With our social fabric gone, can we come back together? Plus, we examine the fallout from the Democratic Debates, and talk about the continuing attacks on J.K. Rowling. This is The Ben Shapiro Show with Ben Shapiro, and it's on your favorite streaming platform, wherever you get your news and information. Enjoy! Ben Shapiro is on the road, so as you can tell, he's not sleeping as well as he does at home, but as you know, that's not a bad thing, because he doesn't need to be sleeping at all, because his brain is full of information, and he's got a lot to talk about, including the latest in the Trump impeachment saga, the Christian Today article, and the continued attacks on President Trump by the media on the right wing of the Christian right, including Mark Galley, the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, who said that Trump should be removed from office because he thinks the President is a bad, immoral man and shouldn't be allowed to serve in the United States and that he should be replaced by someone who s better than Trump. . The show is brought to you by Boll & Branch, a bedding company that makes me unbelievably comfortable, and I don t have to pay wholesale prices for my sheets, because they make them up to $1,000 in soft, 100% pure 100% organic cotton. Go check them out at $99.99 a piece. You can get them for only a couple of bucks! - and they make me unbelievably soft and pillowy. - I don't even better than I do at home. I'm going to be back in a week or two! . . . and I can't wait to go back to bedding, but I'm not going anywhere else but I can promise you that you'll get a good night's rest, you'll be better than that in bedding that's going to make you feel like you're going to fall asleep better than you can feel like that you're at least be comfy, and you're not going to have to sleep like that in the next day, you won't have to go to sleep in a nice, comfy bed, you can go to bed like that, you're getting a good dream, you know what I'm gonna dream about it like that's gonna sleep in the bed you're in a dream you're gonna dream of it, right?
00:00:34.000And we got a lot to talk about, because some stuff happened over the weekend.
00:00:37.000The biggest thing that happened over the weekend for the President of the United States was not the impeachment stuff, because that stuff basically concluded last week.
00:00:43.000The Democrats finished their impeachment move, and then they were like, you know what?
00:01:09.000But, the big news over the weekend for President Trump, of course, is that a magazine called Christianity Today, the editor, came out and said that Trump should be removed from office.
00:01:17.000For the media, this was a massive story, a huge, unparalleled story, because Christianity Today is a very popular magazine, particularly with evangelical Christians.
00:01:26.000It was founded by Billy Graham, and therefore it has a pretty good pedigree.
00:01:30.000Well, Franklin Graham, Billy's son, Billy passed away last year.
00:01:33.000Franklin came out and he said, well, you know, no.
00:01:37.000He said, my father was a supporter of President Trump's I had no editorial input on this thing.
00:01:43.000And historically speaking, it is true that Mark Galley, who is the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, has been extremely critical of the president in the past.
00:01:50.000In fact, just back in 2017, he wrote an entire piece about how President Trump's soul was in danger.
00:01:55.000So he has been very much on board with the President Trump is a very, very bad man, and therefore, because he's a bad, immoral man, he shouldn't be president-trained for quite a while.
00:02:04.000Nonetheless, the media jumped on this as though it was something new.
00:02:07.000And this is indicative about how the media cover these things.
00:02:09.000The media doesn't know anything about the evangelical world.
00:02:12.000The media don't know anything about Christianity.
00:02:15.000They don't know anything about religious human beings.
00:02:17.000In fact, they are constantly surprised to learn things about religious human beings they didn't think were possible.
00:02:22.000Like that religious human beings sometimes have doubts about their own spirituality.
00:02:27.000Like that religious human beings disagree with one another.
00:02:30.000That religious human beings look at the Bible and interpret it sometimes.
00:02:33.000These are all shocks to members of the media because none of them actually know anything about religion.
00:02:38.000Well if they knew anything about Christianity today, they would have actually done like a Google search of Mark Galley and they could have found out that Mark Galley has for years been ripping the president up and down and that Galley himself has been quite anti-Trump for quite some time.
00:02:51.000The fact that he came out and he suggested that Trump should be removed from office, that is not a new thing.
00:02:57.000They're treating this like a man-bites-dog story to dog-bites-man story to Mark Galley-bites-Trump story, realistically speaking.
00:03:03.000Now, in one second, I want to get into Mark Galley's perspective, because Mark Galley's perspective is sort of interesting, it's sort of fascinating.
00:03:10.000And it does speak to a deeper conflict that is happening within the religious community over the nature of the United States right now.
00:03:18.000I'm gonna get to it in just one second.
00:03:20.000First, let's talk for a second about the quality of your bedding.
00:04:30.000In our founding documents, Billy Graham explains that Christianity today will help evangelical Christians interpret the news in a manner that reflects their faith.
00:04:36.000The impeachment of Donald Trump is a significant event in the story of our Republic.
00:04:41.000The typical CT approach is to stay above the fray, and allow Christians with different political convictions to make their arguments in the public square, to encourage all to pursue justice according to their convictions, and treat their political opposition as charitably as possible.
00:04:53.000That seems like a smart way to do it, right?
00:04:55.000They're talking about eternal values and their perspective.
00:04:57.000everyone that politics is not the end and purpose of our being.
00:04:59.000We take pride in the fact, for instance, that politics does not dominate our homepage.
00:05:03.000That seems like a smart way to do it, right?
00:05:05.000They're talking about eternal values and their perspective.
00:05:08.000So why exactly would you then cram down a perspective on something as hotly fraught as impeachment?
00:05:12.000That said, says Mark Galley, we do feel it necessary from time to time to make our opinions on political matters clear.
00:05:18.000Always, as Graham encouraged us, doing so with both conviction and love.
00:05:21.000We love and pray for our president, as we love and pray for leaders, as well as ordinary citizens, on both sides of the political aisle.
00:05:28.000The Democrats have had it out for him from day one, and therefore nearly everything they do is under a cloud of partisan suspicion.
00:05:34.000Again, this is Christianity Today's much-ballyhooed editorial.
00:05:37.000This has led many to suspect not only motives, but facts in these recent impeachment hearings.
00:05:41.000And no, Mr. Trump did not have a serious opportunity to offer his side of the story in the House hearings on impeachment.
00:05:47.000But the facts in this instance are unambiguous.
00:05:49.000The President of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the President's political opponents.
00:05:56.000That is not only a violation of the Constitution, more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.
00:06:01.000First of all, whether that is true or not is actually at issue.
00:06:04.000The question that I've been asking for a long time is was this about 2020 or was this about 2016?
00:06:09.000Was this about harassing Joe Biden with an eye toward 2020 or was this President Trump looking back at 2016 being irritated that he's been accused of Of cheating in the election by working with the Russians, being whispered in his ear by Rudy Giuliani that Ukraine was really behind some of the election manipulation, looking at stories in Politico and the New York Times about how the Ukrainian embassy was coordinating with members of the DNC to dig up dirt on Paul Manafort.
00:06:33.000Hearing other rumors from Rudy Giuliani about other corruption going on in Ukraine.
00:06:36.000And so Trump, irritated by the Mueller report, being told by Rudy Giuliani that the 2016 election cycle was really about Ukraine, not about Russia, he decides that he's going to go forward with this quid pro quo attempt.
00:06:49.000It's not about 2020, in other words, it's about 2016.
00:06:52.000So the question was always, what is Trump's intent here?
00:06:54.000Trump's intent was never proved, because only one witness who actually had an actual human conversation with Donald Trump, Gordon Sondland, testified, and he didn't bring the goods.
00:07:03.000This is the problem for the Democrats' case, it's why not a single Republican has peeled off.
00:07:06.000But according to Mark Galley, the facts are not in dispute.
00:07:08.000Okay, but that's really not the crux of this piece.
00:07:10.000The crux of this piece is that he thinks that President Trump is an immoral man.
00:07:13.000And this is where we're going to get to a deeper question in America right now.
00:07:18.000And that is, do we have a social fabric such that it is possible for us to cast someone out of office for immorality alone?
00:07:25.000Do we have a social fabric where it's possible to even evaluate our candidates on a character level anymore?
00:07:31.000Well, I'll ask that question in just one second.
00:07:33.000The editorial continues, it says, Okay, all of that stuff is prior to his presidency, obviously.
00:07:37.000And this mirrors a lot of the things I believe about the president.
00:07:39.000He has hired and fired a number of people who are now convicted criminals.
00:07:41.000He himself has admitted to immoral actions in business and his relationship with women about which he remains proud.
00:07:46.000Okay, all of that stuff is prior to his presidency, obviously.
00:07:49.000And this mirrors a lot of the things I believe about the president.
00:07:52.000I don't think the president is of sterling character when it comes to his business or his women.
00:07:56.000You'd have to be, I think, blinding yourself to reality to think that.
00:08:00.000His Twitter feed alone, says Mark Galley with his habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders, is a near-perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused.
00:08:08.000Trump's evangelical supporters have pointed to his Supreme Court nominees, his defense of religious liberty, and his stewardship of the economy, among other things, as achievements that justify their support of the president.
00:08:18.000We believe the impeachment hearings have made it absolutely clear, in a way the Mueller investigation did not, that President Trump has abused his authority for personal gain and betrayed his constitutional oath.
00:08:27.000The impeachment hearings have illuminated the president's moral deficiencies for all to see.
00:08:31.000This damages the institution of the presidency, damages the reputation of our country, damages the spirit and future of our people.
00:08:38.000And then he equates this with the call for impeachment of President Clinton, He says the president's failure to tell the truth, even when cornered, rips at the fabric of the nation.
00:08:47.000This is not a private affair, for above all, social intercourse is built on a presumption of trust.
00:08:51.000Trust that the milk your grocer sells you is wholesome and pure.
00:08:53.000This is what they wrote about Clinton.
00:08:54.000Trust that the money you put in the bank can be taken out of the bank.
00:08:57.000Trust that your babysitter, firefighters, clergy, and ambulance drivers will all do their best.
00:09:01.000And while politicians are notorious for breaking campaign promises, while in office, they have a fundamental obligation to uphold our trust in them and to live by the law.
00:09:09.000See, unfortunately, the words that we applied to Mr. Clinton 20 years ago apply almost perfectly to our current president.
00:09:13.000Whether Mr. Trump should be removed from office by the Senate or by popular vote next election, that is a matter of prudential judgment.
00:09:19.000That he should be removed, we believe, is not a matter of partisan loyalties, but loyalty to the creator of the Ten Commandments.
00:09:25.000To the many evangelicals who continue to support Trump in spite of his blackened moral record, we might say, remember who you are and whom you serve.
00:09:32.000Consider how your justification of Mr. Trump influences your witness to your Lord and Savior.
00:09:36.000Consider what an unbelieving world will say if you continue to brush off Mr. Trump's immoral words and behavior in the cause of political expediency.
00:09:43.000If we don't reverse course now, says Mark Galley, will anyone take anything we say about justice and righteousness with any seriousness for decades to come?
00:09:49.000Can we say with a straight face that abortion is a great evil that cannot be tolerated and, with the same straight face, say that the bent and broken character of our nation's leader doesn't really matter in the end?
00:09:58.000We have reserved judgment on Trump for years now, some have criticized us for our reserve, but when it comes to condemning the behavior of another, patient charity must come first, so we have done our best to give evangelical Trump supporters their due, to try and understand their point of view, to see the prudential nature of so many political decisions they have made regarding Mr. Trump.
00:10:13.000To use an old cliche, it's time to call a spade a spade, to say that no matter how many hands we win in this political poker game, we are playing with a stacked deck of gross immorality and ethical incompetence, and just when we think it's time to pull all our chips to the center of the table, That's when the whole game will come crashing down.
00:10:26.000It will crash down on the reputation of evangelical religion and on the world's understanding of the gospel.
00:10:31.000It will come crashing down on a nation of men and women whose welfare is also our concern.
00:10:35.000Okay, so that's the that's the much-ballyhooed editorial.
00:10:37.000As I say, it's not new, so it's weird for the media to treat it as news, but it's an argument that ought to be Confronted by evangelicals and also it should be confronted by religious people of every stripe and by Republicans who look at Trump's character and say, yeah, Trump is a man who has always had serious real and abiding character problems.
00:10:57.000And now that really doesn't have to do with impeachment.
00:11:01.000If you are going to link impeachment, and Mark Galley basically says this, right, says whether it's impeachment or whether it's the next election, we got to get Trump out.
00:11:09.000But that now becomes a political question, not just a moral question.
00:11:12.000And this is what I'm going to explain in a second.
00:11:14.000In order for it to be true that the chief question in election is the moral character of our leaders, we have to have a broad social fabric agreement on values across the board.
00:12:48.000It is also true that when it comes to the allegation that everyone who voted for Trump was somehow selling themselves out morally, That was something I just didn't agree with.
00:13:09.000I mean, we'll find out 10 years from now how this plays out.
00:13:13.000He's been much more conservative than I thought he would be.
00:13:15.000He has justified his statements on religious freedom, on abortion, on a wide variety of issues that I care deeply about as not only a religious human being, but as just a conservative generally.
00:13:25.000But, when it comes to the implication that is being drawn by this editorial, that's something I never did in the 2016 election.
00:13:31.000I never said to people, if you vote for Trump, it makes you a bad human being, or a bad Christian.
00:13:36.000The implication of this editorial is that if you vote for Trump, or if you think he shouldn't be impeached, it's because you have decided to make Trump into an idol.
00:13:42.000And if you watch Mark Galley's Twitter feed after this, that's basically all the things he's been tweeting out.
00:13:46.000He's been tweeting out a variety of emails from people who have fallen into a sort of idolatry for Trump.
00:14:16.000But to substitute Trump for your faith is, of course, a large mistake.
00:14:20.000However, in order to make the claim, That you are undermining your own faith.
00:14:25.000You're undermining your own morality by opposing Trump's impeachment.
00:14:29.000Even assume, let's assume for a second, Galley's case, which has yet to be proved, that Trump did something super terrible here and that it's worthy of impeachment.
00:14:37.000Even assuming that is the case, on a pragmatic level, Can a moral human being say, you know what, we don't live in an America anymore where I trust the other side to abide by rules?
00:14:49.000Because I think that that is really what's going on here.
00:14:51.000I think that in the best of all possible worlds, most evangelical Christians and most Americans and most religious people across America would say to themselves that when a president sins, we would rather that person not be president.
00:15:01.000But we also recognize we don't live in that ideal world.
00:15:03.000We live in a very flawed real world where political priorities are connected to candidates and where the Solid ground that we thought we were standing on the aftermath of Richard Nixon leaving office.
00:15:15.000The solid ground where there are some lines you just don't cross.
00:15:18.000And if you cross those lines, then we're gonna stand up and say, no way.
00:15:21.000That died during the Clinton impeachment.
00:15:32.000Yes, he committed obstruction of justice.
00:15:34.000But we don't care because he's gonna give us abortion.
00:15:37.000And so a bunch of people on the right said, okay, well, then we don't share the social fabric anymore.
00:15:41.000See, in order for you to believe that moral people are betraying the social fabric by not throwing a president out of office for immorality, you have to believe that there is a social fabric that is there in the first place.
00:15:54.000In other words, we all have to be living in the same sphere.
00:15:57.000We all have to be living on the same moral plane.
00:15:59.000We have to at least have a certain level of baseline.
00:16:01.000If the baseline is not there, then there's no net, right?
00:16:05.000I mean, then you are operating without a net.
00:16:06.000And then it just becomes, okay, well, the Democrats are going to take over.
00:16:09.000They're never going to impeach the president, no matter what he does.
00:16:11.000That president is going to come in and mandate abortion, basically.
00:16:14.000He's going to come in and is going to suggest that you have to pay for other people's abortions.
00:16:18.000And as a religious human being, you're an evangelical Christian, you say to yourself, okay, so here is the balance now.
00:16:23.000The balance is not between a more moral United States And a less moral United States, the balance now is between policies that are going to preserve the lives of the unborn and policies that are not, because the moral United States is gone.
00:16:35.000Okay, and this is the great tragedy of what's happened in the United States over the last 30-40 years.
00:16:39.000There's a mainstream belief, right, left, and center, that the moral basis of the United States is not here anymore.
00:16:45.000There's no social fabric we share where we think that certain activity is off-limits and certain activity is still within limits.
00:16:52.000And evangelical Christians are coming along now, with Trump, and they're saying, okay, he's a recognition of something we didn't want to recognize.
00:16:59.000He's a recognition that, I mean, even, listen, I know tons of evangelicals.
00:17:03.000They were very, very split of mind, even though they voted overwhelmingly for Trump.
00:17:08.000They were very split of mind about Trump himself.
00:17:11.000And now, here's where Galley's observation makes sense.
00:17:14.000Okay, if Galley's observation is that people who fall into idolatry are betraying religion, that of course is true.
00:17:19.000And if his observation is that it's very bad for religious people to make excuses for Trump's bad behavior, that's true too.
00:17:26.000Every time Trump does something that's bad, does something that's immoral, does something that's wrong, it is up to moral people to say that is bad, that is wrong, that is no good.
00:17:33.000But when it comes to the prudential consideration of who ought to be leading policymaking, we can no longer operate under the assumption that we all agree that immoral people should not be president.
00:17:47.000And we haven't agreed on that for quite some time.
00:17:50.000And the right acknowledging that and saying, okay, well, I guess if the choice is between playing by Marcus of Queensberry rules while they crotch punch us on the moral issue and then implement policy that actually harms our religious freedom, then I guess we'll have to acknowledge a reality that we wish we didn't have to acknowledge.
00:18:06.000Which is that we don't live in a country of shared morality anymore.
00:18:11.000If there were an evangelical pastor in a community, and that evangelical pastor committed adultery, that evangelical pastor presumably would be out of a job tomorrow.
00:18:40.000And this is true in our local community, right?
00:18:41.000If you're in a local community with a lot of people who share your same moral sentiments, if somebody does something morally wrong, even if you like their politics, you say, okay, well, we all share enough that the risk of us getting rid of this guy isn't the complete demise of all of our priorities, and also, we at least get to uphold a certain moral level.
00:18:59.000But when we don't share anything, when we don't share politics, when we don't share morality, then every political battle becomes a life or death battle where morality of the politician takes a back seat.
00:19:09.000Now again, your own morality is still on the line when it comes to how you characterize that politician.
00:19:15.000It does not behoove any evangelical, any religious person, any religious Jew, anybody in the United States to cover for bad acts by a politician.
00:19:24.000Be upfront about the fact that you're going to vote for Trump even though you think that the guy is horrible with women.
00:19:32.000I'm also going to recommend that if we're going to elect somebody that the top priority be that that person implements policies that are not going to continue to undercut not only the social fabric but things that are endemic to our rights.
00:19:49.000All the pillars of our civilization are crumbling away right now.
00:19:53.000And some of those central pillars are the rights that are protected by the Bill of Rights.
00:19:58.000If somebody is a moral person, and the left proclaims them moral, but we know the left doesn't care about morality because the left was fine with Bill Clinton, right?
00:20:06.000If the left says, well, here's our moral candidate who's going to chip away at all the foundations, they haven't restored any moral fabric.
00:20:23.000It's an interesting intellectual exercise.
00:20:25.000So here is Mark Galley, the editor of Christianity Today, saying that when Christians support an immoral cause, it does damage to my cause.
00:20:32.000Well, that's true, but you have to define immoral cause.
00:20:36.000Is the immoral cause you're supporting Trump being an adulterous lech with Stormy Daniels?
00:20:42.000If that's the moral cause, then I agree.
00:20:45.000If the immoral cause is, I'm going to vote for a politician who is going to preserve the right to religious freedom and the right to life, and I'm going to freely acknowledge that the man is horrible on a variety of character scores, but also that I don't trust a Democrat to uphold those basic rights, and so I'm not going to do this thing.
00:21:06.000So here's the Christianity Today editor who's conflating the two.
00:21:08.000And again, I think the reason he's conflating the two is because there are so many people who do make the mistake of conflating the president's character with his accomplishments.
00:21:15.000There are a lot of people out there who do this routine where it's like, I love these judges.
00:21:22.000You can love all these things, but you got to acknowledge the man's sins.
00:21:25.000If you're a religious person and you hope to obtain any solid objective sense of morality, here's Mark Galley.
00:21:31.000As a Christian, I like to think of myself as a person who has given my ultimate loyalty to Jesus Christ and the gospel he's called us to proclaim.
00:21:39.000So when Christians of any stripe support a cause that strikes me as manifestly immoral, it does damage to the cause that I've given my life to.
00:21:51.000So I think that's one part of the equation that all Christians, especially my brothers and sisters in the evangelical world, need to think about more seriously and more deeply.
00:22:00.000Okay, and then President Trump immediately fires back on Twitter, and you can see they're talking right past one another.
00:22:06.000Trump fires back and he says, I guess the magazine Christianity Today is looking for Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, or those of socialist communist bent to guard their religion.
00:22:58.000Now you're getting into my territory because the fact is that the president, when it comes to upholding religion and the cultural value of religion, Having a president who actively stands for moral values is actually a pretty important thing.
00:23:12.000So you can see Trump is talking right past Galley.
00:23:38.000And that's why you're seeing this divide.
00:23:40.000You can have sympathy for Gali and what he's saying morally, and at the same time recognize that what he's saying about other Christians is actually wrong on the merits.
00:23:47.000In just a second, I'm going to talk about why it is that we feel like there is no social fabric, because it's pretty obvious we feel like there is no social fabric first.
00:23:55.000Let's talk about the fact that life insurance is probably on your to-do list.
00:24:58.000Okay, so you can see why people are coming apart at the seams.
00:25:02.000Why are evangelical Christians supporting Trump?
00:25:05.000Because they look at the culture and they see people who are being featured in the culture, like Robert De Niro, for example.
00:25:10.000They're not going to be a part of the Prominent people in the culture.
00:25:13.000And they say to themselves, these are the people I'm supposed to trust with morality?
00:25:16.000I'm gonna be lectured by Robert De Niro on the moral compass of our leader?
00:25:19.000I'm gonna be lectured by people who are for abortion on demand all the way up till birth?
00:25:24.000On the morality of the leader of the free world?
00:25:27.000Because it seems to me that I can criticize Trump's morality, being a moral human being in my own right, but people in Hollywood, they don't have any right to do this.
00:25:35.000De Niro says, there's not been one thing about this person that has been redeeming as far as I can see.
00:26:00.000They don't have to do it in an obvious physical way, but they have to have the formidability to confront him and put him in his place because the people have to see that to see him be humiliated.
00:26:09.000Okay, religious people understand that Robert De Niro isn't talking just about Trump there.
00:26:13.000Robert De Niro is talking about any religious Christian, anybody who disagrees with him on politics, anybody who disagrees with him on abortion.
00:26:20.000Robert De Niro is not just talking about his personal dislike for Trump.
00:26:23.000In fact, were it not for the fact that Trump is a Republican, Robert De Niro would be having dinner with Donald Trump.
00:26:28.000Donald Trump was featured on the Emmy Awards.
00:26:30.000Donald Trump had a huge show on national TV.
00:26:33.000He was hanging out with all these people.
00:26:34.000Hillary and Bill Clinton were at his wedding.
00:26:36.000The same people who want to hit him with a bag of bleep right in the face today are the same people who five seconds ago were hobnobbing with him.
00:26:57.000When Mark Galley says that people are looking at evangelical Christians, and they're saying, look at those hypocrites, because they support Donald Trump.
00:27:03.000Do you think any of those people had great love for evangelical Christians when they were supporting Mitt Romney?
00:27:07.000Great love for evangelical Christians when they were supporting George W. Bush?
00:28:18.000They're castigating—they crapped all over Mike Pence for saying that he won't go to dinner with a woman, not his wife.
00:28:24.000So don't give me that it's all about Donald Trump's moral character.
00:28:28.000Or that they're gonna look at evangelicals like they are hypocrites.
00:28:30.000Okay, the only reason they would look at evangelicals like they're hypocrites if evangelicals look the other way on Trump doing this stuff, right?
00:28:43.000Okay, but if you're gonna pretend that you're appealing to people by ripping on Trump's moral character, Okay, you're not appealing to these people.
00:28:55.000Like, I promise you that the only time Christianity Today has ever received a kind word in the press, ever, the only time Billy Graham has received a kind word in the press, ever, is when they came out against Trump.
00:29:08.000You will not find a single New York Times article going back as long as this magazine has been around praising Christianity Today for their moral stance.
00:29:25.000They only respect you when they think they can make hay out of you.
00:29:28.000That is all that is happening here, and religious people understand that, and that is why religious people are fighting back against all of this.
00:29:47.000I think there's a lot of truth to that.
00:29:48.000I think that if you're a politician and you criticize Trump, I think that that could be a serious problem for you.
00:29:53.000But I think it's also in how you criticize Trump.
00:29:56.000Meaning, if you criticize Trump and you say, look, dude's terrible with women.
00:30:00.000One of the problems here is that Trump, because he is so vindictive, he can't just let stuff like that go.
00:30:06.000He has to try and defend himself from stuff that's obviously true.
00:30:09.000And so he says things to target members of his own party, which is foolishness.
00:30:14.000But beyond that, I think that people see attacks, because people rightly see attacks on Trump very often as attacks on them, they've started to see any attacks on Trump as attacks on them.
00:30:51.000If the Republicans got rid of Donald Trump tomorrow, let's say the Republicans in the Senate turned around and tomorrow they're like, you know what?
00:30:57.000But then they got rid of Trump, and Mike Pence were president.
00:30:59.000Do you think the Democrats would turn around and say, look at those moral, decent, beautifully ethical Republicans, and now they're running this beautifully ethical man, Mike Pence, and they've really turned a corner.
00:31:52.000What if he rings the doorbell, you're not home, and he's doing that just to hop your fence so he can rob your house?
00:31:57.000Now, a lot of people who are attempting to break and enter will actually ring the doorbell first to make sure you're not home, and then they will go into your house.
00:32:05.000Ring helps you stay connected to your home from anywhere.
00:32:07.000So if there's a package delivery or a surprise visitor, you get an alert and you're able to see, hear, and speak to them all from your phone.
00:32:14.000If you're on the go this season, whether it's across town or across the country, you can check in anytime for some much-needed holiday peace of mind.
00:32:21.000My wife and I, we're obviously worried about security, and for good reason.
00:32:25.000So we have Ring security devices all over our property.
00:32:28.000We are constantly ensuring that we are safe and secure by using Ring.
00:32:31.000As a listener, you have a special holiday offer on the Ring Welcome Kit available right now.
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00:34:20.000You have to feel like the other side isn't cheating.
00:34:23.000And so that means we need to see some evidence on the part of the left.
00:34:26.000I think we've seen some evidence on the part of the right from time to time.
00:34:28.000I think Roy Moore not winning in Alabama is pretty good evidence that there are a bunch of people in Alabama who are not willing to vote for somebody if their crime is so significant that it even overwhelms the politics of the situation, and if Democrats run somebody who purports to be moderate and moral.
00:34:42.000That's what happened with the Doug Jones election in Alabama.
00:34:46.000Have you seen anything remotely like that on the Democratic side of the aisle?
00:34:49.000When was the last time the Democrats said, you know what, this person is too immoral to be in office.
00:34:53.000When was the last time they said that?
00:34:54.000Now you could say maybe Katie Hill, that Congresswoman from California.
00:35:05.000Somehow I think that it had more to do with the political inconvenience of Katie Hill being in office for Nancy Pelosi than it had to do with morality.
00:35:13.000Let's see them do that in an electoral situation, not in a situation where that gap is going to get filled by a Democrat automatically, when there's actual risk attached.
00:35:23.000But we're going to need a consistent pattern of behavior from both sides of the aisle where they say repeatedly that immoral behavior on their own side is wrong.
00:35:30.000Even if it doesn't mean that they vote against the person or get rid of them.
00:35:33.000Like I'd love to see Democrats actually suggest that Ilhan Omar is an anti-Semite.
00:35:39.000I would love to see Democrats come out in real time when a Democrat does something that is wrong or immoral, and say that that's wrong or immoral, as opposed to circling the wagons.
00:35:48.000Because it's going to need both sides letting down their guard just a little bit to re-establish this level of trust.
00:35:52.000And it's going to need less online interaction.
00:35:56.000Because online interaction, social media interaction, is inevitably the worst sort of interaction.
00:36:01.000The people you see at church, you agree with them because you see them at church.
00:36:04.000The people you see in your bowling league or the PTA meeting, they're people you can deal with on a personal level because you see them on a personal level.
00:36:10.000We need to rebuild trust away from social media.
00:36:13.000Social media actually exacerbates the problem.
00:36:50.000We'll get to that in one second first.
00:36:52.000This is the time of year when you are starting to figure out, okay, you know what, I'm gonna eat up, do what I want during Christmas, during Hanukkah, and then, after the new year, I am getting fit, I'm getting healthy.
00:37:02.000Now I know, you're gonna make that pledge to yourself, but here is the thing, you're not gonna change your habits.
00:37:05.000You're gonna get a gym membership, it's gonna go unused for three months, you're gonna let it wane.
00:37:09.000as you probably should if you're not using it.
00:37:11.000Instead, you need to actually change the way you live.
00:37:13.000The best way to do this is with the Noom app.
00:37:14.000Based in psychology, Noom teaches you why you do the things you do.
00:37:18.000Arms with the tools to break the bad habits and replace them with better ones.
00:37:20.000I've been using Noom for several months here, and it gives you tips every single day.
00:38:16.000It was conducted using Ipsos' knowledge panel and it interviewed the same group of voters twice, once on either side of the debate to capture both the before and the after picture.
00:38:25.000And it's kind of fascinating to see who went up and who went down and who didn't do great.
00:38:30.000So everybody apparently went up, which is not surprising because it's a showcase for everybody.
00:40:22.000Andrew Yang saw an increase of 0.9, so not much for him.
00:40:26.000And Tom Steyer saw an increase of about 1.4 points.
00:40:29.000According to the FiveThirtyEight Project, The biggest winner in terms of attracting potential voters was clearly Klobuchar, who gained a little over four points in the share of respondents who said they were considering voting for her.
00:40:39.000Biden and Sanders also gained nearly two points each in potential support.
00:40:43.000No one seems to have lost any potential supporters, although candidates like Yang, Warren, and Buttigieg made only small gains of less than one point each.
00:40:50.000Candidates' favorable and unfavorable ratings among likely voters?
00:40:54.000Basically unchanged, except for Buttigieg.
00:40:58.000Buttigieg saw a significant move in the direction of unfavorability.
00:41:03.000He saw a little bit of movement in favorability, too.
00:41:05.000So people have stronger opinions of Buttigieg than they did before the debate.
00:41:10.000So 21% of voters see Buttigieg unfavorably.
00:41:14.000So about a four-point move for Buttigieg in the wrong direction.
00:41:19.000Elizabeth Warren is exactly where she was.
00:41:22.000Bernie Sanders is basically exactly where he was.
00:41:24.000Tom Steyer is a little bit more unfavorable, but also a lot more favorable, so people will have stronger opinions on him.
00:41:30.000Klobuchar had a big move in terms of favorability, a seven-point move in terms of favorability.
00:41:34.000Yang had a big move in terms of favorability.
00:41:37.000So it's exactly what you would think it is.
00:41:41.000So bottom line is that Yang and Klobuchar saw the largest jumps in net favorability, 6.3 points for Yang, 6.1 for Klobuchar.
00:41:47.000Most of the other candidates made modest gains of two or three points.
00:41:50.000Buttigieg, his net favorability actually fell by about two points.
00:41:55.000Before the debate, by the way, about 36% of Democrats said that sharing a stance on the issue is the most important thing, as opposed to 64% who said ability to beat Trump was the big thing.
00:42:04.000And that is why you saw Buttigieg take the hit, because Klobuchar was the first person to point out that Buttigieg has no credentials to actually win this thing.
00:42:13.000Here is Amy Klobuchar explaining, yeah, I was waiting.
00:42:16.000I was waiting to hit Buttigieg over all of this.
00:42:19.000This is a debate and I think it was done in an appropriate way.
00:42:24.000I actually had been waiting to do that since the MSNBC debate the month before where we went back and forth some about that issue and then he had made that statement.
00:42:36.000Now, that doesn't mean that Buttigieg doesn't have his defenders.
00:42:39.000As I suggested, Buttigieg's response to the wine cave stuff was basically correct.
00:42:42.000it then went to Tulsi and I never had a chance to reply.
00:44:44.000By the way, Michael Bloomberg, this is worth noting.
00:44:46.000So people have been saying that Pete Buttigieg is moving the party back to the center and Klobuchar is moving the party back to the center.
00:44:51.000Well, if you really thought that the party was moving back to the center, the Democratic Party, they wouldn't be saying things like this.
00:44:55.000Michael Bloomberg, who's a supposed centrist, he came out and he said he'd vote for Elizabeth Warren over Donald Trump, which is patently insane.
00:45:01.000This is a candidate who's just saying she wants to put rules on capitalism.
00:45:05.000If this man is that dangerous, why would people sooner vote for him than vote for her?
00:45:10.000I can only tell you if I were faced with Elizabeth Warren or Donald Trump, I would vote for Elizabeth Warren, even though I don't agree with her on a lot of things.
00:45:18.000She is honest and smart and hardworking.
00:45:21.000So there you are, the Democratic Party, still in search of a candidate.
00:45:25.000Biden continues to be the most durable guy out there.
00:45:27.000In all likelihood, at this point, you gotta say he's the odds-on favorite to take the nomination.
00:45:51.000Rowling, of course, committed the grave and unforgivable sin of defending a woman who had suggested that men cannot become women, that men cannot change into women.
00:45:59.000I know, it's unbelievable that somebody would even contend that a man cannot magically become a woman.
00:46:06.000And she is getting ripped up and down.
00:46:08.000Charlotte Clymer, who's a transgender woman and U.S.
00:46:11.000Army veteran, which is to say a man who believes that he is a woman, is press secretary at the Human Rights Campaign, which tweets out idiotic things like, trans women are women, trans men are men, non-gender binary people are non-gender binary.
00:46:24.000You know, nonsensical crap that used to land you in the cuckoo house.
00:46:29.000Because anybody claiming that a man is a woman or a woman is a man, like, ten years ago, you'd be like, uh, what now?
00:46:35.000Okay, but now this is not only established belief.
00:46:39.000You can rip down one of the most popular authors of all time based on her saying that women exist.
00:46:44.000According to Charlotte Clymer, in the magical world of Harry Potter, the justice-minded and rebellious adolescent characters drink something called Polyjuice Potion to temporarily take on the general appearance of other people, even those of entirely different anatomies and gender expressions.
00:46:56.000As a teenager, I remember reading this and thinking, oh god, I wish it were that easy.
00:47:00.000Right, but that because that like one is like fiction in like a magical world where wizards happen.
00:47:09.000At the time, I was very much in the closet as a transgender girl with scarcely any vocabulary, not even the familiar medicalizing term gender dysphoria, to explain to the adults in my life how I was in pain, and the world JK Rowling offered created escape.
00:47:21.000It wasn't the genre elements that appealed to me, but the central message of courage in the face of evil, and authenticity in the midst of urged conformity.
00:47:27.000Woven throughout the narrative is an insistence on love and community, and integrity and inclusion, which is why it has broken my heart.
00:47:34.000In recent years, to see Rowling's inexplicable replacement of justice-minded imagination with bigotry-driven rejection of science and reality.
00:47:41.000Okay, you're not delusional, you have to believe, to be to believe, that it is bigotry-driven rejection of science and reality to say that women exist.
00:47:50.000It's bigotry-driven rejection of science and reality to say women don't exist.
00:47:53.000I mean, that is like, that is the hyper-essence of sexism, to suggest that I, a man, can be a woman.
00:48:01.000But to then suggest that it is rejection of science and reality to say that a man cannot become a woman.
00:48:09.000Okay, we are living in cloud cuckoo land now.
00:48:12.000On Thursday, Rowling tweeted in defense of the British researcher Maya Forstater, whose employer declined to renew her contract in light of Forstater's own tweet, which included statements such as, men cannot change into women.
00:48:22.000Forstater took her former employer to court, where the judge sided with the employer.
00:48:27.000In her tweet, Rowling effectively dismisses the judge, suggesting that Forstater was being fired for stating that sex is real, a common transphobic assertion that has been dismissed by medical experts and other scientists.
00:48:37.000That sex is real has been dismissed by medical experts and other scientists?
00:49:11.000And it was not true in the first place because gender is innately connected with biology in a wide variety of ways, but then it becomes gender is a social construct, but sex is real.
00:49:22.000Now it's, gender is real, and sex is a social construct.
00:49:42.000Without sexual dimorphism, I'm gonna need some explanation on this one.
00:49:46.000You know, without like the small gamete side of species, with the big gamete side of species, I'm gonna need some biological explanation on this one.
00:50:18.000Britain has finally advanced its Brexit bill in a lopsided vote.
00:50:22.000According to the New York Times, after more than three years of anguished national debate, multiple cliffhanging votes, and two general elections, Britain's parliament voted by a wide margin on Friday to advance Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Brexit plan, paving the way for a country to leave the EU next month.
00:50:35.000For all the drama of the moment, the vote, 354 to 234, was a foregone conclusion.
00:50:40.000After the landslide victory of Mr. Johnson and his Conservative Party last week, the outcome was never in doubt.
00:50:46.000With Parliament now firmly under the grip of conservatives, the days of fierce debate over Britain's future, which had thwarted Johnson and his predecessor, Theresa May, are gone, the House of Commons has become an efficient vehicle to enact Brexit.
00:50:57.000The House of Commons, so recently a grand arena for democratic defiance, has become an efficient vehicle to enact Brexit.
00:51:04.000So in other words, when people that the Times like are obstructing Brexit, that's just democratic defiance, man.
00:51:11.000But, When people who run the government, right, because they were elected, do what they were elected to do, then that is an efficient vehicle.
00:51:21.000By the way, if labor were in charge and they were ramming through anything, the New York Times would be like, look at the efficiency there.
00:51:48.000And it is a blow against the international institution that is the EU, which had overstepped its boundaries with regard to regulations in a way that the British people did not like.
00:51:56.000So good for the people of Great Britain.
00:51:58.000Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
00:52:04.000So I'll admit that I have not yet seen Rise of Skywalker.
00:52:06.000I look forward to seeing Rise of Skywalker.
00:52:07.000I've heard mixed reviews, but people I trust actually say it's kind of good.
00:52:10.000So I'm looking forward to giving you my review of it.
00:52:17.000Here is a dumb thing from Twitter to end your year.
00:52:20.000They have a Twitter moment looking at Rise of Skywalker's depiction of gender, race, and sexuality.
00:52:26.000It's a science fiction movie about aliens who fight in space with people, but the people are not from Earth, so it's a galaxy far, far away, and we're gonna have a conversation about lesbians in space.
00:52:40.000I'm also old enough to remember when Star Wars was considered a movie for all ages, including children, as opposed to a social justice warrior vehicle for various political identity groups.
00:52:52.000Some had an issue with Rey's relationship with conflicted villain Kylo Ren.
00:52:56.000And they quote an article from some random website called SW Shadow Council, Star Wars Shadow Council, saying that the rise of Skywalker glorifies abuse and assault against women.
00:54:15.000The fact that we have to do this every time a big name movie comes out.
00:54:19.000The franchise's first on-screen kiss between a same-sex couple has also sparked both positive and negative reactions.
00:54:25.000Apparently, there's like a very, very brief kiss between two women in the background of a celebration of some sort.
00:54:32.000And it's a historic first, because if the movie doesn't at least throw some sort of sop to GLAAD, then the movie has not fulfilled its basic mandate that homosexuality exists in galaxies far, far away.
00:55:46.000Hey everybody, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
00:55:49.000You know, some people are depressed because the American Republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon has turned to blood.
00:55:55.000But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.