"If He Keeps His Trap Shut He’ll Win" Ben Shapiro On Trump, Biden and Israel-Hamas

do you feel slightly depressed that this is the choice that your country has got Biden Trump people say well look he spent years saying lock her up about Hillary Clinton there's now footage of him saying it multiple times lock her up lock her up lock her up and then he didn't do it if you take everything that Donald Trump says at pure face value you're a fool the truth is if you're attacking terrorists in the area of a refugee camp this is going to keep happening then you against literally all retaliation or military action that Israel has taken team have been desperate to try and get you to debate Norman thinkl Stein it's definitely not a no it is also not a yes two seismic Global stories that divided our audience are panelists and wider public opinion more than I can remember in modern times the first is a criminal conviction of former president Donald Trump second is the deadly Israeli incursion into Rafa and the growing International demands for ceasefire in Gaza my next guest has passionate and polarizing views on both I expect will strongly agree on at least some of it on the other well let's wait and see returning to un sensor with daily wire editor Emeritus Ben chapiro Ben great to see you YouTube peers I feel like a bit like when Elvis died I'll always remember where I was when Trump got convicted the fact that an American president one of the only 46 people to hold that office actually turned into a criminal felon before our our eyes when you actually heard the verdict what was your immediate gut reaction I think everybody's stomach sank who actually takes the justice system seriously the entire case was obviously a put up job the coordination between the prosecution and the judge in this particular case in order to craft a set of charges that are pretty much the turducken of criminal charges who was a misdemeanor wrapped around what may have been a federal felony but wrapped around another New York State felony and none of it made any sense but the bottom line here was so long as they could somehow bootstrap some sort of criminal case into a Manhattan jury Donald Trump was going to get convicted now the only question of course is whether he's going to go to jail or be put under house arrest but the bottom line here is that is that going to impact the presidential race in any serious way not particularly the only thing it might do actually is have a rally around the flag effect for Donald Trump on the right side of the aisle and it might actually impact Independence such that they look at what happened here and they say to themselves you know the guy who keeps preaching about democracy being under threat from Donald Trump that guy's party seems very focused on putting his chief political opponent who right now is winning the swing States in jail right I mean it's it stinks of being a Banana Republic it's the kind of thing you would expect Americans to look at from afar and mock this kind of of of of political um abuse really of the of the judicial system I don't care what side people are on this seems to me like an absolute clear case of an overreach purely for political purposes and at that point America becomes a very different country for sure I mean the problem that you see in all all these situations is that as soon as the break glass in case of emergency glass is broken well now the glass has been broken it doesn't get unbroken and in American politics once you have a political opponent being prosecuted along specious lines for something that that really happened many many years ago and wasn't a crime at the time do you believe that there will be any presidential candidate in the future from either party who is going to escape the threat of criminal Inquisition from a from a political party in another state I mean this again is a state level crime and it was brought in Manhattan meanwhile you have the president's son who's being brought up on federal charges but that's happening in Wilmington so Wilmington Delaware you would assume that's going to be a pretty friendly place for Hunter Biden to be brought up on charges you know all of this starts to call into question the justice system obviously listen we we all have critiques of the Criminal Justice System here in the United States we disagreed with particular verdicts but on this one it is so eminently clear that there is no charge that should have been leveled here against Donald Trump that it's hard for me to see how how people in the middle of the of the spectrum look at this and take it seriously yeah I mean it seems so pathetically trivial that really at the center of this is an alleged one night stand between a billionaire real estate magnet stroke TV star and a porn star 20 years ago and he's then shuffled some paperwork and then in the run up to an election he's wanted it to stay quiet I mean this this it just seems so trivial to me and and yet now it's led to an American president becoming a convicted felon which like you say it's such a precedent now going forward every party going forward will now try and do this to the leader of the other party because the president is now set you know there there have been so many of these cases where Donald Trump has been targeted in unique ways and it's actually not done any serious damage to Trump per se it's really done damage to the institution trying to Target him so they impeach Donald Trump not once but twice and now of course Republicans have thought about impeaching Joe Biden that's just going to be a tool that's on the table all the time doesn't mean that's an important tool anymore it actually makes the tool less important you're going to see the same thing happen with criminal prosecutions of political opponents across the political Spectrum there have already been calls inside the Republican party for local Das and jurisdictions in red states to go after Democratic officials I don't think this is a good precedent for anybody but this is something that that has been done by democrats and then you see turnout as fair play you remember that Harry Reid nuked the filibuster with regard to judicial nominees and at the time the Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said if you do this this is going to come back to bite you and of course it did the bottom line is that in politics every sword has two edges and so if you're going to go after Donald Trump with the one Edge you better be prepared for the other Edge to come back at you in pretty short order I mean Trump you know the other side looking at it people say well look he spent years saying lock her up about Hillary Clinton there's now footage of him saying it multiple times the crowd banging for blood lock her up lock her up has he brought that on himself well I mean again I I think that when Donald Trump's Epitaph is written it's going to say Donald Trump 50 45th and maybe 47th president of the United States he set a lot of bleep and I I think that the difference between Donald Trump saying things like lock her up and Joe Biden's doj and his his various allies in the states actually attempting to lock up his political opposition there's a wide difference right there this has always been one of the bizarre things about how people pretend to interpret Trump I mean peers you know Donald Trump I've met Donald Trump in government for years obviously if you take everything that Donald Trump says at pure face value you're a fool yeah really a fool and I think everybody knows that including the voting public and so when he goes out there and he says colorful things like lock her up does anyone and then he didn't do it he didn't do it he was President of the United States his doj was in charge and he didn't do it and Joe Biden's been in charge for three years and guess what his doj is coming after Donald Trump in two separate jurisdictions in Florida and in DC you got local Das in Atlanta and New York going after Donald Trump kind of weird how it happens whenever it's the Democrats but when Republicans talk about it somehow that's equivalent I don't buy it well I keep asking Democrats about this since these VCT came came in explain to me why what Bill Clinton did with Monica Lewinsky and Paula Jones and the paying off of a sexual harassment case and everything else and lying to American people why is that deemed to be not as bad as what Trump did consensually with stormmy Daniels I don't get it right now there there is no sense to it Beyond which obviously this is such a stretch of criminal law I mean even people who are honest on the left will acknowledge this is the first time these statutes have ever been used in this way well if you're going after a former president of the United States who happens to be leading in the polls against the current president of the United States you better do better than this is a unique interpretation of law that's being brought for the very first time that's totally insane it better be a well-established Corpus of law that has been clearly violated in a unique way and that is not what happened here do you think Trump will win in November I do I I think that if this if if Donald Trump there's always the Proviso if Donald Trump can keep his trap somewhat shut he's going to win because if this is a referendum on Joe Biden's leadership Joe Biden is falling apart there's an article in the Wall Street Journal that just said the obvious today about how Joe Biden is effectively scile everybody around him knows it you can read that in the Time Magazine interview that he just did where he stumbles all over himself he mixes up Russia he mixes up China he mix up South Korea and Taiwan all in the course of one interview there's a reason the doj his doj won't release tape of his interviews with Robert her apparently interviews so bad that they basically allowed him off the hook in his own criminal case with regard to mishandling of classified documents because he was so daughtering and so elderly that he might be too sympathetic to to a jury if this is a referendum on Joe Biden's leadership Donald Trump will win if Donald Trump makes himself the center of the election then that's a dicee issue for him obviously do you feel slightly depressed that this is the choice that your country has got again Biden Trump I mean I think that like most American voters you know this wouldn't been my optimal I I didn't vote for Donald Trump in the primaries I am financially supporting him in this election right I I'm fundraising for Donald Trump because Joe Biden in my opinion cannot be president he is just that bad a president and he should not be occupying the White House I know what a Donald Trump presidency looks like and that's a lot of wild rhetoric and a lot of pretty good policy and I know what a Joe Biden presidency looks like and that is basically oatmeal in the mouth and terrible policy the I mean it is a a strange election I can remember feeling in 2016 I was absolutely sure Trump would win because I could feel it this time it's interesting there a Reuters poll came out and it said that 10% of registered Republicans and 25% registered Independence were now less inclined to vote for Trump since these verdicts came in but at the same time he's raised over $200 million according to Eric Trump uh for The Campaign which is a staggering amount of money so clearly the base has been massively surging on the back of this with their Fury but at the same time is it concerning for him that even some of his own party now feel less inclined to vote for him you know less inclin ain't I'm not going to vote for him less inclined is less inclined I don't think you find a lot of Democrats right now who are massively inclined to vote for Joe Biden I mean the lack of enthusiasm in the American public for this electoral cycle is absolutely palpable which Cuts in Donald Trump's favor by the way because a lower turnout election is how Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 in 2020 he had an unprecedented jump of 22 million additional voters in the voting pool between 2016 and 2020 and those cut largely for Joe Biden many of those were in the early balloting obviously via mail and ballots that same thing is not going to happen this time Joe Biden in a low turnout election has got a very serious problem on his hands that's why he keeps trying to you know go back to his base it's why he is now being forced to campaign in the black community which presumably normally Democrats are going to win that 9010 they're afraid that he might lose 15 20% of the black he doesn't even have to do that if he doesn't get heavy black turnout in this election cycle he probably loses in the swing States is there any chance that he that he is persuaded to stand aside and if he does is there any Democrat out there that you would fear very unlikely he would stand aside he's made very clear I mean he literally threatened to fight a Time Magazine reporter two days ago who asked him about that to which I say I I'll watch that televised like 10 out of 10 would watch that fight but he's G he's not going to stand if he were to stand aside KLA Harris is a much worse option for the Democrats than even Joe Biden is the only person who I fear is a republican coming in from the wings and I think everybody knows this is Michelle Obama and Michelle Obama does have a very high level of popularity in the United States she's widely seen as sort of an Oprah likee figure despite the fact that she is fairly radical politically so that that'd be the one I'd fear but she seems to have no inclination to want to do that plus Joe Biden is not going to step aside now again I think the possibility of a serious health event between now and November is really high because I subscribe to a political philosophy that says that the rule about Czech off's gun that if it's over The Mantel in act one it will be used by act two I think that that's descriptive not normative so I think there's a really good shot that the thing we've all been waiting for which is some sort of serious health event to happen to Joe Biden unfortunately I have a feeling that's going to happen before November i' I've got a a bad feeling he just doesn't look at all well to me or functioning properly as as a as a human being on that level It's just sad to watch who's the smart play for Trump as as his running mate I I think anybody who gives a feeling of solidity for Trump so there there's been some talk about Tim Scott I think Tim Scott would be fine I think Senator Tom Cotton from Arkansas would be fine I I think you know Nikki Haley although the base doesn't like Nikki Haley very much she obviously has appeal to centrists in the polling so you could see a world where Trump isn't going to lose his Bas his Bas going to show up to vote for Donald Trump so politically speaking putting aside whatever disagreements I or anybody else has with Nikki Haley she would not be a bad pick for that political position Doug bergham North the like bottom line I don't think I don't think that vice presidential candidates win you an election I do think a bad vice presidential candidate can really hurt you electorally which is why Joe Biden being saddled with Camala Harris is really bad because she's the first VP candidate that people have looked at in a while and go whoa she might actually be president and that's the person who he's running with well what's incredible is that that he insisted on having a black woman as his vice president and their approval ratings with the black community in America have been plummeting and migrating to a guy they spent years saying is the biggest racist in the country yeah well I mean the the fact is that Joe Biden has been relegated to Simply pandering and pandering and pandering at this point I he went to morous college and he suggested to brand new college graduates that they were facing an intractably racist America in which they could never succeed you saying this to people at their graduation from college a really uplifting message from the president of the United States again I think that him attempting to relieve student loan debt I think that many of his policies in the Middle East a lot of what Joe Biden is doing right now is geared to trying to reinus a very unenthusiastic base yeah I agree let's turn to the Middle East um I know you have very passionate strong feelings about all this where do you think we are with the War I mean if you're if you're being completely honest with yourself perhaps do you feel it's reaching a point where Israel has to at some stage do some kind of deal well I mean it depends on the kind of deal that would be on the table presumably any deal that leaves Hamas in power in the Gaza Strip would not be acceptable to the Israeli government no matter who was leading the Israeli government at this point no government in Israel could stand on the basis of that after October 7th and so far as I'm aware Kamas has not accepted any deal that involves Hamas actually leaving power its leaders going into Exile and Israel not completely pulling out of the Gaza Strip so again there is no deal on the table like that I think the realistic scenario here is that Israel because of all the pressure is going to go slower in Rafa than they otherwise would have which frankly I think it's bad policy for the Israelis I think it's bad policy for the West this thing could have been over back in March if the West had let Israel find kind of finish the job in Rafa and then move on to whatever the next thing is and of course that's the other big problem you and I have discussed this before what is the next thing who's willing to take responsibility for the situation in the Gaza Strip other than the Israeli militar it's not the Americans not the UAE not the jordanians not the Saudis not the Egyptians none of whom by the way will accept any Palestinian refugees under any circumstances good or bad so yeah again that's an impracticable problem but as far as finishing off Kamas as a functioning well-organized military machine the final step of that is finishing things off in Rafa where there's still at least three battalions of Kamas fighters in Rafa of course the biggest problem for Israel right now actually may not militarily be in the South the biggest problem for Israel right now is militarily in the north where has really been upping the anti yeah they they obviously believe that their pressure up north is going to force Israel into concessions down south and they believe that the West is going to continue to pressure Israel even the in the face of increasingly deadly fire aimed from Southern Lebanon into Northern Israel see where I was slightly to take issue with you with this situation with Rafa is that the American intelligence is clear that they believe that hamas's ability to commit anything like October the 7th again has been completely degraded they no longer see them as a existential threat of any kind to Israel and that of course you've got hundreds of thousands of innocent women and kids in this refugee camp and you've also got the remaining members of Hamas deliberately put putting themselves around refugees and almost I would imagine hoping that Israel continues to bomb because each time they land a bomb tents will catch fire and 50 more civilians get killed and more appr probium Reigns on Israel's Head and that there's a kind of no win scenario there and the ultimate gain that gets uh Israel to finish off Hamas in in Rafa will be completely negated by the downside of so many more civilians being killed do you believe that the American intelligence is correct that Hamas has now been degraded to the extent where there's no actual military point in continuing this well that that's a massive moving of the goal posts remember the original goal of the war was to extrap Hamas as the ruling Authority in the Gaza Strip because they had built hundreds of kilometers of Terror tunnels and they had access but I I agree Hamas should be I agree Hamas can't return let's agree that Hamas can't return to power I don't think that is remotely ever going to be allowed to happen and I would be to totally supportive of Israel but do not think that now is a moment for the deal to be done and how obstructive to that deal is Netanyahu who Biden made pretty explicit that he believes a lot of the reason he's continuing the war is that at the end of it he's out of a job because Israelis want him to be held accountable for what happened even though they support the war effort well that that's well the polling does say that a few thing one one that's that's wishcasting that's wishcasting right over the Grand Canyon that exists where Hamas actually cuts a deal because there has to be somebody on the side that deal understand I'm just saying whether you think that so I think Hamas have got to go I also think that Netanyahu has to go and I also think that smri and mavir in that cabinet are spewing rhetoric and which plays into the hands of people who think Israel is being genocidal which I don't think they are and I think it's a ridiculous label to put aside them but when you hear those guys talk I I would it look I'm not Jewish I'm not an Israeli but I would be uncomfortable that that they have another agenda going on here and that this not doesn't reflect what they're not part of the war cabinet I mean the the immediate War cabinet right now I mean just to get technical the immediate War cabinet in Israel is Netanyahu his defense minister y Galant who's a member of lud and Benny Gans who's a member of his own party and the chief rival to Netanyahu for the prime ministership so that government still exists that may collapse in terms of the war cabinet the actual sitting government of the state of Israel is of course a coalition government that does include right-wing parties who are calling on Netanyahu to finish the job but again if there were an optimal situation where Hamas leaves where H where the the leadership of Hamas goes into Exile and where some form of gazen native leadership is brought up to Bear Israel I think pretty much along all lines with maybe the exception of SMR and benav would be totally willing to do that that deal is not on the table I can't say this enough what Joe Biden has been doing right now is actually an incredibly incredibly dishonest tactic he essentially walked out a deal that was vague on the central point of the negotiation which is whether Hamas would go and how and then he proclaimed that Israel had accepted it and then he proclaimed that Israel should accept it so question if this was Israel's offer as Joe Biden suggested that it was originally last Friday why is he encouraging the Israelis to accept it they made the offer when was the last time you made an offer Piers that somebody then came back to you and said Piers will you accept the offer that you just made if you make an offer typically you're the one who made the offer and yet all the pressure right now seems to be brought to bear on the Israeli government in the hope that presumably it will break the internal Coalition in Israeli Politics the the truth is that right now the Biden Administration is putting an extraordinary focus on getting rid of Netanyahu significantly more focused than they are on getting rid of Hamas unfortunately because the reality is Hamas is not going to surrender Hamas is not going to give up the hostages so long as the hostages are the thing protecting them they think from being ousted in the Gaza Strip the minute they give up the hostages the reason they haven't gone through this multi-stage deal is because the minute they give up the remaining hostages there is no reason for Israel not to ex at them and finish them off and the reports from Israel are that that sinir who's the military leader of Kamas still sitting in the Gaza Strip has surrounded himself personally with the remaining living hostages so again this is an intractable situation only military pressure is going to end whatever rule Kamas has of the Gaza Strip Kamas as you and I both agree cannot be the governing party in Gaza nor should it be part of a selection Committee in terms of the government in Gaza which is something that had been floated before the idea was that the PA and Hamas Were Somehow going to form a coalition government which is insane i i i on that I completely agree but should Netanyahu stay in power at the end of this I mean I think that the the Coalition likely When The War is Over will in fact collapse and I think that you probably will see a new election at that point but Netanyahu is not the obstacle to quote unquote peace or a ceasefire the obstacle would be the terrorist group currently holding hostages including American citizens women in the elderly who runs Gaza after this I mean it depends Hamas has literally been killing the people who are bringing in the humanitarian AIDS there was a a gazen family that was working with the Israelis and working with the International Community to get Aid in and Hamas literally went and killed them so if Israel can identify locals who are willing to do local rule as has been the case in some parts of the West Bank for years and years and years then presumably Israel will do that the question is is there anyone there again politics unfortunately is a series of bad decisions and worse decisions the Israelis want nothing less than to station 30 to 40,000 troops in Gaza for the duration they don't want that but the problem is they can't hand it back over to a population that is 70 to 80% supportive of October 7th in Kamas in the hopes that that population will suddenly moderate and become a full-fledged flourishing member of the International Community they tried that in 2005 2006 and they got October 7th for their troubles I mean they got October the 7th it was a heus terror attack it was fueled by an ideology are you comfortable that that ideology has been crushed or do you fear that it may just have been exacerbated by what's happened particularly given the very large civilian toll and the reality is that when it comes to crushing ideologies the only way to do that is to essentially clear and hold counterinsurgency strategy is going to have to be the tactic that is applied with regard to this there let's put it this way there has never been a a truly disgusting ideology that has been extrap simply through hoping praying and giving things away to the to the people who are promoting that idea ology that has never happened in the history of the world it turns out that massaging bad ideologies tends to make them more powerful and that the only way to get rid of ideologies unfortunately tends to be long-term commitments to change the situation on the ground that's what the British did for example in Malaya that is what the United States did in Germany and Japan and what you're watching right now with regard to the the perverse ideology that's been promoted in the Palestinian Authority and in the Gaza Strip is something that's going to take generations to remove is a two-state solution feasible in our lifetime I have a hard time seeing how unless there is a massive change in the opinions of the people who are living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and those opinions are not going to be bought off by temporary concessions that are made on a one toone basis or even by the idea of a quote unquote Palestinian State handed over to whom there's no government no borders and no actual citizenry given the fact that the Palestinian Authority and Kamas both claim that there's a quotequote right of return for all of the Palestinians who are living in these areas meaning that they would get to become citizens of the state of Israel so again this is it's an intractable problem with the series of of goals that are totally unrealistic in the real world so you know until Things become realistic I tend to believe they are unrealistic as we're talking the uh well it's not an invasion of Rafa clearly yet but the attacks are going to continue netanyahu's made that clear if there are many more incidents like the one the other day where 50 civilians end up being killed as a consequence of two Hamas terrorists being taken out how many of those can Israel sustain before public opinion globally really does turn on them in a massively bigger scale well I mean I think public opinion has turned on Israel to a large extent already so I think the only question for Israel is does it want to win the war or does it want to lose the war and as far as that particular incident Israel used literally the smallest bombs in its Arsenal to hit a site that was not inside the humanitarian protected area apparently had set off some sort of weapons cach that Hamas was keeping there and that's what led to the fire that killed a lot of people this is hamas's strategy Hamas has been using civilian sites to hide Weaponry to hide its own fighters the entire construction of this war was predicated on that idea if the new idea in fighting war is that if terrorists are even more evil than you thought they were they're going to hide behind women and children and they're going to hide themselves among civilians and hide weapons there that this somehow amounts to like safe in tag then all you're going to get from here on in is Insurgency strategy that relies on the humanitarian impulses of the West in order for terrorists to survive and thrive but on that incident you're right they didn't use massive missiles as was originally thought to be the case the smaller 37 pounds I understand but but the the damage that was caused by the repercussions of that attack were enormous and 50 people is an enormous number of people to be killed and the truth is if you're attacking terrorists in the area of a refugee camp this is going to keep happening that's why I was always extremely against the idea of attacking them in Rafa because that is of course where Israel everybody and so yeah a lot of them have moved on to another place to be fair Israel has also cleared Israel against against the opinions of the West Israel has cleared some 1 million people from Rafa and moved them outside of Rafa in hundreds of thousand said was loss and they're all living around and there will be hundreds of thousands more who will move right I mean listen it's it's all a tragic scenario but if the idea appears is that Israel cannot attack anyone who just opposed to civilians then you are against literally all retaliation or military action that Israel has taken since October 7th since that's literally come out his entire strategy this has been going on another 75 years this this conflict right back to the late 40s well it's been going on longer than that but yes I obious you can go back you know thousands of years of course but this particular phase of it if you like um you know I remember I often do the parallel it's obviously not exactly the same but there are parallels with Northern Ireland and what went on there for many decades where a lot of blood was shed on both sides and eventually new leadership came together together on all sides and the Americans helped obviously and peace was was found they did learn to live with each other and the killing stopped but you seem a lot more pessimistic about that being able to happen between Palestinians and Israelis yes why because the goal of the northern the goal of the IRA was never to extrap the UK from complete existence their goal was not to completely destroy Great Britain as an entire entity and the murder of all of her citizens that is a very different goal than the goals of say Hamas the terror arm obviously of the of the pseudo nationalist Palestinian movement I say pseudo nationalist because the goal actually is not a state in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip as Kamas has made clear it's a state in Tel Aviv and kifa and Jerusalem and all the rest so yeah again these these conflicts are not particularly comparable the the tactics are not particularly comparable and unfortunately the the conflict is significantly more intable even than the conflict between the IRA and the British government do you feel that Israel is being singled out in a negative way for the way it's executed this war compared for example how the Allies went after Isis and other Terror groups of course I mean by by the statistics provided by a combination of the Gaza Ministry of Health which would be Hamas and the Israeli government Israel currently has the lowest ratio of Terror to civilian casualties in terms of death ratios terrorist kill to civilian casualties of any army in the history of modern warfare and yet Israel has been treated by the media as though there's an ongoing genocide a desire by Israel to destroy millions of people which by the way Israel does have the military capacity to do if it were so evily inclined which it is not obviously Israel has been singled out in a way that no other Force fighting an entrenched terror group has been singled out during my lifetime but that's not a particular shock because there is a perverse moral equivalence that tends to apply in the western media with regard to Israel instead of seeing Israel as a repository of Western values in a very unfriendly region of the world there's been this sort of post Colonial idea that Israel is a European Colonial outlet and that basically what's happening in Israel and Gaza is more like say the Algerian War than it is like a war for the existence of a of a population that has historic tide to the Homeland and a right to exist how has it been for you personally because you you're a very high-profile Jewish man you've taken very strident views about this since the War Began I know the the kind of stuff I've been on the receiving end from both sides at various stages of this for hosting debates and both sides accusing me of being against them and so on it's been pretty vicious pretty awful a lot of death threats and so on you must have had exactly the same how have you dealt with that you know 247 security helps um but you know the the reality is that you social media is mind poison to a certain extent and uh and I try to use it as an outlet for for pushing views that I think are worthwhile and then log off because if you if you read the comments never read the comments as you know Piers the comments are the worst place to be what do you make of the media landscape uh generally at the moment because people like you like me like Joe Rogan like Jordan Peterson there's a whole kind of new world outside of conventional mainstream media I read last week that 10% of Americans uh now spend their TV watching time on the YouTube app on their Smart TVs which struck me as a very striking statistic what do you think's happening here I mean there is definitely a lack of trust in the Legacy Media that has been extraordinarily well earned there's a reason that the Washington Post was losing tens of millions of dollars every single quarter the the big question for independent operators like us like you peers is going to be that we still exist sort of at the sufferance of many of these big social media companies how long will the social media companies actually allow the distribution of speech that they don't particularly like how how wide are they going to allow their Overton window to be that is a constant ongoing concern I know for our company I'm sure for you as well because there's going to be a Temptation by a lot of these social media companies under political pressure to Simply dispense with news and political commentary altogether or to shut it off and in order to avoid the controversy yeah I mean and the one who's sort of fighting against that is Elon Musk what do you make of his tenure X so far I mean listen I I think that Elon buying Twitter was a signal act in favor of the public good and I can have quibbles about the way that Twitter is run about the comment section about safety in terms of you know stuff that pornography and the comments and all that sort of thing but the general overarching Free Speech concerns that musk seems to take incredibly seriously to the think are desat in the name of fre speech I think that is an overwhelming I mean had a bit of a falling out with him over Alex Jones you know he canceled an interview that we had planned because he didn't like me criticizing him for letting Alex Jones back on but I pointed out he had initially said he wasn't going to let him back on and then did is there do you have a line if you were running X you have a line of people that you wouldn't let on would it include Alex Jones I mean so so the truth is that if I were if I were running X in the way that Elon says he wants to Public Square it depends on your concept of what you think this company is if it's Public Square Alex Jones should be on it and so should the AY and so should people who I think are truly evil out there I I think that a Public Square is a Public Square and you can't discriminate based on Viewpoint generally speaking unless you break the law which is the stance that Elon I think is trying to take if it were up to me I'd you know run it like my company which means that there's an Overton window and inside that Overton window are a series of views many of which I disagree with but I think contribute to the public discourse and then there are views that I don't and I don't think that there's like an amazing hard and fast line there I think Elan is doing an admirable job of trying to find a clear bright line for what's allowed and what's not allowed but as we've seen with all of these social media platforms it's very difficult to Define that in any serious and clear way and so to a certain extent you always end up with a bit of a cotti under a palm tree sort of discerning what you like and what you don't you pretty much I think could hold your own in a debate with anyone my team have been desperate to try and get you to debate Norman felstein is there a particular a reason you're resisting our advances I'm not sure I'm not sure that we've particularly resisted your advances peers but I'm happy to take a look at the schedule would you have any any principle would you object to debating with him I mean I I generally object to debating with people who say that that October 7th warmed every fiber of their being I don't think that Norman finlen is a particularly honest interlocutor so I do have objections along those lines I think I have moral objections to that I don't think that every debate is particularly worthwhile I don't Norman finlin and particularly be a a valuable source of information that's not a no though it's definitely not a no it is also not a yes so I'll have to consider that one what is your your next move Ben because I've been watching you for the last few years with great interest a bigger Mar of what you've done um you've built a very successful media Empire with all sorts of different strands do you have a big grand plan I mean I think that our plan is to continue to expand where we can and then I think that we want to Branch out into different and new areas obviously we have a series of product lines that we think are pretty successful we'd like to expand into those areas we want to impact culture we have a a children's Programming Network that we haven't really marketed to its full extent yet in bent key so we have a lot of aspirations to shape the culture and the politics of the world obviously you know growth is is the number one prerequisite for that so when it comes to you know the the running of the company I'll leave that in the hands of the people who actually run the company my business partners Jeremy boring and Caleb Robinson are you optimistic about America going forward uh I'm not an optimistic person as you as you can tell here so I'm I'm never particularly optimistic about the state of things or where they are going I will say that I I think that decline as Charles Crow Haman said is a choice and I think it's a choice that can be reversed by an American people who are reinvigorated with the spirit of the founding and Who start to actually look back at the ideas that made the country great in the first place and you're not tempted to go into politics yourself really affect that change dude that sounds so terrible I can't even express to you how terrible that sounds although I I I I would imagine they they would have a difficult time criminally Prosecuting me I overpay my taxes and I'm an orthodox Jew who lives the cleanest personal lifestyle is possible to live that said anything's possible again I won't take that as I know uh Ben jair great to catch up with you thank you very much thanks P appreciate it

Channel: Piers Morgan Uncensored

Views: 653,989

Keywords: piers morgan, piers morgan uncensored, interview, debate, piers morgan debate, piers morgan interview, Rafah, Hamas, Gaza, Palestine, Israel, piers morgan israel, piers morgan palestine, october 7, pierce morgan, humus, hummus, peirs morgan, Ben Shapiro, ben shapiro, shapiro, biden, joe biden, joe biden senile, dementia, joe biden dementia, trump trial, middle east, two state, ceasefire, israel deal, peace deal, palestine peace, cease fire, norman finkelstein, hillary clinton

Id: pNMJGR5OVqo

Length: 35min 32sec (2132 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 05 2024