The Ben Shapiro Show - November 29, 2017


Lauer's No Longer | Ep. 426


Episode Stats

Length

47 minutes

Words per Minute

209.40678

Word Count

9,884

Sentence Count

701

Misogynist Sentences

12

Hate Speech Sentences

10


Summary

Matt Lauer has been fired from NBC for sexual misconduct, North Korea fires a historic missile, and President Trump fires at the Democrats. Ben Shapiro talks about it all on The Ben Shapiro Show with John Avlon ( ) and Alex Blumberg ( ) on today's episode of The Weekly Standard. Subscribe to the Weekly Standard to get immediate access to all the latest news and discuss it with your favorite satirical columnists, podcasters, and podcasters. Use the promo code: PODCAST at checkout to receive $30 off your first purchase when you sign up for Blue Apron. It's the best way to cook at home, and it's a great way to bond with your family and friends. You can cook it in under 45 minutes, and you can do it without having to leave your home. Blue Aprons is a $30 value that includes pre-portioned, pre-cooked meals that can be delivered to your door in less than 45 minutes. Check out this week's menu, including: Roasted Chicken and Fall vegetables with cranberry and ginger compote, Roasted Beef Parmesan Compote, and Roasted Garlic Parmesan Cheesecake, and Gratin, and a whole bunch of other delicious side dishes that you can enjoy with a glass of wine and a generous dollop of maple syrup. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE on Apple Podcasts and tell a friend about it! and let us know what you thought of it in the comments below! Thanks for listening and sharing it with a friend! Ben and Alex are looking out for the best ways to help spread the word about this podcast! Tweet us . to Ben Shapiro or share it on your friends and your thoughts on the podcast on social media! and other links to other podcasts and posts about it on the show! :) Thanks Ben Shapiro: Timestamps: , & in your feed Tweet Me! or a screenshot of this episode of the show? if you have a podcast episode you like it is a tweet me! , and I'll be giving Ben Shapiro a shoutout on Insta screenshot of Ben Shapiro's latest podcast episode tweet me a link to Ben's tweet about this episode and what you're listening to it? and a review of the episode is


Transcript

00:00:00.000 It is one hell of a Wednesday morning.
00:00:02.000 A lot of news happening.
00:00:03.000 Matt Lauer fired for sexual misconduct.
00:00:05.000 North Korea fires a historic missile.
00:00:07.000 And President Trump fires at the Democrats.
00:00:09.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:00:10.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:00:16.000 Okay, so we have a lot to get to today.
00:00:18.000 As I say, Matt Lauer is firing, obviously, at the top of the news.
00:00:21.000 President Trump is trolling everyone this morning.
00:00:23.000 We'll talk about what good trollery looks like and what bad trollery looks like.
00:00:27.000 And President Trump did some of both over the past 24 hours.
00:00:30.000 I want to look at the news cycle, which should be an amazing news cycle for President Trump.
00:00:34.000 I mean, here's the fact of the matter.
00:00:35.000 Right now, you are looking at a historically good news cycle for President Trump.
00:00:39.000 I'll explain all of that in just a second.
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00:01:00.000 Basically, it's going to have you cooking like a gourmet immediately.
00:01:03.000 And the recipes change all the time.
00:01:05.000 So unlike at the Shapiro household, where historically we have had to have spaghetti like every Tuesday night, if you have Blue Apron, they change the recipes all the time and they're not repeated inside a year unless you want them repeated inside a year.
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00:01:42.000 I mean, their recipes are just amazing.
00:01:43.000 I mean, I'm looking at some of them right now.
00:01:45.000 Seared steaks and garlic butter with oven fries and romaine salad.
00:01:48.000 I mean, this is gourmet stuff, guys.
00:01:50.000 Roasted chicken and fall vegetables with cranberry and ginger compote.
00:01:53.000 Just...
00:01:54.000 I mean, it sounds delicious.
00:01:55.000 I'm getting hungry just looking at it.
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00:02:22.000 Okay, so, a lot happening in the news.
00:02:25.000 You know, one of the frustrating things about doing a daily show is that you can plan your show the night before, and the news cycle is so fast that by the next morning, the entire show has been upended.
00:02:33.000 That's exactly what happened yesterday.
00:02:34.000 Like, when we planned the show yesterday, last night, because I was on a plane to D.C.
00:02:39.000 When we planned that show, it was all about North Korea and it was all about tax cuts.
00:02:42.000 And then this morning, Matt Lauer was fired.
00:02:44.000 So Matt Lauer, of course, is a long-standing mainstay of morning television, always considered kind of the nice guy of morning TV, the guy that women loved and trusted and he was very friendly and everybody liked him.
00:02:57.000 Yeah, it turns out that he's a bit of a douchebag.
00:02:59.000 So, here is the announcers on NBC were apparently told that Lauer was fired like five minutes before they went on air.
00:03:05.000 I thought that the best suggestion today came from Chrissy Teigen, who suggested that SNL should do a skit in which anchors start reading the news and then the teleprompter comes up that they're resigning because they've been accused of sexual harassment.
00:03:17.000 Because that's basically where we are right now, is with no notice people are being fired right and left.
00:03:21.000 Here is the footage from NBC this morning as they announced that Matt Lauer is now gone.
00:03:26.000 Dear colleagues, on Monday night we received a detailed complaint from a colleague about inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace by Matt Lauer.
00:03:34.000 It represented, after serious review, a clear violation of our company's standards.
00:03:39.000 As a result, we have decided to terminate his employment.
00:03:42.000 While it is the first complaint about his behavior in the over 20 years he has been at NBC News,
00:03:47.000 We were also presented with reason to believe this may not have been an isolated incident.
00:03:53.000 Our highest priority is to create a workplace environment where everyone feels safe and protected, and to ensure that any actions that run counter to our core values are met with consequences, no matter who the offender.
00:04:05.000 We are deeply saddened by this turn of events, but we will face it together as a news organization and do it in as transparent a manner as we can.
00:04:15.000 That is the statement from our chairman, Andy Lack, and we just learned this moments ago, just this morning.
00:04:21.000 As I'm sure you can imagine, we are devastated and we are still processing all of this and
00:04:27.000 I will tell you right now, we do not know more than what I just shared with you.
00:04:30.000 But we will be covering this story as reporters, as journalists.
00:04:34.000 I'm sure we will be learning more details in the hours and days to come.
00:04:38.000 And we promise we will share that with you.
00:04:41.000 Just amazing.
00:04:41.000 I mean, you can see that all of this is just breaking stuff.
00:04:44.000 It happens one after another.
00:04:45.000 So we've had Charlie, in the last week, Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, Glenn Thrush,
00:04:51.000 We're good to go.
00:05:08.000 We're good.
00:05:26.000 Sort of on top of all of the all of the allegations about various people For sexual harassment sexual assault and he says that he's talked to many women who have felt intimidated by Matt Lauer So this is not a complete surprise.
00:05:37.000 In fact, Barry Weiss of the New York Times
00:05:39.000 Very good op-ed columnist over there.
00:05:41.000 She predicted a week ago that Matt Lauer would be the next guy to go.
00:05:44.000 Well, this does raise a couple of questions.
00:05:46.000 I mean, I think number one, it raises the question of why is it that the treatment of sexual harassers and assaulters in the media is so different than it is in politics, right?
00:05:53.000 Here are the people who in the last few months are gone, right?
00:05:56.000 Harvey Weinstein, Bill O'Reilly, Roger Ailes, Kevin Spacey, Charlie Rose, Michael Oreskes of NPR, Mark Halperin, and Leon Wieseltier, among many others.
00:06:04.000 Glenn Thrush, Louis C.K., Brett Ratner, John Lasseter, all those people are going home.
00:06:08.000 All of those people are in the media.
00:06:09.000 In politics, the people who have so far been accused are President Trump, Roy Moore, Al Franken, and John Conyers.
00:06:14.000 None of them are out.
00:06:15.000 So you can see that there is a vast gap between how we treat people who are accused of this stuff in politics and how we treat people who are accused of this stuff in the media.
00:06:22.000 There is a logic to it.
00:06:24.000 The logic is that in the media, the way that
00:06:26.000 Dislike reflects itself as in ratings.
00:06:28.000 No one wants to watch Matt Lauer over their morning coffee knowing that he tried to sexually assault somebody.
00:06:33.000 But in politics, we vote once, and that's pretty much it, right?
00:06:37.000 The ongoing approval ratings don't matter for the presidency, or for a senatorial office, or for a House member.
00:06:44.000 All that matters is the election results.
00:06:45.000 And popularity is not really a huge factor, believe it or not, in a lot of these congressional races.
00:06:50.000 I mean, the fact is, President Trump won the presidency in the mid-30s in terms of popularity.
00:06:54.000 There are a lot of other priorities that impede.
00:06:56.000 There are a lot of other priorities that come to bear, right?
00:06:58.000 The Roy Moore situation is an obvious example.
00:07:00.000 A lot of people, I think,
00:07:02.000 They're calculating that they have to vote for Roy Moore even if they find him disreputable because Doug Jones is a pro-abortion fanatic.
00:07:21.000 It is striking, the difference between how sexual harassment allegations are treated in the media versus how they are treated in politics.
00:07:26.000 Okay, so that's breaking piece of news number one.
00:07:30.000 And that means good news cycle for President Trump.
00:07:32.000 Because again, another member of the mainstream media, a well-respected member of the mainstream media, is outed for sexual harassment and assault.
00:07:38.000 And for President Trump, that's good news because number one, it means that it's very difficult for the media to suggest that Roy Moore is alone.
00:07:45.000 And number two, it means that all these people who were yelling at President Trump for being a woman abuser back in 2016, half of them were doing the same stuff themselves, apparently.
00:07:53.000 So that's a good piece of news for President Trump.
00:07:55.000 Another good piece of news for President Trump is that the GDP is out, the GDP statistics are out, and in the third quarter, apparently there was 3.3% GDP growth.
00:08:03.000 That is the best GDP growth that we have seen since 2014.
00:08:06.000 That is a big win for President Trump.
00:08:08.000 It doesn't matter that President Trump hasn't really done all that much on economic policy.
00:08:12.000 What matters is that businesses know that under President Trump and a Republican Congress, there are not going to be a lot of moves to shut them down.
00:08:19.000 And so they are investing and they are creating new jobs.
00:08:21.000 And all of that is due to the election of President Trump, even if President Trump isn't taking sustained action to actually impact the economy in any serious way.
00:08:29.000 So that's a piece of good news for President Trump, number two.
00:08:32.000 Piece of good news for President Trump number three from a political side.
00:08:35.000 It's very bad news for the United States, but it's good news for whomever is the president.
00:08:38.000 Whenever there's an ever-present foreign threat, that's good for the president in terms of popularity ratings.
00:08:42.000 Just from a pure political calculation.
00:08:44.000 Well right now, we have an ever-present threat.
00:08:46.000 Yesterday, North Korea launched a ballistic missile that traveled ten times higher than the NASA International Space Station into space.
00:08:53.000 It traveled apparently 11,000 kilometers.
00:08:56.000 And that puts New York in range.
00:08:58.000 It puts Washington, D.C.
00:08:59.000 in range.
00:09:00.000 It puts Hawaii in range.
00:09:01.000 Basically, the entire world is now under the threat of a North Korean nuclear missile if they can get a nuke affixed to the head of that ICBM.
00:09:09.000 And that is a major, major ground shift in the nature of the technology the North Koreans have demonstrated thus far.
00:09:15.000 President Trump came out yesterday and he tried to quiet the nation, basically said, don't worry, I'm handling this.
00:09:22.000 A missile was launched a little while ago from North Korea.
00:09:26.000 I will only tell you that we will take care of it.
00:09:29.000 We have General Mattis in the room with us, and we've had a long discussion on it.
00:09:35.000 It is a situation that we will handle.
00:09:38.000 Okay, whenever there's an ever-present threat, again, it redounds to the benefit of the president.
00:09:42.000 And President Trump, you know, is doing what he can here.
00:09:44.000 This is not his fault.
00:09:46.000 This was a system that was built over the past three decades by presidents, both Democrat and Republican.
00:09:50.000 And now Trump's there, and this fell into Trump's lap, right?
00:09:53.000 I mean, this is—Trump's gonna have to figure out what to do about it.
00:09:56.000 But the fact of the matter is that Trump is not to blame for it, and the American people know that.
00:10:01.000 The best that we can do right now is build up our missile defense system, and I think Trump is very much for that.
00:10:05.000 So that's piece of news number three that cuts in favor of the President of the United States.
00:10:09.000 Piece of news number four that cuts in favor of the President of the United States is that yesterday we discussed at length the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
00:10:16.000 This is the CFPB.
00:10:18.000 This is this ridiculous organization that was set up by Elizabeth Warren and the Democrats under Dodd-Frank that was basically independent of Congress and independent of the president and it was supposed to crack down on all sorts of anti-consumer fraud by businesses.
00:10:32.000 It was supposed to crack down on credit card companies and lending companies and all of this.
00:10:36.000 And it very quickly turned into a shakedown unit where the CFPB would basically approach a particular business and instead of coming to some sort of agreed-upon settlement that was fair and just
00:10:45.000 They would try to shake down that business, take that money, and then direct it toward Democratic offers.
00:10:49.000 They were renting space from the Obama organization.
00:10:52.000 They were funneling money to an Obama-linked PR firm.
00:10:55.000 They had staffed up completely with Democrats.
00:10:57.000 There's a guy named Ronald Rubin who's written about this extensively at National Review.
00:11:00.000 Well, President Trump comes in and he says, we're gonna clean house.
00:11:03.000 And he wants to get rid of Richard Cordray.
00:11:04.000 Richard Cordray's term is up in 2018.
00:11:07.000 So Cordray steps down early and he appoints to replace him a woman named Leanne English.
00:11:11.000 The problem is he's not allowed to do that legally.
00:11:14.000 So President Trump instead appoints Mick Mulvaney, his head of Office of Management and Budget, as a temporary
00:11:19.000 Stopgap until he can appoint somebody with the approval of Congress.
00:11:23.000 So Leanne English shows up to work anyway, right?
00:11:25.000 Even though she's not really supposed to be there.
00:11:27.000 And Mulvaney shows up anyway, and supposedly we have a constitutional crisis.
00:11:31.000 I'm going to tell you how this cut in favor of Trump in just a second.
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00:13:03.000 Okay, so we've had, to recap, we've had several pieces of news that cut in favor of President Trump politically.
00:13:09.000 Again, that's not the be-all end-all, but it is of importance because it shows that, you know, the news cycle is not against Trump right now.
00:13:15.000 Okay, Matt Lauer is fired from NBC.
00:13:18.000 That's number one.
00:13:19.000 Number two, the economy is booming.
00:13:21.000 It's doing really well right now.
00:13:22.000 Number three, the North Korean missile launch.
00:13:25.000 Number four,
00:13:26.000 The CFPB.
00:13:27.000 So as I say, Leanne English shows up to work.
00:13:29.000 So here is Nancy Pelosi tweeting about Leanne English.
00:13:33.000 Okay, so Nancy Pelosi tweets out about Leanne English.
00:13:35.000 Okay, first of all, I do love the idea of the rightful acting director.
00:13:40.000 It sounds like something out of Game of Thrones.
00:13:42.000 I really do enjoy that.
00:13:56.000 It's like, the usurper Mulvaney will be brought low.
00:13:59.000 He will be made to bend the knee before the rightful acting director.
00:14:02.000 It's like the restoration of Charles II in the 1600s.
00:14:05.000 We're gonna bring back the royal family.
00:14:08.000 The glorious revolution is afoot.
00:14:10.000 All of this is just silly talk.
00:14:12.000 A federal judge ruled against the Democrats yesterday.
00:14:14.000 They said that you're making all this up.
00:14:16.000 This has nothing to do with reality.
00:14:18.000 Richard Cordray cannot appoint his own successor.
00:14:20.000 That's not how the system of government works.
00:14:22.000 That would mean that the CFPB would be the most powerful agency in American government.
00:14:27.000 There was a judge named Brett Kavanaugh on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals who actually rewrote the Dodd-Frank Act because he said,
00:14:33.000 Listen guys, you appointed a director position that is more powerful than the President of the United States inside his own purview.
00:14:38.000 That is not constitutional.
00:14:40.000 So Trump had the full power to replace Leandra English, and so he did.
00:14:44.000 So that's a big win for President Trump.
00:14:46.000 That's a big political win for President Trump.
00:14:48.000 So that is piece of news number four.
00:14:49.000 Piece of news number five is that tax reform seems to be going pretty well.
00:14:52.000 It looks like the Republicans are finally going to be able to cram something through.
00:14:55.000 Now as I've said,
00:14:56.000 I think there are problems with this tax reform.
00:14:58.000 The tax reform is basically structured to lower corporate tax rates.
00:15:01.000 That's fine.
00:15:02.000 I think it's important to lower corporate tax rates.
00:15:04.000 But Republicans really have not made that case.
00:15:06.000 Instead, what they keep discussing is individual tax rates and how those are going to be lowered.
00:15:10.000 The problem is that this bill is really...
00:15:13.000 ...structure to lower individual tax rates in any serious way.
00:15:16.000 It lowers them marginally, but it really is designed to do is make up tax revenue by getting rid of certain deductions, by getting rid of your ability to deduct your state income tax.
00:15:25.000 So I live in the state of California.
00:15:26.000 I have like a 10 to 12 percent state income tax in the state of California.
00:15:30.000 I usually get to deduct that for my income before I pay my federal income tax.
00:15:34.000 This new tax bill would get rid of that, so my taxes would go up by fully 10 percent.
00:15:38.000 So that means that
00:15:40.000 Since I'm in the top tax bracket, that means that every dollar I earn in the top tax bracket, I'm going to be paying at least 50%, basically, when you include other taxes.
00:15:48.000 More than 50% of that will go to the state and federal government.
00:15:51.000 So it's a real shock to the system for folks like me.
00:15:55.000 And even if you're not like me in the top tax bracket, if you're in California or New York, then you are going to be smacked.
00:16:00.000 If you're in Massachusetts, you're going to be smacked.
00:16:02.000 All these high-tax states are going to be smacked now.
00:16:04.000 I don't think that's bad policy, actually.
00:16:06.000 I think that's good policy, because I don't think the federal government should be sponsoring the states to raise their own taxes.
00:16:11.000 I think that's silly.
00:16:12.000 But it is true that the individual tax changes here are kind of wishy-washy at best.
00:16:18.000 And that's because they are designed to make up for lost revenue.
00:16:22.000 I hate using that term, but that's the term that's used.
00:16:24.000 Revenue to the federal government.
00:16:25.000 It's not really revenue to the federal government, because the federal government doesn't earn anything.
00:16:28.000 It's your money that they're sucking out of your pocket.
00:16:30.000 The amount of money that the federal government does not take in is lower than it otherwise would be because of the lowered corporate tax rates.
00:16:36.000 And so they are trying to increase the individual tax rates in certain ways in order to basically make up for that lost money so that they can pass with 51 votes in the Senate instead of 60.
00:16:46.000 That's because they have to use a process called reconciliation.
00:16:49.000 Reconciliation requires that the Congressional Budget Office issue a ruling on any law that shows that it does not increase the deficit over time.
00:16:57.000 So that's what they're doing here.
00:16:59.000 All of that said, the Republicans look like they're on the verge of passing this thing.
00:17:02.000 Yesterday, Susan Collins signaled that she would support the tax reform bill, including the repeal of the individual mandate.
00:17:08.000 Now, there's a problem with the repeal of the individual mandate.
00:17:11.000 The repeal of the individual mandate, which is basically forcing you
00:17:15.000 Two, the individual mandate forces you to buy health insurance or pay a fine.
00:17:19.000 And the Supreme Court ruled that it was not a fine, it was a tax because the Supreme Court is a leftist institution and they were lying and Justice Roberts did a real disservice to the American people and the Constitution in that decision.
00:17:29.000 But, suffice it to say, that individual mandate is bad.
00:17:33.000 However, if you get rid of the individual mandate and you leave all the other Obamacare regulations in place, the prices are going to skyrocket.
00:17:39.000 Unless the federal government comes in and jacks up the subsidies.
00:17:42.000 So guess what happened?
00:17:43.000 Yesterday, basically, Trump endorsed the idea of getting rid of the individual mandate, but jacking up the subsidies through the Alexander, uh, Murray bill, I believe.
00:17:52.000 It's this bill that's being pushed by the Democrats and moderate Republicans for the federal government to come in and subsidize all of these, all of these Obamacare regulations, even without the individual mandate.
00:18:03.000 It's not good policy.
00:18:04.000 It isn't good policy.
00:18:05.000 If you're gonna get rid of the individual mandate, you also need to get rid of the regulations.
00:18:08.000 That would be getting rid of Obamacare.
00:18:09.000 Just getting rid of the individual mandate and then having the government pick up the slack actually is close to nationalized healthcare.
00:18:15.000 It's actually close to nationalized healthcare in a lot of ways.
00:18:18.000 So that is not a grand and glorious thing, but...
00:18:21.000 With all these buy-offs, with all these payouts, it looks like tax reform is in pretty good shape.
00:18:25.000 And the Democrats don't know what to do about it.
00:18:27.000 Last night on CNN, there was a debate between Tim Scott and Ted Cruz on the one hand, and Maria Cantwell, Senator from Washington, and Bernie Sanders, the new leader of the Democratic Party, that crazed old bat loon.
00:18:36.000 You know, he was there talking about taxes.
00:18:39.000 And Bernie Sanders was trying to make the case against the tax reform, but having a tough time doing it.
00:18:43.000 He basically had to argue that the GOP wants to cut Social Security, which, of course, there's been no indicator that they want to do.
00:18:50.000 In my view, I have not the slightest doubt that if this bill, God forbid, is passed, as soon as it is passed, the Republican leadership will come back and say, my God, we have to deal with the deficit, and that's why we're going to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and education.
00:19:09.000 Okay, now the reality is that I wish the Republicans would say that.
00:19:12.000 The fact is the deficit is not going away, the debt is not going away, and the main drivers of the debt are not tax cuts.
00:19:17.000 The main drivers of the debt, always and forever, will be these massive entitlement programs that need to be restructured in a very significant way.
00:19:24.000 The big drivers of the debt are things like Social Security.
00:19:27.000 That needs to be restructured and privatized.
00:19:29.000 I need to be able to take my own money and invest it for myself, and I should not have it removed from me and placed into a quote-unquote social security lockbox that does not exist.
00:19:37.000 It's basically a transfer of wealth.
00:19:39.000 It's me paying my grandmother.
00:19:40.000 If I want to give my grandmother money, that's my business.
00:19:42.000 But you shouldn't force me to take my money, pay it out to a bunch of old folks who've had 60 years to earn, and then deprive my children of it.
00:19:50.000 We're good to go.
00:20:13.000 HSA or some sort of savings account, some social security savings account, and you have to opt out of it?
00:20:17.000 Fine.
00:20:18.000 But the idea that we're going to mandate that you pay your money into a pyramid scheme is really morally egregious.
00:20:24.000 And by the time I hit retirement age, I'm not going to see any of this money.
00:20:26.000 I mean, this money is gone or they're going to dramatically raise taxes on my children because they're going to have no other choice.
00:20:30.000 But again, this is a win for Trump because it looks like tax reform is on its way.
00:20:35.000 And final win for Trump, okay, so final win for Trump is that it looks like there may be a government shutdown.
00:20:40.000 Government shutdowns, the theory goes, always benefit the president in power because the people who are not allowing the government to continue operating are seen as obstructionists.
00:20:48.000 This at least was the theory when the Republicans were arguing that they shouldn't shut down the government and Ted Cruz was arguing, let's just shut it down over Obamacare.
00:20:55.000 The Republicans kept saying, we can't shut it down, we can't shut it down, we can't shut it down because it'll benefit Obama.
00:21:00.000 Okay, now Trump's the president.
00:21:01.000 So that means if there's a government shutdown, the reverse logic should apply.
00:21:04.000 It should damage the Democrats.
00:21:05.000 So this means that Trump has a series, a series of good headlines that are coming out for him.
00:21:11.000 Tax reform, North Korea, the CFPB, the economic boom, the Matt Lauer stuff.
00:21:16.000 All of these things are good.
00:21:17.000 I mean, it's like a perfect storm of good headlines for President Trump and the possibility of a government shutdown.
00:21:23.000 So how does President Trump respond to all of that?
00:21:26.000 Well, with trollery.
00:21:27.000 Some of that trollery is good.
00:21:29.000 Some of that trollery is bad.
00:21:30.000 And we will explain the difference between good and bad trollery.
00:21:32.000 I'm not coming at this, folks, from a perspective of, I want President Trump to fail.
00:21:36.000 If you want Trump to succeed, if you want Trump to be a successful president and get done all the things you want him to get done, you need him to be disciplined.
00:21:45.000 One ounce of discipline in this news cycle and Trump would get a five-point bump in his approval ratings.
00:21:51.000 He's capable of it.
00:21:52.000 Not discipline, I don't think, but he's capable of actually trolling in a good manner.
00:21:56.000 So I'm going to show you how he trolled well, and then I'm going to show you how he trolled really, really poorly this morning.
00:22:00.000 He trolled well yesterday.
00:22:01.000 His trollery today?
00:22:02.000 Not so good.
00:22:03.000 I'll explain all of that in just a second.
00:22:04.000 First, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Enzo Chino.
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00:23:19.000 Okay, so...
00:23:42.000 President Trump has the capacity to troll well.
00:23:44.000 The reason I say he has the capacity to troll well is because he did it yesterday.
00:23:47.000 So yesterday, President Trump led off by tweeting that the Democrats were not—that they would be able to come to no actual resolution with the Democrats.
00:23:55.000 It looked like the Democrats were going to insist on some sort of amnesty agreement in order for them to move forward with funding the government.
00:24:01.000 The reason the Democrats are necessary here is because the Democrats can filibuster funding for the government.
00:24:05.000 They can shut down the government with a filibuster the same way that Ted Cruz basically did in 2014, I believe—2013.
00:24:12.000 Well, the Democrats have been signaling that they're perfectly willing to do a government shutdown.
00:24:16.000 Here is House Democratic Chairman, I think his name is Patrick Crowley, and he says maybe we'll shut down the government over DACA.
00:24:22.000 You never know.
00:24:23.000 Democrats are willing to work to secure the future of the 800,000 plus individuals who are DREAMers who are in the DACA program.
00:24:32.000 Democrats are working to ensure the extension of the CHIP program that will provide health insurance for children throughout our country, almost 10 million children throughout our country.
00:24:44.000 Democrats are going to work towards keeping government open and we think we can walk and chew gum at the same time.
00:24:49.000 These are all legitimate and good issues that need to be addressed.
00:24:51.000 Okay, so they say that they're willing to shut down the government.
00:24:53.000 That's Joe Crowley, by the way, from New York.
00:24:55.000 And they say that they're willing to shut down the government if need be.
00:24:58.000 And then Trump tweets out, I'm not sure we're going to come to an agreement.
00:25:01.000 And so Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, who are scheduled to come to the White House, use that as an excuse to pull out.
00:25:06.000 And so Trump does something that is quite imagistically brilliant, right?
00:25:10.000 He sets up a meeting, right, Paul Ryan is there, Mitch McConnell's there, and he leaves seats on either side of him, one with Schumer's name and one with Pelosi's name tag in front of them, and he leaves the seats empty, like they're waiting for Elijah the Prophet on the first night of Passover, and he leaves the seats empty, and then he says, listen, they're not here.
00:25:26.000 Like, I was willing to negotiate.
00:25:27.000 They're not here.
00:25:28.000 Where are they?
00:25:29.000 So they decided not to show up.
00:25:32.000 They've been all talk and they've been no action.
00:25:35.000 And now it's even worse.
00:25:37.000 Now it's not even talk.
00:25:40.000 So they're not showing up for the meeting.
00:25:43.000 I will say this, in light of the missile launch, probably they'll be here fairly quickly, or at least discussions will start taking place.
00:25:50.000 There's a lot of big differences, so we'll see what happens as to shutdown.
00:25:53.000 We'll see.
00:25:54.000 But right now, things have changed over the last two hours, because two hours ago a missile was launched.
00:25:58.000 I think that will have a huge effect on Schumer.
00:26:04.000 Okay, high-level trolling.
00:26:05.000 High-level trolling from President Trump right there, leaving the empty chairs.
00:26:09.000 Very good imagery, right?
00:26:11.000 Trump is good at this stuff.
00:26:12.000 He can be good at this stuff.
00:26:13.000 And you can see that the Democrats are sort of at a loss, right?
00:26:16.000 Chuck Schumer is trying to say, well, you know, we weren't just going to show up for a photo op.
00:26:19.000 That's all Chuck Schumer does for a living.
00:26:21.000 Nobody believes this.
00:26:21.000 So here's Chuck Schumer saying that Trump tweeting, that's what made it just a photo op.
00:26:26.000 If he hadn't tweeted that, we would have been happy to show up, but the tweet came out, and then we weren't going to show up just to, you know, sit next to him for a photo op.
00:26:32.000 Yeah, sure, Chuck.
00:26:34.000 Unfortunately, this morning, instead of leading, the President tweeted a blatantly inaccurate statement and then concluded, I don't see a deal.
00:26:44.000 The President said, I don't see a deal, three hours before our meeting, before he heard anything we had to say.
00:26:53.000 Given that the President doesn't see a deal between Democrats and the White House, Leader Pelosi and I believe the best path forward is to continue negotiating with our Republican counterparts in Congress instead.
00:27:08.000 Okay, and then Schumer went on and he said Trump was a destructive force, and Trump was the end of the world.
00:27:13.000 Here he is, you know, going after Trump.
00:27:14.000 This is not going to work, okay?
00:27:16.000 At least this was the logic, okay?
00:27:18.000 If you think this is going to work, then you need to explain why it is.
00:27:21.000 For establishment Republicans, if you think that Trump is wrong and Schumer is right, you need to explain why you oppose Ted Cruz doing the same thing to President Obama.
00:27:28.000 If you think that Schumer is making the right political move, why was it so bad for the Republicans to stand up for a government shutdown during the Obamacare debate?
00:27:35.000 You need to explain that one.
00:27:37.000 I think that, you know, I think the logic here is pretty sound.
00:27:40.000 That if Trump stands there and he says, listen, you're shutting down the government because you won't build me my wall.
00:27:45.000 The American people want that wall.
00:27:47.000 You're not willing to fund the government?
00:27:49.000 You're not willing to fund the military because you're so desperate to give citizenship to illegal immigrants?
00:27:53.000 That's what's going to shut down the government?
00:27:55.000 Whoever shuts down the government, this is the conventional wisdom, gets the blame.
00:27:58.000 Well, if that was the case during the Obama years, then it certainly should be the case now.
00:28:02.000 And I'll show you that it was the case during the Obama years, right?
00:28:04.000 When Ted Cruz said that we're not going to fund Obamacare.
00:28:07.000 When Ted Cruz said that, here's how the Democrats responded.
00:28:10.000 Chris Matthews, or in other words, he said, he said, Ted Cruz, got up in the morning, got up fresh from the show, got him in here.
00:28:15.000 Ted Cruz like a terrorist, got a bomb strapped to his chest, a political bomb strapped to his chest.
00:28:19.000 Ah!
00:28:19.000 Go!
00:28:20.000 I believe it's terrorism.
00:28:21.000 This is the first time I've seen a political party, or even a fraction of it, saying that their number one goal is a
00:28:28.000 To shut down the American government, it is the American government, kill a bill that's already been passed by Congress, and refuse to pay bills already run up by the Congress in an attempt to basically risk the fall.
00:28:40.000 It wasn't just Chris Matthews, it was also the White House, right?
00:28:43.000 The Obama White House called Republican lawmakers terrorists.
00:28:46.000 Dan Pfeiffer was on CNN with Jake Tapper, and he said, we're for cutting spending, we're for reforming our tax code, we're for reforming entitlements, but what we're not for is negotiating with people who have a bomb strapped to their chest.
00:28:56.000 Okay, this is the same game that Republicans can play if they choose to play it, and Trump is happy to play it.
00:29:00.000 So, okay, so that is useful trollery, right?
00:29:02.000 That's useful trollery.
00:29:04.000 Here is, so Trump could have tweeted about all of these things this morning, right?
00:29:07.000 And exclusively these things.
00:29:09.000 Trump tweets a lot, right?
00:29:10.000 What he should do is he should be exclusively focused on the things that are of benefit to him.
00:29:13.000 So tweet about the tax cuts.
00:29:14.000 Tweet about how you're trying to handle the situation with North Korea.
00:29:17.000 Tweet about the fact that the Democrats are trying to shut down the government.
00:29:20.000 Tweet, even if you want to tweet about, you know, Matt Lauer and ask if there's a systemic problem inside the media, ask that.
00:29:28.000 Here's what Trump did this morning.
00:29:29.000 So that was the good trollery I showed you.
00:29:31.000 Now it's bad trollery time, right?
00:29:32.000 This really is a good Trump, bad Trump day.
00:29:34.000 Then there was the bad trollery.
00:29:36.000 And it's allowing the media to escape all of these headlines that would be great for Trump and instead misdirect to the fact that Trump doesn't seem like he can control his Twitter thumbs.
00:29:44.000 Okay, so Trump starts off this morning by retweeting a bunch of videos from Jada Franzen.
00:29:49.000 Who is Jada Franzen?
00:29:50.000 Jada Franzen is deputy leader of Britain First.
00:29:53.000 Britain First is a white supremacist outfit in the UK.
00:29:56.000 I don't mean that in any soft fashion.
00:29:58.000 Like, Britain First actually rallies with white supremacists.
00:30:00.000 Like, they're so bad that InfoWars was chiding Trump today not to retweet videos from Britain First.
00:30:06.000 When InfoWars, when Paul Joseph Watson over at InfoWars is telling Trump, uh, dude, that's not smart, then it's really not smart.
00:30:13.000 Okay, that's really stupid.
00:30:14.000 So he tweeted out a bunch of videos of Muslims doing bad things, right?
00:30:18.000 Video, Muslim destroys a statue of the Virgin Mary.
00:30:20.000 Video,
00:30:21.000 Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches.
00:30:24.000 There's only one problem with that video.
00:30:25.000 Apparently it wasn't a Muslim migrant beating up a Dutch boy on crutches at all.
00:30:28.000 Apparently it was a dark-haired Dutch boy beating up a light-haired Dutch boy.
00:30:30.000 You know, he tweets all of these things from Britain First.
00:30:34.000 It became such an issue that over in the House of Commons, there was actually a movement to censure Trump, I believe, from the House of Commons floor for retweeting stuff from Britain First.
00:30:44.000 So, Mr. President, no, just stop.
00:30:46.000 And then it didn't stop there.
00:30:48.000 And for people who say, well, he can walk and he can chew gum at the same time, this is not about walking and chewing gum at the same time.
00:30:53.000 It's about walking and stepping in crap at the same time.
00:30:56.000 Do not step in the crap.
00:30:58.000 Okay?
00:30:59.000 Why don't you just walk?
00:31:00.000 Like, can we just do the walking?
00:31:01.000 You want to walk and chew gum?
00:31:02.000 Great.
00:31:02.000 Walking is great.
00:31:03.000 Chewing gum is great.
00:31:04.000 Stepping in crap, not so great.
00:31:05.000 Please don't do that.
00:31:06.000 You know, Trump should understand by this point that his Twitter account is basically like a laser pointer and the media are like cats.
00:31:13.000 But the problem is that those cats are only going to follow the laser points or where he points it.
00:31:17.000 So if he points it in irrelevant places, they're going to follow him to those irrelevant places and they would prefer to stay there because it's more fun.
00:31:24.000 It's more interesting.
00:31:24.000 They're all leftists.
00:31:25.000 They're looking for an excuse to cover Trump saying stupid things as opposed to all these headlines that actually benefit President Trump.
00:31:32.000 Right?
00:31:32.000 Trump tweeted three of these videos from Britain First.
00:31:34.000 Then he tweeted out,
00:31:43.000 Okay, is that self-aggrandizing?
00:31:45.000 Would that tweet be better without the last sentence?
00:31:46.000 Absolutely, but that's an acceptable tweet, but that's going to get lost in the Britain First tweets.
00:31:50.000 I mean, come on.
00:31:52.000 And then, Trump decided that it was necessary not only to troll Matt Lauer, but then to use that as an excuse to troll Joe Scarborough and all the heads of MSNBC and CBS.
00:32:01.000 He tweeted this, quote,
00:32:15.000 What does Matt Lauer sexually assaulting people, or allegedly sexually assaulting people, have to do with, you know, fake news, exactly?
00:32:21.000 I mean, that's a stretch.
00:32:22.000 Basically, he's just saying, I hate CBS, or I hate NBC, so smack NBC.
00:32:26.000 And then, he continues on to Phil Griffin.
00:32:29.000 So now that Matt Lauer is gone, when will the fake news practitioners at NBC be terminating the contract of Phil Griffin?
00:32:34.000 And will they terminate low ratings Joe Scarborough, based on the unsolved mystery that took place in Florida years ago?
00:32:40.000 Investigate!
00:32:42.000 So what is he talking about?
00:32:42.000 I'll explain what he's talking about in just a second.
00:32:44.000 Again, this is so asinine, and it's so confused, and it's so worthless.
00:32:48.000 There's no reason for the President of the United States to be doing this.
00:32:51.000 Again, there's so many good headlines for him today, and instead he's creating bad headlines just because he's bored.
00:32:57.000 Just because he's sitting around, he doesn't have anything else to do.
00:32:58.000 Ugh!
00:32:59.000 It's so irritating.
00:33:00.000 If you'd like the country to be better, if you'd like all the good headlines to actually get some play, you need to stop stepping on your own wiener.
00:33:07.000 Like, just stop.
00:33:08.000 Stop stepping on your Anthony Wiener.
00:33:09.000 Okay, so, before I go any further with what Trump is talking about with Joe Scarborough, first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at NatureBot.
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00:34:54.000 Okay, so, President Trump
00:34:57.000 You know, he feels the need to sound off on everything because he can't contain himself.
00:35:02.000 It's a serious problem for him.
00:35:04.000 Again, this should be a time when you're urging discipline for the president.
00:35:07.000 North Korea fired a missile yesterday that can hit New York.
00:35:10.000 Like now would be a good time to focus and show some leadership.
00:35:13.000 Instead, he's tweeting about
00:35:14.000 Terminating the contract of Phil Griffin, no one really knows why.
00:35:17.000 Because they're fake news practitioners, I guess.
00:35:19.000 And then he says, well, they terminate low ratings Joe Scarborough.
00:35:21.000 What's he talking about with Joe Scarborough?
00:35:22.000 This unsolved mystery that took place in Florida years ago?
00:35:25.000 What he's talking about, specifically, is that Joe Scarborough, when he was in Congress, there was a 28-year-old intern, I guess, in one of his local offices.
00:35:34.000 Was found dead in the office.
00:35:35.000 The medical examiner did a full examination and what they found is that she had an undisclosed heart condition, that she had a heart attack, she hit her head and she died.
00:35:41.000 There was no sign of foul play.
00:35:43.000 There was a full investigation.
00:35:44.000 Joe Scarborough was not involved in any way according to the police or the medical examiner.
00:35:48.000 There was no sign of any sort of force that was used against her.
00:35:52.000 She basically had a heart attack and died.
00:35:54.000 This does happen, I know.
00:35:55.000 It happened to my boss Andrew Breitbart, my friend Andrew Breitbart.
00:35:58.000 Trump is now tweeting out conspiracy theories that require investigation from the White House in the middle of a series of good headlines.
00:36:05.000 How is that smart?
00:36:06.000 And the problem is that when you mix... If you have a crap sandwich, like Trump's Twitter feed, where half of the sandwich is just high-quality roast beef and half of the sandwich is poop,
00:36:15.000 People are going to tend to focus more on the poop that's in the sandwich than the roast beef, right?
00:36:19.000 His next two tweets are, Good!
00:36:20.000 Good!
00:36:20.000 You're the president.
00:36:21.000 That's what you're supposed to do.
00:36:22.000 And then he tweeted about the economy.
00:36:45.000 All good stuff, right?
00:36:46.000 This is what he should be doing.
00:36:47.000 But because he can't focus, instead we're going to get a day of headlines over him retweeting racist groups from the UK and him trying to bring up discredited conspiracy theories about Joe Scarborough.
00:36:56.000 How that's beneficial to his agenda is beyond me.
00:36:59.000 So don't blame—you know, there are a lot of people who get angry at me when I criticize President Trump.
00:37:02.000 I'm criticizing President Trump because I want him to do better.
00:37:05.000 He's the president.
00:37:06.000 I want any president to do better.
00:37:07.000 This is not the way that you're going to make the GOP more popular, or get your agenda passed into law, or maintain any long-lasting grip on power.
00:37:16.000 There's a poll out today, and people are asking, how do we get young people conservatives?
00:37:20.000 How exactly are we supposed to draw young people?
00:37:22.000 This is a good question.
00:37:22.000 When you look at the poll today, what you find
00:37:25.000 Is that Millennials, okay, Millennials are actually 19%.
00:37:30.000 19% and 19% only say that they identify as GOP.
00:37:33.000 Okay, that is as compared to 34% who identify as Democrats, 29% independent, and 17% something else.
00:37:41.000 And then when you look at, do you think the Republican Party cares about people like you or not, among all adults, the answer, 71% no.
00:37:46.000 That's among all college-age young people, among all Millennials.
00:37:53.000 Okay, 71% no.
00:37:54.000 That is a bad statistic.
00:37:56.000 And the way that you increase that bad statistic is by taking the wrong side of moral conflicts, especially when you could be taking the right side of moral conflict.
00:38:04.000 And it is taking the wrong side of moral conflict to put out unbased conspiracy theories or retreat white supremacist accounts from Britain.
00:38:09.000 It's just, forget about the morality of it for a second.
00:38:12.000 It's not smart politically, from a utilitarian point of view.
00:38:14.000 Now, I know.
00:38:15.000 Every time I say this sort of stuff, it's, you cuck.
00:38:17.000 You're a cuck.
00:38:18.000 Right?
00:38:18.000 You just don't understand the strength and the power.
00:38:20.000 Cause hit and fight!
00:38:23.000 Okay, well, except that when you punch yourself in the balls, it turns out that that's not actually a good political strategy.
00:38:28.000 And it's kind of immoral also, because now your balls hurt.
00:38:30.000 It's really not smart.
00:38:31.000 It's just not bright.
00:38:32.000 So I really wish that we would stop all of this.
00:38:35.000 Okay, so before we get to things I like, things I hate, and a little bit of Bible talk,
00:38:40.000 First, you're gonna have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.
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00:39:39.000 Alrighty, time for some things I like, and some things I hate, and then Bible talk.
00:39:42.000 So, things I like.
00:39:43.000 I have started the new Netflix superhero series, The Punisher.
00:39:47.000 And Netflix, I have to say, their productions are very high quality.
00:39:50.000 The Punisher is really good.
00:39:52.000 I like The Punisher, because The Punisher kills people.
00:39:54.000 It's not just because I'm a deviant and I like murder.
00:39:58.000 That very may well be true.
00:39:59.000 I mean, that may be true.
00:40:00.000 I'm not going to deny that.
00:40:01.000 But what I will say is that in a comic book universe, where every time you imprison someone, they escape prison and immediately murder 10 other people, the only moral solution is to kill criminals.
00:40:10.000 OK?
00:40:10.000 That's the only moral solution is to actually kill the criminals.
00:40:13.000 This is my problem with Batman.
00:40:15.000 He keeps putting people in Arkham Asylum, and they keep escaping.
00:40:18.000 And then the Joker kills like 10,000 people.
00:40:19.000 And then he's like, I can't kill the Joker.
00:40:21.000 If I kill the Joker, that'll make me as bad as he is.
00:40:24.000 No!
00:40:24.000 If you kill the Joker, he won't go back to a place he will escape five minutes later and murder 10,000 people.
00:40:29.000 Just kill the stupid Joker already.
00:40:31.000 The Punisher has no such qualms.
00:40:32.000 He just goes around killing people.
00:40:34.000 The series itself is good.
00:40:35.000 The guy who plays the Punisher is the same guy who was Shane in The Walking Dead.
00:40:39.000 He's actually starting to make quite a career for himself.
00:40:42.000 He's good.
00:40:43.000 There is a subplot here that's anti-NRA, which is just irritating, and obviously a sop to the leftists who work at Netflix.
00:40:49.000 But the series itself is a better-than-average superhero series.
00:40:52.000 Here's a little bit of the preview.
00:40:59.000 Dad.
00:41:04.000 Dad!
00:41:08.000 It's plenty of time now that you're home.
00:41:28.000 So I am not a Marvel fan, as you know, but I do like the Punisher.
00:41:31.000 I think the Punisher's cool.
00:41:33.000 And the series is quite good and very action-packed.
00:41:37.000 He's like Batman, except he kills people, basically.
00:41:43.000 So, go and check that out over at Netflix.
00:41:45.000 It's a good series.
00:41:46.000 Okay, things that I hate.
00:41:48.000 Let's do some things that I hate.
00:41:54.000 So last night at UConn, a guy named Lucian Wintrich, who is the White House correspondent for Gateway Pundit, and has sort of made a name for himself in the past for tweeting memes and such, he was speaking on, it's okay to be white, which is sort of the new slogan that's used by some edgier members of the right, shall we say.
00:42:16.000 It's also used by the alt-right a fair bit as sort of like, you say it's okay to be black, I say it's okay to be white, what's the problem?
00:42:22.000 So in any case, Wintrich goes and he speaks, and the students act like idiots at UConn.
00:42:26.000 So they start chanting that he's a Nazi, and shouting him down, and all the usual forms of stupidity that you expect from the snowflakes at a college campus.
00:42:35.000 And then one of these idiot snowflakes, this young woman, she walks up to his podium and she grabs his notes.
00:42:40.000 Okay, this is bad.
00:42:41.000 This is stupid.
00:42:42.000 She should be prosecuted, right?
00:42:43.000 You're not allowed to steal other people's property.
00:42:46.000 Wintrich, instead of doing the smart thing and saying to the cops who are standing right there, stop her and get my notes back, he immediately charges into the crowd and grabs the notes by kind of reaching around her body and basically pulling her down to the ground.
00:42:58.000 You can watch the video online.
00:43:00.000 So I tweeted out two things can be true at once, right?
00:43:02.000 Because I've spoken at many of these campuses.
00:43:04.000 Two things can be true at once.
00:43:05.000 One, it is bad.
00:43:06.000 And criminals who steal other people's property.
00:43:08.000 Second,
00:43:09.000 It's nuts to respond like this in a public way.
00:43:11.000 And it's nuts to respond like this when you have a series of police officers, particularly when, if they don't respond, you can then claim, rightly, that the police fail to do their jobs at these universities, which is actually the headline that a lot of folks are looking for, that the police are not doing their jobs in protecting freedom of speech and protecting conservative speakers from being victims of assault and from being victims of petty theft, right?
00:43:33.000 That would be the way to treat this.
00:43:35.000 It's not smart to do what Wintrich did.
00:43:38.000 He got very angry at me.
00:43:38.000 No, I was defending my property, and that's my right to defend my property.
00:43:41.000 It may be your right to defend your property.
00:43:44.000 It's not your right, as far as I know, to pull a girl to the ground over stealing some notes.
00:43:49.000 I think that that's an excessive response.
00:43:51.000 I think the law would probably see it the same way.
00:43:53.000 But beyond that,
00:43:54.000 It's not smart.
00:43:55.000 It's not effectively smart in a utilitarian sense.
00:43:58.000 Okay, other things that I hate.
00:44:00.000 So, I do love that the media, who are trying to fight the fake news charge, keep trotting out Dan Rather as though he's the epitome of journalistic integrity.
00:44:08.000 Here is Dan Rather, yesterday, talking about how Trump is moving us into an Orwellian space where truth does not matter.
00:44:14.000 Look, previous presidents sometimes have lied, but none has relentlessly, so consistently lied, and I use the word measured, as this president has done.
00:44:25.000 And here again, it's proved positive.
00:44:27.000 But there's something within Donald Trump that has convinced him, no doubt the election itself, that he can get away with it.
00:44:34.000 That we've moved into, at least President Trump is trying to move us into an Orwellian space, where truth doesn't matter.
00:44:43.000 And the opposite of truth is truth.
00:44:46.000 So stupid.
00:44:48.000 So stupid.
00:44:49.000 Why would the media keep trotting out the guy who's famous for losing his job over trotting out a fake letter that he still maintains was real?
00:44:56.000 Why exactly would they do that?
00:44:57.000 Because they're dumb.
00:44:57.000 I mean, the answer is because they're dumb.
00:44:59.000 And because they think they can get away with anything, and this is why Trump wins.
00:45:02.000 This is why Trump wins.
00:45:03.000 Okay, so, I don't have a lot of other time for things I hate, so let's do a quick Bible talk.
00:45:07.000 So, there's been a lot of talk lately about how God uses bad people in order to achieve good ends.
00:45:12.000 Okay, there's a story in 2 Kings about King Hezekiah.
00:45:16.000 And I want to talk about it briefly.
00:45:17.000 So King Hezekiah is the king of the Jews, and he's basically caught in this conflict between the Assyrians and the Egyptians.
00:45:23.000 And it looks like the Assyrians, sometimes he's allied with the Assyrians, sometimes he's allied with the Egyptians.
00:45:27.000 And Isaiah keeps saying to him, you need to stop siding with the Egyptians.
00:45:31.000 Do not side with the Egyptians, because if you do, then you will fall under their influence.
00:45:36.000 Right?
00:45:36.000 And Isaiah basically makes the case that you need to follow God instead of following the Egyptians.
00:45:42.000 Because the Assyrians invade Israel, and they march toward Jerusalem, and Hezekiah decides to defend the capital.
00:45:48.000 This is all true stuff, by the way.
00:45:49.000 One of the things that's cool is when you go to Jerusalem, you can actually go through Hezekiah's water tunnels.
00:45:53.000 He actually built tunnels through the rock in order to survive the siege, and you can walk through the water tunnels.
00:45:58.000 It's actually a very, very cool experience.
00:45:59.000 I mean, this is thousands of years old.
00:46:01.000 And a lot of Hezekiah's ministers were telling him, you need to go to the Egyptians for help.
00:46:06.000 And Isaiah kept saying, no, don't go to the Egyptians for help.
00:46:08.000 Rely on God.
00:46:10.000 He did rely on God.
00:46:11.000 And the Assyrian army, according to the prophets, ends up basically being destroyed outside the walls of Jerusalem.
00:46:18.000 The point of this story is that sometimes, you know, it's always easy to do the side with Stalin to defeat Hitler.
00:46:23.000 Sometimes the danger of being seduced by the dark side is grave enough that you have to rely on God and yourself.
00:46:29.000 And I think that there are cases in, you know, you have to decide for yourself how you're going to vote if you're in Alabama, but I've told you how I would vote.
00:46:36.000 I would not go to the polls or I'd vote right in.
00:46:38.000 And the reason that I would do that is because I think that sometimes siding with the bad guys dirties your soul.
00:46:43.000 Even if siding with the bad guys, you're trying to defeat people who you perceive are going to do worse to you.
00:46:47.000 Okay, so that's a story from Second Kings that sort of backs up my point of view instead of doing the, you know, some people are trying to make the case that the Bible demands that you support Roy Moore.
00:46:56.000 I think that that is a dicey case at best.
00:46:58.000 David French, by the way, wrote an entire column on this segment of Second Kings that is quite good at national review.
00:47:02.000 You should go check it out.
00:47:03.000 Okay, so we'll be back here tomorrow.
00:47:05.000 Tomorrow I will be back in Los Angeles.
00:47:07.000 I might or might not have some stories to tell.
00:47:09.000 I don't know yet, but maybe I will.
00:47:11.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:47:11.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.