The Ben Shapiro Show - Ep. 55 - Is Marco Rubio Toast?

00:00:00.000 Wow, here we are, and it is Wednesday, the second-to-last debate before Iowa is happening tonight, and we'll talk about all of that.

00:00:08.000 We will also do the first, the inaugural Ben Shapiro Show Mailbag on the podcast.

00:00:11.000 We used to do it on the old show, we will do it on this show too, so we'll be doing that.

00:00:15.000 Plus, all these balloons are here because my birthday is tomorrow, so happy birthday to me!

00:00:20.000 I'm a 32-year-old Jew tomorrow, which means I have one more year until I become the second most famous 33-year-old Jew in history.

00:00:26.000 I'm Ben Shapiro, and this is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:30.000 All righty, so here we are, and it is indeed the day before my birthday.

00:00:39.000 That's why these balloons are out here for decoration.

00:00:41.000 They're also out here to signify the competitors in tonight's second-to-last penultimate Republican debate.

00:00:48.000 So here is Ben Carson, and here is John Kasich, and here is Jeb Bush.

00:00:52.000 And here, of course, is Ted Cruz.

00:00:54.000 Here is Marco Rubio.

00:00:55.000 And here's Chris Christie.

00:00:57.000 So, in any case, leading up to the debate, I have to say that all of the pressure tonight is going to be on Marco Rubio.

00:01:05.000 Everybody is saying it's all about Cruz.

00:01:07.000 Cruz is the one who has a lot to lose.

00:01:09.000 I don't think that's true.

00:01:11.000 Here's why.

00:01:12.000 The main line of attack on Cruz tonight, there are going to be two lines of attack on Cruz.

00:01:16.000 The first line of attack on Cruz is going to be along the birther lines.

00:01:20.000 He was born in Canada, therefore he's ineligible to be president.

00:01:23.000 I don't think that this plays on a debate stage.

00:01:26.000 I think it plays in the press.

00:01:27.000 I think it plays with a certain level at the grassroots.

00:01:30.000 I don't think that it plays on a debate stage, and here's why.

00:01:33.000 Donald Trump is going to say, they'll ask him about it, and Donald Trump is going to say, I think he's eligible, but

00:01:38.000 I think that we need to ask the question, because otherwise the Democrats will sue.

00:01:42.000 And Cruz will say, let them sue, the only reason they'd sue is because they're afraid of me.

00:01:46.000 Right?

00:01:46.000 That's going to be his answer.

00:01:47.000 And if they ask all the other candidates on the stage if they think that Cruz is eligible, there's only one way that goes badly for Cruz, and that's if multiple people on the stage all raise their hands and say they think he's ineligible.

00:01:58.000 That's not going to happen.

00:01:59.000 The reason that's not going to happen is because this is basic game theory.

00:02:03.000 The worst outcome for any one of those candidates is if they are the only person on the stage raising their hand when asked if Cruz is ineligible.

00:02:10.000 If only one candidate raises their hand and says, yeah, I think Ted's ineligible, that person becomes the kook.

00:02:17.000 Right?

00:02:17.000 So to avoid becoming the kook, nobody is going to raise their hand and Cruz will get away with it.

00:02:21.000 Plus, it's an implicit rebuke to Trump, and they all dislike Trump.

00:02:25.000 So, I don't think this is going to be a big problem for Cruz.

00:02:28.000 The other reason that they're going after Cruz is because of the so-called Goldman Sachs controversy.

00:02:33.000 So apparently, when Cruz was running for Senate a few years back,

00:02:37.000 He took a loan from Goldman Sachs to run.

00:02:40.000 And this is not uncommon.

00:02:41.000 People take swing loans from banks all the time, actually, to run.

00:02:44.000 And this wasn't even a swing loan.

00:02:45.000 It was something even more obscure.

00:02:46.000 And they were saying that he didn't report it.

00:02:48.000 Okay, first of all, the idea that people are supposed to be ignorant of Cruz's ties to Goldman Sachs.

00:02:53.000 His wife works for Goldman Sachs.

00:02:54.000 Heidi works for Goldman Sachs.

00:02:55.000 So the idea that he has no ties to Goldman Sachs, that's silly.

00:02:59.000 But nonetheless, the media are jumping on this and trying to finish Cruz off with this one.

00:03:03.000 Joe Scarborough on MSNBC, for example,

00:03:05.000 He says that he thinks that Cruz's Goldman Sachs scandal is really going to cost him.

00:03:09.000 So here's Joe Scarborough, if we can grab that clip.

00:03:12.000 It's about halfway down the list.

00:03:13.000 I think it's clip five.

00:03:14.000 Mark, the big complaint when you talk to Republicans, especially Republicans who worked with him on Bush campaigns and in past administrations, is they say he's a hypocrite.

00:03:25.000 They say he's a phony.

00:03:27.000 They say that he preaches populism, but he went to the best Ivy League schools in America.

00:03:34.000 He's got deep ties with Goldman Sachs.

00:03:38.000 He was George W. Bush's, you know, at the center of that campaign.

00:03:43.000 That he was Mr. Republican establishment is plugged into the East Coast establishment as you could be.

00:03:50.000 And then in 2010, the Tea Party movement erupted, and suddenly he became a Tea Partier's Tea Partier.

00:03:59.000 I wonder if that's why this Goldman Sachs story stings so much.

00:04:03.000 I'm not saying that.

00:04:05.000 You've heard it too.

00:04:07.000 I didn't know Ted before this, but that is a constant knock, is that he's a phony.

00:04:13.000 And this seems to feed into that, doesn't it?

00:04:16.000 It's a constant knock, and it's one that he's well aware of.

00:04:20.000 Okay, the idea that the Goldman Sachs thing makes Ted a phony, first of all, worth noting.

00:04:24.000 Joe Scarborough, his face appears to be shrinking while his glasses and hair enlarge.

00:04:29.000 So he's actually beginning to look like a cartoon of himself a little bit, but here he is ripping Ted Cruz for being a phony.

00:04:35.000 Here is the real story.

00:04:36.000 Ted Cruz basically got a swing loan from Goldman Sachs for about a million dollars for his 2012 Senate campaign, which of course he won.

00:04:43.000 The New York Times suggested that it didn't appear in Cruz's FEC filing, his Federal Elections Commission filing.

00:04:49.000 Cruz's spokeswoman said that they did receive a loan and the failure to report it was inadvertent.

00:04:54.000 And the truth is, however, that actually, Cruz did disclose the loan.

00:04:58.000 He disclosed the loan in July of 2012.

00:04:59.000 So it's not like he was trying to keep this hidden, like nobody knew about it, like it's the end of the world.

00:05:04.000 The media are trying to treat it as the end of the world.

00:05:07.000 They're trying to say that Cruz said that he self-funded, he didn't really self-fund, he took a loan from Goldman Sachs.

00:05:12.000 Okay, taking a loan is still self-funding.

00:05:14.000 I mean, unless people are unaware of how loans work, you actually have to pay them back.

00:05:18.000 I don't think so.

00:05:34.000 I think that there are some people who are desperate to stop Cruz, but I don't think that this is particularly going to work.

00:05:39.000 And Ted Cruz said this.

00:05:40.000 He said, look, they're after me for one reason and one reason only, and that's because I'm starting to win.

00:05:44.000 Here is Senator Cruz explaining why all of a sudden everybody is focusing their field of fire on him.

00:05:50.000 You know, four weeks ago, just about every Republican candidate in the field was attacking Donald Trump.

00:05:56.000 Today, just about every Republican candidate is attacking me.

00:06:00.000 And I think that suggests maybe something has changed in the race.

00:06:03.000 But I will note that Mr. Trump is relying on ultra-left-wing liberal law professors at Harvard to make this argument, and the same professors he's relying on are major supporters for Hillary Clinton.

00:06:16.000 And, you know, some folks are asking, gosh, why is it

00:06:19.000 That Hillary Clinton's biggest supporters are echoing Donald Trump's attacks.

00:06:24.000 And perhaps it's the case that, you know, we've seen the last couple of elections Democrats were thrilled with the Republicans they ran against.

00:06:32.000 Right now, Donald Trump is losing to Hillary Clinton in national polls.

00:06:35.000 Right now, I'm beating Hillary Clinton in national polls.

00:06:39.000 And we're seeing Clinton allies amplifying the Trump attacks.

00:06:43.000 It seems to me we need a strong conservative who can win because we don't need another four or eight more years of these same policies we heard tonight in the State of the Union.

00:06:51.000 Stagnant economics and weakness to radical Islamic terrorism.

00:06:55.000 We need strength.

00:06:56.000 And so this is what you're going to get from Cruz tonight.

00:06:57.000 What Cruz is going to say is they're all coming after me for a reason.

00:07:00.000 The reason they're all coming after me is because they know that I can beat Hillary Clinton, and they know that I'm doing well in the primary fight.

00:07:07.000 Okay, so let's talk a little bit about what's happening to the various candidates.

00:07:11.000 I think Cruz is going into this one, into this particular debate, in relatively strong position.

00:07:15.000 I don't think it's formidable because I think that Trump is still on top right now, but Cruz is in pretty good position.

00:07:22.000 If he wins Iowa, right now he's running second in New Hampshire, or third in New Hampshire.

00:07:26.000 It's very, very tight for second place in New Hampshire.

00:07:29.000 We're good to go.

00:07:51.000 I want to spend one second talking about the problem I think that Rubio has.

00:07:55.000 And this is that Rubio is actually a relatively insecure guy.

00:07:59.000 I've interviewed Marco Rubio only once.

00:08:01.000 I only had one interaction with him in my entire life on a one-to-one basis.

00:08:04.000 It was at the 2012 Republican National Convention down in Tampa.

00:08:08.000 Beautiful place to hold a convention.

00:08:10.000 And so we're there, and I'm running around interviewing various people, and I run up to interview Marco Rubio, and he's doing a walk-in talk.

00:08:17.000 Like, he's been avoiding reporters all day, and I kind of track him down in a stairwell, and I'm asking him questions, all of which are pretty basic questions.

00:08:26.000 It wasn't attacks on him.

00:08:27.000 It wasn't about amnesty.

00:08:28.000 It wasn't about any of that stuff, because this is before amnesty was a thing for him, really.

00:08:34.000 And so I asked him some questions about Romney versus Obama, and he was extraordinarily careful in how he answered the questions.

00:08:42.000 And he knew I was on his side.

00:08:43.000 I mean, I was flattering to him.

00:08:45.000 He knew that we thought alike politically.

00:08:48.000 And instead of giving me a headline, he was being extremely careful, very calculated in how he answered the questions.

00:08:54.000 That's either a sign of smarts or it's a sign of fear.

00:08:58.000 Because if you're very careful in how you answer questions, it's because you don't trust yourself to get out of any situation you create for yourself.

00:09:04.000 I think the real difference between Cruz and Rubio is that Cruz is smart and knows he's smart, and so he feels like if he steps on a landmine, he'll be able to step off the landmine.

00:09:13.000 He trusts his own intelligence.

00:09:15.000 I think that Rubio

00:09:16.000 Isn't quite as trusting of his own intelligence, and so he appears insecure.

00:09:19.000 When you watch him, he appears insecure.

00:09:22.000 He appears smooth, but he's one of these guys where the faster he talks, the more insecure he appears.

00:09:28.000 The fact that I talk quickly, I'm generally a fast talker, it's not coming from insecurity, and it's pretty obvious it's not coming from insecurity, because I always speak quickly, and because I have a lot to say.

00:09:38.000 Rubio, it's a little bit of a different story.

00:09:41.000 So, that's been a problem for Marco Rubio, and it's why he hasn't been able to pull away from the pack.

00:09:45.000 So, as we go into the debate tonight, here are the poll standings as we go into the debate tonight.

00:09:50.000 In the RealClearPolitics primary averages and national averages.

00:09:54.000 National averages, Donald Trump is way ahead.

00:09:56.000 He's way ahead.

00:09:57.000 Coming in in second place is Ted Cruz.

00:10:00.000 Behind him in third, according to the Reuters national tracking poll, is Jeb Bush.

00:10:04.000 According to the RealClearPolitics national tracking poll, or the average of the various polls, it's Marco Rubio in third.

00:10:11.000 Carson is at 6, Jeb is at 4, and Chris Christie is at 3, according to the national average.

00:10:15.000 But, the polls are all over the place.

00:10:16.000 Reuters shows Jeb actually surging a little bit.

00:10:19.000 The bottom line for Rubio is that Rubio is static.

00:10:22.000 Rubio is absolutely static.

00:10:23.000 Right now, in the Iowa polling... In the Iowa polling, Rubio is running third.

00:10:28.000 And when it comes to New Hampshire, Rubio is tied for second in some polls, but he's losing ground.

00:10:35.000 In the latest Monmouth poll, for example, he's actually tied for fourth.

00:10:38.000 In the latest Monmouth poll, he's now running behind John Kasich.

00:10:41.000 So, he's got problems.

00:10:43.000 He has real problems.

00:10:44.000 And those problems were exacerbated yesterday.

00:10:46.000 Nikki Haley, who we talked about yesterday, she gave her response to the State of the Union and spent an inordinate amount of time attacking Donald Trump and the anger within the Republican Party.

00:10:56.000 And I have to say, I'm getting very tired of hearing, and angry about hearing, about how the anger of the Republicans, it's unjustified.

00:11:03.000 The grassroots anger is unjustified.

00:11:05.000 And I agree with Drew, that when Andrew Klavan says that anger is the devil's cocaine, I agree with him.

00:11:13.000 I think that's a hilarious and smart description of what anger is.

00:11:17.000 I will also say that doesn't mean it's unjustified.

00:11:19.000 And when it comes to being angry at the Obama administration and the RNC, don't let it make you stupid, but understand that the anger is justified.

00:11:27.000 There is something else that is the devil's cocaine, or let's call it the devil's heroin for a moment, and that is a feeling of tonal superiority.

00:11:36.000 There's nothing more infuriating than the people on NPR who believe they are smarter and better than you because they speak in soft, soothing tones.

00:11:44.000 When Jeb does it, it's very obnoxious.

00:11:46.000 When Nikki Haley did it, it was very obnoxious.

00:11:49.000 If you've ever been in a fight with your spouse or significant other, and they tell you to calm down, there is nothing more likely to make you enraged and punch you a plate glass window than if they tell you to calm down.

00:11:58.000 I know because this is how my wife sliced up her hand.

00:12:00.000 But in any case,

00:12:02.000 You don't tell people to calm down in the middle of an argument, and in the middle of a political argument, you don't tell your own base to calm down, especially because their anger is what drives them to the polls.

00:12:11.000 So Nikki Haley did her State of the Union response, in which she ripped Donald Trump, and the establishment is thrilled with her.

00:12:16.000 She does a media tour.

00:12:18.000 Everybody's talking about it.

00:12:19.000 She's going to be a great VP candidate.

00:12:21.000 She and all 6,000 of her teeth will be spectacular.

00:12:24.000 She's going to be awesome in every respect.

00:12:27.000 And then, and then, she disappointed them.

00:12:30.000 Nikki Haley was asked about Marco Rubio, and everybody sort of assumed she's bashing Trump.

00:12:33.000 That means she must not like Cruz either, so she probably likes Marco Rubio.

00:12:37.000 She was asked about Marco Rubio, and here was the toothy governor of South Carolina.

00:12:42.000 What did you say earlier today?

00:12:43.000 Did you misspeak?

00:12:44.000 Yes, it's been a long couple of days.

00:12:46.000 What I said was that I didn't agree with him.

00:12:49.000 I meant what I didn't agree with him was on the Gang of Eight bill.

00:12:52.000 I said that he wasn't for amnesty.

00:12:54.000 That's not what I meant.

00:12:55.000 What I meant was that he supported the Gang of Eight bill, and I did not.

00:12:58.000 Okay, good.

00:13:00.000 Okay, so that was her trying to walk it back a little bit.

00:13:02.000 But earlier in the day, she had said that she didn't like that Rubio was pro-amnesty.

00:13:07.000 And so she was bashing Rubio.

00:13:09.000 And she didn't just bash Rubio, obviously.

00:13:11.000 She said openly that she was bashing Trump, right?

00:13:14.000 So she's bashing Trump and she's bashing Rubio.

00:13:16.000 Who does that leave left, right?

00:13:18.000 That leaves Cruz.

00:13:18.000 I mean, if you're talking about the big three, that leaves Cruz left.

00:13:21.000 And so the establishment is now panicking because the fact is that Marco Rubio is stagnant.

00:13:26.000 Marco Rubio is not, he's not rising.

00:13:28.000 Everybody thought by this point he'd be consolidating support.

00:13:30.000 And right now, as I've said the past couple of days, the Republican establishment side of the aisle in this election cycle is a total crab pot.

00:13:39.000 It's a bunch of crabs in a pot, one trying to escape, the others pull him back in, another tries to escape, they pull him back down to earth.

00:13:45.000 That's Kasich, that's Christie, that's Jeb, that's Rubio.

00:13:47.000 That's Christie.

00:13:48.000 That's Jeb.

00:13:48.000 That's Rubio.

00:13:49.000 And they're all trying to pull each other down.

00:13:52.000 So that means that Rubio has the toughest job in the debate tonight, and generally.

00:13:56.000 He should be surging by now.

00:13:58.000 We should start to see the momentum build for Marco Rubio.

00:14:00.000 And it's not happening.

00:14:02.000 And so there was an article in the New York Times today suggesting that, in fact,

00:14:06.000 Support from the establishment may be consolidating behind Cruz.

00:14:09.000 I don't believe it.

00:14:10.000 I don't think that that's what's happening.

00:14:11.000 But I've been encouraging that for weeks.

00:14:13.000 I've said for a long time the best shot you have to stop Donald Trump is to get out of the establishment business entirely and get behind Cruz.

00:14:20.000 And it may be coming to that point.

00:14:22.000 Chris Christie tonight at the debate is going to have to go hard after Marco Rubio because Christie's only hope is winning New Hampshire or finishing second to New Hampshire and putting Rubio down in the pack.

00:14:32.000 I think basically Christie's line of attack on Rubio is going to be he's immature, he's weak.

00:14:36.000 You can't trust him to stand tall, and he'll use amnesty as an example of that, even though Christie is actually not anti-amnesty either.

00:14:43.000 So he'll attack him on that.

00:14:45.000 I think John Kasich is going to be his usual weird, wild self.

00:14:49.000 I think that when it comes to Jeb Bush, Jeb is, if you watch him on TV lately, Jeb seems like he's having fun again, which suggests that he thinks he's doing well.

00:14:58.000 Here's Jeb on MSNBC going after Marco Rubio.

00:15:01.000 Yeah, but Jeff, do you own any platform boots that make you taller?

00:15:08.000 I got my cowboy boots on, Big Joe.

00:15:10.000 Rocky Carroll.

00:15:11.000 Do they make you three inches taller, or are they just normal cowboy boots?

00:15:16.000 I don't have a height issue.

00:15:17.000 Let me just make it clear here.

00:15:19.000 Just to be clear, I'm height challenged.

00:15:22.000 My wife tells me there's an inverse relationship between height and intelligence, so I'm struggling.

00:15:39.000 He tries to buy it back there, and this is the part of Jeb where, honestly, that's why Jeb is losing, right?

00:15:43.000 If Jeb just lets the insult sit out there, he's fine.

00:15:46.000 Instead, what he does is he backs off of it by making a self-deprecating joke, which I guess is a charming thing to do, but it makes him look weak.

00:15:53.000 So here's, the dynamics of this thing are so fascinating.

00:15:56.000 So Chris Christie's big target tonight is gonna be Marco Rubio.

00:15:58.000 Jeb's big target is not gonna be Rubio.

00:16:00.000 It's not gonna be Rubio.

00:16:02.000 So he's going to, he's gonna continue going after Trump.

00:16:05.000 And I've been asking this whole time,

00:16:08.000 Why does Jeb keep going after Trump?

00:16:11.000 Why does Jeb keep doing this routine where he challenges Trump to a fistfight in front of a mass national audience and then gets his ass kicked?

00:16:19.000 I mean, it happens every single debate.

00:16:20.000 There's always one moment where Jeb says to Trump something and then Trump looks at him and sneers at him and gives his little look.

00:16:27.000 And then Jeb just collapses and whimpers in the corner.

00:16:29.000 And so I keep wondering, why is he doing that?

00:16:31.000 Well, here's the reason why he's doing that.

00:16:33.000 The reason he's doing that is because he believes that Rubio and Christie and Kasich are going to take each other out.

00:16:38.000 He thinks that they're going to have basically a clown car crash, and all of them are going to be laid out on the side of the road.

00:16:44.000 And then the establishment is going to turn back to him as the parent in the room, and how do they know that he's the adult in the room?

00:16:49.000 Well, because he's taking care of the toddler.

00:16:51.000 He's the only one fighting the toddler, Donald Trump.

00:16:53.000 While all the rest of them are fighting each other, he's trying to take care of the toddler, Donald Trump, and to contain the toddler.

00:16:59.000 So he's going to try and play above the fray tonight, and he's going to go after Trump again.

00:17:03.000 And he doesn't even have to beat Trump, he thinks.

00:17:05.000 He thinks he just has to consolidate the feeling among establishment folks that he is the guy

00:17:10.000 Who can be trusted and is responsible and is willing to take on all of the people that the establishment wants to take on, namely Trump and Ted Cruz.

00:17:20.000 So that's going to be his mission tonight.

00:17:22.000 Chris Christie's mission tonight is to knock Rubio down a peg.

00:17:24.000 And he's going to do it on foreign policy.

00:17:26.000 He's going to say Rubio votes a certain way on foreign policy.

00:17:29.000 I was a prosecutor on 9-11.

00:17:31.000 If you drink every time Chris Christie mentions 9-11, there's certain things I think we will find out tonight in the debate.

00:17:36.000 For example, crucial questions we must have answered, such as, was John Kasich's father a mailman?

00:17:43.000 Such as, did Marco Rubio's father work in a bar?

00:17:46.000 And also,

00:17:48.000 These are crucial questions, I think, that we're all waiting to have answered tonight.

00:17:54.000 But Chris Christie's going to go after Rubio.

00:17:56.000 Rubio's going to be trying desperately to avoid the fray, and he's going to be dragged back down into the crab pot, and he's going to get pummeled by all these guys.

00:18:03.000 John Kasich is going to try and consolidate a second place finish in New Hampshire.

00:18:10.000 If he finishes out of the money, he's out.

00:18:11.000 So right now, he's also going to try and play above the fray.

00:18:14.000 He's just going to do the populist thing that he's been doing, the establishment populist thing he's been doing.

00:18:18.000 He's going to air chop watermelons, and he's going to play Fruit Ninja, and he's going to try and play above the fray.

00:18:24.000 Jeb will try and play against Trump.

00:18:26.000 So, congratulations to me.

00:18:46.000 Alright, so moving on from the debate, I want to talk about Hillary falling apart a little bit.

00:18:51.000 On the other side of the aisle, the enthusiasm gap for Hillary Clinton continues to grow.

00:18:56.000 So, Hillary has a nasty habit, and you'll see it in this next clip, and we've talked about it before.

00:19:01.000 Every time she's asked an uncomfortable question, she laughs.

00:19:04.000 And when she laughs, when Hillary Clinton laughs,

00:19:07.000 My God.

00:19:07.000 I mean, when she laughs, it sounds as though the devil's maw has opened.

00:19:12.000 And all of the butchery of the last several million years are flowing through him.

00:19:17.000 I mean, it really is terrifying.

00:19:19.000 So she was asked whether Bill Clinton was in fact a liability to her campaign.

00:19:24.000 In a word, does he undercut the effectiveness of Bill Clinton as a surrogate for you?

00:19:45.000 Oh, I am so proud.

00:19:46.000 My husband's out on the campaign trail.

00:19:48.000 In fact, in New Hampshire and Iowa in the last week where he has now been to both states, people were asking me, when was he coming back?

00:19:57.000 When could they see more of him?

00:19:58.000 So, he carries a message of peace and prosperity under his presidency, and I think a lot of Americans would like to get back to those days.

00:20:08.000 Hillary Clinton, when can he come back and when will we see more of him?

00:20:11.000 Okay.

00:20:11.000 Number one, no woman is asking when he can come back and he's saying to every lady, you can always see more of me, gang.

00:20:19.000 So Hillary Clinton, the fact that she's dragging Bill out of the closet this early and wheeling him around, I mean, he looks like death.

00:20:25.000 I mean, let's be real.

00:20:26.000 Bill Clinton is beginning to look like a warmed over corpse.

00:20:29.000 It's weekend at Bill's.

00:20:30.000 They're stapling that wig on him and wheeling him around South Beach.

00:20:34.000 But Hillary Clinton is dragging Bill out of the closet here because Hillary is starting to feel a little bit of pressure from Bernie Sanders, which is amazing!

00:20:43.000 Bernie Sanders is the kookiest person in the United States Senate, and he is going to win New Hampshire.

00:20:49.000 And there's a very good shot that he wins Iowa as well, if he's got any sort of organizational base in Iowa.

00:20:55.000 So, Bernie Sanders was asked about Hillary Clinton, and Hillary has, by the way, been sending out Chelsea Clinton as her surrogate to attack Bernie Sanders.

00:21:02.000 So, Chelsea, and this is, it's so Clintonian, right?

00:21:05.000 Hillary doesn't want to attack Bernie directly, because then he'll fire back on her.

00:21:09.000 She doesn't want Bill to do it, because then Bernie will fire back on her.

00:21:12.000 She wants Chelsea to do it, so that way Bernie can't fire back on her daughter, and if he does, she says, That's my child!

00:21:19.000 That's my child prop!

00:21:20.000 You can't fire back on my child prop!

00:21:23.000 So, Chelsea goes out and makes fun of Bernie Sanders and says that Bernie Sanders wants to overthrow Obamacare and Medicare and all the rest of this.

00:21:29.000 And Bernie Sanders is now beginning to open fire on Hillary Clinton.

00:21:32.000 I think for the first time, Bernie Sanders is actually considering the possibility that he could win.

00:21:39.000 You can see the crazed gleam in his eye.

00:21:42.000 A gleam that we haven't seen since he was writing about how lack of sex caused uterine cancer back in the 1970s in Vermont.

00:21:48.000 He actually wrote that.

00:21:49.000 Bernie Sanders, you can see the gleam in his eye as he talks about taking down Hillary Clinton in this race.

00:21:55.000 Here we go.

00:21:56.000 Do you have the campaign infrastructure and the support from the DNC to take this all the way?

00:22:01.000 Well, maybe not the support from the DNC, but we have the support from the American people.

00:22:06.000 Thomas, as you know, we have raised more individual campaign contributions

00:22:11.000 We're good to go.

00:22:36.000 I think the American people are tired of establishment politics, establishment economics.

00:22:41.000 They want to see leadership stand up to the billionaire class.

00:22:45.000 Our message is resonating all across this country.

00:22:47.000 And yes, we have the energy, we have the funding to take this to the convention.

00:22:53.000 He's so excited.

00:22:54.000 You can just see it.

00:22:55.000 I mean, Joy Behar should just look out, gang, because Bernie's on the loose.

00:22:59.000 Bernie also says that Hillary is actually getting nervous about this entire campaign.

00:23:03.000 He says that he's gaining momentum and Hillary is starting to feel the pressure a little bit.

00:23:07.000 These two octogenarians are going to have a death match.

00:23:10.000 They club each other with their walkers until only one remains.

00:23:14.000 It's Mad Max, Nursing Home Thunderdome.

00:23:17.000 And so here is Bernie Sanders continuing to talk about how Hillary is now feeling the pressure.

00:23:22.000 Well, I think what's happened is, you know, we started this campaign at 2% of the polls, and now some polls actually have us ahead.

00:23:31.000 And I think we have a really good chance to win in Iowa and to win in New Hampshire.

00:23:35.000 And obviously, as we have gained momentum, I think it's fair to say that the Clinton campaign has become very nervous.

00:23:43.000 They're becoming very, very nervous.

00:23:44.000 Every time I see Bernie Sanders, it just, if you don't think Barack Obama has transformed the country, and I was having this fight in the hallway with Andrew Klavan a little bit earlier, I listened to Drew's podcast yesterday, and Drew said that Obama was not a transformative president.

00:23:56.000 If he's not a transformative president, how is this old codger, this dude, gonna win Iowa and New Hampshire, and in national polling, defeats all Republican comers?

00:24:06.000 If there has not been a transformation, this old badger,

00:24:10.000 Who's the kind of guy who you go to a party at your parents' house, and there's a guy who lives down the street they really didn't want to invite, but he showed up because there's free cake, and he sort of corners you, and then he starts jabbering about UFOs, and he's wearing overalls and a dandruff-flecked flannel shirt, and he's kind of spitting on you a little bit, and you're just trying to get up the spit guard.

00:24:29.000 How did that guy end up as the leading candidate for President of the United States?

00:24:34.000 How?

00:24:35.000 Okay, if Barack Obama was not a transformational president.

00:24:38.000 It shows the weakness of Hillary Clinton and the transformed nation that we have become.

00:24:42.000 And I think one of the reasons for that is because there's such a disconnect in the narrative.

00:24:46.000 My mom said this in 2012.

00:24:48.000 In 2012, a lot of people on the right side of the aisle, including me, we got suckered into believing that Mitt Romney was going to win.

00:24:54.000 And if you looked at the Huffington Post, there was no doubt that Obama was not only going to win, but that he was the godchild, that he was the god-king, and everything under his tenure had been just spectacular in every available way.

00:25:07.000 And if you looked at Breitbart, which is the website that I'm senior editor-at-large of, and I worked for them more at the time, if you looked at Breitbart,

00:25:15.000 What you got was Romney was definitely gonna win, Obama was the worst president that ever was.

00:25:19.000 Now, I agree, Obama's the worst president that ever was, but the Democrats, the reason Bernie Sanders can win is because the media have crafted this alternative universe where Bernie Sanders is right, and Hillary Clinton is right, and Barack Obama is right.

00:25:31.000 This alternative universe where they never even see, it doesn't even occur to people, that perhaps Obama's lying to them.

00:25:38.000 So, just more evidence of this.

00:25:40.000 Yesterday we discussed the fact that what went down with the Iranians seizing two American boats was a lie.

00:25:45.000 That all of that was nonsense.

00:25:47.000 That when the administration claimed that two boats just suddenly had mechanical failure and floated into Iranian waters, and the Iranian AAA showed up just to help out, and the friendly Honda people got out and changed a couple of tires and sent them on their way.

00:26:02.000 That was nonsense, and we showed yesterday that was nonsense.

00:26:04.000 You had Joe Biden on national TV claiming that we didn't apologize to the Iranians, and the Iranians forcing one of our sailors into apologizing to them on Iranian national TV.

00:26:13.000 But you wouldn't know that unless you listened to this podcast, unless you watched this podcast.

00:26:18.000 The narrative.

00:26:19.000 So all these facts are out yesterday, right?

00:26:21.000 All of these facts are out.

00:26:22.000 You've got all the pictures of American sailors on their knees with their hands behind their head.

00:26:25.000 You've got the picture of the American female sailor who's been forced into a hijab.

00:26:30.000 You have all of the information.

00:26:31.000 You have the video of the guy apologizing to the Iranians.

00:26:33.000 So what do the Democrats do with the compliant media?

00:26:36.000 What do they do?

00:26:37.000 The Democrats decide that they're going to just keep pushing.

00:26:41.000 This narrative, it doesn't matter to them.

00:26:43.000 So, here is John Kerry, the Secretary of State, thanking Iran for, by the way, there was a news breaking this morning, Fox News says there was no mechanical failure, which means the Iranians went out of their waters, grabbed a couple of American boats, and did it to humiliate Obama.

00:26:57.000 Here is John Kerry thanking the Iranians for the privilege of American soldiers being detained and captured and forced onto their knees at gunpoint.

00:27:05.000 Here's John Kerry, our Secretary of State.

00:27:07.000 I want to underscore how pleased I am that our sailors were safely returned into United States hands this morning.

00:27:25.000 As a former sailor myself, as General mentioned, I know as well as anybody how important our naval presence is around the world, and certainly in the Gulf region.

00:27:37.000 And I could not be, and I know the President could not be, prouder of our men and women in uniform.

00:27:44.000 I also want to thank the Iranian authorities for their cooperation and quick response.

00:27:51.000 These are always situations which, as everybody here knows, have an ability, if not properly guided, to get out of control.

00:27:59.000 Well, okay, we can cut this idiot off.

00:28:03.000 To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, you never really expect, it's not that you expect an Easter Island head to speak well, it's that he's speaking it all.

00:28:11.000 That really is the astonishing point here.

00:28:12.000 But there's John Kerry thanking Iran for

00:28:15.000 Essentially kidnapping some American sailors.

00:28:17.000 So thank you, Iran.

00:28:19.000 And it wasn't just John Kerry.

00:28:20.000 It was the head of the Democratic National Committee, Jar Jar Binks.

00:28:25.000 And she went ahead and she also said that all of this is just directly related to the fact that the Obama administration is so stellar and stunning when it comes to their foreign policy.

00:28:34.000 So here is Debbie Wasserman Binks talking about how it is that the Obama administration's been so brilliant with its diplomacy.

00:28:43.000 I think an example of the ability for us to quickly negotiate the release of our sailors yesterday was directly related to the fact that we have been working through Secretary Kerry and the Iranian leadership over these last two years.

00:29:01.000 And without that relationship, I think the results could have been very different and very unfortunate.

00:29:08.000 Oh, really?

00:29:09.000 Okay.

00:29:10.000 And then she added, Mr. Love Barack Obama!

00:29:13.000 I do believe the theory, by the way, the George Lucas theory that Debbie Wasserman Banks is in fact a Sith Lord.

00:29:19.000 I do believe the countervailing alternative theory.

00:29:22.000 So this is the alternative world in which the left lives, and this is why Bernie Sanders is considered a frontrunner, and why he's doing well.

00:29:29.000 And so on the right side of the aisle, you have people who even refuse to recognize that their own base is angry.

00:29:34.000 And on the left side of the aisle, they live in an alternative universe where John Kerry and Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are pillars of absolute strength on foreign policy.

00:29:42.000 And then you wonder why our politics are broken, and this is why our politics are broken.

00:29:47.000 Okay, so we have some extra stuff to get to today.

00:29:50.000 A couple of things that I like, and then some things that I hate, and then finally I want to do a couple mailbag entries because we have to go... We actually got some letters from folks, actually a lot of letters from folks, and so we'll go through some letters to the Ben Shapiro Show podcast.

00:30:02.000 Okay, a couple of things that I like.

00:30:03.000 So I'm a violinist.

00:30:04.000 I'm a violinist from the age of five.

00:30:06.000 I haven't practiced extensively for probably, at this point, six or seven years, which is really unfortunate.

00:30:11.000 When I was a kid, I thought I was going to go to Peabody School of Music at Johns Hopkins, and I studied with one of the top ten violin teachers in the world.

00:30:18.000 I was actually a world-class violinist at one point.

00:30:21.000 I decided you have to make a commitment at a certain point as a kid,

00:30:24.000 If you really want to be world-world-class, like soloing with orchestras world-class, you have to practice six, seven, eight hours a day, and you have to give pretty much everything else up.

00:30:33.000 And I decided I didn't want to do that.

00:30:34.000 I was only practicing like three hours a day, and that wasn't enough to make it happen.

00:30:38.000 And so, you know, it's a fun hobby for me.

00:30:42.000 But I do love the violin repertoire, and if you've never heard the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, it's a wonderful piece, and you should check that out.

00:30:50.000 My favorite violin concerto.

00:30:52.000 Probably.

00:30:52.000 And there's so many great pieces in the violin repertoire that are fun to play and fun to listen to.

00:30:59.000 The Brahms Violin Concerto is terrific.

00:31:01.000 There's a showpiece called Preludium and Allegro by Fritz Kreisler that's a lot of fun.

00:31:06.000 And I thought that since my birthday is tomorrow, we may as well celebrate with a 20-year-old piece, a video.

00:31:13.000 So, you know, 20 years ago,

00:31:15.000 I was 12, and I was playing at the Israeli Bonds Banquet.

00:31:20.000 So I know that a lot of people have seen this already.

00:31:21.000 It has probably 50,000 hits on YouTube or something.

00:31:24.000 But if you haven't seen it, here's a small piece of me playing violin when I was but a lad.

00:31:29.000 And not much has changed.

00:31:30.000 I basically have that amount of fat on my cheeks still.

00:31:32.000 But here is me when I was 12 years old playing some violin.

00:31:44.000 We're good to go.

00:32:08.000 We're good to go.

00:32:33.000 We're good.

00:32:49.000 Oh, I was a cutie.

00:32:50.000 And look what all that talent has brought me to.

00:32:55.000 Balloons on my desk.

00:32:55.000 So, Schindler's List.

00:32:58.000 It was actually introduced by Larry King, and it was weird because I was interviewed by Larry King like two years ago, and I brought this tape up to him.

00:33:05.000 He did not, of course, remember it, but he introduced me in this piece beforehand by saying that at the time I wanted to be on the Supreme Court of the United States, and so the Supreme Court would have to close early on Fridays.

00:33:15.000 So there are some things that I like.

00:33:18.000 Not necessarily me playing violin.

00:33:20.000 It's hard to watch yourself, you know, because you realize where you're making all the mistakes, but it's fun anyway.

00:33:26.000 Okay, some things that I hate.

00:33:27.000 The Oscar nominations are out today.

00:33:29.000 And the Oscar nominations are out, and one of the things they did in 2009, the Oscars, is they decided they were going to broaden the category of best picture to include anywhere from 5 to 10 movies.

00:33:41.000 So it could be all the way up to 10 movies.

00:33:43.000 And the stated goal was that they wanted to include movies that people liked, right?

00:33:47.000 They were sick of putting up movies that nobody had ever seen.

00:33:50.000 Yeah, not so much.

00:33:50.000 So there were eight nominees for Best Picture this year.

00:33:52.000 The Big Short, Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn, Mad Max Fury Road, The Martian, The Revenant, Room, and Spotlight.

00:34:16.000 So I will freely admit, the only one of these movies I've seen, like pretty much everyone else, is The Martian, right?

00:34:20.000 That's the only movie on this list that I've seen.

00:34:22.000 I know a lot of people saw Mad Max Fury Road.

00:34:24.000 It made about $150 million at the box office.

00:34:27.000 There are two movies on this list that made over $100 million at the box office, which is kind of, for a big-budget film, that's at this point almost break-even point for a lot of big-budget films.

00:34:37.000 The other films, Bridge of Spies, which was the Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg movie, that one pretty much bombed at the office.

00:34:43.000 The Big Short never did big business.

00:34:45.000 And so the question is, why is it that none of the films that actually made money got nominated for Best Picture or pretty much for anything?

00:34:52.000 Because Hollywood is so leftist that even when it comes to the acting categories, they didn't put up anyone who you would possibly think was up for it.

00:35:00.000 So for example, I think that there's a good case that Han Solo, right?

00:35:04.000 Harrison Ford.

00:35:05.000 Why not give him a Best Supporting Actor nomination?

00:35:08.000 Right?

00:35:08.000 Why is that so bad?

00:35:09.000 Why would it be so terrible?

00:35:10.000 It's a weak category this year.

00:35:11.000 Why not give him a Best Supporting... Like, everyone went to the theater to watch Han Solo.

00:35:15.000 Right?

00:35:15.000 That's why you went.

00:35:17.000 If Han Solo's not in that movie, you don't go to see the movie.

00:35:19.000 Right, then you're back in the prequels and everyone hates those because they're garbage.

00:35:22.000 So the fact is that Harrison Ford, right, he could have been nominated, that wouldn't have been a big deal, but they did nominate Cate Blanchett and Rudy Mara for being lesbians in the 50s in Carol, a movie that has now more nominees than people who have ever seen it.

00:35:35.000 They nominated Eddie Redmayne for playing a transgender woman from the 1920s in this ridiculous movie called The Danish Girl, which we've talked about on the show before.

00:35:43.000 So did Alicia Vikander, who's a very beautiful woman, but she plays the wife in The Danish Girl.

00:35:48.000 That's not even her best role of the year, right?

00:35:50.000 Ex Machina came out this year, and she's actually really good in Ex Machina.

00:35:53.000 If you're gonna nominate her, nominate her for that.

00:35:55.000 That was a surprise hit.

00:35:56.000 So the question is, why didn't they nominate any of these?

00:35:58.000 Especially because, if you go back in history, for example, wouldn't it have been so terrible?

00:36:03.000 There are ten movies.

00:36:04.000 Star Wars isn't gonna win Best Picture.

00:36:06.000 Couldn't you give it a nod?

00:36:07.000 Give it a nomination?

00:36:08.000 Okay, it's the number one earning picture of all time.

00:36:11.000 You couldn't give it a nomination?

00:36:12.000 Like, really?

00:36:13.000 The original Star Wars, Episode IV, was nominated for Best Picture in 1978.

00:36:17.000 Or Jurassic World, would it be so terrible to give that a nomination for something?

00:36:21.000 It wasn't a great movie, but it's a good, fun movie.

00:36:23.000 Jurassic Park won three Academy Awards back in 1993, and probably should have been nominated for Best Picture that year, considering that Remains of the Day was, and that is the single most boring thing ever put on film.

00:36:34.000 Inside Out certainly should have been nominated.

00:36:36.000 Inside Out, the animated flick?

00:36:38.000 Really a terrifically creative film.

00:36:40.000 Really creative.

00:36:41.000 They left two slots empty.

00:36:42.000 They didn't even fill out all their slots.

00:36:44.000 Would it have been such a terrible thing for all the people and made $356 million at the box office, at the domestic box office, would it have been such an awful thing to give this sop to the American public?

00:36:57.000 We saw a movie and we want to root for that movie to win.

00:36:59.000 When's the last time like a real blockbuster big picture epic won best picture?

00:37:04.000 Was it Return of the King maybe?

00:37:07.000 I think it was Return of the King.

00:37:08.000 And then it's been nothing since.

00:37:10.000 None of the Batman flicks.

00:37:11.000 Dark Knight certainly should have won best.

00:37:13.000 What came out the year of Dark Knight?

00:37:14.000 What won that year?

00:37:15.000 Does anyone even remember?

00:37:16.000 Hurt Locker.

00:37:17.000 I mean, that's a joke.

00:37:18.000 Hurt Locker won that year.

00:37:18.000 That's exactly right.

00:37:19.000 Hurt Locker won that year.

00:37:20.000 Hurt Locker is a mediocre flick at best.

00:37:23.000 At best.

00:37:24.000 And last year, American Sniper loses to Birdman?

00:37:28.000 Are you kidding me?

00:37:29.000 Are you kidding me?

00:37:31.000 Right?

00:37:31.000 But this is even worse.

00:37:32.000 At least American Sniper was nominated.

00:37:34.000 Of course, if it had not been made by Clint Eastwood, it wouldn't have been nominated.

00:37:37.000 And the critics would have savaged the crap out of it.

00:37:38.000 No question.

00:37:39.000 Clint Eastwood gave that film a shield.

00:37:42.000 But here's the point.

00:37:44.000 There are a bunch of movies on this list.

00:37:45.000 Cinderella.

00:37:46.000 Did anyone here see Cinderella?

00:37:47.000 The Disney film?

00:37:48.000 Charming.

00:37:49.000 Absolutely charming.

00:37:50.000 Just a beautifully made film.

00:37:52.000 The only thing it got nominated for, basically, was Best Costume Design.

00:37:55.000 Beauty and the Beast was nominated in the early 90s for Best Picture.

00:37:58.000 Would it be so terrible that a movie that, like, my kid could see would get nominated for Best Picture?

00:38:03.000 But instead, we have to, you know, get...

00:38:06.000 Instead we have to get the big short?

00:38:08.000 Something about the financial collapse?

00:38:10.000 Like anyone cares?

00:38:11.000 We lived through it, okay?

00:38:12.000 It sucked.

00:38:12.000 Got it.

00:38:13.000 You know, it's fine.

00:38:14.000 You want to make that movie?

00:38:15.000 Blow your money on making it.

00:38:17.000 The cast for the big short is maybe the best cast of the last 10 years.

00:38:20.000 And it's in a movie that made 33 million dollars.

00:38:22.000 Because the priorities of Hollywood are always their politics and never what you care about.

00:38:27.000 They just use what you care about to fund their own priorities and then slap you in the face over it.

00:38:31.000 Which is why all of the ratings are going down for the Oscars as well they should.

00:38:35.000 So, you know, that's something that I really hate is the elitism of the Academy.

00:38:38.000 It really would not kill them.

00:38:39.000 It would not kill them at all if they were to nominate at least a couple of flicks that some people might have liked.

00:38:45.000 I mean, even at the Golden Globes, they couldn't even put the Martian in the right category.

00:38:49.000 They give it an award for comedy or musical.

00:38:51.000 Musical!

00:38:52.000 I wasn't aware that Matt Damon was singing while he sifted his own crap in a Martian tent.

00:38:56.000 I wasn't aware that that was part of the film.

00:38:58.000 Okay, so that's something I hate.

00:38:59.000 And speaking of Hollywood things that I hate, there's something that's making the rounds right now that's really quite horrible.

00:39:06.000 It's this show on Netflix, and I've watched a couple of episodes of it, called Making of a Murderer.

00:39:11.000 It's about a guy named Stephen Avery, and it's become a big thing now.

00:39:14.000 It's a 10-part documentary, 10 hours of your life that you can waste watching this.

00:39:19.000 In which basically these documentary makers leave out all of the evidence to suggest that a guy who murdered a girl didn't actually murder the girl, that it was a big conspiracy by the state of Wisconsin in order to get this guy because they had wrongfully imprisoned him on charges of rape, he got out, and then they framed him for murder, right?

00:39:34.000 And here's the trailer for Making of a Murderer in case you missed it.

00:39:37.000 Let's grab the trailer if we can first.

00:39:40.000 And then we'll go to the woman who is the fiancé.

00:39:43.000 And we don't have the trailer?

00:39:44.000 Okay, fine.

00:39:45.000 So here, in any case, Stephen Avery's ex, his ex-fiancé, she's now coming out.

00:39:51.000 This is the guy who was the supposed innocent in all of this.

00:39:54.000 She's coming out and she's saying, oh no, he absolutely did it.

00:39:56.000 And here is her testifying about the fact that he absolutely did it and what kind of a guy he was.

00:40:02.000 So we can play that.

00:40:03.000 Do you believe Stephen Avery killed Teresa Halbach?

00:40:06.000 Yes, I do.

00:40:08.000 Why?

00:40:10.000 Because he threatened to kill me and my family and a friend of mine.

00:40:17.000 How did he threaten you?

00:40:20.000 I was in a bath and he threatened to throw a blow dryer in there and he told me that he'd be able to get away with it.

00:40:28.000 What was the reason?

00:40:31.000 He's sick.

00:40:33.000 What was your relationship like with him?

00:40:37.000 Not good.

00:40:38.000 Abusive.

00:40:42.000 What kinds of things would he do to you?

00:40:44.000 He'd beat me all the time, punch me, throw me against the wall.

00:40:51.000 I'd try to leave, he'd smash the windshield out of my car so I couldn't leave him.

00:40:57.000 I was at work one day and he was up there spying through a window.

00:41:04.000 I got in the car after work, I knew nothing about it and he just started slapping me and got back to the jail.

00:41:16.000 They told me I wouldn't be working anymore so I couldn't see him because they noticed the red marks on my face.

00:41:25.000 How long were you in a relationship with him?

00:41:28.000 Two years.

00:41:30.000 Just about two years.

00:41:31.000 Okay, we can cut it off there.

00:41:32.000 First of all, stellar camera work by Headline News.

00:41:34.000 The camera's on the reporter literally this entire interview, so you're just hearing this woman cry off-screen.

00:41:40.000 But, okay, so for people who don't know, this guy murdered a woman named Teresa Halbach.

00:41:44.000 He was a 25-year-old photographer, and he catfished her to his house.

00:41:48.000 He said that he wanted her to come there to do a photo shoot for Autotrader magazine.

00:41:53.000 I don't know.

00:42:04.000 Hollywood finds a romance in turning villains into victims.

00:42:27.000 And this is true going- Bob Dylan did this with the hurricane, right?

00:42:29.000 Hurricane Carter was a guilty man.

00:42:30.000 He was not innocent.

00:42:32.000 They tried to turn him into an innocent man.

00:42:33.000 They made a movie about him with Will Smith.

00:42:35.000 It's not true.

00:42:36.000 He was guilty.

00:42:37.000 Now Fox is about to do this with O.J.

00:42:39.000 Simpson.

00:42:39.000 They have a miniseries they're doing with Cuba Gooding Jr.

00:42:41.000 about O.J.

00:42:42.000 Simpson where they leave it up to the audience whether O.J.

00:42:44.000 did it.

00:42:46.000 Which is just... O.J.

00:42:47.000 did it, okay?

00:42:48.000 Just telling you straight out.

00:42:49.000 O.J.

00:42:49.000 murdered his ex-wife, and then he murdered Ronald Goldman as well, and he's a brutal murderer.

00:42:54.000 Okay?

00:42:54.000 But this is what Hollywood likes to do, and the way that they explain all of this is they talk about the backstory, the side of the killer that you didn't know.

00:43:02.000 The side of the killer you didn't know.

00:43:03.000 And what's really fascinating about the Bible... Obviously, I love the Bible.

00:43:07.000 I'm a believer in the Bible.

00:43:08.000 It's why I wear a yarmulke.

00:43:08.000 It's why I'm an Orthodox Jew.

00:43:10.000 When it comes to the Bible, God, who wrote it, does not care about backstory.

00:43:15.000 One of the fascinating things, if you read any element of the Bible, is basically what you get is the lineage of the person, and then fast forward to when they're adult making decisions.

00:43:23.000 You don't get anything about how they were mistreated by their siblings, or how they were

00:43:27.000 We're good to go.

00:43:42.000 The backstory is usually the least interesting part of the person.

00:43:46.000 It's why Hollywood likes backstory and not plot, and plot has gotten weaker over time and backstory has gotten stronger over time.

00:43:53.000 We were talking specifically about the fact that now they're gonna make a movie with young Han Solo talking about his formative experiences.

00:43:58.000 I don't care.

00:44:00.000 I don't care.

00:44:01.000 I'm not gonna watch that movie.

00:44:02.000 The reason I'm not gonna watch that movie is because Han Solo is cool the minute he arrives on screen and shoots Greedo first.

00:44:08.000 Right?

00:44:08.000 That's how you know that he's cool.

00:44:10.000 The way you know that he's a badass is because he's not gonna take crap from people, somebody's hunting him, and he shoots him right off the bat.

00:44:16.000 Right?

00:44:16.000 You don't need to know where he went to high school and was he was he bullied for being gay and like you don't need to know any of this stuff.

00:44:23.000 The backstory is not important.

00:44:25.000 But for the left, backstory is always important.

00:44:27.000 Always important.

00:44:28.000 Except when it comes to people with whom they really disagree, in which case the backstory doesn't matter at all.

00:44:33.000 But it is fascinating that the left's obsession with backstory

00:44:38.000 Goes here, too.

00:44:38.000 I mean, the first half of Making of a Murderer is what a glorious kid Stephen Avery was and how all of his youthful hijinks were just that.

00:44:45.000 They were hijinks.

00:44:46.000 Like, for example, in the documentary, at least the part that I saw, they say that Avery was goofing around with a cat and burned it to death.

00:44:55.000 I've never goofed around with anything and burned it to death.

00:44:58.000 It's never actually happened.

00:44:59.000 When I goof around with my child, I'm never in mortal fear that I'm going to burn my child to death.

00:45:03.000 What he did is he set his cat on fire, he soaked it in gasoline, and then watched it burn to death.

00:45:08.000 That's what he did, because he's a sociopath.

00:45:10.000 Right?

00:45:11.000 Or at the very least, he's somebody who's very sick.

00:45:14.000 Or evil.

00:45:15.000 But, again, the left's obsession with backstory is something that actually hurts its art, because they're so interested in backstory.

00:45:20.000 Books are for backstory.

00:45:22.000 Movies are for action.

00:45:23.000 Backstory tends to hurt.

00:45:24.000 Okay.

00:45:25.000 A couple of entries to the mailbag.

00:45:26.000 I know we're running really long, but, you know, we do it all the time.

00:45:28.000 So, a couple of entries.

00:45:29.000 A couple of entries from the mailbag, because I've been promising, particularly subscribers, if you are a subscriber, we know.

00:45:37.000 And we love you.

00:45:38.000 And if you write us an email at bshapiroatdailywire.com, we will answer your emails in our mailbag.

00:45:44.000 So, a couple of letters from the mailbag that I want to discuss.

00:45:48.000 So, one is from a guy named Ari.

00:45:50.000 He says, Do you realistically believe millions of workers can just get a different job?

00:45:54.000 We'll answer that one first.

00:46:06.000 Yes!

00:46:07.000 Because it turns out that we've had massive technological change over the last two centuries and the unemployment rate has stayed basically the same or gone down.

00:46:14.000 Because when technology gets better, it creates more jobs in different sectors.

00:46:18.000 And the fact is, that it's what makes your life easier.

00:46:21.000 The reason that we have weekends and it doesn't hurt the economy, the reason that we have leisure time and it doesn't hurt the economy, the reason you can take a week vacation and it doesn't hurt the economy, is because of all the technologies that took over for you.

00:46:32.000 The reason you have nice stuff and live longer is because of the technology.

00:46:35.000 And listen, there was no IT sector 40 years ago.

00:46:38.000 Right?

00:46:38.000 There was no high-tech medical sector 40 years ago.

00:46:42.000 There wasn't a computer sector at all 40 years ago.

00:46:44.000 And now, how many people work in the service sector?

00:46:46.000 The answer is a bajillion.

00:46:48.000 Right?

00:46:49.000 There would not be a podcast.

00:46:49.000 There wouldn't be any of the people behind the cameras.

00:46:51.000 There wouldn't be any of the frustrated faces I'm looking at who just want me to stop now.

00:46:54.000 There wouldn't be any of this if it weren't for the advances in technology.

00:46:58.000 Right?

00:46:58.000 So, yes, technology does not kill jobs.

00:47:01.000 It just changes the form of the economy.

00:47:03.000 And you wouldn't want to live back in agricultural days where everybody had to pick their own vegetables.

00:47:07.000 It wouldn't be fun for you.

00:47:09.000 The second question is why can't socialism work in the United States?

00:47:12.000 And the answer is because it doesn't work anywhere else.

00:47:13.000 So we're no different.

00:47:15.000 It doesn't work in Europe.

00:47:16.000 Despite all of the lies, Europe will go bankrupt.

00:47:18.000 It is going bankrupt.

00:47:19.000 It's going both morally and economically bankrupt.

00:47:23.000 And it's unsustainable over the long run.

00:47:25.000 They've also had to pay for no military budget because we've been paying for their military budget for basically more than half a century.

00:47:31.000 Okay, here is another question.

00:47:33.000 This one I thought was interesting.

00:47:35.000 From a gal named Christine.

00:47:37.000 She writes,

00:47:55.000 Right, this is what the left believes.

00:47:56.000 The left believes I could walk in today, say I'm a woman, and you have to treat me as a woman.

00:48:00.000 I had a discussion about this with a friend of mine.

00:48:02.000 They told me about the brain scans of transgender people, which show that transgender people, on average, have a brain matching their gender identity.

00:48:09.000 In the Caitlyn Jenner debate, they wanted to talk about brain scans.

00:48:12.000 What are your opinion of these brain scans of transgender people?

00:48:15.000 Okay, so there have been a couple of studies.

00:48:16.000 They're very flawed because they have very small sample sizes, and the people you're dealing with are self-identified transgenders, so there's no real control group.

00:48:24.000 What you'd really need, theoretically, is a group of people who haven't identified as transgender yet, so you don't have any clues, and then you look at their brains and say, do they look more female or male?

00:48:32.000 There's also another flaw, which is that of all the parts of the human body, the brain is what we understand least.

00:48:37.000 In a hundred years, they're gonna look back on what we're doing to people's brain chemistry right now, and they're gonna look back on it like people who watch the Nick look at the surgeries on the Nick on Showtime.

00:48:47.000 It's brutal and it's barbaric.

00:48:48.000 I mean, it truly is.

00:48:49.000 Our understanding of how the brain works, extremely limited.

00:48:53.000 All of which is to say that I've never said that transgenderism is not something that is a chemical disorder in the brain or even a structural disorder in the brain.

00:49:01.000 Of course it's biological, I assume, because I think that pretty much everything that happens in your body is biological.

00:49:06.000 I think schizophrenia is biological, for example.

00:49:08.000 The question is, what's the best solution?

00:49:10.000 Pretending these people are women is not the best solution, and the proof is in the pudding.

00:49:14.000 When we do transgender surgery on people, and remove their genitals or add genitals, the suicide rate is precisely the same as it was before, and the suicide rate in the transgender community is 40%.

00:49:23.000 And it's not because people are mean, or because of lack of social services.

00:49:28.000 It's 40% in San Francisco, it's 40% in Timbuktu.

00:49:31.000 It doesn't matter.

00:49:32.000 The fact is that when you have people, the high comorbidity between transgenderism, gender identity disorder, is what they used to call it, now they call it gender dysmorphia, when the idea that there is no sort of biological component is not true, but it's also not true that you can magically cure it by calling a man a woman and then slicing off some parts.

00:49:55.000 It's not true.

00:49:56.000 And so you have to determine, okay, if this is a mental illness, which it is, there are lots of structural mental illnesses,

00:50:01.000 Then how do you treat that best?

00:50:02.000 And it doesn't mean talk therapy.

00:50:03.000 It's possible you should be looking to produce drugs that help this.

00:50:07.000 But one thing that is clear is that you should not buy into the idea that chopping off people's genitals or an 11-year-old who thinks he's a girl actually is a girl.

00:50:16.000 We don't have enough information, even with brain scans of the living, to tell whether that is true.

00:50:20.000 And even if it were true, the solutions being proposed are not the correct solutions.

00:50:24.000 By the way, there was a study that came out this week, or two weeks ago, that said that they've done brain scans of men and women and they can't even tell structural differences between men and women, let alone say that a brain looks more like a woman than a man inside a man's body.

00:50:35.000 It just doesn't, that's, the science is not developed enough for any of this.

00:50:39.000 Okay, we'll do, I promise, one more and then we'll be done.

00:50:42.000 So, here is the, here is the last question.

00:50:46.000 The last question is, this one goes to... let's see.

00:50:50.000 Tim, one topic I find particularly interesting and does not seem to be touched a lot in politics is obesity.

00:50:57.000 Michelle Obama touches on it a lot.

00:51:27.000 It's certainly more instrumental in deaths than things like gun violence, and it's completely and 100% preventable with proper self-control.

00:51:35.000 Well, Tim, your question answers itself.

00:51:37.000 Because it is preventable, as a general rule, not all the time, there are people with genetic disorders, because it is generally preventable with proper self-control, that is why we don't talk about it.

00:51:45.000 Because the left believes self-control doesn't exist, the left believes you can't control yourself, you don't have free will, your biology drives you, and so if your biology drives you to eat unending portions of sugar and get fat,

00:51:56.000 We can't in any way suggest that perhaps you should make different decisions.

00:52:00.000 Either that or we'll use government to regulate you into making different decisions.

00:52:03.000 You have no capacity to make the decision on your own, but we can use government to cram it down on you, making crappy lunches and forcing your kids to eat them.

00:52:10.000 So, happy birthday to me!

00:52:12.000 I hope that you're going to enjoy the... I will be live-tweeting and live-blogging the Republican debate tonight.

00:52:18.000 Follow it at dailywire.com for all the fun.

00:52:20.000 We do lookalikes, I make jokes,

00:52:23.000 I scream in unending pain every time John Kasich speaks.

00:52:26.000 You can be a part of all of it over at dailywired.com.

00:52:29.000 And for my birthday, my present, you want to buy me a present?

00:52:32.000 Subscribe to our podcast at dailywired.com and help pay for all of these poor mules who will have to now process all of the data I've just spewed forth and put it on the internet so you can listen to it.

00:52:42.000 I am Ben Shapiro.

00:52:43.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

The Ben Shapiro Show - January 14, 2016

Ep. 55 - Is Marco Rubio Toast?

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