Roseanne is back with vengeance. Journalism collapses on all sides. And Senator Ted Cruz stops by. So we ve got a big show for you, coming up today on The Ben Shapiro Show with your host, Ben Shapiro. Today we re talking about Roseanne, the new ABC sitcom starring Roseanne Barr, which premiered on Tuesday night and immediately hit new heights in the ratings. And we re here to talk about why this is a huge cultural moment, even though it s not even close to being a conservative show, and why we should be worried about what it means for the future of the show and the country as a whole. Today s show is brought to you by Tripping, a vacation rental company that makes great short-term rentals for your next getaway. Tripping is all about escaping the hustle and bustle of the real world, and taking a break from the hectic times we re living in to relax and unwind in your favorite vacation spot. If you re planning a trip to Lake Tahoe or San Francisco Bay Area, you ll want to skip the traffic and take advantage of some of the best restaurants in the area, this is the place for you! Tripping has everything you need to make the most of your time in the best way possible, including the best Wi-Fi, the most efficient way to get the most out of your trip, and most affordable rates in the cheapest possible way possible. You ll never have to go anywhere else in the world. You ll get more peace and quiet, and you ll never feel like you re ever have to be anywhere else except in the same place. . . . except maybe in the middle of the country and you won t have to pay the same thing you ve ever heard of it except in your average American girl in the place you ve heard of . you ll get it on the internet, and it s better than that, and she s going to like it, right here, right there, right in your local coffee shop, right at your average coffee shop or your local gas station or gas station, right on the other place, right next to your local airport, your local train station or whatever you re gonna get it, you re going to get it? that s not going to have it, it s a good one, right she s gonna love it, she s not gonna be there, you s gonna have it there, too.
00:00:12.000I do have many, many, many thoughts on the Roseanne premiere.
00:00:15.000It had huge ratings, and we'll get into all of that.
00:00:17.000I do think it's an important cultural moment, but not quite in the way that I think a lot of Republicans want it to be a huge cultural moment.
00:00:23.000First, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Tripping.com.
00:00:27.000When you plan a vacation, finding a place to stay that'll make everybody happy is usually really difficult, particularly for the right price.
00:00:33.000And if you have a family, this is certainly true, right?
00:00:35.000If you have small kids and you're staying in a one-bedroom hotel room, it is just disastrous, which is why you need Tripping.com.
00:00:41.000Because Tripping.com lets you compare every home from the world's top vacation rental sites in one place to find the best deal on your perfect vacation rental.
00:00:48.000My wife and I only use vacation rentals now.
00:00:50.000We need a kitchenette or a kitchen so that we can actually cook.
00:01:21.000Well, Tripping.com, make sure that you have all of these amenities.
00:01:24.000Best of all, at Tripping.com, you can join the millions of travelers who find more savings with rates up to 80% less than traditional hotel rooms.
00:01:32.000So if you're planning spring break on the beach in Florida, it's Tripping.com.
00:01:34.000It doesn't matter if you're going to Lake Tahoe.
00:02:54.000And the audience grew slightly from the first quarter to its second, which is a pretty good sign.
00:02:59.000This was Tuesday's highest rated entertainment telecast in six years among young adults and ABC's best results in the time slot since 2006.
00:03:06.000Okay, that is a massive, massive hit for ABC if those ratings hold up for Roseanne.
00:03:13.000What's fascinating about this is a lot of people on the right are very excited about this.
00:03:27.000It's not even close to a conservative show.
00:03:29.000In fact, I think it's pretty clever and nefarious in how non-conservative it is.
00:03:34.000And it's worth going back to the history of Roseanne and talking a little bit about this.
00:03:38.000I happen to be an expert on this, because I wrote an entire 400-page book about television called Primetime Propaganda, in which I talked with the producers of the original Roseanne, including Marcy Carsey, who was the woman behind it originally.
00:03:50.000And the way you can tell that this show has some pretty skewed politics, even though it has a Trump supporter who's not being portrayed as a complete nincompoop, the reason you can tell that the politics of the show are skewed is because the New York Times is treating it well.
00:04:16.000The show is one big lie about conservatives.
00:04:18.000The lie that the show tells is that the reason people voted for Trump is because they were dissatisfied with the economy and because they were looking to give Donald Trump a chance to fix it.
00:04:30.000Okay, in 2016 Donald Trump did not win because there was a bunch of dispossessed white people who decided they need a better way of doing economics and so they turned to Trump.
00:06:31.000Just like a lot of shows on TV, it's well written.
00:06:33.000And I think that folks in the middle of the country who are finally feeling like, wow, now I'm finally getting my respect because there's a pro-Trump character who's not perceived as a complete jerk is on TV.
00:06:47.000Okay, so here's what the New York Times had to say about this.
00:07:01.000Okay, here's what the New York Times has to say about the original Roseanne.
00:07:20.000Roseanne was a bonafide trailblazer the first time around, with its focus on blue-collar Americans, its diversity of LGBT characters, and its star, a woman who did not look or sound like a typical television female lead.
00:07:30.000The new Roseanne is topical in its own ways, starting with Roseanne Connors' full-throated support for President Trump.
00:07:36.000Barr is a Trump backer as well, to the dismay of many fans.
00:07:38.000She argued on Jimmy Kimmel recently that supporting Mr. Trump was critical to keeping Mike Pence from the presidency.
00:07:43.000So Roseanne Barr is not a typical Trump supporter, okay?
00:07:45.000The vast majority of people who voted for Trump
00:07:47.000Many of them are more fond of Pence than they are of Trump in terms of his policies, even if they like Trump's pugnacious persona.
00:07:54.000So, it is worth noting that the real reason that the media are supporting this is because the original character of Roseanne Barr was not a conservative character.
00:08:01.000I know this because I talked to the people who created it.
00:08:03.000So, Marcy Carsey is the person who helped create the show.
00:08:06.000Here's what she told me back when I wrote Primetime Propaganda in 2011, quote, you know, I'm of a liberal bent.
00:08:11.000So obviously that's going to come out of the shows I was involved with.
00:08:14.000I was raised in a moderate Republican, Eisenhower Republican family.
00:08:16.000I'm very much a Democrat, but I understand people that have that kind of bent.
00:08:21.000She says when we did Roseanne, the intent was to do a show about the millions, the 85% of households out there, where the woman had to work.
00:08:27.000Not an upper class or upper middle class choice to work, but where the woman has to work.
00:08:31.000The woman should be undereducated, should be not wealthy, should be natively smart, a working class heroine to represent the difficult lives that so many millions of people were leading.
00:08:58.000I was standing in the back of the room where there were a thousand people, and the women are invited to watch it, and the thing is playing, they're laughing, laughing, laughing, and she makes a speech somewhere about, I'm a mom, I'm supposed to be a lover, I'm supposed to be a friend, I'm supposed to be taking care of the teacher, I'm handing out the food tonight, she does the confused who am I role, which Roseanne did brilliantly, and there was audible reaction by the women in the audience, audible, they were like, yeah, and I went, we've got a hitman, they completely got it because we were real.
00:09:38.000So it's a very populist show, in a sort of classical populist sense.
00:09:41.000And there's no reason why she wouldn't have voted for Bernie Sanders in the last election cycle in the primaries, as opposed to Trump, per se, which is a dramatic misread on who the Trump voters are, which, again, I'm going to explain in just a second.
00:09:52.000Roseanne's original show, as The New York Times says, it was very pro-LGBT.
00:09:56.000It imbibed all of the values of Hollywood.
00:10:01.000It was basically an Archie Bunker character who happened to be on the left, a grumpy
00:10:05.000Quote unquote, blue collar conservative who wasn't actually very conservative at all.
00:10:10.000In one episode of the original series, Roseanne told her daughter Darlene to use birth control even though the daughter wasn't yet having sex.
00:10:16.000There's another episode in which Darlene admitted to using pot, speed and acid.
00:10:20.000An episode in which Roseanne's son achieves a certain physical status for his genitals.
00:10:27.000And she says, what about pitching the trouser tent, booting up the hard drive, charming the anaconda?
00:10:31.000I mean, this was a very, very vulgar show.
00:10:33.000And the show was designed to be vulgar.
00:10:36.000Their most famous episode was one called Don't Ask, Don't Tell, in which Roseanne visits a lesbian bar with her friend Nancy and is kissed by Nancy's girlfriend.
00:10:43.000And Frank Richard of The New York Times, of course, praised it.
00:10:44.000So remember, this thing was a critical hit because the idea was that people in the middle America
00:10:49.000actually have the same values as people in Hollywood, they just have different economic priorities.
00:10:55.000John Goodman's character is constantly portrayed in the original series, and in this series as well, the first couple of episodes, as basically an idiot.
00:11:02.000He's an adult who's kind-hearted, but Roseanne's really the boss of the place, and they used to show his butt crack all the time on national TV just to demonstrate how dumb John Goodman actually was.
00:11:25.000And I'm going to explain how that plays into the couple of episodes of Roseanne that premiered last night, because it really is quite fascinating.
00:11:32.000And again, demonstrates that this show is a cultural reach out to conservatives.
00:11:37.000Okay, so first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Thrive Market.
00:11:46.000So, to look at me, you would say, look at that man.
00:11:52.000And one of the ways I eat healthy is by shopping over at Thrive Market.
00:11:55.000It's a revolutionary online marketplace on a mission to make healthy living easy and affordable for everyone.
00:12:00.000You can shop for thousands of the best-selling non-GMO foods and natural products,
00:12:03.000Always at 25 to 50 percent below traditional retail prices.
00:12:07.000You can check out the Thrive brand market brand products because they are the highest quality ingredients at even more affordable prices than the current premium products carried on site.
00:12:15.000Now, you ask me, Ben, what can you eat there?
00:12:17.000Well, the answer is that they have kosher food there because you can filter the catalog by your values and dietary preference.
00:12:44.000You don't want to hang out in the parking lot with all those people driving Priuses and shouting about how they love Jill Stein over at the Whole Foods.
00:12:50.000You don't want to overpay at Whole Foods.
00:13:40.000Okay, so, back to Roseanne and this cultural moment.
00:13:42.000Because a lot of people are saying this is the big cultural moment in the United States.
00:13:46.000So here is what the first two episodes are about.
00:13:48.000First episode is about Roseanne arguing with her sister about Trump versus Hillary.
00:13:52.000And it turns out that her sister voted for Jill Stein.
00:13:54.000That's the big punchline, is that the sister was, in fact, convinced by Roseanne that Hillary was so bad that she had to vote for Jill Stein, and she feels like she threw her vote away.
00:14:02.000And it turns out that can they get along, Roseanne and her sister?
00:14:05.000Sure they can get along, because they're not arguing over deep issues.
00:14:38.000We're not coming together around that, because the second episode of the show—I mean, it's mentioned in the first episode of the show—is that Darlene's son—Darlene is, of course, Roseanne's daughter in the show—her son is named Mark, and he likes to dress up in girls' clothing, right?
00:14:53.000It would be wrong to assume that the nine-year-old character is transitioning or gay, so they asked executive producer Sarah Gilbert to explain why she created the role of Mark.
00:15:01.000So they asked, does Mark see himself as a girl?
00:15:08.000He's based on a few kids in my life that are boys who dress in more traditionally feminine clothing.
00:15:11.000He's too young to be gay, and he doesn't identify as transgender.
00:15:14.000But he just likes wearing that kind of clothing, and that's where he is at this point in his life.
00:15:18.000These are the kinds of values that people actually voted for Trump regarding.
00:15:22.000They felt like there was a cram down in Hollywood saying that you are not allowed to raise your kids with traditional gender roles.
00:15:28.000And that if you do, it's mean and nasty and cruel.
00:15:32.000One of the reasons that people voted for Trump is the cultural blowback.
00:15:35.000It's because Trump is a culture warrior.
00:15:37.000Donald Trump doesn't give a damn about economics outside of tariffs.
00:15:39.000Donald Trump doesn't know anything about economics outside of tariffs.
00:15:42.000But what Donald Trump does know is that there is a large feeling in the rest of the United States that the social values of New York and Los Angeles are actually not popular, and we feel like they're being crammed down our throats.
00:16:27.000Well, if that's the case, then why do you care if I put my kids in corduroy slacks versus putting them in a dress?
00:16:31.000What you're saying is my kids should be able to wear the dress, and it shouldn't be up to me whether I want my kid to wear corduroy slacks.
00:16:35.000So clearly, you think the clothes make a difference.
00:17:11.000You shouldn't train to be like your mom when it comes to dressing.
00:17:14.000It's one of the reasons that the Bible is very strict about cross-dressing actually.
00:17:17.000But the notion here is that traditional conservatives don't really exist, that really they're all fine with their seven-year-olds dressing up in dresses.
00:17:23.000And if they're really tolerant, they would be.
00:17:24.000What makes Roseanne and John Goodman good people is that they are allowing the seven-year-old to run around in a dress.
00:17:29.000And if they didn't allow the seven-year-old to run around in a dress, then that would mean that they were mean, right?
00:17:33.000By the end of the episode, John Goodman has fully accepted this.
00:17:35.000And this is not actually the only socially left point that's made in Roseanne.
00:17:40.000Roseanne also makes another socially left point.
00:17:42.000So, back in the day when they originally premiered Roseanne, Roseanne was a very pro-abortion character.
00:17:46.000In fact, she even considers aborting her child, one of her kids, in the later episodes of Roseanne.
00:17:52.000And one of the things that happens in this series is that Roseanne, Roseanne's other daughter, not Darlene, comes back, she comes home, and she has decided that she wants to be a surrogate.
00:18:03.000And she wants to carry somebody else's child.
00:18:26.000They just don't want to make an abortion argument because it turns out that abortion is not nearly as popular a political stance in 2018 as it was in 1997.
00:18:33.000So, all of this is designed, again, to shovel a bunch of social left messaging into a supposedly conservative-friendly show.
00:18:41.000So in many ways, it's actually more disturbing from a conservative point of view than openly left shows like Will & Grace.
00:18:47.000Because Will & Grace just says what they think.
00:18:49.000They just say conservatives are a bunch of nasty rubes who hate gay people, and we'll make fun of them all the time.
00:18:54.000This show says, listen, Trump supporters are really all like us.
00:18:58.000Deep down inside, they're all social leftists, right?
00:19:00.000They're people who like abortion, they like cross-dressing, and they're fine with early-stage transgenderism.
00:19:05.000They're fine with all of these things, right?
00:19:07.000It's just that they disagree on economics, and that's how we're going to come together.
00:19:10.000Now, that actually achieves the same purpose as Will and Grace.
00:19:14.000Because Will and Grace says, conservatives who believe all this stuff about same-sex marriage and transgenderism and abortion, those people are rubes and hicks and evil people.
00:19:21.000Roseanne is almost saying the same thing.
00:19:37.000If they were to say that to their kid, if the father were to step in and say, listen, I think it's important that you dress like a man because one day you will be a man.
00:19:54.000If you were to say that to a child on national television, this would make you cruel, inhumane, nasty, barbaric, right?
00:19:59.000Because these are the values the left wants to push.
00:20:02.000So you end up in the same place with this wink and nod, with this wink and nod to the notion that they're actually pro-Trump or Trump-friendly.
00:20:10.000And that just isn't really the case, okay?
00:20:12.000They're Trump-friendly in name only, but again,
00:20:14.000They're Trump-friendly because they think that poor people will vote for Trump or Bernie because they're poor and downtrodden, not because those poor, downtrodden people actually may have values and go to—certain biblical values and go to church and think that Hollywood cramming down Laverne Cox on the rest of the country and suggesting that if you don't think that a man is a girl and a girl is a man, that you're a bad person is a bad thing.
00:20:34.000So, it's a pretty amazing thing that Roseanne is attempting to do.
00:20:39.000And this is, unfortunately, how so much of the left is working these days.
00:20:43.000Another indicator of how the left is working these days.
00:20:44.000So Kevin Williamson is a columnist over at National Review.
00:20:47.000One of my favorite columnists, actually.
00:21:19.000These are not folks who are probably going to call me up and ask me to do a show, even though this show right here gets better ratings than pretty much anything else they have in daytime.
00:21:38.000Kevin Williamson has talked about—he called Donald Trump an ape on an escalator.
00:21:43.000When Donald Trump announced for the presidency that Williamson could not be more anti-Trump.
00:21:47.000It is not possible for him to be more anti-Trump.
00:21:50.000And now the Atlantic wants to hire him.
00:21:52.000And now the Atlantic is getting tremendous blowback.
00:21:54.000They're getting tremendous blowback because Kevin Williamson has a couple of really kind of odd positions.
00:21:59.000He has a position saying that he is in favor of the death penalty for women who actually obtain abortions, for example.
00:22:07.000And this is unacceptable to the Atlantic.
00:22:08.000It's OK to have people like Peter Beinart who are openly pro-Hamas.
00:22:11.000But it's another thing for Kevin Williamson to make an argument that I think is wrong, but at least is sort of interesting, even if you don't think it's morally wrong, right?
00:22:19.000But the idea is you can't have people who disagree with you over at the Atlantic.
00:22:23.000So the entire leftist society, Kevin Williamson is not allowed to work at the Atlantic, and they're trying to force the Atlantic not to hire him.
00:22:29.000There's a big piece by Sarah Jones over at the New Republic in which she links
00:23:20.000That's how Roseanne defines people who voted for Trump.
00:23:22.000They're people who agree with us, they just disagree about Hillary stinking.
00:23:25.000That's not what happened in this last election cycle.
00:23:27.000There are serious, real differences between right and left, and you're not actually going to get to any serious sense of American unity without coming face-to-face with those differences instead of just eliding them and pretending we all agree that seven-year-old boys should be wearing girls' clothing.
00:23:40.000Okay, before we go any further, ZipRecruiter.com.
00:23:43.000So, ZipRecruiter.com, if you want to get the best employees, this is the place to go.
00:23:47.000So, ZipRecruiter.com knows there's a smart way to recruit people, and they built a platform that finds the right job candidates for you.
00:23:53.000They learn what you're looking for, they identify people with the right experience, and they invite them to apply
00:26:23.000Because it looks like the House is able to pass some of these bills through regular order, but it seems like everything stops dead in the Senate.
00:26:27.000Well, look, in the Senate, we had no amendments on the bill.
00:26:48.000Now I will say, I think there were some meaningful victories in things we were able to keep out of the omnibus.
00:26:54.000There was a big hard push from a number of more moderate and liberal Republicans to have tens of billions of dollars of bailouts for insurance companies under Obamacare.
00:27:06.000I think that would have been a disaster.
00:27:07.000The idea that we're bailing out the insurance companies, who are making record profits,
00:27:11.000While not honoring our promise to repeal Obamacare, while not lowering premiums, reducing regulations, expanding choice, expanding freedom.
00:27:30.000So, I mean, as a conservative, I've spent virtually my entire life being frustrated with the Republican Party because the Republican Party makes a bunch of promises about things they're going to do.
00:27:42.000And when it does get done, it tends to be done in these vast bills that are a thousand pages long and always are a crap sandwich.
00:27:48.000Is the problem here that Republicans are promising more than they can deliver or is the problem here that the crowd of conservatives were just not realistic about what is possible in a Senate with 51 votes and with, you know, a couple of Republicans who are at best very dicey on serious conservative priorities?
00:28:02.000So is it an expectation problem or is it a promise problem?
00:29:16.000Every one of those victories was done through legislative vehicles that only require 50 votes, that can't be filibustered.
00:29:23.000What I'm urging my colleagues to do is in 2018, let's demonstrate that same seriousness of purpose and let's bring up and vote on major priorities.
00:29:32.000Let's bring up and vote on making the individual tax cuts permanent.
00:29:36.000Let's make the small business tax cuts permanent.
00:29:39.000Let's vote on a full repeal, or if not, major reform of Dodd-Frank to free up capital for small banks that go and turn to small businesses.
00:29:49.000Let's tackle Obamacare and rescind regulations that are driving up premiums and expand consumer freedom.
00:29:56.000All of those we can do if, and here's the critical if, we tee up vehicles that only require 50 votes.
00:30:03.000If we stay in the world of the omnibus where you need 60 votes,
00:30:08.000So there are procedural vehicles that take 50 votes.
00:30:12.000The two are reconciliation, which is how we passed the tax cut.
00:30:16.000It's how we passed the Obamacare individual mandate repeal.
00:30:19.000It's how we passed my amendment expanding College 529.
00:30:22.000It's the biggest federal school choice legislation in history we passed last year.
00:30:27.000The other avenue I've suggested is using NAFTA renegotiation as a vehicle for regulatory reform, but both of those you can do with 50 votes and they can't be filibustered.
00:30:37.000If our leadership is willing to focus on, let's deliver on our promise.
00:31:14.000Look, I'm not going to get into right now sort of leadership politics and battles.
00:31:18.000What I do think is we need a Republican leader.
00:31:22.000Who is responsive to the will of the Republican conference, the will of the majority, and ultimately the will of the people who elected us.
00:31:29.000And I will say, among Senate Republicans, there's a generational divide.
00:31:33.000A divide between what I call the young Turks and the old bulls.
00:31:38.000The young Turks I define as anyone really elected 2010 or later.
00:31:43.000And that's a little more than half our conference.
00:31:45.000It's a big chunk of the Republicans in the Senate.
00:31:49.000The Young Turks, many of them are pushing for let's do more.
00:32:22.000Let's learn from our victories and let's do it again.
00:32:25.000So I want to drill down on this for just one more second.
00:32:27.000And that is, you know, when it comes to Senator McConnell, you keep saying leadership.
00:32:30.000I assume his argument here would be that he's got a fractious caucus, that there are five or six Republicans who are not willing to go along with the rest.
00:32:36.000You say 80 percent of the caucus wants to go along with you.
00:32:38.000That leaves 20 percent that isn't when you have a 51 vote majority.
00:32:41.000All you need is two who don't like what you're doing in order to say something.
00:32:44.000Do you think that's a real concern or do you think that that's being exaggerated a little bit by leadership as an excuse for doing nothing?
00:32:50.000Look, I think that's a very real concern.
00:33:44.000And you and I were talking about right before the show, look, I'm away from my kids every week.
00:33:48.000I mean, this hurts to be away from my daughters.
00:33:51.000There's only one reason to do it, and it's to make a difference in our country, to get conservative victories, to defend the principles we believe in, and so that focus
00:34:02.000We've got to get focused on doing that job.
00:34:12.000The way you set a lawsuit, you sit down with the opposing party, you sit down with the clients, the principals, and you say, all right, what do you want?
00:34:35.000You know, the week after the tax cut plan passed, Bernie Sanders went on on one of the Sunday shows with Jake Tapper and Tapper said, said, well, look, this tax cut cuts the taxes for virtually every middle class taxpayer in America.
00:35:59.000If there are things we want to get done and we've got potentially a narrow window of time, nine months to get it done, then let's develop a systematic plan to accomplish those victories.
00:36:10.000That's what what our leadership is doing right now is going to Chuck Schumer and saying, Chuck, what do you want to get done?
00:36:16.000And let's have a plan to get that accomplished.
00:36:23.0002018, obviously, the polls don't look fantastic.
00:36:25.000It's going to be very, very important for conservatives to get out and do something about it.
00:36:29.000The question that I get a lot when I have folks like you, when I have senators on, is what are we supposed to do?
00:36:34.000The grassroots conservatives, what can they do?
00:36:36.000Because they sit around and they're really frustrated, and then that frustration bubbles to the top through tea parties or through Trump or through whatever it is, but then they feel constantly let down.
00:36:43.000So what can they do right now to help foster what you're talking about?
00:36:47.000What can they do other than sit around and grouse about it?
00:36:49.000If you look at 2018, 2018 I think is going to be a turnout election.
00:36:56.000The Democrats agree with this, by the way.
00:36:57.000If you look at how the Democrats are behaving, they have decided that the set of swing voters, of voters who are going to show up and vote in November but haven't decided if they're Democrat or Republican, that that's essentially a null set.
00:37:13.000For the last 15 months, what we've seen is the demise of the moderate Democrat, where even the so-called moderate Democrats, the Joe Manchins, the Heidi Heitkamps, their voting records are identical or virtually identical to Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
00:37:33.000And the far left, they're energized, they're angry, and they hate the president.
00:37:38.000It is their motivating force and rage.
00:37:42.000We're going to see in November record Democratic turnout.
00:37:45.000In all 50 states, it's going to shatter records.
00:37:48.000The question that will determine whether 2018 is a good election, where we win three, four, five Senate seats, we come back with a real functioning majority in the Senate, or whether we get blown out and have Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer as the leaders in Congress, is going to come entirely down to conservative turnout.
00:38:08.000The states that are up in 2018, there are more conservatives than liberals.
00:38:11.000If conservatives show up, we'll do well.
00:38:14.000My state in Texas, I'm up for re-election in Texas.
00:38:18.000We're facing Democrats who are energized.
00:38:20.000We just had earlier this month, a Democratic primary where Democratic turnout was up 100%.
00:38:58.000And what happens every time the president says something, tweets something.
00:39:05.000Thousands of Bernie Sanders leftists, their heads explode and they go online and they give 50 or 100 bucks to every Democrat they can find.
00:39:12.000So one of the things the folks listening to you, look, the other side is energized and engaged.
00:39:18.000For my campaign, I'd encourage you to come to our website.
00:39:26.000We need the resources to mobilize conservatives.
00:39:30.000And then I'd encourage one of the beauties of the modern age, of the social media age,
00:39:35.000Is you don't have to be, you know, Ben, you've got a show, you've got, you've got a media platform, you know, every one of your listeners has a platform also.
00:39:42.000Every one of your listeners can engage their friends, mobilize their friends, make them laugh, make them care.
00:39:48.000Every person listening to this show, I hope, number one, will contribute at TedCruz.org.
00:39:53.000But number two, we'll focus on energizing and turning out conservatives for November and simultaneously holding Republicans accountable in Washington.
00:41:17.000We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast in the nation.
00:41:25.000One of the reasons the country is so divided right now, obviously, is because the way journalists have done their business is quite obviously terrible.
00:41:32.000And it is true across the spectrum, okay?
00:41:56.000Where exactly am I making a leap between fact A and fact B in order to get to conclusion C?
00:42:02.000That's what I try to do on the show so that we can take this journey together and think along with one another.
00:42:06.000But that's not something that's happening in the media, and the media seem okay with this.
00:42:09.000The reason I'm talking about this is because Michael Wolff, who is the author of Fire and Fury, and has been widely discredited at this point, he made a series of comments to a student newspaper at Vassar College, which was his alma mater, and here's what he had to say.
00:42:25.000All I do is look and write what I see and what I hear.
00:42:28.000And my job, which has nothing to do with truth, is to take what I see and what I hear and write in a way that readers can come as close as possible, as close as I came to the experience of doing this.
00:42:36.000I want to be able to turn what I see into something that a reader says, oh, I see that too.
00:42:40.000That line there, which has nothing to do with truth, is the key line.
00:42:43.000And right now in media, media coverage has nothing to do with truth, which is one of the reasons why I think people are so polarized.
00:42:49.000Because you can view one website and view a second website and come up with two completely different visions of the world.
00:42:54.000But not only that, two completely different versions of the facts.
00:43:42.000You can't understand what anyone is saying, but the point here is to have on a bunch of young students like a Linda Ellerbe show on Nick Jr.
00:43:49.000in order to in order to discuss these issues.
00:43:50.000The whole point here is, of course, to produce a particular agenda.
00:43:53.000This is what CNN has been doing for weeks on the gun issues.
00:43:56.000So the media coverage of this has been just egregious.
00:43:58.000And then on the right, you have people like Alex Jones who are out there promoting the most radical version of critique.
00:44:04.000First of all, you've seen people who are putting out false
00:44:06.000Falsehoods, open falsehoods about the Parkland students who they disagree with.
00:44:36.000Okay, and if you can't see this, he's actually putting video of David Hogg over that audio of Adolf Hitler and putting it in black and white.
00:44:47.000Now, is any of this designed to actually get to the truth?
00:44:55.000Is any of this designed to enrich the country or get us to a point where we can have discussions?
00:44:59.000Now, this is my problem with everything that's happening in the media right now, from Hollywood, from shows like Roseanne, to what's happening on Alex Jones, to CNN.
00:45:06.000There's no attempt to even get to a common basis of facts so that we can have a discussion.
00:45:10.000If there is no common basis of facts, there is no discussion to be had.
00:45:13.000There cannot be a discussion if this is the case.
00:45:44.000Virtually everybody else in the media, MSNBC, CNN, all the networks, they were giving Michael Wolff enormous credibility, and he says he has nothing to do with the truth.
00:45:50.000And then you wonder why it is that there seem to be alternative realities in the world of politics.
00:45:55.000That's why there are alternative realities.
00:46:39.000that Melania should leave Trump for a couple of reasons.
00:46:42.000She can if she wants, but there are a couple of reasons I don't think that Melania should leave Trump.
00:46:45.000But the reason that I'm bringing this up is because it's pretty obvious that the Stormy Daniels stuff has just become gossip TV at this point.
00:46:53.000One, Melania knew what she was getting into in the first place.
00:46:55.000She was wife number three, and she was having an affair with Trump while he was married to wife number two.
00:46:59.000So it's not like Melania didn't know it was coming, and she's been very obvious about this.
00:47:02.000She was asked at one point whether Trump would have married her if she wasn't beautiful, and she said, would I have married Trump if you weren't rich?
00:47:08.000I mean, this is a very transactional relationship.
00:47:10.000Everybody knows this who's been watching it.
00:47:57.000It's all Jerry Springer nonsense, and the Jerry Springer nonsense devolves into basically people tribally siding up, right?
00:48:03.000So, CNN did an interview with a bunch of female Trump supporters, and they asked, you know, what do you think now that all these allegations have come out about Stormy Daniels?
00:48:10.000And the female Trump supporters basically said, listen, you guys are going to tell me what you want me to hear, and I don't believe anything you have to say.
00:48:18.000In order for somebody to come forward, you can be pushed by somebody else, right?
00:48:24.000And so I think the thing is, is you're looking for a way to impeach my president that I worked very hard for.
00:48:33.000Okay, and I think there are a lot of Trump supporters who feel that way, again, because the media have failed to do a good job in policing themselves and simply telling the facts.
00:48:41.000They can give us their conclusion, but they have to tell us the facts first.
00:48:43.000Okay, a quick thing I like, and then a quick thing I hate, and then I want to talk Passover for about 30 seconds here.
00:48:49.000Things I like, number one, the thing I like today is that Bernie Sanders inspired an actual circus clown to run for office.
00:48:58.000So according to Emily Zanotti over at Daily Wire, Stephen Loft is a former clown with the Ringling Brothers Circus and a former volunteer with both Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders' campaigns.
00:49:06.000He also happens to have snagged the Democratic nomination in South Carolina's 5th congressional district, and he's going to take on Ralph Norman in November.
00:49:13.000He promises that he will be a better clown in office than the current clowns in office.
00:49:16.000He says they joke that the president and Congress are all clowns.
00:49:19.000Well, in my professional opinion, they are the worst clowns I have ever seen.
00:49:29.000OK, our politics is filled with clowns.
00:49:30.000OK, time for a quick thing that I hate.
00:49:37.000So Heineken has now released an ad and then they pulled the ad.
00:49:40.000I'm going to show you the ad and then we'll try to figure out exactly what's wrong with the ad.
00:49:47.000It's a bartender who's looking down at a beautiful woman at the end of the bar, and he's sliding her a beer, and it soars past a bunch of different people.
00:49:58.000It soars past, it's obviously in a tropical place, it soars past a couple of black folks, and then finally it arrives at the end, and it's a light beer.
00:50:07.000Right, and it says, sometimes lighter is better at 99 calories.
00:50:11.000Okay, and the woman at the end of the bar, can we pause it on her?
00:50:13.000Because, go back for a second, is there a way that we can pause it on her?
00:50:16.000Because I want to see what she actually looks like.
00:50:50.000Okay, so the problem with this ad is that the ad shows the beer sliding past three black people and then arriving at a non-black woman at the end.
00:50:57.000And so the idea is that this is a racist ad.
00:50:59.000That the ad is saying that lighter skin is better.
00:51:01.000And that's why he's sliding the beer to her.
00:51:03.000Okay, if we've become this stupid and this sensitive, do you really think the people who made this ad were saying that light skin is better?
00:51:09.000Really, that was the implication of the ad?
00:51:11.000When you have a couple of people who look like maybe they're of Spanish extraction sliding beers to each other?
00:51:17.000You may be a little bit crazy if this is how far you are willing to go in the name of political correctness.
00:51:21.000Okay, so, today is a Wednesday, and that means that normally we do a little bit of Bible talk.
00:51:25.000Well, the Bible talk for today comes courtesy of the fact that this weekend begins the holiday of Passover, which is, I believe, my favorite holiday.
00:51:33.000It's either that or Sukkot, which is the one where we sit in the booths.
00:51:36.000And one of the things that people need to know about the holiday of Passover, which is, of course, all about the Exodus, is the Exodus is not just a universal vague thing.
00:51:42.000So people in politics have used the Exodus story to justify virtually anything.
00:51:45.000We've heard it used to justify the civil rights movement, I think appropriately.
00:51:48.000Used to justify the gay rights movement, I think wildly inappropriately.
00:51:54.000Again, the let my people go line is the one that's usually used.
00:51:57.000Moses goes to Pharaoh, and he says, let my people go.
00:52:00.000And this is supposed to be the end of the story.
00:52:01.000But this is not the end of the story, folks.
00:52:03.000That ignores a couple of things about the Exodus story.
00:52:06.000One, the rest of let my people go, the phrase does not end at let my people go.
00:52:11.000OK, what God actually says to Moses is he says, go to Pharaoh and say to him, quote, Thus says the Lord, let my people go that they may serve me.
00:52:19.000Every time it says, let my people go in the Bible, it is followed with that they may serve me in the wilderness or that they may serve me.
00:52:24.000The whole point is that God is saying people have to be freed of earthly tyranny so they can submit themselves to the yoke of heaven.
00:52:51.000And once you sever, so that they may serve me, then let my people go basically just means leave me alone.
00:52:56.000But it turns out that people then impose other sorts of earthly tyranny, because what they suggest is that now, in order for me to let your people go, that means that you have to invade my church and tell me what to do.
00:53:05.000It means that you have to invade my home and tell me how to raise my child.
00:53:08.000Let My People Go So They May Serve Me is the root and branch, I believe, of the Western civilized thought, which is, there are rights and there are duties, and these two things are inherently connected.
00:53:18.000There are rights from government, there are rights that you have that pre-exists the state, those come from God, and those exist so that we can seek Him.
00:53:25.000That is, without a religious, fundamental, moral basis to the United States, rights tend to disappear into a miasma of libertinism.
00:53:31.000And that's what all the founders believed.
00:53:32.000Adams thought that, Washington thought that.
00:53:35.000The Exodus is very specific to a specific people who are supposed to be a light unto the nations.
00:53:40.000It wasn't just God decided, I'm going to take one nation out of another nation and then I'm just going to leave them alone and tell them to do whatever the hell they want.
00:53:53.000It's to fulfill an earthly promise in terms of the land that the Jews are supposed to inherit, that God is a fulfiller of promises, that he keeps his promises, that he is true to you.
00:54:02.000That is the message, message number one of the Bible.
00:54:04.000And message number two is that you must be true to him as well, because your freedom is contingent upon you doing your virtuous duty.
00:54:10.000So that is the real message of Passover.
00:54:12.000Don't believe all the all the cheap hype about it's just about let my people go, because again, there are some missions that attach once you have freedom.
00:54:18.000OK, we'll be back here tomorrow with much, much more.