A Mortal Kombat version of the Trump White House. The White House looks like a game of "Good Trump, Bad Trump." President Trump introduces the RAISE Act, and CNN's Jim Acosta makes a total ass of himself. Plus, we have an amazing graphic that apparently I have not seen yet, but I've been told by staff it's incredible. The Daily Wire has a mashup of the Scaramucci, Priebus, Reince Priebus, and the new Chief of Staff, and a "Moral Combat" mashup, and it's pretty spectacular. Also, the media blows up at CNN's Acosta for asking a question about the immigration bill, and I explain why it's a good thing we have Good Trump and Bad Trump on hand. And, of course, there's still time to catch up on The Weekly Standard's Top 10 Most Influential People in America. Subscribe to The Ben Shapiro Show on iTunes and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! Thanks for listening and share the podcast with your friends and family! Subscribe, Like, and Share, and Retweet! Ben Shapiro's new book: is out now! If you like what you hear, share it with a friend or become a supporter of the podcast! I'll be giving out a shoutout in next week's episode. Thanks again for supporting the podcast, Ben Shapiro and I'll see you next Tuesday! if you leave a review and review the podcast on iTunes! Thank you for listening! - Your support is greatly appreciated! Timestop - The Best of the White House? - Ben Shapiro, @ Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire? . @ . . . #BenShapiro , & @ ? And Can't wait to hear back from you're listening to the podcast? @Ben Shapiro? & or at ! | / Ben's new song? Thanks Ben Shapiro is : Thank You? Ben (featuring: , and + ; Is that a tweet? , & ? . &/or Music: "Can I have it? ? ? & / or ? & , etc., )
00:00:19.000So before I get to any of that, plus, we have this amazing graphic that apparently, I have not seen it yet, but I've been told by staff it's incredible.
00:00:25.000The Mortal Kombat version of the Trump White House, like the 1990s video game.
00:00:30.000So we'll get to that in just a second, but before we do any of that, I first want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Indochino.
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00:02:00.000I really want to see this Moral Combat at the White House, just because I've heard so much about this.
00:02:04.000So, instead of us waiting until Things I Like, we're just going to do it now, because I don't know whether I like it or not.
00:02:08.000So, apparently, I had asked if they would do a Moral Combat mashup of staffing decisions over at the White House.
00:02:14.000So, it is Scaramucci, Anthony Scaramucci, versus Reince Priebus, followed by General John Kelly, the new Chief of Staff, versus Anthony Scaramucci.
00:04:10.000And I will explain my view on when legal immigration should be increased, when it should be decreased in just a second, but here's Trump introducing this bill yesterday.
00:04:24.000The RAISE Act will reduce poverty, increase wages, and save taxpayers billions and billions of dollars.
00:04:32.000It will do this by changing the way the United States issues green cards to nationals from other countries.
00:04:40.000The RAISE Act ends chain migration and replaces our low-skilled system with a new points-based system for receiving a green card.
00:04:50.000This competitive application process will favor applicants who can speak English, financially support themselves and their families, and demonstrate skills that will contribute to our economy.
00:05:06.000The RAISE Act prevents new migrants and new immigrants from collecting welfare and protects U.S.
00:05:15.000Crucially, the Green Card Reforms and the RAISE Act will give American workers a pay raise by reducing unskilled immigration.
00:05:24.000This legislation will not only restore our competitive edge in the 21st century, but it will restore the sacred bonds of trust between America and its citizens.
00:05:34.000Okay, so overall, the proposals that he's proposing here are just...
00:05:39.000Okay, so what the RAISE Act does, and a lot of it is really good, is it limits legal immigration, and it does it based on a points-based system.
00:05:46.000So right now we have a visa lottery, which is just idiotic.
00:05:49.000Why should it be a lottery to get into the country?
00:05:51.000We are the greatest country on the face of the planet in human history.
00:05:54.000We should be able to choose who comes in and who does not.
00:05:57.000We should only bring in people who are beneficial to the country at large.
00:05:59.000People who can help the economy, people who are going to assimilate,
00:06:02.000People who are going to integrate, people who are going to better the stock of the United States.
00:06:06.000I don't mean racial stock, but I mean the intellectual and moral and social stock of the United States.
00:06:13.000You know, all of these things, this is not a very difficult call, right?
00:06:17.000I mean, if you were to start a community, you'd want to be pretty selective about who is allowed to enter the community.
00:06:21.000If you go to a church or a synagogue, you want to be selective about who's allowed in your community because you don't want it being overrun with people who don't agree.
00:06:46.000And the reason that that was better than what came afterward is because one of the criteria to get in is that number one, you weren't going to take welfare and number two, you spoke English or you were willing to integrate, you were willing to assimilate quickly into an English speaking language.
00:07:01.000And in 1967 they decided no longer would they privilege people who had educations, who had degrees, who had economic backgrounds, who spoke English, who had a history in Western civilization.
00:07:11.000Now we're just going to take in basically anyone who applied first come first serve.
00:07:15.000What that did is it changed the kinds of people who are coming over into the United States.
00:07:19.000Not because they're bad people, but because when you change the countries from which you draw, you change the cultures from which you draw.
00:07:43.000Disneyland, the prices are much higher.
00:07:44.000Very, very different crowd goes to Disneyland than goes to Magic Mountain.
00:07:47.000So, none of this is really, or should be controversial.
00:07:51.000Trump points out that more than 50% of all immigrant households receive welfare benefits compared to only 30% of native households in the United States who receive welfare benefits, which is obviously true.
00:08:00.000He's also pointed out crime that is connected with immigration, both legal and illegal.
00:08:05.000People point out that there is not a tremendous crime wave coming from immigrants, but the question is not whether there's a wave like above and beyond what happens in America.
00:08:13.000The question is whether the people who are being brought in are more likely to behave like people at the lower end of the socioeconomic status in the United States in terms of crime, or whether they're more likely to behave like the people at the higher end of the socioeconomic status in the United States with regard to crime.
00:08:27.000My father-in-law came to the United States as an engineer from Israel, right?
00:08:32.000Was he likely to commit a crime or was he more likely to commit a crime if he was a person who was coming in from El Salvador with no marketable skills and was coming in in poverty and trying to provide for his family?
00:08:43.000Which one is more likely to integrate?
00:08:45.000Which one is more likely to provide benefit to the United States economy?
00:08:51.000The other stuff that this does, it rewards education, English language ability, high-paying job offers, past achievements, and entrepreneurial initiative.
00:09:04.000One of these ideas is good and one of these ideas is bad.
00:09:06.000So the good idea about decreasing immigration among low-skilled and unskilled labor is that you're bringing in a group of people who are more likely to end up on welfare.
00:09:13.000So if you have a lot of people who are likely to end up on welfare, then it is not worthwhile to have them come into the United States.
00:09:19.000The part of this that is stupid is the suggestion that you're undercutting the labor market by bringing in immigrants.
00:09:39.000There are two arguments, and you can't make them both simultaneously, but Trump does.
00:09:42.000Argument number one, China and Mexico are taking all the jobs.
00:09:46.000Argument number two, we have to increase the wages.
00:09:49.000You can't really say both those things, right?
00:09:51.000If you believe that American companies are offshoring and outsourcing because wages in the United States are too high, you can't deliberately drive up the wages in the United States and then be surprised when companies outsource.
00:10:01.000The argument for limiting immigration in order to drive up wages by limiting the labor supply is exactly the same as the argument for minimum wage, which I assume Trump opposes.
00:10:09.000Right, the fact is, minimum wage artificially drives up the price you have to pay for labor.
00:10:13.000This forces businesses to raise their prices.
00:10:15.000This forces them to be non-competitive, and that forces them to outsource.
00:10:19.000It forces them to go to other countries for labor, or to fire people.
00:10:22.000Okay, the same thing is true if you artificially drive up the price of labor by keeping prospective workers from coming into the United States.
00:10:28.000You're not going to boost the economy by preventing workers from coming into the United States.
00:10:31.000There are only two reasons to limit immigration into the United States.
00:10:34.000I'm very libertarian when it comes to this.
00:10:45.000If they are not going to assimilate to the culture of the United States, no.
00:10:48.000And if they are a threat to safety, no.
00:10:50.000Otherwise, I have no problem with anybody coming in who wants to work hard, not be on welfare, and compete for jobs.
00:10:55.000And that's my really only problem with the way that Trump is expressing this.
00:10:59.000It's sort of pandering to an economic falsehood.
00:11:02.000The content of the bill itself is just fine.
00:11:04.000The content of the bill I'm totally fine with.
00:11:05.000And I want to explain a little more about what's in the bill, and then I want to show you an exchange that really was making the rounds yesterday, as well it should, because it demonstrates why people like me, people like you, probably, dislike the media so much.
00:11:19.000But before I get to that, I first want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Upside.com.
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00:12:56.000It would prioritize immediate family members of people who immigrate.
00:12:59.000So, my father-in-law comes in, now he can bring his wife and children, but it doesn't allow him to bring in his entire extended family from Morocco, right?
00:13:07.000This is what Trump was talking about when he talks about chain migration.
00:13:10.000This idea that one person sets roots and then now you get a thousand people who are the extended relatives coming in because that one person settled down.
00:13:18.000We should be able to pick and choose who we bring into the country.
00:13:20.000It seems fair that we would bring in immediate family members so people who are of benefit to the country can have their immediate family around them, but I'm not sure why Cousin Bobbo should be allowed into the country just because I was allowed into the country and I'm of benefit to the United States.
00:13:39.000The biggest problem is that this is not going to pass, right?
00:13:40.000So, Dianne Feinstein, Democrat from California, she was saying this is not going to pass.
00:13:44.000In all likelihood, it's going to be very difficult to get people like John McCain on board.
00:13:48.000And here's Dianne Feinstein, you know, suggesting as much.
00:13:52.000So, it's a program that I hope, candidly, won't see the light of day.
00:13:58.000I don't know whether it will or not, but I think in the Judiciary Committee, it's not going to be very welcomed.
00:14:05.000The White House and Stephen Miller and the President, they kept referring to what they called a fact that this new policy, this new immigration policy, would help African-Americans and Hispanic workers who are here in the United States.
00:14:48.000Not because he thinks that this is going to pass, but because it's a good political move.
00:14:51.000Exactly the stuff he's talking about with immigration that I dislike is the stuff that a lot of voters like.
00:14:55.000They want to be told that the reason they're losing their jobs is because of these people coming across the border legally on low-wage visas who are taking their jobs.
00:15:04.000And the truth is that there is some of that going on.
00:15:07.000Like, to pretend that in the short term there is not a job substitution that happens when low-wage immigrants come into the United States,
00:15:13.000Of course there's a substitution that happens.
00:15:15.000What I'm saying is in the medium to long term, you end up with a net loss of jobs as businesses close their doors.
00:15:19.000In the same way that a union will break a company and the company will end up moving out of state or out of country, limiting the labor supply inevitably means a higher cost to the company.
00:15:29.000So in the mid to long term, it's bad economics.
00:15:31.000But for those people who are living in Ohio or Michigan and they're afraid that bringing in low-wage labor is going to undercut them, of course that's what they're pandering to.
00:15:39.000It's a political move for Trump to talk about that stuff.
00:15:41.000I'm in favor of the bill because we ought to be picking and choosing the people who come into the country and making sure that they actually are not on welfare, are not safety threats, and are going to assimilate to the U.S.
00:15:50.000Now, the media don't know the first thing about immigration.
00:15:53.000The history of immigration in the United States is filled with ebbs and flows.
00:15:56.000There were times when there were tons of immigrants coming to the United States.
00:15:59.000In 1907, when my great-great-grandfather got to the United States,
00:16:03.000Harry Shapiro, when he came in 1907, there were over a million immigrants that came into the United States that year, mostly from Western and Eastern Europe.
00:16:15.000But then there was a crackdown in the 1920s and immigration plummeted.
00:16:18.000So we've had times when there was lots of immigration, times when there was not as much immigration.
00:16:22.000And this sort of ebb and flow in terms of immigration is perfectly natural.
00:16:25.000There's nothing quote-unquote nativist about it, depending on the motives.
00:16:29.000You know, sometimes there is nativist.
00:16:30.000Sometimes they're trying to ban the Chinese or
00:16:32.000Ban the Jews, or ban the Irish, or ban the Germans.
00:16:35.000But in this particular case, that's not what's going on here.
00:16:38.000This is a case that you have to have people who are willing to assimilate, and you have to have people who are not safety threats, and people who are not going to be on welfare.
00:16:44.000All of which seems perfectly decent to me.
00:16:47.000Now, what happens is the media, because they are so eager to call President Trump a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, and all the rest, they immediately decide, without any evidence, that this bill is based on racism.
00:16:58.000So Stephen Miller, a guy I know, and who is definitely an expert on immigration, I mean, as I've said before, I remember in, it must have been 2013, there was an event, or it would have been 2014 actually, 2014-15, there was an event at which I did, it was like a late night dinner slash drinking session,
00:17:17.000With Stephen Miller, Ann Coulter, Jeff Sessions, and me.
00:17:21.000And Stephen knows what he's talking about.
00:17:22.000When it comes to immigration, this is his specialty.
00:17:38.000You're gonna see that on full display in this particular clip.
00:17:42.000But what you're proposing, or what the President is proposing here, does not sound like it's in keeping with American tradition when it comes to immigration.
00:17:48.000The Statue of Liberty says, give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, your aim to breathe free.
00:17:53.000It doesn't say anything about speaking English or being able to be a computer programmer.
00:18:00.000Aren't you trying to change what it means to be an immigrant coming into this country?
00:18:05.000If you're telling them you have to speak English?
00:18:09.000Can't people learn how to speak English when they get here?
00:18:11.000Okay, so there's nothing wrong with telling people they need to learn how to speak English.
00:18:14.000I love this idea from the left, and from the media, that what it says in Emma Lazarus's poem on the Statue of Liberty is somehow U.S.
00:18:33.000So, the English language requirement is only a requirement now because we've had two generations of immigrants who have not bothered to learn English in many cases.
00:18:41.000Their kids learn English, but they themselves have not bothered.
00:18:44.000Like, when my great-great-grandfather came to the United States,
00:18:49.000It was actually forbidden in the household for them to speak Yiddish because they wanted their kids to learn English and integrate into American society.
00:18:56.000That's not the way that it works anymore.
00:18:57.000Now here in California, we have English as second language, right?
00:19:00.000You have full classes taught in Spanish in public schools.
00:19:03.000You know, that is not the way that we were told immigration was supposed to work.
00:19:06.000So, when you have Jim Acosta doing the, you know, huddle masses yearning to be free, the immediate and obvious point is, okay Jim, there have to be some restrictions on immigration.
00:19:21.000Because clearly you think that's what Emma Lazarus' poem means.
00:19:23.000If you want to come here, you should be able to come here.
00:19:25.000Well, that would immediately destroy the United States as it stands, and that's where Stephen Miller goes with this.
00:19:31.000Well, first of all, right now it's a requirement that to be naturalized you have to speak English.
00:19:36.000So the notion that speaking English wouldn't be a part of immigration systems would be actually very ahistorical.
00:19:41.000Secondly, I don't want to get off into a whole thing about history here, but the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of liberty enlightening the world.
00:19:48.000It's a symbol of American liberty lighting the world.
00:19:51.000The poem that you're referring to that was added later is not actually part of the original Statue of Liberty, but more fundamentally
00:19:57.000You're saying that that does not represent what the country has always thought of as immigration coming into this country?
00:20:02.000That sounds like some National Park revisionism.
00:20:05.000The Statue of Liberty has always been a median of hope to the world
00:20:18.000Jim, do you believe... Jim, pause it right there.
00:20:21.000Jim, do you believe... Jim, pause it for a second.
00:20:24.000He's being such a contentious douchebag, Jim Acosta, right here.
00:20:27.000I mean, this is, like, even if you think that Jim Acosta is correct on this, Jim Acosta just badgering Steven Moe, not even letting him get an answer, and this is a press conference, right?
00:20:35.000You ask a question, you get an answer.
00:20:38.000But the idea that you just get to grandstand, this is one of the reasons why the White House, they're getting a lot of flack for this, they've been saying we don't want on-camera press conferences.
00:22:07.000900,000 violates it, 800,000 violates it.
00:22:09.000You're sort of bringing a press one for English philosophy here to immigration and that's never been what the United States has been about.
00:22:17.000But your statement's also shockingly ahistorical in another respect too.
00:22:21.000If you look at the history of immigration, it's actually ebbed and flowed.
00:22:24.000We've had periods of very large waves, followed by periods of less immigration and more immigration.
00:22:29.000We're in a period of immigration right now that wants to build a wall.
00:22:34.000Surely, Jim, you don't actually think that a wall affects green card policy.
00:22:40.000You couldn't possibly believe that, do you?
00:22:42.000Actually, the notion that you actually think immigration is a historic wall, the foreign-born population of the United States today... Jim!
00:23:52.000This is an amazing moment that you think only people from Great Britain or Australia would speak English is so insulting to millions of hard-working immigrants who do speak English from all over the world.
00:24:05.000Jim, have you honestly never met an immigrant from another country who speaks English?
00:24:10.000Okay, and Miller is totally right on this.
00:24:11.000Okay, what he is saying here is exactly right.
00:24:13.000There are more English-speaking people in China than in all of the UK and the United States put together.
00:24:20.000Okay, there are more English-speaking people in India than there are in the United Kingdom and Australia.
00:25:48.000Or, if you want the annual subscription, then you, my friend, then you will be in the greatest of luck, because you will receive, in the mail, delivered to you, this magical, incredible...
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00:26:06.000That $99 you get to all the things I just mentioned, the website, ad-free, plus this Tumblr that you will treasure forever and give to your daughter as a wedding gift on this, her wedding day.
00:26:26.000We are the largest conservative podcast in the nation.
00:26:36.000So as you see, Stephen Miller absolutely hammers CNN's Jim Acosta.
00:26:40.000And what is Acosta's response to this?
00:26:42.000I mean, this is full-on delusional crap, right?
00:26:44.000Because Jim Acosta then goes on CNN, and he says,
00:26:51.000It was odd to see the White House wolf in the form of Stephen Miller, one of the top policy advisors, sort of sound like a Statue of Liberty originalist.
00:27:01.000As if there's some difference between what the Statue of Liberty looked like when it was first brought over here to the United States and what it looks like now with a poem attached to it.
00:27:12.000I just thought that was an odd moment.
00:27:31.000He actually said, though, live on CNN, that this was- it was obvious that he couldn't take that kind of heat, that Stephen Miller couldn't take that kind of heat.
00:27:38.000He said, I think what you saw unfold in the briefing room is that Miller just couldn't take that kind of heat and exploded right before our eyes.
00:27:53.000And, you know, Acosta then said that Stephen Miller, when he says you have a cosmopolitan biases, it's not often you're accused of a cosmopolitan bias from someone who went to Duke University wearing cufflinks in the White House briefing room.
00:28:03.000Not a completely unfair critique of Stephen Miller, except for the fact that
00:28:06.000It is a leftist, a left-wing coastal bias.
00:28:08.000Like, to pretend that Stephen Miller doesn't represent the thoughts and feelings of people in the middle of the country more than Jim Acosta is just silly.
00:28:14.000But that's not really what this was about.
00:28:22.000He says that, quote, when you hear about, the president makes some of the comments he makes about immigrants, and when you see Stephen Miller of Policy talking about this, it's a wink, right?
00:28:33.000Talking about deportation forces, and when you see Stephen Miller, a policy advisor to the president, talking about an English language preference for people coming into this country, it is a wink, it is a dog whistle to certain parts of this country that they are going to be looking at the racial and ethnic flow of immigrants coming into this country.
00:28:53.000Again, it's not about the ethnic and racial flow, it's about the cultural flow, it's about the income flow, it's about the education flow.
00:28:59.000But this is what the left never understood.
00:29:01.000When they made the immigration case, for the last 20 years, they kept saying things like, well, you let anybody in and it's not a problem at all.
00:29:08.000You have people in the middle of the country going, wait a second.
00:29:10.000You have people like Victor Davis Hanson, who lives up in Northern California, Central California, saying, my entire town has been transformed by people who don't speak English, who don't abide by basic Western standards of civilization.
00:29:21.000You know, there are a lot of people who suffer, and there is a cosmopolitan bias to this.
00:29:27.000In L.A., here's the truth about how people like Jim Acosta and members of the media think about this kind of stuff.
00:29:33.000The way they think about this kind of stuff is they live in very nice houses, they went to top universities, and the only time they see immigrants, legal or illegal,
00:29:40.000Is usually when they are working with them at the top notches of business, right?
00:29:44.000They're working with them as like an IT person or the person comes in and now they're a nurse, right?
00:29:50.000Or illegally, they're the people who mow their lawn, right?
00:29:54.000The nanny who takes care of their kids.
00:29:56.000They don't ever see the people who aren't working because the people who aren't working are down at the Home Depot waiting for somebody to pick them up, or alternatively, they're in East L.A.
00:30:04.000working with some sort of heroin cartel, right?
00:30:06.000I mean, like, the fact is that most of the people who are coming in are not participating in drug-related activity, of course, but...
00:30:12.000To pretend that that doesn't exist is just silly, it's just foolish.
00:30:14.000To pretend the criminal element doesn't exist is foolish.
00:30:16.000To pretend poverty doesn't exist is foolish.
00:30:18.000Drive over to East LA, look around and tell me that the poverty that is endemic in that community has nothing to do with the immigrants who are being brought in, that it's just the American system that causes that poverty.
00:30:28.000No, if you come in and you bring a bunch of people who have no skill set, then this is what you are going to get.
00:30:37.000Okay, people with no skill set are not the top choices for the United States to bring in and that has nothing to do with race.
00:30:43.000There are a lot of people, there are countries in the world where if you bring white people in from those, I mean, like people don't like to talk about the fact that, you know, there are a lot of Russian immigrants to this country.
00:30:53.000Well, presumably this new bill would harm Russian immigrants to this country if they can't speak English properly and have no skill set.
00:31:04.000Again, the left refuses to acknowledge any of this and so instead they castigate everyone who agrees with Trump that maybe we ought to be worried about the shifting culture of the country based on bringing in legal immigrants who then stay illegally, by the way.
00:31:17.000Illegal and illegal immigration are connected.
00:31:19.000There are a bunch of people who have overstayed
00:31:21.000The whole notion that people who want to come to the United States, immigrate to the United States, should know English before they arrive, why is that so central to this new strategy that the president is putting forward?
00:31:51.000Well, Wolf, I think at times this White House has an unhealthy fixation on what I call the three Ms, the Mexicans, the Muslims, and the media.
00:31:59.000Their policies tend to be crafted around bashing one of those three groups, and we just see it time and again.
00:32:07.000And today, on immigration, what the White House is essentially saying, in a wink and a dog whistle to some of these battleground states that they won, is that
00:32:17.000Immigrants coming in from Latin America are taking your jobs.
00:32:20.000Well, if immigration is not the reason why the factory closed in Pittsburgh or the coal mine was shut down in West Virginia, the people who are struggling in those states, they need policies that will help get them out of this mess that they've been in for generations.
00:32:40.000You have to bring in everybody from Latin America who has a low skill set and creates wage competition, and then you have to pay welfare to all the people who are thrown out of work.
00:32:48.000Like, that's his idea because Jim Acosta is on the left.
00:32:52.000When he says Muslims, Mexicans, the media?
00:32:53.000Listen, I'm not in favor of people attacking Mexicans.
00:32:56.000During the election cycle, when President Trump went after Judge Curiel and suggested that because his parents were Mexican he couldn't be fair in his trial, I said that's disgusting.
00:33:03.000When it came to his Muslim ban, I said I don't think that a full Muslim ban is good policy.
00:33:08.000But when it comes to the media, there's a reason he's bashing the media, and it's because of the guy you see on your television screen right now.
00:33:16.000Glenn Thrush, over at the Washington Post, he and Miller go at it, and here's what that looked like in the briefing room yesterday.
00:33:23.000And no recent study said that as much as $300 billion a year may be lost as a result of our current immigration system in terms of folks drawing more public benefits than they're paying in.
00:33:33.000But let's also use common sense here, folks.
00:33:36.000At the end of the day, why do special interests want to bring in more low-skilled workers?
00:33:44.000Well, I think it's very clear, Glenn, that you're not asking for common sense, but if I could just answer, if I could just answer your question.
00:33:50.000I named, I named, I named the studies, Glenn.
00:33:59.000Glenn, maybe we'll make a carve-out in the bill that says the New York Times can hire all the low-skilled, less-paid workers they want from other countries and see how you feel then about low-wage substitution.
00:34:09.000This is a reality that's happening in our country.
00:34:12.000Maybe it's time we had compassion, Glenn, for American workers.
00:34:15.000President Trump has met with American workers who've been replaced by foreign workers.
00:34:20.000And ask them how this is affecting their lives.
00:34:25.000Again, this is a strong political case.
00:34:27.000Again, I don't think it's a strong factual case that in the long run this is going to help the economy in any real way.
00:34:32.000But the political case that he's making against Thrush is an obvious one, and it's not nativism as much as it is, you know, the idea that if you don't want people coming in who are going to threaten the wage base,
00:34:44.000Then you can't have people coming in who are low-skilled.
00:34:46.000Okay, it's an argument with which I disagree economically, but it's at least a fair argument to suggest that it's based on racism is just nonsense.
00:34:53.000Especially because, as Miller says, a lot of the low-wage skill in the United States are people who are black or Hispanic.
00:34:59.000But that didn't stop Thrush from ripping Miller and then suggesting that this was, you know, it was just terrible.
00:35:49.000Another element of the objective media today, the Washington Post revealed leaked transcripts from January 27th phone calls made by then-brand-new President Donald Trump to his counterparts in Mexico and Australia.
00:36:01.000They gotta crack down on these White House leaks.
00:36:03.000The content of the calls is not edifying, you know, for people who either support Trump or oppose Trump.
00:36:09.000I mean, it doesn't show a guy who has tremendous command of the issues, but it is a serious security issue, and you do have to wonder whether it is worthwhile for the Washington Post to be printing full-scale transcripts of national security-related calls to Australia and to Mexico.
00:36:28.000The media is out to get Trump, there's no question about it.
00:36:30.000Now, I've been very critical of Trump.
00:36:31.000I've said that I think Trump needs to do a better job.
00:36:33.000But when you watch things like what happened in the White House briefing room yesterday, it is impossible not to come to the conclusion that the media have an agenda, and they are going to force that agenda through, and that agenda has nothing to do with policy and everything to do with character assaults, suggesting that everyone who agrees with some sort of crackdown on immigration or a change in the way we do immigration to bring in people who are more likely to assimilate and add to the economy rather than subtracting, that those people who want to crack down on that stuff
00:37:02.000It should be unacceptable for the media to do that, but that's their entire game at this point, and that's why Trump continues to hold his base.
00:37:09.000Okay, so time for some things I like, some things I hate, and then we'll get to the big idea.
00:37:14.000We've been paying late homage to Anthony Scaramucci and doing characters who are like Anthony Scaramucci in movies, and he is a stock character from the films.
00:37:23.000And so this one, today's, comes from Boiler Room.
00:37:27.000Boiler Room is a really underrated film with Giovanni Ribisi and Ben Affleck.
00:37:32.000Ben Affleck sort of plays the Alec Baldwin, Glenn, Gary, Glenn Ross part, but this is all about basically a scam firm, kind of a Wolf of Wall Street firm,
00:37:42.000They just call people up, they sell them leads on stocks, and then when the stocks collapse, then they're not around to pick up on it.
00:37:48.000They get a commission based on the amount they sell.
00:37:50.000It has nothing to do with whether the stock goes up or down, and they're paid by companies to basically sell all the stock, these penny stocks that are not heavily regulated, and then if they collapse, no big deal.
00:37:59.000Here's the scene where Ben Affleck makes the pitch to all of the prospective Series 7 stockbrokers as to why they should work for his firm.
00:40:12.000I talked a lot about Venezuela and Hugo Chavez yesterday.
00:40:14.000The best book on this that I know of is a book by Rory Carroll called Comandante, which is a biography of Hugo Chavez, and it is quite good.
00:40:22.000It really explains where he came from, why he was who he was, and why demagoguery works.
00:40:29.000Okay, time for A Thing I Hate, so let's do A Thing I Hate.
00:40:37.000Okay, so the thing I hate today is Al Gore, who has made literally a billion dollars off of global warming.
00:40:43.000He was on national TV on CNN, and he's talking to a priest, and he explains that global warming is a moral and spiritual issue.
00:40:51.000The habits of over-consumption and looking for happiness in just more things, that definitely is a part of the issue, for sure.
00:41:03.000Now, I was taught in my church that the purpose of life is to glorify God, and if we are heaping contempt on God's creation, then we're not living up to the
00:41:37.000Maybe the reason I don't worry so much about global warming is because, at best, the IPCC says that we're going to have a seven degree increase Fahrenheit.
00:41:42.000This is like, this is their outside estimate.
00:41:45.000Seven degree Fahrenheit increase over the next hundred years, average across the planet.
00:41:50.000They also say that there's really no way to stop a pretty significant temperature increase from happening anyway, even according to their best estimates.
00:41:57.000And I have more faith in the human capacity to adjust to climate change than I do to the idea that we're all going to suddenly become
00:42:05.000Communistic, poverty-ridden saints who share all property in common.
00:42:09.000I mean, Al Gore has made $200 million off this scam.
00:42:13.000So before he starts talking to us about what's really good in life is having no money, dude, give up your private jet and then we can start talking about it.
00:42:20.000Okay, so we don't have time, unfortunately, to do the big idea this week because we ran out of time.
00:42:26.000But we will do it next week because I think that the Jerusalem versus Athens issue is one that has a lot of ramifications for our politics, but you'll have to wait
00:42:34.000Until next week's big idea in order for us to do that.
00:42:36.000Maybe we'll do it early next week instead.