Behind the Bastards - A Very Special Election Reading of Ben Shapiro's Unreadable Book

Episode Date: November 3, 2020

Robert is joined by Cody Johnston for a special election day reading of Ben Shapiro's awful novel. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's distracting us from the election? We're going to cast about terrible people. Normally, this week is not going to be anybody's favorite week ever. We're going to cast about terrible people. We're going to cast about terrible people.

Exactly. And then I feel at peace. I feel at one. And then I do it all again the next day. Yeah, so we're going to be dropping this on election day so you can listen to it while you're standing in line and or getting into gunfights with fascist paramilitaries, whatever winds up being our reality. Yeah, whichever you want. Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, so that's that's good. That's great. We're all very happy. Cody, we should also the elephant in the room. Katie is not here. Her dog is sick, unfortunately. So our thoughts are with both her and her dog in equal measure as she is at the dog hospital.

Yes, heart goes out to Katie and Benny. We love you, Benny and Katie. The good Benny. The good Benny, yeah. As opposed to the author of this book, Ben Shapiro. Yeah, the bad Benny who wrote the good book, this book. The good book. The book book. So when we last left off, we had that fun chapter with with Soledad and her militia who she seemed to be the plot seemed to be piloting rather than her.

Because as a woman in Ben's book, she's not allowed to actually make decisions. Yeah, why would she? Yeah, why would she? It's not a fantasy novel, Robert. Come on. So our next chapter, we're back in Detroit, Michigan for Leva with Levan, or at least we'll be with them for a few paragraphs. Just do another character. Oh, gosh. How many tenses do you think we'll get in this chapter?

Levan couldn't believe what he was hearing. Reverend Jim Crawford sat there in the conference room of the MGM Grand. The room had already been scanned for bugs and been found clean in his expense. Wow, that is a sentence right now. Oh, my God. And then Reverend Jim Crawford sat there, comma, in the conference room of the MGM Grand. And then there's an M dash. The room had already been scanned for bugs and been found clean.

Second M dash in his expensive suit, comma, explaining why he thought Levan should get his people off the street. Oh, my God. One sentence. Oh, and oh, oh, my God. Yeah. Ben, use the fucking period. You don't even, like, oh, okay. OK, it's OK to have sentences.

It's OK to have sentences sensibly. Senses can be short. All you need, you know, you need the subjects, you know, you need a little verb, maybe like an object in there. Yeah, but like even that first one where you said is what was it? He's sitting there, comma in the conference room. No, he was sitting there in the conference room. Get rid of that comma.

Yeah, but you're about to have a long M dash clause that is itself an entire sentence. Oh, and here's the best part. After in his expensive suit, comma, explaining why he thought Levi should get his people off the street. The next sentence is just the word now. Oh, my God. Oh, what the difference, Ben?

Oh, my God. Oh, so many extremes. What? It's amazing. Like you couldn't write worse if you tried. It's it's really something else. Like presumably an editor looked at this. I don't think so, man. I like, I don't know.

I think he's like Glenn Greenwald. And he does not like to be edited. Yeah, if they are like, I'm sure they offered to edit it. But then it was like, no, you're censoring me. And he quit. You don't edit poetry. I'll publish this myself because I'm an artist allegedly. OK, leave on and seen Big Jim's press conference

with the mayor the previous week period. That's a sentence. Good. The mayor comma still sporting a bandage over his gashed forehead, comma, had thanked Big Jim profusely for stopping the violence, comma, for cutting short the possibility of a riot. OK, OK, OK, OK. All right, it's a little uneven. That's my one note, like sometimes you nail it in that you write a sentence.

And other times it seems like maybe you need to add word. See, this is the other thing that I read his book for it gets out the toxins. He made me spit out coffee. God dammit. It's that good. That was fun to watch. Yes, that would be good for everybody listening to this in line to vote or getting into a gunfight with fascist paramilitaries.

Again, either way, it could be both, you know, both. Yeah. Yeah. Multitask. You know, there's a lot going on in 2020. So yeah, they talk about problems of inequality, problems of racial justice. They're talking to the mayor. They're doing a a conversation with the mayor about racial justice after this big riot. Mayor Burns nodded along, comma, knowing that he had no choice.

Dash. He used the photo with the civil rights icon in his reelection campaign. Newsweek put Big Jim on its cover. The headline, the peacemaker. The photo framed his head with a halo in the piece. Big Jim in Detroit said that Detroit would have to pursue a complete makeover of its obviously racist police department that meant community policing in the truest sense, drawing police officers from the community itself. That didn't mean hiring officers from the outside.

The way they'd hired Rikki O'Sullivan. It didn't even mean hiring black cops from outside the city and forced them to live in the city to get to know the people they protected and meant hiring longtime residents of the city, even people with backgrounds. America, said Big Jim. Yeah, exactly. It's like this is a horrible idea. Like what Ben's actually saying here, like he's trying to frame this as like this evil black terrorist has a plan to make all of the cops be gangsters

by community policing. But what he's actually saying is community policing, like having neighborhoods policed by people who live in those neighborhoods is a bad idea because blacks are criminals. Like that's what Ben is actually saying. Oh, my God. People with bad. There's like the phrase people with backgrounds. Like, say what you mean, buddy.

What are the backgrounds? But like it's as you were reading that, I was like, surely, surely this is actually going to be framed as though it's a bad thing. And he just got disappointed. No, no, no, no, it absolutely did not. He wants like to force people from out of the city to like move there to police the area that you work. All of the stuff, like there's actually a lot of problems

with community policing, as it's generally introduced. But but all of the stuff, Big Jim, who is again the devil, basically, is saying here is perfectly reasonable. You want to know why our community doesn't trust the police. They don't trust the police because to them, the police are strangers and the other way around. And it takes more than a few than living in the community a few months to earn trust. I'll tell you what, he told the Newsweek reporter,

it takes more than even being a good policeman. It means having been through what these folks have been through. It means knowing that just because somebody got sent up to prison for some stupid drug crime that wouldn't have gotten a white boy six months in the can, that doesn't mean their life should be over. It means understanding that there's a legacy of racism. Again, what these people are engaged in a plot to overthrow the government. I it is it is so frustrating hearing this young man write this book.

Like, yeah, because it just it makes it clear that he knows. Yeah, like he's making he's he knows and he's making the argument like that is correct and good. So he knows he knows what the argument is. But whenever he talks about it, he pretends like he doesn't. I shouldn't have gotten mad at my favorite book. Sorry, Ben. I take it back.

It's OK. You only you only, you know, we only heard the books we love, which, you know, is why, for example, every night, I get into a fistfight with a copy of Slaughterhouse five. You know, it's just it's just what happens when you're sad. It's how it happens. Exactly. You assault the books that you love. I understand. Yeah. OK. So, yeah, the interview had caused an uproar.

They'd even put a leave on it. Robert, I believe we left off at the M dash. There's there's so many in this fucking book, which I get it, right? Like we all use them, especially like when I'm in stuff that's not for publication, I'll throw them in a lot because it's a helpful way for me to remember how I plan to read it. Like absolutely.

Like people ask like why I don't push them up. It's because like they're messy as hell. They're not like there. I write them their essays, but they're they're written with your cadence. And like, exactly. And I would not publish them that way because they wouldn't read well if someone was reading them, right? Yeah. Ben, like it is a thing that new writers do.

It's fine. Like if you're using a lot of M dashes, it's fine, but your goal should be, you know, the sentences. It's fine. Oh, like, yeah. Also, he's not a new writer at this point. He's not a new writer. He's been doing it. It's the only thing he's ever done in his entire life for money.

Yeah, exactly. It's the only thing he's ever done for a living. Yeah. But it's literally his one job. And he's he's and he's killing it. He's nailing it. He's nailing it. Yeah. The interview had caused an uproar. They'd even quoted Leif on it, asking him,

what do you thought of Big Jim's leadership? Levon told them that without Big Jim, the whole street would have gone up in flames. Big Jim, he told them, is standing up for us. So long as he does and so long as we get justice, we can make this city whole again. Now, however, Levon regretted it. He'd ever laid eyes on Big Jim. He'd been foolish to have trusted the man. He'd figured he could always outplay him.

Everybody thought Big Jim was past his prime, that he'd run his course. After a youth of rabble rousing and race baiting, he'd entered the mainstream. He'd appeared in liquor stores, blah, blah, blah, blah. He's just making the same big Jim's talking about how they've done a lot of good. And they're OK that they they've achieved some things. And Levon's going to get what he wants. And he should he should be satisfied with what they've gotten so far and play the cards they've got. Yeah. OK.

So that's what Big Jim say. Is this his next paragraph in Afghanistan? No, no, no. It was already packed when he pulled up in the shop. So he leaves the meeting with Big Jim angry, because Big Jim is happy with the the gains they've made. It was already packed when he pulled up in the shop, set a slightly overweight black woman. Regina Malone clutched a handkerchief to her face.

Her every makeup was streaked with tears. She looked like she hadn't stopped crying since she found out about her son, Kendrick. And the truth was she hadn't. Kendrick had been her youngest boy, a good boy, she told the media, shot to death because of police racism. The president had called her offer his condolences and told her he'd stop at nothing to get to the bottom of the case. That's what a president would say. I'm going to get to the bottom of the case as the president.

Yeah. Yeah. I also like that his left wing rag in this is Newsweek, the magazine that Andy No writes columns for. But also Ben writes for it. Ben's written for Newsweek. Yeah. The Wayne County prosecutor hadn't been his forthcoming. She'd been elected for a fluke. The entire government in Wayne County sprang from the Democratic Party,

but Kim Donahue had lucked into her job. Ah, so she it is a fluke that a competent conservative had become the prosecutor here. Of course. Yeah. She'd been appointed with no opposition. So he's just describing this person who is his his ideal human being because she's going to not going to prosecute cops for shooting a black boy. Yeah. OK. That's good.

Talking about how great this this prosecutor is. OK. Regina Malone standing next to Big Jim had called a press conference in which he asked Donahue to recuse herself, given her ties to the police department. Donahue would refuse stating that she would ensure justice was served and implied that if anyone implied her skin color meant that she couldn't be objective, they were racist. Well, I made national headlines turning and turned Kim Donahue into one of those polarizing political figures in America.

Levon got out of his car. Regina Malone. What? Who mentioned the skin color? I thought it was because of a relationship with the police. Yeah, I know. I. Yeah, that no one did. It doesn't seem like. OK. Just making. All right. She's she's doing the thing that Ben says you shouldn't do. But he she likes cops. So Ben's fine with it.

Because, yeah, it does sound like she's the one who brought race into it. Then on the television stood Kim Donahue, Donahue, the cheer. So we go through a little bit of this like Levon's talking with the mother of this dead boy and then the news announces that the DA is not going to charge the police officer who shot the kid as as happens repeatedly. Yeah. So that's that's cool. She says that she's not doing the agenda of the mob. The evidence of the poor manslaughter doesn't support murder.

Levon gets angry at this as you as you might. As well, one might one might get angry at that. Yeah, the mayor asks everybody to remain calm. So I think we're going to have, yeah. And Big Jim tells people not to riot. So I think that's that's that's what we're going to have here. Very, very subtle foreshadowing. Yeah. And also the officers getting released from prison

the day that they choose not to do charges, which is not how it works. They like charge them and then they tend to really get out on on bail. And bail like what's happened every time one of these guys has shot somebody and actually been charged, but whatever. OK, administrative leave, paid administrative leave. So Levon is surrounded by cameras and like media after this announcement that they're not charging the cop comes in and he realizes that he's standing next to the mother of the kid who's just been killed.

And he has a great opportunity to be a rabble rouser. So the camera zoomed in on Levon. He forced himself to cry, comma, just to tear semi colon. He looked up at the throat at the browning piles of the ceiling. He's doing Obama. He's doing Obama. He's doing Obama's Sandy Hook cry. Oh, yeah. It's a because Obama cry. He cried the one tear. The same. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. The right hates that he cried that one tear. Yeah, he's doing that. He's doing that. Oh, I think you're probably right. Yeah. OK. Yep. Definitely. Then he exhaled slowly and looked directly into the camera. Enough dead children. It stops. Oh, my God. He did it. Yeah. Oh, my God. Ben, so bad. Oh, my God. Every now and then we'll get to like a chunk like we just went through

where it's kind of dull and then you get Ben Shapiro like making the terrorist leader do the exact same thing Obama did when he was sad that 20 something children got shot to death with an assault rifle at school. Oh, my God. Oh, Ben, so good slash bad at this. It's it's amazing. Like one of the things that's frustrating is like I don't like Obama or Biden, but they keep getting attacked by the right

for things that like aren't bad. Like, I don't think Obama was faking his tears at 20 something children getting shot to death because he's a person. It's a great being. It makes you sad. It's like it's so it's it. I mean, a lot of that stuff just speaks to like their world view and who they are, right? Like they don't cry or like feel those things.

Yeah. Ben didn't give a shit about those kids. So I would Obama. Yeah, exactly. Like, oh, surely he has to be faking it because nobody would ever cry at this. Yeah, it can't be that like no, he can both like have a callous disregard for the lives of people in Yemen and also like see a bunch of small children shot to pieces with a rifle and be fucked up by it because he's a dad.

Like, yeah, like those really don't conflict with each other. No, much as maybe they should. But like, yeah, oh, God. And it's the same thing with like the the paid protesters stuff. Yeah, you think that because you would need to get paid to protest something. Yeah, in order to care about people getting harmed, who aren't you, you would need money because you're a bad person. Unbelievable. I cannot believe he just did that.

I can't believe it. I mean, I. Oh, hey. OK. And yeah, he's he's. OK, so he just says that to the news and then he silently leads a crowd that I guess is formed at this point away from the barber shop towards the criminal justice center. So he's marching with a big protest that I'm sure is going to burn the city down. Yeah, that's the thing that's going to happen next.

Yeah, so now we're back to Brett Hawthorne. Yes. Oh, there we go. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Fuck it. Precious, sweet bread. Get that bear of a man in here. Mm hmm. Yeah. Brett surveyed the damage from the top of a nearby parking lot. It stretched before him like a diorama, unreal and miniature, too dramatic for life. Since the attacks, all commercial air travel had been shut down

thanks to warnings from the Department of Homeland Security. The terror chatter had actually elevated after the attack. DHS thought the airlines could be targeted again, given the focus on the destruction of the bridge. Brett's homecoming hadn't been much of one. By the time he landed, his rescue, if you could call it that, had been blown off the front pages by the terror attack. His flight back to Texas had been canceled and he'd been stashed at a local hotel with.

Oh, my God, the sentence. His flight back to Texas had been canceled, comma, and he'd been stashed at a local hotel, comma, with guards on him at nearly all times, M-dash. The president was obviously worried he'd talk to the media without handlers nearby, period. Oh, those first few commas did not need to be there. You could just have written a couple of sentences there, buddy.

It's OK to use a period bit. It's OK to use a period, and it's also OK to just like not use commas and just like keep writing. I kind of want, yeah, yeah. You're in the middle of a sentence, just keep going. You're almost done with the sentence. I kind of want to get, you know, they have those books. I assume they have these books for little girls about like

their first periods. I want to like Photoshop one of those to be for Ben and about like using periods and sentences. It's actually OK. It's OK. It's OK. Everyone uses periods. Everyone does it.

It's totally natural. Very funny. Well, you know, he's pretty afraid of P words. Yeah, he is. You can't tell. Ellen had hinted via phone that some big move was imminent in Texas from the governor, but he hadn't had time to focus on that. He'd been more focused on helping out Bill Collier.

Collier's wife, Jennifer, had been on the bridge. They still hadn't dredged up her body. The day after his arrival, Bill had met Brett at his hotel. He dismissed his security for a few minutes. Brett could see that his friend had aged a century in a day. His face looked craggy. His eyes sunken. Bill had been married to Jennifer for a long time.

He'd also lost his daughter in the attack. An eight-year-old, he'd called his little trooper. We don't get her name. Why would he give her a name? I do love that this guy losing his eight-year-old daughter is an afterthought. His young child also died. By the way. Very fun.

By the way, his small daughter is dead, too. They talk about this man who has lost his wife and young child, talks with Brett about the fact that he's afraid the president's going to use the terrorist attack to call for a massive spending package on infrastructure and urge for their cuts to the military. His fucking worst nightmare is an infrastructure bill. What the hell? He doesn't know where his eight-year-old's corpse is, but he's concerned about an infrastructure bill. Like a human would, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's all that I have in my mind. Yeah. Well, you know what? I have on my mind a Trojan rubber. Products and services? Perhaps. It is the only thing that can balm the loss of an eight-year-old.

It's true. It's true. So if your wife and daughter have died in a terrorist attack on a bridge, please console yourself with these products and services. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes, you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy.

Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse were like a lot of guns. He's a shark, and not in the good-bad-ass way. He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

We have back our return. We're here. A single tier for the products and services. And we're shedding a tear for products and services. So this general guy orders Brett to New York. We're doing the thing, Ben started us in media arrests and then he's going back in time to explain how Brett arrived in New York City. Four weeks earlier, whatever. Oh, God, I love it.

It's amazing that they're having this conversation about sending Brett somewhere to thwart the president's plans for an infrastructure bill while this man is grieving. I was like, oh, all the reasons. God, just ignoring, like, I love, yeah, in the middle of the action, we're gonna like, yeah, it's starting. But like earlier, let's see, like how we got here. Let's do all the boring stuff real quick. Instead of, instead of summing up the boring stuff in a sentence, you know, Bill had, you know, threw a haze of tears ordered, you know, Brett to New York in order to do this and this, like, bam, you got it in a sentence. Let's continue the action. We're going back. And rather than, you know, trying to establish any emotional pathos by lingering on the fact that this man has lost his wife and child, he's just talking like normal about how they need Brett here and how bad it is that the president wants to build up infrastructure bill.

Oh, it's it's. Fuck your daughter. We got to stop the roads. Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. So Brett says the president won't like that. And Bill says, my patience for bullshit goes out the window after I watched them search on television for my daughter's body, said the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. I'll make whatever excuses I have to make. I want to know who's responsible for this.

And right now you're my best lead. You're the only person that Ben really understands how humans deal with grief. Yeah. No, no, he doesn't. You could have just stopped it. Ben doesn't really understand how humans. You could have just stopped it. Yeah, he does also understands tense because you would not say like where I saying to you, Cody, that my patience for bullshit goes out the window after I watch them search on television for my daughter's body.

That's not what I would say. I would say my patience for bullshit went out the window when I watched them search on television for my daughter's body. Or my patience goes out the window when I see them doing X or Y. Yes. Yes. Every way, basically, but the way Ben wrote it would be grammatically appropriate. Yeah. Excellent.

A plus. I'll need your word that you'll stay away from the media. That's the only thing Prescott cares about. Amazing. Like that. You care about infrastructure and your daughter's body is not even found. Come on, dude. Okay.

Brett Nott, I'm sorry about your family bill. Call your grimace. Yeah, me too. He said, me too. No, go get the pieces of shit who did this so I can bomb them back into the sixth century. God, he's just like writing Independence Day. Yeah. But like bad and worse.

Yes. The thing that a man would say after being comforted by a friend for the loss of his wife and daughter, like, I'm sorry about your family. Yeah, me too. Me too. Yeah. Hey, you know what? Same.

Yeah. Same as his brother. Yeah. It's like they're talking about a car that got totaled. Right. Like that's what's like, oh, hey, man, I'm sorry about your car. I know you really like that car. It's like, yeah, me too.

Me too. It's a bummer. It's a bummer, right? Yeah. This is your wife and daughter, dude. Yeah. Like I said, it's a bummer. Yeah.

It was lame as hell, bro. I thought I made that very clear how bummed I am. Okay. So now looking at the damage, Brett punished himself for not having been able to warn intelligence sooner. If only he'd used Morse code to tell them something was coming from a shammy. If only he'd blinked the name, Mohammed. If only he'd blinked the most common name in the world.

That would have really keyed him in. If only I let him know, John did it. Okay. Thanks for the info, Ben. Yeah. Oh, it's so good. In his name, in his heart, he knew it wouldn't have helped. Yes, I agree.

America had blinded itself in the name of peace. Okay. And Brett knew that hope wouldn't buy peace anyway. He turned his back on the Hudson where the sunken bridge still lay slumbering under acres of water, the calm of the surface masking the graves of thousands of Americans. The American public had called the Iraq war two bloody, comma, the Afghanistan war two costly, semi colon, combined America lost fewer than 7000 people. Period.

Now, comma, on one day they'd lost far more than that. It's funny because Ben is trying to justify the war on terror. And the only way he could do it is by inventing a fake terrorist. It's amazing. It's so cute. It's all. They killed more people than we lost in the wars that we lost. It's like slippery slope and novel.

It's so good. Oh, I love it. But what? What if? Yeah. What if? And then I'm right. Okay.

Good point. Yeah. I guess then you're right, man. Yeah. Yes, Ben. Well, no, you still wouldn't have been right because again, this terrorist attack was launched by Iran. One of the...

Yeah. Okay. None of the actual interplay with the terrorists makes a whole lot of sense in this either, but still, Ben. Right. I mean, wrong, and then your justification is also wrong. Oh, wait. No, no.

It was one of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Okay. Yes. Oh, right. Yeah. Because they were real, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Actually it was... Yeah. Iraq was justified because in this book they were right. They were right. It wasn't a lie in the book, so it's okay. Saddam's Revenge. Unbelievable. Which is normally a term for diarrhea.

Yeah. I mean, it was. Yeah. So, the airport felt like a mausoleum. He gets sent to the airport, by the way, completely empty, completely deserted. The plane's set at their terminals like sleeping grasshoppers. What? That's so weird.

Why? That's... Maybe take another pass on that. What are you... Why are you comparing planes to grasshoppers? Sleeping grasshoppers. I mean, I guess they have wings, but so do things that look more like planes. Right.

Okay, Ben. I mean, it's in the name. They hop in the grant. Dragonflies? I don't know. You also just don't do the metaphors, just don't do it. I guess that was a simile, but come on, man. So, Ben is with Port Authority and Security in the closed down airport looking to see

all the people who have entered the country and all of the flight manifests to see if this terrorist had come into the country. He tells one of the officials, I want access to the customs files. If you don't mind me asking, sir, remember the official. Is there somebody we're looking for particularly? Brett said, yes, an Arabic looking young man. Which is clearly like he's trying to justify racial profiling, but also like the least useful, yes, that will narrow it down to thousands.

And like that's the point. Like that's why. Yes, exactly. That's why it's bad. That's why it's bad. But there's too many layers to this. A slightly better hack writer would have had him accurately describe the man and then had some histrionic official be like, that's racial profiling.

It's not racial profiling just to point out that he's an Arab man and he has these features. Like that, again, would still be a bad book, but that would be like a competent, shitty writer. Yeah. A better, smarter person. Yeah. A better right wing grifter author. Exactly.

Would have done it that way. But Ben is, again, a complete failure of a man. And just incapable of anything. Yeah. It rules honestly. It's amazing. It's the best thing about him. Yeah.

Yeah. The official complains that that's racial profiling, which it is because the only detail Brett gave is that he's Arabic looking. Arabic looking. Yeah. That's, oh my God. All right. Oh God.

Losing my mind. You're not doing the profiling. I am. Well, now I'm a party to it. Brett stared into his face. I don't care. Just do it. Sir, it's against regulations, though.

Look, Brett burst out losing his patience. I don't give a rat's ass at this point, whether it's racial profiling or not. Maybe you're right. Maybe Mohammed is a light-skinned Norwegian woman or a Cherokee elder. Maybe he's a Persian or Arabic. I feel like I'm listening to him talk right now. I know. It's good.

It's good. Or maybe he's a Persian or Arabic-looking son of a bitch who hangs out with other Persian or Arabic-looking sons of bitches who look like Ibrahim Hashami, which is, you know, Ben, they're different ethnic groups, Persians and Arabs. I don't care for this. Yeah. He's like, yeah, he's a Mexican or an African person, you know? Right.

Like it's that level of racist. He's a person from one of two massive land masses, you know? Again, making the case for why racial profiling is bad. Like he's doing all of the work for us. It's just incredible. Yeah. I mean, it is like it's that racist. It's as racist as being like he's an African-looking person.

Well, but that's a giant land mass that includes a wide variety of different ethnic groups. Like, yeah, I know he's Persian or Arabic. Thank you, Ben. That narrows it down. You got it. You got it. You definitely understood what we said. Yeah.

And responded accordingly. Yeah. It's great because this is supposed to be like how him explaining like how racial profiling is really necessary to stop terrorism. But all it actually is is like showing that all Ben wants is racial profiling. He's not saying like this isn't it's usually pointed as like, well, look, you know, if we get a solid tip that like a terrorist is a man of, you know, Afghan descent, you know, we can't you're saying we can't like look for people who are of Afghan descent who

are in the area and like that's wrong. And like that's again is a wrong line of argument. But there's at least more. It's at least more of an argument than Ben who is saying like let's profile all of the Persian or Arabic looking sons of bitches. Right. Like he's not he's not actually saying anything. There's no argument here.

He's just saying I want it. So I'm going to have my character yell about it and be proven right by the circumstances that I write in the book. And also, Ben, again, the lack of research here, one of the things that Brett notes is that there would be hundreds, maybe thousands of possible leads, men who had flown from the Middle East through some point in the days that would be 10. The Middle East is large. There's so many people who come to the U.S. and leave the U.S. toward like heading there.

It's every day. It's big. It's very big. So many places. Like is the Middle East a country to him? Is that like what he like? Yeah. I think it is.

I think the Middle East to him is like Idaho. It's just like a place. Yeah. It's a single place as opposed to a massive. Again, it's like somebody saying he looks Africans like, well, OK, does he look like he's from Morocco or look like there's a wide variety of countries and there's thousands of ethnic groups. Like it's a massive area.

No, he looks average. Like, yeah. Very big continent. Yeah. I mean, of which, you know, yeah, it's great. It's very racist. It's everything in this book is so good. And OK, here's the best part.

He realizes that there's too many names to search through, making the point that everything he's done at this so far is is useless. So he calls a contact of his name to Hassan Abdul to find a cafe to go meet a contact who presumably is going to know about this guy, which is kind of been maybe making the point that that racial profiling doesn't work. It didn't work. Right. Because he needed to go contact.

There would be too many people. Yeah. He said you reached out to an individual who had pertinent information maybe about an individual who you were looking for as opposed to, again, looking for Persian or Arabic sons of bitches. So the whole point of that section was just for him to be racist. Right. And then not realize that he's making the case against it. Yeah.

Well, he did it. You got to do the racism scene. I mean, one of the many scenes in the book. The whole book is a racist scene. Yeah. So he sits down from this guy. Oh, I guess that's his friend from high school. His his his black friend who I think converted to Islam, the one who taught him how to be

funny to the bully with no name. Yeah. The Jerseyless football player. Yeah. Just call just call your friends first instead of saying look for an Arab looking guy. Oh, cool. So Ben's friend, the one positive Muslim person that we've met so far was was buddies with Anwar Al Alaki, who is like one of the who's like a fucking very hardcore Islamic

preacher who is seen as having an influence on, you know, terrorists. So and then he he's he's he's now helping Brett out because on September 11th, he'd seen the. Yeah. Okay, cool. So so Ben's Ben's one positive Muslim like character was also friends with a still with an extremist. Yeah.

Still terrorists. Still terrorists to Jason. Yeah. After September 11th, Hassan spoke to Brett and Brett set up a covert meeting with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hassan Abdul became a mole. His jobs changed over the years as did his location. His responsibility under the Bush administration had been to provide leads on possible terror suspects attending mosques in prominent urban areas.

For the past few years, he'd been stationed in New York City at the mosque. He posed as a borderline radical. He spoke regularly about the injustices of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But during. Okay. So yeah, he's he's he's been a cop. He's been working with the FBI. Because he found out that all Muslims are terrorists.

And then we point Ben points out that under the election of Mark Prescott, who is white Obama, the FBI no longer monitored mosques and that that is clearly a bad thing. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yep. Cool. Wait, wait. I forget what years was this written.

2016 is when it was published. So I guess he probably wrote it 2015. 2014. Or during a weekend in 2016. Right. The care he gave to editing this. Yeah. Yeah.

He gives the information about this terrorist he's looking to to his contact. Guy says it's not a lot to go on. How do you know he's coming to New York as opposed to some other city? How do you know he wasn't involved in the original attack? Has the government even locked down the bastards who planted the bombs? I don't know, Hassan. All I know is there's something more to this. And I know that he is religious.

The way a shot me spoke to him. If he's here, the only way to find him will be through the mosques. That's good. They talk some more. He's got to convince his friend who's angry because the FBI isn't profiling Muslims anymore. This is getting somehow, somehow darker. Yeah, it is. I'm going to read the last bit of this because it's very strange writing.

You don't need to convince me, white boy. I just need to know why I'm doing this and it isn't for your president. Believe me. Not it, Brett. Neither am I. Hassan not it. A lot of nodding here. I'll be in touch when I've got something for you. He turned toward the door, then turned back.

There's good and bad in everyone. He crooned a smile suddenly creasing his lips. We learn to live. We learn to give Brett left. Each other what we need to survive together alive. I think they're singing a song here. I guess. Yeah.

It's rhyming. Yep. Okay. I'm guessing that's a song. Yeah. Like a thing that they did together. Like it's like a friend thing that they do. Yeah.

Yeah. That's fine, I guess. Like they're like they're little spoken handshake, I guess. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Okay. So you won't surveil Muslims pointlessly and because of racism.

That's not shit. These products. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation.

In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy voiced cigar smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And not in the good and bad ass way. And nasty sharks. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to heaven. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Lance Bass and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991 and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left offending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space. 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus. It's all made up.

Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yep. Alright. You know... I do. You know, you know, Cody. Alright, we're back to New York City.

I mean, that could have just been like you reading the book. You know, comma, you know, dash, you know. So, New York City, President Prescott, iconic moments. These were the moments that Mark Prescott had always wanted. FDR standing before Congress, declaring war on Japan. John F. Kennedy in Berlin, Reagan at the Berlin Wall, George W. Bush in the wreckage of the World Trade Center. And now Prescott standing on the precipice of the Hudson. Oh my God, what a sentence. And now comma, Prescott, comma, standing on the precipice of the Hudson River, comma, with the Coast Guard still dredging the waters,

comma, with the wreckage of one of America's greatest public works projects mangled behind him. Period. Ooh, we got there. We got through it. Oh my goodness. God damn it. What a ride. Wow, Ben. What a sentence. There are a lot of... Oh, you could have... Yeah. Just generally, just generally, like, if you, like, just go through...

I know, Ben, you're listening because you're a huge fan and you appreciate feedback. Just go through and remove half the commas and your sentences will be better. I also find it very, very funny that Ben seems really, really hyper-focused on this idea of Obama only wanting these, like, moments, these publicity moments. He's like, I want to look like FDR. I want to look like this. And has... I don't know if you know anything about the current president, Robert. I don't. Do we have a president? We do. We do.

He, one could argue, is, like, the worst at this exact thing. The most obvious about this exact thing that Ben cannot get out of his mind about President Barack Obama... Sorry, I'm sorry. President Barack Hussein Obama. Barry Cetero. Do you remember that? Do you remember when that was the thing on the right? Wait, no. Oh, boy. Oh, man. Yeah. It used to be, like, yeah, they were convinced that that that that was his should be his real name for reasons that I don't know. I don't even remember.

What? I used to know why. Like, yeah, they used to... No. Yeah, it stopped once. Everything got so much, like, worse once Trump became president. But, like, that used to be, like, a whole. If you'd go to, like, Free Republic, where all of, like, the really old, like, worst fascist Republicans were back before that was the norm. In the party, they would all call him Barry Cetero. It was very silly. Yes, and I suspect Ben did it in private.

Oh, absolutely. Ooh, that's a tab I'm opening for later. Yeah, yeah, Keith, take a look into that. So the president is obvious, is very excited because a bunch of people are dead, so he gets to give a speech. He's wearing a windbreaker instead of a suit. Again, like George Bush did, which is, like, yeah, as if it's, like, a ploy as opposed to, like, yeah, you're heading to a disaster area. You wouldn't wear a nice suit to, like, an active disaster. Like, it's one of those things, like, you don't even, like, I'm not even gonna, like, give Bush shit for that.

Like, he wasn't doing it for a look. He was doing it because he was headed to a disaster area, and you're gonna wear not a fine suit for that, you know? And if he did wear a fine suit, he would be called, like, a coastal elite fancy man who's wearing a suit to a thing he shouldn't have worn a suit to. Nonsense, utter nonsense. Also, Ben capitalized his windbreaker, which is weird to me. It doesn't seem like a proper noun, but okay. That is weird, that is weird. He's also super concerned about his editor, like.

I don't think there is one. I really don't think he had one. There's, like, there's no way, there's no way he had one. Like, it's, like, that, that, that would be, I would be, I would be surprised if there was actually one. We would, we would have to hunt his editor down. Yeah, that person should be fired. I mean, Ben should be fired. Out of a cannon, yeah.

No, no, no, that person should be, comma, fired, comma, right, comma, away, comma, period. M-dash. But also, windbreaker, windbreaker's not capitalized. Like, unless it's- No, never, never, ever. Unless it's, like, the name of a boat, right? Right, yeah. Or, like, like, the brand of, of, of the windbreaker.

Yeah, if it's a windbreaker. And the next word is windbreaker. Yeah, I don't know why, but that's my favorite part of this book. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah, I'm upset that the president didn't wear a suit, I guess, at the thing. And really, once that photo op, the photo op president, Barack Obama, always came out photo ops. No presidents after him cared more about that.

He's the only president who, like, got his picture taken ever. It never happened again. That was the single time that it occurred. And it would never again, like, create events just to, just to have these sort of photo opportunities. Yeah, never. Yeah, he would never, like, have people tear-gassed in order to take a picture with the Bible, right? Like, that would be bad. That's, that's ridiculous, Robert.

Yeah. That's an Obama thing. Classical Obama stuff. Yeah. The president gives a speech. Right, I'm going to read a speech. They hope that we would surrender our philosophy, our way of life. Yeah, this is a boring speech that doesn't seem very...

Yeah, like, why even write all this out if it's also okay. Right, because it's not even saying anything about his president or, like, anything. It's just like, yeah, the basic president shit. Like, okay. Okay, so he's giving his speech and he's about to hit the big moment that he's been excited for. And then someone in the crowd screams, you did this. Prescott was momentarily startled. Then he began, in times of grief, we do not walk alone.

Yeah, yeah, he continues. Then someone interrupts again and yells, you did this, Mr. President. And suddenly, yeah, he sees a lone protester. It was a woman overweight wearing faded jeans and a T-shirt with holes in it. Her hair cropped short. You did this, Mr. President. My husband is at the bottom of this river because of you, Mr. President. So, yeah, he gets distracted from this.

He tries to continue his speech. He loses him all answers. It doesn't really, not really clear why it would be the president's fault. I guess because he pulled that out of Afghanistan. Yeah, I've been wondering what they're saying about what he did, other than just, like, be the president while this happened. Yeah. Or, like, it seems to also just be another, like, that guy who shot a liar during the State of the Union

or something, right? Yeah, yeah. It seems like that's what he's doing. Yeah. So, he lets the woman speak being the monster that he is. And she's very grief-stricken. And she talks about her husband who, of course, served in Vietnam and then was a bus driver, I guess. And, yeah.

Oh, God, he's doing the Obama thing again. OK, so she asks him, how could you keep us safe? She stared at him, eyes glowing. And then he suddenly saw a way forward. And then he turned around his cheek and hugged her. She tried to pull away initially. He held her tighter. Finally, he felt her sob against his chest.

The tension go out of her body. The cameras flashed around him. The moment. Time stood still. This was the image he'd been seeking ever since his election. Compassionate, caring. Yeah, he does it a second time. Do you already did, man?

Because all of the villains in this are Barack Obama. Unbelievable. They're all Obama. Oh, my God. And, like, the worst thing about... They're all Obama and the bad thing about them is that they cry. Yeah, yeah. They let out a single tear.

I cannot believe he did that again with a different person so close to the other time. It has not been that long. Like, at least spread them out, you know? Wait a couple of chapters. Don't... I would have forgotten about it.

Yeah, because there's so much terrible shit going on. Exactly. Just, like, spread it out, man. Yeah. And then this president, who is again a monster, admits that he and the government made mistakes. Weak. Weak? Yeah, yeah. It's great.

He says that, like, also some of the mistakes were that we struck out in aggression in the Middle East, which, like, inspired more anger against us and maybe helped make the attack. We go to war to protect ourselves, but we end up weakening ourselves. An objectively true statement. What?

I... Oh, Ben. Ben, you keep making amazing points. Even the guy you've said you're going to vote for in 2020 for president, Donald J. Trump, says that we weakened ourselves by invading Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yeah, yeah. Part of why he got elected. It's such simple shit. It's amazing, really. Like, I love everything that happens in the world. It's so good. Ben... Keep writing. Ben, write another book.

But make it a fiction book so I can read it. Yeah. He's going to... America's going to rebuild. We're going to raise this bridge again. Evil. Evil. Evil. Evil. Our swords will be beaten into plowshares. He motioned over to the thousands of American troops now working along the shoreline.

Our bravest and finest men will be put to work rebuilding. No more nation building abroad. Thousands upon thousands of those men and women are coming home to New York to rebuild, to revitalize. It's time to build ourselves up here at home. What a horrible thing! I am... This is...

It's just... This is beautiful art. I can't even... Yes, Ben. Good idea. Yeah. Good idea. The worst thing we could do is stop fucking around in other countries with our army and instead use them to, I don't know, fix the bridges that are falling apart.

And then create stuff for each other. Yeah. What is the problem? It's just weird revenge shit. He wants to... It's weird revenge shit. It's also weirdly... I also think he's making a tax at FDR here

for the Works Progress Administration. Oh, for sure. The Nazi stuff. One of the best things the government ever did was be like, what if we took all these starving people and gave them jobs to make parks and shit that will be usable by all Americans? Disgusting.

No. No, thank you. Make parks and stuff that people still camp in every single day. It's called here in Europe. 70 or 80 years later. It's amazing. Yeah, safety does not come through the fear of a gun or the height of our walls.

Safety comes from love. Yes, love for each other. Again, this is the bad guy. It's just... Awesome. I really... I know it's not going to happen because, of course, it's not. I know who wrote this.

But I'm waiting for the actual evil thing. Right? What's the thing that he does where a normal person would read this and go, oh, that's a villain. That's a thing you would do

in a good thing, is have these characters pretty good, actually. And then, like, oh, they turn. They reveal what they're actually about. He's going to, like, embezzle all of this money or something from his program and whatnot.

He wants to build bridge... He wants to use U.S. troops to, like, improve infrastructure at home and not waste money in foreign wars, thus making him the devil. It really doesn't seem like there's going to be a turn. It seems like this is what we get. Like, what chapter is this?

It's going to be a very sudden turn that makes no sense. But we are, like, two-thirds of the way through the book at this point. Oh, okay. So the end of the book, there'll be, like, I actually want to do the genocide or something like that. Yeah, I'm here to kill all white people or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great. So, yeah, the president... Next scene is the president relaxing in his hotel room watching TV. The coverage was nearly universally static. The one guest commentator on Fox News asked whether the president had any leads on the perpetrators. Again, no one

would have a problem with that question after a massive terrorist attack. It would be the thing we'd be talking about, yeah. Ben famously hates presidents that spend all their time watching Fox News. Yes. My God. All right.

So the president's concern, or the president's aide is concerned that Brett Hawthorne is in New York. Yada, yada, yada. The president's like, why should I care? And the aide says, well, he's digging around flight manifest, and he's asking to see pictures of Arabs first.

Jesus Christ, the president says. Racial profiling right after the love speech, and they say the media will probably figure it out pretty soon. I mean, these things have a way of leaking. Yeah, okay. That's awesome. Kudos to Ben for writing that line,

which I think is actually... Racial profiling after the love speech? Yeah, it's so good. Like, it's such a, it's so childish. What a childish way to frame it. I love it. Good. Yeah, it ends on the president watching his speech in, like, the last line from his speech.

Vengeance is God's, we know. Our job is to build. Again, a monster. The literal devil. A guy who wants to rebuild bridges. He must, he must be stopped. We must stop this monster. Pretty, if he were allowed to continue

on his path of evil, eventually we would choke to death on all of the bridges. That's his evil plan. He wants to make too many bridges. He wants to drown us in bridges. Yeah, he wants to murder us in bridges. He wants to choke us

in an endless river of infrastructure that allows us to safely drive without our bridges collapsing. Like the devil would do. Yeah, the devil in the single tier for all the bridges that I can't even... Well, Cody, we're three more chapters in.

Ugh. That was three chapters. Yup. I can't even decide if that was too long or too short for three chapters. I feel like I've lived a thousand years. Ugh. This is an eternity.

We're never going to leave. We're stuck here. No, this is life. We're stuck in true allegiance forever. We will never escape true allegiance. It is the alpha in the Omega, the beginning and the end. And like Ben's sentences, it never concludes.

It never actually, comma, concludes. It never actually, comma, M dash concludes like a sentence should do second M dash. But because Ben doesn't like to use comma periods, comma. Which... Which would conclude that meanwhile...

I can't wait until the president either turns comically way too evil to be believable or continues down this path of just like basic good stuff. You know what I love, Cody? What's that? The written word.

I know. I know that about you. Yeah. So, have your feelings on Ben's novel changed? We're now 60% of the way through. It's changed in that... I get more of it. Can I just say more of it? Yeah. My thoughts, but more?

Yeah. It ebbs and floats. It's really something to behold. Yeah. Because you think it doesn't end. You think it doesn't stop. You think like, oh, surely he can't show his ass anymore. Surely the mask couldn't possibly slip anymore. Surely he couldn't write another just

awful, awful sentence. It's amazing. I want to collect and frame all of the bad sentences in this and then send them to Ben Shapiro via a registered courier. Like, here are the sentences you wrote that are not. They're not sentences, Ben, but I want to do

immortalize them. Here are some not sentences for you to check out. Fire editor or hire an editor, whichever one you didn't do. Yeah, hire and fire a series of editors until you get someone who's willing to tell you to use a fucking period, Ben. It's okay. That's my message at the end of this.

I don't hate Ben Shapiro. I don't want ill to befall him. I want him to know that it's okay, Ben. It's okay to conclude a sentence. You can do it. You can do it. We believe in you. End of

sentence. Cody, you got any plugables to plug? Sure, why not? I got a YouTube channel called Some More News. We got a patreon.com slash Some More News and a podcast called Even More News. We also co-host a podcast with Robert Evans.

It's called Worst Year Ever. Some More News actually has a movie that we released a couple of days before you listened to this, so check that out. It's fun and about a lot of stuff. And I don't know. Dr. Mr. Cody on Twitter. All that jazz. You know, I do want to make one note

before we roll out. There is some evidence that Ben Shapiro has improved in the second half of his novel. That he's learning as he's writing. Which is that we went through three whole chapters and he never randomly switched from a perspective character to a completely different character in a wild, least jarring transition.

That is true. He is growing. That's why he's such a skilled writer. Because he does it for the first third of the book. So then you expect it to keep happening. You're like, okay, when's this going to happen? And then he doesn't do it. That's surprising. It's a twist. It's a twist, exactly. I thought you were even worse as a writer

than you are, but you've gotten slightly better. Surprise! You're actually not the worst. Oh, it's good times for everybody. All right, well, the episode's over. Please continue voting and or engaging in gunfights with fascist paramilitaries. Have a good election day. And remember, a tourniquet should be placed

above the bleeding wound and then tighten until the bleeding stops. America's strong. Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation

of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse we're like a lot of goods. But our federal agents catching bad guys with a gun, and we're like, we're like,

we're like, but our federal agents catching bad guys or creating them. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.