← The Ben Shapiro Show
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2099 - The EVIL Revolutionary Left Cheers Murder
00:49:26
The murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson brings with it a wave of sympathy…for the murderer; Donald Trump’s administration is geared for effective administration, as Republicans prepare to pare back government overreach; and Pete Hegseth fights back against media smears. Click here to join the member-exclusive portion of my show: https://bit.ly/3WDjgHE Ep.2099 - - - DailyWire+: Our largest sale of the year is live NOW! Get 50% off New Annual Memberships this Cyber Week! https://dailywire.com/cyberweek Matt Walsh’s hit documentary “Am I Racist?” is NOW AVAILABLE on DailyWire+! Head to https://amiracist.com to become a member today! Get your Ben Shapiro merch here: https://bit.ly/3TAu2cw - - - Today's Sponsors: PureTalk - Exclusive discount for our listeners at: https://www.PureTalk.com/Shapiro Home Title Lock - Get a FREE 30-day trial and a FREE title history report when you use code SHAPIRO at https://hometitlelock.com/shapiro today! Tax Network USA - Seize co...
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
Ben Shapiro
Well, folks, we have updates in the search for the murderer of the United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. He was assassinated, of course, on Wednesday. And there are some pretty deep ramifications for American society and all this. We'll get to that in a moment. First time is running out. DailyWire plus is 50% off, but not for much longer. Get a full year of uncensored shows, exclusive series, documentaries and more, all at half the price. Head on over to dailywire.com cyberweek before it is too late already. So on Wednesday, as we know, the United Health executive Brian Thompson was shot to death on the streets of New York. Authorities are still searching for the suspect at this point. According to the Wall Street Journal, police are combing New York City for the suspect who used a Sharpie to write, deny, defend and depose on cartridges that are believed to have come out of his gun when it jams. According to law enforcement officials, some of those words are commonly associated with tactics insurers use to avoid paying claims. Investigators believe that the suspect may be staying or may have stayed at a hostel on Manhattan's Upper west side. The NYPD hasn't publicly identified the person who ambushed Brian Thompson. However, they have released an image of the person, quote, unquote, wanted for questioning. They released his face. He's smiling and wearing a hood in one of the photos as he appears to lean on a counter. Authorities are offering up a reward of up to ten grand for information leading to an arrest in the case. The real question in all of this is how Americans respond. So Taylor Lorenz, we talked about her yesterday. She is a psychotic former reporter for the Washington Post and the New York Times. She's totally insane. She was insane on Covid. She was insane when it came to the supposed predations of people on the right who ought to, she said, be shut out of media and particularly social media. Well, now she is full scale rallying in favor of the murderer. So she tweeted yesterday on Blue sky, which is a weird left wing echo chamber form of Twitter, there was a post put out by Blue Cross Blue Shield all about whether it was going to pay for anesthesia under its healthcare coverage. And she then tweeted out, quote, and people wonder why we want these executives dead so openly shearing the death of Brian Thompson. That wasn't her only post. Somebody put out a statement saying, quote, legislation, idea, healthcare executives and their families must be on the cheapest plan their company offers and they aren't allowed to seek other care. And she wrote in all capital letters indoors. Then she put out a post that showed a graphic of a happy star, like a star with a happy face and balloons and the caption CEO down. And she wrote, woke up to see this spammed in my group chats. And she said I am not alone, that other people were doing the same thing. Then she reposted a post from left wing agitator Ken Klippenstein saying, today we remember the legacy of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. And what exactly was that legacy? The claim denial rates by insurance companies. And of course, it's not just Taylor Lorenz socialist Nathan Robinson, a complete useless leech on the ass of society, posted himself, quote, live your life in such a way that people will be sad when you die. That was above a screen cap of a New York Times headline that said torrent of hate for health insurance industry follows CEOs killing. That piece from the New York Times is all about people who apparently were perfectly fine with the murder of Brian Thompson on the streets of New York City. According to the New York Times, none of this stopped social media commentators from leaping to conclusions and showing a blatant lack of sympathy over the death of a man who is a husband and father of two children. Thoughts and deductibles to the family, read one comment underneath a video of the shooting posted online by cnn. Unfortunately, my condolences are out of network. A TikTok user wrote, quote, I'm an ER nurse and the things I've seen dying patients get denied for by insurance, it makes me physically sick. I just can't feel sympathy for him because of all those patients and their families. And these sorts of messages were incredibly common across the Internet. We discussed yesterday a Columbia professor who wrote something very similar. Unfortunately, bubbling under the surface of all this is something very serious. Really serious. What is that serious thing? The revolutionary left is creeping into the mainstream. Yesterday we talked about liberals versus the left. Liberals are people who disagree with me on public policy but aren't in favor of, you know, the murder of their opponents. The left is a different thing. The shooting of Thompson has unleashed a wave of evil from members of the left. Thompson was not a criminal. He wasn't even an advocate of death the way, for example, abortion or euthanasia advocates are. And by the way, murdering an abortionist or an advocate of euthanasia would be unjustifiable morally in a democratic system. Brian Thompson's great sin, according to these people, is that he was the head of a company that exists within a mixed private public healthcare framework and that he did his job because that's how health insurance actually works. Some things are covered and some things are not. And you may not like the application of the coverage and it may be bad. That is not an excuse for murder. But for the left, if you hate the system, you are morally justified in murdering anyone who acts within the system. That means that if, like one Bernie Sanders follower, did you believe that private healthcare kills Americans, you can go around murdering congresspeople. I know we buried that one. The media pretended it never happened. Steve Scalise is still limping today because he was nearly shot to death by a Bernie Sanders fan who believed that being part of the quote unquote system that didn't nationalize healthcare meant you were a murderer. This stuff means that if you don't like that health insurers often deny coverage for certain preexisting conditions or non cover doctors or medication, you can then murder the CEO of a health insurance company. This is revolutionary leftist evil. And it's evil for a couple of reasons. First, violence is not justified in a democracy where your say is part of the process. This is why democracies are generally good, because they outsource the violence to the government. Revolution to overthrow tyranny is justified, but tyranny has to be actually real and violence has to be the last resort. I didn't like public policy in California, so I picked up my family and my company and we left. Okay? Tyranny is not real in the case of healthcare in the United States. And violence is not being used as last resort in this particular case. If you perceive America to be a tyranny and violence to be the proper response, that is a call for unending violence until the system itself is changed. It's a call for revolution. When you say it's okay to murder CEOs on the street, that is a call for revolution. Second, violence against members of private industry. That isn't even a protest of public policy. Let's be fair about this. That isn't even shooting politicians, which would be evil enough. It's even a different level of evil because it's a protest against the very system of free markets themselves. Brian Thompson isn't responsible for America's healthcare system any more than the head of CVS is responsible for America's trade system. Directing hatred against Brian Thompson is not about shaping public policy because you could shoot every CEO in America and it wouldn't shape public policy. It turns out that it's about trying to threaten anyone who engages in free markets at all. This is simply Marxist leftist radical evil. This person could just as easily have shot a doctor who decided not to perform a surgery or shot a bank CEO who denied a loan application for a home. It would have fallen under the same category. This, by the way, is not uncommon. Unfortunately, in modern Western history, this was all the philosophy of the Red army faction in Germany in the 1970s that was known as the Baer Meinhof gang. They weren't seeking a better world. They were seeking to tear down the world of capitalism on behalf of Marxist revolutionary evil. These are people who routinely quoted Erba Marcuse and Antonio Gramsci. They called for revolution. Ulrike Meinhoff, a left wing radical journalist, led the way. She famously said, quote, protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more. And that language is replete with echoes in today's society. From college campuses to left wing media. That philosophy led the Baer Meinhof gang to engage in routine assassination of everyone from industrialists like Hans Martin Schleyer to, to Dresdner Bankhead Jurgen Ponto to American soldiers in Germany. These people also sometimes become the tools of enemy regimes. Baader Meinhof certainly was. They worked with the Stasi, the East German Stasi, other Soviet agents, to foment chaos. They coordinated with terrorist groups like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Palestine Liberation Organization itself. The origins of Baader Meinhof came from the 1968 student protests in Germany. Does any of this sound familiar? They were Marxist in orientation. They were actually influenced by the 1965 Watts riots in the United States, radical race riots in the United States in which violence was somehow justified. They allied with radicals all over the globe. They would read Che Guevara. They wrote essays defending the Munich massacre of Israeli Olympians by Palestinian terrorists. Stephen Aust is an author who literally wrote the book on the Beidermeinhof gang. And he pointed out, quote, the Baer Meinhof gang drew a measure of support that violent leftists in the United States like the Weather Underground never enjoyed. A poll at the time showed a quarter of west Germans under 40 felt sympathy for the gang. One tenth said they would hide a gang member from the police. Prominent intellectuals spoke up for the gang's righteousness as Germany, even into the 1970s was still a guilt ridden society. When the gang started robbing banks, Newscasts compared its members to Bonnie and Clyde. Andreas Bader, a charismatic action man, indulged in the imagery, told people his favorite movies were Bonnie and Clyde, which had recently come out, and the Battle of Algiers, which is an anti colonial propaganda piece on behalf of actual groups that would end up with a with an Islamic fascist regime in Algeria. The pop poster of Che Guevara hung on his wall. He paid a designer to make a Red Army Faction logo, a drawing of a machine gun against a red star. So with all this backdrop, what exactly are we supposed to make of journalists? Pseudo journalists like Taylor Lorenz? Or academics like that Columbia professor who proclaimed soft support for the murder of Brian Thompson? Well, I mean, I think that we should take it as a leading bleeding edge indicator that we are on the verge of something terrible. After all these acts of violence, they're not quite as sporadic as they used to be. This follows hard on the Black Lives Matter riots, which burned cities, did $2 billion in property damage and were indulged and even celebrated by many on the left. The Hamas takeover of college campuses, again indulged and celebrated by the left wing elite up to and including the Democratic presidential candidate for the United States. And now the not so quiet applause for the assassination of a private healthcare CEO. The toxic brew of radicalism and violence that characterized the 70s in Germany and the United States. Actually, because it happened in the US too. Enormous number of terror bombings in the United states in the 1970s. All that stuff is bubbling again. And why not? Many of the people who engaged in precisely that sort of violence are now well respected American academics. We'll get to more on this in a moment. First, there's no shortage of flashy ads from the big wireless carriers offering the latest iPhone for free. Look a little deeper. Quickly realize what that really means. To qualify, you need to trade in your phone. And not just any phone, but one valued at $1,000. Then you're required to sign up for their $100 a month unlimited plan and pay that sneaky $35 activation fee. On top of all of that, it's a lot of money for something they're calling free. Don't fall for the marketing gimmicks. Pure Talk. My cell phone company has a much better option. Get a brand new iPhone 14 that comes with all the bells and whistles you actually need. Plus get unlimited talk text, a generous 15 gigs of high speed data and mobile hotspot capability, all for just 50 bucks a month. How about that? You're paying half the price of what the big guys charge. You still get a new iPhone powered by America's most dependable 5G network. So do this. Go to PureTalk.com Shapiro today. Switching is super simple. Plus, when you go to PureTalk.com Shapiro. You'll get an additional 50% off your very first month of coverage. That's PureTalk.com Shapiro for an additional 50% off your very first month. Pure Talk is America's wireless company. We've been working with them here at the DailyWare for a long time. I have Pure Talk coverage myself. They're great. Check them out. Right now. PureTalk.com get an additional 50% off your first month. Also, if you happen to be a homeowner the same way that I am, when's the last time you actually checked the title to your home? That's the legal document that proves your ownership. If the answer is you never have, you need to know about an alarming crime the FBI calls house stealing. I recently learned how this scam works. It's pretty disturbing. It comes down to a single document called a quitclaim deed. Criminals can forge these documents using your information, add a fake signature, obtain a notary seal online for just a few bucks. Once filed with county officials, your home could be transferred out of your name without your knowledge. Here's what's really happening. These scammers aren't after your house. They're after your equity. They use the property as collateral for loans and then they vanish. They leave you with a devastating financial and legal mess to clean up. Fortunately, there's a quick and easy solution. Home Title Lock offers triple lock protection, which includes 247 monitoring of your title. Immediate alerts if anyone attempts to modify it. Comprehensive Restoration Service. If fraud occurs, all at no extra cost, our own senior video editor, Adam Trust them to protect his home. You can do the same. The first step, check on your home's title. Make sure you're not already a victim. You get a free title history report and 30 day free trial of triple lock protection today by going to hometitlelock.com and using promo code Shapiro. Or click on the link in the description. That's hometitlelock.com, promo code Shapiro. Don't wait until it's too late. Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorn. They found high positions in academia. They used to hang out with Barack Obama after spending years planting bombs with the Weather Underground. Certainly today, a desperate left spurred to action by constant talk of the fascistic takeover of Donald Trump. They can be counted on to increase their support for violence. I mean, there were two assassination attempts against Donald Trump in the last six months. That's an indicator of just how deeply this rot is spreading. And it has to be stopped. It has to be stopped. It can only be Stopped by a widespread rejection on all sides of the aisle for this type of violence and for support of this type of violence. The shooter in this case, we can only hope, is arrested and should be given the death penalty. Seedbeds for Marxist Leninist violence on college campuses. I hope the incoming Department of Education defunds all of it. Defunds all of it. Pseudo journalists like Taylor Lorenz should not only be rejected from polite society, all of the publications that hired her knowing she was a nut and then promoted her knowing she was a nut should be called on the carpet by the American public. The Brian Thompson shooting is a bleeding edge indicator of where the country could be going. It's the reason why there were security professionals who were wondering why he was walking around without security. That says something about the American body. Politicians, a lot of people that I know now have to have 247 security just because of the climate of violence that is bubbling under the surface. All it takes is somebody with some organizational capacity on the left to launch America into a new era of domestic terrorism with the tacit moral support of much of the journalistic establishment. Meanwhile, of course, many of those people in the journalistic establishment will claim it's the right that's violent in the United States. That is not the story of the last 10, 15 years in American life and certainly is not the story today. And it's something we need to watch out for because this has happened in the west before. And once that can of violence is opened, it is very difficult to close again without concerted action, not just by law enforcement, but by an American public that decides it doesn't want to have anything to do with these people. It's something deeply disturbing and scary that there are so many people who are blase about the murder of a private healthcare CEO because they don't like the way the health care system works in the United States. It can be done with literally any business in the country. Any business. Name an industry and you can make the case that something unfair is happening in the industry. This is why Socialist leech, scavenger lingo used by people like Bernie Sanders. If you want to talk about stochastic terrorism, if you want to talk about rhetoric that leads to a higher possibility of violence, when you suggest that everything in American life is unfair and bad and rigged by the system, when you suggest that, and then you suggest that anybody who does business is merely an apparatchik of that system, the result is a support for revolutionary violence, you're raising that temperature, it's going to stop bubbling and it's going to start bursting out into the open. Okay. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is moving forward. It's interesting to watch because Trump 2.0, I will say, is much more efficient, significantly more directed than Trump 1.0, which makes sense. Donald Trump had never held public office before he was elected president in 2016. Now he's been president once. He knows where the bodies are buried, he knows what needs to get done. I think the biggest threat to the Trump presidency is being distracted by shiny baubles. It's being distracted by sort of dumb rhetorical fights. But Donald Trump is set for a historic presidency right now. And you're seeing the people surrounding him, encouraging him in the right way, I think, toward that. Lara Trump, of course, is the head of the rnc. She pointed out that Donald Trump is not seeking revenge. Now, by the way, I think this is true. I think that the Donald Trump is seeking revenge narrative is something that Democrats are promoting as an excuse to blanket pardon all of their friends. But the reality is Donald Trump did not seek revenge his first time around. And it is not revenge to fire people who are involved in things like Russiagate. That is not revenge. That is the proper response to blowing it on your job. Here's Laura Trump yesterday. We remember how he was the first term in office. He didn't start World War Three. He was actually the first president in 82 years not to start a new war, not to get America into a new war. And much in the same way, I think people are going to see very quickly that this is a man who really just wants to go in there and take charge of this country as the American people mandated, you know, secure our border, bring down inflation, get us out of wars, and do the right things for America. He has no intention on retribution or revenge. Again, he has things to do. And I think that is the point. And you're starting to see corporate CEOs, people who were not friendly to Donald Trump realize this. So Jeff Bezos, the head of Amazon, and also tangentially, the Washington Post, because who cares about the Washington Post? Bezos says that he thinks that Donald Trump is calmer and more settled now, that he actually has an agenda. Optimistic. I'm super about this president. And the reason I ask is because. Optimistic that President Trump is serious about this regulatory agenda. And I think he's going to. I think he has a good chance of succeeding. What about the idea that he thinks that the press is the enemy? Well, I think he. I'm going to try to talk him out of that idea. I don't think the press is the enemy. And I don't think, you know, he's also, you've probably grown in the last eight years. He has, too. Like, it's, you know, this is not the case. The press is not the enemy. I hope you're right. I hope I'm right, too. Have you told. Let's go persuade him of this. No, let's talk. But you and I should go. Let's go talk to him. If we could try. I really don't. I think that this is absolutely. I don't think he's going to see it the same way, but maybe I'll be wrong. Was that always your. Always your thought, by the way? What I've seen so far is that he is calmer than he was the first time and more confident, more settled. I mean, first of all, that's actually true. And the reason that's true is because Donald Trump is oriented toward victory. He just won the last victory he can win in the political sphere. Like, he won. It's over. There's not gonna be a third term for President Trump. It's not constitutional. So that means that he now knows that he has won, and that gives him a feeling of solidity, for sure, and a feeling that now he just has to pursue his agenda, that there's nothing that can be done to take that victory away from him. He is right about all of that in here. Andrew Ross Sorkin from the New York Times being very skeptical about that. But again, I think that's a buildup in the head of people who tend to be on the left that, oh, my gosh, it's just going to be chaos. And here's the thing. It wasn't even during the first administration. The second administration is going to be a lot more pointed than that. Bezos then said that he was optimistic that Donald Trump is going to cut the red tape, which of course should be good for everybody. By the way, it points to John Fetterman who came out and said that he's in favor of Elon Musk over at Doge. Like, this should be a bipartisan thing going through and ripping away the red tape and ripping away the useless government spending. If we're talking about Trump, I think it's very interesting. I'm. I'm actually very optimistic this time around that we're going to see. I'm very hopeful about this. His. He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. And my point of view, if I can help him do that, I'm going to help him, because we do have too much regulation in this country. This country is so set up to grow, by the way, all of our problems, all of our economic problems. Like if you look at the deficit and I mean, you know, the debt, the national debt and how gigantic it is as a portion of gdp, these are real problems and they're real long term problems. And the way you get out of them is by outgrowing them, you're going to get, you're going to solve the problem of the national debt by making a smaller percentage of gdp, not by shrinking the national debt, but by growing the gdp. You have to grow the denominator. He is right about that. And that is something that Donald Trump is, in fact, focused on. Because here's the actual reality of politics in the United States. There will be cuts around the edges. There should be cuts around the edges. It's going to be very difficult to convince the American people that the giant systemic drivers of American debt, namely Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which are the giant drivers of American debt, that those are gonna be radically restructured. Trump knows this, which is why he ruled it off the table of the, in the middle of the campaign. And so what that means is that you're gonna have to grow your way out of this. You're gonna have to have robust GDP growth. That's something that Donald Trump absolutely wants. Well, this is something that the Republican Congress is going to be pursuing amidst a bevy of cuts. So a report from Luke Rosiak quoting a Senate investigation over at Daily Wire, says, quote, only 6% of federal employees work from an office full time. A third are fully remote. Some aren't actually working when they, quote, unquote, work at home. According to a Senate investigation, Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa says Washington is still operating as if it's March 2020. She's chair of the Senate Doge Caucus. That's the Department of Governmental Efficiency. She said just 3% of the federal workforce teleworked daily prior to the COVID 19 pandemic. Today, 6% of workers report in person on a full time basis. Nearly one third are entirely remote. Government office buildings have an occupancy rate of 12%, even though the government is spending $16 billion a year to operate them. Well, your hard earned taxpayer dollars are being spent in a wide variety of stupid places. But here is the thing. If you don't pay your taxes, you got a problem. The October 15 deadline has now passed. Are you prepared for what's coming? Do you owe back taxes Are your tax returns still unfiled? Did you miss the deadline to file for an extension? Well, now that October 15th is behind us, the IRS may be ramping up enforcement. Let me tell you, they don't play around. You could face wage garnishments, frozen bank accounts, even property seizures. If you haven't taken action yet, here's the good news. There's still hope. Tax Network USA has been in the game for years. They know exactly how to navigate the complex world of tax law. They've helped taxpayers save over a billion dollars in tax debt. They've filed over 10,000 tax returns. That's billion with a B, folks. They specialize in helping hardworking Americans like you reduce their tax burdens. So don't let the IRS catch you off guard. Get ahead of this right now with Tax Network usa. Their team of professionals will work tirelessly to protect your assets and find the best solution for your unique situation. Here's what you need to do. For a complimentary consultation, call today 1-800-958-1000 or visit their website at tnusa.com shapiro. That's 1-800-958/1000 or visit tnusa.com Shapiro today. Do not let the IRS take advantage of you. Get the help you need with Tax Network usa. Also, this election season, I visited a bunch of states. Between campaign stops, media hits on other podcasts, our very own election coverage. In Nashville, I was on the go all the time. Somewhere in between all of that travel, I needed to maintain my health. Hit the gym, spend time with the family. When I was younger, I used to think I could just power through on the pure conservative willpower and caffeine. I learned pretty quickly peak performance requires peak nutrition, and that means eating veggies. Well, I don't like veggies, so I'm thankful to have balance of nature, which fits right into even the busiest of days. Imagine trying to eat 31 different fruits and veggies every day. That's what they say you're supposed to do. That sounds miserable. It sounds time consuming. With Balance of Nature fruits and veggies, there's never been a more convenient dietary supplement to ensure you get a wide variety of fruits and veggies daily. Balance of Nature takes fruits and veggies. They freeze, dry them, they turn them into a powder, and then they put them into a capsule. You take your fruit and veggie capsules every day. Your body knows precisely what to do with them. It's kosher, which means I put it right in the protein Drink. It's Awesome. Go to balanceofnature.com use promo code SHAPIRO for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer and get a free bottle of fiber and Spice. That's balanceofnature.com promo code Shapiro. Elon Musk has signaled federal employees should have to work from the office. They should have to return to the office. That's also something that speaker of the House Mike Johnson suggested is going to be mandatory from now on. Here was Johnson yesterday. One of the first things that I think you'll see is a demand from the new administration and from all of us in Congress that federal workers return to their desks and get back to the work that they're supposed to be doing. I think that is common sense. What you're going to see here, the overriding theme here is a return to common sense and a return to accountability and efficiency in government. I think that's going to serve the people well. That is absolutely correct. Meanwhile, Democrats, of course, are trying to fight back against this. It's hysterical. I mean, this should be the most bipartisan thing in the world. Efficiency from the government that you pay for should be a bipartisan thing. The fact that Democrats are upset about it demonstrates something about their view of government. Democratic Representative Zoe Lofgren of California says that actually the Department of Governmental Efficiency is unconstitutional and illegal, which is weird since it totally isn't. They're issuing recommendations and then they don't have the actual power to enforce those recommendations. So it's the same as me issuing a recommendation or something. Here she was what are your thoughts on Elon Musk and Ramaswamy deciding or trying to decide what stays and what goes in the federal government? What's illegal? You know, they haven't asked to meet with me, but the impoundment of funds that have been appropriated by the Congress is unconstitutional and illegal. There is no such Department of Government efficiency. It's made up. So good luck to them. I mean, if there is a plan that President Trump wants to propose to the Congress, he should send it to us. But the Constitution does not permit the president to simply avoid what the con Congress has done. That power of the purse is with the legislative branch, not the president. Wow. It's really fun to hear Democrats suddenly standing up for the congressional power of the purse. After Barack Obama declared years ago that he had a pen and he had a phone and therefore he could do anything he wanted to do. But there is so much dead wood that needs to be cut within the federal government and restructured within the federal government. There was a little notice hearing yesterday from the House Oversight Committee over the census. The Census Bureau in 2020 utterly blew it. The census of 2020 was an absolute mess. I've talked about this on the show before. The census of 2020 dramatically undercounted red states. It dramatically overcounted blue states. If the population count in 2020 had been done properly, Donald Trump could have won the 2024 election without winning any of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, or Michigan, any of them, because that's how many votes would have shifted in the Electoral College south to states that he definitely was going to win, like Arizona, Texas and Florida. The balance in the United States Congress would be much more Republican because it turns out many people like me and my family and my company, we all move from a blue state to a red state. And that is the story of migration internally in the United States over the course of the last ten years or so. And it was done totally wrong is a point made by Representative James Comer yesterday, the chair of the House Oversight Committee. It's imperative that we understand what went wrong in the 2020 census and take action to mitigate the risk of those similar errors in the 2030 census. Mitigating these risks is even more important because there are major demographic changes happening across the country as citizens of blue states flee from those high tax sanctuary jurisdictions for red states to enjoy lower taxes, a safer environment, and to exercise more freedom. He is right about all this, and it has really significant electoral ramifications. Meanwhile, Democrats are of course upset that while people are migrating down to the south, that means that Republicans are winning more seats. Here's Representative Jasmine Crockett, somehow turning this into an issue of racism. We know that specifically, Texas added 4 million people. Of those 4 million people, do you want to take a guess at how many were Anglos? Just a guess. I'd say a majority. 180,000. That's it. Of 4 million, 95% of the people, people that were added. And we know that when it comes to minority populations, they tend to be undercounted. So get this. We added 4 million people. They were people of color. Texas got two new seats. So they took those black and brown and Asian bodies. And guess what? Do you think that we got a new black, brown or Asian seat? Somehow, the way that they do their Republican math, in the state of Texas, that amounted to two new white seats. Guess what? White Republican seats. We got two new Republican seats out of 4 million people of color. So let me tell you, they love to use our bodies to apportion us in an inaccurate way. That's not an inaccurate apportionment. It turns out that Hispanics voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in places like Texas. That is a very, very weird statement. But again, it always comes down to race for Democrats. What it really is about is the census failing. This is also true for the Secret Service. And the Secret Service dramatically failed throughout this election cycle. When the current president's elective, the United States missed assassination, literally through the grace of God, God took his hand, put it on Donald Trump's head and turned it slightly. And if not for that, Trump's brains would have been all over the stage in Butler, Pennsylvania in front of the entire nation. That is a thing that nearly happened. The Secret Service dramatically failed. But again, accountability in so many of these government agencies is in abeyance. Yesterday there was a big shouting match in Congress during a hearing with the acting Secret Service director. They got into it because the congressperson, Pat Fallon, he was questioning the acting Secret Service director about the fact that they had not gone the Secret Service to Butler, Pennsylvania to investigate in the immediate aftermath of the assassination attempt in Butler. Instead, Ronald Roe had gone to the 911 memorial with Donald Trump. And the suggestion by Pat Fallon is he was there to sort of appeal to both Biden and Trump and things got a bit fraught. Who is usually at an event like this closest to the President of the United States, Security wise, the sack of the detail. Special agent in charge of the detail. Were you the special agent in charge of the detail that day? Actually let me address this. Could you please staff, leave that. Oh no, leave that one up with the circle around me. Thank you. So actually Congressman, what you're not seeing is the sack of the detail off out of the pictures view. And that is the day where we remember the more than 3,000 people that have died. On 911 I actually responded to ground Zero. I was there going through the ashes of the World Trade Center. I was there at Fresh Kills. I'm not asking you that. I'm asking you, Congressman, the state in charge, to show respect for a Secret Service that died on 911 that you're trying to be. Do not invoke 911 for political purposes. Oh, I'm not. I'm invoking this war, sir. You are like to ask him a question. Please don't try to order me. Don't try to bully me. You wanted to be visible because you are auditioning for this job. I was there to pay respect for a foreign member of this agency. You endangered President out of line. Congressman, Vice president out of his life because you are put. You put those agents out of position. Mr. Fallon, radio with Mr. Fallon. Your time has, sir, and you are out of line. Good times in Congress. Bottom line is a lot of these government agencies, they ain't working the way they are supposed to be working, which is precisely why Donald Trump is now trying to nominate people who are going to come in and clean out the dead wood. That includes Pete Hegseth. So Hegseth's nomination is still up for grabs. At this point, it's unclear exactly how much support Hegseth has inside the, inside the United States Senate for his nomination. There are some Republicans who are on the fence given all of the allegations that have been made, mostly anonymously, about his prior personal life and supposed drinking habits and all the rest of the stuff. Again, as I said yesterday on the show, all of that is anonymous. All of that is being litigated in the media, and much of it is being directed against Hegseth specifically because Hegseth knows that he has to come in and cut. Hegseth is going to come in and he is going to take a lot of political generals and he is going to have them fired. Hegseth is going to come in and he's going to completely redo how weapons systems are actually approved. Hegseth is going to come in and he is going to completely rejigger how recruitment is done to the United States military. The woke is gone. The DEI is gone. It's going to be about making America's Department of Defense the most lethal fighting machine on planet Earth, staffed up, retake all of it. And that's a threat to a lot of people within the system because I haven't heard any substantiated allegations thus far that should be sinking his nomination. I think that Pete will make a fantastic Secretary of Defense. Here was Hegseth yesterday saying, listen, we're not going to try this one in the media. I'm proud of what I fought for. I'm not going to back down from them one bit. I will answer all of these senators questions, but this will not be a process tried in the media. I don't answer to anyone in this group. None of you, not to that camera at all. I answer to President Trump, who received 76 million votes on behalf and a mandate for change. I answer to the 50, the 100 senators who are part of this process and those in the committee. And I answer to my Lord and savior and my wife and my family. I'm proud to be here. And as long as Donald Trump wants me in this fight, I'm going to be standing right here in this fight, fighting to bring our Pentagon back to what it needs to be. Well, President Trump, for his part, put out a statement this morning on Truth Social saying Pete Hegseth is doing very well. His support is strong and deep, much more so than the fake news would have you believe. He was a great student, Princeton, Harvard educated, with a military state of mind. He will be a fantastic high energy secretary of Defense, one who leads with charisma and skill. Pete is a winner and there is nothing that can be done to change that. So so far, he still has Trump's support. Again, that seems perfectly appropriate at this point since the allegations are unsubstantiated and they are anonymous in nature. And the police report that, for example, was issued about his supposed possible rape of a woman at a conference in California, that police report tended to show the woman was telling a very sketchy story, shall we say? Now, again, there are some senators who are on the fence, but they seem to be leaning toward Hagset. That includes Senator Kevin Kramer. Kramer, of course, is a representative from North Dakota here. He was saying that, you know, it's probable that he'll support him. I am ready to be supportive of getting him to that point. I'm ready to get him in front of the committee. I did warn him. I said, you know, not everybody on the committee is as friendly as I am, which I don't think surprised him. But I also said there's nobody on the committee that doesn't earn our respect. And certainly there are people like Joni Ernst and Tammy Duckworth who earn more than all ever earn, given their history. So I was very favorably impressed, quite honestly. So I see no reason at this point to not be supportive of him. So that, of course, is exactly, I think, the appropriate response to Pete Hagseth. I'm still very hopeful that he gets confirmed already. In just one second, we'll get to the left's continued nonsense on trans. And the radicalism of the left on this issue is not going away, not anytime soon. We'll get to that in just one moment. First, there are only a few days left to join the fight and save 50%. If you've ever thought about joining DailyWare plus, now would be the moment. Right now, new annual memberships are half priced as our best deal of the year. That is one full year of uncensored daily shows with limited ads, groundbreaking documentaries and hit movies like Am I Racist? Series, including Dr. Jordan B. Peterson's the Gospels, along with our entire entertainment catalog. Plus you get unlimited access to Bentkey, our kids app packed with content that reflects your values. Already a member give the gift of DailyWire. Plus this holiday season at 50% off, this deal does end on Sunday. Go to DailyWire.com cyberweeknow and join the fight. Also this Sunday, we're releasing a brand new episode of the Sunday Special with Gene Simmons. This is maybe the wildest episode of Sunday Special we have ever done, so you're gonna wanna hear it for sure. Don't miss this awesome episode of the Sunday Special with Gene Simmons of Kiss without the makeup and everything. Meanwhile, the Democrats continue to be unable to divorce themselves from the radicals within their caucus. We talked about this a little bit earlier with regard to the murder of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, but it's true with many of the radical contingents in their caucus. The most radical contingent ideologically in the Democratic caucus is of course, the contingent that suggests that boys can be girls and girls can be boys. There's a case before the Supreme Court right now that we discussed at length yesterday, discussing whether the Constitution of the United States mandates that girls be given testosterone if they have gender dysphoria, or whether boys should be given estrogen if they have gender dysphoria. Or that can be banned by states, which of course it should not. Not only can it be banned by states, it should be banned by states, but the left can't let go of this. So you have members of the radical left in the media who just promulgate lies. Why? Because it's all a power game. If they can get you to say things that are wildly untrue, well then they've got you where they want you. Yesterday, MSNBC's Joy Reid, in what can only be described as an Orwellian turn of logic, suggested that Tennessee banning giving cross sex hormones to children was somehow akin to Nazi Germany. Which is weird because if you were talking about Mengele like experiments on young children, that would be what transgender medicine is. Anyway, here is Joy Reid not knowing either history or biology. Targeting trans people isn't new. It is an age old tradition which Nazi Germany did with brutally violent ends in the 1930s. While the Supreme Court refuses to do anything about weapons of war in schools today, they seemed inclined to uphold Tennessee's ban on gender affirming care for minors. While the decision is not expected for months, a majority of the justices parroted a string of debunked talking points, all under the Guise of protecting the kids. Just not every kid. Ridiculous. These people are just ridiculous. By the way, gender affirming, care, don't talk about or Wellington phrases. So let me just ask a question. If your genitals don't establish your gender, then why does cutting them off affirm your gender? It's a pretty simple question. If you've got a D and that means that you're not a boy, you might be a girl, then why does cutting off your make you more of a girl? Why? Explain. Use small words, please, in short sentences. My goodness. Anyway, CNN's Brianna Keillor did the same thing. She was out there propagandizing for the idea that three year olds can know that they are trans. Can I explain something to you? Three year olds don't know. I have four children. One of them right now is four. One of them is one. They don't know things. They're adorable and they're wonderful and they don't know things. And if you're a parent who's allowing your 3 year old child to dictate to you what their quote unquote gender is, it's because you are engaging in child abuse. Here's CNN engaging in stupidity. What kid, what girl knows whether she's going to want to have a baby long term or what testosterone will do to her uterus or that she will increase her risk of heart attacks by taking these drugs? Some of them do. No. No, none of them. No, I don't think none of them. None of them do. 85% what we know from the science and again, it's about not putting ideology over evidence. And that's what's happening here. 85% of all kids that are able to grow through puberty who say they're gender confused, over 85% of those kids live at peace with their bodies and consistent with their sex. In those children that are put on puberty blockers, the science tells us that you're putting them on a one way treadmill to live as the opposite sex for the rest of their life. As Kristen Wagoner, president of Alliance Defending Freedom, they do a wonderful job over there. And that is Brianna Keillor suggesting that three year olds know whether they wish to be sterilized or not. That is how insane some members of the left are. Annette Bening, who is the wife of Warren Beatty and who has a child who is a girl who believes that she is a boy, was outside the Supreme Court speaking and talked about what really is driving a lot of this and that is the absolute narcissism of the parents. Here is Annette Bening. I think the greatest gift of my life is to have kids. And to have a transgender child has made me so much more interesting, so much more wise. And for the Supreme Court justices, I encourage them to talk to their kids, their grandkids, their nieces and nephews, because I'll bet if they really sit down and ask them, do you know trans kids around you? Do you have any non binary friends? They're going to say yes, and they're going to say that this is part of the beautiful rainbow of human beings everywhere. Absolute ridiculous narcissistic nonsense. By the way, my sister actually went to a theater camp when she was younger with the person who had become Stephen Beatty when this was a girl named Kat. And she was a girl. I mean, like, it's ridiculous. It's just ridiculous. But unfortunately, the left has decided that ridiculousness is the name of the game. And if the left refuses to let go of this stuff, by the way, then there is an extremely good shot that they will continue to lose elections because no one is buying into the lie that small children have the capacity to decide that they are not members of their own biological sex. But they're gonna keep pushing it, man. I don't think they can let go of it. I really don't. I think it is two part and parcel of their entire philosophy. Their philosophy is that human beings ought to be equivalent in every single way. Unfortunately, nature and nature's God objected to this. But that's not gonna stop them from continuing to push the lie. Because you have to assume that in order to get to the Marxist redistributionist point of view, Ibram X Kendi, racialist fool said it best. He suggested that if there is any disparity in life, it must be due to discrimination. He said, any disparity. Now, for anybody who has a shred of logic or common sense, you understand that that's not true, that there are tons of disparities in life and many of them are natural. I, for example, cannot defeat LeBron James at basketball. That is a natural disparity. He in turn, cannot defeat me in a spelling bee. Again, a natural disparity, like, not everybody's the same smart, not everybody's the same athletic, not everybody's the same well read. All of that is true. But for the left, the entire predicate of redistributionism is that that inherent disparity is mean and nasty by the universe. And now we are going to correct for all of it. And most people understand that's stupid. So instead, they have to make the argument that all human beings are innately exactly the same. Male, female, young, old, smart, stupid, all exactly the same. Good luck with that argument. Most Americans don't buy it, nor should most Americans buy it. Again, they're not gonna stop pushing it. Here's sex education consultant Nora Gelperin talking about how kids as young as three can know that they are transgender. So if you ask any child at the ages of 3, 4 or 5, what gender are they, they will clearly be able to tell you they have been inundated with messages about gender. If you think about the Halloween costumes, if you think about the careers that kids are exposed to, if you think about the cartoon characters in their TV shows, the books that they're reading, there are messages about gender and gender role stereotypes and gender identity from when they are very, very young and kids are able to identify what their gen gender is at a very early age. These people, my goodness, you know what you know? Keep pushing it, keep pushing it. Let's see how it goes for you. It's a bold strategy, Cotton. We'll see how it works for you electorally. Pretty soon, it's not going to be legislation like Tennessee's in 25 states. It'll be legislation like Tennessee's in 45 states. The only exception is going to be places that are insane, like Massachusetts, New York and California. We'll get to more on this in a second. But first, as a potential home buyer, you've likely been waiting on the sidelines through some challenging times. Between the pandemic, inflation, limited housing inventory, and rising interest rates, the real estate market has been very unpredictable. But here's the good news. Conditions are improving. It's worth considering making your move now, before the traditional spring surge brings more competition and potentially higher prices. You might be thinking, Ben, isn't winter a terrible time to buy with the holidays? Actually, winter can be a smart time to enter the market. There are typically fewer bidding wars. That means you may have more negotiating power and better opportunities to find good deals. Here's how you get started. Go to Churchill Mortgage.com Churchill Mortgage is the company I trust to help you. I've met with the president of Churchill. They are committed to finding the right loan for your financial situation. They want to make sure they do right by you. Churchill gives you additional advantages as a buyer, including a $10,000 seller guarantee Churchill will pay for. They even have programs to help you compete with cash offers. With rates trending down, this could be your moment. Churchillmortgage.com Shapiro, tell your loan officer I sent you. You'll be in good hands. This is a paid advertisement. Homebuyer Edge and Seller Guarantee are available for qualifying borrowers and select loan types only. Not available in all states or locations. And MLS ID1591mlsconsumeraccess.org, equal housing lender 174 9. Mallory Lynn, Brentwood, Tennessee 37027 Alrighty. Joining us on the line is Jonathan Pageau, French Canadian liturgical artist, writer and public speaker on religious philosophy, symbolism and orthodox Christianity. You can see all of his commentary on his YouTube channel, the symbolic World. And of course, you can see Jonathan in our brand new series here at DailyWire, plus the Gospels with Jordan B. Peterson, where Jordan brought together a bunch of great minds to talk about the New Testament. Jonathan, great to talk to you. It's good to see you, Ben. So let's talk about this brand new series. Take me through kind of what it was like behind the scenes because obviously you have a bunch of different perspectives on the New Testament, how you discuss that. You're a deeply religious person, obviously. So how do you discuss that from a variety of viewpoints and keep the conversation flowing with all those viewpoints? Yeah, definitely. We were very nervous. I was nervous about it, for sure. I mean, talking about Exodus is one thing, but talking about the gospels like there are literally wars based on interpretation of the Gospel. But what I found is I think Jordan, the way he opens up the discussion and his deep respect for the people around made the conversation actually quite amazing. It was we really did come into a groove and it was crazy, the difference between the people that were there, but the capacity we had to respect each other and to enter the conversation just for that, for the capacity to model a conversation. I think it's worth people checking it out because it was quite impressive. So, you know, Jordan decides to take on the Gospels, that obviously is a huge topic. What do you think are sort of the what were your favorite episodes of this what are your favorite themes to discuss in the Gospels with everybody? Well, I think the idea of looking at the Gospels in a way that is almost with fresh eyes, I think that's what everybody kind of came to the table in that way. So basically the idea of sitting even around a table and reading the entire Gospels within a week is something that I don't think I've never done in my life. And so what it did is it cast a different light on the entire story and opened it up in ways that were surprising. And I think that's what I love the most about it is how even people who have read it over and over for 20 years, 30 years, we still found some jewels of surprise and connection maybe we hadn't seen before. And that was really enlightening. One of the things that Jordan does when he examines biblical texts is he sort of puts aside many of the questions that that tends to come up in seminars like this where people go into the historicity or people tend to go into the archeology. And instead he really focuses on the meaning of the actual text, which I think is a wonderful way to go about looking at these things. Because the truth is that while many people who are believers are very interested in the historical nature of the text, the truth is that for most people who are first engaging with the text, it's the meaning of it that they actually care about. Because the truth is that in our lives, as you've talked about in terms of symbolism, the way we live our lives is through a prism of meaning, not through a prism of historicity per se. And so this isn't making any claims here, I'm not making any claims about historicity, but I think that it's the meaning centrality of this that actually, that actually makes it different. I think you're absolutely right. You know, because even if we ask the question of historicity, the reason why we ask it is because it's something that we. That it's important. And it's the importance of the text, the stories that are brought about, which are more important than, let's say, the literal historical details of what happened in the first century. Not that that's completely uninteresting, but dealing with it as a story that presents itself to us and that people have cared about now for 2,000 years, that's really the way to go. And that's why in some ways, looking at it as a story, first of all, is why it was so easy to have the conversation. Because even someone like Greg Hurwitz, who's secular Jewish, could enter into it as a story and talk about what he's seeing there in the narrative. So that's, that's what made it very, very good. So, yeah, a couple of episodes are already available. It's a 10 part series. A couple of episodes are already available over at DailyWare plus, what was your favorite episode to film? It's hard to know because it's all a blur in the sense that we sat there for four hours a day. Can you imagine? We like two hours in the morning, throughout the afternoon, you know, I Think that for sure, as it. As it went forward, you know, and we kind of entered into this groove. I think that around towards the end, it was the time where I liked it the most because we had all kind of taken. We understood each other's perspective, and we were in this almost like conversation dance. And that's when it's almost like this flowing experience of discussing something that important. I think that that's the thing that I get the most out of the. Out of the experience that I remember the most. So did you undo any research for this, or did you just kind of walk in with an open mind and sort of your set of knowledge? I mean, obviously you've studied these texts for a very, very long time. So it's not as though you have to sit there, you know, with Wikipedia or something. But did you sort of just come in sort of. And then Tabula Raza, everybody just started discussing. I think that most of us did. I definitely did reread the Gospel before we started. And one of the things I did also was because we had just come out of the Exodus seminar, I spent quite a bit of time trying to see how the story in the Gospel connects to the Exodus narrative in order to help people kind of bridge into the Gospels. So that's the work that I did, saying, like, okay, what's the relationship between, let's say, the massacre of the innocents in the story of Jesus and the Pharaoh killing the Israelite babies in Egypt? What's the connection between those stories, et cetera, et cetera? There are many parallels between the two stories, and I tried to kind of bring that forward in order to help people connect it together. Well, again, the series is well worth the watch. The Gospel is available over at Dailywire right now. Jonathan Pageau is a key part of that, as he is with a lot of the series that Jordan does, ranging from the Western Civilization series that we did to the Exodus series. Jonathan, really appreciate the time. It's worth checking out the series and check out his YouTube channel, the symbolic World as well. Jonathan, appreciate it. Thank you so much. And thanks to Daily Wire for taking this risk. It's a huge risk to do something like that, and it's really appreciated. All right, guys, coming up, we'll get to the chaos in Syria. Is Bashar Assad's regime about to fall? If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.