Jussie Smollett gets off the hook for an awful race hoax.

Mitch McConnell plays AOC like a fish, and a mosque leader in New Zealand blames the Jews.

I'm Ben Shapiro. This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

Sometimes the news cycle just gives you too much to play with.

I mean, honestly, sometimes the news cycle is just so full of wonderful goodness that you don't know where to begin. But I know where to begin. In 2008, the U.S. national debt was $10 trillion. By the end of 2018, the debt was over $21 trillion. It is rising like a hockey stick. So if you don't think we are sitting on a house of cars, you are living with your head in the sand, but since you're listening to this podcast, you are clearly smarter than the average bearer. So what is your plan? Can you afford another hit to your retirement, like the last downturn when the S&P dropped 50%? You can hedge against inflation, hedge against uncertainty, and instability with some precious metals. Gold is a safe haven against uncertainty. And my savings plan is diversified. Yours should be too. The company I trust with precious metal purchases, Birch Gold Group, right now,

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All right.

So, quick announcement right off the bat.

We were the number one sold book on Amazon in the last week, which is a great accomplishment.

I want to thank everybody who purchased a copy of my book, The Right Side of History.

We'll find out where it stacks on the bestseller lists a little bit later today. Suffice it to say, we've sold legitimately tens and tens and tens of thousands of copies in the first week alone, and we couldn't have done that without you. I think it's an important book. Please recommend it to your friends. And thank you so much for helping it really sore on the bestseller charts. Okay, now to the news. Jussie Smollett. You remember Jussie Smollett, the guy from Empire. Now, I know, maybe you've never seen Empire. Maybe this wasn't one of your shows, but Jussie Smollett is apparently an actor, and he's apparently a star of Empire, a guy who thinks he's very important, so important and so upset about Trump's Merca, that he allegedly sent himself in the mail, a piece of hate mail, a piece of

hate mail that contained white powder and a scrawled craned drawing that threatened him with death.

Allegedly, it was a letter from him to him. So there was that. Then he decided, you know what,

I didn't get enough attention for the fake hate crime that I tried to perpetrate via the federal males.

So I'm going to do this thing in real life.

You know, take it from script to scream.

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