Trump called the family of slain San Antonio police officer Benjamin Marconi on Tuesday to offer condolences. It's not the first time that a president has called a family of a slain police officer, but it's a change from the past presidents and what they've done in the past. Plus, why the Democrats are falling apart, and why they need to get back on track with identity politics. Ben Shapiro's full show is available on most major podcast directories, if you search for it, you'll find us. Thanks to our sponsor, Helix Sleep, you get $50 off your first order, and you can try it out for 100 nights for free. And if you don't like it you can just send it right back, and if you like it so much you want to try it, they'll send you a 100-night trial of the mattress for free, so you can make sure you never, ever go back to the same bed again. If you like the mattress, you can get it for free by calling in and asking them to make sure it's good enough for you, and they'll make sure that you get it in the mail for free! And if it's not good enough, they won't charge you a cent, you won't have to pay a cent a night to use it for a night's worth of sleep. You can get a 100 nights worth of room service, and it'll cost you $50 a night, and that's $50 for the night you're getting a good night's rest and a free night of rest and you'll get it back in the morning when you're up to sleep the next day. Ben's going to get a little bit more rest, and a full day of rest in the rest of your day, you're not going to feel like you're going to sleep better than you can do that, right? That's right there, right in the meantime, right right in bed, right at the front door of your house, right next to the front seat of the house you're in front of you. . Thanks, Ben Shapiro - The Ben Shapiro Show, Welcome to the Ben Shapiro Podcast! - Ben Shapiro, the podcast that's all about the truth, right here, right across the road from the heart of the real world, right where you're at it, right on the ground, in the real life, in real time, right under you?
00:00:00.000One of the reasons Donald Trump has become so popular with many Americans lies in his gut-level pro-Americanism.
00:00:05.000Trump doesn't make blue-collar Americans feel bad about themselves.
00:00:08.000He tells them they're not racist, they're not sexists.
00:00:11.000Trump doesn't make those who earn feel rotten.
00:00:13.000He tells them he's earned, too, and he's proud of it.
00:00:15.000Most of all, though, Trump does not tear down law enforcement.
00:00:19.000That last fact was on full display on Tuesday when the President-elect called the family of San Antonio Police Officer Benjamin Marconi, who was murdered on Sunday during a traffic stop.
00:00:27.000Police Chief William McManus said the uniform was the target in the murder.
00:00:31.000Marconi's son Dane got on Facebook and posted, quote, just got off the phone with future President Trump.
00:00:36.000He sends his condolences to our family.
00:00:38.000Trump's team has said nothing about the call thus far.
00:00:40.000This isn't the first such call for Trump post-election.
00:00:43.000Shortly after the election, Trump called the widow of murdered New York Police Department Sergeant Paul Tuozolo to offer condolences.
00:00:58.000President Obama sometimes called the families of slain cops.
00:01:01.000He routinely called the families of black people shot by cops under disputed circumstances at best.
00:01:06.000When he spoke at the funeral service for targeted and murdered Dallas police officers, he used the dais to rip police across the country as suffering from implicit bias and racism.
00:01:16.000Americans rightly got the impression Obama didn't care nearly as much about targeted officers as he did about his misguided crusade to slander officers as the source of anti-black racism.
00:01:26.000That is certainly not the message from Trump.
00:01:28.000Trump isn't standing by bad police officers, of course, but he is making it clear that he stands by police officers across the country and that he takes their lives seriously.
00:01:36.000That is a hell of a change from the current occupants of the Oval Office.
00:01:46.000Alrighty, so much to get to here today, but we begin by saying hello to our sponsors at Helix Sleep.
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00:02:14.000They send it to you in the mail, and you can try it out for 100 nights for free.
00:02:17.000And if you don't like it, you can just send it right back.
00:02:20.000A customized mattress can cost you thousands and thousands of dollars, but Helix Mattress, they cost you a fraction of that.
00:03:18.000So, you know, the fact is that everybody's paying attention to the Trump transition, and we'll get to that in a little while.
00:03:22.000There's been some more good Trump, bad Trump with regard to the picks that he's making for his cabinet.
00:03:27.000Dr. Ben Carson has been picked, which is a...
00:03:30.000But then also he just picked a woman in Betsy DeVos for the Secretary of Education, which is a great pick.
00:03:37.000He's been stomping all over the grave of Kelly Ayotte, which is also a kind of... But he's made, apparently, Nikki Haley the UN Ambassador, which is a great pick.
00:03:45.000So we'll talk about all of those and what they mean and why this is happening.
00:03:48.000But first, we need to talk about the Democrats.
00:03:50.000Because the Democrats are totally falling apart.
00:04:09.000And that means that they have to fall back on the tried and true strategies.
00:04:13.000Those strategies include, of course, saying that black people are going to be victimized by white Republicans and saying the gay people will be victimized by Trump.
00:04:42.000I think that we, I think we need to, no, I don't necessarily agree.
00:04:46.000I think we need to deal with economics.
00:04:48.000I think economics is very important, but I think that we need to still
00:04:53.000Pay attention to so many people who have been left out of the system in one way or another, just like what I just talked about, voting rights of certain segments of our population.
00:05:07.000But we've got to concentrate on economics, because a lot of people are suffering, and African-Americans and Hispanics are suffering probably more than other parts of our communities.
00:05:41.000The way the Democrats, if they actually wanted to win, could win is by abandoning those identity politics.
00:05:46.000Or maybe they're so far down that road there's no way to do it.
00:05:48.000Maybe they're afraid that if they abandon identity politics, maybe more black people will vote Republican because they won't feel pressured to vote Democrat because those Republicans are evil racists.
00:05:58.000One of the ways they're doubling down on this
00:06:00.000Is the push for Keith Ellison, Muslim congressperson from Minnesota.
00:06:04.000The reason I say Muslim congressperson is because there are only two Muslims in the United States Congress.
00:06:08.000I believe the other one's Andre Carson.
00:06:10.000And Ellison, of course, was the first, I think, Muslim congressperson in the Congress.
00:06:16.000And so he's gotten major play politically over that.
00:06:19.000He's being talked about very seriously for head of the Democratic National Committee.
00:06:24.000There's a problem there, and that is that Keith Ellison is a radical, radical anti-Semite.
00:06:29.000I mean, he's radically anti-Israel, he's associated with the Nation of Islam, and the Democrats don't know what to do.
00:06:36.000They're endorsing Ellison because they're doubling down on the identity politics.
00:06:39.000So here's Elizabeth Warren, the senator from Massachusetts and the supposed god-queen of the hardcore left, talking about why Keith Ellison would be a terrific choice.
00:08:04.000But the thing is, is that, you know, after the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the communists for it.
00:08:10.000Okay, so he compared the 9-11, if you missed it, to the Reichstag fire, which was a faked fire by the Nazis in order to allow Hitler to consolidate his power.
00:08:19.000So he's actually, I mean, this is a far-left
00:08:30.000radical Islamist lie that has been pushed by people from those contingents.
00:08:35.000And there's Keith Ellison, by the way.
00:08:36.000You hear the guy in the audience saying the Jews benefited from 9-11, and Ellison basically going, yeah, maybe.
00:08:40.000I mean, this is the guy they're talking about for head of the DNC, but that's not the only thing that we know about Keith Ellison.
00:08:45.000Joel Mowbray, my friend who writes over at the Daily Caller, he wrote, the man poised to head the Democratic Party was a spokesman for the Nation of Islam well into his 30s.
00:08:53.000The Nation of Islam is a radically anti-Semitic group led by Louis Farrakhan.
00:08:59.000And later in life, as a congressional candidate, knowingly accepted $50,000 in campaign contributions, given and raised by Islamic radicals who openly supported Islamic terrorism and were leaders of front groups for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
00:09:11.000By the way, the period during which Ellison defended the Nation of Islam, the spokespeople were openly Jew-hating.
00:09:15.000In 1995, that guy, you saw on tape, Keith Ellison, he led a rally featuring a guy named Khalid Abdul Mohammed, who was a Nation of Islam member.
00:09:23.000Mohammed got up and said, quote, if words were swords, the chests of Jews, gays, and whites would be pierced.
00:09:29.000Ellison also defended Louis Farrakhan as, quote, not a racist, not an anti-Semite.
00:10:02.000Because a ceasefire is what we should prioritize now.
00:10:06.000A ceasefire protects civilians on both sides.
00:10:09.000It doesn't just say we're only concerned about people on one side.
00:10:13.000Okay, so the way that he wants to cease fire is by removing Israel's protection from indiscriminate rocket attack.
00:10:31.000That's Keith Ellison, the guy they're talking about for head of the DNC.
00:10:34.000Just a couple of months ago, he wrote in the Washington Post, quote, as I have talked with ordinary Gazans, I have not encountered anyone representing Hamas.
00:10:41.000The Gaza Strip is literally run by the terrorist group Hamas.
00:10:43.000Ellison openly associates with the campaign to end the Israeli occupation, which is a virulently anti-Israel interest group that labels Democrats like Chuck Schumer.
00:11:09.000Many stories avoiding elephant in the room.
00:11:12.000Meanwhile, the Anti-Defamation League, which has done yeoman's work on criticizing the alt-right, they have nothing to say about Keith Ellison and the fact that the leader of the DNC may be this guy who is openly associated with anti-Semites and in fact has engaged in openly anti-Semitic behavior.
00:11:26.000Here is the statement from Jonathan Greenblatt.
00:11:28.000Greenblatt, by the way, I've met him, nice guy, but Jonathan Greenblatt was an Obama staffer, okay?
00:11:33.000And here's the statement from the ADL, quote,
00:11:36.000We spoke with the leadership in the Jewish community in Minnesota, who confirmed what ADL and other national organizations have seen, that Keith Ellison is a man of good character.
00:11:45.000We have seen him through his work in Congress as an important ally in the fight against anti-Semitism and for civil rights.
00:12:12.000And that the Democratic National Committee will make a choice that affirms the long-standing bipartisan consensus to a strong US-Israel relationship.
00:12:18.000In addition, we want to make clear to those who disagree with Congressman Ellison that in doing so there is no room for innuendo or slander because of his race or faith.
00:12:27.000It has everything to do with his views and the views that he has openly espoused.
00:12:31.000Right, but again, left-wing Jews are not criticizing Ellison, they're criticizing the alt-right only, and you got a bunch of people in the media who are completely ignoring the fact that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and the entire left wing of the Democratic Party are supporting for the head of the DNC, a guy who's interested in doubling down on identity politics and who also has spent his entire adult life associating with the worst kinds of vile anti-Semitism you can imagine.
00:12:54.000And again, these people are all over Steve Bannon, which is okay, but they are completely leaving alone Keith Ellison.
00:12:59.000And I do want to point out here that there's a mistake that people on both sides seem to make, and that is they play the double standard game.
00:13:05.000They say, well, you know, they're focusing on Bannon, but they're not focusing on Ellison.
00:13:09.000Therefore we shouldn't focus on Bannon.
00:13:12.000The proper conclusion is you should focus on Bannon, and you should focus on Ellison.
00:13:16.000By the way, Ellison is a significantly more dangerous character than Bannon is, with regard to his views.
00:13:21.000Bannon's just a cynical opportunist who's willing to use the alt-right to get where he wants to go.
00:13:26.000Ellison is somebody who actually believes all these things, right?
00:13:28.000He's somebody who spent his time in the 90s calling himself Keith X Ellison, because he was an actual member of the Nation of Islam, and the media have nothing to say about it.
00:13:37.000The point of the double standard argument should be to restore the standard, not to tear it down.
00:13:41.000The point of saying, why aren't you covering X when you're covering Y, is not to say you shouldn't cover Y, it's saying you should cover all of it.
00:13:48.000But again, people tend not to buy into that because everybody's a partisan, unfortunately.
00:13:53.000Now, the Democrats are falling apart over this stuff, because a lot of them are saying, like Congressman Tim Ryan from Ohio, why are we doubling down on the identity politics that just lost us this election?
00:14:42.000He says, you know, while he's trying to figure out what the strategy ought to be, he's saying, well, Trump's business is a minefield for conflicts.
00:14:48.000The president can't have a conflict of interest.
00:14:55.000It is problematic because, clearly, I don't think Mr. Trump
00:15:01.000Realizes how significant the minefield is in this area.
00:15:08.000Keep in mind, Wolf, that during the campaign, he said one of his top priorities would be to bring honesty to government.
00:15:17.000He also talked about draining the swamp and used a lot of terms, basically saying that he was going to clean up government and he was going to make sure that there would be transparency.
00:15:29.000When you're dealing with so many businesses in so many countries, it's basically a minefield for conflicts.
00:15:40.000And to say that because you are the president that the law does not apply to you, it's not so much just the law, it is the appearance of conflict.
00:15:52.000Okay, so Cummings here is basically saying, we're banking on Trump to blow this thing.
00:15:57.000And if you're rooting for Trump to actually be a successful president, to do good things, particularly conservatives, if you're betting on him to do good things, you want him to stop doing the stuff where he's associating his business interests.
00:16:07.000The only hope for the Democrats is that Trump disgraces himself, and then they come back.
00:16:11.000Because 2018, the map looks terrible for Democrats in the Senate.
00:16:36.000You do not get to turn around and then proclaim that Trump is clean as the driven snow, pure as the driven snow, when he's intermingling his business assets and his presidency.
00:16:45.000And even the appearance of that is something that should be shunned.
00:16:48.000And there's an article today, we mentioned it a couple of days ago, there's talk that Trump had gotten on a call with the president of Argentina, and the president of Argentina had called to congratulate him, and Trump had brought up this permit for the Trump Tower in Argentina.
00:18:21.000One of them makes, I think, a whole world of sense for him politically.
00:18:25.000It doesn't necessarily make sense in terms of the job, but it makes a lot of sense politically, and that is the choice of Nikki Haley for UN ambassador.
00:18:32.000So the governor of South Carolina, Trump has now picked her for UN ambassador, and she is going to, she's going to accept.
00:18:38.000This makes sense for a number of reasons.
00:18:39.000First of all, does she have any foreign policy experience?
00:18:58.000But the real reason that Trump appointed her is pretty obvious.
00:19:01.000One, it gets rid of a potential rival.
00:19:03.000If he does a bad job and someone's going to primary him, it could be somebody like Nikki Haley.
00:19:06.000Two, it gets rid of these charges of racism.
00:19:09.000People have been saying his cabinet is filled with white men.
00:19:11.000Nikki Haley is a woman of Indian descent, as Ann Coulter has made eminently clear.
00:19:15.000And Donald Trump is attempting to sort of get past the alt-right thing by appointing a woman of Indian descent.
00:19:23.000Third, it actually has the effect of elevating Trump allies.
00:19:26.000So even though Nikki Haley was not a strong Trump ally, she critiqued Trump a lot during the campaign, criticized him a lot.
00:19:32.000The person who is the lieutenant governor of South Carolina, who will now become the governor, is a guy named Henry McMaster.
00:19:37.000McMaster was a huge Trump supporter throughout the primaries, endorsed him as early as January, even before the first primaries were held in Iowa.
00:19:45.000Finally, it makes Trump look a little bit more broad-minded than he probably is, because it looks like he's bringing someone in who disagrees with him about foreign policy.
00:19:52.000Again, the reason I say that that's exaggerated is because UN ambassador doesn't really have much of a say.
00:19:58.000If he picks Mitt Romney for Secretary of State, then you start to change your calculus about the kind of administration he's gonna run.
00:20:03.000Maybe he's gonna bring in some people who disagree.
00:20:07.000You want to hear me talk about the rest of his cabinet picks, however, you'll have to go over to dailywire.com right now and become a subscriber.
00:20:22.000If you're an annual subscriber, then you get a free copy of my novel signed by me, and you also get the ads removed from the website and all the rest of it.