Ben Shapiro Exposes Candace Owens' Evil Attack Series on Erika Kirk and Deconstructs Wuthering Heights' Cultural Decay

Sick and evil Candace Owens has now released a trailer for her new series attacking Erica Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk. We'll prepare for President Trump's State of the Union address. And we're going to analyze the top global box office at Weathering Heights, and explore what its perversity actually means for our civilization. But first, everyone knows what the legacy media is going to look like tonight. It'll be somewhat depressing, somewhat dramatic. Caitlyn Collins will be a little outraged, but President Trump is going to be making his State of the Union, and you can hang out with us instead. We have our very own State of the Union watch party. It kicks off 8:00 p.m. Eastern with a live pre-show hosted by Cabbat Phillips. We'll get you ready for President Donald Trump's big night, which you can watch right here. And then once the speech is over, we're just getting started. Stick around for a special edition of Friendly Fire hosted by MUA. Pre-show, State of the Union, Friendly Fire, all in one place. Watch with me, Andrew Claven, and special guests live tonight at dailywire.com and on the Dailyware Plus app on Roku, Samsung, Apple TV, and everywhere else. Now, I need to take a breath here because what I'm about to discuss is significantly more serious and truly troubling. Candace Owens, as you may have heard me refer at the top of the show, is an evil, twisted human being. Now, the reason I say that today is because Candace has spent the last several months attacking the widow of Charlie Kirk, Erica Kirk. It took her just a few days after Charlie's sick murder in order to start casting aspersions at Turning Point USA, people who worked there all the way up to the highest levels up to and including Erica Kirk. She was doing that very, very quickly. And she's been doing it for months. I mean, truly for months. I mean, yesterday she came out with something that she had announced she was doing, which is a series. This is a trailer for a series, a teaser trailer that is titled Bride of Charlie, which is supposedly now an expose on the evil, nefarious, predatory nature of Erica Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk, who again was shot in the neck not by some sort of vast conspiracy involving French intelligence and Egyptian airplanes, but by a transloving gay man who was a furry. That that is the actual story. And because Candace Owens is either going through the throws of mental illness or because she is a sick human being or both, she has decided that she is going to turn her fire on the widow. Don't believe me? I know. Listen, there are a lot of people who listen to Candace. She has a huge audience. This is what she does. This is who she is. She is a conspiratorial evil person because that's who would do something like this, a conspiratorial evil person. Now, the only reason that I'm playing this trailer is so you understand the extent of the evil that Candace Owens is perpetrating here because obviously I do not wish to promote her propagandistic horror that she is now pushing on a grieving widow with small children. The entire purpose of this is so you understand what Candace Owens is and what she is doing. I have to show you this thing so you understand that I'm not exaggerating, that I'm not making it up, that the thing that I'm saying is a thing Candace is doing because otherwise it would be kind of unbelievable. I get this all the time with regard to Candace. I get with regard to other personalities, too. But what happened to her? Does she really mean this stuff? Does she mean the kind of stuff that she says? Take her at her word. Here is what she is doing. Here is the trailer for her hot garbage fire of nonsense conspiracy mongering defecation. Here is the trailer she just released for her series of attacks. It's going to be an entire series of attacks on Erica Kirk. Again, she's been retailing and implying and basically saying out loud a lot of this stuff on her show for months. For months, people cannot claim that they were ignorant that this was happening. They know what was happening and they let it go. We'll get to them in a moment, but here is the trailer that she released yesterday. President Trump says that Kirk has died after he was shot from a nearby building after being shot at Utah Valley University. >> The great and even legendary Charlie Kirk is dead. >> The cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry. I don't get to give him a kiss goodbye. That young man, I forgive him. >> Take your time. >> Erica Kirk has been named the new CEO of Turning Point USA. >> My husband's dead. Like, I'm not trying to be morbid, but he's dead. >> It's weird to say excited. >> Describes her husband's funeral as the event of the century. Merch hats. >> We have 50,000 plus hat orders. Nobody knows why she's out there in a glittering pants suit in a recreated tent that her her husband tragically was murdered in throwing merch out. >> Everyone grieavves differently. So if someone's acting weird, don't read into that. >> Zionists, the prime minister of Israel, all lied through their teeth about Charlie Kirk. >> Her operation was in Constant, the epicenter of Romania's trafficking scandal. weird conversations to have with a 15-year-old. I'm going to touch your butt. $8.6 million to their own shell company. What is going on? >> We have nothing to hide. >> My aunt used to tell me, "Never do something that you don't want on the front page of a newspaper." So, that's what Candace Owens has been spending her days doing. And millions of people, of course, have been watching her as she's been doing this. Apparently, she is calling Erica Kirk, she has been calling Erica Kirk a lesbian pedophile grooming a 15-year-old. She is suggesting, of course, she has been suggesting for a while that TPUSA was complicit, if not in the murder of Charlie Kirk, than in the cover up of the murder of of Charlie Kirk. This is the stuff that Candace Owens has been doing because Candace Owens is a is a true vampire when it comes to conservatism and the conservative movement. She finds prominent people and then she grifts off of them and then she does more grifting off of them and then she grifts them until she's done grifting them. Then she moves on to the next thing she can grift off of. Truly sick, truly evil. You You lack for words. There is a biblical injunction for those of us who actually care about the Bible. So, it's a biblical injunction in Exodus 22 that you ought not to oppress any widow or orphan. Now, the reason that I focus in on this is because aside from the fact that Candace drives huge numbers through slandering people, truly slandering them, and yes, Erica Kirk absolutely should sue the living hell out of Candace Owens for this sort of stuff. The reason I bring this up is because there's been a wide and vast silence by people who should have spoken out about this months and months and months ago. In fact, some of us were calling this out from the stage of TPUSA in December. Here's what I had to say about Candace doing exactly this thing. This is back in December. Okay, it is now nearly the end of February and the same people who I suggested were silent then are silent now. So if Candace Owens decides to spend every day since the murder of Charlie Kirk casting aspersions at TPUSA and the people who work here who worked with Charlie every single day his best friends to cast dispersions at Mikey McCoy and Andrew Kovvin and Blake Nef and Tyler Ber and yes at Erica Kirk and to imply or outright claim complicity in a cover up over Charlie's murder to spew absolutely baseless trash implicating everyone from French intelligence to MSAD to members of TPUSA in Charlie's murder or a cover up in that murder, then we as people with a microphone have a moral obligation to call that out by name. Erica Kirk and TPUSA never never should have put in never should have been put in the position to have to defend themselves against such specious and evil attacks, particularly in a time of mourning. And the people who refuse to condemn Candace's truly vicious attacks, and some of them are speaking here, are guilty of cowardice. Yes, cowardice. The fact that they have said nothing while Candace has been vomiting all sorts of hideous and conspiratorial nonsense into the public square for years is just as cowardly. When the signs are there for years on end and people say nothing and people continue to say nothing today, that's cowardice, obviously. Where are Charlie's friends? Where are Charlie's closest friends? Where are all the people who proclaim solidarity with Charlie and with Erica today? What are they doing? And for all the people who are watching Candace stitch together a bunch of specious nonsense because they like the gossip of it because they enjoy the todry mory povich silliness of it because they're watching a car crash at the side of the road. Please have some more respect for your own brain than that. Please have some more respect for yourself than that. Truly. Truly. Because what she is doing is evil. And when you watch her show, she gets paid to do that evil. That is how she is making her money. She is making money off the murder of Charlie Kirk by literally implicating his widow and everyone else at TPUSA in that murder and then trying to dig up pseudo dirt on the wife of the person who was murdered. I don't know what to call that other than evil trash, but you are too smart for this. I mean, the fact is that while Candace Owens is obviously good at broadcasting, she's very good on camera, she happens not to be a particularly smart human being. She just isn't. I'm I'm sorry. I'm sorry to to break it to everybody. She is not some sort of magical genius guiding you through the mysteries of life, unpacking for you all of the secrets of how the world really works. She is a grifter who is making money off of you by telling you lies that are unbelievably stupid but evocative. In fact, that could be the name of her autobiography, Stupid but Evocative by Candace Owens. Except she would pronounce it evocative. Coming up, we'll get to Chaos in New York. 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That's ex psvpn.com/ben to get four extra months and start protecting yourself today. Yesterday in New York City, there's been this gigantic freeze that has set beset New York City and the rest of the East Coast. And as you will see on Washington Square, several NYPD officers responded to a call there and people started hurling snowballs at them. This isn't like playful stuff. They were actually trying to hurt them. They started just hurling objects at the police officers. Every one of these people should be identified and every one of these people should go to jail. Every single one of them hurling objects at police officers, assaulting police officers, mobs of people, some of them masked trying to assault police officers. This is 1970s style disorder in New York City. And yes, it has been prompted and promoted by people like Zoron Mamani. The attitude that governance has toward people who are actual hoodlams in the streets has a pretty marketked impact on whether or not people act like hoodlams in the streets. Forget about broken windows theory. How about attacking cops theory? You attack a cop, you go to jail. Again, pretty simple stuff. But the rising level of disorder and chaos that we see in the country is a direct result of governance decisions that are being made in blue cities particularly by the people who run those blue cities. You think that has no impact on how people think of the cops that Zarani has spent his entire career prior to being elected mayor of New York ripping on the cops and suggesting that they are a nefarious force for viciousness. Of course it has an impact. Every single one of those people pelting the NYPD with snowballs should go to jail. And those are full grown adults, by the way. Those are not kids. You're not talking about misbegotten 15-year-old juvenile delinquents who get frisky with the cops. You're talking, look at that video again. You're talking about people who are standing there. The cops arrive and they just start hurling things at the cops. Jessica Tish, who is the commissioner of the NYPD, put out a statement, quote, "The NYPD is aware of certain videos taken earlier today in Washington Square Park showing individuals attacking cops. I want to be very clear. The behavior depicted is disgraceful and it is criminal. Our detectives are investigating this matter. The PBA called the incident unacceptable and outrageous according to ABC7 in New York. The fact that this has become commonplace, this sort of attitude toward the cops has become commonplace really since 2014 in the country. In 2014, of course, you had the Ferguson riots justified then by the president of the United States. And then it turns out Americans didn't like that. Donald Trump was elected. You saw reversion to a law and order attitude at the top and then in 2020 broke out a new again but far far far larger. And now you have blue cities that are being taken over by effectively defund the police advocates. And those defund the police advocates may then turn around and try to claim that they want to work with the cops, but it's too late. Message received. Message received. Disorder comes from the top. It does not come from the bottom. A disordered government leads to a disordered citizenry. There's a reason that law and order, it's not just law, it's also order have to be implemented. Speaking of Zoran Mani, Zoran Mamani is who has totally changed the policy in New York City with regard to getting people off the streets in the middle of, you know, blizzards and then bunch of people have died. He's saying that the people dying, well, you know, it's because they actually died of overdose, not because they are they are freezing. Well, I mean, I guess you're doing a great job then, Merry uselessness. We have more than 500 homeless outreach workers who have been traversing the five burrows looking to connect homeless New Yorkers with services and support. And what we've also learned is the tools that were effective over the course of the prolonged cold period, again a historic period of sub freezing uh conditions, those are ones we've employed from the very first day of our response to this one. I'll give you one example. A number of those New Yorkers who lost their lives, the preliminary indications came that it was from an overdose related death. Well, you know what helped is if you had forced those people to go inside. That's what would have really helped. Or maybe if you just didn't let people sleep in the outdoors at all, regardless of the weather, and then people would probably die less often of drug overdose on the street. And Mayor SMARMM over there, grins at the camera always. And then through that gritted, smarmy smile utters the most innane platitudes again. New Yorkers, you broke it, you bought it. Unfortunately, the disconnection of the Democrats runs the gamut. James Terico is a state representative in Texas who's received outsized media attention because he's sort of the beta or of this cycle. Every so often, Democrats decide that they're going to win a Senate seat in Texas every couple of years and they run the hot new thing. So, they tried Beta. You remember Bato? Bet was a representative in the House of Representatives, ran for Senate, got smooshed. You remember that he was raising millions and millions of dollars because he betor was gonna bring Texas back to the blue bra. And then that that failed. Then he ran for president and then that also failed. Brah. And then he went to the New Mexican desert to eat dirt or something. Well, now they're trying again with James Terico who kind of is b he feels like Texan Pete booty judge kind of. That that's kind of the vibe for James Terico. He's got the howdy duty thing going on. Anyway, when he's not appearing on Joe Rogan to receive silly questions or when he is not appearing on Steven Coar to receive silly questions, he is out there suggesting that Americans ought not worry about radical Islam or say transgender shootings. They should worry about rich people. Okay, my dude. >> Trans people are 1% of the population. Mus Muslims are 1% of the population. Undocumented people are 1% of the population. We are focused on the wrong 1%. Um so um I'm just going to point out at this point that murderers represent a very small percentage of the American population. Should we not worry about like why is the percentage of the population the relevant categorization here? It's a bizarre contention. I mean, is the contention that if transgenders were 20% of the population that we should worry more about them or that if Muslims were 10 because I feel like he wouldn't say that. I feel like he wouldn't say that if Muslims were 10% of the American population, we should be concerned. By the way, they're like 10% of the New York population. So, I really don't think that he's making the argument that he thinks he's making there. I I think what we really should worry about are not transgenders per se, but the phenomenon whereby we tell children that boys can be girls and then treat them with hormones and tell them that their mental illness is fixed. That seems to me a problem. Has nothing to do with the percentage of people affected. If a very small percentage of people in the United States believe that they are in fact Jack the Ripper, maybe it's only one guy. It feels like telling him he's Jack the Ripper and handing him a knife would also be a bad idea. It turns out bad ideas are bad ideas regardless of the percentage of population they cover. Why were supposed to quote unquote worry about the 1% being, you know, presumably the people who have participated the most in the market providing goods and services that others wish to obtain. That is how you get rich in a free country. You don't get rich, contrary to popular opinion, by stealing from poor people because it turns out poor people don't have lots of money. It turns out that in a free country the way that you get rich is through free exchange of goods and services. And if you do that lots of times and you invent cool new stuff that other people want, you can get real rich in the United States. I love that for James Terico, the threat to the American population is that a person who once was not rich is now extremely rich. And that's a threat, but a threat to the population is not a transgender person picking up a gun and shooting up a Catholic school. Like that's okay, my dude. The again, the the the level of disconnect here is astonishing. And here, you know what? I I have to say, again, partial credit to Gavin Newsome. It's funny that I have to say this about Gavin Newsome, who again, I think Gavin Newsome is the the bizarre Patrick Baitman of American politics, shape-shifting in the extreme. But I will say that he at least has his finger on the pulse enough to understand that Americans don't like the left-wing view on transgenderism very much. Here was Gavin Newsome explaining that actually Dems will will lose people if they don't address trans athletes. Now, as I pointed out to him directly when I was sitting with him, I think the American people are going to be just as upset when they find out that you would like to trans children and that you think that that hormone treatments and surgeries for children are somehow morally justifiable. I feel like Americans care about that even more than boys playing in girls sports. But New Nome is at least willing to go this far >> from a a tactical perspective from the prism of purely politics. >> Um there's no doubt that the Democratic Party needs to be dare I say more culturally normal. I believe that um less prone to spending disproportionate amount of time on pronouns, identity, politics, more focused on tabletop issues, things that really matter. the stacking distress in terms of electricity bills and child care costs and health care and obviously housing costs uh and how easily we get trapped in that how I've fallen prey to that. I mean here I was way out front on marriage equality. So I understand this from both in the receiving end of this and on the front end of this leading the pack. So I think there has to be some consideration of that. Uh but I think if you can't hold the line on on on competitive sports again sports it's a there's some nuance in this larger conversation but competitive metal sports if we can't find that nuance I think we're going to lose a lot of people that aren't we're not going to get invited in a larger conversation. Now again like it's weird that Gavin Newsome is the somewhat rational person at least like in very small part rational person in the Democratic room but that is how far left the Democratic party has moved. Speaking of which Senator Ruben Ggo of Arizona who would also like to run for president. He's he's one name that's not being dropped very often but he certainly wants it. He is uh he's now claiming that ICE detention centers are internment camps. The disconnect in the Democratic party is a real thing. >> In Arizona, for example, uh they just bought a $70 million warehouse, did not even speak to the governor, did not speak to any of the local city council members, which and the Republicans, uh you know, they're setting up these interment camps. And yet, when we asked for very simple things, things that would actually bring trust, security, uh to our communities, they refused. If Democrats wish to run on ICE detention centers or internment camps, throw snowballs at the cops and leave the homeless out on the street to freeze and also billionaires are the real problem. I suppose they can do that. Doesn't seem like the world's smartest strategy to me. Tonight is the State of the Union address. The president of the United States giving his first official State of the Union address last year. I was there, but it wasn't really a State of the Union. It's kind of fake State of the Union. He went for 99 minutes last time. Like really, really long. He says he's going to go long this time. When the president says he's going to go long, calf up, man. It's going to be long. I mean, make sure that you hydrate. Make sure that you have some carb packets on hand. When the president decides to go on a stem winder, I mean, I've I've been at many of his events. I will say I think the overunder on this thing is like 2 hours probably. There's got to be a couchy market for this. Like the actual length of the president's speech tonight. I I'd be shocked if they if there if there is not. There we go. Okay, so the overunder is 100 minutes or above. Apparently 48% of people believe he's going to go for at least 100 minutes. 62% at least 95 minutes. So the overunder is an hour 40. I I say that he tops last year. I think that he has it in his head that he is going to go for it. Calia, by the way, is a sponsor of the show. Well, joining me on the line on this historic day is Mary Margaret Olahan. Mary Margaret is, of course, our White House correspondent. Mary, Margaret, good to talk to you. >> Hey, Ben. Great to be here. >> So, what can we expect from the president's first official State of the Union tonight? Last year, he did a a kind of quasi state of the union. It wasn't officially a State of the Union. This is his actual first second term State of the Union. So, what should we expect tonight? >> Well, we should expect a long State of the Union. Last year, I believe he went 99 minutes, and this year, he's already told us that it's going to be pretty long. So, I think we can expect it to be even longer than last year. Uh, but what Caroline Levit and the White House are saying is that this is going to be a celebration of America, of American patriotism, and of all the things the president has done during uh the first year of his administration. So, last year when he spoke, he'd only been in office for a few months. Uh now he has all of these different accomplishments that he can tout and you know that he will especially on the economy on the border crisis uh that he has handled effectively and on the deportations that he continues to do uh on his foreign policy wins uh making American city safer that those things and much much more. Uh he intends to have a number of guests and my understanding uh Melania will also have a few guests. All of these congressmen will have guests and and what I have been told is that these guests are supposed to be American people who showcase uh the beauty of America, the beauty of our workers, uh the strength of the American person in general. Uh and all of this will contribute to a spectacle which from the Trump administration's perspective will be one of the most watched speeches of the president's year if not the next several years. All eyes are on the president. uh all the cable news channels will be tuned in which is not something that they always do. So the Trump administration is excited. Uh they know the eyes of the world are watching and they're planning to take full advantage of that. So Mary Margaret, the president is famous for not only some surprises that he has dropped during addresses like this in in the past, but also for his guest election, which is always really really interesting. Do we have any indicators of of who he might be inviting on a more specific level? >> Yes. Yes. So, Ben, we can exclusively report here at Daily Wire that President Trump will be bringing Erica Kirk, the widow of the late Charlie Kirk as his guest to the State of the Union this year. Uh we learned this from the White House that Erica, who as we know has taken over as the head of Turning Point USA. Uh she will be attending as a president's guest. And I'm also told by a White House official that Trump plans to talk about the tremendous revival of faith, Christianity, and belief in God and in our country. Since Charlie's death, we know that across the the nation, if not the world, we have seen this amazing spiritual revival, uh especially young people turning to their faith, uh turning to to God, to Jesus Christ in an attempt to find solace after Charlie's death and to follow his admonition that the most important thing for uh any individual is their faith in their God. Uh, and I'm also told by the Trump administration that the president plans to firmly reject political violence against our fellow citizens. Uh, so he will make a plea to Congress that all Congress members should reject political violence. And this comes only a few days after we heard of yet another incident of apparent political violence against the president when the Secret Service shot and killed a man who is attempting to enter the Winter White House, Mara Lago, and Palm Beach. Uh I'm told that uh they're still looking into this. The FBI is still investigating this incident. Um but this is I I believe the third or the fourth instance of a man attempting to take the president's life and it also comes after Charlie's tragic assassination. It comes after multiple shootings uh by transidentifying shooters targeting Christian school children. Uh and unfortunately, Ben, most of this violence that we've seen is left-wing violence. So, um, the president's going to take this opportunity to point out to Congress the importance of everyone condemning this type of violence as Erica sits there as his special guest at the State of the Union, which uh, frankly is a a huge honor to Erica, particularly coming in at a time when she's facing this onslaught of criticism from online commentators. uh this onslaught of really frankly malicious criticism suggesting that she had something to do with her husband's death that she and her organization are behaving in somehow maliciously. Um so it's it's really coming at a crucial time for Erica and is a huge honor to her to her family to Turning Point and to her deceased husband. >> So Mary Margaret, we also know that the the president invited the men's hockey team from the Olympics to come as well as the women's hockey team from the Olympics, both gold medal medal winning teams. Uh do do we have any reports on on whether the teams are actually going to show up? >> Yes. So as far as I know, the men's hockey team will be coming to the State of the Union. Uh they're excited online. Uh you can see many viral videos of them celebrating their win, talking about how they're looking forward to coming to the State of the Union. Uh not their typical scene, I don't think, but they all say they're excited and they're looking forward to it. The women's hockey team, I believe they graciously declined. Uh the reporting out there says that this was not a uh political uh decline. It was just more that they couldn't make it and they weren't going to be able to come. But the men's hockey team will be there. And I'm sure you saw, Ben, there's been some really great footage of them celebrating their win in an incredibly patriotic way. I was just watching a video of them singing the national anthem very boisterously in a club in Miami last night. And they're just having the time of their lives, but in a way that the American public can really appreciate. They are uh very patriotic, very proud of their country. Uh they seem to really be excited to be the president's guests and they haven't said one word of criticism to him which uh you know as an American I think is is really great. I think it's wonderful that we can be celebrating their win uh in a non-political way and look forward to hopefully seeing them tonight. >> Well, Mary Margaret, looking forward to seeing you tonight. We are covering the State of the Union live here at Daily Wire. Mary Margaret will be stopping by, I assume, for some of that friendly fire coverage. You'll get to hear from our host as we cover the State of the Union, the president's big speech tonight. Mary Margaret, thanks so much for the coverage and see you in a bit. >> Thanks, Ben. I'll see you later. >> The the president of the United States does have a heavy lift. He acknowledged yesterday that his poll numbers are not particularly good. That of course is true. The latest CNN poll shows that the president is stuck at 32% of Americans now saying that Trump has the right priorities. 68% saying that he has not paid enough attention to the country's most important problems. 61% say that Trump's policies move the country in the wrong direction and his job approval rating is stuck at 36%. So pretty bad numbers for the president right now. According to the latest Maris poll, 43% say the State of the Union is very strong or strong. 57% say not very strong and not strong at all. If you look at the breakdown, obviously Republicans remain very solidly behind the president, but 23% of Republicans say that the state of the nation is not strong, which is not a wonderful number for a Republican president. Usually, the president has up in the9s in terms of his support here. Again, among Republicans, 43% of Republicans think the system of checks and balances in the United States is not functioning effectively, according to that Maris poll. And these poll numbers are are grouped fairly solidly. The president is somewhere between 36 and 43% generally speaking. Washington Post ABC Ipsos poll has President Trump stuck at a 39% approval rating. Now the question of course is is why? And and the answer is there remain a lot of open questions about the economy. People remain extremely nervous about the economy. Not only did the Q4 growth come in low, but there are real and durable fears about AI. I do believe that the president needs to address those fears, explain exactly what the vision of AI for the future looks like. I think a lot of people hear AI and they and they think my job is on the line. And so the president does need to convene, I think, some sort of round table with AI leaders and explain to the American public that AI is going to make your job easier and more productive and that it actually will increase by increasing productivity the value of your take-home wages as opposed to what I think most people think, which is they're kind of scared of AI. They think that AI is just going to take over everything. As the Wall Street Journal points out, it doesn't take too much to cause tumultuous stock moves in a market topheavy with tech shares and jumpy about the prospects for AI, but nothing underlines the sensitivity of stocks right now quite like what happened on Monday when one of the factors behind the Dow's 800 point drop was a 7,000word hypothetical. A viral report by Catrini Research tapped into a new strain of fears about AI, painting a dark portrait of a future in which technological change inspires a race to the bottom and white collar knowledge at work. Concerns of hyperscalers overspending are out. Worries of software industry disruption don't go far enough. The global intelligence crisis is about to hit. Catrini wrote for the entire entirety of modern economic history, human intelligence has been the scarce input. We are now experiencing the unwind of that premium. And what basically in English what they are saying is that during the information technology era, people who are smart are the shortage and those people get paid a lot of money and then there's a lot of downstream jobs from that. But what happens when everybody becomes smart because of AI? What is now the scarce input? How do people get paid? What do you do that a machine can't? So number one, there is labor, manual labor that people do. There's care work, healthcare for example. But I think the thing that's going to be in actual short supply remains a level of intuitive creativity that machines just can't do. And there will be jobs that are created by that. Now, are we in a transitional period where we don't know quite what's going on? Yes. And this is why I think the president really should convene a lot of AI optimists and have them put out together a report that suggests what they think the future economy looks like. What will people actually do for a living? Maybe it's speculative, but the downside right now is speculative. So, we're going to have to see again the how the president addresses that. I think that is sort of the the dog that isn't barking yet, at least clearly in the minds of many people with regard to this economy. People are sort of feeling like they're on the precipice of something. They don't know quite what. Meanwhile, the president's continual focus on tariffs is not helping him. That is not a popular policy with the American people. I think it is right not to be a popular policy with the American people. The president, however, keeps talking about how he's going to jack up tariffs. Tariffs are going to make America rich. The the reality is that the tariffs that the president has loaded on the economy have not rejiggered manufacturing in the United States. They have not reduced the trade deficit. They may have contributed slightly to inflation. However, the president continuing to talk about it creates serious input problems when it comes to small businesses, businesses that have to determine whether or not they're going to invest in new workers. Where do they spend the money? Are they going to have to pay higher prices for the inputs and their labor? Are they going to have to pay new fees and taxes to the government? That uncertainty is a real blow to the economy. And so, President Trump will argue the economy is great and the economy is overall pretty good, but convincing people of a thing they don't feel in their guts is a very, very difficult thing. Now, when it comes to the generic congressional ballot, while the president is currently riding at 40 39% or so, Republican hopes in Congress seem to be riding at a similar level. That does not mean that Democrats are blowing it out right now in the Real Clear Politics polling average. Democrats have about a fivepoint margin in the in the generic. That would probably reflect itself in a pickup of some 20 seats, 20 to 25 seats. However, as we've seen in prior midterm cycles, one scandal can turn that into a raging fire. That scandal may be arriving at the door of Republicans thanks to the pecadillos and terrible sexual behavior allegedly of Representative Tony Gonzalez of Texas. Tony Gonzalez allegedly had an affair with one Regina Santos Az, a former staffer who committed suicide by burning herself to death. In text messages obtained by 24 sight news, according to mediaite, Gonzalez asked Santos Ales to send him a sexy pick and then speculated with her about sexual positions and sexual practices in which he wished to engage. Apparently, he had an affair with her. According to one of her friends, she had been battling depression ever since her husband found out about the relationship, causing the congressman to abruptly cut her off. They are both married. Other members of Congress, Republican members of Congress, are calling for him to resign. The speaker of the house has suggested that there ought to be a full investigation before he resigns. It seems to me that he ought to resign because I think that the consequences for Republicans, if he does not, are going to flow upward. This is very much like the Mark Foley scandal in 2006. Republicans were coming off a major electoral victory in 2004. By 2006, Nancy Pelosi was running the Congress in large part because of Republican leadership's response to a sex with a congressional page allegation and scandal surrounding Representative Mark Foley from Florida and end up really hurting the Republicans in the midterms. You could see something similar happening here with regard to Tony Gonzalez. Well, Tony Gonzalez's behavior reflects some perverse views, obviously, about relationships and about sex, which brings us to deconstructing the culture. So, my team forced me this week to sit down and watch the new version of Weathering Heights. I have some pretty marketked critiques of this movie, Withering Glutes, because it speaks to the complete and utter degradation of our entire culture. Truly, it is a disastrously bad film. My producers originally made me watch this so I could do a YouTube video on it. And I'm actually putting it in the episode because I think it is that important. It speaks to where we are as a civilization and a culture because there are sort of cultural bell weathers. What are the things that become important? What does it say about a country when the most popular movie that is put out is basically music of video pornography and a complete destruction of the underlying cultural value of the original novel and of the 1939 movie. It actually does speak to that. So before all the ladies in the audience or or all the people who are listening to the sound of my voice take their girlfriends or wives to see this piece of absolute gutter trash, true trash, I would recommend that they actually sit for a second, head on over to Amazon and get the original Weathering Heights, the film with Lawrence Olivier and Merl Oberon. It is significantly better in every possible way it is possible for a film to be better. Why? Because the values are better. Okay. So the reason I want to talk about this is because the pornification of our society, a society in which people are not having children, in which people are not even having sex, the the complete destruction of true eroticism in our society. That is what is happening with Weathering Heights. Weathering Heights, as I say, is basically just BDSM pornography shoveled into a very, very bad version of the kind of quasi framework of the plot of Weathering Heights. And the truth is that all of the elements that build a successful society can be found in the ways that societies view marriage and virtue and love and romance. And when that turns into what you see in the new version of the movie, which is basically just lust, materialism versus lust is basically the thrust of the film. No pun intended. When Withering Heights becomes Withering Glutes, then you've basically cooked your society. It is cooked. You want to know why people aren't having children? You want to know why people are having less sex? You want to know why life is actually more porn more pornified and less erotic? This is why. This is why. Okay, so I'm going to get into the actual details of the film for just a second, which again, a lot of people are going to see it this weekend. And it speaks to the destruction of the relationship between the sexes and what women think of themselves and how they think of sex and romance and how men think of this sort of stuff. So in order to do that I sort of have to contrast what a good version of a movie looks like of Weathering Heights and what a horrible version of a movie looks like. The good version would be the 1939 version which was written by Charles MacArthur, Ben Hec and John Houston. And the terrible version is the Emerald Fennel version. The the original Weathering Heights, the 1939 version happens to be again one of the great movies of all time. It was directed by William Wiler, maybe the greatest director of all time. He also did Best Years of Our Lives and Ben Hur, which shows you the difference in in quality. The music makes a huge difference. In 1939, the music was written by Alfred Newman. One of the great scores ever. Truly a great score. I actually want to play a piece of that score here, like the theme from the original Weathering Heights. You know what I'm talking about. Heat. Heat. Here you have music by some person who does Emerald Fennel scores and Charlie XCX. But the real problem here is the plot difference. And the plot difference underscores really where we are as a culture. Again, I've talked about this in the past that you can look at movies made in the 1940s and movies made today and you can see the differentiation in values. To take a perfectly obvious example in the world of Disney, if you go all the way back to the original Pinocchio, which was made in the 40s, like the beginning of the 40s, the original Pinocchio has the line from Jimny Cricut and always let your conscience be your guide. And there's a right, there's a wrong, always let your conscience be your guide. Frozen, the most popular Disney movie for this generation, the most famous song from it is no right, no wrong, no rules, I'm free, right? Just a completely difference in values. Okay, so in 1939 version, here is how the plot of Weathering Heights goes. And it's it's important to go through the plot synopsis so you understand the differences and why those differences were inserted into the film. So in the 1939 version of Weathering Heights, which is much more heavily based on the novel, basically you have a an estate. It is called Weathering Heights. It's perfectly fine place. Everybody's happy. There's a father, Mr. Ernshaw, and he has a couple of kids, Henley and Kathy. And one day, he brings home a foundling. And the foundling is Heathcliffe. And he's described in the movie and in the original books as sort of dark and gypsy looking. He's supposed to be a representative of the lower classes. and the father brings him home because he's trying to make the point that you actually have to be charitable toward people in the lower classes because there is an innate equality of human beings. Kathy not only accepts this, she becomes originally best friends with Heath Cliff when they're children and then lovers with Heath Cliffe. Not like they're having sex or anything in the movie. They're not. But they clearly love one another so much so that because Heathcliffe is abused by the brother, right? The brother becomes jealous. Hindley, who's the brother, becomes jealous and beats him up and treats him horribly. And when the father dies, relegates Heath Cliff to being a stable boy. It's basically a fairy tale gone wrong. He relegates him to to being a stable boy. And Kathy is still in love with him. Okay, so this creates the central conflict for Kathy. Hey, her central conflict in the 1939 movie is twofold. First, there's the conflict between love, like passionate love with Heath Cliff, who wants to run away with her, and material prosperity, which was historically a very real concern for women, particularly at the time that the book was written back in the 19th century. Because again, if you run away with a guy into the middle of she says this in the film, if you run away with a guy and you just live on the countryside, that's a very bad life. And so she has to make the decision. Does she wish for eternal love with Heathcliffe or does she want to marry the boy next door basically who is an upper class kind of posh but not a terrible person who she clearly doesn't love but will usher her into a world of plenty and material comfort and sort of wealth. That's the decision that she originally has to make and she tries to solve it a couple of ways in the 39 movie. At the beginning, she tells He cliff, "Why don't you go out into the world, go make your fortune, come back to me?" And he says, "I can't leave you. I'm that attached to you. If I leave you, I will I will fall apart." And he at one point, he does try to leave and he comes back because he misses her too much. So that's the original conflict. And at a certain point, she's proposed to by the boy next door, and she says to a maid that she wants to accept because to Mary Heathcliffe would be beneath her. And so she has this sort of two-sided personality with regard to Heath Cliff. On the one hand, she loves him deeply and she wants to be with him and she identifies with him. On the other hand, she wants to be she aspires to be a person of material comfort and wealth and leisure and all the rest of this sort of stuff. And so she says to the maid, "Maybe I should marry the guy next door, Lyndon. Edgar Lyndon, maybe I should do that." And because Heathcliffe is beneath me and Heath Cliff happens to be overhearing this and so he runs away. And so she ends up marrying Linton. And that's the that's sort of the first conflict. Then you get to the second part of the plot. The second part of the plot is that Heath Cliffe now comes back. She's married to Linton. And now the conflict is she's still in love with Heathcliffe. She has this eternal love with Heathcliffe, but virtue is the problem. Right? So again, notice the conflicts here which are actually real and interesting. the conflict between material comfort versus privation or eternal love, passionate but risky. That's the original conflict. And then it moves into love versus virtue. She's married and not only is she married, Heathcliffe comes back and Heathcliffe decides that as almost a form of emotional revenge against her, he is going to marry Lyndon's sister. And so Isabella, who is also a good character in the 39 movie, she's not a milk. She's not ridiculous. She falls in love with Heath Cliffe, believing that she can make him love her back, which of course is untrue. And when that happens, that's when Kathy realizes she's ruined not just herself, but also Heath Cliff and goes into sort of a death spiral. And you get this very, very famous last scene in the 1939 film. Here is a couple of minutes of that famous last scene where it looks like Kathy is dying. And here is the incredibly romantic famous last scene of the movie. Miss Gabby. Oh my heart. Miss Kevin, she's gone. >> You've done your last black deed. He leave this house. She's at peace now in heaven beyond us. What do they know of heaven or hell? Kathy will know nothing of life. Oh, they're praying for you, Kathy. I'll pray one prayer with them. I repeat, till my tongue stiffens. Katherine Ernaw, may you not rest so long as I live on. I killed you. Haunt me then. Haunt your murderer. I know that ghosts have wandered on the earth. Be with me always. Take any form. Drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this dark alone where I cannot find you. I cannot live without my life. I cannot die without my soul. Oh my dear. You know, that is what a good version of the film looks like. Why? Because what that film is about is about longing. Unfulfilled longing. Right? That Heath, Cliff, and Kathy never get together. In fact, the only way it is possible for them to get together is in death. One of the things he says to her near the end of the film is, "Why don't you want to live?" And she says, "I want to die." Because she knows the only way out because she's married. The only way out is death. And so, she wants to die. And then he wants to die. and she ha he asks her to haunt him. I mean that that's unbelievably romantic stuff obviously because these are deep conflicts and they go to the value of virtues. Virtue is important and romance is important and and she apologizes for having been materialistic for having thrown away love in favor of material comfort. It's deeply moving, right? It's a wonderful wonderful film. Okay, now fast forward to 2026 and the new the new version, Glistening Butts from Emerald Fennel. It is insulting. It is degrading and it is stupid. Truly, it is a stupid movie. It is stupid in every possible way for it to be stupid. Okay, here you first of all, the plot is is changed. Now you have the father bring home Heathcliffe. The brother doesn't really exist. So, it's just Kathy and Heath Cliff in the house. They get together. The father is both kind, but also an abusive drunk, which makes no sense. In the 39 version, the father is good. The brother is the bad guy. Heath Cliff comes back and he ends up buying up the brother's gambling debts and taking overweathering heights as a form of revenge on him. There's no brother here. So, Heathcliffe comes back. He buys it from the dad who took him in as a foundling. So, none of the conflict makes any sense. And then the the central conflict becomes the conflict not between love and materialism but between lust and materialism. And one of the kind of key aspects, one of the reasons why she's driven away from Heathcliffe is because he is seen as not only lowerass but also racially different. He's a gypsy. Again, he's described that way in the book and in the 39 film. Here you have Jacob Aorti who is as white as white can be and her new husband, right? the guy who she's going to marry who's next door, Kathy. Now, he is a dude of Middle Eastern extraction, which makes zero sense at all. None. So, the plot to this point is at least kind of similar. Keith Cliff overhears a conversation where she says she's going to marry the guy next door. He runs away. Okay. In the in the Emerald Fennel modern version, he comes back. So, now he comes back and this is where the conflict is really supposed to play out, right? Except that instead of there being this longing that is barred by virtue which is where the romance lies instead now he comes back and they just a lot. Okay, that is what actually happens. He comes back and instead of virtue being an obstacle to them being together eternally, they actually just get together and screw like rabbits. That is the thing that happens in the film. So all the romantic tension is gone because there is no romance. It's just them screwing. It's just lust. And and that's the theme throughout the whole film is that lust lust uber Alice apparently. But the problem is that then where's the conflict? Where's the conflict at the beginning at least you sort of understand okay fine it's kind of lust versus materialism I guess kind of but she has no moral scruples. So why can't she have both? And when he comes back and instead of them being forced apart by virtue because virtue no longer exists in 2026. Virtue is not of any importance. He comes back and they immediately get together and they start doing the dirty all over the place like full scale minutes long montages of them banging. So where is the where is the plot tension? It does not exist. There's no plot tension. She's pregnant in the 2026 version with another man's child with her husband's child. She tells Heathcliffe this and we'll get into the perverseness of all the sexual viewpoints in the movie in a second because they they really are perverse. Instead of of this being an obstacle even to them being together, he says, "I'm more turned on by the fact that another man's child is in you," which is like, "What?" Okay, so you even took away the the whatever whatever perverse values you have. You even took away the plot tension there. It makes no sense at all. And then she says, "Well, I can't be together with you." And so he marries the sister just as he would in the 39 version, but he overtly tells the sister he is going to abuse her. He says, "I'm going to be horrible to you. I hate you. I'm never going to love you. do you want it? And because she too is a lusty little creature, she says, "Absolutely, I want it down to the point, as we'll discuss, of full BDSM with him where he is treating her, I kid you not, as a dog." And then the baby within her dies. She dies of septasemia. She's on the bed dead before he even gets back. And that's the end of the film. It's a horror show. And it's a horror show because you got rid of actual love in favor of lust. Actual romance in favor of sex, actual virtue in favor of literally nothing. And yes, eroticism. It is not an erotic film. It is not a sexy film. It is not an interesting film. Close-up shots from Weathering Heights of Thundering Nips do not make up for lack of romance. Particularly, by the way, for women. There's a reason that women read romance. novels and men watch pornography because men and women do not think about sex and romance in the same way. Women like there to be a plot. They like there to be an overarching structure of feeling before you get to the sex. Which is why you can watch an entire movie from 1939 and it can be erotic without there being any sex or barely any kissing in it because the romantic tension is the thing. And in fact, this by the way is the way we used to build entire societies. What we used to say is yes, we know sex is a very important part of life. The human mind is driven toward the forbidden. Libido is driven toward the forbidden. This is true in pretty much every society and it is a universal of human nature. And therefore, what we do is we take sex and we hide it behind marriage. If you want to get to the forbidden, you have to do this responsible thing. Which is why the culmination of every classic comedy is a marriage. because now you're in the realm of virtue, but you can do the thing that was once forbidden and it's no longer forbidden and it's good and it's plentiful and it's healthy. And instead, what we did is we obliterated as a society everything that was forbidden. All the walls came down. When there's no virtue, there are no walls. There's nothing forbidden. And so, if there's nothing forbidden, you have to get wilder and wilder and wilder in search for the new high. It's basically a dopamine drug. That that is where we are as a society. Which is why apparently the new sexiness of Weathering Heights/beckoning abs apparently the new sexiness is just bizarre sexual perversion which is what actually happens in the film. And again this is not about prudy. That is just what the film is. So to take a couple of examples from the Emerald Fennel film Margot Robbie who is way too old for the part. I'm going to get to the casting in a second because it again speaks to where we are as a society. Initially, she is very, very lusty. She realizes she's very lusty for Heath Cliff, which makes no sense. She's 36 years old. Okay, Marggo Robbie is 36 years old. Even if you were to play this entire plot out rooted in lust, she's 36. Okay, that makes a big difference. A 36-year-old in lust, like constantly in lust, is kind of just a bizarre spectacle on screen. It is, you understand an 18-year-old, you know, somebody who's coming into the full flowering of maturity, looking for romance, looking for love in the wrong. You get that 36. I mean, get a job, lady. My wife is two years older than Margot Robbie and she is a full-fledged doctor who's been married for almost 20 years and has a fifth kid on the way. And Margot Robbie is still cosplaying as a 16-year-old lust struck. Wench masturbating on the hill. I I kid you not. That's part of the film. She She literally Here are the romance scenes of the film. Okay, this is what is supposed to be romantic. Not again the longing. The the entire basis of Weathering Heights as a book, as a film, as a piece of art is the longing. If you're going to come down to one thing, it's the longing. It's the the forbiddenness of the love and the impossibility of it ever truly being fulfilled because of these obstacles. First, the self-made obstacle by Kathy and not going with Heathcliffe in the first place. And then the obstacle of actual virtuous institutions that exist for a reason and must be upheld even at the cost of somebody's happiness. That's where the longing comes in. obliterate all of that and what you end up with is just nastiness. Okay, so here are just a few of the scenes in Emerald Fold's Weathering Heights. One, there is a scene where Margot Robbiey's Kathy ends up in the attic of the barn, which is where Heathcliffe sleeps for some odd reason that we have no idea why. She ends up in the attic of a barn, and she's looking down through the slats of the attic, and two of the farm hands start going at it, a male and a female. It's like a maid from the house and a farm hand. start going at it. But they don't just start going at it. He bridles her with a horse bridal. He puts like a bit in her mouth. And she is staring at this lustily from above. And Heathcliffe comes up from behind her. Jacob Lord comes up from behind her shirtless and puts his hand around her mouth and another hand around her eyes. So they're watching porn together. They're watching horse porn together. And this is supposed to be sexy and erotic. I don't know about you, it's just weird. There's a scene where she is so over overcome with her lust for Heathcliffe for the quivering butts. She's so she's so overcome that she goes out onto the hill which is again supposed to the hill symbolically is the actual place that Heath Cliff and Kathy are supposed to be on the moors is supposed to be an idealized place of romantic heaven. It is not supposed to be the place where you do your guilty pleasures. So, she goes out to the hill again as a 36-year-old woman. And she starts masturbating and Heath Cliffe spots her doing that. And then he comes up to her and starts licking her hands. Not kidding. It's in the film. Then there's a full scale scene of cuckery, right? Where where she's pregnant with another dude's baby and she literally he literally says to her, "That turns me on more. It makes me want you more." And now I don't know about you, that is not a natural emotion. The number of men I know who are deeply turned on by the idea that another man's baby is in the woman that they are having sex with. That is not let's just say that is unnatural there. Then there is the relationship between Heathcliffe and Isabella who is the sister where he literally has sex with her while telling her that he does not like her, is not interested in her, and is thinking of another woman. Now call me crazy. I don't think there are that many women who would be turned on by a man telling them they're thinking of another woman while they do it. I call me Call me nuts. I I think that that's probably uncommon. And then by the end of the film, he literally has her on a leash like a dog. I mean, you talk about degrading to women. This movie is so degrading to women. I can't believe a woman made it. Honestly, it is the most degrading for women maybe I've ever seen on film. It's insulting. It's disgusting. Heath Cliff literally has her on a leash, a dog leash, and she is barking like a dog. And he takes food and he stuffs it in her mouth with his hand like she's an animal and she quote unquote loves it. Something is wrong. Something is wrong. Not just with the filmmaker, but with a society that laps this stuff up and then calls it some form of eroticism and sexiness. Again, we are a society that has more pornography than ever, more bizarre sexual fetishes than ever, and less eroticism, less romance, and actually significantly less sex than ever. We we are becoming quickly in the West a society of sterility, a sort of brave new world society. And again, this goes back to the age point. So when I say that the casting is all wrong, I mean it is all wrong. In order for the story to make any sense, the whole thing has to be rooted in Kathy's immaturity. She's 17, 18 years old. She doesn't know what to do. She's torn between the the lure of a materialist lifestyle where she can be in comfort. She doesn't have to live the sort of terrible lifestyle she's led in in poverty. And so, she's drawn to it and her kind of wild passion for Heathcliffe. That that that is supposed to be the basis of the of the story. That only works for an 18-year-old girl, which is why in the original book she's 18. And even if you are going to play it a little bit older, as they did in the 39 version, Merl Oberon, when she played this part, was 28 and she looks like she's about 24, 25. She looks younger than she is. Lawrence Olivier plays Heath Cliff, he's 32 when they made this movie. And that's important, too. The man needs to have a dominant emotional position versus vis the woman. He can't look as though he's just whimpering and whining the whole movie. If he looks like that, he's utterly uninteresting. You do not understand for the life of you in the new version why she's interested in Heath Cliff. There's nothing about him that's rebellious or interesting. There's nothing about him that besp speaks a sort of inner masculinity. He's just a muing, whining, tall guy who's good-looking. That's it. And when he shows up, he has a pirate earring, which is exciting. Apparently, Margot Robbie is horribly miscast here. And half the time, she's playing Harley Quinn. I don't know what she is playing at. She makes a spectacle of herself on the screen. Jacob Allerti is basically given nothing to do other than stand there and look tall and then every so often say something really kind of on the nose and again bizarrely unsexy. There there's one point where she is saying I I don't want to be with you and he says, "Well, that was your tongue in my mouth just a minute ago." Actual dialogue written by an actual human. Super hot. Again, none of the casting makes s