Ben Shapiro: Politics, Kanye, Trump, Biden, Hitler, Extremism, and War | Lex Fridman Podcast #336

1. 0:00 – 2:01

   Introduction

   1. BSBen Shapiro0:00

      The great lie we tell ourselves is that people who are evil are not like us. They're, they're a class apart. But everybody in history who has sinned is a person who's very different from me. Robert George, the philosopher over at Princeton, he's, he's fond of doing a, a sort of thought experiment in his classes where he asks people to raise their hand if they had lived in Alabama in 1861. "How many of you would be abolitionists?" And everybody raises their hand. And he says, "Of course that's not true. Of course that's not true." Right? The, the, the best protection against evil is recognizing that it lies in every human heart and the possibility that it takes you over.

   2. LFLex Fridman0:32

      Do you ever sit back, you know, in the quiet of your mind and think, "Am I participating in evil?" The following is a conversation with Ben Shapiro, a conservative political commentator, host of the Ben Shapiro Show, co-founder of The Daily Wire, and author of several books, including The Authoritarian Moment, The Right Side of History, and Facts Don't Care About Your Feelings. Whatever your political leanings, I humbly ask that you try to put those aside and listen with an open mind, trying to give the most charitable interpretation of the words we say. This is true in general for this podcast, whether the guest is Ben Shapiro or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Donald Trump or Barack Obama. I will talk to everyone from every side, from the far left to the far right, from presidents to prisoners, from artists to scientists, from the powerful to the powerless, because we are all human, all capable of good and evil, all with fascinating stories and ideas to explore. I seek only to understand, and in so doing, hopefully add a bit of love to the world. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Ben Shapiro.

2. 2:01 – 9:41

   Kanye 'Ye' West

   1. LFLex Fridman2:01

      Let's start with a difficult topic. What do you think about the comments made by Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, about Jewish people?

   2. BSBen Shapiro2:09

      They're awful and anti-Semitic. And they seem to get worse over time. They started off with the bizarre Death Con 3 tweet, and then they went into even more stereotypical garbage about Jews and Jews being sexual manipulators, I think that was the Pete Davidson/Kim Kardashian stuff, and then Jews running all of the media, Jews being in charge of the financial sector, Jewish people... I mean, there's no, I mean, I, I called it on my show they're Sturmer Nazism, and it is. I mean, it's like, right From Protocols of the Elders of Zion type stuff.

   3. LFLex Fridman2:43

      Do you think those words come from pain? Where do they come from?

   4. BSBen Shapiro2:47

      I mean, you know, it's, it's always hard to try and read somebody's mind. You know, w- what, what he looks like to me, just having experience in my own family, people who are bipolar, is he seems like a bipolar personality. He, he seems like somebody who is in the middle of a manic episode. And when you're manic, you tend to say a lot of things that, that you shouldn't say, and you tend to believe that they're the most brilliant things ever said. The Washington Post did an entire piece speculating about how bipolarism played into the kind of stuff that, that Ye was saying. And, um, it's hard for me to think that it's not playing into it, especially because even if he is an anti-Semite, and I have no reason to suspect he's not, given all of his comments, if he had an ounce of common sense, he would stop at a certain point. And bipolarism tends to drive you well past the, the point where common sense applies. So, I mean, I, I would imagine it's coming from that. I mean, I, I... From his comments, I would also imagine that he's doing the logical mistake that, that a lot of anti-Semites or racists or bigots do, which is, "Somebody hurt me. That person is a Jew. Therefore, all Jews are bad." And that, that jump from, "A person did something to me I don't like who's a member of a particular race or class, and therefore everybody of that race or class is bad," I mean, that's textbook bigotry, and that's pretty obviously what Ye is engaging in here.

   5. LFLex Fridman4:07

      So, jumping from the individual to the group.

   6. BSBen Shapiro4:09

      That's the way he's been expressing it, right? He keeps talking about his Jewish agents. And I watched your interview with him and you kept saying, "So, just name the agents," right? Just name the people who are, who are screwing you. And he wouldn't do it. Instead, he just kept going back to the, the general, the group, the, the, the Jews in general. I mean, that's, that's textbook bigotry. And if it were put in any other context, he would probably recognize it as such.

   7. LFLex Fridman4:30

      To the degree his words fuel hate in the world, uh, what's the way to reverse that process? What's the way to alleviate the hate?

   8. BSBen Shapiro4:37

      I mean, when it comes to alleviating the kind of stuff that he's saying, obviously debunking it, you know, making clear that what he's saying is, is garbage. But the reality is that I think that, that for most people who are in any way engaged with these issues, uh, I don't think they're being convinced to be anti-Semitic by Ye. I mean, I think that there's a group of people who may be swayed that anti-Semitism is acceptable because Ye is saying what he's saying, and he's saying so very loudly and he's saying it over and over. But, you know, I think that, for example, there are these signs that were popping up in Los Angeles saying, "Ye is right." Well, that, that group's been out there posting anti-Semitic signs on the freeways for years. And there are groups like that posting anti-Semitic signs where I live in Florida. They've been doing that for years, well before Ye was saying this sort of stuff. It's just like latest opportunity to, to kind of jump on, on that particular bandwagon. But listen, I think that people do have a moral duty to call that stuff out.

   9. LFLex Fridman5:34

      So, there is a degree to which it normalizes that kind of, uh, idea that Jews control the media, Jews control X institution. Is there a way to talk about, uh, a high representation of a group, like Jewish people, in a certain institution, like the media or Hollywood and so on, without it being a hateful conversation?

   10. BSBen Shapiro6:02

       Sure, of course. A high percentage of, of... Higher than statistically represented in the population percentage of......Hollywood agents are probably Jewish, a higher percentage of lawyers, generally, are probably Jewish, a high percentage of accountants are probably Jewish. Also, a higher percentage of, of engineers are probably Asian. Like, the statistical truths are statistical truths. It doesn't necessarily mean anything about the nature of the people who are being talked about. There are a myriad of reasons why people might be disproportionately in one arena or another, ranging from the cultural to sometimes the genetic. I mean, there are certain areas of the world where people are better long-distance runners because of their genetic adaptations in those particular areas of the world. That's not racist. That's just fact. You know, w- what starts to get racist is when you are attributing a bad characteristic to an entire population based on the notion that, that some members of that population are doing bad things.

   11. LFLex Fridman6:58

       Yeah, there's a jump between... It's also possible that, uh, record label owners as a group have a kind of culture that Fs over artists-

   12. BSBen Shapiro7:09

       Sure.

   13. LFLex Fridman7:09

       ... doesn't treat artists fairly. And it's also possible that there's a high representation of Jews, uh, in, in the group of people that own record labels. But it's that small, but a very big leap that people take from the group that own record labels to all Jews.

   14. BSBen Shapiro7:27

       For sure. And I, I think that one, one of the other issues also is that anti-Semitism is, is fascinating because it breaks down into so many different parts. Meaning that if, if you look at sort of different types of anti-Semitism... I- if you're a racist against Black people, it's typically because you're racist d- based on the color of their skin. If you're raci- if you're racist against the Jews, you're anti-Semitic, then there are actually a few different ways that breaks down, right? You have anti-Semitism in terms of ethnicity, which is like Nazi-esque anti-Semitism. You have Jewish parentage, you have a Jewish grandparent, therefore, you are... Your blood is corrupt and you are inherently going to have bad properties. Then there's sort of olds- old school religious anti-Semitism, which is that the Jews are the killers of Christ, or the Jews are the sons of pigs and monkeys, uh, and therefore Judaism is bad and therefore Jews are bad, sort of... And the way that you get out of that anti-Semitism, historically speaking, is mass conversion, right? Which most anti-Semitism for a couple thousand years actually was not ethnic. It was, it was much more rooted in, in this sort of stuff, right? If a Jew converted out of the faith, then the anti-Semitism was "alleviated." A- and then there's a sort of bizarre anti-Semitism that's political anti-Semitism, and that is members of a group that I don't like are disproportionately Jewish, therefore all Jews are, are members of this group or are predominantly represented in this group. So, you'll see Nazis saying the Communists are Jews. You'll see Communists saying the Nazis are Jews, or, or you'll see Communists saying that the capitalists, rather, are Jews. And so th- that's the weird thing about anti-Semitism. It's kind of like the Jew is behind every corner. It's basically a big conspiracy theory. Unlike a lot of other forms of racism, which are not really conspiracy theory, anti-Semitism tends to be a conspiracy theory about the levers of power being controlled by a shadowy cadre of people who are getting together behind closed doors to control things.

   15. LFLex Fridman9:12

       Yeah, the most absurd illustration of anti-Semitism, just like you said, is, uh, Stalin versus Hitler over Poland, that every bad guy was a Jew.

   16. BSBen Shapiro9:24

       Right (laughs) .

   17. LFLex Fridman9:24

       It was like, so every enemy... There's a lot of different enemy groups, uh, intellectuals, political and so on, military, and, and behind any movement that is considered the enemy for the Nazis and any movement that's considered the enemy for, uh, the Soviet Army are the Jews.

3. 9:41 – 17:47

   Hitler and the nature of evil

   1. LFLex Fridman9:41

      What does the fact that Hitler took power teach you about human nature? When you look back at the history of the 20th century, what, what do you learn from that time?

   2. BSBen Shapiro9:52

      I mean, there are a bunch of lessons to Hitler taking power. The, the first thing I think people ought to recognize about Hitler taking power is that the power had been centralized in the government before Hitler took it. So, if you actually look at the history of Nazi Germany, the Weimar Republic had effectively collapsed. The power had been centralized in the Chancellery, uh, and, and really under Hindenburg for a couple of years before that. And so it was only a matter of time until someone who was bad grabbed the power. And so the struggle between the Reds and the Browns in Nazism, uh, in, uh, in pre-Nazi Germany, led to this kind of up spiraling of radical sentiment that allowed Hitler in through the front door, not through the back door, right? He was elected, so-

   3. LFLex Fridman10:35

      So, you think Communists could have also taken power?

   4. BSBen Shapiro10:37

      I mean, there's no question Communists could have taken power. They were a serious force in, in pre-Nazi Germany.

   5. LFLex Fridman10:42

      Do you think there was an underlying current that would have led to an atrocity if the Communists had taken power?

   6. BSBen Shapiro10:46

      Wouldn't have been quite the same atrocity, but obviously the Communists in Soviet Russia at exactly this time were, were committing the Holodomor.

   7. LFLex Fridman10:53

      Yeah.

   8. BSBen Shapiro10:53

      Right? So, they... So, it was... There, there were, there were very few good guys in terms of good parties. The moderate parties were being dragged by the radicals into alliance with them to prevent the worst case scenario from the other guy, right? So if you, if you look at... I'm, I'm sort of fascinated by the, the history of this period because it really does speak to how does a democracy break down. I mean, the '20s, Weimar Republic, was a very liberal democracy. How does a liberal democracy break down into complete fascism and then into genocide? And there, there's a character who, you know, was very prominent in the history at that time, uh, named Franz von Papen, who was actually the second to last chancellor of the republic before Hitler. So, he was the chancellor, and then he handed over to Schleicher, and then he ended up... Schleicher ended up collapsing, and that ended up handing power over to Hitler. It was Papen who had stumped for Hitler to become chancellor. Uh, Papen was a, was a Catholic democrat. He didn't like Hitler. He thought that Hitler was a radical and a nut job. But he also thought that Hitler being a buffoon, as he saw it, was going to essentially be usable by the right forces in order to get the... In order to prevent the Communists from taking power, maybe in order to restore some sort of legitimacy to the regime because he was popular, in order for Papen to, to retain power himself. And then immediately after Hitler had taken power, Hitler basically kills all of Papen's friends. Papen, out of......quote-unquote, "Loyalty stays on." He ends up helping the Anschluss in Austria. Now, all this stuff is really interesting mainly because what it speaks to is the great lie we tell ourselves that people who are evil are not like us. They're, they're a class apart. People who do evil things, people who support evil people, people... They're not like us. Right? That- That- That- That's an easy call. Everybody tha- everybody in history who has sinned is a person who's very different from me. Robert George, the philosopher over at Princeton, he's, he's fond of doing a, a sort of thought experiment in his classes where he asks people to raise their hand if they had lived in Alabama in 1861. "How many of you would be abolitionists?" And everybody raises their hand. And he says, "Of course, that's not true. Of course, that's not true." Right? The- The- The best protection against evil is recognizing that it lies in every human heart and the possibility that it takes you over. And so you have to be very cautious in how you approach these issues. And the back and forth of politics, the- the sort of bipolarity of politics, the- the- or the polarization in politics might be a better way to put it, you know, makes it very easy to, to kind of fall into the rock-'em-sock-'em robots that eventually could theoretically allow you to support somebody who's truly frightening and hideous in order to stop somebody who you think is more frightening and hideous. And you see this kind of language, by the way, now predominating almost all over the Western world, right? "My- My political enemy is an enemy of democracy. My political enemy is gonna end the republic. My political enemy i- is going to be the person who destroys the country we live in." And so that person has to be stopped by any means necessary. And that's- that's dangerous stuff.

   9. LFLex Fridman13:47

      So, the communists had to be stopped in Nazi Germany, and so they're the devil, and so any useful buffoon, as long as they're effective against the communists, would do. Do you ever wonder... Because the people that are participating in evil may not understand that they're doing evil. Do you ever sit back, you know, in the quiet of your own mind and think, "Am I participating in evil?"

   10. BSBen Shapiro14:10

       I mean, th- So, my business partner and I, uh, one of our, uh, our favorite memes is, uh, from...

   11. LFLex Fridman14:16

       (laughs)

   12. BSBen Shapiro14:16

       There's a, uh, British comedy show, the name escapes me, of these two guys who are members of the SS, and they're dressed in the SS uniforms and the black uniforms. They put the skulls on them and they're saying to each other... One says to the other guy, "You- You notice, like, the- the British, their- their symbol is something- is something nice and it's like an- it's like an eagle."

   13. LFLex Fridman14:33

       Mm-hmm.

   14. BSBen Shapiro14:33

       "And... But us, it's a skull and crossbones. You see the- the Americans, you see their- their blue uniforms. They're very nice and pretty. Ours are jet black. Are we the baddies?"

   15. LFLex Fridman14:41

       (laughs)

   16. BSBen Shapiro14:41

       And, you know, that's a... (laughs) And-

   17. LFLex Fridman14:43

       Ah.

   18. BSBen Shapiro14:44

       ... the- the truth is we look back at- at the Nazis and we say, "Well, of course they were the baddies. They wore black uniforms and they had jackboots and they had this and that." And of course, they were the bad guys, but evil rarely presents its face so clearly. So yeah, I mean, I think that you have to constantly be thinking along those lines and, you know, hopefully you try to avoid it. You know, you can only do the best that a human being can do. But yeah, I mean, the answer is yes. If it... I would say that I spend an inordinate amount of time reflecting on whether I'm doing the right thing, and I may not always do the right thing. I'm sure a lot of people think that I'm doing the wrong thing on a daily basis. But, um, it's definitely a question that- that has to enter your mind as a- as a historically aware and hopefully morally decent person.

   19. LFLex Fridman15:27

       Do you think you're mentally strong enough if you realize that you're on- on the wrong side of history to switch sides? Very few people in history seem to be strong enough to do that.

   20. BSBen Shapiro15:37

       I mean, I- I think that the answer I hope would be yes. Uh, y- you never know until the- the time comes and you have to do it.

   21. LFLex Fridman15:43

       Yeah.

   22. BSBen Shapiro15:43

       Uh, I will say that having heterodox opinions in a wide variety of areas is, uh, is something that- that I have done before. I'm the only person I've ever heard of in- in public life who actually has a list on their website of all the dumb, stupid things-

   23. LFLex Fridman15:59

       That's great. (laughs)

   24. BSBen Shapiro15:59

       ... I've ever said. Uh, so where I go through and I either say, "This is why I still believe this," or, "This is why what I said was terrible and stupid."

   25. LFLex Fridman16:06

       Yeah.

   26. BSBen Shapiro16:07

       Um, and I'm sure that list will get a lot longer-

   27. LFLex Fridman16:09

       Yeah, I look forward to-

   28. BSBen Shapiro16:10

       ... as the years go on.

   29. LFLex Fridman16:10

       ... to new editions to that list. (laughs)

   30. BSBen Shapiro16:11

       Yeah, exactly.
4. 17:47 – 23:31

   Political attacks on the left and the right

   1. LFLex Fridman17:47

      you're one of the most effective people in the world at attacking the left, and sometimes it can slip into attacking the group. Do you worry that there- that's the same kind of oversimplification that Ye's doing about Jewish people that you can sometimes do with the left as a group?

   2. BSBen Shapiro18:05

      So, when I speak about the left, I'm speaking about a philosophy.... I'm not, I'm not really speaking about individual human beings as the leftists like group, and then try to name who the members of this individual group are. I also make a distinction between the left and liberals. There are a lot of people who are liberal who disagree with me on taxes, disagree with me on foreign policy, disagree with me on a lot of things. Um, the people who I'm talking about generally when I talk about the left in the United States are people who believe that alternative points of view ought to be silenced because they are damaging and harmful, simply based on the disagreement. So, that's one distinction. The second distinction, again, is when I talk about the right versus the left, typically I'm talking about a battle of competing philosophies. And so I'm not speaking about typically... It, it would be hard to... If, if you put a person in front of me and said, "Is this person of the left or of the right?" Having just met them, I wouldn't be able to, to label them in the same way that if you met somebody and their name was Greenstein, you'd immediately go, "Ah, Jew." Or you met a black person, it's black person. And that the adherence to a philosophy makes you a member of a group. If I think the philosophy is bad, that doesn't necessarily mean that you as a person are bad, but it does mean that I think your philosophy is bad.

   3. LFLex Fridman19:11

      Yeah. So the grouping is based on the philosophy versus something, uh, like a race, like the s- the, the color of your skin, or a race as in the case of the Jewish people. So it's a different thing. You c- you can be a little bit more nonchalant and careless in attacking a group because it's ultimately attacking a set of ideas, right?

   4. BSBen Shapiro19:29

      Well, I mean, it is really nonchalant in, in attacking the set of ideas. And I don't know that nonchalant would be the way I'd put it. I, I tried, I try to be exact when you're... You know, you don't, you don't always hit, but, you know, the... If I say that I oppose the communists, right? And then presumably I'm speaking of people who believe in the communist philosophy. Now, the question is whether I'm mislabeling, right? Whether I'm taking somebody who's not actually a communist and then shoving them in that group of communists, right? That would be inaccurate.

   5. LFLex Fridman19:54

      The, the, the dangerous thing is it expands the group, as opposed to you're talking about the philosophy. You, you're, you're throwing everybody who's ever said, "I'm curious about communism. I'm curious about socialism." There's, 'cause there's like a gradient. You know, it's like, um, to th- to throw something at you, I think Joe Biden said, "MAGA Republicans," right?

   6. BSBen Shapiro20:13

      Right.

   7. LFLex Fridman20:14

      You know, I think that's a very careless statement because the thing you jump to immediately is like all the Republicans-

   8. BSBen Shapiro20:20

      Everyone who voted for, for Trump, right?

   9. LFLex Fridman20:21

      Oh, for Trump.

   10. BSBen Shapiro20:22

       Right.

   11. LFLex Fridman20:22

       Versus I think the, in the, in the charitable interpretation, that means a set of ideas. Right?

   12. BSBen Shapiro20:28

       Yeah. My, my actually problem with, with the MAGA Republicans line from, from Biden is that he went on in the speech that he made in, in front of Independence Hall to actually try and define what it meant to be a MAGA Republican who was a threat to the republic, was the kind of language that he was using. And later on in the speech, he actually suggested, "Well, you know, there are moderate Republicans. And the moderate Republicans are people who agree with me on like the Inflation Reduction Act." It's like, well, that, that, that can't be the, the, the dividing line between a MAGA Republican and a moderate. Like, a moderate Republican is somebody who agrees with you? You got, you gotta name me like a, a Republican who disagrees with you fairly strenuously but is not in this group of threats to the republic. You make that distinction, we can have a fair discussion about whether the idea of election denial, for example, makes somebody, you know, a threat to institutions. That, that's, that's a, that's a conversation that we can have, and then we'll have to discuss how much power they have, you know, what the actual perspective is, what... Delve into it. But, you know, I think that he was being overbroad and sort of labeling all of his political enemies under one rubric. Now, again, in politics, this stuff sort of happens all the time. I'm not gonna plead clean hands here 'cause I'm sure that I've been inexact. Um, but somebody, w- what would be good in that particular situation is for somebody to sort of read me back the quote and I'll, I'll let you know where I've been inaccurate. I'll try to do that.

   13. LFLex Fridman21:37

       And also you don't shy away from humor and occasional trolling and mockery and all that kind of stuff for the, for the fun, for the chaos, all that kind of stuff.

   14. BSBen Shapiro21:44

       I mean, you know, I, I, I try not to, to do trollery for trollery's sake. But, you know, if the show's not entertaining and not fun, people aren't gonna listen.

   15. LFLex Fridman21:51

       Right.

   16. BSBen Shapiro21:52

       And so, you know, if you can't have fun with politics, the truth about politics is we all take it very seriously 'cause it has some serious ramifications. Politics is Veep. It is not House of Cards. The, the general rule of politics is that everyone is a moron unless proven otherwise, that virtually everything is done out of stupidity rather than malice, and that if you actually watch politics as a comedy, you'll have a lot more fun. And so the, the difficulty for me is I take politics seriously, but also I have the ability to sort of flip the switch and suddenly it all becomes incredibly funny. Because it, it, it really is. Like, if you just watch it from a pure entertainment perspective and you put aside the fact that it affects hundreds of millions of people, then watching, you know, President Trump being president... I mean, he's one of the funniest humans who's ever lived. Watching Kamala Harris be Kamala Harris and talking about how much she loves Venn diagrams or electric buses, I mean, that- that's- that's funny stuff. So, if I can't make fun of that, then my job becomes pretty morose pretty quickly.

   17. LFLex Fridman22:43

       Yeah. It's funny to figure out what is the perfect balance between, uh, seeing the humor and the absurdity of, of the game of it, versus taking it seriously enough because it does affect hundreds of millions of people. It's a weird balance to strike. 'Cause like, uh, I am afraid with the internet that everything becomes a joke.

   18. BSBen Shapiro23:03

       I, I totally agree with this. Uh, I will say this. I, I try to make less jokes about the ideas and more jokes about the people in the same way that I make jokes about myself. I'm, I'm pretty self-effacing in terms of my humor. Um, I would say at least half the jokes on my show are about me. When I'm, when I'm reading ads for, for Tommy John and they're talking about their no wedgie guarantee, I'll say things like, "You know, that would help me in high school," because it would have. I mean, just factually speaking. Um, so, you know, if I can speak that way about myself, I feel like everybody else can take it as well.

5. 23:31 – 33:26

   Quebec mosque shooting

   1. LFLex Fridman23:31

      Difficult question. In 2017, there was a mosque shooting in Quebec City. Six people died, five others seriously injured. The 27-year-old gunman consumed a lot of content online and checked Twitter accounts a lot of a lot of people. But one of the people he checked quite a lot of is you, uh, 93 times in the month leading up to the shooting. If you could talk to that young man, what would you tell him? And maybe other young men listening to this that have hate in their heart in that same way, what would you tell 'em?

   2. BSBen Shapiro24:03

      You're getting it wrong. If anything that I or anyone else in mainstream politics says drives you to violence, you're getting it wrong....you're getting it wrong. Now, again, when, when it comes to stuff like this, I have a hard and fast rule that I've applied evenly across the spectrum. And that is, I never blame people's politics for other people committing acts of violence, unless they're actively advocating violence.

   3. LFLex Fridman24:25

      Hm.

   4. BSBen Shapiro24:25

      So, when a fan of Bernie Sanders shoots up a congressional baseball game, that is not Bernie Sanders' fault. I may not like his rhetoric, I may disagree with him on everything. Bernie Sanders did not tell somebody to go shoot up a congressional baseball game. When a nutcase in San Francisco goes and hits Paul Pelosi with a hammer, I'm not gonna blame Kevin McCarthy, the House Speaker, for that. When somebody threatens Brett Kavanaugh, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna suggest that that was Joe Biden's fault because it's not Joe Biden's fault. I mean, we can play this game all day long, and I find that the people who are most intensely focused on playing this game are people who tend to oppose the politics of the person, as opposed to actually believing sincerely that this has driven somebody into the arms of the, the god of violence. But, you know, I, I have 4.7 million Twitter followers. I have eight million Facebook followers. I have five million YouTube followers. I would imagine that some of them are people who are violent. I would imagine that some of them are people who do evil things or want to do evil things. And, um, I wish that there were a wand that we could wave that would prevent those people from deliberately or, or mistakenly misinterpreting things as a call to violence. Uh, it's, it's just a negative byproduct of the fact that you can reach a lot of people. And so, you know, if somebody could point me to the comment that, that I suppose, quote-unquote, "drove somebody to go and literally murder human beings," uh, then I would appreciate it so I could, so I could talk about the comment. But I, I don't, mainly because I, I just think that if we remove agency from individuals and we, if, if we blame broad-scale political rhetoric for every act of violence, we're not gonna... The, the, the people who are gonna pay the price are actually the, the general population, because free speech will go away. If the idea is that things that we say could drive somebody who is unbalanced to go do something evil, the necessary byproduct is hate, i- i- is that, is that speech is a form of hate. Hate is a form of violence. Speech is a form of violence. Speech needs to be curbed. And that, to me, is deeply disturbing.

   5. LFLex Fridman26:26

      So, definitely he, that man, that 27-year-old man is the only one responsible for the evil he did. But what if he and others like him are not nutcases? What if they're people with pain, with anger in their heart? What would you say to them? You are exceptionally influential, and other people like you that speak passionately about ideas, what do you think is your opportunity to alleviate the hate in their heart?

   6. BSBen Shapiro26:55

      If we're speaking about people who aren't mentally ill and people who are just misguided, I'd say to him the thing that I said to every other young man in the country, "You need to find meaning and purpose in forming connections that actually matter, in, in a belief system that actually promotes general prosperity and, and, and promotes helping other people." And this is why, you know, the message that I most commonly say to young men is, "It's time for you to grow up, mature, get a job, get married, have a family, take care of the people around you, become a useful part of your community." I've, I've never, at any point in my entire career, suggested violence as a resort to political, political issues. And the whole point of having a political conversation is that it's a conversation. If I didn't think that, that you're worth trying to convince people of my point of view, I wouldn't do what I do for a living.

   7. LFLex Fridman27:45

      So violence doesn't solve anything?

   8. BSBen Shapiro27:47

      No, it doesn't.

   9. LFLex Fridman27:49

      As if this wasn't already a difficult conversation...

   10. BSBen Shapiro27:54

       (laughs)

   11. LFLex Fridman27:55

       ...let me ask about, uh, Ilhan Omar. You've called out her criticism of Israel policies as anti-Semitic. Is there a difference between criticizing a race of people, like the Jews, and, uh, and criticizing, um, the policies of a nation like Israel?

   12. BSBen Shapiro28:12

       Of course, of course. I criticize the policies of Israel on a fairly regular basis. I would assume from a different angle than Ilhan Omar does. Um, but yeah, I mean, I criticize the policies of, of a wide variety of states. And to take an example, I mean, I, I've, I've criticized Israel's policy in giving control of the Temple Mount to the Islamic Waqf, which effectively prevents anybody except for Muslims for praying up there. I've also criticized the Israeli government for their COVID crackdown. I mean, like, you can criticize the policies of any government. But that's not what Ilhan Omar does. Ilhan Omar doesn't actually believe that there should be a state of Israel. She believes that Zionism is racism and that the existence of a Jewish state in Israel is, in and of itself, the great sin. That is a statement she would make about no other people in no other land. She would not say that the French don't deserve a state for the French. She wouldn't say that Somalis wouldn't deserve a state in Somalia. She wouldn't say that, that Germans don't deserve a state in Germany. She wouldn't say for the 50-plus Islamic states that exist across the world, that they don't deserve states of their own. It is only the Jewish state that has fallen under her, her significant scrutiny. And she also promulgates lies about one specific state in the form of suggesting, for example, that Israel is an apartheid state, which it is most eminently not, considering that the last unity government in Israel included an Arab party, that there are Arabs who sit on the Israeli Supreme Court, and all the rest. And then beyond that, obviously, she's engaged in, in some of the same sort of anti-Semitic tropes that you heard from Ye, right?

   13. LFLex Fridman29:29

       (laughs)

   14. BSBen Shapiro29:29

       The stuff about, it's all about the Benjamins, that American support for Israel is all about the Benjamins. And she's had to be chided by members of her own party about this sort of stuff before.

   15. LFLex Fridman29:38

       Can you empathize with the plight of Palestinian people?

   16. BSBen Shapiro29:41

       Absolutely. I mean, I, I, you know... Some of the uglier things that I've ever said in my career are things that I said very early on, when I was 17, 18, 19. I started writing a syndicated column when I was 17. I'm now 38. So virtually all the dumb thing... I won't say virtually all. Many of the dumb things, the ben- the plurality of the dumb things that I've said came from the ages of, I would say, 17 to maybe 23.

   17. LFLex Fridman29:58

       Yeah.

   18. BSBen Shapiro29:58

       Uh, and they are rooted, again, in sloppy thinking. Uh, I, I feel terrible for people who have lived under the thumb and currently live under the thumb of Hamas, which is an actual terrorist group, or the Palestinian Authority, which is a corrupt oligarchy that steals money from its people and leaves them...... in misery, or Islamic Jihad, which is an actual terrorist group. And the, the basic rule for the region, in my view, is if these groups were willing to make peace with Israel, they would have a state literally tomorrow. And if they are not, then there will be no peace. And it really is that simple. If Israel ... The, the, the formula that's typically used has become a bit of a, a bumper sticker, but it happens to be factually correct. "If, if the Palestinians put down their guns tomorrow, there would be a state. If the Israelis put down their guns, there'd be no Israel."

   19. LFLex Fridman30:43

       (sighs) You get attacked a lot on the internet.

   20. BSBen Shapiro30:47

       Oh, yeah.

   21. LFLex Fridman30:48

       I got, I got-

   22. BSBen Shapiro30:48

       You noticed? (laughs)

   23. LFLex Fridman30:49

       I gotta ask you about your own psychology. Um, how do you not let that break you mentally? And how do you avoid letting that lead to a resentment of the groups that attack you?

   24. BSBen Shapiro31:02

       I mean, it's ... So, there, there are a few sort of practical things that I've done. So, for example, I would say that four years ago, Twitter was all-consuming. Twitter is an ego machine, especially the notifications button, right? The notifications button is just people talking about you all the time. And the normal human tendency is, "Wow, people talking about me. I gotta see what they're saying about me," which is a recipe for insanity. So, uh, my wife actually said, "Twitter is making your life miserable. You need to take it off your phone." So, Twitter is not on my phone. If I wanna log on to Twitter, I, I have to go onto my computer and I have to make the conscious decision to go onto Twitter and then take a look at what's going on.

   25. LFLex Fridman31:33

       I could just imagine you, like there's a computer in the basement. You descend into it to check Twitter-

   26. BSBen Shapiro31:38

       That's pretty much it.

   27. LFLex Fridman31:38

       ... just in the darkness.

   28. BSBen Shapiro31:39

       I mean, if you, if, if you look at when I actually tweet, it's generally, like, in the run-up to recording my show or when I'm prepping for my show later in the afternoon, for example.

   29. LFLex Fridman31:47

       That doesn't affect you negatively mentally, like put you in a bad mental space?

   30. BSBen Shapiro31:51

       Not particularly, if it's restricted to sort of what, what's being watched. Now, I, I will say that I think the most important thing is you have to surround yourself with a group of people who are, who you trust enough to make serious critiques of you when you're doing something wrong, but also, you know that they have your best interests at heart. 'Cause the internet is filled with people who, who don't have your best interests at heart and who hate your guts. And so, you can't really take those critiques seriously or it does wreck you. And the world is also filled with sycophants, right? The, the, the more successful you become, there are a lot of people who will tell you, "You're always doing the right thing." I'm very lucky. I got married when I was 24 and my wife was 20, so she's known me long before I was famous or wealthy or anything. And so, she's a, a good sounding board. I, I have a family that's willing to, that's willing to call me out on my bullshit, as you talked to, to Ye about. Uh, I have friends who are able to do that. I, I try to have open lines of communications with people who I, I believe have my best interests at heart. But one of the sort of conditions of being friends is that when you see me do something wrong, I'd like for you to let me know that, so I can correct it. And I don't want to leave bad impressions out there.
6. 33:26 – 46:29

   Elon Musk buying Twitter

   1. BSBen Shapiro33:26

   2. LFLex Fridman33:26

      All right.

   3. BSBen Shapiro33:27

      (laughs)

   4. LFLex Fridman33:27

      Well, uh, on that topic, what- what do you think about Elon buying Twitter? What do you like? Um, what do you- what are you hopeful on that front? What would you like to see Twitter improve?

   5. BSBen Shapiro33:36

      So, I'm, I'm very hopeful about Elon buying Twitter. I mean, I, I think that Elon is significantly more transparent than what has taken place up 'til now. He seems committed to the idea that he's gonna broaden the Overton window to allow for conversations that simply were banned before, everything ranging from efficacy of masks with regard to COVID, to whether men can become women, and all the rest. A lot of things that would get you banned on Twitter before without any sort of real explanation, it seems like he's dedicated to at least explaining what the standards are going to be and being broader in allowing a variety of perspectives on the outlet, which I think is wonderful. Uh, I think that's also why people are freaking out. I think the, the, the kind of wailing and gnashing of teeth and wearing of sackcloth and ash by so many members of the legacy media, uh, I think a lot of that is because Twitter essentially was an oligarchy in which certain perspectives were allowed and certain perspectives just were not. And that was part of a broader social media reimposed oligarchy, uh, in the aftermath of 2017. So, in, in order for, to, to really understand, I think, what, what it means for Elon to take over Twitter, I think that we have to take a look at sort of the history of media in the United States in two minutes or less. The United States, the media, for most of its existence, up until about 1990, at least from about 1930s until the 1990s, virtually all media was three major television networks, a couple major newspapers, and the wire services. Everybody had a local newspaper with its wire services that, that basically did all the foreign policy and all the national policy, McClatchy, Reuters, AP, AFP, et cetera. So, that monopoly or oligopoly existed until the rise of the internet. There were sort of pokes at it in talk radio and Fox News, but there certainly was not this plethora of sources. Then the internet explodes, and all of a sudden, you can get news everywhere. And the way that people are accessing that news is you're, I believe, significantly younger than I am, but we used to do this thing called bookmarking, where you would, uh, bookmark a series of websites and then you would visit them every morning. And then, uh, and then social media came up. And we-

   6. LFLex Fridman35:33

      Was this on AOL, or?

   7. BSBen Shapiro35:34

      Yeah, exactly.

   8. LFLex Fridman35:34

      (laughs)

   9. BSBen Shapiro35:34

      You had the dial-up and you would actually ... It was actually a can connected to a string, and you would actually just ... It would go ... And, and, uh, and then, uh, there came a point where social media arose. And social media was sort of a boon for everybody, because you no longer had to bookmark anything. You just followed your favorite accounts and all of them would pop up, and you'd follow everything on Facebook, and it would all pop up, and it was all centralized. And for a while, everybody was super happy because this was the brand new wave of the future, made everything super easy. Suddenly, outlets like mine were able to see new eyeballs because it was all centralized in one place, right? You didn't have to do it through Google optimization. You could now just put it on Facebook, and so many eyeballs were on Facebook, you'd get more traffic. And everybody seemed pretty happy with this arrangement until precisely the moment Donald Trump became president. At that point, (laughs) then the sort of preexisting supposition of a lot of the powers that be, which was ......Democrats are gonna continue winning from here on out, so we can sort of use these social media platforms as ways to, to push our information and still allow for there to be other information out there. The immediate response was, "We need to reestablish this, this siphoning of information." It was misinformation and disinformation that won Donald Trump the election. We need to pressure the social media companies to start cracking down on misinformation and disinformation. And you actually see this in the historical record. I mean, you can see how Jack Dorsey's talk about free speech shifted from about 2015 to about 2018. You can see Mark Zuckerberg give a speech at Georgetown in 2018 in which he talked about free speech and its value, and by 2019, he was going in front of Congress talking about how he was responsible for the stuff that was on Facebook, which is not true. He's not responsible for the stuff on Facebook, right? It's a platform. Is AT&T responsible for the stuff you say on your phone? The answer is typically no. So, when that happened, all of these... Because all the eyeballs had now been centralized in these social media sites, they were able to suddenly control what you could see and what you could not see. And the most obvious example was obviously leading up to 2020, the election that the killing of the Hunter Biden story is a great example of this. And so Elon coming in and taking over one of the social media services and saying, "I'm not playing by your rules." Right? "There's not gonna be this sort of group of people in the halls of power who are gonna decide what we can see and hear. Instead, I'm gonna let, uh, a thousand flowers bloom." There will be limits, but it's gonna be on a more case by case basis. We're going to allow perspectives that aren't mainstream, but maybe not mainstream in the halls of, of academia or in the halls of media. Let those, let those be said. I think that's a really good thing. Now, that comes with, you know, some responsibilities on Elon's personal part, which would be, you know, to be, for example, I think, more responsible in dissemination of information himself sometimes, right? Like, he, he got himself in trouble the other day for tweeting out that, that story about Paul Pelosi that, that was speculative and, and untrue. And I think... I, I don't think what he did is, you know, horrific. He deleted it when he found out that it was false, but... And, and that's actually a free speech working, right? He said something wrong, people ripped into him, he, he realized he was wrong, and he deleted it, which seems to me a better solution than preemptively banning content, which only raises more questions than it, than it actually stops. With that said, as the face of, of responsible free speech, you know, and, and that's sort of what he's pitching at Twitter, he, I think, should, should enact that himself and be a little more careful in, in the stuff that he tweets out.

   10. LFLex Fridman38:39

       Well, that, that's a tricky balance. Uh, uh, the reason a lot of people are freaking out is because, one, he's putting his thumb on the scale by saying he is more likely a Rep- Republican. He's showing himself to be center right, and sort of just having a political opinion, versus being this amorphous thing that doesn't have a political opinion. Um, I think if, if I were to guess, I haven't talked to him about it, but if I were to guess, he's sending a kind of signal that's important for the... Twitter the company itself, because if we're being honest, most of the employees are left-leaning. So, you have to kind of send a signal that... like a resisting mechanism to say like, uh, "Since most of the employees are left, it's, it's good for, uh, for Elon to be more right, to balance out the way the actual engineering is done, to say, 'We're not going to do any kind of activis- activism inside the engineering.'" If, if I were to guess, that's kind of the effective, um, aspect of that, of that mechanism. And the other one, by posting the Pelosi thing, is probably to expand the Overton window, like s- saying, "We can play. We c- we could post stuff. We could post conspiracy theories, and then through discourse, figure out what is and isn't true."

   11. BSBen Shapiro39:48

       Yeah. Again, like I say, I mean, I think that the... That is a better mechanism in action than what it was before. I just think it gave people who hate his guts the opening to, to kind of slap him for, for no reason. But I can see the strategy of it, for sure.

   12. LFLex Fridman40:01

       (sighs) Yeah.

   13. BSBen Shapiro40:01

       And I, I think that the, you know, the, the general idea that, that he's, you know, kind of pushing right where the company had pushed left before, I think that there, there is actually, uh, unilateral polarization right now in politics, at least with regard to social media, in which one side basically says, "The solution to disinformation is to shut down free speech from the other side." And the other side is basically like people like me are saying, "The solution to disinformation is to l- let a thousand..." Like, I'd rather have people on the left also being able to put out stuff that I disagree with than for there to be anybody who's sort of in charge of these social media platforms and using them as editorial sites. I mean, there, there are plenty... L- I'm, I'm not criticizing MSNBC for not putting on right-wing opinions. I mean, that's fine. I run a conservative site. Um, you know, we're not gonna put up left-wing opinions on a wide variety of issues 'cause we are a conservative site. But if you pitch yourself as a platform, that's a, that's a different thing. If you pitch yourself as the town square, as, as Elon likes to call it, then I think Elon has a better idea of that than, than many of the former employees did, especially now that we have that report from The Intercept suggesting that there were people from Twitter working with DHS to, to monitor, quote-unquote, "disinformation," and being rather vague about what disinformation meant.

   14. LFLex Fridman41:08

       Yeah. I don't think activism has a place in what is fundamentally an engineering company that's building a platform. Uh, like, the people inside the company should not be putting a thumb on the scale of what is and isn't allowed. They should create a mechanism for the, for the people to decide what is and isn't allowed. Do you think Trump should have been removed from Twitter? Should his account be restored?

   15. BSBen Shapiro41:32

       Uh, his account should be restored. And this is coming from somebody who really dislikes an enormous number of Donald Trump's tweets. Um, uh, uh, again, he's a very important political personage. Even if he weren't, I don't think that he should be banned from, from Twitter or Facebook in coordinated fashion. By the way, I, I hold that opinion about people who I think are far worse than, than Donald Trump. Right? People... I... Everyone knows I'm not an Alex Jones guy. I don't like Alex Jones. I think Alex Jones-

   16. LFLex Fridman41:59

       Uh-oh.

   17. BSBen Shapiro41:59

       ...pervades-

   18. LFLex Fridman41:59

       You think Alex should be back on Twitter?

   19. BSBen Shapiro42:01

       Uh, I do actually, uh, because I think that there are plenty of people who are willing to say that what he's saying is wrong. And I'm, I'm not a big fan of this idea that, that because people I disagree with and people who have personally targeted me, by the way. I mean, Alex Jones has, has been... has said some, some things about me personally that I'm not real fond of.

   20. LFLex Fridman42:18

       Are you guys not... You're not-

   21. BSBen Shapiro42:20

       Well, we're not besties. No.

   22. LFLex Fridman42:21

       Okay.

   23. BSBen Shapiro42:21

       It turns out... Yeah.... you know, all, all I've said is I don't really enjoy his show. He said some other stuff about the Antichrist and such. But, uh, that- that- that's, that's a bit of a different thing, I suppose. You know, even so-

   24. LFLex Fridman42:31

       Yeah.

   25. BSBen Shapiro42:32

       ... you know, I'm, I'm, I'm just not a big fan of this idea. Like, I've defended people who have really gone after me on a personal level, have targeted me, that... The town square is online. Banning people from the town square is unpersoning them. Unless you violated a criminal statute, you should not be unpersoned in American society, as a general rule. That doesn't mean that companies that are not platforms don't have the ability to respond to you. I think adidas was right to, to terminate its contract with Kanye, for example, or with Ye. Um, you know, that's... But Twitter ain't adidas.

   26. LFLex Fridman43:08

       So, the way... Uh, your stance on free speech, to the degree it- it's possible to achieve on a platform like Twitter, is, you fight bad speech with more speech, with better speech. And that's, um... So, if Alex Jones and Trump is allowed back on in, in the coming months and years leading up to the 2024 election, you think that's gonna make for a better world? In the long term?

   27. BSBen Shapiro43:36

       Uh, I think that on the principle that people should be allowed to do this, and the alternative being a group of, of thought bosses telling us what we can and cannot say, yes. Do I think in the short term, it's gonna mean a lot of things that I- I don't like very much? Sure. I mean, that's... Them's the, them's the cost of doing business, you know?

   28. LFLex Fridman43:50

       (laughs)

   29. BSBen Shapiro43:50

       Like, I think that one of the, one of the costs of freedom is people doing things that I don't particularly like. And I would prefer the freedom with, with all the, with all the stuff I don't like than, than not the freedom.

   30. LFLex Fridman44:01

       Let me linger on the love a little bit. Uh, you and a lot of people are pretty snarky on Twitter, uh, sometimes to the point of mockery, derision, even a bit of, if I were to say, bad faith, in, in the kind of mockery. Um, and you see it as a war. Like, El- I disagree with both you and Elon on this. Elon sees Twitter as a war zone, or at least has, saw it that way in the past. Have you ever considered being nicer on Twitter?
7. 46:29 – 51:03

   Trump and Biden

   1. BSBen Shapiro46:29

   2. LFLex Fridman46:30

      Can you say what your favorite and least favorite things are about President Trump and President Biden, one at a time? So, maybe one thing that you can say is super positive about Trump, and one thing super negative about Trump.

   3. BSBen Shapiro46:44

      Okay. So, the, the super positive thing about Trump is that because he has no preconceived views that are establishmentarian, he's sometimes willing to go out of the box and do things that haven't been tried before. And sometimes that works. I mean, the, the best example being the entire foreign policy establishment telling him that he couldn't get a Middle Eastern deal done unless he centered the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. And instead, he just went right around that and ended up cutting a bunch of peace deals in the Middle East, uh, or moving the embassy in Jerusalem, right? Sometimes he does stuff, and it's really out of the box, and it actually works. And that's, that's kind of awesome in politics and, and neat to see. Uh, the downside of Trump is that he has no capacity to, to, to use any sort of... Uh, there- there- there's no, there's no filter between brain and mouth. What- whatever happens in his brain is the thing that comes out of his mouth. I know a lot of people find that charming and wonderful. And from time to... And it is very funny. Um, but I don't think that, that it is a, a particularly excellent, personal quality in a person who has as much responsibility as President Trump has. I think he says a lot of damaging and, and bad things, uh, on Twitter. I think that he, um, seems, you know, consumed in some ways by his own grievances, which is why you've seen him focusing on election 2020 so much. Uh, and I think that that is very negative about President Trump. So, I'm, I'm very grateful to President Trump as a conservative for many of the things that he did. Uh, I think that a lot of his personality issues are, uh, are pretty severe.

   4. LFLex Fridman48:02

      What about Joe Biden?

   5. BSBen Shapiro48:05

      So, I, I think that the thing that I like most about Joe Biden?

   6. LFLex Fridman48:08

      Yes.

   7. BSBen Shapiro48:09

      Um, I will say that Biden... Two things. One, Biden seems to be a very good father, by all available, by all available evidence, right? There are a lot of people who have put out, you know, kind of tape of him talking to Hunter, and Hunter's having trouble with drugs or whatever. And I keep listening to that tape and thinking-... he seems like a really good dad. Like, the stuff that he's saying to his son is stuff that, God forbid, if that were happening with my kid, I would be saying to my kid.

   8. LFLex Fridman48:35

      Mm-hmm.

   9. BSBen Shapiro48:35

      Uh, and so, you know, you can't help but feel for the guy. He's had an incredibly difficult go of it with his, with his first wife and the death of, of members of his family, and then Beau dying. I mean, like, that, that kind of stuff obviously is deeply sympathetic and his, his... You know, he seems like a deeply sympathetic father. Um, as, as far as his politics, uh, he seems like a slap on the back, you know, kind of guy, and I don't mind that. I, I think, that's, that's nice so far as it goes. It's sort of an old school of politics where things are done with handshake and personal relationships. Uh, the thing that I don't like about him is I think sometimes that's really not genuine. I think that, that sometimes (laughs) , um, you know, I think h- that's his personal tendency, but I think sometimes he allows the, the prevailing winds of his party to carry him to incredibly radical places and then he just doubles down on the radicalism in some pretty disingenuous ways.

   10. LFLex Fridman49:23

       Mm-hmm.

   11. BSBen Shapiro49:23

       And, and there I would cite the Independence Day speech with, or the Independence Hall speech, which I thought was truly one of the worst speeches I've seen a president give.

   12. LFLex Fridman49:30

       So you don't think he's trying to be a unifier in general?

   13. BSBen Shapiro49:32

       Not at all. I mean, I, I... That's, that's what he was elected to do. He was elected to do two things: not be alive and be a unifier. Those were the two things. And like, and when I say not be alive, I don't mean like physically dead. This is where this now comes in. But he, but what I do mean is that he is... He was elected to not be particularly activist. Basically, the mandate was, "Don't be Trump. Be sane, don't be Trump. Calm everything down." And instead he got in and he's like, "What if we spend $7 trillion? What if we, what if we pull out of Afghanistan without any sort of plan? What if I start labeling all of my political enemies, enemies of the Republic? What, what if I start sig- bringing Dylan Mulvaney to the White House and talking about how it is a moral sin to prevent the general mutilation of minors?" I mean, like th- like this kind of stuff is very radical stuff, and this is not a president who has pursued a unifying agenda, which is why his approval rating sank from 60% when he entered office to low 40s or high 30s today. Unlike President Trump, who never had a high approval rating, right? Trump came into office and he had like a 45% approval rating and when he left office, he had about a 43% approval rating, and bounced around between 45 and 37 pretty much his entire presidency. Biden went from being a very popular guy coming in to a very unpopular guy right now. And if, if you're Joe Biden, you should be looking in the mirror and wondering exactly why.

   14. LFLex Fridman50:41

       Yeah. Do you think that pulling out from Afghanistan could be flipped as a pro for Biden in terms of he actually did it?

   15. BSBen Shapiro50:47

       I think it's gonna be almost impossible. I think the American people are incredibly inconsistent about their own views on foreign policy. In other words, we, we like to be isolationist until the time, comes time for us to be defeated and humiliated. Uh, when, when that happens, we tend not to like it very much.

8. 51:03 – 1:02:36

   Hunter Biden's laptop

   1. LFLex Fridman51:03

      Y- you mentioned Biden being a good father. Can you make the case for and against the Hunter Biden laptop story, for it being a big deal and against it being a big deal?

   2. BSBen Shapiro51:15

      Sure. So, so the case for it being a big deal is basically twofold. One is that it is clearly relevant if the president's son is running around to foreign countries picking up bags of cash because his last name is Biden while his father is Vice President of the United States, and it raises questions as to influence peddling for either the vice president or the former vice president using political connections. Did he make any money? Who was the big guy, right? All these open questions. That obviously implicates, you know, the questions to be asked. And then the secondary reason that the story is big is actually because of the reaction of the story. The banning of the story is in and of itself a major story. If there's, if there's any story that implicates a presidential candidate in the last month of an election and there is a media blackout, including a social media blackout, that obviously raises some very serious questions about informational flow and dissemination in the United States.

   3. LFLex Fridman52:03

      So no matter h- how big of a deal the story is, it is a big deal that there's a censorship of any relevant story.

   4. BSBen Shapiro52:10

      When there's a coordinated collusive blackout, yeah, that's, that's a, that's a serious and major problem. Uh, so those are the two reasons why it would be a big story. The two reasons, uh, uh... A reason why it would not be a big story perhaps, uh, is if it turns out, and we don't really know this yet, but let's say that, that Hunter Biden was basically off on his own doing what he was doing, you know, being a derelict or a drug addict or acting badly, uh, and his dad had nothing to do with it and Joe was telling the truth and he really ne- But the problem is we never actually got those questions answered. So if it had turned out to be nothing of a story, the nice thing about stories that turn out to be nothing is that after they turn out to be nothing, they're nothing. (laughs) The, the biggest problem with this story is that it wasn't allowed to take the normal life cycle of a story, which is original story breaks, follow-on questions are asked, follow-on questions are answered, story is either now a big story or it's nothing. When, when a s- the life cycle of a story is cut off right at the very beginning, right when it was born, then that allows you to speculate in any direction you want. You can speculate it means nothing, it's abs- it's nonsense, it's Russian, it's a Russian laptop, it's, it's disinformation. Or, on the other hand, this means that Joe Biden was personally calling Hunter and telling him to pick up a sack of cash over in Beijing and then he became president and he's influence peddling. So, you know, this is why it's important to allow these stories to go forward. So this is why actually the bigger story for the moment is not the laptop, it's the reaction to the laptop because it cut off that life cycle of the story. And then, you know, at some point, I would assume that there will be some follow-on questions that are actually answered when the House is pledging, if it goes Republican, to, to investigate all of this. Again, I wouldn't be supremely surprised if it turns out that, that there was no direct involvement of Joe in this sort of stuff, because it turns out, as I said before, that all of politics is veep.

   5. LFLex Fridman53:46

      Mm-hmm.

   6. BSBen Shapiro53:47

      And this, this is always the story with half the scandals that you see, is that everybody assumes that there's some sort of deep and abiding clever plan that some politician is implementing it, and- and then you look at it and it turns out, no, it's just something dumb, right? Th- this is sort of perfect example of this. You know, President Trump with the classified documents in Mar-a-Lago. So people on the left are like, "It's probably nuclear codes. Probably he's taking secret documents and selling them to the Russians or the Chinese." And the real most obvious explanation is Trump looked at the papers and he said, "I like these papers," and then he just decided to keep them, right?

   7. LFLex Fridman54:16

      (laughs)

   8. BSBen Shapiro54:16

      And then people came to him and said, "Mr. President, you're not allowed to keep those papers." He said, "Who are those people? I don't care about what they have to say. I'm putting them in the other room in a box."

   9. LFLex Fridman54:23

      (laughs)

   10. BSBen Shapiro54:23

       Like, like which is more... Th- it is, it is highly likely that that is what happened and it's very disappointing to people, I think, when they realize i-... the human brain, I mean, you know this better than I do, but the human brain is built to find patterns, right? It's what we like to do. We like to find plans and patterns because this is how we survived in the wild is you found a plan, you found a pattern, you crack the code of the universe. When it comes to politics, the, the conspiracy theories that we see so often, it's largely because we're seeing inexplicable events. Unless you just assume everyone's a moron. If you assume that there's a lot of stupidity going on, everything becomes quickly explicable. If you assume that, that there must be some rationale behind it, you have to come up with increasingly convoluted conspiracy theories to explain just why people are acting the way that they're acting. And I find that, I won't say 100% of the time, but 90, 94% of the time (laughs) , the, the conspiracy theory turns out just to be people being dumb, and then other people reacting in dumb ways to the original people being dumb.

   11. LFLex Fridman55:15

       But it's also, to me, in that same way, very possible, uh, very likely that, uh, Hunter Biden... Hunter Biden getting money i- in Ukraine, I guess, for consulting and all that kinda stuff, is a, is a nothing burger. Is a... He's qualified, he's getting money as he should. There's a lot of influence-peddling in general in ter- that's not corrupt, like-

   12. BSBen Shapiro55:35

       By the way, I think the most, I think the most obvious explanation there probably is that he was f- fake influence peddling, meaning he went to Ukraine and he's like, "Guess what? My dad's Joe." And they're like, "Well, you don't have any qualifications in oil and natural gas, and you don't really have a great resume, but your dad is Joe." And then that was kind of the end of it. They gave him a bag of cash hoping he would do something, he never did anything.

   13. LFLex Fridman55:51

       I think you're making this sound worse than it is. I think that, in general, consulting is done in that way. Your name, it's not like-

   14. BSBen Shapiro55:56

       (laughs) I agree with you.

   15. LFLex Fridman55:57

       ... you're not, it's not like he is, uh, some rare case and this is an illustration of corruption. If you can criticize consulting, which I would-

   16. BSBen Shapiro56:06

       That's fair. (laughs)

   17. LFLex Fridman56:06

       ... which they're basically not providing... You, you look at a resume and who's who. Like, if you went to Harvard, I can criticize the same thing. If, if you have Harvard on your resume, you're more likely to be hired as a consultant, maybe there's a network there of people that you know, and you hire them in that same way. If your last name is Biden, if your last name... There's a lot of last names that sound pretty good, right?

   18. BSBen Shapiro56:29

       For sure, for sure.

   19. LFLex Fridman56:29

       And so the... And, and it's not like-

   20. BSBen Shapiro56:31

       And Hunter Biden admitted that much, by the way, right?

   21. LFLex Fridman56:32

       Yeah.

   22. BSBen Shapiro56:32

       In open interview, he was like, "If your last name weren't Biden, wouldn't you have got that job?" And he's like, "Probably not." And he's right.

   23. LFLex Fridman56:37

       But that's an honest...

   24. BSBen Shapiro56:38

       I agree with you.

   25. LFLex Fridman56:39

       It's not like he's getting a ridiculous amount of money. He was getting like a pretty standard consulting kind of money, which also we criticize 'cause they get a ridiculous amount of money.

   26. BSBen Shapiro56:49

       (laughs)

   27. LFLex Fridman56:49

       But I, sort of even to push back in the life cycle, or to Steelman the, the side that was concerned about the Hunter Biden laptop story, I don't know if there is a natural life cycle of a story. Because there's something about the virality of the internet that we can't predict, that a story can just take hold and the conspiracy around it builds, especially around politics, where the interpretation... Some popular sexy interpretation of a story that might not be connected to reality at all will become viral. And that, from Facebook's perspective, is probably what they're worried about, is, uh, uh, organized misinformation campaign that makes up a sexy story or a sexy interpretation of the, of the vague story that we have. And that has an influence on the populous.

   28. BSBen Shapiro57:39

       I mean, I think that's true, but I think the question becomes, who's the great adjudicator there, right? Who adjudicates when the story ought to be allowed to go through even a bad life cycle or may- allowed to go viral, as opposed to not? Now, it's one thing if you wanna say, "Okay, we can spot the Russian accounts that are actually promoting this stuff. They belong to the Russian government. Gotta shut that down." I think everybody agrees. This is actually one of the slides that's happened linguistically that I really object to, is the slide between disinformation and misinformation. You notice there was this evolution. In 2017, there was a lot of talk about disinformation. It was Russian disinformation. The Russians were putting out deliberately false information in order to skew election results, was the accusation. And then people started using disinformation or misinformation. And misinformation is either mistaken information or information that is, quote, unquote, "out of context." That becomes very subjective very quickly as to what out of context means. And it doesn't necessarily have to be from a foreign source. It can be from a domestic source, right? It could be somebody misinterpreting something here. It could be somebody interpreting something correctly, but PolitiFact thinks that it's out of context. That sort of stuff gets very murky very quickly. And so, I'm deeply uncomfortable with the idea that Facebook, I mean, Zuckerberg was, was on with Rogan and talking about how, you know, the FBI had basically said, "Look out for Russian interference in the election." And then all of these people were out there saying that the laptop was Russian disinformation, so he basically shut it down. You know, that, that sort of stuff is frightening, especially 'cause it wasn't Russian disinformation. I mean, the laptop was real. And so the fact that you have people who seem to... Let's put it this way. It seems as though... Maybe this is wrong. It seems as though when a story gets killed preemptively like this, it is almost universally a story that negatively affects one side of the political aisle. I can't remember the last time there's a story on the right that was disinformation or misinformation where social media stepped in and they went, "We cannot have this. This cannot be distributed. We're going to all collude so that this, this information is not distributed." Maybe in response to the story being proved false it gets taken down. But the, what made the Hunter Biden thing so amazing is that it wasn't really even a response to anything. It was like the story got posted. There were no actual doubts expressed as to the verified falsity of the story. It was just supposition that it had to be false and everybody jumped in. So I think that confirmed a lot of the conspiracy theories people had about, about social media and how it works.

   29. LFLex Fridman59:46

       Yeah, so if the reason you want to slow down the viral spread of a thing is at all grounded in partisanship, that's a problem. Like, you should be very honest with yourself and ask yourself that question. Is it because I'm on the left or on the right that I want to slow this down? Versus, is it hate? Uh, bipartisan hate speech? Right. So that, that's... But it's, it's really tricky. Um, but I, I... Like you, I'm very uncomfortable in general with any kind of slowing down, with any kind of censorship. But if, if there is something like a conspiracy theory that spreads hate that becomes viral, um, I still lean to let that conspiracy theory spread, 'cause the alternative is dangerous.

   30. BSBen Shapiro1:00:32

       Eh.
9. 1:02:36 – 1:06:15

   Candace Owens

   1. LFLex Fridman1:02:36

      Uh, so speaking of people you disagree with, what is your favorite thing about Candace Owens and, and what is one thing you disagree with her on?

   2. BSBen Shapiro1:02:46

      Uh, well, my favorite thing about Candace is that she will say things that nobody else will say. My least favorite thing about Candace is that she will say things that nobody else will say.

   3. LFLex Fridman1:02:54

      (laughs)

   4. BSBen Shapiro1:02:54

      You know? (laughs) I mean, listen. She- she says things that are audacious and I think need to be said sometimes. Sometimes I think that she is morally wrong, right? I think the way she responded to Kanye, I've said this clearly, was dead wrong and morally wrong, I-

   5. LFLex Fridman1:03:07

      What was her response?

   6. BSBen Shapiro1:03:08

      Her original response was that she proffered confusion of what Ye was actually, uh, talking about. Uh, and then she, you know, was defending her friend. I wish that the way that she had responded was by saying, "He's my friend and also he said something bad and anti-Semitic." I wish that she had said that. Right? So...

   7. LFLex Fridman1:03:25

      Right away.

   8. BSBen Shapiro1:03:26

      Right away.

   9. LFLex Fridman1:03:27

      Yeah. I think you can also... This is the interesting human thing. You can be friends with people that you disagree with and you can be friends with people that s- actually say hateful stuff and, and one of the ways to help alleviate hate is being friends with people that s- that, that say hateful things. Talk to them-

   10. BSBen Shapiro1:03:44

       Yeah, and then calling them out on a personal level when, when they do say wrong or hateful things.

   11. LFLex Fridman1:03:50

       Yeah, from a place of love and respect and privately.

   12. BSBen Shapiro1:03:53

       Privately is also a big thing, right? I mean, like, like, the p- the public demand for, for, you know, denunciation from friends to friends, uh, is-

   13. LFLex Fridman1:04:00

       Yeah.

   14. BSBen Shapiro1:04:00

       ... is difficult. And I, I certainly have compassion for, for Candace given the fact that she's so close with Ye.

   15. LFLex Fridman1:04:07

       Yeah. It breaks my heart sometimes, the public, uh, the public fights between friends and broken friendships. I've seen quite a few friendships publicly break over COVID. COVID made peop- made people behave their worst in many cases, which, um... Yeah. It breaks my heart a little bit 'cause, like, the- the- the human connection is, uh, a prerequisite for effective debate and discussion and, and battles over ideas. Uh, has there been any argument from the opposite political aisle that has made you change your mind about something? If you, if you look back.

   16. BSBen Shapiro1:04:45

       So I will say that the... I'm thinking it through because the... I- I think that my views probably on foreign policy have morphed somewhat. Uh, I would say that I was much more interventionist when I was younger. I'm significantly less interventionist now. I'd probably give myself-

   17. LFLex Fridman1:05:02

       Can you give an example?

   18. BSBen Shapiro1:05:02

       Uh, sure. I was, I was a big backer of the Iraq War. I think now in retrospect, I might not be a backer of the Iraq War if the same situation arose again, based on the amount of evidence that had been presented or based on, you know, the- the sort of willingness of the American public to go it.

   19. LFLex Fridman1:05:19

       Yeah.

   20. BSBen Shapiro1:05:19

       Right? If you're gonna get involved in a war, you have to know what the end point looks like and you have to know what the American people really are, are willing to bear. And the American people are not willing to bear, uh, open-ended occupations. Uh, and so knowing that, you have to, you know, consider that going in. So on foreign policy, I've become a lot more of a, I'd say almost Henry Kissinger realist, uh, in, in some ways. Uh, and when, when it comes to, um, social policy, I- I would say that I'm- I'm fairly strong where I was. Uh, I- I may have become slightly convinced actually by more of the conservative side of the aisle on things like drug legalization. I think when I was younger, I was, I was much more pro-drug legalization than I am now, at least on the local level. On a federal level, I think the federal government can't really do much, uh, other than close the borders with regard to fentanyl trafficking, for example. But when it comes to how drugs ruin local communities, you can see how drugs ruin local communities pretty easily.

   21. LFLex Fridman1:06:09

       Which is weird because you... I saw you, uh, smoke a joint right before this conversation.

   22. BSBen Shapiro1:06:13

       It- it's my biggest thing. I mean, I try to keep that secret.

10. 1:06:15 – 1:16:24

    War in Ukraine

    1. BSBen Shapiro1:06:15

    2. LFLex Fridman1:06:15

       (laughs) All right. Uh, well, that's in- interesting about intervention. Can y- can you comment about the war in Ukraine? So, so for me, it's a deeply personal thing, um, but I think you're able to look at it from a geopolitics perspective. What is the role of the United States in this conflict, before the conflict, during the conflict, and right now in helping achieve peace?

    3. BSBen Shapiro1:06:38

       I think before the conflict, the big problem is that the West took almost the worst possible view, which was encourage Ukraine to keep trying to join NATO and the EU, but don't let them in (laughs) . And so what that does is it achieves the purpose of- of getting Russia really, really, really ticked off and feeling threatened, but also does not give...... any of the protections of NATO or the EU to, to Ukraine. I mean, Zelenskyy is on film when he was a comedy actor making that exact joke, right? Like, (laughs) he has Merkel on the other line and she's like, "Oh, welcome to the, welcome to NATO." And he's like, "Great." And she's like, "Wait, is this Ukraine on the line?" And... (laughs) Oops. But so, you know, that, that sort of policy is, is sort of nonsensical. If you're gonna offer alliance to somebody, offer alliance to them. And if you're going to guarantee their security, guarantee their security. Uh, and the West failed signally to do that. Uh, so that was mistakes in the run-up to the war. Once the war began, then the responsibility of the West began, became to give Ukraine as much material as is necessary to repel the invasion. Uh, and the West did really well with that. I think we were late on the ball in the United States. It seemed like Europe led the way a little bit more than the United States did there. Um, but in terms of effectuating American interests in the, in, in the region, which being an American is what I'm chiefly concerned about, you know, the, the American interests were, were several-fold. One is preserve borders, two is degrade the Russian aggressive military, because Russia's military has been aggressive-

    4. LFLex Fridman1:08:01

       Mm-hmm.

    5. BSBen Shapiro1:08:01

       ... uh, and they are a geopolitical rival of the United States. Three, recalibrate the European balance with China. Europe was, was sort of balancing with Russia and China. And then because of the war, they sort of rebalanced away from China and Russia, which is a real geostrategic opportunity for the United States. It seemed like most of those goals have already been achieved at this point for the United States. And so then the question becomes, what's the off-ramp here and what are, what is the thing you're trying to prevent? So what's the best opportunity? What's the, what's the best case scenario? What's the worst case scenario? And then what's realistic? So best case scenario is Ukraine forces Russia entirely out of Ukraine, including Luhansk, Donetsk, and Crimea, right? That's the best case scenario. Virtually no one thinks that's accomplishable, including the United States, right? The White House has basically said as much, it's difficult to imagine, particularly Crimea, the Russians being forced out of, out of Crimea. Uh, the Ukrainians have been successful in pushing, uh, the Russians out of certain parts of Luhansk and Donetsk. Um, but the idea they're gonna be able to push the entire Russian army completely back to the Russian borders, that would be at best a very, very long and difficult slog, uh, in the middle of a collapsing Ukrainian economy, which is a point that Zelenskyy has made. It's like, "It's not enough for you guys to give us military aid. We're in the middle of a war, we're gonna need economic aid as well." So it's a pretty open-ended and strong commitment.

    6. LFLex Fridman1:09:09

       Can I take a small tangent on that-

    7. BSBen Shapiro1:09:10

       Sure.

    8. LFLex Fridman1:09:10

       ... and the ba- best case scenario? If that does militarily happen, including Crimea, do you think there's a world in which Vladimir Putin would, um, be able to convince the Russian people that this is, this was a good conclusion to the war?

Episode duration: 2:31:24