Shapiro On Fox: We’re In A Vortex Of Stupid, To Pretend Trump Started This Is Ridiculous

On Monday night, Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro appeared on Fox News Tonight with host Dana Perino and radio host Richard Fowler to discuss the controversy between President Trump and NFL players who have used the playing of the national anthem as a time to protest. When Fowler kept insisting that the protests were justified because of endemic racism among police, Shapiro pointed out the tiny percentage of shootings of unarmed blacks in the country. Shapiro also pointed out that using the national anthem as a means of protest was singularly ineffective, as it was highly unpopular among Americans.

Perino started by playing a clip of Hillary Clinton accusing Trump of attacking black athletes as a “dog whistle to his base” and to “detract attention from other things that are going on.” She added, “He never says anything of an insulting manner toward white supremacists, or neo-Nazis, or Ku Klux Klanners or Vladimir Putin, right?”

Perino asked Shapiro if remarks like Clinton’s, which seemingly were a continuation of the 2016 election, crystallized something he referenced repeatedly in his podcast, that the division among Americans could continue indefinitely and not end well.

Shapiro replied:

It never ends. We’re in a vortex of stupid and it’s reduced to a black hole of idiocy and we’re never going to escape it now. We’re just going to be ceaselessly reliving 2016. Look, President Trump did a couple of things in that Alabama rally; the first thing he did was he condemned people kneeling during the anthem, which I think is totally fine. The second thing he did, when he called for people to be fired, is not appropriate from a government official.

When Hillary Clinton, however, suggests that this is rooted in racism, listen, when I think President Trump has wrong-footed on racial issues I’ve been very clear about it, but I don’t see the racist intent here. If she’s talking about people who are white that Trump has attacked, she could look in the mirror, because Trump does that every single day and continues to do that nearly a year after the election. So this isn’t about race; this is about Trump felt like he had an issue that he got to club, and so he was going to club that issue like a baby seal. That’s essentially what he did in Alabama.

Perino hearkened back to her childhood, noting that when she was a child at rodeos, people always stood for the anthem and felt commonality. She asked Fowler if the NFL players who were kneeling saw Trump’s attack on them as racist.

Fowler said that they did, and then launched into one specific case, in which police killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Ohio, as a justification for the protests against the national anthem. He claimed, “I could go on and on and on.” He attacked Trump for his language, saying that he (Fowler) would never use Trump’s language, calling it “disgusting.” He concluded, “This protest is about racial injustice for people of color in this country. And that’s what these athletes are using their platform to do.”

Perino pointed out that Kaepernick’s original protest had been dying out until it was revived, adding that the Left overreacted to Trump’s remarks, prompting others to insist that people should stand for the national anthem, that racial tensions should be addressed, but also that the national anthem was an inappropriate place to protest.

Shapiro said:

There’s a series of overreactions that happens here; first of all, just to talk about the underlying issue with regard to police brutality being systemic across the country and then citing a case like Tamir Rice. Out here in California there was a white homeless guy named Kelly Thomas who was beat to death on tape, and the officers eventually ended up getting off; that was not about racism. There is such a thing as police brutality having nothing to do with race. There were some 760 shootings of people by the police this year, according to The Washington Post; nine of them were of unarmed black people. So the idea that there’s this wide spate of these shootings happening across the country is just not true.

But beyond that, this idea – what basically happened here is that Colin Kaepernick started a protest; it didn’t turn into a movement; it was basically dying out; most players didn’t like it; the vast majority of Americans didn’t like it. And then President Trump decided to bring it up, again, and then the Left reacted, as they always do to President Trump, by falling directly into whatever trap I think he inadvertently set. Trump says, anyone who kneels for the national anthem should be fired, and so now everybody on the Left goes, well, then everybody should kneel for the national anthem. They basically react to him the same way my three-year-old reacts to me when I’m using reverse psychology on her.

It’s just not smart. If you’re on the Left and you’re trying to create a PR movement in favor of this movement, it doesn’t seem to me like the smartest way to do that is to create the image of everybody kneeling during the national anthem, and the booing audiences across the country, the booing stadium audiences across the country seem to be good evidence that this is not a protest movement that is actually gaining steam; it’s actually undercutting its own message. If you want to protest perceived police brutality, there are police stations right down the way where you can protest. Sitting or kneeling during the national anthem doesn’t seem like the smartest way to do that.

Perino asked Fowler if he thought the protest had been helpful.

Fowler stated that the issue was not a Left-Right issue, claiming that Trump race-baited in front of a group in Alabama “which is his base,” and adding that all Americans thought Trump was wrong.

Perino asked Shapiro how America could move past the current divisiveness, Shapiro replied:

I think the only way to get past this is to go back to the consensus that we sort of had before. To suggest that Trump started this culture war is not true. He escalated the culture war. Kaepernick started this particular thing; this was a controversy a year ago, so to pretend that Trump started this is ridiculous. If we want to get back to consensus here, then we need to go back to where public opinion actually is, which is: it’s inappropriate to protest the national anthem, or during the national anthem; protest all you want in other venues, and at the same time, no one should be fired for this. That’s the basic opinion.

I’m not saying that Kaepernick doesn’t have the right to do it, or any of these players don’t have the right to do it; they certainly have the right to do it; owners have the right to react how they want to react. The president should not be calling on people to be fired for expressing their protest opinions any way they see fit. With that said, I think that there are only very few common symbols that we hold together, and those are things like the flag and the national anthem and football, by the way, and as those disappear, as those become politicized, the country becomes almost irreconcilable.

(First reported by The Daily Wire) http://www.dailywire.com/news/21526/shapiro-fox-daily-wire   (September 26, 2017)

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