Ben Shapiro explains why the Statue of a 'Fearless girl' statue in New York City stands in defiance of the even more famous statue of a Wall Street bull. He also explains why Bill de Blasio is a certifiable moron and why he should be worried that the statue will be taken down by the Wall Street Bull. And he answers the question, why Trump is doing what he's doing and why it's so bad. Plus, Ben answers a listener question and answers a question from a listener at the end of the mailbag. Subscribe to The Ben Shapiro Show on Apple Podcasts and leave us your thoughts and reactions in the comments section below. Use the promo code SHAPIRO to receive 20% off your first order at Mac&Wenldon.co.nz/TheBenShapiroShow and why you need to subscribe to the show to get 20% of the first order you get when you subscribe. Thanks for listening and share the show with your friends! You can also join our FB group and use the hashtag to help spread the word about the show! and ask any questions you have about it! Thanks to our sponsors, too! Ben Shapiro and The Daily Wire . Subscribe, rate, review, and subscribe to our new podcast, and rate/subscribe to our newest podcast, The Ben Show! The Ben's Note: Rate, review and review the show is now on all of the social medias including Craigslist, iTunes, Podcharts, Instapaper, Podcoin, and The Huffington Post, and we'll be giving you a chance to win a FREE shipping discount on our next big box set! Thank you for supporting The Daily Show, and so much more! Subscribe and review our new ad-free version of the Daily Show on your first episode of The Daily Mail, The Weekly Mailbag! in May 2020, coming soon! Learn more about the latest edition of The Weekly Shakes Podcasts, The Daily Shakes podcast, featuring the latest in Uncensored Podcasts & The Daily Scoop, featuring Ben Shapiro's latest podcast, Ben's Secret Service, The Shakes and The Weekly Bumpers, The Realest Podcast, featuring The Daily Bump Podcasts? will be out on The Daily Remarks, The Fadi Al-says it's the most authentic and the Realest, The Most Authentically Unfiltered, Realest of It All!
00:00:00.000On Thursday afternoon, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is a certifiable moron, tweeted about the wonders of the left's favorite new New York icon, the bronze statue of a fearless girl who stands in defiance of the even more famous statue of a Wall Street bull.
00:00:12.000De Blasio tweeted, quote, unlike the charging bull, which has become a symbol of Wall Street, fearless girl is a beacon for the fight against injustice.
00:00:22.000Here are a few things you need to know.
00:00:23.000One, the Fearless Girl statue is funded by a hedge fund.
00:00:27.000State Street Global Advisors is behind the sculpture.
00:00:30.000State Street Global Advisors manages 2.5 trillion dollars in assets.
00:00:33.000The notion that it funded a statue to rail against capitalism is idiotic.
00:00:37.000State Street isn't just representative of Wall Street, it invests in Wall Street on the most general level by putting all money into funds that track the performance of the indices.
00:00:45.000As Wall Street goes, so too does Fearless Girl.
00:00:48.000Two, the hedge fund has few female executives.
00:00:50.000State Street Global Advisors has 28 high-level executives, according to the New York Daily News.
00:00:56.000Three, employment in New York relies heavily on Wall Street.
00:01:00.000According to the New York Federal Reserve, the financial services sector represented 35% of all paid income in the city of New York as of 2000, and more than 1 in 10 people employed in New York City were employed on Wall Street.
00:01:10.000The fearless girl statue is a bit of stupid virtue signaling by a firm looking for some good publicity.
00:01:15.000de Blasio has embraced it because he is a stupid man.
00:01:17.000But here is what de Blasio should understand.
00:01:19.000If the bull actually walks away from New York and the fearless girl remains, the bull is going to be like all the jobs.
00:01:47.000I'm developing a theory of what exactly Trump is doing in foreign policy, which is good because no one really has a theory as to what is going on there.
00:01:54.000There are multiple working theories, but we will discuss them.
00:01:56.000I think it's a theory that will make no one happy and yet everyone happy, just like most of the things that I say.
00:02:01.000But we'll get to that in just a second.
00:02:02.000First, I want to say thank you to our advertisers over at Mack Weldon.
00:02:55.000Use that promo code SHAPIRO, and you get 20% off your first order.
00:02:58.000Use the promo code SHAPIRO at MACWELDON.COM and they look good when you go out, they look good when you're in, and they are the most comfortable clothes I own.
00:03:06.000MACWELDON.COM, promo code SHAPIRO, get 20% off your first order.
00:03:10.000Again, that's promo code SHAPIRO at MACWELDON.COM for 20% off your first order.
00:03:15.000Okay, well we have a lot coming up on the show today.
00:03:17.000We have the mailbag that's coming up at the end of the show, which is why you need to subscribe.
00:03:20.000If you subscribe, you can be part of the mailbag.
00:03:22.000But don't worry, I'll make that pitch later.
00:03:29.000He is a Middle East and Northern Africa human rights advocate.
00:03:33.000And I want to talk to him because he thinks that the United States has an obligation to take in Syrian refugees if we're going to bomb Assad.
00:03:40.000And I would like to have that discussion with him.
00:03:54.000naval carrier and aircraft carrier into the waters off North Korea and there's been rumors that we are going to preemptively hit them if they were going to drop some sort of nuclear test.
00:04:04.000Seems to me a wild rumor the Trump administration is basically denied it because that could precipitate World War III.
00:04:09.000What folks need to understand about North Korea is that North Korea has like 20,000 missiles that are aimed, 20,000 rockets that are aimed directly at Seoul in South Korea and there are 10 million people who live in Seoul.
00:04:21.000So if something should go wrong in North Korea, then Seoul is immediately under severe attack and probably hundreds of thousands of people die.
00:04:28.000So it's very important that we handle this whole thing very carefully.
00:04:31.000The other sort of response has been that the United States is going to take some sort of retaliatory strike against the North Koreans if they should test a nuclear weapon.
00:06:04.000And here is Donald Trump praising the use of Moab.
00:06:33.000Uh, everybody knows exactly what happened.
00:06:35.000So, and what I do is I authorize my military.
00:06:38.000We have the greatest military in the world and they've done a job as usual.
00:06:42.000So we have given them total authorization and that's what they're doing.
00:06:46.000And frankly, that's why they've been so successful lately.
00:06:50.000If you look at what's happened over the last eight weeks and compare that really to what's happened over the last eight years, you'll see there's a tremendous difference.
00:08:04.000I thought it was a mistake to enunciate a doctrine in the inaugural address, which is we're coming home.
00:08:10.000It scared the bejeebies out of our allies in NATO when he talked about it being obsolete.
00:08:16.000It scared in the Middle East, the Gulf Arabs were scared to death.
00:08:20.000I think this is reassuring that we are returning
00:08:24.000Well, this is what's confusing as all hell to a lot of the Trump supporters, and we'll get to that in just a minute.
00:08:29.000Chris Wallace says that what's very clear here is that Trump has been basically humiliating Obama by being as quick as he is to use military force when called for.
00:08:51.000And this is a president sending a message that he's, as opposed to Barack Obama, willing to project and very comfortable projecting the use of U.S.
00:09:02.000And again, as I say, I think that Donald Trump has shown a willingness to project American force, what, less than 100 days into office, that we certainly didn't see with Barack Obama, who the Trump administration openly dismisses as paralysis through analysis.
00:09:20.000Okay, so, you know, all of this is sort of, I think, a little bit early.
00:09:25.000Not just because, you know, not because I think Trump is wrong in doing what he's doing.
00:09:29.000I think he's exactly right in doing what he's doing.
00:09:31.000But I think people are trying to graft an ideology onto Trump that he may not hold, and it's a little bit premature.
00:09:35.000But I'll discuss that in just a minute.
00:09:37.000I want to bring on our special guest today.
00:09:39.000Fadi Alkadi is a Middle East and Northern Africa human rights advocate, and he's written about what he thinks the United States ought to do with regard to Syria and what the United States has an obligation to do with regard to Syrian refugees.
00:09:52.000Mr. Alkadi, thanks so much for joining The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:10:17.000So let's start with Trump's strikes in Syria.
00:10:19.000You say that President Trump's strikes in Syria violated international law and you say accountability is the answer.
00:10:25.000What sort of accountability are you talking about if nobody's actually holding Assad to account?
00:10:29.000Well, that exactly has been the problem for the past six years, whether the previous former American administration was part of the problem or the solution is not really the issue.
00:10:40.000But there was never been a discussion, a conversation, an international conversation about how to bring Assad and everyone else who has committed atrocities in this particular conflict.
00:10:55.000I mean, to me, it's just seemed that there is a sort of a missing connection here.
00:11:02.000Mr. Trump's, I mean, during the presidential campaign, he has been sort of, I mean, I'm going to say it, he has been demonizing, you know, the refugee population, specifically, you know, those refugees coming from countries with a Muslim majority and the Syrians.
00:11:25.000It seemed to me that there is a sort of inconsistent policy in terms of, you know, dealing, you know, with sending, you know, missiles to hit Assad, but at the same time not finding the linkage to this problem.
00:11:42.000The problem is that these refugees really fled a country that is
00:11:48.000has been seeing atrocities and massacres over the past six years.
00:11:52.000And if you denied that, if you fundamentally denied that, you don't have an excuse to send these missiles to punish a dictator or a brutal governor.
00:12:10.000So I want to ask you a question about this, because this has been a contention made by a lot of people that it's fundamentally inconsistent, as you say, for the Trump administration to fire missiles at an airbase in Syria while also banning Muslim refugees from Syria into the United States.
00:12:26.000But isn't it true that, I mean, there are 50-plus Muslim countries all around the world
00:12:30.000Uh, that have the capacity to take in refugees.
00:12:32.000Turkey, obviously, has taken in well over a million Syrian refugees.
00:12:36.000Uh, why do you think that it's the obligation of Western countries like the United States or countries in Europe to take in Syrian refugees who it's, I mean, let's face it, it's impossible to vet their backgrounds because the government has no records and we can't trust the government anyway.
00:12:51.000There have been serious issues with crime and some instances of terrorism in Europe due to refugees, not necessarily from Syria, but from places like Libya.
00:13:01.000Why does the West have an obligation to take in everybody, or does the West have an obligation to take in everybody on Earth who is in some sort of dire human rights strait when an alternative might be available in terms of Muslim countries taking in these folks?
00:13:15.000Well, Ben, everybody has a responsibility to take in refugees if they can and if they're willing.
00:13:22.000And, I mean, I live in a country, we're talking now, you know, from Jordan, who has also, is a neighboring country to Syria and has taken, you know, approximately a million and a half.
00:13:33.000Lebanon is another neighboring country which has taken more than it actually takes.
00:13:39.000Turkey has taken so much refugees in the past few years.
00:13:45.000In the sense of the responsibility, it's everyone's responsibility.
00:13:50.000And the problem about the neighboring countries, they have been really flooded, their infrastructure cannot absorb extended waves of refugees.
00:14:03.000And it's just the matter of fact that we cannot sustain, and I think this is the key word,
00:14:10.000We cannot sustain the neighboring countries to keep on receiving more refugees or else or otherwise they will collapse and we don't want them to collapse.
00:14:20.000And there comes the sort of like the issue of Europe and the United States and Canada and everyone else.
00:14:27.000You have a very true point about why other Muslim countries like Saudi, the UAE have not really mobilized, you know, these, you know, have not
00:14:39.000provided access to these refugees in the past.
00:14:41.000But let's just face it, they are also on the, some of these Gulf countries are on the forefront of providing substantial financial aid to a UN agency that is providing aid to these
00:14:55.000to these refugees, which is, by the way, Ben, which is, by the way, another problem that Mr. Trump is facing in terms of this inconsistency.
00:15:05.000Now, we're talking about helping the Syrians and recognizing that a massacre has happened and something needs to happen, but at the same time, he cuts aid to the World Food Program agency, which basically provides food.
00:15:18.000But he's talked about increasing aid pretty dramatically for refugee programs, specifically Syrian refugee programs in the area by sponsoring refugee camps in places like Turkey.
00:15:28.000One of the questions that I have here is that you say that every country has sort of an equal obligation to take in refugees in human rights situations.
00:15:34.000Obviously, that has not been true historically.
00:15:37.000Obviously, to take an easy example, the Palestinian refugee crisis has been on the hook for 70 years plus.
00:15:45.000And Jordan took in many Palestinian refugees and then pushed them out to Lebanon.
00:15:49.000Lebanon pushed out those Palestinian refugees to Tunis.
00:15:55.000The problem that I have here with a lot of the talk about who should take in refugees is it assumes that all cultures are equally malleable and assimilate easily to the cultures that are supposed to take them in.
00:16:07.000It seems to me that it should be easier for Jordan to absorb refugees from Syria than it would be for France to absorb refugees from Syria, given cultural differences, which do make a difference in terms of how people have grown up, what
00:16:19.000The idea that you have to take in a refugee in order to oppose the slaughter of civilians, I don't see how that follows, in other words.
00:16:31.000Why is it bad that Trump is trying to bomb Assad and stop Assad from committing gas attacks if Trump doesn't take in Syrian refugees?
00:16:39.000It doesn't seem like there's a connection between the two.
00:16:41.000You may think that he's wrong not to take in Syrian refugees, but why is it now bad for him to bomb the airfield from which Assad is launching gas attacks?
00:16:51.000The issue about the global responsibility to protect those who flee atrocities, I don't think it's just a moral issue.
00:17:04.000And I'm not quite sure that it is sort of, you know, the issue about cultural differences can substantiate the issue of the need to protection.
00:17:13.000We have also to recognize that in some, what you just said, or refer to as culture, there may not be an adequate sort of structure to provide protection to those people who are fleeing massacres and atrocities.
00:17:30.000And I sort of think the neighboring countries have
00:17:33.000sort of grown to a point where they can no longer provide such protection.
00:17:39.000So I think that the main difference here is that some countries, some cultures, as you referred, have more sort of advanced, more of substantiated structures that, you know, that makes them capable of providing such protection.
00:17:55.000The other point, I think, is that when we talk about, you know, Mr. Trump's administration sort of sending these messages to
00:19:23.000They'll ship you a free digital scale right now.
00:19:25.000When you go over to stamps.com and click on the microphone at the top of the page and type in that promo code SHAPIROSTAMPS.COM, promo code
00:19:32.000Shapiro you don't have to go to the post office and stand in line ever again if you go to stamps.com right now if you go there then you get a four-week trial including free postage and a digital scale if you go to stamps.com go to that upper corner click on the microphone and type in Shapiro and you get that deal again you know one of the most annoying things in life is having to stand in line at the post office and and wait for those stamps so you don't have to do that anymore plus again that digital scale means you can weigh everything right there on your desk okay so
00:19:59.000Here is my theory about what's going on with the Trump administration foreign policy.
00:20:03.000There are two theories that have been put out there.
00:20:06.000Theory number one is the theory that President Trump is basically being co-opted by all of the evil neocons in the administration.
00:20:15.000That it's basically Reince Priebus and it's
00:20:19.000It's General Mattis, and it's all these members of the administration who are neocons.
00:20:23.000Nikki Haley, all of the interventionists, the globalist cucks, who are taking advantage of President Trump, and President Trump is basically being led astray by these people.
00:20:31.000This has been the line that's been taken by people like Ann Coulter, who is never willing to take Trump on directly, but instead will sort of blame his action on the people who surround him.
00:20:41.000So theory number one is that Trump is being co-opted by the establishment.
00:20:45.000Here's Ann Coulter basically expressing that theory.
00:20:48.000And for that region of the world, Assad is one of the better leaders.
00:20:56.000There are probably only one or two that are better than he.
00:20:58.000He's not even like a Saddam Hussein murderous thug.
00:21:03.000He helped us after 9-11, giving us intelligence.
00:21:06.000It's a very strange thing we've done here and I feel like it is such a departure from what Trump said on the campaign trail and in 2013 on his Twitter feed.
00:21:17.000Okay, and so she's sort of saying it's a departure, and Roger Stone, who's sort of this conspiracy-minded guy who worked closely with Trump, he says that Trump is being co-opted and Steve Bannon is basically being attacked by all of the neocon globalist cucks.
00:21:43.000First of all, I think Steve made an error by not spending any of his political capital to bring other Trump-ites and non-globalists into the White House circle.
00:21:52.000So now... He didn't do a good job staffing the White House.
00:21:57.000So therefore, now he's alone and he's surrounded.
00:22:01.000I think unfairly, perhaps, he takes the rap for the fiasco surrounding health care.
00:22:08.000Maybe Reince should be wearing a bit more of that.
00:22:12.000The travel ban is also probably counting against him, although I would argue that in Donald Trump's case, he only suffers politically not when he's defeated, but when he stops trying.
00:22:23.000Okay, so again, the idea is that Bannon has been surrounded by this cabal and they're taking advantage of Trump.
00:22:29.000So that's theory number one, is that Trump is being co-opted by this evil cabal.
00:22:33.000It's not Trump's fault, he's just being co-opted by this evil cabal.
00:22:35.000Theory number two is a little bit different.
00:22:39.000Theory number two is that Donald Trump basically just reacts.
00:22:43.000That something happens and Donald Trump reacts and there is no plan and he's just
00:22:49.000Acting how Donald Trump has always acted, which is he reacts to the news that's on TV.
00:22:53.000And there's a fair bit of evidence to support this basic case.
00:22:55.000Here's Sean Spicer saying that basically Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump pushed Trump into reacting to the gas attack in Syria.
00:23:01.000There's no question that Ivanka and others weighed into him as, you know, it was asked earlier, Hallie asked it, that when he himself saw images, he was very, very moved.
00:23:13.000And I think Ivanka and others, frankly, I don't think that there's many humans that came into contact with the president during that window of time that said, did you see those images on television?
00:23:25.000You know, I think there was a widespread acknowledgement that the images and the actions that have been taken were horrific and required action.
00:23:36.000Okay, so, you know, the story is that apparently Ivanka came to Trump and she said, it's really bad what's happening in Syria.
00:24:45.000Basically, Trump reacts to a certain thing.
00:24:48.000And then Trump responds to the applause based on that reaction.
00:24:51.000So, if he reacts, follow the course of his campaign.
00:24:54.000Basically, he leads off his campaign by talking about Mexican immigrants coming across the border and committing crimes.
00:25:01.000And a certain cadre of people cheer and love it and they think it's just great.
00:25:05.000At least Trump is saying this sort of thing.
00:25:07.000And Trump responds to them, and he panders to their applause, because Trump is motivated by one thing and one thing mostly, and that is love of Trump.
00:25:14.000If you love Trump, you are great, right?
00:25:15.000Trump has said this in interviews about Vladimir Putin.
00:25:49.000And so then, he falls into their thrall because he starts pandering to their applause.
00:25:53.000Now, Ivanka and Jared are leading the crew instead of Bannon.
00:25:56.000So, Bannon was leading the crew when everybody was applauding him for his trillion-dollar infrastructure package, and for his talk about how he was going to put up tariffs.
00:26:04.000That was Bannon's doing, and so Bannon was the guy applauding the loudest, and that's when Trump was friends with him.
00:26:08.000Now Bannon doesn't like what he just did, in terms of reaction.
00:26:11.000And so now he's fallen under the sway of Ivanka and Jared, at least up to the point where he does something Ivanka and Jared don't like, and then he turns on them in favor of another ideology.
00:26:20.000Now, what does that mean for the future of the Trump administration?
00:26:23.000We'll talk about that in just a second.
00:26:24.000But for that, you have to go to dailywire.com and become a subscriber.
00:26:27.000$8 a month makes you a subscriber over at dailywire.com.
00:26:36.000Live right now, if you subscribe, move really fast, go there, and if you get an annual subscription, you get a free copy of the Arroyo fictional border film set, obviously on the southern border by Jeremy Boring, all about the, it's about a rancher who's trying to defend his land against the encroachment of drug cartels into his land.
00:26:53.000Really, really good action flick, and you can go check it out over at dailywire.com, get an annual subscription.
00:26:58.000Plus, make sure you go over to iTunes or SoundCloud and subscribe, and then leave us a review, we always appreciate it.
00:27:03.000We are the largest conservative podcast in the nation.