Speaker 1: There comes a time in the life of every podcaster
Speaker 1: when he has to introduce the show that he's doing,
Speaker 1: and this is that moment for me. Robert Evans, host
Speaker 1: of Behind the Bastards, the podcast where we talk about
Speaker 1: terrible people. Normally, this is a show where we give
Speaker 1: it a tail history of an awful person's life. But
Speaker 1: today we're doing something special. Today, due to the massive,
Speaker 1: outrageous clamoring popular demand, we are continuing with our investigation
Speaker 1: into True Allegiance, the fictional novel debut of one Benethan Shapiro.
Speaker 1: Here with me today to talk about this this opus
Speaker 1: are my co hosts, Cody Johnston and Katie Stole. Hello everybody,
Speaker 1: how are you doing to that? Hello? Hello, thrilled to
Speaker 1: everybody out there in radio. I took a more serious
Speaker 1: tact with the intro because I think it's important to
Speaker 1: really he set the tone of the gravity that that
Speaker 1: this book demands from the reader. Oh yeah, we're serious
Speaker 1: people delving into a very serious book by a very
Speaker 1: serious person. You've covered a lot of serious, serious bad
Speaker 1: guys in your time on the show, but I don't
Speaker 1: think there's anything more serious than what we're about to
Speaker 1: embark on. No, no, and I think that, Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I've I've read a lot of books about human conflict
Speaker 1: and war. You know, books by people like Kurt Vonneguet,
Speaker 1: who would would what what experience did Kurt Vonnegut have
Speaker 1: to write about any of this stuff? He survived a
Speaker 1: bombing or something. Ben Shapiro is the man that I
Speaker 1: want to hear talk about the serious issues because I
Speaker 1: know when Ben talks about, for example, the war in
Speaker 1: Afghanistan or the crack trade in Detroit, Michigan, that he
Speaker 1: is writing from a position of deep personal understanding and
Speaker 1: authority exactly exactly and empathy and empathy. Yeah, he Uh,
Speaker 1: He's had a lot of harrowing experiences getting ratioed online.
Speaker 1: So he has a lot of getting ratioed online was
Speaker 1: his Afghanistan And Afghanistan was the war that he suggested
Speaker 1: people killed children in. Uh. He did that when he
Speaker 1: was eighteen. Someone let him write write a fucking column
Speaker 1: where he said, why do we care about civilian casualties
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan? So I'm very excited to see where this
Speaker 1: book goes. I love precocious kids. Yeah, they say the
Speaker 1: wildest thing we talked. I think a tiny bit about Lavan,
Speaker 1: who is the one of the two villains. The two
Speaker 1: villains of the of the of Ben Shapiro's book are
Speaker 1: the president who wants everybody to have a job and uh,
Speaker 1: and that makes the president of Nazi. And then of
Speaker 1: course there's Levi on Um who is uh the black
Speaker 1: character and is also of course a crack trading gang dealer.
Speaker 1: Um oh, wait is um is the president in this
Speaker 1: not black? No? No, he's not. No. That would have
Speaker 1: been two on the sneaky seat with fiction, Cody. You
Speaker 1: gotta separate some things. So you have a black president
Speaker 1: who you don't like and trust, you separate him into
Speaker 1: a white president you don't like and trust and a
Speaker 1: crack dealer in Detroit. Yeah, the duality of man. It's
Speaker 1: basic storytelling rules, classic storytelling rules, Chekhov's racism. Okay, so um,
Speaker 1: now we open. I noted that Levan's chapter first chapter
Speaker 1: opens up with Detroit was a ship hole, but it
Speaker 1: was his ship hole. So you know that right away.
Speaker 1: You're coming from the perspective of somebody who understands the
Speaker 1: place he's talking about. Don't like the Detroit shade is
Speaker 1: gonna put it out there, don't like it now, of course,
Speaker 1: Levan's neighborhood includes eight Mile Road because Ben Shapiro saw
Speaker 1: the movie eight Mile and literally the only thing he
Speaker 1: knows about Detroit is that it includes eight Mile Road,
Speaker 1: and it is the not have as much money as
Speaker 1: other places. Great soundtrack. Oh, I'm do you think he
Speaker 1: has memorized all the words to lose yourself? Yes? Yes,
Speaker 1: does it in the mirror? Yeah, that's Ben Shapiro has.
Speaker 1: Like when he I can imagine him getting up in
Speaker 1: the morning and like drinking a bunch of raw eggs,
Speaker 1: and like putting on like a hoodie, a sleeveless hoodie,
Speaker 1: and like going out to hit a boxing bag. Is
Speaker 1: like that song starts to really pump and then he
Speaker 1: punches it once and he starts crying because he's hurt
Speaker 1: his little fist. Well, I see it punching it and
Speaker 1: it swings back and hits him. But you're right, maybe
Speaker 1: both things happen one of the two. So yeah. Quote
Speaker 1: from Benny. The stores dotting at Mile Road itself formed
Speaker 1: a steady depressing pattern. Liquor store, auto part store, burned out,
Speaker 1: hulk boarded up shop, hair salon, repeat, adfinitum. Every once
Speaker 1: in a while and Otto Lot broke up the monotony,
Speaker 1: or perhaps a music store, but that was about it.
Speaker 1: What idiot would open up in one of the least
Speaker 1: police streets in America, leve On would. And of course
Speaker 1: the shop he's opened up sells crack. Um. Yeah, oh,
Speaker 1: it sells crap. That's where you don't get your crack
Speaker 1: is us. It's a barbershop where mostly filled with older
Speaker 1: black men. Uh barbershop, you say, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And then the back room is where he sells crack.
Speaker 1: I'm just waiting for like him to like I have
Speaker 1: expected when he's saying, like, I'm from Detroit, I live
Speaker 1: in Harlem, in Compton, in Detroit. Yes, he's just like like,
Speaker 1: yes he lives. He lives in the neighborhood of yeah, Compton, Detroit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Jesus Ben Okay. So there's a little line here about
Speaker 1: since he and he live on and his crew shuttle
Speaker 1: crack cocaine that drugged gout out of style. In the
Speaker 1: mid nineties things to the federal crackdown on crack dealers,
Speaker 1: Black politicians had been the biggest advocates of putting crack
Speaker 1: dealers on a different footing than powder cocaine dealers at
Speaker 1: the time, nobody wanted to deal crack anymore, but Levon
Speaker 1: care due to a select population. So number one, that's
Speaker 1: actually just just not true. The evidence suggests that a
Speaker 1: lot of white people stopped doing crack so much is
Speaker 1: that crack is really really toxic on your body, And
Speaker 1: younger people watched what it did too older people, to
Speaker 1: people who were older than them, to their older brothers
Speaker 1: and stuff, and we're like, nah, I don't want that, uh,
Speaker 1: because that's has more of an impact that just throwing
Speaker 1: people in prison. But I I don't expect Ben to
Speaker 1: have that take on things, so I did. Yeah, We're
Speaker 1: about a page and a half into the Bonds chapter
Speaker 1: when Ben describes how big Levan is. It's six ft
Speaker 1: three and two pounds of shredded muscle. Levon cut an
Speaker 1: imposing figure. Walking into other stores on the block, they
Speaker 1: immediately when quiet when he came in. When he told
Speaker 1: them he'd graduated from the U of M, they got
Speaker 1: even quieter. This kid was brutal and smart. They knew, Um,
Speaker 1: I'm just that's excellent. That's excellent. Then I'm I'm reminded
Speaker 1: of um. Weirdly, the word articulate for some reason comes
Speaker 1: to Yeah, oh boy, here's Al Sharpton. Um, not Al Sharpton,
Speaker 1: he's the Reverend Jim Crawford, but he's Al Sharpton. Yeah God,
Speaker 1: come on man, Yeah, yeah, he's in he's in Levin's barbershop.
Speaker 1: Um to talk to him about a deal. Um yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: So he meets with this Al Sharpton character, and it's
Speaker 1: clear that like the Al Sharpton character wants to partner
Speaker 1: with him on some sort of complicated and cunning political
Speaker 1: scheme because of course that's what um, all of the
Speaker 1: black leaders in America have secret connections to crack dealers, um,
Speaker 1: and and want to work with them on. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then we get to a really a real fun
Speaker 1: moment here. So leave on and this guy are talking,
Speaker 1: and leave on. Quote Shakespeare. He says there is nothing
Speaker 1: either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. And
Speaker 1: of course, uh at the Al Sharpton standing doesn't recognize
Speaker 1: this quote, and so leave on. The educated, brutal guy says,
Speaker 1: it's Shakespeare. It means you'll learn to trust me. And
Speaker 1: then the al sharp and guy laughs and says, quit
Speaker 1: quoting or quoting dead honkeys. You'll be useful yet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's good. I think it's good too. Yeah, that's fun. Um,
Speaker 1: I was just listening and not Ben's white, so it's
Speaker 1: okay for him to write the word honky. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not sure if this is bad formatting or
Speaker 1: just Ben is bad at writing a book. But in
Speaker 1: the chapter that is le chap. Yeah, so this is
Speaker 1: Levan's chapter, right, And what you do if you're writing
Speaker 1: a book where every chapter takes the perspective of a
Speaker 1: different character, you expect that each of those chapters will
Speaker 1: be about a different like from the perspective of that character.
Speaker 1: But midway through this chapter, actually right after the line
Speaker 1: quoting dead honkys, you might be useful yet we switch
Speaker 1: perspective without switching chapters to a completely different character. A
Speaker 1: local cop named Ricky O'Sullivan. Yeah, that's cool. That's bad
Speaker 1: writing and bad formatting. Yeah. Yeah. So he's hanging out
Speaker 1: at an abandoned packard plant that looks like something out
Speaker 1: of Mad Max. Uh been Been describes it um, which
Speaker 1: is a known drug hangout, So that's why uh he's
Speaker 1: he's hanging out there as a cop, and I think
Speaker 1: he's about to shoot a black kid, that's the feeling
Speaker 1: I get. Um. Yeah, he gets a ten thirty one
Speaker 1: in progress sign uh and he rolls over. Grass had
Speaker 1: pushed its way through the cement of the lot. Graffiti
Speaker 1: marked the station, illiterate bubble letters. Oh. Sullivan had given
Speaker 1: up on trying to decode that ship long ago. And
Speaker 1: the lights on the street flickered eerily. So he gets
Speaker 1: into this scary situation. He shows up for a call,
Speaker 1: and then some kid called says, hey, Pig. The voice
Speaker 1: wasn't deep. It was the voice of a child. And
Speaker 1: the kid stood outside the door of the quick mart
Speaker 1: leg spread arms hanging down by his sides, a cute
Speaker 1: black kid wearing a Simpsons T shirt and somebody's old
Speaker 1: Converse sneakers and baggy jeans on his hips. Stuck in
Speaker 1: those baggy jeans was a pistol. It looked like a
Speaker 1: pistol anyway, but A Sullivan couldn't see clearly. The light
Speaker 1: wasn't right. He could see the bulge, but not the object.
Speaker 1: A Sullivan put his flashlight back on his belt and
Speaker 1: put his hand on his pistol, the greasy handles still
Speaker 1: warm to the touch. Stop right there, pig, the kid
Speaker 1: said his hand began to creep down towards his waistband a.
Speaker 1: Sullivan pulled the gun out of his holster, leveling it
Speaker 1: at the kid. Put your hands above your head, do
Speaker 1: it now, fuck you, honky. The kids shot back, Get
Speaker 1: the funk out of my neighbor. Boy. Yeah, I feel
Speaker 1: like Ben really has his finger on the pulse on
Speaker 1: you know how black people speak. Yeah, So this goes on,
Speaker 1: and the kid says, you ain't gonna shoot me, pig,
Speaker 1: and the cop, who's clearly a nice guy, does everything
Speaker 1: he possibly can to try to avoid Oh jesus um,
Speaker 1: just like how that works in real life. This is
Speaker 1: a depiction of how how it happens. Yeah. In the
Speaker 1: retraining sessions at the station, they told officers to remember
Speaker 1: the nash nasty racial history legacy of the department, be
Speaker 1: aware of the community's justified suspicion of police. Right now,
Speaker 1: all Sullivan was thinking about was getting this kid with
Speaker 1: the empty eyes to back the funk off. The empty eyes,
Speaker 1: empty eyes, Oh my god, empty eyed kid. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this is like, this is an eight year old Oh
Speaker 1: my god, Ben, No, oh no, oh god. I turned
Speaker 1: the page. Okay, I'm gonna read for a spell. Here y'all. Suddenly,
Speaker 1: Oh Sullivan's head filled with sudden clarity, his brain with
Speaker 1: a pretter natural energy. He recognized the feel of the
Speaker 1: adrenaline hitting. He was going to get He wasn't. He
Speaker 1: wasn't going to get shot on the corner of Iowa
Speaker 1: and Van Dyke, outside a shitty convenience store and a
Speaker 1: shitty town by some eight year old bleed out in
Speaker 1: the gutter of some city the world left behind. He
Speaker 1: had a life too. The gun felt alive in his hands.
Speaker 1: In his hand, the gun was life. The muzzle was
Speaker 1: aimed dead at the kid's chest, no way to miss
Speaker 1: with the kid this close, just ten feet away, maybe
Speaker 1: still cloaked in the shadow of the gas station overhang.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, they have another interaction where he says
Speaker 1: get on your knees and the kid says, fuck you,
Speaker 1: and this is like the third time that's happened. And
Speaker 1: then the kid says, I'll cap your ass, and then
Speaker 1: he shoots the kid. There is that We're getting at
Speaker 1: a couple of things. The first sentence. Suddenly, his head
Speaker 1: was filled with a sudden energy or something like that.
Speaker 1: It's writing one a one. You don't use the same
Speaker 1: word twice in the same sentence. Jesus christ Man. Also,
Speaker 1: I love going from you know, the idea this is
Speaker 1: a nice guy too. You know, clearly this character just
Speaker 1: wants to kill the kid. Yeah, the character wants to
Speaker 1: kill the kid. Ben doesn't understand what it's like to
Speaker 1: have adrenaline hit you in a situation like this. I
Speaker 1: can tell you if this, Yeah, it's not it's not
Speaker 1: like that. Um, it's it's not a sudden clarity for sure.
Speaker 1: That's also like a less charitable picture of cops. Then, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think he would want to have like just describing
Speaker 1: it as a moment of confusion and panic would be
Speaker 1: uh and more relatable than life. Yeah. Like I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm making a very deliberate choice with my very alert
Speaker 1: brain right now. Yeah. Also, I love just the whole
Speaker 1: the weird passage about like I'm not going to die
Speaker 1: here in this place that I've chosen to live, in
Speaker 1: this job that I've chosen to have, and like what
Speaker 1: like he had no option but to be a Detroit
Speaker 1: cup Like excuse me, oh god. I also like just
Speaker 1: the idea that like the kids like a eight years
Speaker 1: old apparently and saying I'm going to cap you and
Speaker 1: that's what makes him pull the trigger. Yes, and it's
Speaker 1: it's there's a lot that's wrong with this, but there
Speaker 1: is one, one, one thing I think actually been does
Speaker 1: get right. And I think he gets it right by accident. UM.
Speaker 1: But one of the honestly, anything gets right is always
Speaker 1: an accident. One of the big problems that we have
Speaker 1: with UM policing in the United States right now is
Speaker 1: that increasingly often the police in large cities do not
Speaker 1: live in those cities, like in the city of Portland, Oregon, UM,
Speaker 1: with the police regularly use excessive force on protest or
Speaker 1: something like two thirds to three quarters of the police
Speaker 1: in Portland don't live in the Portland city limits, like
Speaker 1: they live in a suburb or a town outside of
Speaker 1: Portland or something like that, UM, which is increasingly common
Speaker 1: all around the country and leads it reinforces the attitude
Speaker 1: that like, the police are separate from the community. UM.
Speaker 1: And that is a problem. And I think accidentally you
Speaker 1: do see the result of that is this guy instead
Speaker 1: of saying like, oh, this kid is a member of
Speaker 1: my community and I need to like to like talk
Speaker 1: with him and work it out, he's like, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to die in this ship the whole town. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so O'Sullivan murders an eight year old um and then realizes,
Speaker 1: uh that the gun in his waistband was a toy
Speaker 1: gun with an orange plastic tip. For a brief moment,
Speaker 1: Sullivan couldn't breathe. When he looked up, he saw them coming,
Speaker 1: dozens of them, the citizens of Detroit, coming out of
Speaker 1: the darkness, congregating. He could feel their eyes. Oh no,
Speaker 1: they're dead eyes all there. Everyone, everyone in the neighborhood's
Speaker 1: dead eyes staring at me articulately. Yeah. Uh, sorry to
Speaker 1: the cop. Yep, sorry to the cop. And I think
Speaker 1: from what other things I've read about this book that
Speaker 1: the kid was sent out there as part of a
Speaker 1: plot by Al Sharpton and uh the crack dealer in
Speaker 1: order to set up Yeah, it's a BLM type thing, right.
Speaker 1: BLM like sets these things up where by members of
Speaker 1: their community get murdered so that they can justify protests
Speaker 1: against the police. Been watched fourteen seconds of the Ferguson
Speaker 1: protests and decided he knew what was going down. That
Speaker 1: that's that's where that chapter came from. Uh so, yeah,
Speaker 1: next chapter is a character named Ellen and It starts
Speaker 1: with a dead kid who was murdered and the US
Speaker 1: Mexican border by coyotes. Um, so that's cool, just another
Speaker 1: fact fighting mission along the rio. Grand oh god, I
Speaker 1: love I just love that, like knowing everything we know
Speaker 1: about Ben and um knowing like his opinions, his demeanor. Um,
Speaker 1: I love that every single sentence of this needs to
Speaker 1: be read like this. Yeah, yeah, and it it okay.
Speaker 1: So yeah. Over the last year had seen an up
Speaker 1: sudden upsurge in the number of children attempting to cross
Speaker 1: the border without papers. Not all we're children. A surprising
Speaker 1: number of the unaccompanied miners were of gang age, somewhere
Speaker 1: between fourteen gang agee. Well, no, actually, Cody Ben Ben,
Speaker 1: being a great writer, immediately tells us that it's between
Speaker 1: fourteen and seventeen. That's what. So is that exclusive? So
Speaker 1: I'm I'm too old to join a gang? Then yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: gangs kick you out at a j teen. Yeah, then
Speaker 1: you gotta go work with Al Sharpton. Yep, well, okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 1: What are you gonna do when your kids reach gang age? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta really watch out for those kids when they
Speaker 1: hit gang age. Those gangs are going to come for him.
Speaker 1: It gets more ridiculous. So after he says that gang
Speaker 1: ages is somewheretween fourteen seventeen, some had tattoos, many were
Speaker 1: missing fingers, eyes, ears. Law enforcement thought the smugglers had
Speaker 1: mut mutilated the kids and sent their body parts back
Speaker 1: to their parents for ransom. Uh what's this book about again? Uh?
Speaker 1: Everything that has been hates, which so far is not
Speaker 1: white people on borders in the inner cities. Do we
Speaker 1: have any liberals on Twitter yet? Uh? Good lord, I
Speaker 1: bet we'll get there. I bet there will be comments
Speaker 1: about social media. See Been understands is a great author
Speaker 1: that you want your book to be timeless, so you
Speaker 1: keep it vague by just saying social media or something. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, that's That's the way you make a worktime.
Speaker 1: Everyone logging into the website dot com, the site dot com.
Speaker 1: That's it. Do you know what won't killed children on
Speaker 1: the US Mexican border? Well, exactly. Yon guarantees that when
Speaker 1: they killed children on borders, there aren't enough left of
Speaker 1: those kids to ransom. That's the Raytheon guarantee. I'm on
Speaker 1: board again. Thank you, Cody. I knew I could trust
Speaker 1: on you to be ethical. Thank you Raytheon, Thank you Raytheon.
Speaker 1: We're back, We're back. We still haven't figured out who
Speaker 1: Ellen is. I don't think she's been introduced yet. She's
Speaker 1: just doing some sort of fact finding mission on the border,
Speaker 1: but I don't yet. Really. No, Ellen is a daytime
Speaker 1: talk show host that everyone loves but turns out is
Speaker 1: maybe unlikable. Yeah, this is not that Ellen, um, but
Speaker 1: I don't think she will be likable. Yeah, she's probably like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, and intrepid Breitebart type. That's great. Um, okay,
Speaker 1: so Ellen is. Ellen is the wife of UH combat
Speaker 1: General Brett Hawthorne. There, yeah, the standing for Ben. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Ellen's his wife, lucky lady, and she's angry because
Speaker 1: the governor of Texas Bubba Davis. Oh now that part
Speaker 1: proves that Ben has some understanding of Texas because Bubba
Speaker 1: Davis would do great in a Texas state classic. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, is this is this actually a screenplay for
Speaker 1: Slither like where Bubba Davis sounds like a sausage company?
Speaker 1: Yeah it does, and actually really start your day with
Speaker 1: a Bubba sausage? Such a day with a Bubba sausage? Yeah, yep.
Speaker 1: So Bubba Davis had asked the President for help, and
Speaker 1: the President had refused to take the governor's calls, which
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like anything that's happened recently that Ben hasn't
Speaker 1: complained about. Well, did Bubba try being nice to the president? Well,
Speaker 1: there we we go, exactly. Uh. So the President didn't
Speaker 1: talk to the governor about helping him with this problem
Speaker 1: of all these kids getting murdered on the border, which
Speaker 1: is the real problem of of of Uh, the US
Speaker 1: Mexican border is all the kids that get murdered on it,
Speaker 1: not anything else. That's that's the issue, um, is that
Speaker 1: these kids keep being murdered by these evil people smugglers. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the President refused to talk to the governor of
Speaker 1: Texas about this. He just talked on TV about how
Speaker 1: anyone who wanted to deport these children was racist. Uh.
Speaker 1: That bullshit didn't surprise Ellen one bit. She knew what
Speaker 1: Prescott would do to push forward his agenda. Her husband
Speaker 1: was stuck in Afghanistan and her marriage was a public joke.
Speaker 1: That was proof positive of that little proposition. I don't
Speaker 1: know why her marriage is a public joke. What I
Speaker 1: couldn't tell you could not it seems like a like
Speaker 1: a power couple, right, Like that's the whole point. Yeah again,
Speaker 1: bad writing. Oh, I keep forgetting that part. So she
Speaker 1: drives away from this dead kid that they're taking notes
Speaker 1: on for some kind of pretty unclear reason. And then
Speaker 1: dead kids in this book already Ben loves dead kids.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you were aware of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've seen his tweets, so yeah, yeah, so he realized.
Speaker 1: She realizes that she drives away from the real Grand
Speaker 1: after leaving. Yeah. Ellen first noticed the helicopter following her
Speaker 1: truck a few minutes after leaving the Rio Grand. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then to the water buddy. Yeah. Yes, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: wasn't a news helicopter. Ellen knew it was too decrepit
Speaker 1: for that obviously in nineteen eighties Model Cheap Black. She
Speaker 1: could see it through her window her review of mirror
Speaker 1: in the distance, and it was gaining. So she's being
Speaker 1: followed by There's another helicopter shows up, and soon it
Speaker 1: becomes clear that she's being uh falled by the evil
Speaker 1: news and then she gets it looks like she gets
Speaker 1: kidnapped by men with guns. Yeah. One of the men
Speaker 1: shouted something in Spanish at Ellen she held up her hands,
Speaker 1: just look non threatening. She told herself, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: she doesn't say hands up, don't shoot, does she? Yeah? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So uh they they expect her Ellen's friend um, and
Speaker 1: then kidnapped them. Uh dang it. Yepkay, yeah, so it
Speaker 1: looks like she's been kidnapped by the cartel. Um. So
Speaker 1: that's cool and this is good m hmm yeah, so great.
Speaker 1: So she drives off and manages to escape, and then
Speaker 1: we're back in Kabul, Afghanistan with another chapter about combat.
Speaker 1: General Bret Hawthorne Yeah yeah, it was shortly after midnight.
Speaker 1: The muddy puddle at his feet ran red with his blood.
Speaker 1: All he could think about was Ellen Ellen living there.
Speaker 1: This is a lot more fun if you think about
Speaker 1: it as the TV show host Ellen. I'm yep, he's
Speaker 1: never met her either. It's not like they're even acquaintances. Like,
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking of the TV show host Ellen. She
Speaker 1: would do that bit where she like trips over the
Speaker 1: sidewalk and looks back like don't trip over that, And
Speaker 1: that's how she she would charm her way out of
Speaker 1: this situation. It's like guess what I'm getting at, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: or like he's not even thinking of like modern day Ellen,
Speaker 1: like the famous dance. She's like thinking of like her
Speaker 1: sitcom with Jeremy thinking of he's thinking of Ellen that
Speaker 1: came out on TV. Yeah. Yeah, that's Brett Hawthorne, wounded
Speaker 1: and trapped in Afghanistan alone, is just thinking about the
Speaker 1: Ellen degenerous Jeremy Piven sitcom. Piven doesn't get enough credit
Speaker 1: for being so great on that Ellen sitcom that year ago.
Speaker 1: Truly did not realize that was Jeremy pivencom. This is uh, this,
Speaker 1: this episode is going in a new direction. So we
Speaker 1: get we get a lot of interesting statements by Ben
Speaker 1: here so so again combat General Brett Hawthorne is wounded
Speaker 1: and alone in Kabul and and the nights in are cold.
Speaker 1: Uh and the good news is that cold had helped
Speaker 1: stop the bleeding. Which interesting. Okay, okay, well yeah, just
Speaker 1: like just by virtue of being cold. Yeah, that's an
Speaker 1: interesting take. I I haven't heard before about gunshot wounds
Speaker 1: and just when the night gets kind of chilly but there,
Speaker 1: Well no, I mean you really, Robert, with all of
Speaker 1: your medic street training, you didn't know that just to
Speaker 1: stop blood flow, you just you put an ice cube
Speaker 1: on it. Yeah, you just hang out. There is something
Speaker 1: to say if you were to actually like put like
Speaker 1: a packet of ice on a bleeding wound, that wouldn't
Speaker 1: be the most effective way to staunch it, but I
Speaker 1: think it would eventually slow like the rate of blood loss.
Speaker 1: But he's just talking about being having an untreated gunshot
Speaker 1: wound out in a chilly night. And I don't think
Speaker 1: I left my joke backfired. Continue, No, no, no, it's
Speaker 1: it's okay, Katie, because everything about this book is a backfire.
Speaker 1: So Brett Hawthorne, as far as I can tell, hasn't
Speaker 1: treated his gunshot wound is at all, is keeping himself
Speaker 1: conscious by jamming the butt of his handgun into the
Speaker 1: wound because he's that much of a badass. How that's
Speaker 1: how I've fixed me. Yeah, Jesus Christ'll be better. So
Speaker 1: here we learned that Ben Shapiro really understands Kabul. At night,
Speaker 1: the streets emptied completely. Even the Taliban fighters didn't want
Speaker 1: to be in the open. They'd be in nearby apartment buildings,
Speaker 1: no doubt, huddled around their primitive fires. I mean that is,
Speaker 1: oh my god, primitive. Look. You don't have to say
Speaker 1: they're primitive. There's something jokes aside, so revolting about a
Speaker 1: white man who has clearly never been there trying to
Speaker 1: write about something he does not understand. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: an obvious thing, but just think about it. He hasn't
Speaker 1: gone there, he hasn't spent time researching. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: a few movies that are like this, and that is
Speaker 1: colored his entire opinion about what it's like. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he clearly like has a lack of understanding about how
Speaker 1: the Taliban works, like their monsters and everything. But like,
Speaker 1: right now we're seeing a situation that is as close
Speaker 1: as possible to analogus about like what he's talking about
Speaker 1: here with the war in Afghanistan like turns completely in
Speaker 1: the Taliban's favor. It's happening now. They're killing dozens of
Speaker 1: Afghan security forces a day. Um. But Ben is talking
Speaker 1: about how they've like destroyed all power to kabul Um basically,
Speaker 1: which hasn't happened because for one thing, part of how
Speaker 1: do you win an insurgency the way the Taliban has
Speaker 1: is you don't like deliberately piss off civilians for no
Speaker 1: good reason. Um, I would hold he framed them like
Speaker 1: primitive caveman, Robert, Yeah, exactly. Well you could just use
Speaker 1: the word primitive when you're describing them, Yeah, that would
Speaker 1: be that would be too obvious. Because it's a fire.
Speaker 1: It's necessary. It's like, okay, well it's primitive fire to like,
Speaker 1: these are primitive people, and I think they're all right, man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: these are Yeah, he he had to really emphasize how
Speaker 1: primitive and pitiful the Afghan people are. Um. So Brett's
Speaker 1: headed towards the airport because the airport he knew would
Speaker 1: still be in American hands. Um, yeah, he knew he'd
Speaker 1: but he knew he'd have to stay quiet. With the
Speaker 1: Taliban presumably running the place, there would be a bounty
Speaker 1: out for US soldiers. Every time he brushed his shattered
Speaker 1: arm against the wall, swollen to twice its normal size,
Speaker 1: he gasped in pain. Then reluctantly he took the magazine
Speaker 1: out of the gun and bit down on it. Hard
Speaker 1: better to crack a few teeth than to be featured
Speaker 1: on CNN being dragged through the streets, and an empty
Speaker 1: gun wouldn't be of any use to him anyway. Why
Speaker 1: is it still in your hand, then, ben? Um? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he here he compares it to the last helicopter
Speaker 1: out of Psaigon. Yadda YadA YadA. Um. So he gets
Speaker 1: to the gate and he realizes that the gates been
Speaker 1: blown wide open in the US air base in Afghanistan
Speaker 1: has been taken over by the Talifan, and all of
Speaker 1: the U S soldiers are dead. Yeah, so that's cool.
Speaker 1: The advanced soldiers and their primitive enemy. Yeah yeah, they'd
Speaker 1: somehow managed to to blow the gate open and execute
Speaker 1: all the survivors. Um, so that's awesome. Um, good, good
Speaker 1: for the Taliban. I guess you know you gotta you
Speaker 1: gotta support an underdog at times like this. Um. Blood
Speaker 1: covered the floor, the walls, Its slicked the floor at
Speaker 1: like oil at a transmission shop. Okay, say I need
Speaker 1: you to say that sentence again. Please. Blood covered the floor,
Speaker 1: the walls, It slicked the floor like oil at a
Speaker 1: transmission shop. Transmission shop, another place Ben has never been,
Speaker 1: like what a mechanics shop is like just the floors
Speaker 1: coated in oil all the time, Like just like you
Speaker 1: repeating yourself, like it's covered, it's covered. Also it's flicked,
Speaker 1: like just do pick one do the second part? Do
Speaker 1: the metaphor that you're trying to do. Yeah, whatever, it's
Speaker 1: it's awesome. Um. So yeah, they the Taliban who have
Speaker 1: been Brett tells us is sure to tell us our
Speaker 1: fucking animals, um have tortured all of the people that
Speaker 1: they captured horribly before killing them. Um. Which is interesting
Speaker 1: because one time when they captured a US soldier, they
Speaker 1: kept him alive for like five years and he was
Speaker 1: eventually ransom back to the United States. Um. And they
Speaker 1: were pretty bad to him, but they didn't uh torture
Speaker 1: him to death just for fun, because that's not productive.
Speaker 1: But you know, been been been understands the Taliban, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he gets it. You know who doesn't torture people? The
Speaker 1: United States of America. Never. Never, I don't think that's
Speaker 1: ever happened. Um. So now, okay, finally, eight or nine
Speaker 1: hours after getting his wound, Bret Hawthorne decides to set
Speaker 1: his arm to like actually treat his his shattered and
Speaker 1: gunshot riddled arm. So that's that's when you do that.
Speaker 1: That's the time. That's the time for it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's good. So he can tell by looking at it
Speaker 1: that there's no internal bleeding um that. But the arm
Speaker 1: is swollen and it's bulging. Yeah, if he left the
Speaker 1: broken bone hanging around inside, it would cut an artery
Speaker 1: sooner or later. Ben Shapiro medical expert here, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: doctor his wife and doctor honey honey. Uh does this
Speaker 1: sound realistic? You know I'm putting it in anyway. I
Speaker 1: love it because like he definitely didn't ask her, because
Speaker 1: why would he ask a woman anything about their opinion?
Speaker 1: But she definitely didn't read it. Yeah, yeah, because she'd
Speaker 1: be like, Ben, don't but she couldn't. How could she
Speaker 1: get through this? Yeah, that's the secret to their marriages.
Speaker 1: She does not pay attention to any of the things
Speaker 1: he does. Yeah, never been online. So he he manages
Speaker 1: to guess them the dead ambassador because remember the corrupt
Speaker 1: US ambassador who got his job by supporting the president's campaign,
Speaker 1: and so he got the cushy position of an ambassador
Speaker 1: to Afghanistan, which is what every every rich man once. Yes,
Speaker 1: you remember how Trump gave all of his donors ambassadorships
Speaker 1: to Afghanistan and Iraq the real position. Yeah, that that
Speaker 1: that crown jewel of a position. Yeah, I mean I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure he did give donors ambassador ships, yes, but
Speaker 1: not Yeah, but like you know countries where you'd win
Speaker 1: a vacation, right right, right, Yeah, like Germany. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: get to go to Germany if you support the president,
Speaker 1: you tend to not put someone alike as if bassaard
Speaker 1: to Afghanistan. Not a great gig um. But he he
Speaker 1: opens the briefcase, the locked briefcase that is like handcuffed
Speaker 1: to the dead Uh ambassador. Um that the Taliban who
Speaker 1: had like stolen everything that wasn't nailed down, apparently left
Speaker 1: this rich man's briefcase just unopened, didn't shoot it open
Speaker 1: or anything. But Brett is able to guess the pass
Speaker 1: code for the briefcase. Um, and it pops open, and
Speaker 1: inside is a glock because you've gotta have a gun, um,
Speaker 1: a passport, a stack of Afghan money, a stack of
Speaker 1: US money, and a bag of opium. Yes, oh my god. Okay,
Speaker 1: So there's a xerox copy of a map with coordinance
Speaker 1: on it in Iran and in Iraq, and quote Brett
Speaker 1: knew what it meant. Brett had known of the CIA's
Speaker 1: discovery of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq for years.
Speaker 1: Everyone on the inside had known. The media had reported
Speaker 1: that the government had lied that somehow all the world's
Speaker 1: greatest intelligence agencies had been dead wrong. But that is
Speaker 1: the case. Hussain had smuggled some of the weapons out
Speaker 1: of the country to Syria. Others had been buried in
Speaker 1: the desert. Yeah. Yeah, they'd been taken to Iran, the
Speaker 1: country that Saddam Hussein fought for ten years and an
Speaker 1: unspeakably brutal war that killed a million people. That's where
Speaker 1: he sends his weapons. This wild I've read the reports. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so the weapons were buried. Just so sorry, I got
Speaker 1: that wrong. I need to be fair to Ben Shapiro,
Speaker 1: who's Saddam Hussein didn't smuggler weapons into Iran. UM. Hussain
Speaker 1: had smuggled some of the weapons out of the country
Speaker 1: to Syria, a country that he had obviously great relationships with. UM.
Speaker 1: Others had buried. Others had been buried in the desert,
Speaker 1: just the desert. No country given. Now that they were
Speaker 1: smuggled into Iran, because the the U s Ambassador to
Speaker 1: Afghanistan and friend of the president helped the government of
Speaker 1: Iran get us like it helped smuggle Saddam's new like
Speaker 1: like buried weapons into Iran. The ambassador did, so that's
Speaker 1: how they got to Iran because the ambassador, as as
Speaker 1: Brett Hawthorne says, right before passing out, which is how
Speaker 1: the chapter ends, you said a bit you sold us out.
Speaker 1: So that's the story. That's the story. That's a good line.
Speaker 1: Uh good, it's a good writing. Character development a lot
Speaker 1: to analyze their Number one the fact that both Ben
Speaker 1: thinks it's important to know that all of the great
Speaker 1: US intelligence agencies were totally right about Saddam's weapons of
Speaker 1: mass destruction, but that Saddam got them out of the country,
Speaker 1: and that in the intervening decade, almost those great agencies
Speaker 1: weren't able to find where any of them were buried.
Speaker 1: But this random ambassador figured it out and was able
Speaker 1: to get them smuggled into Iran without these perfect and
Speaker 1: incredible intelligence agencies, the best the world has ever known,
Speaker 1: realizing what was happening. Right they were, they were, They
Speaker 1: were telling the truth the whole time. They just didn't.
Speaker 1: They couldn't. They didn't figure out that. They didn't know
Speaker 1: the rest of it. They didn't the important stuff. Ben
Speaker 1: would tell us that if we'd let them torture more people,
Speaker 1: they would have got it right. Good kind of torture Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love what if this is a beautiful again It's
Speaker 1: just it's like I said this last time, like I
Speaker 1: wish like Jordan Peterson would write a novel so we
Speaker 1: can really see, like here's here's you, here's the essence
Speaker 1: of you. But I just love what a just a
Speaker 1: perfect like fantasy. This is yeah, this this like anti reality,
Speaker 1: uh wish fulfillment fantasy of his Yeah, like the facts
Speaker 1: don't care about the feeling. This guy just being like,
Speaker 1: what what if they were what? But what what? What
Speaker 1: if they were? Right? It is all the kids that
Speaker 1: die from cops, what if they were put up to it?
Speaker 1: But l Sharpton, Yeah, it's in two chapters we've seen
Speaker 1: like been going out of his way to create a
Speaker 1: world where everything he believes but can't factually back up
Speaker 1: everything he feels, you might say, is yeah, it's art.
Speaker 1: It's art in the worst way possible. So good. It
Speaker 1: reminds me of that one line from Royal Tenant Bombs.
Speaker 1: Everyone knows that Custer died at Little Big Big Horn,
Speaker 1: But what my book presupposes is maybe he didn't. Maybe
Speaker 1: he didn't. Like what if everything that I can't prove
Speaker 1: was actually yeah provable was proven and immediately obvious, like
Speaker 1: this crack dealer sees Al Sharpton hanging out in his
Speaker 1: cracked in and it's like, oh, of course Al Sharpton
Speaker 1: is here to make a deal with me. And this
Speaker 1: deal is, of course, to set up an eight year
Speaker 1: old boy to die, which none of us has issues with,
Speaker 1: so that we can protest the cops. Um. Yeah boy
Speaker 1: yea the dead eyed boy. Uh. And of course all
Speaker 1: of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction were smuggled with the
Speaker 1: help of a Democrat into Iran, which is what all
Speaker 1: the democrats want, is for Iran to have Saddam's weapons.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't speak for others, but it's what
Speaker 1: I want. Yeah, I mean, Katie, you've been you've been
Speaker 1: very outspoken about your desire to go back in time
Speaker 1: give Saddam Hussein chemical weapons and then send them to Iran. Um.
Speaker 1: Which is an interesting point to take. But uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I respect your consistency. Thank you, Robert. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that you tolerate my, my my profound viewpoints.
Speaker 1: You know, we all this is America, and we're not
Speaker 1: going to agree on everything. I for one think that
Speaker 1: Saddam should have been given nuclear weapons so that he
Speaker 1: could smuggle them into the inner cities in order to
Speaker 1: execute a war on white people. But you know, maybe
Speaker 1: that's where this is going. Maybe I have a feeling
Speaker 1: this might be where that's going. Katie is a yeah.
Speaker 1: So our next chapter is a President Prescott chapter, and
Speaker 1: it starts with him talking to an analyst about how
Speaker 1: the recessions coming. But it doesn't make any sense because
Speaker 1: the airlines have been doing well this year and the
Speaker 1: dip in the stock market doesn't make sense. Why so
Speaker 1: words on pages. Yeah, it's uh, it's kind of amazing.
Speaker 1: So he's got this analyst in there talking to him
Speaker 1: about how it doesn't make sense that that things aren't
Speaker 1: going great for the economy, and he also has General
Speaker 1: Bill Collier, uh sitting right there. Um quote. Prescott couldn't
Speaker 1: just blow this irritating asshole off. He had to at
Speaker 1: least appear interested. Thankfully, that was his specialty. So Prescott said,
Speaker 1: he's talking to the general. The analyst cleared his throat.
Speaker 1: Let me start at the beginning. You remember nine eleven,
Speaker 1: Prescott nodded amiably. So in a couple of months before
Speaker 1: nine eleven, there was a huge jump and currency in circulation.
Speaker 1: That probably means that somebody, somebody with an awful lot
Speaker 1: of money in domestic bank account, for example, cashed out
Speaker 1: in order to avoid blowback after the attack. He's been
Speaker 1: going truth or here, remember yeah, and the President just
Speaker 1: nods mean, yes, I do vaguely remember nine eleven. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: the thing that happened on the watch of the president
Speaker 1: that immediately preceded me. Yes, I do remember that. With
Speaker 1: a skip in his step, he nods, he smiles and
Speaker 1: nods wistfully, those were the day. Yeah, boy, it's it's great.
Speaker 1: So this guy explains stock shorting to the president in
Speaker 1: a really boring way. Uh so, yeah, it's it's it's frustrating.
Speaker 1: So this kid is saying that basically, somebody shorting the
Speaker 1: US market, and it's proof that some dastardly foreigner knows
Speaker 1: that there's a nine eleven style attack. Um, it's about
Speaker 1: to hit the United States. And Prescott doesn't grasp any
Speaker 1: of this and seems to have no idea what this
Speaker 1: kid is saying. And then the grizzled general growls. What
Speaker 1: he's trying to say is that we're about to get
Speaker 1: hit hard. So that's Robert. You could have been an actor.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you so much. I love acting. I
Speaker 1: love the theater. To get permission to do the audio
Speaker 1: book of this and get a cast of people to
Speaker 1: play each character, yes, yes we should, Katie, I think
Speaker 1: that would be really fun. Can I be Ellen? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You can be Ellen, will get I don't know, I'm
Speaker 1: just I'm just gonna spit ball here. But Ben Shapiro
Speaker 1: to be bred haf Yeah, every big man in this book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I oh my god. I would love that, especially if,
Speaker 1: like if whoever does the narrator does like this kind
Speaker 1: of voice. Whatever they do the narration, and then whenever
Speaker 1: Hawthorne talks, it's bend to come out with this good.
Speaker 1: I bet we could get an all star studied cast
Speaker 1: for this project. I bet Chris Evans would do it.
Speaker 1: He hates. Yeah. So it turns out that it's China. Um.
Speaker 1: China is the country that's that's shorting the U. S.
Speaker 1: Stock market because they know that there's an attack coming.
Speaker 1: Um and the president primitive Chinese and the president so
Speaker 1: the general is like, we have to do something about this.
Speaker 1: This is you know, there's an attack coming. This is serious.
Speaker 1: And the president uh, speaks to him like he's the
Speaker 1: third grader, which in the President's mind, this general is
Speaker 1: because all American Democratic presidents hate the military. Um, and
Speaker 1: they don't, for example, higher numerous generals and then fire them,
Speaker 1: saying that they're all idiots. That would never happen with
Speaker 1: a Republican president, only a Democrat with disrespect the wonderful
Speaker 1: generals this way, so that's great. Uh yeah, okay, So
Speaker 1: the general's advice sums out to being all I'm saying
Speaker 1: is that we ought to check get out, sir, if
Speaker 1: only to cover our asses should something go wrong. And
Speaker 1: the President says, well, I disagree, this discussion is tabled.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's cool. Um, that's cool. There's also a line
Speaker 1: in there where they talk about the nine eleven report
Speaker 1: but it gets rejected out of hands is compromised. Um,
Speaker 1: so that love the thing I didn't realize being believed.
Speaker 1: I just his his His perspective on Obama is so
Speaker 1: funny because, like I know, at least we and a
Speaker 1: lot of people listening, I'm sure like, wow, Obama compromised
Speaker 1: too much, and he really bent over backwards to please
Speaker 1: people he shouldn't have and so on, and Ben just
Speaker 1: like Obama went in there and he told everyone to
Speaker 1: shut the funk up, and he did whatever he wanted.
Speaker 1: And it's like, man, what do you Yeah, what's the narrative?
Speaker 1: So immediately after this meeting, the President gets on the
Speaker 1: phone with the Premier of China, which is now international
Speaker 1: relations tend to work as a general rule, um, and
Speaker 1: the president Premiere of China immediately agrees to a request
Speaker 1: from the President to buy a bunch of bonds. So
Speaker 1: Prescott gets off and sells out America to the Chinese instantly,
Speaker 1: like right after this meeting, uh and quote Prescott thanked
Speaker 1: him profusely and promised him that the United States understood
Speaker 1: the position of the Chinese government with respect to military
Speaker 1: exercises in the South China Sea, but asked that all
Speaker 1: that the expert exercises take place sporadically rather than all
Speaker 1: at once. And then hung up. And they say the
Speaker 1: Chinese are tough to deal with, Prescott thought to himself.
Speaker 1: Then he ignores a call from the governor of Texas
Speaker 1: because he hates Bubba Davis. Uh yeah, yeah, yeah, the
Speaker 1: democratic president holding personal grudges against specific states. Um. So
Speaker 1: he yeah, a thing that only a Democrat would do.
Speaker 1: So he tries to ignore Bubba Davis, but Bubba says
Speaker 1: it's urgent, so he has to get on the phone
Speaker 1: with him, and Bubba is just begging him to send
Speaker 1: troops to the border. Um yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: He wants him to send troops to the border because
Speaker 1: one of the governor's staffers was kidnapped by cartel people.
Speaker 1: This book is wild. Yeah, so that's an that's an
Speaker 1: act of war. So the governor says, this is an
Speaker 1: act of war, and the President says, rightly, it's not
Speaker 1: an act of war if it's not by a foreign government,
Speaker 1: which you might recognize as accurate. I think he's trying
Speaker 1: to do too much. He's shoving five different books into
Speaker 1: one yes, yes, because he has to get all of
Speaker 1: his political beliefs into this one book. Um yeah, it's
Speaker 1: neat because like by this logic, I don't know, we
Speaker 1: could look at the fucking kidnapping of or like the
Speaker 1: mafia executions of like local politicians in the Northeast that
Speaker 1: happened in like the sixties and seventies and eighties, Like
Speaker 1: what are we going to war with Italy? Is that?
Speaker 1: What that is? No, it was a crime syndicate killing
Speaker 1: somebody who got in the way of what they were
Speaker 1: do doing. Only dangerous lunatics would view that as an
Speaker 1: active war with a foreign government. Yeah. We I mean
Speaker 1: we could, we could do that with just any crime.
Speaker 1: Oh and so the government war with that nation. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: one of their citizens committed a crime against us. So
Speaker 1: the President's like, it's not an active war if it's
Speaker 1: not by a government. And the Governor of Texas as
Speaker 1: horship Mr President, you know as well I do that
Speaker 1: the Mexican government is run by the cartels, and they
Speaker 1: killed one of my people, one of your people. So
Speaker 1: been understands Mexico. Um, it totally understands Mexico. Uh, that's good.
Speaker 1: That's great. Um. You know what else is good and great, Robert,
Speaker 1: the products and services that support this podcast. Yes, that part. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the saddest I've ever heard you. Yeah, I this is
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be honest with you all, less fun than
Speaker 1: the first time. Yeah, we're getting that's good. That's good. Okay.
Speaker 1: I want to note before we roll out to ads,
Speaker 1: I just want to get to the end of Prescott's chapter. Um.
Speaker 1: So he gets off the phone with the governor, UM
Speaker 1: and says that he's going to charge them with breaking
Speaker 1: federal law if his boys on the border shoot anybody. Um.
Speaker 1: And yeah, then he hangs up on the governor of
Speaker 1: Texas after threatening to put him in jail if he
Speaker 1: does anything like that. And then he gets a call
Speaker 1: from Jazz Jasmine. Jack's the national security advisor um also
Speaker 1: his longtime political mentor. He could hear her sexy fingers
Speaker 1: manipulating the phone. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's in the situation room,
Speaker 1: Mr President, and she says, you might want to get
Speaker 1: down there. Something about bread Hawthorne. Well, I thought you
Speaker 1: were going to say something about bread. No, something about
Speaker 1: her sexy fingers again, Yeah, the sexy fingers of his
Speaker 1: national security advisor, um playing with the You could hear
Speaker 1: sexy fingers playing with a phone. I'm trying to figure
Speaker 1: out who that is because I was thinking at first,
Speaker 1: condo Liza Rice. Um. But she wouldn't work for a Democrat,
Speaker 1: would she. And also yeah, I don't know, Um, we'll
Speaker 1: we'll see if it becomes clear where Ben's going with this. Obviously,
Speaker 1: every single person is somebody in real life. And what
Speaker 1: I'm taking away right now is that Ben's got a
Speaker 1: thing for fingers. You know, that's what it does, Ben does.
Speaker 1: Fish gotta be gotta be real tall and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: check out those sexy fingers. You know what I've got
Speaker 1: a thing for. Here we go, We're back. Okay. So
Speaker 1: we opened with another chapter from Ellen, Brett's wife, uh,
Speaker 1: who escaped you know, murder although her friend got shot
Speaker 1: by the cartel uh. And it starts with her noticing
Speaker 1: that that Brett had lost weight. Funny that would be
Speaker 1: the first thought to cross Ellen's mind when she saw
Speaker 1: him on television. But it was he he was always
Speaker 1: so self conscious about the four or five pounds around
Speaker 1: his middle section. He couldn't shake what he liked to
Speaker 1: call the fame to Hawthorne underbelly. That's just been that's
Speaker 1: just been being anxious about his own weight problem. Personal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: body issues manifest once again in this book. That is
Speaker 1: just a window into his soul. Yeah yeah, a complete
Speaker 1: and utter window. So Brett Hawthorne has been captured. Um yeah, yep, yep.
Speaker 1: That's what happened. After he passed out having realized that
Speaker 1: Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons had gotten smuggled into Iran by
Speaker 1: the US ambassador to Afghanistan. He should have bit down
Speaker 1: harder on that bullet. And now he's in a real screen.
Speaker 1: Now he's in a real, real, real trouble. Brett Hawthorne
Speaker 1: is Uh so Brett's captured. He's wearing an orange jumpsuit. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's this is like that they they've gone and
Speaker 1: like gone, like isis video or all kind of interact
Speaker 1: video from this even though it is the Taliban? Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, whatever, that's close enough. At least he's captured
Speaker 1: and being ransomed, unlike you know all of the other
Speaker 1: ransomable people like the a ambassador who they just murdered
Speaker 1: for no reason. Um. Yeah. Yeah, So they're they're threatening
Speaker 1: the president that if he doesn't withdraw the US like
Speaker 1: US bombers from Afghanistan, they're going to cut off General
Speaker 1: Brett Hawthorne's head. Um. And then the President says, we're
Speaker 1: not going to bow before terrorists, which you'd expect to
Speaker 1: be like the attitude that's been been with support. But
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll find out that the President is actually
Speaker 1: somehow being evil in this too. Yeah. If he cuts
Speaker 1: off his head, then that's there's that four pounds doesn't
Speaker 1: have to worry about anymore, right, Oh, there you go.
Speaker 1: You need to interject. I opened Twitter randomly as we're
Speaker 1: sitting here and Shapiro is trending, So oh, dear god,
Speaker 1: what did he do. Oh it's because he said that, Um,
Speaker 1: it's about COVID and uh, sacrificing your grandma for the economy.
Speaker 1: And if it was young people dying to be fine.
Speaker 1: But if you're grandma, if somebody who eighty one dies
Speaker 1: of COVID, that is not the same thing as somebody
Speaker 1: who is thirty dying of COVID nineteen. If grandma dies
Speaker 1: in a nursing home at anyone, that's tragic and it's terrible. Also,
Speaker 1: life expectancy in the United States is eighty That's a
Speaker 1: really good Shapiro impression. So thank you so much. I
Speaker 1: was trying really hard but sacrifice the Ben Shapiro, Ben Shapiro,
Speaker 1: famed advocate of life and its preciousness. Um. Oh, it
Speaker 1: looks like he was saying that to Dave Reuben. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds about right. That sounds about right. Anyway, back
Speaker 1: to the topic in hand, Yeah, I love it. Also,
Speaker 1: just sorry real quick in regards to exactly this that
Speaker 1: we're talking about. Dave Reuben earlier said a similar thing
Speaker 1: to Larry King, his hero, and Larry King was like, Dave,
Speaker 1: that's stupid. Come on nice anyway, sorry, go ahead, amazing.
Speaker 1: So Ellen sees her husband kidnapped, and you know, the
Speaker 1: President say that he's not going to rescue him, which
Speaker 1: is bad in this instance, although I think in other
Speaker 1: instances Been would support the president refusing to negotiate with terrorists. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Ellen lives in Texas like all good Americans except for
Speaker 1: Ben Shapiro, who lives in California. But let's not analyze
Speaker 1: that suit too much. Oh good lord, there's a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh god, Okay. So there's protesters out in front of
Speaker 1: the Texas Governor's office saying close the border. Enough is enough,
Speaker 1: protect your people, and she's walking through the crowd. She
Speaker 1: edged her way past one burly linebacker of a man
Speaker 1: wearing a cowboy hat and a gun, which was perfectly
Speaker 1: legal in the state. That was reason enough for Ellen
Speaker 1: to love the lone Star state. The fact that people
Speaker 1: can wear guns there is enough. Um, there wouldn't be
Speaker 1: any random shootings in this capitol building anytime soon, even
Speaker 1: if the media made it seem as though every civilian
Speaker 1: with a gun represented a threat to public safety. For
Speaker 1: every nut with a gun, she knew there were ten
Speaker 1: willing to put him down. What happens on eleven people
Speaker 1: in a crowd start shooting at each other. Ben like,
Speaker 1: I'm as pro gun as you're gonna get. But come on, man,
Speaker 1: you're really fucking stupid. Yes, eleven people in a crowd
Speaker 1: having a gunfight is the situation. We want to encourage
Speaker 1: what we want. That's how we say, that's how we
Speaker 1: were safe. Yeah. She showed the guards her I d
Speaker 1: and they waved her through. Two knocks on the door,
Speaker 1: and she stood across from one time Republican presidential candidate
Speaker 1: and four time governor Boba Davis after Stinton Vietnam back
Speaker 1: in the late sixties. Davis a big bear of a man,
Speaker 1: burly and fun. I to ask you at some point
Speaker 1: to do a word search. Please, I'm gonna do it.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do it right now. I'm gonna do bear
Speaker 1: of a man. Oh. I was gonna say, please do
Speaker 1: a search for the words short. Oh. Yeah, because I
Speaker 1: don't think that this world has a short person in
Speaker 1: it unless they are a dead eyed eight year old boy.
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't think so. I think everyone is over
Speaker 1: six ft tall in this book. I don't think that
Speaker 1: there is a short person in it. Yeah. That is
Speaker 1: so within like three paragraphs, the two people, the two
Speaker 1: new characters that were unbelievable. I love it, I love it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's described two characters in the same page as big
Speaker 1: and burly. Um. Yeah, so Davis, Anna Hawthorne or the
Speaker 1: only two people described as bearer of a man. But
Speaker 1: let's see short, do we do? We get a short
Speaker 1: in here? Short years ago, shortly after midnight? Yetda YadA
Speaker 1: yeada uh, sexy blonde in a short skirt. Okay, here
Speaker 1: we go yet then yeah, so there's there. Yeah, actually
Speaker 1: all the terrorists are short people. You fucking no, No,
Speaker 1: it seems it seems like the terrorists. Yeah. The first
Speaker 1: two people I find described as short are a short
Speaker 1: man named Mohammed who seems to be doing some sort
Speaker 1: of terroristy deal and like a short Russian. Um, maybe
Speaker 1: so fucking happy and oh my gosh, this book is tragic.
Speaker 1: Then it's not all of his own self loathing. Yeahs short,
Speaker 1: I think all the terrorists are short. I think all
Speaker 1: the terrorists are short. Um. And now it is worth
Speaker 1: noting that the main bad guy leave on or at
Speaker 1: least one of the big bad guys is tall and shredded,
Speaker 1: so as as was Yard. The man with no other name,
Speaker 1: the nameless kid in the student with the jersey might
Speaker 1: be a bad guy, but he's not a terrorist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there we go. So, yeah, we get a little
Speaker 1: bit about Bubba Davis, how he came home without a job,
Speaker 1: but then he got a job, which I don't know
Speaker 1: why you of course he came home without a job.
Speaker 1: He was leaving his job. Most people like who are
Speaker 1: in Vietnam didn't like set up another gig before they
Speaker 1: left the military, Like, that's not how that works. But okay,
Speaker 1: he gets a job working on an oil rig, which
Speaker 1: he loved. Uh and and then he felt good enough
Speaker 1: to go out on his own with a bank roll
Speaker 1: from his father in law. He had to live frugally, um,
Speaker 1: which I don't think you can do when your rich
Speaker 1: dad gives you the money to start a business. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I guess you can buy relative terms. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so he patented a new drilling technique that skyrocketed efficiency.
Speaker 1: We don't get any detail on that because Ben doesn't
Speaker 1: know anything about actually mining whale or how it works,
Speaker 1: and he became one of the richest men in the state. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he did. He definitely saw arm ageddon. Uh yeah. So uh.
Speaker 1: He only got into politics because his local state assemblyman
Speaker 1: begun calling for environmental reviews of all drilling. The way
Speaker 1: Bubba figured it, he had no choice. His livelihood, the
Speaker 1: livelihood of his workers was at stake. He ran, he won,
Speaker 1: and he kept on winning. So that's he didn't want
Speaker 1: environmental reviews of drilling. That's why he got in the
Speaker 1: politics because that was clearly bad, like just being like,
Speaker 1: let's see what this might do to the environment is
Speaker 1: fundamentally toxic in the eyes of one Benneth and Shapiro. Um,
Speaker 1: so that's that's good. His campaign slogan was don't let
Speaker 1: him horne swaggle you, which, speaking as a Texan, that's
Speaker 1: a word we use, all right, don't let a horn
Speaker 1: swoggle you. Don't don't let him horns swaggle you. Uh yep,
Speaker 1: um yeah, that's um it's god, oh god, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. What the fucking perfect here for that? It is?
Speaker 1: It really does show that ben is trapped in some
Speaker 1: ways in that world of like late nineteen nineties Rush
Speaker 1: Limbaugh radio politics like, which is kind of why he's
Speaker 1: felt increasingly sort of left behind by conservative media. This
Speaker 1: is my my feeling in the Trump era because he
Speaker 1: is sort of permanently stuck in this like the like
Speaker 1: he's really obsessed with the environmentalists are uh corrupt and
Speaker 1: part of some sort of scam like this. This paragraph
Speaker 1: goes in later to how um the Bubba opened his
Speaker 1: campaign by naming the top three environmental officers in the
Speaker 1: state and reading off how much they'd received from lobbyists
Speaker 1: for for the environmentalists, and then how much those environmental
Speaker 1: groups had received from global competitors like the Saudi government.
Speaker 1: So Ben believes that the Saudi Arabia is funding the
Speaker 1: environmentalist movement in the United States richest environmentalists. Yeah, Bubba
Speaker 1: Davis played politics the way like he played put football.
Speaker 1: He pushed the line. The press called it swagger. He
Speaker 1: just called it the Texas way. Been really gets Texas,
Speaker 1: Yeah really does. Yeah. God, that's it's that is interesting
Speaker 1: and true. I think what you're like, how stuck he
Speaker 1: is um in that era? Um. He has described himself
Speaker 1: as a rush baby in the past. Yeah, Like I
Speaker 1: can see that. I like, I love I love Russia. Limbaugh. Um,
Speaker 1: he's my hero and so on fits it's amazing. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh Bubba's Bubba's angry um because of the yeah
Speaker 1: he's he's he's trying to stop people from get horn
Speaker 1: swaggled the hell I So he says that, uh have
Speaker 1: you seen the crime statistics in El Paso? Used to
Speaker 1: be one of the safest city cities in the state.
Speaker 1: Now it looks like goddamn Phoenix. Al Paso was in
Speaker 1: two thousand sixteen and is still today one of the
Speaker 1: safest cities in the United States, Like yeah, and it
Speaker 1: has been for a long time, like despite its proximity
Speaker 1: to Yeah, what do you like? It's a good example
Speaker 1: of why you're wrong about everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Like
Speaker 1: El Passing in the world is like, oh my god.
Speaker 1: After eight years of Obama, El Passo was still one
Speaker 1: of the safest cities in the country. So Ben just
Speaker 1: pretends that it got dangerous under a different fake Democrat
Speaker 1: not named Obama, so that he can Yeah fucking christ Ben, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's embarrassing. It is very embarrassing, embarrassing. That's embarrassing about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: an embarrassing Oh good god. Um, okay, So that's great.
Speaker 1: So uh. The governor talks to Ellen about his conversation
Speaker 1: with the President and about how even if the President
Speaker 1: says it's not a war, he knows that what's going
Speaker 1: on at the border is a war. Um. And Ellen says,
Speaker 1: do you think Prescott is bluffing about like sending him
Speaker 1: to prison if he, you know, uh, cracks down the border.
Speaker 1: It's just what he wants. He wants another Waco, and
Speaker 1: even better, a Waco created by one of his chief
Speaker 1: political opponents, because Waco went really well for the Clinton administration.
Speaker 1: One the hell are you talking about? Yeah? Yeah, so
Speaker 1: seven out of ten Texans want to militarize the border, um,
Speaker 1: Which yeah, so this Ben is really on board with
Speaker 1: militarizing the border. And that's what what this this chapter
Speaker 1: is really all about. Um. And then this is really
Speaker 1: interesting because it involves the governor of Texas dealing with
Speaker 1: a massive problem UM in his state that has led
Speaker 1: the loss of life and has outraged the population of
Speaker 1: his state. And the governor recognizes that the only way
Speaker 1: to deal with the problem is to take Like the
Speaker 1: governor goes to the federal government and asks for help
Speaker 1: dealing with this problem, and a careless hateful president who
Speaker 1: rejects him immediately because of where he comes from, refuses
Speaker 1: to help him, and threatens him if he does the
Speaker 1: necessary It takes the necessary steps to to do anything.
Speaker 1: And so this chapter is all about Bubba, the governor
Speaker 1: of Texas and his assistant chief assistant, deciding that they
Speaker 1: have to go out on their own independent of the
Speaker 1: federal government because they have been abandoned by their government,
Speaker 1: and they're the heroes. I wonder how Bim feels about
Speaker 1: things like this that might be happening now that are
Speaker 1: real and not hypothetical and don't involve imagining a crisis
Speaker 1: on the border. This is fiction, Robert. It's amazing that
Speaker 1: a real thing you could see as a parallel to
Speaker 1: something Ben as writing about here happens. But it's the
Speaker 1: complete opposite of everything been suspects, and he hates it.
Speaker 1: That's incredible. That's incredible. It's beautiful art. Yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I am exhausted, and we've been at this for more
Speaker 1: than an hour, and I think, yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: we've come to like the moment of conclusion for this episode,
Speaker 1: because it's really telling to me that Ben does like
Speaker 1: the fact that there's so many perils. You've got like
Speaker 1: a state that the President of the United States clearly
Speaker 1: just sort of automatically hates anyone from that state and
Speaker 1: rejects them because President Prescott hates Texans. Um our our
Speaker 1: president has a hatred of California. You've got that governor
Speaker 1: who has to take action to protect his state, and
Speaker 1: that action means doing things that like could be seen
Speaker 1: as like pre secessionist um. And in Ben's book, they're
Speaker 1: the hero because what he's trying to do is send
Speaker 1: soldiers to the border UM And in reality, they're trying
Speaker 1: to lock down their state and and build more ventilators,
Speaker 1: and they're the bad guys in Ben's head. I do
Speaker 1: think we need to to, you know, earmark where we
Speaker 1: are and continue to work our way through this book
Speaker 1: a few chapters at a time, because honestly, I'm too
Speaker 1: invested at this point and I'm never going to read it,
Speaker 1: but I want to know how all of this comes together.
Speaker 1: If it does, yeah, I'm sure lev On becomes a
Speaker 1: figure of national let's with our prediction. So my prediction
Speaker 1: is that leve On will become a respectable national political
Speaker 1: figure while still selling crack cocaine UM and that BLM
Speaker 1: will cause a bunch of violent protests that necessitate they
Speaker 1: be put down violently. Um after they fake that eight
Speaker 1: year old's death. UM. I predict that that Bubba will
Speaker 1: become the president. Maybe I'm wrong about that. There might
Speaker 1: be like a civil war thing that happens at the end.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know where bins leading with this.
Speaker 1: That's what I was going to say, is I think
Speaker 1: that there's going to be some sort of a civil war.
Speaker 1: Bubba will assume the presidency, locked down the borders, and
Speaker 1: America will live happily ever after. O. Yeah. I also
Speaker 1: suspect we're going to hear more about this this international
Speaker 1: conspiracy against the United States that involves at least China,
Speaker 1: but I bet, I bet some ridiculous countries will also
Speaker 1: show up. I think the weapons of mass destructions are
Speaker 1: going to end up with black lives matters. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: bet gets in Saddam's nukes. There's going to be right,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a threat where Lavon has the weapons
Speaker 1: of mass instruction and they need to stop him from
Speaker 1: using them. I truly believe that's what's happening, because that
Speaker 1: that that is the most ben Shapiro kind of Republican
Speaker 1: thing that could happen is that the evil black activists
Speaker 1: who hate cops get Saddam Hussain's weapons of next destruction
Speaker 1: from Iran. It's everything he hates but is in reality connected,
Speaker 1: in no way whatsoever being connected, which is what all
Speaker 1: Republicans have to believe happens, right, that everything is a
Speaker 1: little piece of the puzzle and it's all coming to
Speaker 1: a head. Yea. God, it's it's a kind of thinking
Speaker 1: we all have to avoid. Like there's a tendency to
Speaker 1: believe that everything bad is tight into everything else bad.
Speaker 1: And it's made more complicated by the fact that like
Speaker 1: a lot of shitty people are all friends with each other.
Speaker 1: I don't know, right, and it's it's a it's but
Speaker 1: it's also oftentimes the difference between well, their interests naturally
Speaker 1: aligned yea, as opposed to like they're all meeting in
Speaker 1: like their meeting in a room and they're saying like, well,
Speaker 1: you go do this and I'll go do this, and
Speaker 1: then like it's not it doesn't have to be a
Speaker 1: conspiracy for interests to aligne. Yeah, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: why Kim Jong un. There were times when he was
Speaker 1: willing to like be positive about Trump and the administrations
Speaker 1: because it helped individual things he wanted to have happened,
Speaker 1: And there was no there was no coordination because he
Speaker 1: was also happy to throw Trump under the bus at times,
Speaker 1: because none of these groups actually give a shit about
Speaker 1: each other. Yeah, but in Ben's head, Black Lives Matter,
Speaker 1: I'm certain is about to be collaborating with Iran to
Speaker 1: use Saddam's weapons of mass destruction on America. That that
Speaker 1: is I think where this has to be headed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the domestic terrorists are working with the international terrorists. The
Speaker 1: domestic terrorists, which certainly are not going to be for example,
Speaker 1: white militia dudes, who, as we all know, never commit terrorism. No,
Speaker 1: they're the eros. I'll tell you what if some white
Speaker 1: militia dudes uh went somewhere and did and did some
Speaker 1: crimes to people in Mexico. I bet uh he wouldn't
Speaker 1: be like, well, this justifies Mexico starting a war with US. Yeah,
Speaker 1: There's never been a case of members of a militia
Speaker 1: killing a child on the border. That never happened. In
Speaker 1: the episode we did about the border militia community and
Speaker 1: its growth in history, nothing like that. Occurred. I believe you.
Speaker 1: I'm waiting also for a have we seen a right
Speaker 1: wing Have we seen like a Russia Limpbob Ben Shapiro type?
Speaker 1: We have to I'm gonna guess we are, although I
Speaker 1: think it'll be interesting if we don't. If there's no
Speaker 1: like actual like Ben Shapiro media personality stand in in
Speaker 1: this book, I think that's going to be really interesting
Speaker 1: because it might suggest to me that Ben Shapiro um
Speaker 1: kind of hates himself and what he does and wishes
Speaker 1: he'd joined the military, but he doesn't think he was
Speaker 1: big enough. Yeah, short enough to be a terrorist, not
Speaker 1: tall enough to be Ben. Yeah, we gotta dig more
Speaker 1: into these terrorists next. Maybe we'll start the next one
Speaker 1: with that, But for now, I need ye all to
Speaker 1: plug your plug doubles. Cool. Yeah, check out our show
Speaker 1: with Robert Worst You're ever also on iHeart Radio. And
Speaker 1: we have another podcast called even More News. Uh. You
Speaker 1: can check that out to the rest and YouTube show
Speaker 1: called some More News. Uh. There's websites like Patreon, Twitter
Speaker 1: and things related to that. And I'm on Twitter Dr
Speaker 1: Mr Cody and Katie's on Twitter at Katie. You can
Speaker 1: find me on Twitter at I right, okay. Also, we're
Speaker 1: doing helping with a fundraiser to provide diapers to poor
Speaker 1: families in the Portland area at the Portland Diaper Bank.
Speaker 1: You got to go fund me COVID, Ninteam Response and
Speaker 1: Diaper Need you can donate. Fans have donated somewhere around
Speaker 1: three thousand dollars already, which is great. Um and and
Speaker 1: I'm very grateful for that. Uh So again, times are
Speaker 1: sucked up. People like Ben Shapiro have more influence than
Speaker 1: they should ever have had, which is none. But sometimes
Speaker 1: we can do things like make sure a few hundred
Speaker 1: women without much money don't have to worry about diapers
Speaker 1: for their babies. So COVID Night Team Response and Diaper
Speaker 1: Need unto fund me or just find my pin tweet
Speaker 1: on Twitter at I right, okay, so you can all
Speaker 1: go by shirt they exist. Yeah, and there's a podcast
Speaker 1: called The Women's War. It's upbeat. You should listen to
Speaker 1: it if you want to know how things could be
Speaker 1: better in a world where people like Ben Shapiro don't
Speaker 1: have influence. All right, that's the episode What a World
Speaker 1: Wash Your New Dipay