The Jussie Smollett hoax reaches its natural termination, President Trump's wall is still divisive,

and Democrats celebrate losing jobs in New York City. I'm Ben Shapiro. This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

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All righty. So over the weekend, the Jussie Smollett hoax turned out to have been, dun, dun, dun, a hoax. Everybody knew it was a hoax. From the very beginning, everybody with half a brain was incredulous about the story, which again made no sense. Jesse Smollett, an Akron Empire claim that he had received a bunch of threats, and that then at 2 o'clock in the morning, in Chicago, in the middle of a polar vortex, he went over to a subway to buy a sandwich, and on the way back, he was accosted by two gentlemen who were supposedly wearing MAGA hats. Some of the reports that they were wearing MAGA hats, and they wound a rope around his neck, poured bleach on him, and shouted, this is MAGA country.

Again, remember, at 2 a.m., in the middle of Chicago, in the middle of a polar vortex.

And they also shouted at him the N-word and the F-word and recognized him from Empire,

because that's huge with the Trump folks. Empire. They love that show. It's like number one in that

demo. So there were a few things that were suspicious about the story. One, the entire story, too, the guy still had his subway sandwich when he got up to go. And again, he'd be the best subway spokesman of all time. You know how much I love this subway sandwich? Two guys come out of the shadows, kick the crap out of you, then he just keeps walking. I held on to this. He then walked into his apartment right past the guard and then spent 40 minutes doing nothing, then called the police when they showed up. He still had the rope around his neck and refused to turn over his phone to the police. So none of this held together from the very beginning. Everyone was sort of suspicious, but you didn't want to be the guy to say, listen, seems like a hoax. You said instead, I got some questions, right? If you were a smart person, the first thing you did was say, yeah, this sounds a little fishy. Like maybe it happened just the way he said it did, but sounds a little fishy. Well, now it turns out it was not just a little fishy, it was the entire Mediterranean sea fishy. According to CBS News, the two Nigerian brothers arrested in connection with the assault on Empire actor Jussie Smollett are no longer suspects in the attack. They're now cooperating with police. A source close to the investigation confirms to CBS News that the brothers told detectives that Smollett paid them to participate in the alleged attack on January 29th and that they purchased the rope,

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