The Stephen A. Smith ShowInterview Only: Ben Shapiro and Stepen A finally talk face-to-face about George Floyd and Derek Chauvin.
Stephen A. Smith is a New York Times Bestselling Author, Executive Producer, host of ESPN's First Take, and co-host of NBA Countdown.
He's got his own podcast and YouTube show. The man has more than seven point two million subscribers. He is one of the preeminent conservative voices in the world, not just this country. And he's somebody that called me a jackass. He wanted to see his boy, your boy as in me. Well, here I am The stephen A. Smith Show with mister Ben Shapiro up next.
Holla, what's up everybody.
Welcome to the special edition of The stephen A.
Smith Show, coming at you as I love to do, usually three times a week at the very minimum over the digital areas of YouTube, and of course iHeartRadio. Want to thank all my followers and subscribers for continuing to show love for the show. Keep it coming, and I'm gonna keep on coming. I wanted to transition on a show like today from the regular norm.
That's not gonna be a polpo rial topics.
It's just a conversation with an individual by the name of Ben Shapiro. Ben Shapiro is a guy that's been around for a while. He's established himself in the conservative community as one of their preeminent voices. He's beloved by a lot of conservatives, a lot of right wingers. He's unapologetic about his positions on practically most, if not all occasions, and he certainly was that way when it came to talking about Derek Chauvin, the officer most of us believe and the court clearly believed, murdered George Floyd several years ago, sparking riots across the country at that particular moment in time. Derek Chauvin and an officer, a police officer man Applis, Minnesota, ended up being convicted and sentenced the more than twenty one years in prison, and in my estimation, he absolutely positively deserved it. Derek Chauvin is an individual that I believe murdered George Floyd, that most Black Americans feel murdered George Floyd, along with the very other bevy of other people, not just blacks, not just whites, but even people in.
The conservative communities.
The Sean Hannity's of the World and others proclaimed the same thing. Ben Shapiro himself felt that way initially with what he had tweeted out. Upon further reflection as the trial went on, as evidence came forward, he believed otherwise, and once Derek Chauvin was convicted and sent to prison in the aftermath of that. Donald Trumpy five if the President of the United States ultimately became the forty seventh President of the United States, winning this last election in November of twenty twenty four, and from that moment on once he re entered the White House on January twentieth, twenty twenty five, Derek scho I'm sorry. Ben Shapiro has stated for the record that he believes Donald Trump should pardon Derek Chauvin. I took exception to that. I didn't know what he was thinking. I said to myself, why would you suggest such a thing? And even went so far as to say, or to ask Ben Shapiro, a devout Jew who is incredibly supportive of Israel and the Jewish community and issues pertaining to the Jewish community.
I asked a simple question.
If George Floyd had been Jewish and there was a knee on his neck for over nine minutes, would he feel the same way. So Ben Shapiro, with his own platform, which is very formidable, I might add, came right back, accused me essentially of race baiting, says it's something that I do. All the Thompson's got turned down the volume every time I'm speaking. He said a lot of things about me, and to his credit, when I invited him on the show to have a man and man conversation, he did not hesitate. He actually was supposed to do this days ago. I had to postpone, so giving credit where credit is due, giving him an opportunity to express whatever it is that he wanted to express to me about me, about George Floyd, about the whole situation involving his murder at the hands of Derek Chauvin and beyond. I was more than happy to do so. Gave me thirty minutes of his time, and and I think it's safe to say that both of us might have learned a little thing or two from this conversation we had.
How pleasant was it, how tense was it? You'll have to watch to see for yourself.
Not gonna give away the details, all I'm gonna tell you is that it's worth watching. And keep in mind, it's me leaning on what I always tell y'all.
You might.
Think differently than me politically, you might come from a different ethnic background. Your ideology may not be the same as mine. I'm a centrist who leans left. He clearly leans right. I'm not one of those people who believes because you don't think the way that I think, that you should be vilified and excoriated and what have you. Just because you think differently than me doesn't mean I'm gonna shut you down. And I don't want to hear a damn word that you have to say. I'm not built like that. I believe grown ups get together and talk and hash things out in respectful in a respectful and decent manner.
He called me a jackass. I don't know whether he's.
Capable of doing what I just described myself as doing and being, but I'm about to find out. This is a listening session, asking what I want to ask, but listening to his point of view and his perspective and showing him the respect any decent human being deserves. That's what I'm gonna do with Ben Shapiro up next. I do not believe this is a conversation you want to miss.
More to stephen A. Smith's Show in a minute, right after I pay these bills.
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My next guest is a conservative media personality and host of the Daily Wires.
The Ben Shapiro Show.
He recently made headlines by calling for Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who killed George Floyd, to be pardoned. We're going to get right into that. Please, welcome to the show to one and only mister Ben Shapiro.
Ben, how are you so? How's everything?
Thank God? Doing well? Stephen?
How are you doing okay?
I want to ask, and I asked this affectionately. I'm not trying to be incinerated. You called me a jackass? How many dudes are you calling jackass? And then you're going this show? Could you tell me that? Could you answer that one?
First?
Hey, I appreciate you having me on. And then and the invitation, as you know, is open the other way around. It's shockingly the answer is probably a lot actually in terms over a number of people who I've called the jackass, who I've been actually become friendly with, or who I've had on the show or vice versa.
SA. You know you're learning this business. You know it.
I got you. I got you.
I'm not overly offended. Trust me on that though, right, But thank you for coming on the show. So let's get right into it. As you know, I spoke out to get your petition to get President Trump to part and former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. For those that don't know, Chauvin was sentenced to twenty two years in prison after being convicted of unintentional second degree murder, third degree murder, and second degree manslaughter of George Floyd. I wondered if you would feel that way if the office so was black and the victim was Jewish.
That was what I said, And your response was to call me a race batter. Why is that?
Ben Shapiro, Well, to me, the entire case against Derek Chauvin was rooted in a sort of public racial essentialism that I thought was unnecessary to analyze the case. If I'm going to look at this case and just look at the facts of the case, the race of the person on the ground and the race of the officer are irrelevant, and we should treat it exactly the same, whether both people were black, both people are white, one person was Jewish, one person was not Jewish. The identity of the person on the ground, I think should not be the deciding factor in whether or not Derek Chauvin was convicted of second degree murder. It should be the situation, the facts of the case, the autopsy report, and all of the rest. And so the thing that I actually objected to was the suggestion that my opinion would have changed rooted in the say, racial or religious identity of the person who died, as opposed to the racial or religious identity of the person who is the police officer. I just don't think that that's how we ought to decide criminal justice cases in general.
And fairness you, I can understand that in general, damnit. In most instances I can agree with that, But those are cases that we hear about. I'm talking about the visual impact. So let's stay right there, Ben. I am a black man, and I see this black man on the ground, face down, handcuffs behind, handcuffs behind him. Face is imprinted into the pavement. The knee of the.
Police officer is on the back of his neck.
He's literally saying he can't breathe, to one point, crying for his mama.
And it happens for over nine minutes.
I understand from a technical perspective, from a specific analytical perspective, forensic evidence, et cetera, et cetera, fentanyl in the system, et cetera.
I got all of that.
My point is, and my question to you at that time was seeing that, how could you have another opinion? How could it be based on the preponderance of evidence that you threw into the fray in order to ask for this man to be pardoned. I'm just going by like there are certain things that you just see and it won was one of equals two.
So I mean, Stephen Ashley, if you go back to my tweets at the time May thirtieth, in June, first, if you look at my tweets, I'm saying the same kind of things you're saying right now. I'm saying the same kind of things at that time that everybody else is saying seeing the tape, because there's no way to look at the tape and not be sort of shocked by what you're seeing on the tape, obviously, and then I think that the mark of a reasonable person is to change your opinion as the evidence changes. A lot of evidence emerge between the time that the tape was released, that horrible nine minute tape, and the time the conviction actually happened. I mean, there's a full trial, there are autopsy reports, there's witness evidence that there were other people whose testimony was taken, there are multiple medical specialists who are called, and so in looking at all of that, that's the way we're supposed to adjudicate whether or not a person deserves to spend twenty two years in prison, not based simply on our immediate gut response to the tape. And again I had the same gut response to the tape that you did, and I think that everybody did. I think, actually that tends to be the gut response of people when we see a lot of police activity. Actually, it turns out the do a lot of things that look really rough on tape and really difficult on tape, and this was one of those things. And then as we later learned that, for example, the sort of tactic that Chauvin is using there was actually trained by the Minneapolis Police Department, right putting his putting. It's a submission technique that's used if you have a person who's resisting arrest, or if you learn during the course of the investigation that George Floyd was saying I can't breathe before he was even taken out of the car. He says I can't breathe on the longer tape six times before he's even taken out of the car. I mean, it's a very long interaction with the police officers before you get to that nine minute tape, the part that we all saw and there was a part of the story that you can't see on the tape, which is the reverse angle. You can't see that there's a big crowd that shouting at Chauvin. Chauveren's responding to that crowd. One of the preliminaries to getting up off of Floyd that way is to call what's called a Code four, which is where it's an all clear, where you feel that the crowd is not a threat to you. In fact, even the EMTs who showed up to provide care for Floyd didn't call a code for when they arrived on scene because they thought that the crowd was too threatening. So once you take into account all of the fact, if your opinion doesn't change and the fact pattern is different from what you originally thought it was, then you're not doing your job as a commentator. So I can have the same gut response that you have when I first see that tape. The question is what you do when more of those facts e merge, When you do see more of that evidence emerge, when you do read the testimony and see the autopsies.
See but I believe, and this is just my belief because in fairness to you, you're absolutely right. You did put out that tweet initially, and your position was it was shared by the handities of the World, of Mark Levin's of the World, and various others, obviously with a lot of people on the left as well, before the preponderance of evidence that you're alluding to came into play. I get that, so, in fairness to you, I have to say that. But sometimes I'm gonna say this to you because you're a pretty brilliant dude. Nobody can deny it, well, what you've accomplished with the daily while what you've been able to do in your career.
I'm just reading something.
You were syndicated columnist at the age of seventeenth of crime out loud.
This is who you are. This who I'm talking to here.
Is it possible that sometimes we could be so brilliant that our smart, our intellect gets in the way of common sense. For example, what I mean by that is this Ben knee on his neck for nine and a half minutes. If that didn't happen, is he still alive. I'm not talking about today because anything could have happened to you. I'm just saying the fact that Derek Chauvin's knee was on his neck.
That to me should speak for itself, because if the.
Man is clamoring for you to get off the back of his neck, why you got him handcuffed into the ground? Okay? Why is it wrong for us to stop dance? Say that was excessive on the part of the police officer because you had him continued, he wasn't a threat to you. Why is what's wrong with that thinking?
Okay?
So there are a couple of things that could be argued by the defense, and in fact we were argued by the defense in this case. One of them, again was that this was a train technique by the Minneapolis Police Department to keep somebody in this position so long as you have not called a code for which is where you say, there's an all clearer. Now you can move the person who's on the ground into the ambulance, for example, if you've already called the ambulance, or back into the police vehicle. When it comes to the actual question as to causation of death or he has to be the approximate cause of the death, it's not just enough for it to be a contributing factor. Because it turns out that increased stress can cause death in a person who has a human heart that is significantly larger than normal. That the autopsy showed that Floyd unfortunately had an incredibly in large art much heavier than normal. His lungs were much larger than normal person's lungs because of heavy and overtime drug use. That he had eleven He had eleven nanograms of fentanyl in his system at the time primal leader of blood, which is over three times what it would cause normally to kill somebody. The original autopsy report openly said that if George Floyd had been found in his house in the same exact physical condition, they would have called it death by overdose. So all of these things taking into account, raises the question of reasonable doubt. Right, The standard in our criminal justice system is in fact a reasonable doubt standard, and that raises the question as to why there's not at the very least reasonable doubt. So you can say that your sort of first jump at this is he's guilty. Look at the knee on his neck, there's no damage to his neck tissue. By the way, in the autopsy report. You can say all of that, and you can say that that's a plausible explanation. I won't even make the case that's not a plausible explanation.
I'll make the case that.
A plausible explanation is not enough to convict a man in court, especially based on the surrounding circumstances. The amount of pressure that was brought. This was not a fair trial, was one of the points that I'm making. So when it comes to the actual trial itself, they are members of the jury who are at actual rallies wearing shirts that said I can't breathe before they were actually on the jury. There are their members of the jury who have openly said that they felt public pressure to convict in a particular way the president of the United States or one of the people who was running for presidents of the United States at the time. Joe Biden was openly calling for his conviction. The Minneapolis City paid the family of George Floyd. I believe it was a twenty seven million dollars payout in the middle of the trial. So all of this tends to go to is that an impartial jury. These all have serious consequences for the jury system, and so there's really a few separate questions. One is, was Chauvin responsible for Floyd's death. I think on that quese, I would say no, you can say yes, I would say at the very least.
There's a reasonable doubt.
And then there's the question of the amount of pressure that was brought on the jury in this particular case to bring a verdict. This was the most highly publicized trial of the modern era by a long shot, because the incident itself has spurred so much public onstine outrage and massive protests involving twenty million people and riots that had cost the taxpayer some two billion dollars or insurance companies some two billion dollars. It was the most highly publicized trial probably since the oj trial, and because of that that amount of public pressure. Did Chauvin receive a fair trial is obviously a very crucial question here.
But it sounds like your position is that this is more of a political issue as opposed to.
A policing issue.
And what I would say to you, as a black man in America that there are times and there's a preponderance of evidence throughout the years that shows that policing has been an issue as it pertained to black men, which is one of the things that we constantly constantly bring up.
So when that incident happened.
I'm thinking about the officer himself, been Shapiro, and his intent from the standpoint, you're having your knee on the back of his neck, no matter what from a medical perspective we can deduce may have transpired. In the end, if you didn't have your knee on the back of his neck for that amount of time or exceeding nine minutes, this would not have been the outcome.
And because you were insensitive to that.
As a trained police officer who should know better, there should be a level of culpability that comes in your direction. So when somebody looks at you, I look at it, and this way I wanted to go as well. I'm looking at a Ben Shapiro. And this is what I meant when I asked a question about you, being about if George Floyd was a Jewish person. I owe you an explanation for that. So I want to give it to you right now. You are known as a you know, a proud Jewish individual, incredibly supportive of the Jewish community, being amongst them Israel, other things. And I was bringing this up because I said, if that were a Jewish person, the conclusion that you ultimately reached. Would you have been patient enough to draw that conclusion peeling from the information that was the deduced on an objective level to reach the conclusion that, Hey, you know what, I don't think he should have been put in jail. That's where I was going because I know how defensive or I shouldn't say defensive, but a defender of.
The Jewish community that you are. And that's what I was thinking along those lines.
I mean, but I certainly hope so because I can name you, ecademic, you a dozen Jewish criminals who absolutely deserve to be in jail.
Right, Jeffrey Epstein was a Jew?
Hell?
Right?
I mean the the I think that I and my point is that whenever you know, I'm also a lawyer, right, I mean, my identity as a Jew does not mean I have solidarity with a criminal who happens to be a Jew, or a person who's in a who's in a controversial law enforcement confrontation who happens to be a Jew. I mean, my job is to literally remove myself from and and I think also that, as those original tweets show, I don't think that you have to have racial solidarity if a person in order to feel empathy for that person's situation. I think that the whole basis of a democratic republic or us having a conversation right now is the fact that he can speak to each other across racial and identitarian lawnes. So again, I think that there are an enormous number of people in the country who disagree with me, by the way, who are who share both my race and a lot of Jews who I was in the vast majority, who disagree with me on this, or many white Americans who looked at George Floyd and had exactly the same reaction. And as you say, initially I had the same reaction as you, and that had nothing to do with race. And so the kind of idea that if let's put the say, if race is a barrier to logic, then race is the problem, not the solution.
Right.
Let me ask you this, I mean, if you looked at you said before that you didn't look at the autops your report, You're you're not taking a lot of time looking at the evidence of the opop. What would it take for you to change your mind on the case or is there nothing that could change your mind on the case because you saw the tape, for example.
Well, it wouldn't take much.
And this is why I said this, because normally I would look at the autopsy reports or whatever you did.
I saw it.
I saw people bringing up as a rest record, I saw bringing people bringing up fence and all in the system. I saw all of these things, and all I could come to ben fair or unfair, was that none of that matter if he wasn't on the ground with a knee on the back of his neck for nine plus minutes, because I'm looking at a trained.
Police officer who should know better.
I looked at the experts who were saying with their trade there was no reason.
And you saw it.
I'm sure you saw this, and not to say that you would embrace it with the level of sincerity that others may, because I know the level of skepticism that you look at when you see the news outlets.
And by the way, I don't.
Blame you, I'm with you on that, okay, But I would say to you listening to experts talk about how police officers are trained, and pointed to the fact that Derek Chauvin had no business being in that position and putting George Floyd in that position, particularly once he was handcuffed and contained. To me, that, along with the ultimate outcome, is all the evidence I need.
And that's where we might differ.
Right, I mean that it's totally fair if we differ on that.
I guess the question I would ask you is, given the fact that that was in Minneapolis Police Department trained protocol, given the fact that Floyd did ask to be removed from the car. I mean, in the lead up to the situation, the part of the tape that nobody watches, he was actually outside the car. The police officers move him inside the car, he says he's claustrophobic, and then he claims six consecutive times that he cannot breathe.
Well, he's in the car.
So if the idea is that it was the police officer's knee that deprives him of breath, he was already claiming that he couldn't breathe inside the car, suggesting he was already in the middle of some sort of medical event, right, and then he was brought outside the car. I guess the question that I have for you again is what level of evidence would need to be shown to Freda it's a reasonable doubt.
I mean, you seem incredibly certain.
All I'm saying is that the reasonable doubt standard is what pertains in criminal justice. What would it take to get you to criminal to reasonable doubt or is there no reasonable doubt that could be achieved simply by dint of the fact that he had his knee on his neck. By the way, it's not for the full nine minutes. There are minutes where it's on his back. I mean, the even the prosecution acknowledges that. The real question is I think the last fifty seconds, right, the last fifty seconds of the tape, where Floyd stops breathing and Chauvin's knee is still on his neck, that is really the question as to whether this goes into criminal charge character otherwise he ends up being in a position where he's actually just using a typical subdual technique before you put the guy back in the car and you take him off to jail.
And I'm saying, to answer your question, there's absolutely nothing that could convince me that Derek Chauvin deserved a different outcome because of what you just articulated, what we saw, even if it's for the last fifty seconds, I'm not changing my positions.
I mean the restion.
Do you think, so we've talked about race a little bit, do you think that show show was a racist? Is that this is a race based crime interview?
Do I believe that?
Yes, I don't believe that based on anything about his history that they articulated, because I know how people conjure up evidence to go at it. I do believe his actions indicated that because I didn't see him doing that with anybody else, and the times that we were living in and the climate, as you articulated accurately.
I might add the heightened level.
Of sensitivity that it exists because of brutality on a part of some police officers. By the way, I never say with police brutality because I don't like to castigate all police officers that way. I know, if I'm in trouble, I'm calling nine one one. I'm going to sit up there and denigrate police officers throughout this country. But there's rogues that exist in every profession, and I think there's rogues that exists with certain police officers. So to me, he came across as one, and that was my problem with it. Having said that, I want to get to something else, because we're going to stay on this subject of race in this regard, when you saw the climate that exist, I understand you believe it was primarily instigated by the left.
I want to know.
Where you draw the line in the sand, and in terms of veering away from the political and just looking at a case on its merit and saying, this is what I see. This is where I stand, completely devoid of politics. I'm not talking race, I'm talking politics, meaning this has nothing to do with politics. This is the climate that we're living in. This officer should have known better, etc. Do you ever find yourself in a position where you're able to dismiss yourself from the political impact of something or the political agenda of something to join your can well?
I mean, honestly, I think that in this particular case, this is a good indicator of trying to withdraw from a political sort of calculation. Given the fact that, as some people have pointed out on a pragmatic level, they suggested that President Trump pardoning Derek Chauvin would be bad for President Trump politically. And the case that I've made is that's his job determined what's pragmatic for him politically. It's my job to call something out as wrong when I see it to be wrong. In terms of criminal justice cases that have involved race, where I've removed myself on the other side, I mean, there are a bunch of them. Walter Scott, right is a beauty, is a great example of a black man who is victimized by white police officer.
The police officer ends up convicted and going to jail.
You're saying, I'm not campaigning on his behalf because he deserves to go to jail.
The officer in the Walter Scott case.
There're been a number of horrifying or police involved crimes in which the police officer deserves to lose his job and or go to jail, depending on the activities of the police officer, and you have to analyze those one by one. And I think that what we've seen, particularly from the legacy media over the course of the last many years, is that the only types of stories that tend to break into the news are ones with a black victim and a white police officer, and the media immediately jumped to a particular narrative conclusion on the basis of that, and even if the facts end up debunking that conclusion, that narrative continues to be maintained. A good example of this might be Michael Brown and Ferguson, Missouri, where the initial claim was that Michael Brown was shot in the back by a police officer in cold blood, and it turned out that every aspect of that story was false. And yet there are still people who will, you know, sort of repeat the hands up, don't shoot law.
That never happened.
I mean that literally never happened, and that was debunked by the aeric Holder Department of Justice, for example. So I think that we really do have to look at each one of these situations in isolation. We're talking about the life of a person, if you're talking about narrative, if you're talking about sort of generalized race in America, then I think that it's important to look at as much data as humanly possible. I'm a data driven person, and so I'll look at everything from the studies of Roland Friar over at Harvard University about police misconduct toward minorities, and it ranges on the scale. By the way, what Roland Friar studies tend to show is that, for example, there is no disproportionate there's no disproportionate killing of black men by the police. There's disproportionate use of lower level uses of forces by police depending on the circumstance based on race. So that's something Roland Bryer has found at heart, right, That's the sort of conversation that I think is useful and interesting. But I think the one it gets telescoped into one particular case and then that case is used as sort of the meta narrative justifier, that's really negative and that's really bad for the country because what we should be doing in there, you.
Want to lose trust in the criminal justice system overall.
Telegraph all race relations into the OJ case, the Michael Brown case, the Eric Chauvin case.
The George Floyd case.
If you take all of America's race relations and you sort of put it on the back of one particular fat pattern, usually the fact pattern is not capable of carrying that narrative burden.
But ben isn't that easy for us on the outside looking at data, look at at analytics to make the to jord those conclusions as opposed to us having a personal experience or a personal investment, and like, for example, when it comes to the Jewish community, I would never think for one second that I could fully grasp and inhale what you experience as a Jewish person in the United States of America, when we've seen heightened levels of anti Semitism, for example, when people alluding to those kind of things, Well.
I'm not a Jewish person, so I wouldn't know.
What about the argument that when we talk about black folks, you can point to data all you want to, and we get that part, but the real experiences that we endure from time to time is not.
Something that you can necessarily calculate.
How serious do you take those assertions coming different from a community, whether it's your own mind or anybody else's.
Obviously, it's true that we can never fully get into one another's shoes, right, That's just the reality of the world. And that's true beyond race. That's just true for individuals you, Steven or me. As an individual, you can't live in my shoes, I can't live for different people.
We lived different lives.
But when it comes to making public policy, then the only sort of gauge that you can have really is the data, because anecdotal evidence, you can't make public policy for millions of people based on anecdotal elevenance, because you can't legislate people's feelings. I mean, this is sort of one of my things, you know, when it comes to trying to craft law, for example, making law based on the personal feelings of personal people's quote unquote lived experiences is a bad way to make law that is going to have to be generally applicable, because I may have particular feelings about a particular criminal.
Case based on my own personal experiences.
But if we do that, then what you end up with is a really high level of tribalism in which it's if your racial identity prevails or my racial identity prevails, really bad.
Things can come from that.
And the law is designed to treat people as equal individuals underneath it.
And so you know, the relevance of lived experience.
That may play a part in us being able to understand one another as individuals if we're having conversation over dinner, if we're giving advice to each other about our kids. But when it comes to actually making public policy, it's a different thing.
Yeah, you got, and then you make a valid point about policy. When you talk about policy, you can't just go by personal experience.
Has got to be the numbers. Has got to be the data. I totally get that, by.
The way, just as in the side before I get to my next question, lung experts testified George Floyd died because his breathing was restricted. So I just wanted to point that out, now, you know, because again that's with the weight on his neck.
We got to remember that. But let me go to this.
I mean, the Trump pardon, which you obviously was advocating for, would only affect Shovin's federal conviction where he pleaded guilty for violating floyd civil rights. The pardon would have no bearing on his state sentence for second degree and third degree murder. Even if Minnesota Governor Tim Wallace pardoned him, he'd remain in prison regardless of Trump's actions. Of all the things to ask President Trump to pardon, then why this ben Why so?
So? I've asked President Trumps to do many many things. This is certainly not the only thing that I'd like President Trump to do, ranging from tariff policy to foreign policy to tax policy. There are many things that I asked President Trump to do on a daily basis on the show. On this one because I think that it was such a driver of a narrative that I actually do think is false and has been damaging in the United States, which is the idea that there is a tremendous amount of racial tension in America and that's accelerated over the past couple of decades. I think that it's important individual justice above again that sort of group identity based narrative for the sake of the body politic into the The BLM movement of twenty twenty was at the very least incredibly divisive and on a material level, incredibly zamaging to the United States. And I think that one of the things that I'd like to get back to in the United States is a time when we actually had pretty good racial feelings about one another, and it wasn't all that long ago.
I think that if you go back to the pre data, yes, if you go back to I.
Mean between the black community and the Jewish community show, but the black community and white community.
So if you go back to Gallup Poles with twenty twelve, twenty twelve, literally twenty twelve. In twenty twelve, okay, seventy five percent of white Americans thought that race relations were on the correct were on a good path with Black Americans, and sixty five percent of Black Americans also thought that race relations were on a good path in the United States, and then by twenty fourteen it all jumped down into the glow fifty mark for both whites and Black Americans, and it never recovered from there. And one of the inciding events of that was in fact that the riots and Ferguson and the sort of elevation of this narrative that America was deeply emically racist and incurable ways, and that every inequality in American life could be chalked up to inequities that were buried in the founding of the country, and this whole broader racial narrative, which I think again that the best way to get past a lot of these problems, honestly is to It sounds naive, but it isn't.
It's just reality. Any group problems.
The best way to get past a group problem, if you're an individual, to talk with another individual and to treat another individual as an individual, as opposed to trying to reduce everything to group identity, which is the reason I think I objected so strongly when you started talking about racial identity with regard to this case, because my whole point was when it comes to interpersonal situations, the best way to treat other human beings, of course, is not as a member of a race.
The best way to treat them is as individuals.
And of course a race is a component of their identity, but you treat them as an individual regardless of what their race is.
Yeah, but my pushback with you would be Ben, I came. I came at what you said, not at you. You see what I'm saying, because there's a lot of things that you say and do that I don't disagree with. You know, I'm a centrist. There's some things, well, damn it. When you're make sense, it makes sense. Okay, we're having this discussion right here. I'm listening to some of your points. I'm like making sense or something. I mean, I get it.
I can't.
I might disagree, but I can't refute where you're coming from.
It makes a lot of sense.
And what I would ask you before we go, because I know you have you gotta get on out of here, and I can't thank you enough of your time and again I'm gonna come on your show when you asked me too as well, I really, really appreciate it. I'm not gonna run from it. But I gotta ask you this. When you talk about just treating individuals and individuals, one could easily argue that Ben Shapiro with over seven point two million followers, by the way, on his YouTube show, Okay, let's get that out the way with the Daily Wire and what you've been doing with that for years.
Folks are not necessarily treated.
As individual There is group thing the earth, and I'm not talking about just you.
I'm talking about all of us. I'm talking about all of us.
I'm guilty, You're guilty of everybody in my estimation where we think about something. When you had an issue with how I came at you, you brought up the left, and I'm disagreeing with the left at least fifty percent of the time.
But you associated me with the left. But you've disagreed with others.
I've heard you associate them with a group as opposed to treating them as individuals.
So that seems to be counter to what you just articulated.
So I think that you're right to point out that I should characterize us an individual with individual political views.
Sure I could do a better job of that.
And when it comes to, you know, ideological grouping, I will say there is a difference between ideological grouping and say racial grouping. Right, Race is an immutable characteristic of who people are. You know, no matter how many Kenny G tunes you listen to, Steve, and You'll still be a black man. And no matter you know, and no matter what racial stereotype I engagement, I'll still be a nerdy Jewish guy.
That's just the way it is.
But when it comes to ideological groups, ideological groups are quite real, obviously, and so describing people as a member of an ideological camp I don't think is targeting a group in the same way as it would be to target Blacks as a group, or Jews as a group, or Asians as a group, or any other immutable characteristic.
Hey beg, we're running out of tom. I know you've got to go. I've got to go. I would love to further this conversation with you in into the future, your show, my show, and it doesn't matter. I really enjoyed the conversation and I'm thankful that you came on my last question and I'm still a jackass. I just want to make sure I'm still a jackass. I just want to know.
I just no, no, no, no, Now, you're the best, Steven. That's how this works.
I got you, I got you, Ben Shapiro, Man, I appreciate man. I'm looking forward to coming on your show, and I'm looking forward to having you back on so we can further this conversation because obviously we're both running out of time.
Thank you for the time, Man, I really appreciate it.
Thanks a lot. I appreciate it, all.
Right, buddy, what's up everybody?
Stephen A Smith here. Recently we made news because.
The great Bill O'Reilly announced a tour that's coming nearest to you in the very very near future.
Get your tickets now for this.
It's called Three Americans Live March thirtieth at Live Nation's Flag Star at the Westbury Music Feel on Long Island.
Don't miss the very first show.
As myself, Chris Croomo, and yes, that man Bill O'Reilly take our different ideas, a different background, it's different beliefs across the country to demonstrate that respectful, meaningful and even fun conversation.
Those are the things that make America as great as.
It should be.
The show will be spirited unscripted, and all three of us will let it fly as we discuss the topics everyone is thinking about these days. There'll also be questions from the audience we're not running. Tickets are officially on sale now with pre sale code USA at three Americanslive dot Com. VIP packages are available with the opportunity to meet and take photos with myself and both those fellas. That's Three Americans Live March thirtieth at the Westbury Music Fair on Long Island. Additional dates and cities to be announced. Don't miss it. Trust me, you'll get a kick out of it. Welcome back to the Stephen A. Smith Show. Needless to say, I didn't agree with everything Ben Shapiro said when he dissects things and gets into the particulars of what happened with George Floyd and how the preponderance of evidence that we ultimately learned from would indicate that it wasn't murdered on a part of Derek Show, of an, etc. I respectfully disagree with him, but let me be decent enough to give him credit where credit is due. First of all, I found him to be very, very pleasant, and I appreciate it. I can't say enough I appreciate him coming on the show. You're gonna call somebody a jackass, don't go hide, you know. And he came right on the show, and he couldn't have been more pleasant, and he could not have articulated his point of view any better. I don't agree with it. I believe certain things are just simple. I mean, you're gonna put a knee on a man's back, back of his neck, etc. Exceeding nine minutes. I don't want to hear about things that contributed to his death. Nothing contributed more than that. I don't want to care about it.
I don't want to hear about an enlarged heart.
Because I'm thinking along the lines of, well, would that have mattered in the moment if you wasn't leaning on the.
Back of his neck.
I just think that in certain instances, one plus one really really does equal to.
And it shouldn't be that complicated. And I think that.
Derek Chauvin showed little to no regard for George Floyd's life. But I have to tell you that when Ben Shapiro was speaking and the facts that he doled out, I wasn't in a position to sit up there and say, you're just wrong.
He talked about whether he was black, he was Jewish, or anything.
I don't know, Ben Shapiro, is not for me to be accusing him of taking a position just because that was a black man as opposed to if he were a Jew. He was right to call me out on that. He was right because he said, there's plenty of folks from the Jewish community if something like that happened to them, and the evidence showed itself to be what I saw in terms of the evidence that the George Floyd k showed itself to be, I would have taken the same position.
I don't know Ben Shapiro to refute what he's saying.
We have to be fair and we're going to move forward as a society and be better in getting along with one another and walking across aisles and dealing with one another. There has to be a level of the coreerm indecency, in a willingness to listen, in the comprehend and embrace, even if you don't agree with it. I can understand where the person is coming from. I don't agree with him about George Floyd. I believe Derek Chauvin murdered that man, and I believe he deserves exactly what he gets, and I'll be damned if Trump should pardon him. But Ben Shapiro, coming from the lens that he's coming from and the perspective that he provided, I appreciated him coming on this platform and stating it for the record, very clear, by the way, very in depth, by the way. You know, he's one of those dudes. You gotta know what the hell you talk about. You're coming after him?
Now.
I respected it, and I'm going to live up to my word. It's not just about him on my platform. I promised him I would come on his and when he calls, I'm going and whatever conversation he wants to have, I'm going to have it because that's what he did for me. It's called decency, y'all. I'm glad he doesn't. You know, he didn't come to the conclusion that I'm gonna ass so or a jackass.
After all. I'm glad about that. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. But I enjoy it.
I just I don't know how to put it, ladies and gentlemen. I enjoy hearing different perspectives and being educated about what people feel and why they feel.
The way that they feel.
I have grown up so many years watching one politician after another or one pundit after another lies and be listening so much nonsense just because they want to feed some narrative or whatever.
It's good to run across.
People that genuinely stand on what they feel and why. Now I would like them to be open to being corrected, because just because you feel a certain way doesn't make you one hundred percent correct. But if you're honest about what you feel, and you're willing to articulate why, and you have an open mind to hearing and receiving something else that somebody's giving you from a different perspective, I believe that's how we make the world better, in spite of what our politicians and that cesspool they've created in the nation's capital try to create in dividing all of us. That's what I like. And so Ben's gonna do his thing. And I'm not a right wing zealot the way some have described him to be, or he might be. So I got talked with Megan Kelly earlier in the day. I may not share all of her politics, I go, damn sure, don't share showing head of these politics Chris Cromo's my god, I agree with most of the stuff he says, not all so many different Mark Lamont Hill, doctor, Michael Rick Dyson. The list goes on and on and on. We run across Roland Martin, so not I forget him. Candice Own's also been on this show.
I kind of like.
Just hearing an abundance of different perspectives and hearing where people are coming from, so I can deduce on a fact based, on a fact based level, where they're coming from, why they're coming from those perspectives, and how we march forward and do what we all believe ultimately will be in the best interests of this country, for our communities and our societies as a whole. I really appreciate it being Shapiro coming on the show. I actually had a good time talking to him. I know he's smart as a whip lawyer by profession. You know, a nationally syndicated colonists at the age of seventeen runs The Daily Wire once valuated a billion dollars for crying out loud to do this big time.
Whether you agree or disagree with him, he ain't ignorant.
He's smart as hell, which means if you gonna come at him, you better be smart.
I respect that. I'm glad he came on the show.
I look forward to going on his show, and I'd encourage everybody to continue to watch the show because he's a major play in all of this, and what he says matters whether you like it or not. You know, and if you want to challenge him, the one thing that you had to peel from his conversation with me is challenge him on what he says and what you know, not just what you feel, because he don't have to feel that way, and chances are if he feels differently, he's got a Factorbate's position to back up his feelings, which means you'd better have the same for yours.
Rising tide lifts all boats.
That philosophy applies right here when it comes to the conversation I just had with Ben Shapiro.
Thank you agatting Ben for coming on the show.
Look forward to coming on your show as well, And I hope y'all enjoyed that conversation I just.
Had with him.
Until next time, everybody, Stephen they signing off, peace of love.
We'll talk sooner.
