The Ben Shapiro Show - Mexican Stand-Off

00:00:00.000 President Trump prepares to drop tariffs on Mexico, controversy breaks out over the U.S.

00:00:04.000 Census, and we check the mailbag.

00:00:05.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:05.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:12.000 You finally made it.

00:00:13.000 It's the end of the week.

00:00:15.000 I mean, that's exciting stuff.

00:00:16.000 It was a short week, but I will tell you here at The Daily Wire, it was not a short week at all.

00:00:20.000 So I'm very grateful it is a Friday, but we're going to get to all the news in just one second.

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00:01:36.000 Alrighty, so.

00:01:37.000 Fallout from Robert Mueller's big statement continues.

00:01:40.000 It is obvious that the Democrats, the mood in the room is it's time to impeach President Trump.

00:01:46.000 Now, William Barr, the attorney general, continues to maintain that he did nothing wrong in reaching the finding that he reached.

00:01:53.000 I agree with the attorney general.

00:01:54.000 I do not think that William Barr did anything wrong in reaching the decision that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute obstruction of justice.

00:02:01.000 Nor do I think that William Barr was lying when he went in front of Congress and said that Robert Mueller told him that it was not true, that the only reason that he didn't prosecute Trump was because of DOJ regulations.

00:02:11.000 Remember, this is the current line.

00:02:13.000 The current line from Democrats and the media is that if it were not for DOJ regulations, if it were not for the Office of Legal Counsel saying you can't prosecute a sitting president, then Mueller would have recommended indictment of Donald Trump.

00:02:25.000 Barr says that's not what Mueller said.

00:02:28.000 According to Barr, he asked Mueller straight up, is the only reason that you're not indicting the president because of these DOJ regulations?

00:02:34.000 And Mueller said no.

00:02:36.000 And in fact, Mueller has never said that in the absence of DOJ regulations, he would recommend that the president be indicted.

00:02:44.000 In fact, he never reached that determination.

00:02:46.000 He never said that.

00:02:46.000 That's the whole point.

00:02:48.000 And if he wanted to say that, he could have.

00:02:50.000 This is exactly what William Barr was asked on CBS this morning.

00:02:53.000 Here's what he had to say about Robert Mueller and whether he could have reached a decision on obstruction of justice, even with the DOJ regulations on the books.

00:03:01.000 I personally felt he could have reached a decision.

00:03:03.000 In your view, he could have reached a conclusion.

00:03:05.000 Right, he could have reached a conclusion.

00:03:07.000 The opinion says you cannot indict a president while he's in office, but he could have reached a decision as to whether it was criminal activity, but he had his reasons for not doing it, which he explained, and I'm not going to, you know, Okay, so this is exactly right.

00:03:24.000 I mean, what William Barr says here is exactly right.

00:03:26.000 So he has done his job, right?

00:03:27.000 He said, I got all the information.

00:03:28.000 that was necessary for us as the heads of the department to reach that decision. - Okay, so this is exactly right.

00:03:37.000 I mean, what William Barr says here is exactly right.

00:03:39.000 So he has done his job, right?

00:03:41.000 He said, "I got all the information.

00:03:43.000 I made the call.

00:03:44.000 I took credit for the call.

00:03:45.000 This is what should have happened with regard to James Comey, who came out and made the call instead of Loretta Lynch.

00:03:51.000 Loretta Lynch should have owned it, and William Barr is owning it.

00:03:53.000 Good for William Barr.

00:03:54.000 I mean, William Barr was asked, OK, so what about your legacy?

00:03:57.000 Wouldn't your legacy have been different if you had ruled differently here?

00:04:00.000 And William Barr's like, listen, forget about the legacy.

00:04:02.000 I have a job in front of me.

00:04:03.000 This is the difference between a good lawyer and a bad lawyer.

00:04:06.000 This is the difference between a good judge and a bad judge.

00:04:10.000 People who are tasked with implementing the law, their job is not to, quote-unquote, do justice.

00:04:15.000 Their job is to implement the law that is in front of them.

00:04:19.000 If you want to change the law, you become a legislator.

00:04:21.000 You become a politician.

00:04:22.000 If you are a person who is tasked with carrying out the law, you are in the executive branch, or you are tasked with interpreting law, you are in the judicial branch.

00:04:29.000 Your job is not to, quote-unquote, do justice or create a legacy for yourself.

00:04:33.000 All of that is nonsense.

00:04:34.000 There's a famous story about Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, very famous justice in the early 20th century.

00:04:38.000 In the United States on the Supreme Court.

00:04:41.000 And there's some case that came up before the Supreme Court and Oliver Wendell Holmes was on the court at the time.

00:04:45.000 He was at some dinner party.

00:04:47.000 And as he's leaving the dinner party, he gets into he gets into a carriage to drive away.

00:04:53.000 And some man runs up to him knocking on his window and Holmes rolls down the window.

00:04:57.000 The man says, Mr. Justice, Mr. Holmes.

00:05:01.000 Do justice, sir, do justice.

00:05:02.000 And Holmes looks at him and says, it's not my job to do justice.

00:05:04.000 It's my job to interpret the law.

00:05:06.000 This is correct.

00:05:07.000 So William Barr is asked, well, why didn't you, why didn't you do the fair thing on CBS this morning?

00:05:11.000 He says, listen, that's not my job.

00:05:12.000 My job is to do the legal thing.

00:05:14.000 And if that means that my legacy is not to be sung about in odes, then I guess that's my legacy.

00:05:19.000 You're at the end of your career?

00:05:21.000 I'm at the end of my career.

00:05:22.000 It's a reputation that you've worked your whole life on, though.

00:05:27.000 Yeah, but everyone dies.

00:05:29.000 I don't believe in the Homeric idea that immortality comes by having odes sung about you over the centuries.

00:05:39.000 So you don't regret taking the job?

00:05:43.000 Okay, so good for Barr, right?

00:05:44.000 I think that Barr has done the right thing here.

00:05:46.000 I think all of the talk about how William Barr is some sort of corrupt official, like Eric Holder acting as the president's wingman, I do not see the evidence of that.

00:05:53.000 I think that the left is trying to swing it that way to make it look as though the Trump administration would have been indicted in the absence of William Barr, that if the process had gone the way it was supposed to go, that Trump would be in jail now, and thus impeachment is on the table.

00:06:05.000 Well, look, people on the left are going to read this the way they want to read it, and they are reading it exactly that way.

00:06:09.000 So Robert De Niro, It wouldn't matter.

00:06:11.000 I mean, Robert De Niro would indict a ham sandwich if the ham sandwich had an R stamped on it.

00:06:16.000 Robert De Niro, legal expert, because he once played a lawyer on TV, I think, maybe.

00:06:21.000 I mean, you know, when he wasn't playing like a gangster or something.

00:06:25.000 Robert De Niro cut a PSA about the state of the law on obstruction of justice.

00:06:30.000 Now, I challenge Robert De Niro to read me the obstruction of justice statute and explain it to me.

00:06:36.000 I do not think that Robert De Niro has ever read the obstruction of justice statutes.

00:06:39.000 There are several of them.

00:06:40.000 I do not think that he has a law degree, last I checked.

00:06:43.000 I don't think he's a legal expert in any way.

00:06:46.000 But here is Robert De Niro, leading former prosecutors in a public service announcement that there is clear evidence that President Trump committed obstruction of justice and therefore he is impeachable.

00:06:54.000 This is where the heart and soul of the Democratic Party base is.

00:06:57.000 Not only with impeachment, but also in Hollywood, Robert De Niro, the man who gets up on stage and bravely says to a crowd of fellow Hollywoodites who hate President Trump, F Trump, and gets a standing ovation, his bravery has extended to new heights with this public service announcement.

00:07:12.000 Recently, over a thousand former federal prosecutors who served under both Republican and Democratic presidents have united to sign a statement to help Americans understand what's actually in the Mueller report.

00:07:24.000 Their conclusion should trouble us all.

00:07:27.000 Listen to them in their own words.

00:07:29.000 If you or I did what President Trump did, we'd be facing prison.

00:07:32.000 And we all strongly believe that there is more than enough evidence to indict President Trump for multiple felony counts of obstruction of justice.

00:07:40.000 If you or I did what President Trump did, we'd be facing prison.

00:07:46.000 And no one, not even the president, should be above the law.

00:07:51.000 In the words of the Mueller report, no person is above the law.

00:07:55.000 OK, so Robert De Niro leading the charge here.

00:07:58.000 A couple of things.

00:07:58.000 One, if the president were not the president, this investigation never would have begun in the first place.

00:08:02.000 Let's be real about this.

00:08:04.000 The fact is that Paul Manafort was walking around at large until he made the unfortunate decision of joining the Trump campaign, at which point he went directly in the crosshairs of the FBI.

00:08:13.000 Paul Manafort was doing this crap.

00:08:14.000 For years.

00:08:15.000 For years.

00:08:16.000 And the FBI knew about it.

00:08:17.000 In fact, he was indicted on charges that spring from activity long before he joined the Trump campaign.

00:08:22.000 The idea that if Trump were not in a position of power, that he would be guilty of obstruction of justice?

00:08:28.000 Well, that's not really true.

00:08:29.000 And the reason that's not really true is because he's not been held to be indictable on obstruction of justice charges with regard to the people he worked with.

00:08:36.000 For example, his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

00:08:38.000 So Michael Cohen has tried to provide evidence that President Trump ordered him to lie But even Cohen won't say openly that Trump ordered him to lie, which means no obstruction of justice.

00:08:46.000 See, the difference between this and Bill Clinton is that Bill Clinton openly ordered people to lie to people.

00:08:53.000 That is obstruction of justice.

00:08:55.000 Donald Trump, and when I say ordered them to lie, I mean officials.

00:08:59.000 Donald Trump told people to lie to the press.

00:09:01.000 That's bad.

00:09:02.000 That is not obstruction of justice.

00:09:03.000 Donald Trump told his advisors he'd like to see Robert Mueller fired.

00:09:07.000 And then when they said no, he didn't follow up.

00:09:08.000 That's not obstruction of justice.

00:09:09.000 That's him acting like a tool bag.

00:09:12.000 That's not the same thing.

00:09:13.000 And it's very easy for former federal prosecutors to sit there and say this sort of stuff.

00:09:17.000 But if they were on the job, I really doubt they would be indicting.

00:09:20.000 I don't think that they think that they could get any sort of actual.

00:09:24.000 Actual.

00:09:27.000 So here's where Democrats are.

00:09:30.000 If you're a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, you basically have one choice and one choice only.

00:09:35.000 And that choice is that you push impeachment.

00:09:37.000 And the reason you push impeachment is because there's no effect on you to not pushing impeachment.

00:09:42.000 If you're Nancy Pelosi and you still want to be Speaker of the House, it's going to be very difficult for you to retain the speakership.

00:09:47.000 If you push impeachment, given the fact that there are a lot of suburban people, suburban women particularly, who are not all that interested in impeachment.

00:09:54.000 See, here's the truth.

00:09:55.000 Most Americans like stability in politics.

00:09:57.000 They like the idea that they can go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning without having to feel the sense of crisis on their souls.

00:10:04.000 It's the it's the lead reason why the chief threat to President Trump's presidency is, in fact, President Trump.

00:10:09.000 The more chaotic President Trump is, the more people feel uneasy and the more the Democrats sort of 1920 return to normalcy Warren G. Harding campaign has has legs.

00:10:20.000 Americans want to be able to feel that their government is basically in safe hands, that in the same way that you go out for the night with your spouse and you leave the kids with the babysitter and you don't want the babysitter to be a pyromaniac.

00:10:31.000 Yeah, it's the same sort of feeling with regard to government.

00:10:33.000 You want to be able to go to sleep at night, take your wife out for a night on the town, and when you open up your computer afterward, you don't want to see that the world has imploded.

00:10:41.000 Well, the media have done a good job of exacerbating President Trump's tendency toward chaos, but the same thing is true on the other side with regard to impeachment.

00:10:47.000 Impeachment is inherently destabilizing.

00:10:49.000 Most Americans aren't in love with the idea of impeachment.

00:10:53.000 In fact, they think that impeachment is likely to lead to more chaos and more destabilization.

00:10:58.000 If people want to get rid of Trump, they believe, there's an election coming up in a year and a half.

00:11:03.000 And we've lasted for two and a half years and things have been pretty much fine.

00:11:06.000 Yes, there's been a lot of chaotic headlines, but the economy is fine.

00:11:09.000 No foreign crises.

00:11:10.000 All that's cool.

00:11:12.000 So Democrats are playing a dangerous game.

00:11:14.000 But if you're a 2020 candidate, you cannot afford not to call for impeachment because your case is that President Trump is a force of chaos.

00:11:20.000 President Trump is a criminal.

00:11:21.000 So this is the happy medium that Democrats have to sort of push.

00:11:24.000 That Trump is impeachable, but We'll get to 2020 candidates sounding off on this in just a second.

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00:12:43.000 Alrighty, so the Democratic presidential candidates naturally have to push the idea that President Trump is a criminal.

00:12:50.000 They will continue to push that without actually pushing impeachment.

00:12:52.000 Beto is really like, I mean, that skateboard has run out of juice.

00:12:59.000 He's really on a pot low.

00:13:02.000 He's having a tough time.

00:13:03.000 It's falling apart for him.

00:13:05.000 But he says impeachment should be on the table because brah, if it isn't, I'm basically effed.

00:13:12.000 Here's Beto O'Rourke talking about impeachment in the weirdest possible way.

00:13:15.000 Like what I'm about to say as Beto doesn't make any sense.

00:13:18.000 But I'm talking to Chris Cuomo and I said it doesn't have to because Chris Cuomo doesn't understand things, so that's fine.

00:13:22.000 We were attacked by a foreign power in 2016, an attack that was invited by the candidate who is now our president.

00:13:30.000 An investigation into that attack was obstructed by this president.

00:13:35.000 Unfortunately, the House of Representatives today has stalled in their pursuit of these facts and the truth.

00:13:40.000 Only impeachment gives them the leverage and the mechanism necessary for us to know exactly what has happened and who is responsible for that.

00:13:49.000 Oh, oh, so we're still going to go with the collusion thing happened.

00:13:53.000 After 200 pages of the collusion thing didn't happen, we're still going to go with the collusion thing happened.

00:13:57.000 And the reason that we need an impeachment hearing is that we know what happened with Russia.

00:14:01.000 Well, that is a different story than even Democrats.

00:14:03.000 So they're shifting back to Russia now.

00:14:04.000 So remember, this thing started with Trump-Russia stuff and then it moved over to obstruction of justice.

00:14:11.000 And now when it looks like the obstruction of justice thing is kind of falling apart, they're going to move back to.

00:14:15.000 And the reason we need to investigate.

00:14:17.000 So let's let's get this straight.

00:14:18.000 We need to investigate obstruction of justice because there's Trump-Russia stuff.

00:14:23.000 And now the reason that we need to investigate obstruction of justice on the impeachment level is to get to the underlying question of Trump-Russia stuff.

00:14:31.000 So it started Trump-Russia, it moved to obstruction, now it's moving back to Trump-Russia.

00:14:34.000 I feel like you might be shifting the goalposts a little bit here, people.

00:14:37.000 Getting a little dizzy.

00:14:39.000 Meanwhile, Elizabeth Warren, whose basic campaign is, I will be the craziest person in the field.

00:14:44.000 I mean, no matter what, I will be the craziest person in the field.

00:14:46.000 I'll be crazier than Bernie.

00:14:48.000 I will give you free everything.

00:14:49.000 Everything.

00:14:50.000 Free.

00:14:51.000 For you.

00:14:52.000 Now Elizabeth Warren is pitching the vision of President Trump being frog-marched out of the White House in chains.

00:14:58.000 Here she is, Elizabeth Warren.

00:15:01.000 Donald Trump did everything he could to derail, stop, halt, obstruct that investigation.

00:15:09.000 That is a violation of the law.

00:15:11.000 If he were anyone other than President of the United States, he would be in handcuffs and indicted.

00:15:19.000 Okay, so no.

00:15:20.000 That is not true.

00:15:21.000 Again, that is not true.

00:15:23.000 No prosecutor worth their salt would indict a case like this.

00:15:25.000 There just is not enough evidence.

00:15:27.000 You need to have corrupt intent.

00:15:28.000 That is a very, very high bar.

00:15:30.000 It's not clear in the absence of an underlying crime that corrupt intent is present.

00:15:35.000 And meanwhile, the pitch has been put out there that President Trump is unique, that he's being uniquely protected.

00:15:42.000 Now, this is very rich stuff coming from members of the Obama administration.

00:15:45.000 So Valerie Jarrett, who is the sort of right-hand woman to Barack Obama in the White House, she appeared on some SiriusXM show yesterday and she said, you know, Barack Obama would have been impeached in a nanosecond if he acted like Trump.

00:16:01.000 President Obama had done half of the things and said half of the things that President Trump is saying even as recently as this morning.

00:16:11.000 Would he have been impeached and how long do you think it would have taken?

00:16:16.000 About a nanosecond.

00:16:18.000 I think that the standards have slipped dramatically and there's no earthly way President Obama could have gotten away with any of this.

00:16:26.000 Not just the words and the content, but just the policy reversals and what we're doing to the fabric of our country.

00:16:34.000 Oh, OK, so yeah, that, OK, why?

00:16:37.000 OK, it's not true.

00:16:38.000 Barack Obama, his administration was rife with scandal.

00:16:42.000 People covered up those scandals from beginning to end.

00:16:45.000 Barack Obama asserted executive privilege to protect his own attorney general in the same way that Donald Trump just asserted executive privilege.

00:16:52.000 Over documents supposedly to protect William Barr, except Trump had much more excuse given the fact that so much material has already been spilled in front of Congress.

00:17:00.000 It's just, it's just sheer nonsense.

00:17:02.000 Impeachment against Obama was never pursued because it wouldn't have been concluded successfully and because the grounds were not strong enough.

00:17:09.000 The same thing is true for Donald Trump.

00:17:11.000 Meanwhile, new information emerging about disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok, who led the Trump-Russia investigation as well as the Hillary investigation.

00:17:19.000 Fox News is now reporting that Strzok, who was later removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigative team for sending anti-Trump texts, was a central coordinator for the FBI on the defensive briefing, which included multiple agencies.

00:17:31.000 Three weeks earlier, Strzok had opened an FBI counterintelligence investigation into campaign aide George Papadopoulos.

00:17:37.000 A source familiar with sensitive records documenting the August briefing told Fox News that Strzok was in a unique and apparently conflicted position.

00:17:44.000 Strzok opened the FBI investigation into Russian outreach to Trump campaign aides, while at the same time, he was supposed to be warning the Trump campaign about Russian activities.

00:17:52.000 So one of the questions that Trump has always asked about this entire investigation is, why didn't you guys just tell me that this was going on?

00:18:00.000 If you suspected that my campaign aides were acting in nefarious fashion, then why in the world would you not actually just tell me about it so I could fire them?

00:18:09.000 And folks in the FBI are like, well, it's because we suspected you.

00:18:12.000 But the people who were not informing Trump were people like Peter Strzok.

00:18:16.000 Peter Strzok's job was to inform Trump what was going on and give intelligence briefings to Trump.

00:18:21.000 Peter Strzok, at the exact same time that he was refusing to turn over this information to Donald Trump, whose campaign this was, At the exact same time, Peter Strzok was texting with his paramour Lisa Page about their insurance policy against then-candidate Donald Trump, as Ryan Saavedra writes over at Daily Wire.

00:18:39.000 Strzok texted FBI lawyer Lisa Page, quote, I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office, that'd be Andrew McCabe's office, that there's no way he gets elected, but I'm afraid we can't take that risk.

00:18:49.000 It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40.

00:18:54.000 As I wrote at the time, that looks an awful lot like motivation for launching an investigation into Trump in order to sink Trump as a hedge against Trump's victory.

00:19:01.000 The FBI's investigation into Russian governmental interference in the election began in July 2016, just weeks before Strzok's text message.

00:19:08.000 And that means there's now more of a smoking gun of FBI corruption against Trump than there is of Trump colluding with Russia.

00:19:14.000 Herridge also notes that, Catherine Herridge at Fox News, she also notes that just a couple of days before the infamous insurance policy text message, the two anti-Trump agents had the following text message exchange.

00:19:25.000 Page.

00:19:26.000 Trump's not ever going to become president, right?

00:19:28.000 Right?

00:19:28.000 Struck.

00:19:29.000 No he won't.

00:19:29.000 No.

00:19:30.000 We'll stop it.

00:19:32.000 And as I wrote at the time, this is an explicit admission that high-ranking actors in the FBI saw preventing Trump's presidency as paramount.

00:19:39.000 Barring some highly damning information demonstrating the full legitimacy of the Russia investigation, this text from Struck to Page could and should completely destroy whatever faith that America still had in the legitimacy of the Russia investigation.

00:19:51.000 John Ratcliffe, Republican of Texas, member of the House Judiciary Committee, told Fox News, quote, There was a defensive briefing of candidate Trump on August 17th of 2016.

00:19:59.000 And I can tell you what he wasn't told.

00:20:00.000 He wasn't warned about a Russia investigation that Peter Strzok had opened 18 days earlier.

00:20:05.000 Why would Strzok, who would participate at Jim Comey's direction in a defensive briefing designed to protect and warn a candidate, be the same person who is in fact at that time already investigating the candidate's campaign?

00:20:15.000 That shouldn't happen and there should be answers to those questions.

00:20:19.000 President Trump's questions about the Trump-Russia investigation I do not think are illegitimate.

00:20:24.000 And people treating them as illegitimate have a bit of an axe to grind.

00:20:28.000 We'll get the answers.

00:20:29.000 But I'd like the answers and I think that Trump is entitled to the answers.

00:20:31.000 I think the American people are in fact entitled to the answers.

00:20:35.000 My going theory is that this investigation was launched in good faith and that it quickly morphed into an exercise in confirmation bias from people who despised President Trump and already saw him as a Russian tool.

00:20:46.000 That's my going theory.

00:20:47.000 I mean, the more cynical theory is that the thing wasn't even launched in good faith.

00:20:51.000 And that theory has been put out by people, including Andrew McCabe over at National Review, that basically the Obama administration saw Trump as a threat and therefore they authorized the FBI to go after him.

00:21:00.000 I haven't seen the evidence of any of that at this point, but I think it's pretty obvious that there was some serious corruption going on inside the FBI with regard to how they decided to conduct the investigation.

00:21:10.000 Meanwhile, the other big story of the day is that President Trump says that the United States will impose 5% tariffs on all Mexican imports beginning June 10th in a dramatic escalation of the border clash between the United States and Mexico, as according to the Washington Post.

00:21:25.000 President Trump on Thursday said he would impose a 5% tariff on all goods entering from Mexico unless it stopped the flow of illegal immigration to the United States, a dramatic escalation of his border threats that could have sweeping implications for both economies.

00:21:38.000 Now, I gotta say, I do not understand this move by the president.

00:21:42.000 I don't think the president should ever have had this sort of tariff authority.

00:21:44.000 You know, as somebody who believes in the checks and balances of the Constitution, it is not the job of the president to set tariffs.

00:21:50.000 It is the job of the legislature to set tariffs.

00:21:52.000 If Congress wants to take back that power, they absolutely should.

00:21:56.000 And if Democrats move to take back tariff power, then Republicans should move with them to do so.

00:22:02.000 This is a constitutional issue.

00:22:03.000 It's not even a Trump issue.

00:22:05.000 The president should not have unilateral trade authority.

00:22:08.000 Congress has the power to take back all of this authority.

00:22:13.000 If you're going to sign some sort of trade treaty, then the Senate is supposed to ratify that treaty.

00:22:18.000 And if you're going to set tariffs, that should be happening at the congressional level, not unilaterally at the presidential level via emergency executive order.

00:22:24.000 It's nonsense.

00:22:26.000 I don't like it from Trump.

00:22:26.000 I don't like it from Obama.

00:22:29.000 I don't like it in either direction, by the way.

00:22:30.000 The president unilaterally lowering tariffs is a violation of the constitutional order.

00:22:35.000 The Constitution prescribes that the legislature of the United States is supposed to be responsible for the policy decisions.

00:22:40.000 The President of the United States is responsible for implementing those policy decisions and working with Congress to come up with things that can pass both the legislative and the executive veto.

00:22:50.000 This has been completely skewed over the history of the Constitution into the president can do whatever he wants.

00:22:55.000 I'll talk more about it in one second.

00:22:55.000 I don't like it.

00:22:56.000 First, let's talk about something we can all agree on.

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00:23:59.000 OK, so as I say, President Trump says he's now going to impose tariffs.

00:24:03.000 On all goods entering from Mexico.

00:24:04.000 The problem is that he's basically taxing the American people.

00:24:08.000 A tariff is a tax on Americans.

00:24:09.000 Now, you can say that the tax on Americans is designed to elicit changes in policy from another country.

00:24:14.000 So this has been the case that's been made to me by folks, including Newt Gingrich, with regard to President Trump's tariff fight with China, saying the only way to get China to stop cheating is for us to tariff China and it'll hurt them more than it hurts us.

00:24:26.000 Yes, it will hurt American taxpayers, but that will be temporary because we will force the Chinese to stop cheating.

00:24:32.000 That, at least, is arguable.

00:24:33.000 And I think there's something to it in the sense that China is an actual geopolitical rival to the United States attempting to maximize its power.

00:24:41.000 So if they are getting richer, and we are getting richer, but they are getting richer at a faster rate than we are getting richer, that may not, in fact, be good for us.

00:24:48.000 I think there's an open argument, historically speaking, as to whether Richard Nixon should have opened China in the first place.

00:24:54.000 There were complicating factors at the time, like the fact that we were trying to separate off the Chinese from the Soviet Union, but There's a case to be made that the attempted thought experiment that if we just allowed the economy of China to liberalize, that the politics of China would liberalize, that that thought experiment has basically failed and that was a mistake.

00:25:12.000 That's why I think that putting tariffs on China is not quite the same thing as what Trump is doing here with tariffs on Mexico.

00:25:17.000 What exactly does he hope to accomplish by slapping tariffs on Mexican goods other than the president kind of likes tariffs?

00:25:24.000 Well, he says he wants to stop illegal immigration that way.

00:25:27.000 This policy is not designed to elicit the proper response.

00:25:30.000 It is not.

00:25:31.000 So you slap tariffs on Mexican goods.

00:25:33.000 You're going to accomplish a couple of things.

00:25:35.000 One, you're going to tax American citizens.

00:25:37.000 Because the fact is that Mexico is our third largest trading partner.

00:25:40.000 I believe that it goes China, EU, Mexico.

00:25:43.000 That's not great for Americans.

00:25:46.000 And these tariffs are going to escalate.

00:25:47.000 It's going to start at 5%.

00:25:48.000 It's going to go all the way up to 25%.

00:25:50.000 So get ready for your products to get more expensive.

00:25:52.000 So not good for the economy in a near-election year for the president.

00:25:56.000 And for you, right?

00:25:57.000 I mean, you are the taxpayer.

00:25:59.000 Number two, it's going to impoverish the economy of Mexico.

00:26:02.000 Now, what Trump would say is, right, that's the threat.

00:26:04.000 If I impoverish the economy of Mexico, the Mexican government is thereby incentivized to stop illegal immigration.

00:26:10.000 But there's one, there are two problems with that.

00:26:12.000 One, if the economy in Mexico is worse, where do you think those people are going to go?

00:26:18.000 Where do you think the Mexicans who are living in a bad economy are going to move?

00:26:22.000 Do you think they are not going to move north through our poorest border?

00:26:26.000 In fact, every period in American history where the American economy is doing really well and the Mexican economy is not doing really well, you know what's a thing that happens a lot?

00:26:35.000 Illegal immigration.

00:26:36.000 Also, do you really think that the Mexican government, which is politically accountable, remember, that the Mexican government is going to crack down on illegal immigration in the midst of a bad economy?

00:26:46.000 Do you really think that's going to happen?

00:26:47.000 Because that's still an elected, that's still an elected government.

00:26:50.000 How popular do you think that government would be?

00:26:53.000 Do you think that government would be real popular if they were like, you know what?

00:26:56.000 We're shutting down illegal immigration so that people can't travel across the U.S.

00:26:59.000 border and then ship the money back to Mexico, which is very often what happens.

00:27:04.000 We're doing it at the behest of Donald Trump.

00:27:06.000 Yeah, I'm sure that that government will be long for this earth.

00:27:09.000 So none of this is actually geared toward success.

00:27:13.000 You know what would have been geared toward success would be a border wall.

00:27:15.000 That'd be really great.

00:27:16.000 The border wall would have been much more geared toward stopping illegal immigration without wrecking the economy to the south of us and taxing American citizens to do it.

00:27:24.000 This is not smart policy.

00:27:26.000 The White House plans to begin levying the import penalties on June 10th and ratchet the penalties higher if the migrant flow isn't halted.

00:27:32.000 Here's the other problem.

00:27:33.000 There's no actual measure of what a halt in migrant flow looks like.

00:27:37.000 Also, how in the hell are you going to determine if the migrant flow has halted in like six weeks?

00:27:43.000 Because the first deadline on this thing is July 1st.

00:27:48.000 That's the first deadline on this thing.

00:27:49.000 After the 5% tariffs are imposed on June 10th, the White House said it would increase the penalties to 10% on July 1st, and then an additional 5% on the first day of each month for three months.

00:28:00.000 So let me get this straight.

00:28:01.000 You are now giving the Mexican government approximately five minutes to stop the illegal immigration flow.

00:28:07.000 And you haven't actually measured what that looks like.

00:28:09.000 So let's say that it just lessens.

00:28:10.000 Let's say it slows a little bit.

00:28:12.000 Is that enough to relieve the tariffs?

00:28:14.000 Or does it have to stop ultimately?

00:28:16.000 And if it doesn't stop ultimately, you're just going to keep ratchet like forever?

00:28:20.000 Also worth noting, President Trump is not a fan of NAFTA.

00:28:24.000 So he promptly proceeded to rewrite NAFTA and basically pass most of NAFTA with a few improvements in the US-Mexico trade deal.

00:28:31.000 That trade deal is basically going to fall apart now.

00:28:33.000 So one of the signal accomplishments of his trade policy, US-Mexico trade, is basically going to fall apart now for a policy that is not going to accomplish what he seeks to accomplish.

00:28:43.000 The economic consequences of Trump's new plan could be swift and severe.

00:28:46.000 Tariffs are paid by companies that import products.

00:28:48.000 So U.S.

00:28:48.000 firms would pay the import penalties and then likely pass some costs along to consumers.

00:28:52.000 Mexico exported $346.5 billion in goods to the United States last year, from vehicles to fruits and vegetables.

00:29:00.000 Many manufactured items crossed the border several times as they are being assembled.

00:29:04.000 White House officials didn't immediately explain how driving up the cost of Mexican goods would stem the flow of migrants.

00:29:10.000 Mexico vowed a response that could pitch the Trump administration into a full-scale trade war.

00:29:15.000 Mexico's deputy foreign minister for North America, Jesus Shad, said the threatened tariffs would be disastrous and added that Mexico would respond strongly.

00:29:25.000 In a letter sent Thursday evening, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador addressed Trump in harsh terms, a marked change from the diplomatic posture he has tried to adopt.

00:29:33.000 He said President Trump's social problems can't be resolved through taxes or coercive measures.

00:29:38.000 He also unloaded on Trump for his administration's immigration policy.

00:29:42.000 As I say, illegal immigration is very popular in Mexico.

00:29:45.000 Do you really think that killing their economy is also going to lead the government to suddenly do what Trump wants them to do?

00:29:53.000 That seems not like a particularly smart policy.

00:29:56.000 You want to keep people in Mexico, you have to make the economy of Mexico better, and you have to build a wall.

00:30:00.000 Those are the two things.

00:30:02.000 And Trump hasn't built the wall, for all the talk about it.

00:30:04.000 And also, the economy of Mexico is only going to get better if we are trading with them.

00:30:09.000 Which, by the way, is also good for American citizens.

00:30:12.000 OK, in just a second, we're going to get to more on this.

00:30:16.000 We're also going to get to a U.S.

00:30:17.000 census controversy that I think is being overblown.

00:30:22.000 I'll explain in just a second.

00:30:23.000 First, no one really has time to go to the post office.

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00:31:45.000 Alrighty, we're going to get to this controversy over the census.

00:31:49.000 We are also going to be getting to controversy over Martin Luther King Jr.

00:31:53.000 But first, you're gonna have to go subscribe.

00:31:56.000 It is a glorious time of the week, let me point out, when I give a shout-out to a Daily Wire subscriber.

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00:33:27.000 So there's a controversy that's been breaking out.

00:33:37.000 One of the great lies, I think, that the Democratic Party continues to tell is that the Trump administration and Republicans in general are vicious racists who are seeking to water down the vote of minorities because they don't like minorities.

00:33:50.000 This is untrue.

00:33:51.000 What is happening, and has always happened, is that gerrymandering is designed to benefit your political party.

00:33:56.000 And that means drawing lines around your political opponents and watering down their districts or consolidating their districts so they're more competitive districts for you.

00:34:03.000 This happens in every Democratic state.

00:34:04.000 It happens in every Republican state.

00:34:07.000 The reason this has become a national issue now is because the Trump administration is considering asking a citizenship question on the U.S.

00:34:14.000 Census.

00:34:15.000 Now, this seems like a no-brainer, right?

00:34:16.000 It seems like we should know how many illegal immigrants live in the United States.

00:34:20.000 And it seems like we should really know that for purposes of apportionment.

00:34:22.000 Because one of the weirder things about the American political system is that we have to decide exactly how seats are apportioned in the United States Congress.

00:34:31.000 Remember, every district, we have a one-man, one-vote rule when it comes to the House of Representatives.

00:34:35.000 But the way that that works is that we measure the population of a district, and each district has to be equivalent in terms of population.

00:34:43.000 So what that means is that a district in Montana may cover the entire state of Montana, and a district in California may cover a slice of Los Angeles.

00:34:52.000 And how you draw those districts matters an awful lot.

00:34:55.000 But in terms of citizenship, we measure the population of the district.

00:34:59.000 We do not measure the number of registered voters in the district.

00:35:02.000 So in other words, if you have 100,000 illegal immigrants living in a district and one registered voter living in that district, that district, that one voter will have as many representatives as another district with 100,001.

00:35:17.000 100,001 registered voters, right?

00:35:21.000 You could have a district where it's only registered voters and a district that is one registered voter and 100,000 illegal immigrants, and they will have the same number of representatives.

00:35:29.000 That's how apportionment works.

00:35:30.000 So, the Trump administration has been moving toward the idea that apportionment should not be taking place on the basis of people who legally should not be in the country.

00:35:38.000 Which makes perfect sense to me.

00:35:40.000 But now, the left is trying to make the argument that to even ask the citizenship question itself is racist, of course.

00:35:48.000 So in an argument over at the Washington Post, a long article at the Washington Post, despite Trump administration denials, new evidence suggests census citizenship question was crafted to benefit white Republicans.

00:36:01.000 And here's the way that they tell the story.

00:36:03.000 Just weeks before the Supreme Court is expected to rule on whether the Trump administration can add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, new evidence emerged Thursday suggesting the question was crafted specifically to give an electoral advantage to Republicans and whites.

00:36:16.000 Now, again, if inherently you denigrate the populations of a district because it is largely illegal immigrant Hispanics, that is going to benefit other populations in the country, including Republicans and whites, but not limited to those groups, obviously.

00:36:33.000 The evidence was found in the files of prominent Republican redistricting strategist Thomas Hoefeller after his death in August.

00:36:39.000 It reveals that Hoefeller played a significant role in orchestrating the addition of the citizenship question to the 2020 decennial census in order to create a structural electoral advantage for, in his own words, Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.

00:36:51.000 Plaintiffs' lawyers challenging the question wrote in a letter Thursday morning to U.S.

00:36:54.000 District Judge Jesse Furman.

00:36:56.000 The lawyers also argued that Trump administration officials purposely obscured Hoefeller's role in court proceedings.

00:37:02.000 The letter drew on new information discovered on hard drives belonging to Hofeller, which fell into the hands of his estranged daughter, who then promptly shared them with Common Cause, which is a very left group.

00:37:12.000 The files show that Hofeller concluded in a 2015 study that adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census would clearly be a disadvantage to the Democrats and benefit white Republicans in redistricting.

00:37:23.000 Again, that is just statistically true.

00:37:26.000 That does not necessarily mean that it is statistically racist in the same way that if you redistrict and you basically Take a district that was heavily Democrat and heavily Black and you split it into two districts where now Black Democrats have a 51% majority in those two districts.

00:37:43.000 Now Black Democrats have two seats, presumably, that they get to take as opposed to one in this particular district, just statistically speaking.

00:37:50.000 That's not a racial breakdown question.

00:37:52.000 It's just a recognition that many groups in the United States tend to vote in terms of polarized racial blocs.

00:38:01.000 Now the media are spinning this as, this is because they're trying to be racist.

00:38:04.000 No, this is because Republican strategists are trying to be Republican.

00:38:08.000 That does not mean they don't want Hispanic people to vote.

00:38:10.000 It does not mean they don't want black people to vote.

00:38:12.000 It does not mean they don't want Democrats to vote.

00:38:14.000 It means they want to redistrict to help Republicans, just as Democrats have always wanted to redistrict to help Democrats.

00:38:19.000 And also, as a general rule, it is worthwhile noting that districts should not represent people who do not belong in the country.

00:38:27.000 I don't even know why that's remotely controversial.

00:38:29.000 A Justice Department spokesman issued a statement disputing the report of new evidence.

00:38:33.000 They said these 11th hour allegations by the plaintiffs, including an accusation of dishonesty against a senior Department of Justice official, are false.

00:38:41.000 They said that Hofeller's study played no role in the department's December 2017 request to reinstate a citizenship question to the 2020 decennial census.

00:38:50.000 Again, race plays a role in American politics.

00:38:53.000 Unfortunately, it does.

00:38:54.000 And Barack Obama had African-Americans for Obama.

00:38:57.000 He went out there during the 2016 election, and he said that he would take it as a direct insult to his own presidency if black voters didn't show up in droves to vote for Hillary Clinton as a referendum on his presidency.

00:39:07.000 It's very funny how high and mighty the same people who purport to believe in intersectional politics and race-based politics get uptight when people point out that Democrats think that way, and therefore redistricting should take into account Political factors.

00:39:21.000 I mean, it's pretty amazing.

00:39:25.000 Now, again, I would prefer that redistricting didn't take into account race at all.

00:39:31.000 And the Supreme Court says that it should not.

00:39:33.000 I agree with the Supreme Court, obviously.

00:39:36.000 But as a result of redistricting, will people be split up differently?

00:39:41.000 Yes, they will.

00:39:42.000 And that will benefit certain groups at the expense of other groups, because every line you draw benefits certain groups at the expense of other groups, unfortunately.

00:39:50.000 So the media, I think, are covering this in a slightly unfair way, at the very least, at the very least.

00:39:56.000 We'll see how the Supreme Court rules on it.

00:39:57.000 It's definitely an interesting issue.

00:39:59.000 So we'll keep an eye on that.

00:40:01.000 Meanwhile, there's a story that got very little attention this week, even though it is a bombshell.

00:40:08.000 And according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Martin Luther King Jr.

00:40:11.000 allegedly had sexual relations with at least 40 women, from prostitutes to people within his inner circle, according to explosive new research published Thursday by David J. Garrow, one of the civil rights leader's foremost biographers.

00:40:22.000 The most shocking allegation, culled from decades-old FBI files, details a 1964 incident in which King reportedly looked on, laughed, and offered advice to a fellow preacher who was raping a woman in a hotel room.

00:40:34.000 Garrell recounts other allegations from formerly sealed FBI documents, including that King fathered a love child and participated in an orgy with a female gospel legend in an eight-page essay he wrote for Standpoint, a British cultural and political magazine.

00:40:47.000 The incidents emerged as part of a National Archives data dump related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

00:40:52.000 In 2018, President Donald Trump ordered the release of more than 19,000 Kennedy-related documents.

00:40:57.000 The documents included some surveillance summaries of FBI wiretaps of King, between 1963 and 1966 in his home office and hotel rooms, as well as information from informants who had infiltrated King's circle.

00:41:08.000 The FBI allegations chronicled by Garrow could trigger an examination of the civil rights hero's personal life.

00:41:13.000 And second, I wanna talk about why this matters and why it doesn't.

00:41:16.000 So this of course has been largely ignored by most of the mainstream media.

00:41:23.000 Now imagine that it came out that Ronald Reagan had engaged in this sort of behavior.

00:41:27.000 The calls for the statues of Ronald Reagan to come down immediately would break out.

00:41:31.000 The calls have not been issued for Martin Luther King's statues to come down.

00:41:36.000 And I don't think MLK's statues should come down.

00:41:39.000 Because this goes to the heart of how we think about people in the past.

00:41:39.000 Why?

00:41:42.000 People in the past are fully shaded human beings.

00:41:46.000 A lot of those people engage in true evils.

00:41:48.000 If these allegations are true, I mean, this is truly evil behavior.

00:41:52.000 A lot of people engaged in truly evil behavior, but also did good things for the world.

00:41:57.000 The complexities of human behavior, human beings are not all white hat or all black hat.

00:42:02.000 They're not all good or all evil.

00:42:03.000 Human beings do good things and they do bad things.

00:42:06.000 Human beings sin and they commit great acts of courage.

00:42:10.000 The reason we build statues to MLK is not because we are enshrining his personal love life.

00:42:17.000 Not because we are enshrining his treatment of women.

00:42:19.000 The reason statues are built of MLK is because MLK was instrumental in ending state-sponsored discrimination in the United States in a unique way that brought Americans together.

00:42:30.000 That is why we build statues.

00:42:32.000 And it's the same thing with regard to Thomas Jefferson or George Washington.

00:42:35.000 The reason you build a statue to George Washington is because he was the father of our country.

00:42:39.000 Because he was the most important leading founding father figure in America.

00:42:43.000 We're not building a statue of him because we are enshrining his views on slavery or his own personal behavior with regard to slavery.

00:42:50.000 The same thing is true of Thomas Jefferson.

00:42:52.000 Now things get more dicey when you talk about building a statue of a Confederate general.

00:42:57.000 Because then the question is what are you paying tribute to?

00:42:59.000 Are you paying tribute to the Confederacy?

00:43:01.000 Which was an evil organization in its promulgation of slavery?

00:43:07.000 Are you building a tribute to the person for their personal courage?

00:43:09.000 Is the statue built because you are admiring the courage of the man?

00:43:13.000 With MLK, it's pretty obvious.

00:43:15.000 You're not building a statue because of his treatment of women.

00:43:18.000 You're building a statue because of his role in the civil rights movement.

00:43:22.000 If we are now going to tear down statues of everybody who did a great thing but also bad things, even though the statue really is meant to commemorate the great thing, there will be no statues.

00:43:30.000 It turns out all human beings do some really crappy stuff.

00:43:33.000 So this MLK thing should be a great reminder to folks who are intent on tearing down every monument or chipping names off every building that simply building monuments or putting names on buildings is not an endorsement of every aspect of a human being's life.

00:43:47.000 Neither is voting for someone, by the way.

00:43:49.000 If you vote for someone, that does not mean that you endorse every aspect of what they do or who they are.

00:43:54.000 If you personally then go on to endorse all the aspects of what they do or who they are, that is a you problem.

00:43:58.000 But, simply voting for someone, even building a monument to someone, doesn't mean you endorse everything about them.

00:44:04.000 So we ought to keep that in mind, because even people who made tremendous contributions to humanity, allegedly, can do some truly evil things if these stories about MLK are true.

00:44:13.000 Okay, time for some mailbagging, so let's get to it.

00:44:18.000 Alrighty, Joel says, Shalom from Toledo, Spain.

00:44:20.000 Cool.

00:44:21.000 As a conservative, I've been posed the following question.

00:44:24.000 Given that we have public services for safety, such as fire and police departments, why should healthcare not be public?

00:44:29.000 I've tried to argue that there are personal decisions that affect the type of healthcare needed, but there are still some contagions that cause externalities beyond one's personal choices.

00:44:36.000 How would you argue the difference between these services?

00:44:38.000 What are the general principles that would constitute a service to be public?

00:44:42.000 Okay, so.

00:44:43.000 There's a basic view in economics that there is a difference between so-called public goods and private goods.

00:44:50.000 Public goods are goods that are what we call non-excludable and non-rivalrous.

00:44:55.000 So, sunshine is a non-excludable, non-rivalrous good, meaning your enjoyment of the good does not decrease my enjoyment of the good, and it's non-excludable.

00:45:03.000 I can't stop you from enjoying the sunshine.

00:45:06.000 We tend to view police and firefighters in that way.

00:45:10.000 That police and firefighters are non-excludable, non-rivalrous goods.

00:45:13.000 You get to take advantage of the fire department, I get to take advantage of the fire department.

00:45:17.000 Your enjoyment of the fire department does not decrease my enjoyment of the fire department.

00:45:21.000 Your enjoyment of the police department does not...

00:45:25.000 Change my enjoyment of the police department.

00:45:27.000 Now, it's true that on the very extreme edges here, then it could be rivalrous, theoretically, right?

00:45:32.000 I mean, you have a small police department and too many citizens.

00:45:34.000 So that means that my enjoyment of the police department does in fact deprive you of your enjoyment of the police department.

00:45:39.000 But overall, the idea that the police and firefighters, the building of roads, that these things are non-excludable and non-rivalrous, that you enjoy it, I can't stop you from enjoying it.

00:45:48.000 The same thing holds true for the army, right?

00:45:50.000 Non-excludable, non-rivalrous.

00:45:51.000 The army defends my town, which means it defends you too.

00:45:55.000 And my enjoyment of the military does not decrease your enjoyment of the military.

00:45:58.000 Those would fall under the category of public goods.

00:46:00.000 Private goods are both excludable and rivalrous.

00:46:02.000 I own my home, and I can keep you out of my home.

00:46:05.000 I can exclude you, and my enjoyment of my home prevents you from enjoyment of my home.

00:46:10.000 That is, any typical good is a private good.

00:46:12.000 So, is healthcare more like a non-excludable, non-rivalrous good, or is it more like an excludable rivalrous good?

00:46:19.000 And the answer is, my enjoyment of my doctor prevents you from enjoying my doctor.

00:46:23.000 And that doctor has a right to exclude you from service.

00:46:26.000 The doctor does not have a duty to serve you.

00:46:28.000 So it is more like a private good.

00:46:30.000 Healthcare is more like a private good.

00:46:31.000 Now, you talk about contagion.

00:46:32.000 Contagion now moves into the issue of externalities.

00:46:35.000 This is where regulations are necessary.

00:46:36.000 So this is why, for example, I'm in favor of government mandated vaccinations.

00:46:41.000 Because now you've gotten, or I'm in favor of the government taking a role in preventing the outbreak of contagion.

00:46:47.000 For example, but when it comes to you broke your leg and now you want to go to the doctor and get your leg fixed, that has nothing to do with me.

00:46:54.000 That is a you problem, meaning that it's an excludable rivalrous good.

00:46:59.000 You're going to go to the doctor, you're going to pay.

00:47:00.000 I'm not going to the doctor.

00:47:02.000 It ain't my leg.

00:47:02.000 I'm not paying.

00:47:04.000 That is not the same thing as police or fire, both of which are designed to protect an entire community.

00:47:10.000 And in fact, crime in my neighborhood is dependent on crime being stopped on my front door.

00:47:15.000 A healthcare in my neighborhood is not dependent on you not being able to heal your broken leg.

00:47:20.000 This is why it changes a little bit with regard to contagious disease.

00:47:23.000 Chris says, what do you think causes most big cities to lean so heavily to the left?

00:47:26.000 Is there ever a world in which cities turn red or are they just naturally inclined to be blue?

00:47:31.000 No, I think that cities tend to turn blue because the reality is that when you live in an area that is more dispersed, you are less likely to encroach on other people's property, other people's way of life.

00:47:44.000 You just don't see other people that much.

00:47:46.000 When you're in a crowded room, the ground rules need to be set, and those ground rules need to be complicated, and they need to set what the common good is, and that means there needs to be some sort of overarching authority that sets how that works.

00:47:59.000 Zoning restrictions don't seem to apply as much in areas of widely dispersed populations, but if you and I live next door to each other, we're now going to have to have a rule about whether you can erect a smokestack on your property or not.

00:48:12.000 When you cram people together, that requires a lot of government in order to ensure that those people are not harming each other.

00:48:18.000 That's the way it works.

00:48:19.000 More people, in a small amount of space, means that there's a lot more externalities, which naturally means a lot more government.

00:48:26.000 Once the government is involved in every aspect of your life, it's easier to also call on that government to be involved in the problems that, quote unquote, you want to solve.

00:48:34.000 That's that cities have historically been much more liberal than the country.

00:48:37.000 They will continue to be, which is why for conservatives, they're going to have to find a different appeal to people in cities.

00:48:43.000 And I think that the culture wars provide that appeal.

00:48:45.000 Frankly, the fact that the left has gotten so over overbearing in its attempts to cram down those common rules, even in cities, means that the backlash is coming.

00:48:54.000 And the ineffectiveness of government has always been a strong pitch for conservatives, but overwhelmingly cities will remain liberal.

00:48:59.000 The question is only whether that liberalism is 90-10 liberalism or 55-45 liberalism.

00:49:05.000 Stephen says, which trilogy is better, the original Star Wars or Lord of the Rings?

00:49:08.000 Lord of the Rings.

00:49:09.000 Okay.

00:49:10.000 John says, I think that's such a clear cut answer that it doesn't even require explanation, particularly because Return of the Jedi has some very serious flaws to it.

00:49:19.000 Also, Lord of the Rings is deeply moving, has something spiritual to say.

00:49:22.000 Listen, I love Star Wars too, but the original Star Wars trilogy, whenever the best movie of a trilogy is the second movie, It's not the best trilogy.

00:49:32.000 I think that's fair to say.

00:49:34.000 Okay, John says, Hey Ben, I'm really excited to see the Sunday special with D-Day veterans.

00:49:38.000 These men are truly amazing.

00:49:39.000 I'm looking forward to hearing their stories.

00:49:40.000 I wanted to know if you think there's any historical aspect or part of World War II that is understudied, misunderstood, or that people should be more aware of.

00:49:47.000 I've always been very interested in military history.

00:49:49.000 I'd like your thoughts on this.

00:49:51.000 Thank you and have a great weekend.

00:49:53.000 Well, I think that there are a lot of aspects to World War II that are understudied or misunderstood.

00:50:01.000 Some of those aspects include the origins of World War II and Stalin's role in helping to initiate World War II by siding with Hitler, obviously.

00:50:09.000 I think that there are a bunch of military operations that are really ignored.

00:50:15.000 For example, there was something called Dieppe, the Battle of Dieppe, that is a fascinating, fascinating incident in World War II.

00:50:24.000 It was before D-Day, and the Allies wanted to see exactly how German defenses would respond to an amphibious invasion.

00:50:31.000 And so they actually organized a small amphibious invasion in a place called Dieppe.

00:50:37.000 And they sent a bunch of Canadian, it was mostly Canadian troops, to Dieppe to fight on the beaches, knowing full well that these guys were basically going to get slaughtered.

00:50:47.000 The notion that in war, People go willingly to their death knowing that their mission is basically only to gather information, for example.

00:50:56.000 I mean, that's true heroism, and it does demonstrate the bloody sacrifice of war.

00:51:00.000 I think that we wildly understudy the Pacific War in World War II, and we study a lot the Atlantic War.

00:51:07.000 We study a lot the war in Germany and the war in France.

00:51:11.000 We study the Holocaust a lot.

00:51:13.000 We don't study nearly enough what Imperial Japan was, and truly how evil Imperial Japan was.

00:51:18.000 I mean, the Rape of Nine King, which happens before World War II, is absolutely shocking in its brutality.

00:51:25.000 The fact that the Pacific War is understudied is a reflection of certain sensibilities on the part of historians to focus in on Europe in a way that they are not focusing in on what actually led to America's involvement in World War II, which was frankly the attack on Pearl Harbor and the idea of Japanese imperialists to maximize power in the Far East.

00:51:43.000 Let's see.

00:51:43.000 Christopher says, I've lived in California all my life.

00:51:45.000 I'm now thinking about moving to another state due to the cost of living, coupled with the raising of a family, a 15-month-old son.

00:51:50.000 As a Christian, I'd love to live in a state and community that share traditional values, but it seems even red states are becoming more and more blue.

00:51:55.000 If you had to move your family out of California, where would you move and why?

00:51:58.000 Thanks, Chris.

00:51:59.000 Well, I have concerns that other people don't have, right?

00:52:01.000 I'm an Orthodox Jew.

00:52:02.000 That means I have to find an area that has Orthodox Jews in it because I have to be within walking distance of a synagogue.

00:52:07.000 There have to be at least some kosher markets, maybe some kosher restaurants.

00:52:11.000 So that, there have to be Jewish day schools, so that limits sort of where I can go.

00:52:16.000 So the biggest Orthodox Jewish populations in the United States are unfortunately all in very liberal areas.

00:52:21.000 It is New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, in order of populations, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and then Dallas.

00:52:26.000 I believe Dallas is a growing community, so we'd probably consider Dallas.

00:52:30.000 Houston has a growing Orthodox community, we'd probably consider Houston.

00:52:33.000 Texas has a lot of things going for it.

00:52:36.000 That's a personal concern that I have that other people would not.

00:52:41.000 But listen, I think there are lots of red areas around the country that have a really great cost of living, have a lot of burgeoning jobs.

00:52:48.000 If I were not Orthodox, if I were not Jewish, I'd be looking to places further north.

00:52:54.000 I'd be looking to Iowa, I would be looking to Maybe South Dakota.

00:53:01.000 I've been looking into some of these places that have booming economies and that are smaller states, and that means that the smaller states are unlikely to go deep blue anytime soon, just because, again, smaller states with more dispersed populations are less likely to have big cities governing them.

00:53:15.000 Tess says, Hey Ben, tomorrow we celebrate my dad's retirement from the U.S.

00:53:15.000 Um, let's see.

00:53:18.000 Coast Guard after 30 years of service.

00:53:19.000 Do you mind giving him a shout out to congratulate him on this amazing accomplishment?

00:53:23.000 I wish you'd included his name so I could give him a direct shout out, but definitely congratulations and thank you for your service, sir.

00:53:28.000 That is amazing stuff.

00:53:30.000 So, there are many Israeli-Arab citizens.

00:53:30.000 Well, it depends.

00:53:32.000 1.2 million at last count.

00:53:33.000 Is it true that Palestinians in Israel are not allowed to vote nationally?

00:53:33.000 I'm a Canadian fan.

00:53:36.000 How are Palestinians treated in Israel overall?

00:53:38.000 Thanks, Brody.

00:53:39.000 Well, it depends.

00:53:40.000 Are the Palestinians Israeli citizens?

00:53:42.000 So there are many Israeli Arab citizens, 1.2 million at last count.

00:53:46.000 And they represent about 20% of the voting base in Israel.

00:53:51.000 Somewhere between 15 and 20% of the voting base in Israel is in fact Arab.

00:53:55.000 There are several Arab parties in the Israeli Knesset.

00:53:57.000 Some of those Arab parties have openly called for the destruction of the state of Israel.

00:54:01.000 Amir Bashar leads one of them.

00:54:02.000 So the fact that Arabs in Israel vote is true.

00:54:08.000 Arabs living under the rule of the Palestinian Authority don't vote in Israeli elections because they're not ruled by Israelis.

00:54:14.000 Israel has set up military blockades, basically, in order to prevent the invasion of people who wish to kill Israeli citizens.

00:54:21.000 But Palestinians have been engaged in self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip for a long time.

00:54:26.000 It's more self-rule in the Gaza Strip than even in the West Bank, because the West Bank is more integrated territorially with Israel than the Gaza Strip is.

00:54:33.000 But the Gaza Strip has been engaged in, like, why should Palestinians living under Hamas, who elected Hamas in 2006, why exactly should they be voting in Israeli elections?

00:54:42.000 Why should Palestinians who live under the Palestinian Authority, I was informed that that was, effectively, that Palestinians should have autonomy, why should they vote in Israeli elections any more than the Israelis should vote in the Gazan elections?

00:54:56.000 Alex says, Hey Ben, I was listening to a podcast on Locke and the subject of property and productivity.

00:55:01.000 The host argued that with no property tax, there's no incentive.

00:55:03.000 The land can sit there and waste if the owner so decides.

00:55:06.000 But with the tax, at least something is gained and it can also encourage productivity in order to pay the tax.

00:55:10.000 What are your thoughts on the taxing of private property as a means to encourage owners to make the land in which they own productive?

00:55:16.000 Love the show.

00:55:17.000 Well, I'm against property taxes because once I pay for it, the government no longer has a role.

00:55:22.000 There's no other product in the United States where you pay a sales tax on it, and the next thing you know, you have to keep paying a tax on it every single year.

00:55:29.000 When I buy a car, I don't keep paying a tax on the car every single year.

00:55:32.000 When I buy property, I pay a certain sales tax, effectively speaking.

00:55:37.000 And then I'm supposed to pay for the value of the property every single year, a percentage of the value of the property?

00:55:42.000 I'm very much against property taxes.

00:55:44.000 And I do not think that it creates an incentive to cultivate the land.

00:55:47.000 Presumably the reason that you paid to buy the land in the first place is because you want to cultivate it.

00:55:51.000 Also, Locke was a fan of what was called adverse possession, which is the idea that if you buy a piece of land and you just leave it there fallow for 20 years, and you never visit it, and somebody comes and establishes their own house on your land, And then proceeds to cultivate the land that it becomes theirs.

00:56:04.000 This is actually a part of American law, adverse possession.

00:56:06.000 I believe there was even a case, if I'm not mistaken, against like Oprah Winfrey a while back in which somebody actually did this.

00:56:12.000 It was basically squatter's rights.

00:56:14.000 They went and squatted on some property that you never visited.

00:56:17.000 Debbie says, with the speech that Mueller gave yesterday on his way out the door, as predicted, it has ramped up the Democrats call for impeachment.

00:56:22.000 Obviously, now it looks like it could become a timing game with the election around the corner.

00:56:26.000 If the House were to impeach next year, does the Senate have to vote on it?

00:56:29.000 Would it be possible that the Republicans could find themselves without a viable candidate on Election Day due to incumbents typically not being primaried?

00:56:35.000 How would the Republicans safeguard against that?

00:56:38.000 Do they have to primary him?

00:56:39.000 Last but not least, if Trump were to be impeached in his second term and Mike Pence became president, how would the office for vice president be filled?

00:56:46.000 So the factual question of who replaces the vice president is to be a candidate.

00:56:52.000 It's not a constitutionally appointed office.

00:56:54.000 So my understanding is that Pence could appoint the replacement VP.

00:56:58.000 I don't think that there is provision for this.

00:57:00.000 You know what?

00:57:01.000 I'm not actually sure that question.

00:57:02.000 That's a really good question.

00:57:03.000 That might be in the constitutional amendment about the line of succession.

00:57:08.000 I'm going to check that out because it slips my mind, frankly, at this point.

00:57:12.000 So I will check.

00:57:15.000 I don't think that it's like the Speaker of the House then kicks up to the Vice Presidency.

00:57:18.000 I'm pretty sure that's not the case.

00:57:20.000 I think that the office might even remain vacant.

00:57:23.000 I'm not sure.

00:57:24.000 Really good question.

00:57:25.000 With the speech that Mueller gave yesterday, let's see, if the House were to impeach, does the Senate have to vote on it?

00:57:30.000 No, the Senate does not have to vote on it.

00:57:31.000 Theoretically, they could just kill it and not do anything, but they would vote on it and they'd vote to end it.

00:57:38.000 The Republicans will not find themselves without a viable candidate on Election Day.

00:57:41.000 That's not a thing.

00:57:43.000 Well, he has the ability to recommend indictment in the absence of the DOJ rules, which is an effective recommendation of impeachment.

00:57:55.000 That's what Barr said today.

00:57:57.000 I think that is correct.

00:57:58.000 There is nothing in the DOJ rules that says in the absence of this rule, we would vote to indict, right?

00:58:04.000 Or we'd push to indict.

00:58:05.000 He could have said that.

00:58:06.000 That would have led to impeachment.

00:58:07.000 There's nothing that officially says he can't say that Trump should be impeached.

00:58:10.000 He could have gotten up there at his statement and said that.

00:58:13.000 Because, again, impeachment is a political matter, not a criminal one.

00:58:16.000 What's weird about what Mueller did is that he was appointed to investigate criminal matters, and then he didn't rule on the criminal matter.

00:58:22.000 Instead, he basically quasi-said impeach.

00:58:25.000 Kevin says, Hey Ben, if you had to guess, what do you think it's like in the Oval Office when Trump and Pelosi have meetings?

00:58:30.000 Do you think they are as mean to each other face to face as they are publicly?

00:58:32.000 I laugh out loud thinking about the awkwardness in that room.

00:58:35.000 Thanks for your crazy dedication to bringing us the truth.

00:58:35.000 Love the show.

00:58:37.000 Well, Kevin, I appreciate it.

00:58:39.000 No, I think they probably get along until the cameras go on and they're mean to each other.

00:58:43.000 Because I know many Democrats in Congress.

00:58:45.000 I know many Republicans in Congress.

00:58:46.000 And that's basically the way this works.

00:58:48.000 If people understood how chummy everybody is behind the scenes, I'm not sure whether they would be happier or more angry.

00:58:53.000 But the fact is that a lot of this is for public show.

00:59:00.000 President Trump and Nancy Pelosi were getting along up until the point where she basically called him crazy and said he should be thrown out of office.

00:59:08.000 Remember, Trump was getting along with Dianne Feinstein so much at a gun control meeting that Republicans had to re-inform President Trump to stick with his principles as opposed to getting chummy with people in front of him.

00:59:17.000 All right, time for a quick thing that I like, and then we will do a thing that I hate.

00:59:21.000 So because I have young children, this means that I get to watch kids' movies, which is fun.

00:59:25.000 One of the kids' movies that I watched the other day with my daughter, she is obsessed with How to Train Your Dragon.

00:59:31.000 She loves it.

00:59:32.000 And she had not seen How to Train Your Dragon 2 or 3.

00:59:35.000 I still will not show her 2 because she's a little bit too young to understand like parental death.

00:59:41.000 I think that would upset her too much.

00:59:42.000 She'd have nightmares.

00:59:43.000 But How to Train Your Dragon 3 is a really nice, cute, innocent movie.

00:59:46.000 It's worth the watch.

00:59:47.000 It's good for kids.

00:59:48.000 A little too scary for kids who are maybe under five or six.

00:59:51.000 But beyond that, definitely doable.

00:59:53.000 Here's a little bit of How to Train Your Dragon 3, The Hidden World.

00:59:57.000 There were dragons when I was a boy.

01:00:03.000 Where they went, only a few know.

01:00:08.000 It's pretty fun.

01:00:13.000 It's a kick, and it's got some really great scenes.

01:00:16.000 Also, the music is great.

01:00:16.000 It's got humor.

01:00:17.000 John Powell, who did the music for How to Train Your Dragon, incredibly talented dude.

01:00:22.000 Also did the music for Born Identity, among other films.

01:00:25.000 So go check it out.

01:00:26.000 It's good for kids.

01:00:27.000 By the way, I did look up, while that trailer was playing, who replaces the VP if the VP becomes president, and my original answer was correct.

01:00:33.000 He does select his own VP at that point.

01:00:36.000 Okay, other things that I like.

01:00:37.000 So this was just hilarious.

01:00:39.000 Charlemagne the God has a show called The Breakfast Club, and he had on Senator Elizabeth Warren.

01:00:44.000 And things did not go great for Elizabeth Warren.

01:00:46.000 He started asking her about why she claimed that she was Native American for years, and it was awkward.

01:00:52.000 Your family told you you were Native American?

01:00:55.000 Charlamagne tells me I'm Dominican, but I don't believe him.

01:00:57.000 You are.

01:00:58.000 How long did you hold on to that?

01:00:59.000 Because there were some reports that said you were Native American on your Texas bar license, and that you said you were Native American on some documents when you were a professor at Harvard.

01:01:06.000 Like, why'd you do that?

01:01:07.000 So, it's what I believe.

01:01:09.000 Were there any benefits to that?

01:01:11.000 No.

01:01:12.000 Boston Globe did a full investigation.

01:01:14.000 It never affected, nothing about my family ever affected any job I ever got.

01:01:19.000 You didn't get a discount in college?

01:01:21.000 No.

01:01:21.000 You kind of like the original Rachel Dozal a little bit.

01:01:24.000 Rachel Dozal's a white woman pretending to be black.

01:01:27.000 Well, this is what I learned from my family.

01:01:31.000 Ouch.

01:01:32.000 Ouch.

01:01:33.000 Yeah, that's gonna sting a little bit.

01:01:35.000 Wow.

01:01:36.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.

01:01:42.000 Okay, so the quick thing that I hate, it turns out North Korea is super evil.

01:01:46.000 And by North Korea, I mean the dictatorship of North Korea.

01:01:49.000 So remember that time that President Trump says that he trusts Kim Jong-un, that Kim Jong-un is a really strong, young leader?

01:01:55.000 Yeah, here's what happened in the aftermath of some negotiations that went wrong.

01:01:59.000 According to USA Today, North Korea executed its special nuclear envoy to the United States as part of a purge of senior officials over the failed summit between Kim Jong-un and President Donald Trump, according to South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper.

01:02:12.000 Kim Hyuk-chol was executed by firing squad in March along with four other foreign ministry officials, the paper reported.

01:02:19.000 North Korea neither confirmed nor denied the report.

01:02:22.000 South Korea's government was not able to confirm the claim.

01:02:26.000 They reported that Kim Hyuk-chol and other senior officials were shot after being accused of spying for the United States.

01:02:32.000 The paper reported that Kim Jong-un ordered the purge amid mounting dissatisfaction with the summit in Hanoi, the second time Kim and Trump met face-to-face for talks.

01:02:39.000 In Vietnam, they failed to reach a deal because of conflicts over the White House's calls for complete denuclearization.

01:02:45.000 Since then, amid a diplomatic standoff, North Korea has resumed short-range ballistic missile testing.

01:02:50.000 Trump has tweeted out, North Korea fired off some small weapons, which disturbs some of my people and others, but not me.

01:02:56.000 Okay, this suggests that maybe we shouldn't be treating Kim Jong-un as either an authority on Vice President Joe Biden's intelligence or on international affairs generally or trusting him.

01:03:09.000 Probably you shouldn't trust the guy who the negotiations went bad and he just shot everyone.

01:03:14.000 That seems kind of like a problem.

01:03:16.000 Just gonna put that out there.

01:03:18.000 All right, we'll be back here later today with two additional hours of Ben Shapiro's show.

01:03:21.000 Otherwise, we'll see you here on Monday.

01:03:22.000 Have a wonderful, relaxing weekend.

01:03:24.000 Stay off Twitter, folks.

01:03:25.000 Just stay off of it.

01:03:26.000 We'll see you here on Monday.

01:03:27.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

01:03:27.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

01:03:30.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

01:03:36.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

01:03:38.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

01:03:39.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.

01:03:41.000 And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

01:03:44.000 Edited by Adam Sajovic.

01:03:45.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Caromina.

01:03:46.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.

01:03:48.000 Production assistant, Nick Sheehan.

01:03:50.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

01:03:52.000 Copyright, Daily Wire 2019.

01:03:55.000 Betting markets, election models, and a political scientist who has correctly predicted nine presidential elections all say Trump is headed for victory in 2020.

01:04:03.000 We will examine why.

01:04:04.000 Then Liz Warren gets wrecked on the radio, the world's tiniest baby ever is born, Elton John hates his country, and conservatives open up a major fight over the definition of conservatism.

The Ben Shapiro Show - May 31, 2019

Mexican Stand-Off | Ep. 792

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