- It's super clever.
I mean, the argument is
completely circular, right?
They just say, "You're a
racist and you say, well,
but you have no
evidence of my racism."
And they say, "Well,
you don't even recognize
your own racism."
You say, "Well then
how am I racist?"
They say, "Because
you're complicit
"in a system of racism."
See, right, but the
system isn't racist,
like you can't point to
something that's racist.
No, but it results
in racial inequality
and therefore it
is a racist system
and therefore you are
complicit in the system
and therefore you're a racist.
And you say, "Okay, well,
but all systems perpetuate
racial inequality."
By even saying that
you're demonstrating
your white fragility, which
means you're a racist, right?
Like this is basic
Salem Witch Trial.
If you sink, then
you are innocent
and if you float
then you're witch.
(upbeat music)
- I'm Dave Rubin and
this is the Rubin Report.
Quick reminder everybody
to subscribe to
our YouTube channel
and click that
notification bell,
especially, especially
on a day like today
when I have a guest so dangerous
that we're gonna get in a lot
of trouble, you understand?
The man sitting across
from me, that's right.
It is Ben Shapiro,
author of the new book,
"How to Destroy America
in Three Easy Steps."
Here we go again, my friend.
- I know, just get ready for it.
You get it worse than I do.
I mean, honestly, I'm okay.
My people will be fine.
You're the one who
pays the price.
- Do I get it worse than you?
I'm not sure.
You have a very dedicated group
of people at Media Matters
who sit and wait for you
to nod or to move in a way
that they can imply
is white supremacist.
I have a bunch of anonymous
anime, genderless,
trolls on Twitter.
- That's fair.
- These are very
different things.
- I have full employment program
going on over at Media Matters.
I know we have at least one,
maybe two people who are on us
basically full
time at Daily Wire,
so that's exciting.
I'm glad that we can create jobs
in all sectors of the economy.
- We are creating jobs.
I think the obvious way
to start this interview,
'cause I want to focus on
your book, but you know,
of course we have to talk
about some of the things.
I don't know if you've heard,
there's a pandemic and
then riots, have you-
- I missed all of this.
- You haven't heard of it.
- I've been out of
it just a little bit.
- I know, you're a busy guy.
But you know, I titled my book.
"Don't Burn This Book."
And then basically the
day the book came out,
every store that had
the book was on fire.
- Right. (laughing)
Well, you didn't say don't
burn the store to be fair.
- I didn't say don't burn the
store that's has the book.
Now your book is called,
"How to Destroy America
in Three Easy Steps."
- It was about how to
burn your book, yeah.
That's the basic gist of it.
- But of all times,
America does seem like it's
being destroyed right now
and that's what you
titled the book.
And I know a little
something about writing,
you finished this book
when, how long ago?
- December, January.
- Okay, so actually
not that long ago.
- No, this was a quick write.
So what happened is that
I had gone to Israel
for the Jewish holidays.
I came back and I just
looked around the country
and I thought something is
really, really deeply wrong.
I mean, even more
wrong than it has been
in prior iterations.
And it's been wrong for awhile.
I mean, there've been things
that have been going wrong,
which is why I wrote
the previous book,
"Right Side of History",
which was the country's
kind of falling apart.
What do we do?
What common values do we hold?
And then I thought, well,
we really need sort of
a nation specific book
about what we're
supposed to be sharing
because obviously there's
this widespread perception
that we share nothing, right?
The only thing that we share
is an oppressive, evil,
terrible bigoted system.
And so I come back from Israel,
I called up my publisher.
I have a two book deal with
my publisher and my publisher,
I actually had another book
that was slated to come out
probably at the
beginning of next year.
And I said, I want to rush her
book out before the election.
I want it to be called,
"How to Destroy America
in Three Easy Steps"
and I'm gonna write it
in the next six weeks.
And they were like-
- Do you write as
fast as you talk?
- I do, thank God
I write incredibly.
Actually a little known
Ben Shapiro facts,
I used to, many, there
are many of them,
but one of the
least well known is
I was a ghost writer for
many prominent figures
for probably a decade
and it's how I
supplemented my income.
So I have something like
seven or eight New York Times
best sellers that are
not under my own name.
- Really?
- Publishers would come to me.
There would be some prominent
figure who, you know,
had three weeks to go until
deadline and they'd be like,
okay, well you've
got one sentence,
what do we do?
And so they turned
me over to the book
and I'd write an
entire book in a month-
- Can I get you to write
a couple of their names
on the back of
that paper for me?
- I'll tell you later.
I'll tell you later, if it's
not in violation my NDAs guys.
In any case, it was
written in white heat
and it was very easy to write
because the structure of
the book is very obvious.
I mean, the basic idea is-
- Don't go that far yet.
I want to talk structure.
I wrote down all six chapters
'cause I want to talk structure.
- All right sounds good.
- 'Cause I think the way
you broke it down actually
is super interesting.
But before we do
full book stuff,
let's just talk about
the world as it is
at the moment for
just a little bit.
- Do you bleep on this show?
- Oh, you can curse
your brains out,
but what do you mean
you don't curse?
- I know, but I do, if
you want to bleep it,
then I'll curse.
- Oh, yes, my people
will bleep it.
- Yeah, we're sort of (beep).
(laughing)
- I've been waiting for that
for a long time Shapiro,
'cause I've heard
you say fuck off.
My guys don't have
to bleep my fuck,
they can bleep your fuck.
I've heard you
say fuck privately
and then you put your
little asterisks on-
- Well, as you know,
there is a bit of a gap
between the public persona
and in private I
curse absolutory
so that's not a great shock.
- Okay, so yeah,, let's
just do it for a little bit.
Are we fucked?
Like what the hell is
going on here right now?
- It feels that way.
I mean, it really does feel
as though any common bonds
that we once shared are
basically disintegrating
and that you're being
pressured into mimicking
the belief that all
those bonds are gone.
So even if you believe that
the bonds aren't really frayed
and that really we should
have some stuff in common.
If you say that out loud,
you're part of the system,
you're part of the
white supremacist system
and this is, it's
such dangerous stuff.
And as we're sitting here,
in the last few hours,
there was a sort of
graphic that came out from
the National Museum of African
American History and Culture,
which is a
Smithsonian Institute,
taxpayer funded institution.
- Funded by the government.
- Funded by the government.
And it was all about whiteness
and the evils of whiteness
and among the evils of whiteness
things that we've all
integrated into our lives
because of the prevailing
system of white supremacy
or things like hard
work, individualism,
justice, time management,
delayed gratification,
science, I'm not kidding.
This is all in the document.
These are all things
that are listed
as elements of white supremacy
that must be rejected
in order to move forward
into a better, more
progressive world.
And so all the things that
you would think like, yeah,
I feel like we should
all have this in common,
like, you know, science,
this one we should
have in common.
There's a whole
movement to say no, no,
all of these things are
outgrowths of an evil system.
And that in turn is the result
of an absolutely
despicable redefinition
of the term racism for
when it used to mean
for virtually all
of human history,
but certainly since the
1960s, to what it means now.
So in the 1960s,
racism was what we all
think of racism as,
believing in the inferiority
or superiority of a
particular racial group.
Right? Very easy definition.
- Easy enough, yeah.
- Spot it wherever
you see it, right?
I mean, it's not hard.
It's very easily
applied definition.
And then there's been an attempt
in the last several years
to redefine racism
to mean any system
that results in racial
inequality is itself racist.
And so if you are not
seeking the destruction
of that system, you are
complicit in racism.
And in order to be anti-racism,
you have to seek to
destroy that system.
Well, every system
in human history
has resulted in inequality
of some sort or another
because human beings have
different capacities,
we make different choices.
- Wait a minute,
are you telling me
we're not all exactly the same?
We don't have all the
exact same thoughts
and gifts and skills?
You're telling me-
- Stop being racist.
Stop it, stop it.
- We're slightly different?
Abraham Kenzi specifically
writes this, right?
In "How to be an Antiracist",
he says literally any system
that generates racial
inequality is a racist system.
And so therefore it's not
like you're a bad person
because you're a racist,
you're just a
product of the system
or you're upholding the system.
And in order for us
to fight that racism,
we have to fight
the system itself.
And so anything that
is part of that system,
anything and everything
that is of that system
is tainted by racism and must
be ripped down completely.
And if you are
complicit in the system,
by doing things like hard
work and individualism,
you're an
assimilationist, right?
This is what Abraham Kenzi says
in "How to be an Antiracist,"
and Robin DiAngelo
sort of mirrors this.
And you're saying to
yourself, wait a second.
Aren't you closing
an awful lot of doors
to black Americans and
minority Americans?
Like the pathways to
success in a free system
are things like hard
work, individual effort,
thinking ahead,
delayed gratification,
like this is not
unique to capitalism
or the evil American
system or anything.
- Right, but also
what are you saying
about black people
at that point?
- Right, it's insane.
I mean, David Duke
could write this shit.
I mean, he really could.
I mean, David Duke
could write the idea
that whiteness is about hard
work and individual initiative
and religious adherence
and family structure.
That's crap David
Duke would write,
but the anti-racist are
writing the exact same crap.
Now they're saying yeah, but
all those things are bad.
And if we just got rid of our
adherence to these systems,
well then we wouldn't really
have to have standards
that we hold people to
and then equality
would be the result.
I mean, that's insanely
dangerous stuff,
but because the charge of racism
is the most highly
charged charge
you can make against somebody.
It's the worst thing you
can call somebody in America
and for good reason,
because that is an
awful thing to be.
And it's an awful thing
to say about somebody,
it's an awful thing to be.
Because that is such
a highly loaded term,
it's so easy to cudgel
people into line.
All you have to do
is just to acquiesce.
All you'd have to
do is be the person
who cheers on the guillotines
as the guillotines
chop off heads
and we'll leave you alone.
Now we're not going to say
that you're left alone forever,
this only holds true until the
time for the next guillotine.
- Right, it comes for you.
- I really feel like
in this situation,
it's very much like
the action movie
where the bad guy
comes to the good guy
and he's got some blackmail
to hold over his head.
And the good guy says,
"Well, how do I know
you won't use it?"
And the bad guy
goes, "You don't."
That's the anti-racist movement.
They figure that they
can call you a racist
and they will hold
that over your head
until you acquiesce
in all the things
and if you don't acquiesce
in this one little thing,
then you will be ruined
and you will be destroyed
and you will be targeted
as part of the opposition.
And the good news is I
think it is generating
some opposition from
people who are center left.
I think that the only question
for the people who
are kind of liberal,
central left liberals,
the 153 intellectuals
who wrote that piece
in Harper's Weekly with the
obligatory slap at Trump
and Trump supporters.
- Trump is really the problem.
Even though he's not the one
gonna to come burn
down our houses.
- The reason that that actually
matters is first of all,
I'm glad they did what they did.
I mean, welcome
to the party now.
I'm glad they're doing it,
but are you trying to
broaden the Overton window
just so it includes you
or are you trying to
broaden the Overton windows
such that we can actually
have a conversation?
Because if the idea
is we only, you know,
you lefties, you're mostly
right about the things
you think are bad,
but we just don't
want you canceling us,
so just leave us alone
and we'll be okay.
Or is it going to be, you know,
you'll actually allow
people like a Dave Rubin
or a Ben Shapiro
or a Dennis Prager
or a Glenn Beck
to actually speak?
And if the answer is no,
then you really haven't
added anything to the debate.
All you're doing is trying
to feed the crocodile
so that DDT will last.
- I sense you know my
feelings about this.
I mean, right there
protecting their asses.
I'm glad that they
wrote the letter,
but the fact that they
had to make it clear,
we're not conservatives,
we're not Trump people,
Trump is doing
this, and it's like,
but he's not the
one that's rampaging
through your universities.
He's not the one
out in the streets
when they come for
all your mansions,
it's not going to be Trump
and Trump supporters.
I mean, we all know that.
So yes, I think we
know what they're doing
with the Overton window.
That being said,
I still think it's
good at some level,
it's better than nothing.
- It is good, the next step is,
I want to see some
of those people
actually have open conversations
with people on the right.
How about that?
I mean, what's amazing
for both you and for me,
is why is that such
a wild request?
Like I have conversations
with people on the
left all the time.
And many of those people
will not come on my show
because they're afraid
of being canceled.
And I know that the
same is true for you.
You've had conversations
with people
all across the
political spectrum,
but many of them
won't have you on
and I know many of
them won't have me on
because they're afraid
of being canceled
by their own folks
for conversations that
we have privately,
but that they won't
have publicly.
And so then it's just, okay,
you're just being a
coward at that point.
- So we've sort of talked
about this a little bit before,
but do you think there is a
fundamental reason for that,
that there is a
fundamental reason
that underlies the
philosophy of someone
who broadly is on the
left versus on the right,
that why people on the
right are willing to do it?
If I put someone on
the left on my show,
I put Marianne Williamson on,
I put on Andrew
Yang, Tulsi Gabbard,
all the people on the right
virtually who disagree with them
say, yeah, you know,
I disagree with her and
him on this and that
and the other thing, but I'm
glad you had the conversation.
If if I put you on or Prager
on, the lefties go bananas.
I'm endorsing white
supremacy and the da-da-da.
- Because I think
that for the left
and there are many
liberals who buy into this,
all human relations
are power relations.
You saw this in sort of
Ezra Klein's response
to Matt Yglesias, right?
How did I end up on the
same side as Matt Yglesias?
I've got the Ralph Wiggum
of the internet, right?
Like how does this happen?
But Matt Yglesias had the
temerity to sign that letter.
And then Ezra Klein was like,
there are a lot of people
who stand up for free speech
who are really doing this
because it's a way
of gaining power.
And for a lot of
people on the left
this is how they think
of things, right?
All human relationships
are power dynamics.
There are no big principles
that we all share,
like freedom of speech matters.
That's just a bunch of
people who are seeking
to use the principle
of freedom of speech
as a weapon in order to
reenact the hierarchy,
in order to preserve
the hierarchy.
And this argument you see
being made more and more
by folks on the left,
that rights are not actually
universal principles
that we all should hold to.
Rights are just a way
for me to shut you up
while I'm still speaking.
And and I think that
the liberal left
has been somewhat warm to
that argument for awhile,
at least warm enough that
they're willing to hear it.
And they just didn't see it
turning on them at any point,
the left moved so far so fast
that the liberals were like,
we were with you
up until the point
where you started canceling us.
And then we realized, oh wait,
that was a bad mistake.
Yglesias is one of the guys
who was like cheering on
there's no cancel culture,
cancellation doesn't exist.
And then it came for
him and he was like, ah,
this is bad, right guys?
It's like, yes, it's bad.
Well, yes, thank you for
recognizing it as bad.
- Do you love seeing that now
where there's this
move by them now,
AOC's doing this and a
bunch of other people
to completely tell us
that cancel culture
doesn't even exist.
- It's a figment of
your imagination.
When she's not explaining
that people are
shooting each other
in the inner city for bread.
- For bread.
- That's why you shouldn't
want them on the playground
is cause they're hungry.
That's what I do
when I'm hungry.
I say to my wife,
are we out of cereal?
She says, yes.
And I immediately go and
shoot somebody in the face.
That's the way I deal with
my own personal hanger.
But when she's not saying
that sort of stuff,
this is becoming a very
popular notion on the left,
which is that all America
is a group of people
who are dispossessed and the
people who are victimizers
and any principle that
exists in the system,
that is the victimizing
system, again,
this goes back to
the Kennedy point
or the Robin DiAngelo point.
Any aspect of that
system is inherently bad
and reinforces the
power hierarchy.
And so you must remove
those systems of power
in order to allow
the dispossessed
to claim their full
share of the earth.
- You're a sci-fi guy,
do you sort of admire
the beauty of their evil?
(laughing)
You know what I mean?
Really at some level
to create a system
that proves itself, in and
of itself is the proof.
Like there's a certain beauty
to that as evil as it is.
- It's super clever.
I mean, the argument is
completely circular, right?
They just say you're
a racist and you say,
"Well, but you have no
evidence of my racism."
They say, "Well, you don't even
recognize your own racism."
You say, "Well then
how am I racist?"
They said, "Because
you're complicit in
a system of racism."
See, right, but the
system isn't racist,
like you can't point to
something that's racist.
No, but it results
in racial inequality
and therefore it
is a racist system
and therefore you are
complicit in the system
and therefore you're a racist.
And you say, okay, well,
but all systems perpetuate
racial inequality.
By even saying that
you're demonstrating
your white fragility,
which means you're
a racist, right?
Like this is basic
Salem Witch Trial.
If you sink then
you were innocent
and if you float
that you're a witch.
- Yeah, all right,
so a lot of this actually is
very much the point of the book.
So just quickly before
we fully go into that,
let's just do COVID quickly.
Like where the hell
are we at in this?
Let's just talk about
California for a second.
I mean, we just in the
last couple of days
went into another
freaking lockdown.
It's beautiful outside.
I'm not sure what the
beach situation is,
whether we can go there,
but I know I can't
go to a restaurant.
It's like, what the hell is
going on here at this point?
What do you think is honestly
happening at this point?
- So I think what's
honestly happening
is that you have
a deadly disease
that has probably somewhere
between a two times
and six times deadly as the flu.
It's somewhere between .2 and
.6 infection fatality rate,
and that's dangerous and
it's very, very infectious.
And all of that is true.
The whole point of
flattening the curve
was to prevent the overwhelming
of the healthcare system.
We are not seeing
the healthcare system
being overwhelmed right now.
And so the idea that the only
tactic that is available is
full-scale lockdown I think
is not backed by evidence.
I am also growing
extraordinarily tired of people
shouting that they are
on the side of science
while variously
changing their opinion
literally every 15 seconds.
So it went, masks are
bad, now masks are good.
Protests are bad with
anti-lockdown protests,
now protests are good.
And this woke virus spares you
so long as you're kneeling
for George Floyd, right?
- I mean think how
bananas that is.
- It's crazy, it's utterly nuts.
I mean, that was
mindbogglingly incredible.
- Blasio this week
said that in effect,
you are allowed to protest
because racism is so
systemic and profoundly evil
that somehow it supersedes
the deadly virus.
But everyone else,
a couple of Orthodox Jews
playing in a park in Brooklyn,
we got a problem.
- It's a seriously woke virus.
I mean, good for
Colin Kaepernick
who should win the
Nobel Peace Prize
as well as the Nobel
Prize in biology,
because kneeling, it turns out
actually cures coronavirus,
which is pretty awesome.
- That's incredible.
- But I think that there've
been a bunch of false binaries
that have been set up
and those false binaries
are things like it's
either total lockdown
or total openness.
It annoys me when
people on the right
treat mask wearing as though
it's like a virtue signal.
And it annoys me on the left
when people treat mask wearing
as though it's an
incredible virtue signal.
You're an evil, evil person
if you're not wearing a mask,
when you go to sleep at night
and you're a better
person if you wear a mask.
And on the right,
there are people for
sure who are like, well,
I'm not wearing a mask
under any circumstance.
It's a violation of my freedoms
and all this kind of stuff.
When you're in a populated
area with a lot of other people
wear a mask, it isn't that bad.
Like you should do it
because you don't want
other people to get sick.
That's the best we can
do at this point in time.
With that said, the idea
that we're going to
full scale lock down
the entire American economy
or that we are going to
leave children out of school
for the next year
because of COVID,
like that seems
patently insane to me.
I mean, the reason it
seems patently insane
is because the data are pretty
murky on a lot of issues.
There are absolutely not
murky on the risk of children.
There's so little
risk to children.
If you're under the age of 20,
you have a better chance
of dying from the flu
than you do of COVID.
I mean, that's
just straight stat.
And what that means is that
maybe we can come up with
some creative solutions
where parents
actually have a place
where their kids can
go for schooling.
So my friend, John Podhoretz
over at Commentary Magazine,
I thought he had a good idea.
He said, why don't you
keep the schools open
and then you have a bunch
of 20 year old proctors
and then you have
the teachers Zoom in.
Why does the
teacher have to Zoom
with all the kids
at home, right?
Why don't you just
do it at school?
That seems like a
fairly decent idea.
But the incentive structure
is created for
politicians to lockdown,
because the more sternly
you treat the virus,
the better the media
are going to treat you.
- The more virtuous you are.
- Right, exactly.
And this is how you
see Andrew Cuomo,
who was a garbage heap of a
governor in this whole time
and who now create
magical posters,
tributes to himself
with literally a curve
that represents the number
of dead bodies in his state,
being treated as though
he was great at this
when his death rate is
like eight or nine times
that of Florida where Ron
Desantis is the font of all evil
and Greg Abbott in Texas,
it's like 11 or 12 times
the death rate in Texas.
None of the media
coverage makes sense.
And the media, there are
a bunch of issues here,
the politics of it
makes more sense,
the media coverage of
it makes some sense,
but it's really ugly sense
because of the politics
have overwhelmed the data.
And then on the data level,
there's just a lot we actually
don't know at this point.
We don't know whether
there's such a thing
as T-cell immunity.
That's been one of the theories,
that herd immunity actually
may start to kick in
as low as 20% is a
theory from Sweden.
It could be at 60%.
We don't know whether
this thing is,
how far away you have
to be from somebody.
They say six feet,
but the WHO was saying a
meter until five minutes ago.
- By the way, technically
my guys measured,
we're seven feet
away from each other.
- Oh yeah, no and
I insisted on that,
I'm a person who is taking
this very seriously, right?
I mean, like I've been
taking it seriously
because I have 65
year old parents.
So I'm not on the, let's be
skeptical of all of this stuff.
But the idea that like,
it's going to wipe out vast
swabs of the American public
and that it's the
most dangerous thing
that has ever existed
on planet earth
and then we have to shut down
the economy ad infinitum.
Here's the problem,
has anyone ever actually
done on the lockdown side,
any analysis of what the
costs are on the other side?
All I hear is if you
mention those costs
then you're bad and then you
don't care about human beings.
And that's insane,
like these are public
policy decisions
and we should obviously
be having conversations
about how to protect
the most vulnerable
and also how to trans
people back in to work.
I mean, I've been
saying for a long time
that it may end up
being that the way
that we end up moving
forward is what one,
I think it was Hebrew
University or Televiv University
scientist suggested was
controlled avalanche.
The idea was if you're
most vulnerable,
you stay home and we figured
out ways to protect you.
And if you're less vulnerable,
then you go out and if
you get it, you get it.
And then you're one person
closer to herd immunity.
That may be effectively defacto
what we're seeing anyway.
'Cause let's be real about this,
If you're 20, this is kind
of how you're treating it.
- Ben, this is where
they're gonna say,
you want to kill people.
Last time you were here, you
were here for my book launch.
And then the video,
you were the number
one trend on Twitter,
because you said we're
gonna have to deal
with some level of death.
It's a problem we don't want to,
but that's just the reality.
And then they came after
you and said, no, no,
no one should die in
our perfect world.
- Right, I made the
very pure and obvious
which everyone understands
the argument I was making,
which is that if you are
looking at days of life
versus just lives lost, that
is a different calculation
and it has done by
actuaries every single day.
The federal government
has actuaries that do this
on every single policy.
But again, the media
narrative is very easy here.
If you don't mirror
the policies they want,
then you're a you're
grandma killer
who wants to murder
your own grandma.
It doesn't matter
that I'm taking all
sorts of extraordinary
measures in order to protect
my own parents on this thing.
- So, all right, one
more thing on this then,
which is without going too far
down the conspiracy
channel road,
how much of this
is that the system
just wants to destroy Trump
because I don't think that
none of it is about that.
- Yeah, I think
that in the media,
I'll say it's
mostly unconscious,
but I would say a
heavy percentage of it.
I'd say over 50% is, if a
Democrat were president,
it would be how the
president has handled this,
he got the ventilators,
everybody's doing
the right thing.
Somebody is trying, this is
an unprecedented situation.
If it's Trump's fault,
why are we seeing secondary
spikes in countries
ranging from Australia
to Japan to Israel,
is he president over there?
We would be seeing
that sort of narrative.
We're not because
Trump is the president.
So I'm not going to give
any credit to the media.
For democratic governors,
I think all the stars aligned
for lockdown on
the economy's bad.
Okay well, if I have to blame
Trump, I'll blame Trump,
I mean, this is what
Cuomo's shtick is.
That all problems in New
York state are attributable
to the federal government.
They're not attributable to him,
the governor of New York state.
So I mean, Trump is convenient,
is a convenient thing to hit
and you get the added benefit
of maybe throwing
him out of office.
And there've been
those who predicted
that as soon as Joe
Biden is president,
that this will disappear
from the news within a month.
I'm not sure it'll
be quite that quick,
but I think that
there is a good shot
that at least the alarmism,
the sort of we're
steering in the dark
without any sort of oarsmen.
Like, okay, that's true.
And guess what? It's
true everywhere.
It's true everywhere.
It's not just true
in the United States.
It's true in the UK,
it's true in France.
it's true in Spain,
it's true in Italy.
Nobody knows anything.
And then once you recognize that
you realize that politicians
may not have all that much power
to do anything here,
because guess what?
New York locked all the way
down and they lost 33,000 people
and Florida didn't
lock down as much
and they've lost
like 4,000 people.
Colorado opened up at the
exact same time as Georgia,
exact same time, like same week.
Colorado's caseload is down 40%.
Georgia's case load
is up like 100%.
So nobody knows anything.
So this idea that like
everyone's sitting there
with their slide rule
and going here's how many
people I want to die.
It's just, it's not true.
- Yeah, all right.
With that in mind, let's talk
about the book a little bit.
One of the interesting things,
so you're talking about
a three easy steps,
but one of the
interesting things
that you did with the book,
there's only six
chapters in a pretty,
how many pages you got here?
- It's a lengthy
book, about 260.
- 250, something
like that, all right.
So first chapter
when you talk about
the American philosophy.
You think it's pretty good,
the American philosophy.
- I'm a fan.
- What do you think
the American
philosophy you radical?
- So I think the
Declaration of Independence
pretty well expresses
the American philosophy,
it has a few key
elements, right?
There's an idea that your
rights preexist government
and the government
was instituted
in order to protect
those rights.
So those rights adhere
to you as an individual,
they are given to you
by nature or God, right?
Whichever you prefer.
And the idea is that those
are discoverable in nature
using our reason.
Those would be the
right to free speech,
the right to practice religion,
the right to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.
All of these are embedded
in the Declaration
of Independence.
So those rights
preexist government.
Also-
- A lot of people
struggle with that.
- Right and we'll
get to it in a second
what the actual
counter vision here is,
because what we're seeing
right now is two separate
and very conflicting
visions of the United States
and what it ought to be.
The second, kind of
the second element here
is the idea that because
government was instituted
to protect those rights,
if government
violates those rights,
it loses its raison d'et.
So the idea is that government
is accountable to the people
and that the government
doesn't have the,
even if the majority
wants it to,
the government does not
have the wherewithal
to violate those rights
without undermining
it's own the reason
for existence.
That idea of limited
and enumerated powers
that we see in the Declaration
and the Constitution,
that's a central part
of American philosophy.
The idea that we are equal.
The equality provisions of the
Declaration of Independence,
all men are created equal.
Now, obviously Jefferson
and the founders are
very clear about this,
they don't mean everybody
has equal talents.
It doesn't mean everybody
makes equal choices.
It doesn't mean that I'm
gonna play in the NBA,
never gonna happen.
Sadly for you, it also means
that you will not be
playing in the NBA.
- I know, I know.
- But with that said,
the idea is that we
all have equal rights
before government and
before the creator,
we have to be treated
equivalently by the law.
- But then these people owned
slaves, women couldn't vote.
How could this be?
- Right, so this is the
countervailing vision of-
- Oh, should we wait?
We're doing chapter one, right?
- Yeah.
- Okay, keep going.
- And all of these
kind of root beliefs,
rights that preexist government,
the idea that all men
are created equal,
and there's an
equality before law,
the idea that the government
is accountable to the people,
but that even a
majority is not allowed
to run rough shot over
the rights of minority.
All of these are then
embodied in the constitution,
which is designed with
checks and balances
and enumerated powers.
Those are really the
kind of key provisions.
They're really kind of
three key provisions
of the Constitution when
you boil it all down.
Checks and balances, enumerated
powers and federalism.
Subsidiarity, the idea that
the best governance is local
because you and I
live in the same town.
We probably agree more
than I do with some guy,
3000 miles away I've never met.
The idea that there are
checks and balances,
because if I'm given ultimate
power, I can be a tyrant.
If you're given ultimate
power, you could be a tyrant,
but if we check each other,
then we won't be running-
- Well, not me.
- Not you, you're awesome.
I for sure would be.
And then the idea
that, so subsidiarity,
the idea of checks and balances
and the idea of
enumerated powers,
meaning the government
is given a very specific
set of things to do and
does not have any power
beyond those things.
That was the goal of the
Constitution is to provide
the actual institutions
that preserve the rights
that are talked about in the
Declaration of Independence.
And this creates an
explosion in liberty,
not only in the United States,
but an explosion of liberty
that carries
throughout the world.
Now, that sort of brings
us to the question
of American history, right?
So we can go through, I think
the best way to discuss it,
not to dictate to you how-
- No, no.
- When it comes to the book,
I think that there
are three things
that are being destroyed.
One is the American philosophy
and the second is
American history.
So the idea in American history
is that these founding
principles were good,
great, they're universal,
and that we've not
always lived up to them.
And the story of America
is about human beings
falling short of principle,
which is what human
beings always do.
Human beings are sinful.
Human beings can be evil.
Human beings do horrible
things to each other.
And so the story
of American history
is us seeking to live
up to those principles
and then failing and then
striving and then succeeding.
And that's a great story because
that's a story of triumph
and it means that we're all
part of the same history.
Even if we're part of
a victimized group,
then we're the
heroes of the story,
because we overcame
that victimization
to become part of this great
chain that is the United States
to claim our share of the
American dream, right?
And I'm not the one saying this,
Frederick Douglas
was saying this
as a former freed slave in 1852,
he was talking about how
July 4th doesn't include us,
but it should include us
because Independence Day was
meant to apply to everyone.
So are you gonna live up
to your promises or not?
This is Martin Luther
King's promissory note.
The idea that work
here to make good
on the check that you
signed us in 1776.
And so American history
is the story of us
trying to fulfill
those principles
and getting better and better
and extending those
principles to a broader
and broader group of people,
which is a story of triumph.
And not just extend those
principles internally,
but also extend those
principles around the world.
The idea of free markets
and ownership of your
own means of production
and extending this
around the world to free
billions of people from
enslavement and poverty,
the idea of an America that
frees billions of people
from abject tyranny, right?
That's an amazing,
amazing story.
So the story of America
is that America,
President Trump
once, a slogan aired,
I'm gonna make
America great again.
But the idea of American history
is that America always
had great principals,
but people are not always great.
So America was always great
if you think of
America as an idea.
If you think of America
as a set of Americans,
there were some who sucked
and some who were great.
But the idea is that
America was always great,
it was great from inception,
it just didn't live up to
its own founding creed.
And then finally,
there's the idea of a culture
that ties us together.
And this doesn't mean that
we watch the same TV shows,
it means that we speak
sort of the same language.
That when I say right, you
know inherently what I mean.
When I say free speech, we
both immediately flash to,
okay, that means I
can say what I want.
When I say that there's
freedom of association means,
okay, it means I get to
hang out with the person
I want to hang out with.
If we say freedom of religion,
it means I get to worship
in the way that I want.
These are just clear cut
things that we agree on,
ways that we discuss the world
and a culture of rights,
not just legal rights
that are enshrined,
a culture of rights means
that even outside the
bounds of government,
we should respect
each other enough
to acknowledge that we're
gonna disagree sometimes.
This is where we get
into cancel culture,
because the idea is that,
and you'll hear
this from the left.
well, when the New York
Times outs somebody
or when the Atlantic fires
Kevin Williamson or something,
that's not the
government doing it.
So what are you
complaining about?
That's just the
free market at work.
That's true, that's true.
It's not the government,
but that only goes so far.
If we don't have a culture
where we actually respect
each other's ability to speak,
then culture always precedes
what happens in law.
It's a pretty short leap
from the entire culture
says a view is out of balance
to let's make that view
illegal eventually.
Now that doesn't mean all views
have to be held
in equal respects.
Doesn't mean there's no such
thing as an Overton window.
Of course there is
an Overton window,
but it does mean that you
have to have enough respect
for your neighbor to
say, listen, we're
allowed to disagree.
And our rights mean
that you're allowed
to misuse that right
even I don't like the way
you're using that right.
The way to overcome your
misuse of that right
is by using my rights,
my right to free speech,
to gather a group people
who disagree with you,
and then we can win.
Then we can convince you and
convince the people around you.
That's the way the rights
were always approached.
That culture of rights
has been undermined
- So let's pause
there for a second
because we're dealing
with this cancel culture
nonsense right now,
do you think that there
is just a certain inertia
to movements like cancel culture
because of all of the
stuff that we started
this conversation talking about
that it's like, we've had
this thing slowly building,
but now it does feel like
it hit the tipping point
and now it's just
spread everywhere.
Do you think there's like a
functional reason for that?
- Yeah, I mean, I think
that there've been decades
of an attempt to rethink
what rights actually mean.
So one of the things
that the left has done
is in the same way
that we started off
by talking about the
redefinition of racism.
They've redefined
nearly every term
that we've talked about here.
They've redefined every
element of American philosophy
to mean almost the
precise reverse
of what originally
was meant to mean.
They've redefined virtually
all of American history,
which is what the
1619 Project is about.
And they've redefined
our culture of rights,
so that rights are in fact
ways to oppress people.
When we talked a
little bit earlier
about the right to free speech
being seen as a way
for the powerful
to silence the powerless.
And you see people actually
saying this kind of stuff.
- I mean, this is in effect
what white fragility is about.
This is in effect what all
of the whole BLM platform,
this is what it is about,
like you're not just
making this stuff up.
- No, I mean, and
when I wrote the book,
I didn't realize that it was
gonna break open this way.
I really thought that honestly,
when COVID hit in
March, I thought, okay,
I wrote this book to rush
out before the election
and now it's gonna be irrelevant
because it's all going
to be COVID all the time.
And then all this
stuff just broke loose
in the last couple of
months and I thought, wow,
I mean, I'm not a
prophet, but if I were.
That's really how it feels.
I mean, looking back
through the book
and realizing that all the
arguments that I was making
against this particular
vision of America,
which I call disintegrationist,
and the reason I call
it disintegrationist
is because I think
that it really stands
for the coming apart of America.
I think that there's a
group of people who say,
here are all the things
we have in common.
And as Lincoln said,
we have to be brothers
because if we're not brothers,
we're going to be
enemies, right?
That's just how
this is going to be.
The better angels of our
nature had better win
and we better all
be on the same page
or we're going to fall apart.
I think there's
a group of people
who believe that they
are the sole expositors
of ultimate truth.
And as the sole expositors
of ultimate truth,
they get to club everybody
else into submission
and therefore all of the checks
and balances should go away
because they are now
the godlike leaders
who know all the
wisdom of the ages.
They're the best people
who have ever lived.
- Isn't it incredible-
- It's unbelievable.
- They are better than
everyone that came before them.
- And what lucky people we
are to be living in this time,
this time with such unbelievably
special people, right?
Who get to rip down
statues of Ulysses S Grant
and who get to suggest that
Abraham Lincoln was a bad man.
Whereas they, they, if
they'd been living in 1863,
they wouldn't have just
been abolitionists,
they would have been
people who are arguing
for all end to segregation
and complete mixing of
people of different races.
All the principles
they hold today,
that are good principals,
all those principals,
they would have held
them doubtless in 1863
with no background
in any of this stuff.
If they'd been born,
all of their values are sort
of floating miasmatically
in the atmosphere and
they internalize them
and they would have been,
if it wouldn't matter,
you could plop them
down in Rome in 100 BC.
And they would have held
exactly the same values,
they exist outside of time.
They exist outside of history.
They exist absent to any
other outside influences.
They're just the most
incredible people
who have ever lived in
history of humanity.
Good for them.
I mean, and good for
us that we get to live
at a time of such saints.
- So interesting,
because I've been
thinking about this a lot.
Like if you think about how fast
it seems the world
is moving right now,
like just think about today
versus just what we
were talking about
say 10 years ago in 2010,
whatever the hell it was.
Now, if you take
that further back
and you plop that
person down in 1863
and try to imagine how
different the world is,
like people don't really
just sit in that for a minute
and realize how different it was
without plumbing and electricity
and all of those things.
And yet, somehow their
entire moral code
would have been,
which they make up-
- It would be exactly the same.
They're not standing on
the shoulders of giants.
They didn't learn
anything from Lincoln.
American history has nothing
to do with their positions.
They exist as free floating
moral actors in the universe
without any
background whatsoever.
They came to all of the exact
right conclusions about life
simply through a
priori thinking.
It's truly an unbelievable
achievement of the human mind.
I think again,
we should all feel very lucky
to be in their presence.
Of course this is all bullshit,
I mean, the fact
is Robert George,
who's the moral professor,
the professor of moral
philosophy over at Princeton.
He says he uses this as a
sort of thought experiment.
He says, okay, so
he'll ask his class,
you're living in
1860 in Alabama,
are you an abolitionist
or are you pro slavery?
And everybody in the room,
everyone says, I'm
an abolitionist.
And then he's like,
really, really are you?
Because I love for you to name
these extremely unpopular
position you're taking
at the risk to your
life, reputation
and career right now today.
Like it actually risks anything
because none of you can
name any of them, right?
You're actually going
along to get along
with most of your morality.
The example that I
like to use on this
is we're living in an era
where everybody
thinks of themselves
as deeply enlightened
and all of this.
100 from now, all the
statues of president Obama
will come down, why?
Because he ate meat.
100 from now all the
statutes of president Obama
will come down because
there's video of him
at campaign rallies, you know,
in Iowa, at campaign
stops eating a corn dog.
- He had that hot dog.
- Right and people
are going to say-
- I'm with you on this.
It's the next frontier
of this lunacy.
- And what's gonna
happen is it's gonna be,
there were people
who knew back then
that this was being
mean to animals
and you ignored that sort of,
that sort of suffering.
- And worse than
mean to animals,
it's also destroying
the environment.
The cow farts and-
- Right, you drove a car.
I mean, there were people
who weren't driving cars.
You can't say that you
were completely innocent
in all of this.
Nobody's completely
innocent in all of this.
The reason that we erect
monuments to people
is for the good stuff they did,
not the bad stuff they did.
But again, when you
think of yourself
as better than any human
being who has ever lived,
it gives you an awful
lot of moral authority
to rip down
everything around you.
- Right, so okay,
so we've sort of veered
into chapter two here,
which is when you talk
about that disintegration,
do you think that once
something starts disintegrating
at a certain rate,
that then it's inevitable
that it will disintegrate
and that's sort of what we're,
I think a lot of people
are feeling that right now,
like oh my God, the
world really has shifted.
The conversation has shifted.
It feels like everything's
out of control.
Can it actually, you know,
if the wave has started,
can you actually
turn the wave around?
- I mean, I think the only way
to really turn
the wave around is
to refamiliarize
ourselves with principals,
which is a difficult task.
I mean, we've basically
assumed that freedom
was in the water for
50 years, 60 years.
And it turns out freedom
was not in the water,
Kool-Aid was in the water
and people have been drinking
it at a university campuses
and they've been reading
Howard Zinn for awhile.
And now they think they
have a very sophisticated
view of the world and so
it takes some education
in American history
and American philosophy
to re-inculcate that,
but that's a hard slog.
I think it's gonna
be a rough time here.
I don't think this is gonna,
I think there's this assumption
on the part of liberals,
like good-hearted liberals
who actually believe a
lot of this stuff in book,
'cause this is not partisan.
I really believe that everything
that I've said about American
history and American culture,
like rights are good and the
Declaration of Independence,
all human beings are
equal before the law.
Like this should be
pretty consensus stuff.
I mean, this is not
right, left or center.
I know a lot of liberals
who agree with this,
but I think that
there's this assumption
that because everything
is Trump polarized,
that if Biden is elected,
that all this sort of
goes back to normal,
everybody calms down
and it goes away.
I think they are
really underestimating
an ascendant left
that sees the wave of
history behind them.
And they also see a
weak actor in Joe Biden
and they feel like they
can push him around,
I think they're probably
right about that.
- I mean, the guy has
got serious problems.
It's like, that's
the scandal, right?
Like, isn't that the scandal
that no one will talk
about the scandal,
which is that obviously
something's wrong with him?
- I mean, it is
pretty incredible
that's considered such
an out of bounds opinion.
I mean, without any evidence,
you're suggesting that he's
on the verge of senility.
I mean, watch a tape of
him like eight years ago
and then watch a
tape of him today
and Joe Biden was
never any great shakes,
but he looks like
a different dude.
I mean, and listen,
you can elect them if you want.
I mean, that's your prerogative,
but recognize that
there's a high likelihood,
you're also electing
his vice president.
- Right, so okay, we started
talking about culture
and I wanted to pause
you in the middle of it
because when we
talk about culture,
Ben, someone's gonna say,
you're talking about American
culture, that's chapter three,
but American culture
must mean white culture.
That's what you
really mean, Shapiro,
is that it's about
white culture.
- Right and this goes back to
this whole anti-racist idea,
which is that rights themselves
are a vestige of white
supremacist system,
which ignores all
of the progress,
not only made by black people,
but made by black people
in the name of rights,
in the name of rights.
Martin Luther King saying,
we ought to have
the same freedoms
that you all are guaranteed.
Our freedom of speech
matters no less
than your freedom of speech.
An American saying because
you're making that argument,
not the argument the
entire system is bad,
not the sort of early
Malcolm X argument
that white people are devils
and that the entire
system is garbage
and all of this stuff that he
abandoned later in his career.
Because you're making the
actual American argument,
yeah, we'll give that a hearing,
that makes sense to us, right?
I mean, this was
the argument, again,
being made by Frederick Douglas.
He wasn't saying
that July 4th is bad.
He's saying we're not
included in that promise.
We should be included
in that promise.
When you invoke the deep
principles of America,
your movement is
likely to see victory.
This is the same
thing that happened
with the gay rights movement.
The gay rights
movement said, listen,
you guys are guaranteed
freedom of association.
You're guaranteed
freedom in who you love.
So it was rights argument.
Now I may not have agreed
with the application
with regard to behavior,
but the actual rights
with regard to marriage,
with the actual early argument,
which was everybody should
basically be left alone.
That was a very robust argument
and had a lot of power behind it
because most Americans went
yeah, that makes sense to me.
I mean, I, that kind of freedom.
Why shouldn't that guy
have that kind of freedom?
Like why not?
Which is a different argument
than some of the arguments
we're now having,
which have moved beyond the
rubric of right into, well,
I can demand from you
a good or service,
that's a bit of a
different thing.
- And by the way, as you know,
we've discussed this
a million times,
that issue of it,
the gay rights thing,
was one of the first things
that really sort of broke me
related to what was
happening with the right,
how the right was
being tolerant,
because all I get is this
endless hate from the he,
him, she, her, Z, whatever,
tolerant people in
the name of diversity,
I just get endless
hate from them.
And yet, here I can
sit across from you,
we've done it a
million times already
and it's all been seen
a gajillion times more,
and it's like, yeah, here we are
and we live in the same country-
- Because rights to arguments
have an innate appeal
and people in America have
always responded to rights are,
not everybody at every
time, but overall,
the chain of American history
is Americans recognizing
that arguments that are based
on rights are good arguments.
Now the left has abandoned
arguments based on rights.
They've made arguments based
on either entitlements,
like you owe me X,
which is not you owe me,
you leave me alone.
You owe me this specific thing.
Or the argument that rights
themselves are, again,
and this is so pernicious,
rights themselves
are reinforcement of
an evil hierarchy.
And that is so
unbelievably dangerous
because what that
leads to is now
we can get to encroach
upon your rights
in order so that we can
get rid of the hierarchy.
This is an argument that was
first made by Herbert Marcuse,
who is a Neo Marxist,
a philosophy professor
at UC Berkeley,
very, very influential
guy in the 60s.
He's the creator of
make love, not war.
And one of his big ideas
with this was this idea of
what he calls
repressive tolerance,
meaning tolerance for,
he literally says this,
tolerance for opinions
from the left,
intolerance of opinions
from the right,
because if you tolerate
opinions from the right
than the the people on
the right might win.
If the people on the right win,
they're going to use
that power over you.
So we have to actually
stop the right
before it gets started
and we do that by curbing
their right to speak freely.
- It sounds like basically
every professor at Harvard
for the last 30 years probably.
- Yeah, I mean, and it's
every fascist in history,
which is, I know
the road to utopia
and it runs directly
over your house.
It runs directly
over your rights.
And so the argument
that's now being made
that all rights are
essentially just vestiges
of power relationships
and they're covers
for evil, racist arguments.
That if you say
freedom of speech,
what you're really saying is
you don't want to hear
from this black guy.
It's like, that is
not only a nasty
and scurrilous accusation,
it's also incredibly dangerous
because you have now
conflated the idea
that individuals have rights
that cannot be encroached
upon by anyone with the idea
that those people are
somehow supremacists.
- Yeah, are you worried that
within the cultural
aspect of this,
that as we're seeing
population shifts now,
the amount of people moving
out of New York City,
people moving out of California,
they're moving to Texas
and then they're
gonna turn Texas blue
and then we've got a
whole other problem.
But as we're seeing sort of
the idea of federalism in play,
the good part of federalism,
so people are taking
responsibility for their lives,
that it's gonna come at a cost
that our cultural unity is
going to really be ripped apart
because we will all
just move to places
that are more in line with us.
And then it's like, well,
what the hell is the
point of the union?
- That's exactly right.
I mean, I think as we polarize
and it's not just states,
which I think are
getting redder or bluer,
I mean, this is one
thing that we are seeing.
Purple States are
sort of disappearing.
They either turn redder
like Ohio is turning redder
until the last few moments.
And Iowa was turning redder
or they're turning bluer
or like Colorado or Virginia.
As the States polarize,
that's going to be a problem.
It's gonna be even
more of a problem
in just everyday life.
So yes, California's
blue and Texas is red,
but what happens when companies
are either blue or red?
When you're the head of Goya
and you say a nice
thing about Trump
and suddenly your
company is verboten.
Now, your company is bad
and we're gonna
boycott your company.
Listen, I wear Nike shoes.
I think that they fit my
feet well, I like them.
Good, whatever.
- But you also like the
repression of speech in China,
come on, come on.
- I do, it's one of
my favorite things,
but at no point,
before they started overtly
signaling on politics,
did I think to myself,
I really wonder how
Phil Knight voted.
It never occurred to me.
It never occurred to me
to say, you know what?
I'm looking at this
Apple computer.
Do Tim Cook's principles
match my own principles?
It never occurred
to me to do that
because the idea was okay,
he's providing me a good
or service that I like,
his politics have
nothing to do with it
and good, that's how we
should live because we-
- But also they say made
in Cupertino or no, no.
They say, what did they
say, designed in Cupertino.
They don't tell you
where it's made.
That's the genius
of what they do.
But yes, that sort of endless
politicization of everything.
- And the politicization of
everything makes things so ugly
and it makes it so that, I mean,
I got mocked online for this.
I said like, I'm going
to find it harder
to watch the NBA this season
if the NBA has black lives
matter on the side of the court.
Because again, the offense
in black lives matter
is not the actual phrase,
of course, black lives matter.
It's perfectly obvious.
The whole point of painting
black lives matter on a court
is to suggest that
there's a vast swath
of the American public for
whom this is not obvious.
You're not painting on
the side of the court,
babies are good.
We all kind of agree,
babies are good.
It would make no
sense to paint that.
The minute you pay black
lives matter on a court,
what you're really saying is,
and there's a bunch of
nefarious people we don't like,
wink, wink, nod, nod,
Trump supporters,
who don't believe
black lives matter.
When you're saying that
you can put a slogan
on the back of your NBA Jersey,
I don't want to see, I really,
I don't want to see
defund the police lobbying
an alley-oop to raise taxes.
That's not my thing.
- By the way, this is literally
a policy of the NBA now.
What is it about 20 phrases,
social justice phrases-
- Not free Hong Kong, you
can't do free Hong Kong.
- You can't do free
Hong Kong, right,
that's one you can't do.
They won't let you
even make it as a fan,
but you're not
making this thing up.
I mean, they've allowed
for about 20 phrases
that are social justice phrases
so that you don't
have to have James
on the back of your uniform.
- So what you'll
inevitably end up with
is people who are like, yeah,
but I still like basketball
and they'll start
a basketball league
that's like the
patriotic basketball,
I don't want that.
I want to be able
to share basketball
with people that
I disagree with.
I want to be able to watch TV
and understand that I'm
not gonna be sucker punched
just for the fact that I tend
to believe in lower taxes
and more personal freedom.
- Doesn't it suck
though in some way
that we really were ahead
of the curve on this,
I don't mean that to
pat us on the back,
but literally people
can watch video-
- We've been having
the same conversation
ongoing for years now.
- Three years ago
or four years ago,
we were talking about how as
politics infects everything,
it is going to
destroy everything.
That if every time
you turn on ESPN,
if it's about race or
it's about politics,
it will have destroyed
sports and we're there.
You know, I have a
great idea for a show.
You want to do a show together?
How about we will watch,
this is what I do
for cardio anyway,
we will watch old NBA games
together and do play by play.
We'll do play by
play and stream.
- Just stream play by play.
- Yeah, exactly.
I would 100% do that.
- Well, you want to do
color or play by play.
You talk fast so you
gotta be play by play
and I'm color.
- Yeah, I think
that's probably right.
- Yeah, we gotta do it that way.
That's what I do for cardio,
watching 90s Bulls
games with Jordan
is way more interesting
than when they bring
this thing back
and I got to hear about
all the political stuff.
- All the common
spaces that we had
where we weren't being lectured
are now being taken over
and then militarized.
And this is one of the things
I do talk about in the book
with regard to corporations.
So there's this
widespread perception,
corporations are right wing,
they're so conservative,
they're right wing.
Corporations are
profit-seeking enterprises.
If you are the squeakiest wheel
and you suggest that you're
going to go after a corporation,
the corporation will
probably hate to you.
And so what the
left has realized
is they can do this on
any variety of topics.
They can go after Coca Cola
and say, you know, Coke,
you really shouldn't
appear on Facebook
because Facebook allows people
who are right wing on there.
And Coke's like, listen, I
don't have a dog in this fight.
I don't really want
to get involved.
- I just want people
to drink soda.
- Right, exactly.
- That's my thing.
- And so all of the
people who wanted
to stay out of the fight
are now in the business
of virtue signaling to the left
because the squeakiest
wheel gets the grease.
Well, eventually
what's going to happen
and it's gonna be bad,
is the right's gonna fight
back the exact same way.
Eventually the right's
going to say, listen,
if you don't give us
the messages we want,
we're not going to
patronize your company.
And by the way, you see
companies that are doing
great business specifically
based on this model.
Our friends over at
Black Rifle Coffee
are doing exactly
this kind of business.
They basically said,
we're the anti Starbucks.
Starbucks is your woke
progressive SJW coffee.
And over here we like with
like guns, we like freedom,
we like the military,
drink our coffee.
And people are like,
it sounds better to me.
I guess I'll do that.
- And they're killing it.
- And they're killing it.
And that's what that's
going to happen.
There's going to be
two companies, now,
can there be a lot of
money made there? Sure.
But does that further
polarize the culture?
In every single way it
polarizes the culture.
You're not gonna be able to
live next door to somebody
who you disagree with
without suspecting
they're trying to
get one over on you.
And this is also where the left,
all these things
cross streams, right?
The destruction of the culture,
the destruction of the history,
the destruction of
the philosophy, these
all cross streams,
because once you
destroyed the culture
and all the commonality,
then you know what's a really
important thing at that point?
All the checks and balances
of the government, right?
Because that prevents
51% of the population
from cramming down their
perspective on the other 49%.
So naturally the disintegrations
would love nothing better
than to ditch all of
the checks and balances,
ditch the United States Senate,
ditch the electoral college,
get rid of all those things.
We'll just have a pure
majoritarian system
and we'll just ram down on,
get rid of federalism,
we'll ram down from the top.
And once you do that,
then the risk of the
country really splitting
becomes incredibly severe
because with 51%
of the population,
you can say to me that
you're gonna tell me
how to raise my child,
forget about it.
And there are hundreds of
millions of people like me
I would think.
- So you have a line,
I think it's on page three
of the book about that
basically the way
we look at the world
is that viral picture from
a couple of years ago,
that either you see the
dress as black and blue
or you see the dress
as gold and white.
Is that really what this is now?
That we are at the point
that I think about 20 of us
tried to stop from happening
for a couple of years,
there were maybe
more than 20 of us,
but a bunch of us tried online
to stop it from happening,
that this thing was going
to happen no matter what.
And that basically
we're there now
and we both just see
a different dress
and to actually
bring that together,
you already hit on
it in a certain way.
We have to go back to
some of those principles
and things like that.
But in a certain way,
that may be if you
factor in the internet
and just the pervasive
nature of woke culture,
it may be an impossible project.
- It might be, it might be.
The only way that
you bridge that gap
between how you view the
dress is by saying, hey,
maybe we can see this
in different ways
and still agree to be friends.
And then that I think
is the one thing
that the disintegrations
do not want above all,
because if we all agree
that we can disagree,
well, then maybe I might
convince some of you
and you might
convince some of us,
we might have a conversation
and we might leave
each other alone
and recognize that
we're human beings.
So the key is the
polarization is the point.
It's not a byproduct.
The polarization is the
feature, not the bug.
- Oh, God.
- And it's really depressing.
But the point that I'm
trying to make in the book
is that when I say
this stuff about
the Declaration or
the Constitution,
when I talk about
checks and balances
or equal rights before
law, when I say this stuff,
I feel like most Americans,
and I'm not saying
about a silent majority.
I mean like most
Americans period
basically agree with this stuff
and they've just not recognized
that there is a
threat to these things
because what the left
has so cleverly done,
and this is what I
referred to earlier
is they've really
shifted the language.
So it went from,
I have rights to
free speech to, well,
I have a right not
to be offended.
And say, well, no,
that's a very different
use of the word right.
- The word right typically
meant that you have a right
not to be encroached upon by me.
You have a right against me
doing something bad to you.
You do not have a
right to violate
my ability to speak freely
because some unspecified harm
may at some point
attend upon you.
You don't have a
right to my stuff.
You don't have a right
to run my business.
You don't have right to tell
me how to raise my kids.
The redefinition of right
from something I had that
preexisted government,
it was a thing that I had
that preexisted government
and I had it against
all other people,
to I have a demand of you
and I wish that
demand to be honored.
So redefining right as a
demand is a very clever trick.
- But let's give the devil
his due here, do you think,
and I know we have to separate
the leaders of this thing
from the foot soldiers,
but do you think they believe it
when they tell you
words are violence,
but then they'll also tell you
burning down a
business isn't violence
because you're not
murdering a person.
Although I suspect if we
burned down their house,
they might think
it's a violent act.
Do you think they genuinely
and honestly believe
what they're saying
or that they've just
outsourced their faculties,
I suppose, to the greater cause?
- I think there's some of both.
I mean, I'll grant
them either one
ends with the same
kind of conclusion
which is authenticity.
They're authentically believing
or they're authentically
stupid or both.
And I think that
there's some of both,
I mean, I think that
there certainly an element
of the narrative
matters a lot more
than this particular
fact pattern.
There's the AOC line about how
why are you so focused on what
I'm saying is true or not,
it's really the overall
message that matters.
- I think she said it has
to not be factually true,
but morally right.
- But morally right,
that is the line of
the ages right here.
And you can see it very clearly
in the 1619 Project, right?
The 1619 Project is like the
best example of this ever.
Where did the title essay
includes the preposterous claim
that the revolution was
fought to preserve slavery,
which is pure insanity.
I mean, like there's
not a shred of evidence
whatsoever to
support this claim.
Like none, zero, zip, zilch.
And this thing was
given the Pulitzer Prize
and Nikole Hannah-Jones doesn't
give a damn about the truth.
I mean, she really does not.
The entire project,
the 1619 Project,
I talk about it at length,
is replete with just
ridiculous claims
that have nothing
to do with fact
and an incredibly reductionist
view of the universe
in which everything
is simply a reflection
of underlying American racism.
There can never be
any other rationale
for a bad thing happening.
Everything bad that
has ever happened
or is happening is
a result of racism.
There are no other
intervening factors.
- I don't know if you
know the answer to this,
but has any other nation more
quickly gotten rid of slavery,
been formed as a
nation that had slavery
and then gotten rid of
slavery that quickly?
- I don't know the answer
to that question actually.
- We gotta be in the top five.
- Things that people
don't know. I mean,
Saudi Arabia abolish
slavery in 1961.
The British empire
only abolish slavery
in its own colonies
in the 1830s.
- Qatar is using
slave labor right now
and somehow Al-Jazeera is a-
- And so this is not
to justify slavery
in the United States,
but it is to
recognize that like,
history is a thing that happened
and also there were lots of
other things happening on earth.
It's one of my big bugaboos
is people looking at the
United States in a vacuum,
and then you look at
somebody in a vacuum
and of course they look flawed.
Any individual,
this happens to a lot of
people when they're dating
is they look at the
person they're dating
and they're like, it starts off
and you're really hot
and heavy on this.
And you're like, oh,
this is fantastic.
And then about three
weeks in you're like,
yeah but do I like her
nose, do I like his nose?
And then you think
about it and you go,
yeah, but of all the
other people I know
this is like the best person.
- It's the best one I can get.
- But if you look at
anybody in a vacuum,
you're like, God,
look at all the flaws,
look at all the flaws here.
And that's what people tend
to do with the United States.
They're looking for flaws.
And so when you're nitpicking
and looking for flaws,
you don't have to nitpick
to find flaws in
the United States.
But when you find flaws
in the United States
and you refuse to even look
across the pond and say, wait,
is there a
comparative case here?
Like, is it possible like when
people will make the claim
that the United States
was an imperialist
colonialist power and
stole all the land
that it's sitting on.
It's like well, what were native
tribes doing to each other
like for the several thousand
years preceding that?
is it possible that
actually seizure of land
is one of the universals
of human history?
Is it possible that slavery
was one of the evil universals
of human history?
And the United States
was very instrumental
in stopping slavery.
And in fact, fought a war
in which 600,000 Americans
died in order to end slavery.
Like putting things in context
is actually quite useful,
but it's one of the things
that people on the left
really don't want.
I mean, Nikole
Hannah-Jones has said this.
Nikole Hannah-Jones said that
you're not supposed to say
about Jefferson, for example,
that he was a man of his times
or Ulysses S Grant that
he was a man of his times
'cause she says, well, Hitler
was a man of his times.
Pol Pot was a man of his times.
Like, I'm pretty sure Hitler
was not a man of his times
the exact same way
that George Washington
was a man of his times.
In 1939, I don't think
there were tons of people
on planet earth were
like you know what?
Let's just massacre six million
Jews for no reason at all.
But slavery was a universal
of human culture for all time.
That's not an excuse for evil.
What it is, is a recognition
that human beings
progressed beyond evil
as part of a chain of history
when they learn from the past
and when they stand on the
shoulders of other people,
Nikole Hannah-Jones in her
belief that slavery is bad,
is standing on the
shoulders of people
who believe that
slavery was bad.
And that was a process of
learning for all of humanity,
not just in America.
I mean slavery again,
when I say it's universal,
I mean, it is universal.
Slavery was in Africa.
There's still slavery in
parts of Africa today,
slavery was in Latin America,
it was in South America,
it was in Europe.
I mean, there is
no culture on earth
of which I am aware that
slavery was never practiced
at the very least
among warring tribes.
So this idea that the United
States is the font of all evil,
the New York Times ran a piece
where they said that the
most durable caste systems
in history were India, Nazi
Germany, and the United States.
That's patently crazy.
You have to be so ignorant
of anything remotely resembling
history to make that claim,
but this kind of
stuff is cheered on
at the New York Times.
- Yeah, well, all right.
So let's actually do
the New York Times
for a little bit here as
long as they're doing it
'cause as we're sitting here,
this New York Times thing
has burst into the world.
- And full disclosure
we both know Bari.
I'm friendlier with Bari
than you are I think.
- I guess so but Bari Weiss
was the opinion editor
who wrote the original
piece on the IDW,
which you reminded me
right before we started
that you weren't even
in, which was psychotic,
but there's a reason for that.
You weren't in it because
you're a scary conservative
and the farthest she
could sort of push it
was basically me and Jordan
and maybe Michael Shermer a
little bit, something like that.
But then the rest, it
was good liberals and-
- I remember finding
it quite bizarre
because I was
literally on the stage
when Eric coined the term IDW.
- Yeah, I was in the audience,
you were on the stage.
- It was literally Sam
Harris and me Eric.
- But I actually
think you can link
a lot of what's now
happened at the Times
right To that IDW article,
'cause it was her way
of trying to inject
the last bit of liberalism,
true liberalism into the paper.
She got demolished for it.
She threw me under the bus
because you'd have to be,
what was the line?
You'd have to be
cynical or stupid
to talk to some of these
people on the right.
That was a shot at me and
Rogan, but more so me.
And then by the way, I
just tweeted this out
and I don't like all
these little silly things,
but David just reminded me
that two years ago at dinner
after the article,
she apologized to him
about what she did with me
and said she was forced
to do it by the editors.
I don't mean any of this for
insider baseball or to gloat,
but she has now stepped
away from the Times.
And it seems like it's
a true pivotal moment
that may be, to now
link this to your book
'cause I'm a hell
of an interviewer,
is now the full on
disintegration of
the New York Times
that we've been
calling for years.
But do you sense now
that this is the thing-
- Oh, yeah, no question.
They inmates are in
charge of the asylum,
Bari stepping away is actually
sort of the second
bomb to fall, right?
The first bomb
was James Bennett,
the opinion editor
there getting fired
over the great crime
of printing an op ed
from a sitting
United States Senator
on an issue where over
50% of Americans agreed.
- Law and order, eh.
- Yeah, I know like, oh my God,
we should stop
rioting and looting,
a threat to the safety of
staffers at the New York Times.
They're literally tweeting
this bullshit safety as an out.
I mean, it was crazy.
They were tweeting out
stuff like, you know,
the Tom Cotton's op
ed is threatening
the safety of
Nikole Hannah-Jones.
Like really, does she
feel unsafe today?
Does she really with
her Pulitzer Prize
sitting there
shining in the corner
and her six figure salary from
the bastion of liberalism,
that is the New York Times?
Bari's letter is
very, very good.
I mean Bari's letter,
which basically details,
there's so many lines in it
that I think are worthy
of note and are so true.
But the one paragraph
that really,
I think goes to what
we're talking about
is it used to be that
there was a belief
that journalism was
about the collective
enterprise of truth seeking.
And that meant that
we were all supposed
to argue with each other
and we were supposed
to turn over the rocks
and see what was underneath
and examine all
of the sculptures
from different angle,
feel the elephant from
all different angles
so you know it's an elephant
and not either a snake
or a rat or a tree.
Anything like that.
But what she says is that
orthodoxy has replaced that.
This self righteous orthodoxy,
where we are the keepers
of all knowledge,
and we will cram down
that version of knowledge
on everybody else.
That is now become the
cause at the New York Times.
That is perfectly obvious.
That's been quite obvious
for quite a long time.
That truth takes a
backstage to all of us,
very simply saying it out loud.
And then people at the
New York Times saying
how cynical and Bari Weiss
to do this, that's not true.
Bari just deserve to go
because she's a weakling.
All these same idiots who
are saying things like,
you know what we need to do.
We need to rename the
Washington Redskins
in order to rectify
the past injustices
of the United States.
I am offended by
Washington Redskins,
but Bari Weiss that
weakling being offended
by people in internal Slack
channels with our editors,
posting her name with ax emojis.
And it's like, well,
okay, hold up a second.
I'm perfectly
willing to hear you
on the Washington
Redskins thing,
like I frankly don't care
about that very much.
Although I will say
that Native Americans
are a lot less offended
than the woke white liberals
who are interested in
getting rid of the name,
Washington Redskins
by polling data.
But with all of that said,
like the idea that
Bari's a weakling
while you guys are
out there saying
that the term master
bedroom should be removed
from the lexicon because it
is reminiscent of slavery
or that master and slave
units on electronics
need to be removed
because it's reminiscent of
your great, great, great,
great grandfather
who was enslaved
on a plantation in Alabama.
Like really?
Who needs to buck up
a little bit here.
- Right, so should we
be feeling pretty good
about things then because
we were kind of right?
I mean, it is at some level,
this goes to the
institution thing,
I mean, you're gonna need
institutions in this new world
no matter what.
So it's like, you'd like
some of them to exist
at some level, right?
- Yeah, so I think
that clarity is good.
I mean, to borrow from Prager,
I think the clarity is
definitely a good thing,
so I'm glad that
the masks are off.
I think all the masks are
coming off simultaneously,
which is quite frightening
as it turns out.
- That I guess is
the weird part-
- Normally they sort
of slipped gradually
and right now it's
like mask, mask, mask,
and they all drop
simultaneous and like whoa!
I didn't realize this
is that weird party
from that Tom Cruise movie.
This is a weird place, man.
Very, very weird.
- "Eyes Wide Shut", I got it.
- Exactly, you got it.
That is in and of itself
sort of frightening.
What's gonna have to happen next
is what we were talking
about a little earlier.
The people who consider
themselves liberal
and are very angry at
the censorious culture
are going to have to acknowledge
that the Overton window
has to be just not just them.
That's the next step.
- They can't, they won't.
- If they don't then,
then it really is over,
If the people who signed
that Harper's letter
still say that they
can't talk with you
or they can talk with me or
that they can't talk with Glenn,
not even they agree
with any of us
or think that we're
wonderful human beings,
but they can't talk with
us or say, he's a nice guy-
- I'm now too scary for them.
The idea, because
you know what it is.
It's also, I think this is
sort of one of the things
I've been thinking lately
is there's a reason
that so many people
hate liberals
and you know why it kills
me to make that statement,
but it's like this
self-important worldview
that it's like they would never,
I don't mean this for
every single person
that signed the thing.
Of course we're being
sort of broad here,
but they would never,
ever want to have to
admit that holy cow,
evil Ben Shapiro or evil
Dennis Prager or Glenn Beck
or whoever was right.
And I think that
hubris is actually,
they would rather sink with
the ship I think ultimately.
- And maybe that's right.
I mean, that's why, again,
that Harper's letter,
all they had to do was find
one person who voted for Trump.
One and there were
63 million of them.
They could have
even found people
who didn't vote for
Trump last time.
I mean, I would've
signed that letter
if they'd taken out
some of the silliness
about the right wing
militarizing cancel culture
against canceled culture
and all this kind of stuff.
But the fact that they
could not even see it
in their purview
to find someone-
- But do you think it's
that they couldn't see it
or that they
intentionally didn't?
- I think they
intentionally did.
No, I agree with you.
I think that it's intentional
because I think they knew
that if I had signed
on to that letter,
half the people who signed
it would have dropped.
- Yes.
- They can have Noam Chomsky
who literally defended Pol
Pot's Cambodian genocide,
but if they put somebody
like me on the letter
or any of the other
people who like, again,
it drives me up a wall
because I have defended
so many of these people,
I've done it publicly,
I've put my own
resources behind them,
I've called them privately
to offer them support.
The number of these
people who will text
my happy birthday text,
will text me happy birthday,
but will never publicly
say happy birthday
for fear that it will then
be known that I was born
and was born a human
being, that maintains
and as long as that maintains
there ain't a comeback
to the cancel culture
because they're part of it,
they just disagree with
the boundaries of it.
Again, I'm not saying that
there aren't people in society
who have views that are so
far out of the mainstream
that Dave Rubin doesn't
have to host them.
I mean, or that I don't have
to have a debate with them
or something, like, I think
that that's perfectly legit.
I'm a person, you're a person.
We all get to make that
standard for ourself,
but my window is
pretty damned wide
and their window is
pretty damn narrow.
They better widen
that window real fast.
- Yeah, so with all
that in mind though,
you've gotta be
feeling pretty good
about the future of the
center right, right?
- Yeah and I think that the
future of the center right
is pretty strong.
I think this is a
weird time for it
because everything
has been so Trumped,
everything is about Trump.
I mean, I do talk a little
bit in the book about Trump.
I really, it's pretty spare,
but what I do say about Trump
is that I think that
people need to understand
the other side's perspective
on what Trump is.
So people on the left see Trump
and they see this vulgarian,
he's nasty, he
breaks all the rules,
he's a bad man who says
terrible things about people
and he's a jerk and he's crude
and all this kind of stuff.
And they say, I can't vote for
somebody of that character.
Okay, I mean, all right, fair.
All right, okay, fine.
And then people on the
left have to acknowledge
what many people on
the right see in Trump
and what they see in
Trump is not saint,
wonderful human being.
What they see against him is
just the only person right now
who is standing in the breach.
- That's it, I agree.
- He's just a speed bump.
He's the only speed
bump that's there
to slow down this thing
for like half a second.
And so kind of doing this
routine that the left does
and that they didn't at
Harper's weekly letter,
which is if you voted for Trump,
it's probably because
you are Trump.
And it's like,
well, no actually,
people are voting for Trump
and voted for Trump last time
and many will vote
for him this time,
despite all of the mishandling
and all of the botchery
and all the tweeting,
because in the end,
if the debate is down to
make America great again,
versus America was never great,
which is the argument that
the hard left is making,
I think most Americans
are more in line
with make America great again
than America was never great.
Now Biden is doing it smart
'cause he's trying to
allied that bait completely.
Biden is smart enough to
recognize that playing dead
and then being very milk
toast in his own opinions
is the best way to win victory.
He's offering nothing hard for
Trump to push back against.
He'll be asked about
monuments and he'll say,
I think that the Confederates
should come down,
but we should leave up
Columbus and Washington
and Jefferson, like that's a
smart thing for Biden to do,
but he's not going to be a
bulwark against this stuff.
- Right, well and also
it is him doing that
is sort of the liberal
signing that letter.
It's like just the temporary
move to make sure you're okay
while they tear down
everything else.
- Right and again,
I think there's a decent
argument to be made
for removing
Confederate statues,
like they're not heroes of mine,
I don't think they were heroes
when they were fighting.
I get that, but you
do get the feeling
from Biden that he's doing
that more as a political ploy
than he's doing that out of
pure unbridled enthusiasm
for the American-
- You know what
it reminds me of?
You know how many
times I've told you
that we've debated
abortion in here
and that I always say to you,
it's not your good arguments
that have moved me.
It's the bananas lefty
eight month arguments.
I'm having that with
the statues now,
because I used to say,
my preference would
be leave them all up
and you put a counter
plaque or something else.
But I kind of moved
on that at one point
I was like you know what,
to build bridges here
you can put them in museums.
And then you have to do
your multimedia things
about them and all that.
But now they're going
to burn down museums.
So again it's like this
is not the good arguments
that move me in many ways.
It's the ridiculousness.
- Well, once you
doubt the authenticity
of the actual agenda then
it's like, all bets are off.
Then people are gonna say,
I'm not budging an inch
and I feel the same way
about the policing issue.
So originally when
this thing started,
it was like, well,
sometimes the police are brutal
with people and that's bad.
I was like, all right.
I feel like 193% of
Americans agree with that.
There's nothing
inarguable about that.
I think most Americans
also agree that the cops
are generally doing an amazing
job at keeping law and order.
And most cops are
standing between you
and vicious villains
on a daily basis.
But sure, there are
cops who are brutal
and go pass the line.
And there are a few things
we can do about that.
We can curb qualified
immunity in certain cases,
we can dispense with
some of the procedures
of police unions, right?
We can see if there are
better training programs,
we can make it easier
to fire bad officers
and we can have a
federal registry of
fulfilled complaints.
There are things we can do.
And so if you listen
to my early podcast
during this George Floyd
thing, a lot of it was on this.
It was like, okay, well,
here's some stuff
that we could do
if we actually want
to do something.
And then it turns out that
all the left wanted to do
was root for
rioting and looting.
I mean, Nikole
Hannah-Jones literally said
that she was
celebrating the fact
that people were calling
these the 1619 riots.
Celebrating rioting and looting,
talking about how it wasn't
just about curbing bad behavior,
it was about
defunding the police
and how the police were actually
just the modern
day slave catchers,
about how law and order
need to go by the wayside,
which by the way, is going to
end with dead black people.
It's already ending with dead
black people in New York City.
100% of the people who
have been shot in New York
are people of color.
100%, not 95%, 100.
Okay and so once it moved
beyond that, it was like okay,
you know what?
Now you can go screw off.
You were never legit about
this in the first place.
You're not looking
for common ground.
You're not looking
for a solution.
You're looking for, again,
a reinforcement of the idea
that everything about America
is inherently terrible
and inherently bad
and I'm not going to go
along with you on that.
I think a lot of people
are having that reaction.
So I think it is fair to make
the simultaneous arguments
that if there were to
be a good faith debate
about Confederate statues,
then I could definitely
see my way clear
to saying things like,
I don't see why Confederate
statues should stay up.
But if it's being argued
by the same people
who are like every statute
of the American founders
must come down and it
must all be replaced
by statutes of
Nikole Hannah-Jones.
I'm like, well, you know,
I'm gonna go no on everything
and also I'm not
interested in having
that conversation with you.
- So that really is the rock
and the hard place then,
because the more
that they do that,
the more that just
average people
who are just not
particularly political ene,
they just have to say, no,
we'll never move on anything.
- I mean, it's
too bad that Trump
is not a better vehicle
for the resistance, right?
I mean, in 2016 there was
a feeling that he was,
that he was sort of a backlash
to some of these things
that were happening.
And then it turns out that he's
just so easily distractable,
that he doesn't have the
ability to focus in on this.
Like if you told me that there
was a Republican president
against whom there were
essentially race riots
or that there were race riots
on the basis of tearing
down statues of Washington
and Jefferson and
defunding the police
and that this president somehow
was not gaining pull
credence from this
while his opponent was
hiding in a basement.
And the entire democratic party
was half rooting for
looters and rioters.
I'd be like how?
This is one argument
that I've been having
with some of the folks
who are very pro Trump.
And again, I plan,
because of all the factors
we've talked about,
I'm voting for him
because he's the only
stop gap at this point.
But that does not mean that
if he loses it's not on him.
If he loses, it's on him.
I mean, the media is a
preexisting condition
The Democrats are
preexisting condition.
If you somehow
lose to a dead man
in a time when you
can literally say
that your opponents
are supporting
the burning down of
churches in some cases
and are spending their days
trying to defund the police
while painting giant
murals on fifth Avenue,
if you are losing by
13 points to that,
that's gotta be on you
at a certain point.
- It's interesting because
I'm with you on that,
except to me polls
in the last 10 years,
or at least in the
last five years,
let's say in the age of Trump
have just become completely
meaningless at this point.
Not all, I don't mean
Pew polls on opinions,
but I mean on
presidential politics,
I think they've
become completely-
- The national polling
last time was pretty good.
And the one thing
that's happened-
- What do you mean, you
mean in 2016 it was good?
- In 2016 the state level
polling in Wisconsin
and Michigan was obviously
bad and Pennsylvania too.
The national polling was within
0.5% of the actual outcome.
So when they say that
Trump is out by 10,
he's not out by two
if he's out by 10.
- Right, the thing that
I can't get over though
is that it seems to me, if
you voted for Trump in 2016,
I can't see many people
going, all right,
I voted for Trump in 2016,
maybe things aren't exactly
as I wanted them to be,
but I'm gonna vote for Biden
and tearing down statues
and burning things
and everything else.
So I don't see many
of those guys moving,
but I could see an awful lot
of people who voted for Hillary
going, oh, the party has
gone completely bananas.
And at least Hillary
had an excited base.
I think I mean this literally,
I can't find one human
being excited for Joe Biden,
including Joe Biden.
- I am no expert on this.
I called it wrong in 2016
just like everybody else,
who profess to have
data expertise.
- Still, it was such a joy
to be with you that night.
- That was a hilarious evening,
but the the problem is
that he's not running
against Hillary.
2016 was a referendum
on Hillary.
It was not a
referendum on Trump.
She was unpopular of the voters
who despised both candidates
and that was some of like
10 to 15% of the population.
They broke very, very
strongly for Trump.
The same poll done
today shows them
breaking strongly for Biden.
And that's specifically
because of one advantage
that Joe Biden has
that Trump does not,
which the Joe Biden is dead.
Joe Biden being dead is
his greatest advantage.
- You think they're
gonna debate?
- No actually, I think not.
I think if I had
to put money on it,
I would say very unlikely
because I think that
what's the point for Biden.
I think that he'll just say
you won't turn over
your tax returns,
we're in the middle
of pandemic anyway,
what are we going
to do, Skype debate?
It's gonna be too weird.
I think that if you're
leading by 10 or 11
and he can actually cite that,
he could actually
cite Trump on this.
I mean, Trump actually just
didn't do a Republican debate
in the middle of the
last election cycle,
because he was insulted by
Megyn Kelly or something.
So he could actually
say, listen,
if it was good enough for
Trump, it's good enough for me.
I think that Biden strategy
here is the Dracula strategy.
You stay in the crypt
until night falls,
and then you come in.
And I think that that's not
a bad strategy because again,
he doesn't make people,
the problem for Trump is
that it's very difficult
to make people
feel like Joe Biden
is secretly rooting
for the rioters
because he's so just nothing.
He's just so nothing.
Now, if he nominates for VP
Kamala Harris or something,
if you nominated for
VP Tammy Duckworth.
- But it's coming, right?
I mean, it's going to be
one of these people, right?
Like that's how they
have them hostage.
- I could see a world
where he nominates
somebody like Susan Rice,
who's more known as like
foreign policy person,
even though she sucked at
that and was a liar to boot.
I could see him doing
something like that.
I think that'd actually
be his smartest pick,
just double down on
the Obama of it all.
I mean, if you
could get Michelle,
he'd win 83 states, right?
I mean, everybody's sort
of acknowledges this.
States that have not yet
been invented he would win
if Michelle Obama had
joined the ticket.
But with that said,
Biden's greatest asset is the
fact that he's inoffensive.
And in a time when Trump
wants to be able to point
at the Democrats and say,
look at all this
crap they're doing.
Biden's been sitting in
the basement going, yeah,
I don't really like rioting
and looting so much.
And yeah, I kind of liked
the Washington statues
and that's the tenor
of his campaign.
And what that does is it
throws the ball squarely
in Trump's court,
which is earn the vote.
I've said for forever,
Trump is great at
one half of politics
and horrible at other.
Politics is about make it
hard to vote for your opponent
and make it easy
to vote for you.
Trump is very good at the former
and he is awful at the latter.
How many suburban women do
you know who are like, yeah,
you know, I'm gonna
bite the bullet
and I'm gonna vote for this guy,
even though he's just bleh.
And I don't know
very many at all.
I also think there were a
couple of breaking points
for a lot of people.
And then COVID was one
of the breaking points.
I think honestly,
the rioting and looting were
kind of a breaking point
for a lot of people
not against the left,
but against Trump in some
ways, because it was-
- How, so I'm just
not seeing it.
- So I'll say that I've
gotten a lot of letters
and I don't want to be too
anti-Trump here because again,
I plan on voting for him.
But I got a lot of letters
from people who were saying,
he's the president, where is he?
You can't just
tweet law and order.
You have to actually
implement law and order,
what is he doing?
He's out there befuddling
tweeting about NASCAR
while the country is burning.
- But what did they
want him to do?
Because in many
ways I think this is
what I actually was just
on Dana Perino today
talking about this
that I think the mayor
of Portland of Seattle,
and all these places, they
want the cities to fail
so that Trump is forced to
bring in the National Guard
or something like that,
so he will look like the Hitler
that they want him to look like.
- That may very well be
true, but the fact is,
if you're going to run on
a law and order agenda,
at a certain point,
you have to actually
instill law and order.
I mean, signing
executive orders saying
we're going to prosecute
people who tear down statues,
a month after they shut down
the entire city of Los Angeles
at 6:00 p.m. every night's
to let people riot.
What he should have done
is he should have said
after the first riot, he
should have said, listen,
you guys have 24 to 48 hours
to make sure that
your city is secure.
I offer the full resources
of the National Guard.
At that point, I'm sending
in the National Guard
and you are going
to deal with it.
We have legal processes
in this country
for handling objections.
We have a democracy.
We do not have a
dictatorship of the mob.
And so if you're not gonna
handle it, I absolutely will.
And I think that
frankly, I mean,
you were here during the riots,
how many Los Angelenos,
law abiding Los Angelenos,
would be like that
damned fascist
And how many would
have been like,
I'm kind of glad I
can go out of my house
at 6:30 at night again.
- No, it was scary.
There's no doubt it was scary.
See, it's so interesting.
And this is why you
can't judge it all
by meeting someone on
the street and email,
because I'm telling you
just walking my dog
around the street,
a lot of people are coming
up to me and saying,
I've been a Democrat
my whole life.
And I'm voting Trump
and I'm buying a gun
and all kinds of stuff.
Now, again, it's a bubble in LA.
It's a weird place
and everything else.
- I desperately
hope you're right.
He's gonna need to make up
at least some of the ground,
because I don't think
that you can trail
in every single swing state and
then pull it out at the end.
So he's gonna need to make
up some ground, but listen,
there are ages in politics.
I mean, I'm old enough to
remember when Bernie Sanders
was going to be the
democratic nominee
and the stock market
was at near 30,000.
So, and by old enough, I mean,
I'm more than four months old.
- Is that the depressing
part of this though?
That in many ways the
progressive's did win?
Like the idea that there's
an old school Democrat
putting dead Biden, I like that.
- Weekend at Biden's, yeah.
- Right, exactly.
But that in effect, yeah,
they lost the
election this time,
but they have won everything.
They demolished the
democratic party.
You can't point to me, but
please do if you can, Ben,
where is any decent Democrat?
Where is JFK?
Where's Daniel Patrick Moynihan?
Where is any-
- There are few and
far between, I mean,
I think that they've tried
to ask them in primaries,
Nancy Pelosi endorsed Ilhan Omar
for reelection the other day.
I mean, this is not
any great shock.
I think you're right.
I think they've captured
the democratic party.
I think more than anything,
the right focused
on the wrong things.
So I talk in the
book about culture,
the right speak more
broadly about culture,
the right never
had the wherewithal
to compete in the cultural space
or in the educational space.
And so they basically seeded
the ground and then they said,
you know what, we'll win
it back at the ballot box.
Right, we'll elect Republicans.
Republicans had been
elected in several recent
presidential elections,
2000, 2004, 2016.
They held Congress all
the way from 1994 to 2006
and then they held that
again from 2010 to 2018.
They held the Senate for
wide stretches of that time
and the country continued
to move to the left.
The country continued to move
to the left in every way.
And that is because the
institutions of popular culture
and the media were
totally taken over.
The great lie that
Republicans kept banking on
is that reality would
eventually kick in for folks.
The idea was, and I know this
because I've been operating
on campuses for a long time.
- You also wrote
a book about it.
- Yeah, that's true.
But I mean, just from
operating on campuses,
one of the great things
that would happen is
my very first book, which
I wrote when I was 19,
was about liberal bias
on college campuses.
And one of the most frequent
questions I got was, well,
why are you talking
about college campuses,
who cares about
college campuses?
And I was like,
'cause it's not gonna
stay on college campuses.
And people said, no, they'll
get out in the real world.
And then they'll
have to be hired.
They'll have to work a job.
They'll have to learn to
get along in the workplace.
What if they bend the
real world to their will?
What if the person who
graduated the journalism program
at NYU goes onto
the New York Times,
and isn't inculcated
into a culture
that values freedom of speech,
but is granted the
keys to the kingdom
and told it's your
turns to redefine
the meaning of journalism
and that's what's happened.
And the right
basically did nothing.
The entire ship of state has
been listening to the left.
And meanwhile, the Republicans
are running up the slope,
trying to plant the chairs
on this side of the Titanic.
Well, it's still listing guys.
At a certain point
you're gonna have to
fight back culturally.
I think that's frankly
why Trump was elected
because he was seen
as a culture guy,
not as a governmental guy.
And then-
- Are you saying we're the
violinists on the Titanic?
You're a violinist.
So you're definitely
one of the violinists,
that makes me Jack I suppose.
- Women and children first,
depending on how
you define woman.
- Shapiro, we've done about
an hour and a half here.
I know you've got
a lot going on.
I think we actually
sort of touched
on almost everything
in the book.
is there anything else
that you want to talk
about while you're here?
- No, I mean, I think
we covered a lot.
I think that the main thing
that I would just recommend to
everybody is do your reading.
If you do any reading about
the American founding,
if you do any reading
about our culture,
if you read the Constitution
and the Declaration
and you don't come away
with tremendous admiration
for the ideas behind it,
and at least a
little bit of respect
for the people who wrote it,
if your idea of your own
self righteous virtue
is that you're tearing
down statues of people
who did more than
their lifetimes,
then you have done in yours,
then you really should
be thinking more about
what you are as a person
and less about what people
who died 250 years ago were
as people considering you're
standing on their shoulders
in propagating the principles
that are important to you.
- Watch this Shapiro, because
you're a professional,
I want you look at that
camera right over there
and tell people where
they can get the book.
- "How to Destroy America
in Three Easy Steps" by moi.
You can get it
over at amazon.com.
I believe we are still
putting out signed copies
as well at dailywire.com/Ben.
Go check it out today.
- If you're looking for
more honest and thoughtful
conversations about politics,
instead of nonstop yelling,
checkout our politics playlist.
And if you want to
watch full interviews
on a variety of topics, watch
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