Along with hopes of developing an effective vaccine, a long-term goal in the fight against COVID-19 has been achieving widespread immunity. The following presents three potential immunity scenarios laid out by health experts, from the best case to the worst.
Throughout the pandemic, the World Health Organization has <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52747112">cautioned</a> people who have recovered from COVID-19 that there is no evidence they are immune from reinfection. <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-21/covid-antibodies-fade-rapidly-raising-risk-of-lost-protection">Recent</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/12/immunity-to-covid-19-could-be-lost-in-months-uk-study-suggests">studies</a> <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Health/covid-19-antibodies-fade-months-study/story?id=71406787">indicate</a> that protective antibodies may fade in a matter of months, which could leave some people susceptible to contracting the disease more than once, or in seasonal waves, similar to catching the other strains of coronaviruses that can cause the common cold.
On August 24, researchers at the University of Hong Kong <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/08/24/coronavirus-reinfection-hong-kong/">announced</a> they had found evidence that individuals can be reinfected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The team said a 33-year-old man from the region had tested positive for the second time in four and a half months, suggesting the concept of herd immunity could be unlikely, and a hypothetical vaccine that scientists are working to develop might not protect the global population that awaits for extended periods of time.
STAT News recently interviewed several health experts about ways the world can coexist with COVID-19. Vineet Menachery, a coronavirus researcher at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/25/four-scenarios-on-how-we-might-develop-immunity-to-covid-19/">presented</a> four possible immunity scenarios, one of which is a subset of another, based on the human body’s response to other coronavirus types. The outlet described the potential outcomes as “hopeful,” but emphasized that Dr. Menachery’s general categorizations “are educated guesses” which “cover a spectrum, and the lines between some of the scenarios can be blurry in spots.”
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Will Covid-19 vaccines be protective and long-lasting? Will our immune systems learn — and remember — how to cope with the new threat? <a href="https://t.co/JfhzirCtHS">https://t.co/JfhzirCtHS</a>
&mdash; STAT (@statnews) <a href="https://twitter.com/statnews/status/1298711948247195649?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 26, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Below are three potential scenarios, drawing heavily from Dr. Menachery&#8217;s theories and other experts STAT consulted as well as additional sources.
1. Complete immunity — best-case scenario, but “not so likely”
Sterilizing immunity, which essentially means humans would be resistant to reinfection, is a best-case scenario. Protection would persist because the human body’s forms of immunity response minimize the ramifications of repeat infection. For example, the antibodies generated by a measles infection generally last a lifetime.
Chia-Yi Hou, a health writer for The Hill, <a href="https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/501677-what-is-sterilizing-immunity-and-do-we-need-it">explains</a>:
<blockquote>Sterilizing immunity means that the immune system is able to stop a pathogen, including viruses, from replicating within your body.
This typically happens when immune cells in the body are able to bind to the pathogen in places that prevent it from being able to enter a cell where it can start making copies of itself. Some of these immune cells may produce sterilizing antibodies, which are proteins that recognize specific proteins and structures on the surfaces of pathogens.
To achieve sterilizing immunity, your body needs to produce enough neutralizing antibodies and it needs to be able to do so in the long term. Ideally, it leads to life-long immunity.</blockquote>
Marion Koopmans, head of virology at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, told STAT that sterilizing immunity “is out of the question, as with any respiratory virus.” Another expert interviewed described the option as “not so likely.”
As STAT <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/25/four-scenarios-on-how-we-might-develop-immunity-to-covid-19/">reported</a>, “viruses that infect via the mucus membranes of the nose and throat, like SARS-2, typically don’t induce sterilizing immunity.”
Health experts said experimental COVID-19 vaccines tested on primates do not block replication of the virus in the upper respiratory tract, which <a href="https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?ContentTypeID=85&amp;ContentID=P01300">includes</a> the nose, nasal passages, and sinuses.
2. Partial immunity — most likely scenario
Dr. Menachery envisions a concept he calls &#8220;functional immunity,&#8221; effectively partial immunity, as the most likely outcome. Even though the number of antibody proteins in the blood may significantly drop after an infection is cleared, the human body stores “memory cells” that could detect and fight off those same viruses at a later date.
“The idea there is that, yes, your antibodies might wane, but your memory responses aren’t absent,” Menachery said. More from STAT:
<blockquote>Under this scenario, people whose immune systems have been primed to recognize and fight the virus — whether through infection or vaccination — could contract it again in the future. But these infections would be cut short as the immune system’s defenses kick into gear. People infected might not develop symptoms or might have a mild, cold-like infection…</blockquote>
STAT cites “enormous amounts of debate” about the ability of people to produce a “durable” or long-lasting immune response to the virus, but says that experts told the outlet that so far immune responses to the virus follow standard patterns.
Some scientists <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-antibodies-vaccine/swiftly-waning-covid-19-immunity-poses-vaccination-challenge-idUSKCN24F261">believe</a> rapidly fading antibody levels could pose a challenge to vaccine developers. Several <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Health/covid-19-antibodies-fade-months-study/story?id=71406787">suggested</a> the companies consider booster vaccinations that would be administered at regular intervals, especially for the most vulnerable groups.
A recent King’s College London study <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/12/immunity-to-covid-19-could-be-lost-in-months-uk-study-suggests">found</a> that COVID-19 patients with the most severe symptoms produced the highest antibody levels to fight the infection. Another research group from Chongqing Medical University in China <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Health/covid-19-antibodies-fade-months-study/story?id=71406787">provided</a> data that suggests asymptomatic people had a weaker immune response to the virus.
A variant of this functional immunity, Menachery suggests, is “waning immunity,” in which individuals might eventually become reinfected, but the new infection would result in less severe symptoms than the previous episode. “You will never get as sick as you were the first time,” Dr. Menachery explained.
“This is a pattern seen with the four coronaviruses that cause about 15% of what we consider common colds – OC43, 229E, NL63, and HKU1,” <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/25/four-scenarios-on-how-we-might-develop-immunity-to-covid-19/">according</a> to STAT. “People can be reinfected with these viruses after a relatively short period of time.&#8221;
3. Fully lost immunity — worst-case scenario, probably “off the table”
Dr. Menachery described the worst possible outcome as “lost immunity,” meaning immunity would completely fade out, leaving people vulnerable to catch the virus again with unpredictable symptoms that may be just as severe as previous bouts with the disease.
“A reinfection after that point would be like a first infection — carrying all the same risk of severe disease now seen with Covid-19,” STAT explains. “Lost immunity describes a scenario in which people who have been infected would lose all their immune munitions against the virus within some time frame.”
However, STAT says none of the experts with whom they had consulted thought it was a real possibility. If these experts are right, says the health news outlet, we can expect the threat of the virus to wane, with the virus eventually becoming “the fifth human coronavirus to cause common colds.”
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-effective-is-mask-wearing-heres-what-the-science-suggests">How Effective Is Mask Wearing? Here’s What The Science Suggests.</a>
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

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While C.S. Lewis is primarily known for his fictional and faith-focused writing, most notably The Chronicles of Narnia series and Mere Christianity, he believed that claims upon the soul are claims upon the whole of life. In other words, everything Lewis said and wrote about his faith had real-world implications — including political and cultural implications. Reading Lewis’s work with this in mind reveals profound insights on politics and culture, many of which are particularly relevant to America now. Below are 19 quotes about politics and culture from Lewis that America needs to hear now more than ever.
The Worst Kind of Tyranny
Lewis argued that the most oppressive tyranny is not enacted by brutal dictators but by well-meaning “moral busybodies” – the do-gooders, the Karens in government — “who torment us for our own good.”
<blockquote>“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron&#8217;s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one&#8217;s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.” — “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,” 1948</blockquote>
This tyranny, says Lewis, is the tyranny of bureaucrats, carried out in “well-lighted offices” by “quiet men with white collars.”
<blockquote>“I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of ‘Admin.’ The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.” — Screwtape Letters, 1942—preface to the paperback edition</blockquote>
(Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/c-s-lewis-tyranny-for-your-own-good">‘Tyranny For Your Own Good’: C.S. Lewis On The Philosophy Behind COVID Lockdowns</a>)
Materialism vs. Faith
The great ideological error that ultimately leaves men at the mercy of government, says Lewis, is a strictly scientific or materialist view of the world:
<blockquote>“Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning&#8230;” — Mere Christianity, 1952
“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?” — Mere Christianity, 1952
“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or to be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage.” — Mere Christianity, 1952
“When you argue against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on.” — Mere Christianity, 1952</blockquote>
On Being Truly “Progressive”
Lewis argued that “progressive” intellectuals, educators and politicians had taken a wrong turn in their materialist worldview. In many cases, he argued, true progress requires recognizing first that you are going the wrong direction and turning around — in other words, conservatism.
<blockquote>“Progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turn, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.” — Mere Christianity, 1952</blockquote>
(Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/c-s-lewis-on-social-engineering-the-leftist-effort-to-reprogram-your-mind">C.S. Lewis On Social Engineering: The Leftist Effort To Reprogram Your Mind</a>)
The Importance of Justice
Lewis argued that while a society built on Judeo-Christian values attempts to offer grace and forgiveness to everyone, that does not mean doing away with justice. Justice, even harsh justice like the death penalty, must be upheld to create a truly loving society.
<blockquote>“There is all the difference in the world between forgiving and excusing.” — “On Forgiveness,” 1947
“Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.” — The Problem of Pain, 1940</blockquote>
The Importance of the Nuclear Family
The nuclear family is not just important, Lewis argues, it is absolutely central to everything a society is created to protect and promote. For this reason, being a homemaker is the most important career:
<blockquote>“The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only — and that is to support the ultimate career.” — Collected Letters</blockquote>
The Politics of Education
Education stripped of God is ultimately devoid of good, says Lewis:
<blockquote>“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.” — The Great Divorce, 1945</blockquote>
The education system teaching students that morality is relative isn&#8217;t just wrong, it&#8217;s dangerous:
<blockquote>“We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.” — The Abolition of Man, 1943
“Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory or one of unthinkable horror.” — Mere Christianity, 1952
“Jesus Christ did not say, ‘Go into all the world and tell the world that it is quite right.’” — Interview with Sherwood Wirt, 1963</blockquote>
Modern educators misunderstand “the pressing educational need of the moment”:
<blockquote>“They see the world around them swayed by emotional propaganda — they have learned from tradition that youth is sentimental — and they conclude that the best thing they can do is to fortify the minds of young people against emotion. My own experience as a teacher tells an opposite tale. For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity.  The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts.” — The Abolition of Man, 1943</blockquote>
Coddling the younger generation is dangerous, Lewis argues. We should instead be teaching them about courage:
<blockquote>“Those who say that children must not be frightened may mean two things. They may mean (1) that we must not do anything likely to give the child those haunting, disabling, pathological fears against which ordinary courage is helpless: in fact, phobias. His mind must, if possible, be kept clear of things he can’t bear to think of. Or they may mean (2) that we must try to keep out of his mind the knowledge that he is born into a world of death, violence, wounds, adventure, heroism and cowardice, good and evil. If they mean the first I agree with them: but not if they mean the second. The second would indeed be to give children a false impression and feed them on escapism in the bad sense. There is something ludicrous in the idea of so educating a generation which is born to the…atomic bomb. Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.” — On Three Ways of Writing for Children, 1952
“Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.” — The Screwtape Letters, 1942</blockquote>
(Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/c-s-lewis-on-why-the-left-is-coming-for-your-children">C.S. Lewis On Why The Left Is Coming For Your Children</a>)
The Eternal Significance of Society
Lewis ultimately argued that all things, including society and politics, have eternal significance and can only be seen clearly through the lens of eternity.
<blockquote>“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” — The Weight of Glory, 1942</blockquote>
But while God must be central in a society if it wants to be good, He cannot be used as a tool of politicians.
<blockquote>“[God] will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of heaven as a shortcut to the nearest chemist&#8217;s shop.” — The Screwtape Letters, 1942</blockquote>
Read more about Lewis’s political views in the Daily Wire exclusive series “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/klavan-the-politics-of-c-s-lewis">The Politics of C.S. Lewis</a>,” by Spencer Klavan. 
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

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C.S. Lewis Quotes On Politics & Culture America Needs To Hear Now

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While C.S. Lewis is primarily known for his fictional and faith-focused writing, most notably The Chronicles of Narnia series and Mere Christianity, he

C.S. Lewis Quotes On Politics &amp; Culture America Needs To Hear Now | The Daily Wire

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On Thursday, law enforcement officials in New Hanover County, North Carolina, confirmed that they found the body of Mike S. Adams, a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, conservative columnist and Daily Wire contributor, in his Windsong Road home after receiving a wellness check call. No cause of death has been given and an investigation is underway.
Adams&#8217; tragic death at 55 years old was first reported by Wilmington&#8217;s <a href="https://www.wect.com/2020/07/23/details-scarce-body-removed-new-hanover-co-home-surrounded-by-crime-scene-tape/">WECT</a>, which notes that it occurred just a month after Adams reached an agreement with UNCW to retire in August for a settlement of $504,702.76 for lost salary and lost retirement benefits. The settlement was reached amid an activist campaign to get the professor fired sparked by a tweet in which he compared the North Carolina governor&#8217;s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic to slavery.
The university issued a statement Thursday night responding to the tragic news. “It is with sadness that we share the news that the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office is conducting a death investigation involving Dr. Mike Adams, professor of criminology. Please keep his friends and loved ones in your thoughts,&#8221; UNCW&#8217;s Office of University Relations said in a statement on behalf of the Division of Academic Affairs, as reported by WECT.
The settlement between Adams and the university followed a meeting between Chancellor Jose Sartarelli and Adams over response to some of his recent social media comments, which including a petition to &#8220;<a href="https://www.change.org/p/uncw-remove-mike-adams-from-uncw-pledge-not-to-financially-support-apply-to-or-fund-uncw?recruiter=1107745180&amp;utm_source=share_petition&amp;utm_medium=facebook&amp;utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_abi&amp;recruited_by_id=91a532b0-a662-11ea-b0a1-87847cfc3ae9&amp;utm_content=fht-22591234-en-us%3Av10">remove Mike Adams from UNCW</a>&#8221; that garnered over 27,000 signatures.
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Adams, who is openly pro-life and pro-free speech, has come under fire from the Left in the past. The most recent campaign against Adams was sparked by his May 29 tweet comparing lockdown measures to slavery. &#8220;This evening, I ate pizza and drank beer with six guys at a six seat table top. I almost felt like a free man who was not living in the slave state of North Carolina. Massa Cooper, let my people go!&#8221; he wrote. Critics claimed the post was racially insensitive. Adams <a href="https://www.wect.com/2020/06/04/former-trustee-threatens-withdraw-funding-over-professors-controversial-statements-professor-defends-comments/">defended</a> the post, however, stressing that it was not about race but about the overreach of the state.
Adams&#8217; last piece contributed to The Daily Wire highlighted one of his primary focuses as a columnist: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/adams-a-wake-for-civil-liberties">civil liberties</a>. In the opinion piece, published April 9, Adams condemned what he described as the &#8220;blatant viewpoint discrimination&#8221; by some state and local officials, particularly in the apparent targeting of churches, and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper&#8217;s &#8220;stringent overreach&#8221; in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Adams earned both fans and enemies over his unflinching, openly conservative perspectives, particularly on the issues of abortion and free speech. As detailed in his biography on <a href="https://townhall.com/columnists/mikeadams/">Townhall.com</a>, where Adams published opinion pieces for years, Adams and Alliance Defending Freedom won a landmark First Amendment case in 2011 against UNCW that &#8220;held that professors publishing columns and giving speeches have the full protection of the First Amendment when discussing matters of public concern.&#8221; The ruling allows for professors to include such activities in their official review, tenure, or promotion materials and forbids the university from viewpoint discrimination.
Adams says that when he was first hired by UNCW in 1993, he was an atheist and a Democrat. &#8220;A few years later, Adams abandoned his atheism and also became a Republican,&#8221; his bio reads. In his first decade at UNCW, Adams won the university&#8217;s Faculty Member of the Year award twice. Over the course of his career, Adams published three books addressing academia&#8217;s ideological biases and political activism: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Welcome-Ivory-Tower-Babel-Conservative/dp/1891799177/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&amp;keywords=Welcome+to+the+Ivory+Tower+of+Babel&amp;qid=1595600447&amp;s=books&amp;sr=1-1">Welcome to the Ivory Tower of Babel: Confessions of a Conservative College Professor</a> (2004), <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Feminists-Say-Darndest-Things-Politically/dp/B001BSQNCE">Feminists Say the Darndest Things: A Politically Incorrect Professor Confronts &#8220;Womyn&#8221; On Campus</a> (2008), and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Letters-Young-Progressive-Protesting-Understand/dp/1621570312">Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don&#8217;t Understand</a> (2013). 
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Outspoken Conservative Professor, Columnist Mike Adams Dies At 55

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On Thursday, law enforcement officials in New Hanover County, North Carolina, confirmed that they found the body of Mike S. Adams, a criminology professor

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In a wide-ranging interview Wednesday, Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro talked with fellow podcast host Joe Rogan about the Left&#8217;s new definition of racism and some &#8220;unpopular&#8221; but &#8220;empirically correct&#8221; solutions to racial inequality that at times had the two hosts at odds.
The interview began with the two talking about an issue that has impacted both men personally and that is rooted in some of the larger problems they went on to address in the nearly two-hour exchange: the rapid decline of Los Angeles due to &#8220;progressive&#8221; policies that have resulted in an explosion in homelessness and increasingly lawless behavior, as displayed in the recent social justice riots.
The two podcast hosts both expressed surprise at the rate of the deterioration of the city and pointed to the broader issues it highlights – effective law enforcement policies and racial unrest.
Prompted by Rogan, Shapiro – whose new book, &#8220;<a href="https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&amp;rls=en&amp;q=how+to+destroy+america+in+3+easy+steps+amazon&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;oe=UTF-8">How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps</a>,&#8221; addresses the race debate – addressed the growing movement to &#8220;tear down the entire system.&#8221; The forces behind the movement, Shapiro explained, include The New York Times&#8217; &#8220;1619 Project,&#8221; which seeks to &#8220;reframe&#8221; America&#8217;s history in a way that makes slavery &#8220;central&#8221; to everything about the country, and Robin DiAngelo’s widely cited book, &#8220;White Fragility.&#8221; This movement, Shapiro said, seeks to shift the definition of racism in a radical and destructive way.
&#8220;The biggest problem right now in the racism point, is the shifting definition of racism,&#8221; said Shapiro (video below). &#8220;So, I had the unfortunate experience of actually reading one of the bestselling books in the country, Robin DiAngelo’s &#8216;White Fragility.&#8217; And let me just tell you, a greater pile of horsesh** has never been produced by a bevy of horses.&#8221;
The &#8220;awful book,&#8221; he said, is basically rooted in the same theories as Ibram X. Kendi&#8217;s &#8220;How to be an Antiracist,&#8221; which changes the basic definition of racism.
&#8220;You and I, we&#8217;re sitting here discussing racism, and the way I define racism is probably the same way you define racism,&#8221; said Shapiro. &#8220;You believe in the superiority or inferiority of a group based on race – of an individual based on their membership in that group, too.”
&#8220;That&#8217;s racist, yes,&#8221; Rogan agreed.
But DiAngelo and Kendi &#8220;redefine racism to mean any societal structure that results in a racial inequality is itself racist,&#8221; Shapiro explained. &#8220;So any structure that results in a not-exact proportion between whites and blacks is racist.&#8221;
&#8220;Does that make the NBA racist?&#8221; Rogan responded.
&#8220;Exactly, exactly. The answer is kind of yes,&#8221; said Shapiro. &#8220;Except that the NBA&#8217;s not racist because obviously it benefits black people.&#8221; The real reason the NBA&#8217;s not racist, Shapiro stressed, is that it is in fact a &#8220;meritocracy&#8221; in which those who are best at playing the game are rewarded.
But even the idea of a meritocracy, Shapiro noted, is considered &#8220;an aspect of whiteness&#8221; by these new radical activists, and thus &#8220;racist&#8221; according to this new definition of racism. DiAngelo and Kendi both say that &#8220;meritocracy and the individual are aspects of whiteness because these institutions &#8212; things like meritocracy and individualism and not seeing people’s color — these just reinforce hierarchies that end with disparate outcomes,&#8221; he said.
This &#8220;systemic&#8221; definition of racism is also the underlying premise of the Times&#8217; &#8220;1619 Project,&#8221; which Shapiro noted has been strongly criticized by prominent historians. The inevitable conclusion of this premise, Shapiro argued, is that DiAngelo, Kendi, and the Times&#8217; Nikole Hannah-Jones &#8220;say is that in order to be anti-racist you have to be willing to tear down the entire system.&#8221;
As the Defund the Police movement highlights, that &#8220;system&#8221; includes law enforcement, thus the growing movement vilifying law enforcement – a movement which Shapiro argued is something that will ultimately hurt the black community in particular.
While Shapiro and Rogan appeared to agree on the basic definition of racism, Rogan asked if some sort of &#8220;middle ground&#8221; could be attained between the &#8220;1619&#8221; view and the &#8220;1776&#8221; view, which sees the country as founded in the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and progressing in order to better realize those ideals. Shapiro said yes, but said he doesn&#8217;t believe that middle ground is as much in &#8220;the center&#8221; as people want to believe.
&#8220;When you teach people that they are the victims of a society, it makes it very difficult for them to succeed,&#8221; said Shapiro. &#8220;The story of black America should be the story of unbelievably brave people triumphing over systems that sucked. That is the story of black America. Most black Americans do not live under the poverty line in the United States. There&#8217;s a huge black middle class. There&#8217;s a huge upper class, too.&#8221;
On the question of how to best address the cycle of violence and poverty plaguing the black community, the host and Shapiro at times butted heads. Rogan repeatedly suggested that there must be a stronger government-based &#8220;intervention&#8221; in those communities to improve education and opportunities, while Shapiro maintained that so long as  our laws and other systems treat all equally, as he said they do, most of the progress in the end must come down to &#8220;good decisions&#8221; by members of the community. &#8220;At some point, personal agency has to come in,&#8221; said Shapiro.
Rogan countered with a sense of fatalism about individuals&#8217; attempts to break a community cycle without some form of  intervention, particularly through education showing them that there are &#8220;other options&#8221; than what they&#8217;ve seen modeled around them.
After Shapiro argued that a lot of &#8220;the solutions&#8221; to poverty and crime among the black community have been tried, including LBJ&#8217;s failed &#8220;War on Poverty,&#8221; Rogan asked him what he would do specifically to help the black community if he were &#8220;king of the world.&#8221; Shapiro responded with what he described as &#8220;the unpopular view,” but also the &#8220;empirically correct&#8221; view.
“The first thing you have to do is you have to load the place with police,&#8221; he said. &#8220;You’ve got to load the place with police because you’ve got to stop crime. Once you stop crime, then businesses are happy to invest in those areas. You’re not going to get businesses to invest in those areas and provide jobs unless crime is gone.&#8221; Only when residents and businesses in a community feel safe, he said, will there be sustainable educational and vocational opportunities that will help people break out of impoverished historical cycles.
Relevant section of the interview below (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl0iNRXcUbE">view the full interview here</a>):
<iframe title="Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro on the Current State of Race in America" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PZBlRPDGCao?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/shapiro-to-levin-whats-happening-here-is-not-even-right-versus-left-its-radical-left-versus-everybody-else">Shapiro To Levin: ‘What’s Happening Here Is Not Even Right Versus Left. It’s Radical Left Versus Everybody Else.’</a>
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Ben Shapiro

WATCH: Ben Shapiro, Joe Rogan Debate Left’s New Definition Of Racism, ‘Unpopular’ But Effective Solutions

Joe Rogan

Race

Racism

In a wide-ranging interview Wednesday, Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro talked with fellow podcast host Joe Rogan about the Left&#039;s new definition of

WATCH: Ben Shapiro, Joe Rogan Debate Left’s New Definition Of Racism, ‘Unpopular’ But Effective Solutions | The Daily Wire

https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-ben-shapiro-joe-rogan-debate-lefts-new-definition-of-racism-unpopular-but-effective-solutions/

https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/Ben-Shapiro.jpg

In an appearance on &#8220;Life, Liberty &amp; Levin&#8221; Sunday night, bestselling author and Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro discussed a central theme in his new book, &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-America-Three-Easy-Steps/dp/006300187X/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&amp;gclid=EAIaIQobChMI5_OBu7rc6gIVNPC1Ch0x2AaKEAAYASAAEgKUzPD_BwE&amp;hvadid=322146138621&amp;hvdev=c&amp;hvlocphy=9011833&amp;hvnetw=g&amp;hvqmt=b&amp;hvrand=16652842595993281352&amp;hvtargid=kwd-625262468356&amp;hydadcr=20561_10163682&amp;keywords=book+by+ben+shapiro&amp;qid=1595269628&amp;sr=8-3&amp;tag=googhydr-20">How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps</a>&#8220;: the &#8220;Disintegrationist&#8221; movement sweeping across the country that targets the &#8220;ties that bind us,&#8221; undermining and disrupting Americans&#8217; sense of cultural unity and shared values.
Host Mark Levin began the discussion by noting the looting and arson, the rise of Antifa, the Democratic Party&#8217;s general embrace of the movement, and a corrupt media that has thrown their weight behind radical voices.
Shapiro commented, &#8220;The fact is that what we have seen over the last several weeks is the full flowering of an ideology of Disintegrationism that has been running roughshod through our universities, through our media, through our major cultural institutions for years, and it sort of just broke out into the open over the last several couple of months.&#8221;
&#8220;There are really two conflicting visions of America that have been at war for quite a while,&#8221; said Shapiro. &#8220;One is a vision of America that sees American history as a story of  America&#8217;s beautiful and wonderful and eternally true founding ideals and Americans striving to live up to that — failing, stumbling, falling, but eventually succeeding. An America that is founded on basic notions in the Declaration of Independence that bring about unprecedented prosperity and freedom for not just millions of people in America but billions of people over time and around the world. An American philosophy that is beautiful in its essence, that is all about freedom and liberty and a culture that really values rights and in which all of our debates take place on this moral basis that rights preexist government.&#8221;
&#8220;That was the original vision of America,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;That&#8217;s what I call the &#8216;Unionist&#8217; vision of America. That which what holds us together. And any country that holds together has to share a history — they have to share a culture; they have to share a philosophy.&#8221;
Shapiro then described what he called a &#8220;second strain&#8221; battling for control over the American narrative that ultimately seeks to destroy this unifying vision.
&#8220;This is the strain that is virulently running through our politics right now, a strain that I call &#8216;Disintegrationism,'&#8221; he said. &#8220;The idea that really America has never had any ties that bind us and that American history is a story of one group clubbing another group over the head. America&#8217;s philosophy is really just sort of a &#8216;pasteboard mask,&#8217; and really what it is covering up for is hierarchies of brutal power dynamics, and that our culture of rights is really a lie and that those rights ought to be thrown out in favor of an orthodoxy that rules from above and tells you how you ought to think.&#8221;
&#8220;And you can see all of this coming to fruition in everything from the riots and the looting to the &#8216;1619 Project,'&#8221; he emphasized. &#8220;I really didn&#8217;t think it was all going to burst out into the open like an overripe cantaloupe here, but that&#8217;s exactly what&#8217;s happened.&#8221;
Levin responded by asking what has triggered the burst so suddenly.
Shapiro replied, &#8220;I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that President Trump exists. I think that he provides a point of commonality in which no matter how radically Left you go, you&#8217;re going to find allies in the kind of old falling apart liberal school, who will side with you just to get rid of Trump.&#8221;
&#8220;The real story of what&#8217;s happening here is not even Right versus Left; it’s radical Left versus everybody else,&#8221; Shapiro said.
&#8220;You&#8217;re seeing a battle that&#8217;s breaking out inside the Democratic Party between Nancy Pelosi, who&#8217;s now, quote-unquote, &#8216;moderate&#8217; but who&#8217;s radically left, and people like Ilhan Omar,&#8221; Shapiro added. &#8220;And you&#8217;re seeing who&#8217;s winning that battle.&#8221;
Shapiro then tied the political manifestations of this ideological battle to trends he&#8217;s experience first-hand on college campuses. &#8220;There was this old idea from the &#8216;moderate liberals&#8217; that all of the passion they saw win college campuses, the censorious, ideologically fascistic top-down stuff you were seeing on college campuses; the &#8216;microaggressions,&#8217; the cancel culture, all of that would go away once these good-hearted but overzealous leftists reached the halls of power,&#8221; he said.
&#8220;It turns out that they were there, and when they entered the halls of power they decided just to uproot all the systems and take it over,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;This is the French Revolution in real time without the actual physical guillotines.&#8221;
Shapiro then brought the discussion back to the fallout from Trump&#8217;s upset victory.
&#8220;The fact that President Trump campaigned on the basic idea of &#8216;Make America Great Again,&#8217; and the counter from the Left was not that President Trump wasn&#8217;t capable of making America great again; their counter was actually &#8216;America was never great,'&#8221; he said. &#8220;That was the divide, in essence, and that was happening back in 2016 &#8230;&#8221;
Shapiro went on to posit that that &#8220;the real story&#8221; over the last year or so is how many people have been &#8220;cowed into silence.&#8221;
&#8220;This is why the cancel culture we&#8217;re seeing, I talk about it in the book, this is why the cancel culture has become so dangerous,&#8221; he explained. &#8220;Cancellation isn&#8217;t about them coming after you, which they have, or me; it&#8217;s about them coming after people who don&#8217;t have the capacity to defend themselves. You have a platform; I have a platform. I can refuse to be cancelled. But there are tens of millions of Americans who cannot refuse to be cancelled who live in fear of being cancelled for simply expressing something as simple as, &#8216;Yeah, I voted for Trump&#8217; or &#8216;I&#8217;m considering the possibility of voting for President Trump.&#8217; That is a cancellable offense in Left world.&#8221;
The threat of &#8220;cancellation&#8221; is particularly real during &#8220;one of the worst economic downturns in American history,&#8221; said Shapiro. And the surest way to become a target is by the Left labeling you &#8220;racist,&#8221; a term that has been &#8220;refined&#8221; for the Left&#8217;s agenda. &#8220;The Left has openly and obviously refined the term &#8216;racist&#8217; to mean you are part of the American system,&#8221; he said. &#8220;They will say this openly &#8230; the idea that you can only be &#8216;anti-racist&#8217; if you fight the American system.&#8221;
&#8220;They are perfectly open about the fact that they want to disintegrate all the ties that bound us together,&#8221; he stressed. &#8220;They say the ties never existed, that they shouldn&#8217;t exist. That&#8217;s dangerous. That&#8217;s a recipe for the county absolutely falling apart.&#8221;
<a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/ben-shapiro-us-protests-french-revolution-levin">Watch the interview here</a>.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Shapiro To Levin: ‘What’s Happening Here Is Not Even Right Versus Left. It’s Radical Left Versus Everybody Else.’

American History

Mark Levin

In an appearance on &quot;Life, Liberty &amp; Levin&quot; Sunday night, bestselling author and Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro discussed a central theme in

Shapiro To Levin: ‘What’s Happening Here Is Not Even Right Versus Left. It’s Radical Left Versus Everybody Else.’ | The Daily Wire

https://www.dailywire.com/news/shapiro-to-levin-whats-happening-here-is-not-even-right-versus-left-its-radical-left-versus-everybody-else/

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Mike Rowe has parted ways with his fair share of friends. In fact, in one year, he lost as many as a million of them. 
It was around 2013, and in his re-telling, his Facebook following dropped from three million to two after he appeared on “Real Time” with Bill Maher, the left-leaning political commentator who he has described as “opinionated, polarizing and controversial,&#8221; and, that same year, joined conservative radio host Glenn Beck for an interview. 
“My buddies on the right just didn’t know what to do with the optics of me sitting next to Bill Maher,” said Rowe, who recalled the incident in a 2018 interview. “And my pals on the left just had no notion of how to square the cognitive dissonance that forced their heads to explode when they saw me sitting there with Glenn Beck.”
The former “Dirty Jobs” host added: “We’re in the world now, where it’s not what we say that gets us in trouble, it’s what we don’t. And it&#8217;s not where we are that makes people’s eyebrows arch, it’s who we’re next to. It’s the proximity of outrage. It’s the geography of all of it.”
Rowe’s observations, made during a “Sunday Special” conversation with Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro two years ago, continue to hold true — maybe even more so. 
Earlier this month, The Washington Post published a 3,000-word tome about a random woman’s decision to attend a 2018 Halloween party as Meghan Kelly in blackface. Why? Two party guests who confronted the woman at the time were still upset over it, and wanted her to endure a full-throttled public humiliation, nearly two years after she privately apologized to the host. 
Notably, Lyric Prince, one of the two guests, also wanted the host, an editorial cartoonist at the Washington Post, to condemn the woman — his own friend and a non-public figure — in public: “I want people who read this story to say to themselves, ‘I cannot excuse my friend’s bad behavior because it does reflect on me if I say nothing.’” 
The woman has since been fired from her job. Cancel culture abounds. 
According to Rowe, part of the problem can be attributed to social media. Like a gun, social media is a tool, and it demands a level of responsibility from its user. 
“We’re right on the verge, I think, of discovering some really interesting parallels between the First and Second Amendment. And I think people who would never, ever consider or associate a firearm with goodness, are ironically using speech as a real cudgel and restricting it in so many ways,” Rowe told Shapiro. 
But, how you use the tool remains an open question. “Most people simply don’t have the training or the maturity to handle it,” said Rowe. 
“The violence and the anger, and the outrage that you’re seeing, I think in part, is a result of having an unlimited amount of access to a platform that gives you both the mechanism to say whatever you want, and the anonymity, and the comfort to hide behind it,” he said. 
“So people are very shrill and they’re very brave in those scenarios,” said Rowe, who argued that those factors, when combined together, serve as the “portent to a mob.”
“I think that’s what you’ve probably seen. Things get accelerated, and then there&#8217;s no place left for it to go, and so they have to act out,” he said. 
The New York Times recently reported an uptick in high school students and alumni using “social media to expose racism,” including the use of anonymous Instagram accounts, where students can submit stories about others for public humiliation. 
One of the Instagram accounts, described by The Times, was used to share screenshots and videos of local students using anything from racial slurs to engaging in “cultural appropriation.” When students became angry about it, some started photoshopping images to retaliate, and fights between friends broke out online. 
The Times reports that the specific Instagram page in question has since been shut down. 
During the 2018 interview, Rowe told Shapiro that people in society seem to confuse passion with conviction, an observation that reminded him of the “The Second Coming,” William Butler Yeats’ early-20th Century poem that is infamous for its apocalyptic imagery. 
<blockquote>The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity</blockquote>
“If you don’t have the certainty of your convictions. If you can’t make a case….Then what is left? Nothing is left but an explanation of how you feel,” said Rowe. 
“If your philosophy ultimately redounds to an explanation of how you feel, then you’re completely beholden to whatever feeling you might be experiencing at any given point. And then you’re just one of those people who follow their passion. Good luck with that,” said Rowe. 
So what’s better than relying on feelings? Rowe suggests that “a good-natured skepticism, a ton of gratitude, and some honest intellectual curiosity” could be the best replacement for the “let me tell you how I feel” philosophy that dominates outrage mobs.  
“I really don’t care how you feel, honestly. I mean, over a beer it&#8217;s kind of fun,” he said. “I just don’t care. It’s so much more interesting to understand why you believe what you believe, than it is to understand what you believe. That’s why mobs are boring,” said Rowe. 
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/sundayspecialep-12-mike-rowe">Watch Rowe’s full interview with Shapiro</a>.

Mike Rowe Sunday Special

Mike Rowe’s Take-Down Of Cancel Culture, Outrage Mobs Has Gotten Even Better With Age

Cancel culture

Mike Rowe

Political Correctness

Social Media

Mike Rowe has parted ways with his fair share of friends. In fact, in one year, he lost as many as a million of them.  It was around 2013, and in his

Mike Rowe’s Take-Down Of Cancel Culture, Outrage Mobs Has Gotten Even Better With Age | The Daily Wire

https://www.dailywire.com/news/mike-rowes-take-down-of-cancel-culture-outrage-mobs-has-gotten-even-better-with-age/

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On Wednesday’s episode of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” the Daily Wire editor-in-chief talks about Elizabeth Warren’s collapsing campaign, and the senator bragging about taking a $3 donation from a college student with only $6 in the bank. Video and partial transcript below:
[The epic collapse of Elizabeth Warren is] more hilarious than anything else. Watching that pathological liar just fall apart like a mudslide in the Hollywood Hills has been extraordinarily entertaining. So let me just take a moment and pay tribute to the worst campaign of them all. 
Elizabeth Warren is now in full-on mourning mode and it is delicious. Last night, she said she&#8217;s not going to drop out because, of course, she can&#8217;t drop out. If she drops out, it demonstrates that her campaign has been one of the biggest failures in recent memory, since Kamala Harris. This was like a massive failure.
As of October, she was the presumptive nominee. She was leading in New Hampshire; she was leading in Iowa; she was picking up ground in places like South Carolina. And then she presented her “Medicare For All” plan. She tried to put flesh on the bones of Bernie Sanders’ garbage plan, and she completely fell apart. Just imploded…
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[Last night] a 19-year-old woman, who was going to college, came up to Elizabeth Warren complaining that she had a lot of student debt. She said, “I have six dollars in my bank account and I&#8217;m giving three dollars of it to you,” and Elizabeth Warren tweeted that out as though this was a mark of her vision. That seems, first of all, pretty regressive, is it not? The woman has six dollars to her name, and you&#8217;re taking three of them for your garbage campaign that is going to blow it on ads that have no impact? [Warren] is just terrible, she’s a terrible person. 
So last night she announced that she was staying in the race — for no apparent reason, because she&#8217;s got no shot at the nomination. I mean, Bernie is consolidated and she&#8217;s in Bernie&#8217;s lane. He&#8217;s picked up all his support from her. Here is Elizabeth Warren being awful at this:
<blockquote>WARREN: You know me, did the speech and then afterwards did a selfie line, and we were there for over an hour. People are coming through and they&#8217;re saying “thank you” and they&#8217;re given hugs and talking about what&#8217;s important to them. Young woman came up by herself and she said, “I&#8217;m a broke college student with a lot of student loan debt.” And she said, “I checked and I have six dollars in the bank. So I just gave three dollars to keep you in this fight.” That&#8217;s what we gotta do.</blockquote>
We have to take money from people who can&#8217;t afford it? That&#8217;s what you got to do? In fact, Elizabeth Warren then smacked her across the face and was like “Where’s the other three dollars?! You bring your other three dollars, lady?! Don&#8217;t you want to win?! Don&#8217;t you want my campaign to be successful?! If you were really willing to fight, you would give me the other three dollars in your bank account. And don&#8217;t worry, I&#8217;ll leave alleviate all student loan debt at the end. In fact, why don’t you just rack up another twenty grand in student loan debt, you can max yourself out right here on this campaign, and don&#8217;t worry, a little bit later, I will relieve all student loan debt. You know, if you have to falsify the documents a little bit, just give me some money and funnel it to me, and take it out of student loan debt then just kind of hand it to me.”
What a terrible human being. I mean, seriously, if somebody came up to me at an event and they were like, “I have six dollars to my name and I want you to have five of those dollars,” I&#8217;d be like, “No, here&#8217;s a twenty, go get yourself a nice meal.” Like, seriously, who is this person? Who is this? That&#8217;s insane. But that&#8217;s Elizabeth Warren&#8217;s campaign from top to bottom. Completely ridiculous, completely insane. Completely out of touch with regular Americans, even while pretending to represent regular Americans.
The lady’s been teaching at Harvard Law for twenty years, she&#8217;s not been in touch with regular Americans for several decades at this point, and by regular Americans, I mean people who don&#8217;t have tons of money in their bank account. It&#8217;s crazy. 
Her new pitch, by the way, is that people are being mean to each other and mean to her — that&#8217;s her new pitch. So she got skunked last night. I mean, just destroyed. She won 9.6 percent of the vote in a state neighboring her own, she won a grand total of eleven thousand votes last night. Just a brutal, brutal showing, and Elizabeth Warren then gets up in Manchester, New Hampshire, says, “Yeah, we were bad, but people keep fragmenting this party and that&#8217;s terrible.” 
No one has fragmented this party more than Elizabeth Warren, [she’s] been an attack dog against virtually everybody else to get on that stage, and she&#8217;s awful. Pretty soon, those sweaters — the good news is ladies, if you&#8217;re looking for Ann Taylor Loft multi-colored sweaters, those will be on half price within a matter of about three weeks because Elizabeth Warren&#8217;s demand for them have dropped ridiculously.

Senate Holds Hearing On Wall Street Reforms

SHAPIRO: The Spectacular Collapse Of Elizabeth Warren

2020 Election

Elizabeth Warren

On Wednesday’s episode of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” the Daily Wire editor-in-chief talks about Elizabeth Warren’s collapsing campaign, and the senator

SHAPIRO: The Spectacular Collapse Of Elizabeth Warren | The Daily Wire

https://www.dailywire.com/news/shapiro-the-spectacular-collapse-of-elizabeth-warren/

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On Monday’s episode of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” the Daily Wire editor-in-chief talks about the Oscars, the Woke embroidery on Natalie Portman’s dress, and Joaquin Phoenix scolding the public for drinking milk. Video and partial transcript below: 
[Natalie Portman] shows up on the red carpet wearing a cape — but it&#8217;s not just any cape — it&#8217;s a cape that is embroidered with female directors, the names of female directors who were not nominated and therefore are greatly put upon, despite the fact that they earn millions of dollars to direct apparently mediocre films. 
I mean, seriously, the names of the directors that are on there, on her cape, they include the director of “Hustlers.” Does anyone think that “Hustlers” deserve the best director nom this year? Does anyone think that &#8220;Hustlers&#8221; really, really required a best director nomination this year? One of the directors is the director of the Mr. Rogers film. Does anyone think the Mr. Rogers film deserved a best director nomination this year? Does anyone think that Greta Gerwig desperately needed a best director nomination after winning a best director nomination for “Lady Bird?” What exactly are we talking about here? 
The bottom line is that, according to Hollywood, this makes Natalie Portman not have to worry about the fact that she is wealthy and that she has a really easy life — she is now part of the victimized. She&#8217;s part of a coalition of the dispossessed. So the question becomes dispossessed by whom? People do this routinely — dispossessed by the Academy, because the Academy is the font of all evil and super white — so what does the Academy do? Instead of the academy making fun of all this nonsense, the Academy jumps right into it, and they flagellate themselves, and the Academy brings all these people forward, and then they say, “Look how, we know that we&#8217;ve got a problem, guys. We know that we&#8217;ve got a problem, and the first step toward solving a problem is admitting you have a problem and bringing forth people like Natalie Portman, a true victim in American society.”
When I think “victim” I think Natalie Portman, don&#8217;t you? She lives in France with her husband. I feel really, really terrible for Natalie Portman. I feel terrible for all those directors who were given millions and millions of dollars to play with to make really, really kind of mediocre films — that&#8217;s pretty spectacular stuff. 
At least I will hand it to Joaquin Phoenix; at least Joaquin Phoenix is crazy. All these other people are pretty much sane, so when they do stupid things, then you just make fun of them. Joaquin Phoenix, I&#8217;m not sure whether you&#8217;re even allowed to make fun of Joaquin Phoenix at this point because, honestly, he&#8217;s sort of morphed into — Is he still role playing? Is he still just being the Joker? Did he ever get out of the mindset? So Joaquin Phoenix gets up there and he&#8217;s been going around making these sort of environmentalist statements; he really made a sacrifice for the people this year and for the people of Earth — he only has one tuxedo, Joaquin Phoenix — he pointed this out that unlike all these other people of ten tuxedos, he only has one tuxedo — just like all the poor people only have one tuxedo. If you go below the poverty line, everybody&#8217;s got a tux, a thousand-dollar tux hanging in their closet.
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In any case, Joaquin Phoenix wins best actor for the “Joker,” and he makes an insane speech about cows and milk….Joaquin Phoenix last night at the Oscars, lecturing us all about speciesism, which is again, a real hot take — that really is the tragedy, I mean truly. Joaquin Phoenix should have shown up with the names of cows embroidered on his tuxedo — I mean like “Betsy,” “Old Blue,” I mean, they weren&#8217;t nominated for anything either. These cows that have given us our sustenance for generations and not one of them was nominated for an award — not a single one of them was nominated for an award, not a single cow. Unbelievable. Here&#8217;s Joaquin Phoenix explaining to all of us that veganism is the way to go and that basically drinking milk is like you&#8217;re a Nazi. 
<blockquote>PHOENIX: We go into the natural world and we plunder it for its resources; we feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow, and when she gives birth, we steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakable. And then we take her milk that&#8217;s intended for a calf and we put it in our coffee and our cereal. </blockquote>
What now? We have to embroider his coat with milk — like “Two Percent,” “Whole” &#8212; What the hell is going on here? What is wrong with you people? What is wrong with you people? Listen, if you want to make the case against factory farming, make the case against factory farming. But we artificially inseminate these cows, and then we take her milk and we use it in our coffee, we use it in our cereal? Yes, we do; that&#8217;s true. You have scored a point against civilization, Mr. Phoenix. Just wow, solid, and the crowd gave him a standing ovation for this — all of whom drink milk, by the way, all of whom are engaging in protein consumption, animal protein consumption. Like the number of vegans in that room, not that high. But again, it&#8217;s all about the &#8220;We&#8217;ve been lectured and we know that we&#8217;ve been lectured.&#8221; 
This is the new church. It&#8217;s a church for folks on the Left, just like a lot of people go to church to be lectured by their pastor about all the sins that they&#8217;ve committed the prior weeks — [so] that they don&#8217;t commit those sins again; it&#8217;s like that at the Oscars. It&#8217;s the one time they go to church every year, and at that church they&#8217;re lectured about their insufficient Wokeness and if they wish to avoid anti-Woke hell, then they will have to pay homage and they will have to do confession with Joaquin Phoenix, which is a really weird type of confession. So, good stuff over at the Oscars, as per the usual, really in touch with the feelings of most Americans. I think that these people really have a bead on what Americans are feeling. 
Honestly, I was feeling a little optimistic this year because there were some actual movies that people saw this year, and none of them won any awards. I mean, the ones that actually won awards, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” got completely skunked; “Joker” won a couple of awards, but “Parasite” waltzed away with a bunch of these awards — a movie that no American has really ever seen — and again, a class warfare film that would have pleased Bernie Sanders if the rest of the film holds up the way that it&#8217;s holding up so far [in the first hour]. 
Well, in any case, we&#8217;ll get to the actual 2020 Democratic race, and I&#8217;ll explain in just a second why these Culture Wars actually matter, because whenever we sound off about this kind of stuff, people on the Left are like, “How dare you say you&#8217;re so triggered by the culture; you&#8217;re so triggered,” which is gaslighting because the reason you do this is because you want attention, you&#8217;re all the the 15-year-old girl who gets her hair put up in some sort of mohawk, and gets a giant nose ring, gets those earrings that like stretch out your ear lobe and then you walk on like, “Why are you looking at me? Why are you looking at me?” 
You&#8217;re the Oscars, that&#8217;s why we&#8217;re looking at you. We all get it; we all get the you want attention; so if we give you attention, you don&#8217;t get to whine about us giving you attention, and if we make fun of you, you don&#8217;t get to whine about us making fun of you. Of course we&#8217;re making fun of you because you look like idiots. 
You look like a bunch of Woke morons who have no actual relationship with like — is there a single impoverished person in America who feels better off today because of what was done at the Oscars last night?   Whose pocketbook got thicker last night? Is there a single woman in America who&#8217;s struggling to make ends meet who is like, “Yes, slay queen because female directors weren&#8217;t winning Oscar noms this year? Slay Queen Natalie Portman.” Who out there felt really emboldened and empowered by that Oscar routine last night? I have a feeling not all that many people, not all that many people, except for the Oscar voters who feel really good about themselves because, again, they get to participate in this religious ceremony once  a year.

92nd Annual Academy Awards – Show

SHAPIRO: Joaquin Phoenix Lectures The Church Of The Hollywood Elite

Oscars

On Monday’s episode of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” the Daily Wire editor-in-chief talks about the Oscars, the Woke embroidery on Natalie Portman’s dress, and

SHAPIRO: Joaquin Phoenix Lectures The Church Of The Hollywood Elite | The Daily Wire

https://www.dailywire.com/news/shapiro-joaquin-phoenix-lectures-the-church-of-the-hollywood-elite/

https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/02/Joaquin-Phoenix-1.jpg

On Wednesday, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer, a constitutional attorney by training who also frequently opines on issues pertaining to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-border-wall-nice-interior-enforcement-nicer-josh-hammer">immigration enforcement</a> and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-federal-government-has-no-more-important-josh-hammer">border security</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEglbpSPJ2o&amp;feature=youtu.be">joined</a> &#8220;Tipping Point with Liz Wheeler&#8221; on One America News Network to discuss the latest immigration- and crime-related craziness to emerge from the sanctuary jurisdiction that is the state of California.
&#8220;Since California became a sanctuary state in 2017, the number of inmates with immigration detainers being arrested again after being released from jail has jumped, according to a new report from Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes,&#8221; Los Angeles&#8217; local CBS affiliate <a href="https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2020/02/04/oc-sheriff-sb-54-sanctuary-state-law-repeat-crimes-increase-undocumented-immigrants/">reported</a> earlier this week. &#8220;According to Barnes, more than 1,500 inmates released in 2019 had ICE detainers, a request from the federal agency for notification that a particular inmate has been released. Of those inmates, 238 were re-arrested in Orange County for new crimes, including assault and battery, rape, and robbery.&#8221;
&#8220;The rate of recidivism for those with ICE detainers is up from 2018, when 123 were arrested again for new crimes, out of more than 1,800 such inmates, according to the report,&#8221; the outlet continued.
Hammer has been previously outspoken on the topic of sanctuary cities, opining in a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-why-no-one-pointing-out-sanctuary-cities-josh-hammer">Daily Wire op-ed</a> last summer that the majority of sanctuary jurisdictions blatantly violate the text of <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1373">8 U.S.C. § 1373(a)</a>, which reads: &#8220;Notwithstanding any other provision of Federal, State, or local law, a Federal, State, or local government entity or official may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the [Department of Homeland Security] information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.&#8221;
&#8220;The Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, as applied to § 1373(a), therefore prohibits state and local governments from shielding a removable illegal alien from ICE when ICE issues a detainer request on the alien,&#8221; Hammer wrote.
Joining Wheeler, Hammer decried the <a href="https://cis.org/Camarota/NonCitizens-Committed-Disproportionate-Share-Federal-Crimes-201116">disproportionately high rate of crime</a> for illegal aliens in America before making a similar legal point that he made in the Daily Wire op-ed. He accused sanctuary jurisdictions of adopting similar logic to that of the old Confederacy:
<blockquote>Very few people in the conservative punditry class are making this point, but my reading of federal law is that laws like California&#8217;s are blatantly illegal. If you look at title eight of the United States Code, section 1373, subsection (a), it says very clearly that no federal, state, or local government can &#8220;prohibit&#8221; or &#8220;restrict&#8221; sending any information to the Department of Homeland Security, which of course includes [Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)]. Put another way, when ICE requests detainer information, these states cannot just refuse it. That is literally against the United States Code. And of course, that law is promulgated directly pursuant to the Supremacy Clause of <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlevi">Article VI of the Constitution</a>.
Liz your high school viewers might recall from civics class in high school: This was the entire so-called &#8220;nullification crisis&#8221; of the 1830s, with John C. Calhoun in South Carolina. And it&#8217;s the reason why, in my personal writings on this topic going back months, I always refer to the sanctuary jurisdictions as &#8220;neo-Confederate,&#8221; because it&#8217;s literally what&#8217;s going on here. They are adopting John C. Calhoun-esque, defying-federal law, Confederacy-style public policy and legal argumentation.</blockquote>
WATCH:
<iframe title="Orange County Pushes Back On Sanctuary State Policies" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pEglbpSPJ2o?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Hammer OANN 2.05.19

WATCH: Hammer On ‘Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler’: Sanctuary Cities Are ‘Neo-Confederate’

California

confederate

Constitution

Department of Homeland Security

Illegal Immigration

Immigration

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

Law Enforcement

Los Angeles

Police

On Wednesday, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer, a constitutional attorney by training who also frequently opines on issues pertaining to immigration

WATCH: Hammer On ‘Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler’: Sanctuary Cities Are &#039;Neo-Confederate&#039; | The Daily Wire

https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-hammer-on-tipping-point-with-liz-wheeler-sanctuary-cities-are-neo-confederate/

https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/02/Josh-Hammer-OANN-screen-grab-2.05.19.png

On Tuesday evening, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer, a constitutional attorney by training who previously served as a judicial law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-HnMAHs3-c">joined</a> “Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler” on One America News Network (OANN) to discuss the news from earlier this month that a divided Fifth Circuit panel, in the case of <a href="http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/19/19-40016-CR0.pdf">U.S. v. Varner</a>, denied a motion from a biological male litigant who formally moved to have the panel address him using female pronouns.
Earlier this month, Hammer <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/culture-war-in-the-courts-federal-appeals-panel-divides-on-transgender-pronouns/">summarized</a> and briefly opined upon the case for The Daily Wire, referencing the &#8220;fascinating&#8221; development that Trump nominee Judge S. Kyle Duncan&#8217;s majority opinion used male pronouns, whereas Clinton nominee Judge James L. Dennis&#8217;s dissent used female pronouns:
<blockquote>Alas, the latest and most disputatious, headline-grabbing front of our ceaseless culture war has fully hit the federal judiciary. &#8230;
Ultimately, Duncan concluded, “[c]ourts would have to do the same. We decline to enlist the federal judiciary in this quixotic undertaking.” &#8230;
Good for Judge Duncan for both adhering to the letter of the law and for defiantly standing athwart the modern cultural Left’s pernicious insistence on gaslighting the American citizenry into thinking that words may not mean what they so clearly do, in fact, mean.</blockquote>
Earlier this week, prior to the OANN appearance with Wheeler, Hammer also wrote a <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/transgender-pronouns-fifth-circuit-rejects-them-and-lie-they-stand-on/">column</a> about the case for National Review:
<blockquote>To capitulate to the Pandora’s box of transgender pronouns is to pretend that, exceedingly rare intersex exceptions aside, there is more to sexual differentiation than the duality of chromosomal male and chromosomal female. To yield to the soft tyranny of transgender pronouns is to pretend that gender dysphoria is an anodyne lifestyle on which societal legitimacy should be conferred, not a psychological malady requiring compassion and psychological treatment. It is to act as if simple words that have meant the same thing for centuries can change their meanings overnight without ruinous consequence for the language’s durability. It is to encourage the <a href="https://time.com/5767844/transgender-youth-legislation/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-reader-unique-id="21">premature sexualization</a> of children and accede to <a href="https://transcare.ucsf.edu/article/information-testosterone-hormone-therapy" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-reader-unique-id="22">often irreversible</a> tampering of their hormones. It is to undermine the ancient Hippocratic oath: “First, do no harm.” Paul McHugh, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, maintains that to encourage “surgical intervention is in reality to collaborate with and promote a mental disorder.”</blockquote>
Wheeler and Hammer touched upon many of the same substantive themes during the OANN TV appearance, with Hammer stating that Judge Duncan&#8217;s fearless majority opinion made him a &#8220;very proud Fifth Circuit alum&#8221;:
<blockquote>You know, I finished clerking on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit barely over a year ago, so I&#8217;m very familiar with this court. I know both Judge Duncan and Judge Jerry Smith, who was also in the majority, personally, actually. Judge Duncan, Trump nominee — a wonderful jurist based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
So basically what happened here was a very unusual procedural posture. I mean, this took the format of an order — it was more of an order than a traditional &#8220;case&#8221; or &#8220;controversy,&#8221; we might say. But the litigant formally moved to be addressed by a transgender pronoun, which is very unusual. Certainly, in my time clerking, I never came across something like that. That is not a typical motion that as a judge or a law clerk, you see on a day-to-day basis &#8230; [but] I was a very proud Fifth Circuit alum when I saw this opinion.</blockquote>
Wheeler said that she agreed with &#8220;every word&#8221; of Hammer&#8217;s.
WATCH:
<iframe title="Court Rules on Gender Pronouns" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QVp0Vdif0KA?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Hammer OANN 1.28.20

WATCH: Hammer On ‘Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler’: The Fifth Circuit Rejects Transgender Pronouns

Judicial Branch

Judiciary

Lawsuit

LGBT

Transgender

On Tuesday evening, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer, a constitutional attorney by training who previously served as a judicial law clerk on the

WATCH: Hammer On ‘Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler’: The Fifth Circuit Rejects Transgender Pronouns | The Daily Wire

https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-hammer-on-tipping-point-with-liz-wheeler-the-fifth-circuit-rejects-transgender-pronouns/

https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/01/Josh-Hammer-OANN-screen-grab-1.28.20.png

Earlier this week, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer joined &#8220;The Chad Prather Show&#8221; on BlazeTV for a wide-ranging (and oftentimes humorous) discussion with the eponymous host and Blaze Media resident cowboy, Chad Prather. The conversation ran the gamut of topics, covering such diverse terrain as impeachment, recent rumors and revelations pertaining to former National Security Advisor John Bolton, the debate over transgender pronouns, and &#8230; Chad&#8217;s traveling crew getting kicked out of a bar in Bakersfield, California.
The conversation kicked off around impeachment, with Prather asking Hammer why Republicans seem so opposed to calling witnesses in the current Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump. Hammer said he wasn&#8217;t sure why Republicans are so opposed — a skepticism that the podcast host shared:
<blockquote>I don&#8217;t really understand why Republicans and the president are so opposed to witnesses. I mean, look, in theory, here&#8217;s how this is supposed to work. Okay, the House and Senate are supposed to &#8230; actually do what they&#8217;re &#8230; supposed to do and write bills and pass laws and all that stuff that the Constitution talks about.
It ain&#8217;t gonna happen this year because it&#8217;s very simple: The Democrats control the House, Republicans control the Senate, [and] it&#8217;s also an election year, everyone&#8217;s risk-averse, no one&#8217;s trying to stick his or her neck out, put their foot on the line. So in that context, I don&#8217;t really understand this Republican resistance to calling witnesses. Drag this thing out. How is Hunter Biden getting up there not going to help with the president and Republicans come November? I don&#8217;t see it.</blockquote>
The conversation quickly shifted to the news surrounding Bolton, with Hammer offering his take on what we know so far:
<blockquote>So the worst part is &#8230; The New York Times got a copy of his book before anyone in the administration did. You know, I&#8217;m not gonna say John Bolton had anything to do with that, but it&#8217;s pretty unforeseeable that John Bolton had nothing to do with that. That&#8217;s just not a good look.
And like you, I&#8217;m a longtime defender of John Bolton&#8217;s. &#8230; He&#8217;s a lifelong conservative, he really is. I mean, he went to Yale for both undergrad and law school. At Yale undergrad, he was a member of what the nerds of Yale call the Yale Political Union&#8217;s Party of the Right, which in their kind of nerdy political club is the most right-wing party possible. So he&#8217;s a lifelong Barry Goldwater-, Ronald Reagan-like conservative, so it&#8217;s a little weird to see what&#8217;s happening now.</blockquote>
Later in the conversation, the topic shifted to transgender pronouns in the federal courts — a topic that Hammer, a former judicial law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, wrote about earlier this week for <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/transgender-pronouns-fifth-circuit-rejects-them-and-lie-they-stand-on/">National Review</a>. Hammer explained the three reasons why he thinks conservatives must not cave on this issue:
<blockquote>There are &#8230; three reasons why I think we really should care. One is the truth, inherently, is worth defending. Truth should be defended for the sake of truth. I mean, that&#8217;s kind of historically speaking, the entire purpose of debate in the academy, going back to Socrates, Aristotle, going back to all the ancients. They literally engaged in this Socratic dialogue in order to reach the truth. So if we feel like we have the truth, then it&#8217;s worth defending for its own sake.
Second, language cannot change this much, and this drastically, and remain viable. Now, some words can change meaning over time, of course. And plenty of words do change meaning over time. Like, for example, &#8220;decimate&#8221; — the word &#8220;decimate&#8221; — back in the day, the letters &#8220;dec&#8221; mean 10, so it was literally to take out one out of ten of the opposing military. Today, it just means more generally to kind of wipe out. So words can change their meaning, but words as basic as pronouns, the building blocks of distinguishing, as you quite aptly put it, between male and female genitalia — that cannot change. Words like that just cannot change for the English language to be viable.
Third, and probably the most important reason &#8230; is because there are actually really bad side effects to the transgender movement. We saw it here in Texas with <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-father-of-7-year-old-trans-child-james-younger-speaks-out-before-gag-order/">James Younger</a>. We are encouraging the premature, preteen sexualization of children. We are encouraging children to choose their own gender and engaging in oftentimes-irreversible hormonal tampering — chemical castration, frankly, is really what&#8217;s going on here. There are really corrosive, actual real-life effects of this.</blockquote>
The whole lengthy conversation is available on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj804eZqF_M">YouTube</a>.
WATCH:
<iframe title="The Impeachment of an American President | Ep 191" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Dj804eZqF_M?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-at-national-review-the-fifth-circuit-rejects-the-lie-of-transgender-pronouns">Hammer At &#8216;National Review&#8217;: The Fifth Circuit Rejects The Lie Of Transgender Pronouns</a>
RELATED: <a href="http://lp.dailywire.com/getelectionwire/">Sign up here for Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer’s weekly newsletter on election news, polling data, and analysis: “Election Wire”</a>

Hammer on Chad Prather Show 1.27.20

WATCH: Hammer Breaks Down Impeachment, Bolton, Transgenderism On ‘The Chad Prather Show’

Children

Hunter Biden

Impeachment

John Bolton

Sexuality

U.S. Senate

Earlier this week, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer joined &quot;The Chad Prather Show&quot; on BlazeTV for a wide-ranging (and oftentimes humorous)

WATCH: Hammer Breaks Down Impeachment, Bolton, Transgenderism On ‘The Chad Prather Show’ | The Daily Wire

https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-hammer-breaks-down-impeachment-bolton-transgenderism-on-the-chad-prather-show/

https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/01/Screenshot-1.27.20.png

Last evening, on the 47th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court&#8217;s <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/roe-v-wade-ed-whelan/">infamous</a> Roe v. Wade decision, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer, a constitutional attorney by training who has been a frequent proponent of both the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-what-alyssa-milano-gets-so-very-wrong-about-josh-hammer">immorality of abortion</a> and the need to overturn or <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-yes-alabama-legislature-right-openly-defy-josh-hammer">openly &#8220;defy&#8221;</a> a decision as patently erroneous as Roe, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-HnMAHs3-c">joined</a> “Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler” on One America News Network to make the straightforward constitutional argument for why Roe was indeed wrongly decided.
Hammer, a <a href="https://fedsoc.org/contributors/josh-hammer">Federalist Society campus speaker</a> who has a forthcoming piece of legal scholarship on the issue of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-conservatives-how-much-longer-are-you-josh-hammer">judicial supremacy</a>, argued in a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-it-past-time-trump-openly-defy-court-order-josh-hammer">Daily Wire op-ed</a> one year ago that President Donald Trump would be on firm legal standing to outright &#8220;defy&#8221; lawless edicts such as Roe. Hammer contrasted the language of the little-known 1958 case of Cooper v. Aaron — in which the Court pronounced its judicial supremacist adherence to &#8220;the basic principle that the federal judiciary is supreme in the exposition of the law of the Constitution&#8221; — with the language from Abraham Lincoln’s <a href="http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lincoln1.asp">First Inaugural Address</a>, in which Lincoln disavowed the legal and moral abomination of Dred Scott v. Sandford as a broader binding political principle:
<blockquote>I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the Government. And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.</blockquote>
For many social conservatives and constitutional originalists, Roe is the direct <a href="https://www.firstthings.com/article/2003/02/lincoln-on-judicial-despotism">legal and moral successor</a> to Dred Scott — and <a href="https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2016/01/a-republic-if-you-can-keep-it">ought to be treated</a> as such.
But before getting there, Hammer explained to Wheeler the basic 14th Amendment argument as to why Roe is, in fact, a wrongly decided decision whose unprecedented nationalization of abortion policy under thin constitutional guise amounted to a horrific judicial power grab:
<blockquote>Let&#8217;s talk about the actual constitutional law here. The 14th Amendment, Section 1 — it was a very famous constitutional amendment ratified in 1868, in the aftermath of the Civil War, intended as a civil rights provision largely for free blacks. The Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment says that &#8220;nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.&#8221; By the Due Process Clause&#8217;s plain text, it refers only to process — it does not refer to what lawyers would call &#8220;substance.&#8221;
Nonetheless, in 1965, in a case called Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court found that due to the &#8220;penumbras&#8221; and the &#8220;emanations&#8221; that come from the Fourth, Ninth, and 14th Amendments, there is a &#8220;right to privacy&#8221; in the Constitution. That is nonsense: There&#8217;s no such thing as a &#8220;right to privacy&#8221; anywhere whatsoever in the constitutional text. But from there, it was a pretty short step, eight years later after Griswold in 1973, for the Court to say that this &#8220;right to privacy&#8221; that they found means that you have a constitutional right to abort your unborn born child.
And it is a complete distortion and bastardization of the 14th Amendment. In my opinion, Roe v. Wade, Liz, is one of the two most constitutionally unsound and horrific decisions probably probably ever promulgated by the Supreme Court. &#8230; [It&#8217;s] right up there with the Dred Scott decision of 1857, which my hero of all heroes, Abraham Lincoln in his First Inaugural Address in 1861, famously said that he would not abide by. He respected it as applied to Dred Scott himself, but would not respect the ruling as it applied to anyone else in the country. And for years now, I&#8217;ve been preaching my [fellow] conservatives to adapt and adopt that principle as it applies to Roe itself.</blockquote>
WATCH:
<iframe title="The Legal Argument to Overturn Roe v. Wade" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lBMCT8peHGE?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Hammer OANN 1.22.20

WATCH: Hammer On ‘Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler’: The Legal Argument To Overturn Roe

Fourteenth Amendment

Supreme Court

Last evening, on the 47th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court&#039;s infamous Roe v. Wade decision, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer, a constitutional

WATCH: Hammer On ‘Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler’: The Legal Argument To Overturn Roe | The Daily Wire

https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-hammer-on-tipping-point-with-liz-wheeler-the-legal-argument-to-overturn-roe/

https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/01/Josh-Hammer-OANN-screen-grab-1.22.20.png

Last night, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer, a constitutional attorney by training who has been a <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/11/19/alexander-vindman-condemned-himself-in-his-impeachment-testimony/">frequent</a> <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/11/26/why-trumps-ukraine-demands-werent-remotely-illegal/">commentator</a> on Democrats’ current partisan <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/12/13/obstruction-of-congress-is-an-utterly-ridiculous-impeachment-charge/">impeachment</a> <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/12/19/pelosis-newest-dirty-trick-putting-trumps-senate-trial-on-hold/">effort</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR6O_a8m-8A">joined</a> “Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler” on One America News Network (OANN) to discuss the Democrats&#8217; increasingly hard push to ensure that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-bad-trump-presidents-dismissal-john-bolton-josh-hammer">former</a> National Security Advisor John Bolton is called to testify during the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.
&#8220;Democrats may decide to call Bolton to testify about a possible quid pro quo between Trump and Ukrainian officials regarding an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, even though the articles of impeachment are already published.&#8221; The Daily Wire&#8217;s Emily Zanotti <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/pelosi-threatens-to-call-john-bolton-to-testify-in-house-even-as-dems-vote-to-send-impeachment-articles-to-senate">reported</a> earlier this month. &#8220;Senior Democrats raised the possibility of subpoenaing Bolton last week, after Bolton himself admitted that, if asked to testify by the Senate, he would comply (though he did not speak on whether he would do the same for a House subpoena, and referenced Republicans specifically).&#8221;
&#8220;The theory seems to be, according to a plan of action outlined by former advisors of President Barack Obama on the left-leaning site, <a href="https://crooked.com/articles/subpoena-john-bolton-democrats/">Crooked</a>, if Bolton is called to testify in the House and provides information critical to the case against the President, that Senate Republicans will have no choice but to allow witnesses at Trump’s Senate impeachment trial,&#8221; Zanotti continued.
Last week, The Federalist&#8217;s David Marcus <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2020/01/14/john-boltons-testimony-would-not-be-the-smoking-gun-democrats-need/">argued</a> that even if Bolton testified, his testimony would hardly be the smoking gun that Democrats seem to think it would be. &#8220;[W]hat can John Bolton possibly say that would prove Trump’s intent was malicious, and not genuine concern about taxpayer dollars falling into corrupt hands?&#8221; Marcus asked rhetorically. &#8220;Is he really going to say, &#8216;The president told me he doesn’t care about corruption, he just wanted to get that pesky Joe Biden and get him good?&#8217; Is there anyone on the face of the planet who thinks that such a conversation could have taken place?&#8221;
Hammer joined Wheeler&#8217;s OANN program to discuss the same topic. Hammer agreed with Marcus that there is no plausible scenario in which Bolton&#8217;s Senate testimony would be a smoking gun.
<blockquote>[Bolton] is clearly not going to provide any kind of smoking gun testimony for the reasons that you just outlined. &#8230; [M]y boss at The Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro, had a good, pretty lengthy <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/the-two-theories-of-trumps-actions-in-the-ukraine-affair/">column for National Review</a> back in October [on this]. There are two theories as to what happened on the now-infamous July 25th phone call between Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky. The first theory Ben calls the &#8220;Get Biden Theory&#8221;; the second theory is what Ben calls the &#8220;Miasma of Corruption Theory.&#8221;
So on the first hand, Trump is just trying to politically &#8230; get his opponent, Joe Biden. The second hand, he&#8217;s actually trying to attach corruption-related strings to the doling out of taxpayer aid. My reading of everything that&#8217;s happened so far is that this second theory, the &#8220;Miasma of Corruption Theory,&#8221; is more likely. Possibly, the &#8220;Get Biden Theory&#8221; is right, but as you say, the only reason — or the only way that we would ever be shown that is right — is if John Bolton was literally told by Donald J. Trump, president of the United States, &#8220;I am doing this to get Joe Biden.&#8221; That&#8217;s not going to happen.</blockquote>
Hammer also elaborated on Twitter earlier today.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Schiff is gaslighting us. What “evidence” is being hidden?<a href="https://twitter.com/benshapiro?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@benshapiro</a> laid it out well at <a href="https://twitter.com/NRO?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NRO</a> in Oct. There is the “Get Biden Theory” and the “Miasma of Corruption Theory.” There is one thing and one thing only distinguishing the two: Subjective intent. <a href="https://t.co/0wPsbGalBv">https://t.co/0wPsbGalBv</a>
&mdash; Josh Hammer (@josh_hammer) <a href="https://twitter.com/josh_hammer/status/1219692018668130304?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 21, 2020</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Any purported “evidence” that does not directly speak to that subjective intent — what lawyers call mens rea — is, in actuality, no evidence at all.
&mdash; Josh Hammer (@josh_hammer) <a href="https://twitter.com/josh_hammer/status/1219692427335950343?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 21, 2020</a></blockquote>
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WATCH:
<iframe title="John Bolton is no Smoking Gun" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fR6O_a8m-8A?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Hammer OANN 1.20.10

WATCH: Hammer On ‘Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler’: John Bolton Is No Smoking Gun

Democratic Party

Donald Trump

Ukraine

Volodymyr Zelensky

Last night, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer, a constitutional attorney by training who has been a frequent commentator on Democrats’ current

WATCH: Hammer On ‘Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler’: John Bolton Is No Smoking Gun | The Daily Wire

https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-hammer-on-tipping-point-with-liz-wheeler-john-bolton-is-no-smoking-gun/

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On Friday, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer, a constitutional attorney by training who has been a <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/11/19/alexander-vindman-condemned-himself-in-his-impeachment-testimony/">frequent</a> <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/11/26/why-trumps-ukraine-demands-werent-remotely-illegal/">commentator</a> on Democrats&#8217; current partisan <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/12/13/obstruction-of-congress-is-an-utterly-ridiculous-impeachment-charge/">impeachment</a> <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/12/19/pelosis-newest-dirty-trick-putting-trumps-senate-trial-on-hold/">effort</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-HnMAHs3-c">joined</a> “Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler” on One America News Network (OANN) to discuss the recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) purporting to show that, by initially withholding the disbursement of foreign aid money to Ukraine last summer, President Donald Trump violated the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (ICA). It is this withholding of Ukrainian foreign aid money that forms the crux of the Democrats&#8217; impeachment push.
As The Daily Wire initially <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/read-it-gaos-report-on-white-house-withholding-ukraine-aid-violated-law">reported</a> last Thursday, the officially nonpartisan GAO claimed that Trump violated the ICA and, by implication, also the <a href="https://www.heritage.org/constitution/articles/2/essays/98/take-care-clause">Take Care Clause</a> of Article II of the Constitution. “Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” the GAO report asserted, as The Daily Wire reported. “[The Office of Management and Budget (OMB)] withheld funds for a policy reason, which is not permitted under the [ICA]. The withholding was not a programmatic delay. Therefore, we conclude that OMB violated the ICA.”
Hammer penned an <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/01/17/trumps-ukraine-money-holdup-doesnt-make-for-an-impeachable-breach-of-the-law/">op-ed</a> in Saturday&#8217;s New York Post in which he argued that &#8220;Trump likely did not violate the ICA,&#8221; but that &#8220;even if he did breach it, that law itself comes with its own remedy baked in — and it is a far less draconian remedy than impeachment.&#8221; He then elaborated:
<blockquote>
To be sure, expressly directing a subordinate to violate federal law is inconsistent with the Take Care Clause. But the president also has other obligations under Article II of the Constitution. The very first clause of Article II vests the president with “the executive Power.” The doling out of foreign aid is an integral part of conducting foreign affairs, and, according to a 2001 Yale Law Journal article by legal scholars Saikrishna Prakash and Michael Ramsey, 18th-century English common law — which helped form the Framers’ thinking — had an “ordinary &#8230; meaning of executive power” that “included foreign affairs power.”
Similarly, in the 1936 Supreme Court case U.S. v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp., the justices describe the president as “the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations — a power which does not require as a basis for its exercise an act of Congress.” &#8230;
[Furthermore,] as my boss at The Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro, quickly observed after news of the GAO report hit, the ICA prescribes a precise remedy for a situation in which the president allegedly violates it. Specifically, 2 U.S.C. § 687 provides for a cause of action by the comptroller general in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. But since the funds have been released, any legal action would be moot.
</blockquote>
On Friday&#8217;s OANN appearance, Wheeler began by asking Hammer whether the alleged ICA violation is impeachable. Hammer strongly opined that it should not be viewed as impeachable, and went on to describe the current Democratic mentality and antics as &#8220;desperate,&#8221; &#8220;reckless,&#8221; and &#8220;borderline dangerous&#8221;:
<blockquote>
The Impoundment Control Act in 1974 actually provides for a precise remedy within the statute. So a lot of people are talking about this as a possible impeachment vehicle, but it is a deliberate, disingenuous, bad faith effort to attempt to impeach as a draconian remedy where the statute itself has the savviness and the foresight to provide for a much lesser remedy.
And let&#8217;s talk about that remedy. It&#8217;s [title] two of the United States Code, then sub-section 687, I believe. The remedy is the Comptroller General of the United States is allowed to file suit in the federal trial court in the District of Columbia to force the president, essentially, to disburse the funds. Liz, here&#8217;s the problem with that: The funds have already been disbursed! They were released and there was barely any delay. So even according to the statute&#8217;s own remedy — according to the statutory structure &#8230; it&#8217;s a moot case. In law school, you learn this is called a moot lawsuit because the funds were disbursed. Ukraine didn&#8217;t even know that the funds were being withheld.
So all of this is starting to remind me a lot of the whole [Brett] Kavanaugh [Supreme Court nomination] fiasco, where they would just throw mud at the wall and see what sticks. You know, we talked about [how] the Democrats first were talking about quid pro quo, [but] that didn&#8217;t poll-test well. Then they were publicly flirting with bribery and they knew they didn&#8217;t have the legal gravitas to make that argument. They are just so desperate, at this point. Swing state poll after swing state poll shows they&#8217;re gonna lose next November — Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, all these voters are starting to turn against the Democrats. And this is really starting to get reckless; it&#8217;s actually borderline dangerous, at this point, I would say.
</blockquote>
Wheeler agreed, saying that the Democrats do routinely &#8220;move the goalposts.&#8221;
WATCH:
<iframe title="The Truth About The GAO Report" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/G-HnMAHs3-c?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Hammer OANN 1.17.20

WATCH: Hammer On ‘Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler’: The Truth About The GAO ‘Bombshell’

Congress

On Friday, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer, a constitutional attorney by training who has been a frequent commentator on Democrats&#039; current

WATCH: Hammer On ‘Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler’: The Truth About The GAO &#039;Bombshell&#039; | The Daily Wire

https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-hammer-on-tipping-point-with-liz-wheeler-the-truth-about-the-gao-bombshell/

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On Thursday night, Daily Wire Senior Editor Ashe Schow joined The Heritage Foundation’s Charmaine Yoest on EWTN’s “Pro-Life Weekly” with host Catherine Hadro to discuss Planned Parenthood’s annual report regarding its services and organization.
Hadro opened the segment by explaining that Planned Parenthood performed 13,000 more abortions in 2019 than in 2018, for a total of 345,672 abortions, for an increase of 3.88% over 2018. These staggering numbers caused Yoest to refer to Planned Parenthood as “Abortion, Inc.” Schow noted that while the organization increased the number of abortions it performed, all other major services actually declined.
“As abortions go up for Planned Parenthood, all of their other services that they like to saying, ‘no we’re not just [about] abortion,’ have gone down,” Schow said, citing numbers from the report <a href="https://www.lifenews.com/2020/01/06/planned-parenthood-annual-report-shows-it-killed-345672-babies-in-abortions-more-than-ever-before/">and LifeNews</a>. “You’ve got contraception down 2%, pap smears and tests down 7%, breast exams down 11%, cancer screenings down 8%. Prenatal care? Down 68% since 2010, and to put that in perspective, for last year, Planned Parenthood killed 35 babies for every one woman it helped with prenatal care. Adoption referrals down year over year and again, killed 80 babies for every one adoption referral.”
Many of the services listed by Schow had dropped, but were still provided at a higher rate than abortions. Contraception services, for example, dropped 2% to 2,556,413 in 2018, but far outpaced the nearly 350,000 abortions provided by the organization.
Schow also discussed the fact that Planned Parenthood’s annual report completely glossed over the fact that it underwent a leadership crisis in 2019 after firing Dr. Leana Wen because she tried to get the organization to focus on more than just abortion.
“She was trying to get the organization to actually focus on women’s health and other things. She tried talking to pro-life groups and people who weren’t necessarily for abortion but didn’t like medical intrusion in medical health,” Schow said. “She wanted more services for maybe mental health and addiction but within Planned Parenthood it was just, ‘no, abortion’s our thing [and] we’re sticking to it.’”
Schow also bemoaned the constant messaging surrounding abortions, suggesting women can only succeed if they abort their child.
“People know: ‘If I need an abortion, I can go to Planned Parenthood.’ And it says a whole lot about the culture. You’ve got Democrats and progressives just constantly – just recently at the Golden Globes, you had a pregnant Michelle Williams saying the only reason she was able to accept this award was because she aborted a child,” Schow said. “You’ve got this constant messaging to women that if they have a child, their life is over and they can never succeed. And it’s working, it’s clearly working. Abortions are going up even though polls show Americans don’t agree with abortion. By and large, Americans want it at least limited to just the first trimester, and yet you have all this messaging that you should have an abortion in order to succeed in life.
You can watch the full video below:
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Ashe

WATCH: Schow On ‘Pro-Life Weekly’: As Abortions Rose At Planned Parenthood, All Other Major Services Declined

Planned Parenthood

On Thursday night, Daily Wire Senior Editor Ashe Schow joined The Heritage Foundation’s Charmaine Yoest on EWTN’s “Pro-Life Weekly” with host Catherine

WATCH: Schow On ‘Pro-Life Weekly’: As Abortions Rose At Planned Parenthood, All Other Major Services Declined | The Daily Wire

https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-schow-on-pro-life-weekly-as-abortions-rose-at-planned-parenthood-all-other-major-services-declined/

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Last night, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer, a constitutional attorney by training, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRvUG6NTn78&amp;feature=youtu.be">joined</a> “Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler” on One America News Network to discuss the latest twists and turns in Democrats&#8217; ongoing partisan impeachment saga, as well as to recap the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-at-the-new-york-post-obstruction-of-congress-is-an-utterly-ridiculous-impeachment-charge">deeply flawed nature</a> of House Democrats&#8217; two finalized articles of impeachment.
&#8220;House Democrats emerged from a closed-door meeting Tuesday morning to finally announce the much-delayed vote on sending their articles of impeachment against President Trump — passed nearly a month ago without a single Republican vote — to the Senate,&#8221; The Daily Wire&#8217;s James Barrett <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/defeated-democrats-announce-vote-on-sending-impeachment-articles-but-not-wholl-be-running-the-show">reported</a> earlier today. &#8220;The big vote will take place Wednesday, though one particularly important detail has yet to be determined: who exactly from the House is going to be presenting the Democrats’ case against the duly elected president during the Senate trial,&#8221; Barrett continued.
In a <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/12/13/obstruction-of-congress-is-an-utterly-ridiculous-impeachment-charge/">New York Post op-ed</a> last month, Hammer explained why House Democrats&#8217; second article of impeachment, &#8220;obstruction of Congress,&#8221; is &#8220;an utterly ridiculous impeachment charge&#8221;:
<blockquote>
Our tripartite separation-of-powers edifice was hardly devised for the purpose of ensuring amiability between the legislative, executive and judicial branches. On the contrary, the Framers envisioned a national government in which the three branches existed in a state of continuous, unyielding tension with one another.
In particular, the two political branches — Congress and the executive branch — were meant to be jealous guardians of their own ambits and spheres of influence. Ceaseless tussling between them was to be the norm. “Ambition,” James Madison told us in Federalist 51, “must be made to counteract ambition.” &#8230;
That is how our separation of powers is supposed to function — in a state far closer to animosity than to geniality. Which is precisely why House Democrats alleging “obstruction of Congress” as an article of impeachment makes no sense.
</blockquote>
Wheeler began the segment last night by asking about that deeply problematic second article of impeachment. Wheeler noted that the Democrats accused the president of &#8220;obstructi[ng]&#8221; Congress without even waiting for the judiciary to weigh in with respect to congressional subpoenas issued for Trump administration officials. Hammer agreed and also reiterated, in similar fashion to the Post op-ed, that the article of impeachment is also non-sensical from the broader perspective of structural constitutionalism:
<blockquote>[T]his impeachment charge is so risible. &#8230; The entire separation of powers construct is built around tension. The three branches of government — the legislative branch, the executive branch, the judicial branch — are not &#8230; intended to exist in some state of harmony. &#8230; No, that&#8217;s not what the Framers envisioned.
James Madison, in The Federalist No. 51, maybe the most famous Federalist Paper of them all, clearly says &#8220;ambition must be made to counteract ambition.&#8221; They&#8217;re supposed to be zealous guardians of their own idiosyncratic spheres of influence. They&#8217;re supposed to butt heads. They&#8217;re supposed to use all the various tools at their disposal to push back and try to encroach upon each other&#8217;s spheres. They&#8217;re [each] supposed to want to be the most dominant branch. Each one is supposed to not get along with the others. &#8230;</blockquote>
Wheeler agreed, noting that the second impeachment charge is therefore &#8220;both practically and philosophically ridiculous.&#8221;
WATCH:
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Hammer OANN screen grab 1.13.20

WATCH: Hammer On ‘Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler’: A Senate Impeachment Trial Looms

Federalist

Mitch McConnell

Nancy Pelosi

U.S. House of Representatives

Last night, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer, a constitutional attorney by training, joined “Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler” on One America News

WATCH: Hammer On ‘Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler’: A Senate Impeachment Trial Looms | The Daily Wire

https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-hammer-on-tipping-point-with-liz-wheeler-a-senate-impeachment-trial-looms/

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On Tuesday, CNN International and PBS host Christiane Amanpour conducted two interviews, one with U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and another with Iranian VP for women and family affairs Massoumeh Ebtekar, and the contrast in Amanpour’s attitude toward the interviewees could not have been more stark, as she targeted Esper while lobbing softballs at Ebtekar.
As Curtis Houck of Newsbusters <a href="https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/curtis-houck/2020/01/08/cnn-pbs-host-amanpour-shows-more-deference-iranian-vp-sec-esper">pointed out</a> in a comprehensive report, Amanpour started her interview with Esper by suggesting that the threat that the Trump administration cited for its airstrike killing Iranian general Qassem Doleimani was based on evidence that was “razor thin and the chatter was nothing out of the ordinary.” She challenged Esper to look at “the world down the barrel of this camera straight in the eye and say that there was a ticking time bomb evidence.”
Esper fired back that the evidence was “more than razor thin, and it&#8217;s persuasive,” that  Solemani aimed “to synchronize and plan additional attacks on American forces, diplomats or facilities.”
Amanpour segued to claiming that in Iran there was “not just an outpouring of grief from the people there and rallying around a regime that had been unpopular, but that it&#8217;s also a message” of revenge. As Houck noted, Amanpour posited that allies of the U.S. were calling on the U.S. to deescalate, and thus, &#8220;You are being put in the same boat as Iran. I don&#8217;t recall this ever happening before, where the United States and a nation like Iran, are both being put in the same boat, both being asked to de-escalate. How does that make you feel?”
Esper answered, “Well, I guess I disagree with your premise, Christiane. I will tell you — and I&#8217;ve talked to all these allies and partners — the ones in the region are fully, 100 percent supportive of what we&#8217;ve done and what we&#8217;re prepared to do. They see the removal of Soleimani, this known terrorist and head of a terrorist organization, his removal from the battlefield as a great victory and they know what it means — and it&#8217;s a game changer for the region.”
Amanpour then launched into a tirade attacking the decision to target Soleimani, saing:
<blockquote>&#8230; senior Americans have told me that intelligence officials in — you know, your own intelligence officials — predicted precisely this kind of Iranian escalation after the maximum pressure campaign that followed the withdrawal from the nuclear deal. They predicted attacks on shipping in the Gulf — it happened. They predicted attacks on Saudi Arabia — it happened. They suggested it might happen against U.S. bases, U.S. targets — it did happen. You talk about Soleimani, but what is the strategy here? I mean, you knew that this was possibly going to happen. Was it wise — you talk about Soleimani — nobody is claiming that he was a good guy, no — none of your allies are — and everybody knows what his role in the region was, but by the same token, previous U.S. administrations, when they could, did not take him out. Israel, when it could, did not take him out, for fear of the consequences. I guess I want to ask you, do you regret putting that extreme option on the table for the President? Wouldn&#8217;t some of the other options have sufficed in this period to send a very strong message of deterrence?</blockquote>
Esper replied, “Well, Christiane, I would say many experts, going back a few years now, predicted and were proven true, that in the wake of the JCPOA, which did not cover ballistic missiles, which did not cover Iran&#8217;s hostage-taking, which did not cover Iran&#8217;s malign behavior, that such activities would pick up — particularly when we opened up the economic spigots and we returned to them tens of billions of dollars — we saw this activity pick up across the region, again, spanning from Africa, through the Middle East to Afghanistan and what&#8217;s happened in the last few years, in Iraq in particular, in the last 12 months, is just a manifestation of an Iranian regime that is bent on exporting its revolutionary beliefs.”
In 1979, Ebtekar, who was 18 and a spokeswoman for the Iranian hostage-takers who seized 52 Americans, was <a href="https://twitter.com/HanifJazayeri/status/1214667445694275584">asked</a> about the American hostages if she could “personally lift up a gun and put it to the head of one of these people and kill him” if there were an attack on the U.S. embassy to save the hostages. As <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/28/world/top-woman-in-iran-s-government-once-spoke-for-hostage-takers.html">The New York Times</a> reported, she answered, “Yes. When I&#8217;ve seen an American gun being lifted up and killing my brothers and sisters in the streets, of course.&#8221; Here are some samplings of how Amanpour, who did not mention Ebtekar’s 1979 role, treated Ebtekar:
When Amanpour asked whether Iran would “respond” to American “call[s] for descalation,” Ebtekar cited “millions who are marching in support and in commemoration of&#8230;the Commander of the Hearts” against the Americans having “taken a terrorist action” in killing Soleimani. Amanpour stated she found it “interesting” that Ebtekar called the reaction in Iran to Soleimani’s death a “revival of the Islamic revolution.”
Ebtekar delightedly suggested there was a “wave of awakening” in the U.S. on social media “understand[ing] very well what has happened and the terrible actions of the American government.”
Amanpour concluded by insinuating that the Iranian leadership was moderate and “took a gamble negotiating with the United States, saying:
<blockquote>I have heard that message coming out of Iran from the days since this targeted killing, that the final response should be from your perspective to remove American forces, but what I want to ask you is this because you were and are a committed revolutionary. You were very prominent during the early days of the Islamic revolution, but you became more of a reformist as well, and you supported the negotiations for the Iran nuclear deal, and diplomacy to, you know, settle some issues.
My question to you now is, is that completely out of the window? Are people like you and Foreign Minister Zarif, even President Rouhani, who took a gamble negotiating with the United States, are they sidelined? Is it now those who believe that America can never be discussed with, for want of a better word, hard-liners, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps? Are they more in the ascendancy? Is there any hope for any negotiations, very briefly, if you wouldn&#8217;t mind?</blockquote>
Interviews below:
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2019 International Emmy Awards Gala

WATCH: CNN’s Amanpour Targets Def Sec Esper, Goes Soft On Iranian VP Who Once Said She’d Shoot U.S. Hostages In The Head

On Tuesday, CNN International and PBS host Christiane Amanpour conducted two interviews, one with U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and another with

WATCH: CNN’s Amanpour Targets Def Sec Esper, Goes Soft On Iranian VP Who Once Said She&#039;d Shoot U.S. Hostages In The Head | The Daily Wire

https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-cnns-amanpour-targets-def-sec-esper-goes-soft-on-iranian-vp-who-once-said-shed-shoot-u-s-hostages-in-the-head/

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Last night, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer, an attorney and former federal judicial law clerk, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cup29nPmOgo">joined</a> “Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler” on One America News Network to discuss New York state&#8217;s extraordinarily controversial new &#8220;bail reform&#8221; legislation. The law, which the New York Post editorial board <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/01/07/with-lives-at-stake-albany-must-bail-reform-failure-now/">decries</a> today as a flat-out &#8220;bad law,&#8221; eliminates the possibility of judge-imposed cash bail for the overwhelming majority of crimes committed in the Empire State.
Here is how the Post <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/01/07/with-lives-at-stake-albany-must-bail-reform-failure-now/">describes</a> some of the problems with the law:
<blockquote>One huge problem: The new law prevents judges from ordering most criminal suspects jailed, or even requiring them to post bail, no matter how clear a threat to public safety they pose. Judges retain discretion only if the charges include a handful of very violent crimes and they deem the suspect a clear flight risk.
This guarantees a revolving door for serious perps: Caught for a minor holdup, you’ll be charged and released — and can do it again, get caught again and be released again, time after time after time.</blockquote>
The Daily Wire has also <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/democrat-bail-reform-woman-involved-in-anti-semitic-attack-arrested-released-for-3-crimes-in-5-days">previously reported</a> on the law&#8217;s noxiousness. The Daily Wire&#8217;s Amanda Prestigiacomo recently <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/democrat-bail-reform-woman-involved-in-anti-semitic-attack-arrested-released-for-3-crimes-in-5-days">reported</a> on a serial anti-Semitic assaulter who astoundingly committed three separate crimes in a span of five days due to the law&#8217;s inordinate leniency. As also reported by Prestigiacomo, all five borough district attorneys in New York City have gone on the record stating that the law goes too far in favoring defendants.
Hammer has consistently been very critical of this type of pro-criminal, &#8220;jailbreak&#8221;-style legislation. Last weekend, Giancarlo Sopo of TheBlaze <a href="https://www.theblaze.com/news/virginia_weak_on_crime_democrats">quoted</a> him in the context of a similar partisan Democratic initiative in Virginia:
<blockquote>Reached by telephone, constitutional law attorney and Daily Wire editor-at-large Josh Hammer told TheBlaze that [the proposed Virginia] bill is part of a pattern among Democrats and like-minded &#8220;weak-on-crime&#8221; Republicans.
&#8220;Across the country, we see so many leftist Democrats — joined by no small share of libertarian-leaning Republicans — subscribing to the same weak-on-crime agenda,&#8221; Hammer, who has been critical of similar so-called &#8220;criminal justice reform&#8221; efforts, said.
&#8220;New York&#8217;s harrowing recent &#8216;bail reform&#8217; proposal is a shining example, and this Democratic proposal in Virginia fits in neatly, as well. Americans have historically cherished law and order, and it is devastating to see these kind of jailbreak, pro-criminal policies take hold as we descend further into mass lawlessness,&#8221; he added.</blockquote>
Wheeler began the segment by asking Hammer about the New York lawmakers&#8217; purported aim — to reduce inequality and promote justice — and why the law&#8217;s authors do not seem to care about equality and justice for the actual victims of crime. Hammer launched into a rant about how the Left is able to effectively wield seemingly anodyne language, such as &#8220;bail reform,&#8221; as a cudgel to advance their lawless agenda:
<blockquote>The problem with the Left is the Left speaks about justice and compassion and all these fancy words. They never focus on the people who actually suffer &#8230; from their policies. So in the case of border security and amnesty, there is no one who suffers worse from an open border and the human trafficking by drug cartels than the aliens themselves who are trafficked. In the case of &#8220;criminal justice reform,&#8221; &#8220;bail reform,&#8221; no one suffers more than victims of crime.
Where is anyone speaking for the victims of crime? But you know what the Left also does, Liz? The Left is amazing at getting the right version of language for their policies. &#8220;Bail reform,&#8221; it sounds so innocuous, right? What they&#8217;re doing is they&#8217;re throwing out a system of bail that has existed since at least 13th century England! That is how far back bail goes — cash bail, monetary bail. This is literally a centuries-old phenomenon that they are just throwing out.</blockquote>
WATCH:
<iframe title="New York&#039;s No Bail Law Disaster" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Cup29nPmOgo?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Hammer OANN 1.07.20

WATCH: Hammer On ‘Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler’: New York’s Insane Pro-Criminal Bail Law

Anti-Semitism

Crime

Hate Crime

Jail

Leftism

New York

New York City

Prison

Last night, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer, an attorney and former federal judicial law clerk, joined “Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler” on One

WATCH: Hammer On ‘Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler’: New York’s Insane Pro-Criminal Bail Law | The Daily Wire

https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-hammer-on-tipping-point-with-liz-wheeler-new-yorks-insane-pro-criminal-bail-law/

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On Monday’s episode of “The Michael Knowles Show,” Knowles talks about how Ricky Gervais exposed the gap between Hollywood and the American people for all to see. Video and partial transcript below: 
Far more cold-blooded, far more brutal than the killing of Soleimani were Ricky Gervais’ attacks on Hollywood last night at the Golden Globes. The Golden Globes — opening up awards season here in Hollywood — awards season is so irrelevant these days that I didn&#8217;t even know it was happening. I forgot. 
I have worked professionally in show business, I live in Hollywood, I am right here at the center of it, and I forgot that it was going on. I didn&#8217;t know until yesterday when someone said, “You know, the Golden Globes is on.” Oh, really? Okay, who cares? That is how out of touch these people are. 
They decided to become relevant this year that the Golden Globes is going to go vegan. So they served dinner at this particular awards show, and it was going to go completely vegan to help the environment because that&#8217;s that&#8217;s the way that they&#8217;re going to finally turn their failing ratings around and relate to the American people. No, probably not. 
Ricky Gervais gets up there, he&#8217;s hosted this a number of times in the past, he said this would be his last time hosting, and Ricky Gervais didn&#8217;t care. He went for the necks of Hollywood and he — wow, I just realized the pun there because he opened up the night with an Epstein joke, so the pun was not intended. But all of Ricky Gervais’ attacks were intended. He said, I don&#8217;t care. I&#8217;m leaving nothing on the table. 
I think his monologue was pretty much the only shot that the award season has to relate in any way to the American people. It was great, and it was great at the expense of the audience in the room. The Hollywood stars, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, he open[ed] the night with a joke about Jeffrey Epstein. 
<blockquote>GERVAIS: Spoiler alert, Season 2 is on the way, so in the end, he obviously didn&#8217;t kill himself — just like Jeffrey Epstein. Shut up. I know he&#8217;s your friend, but I don&#8217;t care. You had to make your own way here in your own plane, didn’t ya?</blockquote>
Oh my gosh, what a great one-two. He opens up with the Jeffrey Epstein joke, right? That would have been enough, but Hollywood can&#8217;t laugh about Jeffrey Epstein. They didn&#8217;t laugh, they kind of stayed a little quiet. They kind of groaned, which set up Gervais for the actual punchline of his joke, which is, “Oh, shut up, I know you&#8217;re all friends with the guy” — because they are! They are all friends with the guy and they&#8217;re all friends with all the MeToo perpetrators and they&#8217;re friends with all of these sex criminals. 
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They pretend that they&#8217;re not, they clutch their pearls and they pretend to be so nice and wonderful and high and mighty. He says, “Yeah, you had to take your own plane here tonight, didn&#8217;t you?” That one finally got the lights so awkward. It was so brutal and the attacks only got harsher. From there, he went after every single person in that room for hypocrisy, and at many points, you could pretty much hear a pin drop. 
<blockquote>GERVAIS: A superb drama about the importance of dignity and doing the right thing, made by a company that runs sweatshops in China. So when you say you’re woke but the companies you work for — I mean, unbelievable. Apple, Amazon, Disney — if ISIS started a streaming service, you&#8217;d call your agent, wouldn&#8217;t you? So, if you do win an award tonight, don&#8217;t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You&#8217;re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world.Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg. So if you win, alright, come up accept your little award, thank your agent, and your god, and [expletive] off. </blockquote>
That little bit that we had to bleep out there at the end is where, Ricky Gervais told people where they could go after they had received their award. It was a wonderful spectacle. It was great, Ricky Gervais is an international treasure. 
Why? Because he showed the gap between Hollywood and the American people. He showed the gap between the Hollywood foreign press, the international press — the big makers of culture and the consumers of culture. And you can&#8217;t deny that gap, because these awards shows have been tanking in the ratings for years now, every single year. Hollywood cannot even laugh at an Epstein joke — a joke about an international sex trafficking, criminal, pedophile — everything. They can&#8217;t laugh at it because they know him — because they were friends with him. They don&#8217;t understand.
The more interesting level of analysis here is whether or not Ricky Gervais was brave to do this set. The conventional wisdom is it was so brave of Gervais to do this set in front of Hollywood. Now, in many ways, it was because this will hurt his employment prospects in Hollywood. He was telling these people that they&#8217;re degenerates to their face, right? It was absolutely hilarious. In that way, it was courageous to do it. 
But in another sense, it wasn&#8217;t brave at all &#8230; [Gervais] knew that the audience would love this, that they would lap this up, that they would say, “Finally, Rickey Gervais, this guy is so good. This guy gets us.” 
He deserves credit because it really will irritate his employers, but this will make him so much more popular among the audience. The only reason that any person is talking about the Golden Globes today is because Ricky Gervais had this great, killer set. Looking ahead on the political scene to 2020, it shows you how absolutely worthless celebrity endorsements are that the Left, they&#8217;re always shocked. They say, “Oh, Hillary Clinton got all the endorsements of Hollywood, all these big-time movie stars and TV stars. How did she lose? John Kerry got all the big endorsements. Bruce Springsteen. Puff Daddy, all these guys. How did they lose?” Because none of us like Hollywood, we don&#8217;t like these people.
<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-michael-knowles-show/id1266577963?mt=2">Listen to full episodes of “The Michael Knowles Show” on iTunes. 
</a><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-michael-knowles-show">Watch “The Michael Knowles Show” on-demand!</a>

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Can We Achieve Covid-19 Immunity? Here Are The Most Likely Scenarios, Best Case To Worst

C.S. Lewis Quotes On Politics & Culture America Needs To Hear Now

Outspoken Conservative Professor, Columnist Mike Adams Dies At 55

WATCH: Ben Shapiro, Joe Rogan Debate Left’s New Definition Of Racism, ‘Unpopular’ But Effective Solutions

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WATCH: Hammer On ‘Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler’: Sanctuary Cities Are ‘Neo-Confederate’

WATCH: Hammer On ‘Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler’: The Fifth Circuit Rejects Transgender Pronouns

WATCH: Hammer Breaks Down Impeachment, Bolton, Transgenderism On ‘The Chad Prather Show’

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