Ep. 2102 - Bill Burr Goes Full A**hole
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Alrighty, folks. Well, yesterday, Luigi Mangione, who is the alleged shooter of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, he had been arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and he was brought into the courthouse in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, where he immediately began shouting at the press,

It's not totally clear what he is saying here, but here is video of him emerging from a police car and being ushered into the jailhouse where he is being held pending his possible extradition to New York. He apparently is fighting that extradition. Here's what it sounded like yesterday. So what he appears to be shouting there is it's an insult to the intelligence of the American people and their lived experience.

It's not exactly clear what he is talking about right there. What is the insult that you've been arrested when the evidence is pretty clear that you were the person who shot to death Brian Thompson, this UnitedHealth executive?

I mean, what exactly is the insult to the lived experience? Is the idea that if you've had a bad experience with a health insurance company, this means that you now get to murder the head of the health insurance company? By the way, not even clear in this particular case that the alleged shooter's health conditions had anything to do with UnitedHealth. Like, nothing. In fact, it is unclear by whom he was insured. What we know, as we discussed yesterday on the program, is that this particular person

Mangione, he had had some sort of surfing accident where he had a really bad back injury that apparently left him in crippling pain. And he had a surgery that is very often unsuccessful that implanted a series of pins in his spine.

And he presumably was having some sort of fights with some health insurance company, but that is totally unclear. And he did leave a manifesto. His manifesto is very short. It's 262 words. And it is worth exploring because it is a window into the mind of people who tend to believe that because the world is filled with problems, this means you get to shoot people, which is unfortunately a growing sentiment on the left and even some parts of the right.

So here is what the alleged shooter actually wrote, quote, to the feds. I'll keep this short because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn't working with anyone. This was fairly trivial, some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. This

And then it's...

so indecipherable. Largest company in the US by market cap behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but has our life expectancy? No, the reality is these blank have simply gotten too powerful and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it. Obviously, the problem is more complex.

but I do not have the space. And frankly, I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed decades ago, and the problem simply remains. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently, I'm the first to face it with such a brutal honesty. Okay, there are a couple of key lines here that are quite amazing in this manifesto. One is, obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have the space. And frankly, do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. In other words, he didn't have a solution for any of the health insurance problems in the country.

And those problems are quite real because the United States has a very heavily subsidized and regulated health care system. Insurance is not actually insurance. It's actually health coverage. Insurance, as we mentioned yesterday on the show, would imply that you are making a bet with the insurance company that something bad might happen to you. And the insurance company is betting that it will not happen to you. That is obviously not how health care works in the United States, because no company in their right mind would bet that, for example, you won't need a checkup next week.

That would be a stupid bet. So this isn't insurance at all. It's health coverage that is provided at discount based on government subsidy and also based on collective risk pooling. And that's actually how the system works. And the system doesn't work particularly well in a lot of ways. It works better than many of the other systems, including nationalized health care. But the point there is that the alleged shooter himself

is angry at a system that he says he does not fully understand and he has no proper solutions for. And by the way, he happens to be wrong on the merits. So when he says that the United States has the most expensive healthcare system in the world, but we rank roughly number 42 in life expectancy, there's an excellent thread from a person named Jeremy Kaufman laying out some of the statistics with regard to the United States healthcare system.

And the point that he makes is that healthcare spending in all countries tracks income. In other words, the more people get rich, the more they spend on healthcare. And this is true across countries. Here, for example, is a chart of health spending increasing rapidly with real income. So if, for example, you live in Hungary and you have a significantly lower income, you're going to spend less on your healthcare.

And as your income rises, you're going to spend more on your health care. That is true everywhere. It is true in Norway. It is true in Canada. It is true in Italy. It is true in Spain. It is true everywhere. It is almost a straight line arithmetic correlation here that as you as you make more money, you spend more money on your health care, which, of course, makes sense because you care very deeply about your health care. That is not a giant shock, as it turns out.

If you actually correlate health care costs with income, what you see is that income rises. So does health care costs. Again, not a giant shock. In rich country, labor costs more. Inputs cost more. The real price of health care increases actually slower than incomes in cross-sectional analysis. So as income in the United States increases, so does health care price, but slower than income increases in the United States. Not only that.

You can see in surgical prices that there is correlation between income and the price of surgery, for example. Because again, as people make more money, they also demand more money as the inputs on labor. If you are a surgeon in the United States and the average income is $80,000 a year, you're going to make more money than in a country where the average income is $40,000 a year. That is not a shock. Straight line correlation.

Caesarean sections are more expensive in Norway, where the income is higher, than in Israel, where the income is lower. Appendectomies are more expensive in Australia, where the income is higher, than Korea, where the income is lower. And none of this is a giant shock. In other words, the market mechanisms continue to function in the sense that as people make more money and as they spend more money, the costs go up. Most importantly, the idea that profits are radically high in health services is not true. Profits in health services are

are actually lower than in many other areas of the American economy. So if you look at hospitals and nursing and residential care facilities, the profits are somewhere in the neighborhood of 2% to 5%, somewhere in that neighborhood. If you look at construction, they're way higher than that. Profits are really, really high in manufacturing, for example, but they're not particularly high in the healthcare industry, again, because of regulation and subsidization.

So why exactly is it that we spend so much money, but we get so little input in terms of our health expectancy rising, our life expectancy rising? Well, number one, there is in fact a law of diminishing returns when it comes to healthcare spending. It's true across countries. At a certain point, a massive increase in healthcare spending only leads to a marginal increase in life expectancy. And this is not just true of the United States. It's true literally everywhere. So for example,

The cross-sectional relationship in terms of how much you spend on care and the outcome is totally flat. So the life expectancy in, for example, Israel and Luxembourg is totally the same, but the health expenditure per capita is wildly different. So Israel is spending about $2,500 health expenditure per capita,

And the life expectancy in Israel is about 82 and a half years. Same exact life expectancy in Luxembourg, except they're spending $6,500 per capita. Because it turns out, no matter what you do with medicine, you simply can't prolong life beyond a certain point on average. So what's the big problem in the United States? Why does the United States have a lower life expectancy? Well, there are a bunch of reasons. But the biggest reasons are we do a lot of drugs, we're really fat, and we drive badly. Those would be the big reasons. We lose in the United States

About a year and a half in life expectancy on average through drugs, car accidents, and violence. And we happen to be really fat. We have a huge diet metabolic problem in the United States.

In fact, it has almost a six-year decrease in life expectancy in the United States thanks to diet and metabolic because we're real fat in the United States. Okay, so none of this is to ignore the problems in the healthcare system. It is to point out that whenever anyone suggests that there are easy solutions and they are only barred by the evil of greedy health insurance companies, they are lying. It is not true.

It is overtly false. Okay, that's true whether the shooter is saying it while murdering somebody. The alleged shooter is saying that while murdering somebody. It is also true whether you are a comedian or a political commentator. So this brings us to Bill Burr. So I have to say, Bill Burr is an... So Bill Burr, I used to really enjoy his work. On occasion, I still enjoy his work. He's a comedian, which means he's very hit or miss. His Red Rock special, for example, hilarious.

I used to be, I'm such a Bill Burr fan that I actually bought a ticket for me and my wife and two of our friends to go see Bill Burr at the Hard Rock Casino down here in Hollywood, Florida. And I have to say, it was one of the worst shows I ever saw in my life because he got up there and Bill Burr has become woked. He has become woked, right?

I assume because his wife is very much on the left. Over time, I think he became embarrassed that many people on the right thought he was very funny. And so he decided that he was going to start woking it up. Well, Bill Burr is a disappointment, sort of like incognito mode on your computer, because they keep telling you that everything you do in incognito mode is incognito.

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So this entire show that he did in Hollywood, Florida, it was so bad that he got frustrated with the audience.

The audience was not laughing at his jokes because his jokes were basically about how Floridians were a bunch of anti-gay racists. And Floridians were like, that's not true. There are a lot of gay people who live down here and a lot of Hispanics and black people who live down here. And in fact, the room is filled with Jews. And so he actually got so frustrated, he ended up cutting his show early and walking off the stage. And the reason was he was totally disconnected from the audience. Well, that disconnect has continued forever.

You'll remember that he appeared on Bill Maher's show where he declared solidarity with the pro-Khamas students on campus. And now he is proclaiming that he is very happy that CEOs are walking around in fear for their lives. Now, you do get some extra points for being a comedian in today's day and age, meaning that we will tend to give you some more leeway to say edgy things because you're trying to be funny. And it's not clear to me here that Bill Burr is attempting to be funny. This is just his actual political opinion. He's not saying anything funny or insightful here.

Here is Bill Burr yesterday explaining that he is perfectly fine with CEOs having to live with full-time security because they have fear they might be shot because after all, they're murderers too.

I don't believe that Bill Burr holds the same standard for comedians. There's an argument that's been made by the left. It is a crap argument when made about comedians, and it's a crap argument when made about CEOs. The argument goes something like this on the left. People like Bill Burr mock the vulnerable. They mock the marginalized, and thus they are a danger to the vulnerable and the marginalized. So presumably, Bill Burr should have to live in fear of making a joke. Bill Burr should have to live in fear because he doesn't know who he's damaging.

In any case, here is Bill Burr openly cheering the murder of a UnitedHealth executive because he says CEOs should live in fear if they don't act in the way that he would have them act in a system that he has no fixes for, by the way. You know what's annoying me about this kid who killed this CEO is none of these news programs are talking about the incredible lack of empathy that

from the general public about this because of how these insurance companies treat people when they are at their most vulnerable after we've all given them our money every month. And now we finally need you. And all you do is deny us. And then these and all of these things are taking the pictures of their CEOs off their websites. You know, I got to be honest with you. OK, I love that the CEOs are afraid right now. You should be.

By and large, you're all a bunch of selfish, greedy pieces of shit. And a lot of you are mass murderers. You just don't pull the trigger. That's why it looks clean. That's why these people look, oh, my God. Oh, he was just, you know, walking into a hotel. It's like, OK, but what was his job? What did he do? What was the results of it? OK, Bill Burr is an asshole and a piece of shit.

What he is saying here is truly evil. He's truly evil. He's saying you should live in fear if you're the CEO of a company and that company does things that Bill Burr deems to be bad, to be bad things. Now, we have laws on the books, for example, that prevent things like fraud. We have laws on the books that prevent things like embezzlement. We have laws on the books that punish criminal activity. If you don't like the system, and many people don't, the proper response to that system would be legislation.

In a democratic republic, the way that you fix problems is you have open discussions of the details of those problems, and then you try to craft regulatory or legal fixes. You do not say that it is a good thing that CEOs should live in fear of their lives because Bill Burr deems them morally inferior. Bill Burr doing his blue collar class routine act is a bunch of horseshit. Bill Burr is worth $14 million, and he makes his money making crap movies for Netflix at this point.

Again, this basic idea, if we're going to have a functioning country, you can't justify the murder of people who run their businesses legally in ways with which you disagree. It is one thing to disagree with them. You can call them whatever you want. When you start justifying them living in fear or suggesting maybe they should be murdered, I'm just wondering what the limiting principle here is. I'm wondering what it is. The alleged shooter in this case was echoing Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. The Unabomber suggested that if you were, for example, an oil executive, maybe you should be murdered.

Because after all, there were externalities to the oil industry. Why not the banking industry? Why not? Maybe Bill Burr doesn't like the banks. After all, that bank denied grandma her loan. So maybe Jamie Dimon should be tracked down and murdered. This kind of stuff is full stop evil. It is evil. I don't care what complaints you have with the health insurance company. The notion that the solution to those complaints is the murder of the executives is sick.

If you were living in a tyrannical society where you didn't have any legal correctives to any of this, and you had no alternatives in terms of Medicaid, which does exist, and you had no alternatives in terms of other health insurance programs, then you can make the argument in a full-scale monarchic tyranny that assassination is a proper response to this. But that's not the system in which we live. And promulgating that lie leads to greater violence. It leads to justification of all violence. Unfortunately, it's not just Bill Burr. It is so many members of the

elite of our society. The people who are fine living with private security is they make millions of dollars saying things on TV. It's not just Bill Burr here. Okay. It is also Jimmy Kimmel. So Jimmy Kimmel last night decided that he would do an entire segment celebrating the good looks of the alleged shooter.

Here he was last night, gleefully chortling over how good looking the alleged shooter is. I'm old enough to remember when there was widespread national outrage over Rolling Stone running on its cover a picture of the Boston Marathon bomber that made him look particularly handsome or something. And people were like, that's sick. You shouldn't do that. He's a murderer. Here's Jimmy Kimmel just doing it.

So many women and so many men are going nuts over how good looking this killer is. And there's a huge wave of horny washing over us right now. It's like when one of the guys you work with says he, I had a dream about you last night. When it's the FedEx guy with the big muscles and the rolled up sleeves, you're like, oh. But if it's the bald IT guy, we're like, oh.

wearing Crocs with black socks, you're on the phone with HR. It's kind of that same dynamic. Our staff today, I have never experienced anything like this. These are screen grabs of actual exchanges between our members of our staff and their friends, relatives, whatever. I've changed the names to protect the guilty, but let's see. Lorraine C. asks, do you guys think the United...

And it's not just women. This is from the husband of one of our staffers. "Did you see the assassin?" "Yes, I'm so upset." Like, excuse me, LOL. I'm about to be a jailhouse bride. 'Cause damn shorty is so fuwine.

I'm dead or willing to be. And one more from a young woman in our segment department texting all my friends in New York that I hope they get called to jury duty. God, I want to do jury duty so bad. Hilarious, hilarious stuff glorifying the alleged murderer of the United Health CEO. What a delight these people are. It's also in academia, of course. Here is a University of Pennsylvania professor who shouldn't, in fact, lose her job.

You should not be teaching students if your attitude toward murder is that it is a net good because you don't like the healthcare system as it currently stands. By the way, I'm just wondering to what extent we get to extend this logic when it comes to government-run systems. So how would people feel about people just assassinating the heads of the National Health Service in Great Britain, for example? I have a feeling these same people would be a little upset about it. Here is the University of Pennsylvania professor dancing on TikTok to the murder of the United Health Executive.

It says, have never been prouder to be a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Well, not rocking her head to Les Mis.

who will not be slaves again. Just absolute imbecility, but moral imbecility as well. Apparently the McDonald's where the police caught the alleged shooter has now been flooded with negative Yelp reviews because the basic idea is that you should not report murderous criminals if you spot them in public. Meanwhile, some TikTokers are threatening to beat up McDonald's workers. Here's one trans TikToker threatening to beat up a McDonald's worker.

They caught the guy that killed the UHC CEO. For such a professional hit, it's kind of weird that the gunman didn't leave the US. The guy that reported it was a McDonald's worker. I would never advocate for violence on my page, but it would be pretty funny if we beat the shit out of him, and then when he went to the hospital, that if he was out of network and had to pay a huge bill, I think that would be funny. I'm not advocating for it, but...

It would bring a smile to my face. Oh, well, then you're not advocating for it, obviously. Over in New York, signs have been appearing with pictures, wanted pictures of CEOs with Brian Thompson's face crossed out because, of course, he has been murdered. Here is some footage of wanted posters of various members of the health care industry. Again, wanted posters with their faces on them, presumably to be murdered. Do you see this? Deny, defend, oppose at the bottom of it.

This is all insane, especially considering that when it comes to healthcare, that is a complex problem requiring a complex solution. Well, there are a lot of such problems in your life. One of those is HR. When we started The Daily Wire, the biggest question mark was what we would do for HR. You know, we were focused on creating engaging content. It's difficult to find a managing professional capable of handling day-to-day HR tasks.

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There are people on the ground suffering right now. The fellowship is doing amazing work. Go check them out right now. Benforthefellowship.org. Once more, that's benforthefellowship.org, an excellent place to give. God bless and thank you. Benforthefellowship.org. Go check them out right now. Okay, now, how widespread is this sentiment? Well, I mean, it's widespread enough that it has made its way over into the political segment of the body politic, the overtly political. You have the cultural commentators who are

sort of tangentially interested in the issue to the extent that they don't know enough about it to say. And then you have people whose actual profession is to supposedly understand the issues, being gleeful about the murder. Joy Reid, again, the least joyful person ever to be named Joy, and that includes Joy Behar. She is gleeful that people are supporting the UnitedHealth CEO's alleged shooter.

Something a bit unexpected has happened following the murder. A reaction not of universal horror that a 50-year-old father of two and husband was shot dead in public, but rather of, and I don't want to call it glee,

But let's just say not unhappiness, especially online, where the internet sleuths who often dedicate themselves to tracking down people accused of racist behavior in public places, criminals, including January 6th fugitives and more, have been actively refusing to help. Donald Trump Jr., son of our incoming ruler, went on his ex-Twitter page and did the patented internet do your thing post. And the reaction was mostly, yeah, no.

Other popular conservatives like Ben Shapiro and anti-woman zealot Matt Walsh saw their mentions go up in flames when they tried to attack, quote, unquote, evil liberals for celebrating the murder of a CEO, with some of their supporters replying that they had gotten it wrong.

Indeed, instead of universal condemnation, what we have seen and many of us have heard both on and offline has been a barrage of stories of Americans awful experiences with insurance companies. Stories of claims denied of people who've gotten sicker or even died because insurance companies like United refuse to pay claims. Let's just be clear. There's a real hatred for these companies that is unfurling on social media right now and also in real life, too.

Okay, and part of the reason for that hatred is because you have suggested no proper solutions. By the way, Obamacare was supposed to solve all this, remember? Lefties, come get your boy. Barack Obama?

That guy was supposed to have fixed health care, you recall, and it got worse because of the subsidization and overregulation. Meanwhile, the White House refuses to answer if the Biden administration disagrees with the alleged shooter's reported manifesto regarding, quote unquote, profit over people, which, again, has been a talking point of the left for a very long time. The suggestion that the profit margin is really the problem in the health care industry, as we went through with regard to the charts.

There are a wide variety of healthcare systems. When it comes to spending per capita, the bottom line is that as income goes up, so does healthcare spending. It's just a reality.

OK, but the White House, again, has been playing this ugly game. Democrats have been playing this ugly game as long as I'm alive. The reason health care is bad in the United States or worse than it should be in the United States is because of those greedy health care executives. It is amazing, by the way, that this logic is never, ever applied to literally any other area of of human life. Nobody ever says, you know, the NBA could be even better if they paid LeBron James less. Nobody ever says that.

It's only with regard to health care and other areas that the left cares about that suddenly the profit margin becomes bad. Nobody ever suggests that Bill Burr should make less money in his comedy because obviously the profit margin in his comedy is what is driving it. It's making his comedy worse. Here is here is Karine Jean-Pierre refusing to condemn the idea that the United Health Care CEO, the reason United Health Care denies too many claims is because of their profit margins.

What would you say to Americans who sympathize

with Luigi Mangione's purported manifesto indicating that insurance companies ultimately care more about their profits than the health of their customers. So let me just... I'm sorry. Is that premise like... Yeah. Do you... Is that premise accurate in any way? So let me just say at the top, offer up certainly our condolences to the victims and his loved ones. We are certainly tracking the latest regarding this deadly shooting.

So I'd be avoiding the question, obviously. By the way, it's not just Karine Jean-Pierre and the White House. It's also Elizabeth Warren. Elizabeth Warren is such a disappointment of a human being. So I knew Elizabeth Warren back when she was a torts professor at Harvard Law. She was there at the same time that I was. She was a teacher, obviously, and I was a student. And Elizabeth Warren was not a nut job at that point, but she clearly has had too much of the Bernie Sanders Kool-Aid. She said, quote, this is a warning that if you push people hard enough, they lose faith in the ability of their government to make change. Violence is never the answer, but...

People can be pushed only so far. But I have a question. You're a sitting senator from Massachusetts. You're a sitting senator from Massachusetts. It seems like you might have something to do with this a little bit. So I have a question. If they're frustrated with the system, are they allowed to assassinate you? The answer, of course, is no, nor should it be yes. And nobody should be making a butt about that point.

But when it comes to the left, they make that point all the damn time. There's a piece over at Politico trying to explain what exactly is going on over here. Joshua Zeitz, a Politico magazine contributing writer, and he has a piece talking about a particular theory called social banditry.

He traces that to the Marxist scholar, Eric Hobswam in 1959. He suggested that social bandits were sometimes fictional, sometimes real figures who operated outside of the law and were widely revered for their efforts to meet out justice in an unjust world, like Robin Hood, for example.

So what exactly is the theory? Well, the theory basically suggests that

that social banditry attracts popular attention and support in rural environments where the state is weak, where peasants' longstanding prerogatives were eroding in the face of economic change, and where inequality was rampant. So that means that if you then commit individual acts of violence, you are rebelling against some sort of evil system. The problem, of course, is that that is not how the United States works. The reality is that while people might be large-scale upset with insurance companies, and I think for some good reasons because of the regulatory environment,

The basic Marxian idea, which is that violence is now justified in a democratic republic because you don't like how a company is doing its business. That is, in fact, as most Marxist materialism is wrong and also morally wrong. The argument here is that we don't have effective government with regard to this stuff, and that's why things aren't changing. Well, we have more regulation on the health care industry than virtually any other industry in the United States.

We have more subsidization of the healthcare industry than literally any industry in the United States, bar none. Medicare and Medicaid comprise a huge chunk of our budget every single year in the United States. And that's leaving aside state costs. But this, again, this basic idea, and it does tear apart the country, is the idea the system is so broken that murder, individual murder, is the solution to the system.

You shouldn't tolerate that particular argument when it comes to the supposed racial injustice of the United States. You should not tolerate that argument when it comes to the economic system of the United States. And you shouldn't tolerate that argument when it comes to the health system of the United States either. Again, no one is denying people's bad feelings about health insurance companies, many of which, again, I think are fully understandable. But the extension of that to, I now have sympathy with the murder of the CEO is a step beyond and has no limiting principle at all.

It's truly ugly. Okay, meanwhile, the Daniel Penny trial is now over. The fallout, of course, is not. The left is super upset over Daniel Penny's acquittal. So Alexander Ocasio-Cortez had the dumbest take of the day, predictably, since she's not a particularly smart human being. She suggested that people who ride subways should fear Daniel Penny

which is a hell of a statement considering that he literally saved subway riders from a highly drug-addled, deeply mentally ill, violent, threatening homeless person. Here's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez finding the stupidest possible take. ...actually said that he would do it again if necessary, if there was a present threat. What do you make of the comments? Well, you know, doesn't that, I just feel like that...

That tells us everything. If we do not want violence on our subways, the point of our justice system is a level of accountability to prevent a person who does not have remorse about taking another person's life. I mean, even people who have engaged in manslaughter or have taken a life accidentally express remorse.

And so the fact that a person has may express no remorse indicates that there's a risk that it may happen again. And if we do not want to unleash that level of violence, then we should exert a level of accountability to prevent that from happening again. So apparently he should have been remorseful for attempting to stop a guy who was shouting that he was going to kill everyone on the subway. He should express remorse for that. Whoopi Goldberg doing the same routine.

Here she was yesterday from her very rich and privileged station in American life, suggesting it made her uncomfortable that after his trial, after his acquittal, Daniel Penny went to a bar. How did apparently he's supposed to what? Go live in sackcloth and ashes in a monastery somewhere? Well, what exactly is he supposed to do after being unfairly targeted and prosecuted for an act of heroism on the New York subway? I don't know that seeing them celebrating in a bar made me comfortable. You know, I mean, you killed a guy.

The man is dead. And maybe you just, you take the celebration home. You don't do it outside. But that's just me. Don't listen to anything I say. Okay. I mean, I promise you, I won't. Jamal Bowman could predictably be counted on to have the AOC-like take. He wrote an open letter to white people. We'll get to that in just one second. First, let me tell you about the holidays, the heart of family tradition. You know, those precious moments of being together, whether you are decorating the tree, lighting the menorah, just sharing a meal. The traditions matter. Have you thought about what happens if you die?

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to militate against the acquittal of Daniel Penny in the subway case with Jordan Neely. Representative Jamal Bowman, who thank God was primaried out in New York. He has an entire letter dedicated to white people. Here we go. Ready? Dear white people, capital W, capital P, white people. I don't know why I feel the need to keep talking to you. I don't know why part of me still has hope for you and for us. Some of you are too far gone.

Maybe enough of you aren't and will join us in fighting to end white supremacy. I just want to call out the hypocrisy and evil of it all and just continue to hope I won't rely completely on you because I know what's most important is to work with my community and other like-minded allies in the fight for justice. But I guess I'll just offer this. I'm 48 years old and I've seen countless incidents of police, brutal violence and killings in my lifetime. The first black man I saw violently attacked on camera was Rodney King. Those officers were acquitted. So actually two of the four officers were convicted and did time in jail.

Next, says Jamal Bowman, was Eric Garner's murder and his cries of, I can't breathe. All he was doing was trying to sell a few cigarettes to survive an economy that failed him, and he was jumped and killed by police. Actually, he was refusing to comply with police orders, Eric Garner, and he was wildly overweight, and that is what caused his death. He had a heart attack, effectively speaking. The next video burned into my memory is the murder of Philando Castile, shot and bled to death by police on the live stream. Okay, that was indeed a terrible case in which Philando Castile reached for his ID and the cop panicked,

And a wrongful death settlement was brought against the city, settled for about $4 million. So again, Jamal Bowman just goes on. The world saw George Floyd murdered. His murderer knelt on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds. I cried and couldn't stop crying. I saw five black Memphis police officers beating a black man to death on camera. White supremacy is not skin color. It's a state of mind, which of course is an easy way to get out of the fact that none of these cases were actual white supremacy. Jordan Neely is the latest. He was sick. He was not a threat.

Um, he was. He was shouting at everyone on the subway, testified in the trial. They were scared of Jordan Neely. He was subdued. Still not a threat. Daniel Penny choked him for six minutes and killed him. We all watched it on camera and he was still acquitted. I wish I didn't have to live with all of this trauma deep in my bones, says Jamal Bowman. I wish I could just be free to be me. I marvel at the beauty and greatness of my people in spite of white supremacy. It's extraordinary. That is what I will continue to lean on.

R.I.P. Jordan Neely, the justice system failed you. Kyle Rittenhouse and Daniel Penny are free. You're gone. We must still fight. So first of all, Kyle Rittenhouse shot some white Antifa members and he did so in self-defense. Daniel Penny was defending fellow subway riders from Jordan Neely.

And the attempt to turn everything into a racial issue, I think that day is over, by the way. I think Americans are tired of it. They are sick of it and they don't care about it anymore. But Democrats keep doubling down on it. Here were Democrats in front of the House of Representatives yesterday suggesting the full scale commutation of all death row sentences because of race or something. We should note at this point that the people on death row are literally the worst people on planet Earth. The worst people who exist. We're talking about child rapists and murderers, for example. But here are Democrats. It's pretty clear with whom they side.

Today on Human Rights Day, we call on President Biden to do the right thing, to use his clemency authority to commute the death sentences of the 40 individuals on death row, to re-sentence them to a prison term and to save lives. State sanctioned murder is not justice.

And the death penalty is a cruel, racist and fundamentally flawed punishment that has no place in our society. It is deeply discriminatory and has disproportionately been weaponized against black, brown and low income families for far too long. It is long past time for President Biden to make good on his campaign promise to address the federal death penalty.

With 40 days left in his presidency, we must move with urgency and ensure that history never repeats itself. Why the hell not? Why the hell not? Again, what a joke the Democrats are. Daniel Penny, for his part, he's been speaking out. He says, listen, it's pretty obvious that these sort of left wing policies have not worked. They've made people less safe. That's the reason why I had to stand up in the first place. But how does it serve them to hurt you? Just political gain. I mean, these are their policies that are

And I don't mean to get political. I don't really want to make any enemies, really. Although I guess I have already. But I mean, these are their policies that have clearly not worked, that the people, the general population are not in support of yet. Their egos are too big just to admit that they're wrong. Meanwhile, Penney also said he was asked, you know, would you have gone through this again, knowing that you'd get prosecuted, that you'd have to stand trial? Here was his answer.

The guilt I would have felt if someone did get hurt, if he did do what he was threatening to do, I would never be able to live with myself. And I'll take a million court appearances and people calling me names and people hating me just to keep one of those people from getting hurt or killed.

Well, that seems like the kind of person you want more of on the street. Democrats, of course, want apparently more Jordan Neelys on the street and fewer Daniel Pennies on the street. And that is not a call for people to die, obviously. That is a call for people to be kept safe from people who have serious mental illness, schizophrenia, massive drug problems. Liberals have decided to leave on the streets. Now, speaking of terrible policy, the Federal Trade Commission under the excreble Lena Kahn

has now decided that they are going to nix the merger between Kroger and Albertsons. The idea being that Kroger and Albertsons are competing with each other and that's what's keeping prices low. Well, there's only one problem. Their market share as a general percentage of the supermarket industry has dropped radically over the years. Why? Because there are places like Target and, for example, Walmart that now sell groceries.

And so consolidation is a way of competing to lower costs. Alina Khan, who is an anti-market radical, appeared with Hassan Piker, who has now apparently been deemed worthy of decent conversation by the left. I mean, he was on Pod Save America the other day. It's amazing who they will elevate. Truly amazing.

And Lena Kahn, the current FTC head, she says that they are going to go after this merger and cancel the merger between Albertsons and Kroger. Why? In order to increase labor costs artificially.

Because the idea is if they're a merger, then you can't play the two sides off against one another in attempting to get labor. That is not why or how you block mergers. That is not what the FTC is designed to do. The FTC is not a unionization project. The Federal Trade Commission is meant to prevent monopoly that damages consumers. And here they are basically saying we don't care if it damages consumers to block the merger. It's all about us pleasing our union base.

This this decision being blocked. What kind of labor protections does that offer to people that are working at these corporations? So one thing that our lawsuit alleged was that if this merger goes through, it's going to mean higher grocery prices for shoppers.

but it's also going to be worse for the workers. And this is the first time that the FTC has ever sought to block a merger, not just because it's going to be bad for consumers, but also because it's going to be bad for workers. And, you know, especially in recent decades, antitrust enforcers had not really been focused on the worker harms as much. And that's something we've really looked to change.

So the complaint lays out how previously when there has been competition between Kroger and Albertsons,

the workers at each store were able to use that competition as leverage when they were trying to bargain. And that if you allow these two companies to merge, that leverage that comes from having a potential alternative employer or an alternative store where customers can go if there's a strike, but eliminating that leverage point and bargaining leverage would ultimately be bad for workers.

That is not the job of the Federal Trade Commission. That is a psychotic perspective on economics. It is markedly worse for consumers. You're artificially increasing the price of labor by preventing a perfectly market-efficient merger from happening because you want to increase the price of labor. That's what she is talking about right there. Well, good news, she's going to be gone. Trump's going to get rid of her. President-elect Trump on Tuesday announced Andrew Ferguson was going to lead the FTC. He is currently already a member of the agency. That's great. He's a veteran congressional aide. He's a former Supreme Court clerk.

He doesn't need to be confirmed because he's already on the FTC. Ferguson is all for economic efficiency. He has vowed to extend his regulatory scope to target social media sites that police conservative voices as well.

Andrew Ferguson will be an excellent change to the idiocy of Lena Kahn, who is indeed a deeply radical human being. By the way, Donald Trump is ready to open up this economy to a boom. So yesterday he promised via Truth Social that any person or company investing a billion dollars or more in the United States, quote, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including but in no way limited to all environmental approvals. Good, good. OK, that is a pro investment idea.

Okay, meanwhile, breaking news. The UK government has now announced they are indefinitely banning puberty blockers.

Remember that time that puberty blockers were considered mandatory medicine? It was the only way to prevent your girl from killing herself if she wanted to become a boy? Well, now the National Health Service, the vaunted National Health Service that we keep hearing so much about from the left, they have decided that puberty blockers for the treatment of gender dysphoria and gender incongruence in under 18s were banned temporarily in May 2024 after the cast review found there was insufficient evidence to show they were safe. Legislation will be updated to make the order indefinite and will be reviewed in 2027.

So basically the entire transgender medicine con is now over. It's falling apart as well it should be. That is excellent news. And again, goes to the heart of an entirely stupid debate that we've been having in the country over the course of the last 10 years. And it is 10 years in which left maintained that human beings were such interchangeable widgets, that we were all such blank slates, that a boy could be a girl and a girl could be a boy. And that the true obstacle to happiness was shooting girls filled with testosterone.

and then chopping off their healthy body parts. Amazing stuff. So good on the NHS. The United States is lagging behind on this. They shouldn't be. All of this should be banned immediately in all 50 states. That should be a priority, by the way, for the federal government under the brand new Health and Human Services Administration of RFK Jr. This should absolutely be ruled under the HHS mandate as non-usable for under 18.

I'd make the case it should be non-usable for everyone because it is bad medicine. It has nothing to do with actually solving the underlying problem any more than ice pick to the frontal cortex solves seizures. In any case, the Trump administration is now going to have to look pretty deeply into the DOJ again.

Just before Trump takes office, it is now being revealed that the Justice Department secretly obtained phone records from two members of Congress and 43 staffers, including Kash Patel, the new Trump pick to lead the FBI during sweeping leak investigations during Trump's first term, according to a watchdog report released on Tuesday. The new report from the DOJ inspector general raises concerns about how the department tried to root out reporter sources from a sprawling and bipartisan list of federal employees.

who had access to classified information because of their job. Patel and the two members of Congress are not named in the report, but two sources familiar with the matter tell CNN Patel was targeted. So was Adam Schiff. So was Eric Swalwell. Patel was a staffer for the GOP-led House Intelligence Committee at the time. Here yesterday was the Republican chairman of the

oversight committee, Mike Turner, slamming the Trump DOJ for spying on the congressman and staff, including Kash Patel. When we say the Trump DOJ, we mean the DOJ as led by Trump appointees. But much of this was done at the lower levels of the DOJ. You'll recall it was the same DOJ that was targeting Trump at the time. It really shows that he understands the weaponization that has happened, uh,

of the FBI, the Department of Justice against Americans and really against our own government. I mean here you have the executive branch in effect spying on Congress. That weaponization goes right to the heart of really what we expect of the oversight processes. I mean here Congress

is doing its oversight and they access the email records, the phone records of members of Congress and their staff merely because they had access to classified information. They were doing their jobs here at Congress. That can't be, but we need to have statutes in place that both protect members of Congress and hold these people accountable so this doesn't happen again.

I mean, if you're wondering why it is that the Trump administration is nominating so many people who are victims of these particular agencies to then lead the agencies, this would be the reason. Because sometimes it takes the person who is motivated to actually clean out the deadwood from these institutions. Speaking of deadwood inside the institutions, what the hell does our Department of Defense do exactly? What would they say they do now? It's a serious question under Lloyd Austin. So apparently there have been drones floating near a bunch of military sites

According to Fox News, a top FBI leader revealed the agency knows concerningly little about mysterious drones that have been seen hovering over New Jersey. Dozens of drones have been spotted flying near sensitive sites like a military research facility in recent weeks. There's also reports that this was happening over in Virginia as well over the course of the last few weeks.

Some drones as large as SUVs have been spotted hovering in the Garden State skies, as well as smaller, more rapidly maneuverable drones, resembling what's referred to as drone motherships that have been deployed in Ukraine, Russia, and China, according to Fox News contributor Brett Velasovich. Here is Representative Chris Smith, Republican of New Jersey, saying that one police officer saw as many as 50 drones hovering around. So last night I was on the beach in Island State Park, and I saw a drone.

in Ocean County with the sheriff. He has been working it every single night. He's got his own tethered drones chronicling. One of his officers two nights ago saw 50 drones come in off the ocean right there.

So we thought maybe they'll replicate it. They didn't, but we thought it was a possibility. Then last night, we had a number of other people there, including a commanding officer from the Coast Guard, who said that one of their 47-foot motor lifeboats was followed by between 12 and 30 of these drones as they went through the water. Followed right behind them.

And meanwhile, the FBI itself is saying they have no idea who is operating these drones. So what would you do? What do you guys do here? Seriously, what do you do? This is like the most obvious thing in the world. You have giant drones that are hovering like motherships with smaller drones that are around them near American military bases. And the FBI is like, oh, apparently FAA regulations prevent them from just shooting down or even blocking these drones, which is totally crazy.

And the power of your federal government able to raid your house for an IRS regulatory violation, unable to do anything about swarms of drones hovering around our military bases in the United States. Genius level stuff. Here's senior FBI official Robert Wheeler saying the FBI has no idea what's happening here.

We do not attribute that to an individual or a group yet. We're investigating, but I don't have an answer of who's responsible for that, of one or more people that are responsible for those drone flights. But we're actively investigating. Well, I'm glad you're actively investigating.

Your investigations have been so great thus far over at the FBI and Kash Patel can't get in there fast enough. All right, folks, in just one second, we'll bring you the latest from Syria, as well as an insane take from Caitlin Clark on her role in the WNBA. If you're not a member, become a member, use code Shapiro, check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.