Trump delivers his big primetime address on the border. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer look like members of the undead, and Jim Acosta is all over everyone. Ben Shapiro breaks it all down and explains why the president should have focused on the blood and gore aspect of the immigration debate, rather than the incompetence and foolishness of Democrats who say no border wall is necessary. He also points out that the media did a good job of covering the speech, but it could have been better in terms of the content and presentation. Ben Shapiro is the host of The Ben Shapiro Show on Fox News Radio and host of the Daily Wire. He is a regular contributor to the New York Times, CNN, CBS, and other media outlets, and is a frequent guest on CNN and other network news outlets. He is also a frequent contributor to The Daily Wire and the Hill, and has been featured on CNN, NPR, and NPR. He has been a contributor on NPR, CBS News, and many other networks, including CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS and NPR, among others. His latest book, is out now and is available for pre-order on Amazon Prime, wherever you get your hard copy copy of the book, "The White House Correspondent's Notebook" is available. If you haven't already checked it out, you can get a copy of The White House Notebook here: bit.ly/TheWhiteHouseNotebook and the White House Rulebook here at The Weekly Standard, wherever else you re listening to the show. You can also find us on Apple Podcasts and subscribe to our social media platforms. Subscribe to our new podcast, The FiveThirtyEight. and listen to our podcast wherever you re reading this podcast. The opinions expressed in the show is based on the book is published, you ll be getting the most authentic, unedited and unedited version of what we post it. We post it on Apple News and other good listening choices, too! Thank you for listening and sharing it on your comments? Subscribe and reviewing this podcast on your favorite podcasting platform, wherever possible, please be sure to tell us what you're listening to us your thoughts and recommendations are we're listening out for us on social media and sharing us on the podcast and what we re listening out about it on it too of it! We re looking out for the best of what you like it on the internet and what you think of it?
00:00:47.000PolicyGenius has created a website that makes it easy for you to compare quotes, get advice, and get covered without extra fees or commission sales agents.
00:00:54.000PolicyGenius is the easy way to get life insurance in minutes.
00:00:57.000You can compare quotes from top insurers and find the coverage you need at a price you can afford.
00:01:05.000With the insurance company, all part of that best price guarantee.
00:01:08.000And PolicyGenius doesn't just make life insurance easy.
00:01:11.000Whether you're shopping for disability insurance to protect your income or homeowner's insurance or auto insurance, they can help you get covered fast.
00:01:17.000Their site is really easy to navigate and maneuver.
00:01:34.000So the president of the United States had all of the dominoes set up in a row.
00:01:38.000It was time for him to make his big address to the American people explaining why the government was shut down, why it was important to build a border wall.
00:01:46.000The president's address has to be kind of examined in two contexts.
00:01:55.000The content basically covered the things that the president needed to cover, although I would say that he focused a little too heavy-handedly on the blood and gore aspects of illegal immigration, as opposed to what I would have focused on, which is the utter incompetence and foolishness of Democrats who say that no border wall is necessary.
00:02:11.000And that's where I would have put all my focus.
00:02:13.000The president talked about it some, but he didn't talk about it enough.
00:02:16.000And the other place that I would have put a lot of focus is on the minimal cost of the wall.
00:02:21.000I think that the President should have opened up his speech last night.
00:02:24.000I think he should have opened up his speech last night by listing off all of the spending priorities for Democrats.
00:02:28.000They've spent $5 billion on this, and they've spent $5 billion on that, and they've spent $5 billion on the National Endowment for the Arts, where people are paid to smear themselves with chocolate in front of cameras for Art Nouveau.
00:02:38.000But they won't spend $5 billion on a border fence that would permanently Make easier the lives of the Border Patrol agents who are simply trying to enforce the law.
00:02:46.000That's where I would have put the focus.
00:02:48.000Instead, the president went pretty heavy.
00:02:51.000I think that's a reflection of Stephen Miller, his speechwriter, who writes a lot on these particular issues.
00:02:56.000In terms of the content, though, overall, it was fine.
00:02:58.000Whenever the president sticks to teleprompter, he's actually more convincing than when he does Rally Trump.
00:03:03.000Rally Trump is really good for the base, but teleprompter Trump is actually better for the vast swath of Americans who just need to hear the message, and they need to hear the message unfiltered without the media acting as an intermediary.
00:03:15.000The fact that the president went directly to the people was something deeply necessary last night because the media coverage up till now has been that Trump is intransigent and terrible for not simply signing on to the new budget that the Democrats want to put forward and that would not include proper funding for the border barrier that Trump is talking about building.
00:03:30.000So Trump had to go around the media, over their heads, directly to the American people.
00:03:35.000I think he did that successfully in terms of content last night.
00:03:37.000In terms of presentation, it was a little lackluster.
00:03:40.000The big problem with Teleprompter Trump is that it is so obviously different from Authentic Trump.
00:03:45.000When you watch Trump authentically, he's freewheeling, he's basically a stand-up comedian, the guy responds to audiences, he's inherently funny.
00:03:52.000When you get Teleprompter Trump, it's as though he's been drained of all of his life force and he sort of just reads into camera.
00:03:58.000That juxtaposition was not great for him last night, specifically because Stephen Miller's speeches tend to be filled with all sorts of, as I say, kind of blood and gore and appeals to the heart and emotional appeals.
00:04:12.000Well, if you get a speech that is filled with appeals to the heart and emotional appeals and you seem really unemotional while reading it, it's not a great performance.
00:04:22.000So, let's go through President Trump's speech, then we'll get to the responses, because whatever President Trump did last night was blown off the front pages by how horrible the opposition was.
00:04:30.000And this is where President Trump is just an insanely lucky man.
00:04:34.000No matter how bad he is at his job, the good news is that his opponents so far have been even worse at their jobs.
00:04:40.000I mean, you will not believe, once we get to Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, what that sounded and looked like, because my god!
00:04:49.000We'll begin with President Trump last night from the Oval Office, the President's first Oval Office address watched by presumably tens of millions of people.
00:04:58.000My fellow Americans, tonight I am speaking to you because there is a growing humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border.
00:05:08.000Okay, and he started off with the talk of the crisis.
00:05:12.000Again, I think that he should have started off with the government shutdown.
00:05:15.000And then you'll see that this is the difference between how Democrats approach this and how Trump approached it.
00:05:19.000So Trump talked about the crisis at the border that was necessitating his action.
00:05:23.000The truth is, there is no crisis at the border in the sense of something has happened suddenly and now we don't have the means to deal with it.
00:05:33.000That's why what he really should have said is, my fellow Americans, we are now in the midst of a government shutdown.
00:05:38.000That government shutdown is not going to end until Democrats give me the funding necessary in order for us to secure our border, an intractable problem that's been plaguing the nation since 40, 50 years ago.
00:05:51.000That's how I think he should have let off.
00:05:53.000Instead, he let off with talk of crisis.
00:05:55.000The problem with that approach is that it sort of begs a particular question.
00:05:58.000The question that it begs is, okay, well, if this is a crisis, then why didn't you do it two years ago when Republicans were in charge of Congress?
00:06:04.000Hell, why didn't you do it three months ago when Republicans were in charge of Congress?
00:06:09.000If this has been a crisis, and you've known about it for several years, why didn't you treat it like a crisis until Nancy Pelosi took over the House?
00:06:16.000Trump continues on, and he talks about the problems with illegal immigration.
00:06:20.000It strains public resources and drives down jobs and wages.
00:06:25.000Among those hardest hit are African Americans and Hispanic Americans.
00:06:30.000Our southern border is a pipeline for vast quantities of illegal drugs, including meth, heroin, cocaine, and fentanyl.
00:06:39.000Every week, 300 of our citizens are killed by heroin alone, 90% of which floods across from our southern border.
00:06:49.000More Americans will die from drugs this year than were killed in the entire Vietnam War.
00:06:56.000Okay, now, when he talks about the cost of illegal immigration, I think that that is totally proper, although I do think that the vast majority of costs from illegal immigration have less to do with crime, per se, than the economic costs of illegal immigrants constituting a new economic underclass in the United States and straining cultural tensions in the United States.
00:07:14.000He makes a particular argument about illegal immigration with which I generally disagree.
00:07:17.000He talks about how Free flow of labor is undercutting the wage base for particular groups of Americans.
00:07:27.000A labor supply, a free-moving labor supply in the United States is actually quite good for the economy.
00:07:31.000It lowers prices, it makes American business more competitive abroad, and all the rest.
00:07:35.000But when he talks about the problem of illegal drugs flowing over the border, he's correct.
00:07:38.000Now, what the fact-checkers have said is that the vast majority of the drugs that are flowing across the border are flowing across ports of entry.
00:07:45.000In other words, somebody is driving up to the port of entry from Tijuana into San Diego area, and when they drive across the border, the flatbed of their truck is loaded underneath with meth, for example.
00:07:57.000Well, that has nothing to do with building a border wall, and so the implication, which is that if we build more border fencing, that this is going to interdict all of the drugs that are coming across the border, That's not true.
00:08:07.000And Trump seems to be implying that it is true.
00:08:09.000However, it is true that the flow of drugs will be made more difficult if you actually do have more resources on the border.
00:08:15.000Bottom line is that the president is now putting the ball in the court of the Democrats to explain why all of this is OK with them, why they won't just spend the money necessary in order for us to shore up that southern border.
00:08:26.000However, they seek to do it because the Democrats really don't have a plan for shoring up the southern border, as we'll discuss in a moment.
00:08:31.000So when Trump talks about the number of Americans dying, from drug overdoses, for example.
00:08:38.000All that stuff is necessary and useful because appeals to the heart do beat appeals to the head.
00:08:43.000This is one of those areas where I almost wish the president had done something like what Ronald Reagan used to do, or even Ross Perot, and taken out some charts, taken out some pie charts, and just explained them in sort of a friendly way.
00:08:53.000It's amazing how few presidents really know how to do the Oval Office address in which they speak directly to Americans.
00:09:00.000In any case, the president continues and he talks about the problem of crime springing from illegal immigration.
00:09:05.000And he's not wrong that illegal immigration does have a crime problem attached to it, not just the immigration itself.
00:09:10.000Now, his critics will say that illegal immigrants have a lower crime rate than the general population of the United States, but that's not really the question.
00:09:17.000The question is why we should allow anyone in the country who is going to then commit a crime.
00:09:22.000I assume that my kids in my own house may act worse than random kids who come to my house.
00:09:28.000But if a random kid comes to my house and then tears up the furniture, that's really my fault for letting that random kid in my house.
00:09:34.000The random kid, not my responsibility.
00:09:36.000And that's sort of the issue with illegal immigrant crime.
00:09:38.000Here's the president talking about a murder problem that has cropped up thanks to illegal immigration.
00:09:43.000Over the years, thousands of Americans have been brutally killed by those who illegally entered our country, and thousands more lives will be lost if we don't act right now.
00:09:58.000He's correct about all of this, and then he continues by talking about how this is a humanitarian crisis as well.
00:10:02.000Now, the problem is that the president is not, again, great at reading off the teleprompter.
00:10:07.000When he talks about a problem of the heart and the soul, which you're going to hear him say in a second, what you'd really want him to do is look as though he is pained by the humanitarian crisis at the border.
00:10:15.000Instead, it sort of looks like he's pained by having to read from the teleprompter.
00:10:19.000But the content of what he says is, of course, correct.
00:10:21.000This is a humanitarian crisis, a crisis of the heart and a crisis of the soul.
00:10:29.000Last month, 20,000 migrant children were illegally brought into the United States, a dramatic increase.
00:10:37.000These children are used as human pawns by vicious coyotes and ruthless gangs.
00:10:43.000Now, it's amazing how many Democrats are upset with this line.
00:10:46.000Saying, well, how could he talk about vicious coyotes and ruthless gangs?
00:10:56.000And the fact that the president is calling them out does put a moral onus on Democrats to explain why they are okay with all of this human smuggling toward a border that is specifically happening because the United States acts as a giant magnet for people who are looking for a better way of life, thanks to jobs, but also thanks to soft immigration policy.
00:11:13.000Well, in a second, we're going to discuss President Trump's overt appeal for the funding for the border wall.
00:11:18.000Why it succeeds or why it fails, we'll talk about that in just one second.
00:11:21.000First, let's talk about your sleep quality.
00:11:23.000So, the fact is that you are an individual with an individual need for an individual mattress, and yet you're probably buying a mattress that was built for somebody else.
00:11:37.000They use the answers to match your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress.
00:11:40.000Whether you're a side sleeper or a hot sleeper, whether you like a plush or a firm bed, with Helix, there's no more guessing and there's no more confusion.
00:11:46.000All you have to do is go over to HelixSleep.com slash Ben, take that 2-minute sleep quiz, and they will match you to a mattress that will give you the best sleep of your life.
00:11:53.000For couples, Helix can even split the mattress down the middle, providing individual support needs and feel preferences for each side.
00:11:59.000They have a 10-year warranty, and you get to try it out for 100 nights risk-free, so you really have nothing to lose.
00:12:03.000And I promise you, the mattress is great.
00:12:04.000My wife and I took that 2-minute sleep quiz.
00:12:06.000We have a Helix Sleep mattress in our bedroom.
00:12:33.000Finally, as part of an overall approach to border security, law enforcement professionals have requested $5.7 billion for a physical barrier.
00:12:44.000At the request of Democrats, it will be a steel barrier rather than a concrete wall.
00:12:50.000This barrier is absolutely critical to border security.
00:12:55.000It's also what our professionals at the border want and need.
00:13:30.000And again, this is a blown opportunity for the president.
00:13:33.000He should have said here, here are all the things Democrats are willing to spend on.
00:13:36.000This is how you pressure Democrats, is by proving that they are incompetent and that they are willing to spend money on the stupidest random garbage.
00:13:42.000But they won't spend money where it actually counts.
00:13:52.000I don't know why Stephen Miller thinks this is a convincing argument, because it really is not a very good argument.
00:13:56.000But here is President Trump making that argument.
00:13:58.000The border wall would very quickly pay for itself.
00:14:03.000The cost of illegal drugs exceeds $500 billion a year.
00:14:06.000billion dollars a year vastly more than the 5.7 billion dollars we have requested from congress the wall will also be paid for indirectly by the great new trade deal we have made with mexico Okay, this is the line that is just not true.
00:14:23.000When he says that the trade deal is gonna pay for the wall, I don't even know what he's talking about.
00:14:27.000No economist knows what he's talking about.
00:14:36.000But this is not a convincing argument simply because the question is not whether we are going to save money in the long run.
00:14:42.000The question is whether this is good policy and whether Democrats are wasting money on other random nonsense.
00:14:47.000Well, then the president actually decided it was necessary to take it directly to Democrats.
00:14:50.000And this, I think, was the best part of his speech.
00:14:53.000This is when he tried to point out that the Democrats really have no leg to stand on.
00:14:57.000Senator Chuck Schumer, who you will be hearing from later tonight, has repeatedly supported a physical barrier in the past, along with many other Democrats.
00:15:02.000Here is the president of the United States going directly after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. - Senator Chuck Schumer, who you will be hearing from later tonight, has repeatedly supported a physical barrier in the past, along with many other Democrats.
00:15:19.000They changed their mind only after I was elected president.
00:15:24.000Democrats in Congress have refused to acknowledge the crisis.
00:15:29.000And they have refused to provide our brave border agents with the tools they desperately need to protect our families and our nation.
00:15:40.000Okay, and then he continues along these lines slamming Chuck Schumer.
00:15:50.000I mean, there's no question that he switched his position when it came to border security, not because of changing circumstances or evidence, but simply because he doesn't want to hand President Trump a win.
00:15:59.000And Trump continues along these lines.
00:17:11.000It was the section of his speech that personalized and brought the kind of highfalutin rhetoric down to earth.
00:17:17.000The president was talking a lot last night about various kind of monetary costs, $500 billion of cost in terms of drug damage, the cost in terms of illegal immigration in the economy.
00:17:27.000But once you personalize the question of barriers, of border barriers, then it becomes pretty easy to understand why the Democrats don't really have a leg to stand on here.
00:17:36.000Here was the best section of what Trump had to say, and I think it was the most effective section of his speech last night.
00:17:42.000Some have suggested a barrier is immoral.
00:17:46.000Then why do wealthy politicians build walls, fences, and gates around their homes?
00:17:52.000They don't build walls because they hate the people on the outside, but because they love the people on the inside.
00:18:01.000The only thing that is immoral is the politicians to do nothing and continue to allow more innocent people to be so horribly victimized.
00:18:13.000Right, this is a populist appeal and it's an effective populist appeal because it happens to be true.
00:18:16.000A lot of these politicians are very wealthy.
00:18:20.000A lot of these politicians have protection.
00:18:22.000None of these politicians really have to worry about the problem of illegal immigration affecting where they live in any significant way.
00:18:28.000And when he says, you know, they can talk as much as they want about how walls are immoral, but these are all people who live behind walls, he is exactly right.
00:18:36.000That hypocrisy is telling to most Americans, and I think most Americans are going to resonate to that message.
00:18:42.000Then he gets back into sort of his final emotional appeal, And again, the big problem here is not necessarily the text of what he's reading, but the fact that President Trump is not a good actor, right?
00:18:58.000That means that when he is fed a bunch of lines about weeping mothers and dead children and all this stuff, and he's not feeling it emotionally, it doesn't come off quite the way that you would want it to come off.
00:19:10.000Over the last several years, I've met with dozens of families whose loved ones were stolen by illegal immigration.
00:19:17.000I've held the hands of the weeping mothers and embraced the grief stricken fathers.
00:19:30.000I will never forget the pain in their eyes, the tremble in their voices, and the sadness gripping their souls.
00:19:38.000How much more American blood must we shed before Congress does its job?
00:19:45.000Okay, and again, I don't think that the point he's making here is a bad one, but I do think that the sort of Over the top, everyone's gonna die, illegal immigration's killing tons of people.
00:19:57.000That's not really the pitch on illegal immigration.
00:19:59.000And this was the problem with declaring illegal immigration a crisis, okay?
00:20:02.000It is a slow-rolling, serious issue in American life and has been for 30 years.
00:20:07.000And you should have just made that case.
00:20:09.000Overstatement is not necessarily the most effective way of doing all of this.
00:20:13.000I understand that it inflames the base, but the base is already inflamed.
00:20:16.000Trump used exactly this sort of language right before the 2018 election.
00:20:19.000It did not redound to Republicans' benefit.
00:20:22.000In other words, I think that subtlety might have been a better approach here in some ways.
00:20:26.000And I certainly think that putting the onus on Democrats to explain their spending habits, these are people who binge on spending, but suddenly become penny pinchers when it comes to the border security we need, as recommended by Border Patrol.
00:20:40.000Trump concluded with a basic moral call saying it's time for you to call your Congress people because this is basically a question of right and wrong.
00:20:46.000And in the end, this is the only message that matters.
00:20:48.000And that's why, despite my criticisms of Trump's speech, despite my qualms with it, despite my feeling that it was kind of lackluster, I think that overall, it was not an ineffective move by the president.
00:20:59.000This is a choice between right and wrong, justice and injustice.
00:21:06.000This is about whether we fulfill our sacred duty to the American citizens we serve.
00:21:13.000When I took the oath of office, I swore to protect our country.
00:21:28.000I don't think that it was massively overwhelming.
00:21:31.000I don't think that it changed tons of hearts and minds, but it did what was necessary to push the ball forward and to put the ball in the court of the Democrats.
00:21:37.000And the Democrats then just fell completely on their faces.
00:21:41.000Honestly, God, I've never seen anything quite like this.
00:21:43.000So I'm critical of the president's presentation last night in the sense that it was the president just in the Oval Office talking direct into camera for eight minutes.
00:21:51.000It was not riveting TV or anything, but at least it wasn't this horror show.
00:21:56.000What's hilarious about what the Democrats did in response is that they should've just picked a random member of their caucus, just a rando, a random member of their caucus to give the response.
00:22:07.000They should've just said, here's the president fulminating, he got himself into a problem with the government shutdown, now he can't get out of the problem with the government shutdown.
00:22:14.000They should've just let him rant and then be done.
00:22:16.000Instead, because senators and congresspeople, because they love the cameras, I mean, they are camera hogs like nobody's business.
00:22:23.000And these are the people who go to church with a selfie stick.
00:22:25.000I mean, these are folks who just love being on camera.
00:22:28.000It is their favorite thing in the world.
00:22:31.000The sad part, though, is that as much as they love the camera, it is an unrequited love.
00:23:17.000It's supposed to make you look more natural on camera.
00:23:20.000They look like, Pelosi and Schumer look like members of the undead.
00:23:23.000I mean, they, honest to God, look like when you go to a funeral, and it's an open casket funeral, and then people say, you know, how does the person in the coffin look?
00:23:30.000You say, oh, they look so, they look like they're sleeping.
00:23:41.000It looks like Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum come to life and Chuck Schumer standing there glaring like Sam the Eagle from the Muppets into the camera while Nancy Pelosi looking like that bizarre creature in Return of the Jedi who like sits there and laughs next to Jabba the Hutt.
00:24:02.000So people were going crazy on Twitter last night with the memes of this particular image, because it wasn't like both of them needed to be there.
00:24:09.000Like, one spoke for two and a half minutes, then the other spoke for two and a half minutes.
00:24:11.000We'll get to the content of what they said in just a second, but the memes were things like, what your parents look like when you come home at three o'clock in the morning.
00:24:20.000They look like American Gothic Nouveau.
00:24:23.000You know, the painting of the farmer and his wife glaring at the painter?
00:24:30.000They look like... I mean, Chuck Schumer, throughout this whole thing, Nancy Pelosi was like the annoying person who's saying that at a restaurant she wants to speak to the manager, and the husband's kind of sitting there glaring because he doesn't want to be there.
00:24:49.000They are very- this is when you- There are some folks tweeting out things like, this is what your parents look like when you come home and you got a C in math.
00:25:00.000They're standing there glaring at the camera and it's just hysterically funny.
00:25:03.000And the fact that nobody in politics, because they're all 9,000 years old, they don't understand anything like what camera optics are supposed to look like.
00:25:10.000You wonder why Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is popular?
00:25:13.000Because she knows what a camera is and what it does.
00:25:17.000I don't know what it is about old politicians, but older politicians for some odd reason think that camera work should be done the way that it was for Sarah Bernhardt in early film from Thomas Edison in like 1916.
00:25:28.000Like in a film with stage play or something.
00:25:31.000Which is why when you get camera of Elizabeth Warren doing an Instagram, it's her kind of glaring into the camera while she awkwardly drinks a beer.
00:25:40.000Well, between that and Kamala Harris trying to awkwardly dance to offset AOC, and now Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi glaring into camera, look at- Honestly, my first reaction when I saw the picture of Pelosi and Schumer standing next to each other was- There were a couple of pop culture references that jumped to mind.
00:25:58.000The first one was, and we'd have gotten away with it too if it weren't for you meddling kids!
00:26:03.000And the second one, the Scooby-Doo reference, for those who missed it.
00:26:05.000And then, the other one that popped into mind was, no, Mr. Bond, we expect you to die.
00:26:37.000She leads off by talking about the government shutdown.
00:26:40.000Now, here's where the Democrats were good.
00:26:42.000What the Democrats did last night was they talked a lot about the government shutdown.
00:26:46.000The reason that this was smart is because that's the only reason we're talking about this topic right now, right?
00:26:50.000We all know that the government shutdown is the reason that we're talking about this.
00:26:52.000Not because there was a crisis on the border that necessitated a government shutdown, but because we are in the middle of a government shutdown.
00:27:00.000It wasn't the situation on the border that created the urgency.
00:27:02.000It was the shutdown itself that has created this false sense of urgency where nobody actually feels all that urgent about it, is the truth.
00:27:09.000So the Democrats focused heavily on the shutdown.
00:27:12.000This is why I think that Trump should have let off with the shutdown and taken that baton directly out of the Democrats' hands.
00:27:18.000Instead, Nancy Pelosi says, listen, We're in the middle of a shutdown.
00:27:21.000All you have to do is sign the check, and then we're done.
00:27:24.000And we can have this illegal immigration conversation in five minutes.
00:27:27.000There's nothing urgent that necessitates us having this conversation right now.
00:27:30.000That was Nancy Pelosi's case as she spoke from the grave.
00:27:31.000I mean, honestly, this whole video should have led off with the door opening like Tales from the Crypt.
00:27:33.000And you just hear, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa On the very first day of this Congress, House Democrats passed Senate Republican legislation to reopen government and fund smart, effective border security solutions.
00:27:56.000But the President is rejecting these bipartisan bills, which would reopen government, over his obsession with forcing American taxpayers to waste billions of dollars on an expensive and ineffective wall.
00:28:08.000A wall he always promised Mexico would pay for.
00:28:12.000Riveting stuff there from Nancy Pelosi.
00:28:14.000And as much as I was critical of President Trump's delivery, Nancy Pelosi, my goodness, it's like we found the compendium of the most boring people on earth and then put them in front of cameras.
00:28:25.000But what she's saying there, again, from the Democratic perspective, is not untrue, which is that Trump said Mexico was going to pay for the wall.
00:28:31.000He could just have this debate in five seconds.
00:28:37.000Pelosi continued along these lines, and again, she was hammering away at the idea that the government shutdown is Trump's fault.
00:28:42.000All he has to do is sign off on our budget, and then we can have this conversation ten minutes from now while people are still getting paid.
00:28:47.000Why is he using government workers as leverage, right?
00:29:28.000It's hard not to laugh while watching Chuck Schumer standing behind her glaring at the camera as she says all of these things.
00:29:36.000Honestly, it reminds me of one of those old Warner Brothers cartoons where Bugs Bunny is talking and then the camera slowly pans back and there's that giant red fuzzy monster standing directly behind him.
00:29:47.000Somebody needs to cut a video of Pelosi speaking and then you pull back and it's just Chuck Schumer looming over her shoulder glaring.
00:29:55.000In a second, we're going to get to Chuck Schumer's response, and then we will get to all of the rest of the Democratic responses, which demonstrate two things.
00:30:16.000First, I need to mention, before we even get to the subscription pitch, I have a new book.
00:30:20.000It is this book, right here, The Right Side of History, How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great.
00:30:25.000It details the crisis of purpose that is happening right now in Western civilization.
00:30:28.000Earlier this week, I talked about Tucker Carlson's monologue in which he discussed the problem of suicide, opioid overdose, the problem of unhappiness that's spreading through the country.
00:30:36.000I wrote an entire book on the subject.
00:30:38.000If you want to know how we got here, what made us prosperous, why we're blowing it, how we get back on track, pre-order today at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, any major bookseller.
00:30:49.000I cannot wait to share the book with you.
00:30:51.000I really think it is an important work.
00:30:53.000I mean, I spent an awful lot of time on it, an awful lot of thought on it.
00:30:56.000I think it's sort of my magnum opus, so go check it out right now.
00:30:59.000The Right Side of History, How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great.
00:31:01.000It's a great introduction to why Western civilization matters, and why Western philosophy matters, and what we ought to do as a civilization to re-infuse our civilization with the purposes that made our country awesome in the first place.
00:31:18.000Because you get two more hours of me in the afternoon if you do.
00:31:21.000Now, you can listen to our live radio show, you know, like live on radio all across the country.
00:31:26.000But there's something else going on that is amazing, which is that you can actually see it on camera.
00:31:31.000You can interact with me while we're on the air.
00:31:33.000I'm going to start taking questions during the breaks.
00:31:35.000You get to do all these things for two additional hours a day.
00:31:38.000So if you love the podcast, get two more hours of it in the afternoon, which includes all of the daily updates as the news progresses.
00:31:44.000During the day, we are here slaving away for you.
00:31:47.000All for $9.99 a month, or $99 a year when you spend $99 a year, then you also get this, the very greatest in all beverage vessels, the Leftist Tears Hot or Cold Tumbler.
00:31:57.000You know, we just installed a basketball hoop directly outside of these studios.
00:32:01.000Suffice it to say, Jewish men can't jump.
00:32:04.000But, after I have had a drink from the Leftist Tears Hot or Cold Tumbler, not only can I leap tall stories, tall buildings in a single bound, I can dunk Complete 360 reverse tomahawk windmill jam.
00:32:21.000Also, you ought to subscribe to us at YouTube and iTunes.
00:32:23.000That way you have access to our Sunday special.
00:32:24.000This week, our Sunday special features my friend Heather McDonald, who's an expert on crime, immigration policy, and diversity issues on college campuses.
00:32:36.000Heather McDonald, please tune in this Sunday to the Ben Shapiro Show Sunday special.
00:32:41.000Where I talk with Ben about intersectionality, the ruthlessly competitive totem pole of victimhood on college campuses and off, policing, criminal justice reform, immigration.
00:32:53.000Ben and I disagree about that to a certain extent, but amicably.
00:33:05.000We're the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
00:33:09.000Okay, so it wasn't just Nancy Pelosi speaking.
00:33:16.000My favorite part of the Nancy Pelosi-Chuck Schumer speech is the part where Nancy Pelosi says, Senate Minority Leader Schumer, and he goes, thank you, Speaker Pelosi.
00:33:25.000And then she sort of hands the podium to him and then stands there awkwardly.
00:33:30.000Like, they played her off with the music, and you're waiting for the giant hook to come out and just kind of yank her off screen, like the vaudeville hook.
00:33:36.000Instead, you get, now she's gonna stand there and glare at you while he talks to you.
00:33:40.000She's like, now listen to your father.
00:33:58.000My fellow Americans, we address you tonight for one reason only.
00:34:02.000The President of the United States, having failed to get Mexico to pay for his ineffective, unnecessary border wall, and unable to convince the Congress or the American people to foot the bill, has shut down the government.
00:34:16.000Okay, so again, the Democrats focusing heavily on the shutdown the government point.
00:34:19.000At no point in their speeches did they ever explain why the border wall is ineffective and unnecessary.
00:35:08.000No president should pound the table and demand he gets his way or else the government shuts down, hurting millions of Americans who are treated as leverage.
00:35:18.000Okay, I love when Democrats suddenly declare that it's very bad for the president to govern by temper tantrum.
00:35:22.000Barack Obama literally said, I have a pen and a phone.
00:35:25.000Barack Obama governed by temper tantrum all the time.
00:36:50.000Chuck Schumer, who really hates walls.
00:36:51.000Yeah, this is Chuck Schumer back in 2009.
00:36:53.000Because of our efforts in Congress, our border is far more secure today than it was when we began debating comprehensive reform in 2005.
00:37:03.000Between 2005 and 2009, a vast amount of progress has been made on our borders and ports of entry.
00:37:09.000The progress includes 9,000 new Border Patrol field agents in the last four years, construction of a 630-mile border fence, or 630 miles of border fence, That create a significant barrier to illegal immigration on our southern land border.
00:37:27.000Okay, so, you know, things have changed.
00:37:56.000So the most radical response came courtesy of the brand new freshman congresswoman, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, featured on Rachel Maddow's show last night saying insipid things, but doing so with a lot of charisma, which is her brand.
00:38:09.000Her brand is that she's very charismatic and that she says dumb things on a regular basis and so we have to talk about them because she says them and it's terrible.
00:38:17.000So here's Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez saying that illegal immigrants are more American than the law enforcement officials sent to stop them.
00:38:25.000The women and children on that border that are trying to seek refuge and seek opportunity in the United States of America, with nothing but the shirt on their backs, are acting more American than any person who seeks to keep them out ever will be.
00:38:39.000Okay, so Border Patrol agents, not American.
00:38:41.000Illegal immigrants trying to get into the country, American.
00:38:44.000That is an open borders call that she's making right there.
00:38:48.000And even if you say that that's a misinterpretation of what she's saying, what she's really talking about is people who don't want more illegal immigration.
00:38:55.000Being un-American, you're gonna have to explain that one.
00:38:58.000Why it is that if I say that I want the border police, and I want to make sure that we know who's coming into the country, and that people should legally enter the country, and I tend to be pretty libertarian on immigration.
00:39:06.000I want to let more people in, not fewer people.
00:39:09.000I failed to see how people who are more border restrictionist are less American than people who are illegally attempting to sneak over the border.
00:39:16.000I mean, if that's going to be the new Democratic pitch, that is a radical pitch.
00:40:35.000He has decided that he is going to grow a beard under the bizarre misimpression that everyone looks better with a beard.
00:40:40.000Now he just looks even more hipster than he did before.
00:40:43.000So the kind of charming, young, fresh face of Beardo O'Rourke, now he just looks like he lost an election, had to go work in a coffee shop that sells vinyl records behind the counter.
00:40:51.000So here's Beardo O'Rourke on Instagram talking about how we don't have fences or walls in El Paso.
00:40:56.000Worth noting, one of the reasons they don't have fences or walls in El Paso, and El Paso is pretty safe, where do you think Border Patrol is headquartered?
00:41:02.000Really, where do you think the El Paso sector of border control is headquartered?
00:41:05.000Maybe it's headquartered in, I don't know, El Paso.
00:41:08.000So maybe they have pretty good border patrol over in El Paso.
00:41:12.000Here's Beta O'Rourke sort of ignoring that.
00:42:26.000The scientific community has made it very clear in telling us that climate change is real and is causing devastating harm to our country and the entire planet.
00:42:38.000And they have told us, in no uncertain terms, that if we do not transform our energy system away from fossil fuel, our nation and our planet, and the planet we will be leaving... I mean, just insane, just insane.
00:42:51.000So we're not going to talk about the border issue.
00:42:53.000We're going to instead talk about climate change.
00:42:54.000If Democrats really think that's a big winner for them, then Trump is going to win this thing.
00:42:58.000Now, where is this going to go from here?
00:43:00.000In all likelihood, the president is going to, I think now, if he doesn't get any movement from the Democrats, he declares a national emergency, which I think is a Wrong move.
00:43:40.000It can also be a politically valuable move and also a policy valuable move.
00:43:44.000A policy winner for the President of the United States.
00:43:47.000Okay, in just a second, I want to get to the media response to all of this because the media response to all of this is almost as insane as the Democratic response to all of this.
00:43:56.000First, we take a look at the folks in the media who are not actual members of the media.
00:44:01.000Stormy Daniels, who we were assured just wanted to go back to her well-earned obscurity.
00:44:07.000She decided that she was going to distract from the president's speech by doing her laundry in her underwear.
00:44:13.000And this was pressed forward by the media, because this is the world we now live in.
00:44:16.000So here is some video of her doing laundry in her underwear.
00:44:53.000And the media were already prepared to rip into President Trump, no matter what he did here, because this is all he truly, that they care about, right?
00:45:00.000I mean, is ripping into President Trump.
00:45:20.000So before Trump even gave his speech, he was giving the pre-buttle talking about how President Trump is a liar and you shouldn't pay any attention to anything he has to say.
00:45:28.000The mere act of asking networks to make time for it telegraphs the gravity of it.
00:45:35.000In the past, with only rare exceptions, you might disagree with what a president said from the Oval Office without wondering if you were straight up being misled or lied to.
00:45:46.000Now, it's not our job to advocate for or against a given policy.
00:45:50.000It's our job to call out the dishonest pursuit of it.
00:45:53.000So as we wait for the President to speak about what he calls the crisis on the border, we're starting with the crisis of credibility he's created for himself.
00:46:01.000And yet, weirdly enough, you are in fact commenting on the underlying crisis, because when you guys decide that you're not going to focus on the government shutdown, or the border wall, or the policy itself, and instead you decide that you're going to focus on all of the fibs the president holds right before the president gives a speech, obviously you are weighing in on whether you agree with the president or not.
00:46:23.000I mean, if somebody were to give a policy speech and instead of me talking about their policy, I were to sit there and say, well, this person has lied this many times about their policy before they even give the speech.
00:46:55.000Jim Acosta, as I said yesterday on my radio show, has mirrors of Jim Acosta.
00:47:00.000He walked into his apartment, and I assume that all the walls are mirrors, so there can just be an infinite plenitude of Jim Acostas everywhere.
00:48:33.000Don't you put it back in my face for all the corrections that your network needs to issue.
00:48:36.000I was on your network 25 or 26 times in 2018.
00:48:39.000I'm one of the last people here who even bothered to go on.
00:48:42.000And the disrespect that you show to me personally, I'll just let pass.
00:48:46.000Ma'am, I... No, no, don't call me ma'am to make it up.
00:48:52.000Jim Acosta, getting what he so richly deserves, notoriety and his own stupidity.
00:48:56.000Okay, well, we had to run a little bit long because there was so much news today, so we are going to skip directly over the things I like, and we'll do one quick thing I hate on our way up.
00:49:08.000It seems that we now live in a media environment in which people basically try to poison each other and end up poisoning themselves.
00:49:15.000Jim Acosta just being the latest example of this.
00:49:18.000Well, I think that if we could have an avatar of that media environment, that avatar would be this guy.
00:49:23.000There's a prowling suspect who was caught going around licking doorbells.
00:49:28.000So according to the Huffington Post, a family in Salinas, California might be ready to deliver a tongue lashing to the prowler for their security camera caught licking their doorbell for three hours.
00:49:39.000Sylvia Dungan told local station KION-TV over the weekend, the security system alerted the family to strange movement in the early morning.
00:49:46.000I thought, boy, there's a lot of traffic.