Behind the Bastards - Let's Take A Break With Ben Shapiro's Terrible Book

Episode Date: January 12, 2021

Robert is joined again by Katy Stoll and Cody Johnston to continue discussing Ben Shapiro's horrible 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. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian-trained astronaut?

That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know, because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space. With no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the Earth for 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. When I came across a book, a book that reminded me of all of the wonderful beauty of conservatism and all of the evils of my morally bankrupt liberal ideology, and today we're going to read another section from that book, Ben Shapiro's True Allegiance. Katie and Cody, why don't you come onto the stage and take a bow? Hello, hello, thank you, thank you so much. Oh, it's too much, it's too much, thank you, thank you, thank you.

We do it for you, we do it for you. You guys, my heart is going to explode from joy. Hi. More praise, please, more praise, more praise. Now, oh, guys, okay. First question for the panel, who do you think is the bottom? Obama or Stalin? Obama.

Obama, you think so, huh? I've experienced your Stalin episode. Yeah, this is going to be the new Stalin-Trotzky debate, and it's about whether or not Stalin or Obama's a bottom. You haven't done an Obama episode yet, so maybe there's more information. Well, yeah, I've yet to learn about his habits, but I could see that. I think Obama's, you know... Maybe switches, maybe the switches.

Yeah, I do think that Biden, or not Biden, Stalin, sorry, they're both such similar people. I think that Stalin is probably has the versatility to be a switch, for sure. Yeah, yeah. Who's to say, to be a fly on the wall of that fanfic? Ooh, I mean, I have some good news about the way fanfiction works, Katie. We're all flies on the wall. I'm very excited to be back. I was not able to attend the last few chapters.

Yeah, which we released on Election Day. Yeah, you know, you missed Ben Shapiro, still has not learned how to write a single sentence. Yeah, as far as I know... Seems to struggle even more. Yeah, seems to be getting worse. To be fair, he got a little sleepy. Yeah, maybe he was sleepy on the third day, because it took four days to write this. Yeah, and on the fourth day, he got sleepy.

Yeah, you know, we had a couple of different things in there, including President Mark Prescott, who's White Obama, getting to give his equivalent of the speech George Bush gave at Ground Zero, which is bad when a Democrat does it, but it was good that George Bush did it. Of course. Simple maths. And yeah, and actually we're going to start again with another President Prescott chapter, as we turn into 60% of the way through True Allegiance. That's the only thing I really missed was that the President gave a speech.

No, I mean, the black gangster character got angry that the Al Sharpton character didn't want to kill cops as much, so he started a secret plan to replace all of the cops with gangsters, because cops aren't already gangsters. Right, right. Yeah, really changing the force with that move. Oh, and Britt Hawthorne did a... What's the term when you judge people based on their racist criminals? Oh, yeah, racial profiling. And then it didn't help, but the point was still that it's good to do.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It didn't do what it was supposed to do, and learned nothing. He learned nothing. It's even bad at writing propaganda. Unbelievable. Wrote a case against it, still didn't see what he was doing. Yeah, because he kind of had the people who Britt Hawthorne was ordering to do racial profiling be like, this is bad because it's racial profiling.

And then the racial profiling doesn't work, and it turns out they were right, but you're not supposed to walk away from the book thinking that. It was a good try. We're glad he did it because we need to keep doing it. All right. Good job, Ben. We love your commas. Let's do it.

So almost two thirds of the way into the book, here's President Prescott's chapter. New York City. Featuring a lot of other characters. Featuring God, you can switch forward in time 30 years. Yeah, we're starting there. We'll see where we land. Ben knows that the key to any like really readable piece of fiction is that the reader never have any sense of grounding or understanding of where he is.

Absolutely chaos. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is, I would describe Ben Shapiro as most, like this true allegiance is most similar to, for example, the Dubliners. Okay. It's just like the Dubliners. It's just like the Dubliners. Surely that's what he's going for. He's really nailing this consistent inconsistency.

Yeah, I do now thinking about Ben Shapiro trying to write James Joyce. I'm imagining Ben Shapiro writing about a character masturbating through a hole in his pocket and like getting stuck up on not being able to write come. He knows he has to. Just a book full of just like that. Seaward. The seaward. The seaward.

Okay. So the first chapter that we're going to read today is Ellen who remember is Ben Shapiro's wife, but actually is Brett Hawthorne's wife. And she works for Governor Bubba Davis, who is basically George Bush. I think that's what Ben's going for. Yeah, he's Bushian. Yeah, he's Bushian and a perfectly rendered Texan. Ben really has spent a lot of time in my home state.

I can tell because he uses the classic Texan phrase, horn swoggled all the time. Governor Davis' refusal to send the National Guard to New York sparked a firestorm across the nation. He cited precedent. Hadn't the governor of California refused a federal request to place National Guard troops on the border, but in the aftermath of the bridge attack, he didn't get much sympathy. Everyone knows that Texas thinks of itself as its own little country, shouted one MSNBC commentator into the camera, shouting MSNBC. Well that means it was a man and not a woman because a woman would have been screeching.

This is how Ben, yeah, it has to be a man because he didn't write screeching. And it has to be a white man because he absolutely would have told us if it was a black man. Oh, 100%. So here's Ben Shapiro, who clearly knows how people talk on NBC, describing what NBC would say. Everyone knows that Texas thinks of itself as its own little country, but this time their hick governor has shown himself to be deeply unpatriotic. You don't get to be a star on the flag of the United States and then go AWOL when your country needs you, which is, like, first, actually a good point.

Second, remember when a literal fascist won the presidency and every mainstream news outlet couldn't wait to go hang out at waffle houses and talk to Trump voters and lecture liberals about being in a bubble? Unfortunately, I do. And still do, and still do every day, every other day. But no, MSNBC gets on and calls him a hick governor. Yeah, right. Classic, classic.

I watched YouTube then, right? Yeah, he's getting it right. So yeah, heroically, Governor Davis refuses to send in the National Guard to help with a mass casualty event that's killed thousands of Americans. And the media lambasts him for it. The media ran with the story, a president calling for love and unity and a Southern secessionist governor looking like George Wallace. Never mind it, Davis had stood with the marchers of the Civil Rights era.

He now stood on the side of the old South, the media percolate, which I love. So to make this guy, to make this guy a good guy, Ben just, like, has to invent that he marched with civil rights marchers, which is like the easiest way to get around like, I don't want people to think this guy clearly being a bigot is a bigot. I'll just say that he stood with Martin Luther King. It's very funny. He's doing a great job.

It's a well-rounded character, you see. Well, and it's also just an example of, like, how to not write a good book. Because if you're writing a good book, you should always be scared of giving yourself an easy answer. So, like, if you're trying to make this character into clearly a good morally upright guy, your best way to, and, like, you just kind of offhandedly mentioned that he marched with civil rights marchers,

that's the laziest way to make him into a good person. Because, again, it's this whole show, like, tell-don't-show thing that Ben has going on. Yeah, he's incapable of showing anything. Yeah, because the governor is actually being evil here. So, Ben just says, but in the past he did really good things. So, what he's doing now is good because Martin Luther King. Like, that's what he's doing.

Yeah, show him doing a good thing. It would be considered unbelievably lazy if it wasn't the person that we were talking about. It's very believably lazy. Yes, it's believably lazy. Again, if you wanted to make this more of an interesting book, have him actually have a point and be in the right and the federal government be wrong,

but also have the governor be a guy with a problematic past who is battling with that and who, like, faces additional opposition because of bad things he's done in the past that maybe, like, gives the bad guys more, like, room to work with or something. Like, make it an interesting fucking story. No, no, no, Robert, he saved a bus full of nuns and schoolchildren. Yeah, in the past. We don't need to see that.

Oh, oh, oh, way earlier, way earlier. No, no, no. But that way we don't have to wait for words on it. We can just tell you. It's like how, it's like how when they made the action movie classic Die Hard, they mentioned that John McClain had stood with the civil rights movements that people would like him,

rather than painting him as a deadbeat husband and then making him likable through the things that he suffered and went through and sacrifices he made throughout the movie. You know. I'm going to watch Die Hard tonight. It's good. Sounds like good storytelling. It's a Thanksgiving movie.

It's a Christmas movie. It's a Thanksgiving movie. Okay, we'll talk about that later. Die Hard 2 is an Easter movie. Die Hard 2 is an Easter movie. Is it? No, it's covered in snow the whole time. That's another Christmas movie.

No, it's a Thanksgiving movie, too. Fourth of July? Yeah. The President of the United States. Okay, so, Bubba Davis turns to Ellen. Civil rights hero, Bubba Davis. Yeah, civil rights hero,

basically Martin Luther King, Jr., Bubba Davis. Thank you. Turns to Ellen, Ben Shapiro's wife, who asks her to be like the public face of his resistance to the federal government. And she refuses. Because the President of the United States,

she told Davis, had brought her husband home in one piece. He'd made mistakes, she knew. He'd exiled her husband based on lies, separated them for years, slashed the military, undermined the mission, she thought. But in the end, he brought Brett home, and that was all that mattered to her.

Which is, you know, actually a vaguely reasonable step for a character to take in this book. That's like a human being. Yeah. Yeah. No notes on that sentence. You know what, Ben?

Good on you. That was a believable single paragraph. I'm sure you did it. Wait, was it a single paragraph, or was it one really long sentence? Yeah, okay, let's see here. Yeah, he'd exiled her husband based on lies, comma, separated them for years,

comma, slashed the military, comma, undermined the mission, comma, she thought. Nah. Yeah, it's not a great sentence. The sentence structure isn't good. But the paragraph covers useful emotional character. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

It was an attempt, and just because he kept the sentence going a little longer, that's fine. Yeah. Okay, Bubba says when she refuses, then I need you on the border. Somebody has to head up this outfit,

and if I go down there, they'll accuse me of outright insurrection. You're competent, your husband is a well-known military figure, and well, damn it, you're a woman, and those sexists in the press won't labor a woman an insurrectionist. Okay.

So he gives his, I guess, press secretary control of the military forces he's placing on the border, because as a woman, the press won't accuse her of leading an insurrection. So which end of that is sexist is my question? You're the media.

You're the media. Which side has been landing on there? Great question. I think the media is sexist because they won't call her an insurrectionist when she starts leading an insurrection. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Fuck the media. You know, we'll see. Maybe, you know? Yeah. Okay, so in the next paragraph, she's been there for a week. So I guess all of this was just going back in time to catch this up.

This is so... Yeah. Every time, it's like, by the way, this is a year later, and it's just the next sentence. Oh my God, this is absurd. She had to admit that the border felt different. It felt safe for the first time ever.

Military vehicles patrolled the Texas side of the river with checkpoints set up to funnel visitors and workers through after checking identification. Soldiers, many speaking Spanish, spoke with the locals, helping to... Oh my God, what a sentence. Soldiers, comma, many speaking Spanish,

comma, spoke with the locals, comma, helping to direct them to the local ranches. Ben is not a... That's even just saying, spoke with them to help them with. Yeah, I mean, saying... Like, simple adjustments to get rid of all those commas. Yeah, it's just bad.

You can believe in a copy editor. And also, I don't know, if you ever spend a lot of time in places where there's tons of military vehicles and soldiers manning checkpoints, I can say from experience in multiple countries, you don't feel very safe. That checks out.

Tons of soldiers handling basic travel needs makes me feel like I'm in a dangerous place because every place I've been like that has been dangerous. Yeah, interesting, interesting feeling. Yeah. Also, spent a lot of time on the Texas border indefinitely. A lot of terrible things do happen on chunks of the US-Mexican border.

It's a long border. Most of it's pretty empty. Yeah, right. Yeah, she'd been there for a week and there hadn't been any dead kids in the river. Every so often, a black helicopter would buzz the troops on the American side of the border. Ellen thought it might be members of the same drug cartel

that had killed Vivian. She even thought that she'd seen one of the men wearing a bandana over his face. She told the generals of the guard that she didn't want to see any fire at the helicopters unless fired upon. Things were bad enough without starting a war. In the last few days, the hell...

Yeah, she needed to tell the military not to shoot random helicopters out of the sky. In the last few days, the helicopters had buzzed closer and closer, probing, prodding American response. The Americans merely observed. The guard had no intelligence capacities. Every soldier I know who's worked with guardsmen would agree with that statement and fairness to Ben.

The feds hadn't been particularly responsive since Davis's big announcement, but Ellen had some private investigators do some digging. What they found shocked her. The city of Juarez, they said, was won by the Juarez Cartel, one of the most dangerous criminal enterprises on the planet. It's leadership had been passed down through the Carillo Fuentes Brothers, who had turned...

Okay, so he starts talking about cartels, cartels, cartels. Okay, and now he's just quoting a 2006 Guardian article about crimes of Juarez cartels. I'm sorry, excuse me. We've got Ben Shapiro writing a Daily Wire article about the cartels. Is this an article for his website? No, he actually cites a 2006 article

from the UK Guardian. Wait a second. So what fucking world are we in? Yeah, that's a great question. The timeline in this is not super clear, because Obama was also president in the past. Wait, okay. I thought that they did find weapons of mass destruction.

They did. How does this fucking Guardian article from our world still fucking exist? Well, I mean, you know, they found the WMDs in the Middle East. They're still cartels. I guess Middle Eastern history is completely different in Ben's world, but everything is the same up until 2016-ish. Okay.

Yeah. All right. I don't care anymore. All right. Yeah. Doesn't matter. Yeah. The presence of American troops on the board.

So basically she goes into how like it had been so dangerous. She cites a bunch of horrible things cartels did in Juarez and then points out that since all the soldiers were now on the border, all of the violence in Juarez had stopped. So it was that simple. Piece of cake? No problem. Nothing to see here, folks.

Some people might note that the Mexican military is basically armed identically to the United States military and has not succeeded in any way, shape, or form with crushing the cartels who are similarly armed in a lot of cases. Some people might note that. But it wouldn't be Ben Shapiro. Why would he? Yeah.

So Ellen's job is to keep the peace on the border. She'd have to do better, she knew. One incident gone wrong could end Davis's dreams of a safe Texas. So I guess everything's working great on the border because the army's there. Hell yeah. So that's good. Hell yeah. Yeah.

So we have a little line break and then we're, I guess, in the advanced and indeterminate amount of time in the future. Ellen's cell phone. It's still her. It's still Ellen. It is still Ellen. So far. That could change any second, Katie.

Oh, yeah. We don't know. We don't know. Ellen's cell phone rang. New York number. She picked up. Hey, sweetheart, Brett's rich baritone rumbled through the phone. Give me a fucking break.

Give me a fucking break. No, I can't wait to hear Ben Shapiro write about these two love birds. I'm sorry, but we are, we are 60% into the book. 62. We do not need this description. Rich baritone. Actually, I think you do. Hey, sweetheart, says Brett's rich baritone.

Hey, babe. She said, miss you. His voice sounded thick over the phone. Almost beautiful. We know. We fucking know. We already know. You said it.

Okay. Sorry. Okay. It's fine. Just a few days ago, they'd been so close to reuniting. Now with commercial air travel shut down in the crisis in New York, it could be weeks they both knew. But this was something new too.

Brett never talked like this. Since the rescue from Orion, Brett hadn't been himself. He never called her sweetheart. Never called her sweetheart in that rich baritone. She could imagine why and she could imagine his face. She longed to reach out and touch it. Miss you too. That was Bill.

He's hanging in there. Another pause. Are you okay? Bill, by the way, is their friend whose wife and young daughter were just killed. That's what they spare for Bill. How's Bill? He's fine. In fairness to Ben, the way he wrote Bill, he clearly was not broken up over the death

of his wife and child. That is true. He's doing fine. He's doing great. He's right back to work. Are you okay? Yes. That's a no.

He laughed. So did she. She made a mistake not sending the troops, you know. I know she answered and I have a feeling something's coming here. Something bad. I'm getting the same feeling. It's not over. Is it a long pause?

No, I don't think it is. Someone knocked on the door to Ellen's office. I got a run, babe. She said, take a bullet for you. I can't. Brett Hawthorne responds, take a bullet for you, sweetheart. She hung up. Every time that's the only, that's what they say at the end.

That's what, that's their, that's their cute thing that we all love. Take a bullet for you. And I've heard variations of this from a couple of different people who had family members who would end every conversation with, I love you, you know, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and they were like, you know, it always seemed kind of silly to me until the day that like they died. And then I remembered the last thing that they said to me was that they loved me. And like now I understand why they did that.

And that's legitimately like heartwarming and a wonderful thing. Take a bullet for you was not. No, no, no, it's not. It's so interesting to associate violence with love. It says a lot about Ben. That's his equivalent of like, you just want him to know how they feel. So mention being shot. Every time you finish a conversation.

I remember the last time I spoke, we spoke, I said, I'd fucking die in a rain of bullet fire. Yeah. For you. For them. Oh, get stabbed in the abdomen repeatedly for you, babe. Get stabbed in the abdomen repeatedly for you. Fucking fuck up my insides with searing hot metal for you, babe.

For you. I'll pull my hamstring for you, baby. Yeah. I'll suffer hydrostatic shock as a high velocity round tears through my organs for you, babe. Love it. You too, babe. God. And again, if you wanted to do like a fun kooky couple, you could have them do increasingly

deranged versions of that to end their conversations. That's a fun bit. That's a fun bit. But that's not what's happening. Yeah. That shows like, oh, they're playful and they know. Yeah. They know.

Yeah. It gets atomized by a drill bit for you, babe. You can have fun with it. They love each other. Look at how much fun they have. Yeah. They're kind of dark. They have this dark sensibility as opposed to I can't even read them saying that without

like gagging. It's like the ninth time. Yeah. It has every time there's a visceral reaction to it too. It's hard. It's hard. It's the only piece of Vin's writing that makes me feel anything. Okay.

So she hangs up on combat general Brett Hawthorne and then she gets a slip of paper from a sergeant in the guard that tells her it came from HQ. And we'll find out what that slip of paper says. But first, Cody, Katie. Yeah. You know what? We'll take a bullet for you. My man. No.

That's not the answer. No. The products and services that support this podcast. Of course. Of course. Of course they will. God, we should really get sponsored by Body Armor. Yeah.

Let's see if Hesco will, yeah. Get on that, Robert. Throw some bucks at us. Wear Body Armor for you, babe. Mm-hmm. I prefer not to get shot for you, babe. So I wear class four plates. Let's stay out of danger and like be happy somewhere else.

Yeah. I'll attempt to stay safe as best I can for you, babe. I hope you do the same for me, babe. Okay. All right. 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. Because 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 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 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? 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. 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. We're back. Thank God. So she's just gotten a letter from HQ. Ellen goes to the, I don't know, some command headquarters. Oh boy, we're talking about journalists again. By the time she arrived at the mobile home, which is I guess the mobile headquarters for

the guard, a small crowd of journalists had formed outside. As she stepped out of her car, the cameras clacked away. The focus of the nation was certainly on New York, she thought, but that didn't make the regional journalist any less hungry to get their footage on the national broadcast. It's an awkward sentence. Sure is. Yeah. She saw the boxes she stepped inside the empty room, sitting on a makeshift desk, a table

somebody had culled from the local rec center. That's an awkward way of telling you there's a box in the room that's important. Yeah, read that again, please. She saw, so this is her, like, she saw the boxes she stepped inside the empty room, comma, sitting on a makeshift desk, comma, a table somebody had culled from the local rec center. The box was car, yeah. Bad sentence. She walked into a trailer, there was a makeshift desk, and on top of the desk was a box,

waterlogged and made of cardboard or something like that. Oh, that was horrendous. That broke my brain. I want us to do, like, a search of how many commas are used in this book when we're done. Billions. So that will break my machine. I only have four cores to compute that with. I don't have enough RAM in this machine.

So, yeah, the box was cardboard, wet at the bottom, a wet plastic bags had beside it. The box had been carved open at the top. She crept up on it. Why did she creep up on it? Why? Well, you're the one that has some bomb in here, right? Ooh, another real champion of a sentence. She crept up on it, comma, the pressure in her chest screaming at her to not look inside.

Uh-huh. Screaming, huh? Ah, there's a head. There's a head in the box. We're having our seven moment here and it's the head of some National Guard motherfucker who, oh, I guess a National Guard guy had been imprisoned in Mexico for months. She's just letting us know about this here because she finally got her head. If you're, I'm sorry.

Maybe drop that earlier? I don't know. Like, no, he wrote this book in one sitting. He wrote it all the way through and he's like, I did it. Yeah, and he got sleepy. At this point, if you want to do this scene, you pick any moment. Yeah. In any of the pages before this and you mentioned this fucking once.

Yeah, you have the governor have an angry phone call with the president about how this man is in danger and he's been kidnapped and the president says, we're going to take care of it. He's going to be fine. Like they don't want to kill him and you, you show the president is like an unreasonable and detached from reality and the governor is caring about this guy. You establish that like this is a major issue and then when his head shows up in a box, it means more than nothing at all.

More than nothing at all. Yeah, nothing at all. Even just a little bit, a little bit. Yeah. It should be the bare minimum. Just a bare minimum. Just like go back and add a sentence. It's not.

Yeah. I mean, it's good. Yeah. Now the holes on his head that used to hold eyes stared through Ellen. Written on his forehead and blue ink was one word. Terrorista. She held back the urge to vomit. What?

Why hold that back? Sentence, man. Yeah. The sentence man has arrived. She turned away thinking it was a genius move. She concluded so offensive that there would have to be some response from the Texas government, a crime directed not at the national government, but at an individual claimed by the Mexican government to be a criminal.

Wow. That was one sentence. Heck of a sentence. It played directly to Davis's soft spot abandonment. He'd wanted to retaliate. He'd wanted to push across the border into Juarez and Prescott would want no part of it, not while he was trying to woo the president of Mexico to endorse his job creation plan, and not while he had the whole entire world unifying around him.

Yeah. It might be bad to invade Mexico in a time like that. Oh my God. I just got what Ben's doing. What's he doing? So this book, we have another 9-11 and after the actual 9-11 George Bush immediately invaded Afghanistan and started agitating to invade Iraq and playing the part of Iraq and Afghanistan in this book is Mexico.

Oh, yeah, I did. Bush was right to invade a country that had nothing to do with the terrorist attack and Bava Davis is right to invade Mexico, which also had nothing to do with the terrorist attack. Yeah. Excellent. Excellent. I love it.

Good stuff. Yeah. So, Bava calls Ellen and he's like, this is America, not Afghanistan. This shit can't happen along my border. It's America's border, Bava, but America won't do shit to protect it. They failed. They turned. She took a deep breath.

Governor, she said, you do this and you could be looking at open conflict with Prescott this time. No more play acting. No more excuses. You think he's going to send his boys down here to shoot at our boys over us killing some drug dealers? I don't know, but neither do you. Everybody on earth has called the president's bluff, said Davis, everybody.

He's caved every time. What would make this time different? You, she answered, he hates you. That won't make his cahones any bigger, girl. He laughed. Oh, girl. Shit. Look, this has just really...

Yeah. This is how people talk. Yeah. Yeah. Girl. I'm looking forward to seeing some dead criminals for a change and the line goes dead. And then Ellen quotes Caesar, you know, and says alia yachta est stuff, which, well, I think it should be S, but I'm not an expert on Latin, which means like it's what Caesar

said when he crossed the Rubicon because Ben Shapiro only knows about classical history and only the parts of classical history that are dramatic and stuff. The hero moments. The hero moments. Where the hero of history, Julius Caesar, destroys a democracy actually. So yeah, I get why Ben is on board. Yeah. Yeah.

Is on board. Okay. So next we have a Soledad chapter. So that's good. Nice. Yeah. Soledad, if you'll remember, is the only woman of color in the story and also a terrorist, but a good terrorist that Ben likes.

But the good time. Okay. Yeah. So she's hanging out with a bunch of her militia guys, one of whom the black man who is there to tell her that everything that she's doing is good and make Ben not seem racist because, look, there's a black man in the book, Ezekiel is hanging out with her and a bunch of guns. And one of Soledad's men is like, we need to talk.

Soledad knotted the men filed out of the living room into the outdoors. Ezekiel knotted at her. You need anything. Holler. I'll be outside. Aidan, who's the other guy, collapsed into a broken down sofa, breathing hard. And then he leaned forward, staring at Soledad. We need to go to Detroit, he said.

And in fairness, every time I've gone to Detroit, it did start with an emotional conversation. Nobody. Yeah. So, yeah, she laughs at this because they're supposed to be staying off grid and hiding. But Aidan's like, Ricky needs my help. Ricky is the cop who shot the dead eyed black boy. There we go. And I guess he's a friend of Soledad's, one of her militiamen.

Yeah. So, Aidan informs us that those pieces of shit, which I think are Black Lives Matter activists, just took over the detention center. And so, yeah, he's worried. Okay. So, Aidan's worried that the cop who killed the dead eyed black boy is going to get murdered by the BLM activists who took over the detention center where he's being held. Okay.

All right. Okay. That's good. That's at least relatively succinct. Okay. Pretty racist, but succinct. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's clear.

I'm not confused. No. It's just bad. Yeah. They sat listening to the commercials for carpet cleaner in gold, which is accurate for Fox News. So, I guess that's fair. Then the news came back on.

A newscaster speaking in somber tones, his voice cut by static interference. The protesters gathered outside the detention center, chanting that they want their own trial. So, it doesn't look like we're missing any words there. There's just in the middle of there because Ben doesn't even know how to write in static. Like, the sentence is complete. It just has in the middle. Yeah.

The static? Yeah. They're static in the middle of it, but the sentence that we get is the protesters gathered outside the detention center, chanting that they want their own trial. That's pretty, I don't know, we're not missing much there. Weird choice. Anyway, Aiden switches the radio off. He calls it an old fashioned lynch mob because they're black people and white people are

the victims of racism. Yeah. They're not going home without a head on a pike. Okay. Cool. Cool. And apparently, you know, Solar Dad's like, why do you care about this guy? And he's like, we're friends.

He saved my life once. So now you want to return the favor? He nodded. But this isn't just about you anymore, she said. I've got 40 guys out there who abandoned everything they had to come out here and try to be left alone. You want me to put them in the middle of a shit storm? The storm is coming to you.

They're distracted. They'll leave us alone. For how long, Aiden grimaced, I'll bet Ricky thought they'd leave him alone, that he was doing the right thing when he shot that black boy. Oh, my God. The dead-eyed black child. The dead-eyed. Thank you.

Thank you. There you go. Good Lord. Aiden then thanks Solar Dad for giving her something he'd been missing, a reason to fight. So that's good. This is so brutal. Yeah. It's just a bad book.

It's bad. It's just a bad book. Yeah. It's just a bad book. Okay. So she goes through a little long, dark tea time of the soul for a paragraph or so and then she decides to head out at nightfall to Detroit. And then they're in Detroit.

They arrived in the evening, a chain of cars and motorcycles taking refuge in the abandoned Michigan Central Station, the old rail depot for the city. Aiden guides them through because I guess he knows Detroit. Everything is decayed and crumbling. And yeah, they hole up in an abandoned building and make it their HQ. There's homeless drunks still around the place because yeah, that's all of Detroit. Yeah, that's good. So yeah, oh, we get a little rant about Ben Shapiro.

For years, the city had tried to rehabilitate the building. It had been bought, re-bought, bought again, it considered bonds, taxpayer subsidies, anything to get the building restored. Nobody had bothered. Detroit was a disaster area. Investing money in the city would be a massive waste. Aiden had grown up in Detroit, he'd said. He knew the city well.

His grandfather worked for General Motors, had a union job that was supposed to keep him employed all his life. Then foreign cars began flooding the American market and the auto union contracts meant that American car companies couldn't compete. Jobs started fleeing. As they did, the government of the city decided to raise taxes dramatically and the people who still held jobs and the companies that still decided to stay in town. They left too.

Mayor after mayor took office promising to bring business back, then pandered by crushing businesses that remained. The tax base disappeared. So that's how Ben Shapiro thinks Detroit wound up where it wound up. Cool. Yeah. That's good. It's just like a segment from his podcast.

Yeah. He also notes that white families moved out to the suburbs. Black families couldn't afford the follow. The city self-segregated. Oh. They self-segregated. They self-segregated. They self-segregated.

They self-segregated. Okay. It's as simple as that. They self-segregated. They decided to. Oh, okay. There's nothing. A masterful understanding of reality.

It's interesting what's happening. Yeah. It's interesting what's happening here because he starts off by saying that like Detroit is hopeless and like it can't be fixed. And then the only plight that's worth focusing on are like this white kid whose dad lost his job and who, yeah, like that's fun. And yeah, this continues because Aiden and Ricky meet in Detroit and they think they're the only two white kids in town and so they become best friends.

Their parents went to church together. They fought back bullies together. Ricky was the straight arrow. Aiden, the budding juvenile delinquent, eager and ready to do anything to make friends. Yeah. So two white boys against the bad black kids of Detroit. That's Aiden and Ricky, the cop who shoots that little boy to death. So that's good.

That's a good book. Good. Yeah. Good was the word I was going to use too. I was like, what's the right word for this? Ben would know. It's good. Good.

Yeah. Okay. So yeah, they become friends but then Aiden is a juvenile delinquent and they grow apart. One day Aiden's mother saw Ricky in church, asked him if he'd seen Aiden. Ricky lied to cover for him. Aiden, he'd said, was probably at the library. Then hands gripped into fists, still wearing a Sunday suit. He went looking for Aiden.

He found him in a rundown tract house surrounded by a couple of dropouts, high on weed and drunk off his ass. Aiden, Ricky said, your mom's looking for you. She missed you at church. One of the losers laughed. Yeah, momma's boy, your momma's looking for you. Shut up, Aiden slurred to him. Yeah?

Well, tell her I'm out here. I'm not going to do that. I'd come and get you. Aiden laughed, a high-pitched whine that eventually tapered off into a snort. Well, you tried, Boy Scout. Now get back home to your momma. Ricky grabbed him by the scruff of his t-shirt. Get your ass home, Aiden, or what, Aiden sneered, or this, Ricky, punched him in the face.

Aiden went down like a load of brick. Wow. So we're not... Or what, or this? We're not... It's interesting because we're getting Aiden's backstory here, but it's not being posed as him having a conversation with Soledad and telling her what happened. We're just reading this as if it's another, like, we've just switched to 20 years in

the past, is another scene, without any sort of break. It's not like he's not remembering, like, we're not starting this chapter on Aiden and him like having remembering. Ben's just written this. He's not describing it, he's not telling the story, it's just a series of paragraphs that describes the scene that happened years ago. He's such a dog shit writer. I think, I seriously do not think anybody edited this book.

No, they didn't. It's not possible. An editor would have been like, this is not how you write a book, Ben. Did he self-publish it? No, but I don't... The publishing company is... It's not great. It's called No Edit Reads, is the name of that company.

I mean, it's one of those things where, like, it's like, I'll kind of pay you if you, like, publish it for me. Yeah. I wanted to look into the publishing company for a long time, because it is very clear that, like... Yeah. I liked Katie's joke. This is first draft shit.

Can we have a moment for how good Katie's joke was? Thank you, Soledad. Thank you. It was wonderful. So, in this... Real quick, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Yeah.

This is such a terrible scene. It's horrible. And I... What's funny also is that what happens here isn't even all that dramatic, because, like, Ricky punches him and then Aiden never gets high again, and he becomes a fed. Yeah. No, this is... Because he's with the ATF, right?

Yeah. This is a low-grade misrepresentation of something that was kind of similar, that barely didn't maybe kind of happen to Ben or somebody he knew. I think it's just something Ben assumes happens to people who don't succeed. Right, he imagined. It's like, oh, this is what... Yeah. The tell there is that within the book, because it's not Aiden telling the story, it's the

author telling this story, referring to that person as one of the losers, that's all you need to know. Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting because this is clearly what Ben thinks drug addiction is, as opposed to what he's actually described as a kid smoking weed and drinking in a house, which is not an evidence of a serious problem, most people in this country have something like that happen when they're teens.

Yeah. And it's generally fine. It turns out generally fine. Like, if you want to have this... Like, have him get into heroin or some shit. Have fucking Ricky, like, find him ODing and turn him over and stop him from choking on his own puke, at least make it a life or death situation if this guy's going to say he saved my life.

No, he got high on weed. He got high on weed that one time and then got punched. And one of the losers punched him. No, no, no. That was Ricky. His friend punched him because that's how heroes make solve all their problems with violence. That's what makes them heroes. But...

Cody. Unless... Sorry. Cucked my pen once again. Yeah. Okay. So, that's why Aiden, the guy that we barely know wants to save Ricky, the guy who shot that dead-eyed black child.

I wonder if Ben thinks it's disgusting and uncivil to punch Nazis. I bet he does. But not your pot-smoking friends. No, no, no, no. Not if it helps him become feds. Yeah. So, okay. They go through, like, a plan.

They talk about, like, how the fucking detention center's laid out and, yeah. Okay. So, here's Aiden again. So, here's the plan. We have to wait until the right time. We're not interested in taking out the police. They're armed and they're scared. And armed and scared cops are just as likely to shoot us as anybody else.

Ben's on the verge of taking the point, man. You're so close, Ben. You're so close, Ben. He's just dancing right around it, isn't he? Yeah. That is why people are angry, Ben. Get there. Just get there, man.

Instead, we need chaos for the cover. Every riot is led by a few key characters, Ben, the riot knower. Everybody in there may look like they're ready for war, but most are there to show their friends that they're brave. The authorities know that. So, their chief task is to arrest the rabble-rousers and let the rest sort of fade away. If that happens, we'll never get officer or soul of an out of there. I guarantee you that whoever's leading this thing is smart and capable.

This is not amateur hour. Oh, so it's, we're getting into Ben's, like, all, if it's, like, riots and protests are, like, nefariously organized because people couldn't spontaneously, you know, form up in large numbers and confront and outmaneuver the police without having, like, a leadership cast. That's right. That's right. Yeah.

It's funny because an article dropped last week where, like, revealing, like, so the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI were spying on Portland protesters during the protests and riots this summer and were, like, desperately trying to figure out who the leaders were. And the exact, like, wording in the report was something along the lines of, all we wound up with was a list of who was canceling who on Twitter. That is amazing. It's very funny. That is intensely beautiful.

Yeah. It's the best thing that's ever happened. Oh, my God. I've never been so happy reading a story. Best laugh all day. Thank you for that. Yeah. Yeah.

It fucking ruled. Yeah. Ben knows riots. Absolutely. Knows him a riot. Ben, riot, Shapiro. Yeah. Okay, so one of them in the back pipes up, why don't we just grab him off the street

when he's released? And Ezekiel, who's, again, the only black guy in this group, gaffaws, have you seen us? We stick out like a KKK rally in Harlem. No chance they don't find us and at least neutralize us. No, here's what we're going to do. Oh, wait. And then he doesn't tell us what he's going to do. Instead, Aiden, the next paragraph is, so after Ezekiel says, here's what we're going

to do, Aiden takes out a garbage bag and pulls uniforms from it. Then he tosses to Soledad and three of the other men who step forward to put them on. Now for the rest of you guys, I've got something really special. It doesn't even tell them anything, just throws out uniforms and then start putting them on. Ben is a real bad writer. I mean, everything that he has a character say is like a cliche, I'm not sure of the right word, but it's like an overused phrase, like a sentence structure that's like so obvious

and overused. Right, because it's not like, yeah, it's not cliches necessarily, you're right. We'll stand out like a KKK member in Harlem. Well, and it's also, of course, it had to be the black guy who said that because he would think of Harlem, like, right. And it's also that he says, here's the plan and then nobody explains the plan and instead another character takes out a garbage bag full of uniforms and everybody understands it.

And the chapter ends with Aiden opening a duffel bag with t-shirts in it and we don't know what's on the t-shirts, but everybody's jaw drops and solid ad chuckles well, you've got to die sometime. So I'm guessing my guess is that something racist is on them to draw attention and create a giant fight or something so that they can sneak in and free Ricky. That'd be my guess. Kind of like, kind of like the start of the third diehard movie, actually. Yeah.

That's an Arbor Day movie. Okay. Oh, good. You're quicker than me, Cody. Our next chapter is a Levon chapter. I think we have to take a break. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I guess we should.

You just took the words out of my mouth. I'm sorry. Thank you. I'm sorry. I apologize and you're welcome. I'm appreciative. I'm appreciative too. And you know who's most appreciative?

No. Your butt. Yes. That's wrong. The products and services that support this pod cast. Kitty's so funny today. I'm so happy. 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. Because 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 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. 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.

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. All right, we're back and it's time for some motherfucking leave on. Oh, yeah, baby. Who is, again, the black crack dealing Osama bin Laden of the story, basically.

Although there's also another Osama bin Laden who's basically Osama bin Laden but named Muhammad. Right. There's a lot of bin Laden's and a lot of Obama's. You can't have too many Obama's or bin Laden's. Yeah. Absolutely not. Oh, OK, so when we open, he's sleeping with, oh, wait, no, OK, sorry, I'll just start this.

For two days, Levon stood in the cold. He had his men bring him food and clothing. He slept on the sidewalk next to him slept the mother of Kendrick Malone, the little kid that Ricky killed. With them slept hundreds of others. Every day, local businesses shipped out supplies for the group, eager to be seen as caring for the plight of the righteous protesters. And still they didn't release Ricky O'Sullivan.

Perhaps they thought that the crowd would dissipate. Perhaps they were waiting for federal intervention, intervention that wouldn't come. The president had already declared that this was a local matter and the resources of the state had already been redirected to the disaster area in New York City. There would be no cavalry. And so they waited. Each day, members of the media crowded around Levon to hear his words. But each day, the number of media dwindled.

The attention span of the nation ran shorter and shorter these days. Well, yeah, there's just been a giant terrorist attack and the governor of Texas is invading Mexico. So I guess people occupying a detention center might not be the top story in the nation. At the time. Yeah. Fair enough. That's hard to do.

So Levon decides. The media is wild. Who knows? Yeah. What newspapers they have access to in there. Yeah. So Levon decides the time has come for action because the media is not paying attention anymore.

But action required provocation. So far, the authorities have been smart. They had holed up, put nobody on the street, waited for the ire to burn itself out. You know, like we saw the cops do this year. Oh, yeah, sure. They hadn't made any statements other than to praise the peacefulness of the protesters and suggest their sympathies for the protesters cause. Okay.

So, yeah, Ben knows how the cops work. That's how they would handle an occupation of a detention center. Jesus. Okay. So Big Jim is offering to negotiate the, yeah, negotiate the stalemate. He said that Levon could become a player by accepting the verdict demanding change from the feds and being granted an informal say in the appointment of officials up to and including police officers.

He said that Levon should just let O'Sullivan go, show that he was the bigger man. Already Big Jim had gone on national television, urging the president to send more federal officials to talk about the future. The nation's eyes had been riveted on Detroit, but with the Big Jim's imprimatur of legitimacy, the Detroit federal solution was gradually drawing the steam out of the kettle. La, la, la. Okay. Just, just boring shit.

And then they arrived, like a blessing from the skies they came. There weren't many of them, but they were enough. Great men riding motorcycles, planting themselves in the midst of the newly minted tent city, and they wore t-shirts, fight the thugs. Okay. So he's got right-wing vigilantes showing up to a BLM protest. Ben did predict one thing. Nailing it.

Yeah. He's getting, it's not, it's not. That got the media's attention, but oddly enough, few of the men wanted to talk to the media. That part's not accurate. One in particular bowed his head any time the cameras came near, Levon denounced them for the cameras. Who are these white supremacists coming into a city white racism is ruined and accusing

us of racism for standing up for our human rights. But secretly thanked God for bringing them. It kept the fight alive, at least for another day. Okay. So we come to Big Jim Croft. Oh, we switch viewpoint characters. So we've got Big Jim, and he's pinning an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal and hanging out in his house and stuff.

The next step of Detroit, Big Jim knew, would be to give Levon an option for withdrawal with some grace. He'd already pressed Levon, and he knew Levon was waiting, hoping for something big to happen. So that seemed unlikely with the nation's attention riveted elsewhere. Big Jim climbs out of the shower. God, this is, yes, this is just a random interlude with Big Jim. Yeah, let's go on here. Wait a second.

Suddenly he felt out of breath. He plunged forward, grabbing the sink with both hands, but he could feel the strength in those hands weakening. He tried to push his fingertips into the marble they wouldn't give. For some reason, a desperate need to hold himself up rushed over him. And as he felt his bulk dragging towards the cool floor, away from the fogged up mirror, he had the odd thought that the floor was red. Then he realized it was red and slippery with his blood.

He lost his grip. His face hit the oozing puddle hard. He never saw the man who fired the second round into his head. Oh, so he's get, he gets shot to death. Shit. I'm guessing that was Levon. Um, yeah, that seems right. So yeah, now we're back to Levon after killing Big Jim.

And he's looking at the T-shirt gang. So I guess that's the shirts that said, they said fight the thugs, because Ben, Ben wasn't even courageous enough to make the shirts really racist as like a direct provocation. Again, like the diehard thing. Um, okay. Yeah, yeah. Fight the thugs. It's delicate.

It's delicate. You gotta fight the thugs. It's delicate. Delicate. The delicate dance. Yeah. So we wind up with a big bell. Oh, Jesus Christ.

Okay. There were eight of them all told. Four had their hogs planted in the corners of the street, ready to move off at the first sign of trouble. Three of the other four planted themselves near the front of the crowd, near the steps to the detention center. The lone remaining man, a white-bearded big-bellied bear in his mid-60s stood near the center of the crowd.

Like a furry? Yeah, I think so. Like a furry. Nice. A group of young protesters screamed obscenities at him. He stood his ground placidly, a buzz built at the back of the crowd, more white men all wearing the same shirts, pulled up on motorcycles, saying nothing. The crowd of protesters moved on them, expecting a confrontation.

That's when Levon's phone rang and he gets the news that Big Jim is dead and he screams out, they killed Big Jim to the cameras, yeah, they killed Big Jim, tear it all down, tear down this corrupt system. And I guess everybody starts to go fucking nuts. It's riot time. Yeah. Yeah, it's riot time. Let's do it.

And riot Shapiro. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A teenager with a tire iron grabs the white dude's beard and pulls him to the ground from his beard and then beats him with a tire iron in the belly and a bunch of other guys try to break into the detention center screaming, give us O'Sullivan. Give us the Tile Murderer. Sounds like Ben cut off the beginning of that video. Yeah, sounds like he did.

Sounds like this is the Andy Miller version that we're reading. Yeah. Yeah, no, no, but the right wing guys would just stand there placidly like they always do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Placid. Placid. Placid bear of a man.

Placid bear of a man who, if this were a reality, would have had like bear mace canisters in both hands. I do think Ben is a writer that uses the thesaurus search on Google is just like, what's a word for calm? Placid. Yeah. That sounds good. Yeah.

I'm a writer. Behind Levon, the street exploded into chaos. I am a comma a writer. A writer, M-dash, a man who writes things. I'm a writing is what I do, period. He wrote. He wrote writingly. Behind Levon, the street exploded into chaos.

Protesters and rioters merging into one throng. That's a weird way to say that. The bearded white bear had disappeared into the center of the crowd. His body trampled, kicked, stomped, spit on. Hundreds of people gathered in a circle to watch to participate. At the outskirts of the riot, motorcycles rev their engine, fending off rocks and bottles. One pulls out a handgun and fires it into the air, scattering the crowd near him, but drawing a fusillade of debris from all quarters, yada, yada, yada.

Levon gets handed a crowbar and he starts beating the windows of the detention center and he breaks in, but the rubes empty and he has a bunch of his men come in and they're all trying to find O'Sullivan. Oh, and now we have another viewpoint switch. The detention officer unlocked the cell holding Ricky O'Sullivan and it creaked back on its hinges. O'Sullivan backed up quickly into the corner, his bulk filling it. You leave me alone, he said to the masked woman in a police uniform.

She wore a bandana over her face and her gun was pointed at the head of the detention officer. Follow me, Soledad said, okay, so they're just in the, it's Soledad's gotten in there. We don't need to, here, they just, it just happened. Yeah, it just happened to O'Sullivan and the guys there. Yeah. She also threatens to murder Ricky if he doesn't come with her, which is odd for a rescue. Yeah, and then she tells him that the crowd wants to hurt him after threatening to kill

him. Okay. Oh, wait, no, she's, she's saying that the crowd will kill you if you don't come with me. Okay, I guess that makes more questions. Ben just wrote it badly. Oh, shocking. Yeah.

Yeah. So she and Ricky take off and they get out just ahead of the rioters. So we have a viewpoint switch to Soledad and Ricky in the middle of Levon's chapter. Oh, and then we're back to Aiden. So we have another viewpoint switch to Aiden and Levon. Is it in the present or the past? Is this the memory of Aiden? It's in the present.

I don't think we're hearing about his past. All right. Yeah. Aiden's waiting for them in a garage with a SWAT van. We don't seem to know how he got the SWAT van. Don't need to. He's got it. Yeah.

Soledad panned it on the barrier to the van's driver's compartment. Go, she screamed. Go. Let's get the hell out of here. Not without Ezekiel. Aiden replied. What? He's not here.

He'll be here any moment. Now two of Levon's men had reached the van. One began slamming on Aiden's window while the other tried to pry open the back of the van. Hold on. Aiden shouted, throwing the van into reverse. The man at the back of the van screeched as his head banged against the iron of the door. Soledad felt sick to her stomach at the bump as the wheels hit him, but Aiden kept backing

up until there were just a few inches of room between the rear doors and the elevator next to the stairwell. Ezekiel's coming, Aiden said. Any second. Now the man at the driver's, okay, so the guy pounding on the window cracks it. Aiden pulls out a.22 caliber handgun, rolls down the window slightly and fired. The bullet hit the man in the shoulder, knocking him to the ground, which, that's like, the smallest possible handgun generally, like that.22 is like the smallest of the bullets,

which is not to say that it can't kill people, but it's interesting that this bullet knocks a man to the ground. Knocks him to the ground, yeah, yeah, yeah, a, a, presumably a large thug. Another bear of a man we have, we have to, we have to assume. We have to assume. Okay. So the elevator doors open after this and Ezekiel's there sitting on the floor, his mouth open, breaking hard, blood ran down the side of his police uniform.

Soledad leapt out of the back doors, grabbed him by the arm. Stay with me, Ezekiel. We're almost out, almost free. He grunted through another arm over her shoulder. O'Sullivan grabbed him by the collar and hoisted him into the van. So yeah, they confront, he has to gun the engine and drive through people with handguns who are threatening him. Shots are fired, but they don't hit anybody.

Addi, addi, addi, addi, addi, addi. Okay, let's get through this boring action. It is boring. Yeah, it's really boring action. Okay. Not a great sign. Yeah, they get out, they escape, great. And now we're back to leave on.

Oh, we do finally get back to leave on. So here's about O'Sullivan's escape. The street fights have died down that we were being told. The police had fled the detention center. There's bodies in the street bleeding. It looked like a war zone. He turned the face to the reporter, the camera directly in his face. He'd asked him a question before he found out O'Sullivan was gone.

He'd completely forgotten it. What did you ask? He murmured, what comes next? She asked, the mayor is vowing to keep order. Leave on looked out over his burning city, his burning city. We don't need the mayor to keep order. He's just as corrupt as the rest. We're in a war now.

You saw them out there on their motorcycles with their racist t-shirts. White supremacists killed Reverend Jim Crawford tonight. No pretty words are going to bring him back. So here's what America needs to know. Detroit is now in our hands. We will have justice and it starts with the mayor, but that's not where it ends. We want to work with the police officers who will serve justice. If they weren't, we'll have our own forces of justice.

Brothers will not burn down brothers' businesses. There will be no looting, no violence. That's not what Big Jim would have wanted. We're going to build something new in this city, something better on these ashes. Wherever Ricky O'Sullivan is, we'll bring him back to justice too. This is the beginning of a new era. The blood you see here tonight, that will be repaid in freedom. So tonight, I call for the people of my city to join me.

It's time to rise up and claim our freedom. In the distance, the sun began to rise. So I guess we went through a whole night already. Sun began to rise. Yeah. Okay. We're at the end of part three. The end of the big...

Wow. We're now into part two. Now we're in part three. The end of the beginning. Oh, God. Is that the name of that section? Is that the title of that section was? Yeah.

I think... The end of the beginning. Yep. This is a Brett Hawthorne chapter. Okay. Okay. We'll go a little further. We got to talk to Brett.

Okay. The end of the beginning. Yeah. Brett getting a phone call from his friend Hassan, who's again his Muslim friend, who he went to school with, who worked for the FBI to inform on other Muslims, but then stopped working with the FBI when White Obama decided that Muslim terrorists were fine. Well, Obama. Just to catch everybody else.

Well, Obama. Yeah. Well, Obama. Okay. So, yeah, Hassan calls him and is worried and tells him to get over quickly. Clearly, something bad has happened. So Brett picks up his service weapon and slid it in the small of his back because all professional gun users know that holsters are not worth using for a gun.

You got to put him in a cool place, Robert. You got to be cool about it. Slide it in the back of your pants. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Closing the door to the hotel room, he glanced down the hall stealthily. What?

Oh, fuck you. Fuck you, Robert. Oh, you know, you glanced stealthily all the time, Cody. Oh, I'm mad at you now. I don't know why. Nobody who wasn't drunk or having an affair would be coming down the hall at 2 a.m., he figured, but better to be paranoid than blithe. Sure enough, a buzz cut man in a black suit waited at the elevator.

Federal thought Brett. There was only one reason for him to be waiting. The president wanted to see General Brett Hawthorne, and there was only one reason the president would want to see General Brett Hawthorne to stop his investigation. I like the federal. Yeah, so I guess they had both met at some point previously that I don't think we saw. Yeah, and Brett doesn't want to have another meeting with the president. Yeah.

Of course not. Of course not. That means he's trying to stop his investigation. The last thing Mark Prescott wanted, Brett figured, was bad publicity right after a terror attack. Islamophobia in the top ranks. That's how the headlines in the nation would read, and Prescott read the nation. The man in the black suit locked eyes with Brett, began walking towards him.

After years of riding the bureaucratic bull, Brett had one key rule, better to ask forgiveness than to seek permission, which is why he was relieved to see a door at the stairs on the other end of the hallway, and fortunately, he was on the second floor. So he turns back and he takes the stairs half the flight at a time, his knees throbbing. Behind him, he hears the door slam open, and in the man's voice, he's running. We'll grab him in the lobby. Brett had no such intention. So we don't know why these guys are chasing him, really, but yeah, Brett knows how to

run. He's great at running, and he gets onto the street without the feds catching him. Yeah, I do. Yeah, so he makes his way to where Hassan lives, which is a neighborhood nobody wants to walk at at night. Yeah. God. Yeah.

Well, he's black. Of course he lives in a bad neighborhood. Jesus. Come on. Come on. It's not. It's not. Yeah.

He lives with cheap appliances and cheaper flooring. So that's great. They self-segregated, Robert. That's Ben's favorite kind of segregation. Oh, God. Okay. So Hassan gives him a thumb drive and shows it to Brett, and I assume it opened quickly. Hassan slid it at a thumb drive, loaded it onto his laptop, set the machine on the coffee

table before Brett. Do you know this man, and then a video file popped up. It showed a young, slim Muslim man wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, yada, yada. Do you recognize him? Brett does. It's Mohammed, and he asks Hassan how he found it. Oh, okay. I guess Hassan has backdoor access to most of the security cameras in New York mosques.

What? What? Yeah, that's how we got this picture. Here's a development. Yeah. No, it took him years. That's all he says, but he's got it. He has all the security camera footage, so, yeah, the footage is four days old.

It's too, oh, God. It was taken four days ago, Hassan anticipated Brett's disappointment. I know, too long, but finding a man named Mohammed in a mosque in New York is like finding a Jew named Goldstein in a synagogue here. What? Yeah. Yeah. There it is.

He did it. Hell yeah. What Mohammed's talking to is under FBI surveillance. We talk about this new terrorist who's been introduced for a little while, and I don't care. Yeah. Apparently, this other terrorist has given opening prayers at the New York Stock Exchange, so that's great, because prominent Muslims are all tied to terrorism.

I forgot about that. Yeah. Sorry, I forgot. So Brett travels to the house of this imam who's been hanging out with the terrorist. The imam actually lived on a rural compound off the road. In the dark, Brett missed the turnoff twice. The gravel clanked off the underside of the cheap Toyota Hassan had borrowed from a friend. The woods showed black against the early glimmers of rising sun, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So it's daytime. There's prayers going on. He shows up at the imam's house and is told that the office doesn't open until 9 AM. He says, tell him the teacher sent me the mention of a Shammi's nickname, who I guess is the terrorist mastermind that we heard about earlier. Okay. So obviously they don't respond to a random white dude who's clearly military walking up and saying that he was sent by a terrorist.

They say we know nobody with that name. But the imam's like, that's all right. I know this man, and he shows up and he invites Brett in. Hassan Jamomari Hassan had told Brett before Brett left for Jersey was no one to be trifled with. He'd been rumored to have deep connections to various Middle East based charities with their own connections to major terror groups. He fronted for a variety of Islamic human rights organizations dedicated to fighting

Islamophobia. And it was in that guys that he'd become a go-to face for Prescott. Oh, okay. So this guy is fighting Islamophobia and obviously all organizations that are fighting Islamophobia are fronts for terrorists. Yep. Yes. That's what Ben writes here.

That's the only reason. That's the logical conclusion for Ben to make. Okay. That is wild. Oh, and this is also... It's so frustrating. This is fun. The very next sentence states that the Prescott tenure had seen several small lone wolf attacks.

Each time Prescott had cited Omari as evidence that the moderate Muslim community was alive and well in the United States, it's fun to note that 71% of the way in the book is the first time we learned that the US has been beset by lone wolf Islamic terrorist attacks during this president's administration. Yeah. This is all news. This is part three. Yeah.

Part three. We are more than two thirds of the way through the book. We're almost three quarters of the way through the book. Be good to know this context. But... Yeah. So this guy is a well-established media personality. He's a moderate Muslim, but he also criticizes Israel, which should be another hint that

he's secretly a terrorist. Yep. We got it. Yeah. So, uh, so said the Imam. What can I do for you, General Hawthorne? I'm so glad you made it back to us in one piece. Allah must have protected you from harm.

Indeed, he must have said, Brett, I come here seeking your advice and help. And yet you mentioned the teacher. Why would you think I know such a monster? No reason, Brett said carefully, but I am looking for a man and I think that, given your prominence, he might approach you. I'm approached by many Muslims. I am blessed by Allah and having a wide following and a grand platform. How would I know the man you seek?

His name is Muhammad, Brett explained. What is this conversation? I just am astounded by this man writing everybody else's religions and racial experiences, etc. etc. Yeah. It's, it's great. So the Imam says he doesn't know this 17 year old named Muhammad. Um, okay.

Uh, and Brett doesn't believe him. Are you implying that I'm lying to you? No, said Brett. I'm flat out telling you that you're lying. I know you know such a man. So either you can continue spouting this line of bullshit and I can have you detained in question or you can tell me the truth. Omari laughed out loud.

No, I don't think you have that sort of pole, General. You may be a hot shot with a particular segment of the population, but as you say, I am somewhat well connected. Gentlemen, please come in. The door behind Brett opened, in came the federal agent from the hotel, his face impassive. Another black suit clad Fed stood next to him. Brett pushed himself to his feet. Imam, I believe we'll be talking again.

Omari stood as well, looked Brett in the eye. No. I don't believe we will. So let's, there we go. Yeah. Okay. So the feds, the feds and this guy who's a anti-Islamophobia Muslim terrorist are all in bed together because the president likes this terrorist because he's a moderate Muslim.

And I, yeah, there you go. It's good. Ben Shapiro. Shin Bapiro. All right. So this is going to do us for this week's episode. Yeah, I'm a little maxed out on this book. Yeah.

Yeah. 72% of the way in. Our next chapter is another Prescott chapter. We only did 10%. Yeah. We got 10% more through it. It's dense. It's a dense one.

You know? You got to... Yeah. Well, it's all those commas. Exactly. They take up a lot of space. I am excited because, yeah, this next chapter starts with Brett Hawthorne and the president having a conversation.

Oh boy. I think this is going to be a good one. It's going to be a doozy. Yeah. I think this is going to be a real good one. Wow. How many do you think we have left? One, two.

Jesus. At least two. Probably three or four, right? Two or three. Okay, we've got... One sec. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight more chapters including, well, we have actually, I guess, six more named chapters and then the end of the beginning and epilogue.

Oh, and we haven't about the author. You know what? I might sneak ahead to that right now. Robert. You're just spoilers. Robert. What? Yeah.

Well, there's about the author. I want to know. Oh boy, howdy. So it starts with like, you know, he's an editor at large at Breitbart News, the editor of Daily Wire. It lists some of the political books he wrote. Shapiro is also a nationally syndicated columnist since age 17, a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School and the host of The Morning Answer on KRLA 870 in Los Angeles and KTIE 590 in

Orange County. Rush Limbaugh says Shapiro isn't just content to have people be dazzled by his brilliance. He actually goes out and confronts and tries to persuade, mobilize, motivate people. Glenn Beck calls Shapiro a warrior for conservatism against those who use fear and intimidation to stifle honest debate. I've never known him to back down from a fight. Sarah Palin says that Americans... Even when he's wrong.

No. Yeah, especially when he's wrong. Sarah Palin. He got a Palin out of it? He got a Palin. He got a Palin. Yeah, she says that Americans should consider Ben's advice about how we must stand up and push back twice as hard against this bullying.

Sean Hannity says to join Ben Shapiro and fight back against liberal bullying. Michelle Malkin says Shapiro is infused with the indomitable spirit of his friend and mentor Andrew Breitbart. Even the liberal Washington Post and the aftermath of Shapiro's devastating destruction of Pierce Morgan on national television. Devastated them. Devastating destruction. Imagine riding this in your bio.

Oh my God, this is a sentence Ben absolutely wrote. Even the liberal Washington Post in the aftermath of Shapiro's devastating destruction of Pierce Morgan on national television conceded that Shapiro is a foe of extraordinary polemical ability. Agility. Yeah, it's got his stinky little fingers all over it. Yeah, yeah. Amazing.

Well, this was a fun way to wrap up the episode. Quite a rogues gallery of endorsements he's got there. He brutally destroyed Pierce Morgan. The liberal Washington Post. I will say this, if he had literally destroyed Pierce Morgan, I would be more positive towards Ben Shapiro. Yeah, absolutely. If he found his phylactery, yeah.

He's referring to a debate he had with Pierce Morgan about guns and that conversation is the entire basis throughout his other book, 10 or 11, I forget, ways to beat the left. It's like his destruction of the left book, how did he beat the leftist? His example of a leftist through the entire book is Pierce Morgan. Yeah, awesome. Famed leftist. Yeah, he knows, he understands politics. Well, yeah, I mean, Pierce Morgan is definitely like, I would say the most prominent Maoist

in the country right now. Very famous left-wing voice, Pierce Morgan. Pierce Morgan. Pierce Morgan, good friend of the current president and leftist, Pierce Morgan. Well, I feel like the only thing to say is, head bebs, want to plug your plugables, beb. Yeah, beb. Because I'd take a bullet for you. Beb.

Yeah, this is Robert Straub. It's not our show. It's his show. Yeah, your plugables. Oh, yeah, follow us. Follow us. We have a... Katie, you go.

You go. No, you. Shows. We've got shows. We've got a show called Some More News on YouTube. Check us out on Patreon.com slash Some More News. Our podcast is called Even More News. We also co-host another podcast called Worst Year Ever.

And I'm Dr. Mr. Cody on Twitter. Katie is Katie Stoll. Yeah. Twitter. Thanks, good job. All the things I've been said. Bin Shapiro. Hero.

Yeah, you can find me nowhere at all. I've never heard of the internet. I'm actually alone in a forest shrieking this. I'm just channeling Bin Shapiro's words. And I don't know who I'm talking to right now. But you're definitely calling them beb. Beb. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I'd take a bullet for them. God, I can't even say that without, like, starting to retch a little bit. I'd get eaten by ants for you, Beb. Yeah. Anyway. I'd lay down in front of a combine for you, babe, and get churned up into moach, babe. Do you love me?

Yeah, sure. Why not? See ya. Yeah. Yeah. That's the episode. That's the show. That's the episode.

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 were 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 Podcasts, 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 Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. As you know, Lance Bass is a Russian-trained astronaut.

That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know. Because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the Earth for 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.