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March 9, 2018 - Louder with Crowder
01:04:26
#296 WHY CAN’T TRUMP KEEP STAFF?? Ben Shapiro and Jim Norton | Louder With Crowder
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Louder with Crowder Studios is protected exclusively by Walther and Hopper
Look How many subscribers you got on YouTube son
I'm...
you When you crossed over that one million mark, you were beautiful.
Could have been the next PewDiePie.
That half Asian skunk we got you for a lawyer.
Raised your profile too fast.
It wasn't him, not K.G., but it was you.
You remember that night at South by Southwest you told me it'd be a great idea to crash-shank Uyghur's panel?
You said it'd be a great idea.
A great idea?
We were demonetized before that broadcast even went live.
So what happens?
Cenk Weger gets direct support from YouTube, and what do I get?
A one-way ticket to demonetization, Bill.
You were my producer, Nake, Jared.
You should have looked down for me a little bit.
Should have taken care of me just a little bit so I wouldn't have had to do those web-based security ads for the short-end money.
I got you in the MySpace trending list.
You saw some clicks. You don't understand.
I could have had class.
I could have been at DePaul.
I could have been somebody.
Instead of a mug club salesman bum.
Which, let's face it, Not Gay Jared is what I am.
It was you, not Gay Jared.
Okay.
Bye.
I'll tell YouTube I couldn't find you.
Here. Take this Walthard PPS with extended mag and crimson trace laser.
You're gonna need it.
That's a high-quality item.
Yes. Glad to be with you.
That is the Sound of the Weekend. It's a Thursday livestream.
Jim Norton and Ben Shapiro on today's show.
Also, today's show brought to you by Hopper's Tramadol.
I blew my back.
When I say blew my back, I have a ruptured disc and I didn't warm up properly today doing deadlifts.
It was so loud that the guy who learned the Jim heard a popular, you hurt your back?
I said, yeah, it's funny.
Leave me. Producing with me in video studio as always is Jared who is not gay.
Follow him on Twitter at notgayjaredme at scrowder with your thoughts, your comments, your photoshops.
I'm a meme now. No big deal.
I fulfill my legal obligations during conclusions.
Are we good? No, I'm not a meme.
That's my goal. And at gmorgang...
But you took the picture. I took the picture.
How sad is that? That's what he clings to.
And I teed him up for it and he still took it.
SimplifiedWine.com. How are you, Gerald? What's the one of the day?
I'm doing well. We've got the little Lorenz Perrier.
Like, just a little baby bottle here for you.
Hey, Sven Computer with the overlays.
Ready? Yes, you can follow me on Twitter.
Nope. No, seriously.
Hopper, I found this out. I asked the vet, and then I asked the pharmacist at the CVS. I said, yeah, it's the same pain pills.
It's the same pain pills.
Does it cost less? I don't know, but these pills expired in, like, 2016.
That was a while ago. Which is a good thing.
It's a good thing because it shows that I'm not an addict, that I don't have...
I don't know if it's an opiate or opioid watch.
You're off to a rocky start.
But the bad thing is, I took pills that expired two years ago.
To your point, the latter.
Most comedians cannot claim they have two-year-old pills.
Two-year-old pills that are sitting in there.
It's like Wolf of Wall Street is going to hit you a little bit.
It's an accomplishment. Yeah, exactly. It's going to be a fuse.
Hey, by the way, question of the day is, do you think, we're going to talk about this, obviously, in light of the West Virginia story, do you think public school teachers are woefully underpaid?
That seems to be the acceptance among society today.
I disagree. Why are you laughing?
Because that statement is so hilarious.
All we do is pay them more.
You don't deserve it.
The most important job in the world is teaching.
I'd say killing Bin Laden.
News of the day. McDonald's is flipping its trademark arches upside down to honor women on hashtag International Women's Day.
McDonald's will flip its logo upside down to form a W on all digital channels, including its Instagram and Twitter feeds.
And 100 restaurants will have special packaging crew shirts and hats and bag stuffers for us.
So... Grab them by the golden arches!
And jumping on the feminist bandwagon, of course, Wendy herself will also be going topless.
Oh, there you go. Chipotle just shamelessly released a taco bowl with 50% less listeria.
That seems almost tasteless and not related to women's day.
I don't think it's going to go over well for feminists because I think McDonald's is half the reason they're gelatinous and single.
So... I don't think they're going to buy it.
How do you pronounce that now, by the way, with a W instead of an M there?
They're not going to buy it because they've already bought a lot of it.
One billion served?
That could read, okay, 800 million feminists served.
The rest is taking guests.
By the way, this was fascinating.
Every now and then you get a story that's just a feel good.
The world's oldest message in a bottle was found by a beach walker in Australia.
It comes from the Guardian. The bottle had been thrown overboard from a German sailing ship in 1886 across the Indian Ocean.
Did you know this? Does this come from a German story, Sven Computer?
I don't think so, no. That's why you don't get to plug your Twitter.
He's not even ready when to go to work.
Luckily, the discovery of the message in a bottle was caught on tape.
It's the international language of message in a bottle.
Everybody should know.
It's the international language of message in a bottle.
The universe is telling you that.
That's true. I guess it would be... If Trudeau had collected that, someone would be sued.
By the way, hey, hit the notification bell if you're watching on YouTube because subscribing doesn't mean anything anymore.
So if you want to be notified of our videos and not have the Google Overlord stop it, you go hit the bell.
A woman was arrested for attempting...
Then we're going to talk about public school teachers, but this is a story that's more important.
A woman was arrested for attempting to trick Albuquerque authorities yesterday when she claimed she had a prescription for medical methamphetamine.
That's creative. Really is a thing.
The lady wrote a suspicion when she claimed that she had a prescription for the drug, just like medical marijuana.
and suspicions were all but confirmed when she informed them that her co-pay would be toothless b*******
That's terrible.
Put it in 80-20?
It's a hundred. Medical math is not a thing.
But it is. It can be.
Speaking of which, a new study shows that marrying your first cousin is not as bad as we thought.
Oh, thank God. Research...
Bring it back up, Sven Computer.
It was conducted over seven years by a data scientist in Columbia University, and it shows that it's okay to marry your first cousin as long as your children do not marry their first cousins.
Yeah, just cut off somewhere.
Yeah. Yes! He said third cousin Andy.
He's cute. By the way, fun fact, 20 states today still allow cousin marriage, and we'll talk about them in a minute.
West Virginia is not amongst them.
That's hilariously surprising.
It's the forbidden fruit of the line.
That's where they drew the line?
Really, West Virginia? Here's the thing, though.
Here's the fun, extra fun fact.
Sexual relationships with said cousin.
Totally permissible. Hold on, Sven Computer, can you fact check?
Is that true? Yes, that is true.
Beep, beep. Okay, no Twitter plug. That is, um...
So sexual relations allowed with your cousins in North Virginia, but not marriage.
No, hey, hey! You make an honest woman out of her, you divorce her, and bang her on the side.
That's what separates us from the beasts of the sea.
Stringing her along would just be indecent.
It would just be indecent.
Don't you commit. Don't you commit.
By the way, the fact that someone at Columbia took seven years to study this.
I know. Is he on a watch list somewhere?
Probably so. Is this peer-reviewed?
He came back to his peers. He can't fly.
Told ya! Told ya!
Exactly. It just can't be two generations down.
He's got a first cousin. I like taking his rights first and due process later.
Yes, exactly. Due process later for him.
Grabbed by the Golden Archers. Israel is in the process, by the way, of building a Jewish Disneyland designed by rabbis.
And it's as fun as it sounds. The American company iTech is planning a theme park based on Jewish values, and it will feature Torah-themed rides, Jewish cultural, cuisine, and a fast-pass lane, actually, for patrons to bitch about rising ticket prices.
This park is everything that's gone wrong in this world.
This park is nothing.
I know who I am. I've been to Cedar Point.
I'm in the Magic Kingdom. I had a season pass to Hershey Park in 1985.
It sucks. It sucks.
Who the hell are you? Of course, by the way, not a country, just so you know, but always trying to keep up.
This development has prompted Palestine to break ground on their new theme park, Six F***s Over Gaza Strip.
Yeah, that's... Oh, gosh.
Oh, look at all the children having fun.
And their human shields. And their human shields.
That was almost immediate.
That's weird. That happened fast.
Why is a guy firing an AK from the top of the Mr.
Toad ride? Stop!
Oh, my gosh. It's one of the gods.
Alright, we're going to have to get to Ben Shapiro.
Speaking of Jews, Ben Shapiro soon.
Hey, there you go. And then we have Jim Norton.
We'll be on. It's going to be a relaxed day because how am I doing with the pain pills?
You're doing alright. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Five for ten. I'm swinging above my batting average.
I'm getting better. Name that movie line, by the way.
I'm getting better.
Where's that from? No one here.
Tweet me. So here's one thing I wanted to talk about today.
We've talked about it on the show, but haven't really gotten in depth.
I know I'm going to get some flack for this.
That's why it's the question of the day. Many people have the idea in their head that public school teachers are severely underpaid public servants.
Where do they get that? Well, here. Is the fact that teachers are just going to have to keep accepting lower salaries despite the importance of our job, of their job?
But we as a society have decided, nah, teaching's not that important.
It's only our job. Yeah, that's right.
And because we make that decision, we're the taxpayers.
We're the ones who decide how much the teachers get, and we won't pay them.
Not only don't we pay teachers what they deserve to be paid, In other countries that have better test scores than ours, you hear about that all the time, actually teachers get paid much more on an even standard with professionals or engineers and in other walks of life.
My sister is a teacher.
And I know how much effort they put into this.
They don't ask for a lot of recognition.
They're certainly not going into teaching for the money.
Although some do. Talk about a sister.
By the way, how's your brother? Teaching actually pays pretty...
Here's the truth. They're actually paid pretty well.
And so one thing, I know it's unpopular to say because it's the most important job.
No. No, not really.
It's really not. By the way, are we paying Hillary Clinton's hairstylist on a curve?
What is going on? It just seems like you go back in history, you're like, oh, it was always bad.
Yeah. It never changed. Yeah.
You know those ladies that go through that crossover age where it's like, I'm just going to cut it short now and do this sort of flock of seagulls?
She's always done that. It's like Taco Bell.
They keep revamping it, but it still just sucks.
It's the same exact thing.
So teachers are actually paid well.
Let me lay the case out for you.
I'm not saying the teachers aren't important that they shouldn't be paid what they're worth.
That is not what I'm saying.
Hold your comments. Let's compare them first to other government workers.
School jobs, okay? Some of the better paying ones out there.
See this first chart from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
They receive more than two times the benefits of employees in the private sector, by the way.
The average public school teacher, this comes to us, I think National View, more than double the benefits package received by typical workers in the private sector.
So when we take the benefits into account, overall compensation is actually higher than private sector teachers, which, listen, shouldn't surprise you, obviously.
Public dole, they're going to be paid more than private teachers.
They don't do better, by the way.
Test scores aren't better. Now, here's something we haven't even mentioned yet.
We've compared them to other government workers to private school teachers.
They only work nine months out of the year.
This is the only thing nobody talks about when we talk about what they're paid.
So the average salary for a public school teacher is about $57,000.
Which is not nothing. That's a lot.
No, it's not. But if we prorate that for working 12 months, not even including the benefits, by the way, instead of nine, teachers will be making $76,000.
$76,000, well above the average salary, by the way, for workers with a college degree.
So if we're going to do that, because I don't want to, well, you can't, these people, they go to college, okay, let's not just compare them to a McDonald's worker, five for 15.
It is higher than the average college degree worker, and in line with the median salary for workers with master's degrees are higher.
$77,000. By the way, something else, it doesn't matter what your test scores are, it doesn't matter how your students are doing, you're paid that amount, and they're nearly impossible to fire, even if they suck.
That's You'd have to be given the Kevin Spacey treatment to your students times five for them to even consider getting you out of a rubber room.
And then it'll take you about a year and a half to two years to go.
Yes. Yeah. It looked like you were going to say something.
Yeah, so I think it's just absolutely insane.
I had never heard that clip, by the way, that you played at the beginning when they were saying that teachers just accept lower and lower pay.
When's the last time teachers have ever accepted lower pay?
I just laughed out loud because I'm like, I didn't even know that was out there in the narrative.
Yeah. The thing is, okay, listen, so here's what's going to happen this year.
We're not, I know you were expecting a 12% raise.
We're going to give you a 2.5% raise this year.
You're cutting our pay?
Yeah. No, no, no, no. Maybe you misheard me.
It's actually called a raise.
And every single time that this argument comes up, they're like, it's for the children, it's for the children.
Our scores are terrible.
We do nothing but throw money at the problem.
We spend, what, we're like ranked fifth in the world in spending per student, 40% more than other OECD countries out there, and you're telling me that you need to raise teachers and you still suck?
Yeah. Are you serious?
Where else does that occur?
Nowhere! Imagine you guys coming in here like, well, listen, I'm sorry that the overlays were not prepared.
I'm sorry the sketches were not edited, but I feel I'm deserving of a raise.
You're fired! I'm going to direct you to the rubber room.
Go in there, you can't touch me.
Hey, can't fire me. Union. What was it?
Waiting for Superman was the film about.
And they talked about rubber rooms. In New York, right?
Yeah, a long time ago.
This filmmaker was a leftist, by the way.
It was a liberal. And they jumped all over the filmmakers because it showed kind of the corruption of teachers' unions.
Yeah. By the way, if you want to talk about money in politics, I always talk about Big Oil, Koch Brothers, not even close to the money being bandied about by public sector unions.
Teachers are a big one in there. Absolutely.
Speaking of which, bumper stickers you see all the time.
I know I've talked about this ad nauseum.
This idea that we're spending more on the military.
It's like this paltry sum that's left for them.
No, actually, our total spending on education is $946 billion annually compared to $835 billion for military, including, by the way, veteran care.
Okay? Yeah. So it's important to note that just the bumper sticker doesn't necessarily...
It's not accurate. No, they're skewing the stat because 85% roughly comes from state and local governments and not federal.
By the way, all of your parents, people watching, they all went to school before there was a National Department of Education.
And they're smart. They're okay.
And the test scores are fine. Some would say they're almost...
Easier to employ than millennials.
You want to see the pay rate go up for teachers?
Get rid of public education. Tomorrow competition will go.
Get rid of public education completely?
Get rid of it. Well, he's a dick.
The Federal Department of Education.
No, get rid of the Federal Department of Education.
Get the states out of it.
Sell all the land. Let private companies come in.
Have a base for people who can't afford to go.
And watch how people can now, instead of paying property tax that goes towards it, solve the problem.
So you're talking about a school voucher program.
No, I'm saying get rid of the schools.
Well, yeah, get rid of the schools, but you're saying give a base amount for you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that they can't...
Yeah, exactly. So poor families...
Even there, though, you don't even have to go that far.
You can still keep public education in the states, allow them to do it, and give the kids a voucher so they can take it so at least...
Put it this way. Right now, we have an educational system where you have no choice whatsoever.
It just depends on your zoning district.
Teachers can't be fired, and our test scores suck, and we're spending more on this than our nuclear arsenal.
Right. By the way, our military also needs to hold up the Star Wars defense system for Canada.
And the rest of the free world.
The Germans. What are the Germans giving to NATO? Aren't they skimping on the bill there?
Don't they owe more than they've been paying?
No comment. Comment when it comes to plugging in social media.
That's right. When it comes to shaming his country.
And rightfully so. Nothing.
All right. So according to CNN, actually, West Virginia now, they rank...
This is the big catalyst for the story because they just get a 5% raise.
People go, it's not enough. We're cutting teachers' salaries.
Okay. West Virginia is a great example.
This was in the news recently.
They rank 48th in the nation in terms of how much they pay their teachers.
So people go, well, okay, they're long overdue.
Until you realize they rank 51st in SAT scores.
Which when I first read it, I thought that must be a typo.
No, they're a marvel.
Where else do you rank below the number of ranks?
And it's legit.
That's right, West Virginia, they rank 48th in terms of pay.
51st for SAT scores.
So I'd actually say that's pretty generous.
In any case, here to discuss it with us is Jed, our West Virginia Teachers Union correspondent.
Jed, can you hear us? Yes.
Yes, yes, yes, sir.
I can hear you. Great. Okay, so Jed, so what do you say to the skeptics out there, critics who say the 5% raise was unwarranted considering your state already is 48 for pay but 51st for SAT scores?
That's huge. That's dead last, Jed, if you were keeping track.
No, no, no. See, I'm afraid you're mistaken, Stephen.
If you do the arithmetic now, hold on.
If you add them together, you got the 48 and divides them by the 51.
That's not a thing. Jed, I think you're actually missing.
Hold on. Hold on together now.
If you put it in together and you subtract the numbers, you realize the disparity wage gap ain't even a thing, Steve, and I'm afraid you're mistaken.
Okay, how's that? Well, now hold on.
Hold on. I am. 45...
46. I don't know.
Together... Yeah, 246,100, Stephen, which is pretty much what I figured.
I don't know. You're paid in dimes.
Yeah, no, I'm entirely positive that's wrong.
Well, it's not my fault my phone didn't do the f***ing update!
There's been no update. There's not been an update.
There's absolutely been an update, Stephen.
I didn't get it. Not at all. Not even close.
No update. I'm afraid you're mistaken.
Okay, Jed. So, listen, you're ranked dead last.
Your schools are strained budget-wise, as it is, so you and your fellow teachers are getting a race.
The logic says that the money's got to come from somewhere.
Do you know what they're going to be cutting to make up for it?
Or where do you think they should? That's all you care about, Stephen, is cuts.
Cuts, cuts, cuts. We don't need any more cuts.
The day our Air Force needs to host a bake sale to fund a naval ship and teachers get the money they deserve.
It'll be a bright day for America now, since we ain't got there yet.
Whoa. Jed?
Jed, what's happening? I'm going to get my home and leave.
Okay, Jed, our West Virginia's Teachers Union correspondent, will be up after this with Ben Shapiro.
More pleasant. Now, like any commercial break, this announcement is for fans of the Louder with Crowder program.
The viewers, listeners, and downloaders joined under the umbrella of comedy.
I hope a lot of you guys and gals were listening out there because I have something I want you to do for me.
March 22nd at SMU, 7 p.m.
at the McFarlane Auditorium, Lada with Crowder will be broadcasting live.
I know, I know, it's murder asking you to leave your computers and smart devices for a live show in 2018.
And certainly a show this high energy is no cakewalk.
Although it shouldn't be too tough to attend for those who live in the Texas area.
But remember this. All the leftists, social justice warriors, and professional protesters in Texas are already trying to stop this show from happening.
They tried to run us out in a rail last time at SMU, and now we're offering you a chance to rub it in their face and fill up their whole damn theater with laughter.
Which is the nicest gift you'll ever get from the nicest live show you'll ever see.
Oh, and they won't know what to do with themselves.
Because... What do you do with an Antifa when he won't stop being an Antifa?
It seems this campus really would enjoy laughing at one and two and three and four small Antifa unemployed.
So remember now, your objective is SMU, 7 o'clock on March 22nd.
That's March 22nd at McFarland Auditorium.
Doors open at 6.
Synchronize your watches guys and gals for Operation Louder with Crowder.
There we go. Keep clinking.
You've got to be cool.
You've got to be cool.
Unrecorded message.
You've got to be cool.
Get it. Get it.
Glad to have our next guest.
By the way, his parents have to sign a permission slip for him to be on the show.
You know his show at dailywire.com.
He has to have it everywhere.
He has to be gaudy about it. It's called the Ben Shapiro Show.
Unlike with me, some people think my first name is Louder.
You can follow him on the Twitter.
Ben Shapiro, how are you, sir?
I'm doing okay. Just as always, when I watch a dance, I wonder what I've done with my life.
Yeah, well... Why this is happening.
I feel that way when I dance, which I've been told is actually the sign of a good dancer.
It's immediate regret, followed by comorbid tendencies.
Heard that from Baryshnikov, did you?
Yes, yes, exactly.
I've been studying a lot of...
I took a humanities course in college, so this is what I've learned.
Speaking of humanities, Ben, this week has just teed up for you.
Let me just say the names. Nunberg, Cohn, your thoughts?
Okay, so...
We already know!
Why don't we begin with the globalist cuck Gary Cohn, who's finally out.
We're not calling him a globalist cuck because he's Jewish.
We would never do such a thing.
No, no, no. We call him a globalist because he likes free trade.
And so he's out. There's just total staffing chaos inside the administration, which is not a shock, considering that Sam Nunberg was once part of the Trump campaign.
The top men seen from Raiders of the Lost Ark was apparently that guy actually did the staffing at the Trump campaign and then did it again at the Trump White House.
So Gary Cohn being out is actually, it's less about Gary Cohn than about the guy who's replacing him, whose name slips my mind at this point.
Peter Navarro, who apparently knows nothing about free trade, knows nothing about economics.
But it's firmly convinced that if we increase the price on every one of basic steel products, that somehow the smelters will come back to Pittsburgh or something.
This sort of bizarre Idea that what we really need in America is more people in really heavy gear carrying around things like a scene out of Zoolander and having big fiery chasms beneath them.
We need it to look like Mordor.
We need more Mordor-looking parts of America.
This is what's going to restore economic health.
I'm also not entirely convinced that Cohn didn't shoot a face-off sequel with Kevin O'Leary.
When you see the stills...
Hold on a second. Kevin O'Leary worked for Donald Trump?
Who knew? Who knew? Him being out, I mean, I've talked to people in the White House.
I mean, listen, the chaos inside the White House is a very real thing.
Everybody in the White House basically has a last will and testament written up.
Everybody knows that they could be gone at any minute, or they're thinking about quitting at any minute, because, let's face it, Trump is not a good person to work for.
Okay, turnover in this administration is extremely high.
When you saw Trump the other day doing the Everyone wants to work here.
Only the best people want to work.
Who wants to be communications director?
Stormy Daniels? I'm sure she'd settle out of court.
I think Huma's still trying for something.
Yeah, exactly. I could make you communications director inside of a week.
We would just book you on Fox& Friends every morning for a week, and you would talk about how awesome Trump is, and you'd become his director, and you'd last for approximately two weeks until you said something halfway intelligent, at which point you'd be out on your ass.
The only decision would be saline or silicone.
What would I go for to ensure job security?
Here's the thing. We talked about this the last time you were on.
Trump's bite, his bark is worse than his bite.
His policies were pretty good toward the end of the year, toward the beginning of the year.
And then the shooting happened, and of course it was like we talked about, 64D underwater backwards backgammon where he was actually pushing for some of this gun control legislation.
Now we don't really know.
And here we have it this week with the tariffs and the taxes.
This is something I've always been against.
A lot of people don't understand. I think the biggest partner in steel I think we have in the United States or aluminum is Canada.
It's not China. It's Canada.
China's number 11 on the list. Yeah, China's number 11 on the list.
Yes. The notion that we're being screwed by Chinese steel is just not true.
70% of all steel consumed in the United States is created in the United States.
The steel industry produced 5% more than they did last year, the year before, meaning that it's actually growing, the steel industry, in the United States.
The stock price at companies like Nucor was like $10 in 2000.
Now it's like $62. The United States has been producing approximately the same amount of steel since 1983.
It's just that only 25% of the same number of employees are required to produce that amount of steel because technology is what's taking away the jobs, not competition from foreign sources.
So none of this makes any sense. For every job in the steel industry, there are at least 40 jobs that are dependent on products from the steel industry, meaning that if you increase tariffs, which increase prices in the steel industry, you're passing those prices on to a bevy of other industries.
And I'm sorry, watching billionaire Wilbur Ross on national television holding up a Campbell's soup can to explain to the poor why it is that it doesn't matter that they're paying a little bit more for their canned soup is not real good press.
Do they use steel? I thought that was tin.
Hmm. It's steel-plated tin, right?
I guess that's right, because tin would corrode, right?
I don't know exactly. Either way, there's BPA and someone's getting some cancer if it's Campbell's soup, from what I understand.
At least a little pair. I just need to buy my oregano oil.
You'll be all good. Let me ask you this.
There is some inconsistency here.
Because I understand some people support this idea because they feel as though we've been screwed on free trade.
Now here, there is some truth.
There's a kernel of truth, right? A good example is I talked about this with Ronald Reagan.
The least conservative thing he did was the Harley Davidson fiasco.
The reason Americans wanted Japanese bikes at that time was because they were better.
Anyone go back to the AMF days?
Just awful, awful, awful motorcycles.
And the protectionism actually hurt the consumer because we wanted to preserve an American company that should have gone bankrupt.
Some people don't care. Be American, buy American.
So let's put that aside because I know we're not going to get everyone to agree.
I think everyone has to agree that there is a...
This is how I feel about this.
There's a wildly inconsistent message this week.
Either the economy is rip-roaring and it's booming and we're doing fantastically and we can't take enough winning, or we're getting screwed by foreign competitors and we need to batten down the hatches.
It seems like there are some mixed signals.
For sure. And I think this is one of the problems for Trump is that he doesn't care about the numbers.
He's not interested in the numbers. And you can see that because the stock market has been down since these announcements about the tariffs.
The markets have been thrown into turmoil.
All the good that was done by the tax cuts could easily be taken away through a trade war.
I think it's more about Trump has this vision in his head of 1956 America when we were just making assembly line trucks.
And we were making our own steel in Pittsburgh and in Gary, Indiana.
And never mind the fact that the sky was like purple because of all of the garbage that was being tossed into the air.
In the production of that steel, never mind the fact that the Pittsburgh unemployment rate today is 4.6%, significantly lower than it was During those days and the air is breathable in Pittsburgh because everybody is now in the healthcare industry or the service industry.
It's why I think, honestly, there's such a gap in the feelings about Trump between people who are 60 and up and people who are 40 and under.
People who are 40 and under look at this and they go, what are you even talking about?
You're talking about the steel industry as though, as the steel industry goes, so goes America.
I don't know anybody who actually works in the steel industry.
I know people in the car industry.
I know people in the service industry.
And then there are a bunch of people who are over 60, and they remember working at a plant for 40 years and getting their gold watch for retirement.
And they're thinking, well, if we could bring back those days, that would actually fix everything.
That's an interesting point. I'd like to stay on that for a second because I was just watching Driving Miss Daisy the night with my wife.
It was her grandfather's favorite film.
Also, by the way, he was an amazing man, Fred Corzon.
He was mayor.
They call him city commissioner for Bloomfield, where Mitt Romney was from.
Professor. Ph.D., and was a bombardier in World War II. Just incredible.
You go to the funeral, you're like, oh my God, what am I doing with my life?
His favorite film was Driving Miss Daisy.
So it was an emotional roller coaster to watch it with my wife, because she had never seen it.
But, you know, Dan Aykroyd plays one of your folks, see?
But in the South, it's always weird hearing a Winn-Dixie Jew.
You're like, what is this? It was just horrible casting.
Anyway, but he walks past the assembly line, and you see these people, right?
He owns this big factory, and just...
You know, it sounds like bullets going off in this factory, and you see hundreds of people employed.
I'm going, hold on a second. When people talk about how millennials now, there's less job security than ever, and they feel like the lost generation, they've been abandoned.
I'm going, how many millennials would spend...
Nine, ten hours a day in one of those factories.
Because when we're talking about the good old American days, that's what you're talking about with job security.
That was Pittsburgh back then with a higher unemployment rate.
But how many millennials will be willing to do that?
They benefit from the technology.
I think there's a disconnect where when people talk about it, they need to say, this is what job security means.
This kind of job back then, you'd hear a muddy different tune.
That's exactly right. The same people who decry the lack of job security are the same people who are with Nancy Pelosi when she says that we should ensure that you don't have job lock, that you shouldn't be forced to actually be in a job in order to have health insurance.
These are people who want to switch jobs every couple of years, or they want to pursue their dreams of being an artist.
But the notion that any of them are going to sit there and weld If they want to weld, they could do it right now.
There are plenty of welding jobs in the United States, but can you imagine any of these gender studies majors actually welding?
They're talking about the evils of capitalism and the lack of job security, and then they're majoring in gender studies.
If you cared about job security, maybe you'd go into those industries that are supposedly so hallowed about job security.
Again, the only reason that those assembly line jobs were considered so awesome in 1930 is because assembly line jobs in 1830 were even worse.
Meaning that the jobs now are better than the jobs then.
You'd want to work them more.
We laugh at people who are baristas at Starbucks.
That's a better job. It is better to be a barista at Starbucks than it is to be sitting on an assembly line ensuring that stuff that people are now doing in Vietnam is being done in the United States.
It's such foolishness.
So you're saying you're more of a rivet guy.
Yeah, exactly. You gotta rivet.
What's a rivet? You are so Los Angeles Jewish.
Like, I can't rivet. I'll ruin my hands.
These are the money makers.
This and this are the money makers.
I play violin. I play violin.
Come on. Gotta keep the hands fresh.
I have to get my sneakers some journeys.
How much? We have to get going here pretty soon?
Yeah, 10 minutes. Oh, we've only been on for 10 minutes?
Only been on for 10 minutes. It feels like forever.
It's been an eternity. You said Nunberg.
Have I been saying it wrong this whole time?
I've been hearing people on the news saying Noonberg.
I think so. Well, maybe they're mixing up him and Devin Noons.
Yeah, that's true.
There's Devin Nunes, Nunez, Nanu, and then there's Nanu, Nanu, and then there's...
Yeah, I'm not going to work here no more.
What's your read on the Nunberg situation?
Obviously, because he came out...
He's a crazy person. I mean, that guy's crazy.
That dude be crazy. And that's not a shock.
He actually called me one time during the election cycles, right after he'd been fired from the Trump campaign.
He's crazy. So, like, that was not a great shock.
Expect another call from him very shortly.
What? My favorite part is the part where Aaron Burnett is asking him if he's been day drinking.
And he's, like, gulping from the cup.
And you just got to imagine that there's whiskey in it for that to be absolutely hilarious.
But Aaron Burnett, that was the one that really struck me.
It was all these other people, like he's calling into Jake Tapper.
How's Jake supposed to know that this guy is a legitimate loony?
But if you're sitting across from somebody and you say to them, have you been drinking because I smell alcohol on your breath?
Then the question becomes, so why is he on your show?
And you do have to ask yourself why it is—let's say Austin Goolsbee just started showing up randomly to the Obama administration guy.
He started randomly showing up to TV shows looking drunk off his ass.
Do you think he makes the air that night?
Do you think they're just like, you know what, this is going to make great TV? Exactly.
That's right. Nobody allows him anywhere near a camera.
But Nunberg is apparently a representative of a rather non-sober administration, so it's okay to do that.
In the defense of the media, I will say this.
In defense of Donald Trump, he's a teetotaler.
I don't think he's ever touched a drop.
No, that's right. But the attitude, obviously, is less than sober over at the White House, and it was during the campaign.
And in defense of the media, I will say this.
It is very difficult to distinguish people who are Crazy like they should be in a loony bin crazy from people who are just crazy in politics.
If there were a guy who were wandering around trying to get himself booked on morning shows, let's say 2012, claiming that the president of the United States was born in Kenya and firing off tweets to like Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, you might think maybe that guy shouldn't be on TV, but then he wouldn't be president of the United States, would he? So it's kind of difficult to...
Isn't Kirsten sort of lesbian though now?
So I don't follow that part. I don't follow that at all.
She's a lesbian now. She likes to keep her options open.
Oh, really? Did that happen? That's kind of...
Yeah, but that's got to be rough on Pattinson.
Robert Pattinson? I think you might be gay, too.
I don't know. But I saw him in a movie, a film recently.
It wasn't very good. Wouldn't that be amazing if they had a relationship and now he's gay and she's a lesbian?
It would be. I'd say a lot about that relationship.
Yes, it would. It would almost be like Danny Kaye back in the day, or Rock Hudson, where they were all arranged, but secretly they were playing, you know, I'll find a coin with Gomer Pyle.
I also saw a film recently with Daniel Radcliffe.
They're trying to get out of their roles.
Daniel Radcliffe is so embarrassingly bad at doing accents.
It's this film called The Jungle.
Ben, have you seen this film, The Jungle, with Daniel Radcliffe?
No. That sounds awful.
I still have no idea what accent he was trying to do.
I was like, oh, okay, so it's clearly Russian.
Then I go, no, no, it's Bolivian.
And then it turns out his dad was a Jew in an internment camp in, like, Poland.
I mean, now I just don't know what to think.
All I know is Harry Potter sucks at acting.
Sounds amazing. I don't know how we ended up here.
I don't know how we ended up here either.
Let's just stick here. I mean, anybody want to talk to Manji?
I mean, as long as we're just talking...
I haven't seen the Jumanji.
I don't want to ruin, you know, I want to leave it there, my childhood memory.
Oh, wait, should we do Oscars? Come on, how do we not do Oscars, dude?
Because I did Oscars for four and a half hours, and I am Oscar house.
That's true, you did do that, and I ditched you.
I ditched you on that, didn't I? That is true.
It's an unfortunate moment in our relationship, yeah.
Well, listen, fish sex, that's all you gotta do.
Fish sex, you win an award, apparently.
Yeah, grinding Nemo, man. Grinding Nemo.
Was it Dory?
What's the name of the other one?
Dory and Marlin? Dory.
She forgot it because of PTSD. She blocked it out!
I haven't seen it.
It's the only film I think on there, that and Lady Bird, that I hadn't seen.
But you have seen Fish Sex, also known as Shape of Water.
Your thoughts? Yeah, SJW Splash.
It's the exact plot of Splash, except for it's a black woman, a gay man, and a mute.
And a mute woman rescuing Splash.
That's exactly right. If you cross around with Splash and said it in the 1960s, it's The Shape of Water.
And then everybody praises it and says it's awesome.
So, one of the great war movies of all time, Dunkirk, versus SJW Splash.
Where do you think Hollywood's going to go with this one?
I think they're singing the show. It's 1,000, 25,600 gallons.
And then they have sex with a fish.
It is really just despicable.
We always said, hey, it's a slippery slope.
Where does it stop? Do we get to interspecies?
It stops at Kurt Eichenwald.
It stops at Kurt Eichenwald, a tender movie about Kurt Eichenwald and tentacle porn.
That's where this ends. Well, it was really hard.
I mean, Not Gay Jared barely, I mean, I don't think his liver even made it through after two and a half hours of drinking game.
It was the SJ. And what's funny is there was a disconnect.
I mean, let's face it. Not Gay Jared's expiration date is two minutes from now.
I mean, with all the traffic you put him through.
I mean, you, like, electrocuted the guy.
You beat him with sticks.
You, like, make him drink to excess.
I mean, I'm just shocked the man's alive.
The liver transplant list has already been set up for Naki Jared.
He's being held together by double-sided tape and strings from Jim Henson's Creature Shop right now.
Melted Skittles. He's not at all what you think.
Let me ask you this. Do you think, as it goes, because last time you said, you know what, Donald Trump, if he continues this, could be a two-termer.
After this week, do you think he could right the ship?
This has been a rough week, obviously.
I mean, always it's if trends hold.
So, so far, there's been no trend.
Basically, it's been a scatterplot, is how his presidency has gone.
He'll have a week that's an A, and then he'll have a week that's an F. And there's no continuous trend.
So for two months there, it seemed like, okay, maybe this is under control.
Maybe he's really getting a hold of things.
And now it seems like he's been isolated in the West Wing.
So Jared and Ivanka are obviously sort of alienated from the president at this point by John Kelly.
John Kelly is apparently being ripped by Anthony Scaramucci at the behest of Donald Trump on national TV. He's lost Rob Porter.
He's lost Hope Hicks. A lot of his security blankets are gone.
And so he's sort of lashing out and also identifying with people like Peter Navarro.
So it's... He would have been better with Dave Navarro from NXX. I think Dave Navarro would have been a better choice at this point.
At this point, who's to know?
I would just appoint anyone.
Like, yeah, Ben Shapiro, you want a job?
Alright, come on in. You don't even like me.
Just do whatever. I don't care.
Not for all the tea in China, my friend.
The idea of working for that administration.
I have a story to tell you after, when we go, when we hit a break here.
And you'll like to hear this off air.
But it is the Ben Shapiro Show, of course, at dailywire.com.
I'm still fuzzy-headed from the Oscars.
And you can listen to him on iTunes, on the SoundCloud, all over the place.
And he loves that Quip toothbrush.
We will talk with you soon, Mr.
Shapiro. Thanks a lot.
Now you're best for her.
When the best time for the world Hello, a lot of crowd of viewers.
Papa here. Don't forget that you can listen to the podcast on the go on iTunes and SoundCloud.
In the audio, you can download it and you can listen at Live read time, one live read per week.
Unlike Ben Shapiro with those damn electric toothbrushes and their sheets.
Never end. How many toothbrushes do you need?
I tell you what, he does have good products.
That's nice. They're less afraid of him than they are of us.
Listen, thank you so much, everyone.
We've gained so many subscribers recently.
The Change My Mind segments have done incredibly well.
We are so grateful.
But like we've talked about, we employ 15 people here at Ladder with Crowder.
YouTube is not paying us.
YouTube is not paying the bills with the demonetization.
So, louderwithcredit.com slash mugclub.
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That's livewithcutter.com slash mugclub, or you can, of course, enjoy the live show March 22nd at SMU, livewithcutter.com slash tour.
Enjoy the rest of the show. Again, due to the painkillers and the injury.
Big fan of our next guest.
I grew up watching him.
I grew up as a fan of his comedy.
And then I got to know him. There are a few people where that's the case.
Nick DiPaolo is one.
I didn't really watch Joe Rogan's stand-up a whole lot because I was in Canada.
We didn't really have access to it. But I watched him obviously on Fear Factor.
Dennis Prager I listen to on the radio a lot.
And this next gentleman, Jim Norton.
You can follow him on the Twitter, at Jim Norton.
How are you, sir? I'm good, buddy.
It's funny, on Twitter, I was looking, I'm sorry to hear about your back, but it's amazing what, like, you're like, yeah, I hurt my back, and people just immediately, hey, try falling off a scaffolding, you fruit!
Like, their back injuries are legit, and yours is like, you know, you're a little sissy because you hurt your back doing something other than like a man's task.
Right. Yeah, I know. This is true.
Although, you know, I did do it doing a sissy task.
What were you doing?
It was actually warming up, and I didn't respect the warm-up weight doing deadlifts.
And I was in a rush, and so I skipped a couple warm-up sets, and it was funny.
It was loud enough where... And actually the guy across the gym was like, oh, did you just hurt your back?
I said, yeah.
Do you mind taking off the weights? And then it's that rush home because you're in the eye of the storm, you know, before it seizes up on you.
Do you wear like a belt when you lift?
Because I just watched a video of the guy from Game of Thrones Mountain just broke the deadlift record.
Yeah. I think he just set a world record lifting like a little over a thousand pounds.
Did you? No, no.
No, no, no. He's probably one hell of a venture though.
Just that range of motion. Just 800 pounds.
Yeah. No, he actually lifted Peter Dinklage and five of his friends.
Yes, exactly. No, I didn't know that.
You know, the guy actually was talking with me about that today because that was held before by Eddie Hall.
And Eddie Hall is one of the few strongmen to ever compete.
Watch people, like, what are you doing with a strongman?
There's actually a film about it called Born Strong.
It's fascinating. He was, at this point, he had never won strongman.
He was competing against the mountains, Avizkas is one guy, and Brian Shaw.
But he did hold the world record deadlift, I guess, until it was broken.
And he said, as soon as I win World's Strongest Man, I will quit and I will lose, you know, 100-something.
And he did. He won it, and then he walked away because these people did not live long.
But the mountain is like 6'8", 6'9", 400-something pounds.
Aren't those guys all from Iceland, too?
They're all Icelandic. There's only like 300,000 people in Iceland, and all of them are World's Strongest Men competitors.
I don't know. Keep that gene pool small.
I guess so, yeah.
I guess so. They're all having sex with each other, yeah.
Yes, well, the study came out today.
Your third cousin, it's fine. It just can't be your first cousin.
It does not taint the gene pool.
Oh, good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So listen, I know you have your tour.
Your next March 16th at the DC Improv, or is it DC Improv?
Foxwoods, March 16th, yeah.
Foxwoods, okay. And DC Improv, 22nd to 24th.
I wanted to ask you this, because you're obviously one of the biggest names in stand-up out there right now.
Can you remember your first time when you sold out a venue where people were there for you?
Oh, yeah. I was just getting on Opie and Anthony.
It was a place in Philadelphia.
It seats like 500, and it was called the Theater of the Living Arts.
Sounds like one hell of a rockin' party.
TLA! We said TLA for short.
That's how all the rock stars said it.
Yeah, that's how you know the kids are into it.
Yeah. Theater of the Living Arts, and I sold out five shows in a couple of days.
Wow. So that was the first thing that indicated to me, like, wow, this radio thing really is going to bring in an audience.
But it's a weird—it's a relief and it's a pressure.
Like, the relief is, I know I just have to be funny.
I'm not going to offend them. If they're Opie and Anthony fans and they're there to see me, they're probably there to listen to what I have to say.
But if I suck, they're going to let me know it because they're Opie and Anthony fans and they paid to see me.
So I knew I had to be funny, but I knew I didn't have to worry about offending them.
So it was kind of a pressure and no pressure at the same time.
That's a good way of describing it because that was the first time for us at Virginia Tech where it was a 550 seat and they were turning hundreds of people away.
And we were surprised. We actually, you know, because the comedy compression, I talk with these guys about it all the time, you want people packed in.
If it's a room, you want them packed in as tightly as possible.
So I had actually roped off the back rows and the side rows because I was like, well, let's put them in this pocket.
And it was a bizarre experience.
I think that's a good way to put it. You know there's some buy-in.
So you know, okay, they understand where we're coming from.
We're not going to have to worry about offending them despite Antifa protesting outside.
But they're here for a good time.
The flip side is... We better be funny, you know, because they are here, like you said, to see us.
And it changes the whole dynamics.
I wonder if you've managed to keep sort of, I guess, your stand-up chops.
A lot of guys get their second special.
It's not the same. It's not as good.
I see that a lot. I like my newer ones better than my older ones.
I'm more comfortable on stage.
I enjoy them a lot more.
It depends on how long it takes.
It took me a while to get my first one, but I never stopped doing stand-up.
Some guys just kind of, they tour on the same hour they just shot.
And I'm like, what are you doing?
You just did that on TV. Everyone's gonna go there and know your dumb jokes.
That would bore me to tears, too.
I couldn't do it.
So right now, I'm not ready for another special.
On this tour, I'm cycling through.
There's so much stuff to talk about.
The topical stuff just kind of goes out the back door.
That also speaks to your work ethic. Because that means, you know, I've told us to not cage here.
Because, you know, you don't have really the same experience or Sven computer here.
We're actually doing the full show live.
The monologues, sketches, interactive stuff with the audience.
And I said, listen, you've got to re-earn it every show.
The next show, they don't know. They don't know this thunderous applause.
They have no idea. You're starting at.0.
But a lot of comedians lose sight of that.
And that's one thing that...
Eh, not to blow smoke, but I've always watched your recent special.
I'm like, oh, wow, the quality is actually...
I wouldn't say gone up.
Certainly not gone down. It's been consistently really good.
And that's really good. It's not the case, though, with a lot of...
Thank you. Yeah, I mean, you can't...
The thing is, I'm just desperate.
Like, I look at it like...
At any minute, everyone is going to realize I stink.
So it's like I do the chip podcast, I do radio, I do my gay.
I'm trying to do everything just in case everything else is taken away.
Just so you know, you didn't finish that thought, and so what you just said was, I do my gay, and you continued.
Oh, that was probably my mind just saying, go ahead, out yourself.
So you shared it completely, really.
Let me ask you, are you a guy, and then we'll talk about Stormy Daniels, because I'm sure you have some thoughts.
Let me ask you this. Are you a guy who always gets nervous before on stage?
Or are you someone who's, because I've always envied people who don't.
I think I do get mildly.
Carson said he used to get nervous.
I'm not nervous like, oh no, I'm not funny.
What I'm nervous about is I hope I don't forget my act.
I know most of the material will work in front of my audience because I've worked it out enough, but I hope I don't forget my act.
I panic. I was going through this thing years ago where I was on stage.
I was on a theater tour and I was getting lightheaded and I thought I was going to vomit on stage.
And I was at the Orpheum in Boston, and I'm physically holding onto a chair in front of about 2,300 people, and I'm like, I'm gonna collapse, I'm gonna collapse.
And I realized I was just afraid.
And I finally just said to myself, you just shut up and collapse then, like in my head.
And then it went away, because I realized you're gonna faint on stage.
Your inner monologue is Cagney, that's your con?
Shut up and collapse, buddy!
Look, Ma, bottom of the world!
This was after you had risen to fame after your special?
Oh, yeah. So you had it, okay, okay.
2002, this, no, it was actually before my special.
This was 2002. Okay.
This was after Opie and Anthony first got fired, Monster Rainwood.
My first special was 2007.
Right. But I was just scared, man, and I didn't know how to say I was scared.
So it made it into this physical thing, you're going to collapse!
And then I just finally just screamed at myself, like, just shut up!
I was so disgusted with myself, and it kind of snapped me out of it.
Wow, that is incredible.
Well, you know what? There you go. You should do like a Jordan Peterson book, 12 Rules for Life with Jim Norton.
Stage fright. I think a lot of people wouldn't realize that that would help.
Hey, speaking of which, let me ask you, what do you think about the state of comedy as it relates more so to the entertainment industry?
We just saw the Oscars. I don't know who you're...
Obviously, I know you were tight with Jay Leno.
I don't know who you're friends with in the late night department, so I don't want to get you in trouble, but Kimmel was super, super political there.
A turnoff for a lot of people.
I watched it, and it just seemed so flat, and it occurred to me.
In 2018... Comedy, certainly as it relates to what you can see on television, thank God for Netflix and YouTube, it's not very fun anymore.
You know, somebody raised a good point.
I love Gervais when he hosts the Golden Globes because he kind of sets out to ruin their night.
And somebody pointed out that you either play to the audience or you play to the people at home.
Ricky plays to the people at home and Jimmy was playing to the audience.
I was actually impressed because I was surprised he addressed Harvey Weinstein at all.
I thought that they were going to totally and just bash Trump.
And like, you want to bash Trump? That's fine.
He's the president. But I thought it was just going to be so predictive.
But I was a little shocked that they went into it.
And they did talk about Me Too.
It's a tough gig for him too because a lot of those people might be victims in the audience who have had assaults from producers and not know what to do.
He's probably going to bomb at the Oscars and then ruin the fact that he's never going to get these people on his show.
Don't forget, he's performing for the people who come on his show.
So that's kind of a tough gig.
That's a good point for the audience at home, because imagine how hard.
I mean, we would have been pissing ourselves laughing if he made, you know, the Hollywood rape jokes, and it made people in the audience really uncomfortable.
You know, cut to Jennifer Garner, and she's like, and you're like, ah, she was one of them!
We would be laughing at home, but you can't, so he has to cater to them.
It's kind of like a talk about with a debate.
We do these Change My Mind segments.
What you have to do is identify who you're talking with.
Is it someone whose mind can be changed?
If so, you try to. And if it's not, if it's like a hardcore leftist who wants to get a span from SMU, what you have to do is go, okay, at this point, I'm talking to them for everyone else watching.
Sure. Yeah, I've long since given up trying to change people's opinions because...
It's not my job as a comedian.
As a comic, I try to be funny, and I wanna be original, and I wanna express my opinion, and if people like it, great.
And I've had my opinion altered a little bit listening to comedians, but I don't like to be spoken at.
My goal is not to go out there and educate anybody.
I don't think I'm so much smarter than the audience that they need me on stage to educate them.
Sometimes you change someone's mind, sometimes you don't.
But I think it's fun to make people laugh at things that they don't agree with.
To me, that's a great challenge.
Because whenever I mention Trump, I don't, I mean, I make fun of certain parts, but I don't just go up there and kill him, you know, because to me, every comic does that.
And I don't hate him.
So I'm not going to pretend I hate him if I don't.
And it's fun to watch the Trump thing.
It was like the Bush years toward the end.
You're like, it's not even a final war.
You never want to know, like, an entire business should never have the same political opinion if the business is open.
There should be some who like him and some who don't and some who think he says good things and some who thinks what he says is crap.
I mean, there's certain guys like James Woods and other guys who are really all in with him.
With comedy, you don't see as many guys.
Like Nick DiPaolo, I mean, I know is fine with Trump.
But a lot of guys, I think even guys that like certain things he says are afraid of it.
And that's the beauty of me, is I'll never go higher than mediocrity so they can't hurt me.
What are they going to take away?
The comedy seller for me? I get paid 35 bucks there.
Well, yeah, exactly. And you're not afraid to go low.
Wouldn't they go high? Go low. Absolutely.
Believe me, I will undercut all the other comedians.
Okay, so I have your Twitter.
Where's the website, though, for people to go and check out your tour for the future dates?
JimNorton.com. JimNorton.com.
JimNorton.com. He is going to be...
I have Jordan Peterson up in front of me.
At Jim Norton. Because some people have the underscore and it throws you off.
And then someone recently had the dash.
It's awful. Why would you have a dash in 2018 and not use an underscore?
JimNorton.com is going to be at the DC Improv.
And we'll have you back soon, brother.
Have a good time with these shows. Don't collapse.
Don't collapse. All right, buddy. Thanks a lot.
Yeah, feel better now. March 22nd.
SMU. Dallas, Texas.
Prepares. For the greatest show on earth.
I'm free!
Get it.
I'm free falling!
What? Can I come inside, guys?
Beep beep? No, go away!
But it's raining out here.
Beep. Does our AppleCare cover that?
No, no, it covers...
Manufacture of defects doesn't cover, like, fat negligence.
So do you think we should, maybe, should I... Just be safe.
And I'm free!
I'm free!
I'm free falling!
Free!
I'm free falling!
🎵🎵🎵 you
I found out what the key is there. The key is the webbing.
Oh, really? I learned this as a kid.
That's how you get out. No one taught me how to swim.
But I learned my methods through observing ducks.
Ducks. The child, and I was going, I'm not getting anywhere.
Thank you, Sesame Street, for that. And I looked and I said, wait, there seems to be webbing.
Did that? Nah, I just fixed the riptide problem.
Also, mallards mate for life.
Really? So long as they're not first cousins.
Uh... Jim Norton, Ben Shapiro, thank you so much.
And by the way, we were going to be broadcasting live from South by Southwest next week.
They kicked us out. They revoked our passes.
Now, me and Nake Jared, when we But we won't be broadcasting live.
So it's going to be a normal show next Thursday, and then March 22nd, live from SMU, the week after that, Illinois, live broadcasting on campus.
Who knows what could happen? Nobody knows.
A little bit different for the last segment today.
You just saw her dancing.
She has been writing at Loud Earth Crowder now for the last, I want to say, eight months to a year.
You know her, Nicole Cooper.
Nicole, how are you? Doing well.
Thanks, Stephen. Thank you for being on the show.
Now, listen, for people who don't know, this is actually, we wanted to have her on because this is going to be her last day at writing at Lotto's Crowder.
Today is her last day, and we wanted to see her off.
Nicole, how long have you been writing at the website?
Almost a year now.
Yeah, coming up on a year.
Okay, almost a year. That's right.
And you came to us through the Golden Ticket submissions for people who don't remember.
Yeah, that was totally kind of...
Just by chance, I was on y'all's website one day, saw the jobs tab, and the rest is history.
The rest is history.
Not so much. I mean, it still lives on forever in an archive.
It's true. I guess that technically is history.
It's digital history. And for people asking, no, I did not give you the boot.
We are all actually very hard.
You're fired. Want to come on the show?
You're fired. Want to come on the show?
Come on, put a smile on for her.
How about a smile, Apuzikanta?
No, we're actually really sad that you're leaving us.
First off, it's going to be hard to replace.
It took us a long time with the golden tickets.
Hundreds of submissions. Was totally blind, by the way.
And you just happened to be the best person who applied.
But you are leaving us.
And I don't want to steal your thunder.
I'm on a pain pill today, too.
So listen, it's OK. At this point, if anyone's paying attention, there's some buy-in.
They know who you are. Can you explain to them why it is that you're leaving us at this point so soon?
Yeah, yeah. So I'm actually really sick.
That's why I'm laying on a pillow instead of in a proper office chair.
I thought it was a style thing.
People were using pillows at that time.
Yeah, just lounging.
Yeah, exactly. Well, you look fine.
You still look great on the sky, better than me.
Well, thank you. Yeah. Sorry, continue.
Well, whatever. So yeah, I'm really sick.
I have a late stage Lyme disease.
Borrelia burgdorferi is the technical term.
And it's just been getting worse and worse.
And I was just like, I need to leave Lauder with Crowder before my writing starts being affected.
Because I've been really, really sick before.
I kind of bounced back, but I'm kind of back on the downhill.
So... Like I know my body and I know You know, when I'm going to get worse.
And I was just like, I need to just step back, you know, because you guys deserve the best people to be working with you.
And I know that I can't be performing at my best.
Well, you deserve some rest and recovery time.
And I was trying to read up on this.
Because I know everyone knows Lyme disease and ticks.
I wasn't really familiar with this.
And honestly, I didn't know that you were, especially going on campus, I don't want to reveal anything, but wheelchair-bound, that was kind of a surprise.
When Courtney told me that a while back, I didn't even know.
And I felt like a real ass for not knowing.
I should have asked. What is this exactly?
Because most people are not familiar with it.
Yeah, so everyone's, you know, familiar with acute Lyme disease, as you said.
It's something that you can get from a tick bite.
Also, mosquitoes and spiders can carry it.
However, if you're not treated right away after you get bitten and infected, it can turn into chronic Lyme or late-stage Lyme.
And that basically is just these little bacteria.
They're spiral shaped and they can get into anywhere in your body.
And so they love the nervous system and attacking the nervous system.
So mine got into my brain and my spinal fluid.
And so I have problems with seizures, cognitive difficulties, heart My difficulties just started having thyroid stuff.
It's affecting my blood counts now.
So it can really just wreak havoc on your whole body.
I have friends who are on feeding tubes.
I know you mentioned there's some controversy, I guess, surrounding the idea.
Some people say it doesn't exist.
And again, I don't know anything about anything when it comes to Lyme.
I got checked. I'm like, okay, no tick.
I'm good. What's the controversy with the Lyme?
So the controversy is...
Well, first of all, as you said, a lot of doctors and people don't believe in Lyme.
They don't think it's a thing just because there hasn't been a lot of research up until now.
There's a lot of stuff coming out of Johns Hopkins, Duke University and Stanford where they're finally saying, hey, this is a real thing.
These patients need help and these patients need treatment.
The biggest debate right now, however, is what the best way to treat Lyme patients is.
Antibiotics have always been the way to go but it can be really invasive.
Uh, because a lot of patients have to go on, uh, IV antibiotics.
Well, I think, I think you kind of, people throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Like we, Naki, Jared and I talked about that.
It was colitis. Everyone says, you know, I have colitis.
I have Crohn's and they blame mirth.
They blamed gluten. Like, well, gluten, gluten is a thing.
And so it just sort of became, you know, naturopaths.
Oh, okay. Avoid gluten.
And so people go, I feel lethargic.
Oh, chronic Lyme. So some of that gets tossed into the umbrella.
Uh, but actual neurological, obviously with you, it's, it's, it's not, I feel kind of bloated.
You've had the blood work and, uh, And been on antibiotics for a while, I know.
Yeah, most definitely.
And so the standard Lyme test that's given today for acute Lyme disease, it's not accurate.
It's only 60% accurate.
The most recent study has shown.
And so there's new tests that have been developed and they picked up on mine from those new tests, new tests, but it took them eight years to find.
Hey, listen, don't worry about the word flip.
You're doing better than me right now.
Thanks to Hopper's Tramadol.
They should be a sponsor right now.
I've talked about this. By the way, exact same pills as the vet described to me.
Also, the vet is also a liar.
You said Tramadol?
Described? There we go.
Look. I don't have Lyme.
I'm just a moron. By the way, people, and the reason I wanted to bring you on was because I know it's hard to get in to see specialists and neurologists and people who might know those fields.
Put it this way. With the people out there, wherever they line up on Lyme disease or chronic Lyme disease or this idea or not, you know, you have these neurological issues.
I know you need help, and I know that it's been tough.
You know, there's a long waiting line with specialists.
So please, anyone out there, if you can help her, email nicole at loudroscreditor.com.
That's Nicole with an H, right?
Nicole with an H. And I wanted to bring you on, too, Nicole, because we've talked about this.
There are very, very few layoffs in this company.
And honestly, the only reason the layoffs that have happened have ever happened is because it affected everybody else on the team.
And you came to us blind with a golden ticket application, and we've always kind of done these sort of employee assessments.
And Courtney and Jared and I, and specifically Courtney and the website, whenever it came to you, we were like, well, she's particularly got a great attitude.
Mm-hmm. Such a positive attitude, such a can-do attitude, and you're a student, and you've always been so grateful, and we've been grateful to you, and you've been so consistent, and to the point where I honestly didn't know that your health was as bad as it was, because people wouldn't know it to communicate with you, and you've helped a lot of other people, so I wanted to just do what we can to get you some help here.
You've been great to us. Thank you so much, Steven.
I've enjoyed working here so much.
It is so hard for me to walk away.
You guys are amazing.
You work so hard and just produce amazing material.
So it's an honor to have worked here.
Well, it's been a pleasure for us to have you work for us.
And, of course, if you recover, you always have a welcome spot to come back.
And, you know, I think it's important for people to see out there.
A lot of people, they just think, you know, we've talked about this.
People who work for me are the first people I think of when I get up, often the last people before I go to sleep, outside of my wife.
Constantly we've been talking about this.
Constantly we've been thinking about these things.
And constantly we want to make sure that people are taken care of.
That's why we have a very closely knit team.
Now we could just hire day raiders like other companies do and pay them the lowest amount to do clickbait, which we've seen a lot of sites fall by the wayside.
But I think a big part of it is people like Courtney and Casey and Brodigan and Corey and yourself and of course Jared and everyone who works here.
I think people can sense a difference.
And people can sense a difference. A big part of these sweepstakes and a big reason you went through is, like I said, there's an attitude in the way you treat other people, the way you work with other people.
It's been a real blessing to a lot of us.
And, you know, we're really sad to see you go.
But I really hope that someone out there hearing this can give you a hand.
And hopefully some people also learn. Listen, not all employers, employees, it's not the Scrooge McDuck.
No. We actually care.
I certainly care. Sometimes it's tough.
Sometimes I feel too deeply.
But in this case, I'm all torn up about it.
I'm going to miss you. I'm going to miss you guys too.
A lot. Well, listen, we're always a phone call and a Skype away.
All right. And, you know, hopefully you get some...
That's Nicole with an H. Nicole at lottowithcreditor.com.
We're going to see you guys next week.
Please keep Nicole in your thoughts and prayers and send her any help or anyone who you think might be able to help.
Nicole, we love you genuinely.
I love you. Thank you.
You better love her, not care. Say it.
Be a man.
Love you, Sarah. Love you, Nicole.
And we'll certainly be in touch talking with you.
And everyone else, you want to play us out here, Nicole?
Tell them we're going to see them next week. Oh, yeah.
Thank you all for joining us tonight, and we'll see you next week.
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