Behind the Bastards - We Continued Reading Ben Shapiro's Terrible Racist Novel

Episode Date: May 12, 2020

Robert is joined again by Katy Stoll and Cody Johnston to continue reading Ben Shapiro's book. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. 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. 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. There comes a time in the life of every podcaster when he has to introduce the show that he's doing. And this is that moment for me, Robert Evans, host of Behind the Bastards, the podcast where we talk about terrible people. Normally, this is a show where we give a detailed history of an awful person's life, but today we're doing something special. Today, due to the massive, outrageous,

clamoring, popular demand, we are continuing with our investigation into true allegiance, the fictional novel debut of one Benethan Shapiro. Here with me today to talk about this, this opus are my co-hosts, Cody Johnston and Katie Stoll. Hello, everybody. How are you doing today? Good. Hello. Great. Doing great. Hello. Thrilled to be here. Everybody out there in the radio land. I took a more serious tact with the intro because I think it's important to really set the tone of the gravity that this book demands from the reader.

Oh, yeah. We're serious people delving into a very serious book by a very serious person. You've covered a lot of serious, serious bad guys in your time on the show, but I don't think there's anything more serious than what we're about to embark on. No, no. And I think that I've read a lot of books about human conflict and war, books by people like Kurt Vonnegut who would experience did Kurt Vonnegut have to write about any of this stuff. He just survived a bombing or something. Ben Shapiro is the man that I want to hear talk about the serious issues because I know when Ben talks about, for example, the war in Afghanistan or the crack trade in Detroit, Michigan, that he is writing from a position of deep personal

understanding. And authority. And authority. Exactly. Exactly. And empathy. And empathy. Yeah. He's had a lot of harrowing experiences getting ratioed online. So he has a lot of, you know, getting ratioed online was his Afghanistan. And Afghanistan was the war that he suggested people kill children. And he did that when he was 18. Someone let him write a fucking column where he said, why do we care about civilian casualties in Afghanistan? So I'm very excited to see where this book goes.

I love precocious kids. Yeah. They say the wildest things. We talked, I think, a tiny bit about Levan, who is the one of the two villains. The two villains of Ben Shapiro's book are the president who wants everybody to have a job. And that makes the president a Nazi. And then, of course, there's Levan, who is the black character and is also, of course, a crack trading gang dealer. Oh, wait, is the president in this not black? No, no, he's not. No, that would have been two on the nose.

Sneaky Ben, sneaky guy. See, with fiction, Cody, you got to separate some things. So you have a black president who you don't like and trust. You separate him into a white president you don't like and trust and a crack dealer in Detroit. Yeah. The duality of man. It's basic storytelling rules. Classic storytelling rules, Chekhov's racism. OK, so now we hope we I noted that Levan's chapter, first chapter opens up with Detroit

was a shithole, but it was his shithole. So you know that right away you're coming from the perspective of somebody who understands the place he's talking about. Don't like the Detroit shade. Just going to put it out there. Don't like it. Now, of course, Levan's neighborhood includes Eight Mile Road because Ben Shapiro saw the movie Eight Mile and literally the only thing he knows about Detroit is that it includes Eight Mile Road and it does not have as much money as other places.

Oh, man. Oh, yeah. Great soundtrack. Oh, I'm I'm in love with that. Do you think he has memorized all the words to lose yourself? Yes. Yes. Does it in the mirror? Yeah, that's Ben Shapiro has like when he I can imagine him getting up in the morning and like drinking a bunch of raw eggs and like putting on like a hoodie, a sleeve loose hoodie

and like going out to hit a boxing bag is like that song starts to really pump. And then he punches it once and he starts crying because he's hurt his little fist. Well, I see it punching it and it swings back and hits him, but you're right. Maybe both things happen. One of the two. So yeah, quote from Benny. The store's dotting Eight Mile Road itself formed a steady depressing pattern. Liquor store, auto part store, burned out Hulk, boarded up shop, hair salon, repeat ad finitum.

Every once in a while, an auto lot broke up the monotony or perhaps a music store. But that was about it. What idiot would open up in one of the least police streets in America? Leave on wood. And of course, the shop is opened up sells crack. Yeah. Oh, it sells crack. That's where you don't get your crack is at a storefront. It's a barber shop where mostly filled with older black men.

A barber shop, you say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. And then the back room is where he sells crack. I'm just waiting for him to like, I have expected when he's saying like, I'm from Detroit. I live in Harlem in Compton in Detroit. Yes. He's just like listing off like.

Yes, he lives in the neighborhood of Compton, Detroit. Yeah. Oh, Jesus. God. Ben. Okay, so there's a little line here about since he and LeVon and his crew shuttle crack cocaine, that drug had gone out of style in the mid 90s, thanks to the federal crackdown on crack dealers. Black politicians had been the biggest advocates of putting crack dealers on a different footing than powder cocaine dealers at the time.

Nobody wanted to deal crack anymore, but LeVon cared you to a select population. So number one, that's actually just just not true. The evidence suggests that a lot of white people stop doing crack so much is that crack is really, really toxic on your body and younger people watched what it did to older people, to people who are older than them, to their older brothers and stuff. And we're like, nah, I don't want that because that has more of an impact than just throwing people in prison. But I don't expect Ben to have that take on things.

So I did. Yeah. We're about a page and a half into LeVon's chapter when Ben describes how big LeVon is. At six foot three and 220 pounds of shredded muscle, LeVon cut an imposing figure walking into other stores on the block. They immediately went quiet when he came in. When he told them he'd graduated from the U of M, they got even quieter. This kid was brutal and smart.

They knew. I'm just, that's excellent. That's excellent, Ben. I'm reminded of weirdly, the word articulate for some reason comes to mind. Yeah. Oh boy, here's Al Sharpton. Not Al Sharpton. He's the Reverend Jim Crawford, but he's Al Sharpton.

Oh yeah. Oh God. Come on, man. Yeah. Yeah. He's in LeVon's barbershop to talk to him about a deal. Yeah. OK.

So he meets with this Al Sharpton character and it's clear that like the Al Sharpton character wants to partner with him on some sort of complicated and cunning political scheme. Because of course, that's what all of the black leaders in America have secret connections to crack dealers and want to work with them on. Yeah. And then we get to a really, a real fun moment here. So LeVon and this guy are talking and LeVon quote Shakespeare. He says, there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

And of course, the Al Sharpton stand-in doesn't recognize this quote. And so LeVon, the educated, brutal guy says, it's Shakespeare. It means you'll learn to trust me. And then the Al Sharpton guy laughs and says, quit quoting or quoting dead honkies. You'll be useful yet. Oh, my God. Yeah. So that's good.

I think it's good, too. Yeah. That's fun. I was just listening and nodding along like that's good. Well, you know, Ben's white, so it's OK for him to write the word honky. Yeah. And I'm not sure if this is bad formatting or just Ben is bad at writing a book, but in the chapter that is LeVon's chapter, so this is LeVon's chapter, right?

And what you do if you're writing a book where every chapter takes the perspective of a different character, you expect that each of those chapters will be about a different like from the perspective of that character. But midway through this chapter, actually, right after the line quoting dead honkies, you might be useful yet. We switch perspective without switching chapters to a completely different character, a local cop named Ricky O'Sullivan. Oh, that's bad.

Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. That's bad writing and bad formatting. Yeah. Yeah. So he's hanging out at an abandoned Packard plant that looks like something out of Mad Max, Ben describes it, which is a known drug hangout.

So that's why he's hanging out there as a cop. And I think he's about to shoot a black kid. That's the feeling I get. Yeah. He gets a 1031 in progress sign and he rolls over. Grass had pushed its way through the cement of the lot. Graffiti marked the station, illiterate bubble letters. O'Sullivan had given up on trying to decode that shit long ago and the lights on

the street flickered eerily. So he gets into this scary situation. He shows up for a call and then some kid says, hey, pig, the voice wasn't deep. It was the voice of a child and the kid stood outside the door of the quick mark. Legs spread, arms hanging down by his sides. A cute black kid wearing a Simpsons t-shirt and somebody's old converse sneakers and baggy jeans. On the his hip stuck in those baggy jeans was a pistol.

It looked like a pistol anyway, but O'Sullivan couldn't see clearly. The light wasn't right. He could see the bulge, but not the object. O'Sullivan put his flashlight back on his belt and put his hand on his pistol. The greasy handle still warmed to the touch. Stop right there, pig, the kid said. His hand began to creep down towards his waistband. O'Sullivan pulled the gun out of his holster, leveling it at the kid.

Put your hands above your head. Do it now. Fuck you, honky. The kid shot back. Get the fuck out of my neighborhood. You're a busy man. I'll say I'll. Yeah.

Oh boy, yeah. I feel like Ben really has his finger on the pulse on, you know, how black people speak. Unbelievable. Yeah. So this goes on and the kid says, you ain't gonna shoot me pig. And the cop, who's clearly a nice guy, does everything he possibly can to try to avoid. Oh Jesus. Just like how it works in real life.

This is a depiction of how it happens. Yeah. Yeah. In the retraining sessions at the station, they told officers to remember the nasty racial history legacy of the department. Be aware of the community's justified suspicion of police. Right now, all O'Sullivan was thinking about was getting this kid with the empty eyes to back the fuck off.

The empty eyes. Empty eyes, man. Oh my God. Nothing scarier than an empty eyed kid. Yeah. And this is like this is an eight year old. Oh my God. Ben.

No. Oh no. Oh God. Oh God. I turned the page. Okay. Share it. Share it.

Share what you see. I'm going to read for a spell here, y'all. Suddenly, O'Sullivan's head filled with sudden clarity. His brain with a printer natural energy. He recognized the feel of the adrenaline hitting. He was going to get, he wasn't, he wasn't going to get shot on the corner of Iowa and Van Dyke outside a shitty convenience store in a shitty town by some eight year old. Bleed out in the gutter of some city the world left behind.

He had a life too. The gun felt alive in his hands. In his hand. The gun was life. The muzzle was aimed dead at the kid's chest. No way to miss with the kid this close. Just 10 feet away maybe. Still cloaked in the shadow of the gas station overhang.

And then yeah, they have another interaction where he says, get on your knees and the kid says, fuck you. And this is like the third time that's happened. And then the kid says, I'll cap your ass. And then he shoots the kid. There it is. It's what we're getting at. A couple of things.

The first sentence. Suddenly his head was filled with a sudden energy or something like that. That's writing 101. You don't use the same word twice in the same sentence. Oh no, it's a bad writer. Jesus Christ, man. Also, I love going from, you know, the idea, this is a nice guy to,

you know, clearly this character just wants to kill the kid. Yeah, the character wants to kill the kid. Ben doesn't understand what it's like to have adrenaline hit you in a situation like this. I can tell you at this, yeah, it's not like that. It's not a sudden clarity for sure. That's also like a less charitable picture of cops than I think he would want to have. No, no. Like describing it as a moment of confusion and panic would be better and more relatable than

the gun's life. Yeah, like I'm making a very deliberate choice with my very alert brain right now. Yeah. Also, I love just the whole, the weird passage about like, I'm not going to die here in this place that I've chosen to live and this job that I've chosen to have. And like, what? Like you had no option but to be a Detroit cop.

Like, excuse me. Oh, God. I also like just the idea that like the kids like eight years old apparently. Yes. And saying, I'm going to cap you and that's what makes him pull the trigger. Yes. And it's, it's, there's a lot that's wrong with this, but there is one, one, one thing I think actually Ben does get right.

And I think he gets it right by accident. But one of the, one of the. Honestly, anything gets right is always an accident. One of the big problems that we have with policing in the United States right now is that increasingly often the police in large cities do not live in those cities. Like in the city of Portland, Oregon, where the police regularly use excessive force on protest or something like two thirds to three quarters of the police in Portland don't live in the Portland city limits.

Like they live in a suburb or a town outside of Portland or something like that, which is increasingly common all around the country and leads, it reinforces the attitude that like the police are separate from the community. And that is a problem. And I think accidentally you do see the result of that is this guy instead of seeing like, oh, this kid is a member of my community and I need to like, to like talk with him and work it out. He's like, I'm not going to die in this shit whole town. I fucking hate this place.

Yeah. So O'Sullivan murders an eight year old. And then realizes that the gun in his waistband was a toy gun with an orange plastic tip. For a brief moment, O'Sullivan couldn't breathe. When he looked up, he saw them coming. Dozens of them. The citizens of Detroit coming out of the darkness congregating. He could feel their eyes. Oh no, they're dead eyes.

All their, everyone in the neighborhood's dead eyes staring at me articulately. Yeah. Sorry to the cop. Yep. Sorry to the cop. And I think from what other things I've read about this book that the kid was sent out there as part of a plot by Al Sharpton and the crack dealer in order to. This was all a setup. Yeah, it's a BLM type thing, right?

BLM like sets these things up whereby members of their community get murdered so that they can justify protests against the police. Ben watched 14 seconds of the Ferguson protests and decided he knew what was going down. That's where that chapter came from. So yeah, next chapter is a character named Ellen and it starts with a dead kid who was murdered and the US Mexican border by coyotes. So that's cool. Just another fact-fighting mission along the Rio Grande.

Oh God, I just love that like knowing everything we know about Ben and knowing like his opinions, his demeanor, I love that every single sentence of this need to be read like this. Yeah, yeah, and it, okay, so yeah, over the last year had seen an sudden upsurge in the number of children attempting to cross the border without papers. Not all were children, a surprising number of the unaccompanied minors were of gang age, somewhere between 14 gang age. What's gang age? What?

Well, no, actually, Cody, Ben, Ben being a great writer immediately tells us that it's between 14 and 17. Oh, that's it. So is that exclusive? So I'm, I'm too old to join a gang then. Yeah, yeah, gangs kick you out at age 18. Shit. Yeah. Shit.

Then you got to go work with Al Sharpton. Yep. Okay, okay, okay. Ben, what are you going to do when your kids reach gang age? Yeah, yeah, you got to really watch out for those kids when they hit gang age. Those gangs are going to come for them. Oh, that's so good. It gets more ridiculous.

So after he says that gang age is somewhere between 14 and 17, some had tattoos. Many were missing fingers, eyes, ears. Law enforcement thought the smugglers had mutated the kids and sent their body parts back to their parents for ransom. What's this book about again? Everything that Ben hates, which so far is not white people on borders in the inner cities. Wow. Do we have any liberals on Twitter yet?

Good Lord, I bet we'll get there. I bet there will be comments about social media. See, Ben understands as a great author that you want your book to be timeless. So you keep it vague by just saying social media or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, that's the way you make a work timeless. Everyone logging into the website.com. The website.com.

That's it. Yeah. Do you know what won't kill children on the U.S.-Mexican border to ransom them back? You're not going to say Raytheon, right? Well, Raytheon, exactly. Raytheon guarantees that when they kill children on borders, there aren't enough left of those kids to ransom. That's the Raytheon guarantee.

I'm on board again. Thank you, Cody. I knew I could trust on you to be ethical. Thank you, Raytheon. Thank you, Raytheon. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism.

I'm Ben Bullitt. And I'm Alex French. In our newest show, we take a darkly comedic and occasionally ridiculous deep dive into a story that has been buried for nearly a century. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed the world's foremost experts. We're also bringing you cinematic,

historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler, and I got a lot to say. For one, my personal history is raw, inspiring, and mind-blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads, or do we just have to do the ads? 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 Podcasts, 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. We're back. We still haven't figured out who Ellen is. I don't think she's been introduced yet. She's just doing some sort of fact-finding mission on the border, but I don't yet really know.

Ellen is a daytime talk show host that everyone loves, but turns out is maybe unlikable. Yeah, this is not that Ellen. Oh. But I don't think she will be likable. Yeah, she's probably like an intrepid Breitbart type reporter, right? That's great. Okay, so Ellen is the wife of Combat General Brett Hawthorne.

Oh, yes, the stand-in for Ben. Yeah, the stand-in for Ben. Yeah, so Ellen's his wife. Yeah, how tall is she? Lucky lady. And she's angry because the governor of Texas, Bubba Davis. Oh, yeah. Now, that part proves that Ben has some understanding of Texas,

because Bubba Davis would do great in a Texas state election. Oh, classic, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's like, is this actually a screenplay for Slyther? Bubba Davis sounds like a sausage company. Yeah, it does, and a really good sausage company. Start your day with a Bubba sausage. Start your day with a Bubba sausage.

Yeah, yep. So Bubba Davis had asked the president for help, and the president had refused to take the governor's calls, which doesn't sound like anything that's happened recently that Ben hasn't complained about. Well, did Bubba try being nice to the president? Well, there we go, exactly. So the president didn't talk to the governor

about helping him with this problem of all these kids getting murdered on the border, which is the real problem of the U.S.-Mexican border is all the kids that get murdered on it, not anything else. That's the issue, is that these kids keep being murdered by these evil people smugglers. And the president refused to talk to the governor of Texas about this.

He just talked on TV about how anyone who wanted to deport these children was racist. That bullshit didn't surprise Ellen one bit. She knew what Prescott would do to push forward his agenda. Her husband was stuck in Afghanistan, and her marriage was a public joke. That was proof positive of that little proposition. Don't know why her marriage is a public joke.

Yeah, what's that alluding to? I couldn't tell you. Because it seems like they're like a power couple, right? Like that's the whole point. Yeah, again, bad writing. Very bad writing. Oh, I keep forgetting that part. So she drives away from this dead kid that they're taking notes on

for some kind of pretty unclear reason. And then they drive away. A lot of dead kids in this book already. Ben loves dead kids. I don't know if you're aware of that. I have seen his tweets, so yes, I did know. Yeah, so she realizes as she drives away from the Rio Grande. After leaving, yeah.

Ellen first noticed the helicopter following her truck a few minutes after leaving the Rio Grande. OK, Ben. Yeah, you've been to the border, buddy. Yeah, yes. Yeah, it wasn't a news helicopter, Ellen knew. It was too decrepit for that. Obviously, a 1980s model, cheap, black.

She could see it through her view mirror in the distance, and it was gaining. So she's being followed by... There's another helicopter shows up, and soon it becomes clear that she's being followed by the evil news. And then she gets... It looks like she gets kidnapped by men with guns. Oh, no.

Oh, yeah. One of the men shouted something in Spanish at Ellen. She held up her hands, just look non-threatening, she told herself. Oh, my God. She doesn't say hands up don't shoot, does she? Yeah, yeah. OK, so they shoot her Ellen's friend, and then kidnap them. Dang it.

Yeah. Yep. She gonna be OK? Yeah. She gonna be OK? Yeah. So it looks like she's been kidnapped by the cartel. So that's cool.

And good. This is good. Yeah, so great. So she drives off and manages to escape, and then we're back in Kabul, Afghanistan, with another chapter about combat general Brett Hawthorne. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, yeah.

It was shortly after midnight, the muddy puddle at his feet ran red with his blood. All he could think about was Ellen. Ellen, living there. This is a lot more fun if you think about it as the TV show host, Ellen. It is. I'm picturing her.

Yep. He's never met her either. It's not like they're even acquaintances. Like I'm just thinking of Ellen right now. If it was the TV show host, Ellen, she would do that bit where she like trips over the sidewalk and looks back, like don't trip over that.

And that's how she would, she would charm her way out of this situation. It's like, guess what I'm getting at? Yeah, yeah. Or like he's not even thinking of like modern day Ellen, like the famous dance. She's like thinking of like her sitcom with Jeremy Piven. He's thinking of Ellen that came out on TV.

Yeah. Yeah. That's Brett Hawthorne wounded and trapped in Afghanistan alone is just thinking about the Ellen DeGeneres, Jeremy Piven sitcom. It's like Piven doesn't get enough credit for being so great on that Ellen sitcom three years ago. Truly did not realize that was Jeremy Piven

with Ellen on sitcom. Yeah. This is a, this episode is going in a new direction. And so we get, we get a lot of interesting statements by Ben here. So, so again, combat general Brett Hawthorne is wounded and alone in Kabul and the nights in Kabul are cold. And the good news is that cold had helped stop the bleeding, which, oh, interesting.

Okay, Ben. Okay. Well, yeah. Just like, just by virtue of it being cold. Yeah. That's an interesting take. I haven't heard before about gunshot wounds and just when the night gets kind of chilly, but there we go.

Well, no, I mean, you really, Robert, with all of your, medic street training, you didn't know that just to stop blood flow. You just, you put an ice cube on it. Yeah. You just hang out. I mean, there is something to say. If you were to actually like put like a packet of ice on a bleeding wound, that wouldn't be the most effective way to staunch it.

But I think it would eventually slow like the rate of blood loss. But he's just talking about being, having an untreated gunshot wound out in a chilly night. And I don't think. Yeah, it's chilly. That's fine. I accept that my joke backfired. Continue.

No, no, no. It's, it's okay, Katie, because everything about this book is a backfire. So Brett Hawthorne, as far as I can tell, hasn't treated his gunshot wound at all, is keeping himself conscious by jamming the butt of his handgun into the wound. No. So that he can feel pain. Yeah, he's that much of a badass. Yeah, that's what he does.

That's how I, that's how I fix me. I'm going to fuck this gun and I'll be better. So here we learn that Ben Shapiro really understands Kabul. At night, the streets emptied completely. Even the Taliban fighters didn't want to be in the open. They'd be in nearby apartment buildings, no doubt huddled around their primitive fires. Oh, God.

I mean, that is, oh my God, primitive. Look, you don't have to say they're primitive. Yeah, there's something jokes aside. So revolting about a white man who has clearly never been there trying to write about something he does not understand. I mean, that's an obvious thing, but just think about it. He hasn't gone there. He hasn't spent time researching.

Yeah, and it's a few movies that are like this, and that has colored his entire opinion about what it's like. Yeah, and he clearly like has a lack of understanding about how the Taliban works. Like their monsters and everything. But like right now we're seeing a situation that is as close as possible to an analogous about like what he's talking about here with the war in Afghanistan like turns completely in the Taliban's favor. It's happening now.

They're killing dozens of Afghan security forces a day. But Ben is talking about how they've like destroyed all power to Kabul. Basically, which hasn't happened because for one thing, part of how do you win an insurgency the way the Taliban has is you don't like deliberately piss off civilians for no good reason. Yeah, like why would you do that? But how else could he frame them like primitive cavemen, Robert? Yeah, exactly.

Well, you could just use the word primitive when you're describing them. Yeah, but then it would be too obvious because it's a fire. It's necessary. It's like, okay, well, it's primitive fire as opposed to like these are primitive people. And I think they're, oh my god. All right, Ben. Yeah, these are, yeah, he had to really emphasize how primitive and pitiful the Afghan people are. So Brett's headed towards the airport because the airport he knew would still be in American hands.

Yeah, but he knew he'd have to stay quiet with the Taliban presumably running the place. There would be a bounty out for U.S. soldiers. Every time he brushed his shattered arm against a wall, swollen to twice its normal size, he gasped in pain. Then reluctantly, he took the magazine out of the gun and bit down on it hard. Better to crack a few teeth than to be featured on CNN being dragged through the streets. And an empty gun wouldn't be of any use to him anyway. Why is it still in your hand then, Ben?

Yeah, so here he compares it to the last helicopter out of Saigon, yada, yada, yada. So he gets to the gate and he realizes that the gates have been blown wide open and the U.S. air base in Afghanistan has been taken over by the Taliban and all of the U.S. soldiers are dead. Yeah, so that's cool. The advanced soldiers and their primitive enemy. Yeah, yeah, they'd somehow manage to blow the gate open and execute all the survivors. So that's awesome.

Good for the Taliban, I guess. You know, you gotta support an underdog at times like this. Do you? Blood covered the floor, the walls. It slipped to the floor at like oil at a transmission shop. Oh, okay, I need you to say that sentence again, please. Blood covered the floor, the walls. It slipped to the floor like oil at a transmission shop.

Transmission shop, another place Ben has never been. Yes, it's been clearly in the shop. At what a mechanic shop is like. Just the floor is coated in oil all the time. Unbelievable. Also, like, just like you repeating yourself, like it's covered. It's covered. Also, it's like, just pick one.

Do the second part. Do the metaphor that you're trying to do. Yeah, it's awesome. So, yeah, the Taliban, who Ben Brett tells us, is sure to tell us, are fucking animals. Have tortured all of the people that they captured horribly before killing them. Which is interesting, because one time when they captured a U.S. soldier, they kept him alive for like five years,

and he was eventually ransomed back to the United States. And they were pretty bad to him, but they didn't torture him to death just for fun, because that's not productive. But, you know, Ben understands the Taliban. Yeah, he gets it. You know who doesn't torture people? The United States of America. Never.

Never. I don't think that's ever happened. So now, okay, finally, eight or nine hours after getting his wound, Brett Hawthorne decides to set his arm to actually treat his shattered and gunshot riddle arm. So that's when you do that. That's the time for it. Yeah, that's good. So he can tell by looking at it that there's no internal bleeding, but the arm is swollen and it's bulging.

Yeah, if he left the broken bone hanging around inside, it would cut an artery sooner or later. Ben Shapiro, medical expert here. Oh, my God. Well, his wife's a doctor. I was just going to say, his wife's a doctor. Honey, honey, does this sound realistic? Yeah.

You know, oh, I'm putting it in anyway. I love it, because he definitely didn't ask her, because why would he ask a woman anything about their opinion? But I bet she's never read the book. She definitely didn't read it. Yeah. Because she'd be like, Ben, don't, but she couldn't. How could she get through this?

Yeah, that's great. The secret to their marriage is she does not pay attention to any of the things he does. Yeah, never been online. So he manages to guess the dead ambassador, because remember the corrupt US ambassador who got his job by supporting the president's campaign, and so he got the cushy position of an ambassador to Afghanistan,

which is what every rich man wants. Yes, you remember how Trump gave all of his donors ambassadorships to Afghanistan and Iraq, the real plummeted cases. The coveted positions, yeah, that crown jewel of a position. Yeah. I mean, I'm pretty sure he did give donors ambassadorships. Yes, but not, yeah, but to countries where you'd want a vacation.

Right, right, right. Yeah, like Germany. Yeah, you get to go to Germany if you support the president. You tend to not put someone you like as ambassador to Afghanistan, not a great gig. But he opens the briefcase, the locked briefcase, that is like handcuffed to the dead ambassador, that the Taliban, who had like stolen everything

that wasn't nailed down, apparently left this rich man's briefcase just unopened, didn't shoot it open or anything. But Brett is able to guess the passcode for the briefcase, and it pops open. And inside is a Glock, because you got to have a gun, a passport, a stack of Afghan money, a stack of US money, and a bag of opium. Yes.

Oh my God. Okay, so there's a Xerox copy of a map with coordinates on it, in Iran and in Iraq. And, quote, Brett knew what it meant. Brett had known of the CIA's discovery of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq for years. Everyone on the inside had known. The media had reported that the government had lied

that somehow all the world's greatest intelligence agencies had been dead wrong. But that wasn't the case. Hussain had smuggled some of the weapons out of the country to Syria. Others had been buried in the desert. Oh my God. Oh, fuck yeah.

Oh, yes. And they'd been taken to Iran, the country that Saddam Hussein fought for 10 years in an unspeakably brutal war that killed a million people. That's where he sends his weapons. Yeah, he does. This is wild. That's how it happened.

I've read the reports. Yeah. I know the truth. Oh, wait. Wait, that man fell? So the weapons were buried just... So, sorry, I got that wrong. I need to be fair to Ben Shapiro.

Saddam Hussein did smuggle the weapons into Iran. Hussein had smuggled some of the weapons out of the country to Syria, a country that he had obviously great relationships with. Others had been buried in the desert. Just the desert. No country given. Now, they were smuggled into Iran

because the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and friend of the president helped the government of Iran get U.S. like it helped smuggle Saddam's new, like buried weapons into Iran. The ambassador did. So that's how they got to Iran because the ambassador, as Brett Hawthorne says, right before passing out, which is how the chapter ends,

you son of a bitch, you sold us out. So that's the story. God. That's the story. That's a good line, a good so good writing. There's a good character development. A lot to analyze there. Number one, the fact that both Ben thinks it's important to know

that all of the great U.S. intelligence agencies were totally right about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, but that Saddam got them out of the country and that in the intervening decade almost, those great agencies weren't able to find where any of them were buried. But this random ambassador figured it out and was able to get them smuggled into Iran

without these perfect and incredible intelligence agencies the best the world has ever known, realizing what's happening. Right now, they were telling the truth the whole time. They just didn't, they couldn't, they didn't figure out, they didn't know the rest of it. They didn't, the important stuff. Ben would tell us that if we'd let them torture more people, they would have got it right.

Yeah. The good kind of torture. Yep. I love what a, this is a beautiful, again, it's just, it's like, I think I said this last time, like I wish like Jordan Peterson would write a novel so we can like really see like, here's, here's you, here's the essence of you.

But I just love what a, just a perfect like fantasy this is. Yeah. This, this like anti-reality wish fulfillment fantasy of his. Yeah. Like the facts don't care about you feeling this guy, just being like, what if, what if they were, what if, but what, what, what if they were right the whole time? Did have weapons of mass destruction.

Like it's unbelievable. It is, we have seen- What if all the, all the kids did die from cops? What if they were put up to it by Al Sharpton? Yeah. It's in two chapters we've seen like Ben going out of his way to create a world where everything he believes but can't factually back up, everything he feels,

you might say, is, is, yeah. It's art. It's art in the worst way possible. It's so good. It reminds me of that one line from Royal Ten and Bombs. Everyone knows that Custer died at little big, big horn, but what my book presupposes is maybe he didn't. Maybe he didn't, right?

It's like, what if everything that I can't prove was actually. Yeah. Provable. Was proven and immediately obvious. Like this crack dealer sees Al Sharpton hanging out in his crack tin and is like, oh, of course Al Sharpton's here to make a deal with me. And this deal is of course to set up an eight-year-old boy to die, which none of us has issues with, so that we can protest the cops.

Yep. Yeah. Got to find a dead-eyed boy. Yeah, the dead-eyed boy. And of course, all of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction were smuggled with the help of a Democrat into Iran, which is what all the Democrats want is for Iran to have Saddam's weapons. Yep.

I mean, I can't speak for others, but it's what I want. Yeah, I mean, yes, Katie, you've been very outspoken about your desire to go back in time, give Saddam Hussein chemical weapons, and then send them to Iran, which is an interesting point to take. But I respect your consistency. Thank you, Robert. I appreciate that. I appreciate that you tolerate my profound viewpoints.

You know, we all, this is America, and we're not going to agree on everything. I, for one, think that Saddam should have been given nuclear weapons so that he could smuggle them into the inner cities in order to execute a war on white people. But, you know, honest... And maybe that's where this is going. Maybe that, I kind of have a feeling this might be where that's going, Katie. It is a 50-50 chance on that.

Yeah, so our next chapter is a President Prescott chapter, and it starts with him talking to an analyst about how the, a recession's coming, but it doesn't make any sense, because the airlines have been doing well this year. And the dip in the stock market doesn't make sense. Why do you write any words on pages? Yeah, it's kind of amazing. So he's got this analyst in there talking to him about how it doesn't make sense

that things aren't going great for the economy. And he also has General Bill Collier sitting right there. Quote, Prescott couldn't just blow this irritating asshole off. He had to at least appear interested. Thankfully, that was his specialty. So, Prescott said, he's talking to the general, the analyst cleared his throat. Let me start at the beginning.

You remember 9-11? Prescott nodded amiably. So in the couple of months before 9-11, there was a huge jump in currency in circulation. That probably means that somebody, somebody with an awful lot of money in domestic bank accounts, for example, cashed out in order to avoid blowback after the attack. He's been going truth or here?

I need to back up. Remember 9-11? Yeah, and the President just nods. nods amiably? Does he know what that word means? Yes, I do vaguely remember 9-11. Oh, yes. Please continue.

The thing that happened on the watch of the President that immediately preceded me. Yes, I do remember that. With a skip in his step, he nods. He smiles and nods wistfully. Those were the days. So good. Yeah, boy.

It's great. So this guy explains stock shorting to the President in a really boring way. So yeah, it's frustrating. So this kid is saying that basically somebody's shorting the U.S. market and it's proof that some dastardly foreigner knows that there's a 9-11 style attack that's about to hit the United States. And Prescott doesn't grasp any of this

and seems to have no idea what this kid is saying. And then the grizzled general growls. What he's trying to say is that we're about to get hit hard. So that's a... Robert, you could have been an actor. Thank you. Thank you so much. I love acting.

I love the theater. Should we try to get permission to do the audio book of this and get a cast of people to play each character? Yes, yes, we should, Katie. I mean, I think that would be really fun. Can I be Ellen? Yeah, you can be Ellen. We'll get, I don't know, I'm just going to spitball here,

but Ben Shapiro to be Brett Hoffman. Please, please. Yeah, every big man in this book. Yeah. Oh my God, I would love that. Especially if whoever does the narrator does this kind of voice whenever they do the narration. And then whenever Hawthorne talks, it's Ben coming out with this.

Oh, that's so good. I bet we could get an all-star studded cast for this project. I bet Chris Evans would do it. He hates Ben. Yeah, so it turns out that it's China. China is the country that's shorting the U.S. stock market because they know that there's an attack coming. And the president...

The naturally primitive Chinese. And the president, so the general is like, we have to do something about this. There's an attack coming, this is serious. And the president speaks to him like he's a third grader, which in the president's mind this general is, because all American Democratic presidents hate the military. And they don't, for example, hire numerous generals

and then fire them saying that they're all idiots. That would never happen with a Republican president. Only a Democrat would do that. Only a Democrat would do that. Would disrespect the wonderful generals this way. So that's great. Yeah, okay. So the general's advice sums out to being,

all I'm saying is that we ought to check it out, sir. If only to cover our asses should something go wrong. And the president says, well, I disagree. This discussion is tabled. Okay. Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. There's also a line in there where they talk about the 9-11 report,

but it gets rejected out of hand as compromised. So that's a thing I didn't realize Ben believed. I just, his perspective on Obama is so funny. Cause like, I know at least we and a lot of people listening, I'm sure like, wow, Obama compromised too much. And he really bent over backwards to please people he shouldn't have and so on. And Ben's just like, Obama went in there and he told everyone

to shut the fuck up and he did whatever he wanted. And it's like, Ben, what are you? Yeah, what's the narrative? So immediately after this meeting, the president gets on the phone with the premier of China, which is not how international relations tend to work as a general rule. And the president, the premier of China immediately agrees to

a request from the president to buy a bunch of bonds. So Prescott gets off and sells out America to the Chinese instantly, like right after this meeting. And quote, Prescott thanked him profusely and promised him that the United States understood the position of the Chinese government with respect to military exercises in the South China Sea, but asked that all that the experts, exercises take place sporadically rather than all at once

and then hung up. And they say the Chinese are tough to deal with, Prescott thought to himself. Then he ignores a call from the governor of Texas because he hates Bubba Davis. Yeah. Yeah. Bubba Davis.

Yeah. The Democratic president holding personal grudges against specific states. So he, yeah, a thing that only a Democrat would do. So he tries to ignore Bubba Davis, but Bubba says it's urgent. So he has to get on the phone with him. And Bubba's just begging him to send troops to the border. Yeah.

Great. Okay. Yeah. Is he gonna end it? Yep. Yeah. He wants him to send troops to the border because one of the governor's staffers was kidnapped by cartel people.

This book is wild. Yeah. So that's an act of war. So the governor says this is an act of war. And the president says rightly it's not an act of war if it's not by a foreign government, which you might recognize as accurate. I think he's trying to do too much.

He's shoving five different books into one book. Yes. Yes. Because he has to get all of his political beliefs into this one book. He's got Jim in there. Yeah. It's neat because by this logic, I don't know, we could look at

the fucking kidnapping of mafia executions of local politicians in the northeast that happened in the 60s and 70s and 80s. I was like, are we going to war with Italy? Is that what that is? No. It was a crime syndicate killing somebody who got in the way of what they were doing. Only dangerous lunatics would view that as an act of war with a

foreign government. Yeah. We could do that with just any crime. I like that person's crime. We're at war with that nation now. Yeah. One of their citizens committed a crime against us. So the president's like, it's not an act of war if it's not by a

government. And the governor of Texas says, horseshit, Mr. President, you know as well I do that the Mexican government is run by the cartels and they killed one of my people, one of your people. So Ben understands Mexico. It totally understands Mexico. That's good. That's great.

You know what else is good and great, Robert? The products and services that support this podcast. Yes. That part. Yeah. It's the saddest I've ever heard you. Yeah. This is, I'm going to be honest with you all, less fun than the

first time. Oh. Yeah. We're getting real deep into it. That's good. That's good. Okay. I want to note before we roll out to ads, I just want to get to the

end of Prescott's chapter. So he gets off the phone with the governor and says that he's going to charge them with breaking federal law if his boys on the border shoot anybody. And yeah, then he hangs up on the governor of Texas after threatening to put him in jail if he does anything like that. And then he gets a call from jazz, Jasmine Jax, the national security advisor, also his longtime political mentor.

He could hear her sexy fingers manipulating the phone. What? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She's in the situation room, Mr. President. And she says you might want to get down there.

Something about bread Hawthorne. Oh, I thought you were going to say something about bread. No. No. I was going to say something about her sexy fingers again. Yeah. The sexy fingers of his national security advisor. Playing with the, he could hear her sexy fingers playing with

the phone. I'm trying to figure out who that is because I was thinking at first, Condoleezza Rice. Right. But she wouldn't work for a Democrat, would she? And also, yeah, I don't know. We'll see if it becomes clear where Ben's going with this. I mean, right, like obviously every single person is somebody.

Yes. In real life. And what I'm taking away right now is that Ben's got a thing for fingers, you know? That's what I got it to. Ben does have a finger fetish. Got to be real tall and check out those sexy fingers. You know what I've got a thing for?

Products and services. Here we go. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that existed between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. And I'm Alex French.

In our newest show, we take a darkly comedic and occasionally ridiculous deep dive into a story that has been buried for nearly a century. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed the world's foremost experts. We're also bringing you cinematic historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler and I got a lot to say.

For one, my personal history is raw, inspiring and mind blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads or do we just have to do the ads? From iHeart Podcast and School of Humans, this is Let's Start a Coup. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. 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! Okay, so we open with another chapter from Ellen, Brett's wife,

who escaped, you know, murder, although her friend got shot by the cartel. And it starts with her noticing that Brett had lost weight. Funny, that would be the first thought to cross Ellen's mind when she saw him on television, but it was. He was always so self-conscious about the four or five pounds around his middle section he couldn't shake. What he liked to call the famed Hawthorne underbelly. That's just been.

That's just been being anxious about his own weight problem. That is his own personal body issues manifest once again in this book that is just a window into his soul. Yeah, a complete and utter window. Brett Hawthorne has been captured. Yep, yep, that's what happened after he passed out having realized that Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons had gotten smuggled into Iran by the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan.

He should have bit down harder on that bullet, and now he's in a real screen. Now he's in a real, real, real trouble, Brett Hawthorne is. So Brett's captured, he's wearing an orange jumpsuit. Yeah, and this is like, they've gone in like ISIS video or al-Qaeda in Iraq video from this, even though it is the Taliban. But yeah, whatever, that's close enough.

At least he's captured and being ransomed unlike all of the other ransomable people like the ambassador who they just murdered for no reason. Yeah. Yeah. So they're threatening the president if he doesn't withdraw the U.S. bombers from Afghanistan, they're gonna cut off General Brett Hawthorne's head.

And then the president says, we're not gonna bow before terrorists, which you'd expect to be like the attitude that Ben would support, but I'm sure we'll find out that the president is actually somehow being evil in this too. Yeah, Neil Mann. Yeah. If he cuts off his head, then that's,

there's that four pounds, doesn't have to worry about it anymore, right? Oh, there you go. Need to interject. I opened Twitter randomly as we're sitting here, and Shapiro is trending, so... Oh, dear God, what did he do? What did he do? Oh, it's because he said that it's about COVID

and sacrificing your grandma for the economy, and if it was young people dying, it'd be fine, but if you're an 80-year-old grandma, it's all wrong. And somebody who is 81 dies of COVID, that is not the same thing as somebody who is 30 dying of COVID-19. If grandma dies in a nursing home at 81, it's tragic and it's terrible.

Also, life expectancy in the United States is 80. Fuck you. That's a really good Shapiro impression, Sophie. Thank you so much. I was trying really hard, but also, fuck you, Ben. Sacrifice the old Ben Shapiro. Ben Shapiro, famed advocate of life and its preciousness. Oh, it looks like he was saying that to Dave Rubin.

Yeah, that sounds about right. That sounds about right. Anyway, back to the topic at hand. I love also, just sorry, real quick, in regards to exactly this, that we're talking about. Dave Rubin earlier said a similar thing to Larry King, his hero, and Larry King was like, Dave, that's stupid. Come on.

Now you... Anyway, sorry, go ahead. Amazing. So Ellen sees her husband kidnapped and the president say that he's not going to rescue him, which is bad in this instance, although I think in other instances, Ben would support the president refusing to negotiate with terrorists. Anyway, Ellen lives in Texas like all good Americans,

except for Ben Shapiro, who lives in California. But that's not analyzed that too much. Oh, good Lord. Born, grown, raised, lives in. Yeah. Oh, God. Okay, so there's protesters out in front of the Texas governor's office saying, close the border.

Enough is enough. Protect your people. And she's walking through the crowd. She edged her way past one burly linebacker of a man wearing a cowboy hat and a gun, which was perfectly legal in the state. That was reason enough for Ellen to love the Lone Star State. The fact that people can wear guns there is enough. There wouldn't be any random shootings in this Capitol building anytime soon,

even if the media made it seem as though every civilian with a gun represented a threat to public safety. For every nut with a gun she knew, there were 10 willing to put him down. What happens to 11 people in a crowd start shooting at each other, Ben? Nothing bad. I'm as pro-gun as you're going to get. Don't worry about it. But come on, man.

That's really fucking stupid. Yes, 11 people in a crowd having a gunfight is the situation we want to encourage. That's what we want. That's how we save. We're safe. Yeah. She showed the guards her ID and they waved her through two knocks on the door and she stood across from one time Republican presidential candidate

and four time governor, Bova Davis. After a stint in Vietnam back in the late 60s, Davis, a big bear of a man, burly and fun looking. I need to ask you at some point to do a word search, please. I'm going to do it right now. I'm going to do bear of a man. Oh, I was going to say, please do a search for the word short. Oh, yeah.

Because I don't think that this world has a short person in it, unless they are a dead eyed eight year old boy. Maybe Ellen. Maybe. I don't think so. I think everyone is over six feet tall in this book. I don't think that there is a short person in it. Yeah.

That is so within like three paragraphs, the two people, the two new characters that were unbelievable. I love it. I love that. Yeah. She's described two characters in the same page as big and burly. Yeah, so Davis and Hawthorne are the only two people described as bear of a man. But let's see short.

Do we get a short in here? Short years ago, shortly after midnight, yadda, yadda, yadda. Sexy blonde and a short skirt. Okay, here we go. Sexy blonde and a short skirt. Fuck yeah, then. Yeah. So there's, yeah, actually all the terrorists are short people.

Robert, are you fucking kidding me? No, no. It seems like the terrorists, yeah. The first two people I find described as short are a short man named Muhammad who seems to be doing some sort of terroristy deal and like a short Russian. Interesting. Yeah. I'm so fucking, you may be so fucking happy.

Oh my gosh. This book is tragic then. It's about all of his own self-loathing. Yeah. All the terrorists are short. Yeah, I think all the terrorists are short. Come on, man. I think all the terrorists are short.

Now, it is worth noting that the main bad guy leave on, or at least one of the big bad guys, is tall and shredded. So. Yeah, yeah, okay. As was yard, the man with no other name. Yeah, the nameless kid, the student with the fucking jersey. He might be a bad guy, but he's not a terrorist. Yeah.

So, there we go. So yeah, we get a little bit about Bubba Davis, how he came home without a job, and he got a job, which I don't know why you, of course he came home without a job. He was leaving his job. Yeah, what? Most people who are in Vietnam didn't set up another gig

before they left the military. That's not how that works. But okay, he gets a job working on an oil rig, which he loved, and then he felt good enough to go out on his own with a bankroll from his father-in-law. He had to live frugally, which I don't think you can do when your rich dad gives you the money to start a business. I don't know.

I guess you can by relative terms. Yeah. So he patented a new drilling technique that skyrocketed efficiency. We don't get any detail on that, because Ben doesn't know anything about actually mining oil or how it works, and he became one of the richest men in the state. He saw Armageddon, though.

Yeah, he definitely saw Armageddon. Yeah, so he only got into politics because his local state assemblyman had Armageddon calling for environmental reviews of all drilling. The way Bubba figured it, he had no choice. His livelihood, the livelihood of his workers was at stake. He ran, he won, and he kept on winning. So he didn't want environmental reviews of drilling.

That's why he got into politics, because that was clearly bad. Being like, let's see what this might do to the environment is fundamentally toxic in the eyes of one Benethan Shapiro. So that's good. The campaign slogan was, don't let them horn-swoggle you. Which, speaking as a Texan, that's a word we use, all right? Don't let a horn-swoggle you? Don't let them horn-swoggle you.

Oh, huh. Yep. Yeah, that's... Oh, God. What year was this published? 2016. Oh, yeah, it was. What the fucking perfect year for that?

It really does show that Ben is trapped in some ways in that world of late 1990s Rush Limbaugh radio politics, which is kind of why he's felt increasingly left behind by conservative media. This is my feeling in the Trump era, because he is permanently stuck in this... He's really obsessed with the environmentalists are corrupt and part of some sort of scam.

The paragraph goes in later to how the Bubba opened his campaign by naming the top three environmental officers in the state and reading off how much they'd received from lobbyists for the environmentalists, and then how much those environmental groups had received from global competitors like the Saudi government. So Ben believes that Saudi Arabia is funding the environmentalist movement in the United States.

Yeah, it's Rich's fucking environmentalists. Yeah, Bubba Davis played politics the way he played football. He pushed the line. The press called it swagger. He just called it the Texas way. Ben really gets Texas. Yeah, he really does. God, that is interesting and true, I think.

How stuck he is in that era. He has described himself as a Rush baby in the past. Yeah, I can see that. So was I. I loved Rush Limbaugh. He's my hero and so on. So it fits. It's amazing. Yeah, so Bubba's angry because of the...

Bubba, the horn swoggled. Yeah, he's trying to stop people from getting horn swoggled. So he says that... Have you seen the crime statistics in El Paso? It used to be one of the safest cities in the state. Now it looks like Goddamn Phoenix. El Paso was in 2016 and is still today one of the safest cities in the United States. Thank you.

It has been for a long time, despite its proximity to the border. All the fucking places, Ben. It's a good example of why you're wrong about everything. Yeah, El Paso in the real world... That city specifically is like... Oh my God. After eight years of Obama, El Paso was still one of the safest cities in the country. El Paso pretends that it got dangerous under a different fake Democrat,

not named Obama, so that he can... Yeah, fucking Christ, Ben. Yeah, that's embarrassing. It is very embarrassing. There's a lot of stuff that's embarrassing about this. Yeah, embarrassing person. Oh, good God. Okay, so that's great.

So the governor talks to Ellen about his conversation with the president and about how even if the president says it's not a war, he knows that what's going on at the border is a war. And Ellen says, do you think Prescott is bluffing about like sending him to prison if he cracks down the border? It's just what he wants. He wants another Waco, and even better,

a Waco created by one of his chief political opponents. Because Waco went really well for the Clinton administration. What the hell are you talking about, Ben? Yeah, so seven out of ten Texans want to militarize the border. Which, yeah, so Ben is really on board with militarizing the border. And that's what this chapter is really all about. And then, oh, this is really interesting, because it involves the governor of Texas dealing with a massive problem

in his state that has led the loss of life and has outraged the population of his state. And the governor recognizes that the only way to deal with the problem is to take... Like, the governor goes to the federal government and asks for help dealing with this problem. And a careless, hateful president who rejects him immediately because of where he comes from refuses to help him and threatens him if he takes the necessary steps to do anything.

And so this chapter is all about Bubba, the governor of Texas, and his chief assistant deciding that they have to go out on their own independent of the federal government, because they have been abandoned by their government. And they're the heroes. I wonder how Ben feels about things like this that might be happening now that are real and not hypothetical and don't involve imagining a crisis on the border.

This is fiction, Robert. It's amazing that a real thing you could see as a parallel to something Ben is writing about here happens, but it's the complete opposite of everything Ben suspects, and he hates it. That's incredible. That's incredible. Again, it's beautiful art.

This book is exhausting. Yeah, it is exhausting. And I am exhausted, and we've been at this for more than an hour. Oh, we have, haven't we? Yeah. And I think we've come to the moment of conclusion for this episode because it's really telling to me that Ben does... The fact that there's so many parallels,

a state that the president of the United States clearly just sort of automatically hates anyone from that state and rejects them, because President Prescott hates Texans, our president has a hatred of California. You've got that governor who has to take action to protect his state, and that action means doing things that could be seen as like pre-sessionist. And in Ben's book, they're the hero, because what he's trying to do is send soldiers to the border.

And in reality, they're trying to lock down their state and build more ventilators, and they're the bad guys in Ben's head. I do think we need to, you know, earmark where we are and continue to work our way through this book a few chapters at a time, because honestly, I'm too invested at this point, and I'm never going to read it, but I want to know how all of this comes together, if it does.

Yeah, I'm sure Levon becomes a figure of national... Let's end with our prediction. So my prediction is that Levon will become a respectable national political figure while still selling crack cocaine, and that BLM will cause a bunch of violent protests that necessitate they be put down violently after they faked that eight-year-old's death. I predict that Bubba will become the president. That's kind of my guess, but maybe I'm wrong about that.

There might be like a Civil War thing that happens at the end. I don't know. I don't know where Ben's leading with this. That's what I was going to say, is I think that there's going to be some sort of a Civil War. Bubba will assume the presidency locked down the borders, and America will live happily ever after. Oh, for sure. Yeah, I also suspect we're going to hear more about this international conspiracy

against the United States that involves at least China, but I bet some ridiculous countries will also show up. I think the weapons of mass destructions are going to end up with Black Lives Matters. Yeah, I bet Levon gets Saddam's nukes. Right, there's going to be a threat where Levon has the weapons of mass destruction and they need to stop him from using them. I truly believe that's what's happening. Because that is the most Ben Shapiro kind of Republican thing that could happen,

is that the evil Black activists who hate cops get Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction from Iran. It's everything he hates, but is in reality connected in no way whatsoever being connected, which is what all Republicans have to believe happens. Right, that everything is a little piece of the puzzle and it's all coming to a head. Yeah. God. It's a kind of thinking we all have to avoid. There's a tendency to believe that everything bad is tied into everything else bad.

And it's more complicated by the fact that a lot of shitty people are all friends with each other. I don't know. Right, but it's also oftentimes the difference between their interests naturally align, as opposed to they're all meeting in a room and they're saying, well, you go do this and I'll go do this. It doesn't have to be a conspiracy for interests to align. Yeah, it's kind of like why Kim Jong-un, there were times when he was willing to be positive about Trump and the administration,

because it helped individual things he wanted to have happen. And there was no coordination because he was also happy to throw Trump under the bus at times, because none of these groups actually give a shit about each other. Yeah, but in Ben's head, Black Lives Matter, I'm certain is about to be collaborating with Iran to use Saddam's weapons of mass destruction on America. That is, I think, where this has to be headed. Yeah, the domestic terrorists are working with the international terrorists. The domestic terrorists, which certainly are not going to be, for example, white militia dudes,

who, as we all know, never commit terrorism. No, they're the heroes. I'll tell you what, if some white militia dudes went somewhere and did some crimes to people in Mexico, I bet he wouldn't be like, well, this justifies Mexico starting a war with us. Yeah, there's never been a case of members of a militia killing a child on the border. That never happened in the episode we did about the border militia community and its growth in history. Nothing like that occurred. I believe you.

I'm waiting also for a, have we seen a right wing, have we seen like a Rush Limbaugh, Ben Shapiro type? I'm going to guess we are, although I think it'll be interesting if we don't, if there's no like actual like Ben Shapiro media personality stand in in this book. I think that's going to be really interesting because it might suggest to me that Ben Shapiro kind of hates himself and what he does and wishes he'd join the military, but he doesn't think he was big enough. Yeah, short enough to be a terrorist, not tall enough to be. Oh, Ben, yeah, we got to dig more into these terrorists next. Maybe we'll start the next one with that.

But for now, I need y'all to plug your plugables. Cool, yeah, check out our show with Robert, Worst Your Ever, also on iHeartRadio, and we have another podcast called Even More News. You can check that out. Cody, say the rest. And a YouTube show called Some More News. There's websites like Patreon, Twitter, and things related to that. And I'm on Twitter, Dr. Mr. Cody, and Katie's on Twitter at...

Katie Stoll. You can find me on Twitter at iRightOK. Also, we're helping with a fundraiser to provide diapers to poor families in the Portland area at the Portland Diaper Bank. Go fund me, COVID-19 response and diaper need, you can donate, fans have donated somewhere around $3,000 already, which is great, and I'm very grateful for that. So, again, times are fucked up. People like Ben Shapiro have more influence than they should ever have had, which is none. But sometimes we can do things like make sure a few hundred women without much money

don't have to worry about diapers for their babies. So, COVID-19 response and diaper need, go fund me, or just find my pinned tweet on Twitter at iRightOK. So, you can also buy shirts if you want. Yeah, great job, Robert. They exist. Yeah, and there's a podcast called The Women's War. It's upbeat. You should listen to it if you want to know how things could be better in a world

where people like Ben Shapiro don't have influence. Alright, that's the episode. What a world. I'll wash your hands on a different day. Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands.

Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. 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. 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.