On today's show, Ben and Mark take your mailbag questions and discuss immigration, the DREAM Act, the debt ceiling, and much, much more! Subscribe to The Ben Shapiro Show on Apple Podcasts and leave us your thoughts and reactions in the comments section below. Thanks to our sponsor, Bull and Branch, for sponsoring the show. You get $50 off your first set of sheets, plus free shipping, when you use promo code Ben50 and get 50% off plus the free shipping when use the promo code BONUS50. Plus, you get 20% off your entire purchase when you sign up for the show, plus an additional $50 when you try out the sheets for 30 nights and see if you like them. If you don't like them, you can return them for a full refund and get them back for $50 plus the full discount when you run out of time and you want to try them out for a month. Use promo code Ben50 to receive $50 and free shipping on your first box of sheets! $50 is a discount code BenShapiro50 plus $50 free shipping! Ben Shapiro is a big fan of the sheets and they are the most comfortable sheets on the market! you can't ask for much better than that! and they're made in 100% organic cotton! You don't know what's better than those sheets? Listen to find out which ones you should be sleeping on? Ben will be better than the ones you're going to fall asleep on the couch. and which ones are going to bedding you'll be the most rest better than you can fall asleep in the best bed you can tttttttt. on the floor of your room in the next episode of your local store? and you won't want to miss it! Thanks for listening to the Ben Shapiro mailbag! - Ben Shapiro's Mailbag, Ben Shapiro - Subscribe to our newest episode of The Daily Bumpus, featuring a live mailbag, featuring live answering your questions and answering your own mailbag? Subscribe and answering them, of course! Subscribe, and much more. - The Weekly Standard, featuring your thoughts on the latest news, your questions, your comments, your thoughts, and your thoughts about the latest trending topics, your answers, and so much more!! Ben's AMA, your responses!
00:00:22.000Finally we're all the way to a Friday and we have the mailbag coming up a little bit later in the show so if you're gonna subscribe now is the time to do it so you can be part of today's mailbag where we will indeed be taking live questions but before we get to all of the various topics of the day and myriad they are first I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Bull and Branch so as I've said a thousand times on the show
00:02:11.000There is a lot to talk about with regard to President Trump and his move to the left on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, basically saying that he now wants the DREAM Act, the same DREAM Act that he ripped Jeb Bush up and down for.
00:02:22.000We'll also talk about Trump going Democrat on the debt ceiling, what that means, why that's important.
00:02:26.000A lot of people today sort of brushing off the debt ceiling discussion.
00:02:28.000Well, we always raise the debt ceiling.
00:02:31.000Well, raising the debt ceiling, you should at least get one of two things.
00:02:34.000If you're the governing party, you should at least get one of two things out of the debt ceiling.
00:02:37.000One, some sort of systemic change to spending that would actually make sure that you're not taking out as much debt in the future.
00:02:44.000You get some spending cuts in exchange for increasing the debt ceiling or extending the debt ceiling.
00:02:49.000Or two, you blow off the debt ceiling entirely for like another 18 months so you don't have to do this for every three months from now until the end of time so the Democrats can hold up the debt ceiling so that they can spend more money.
00:02:59.000You want to get one of those two things.
00:03:00.000Trump got neither of those two things.
00:03:02.000It's a bad deal and it also puts a lot of pressure on Republicans because he also pushed forward a continuing resolution, a budget resolution, that only goes through December.
00:03:10.000So now, Republicans are basically stacked up.
00:03:15.000If they want to do Obamacare repeal, they have to do it, like, basically in the next three weeks.
00:03:18.000If they want to do tax reform, they have to do it before December.
00:03:21.000And they have to do it with that deadline looming in December.
00:03:24.000Because, remember, right now Republicans only have 52 votes in the Senate.
00:03:27.000That means that if they want to pass anything with 51 votes through reconciliation, then reconciliation rules require any bill you pass has to be revenue neutral.
00:03:36.000Well, how do you gauge whether a bill is revenue neutral?
00:03:38.000The way that you gauge whether a bill is revenue neutral is based on the baseline budgeting.
00:04:04.000I want to get to an issue that has been very undercovered.
00:04:07.000Right now what we're watching in the United States, and it's very disturbing, is a loss of religion across the board in the United States.
00:04:13.000There's a poll that came out this week about evangelical Christians showing that a huge number of evangelical Christians were now uncertain on basic protocol principles, basic doctrinal principles, like, is promiscuity bad?
00:04:25.000I mean, these things are pretty clear in the Bible.
00:04:27.000You may not actually fulfill the mandate, right?
00:04:32.000There are certain things that, in Christian doctrine, are pretty well clear.
00:04:36.000Again, it doesn't mean that you uphold them personally or that you don't sin, but there are certain things that are pretty clear in Christian doctrine.
00:04:43.000Evangelical Christians, those numbers are sliding among Evangelical Christians, among people who actually believe in the doctrine.
00:04:48.000There's a poll out this week showing that we've now reached an all-time high in the United States of people who describe themselves as non-believers, people who feel that they are not religious.
00:04:55.000And this is something that's cheered and pushed by the secular left.
00:04:58.000And it's not just cheered and pushed by the secular left.
00:05:00.000There's an all-out assault that's happening from the Democratic left on people of religious faith.
00:05:05.000Because the idea on a lot of the left is that religion leads to these hard and fast rules.
00:05:11.000And these hard and fast rules are bad rules, right?
00:05:13.000They're ancient, and they're bad, and they're bigoted, and they're backwards.
00:05:16.000If we just got rid of all of those rules, then life would be so much better.
00:05:21.000Force people to bring their religion up to snuff.
00:05:24.000If they're going to believe in religion, let them be spiritual, not religious.
00:05:28.000They can believe in some higher power, sure, as long as it doesn't actually impact what they do in the here and now.
00:05:33.000And we're going to browbeat anyone who actually believes this stuff.
00:05:36.000If you actually believe religious principle, if you actually believe religious doctrine, we're going to beat you up for it.
00:05:41.000So the best case in point that I've seen in recent history is what happened in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
00:05:47.000This would be now a couple of days ago.
00:05:49.000So there is a judge whose name is Amy Barrett.
00:05:55.000She's actually a professor at Notre Dame Law, and she's being appointed to the appeals court, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, or she's being considered for that, and Dianne Feinstein, the senator from California, decided to go after her.
00:06:06.000Because this law professor is a Catholic, and she wrote a piece years ago in which she suggested that if you're a Catholic, and you have to sit in on a death penalty case, then you should probably excuse yourself.
00:06:16.000You should recuse yourself, because as a religious person, you have a duty not to actually vote in favor of the death penalty, so the best thing you can do is recuse yourself.
00:06:25.000Now, note, there's a difference between recusing yourself and voting against the death penalty in a particular case.
00:06:30.000Recusing yourself means you don't get a vote.
00:07:04.000The conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you.
00:07:13.000And that's of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for for years in this country.
00:07:25.000Okay, so what they're really questioning her about is this 1998 paper that she wrote as a law student, along with John Garvey, who's now president of the Catholic University of America.
00:07:35.000In the paper, the two authors explore whether a Catholic judge should recuse herself from death penalty cases if she would be unable to impartially uphold the law because of her religious convictions.
00:07:43.000The Pope and the American bishops have recently offered clear and forceful denunciations of the punishment, they said, and many Catholics feel morally obligated to uphold the teachings of the Church.
00:07:51.000In certain limited circumstances, they argue, federal judges should step back from involvement in cases that might raise conflicts of interest.
00:07:58.000They didn't argue that judges should step back from morally complicated cases all or even most of the time.
00:08:04.000According to Garvey, he said, But again, notice,
00:08:14.000Basically Feinstein is saying you shouldn't be a judge because if you're a judge then that means that you're going to use your religious doctrine in order to target people.
00:08:22.000But that's exactly what the paper is not saying.
00:08:24.000The paper is saying precisely the reverse.
00:08:25.000The paper is saying if I have to rule alongside my religious doctrine and it would impact how I rule alongside the law then I'm going to recuse myself.
00:08:33.000But the idea here is that if you're Catholic you can't be trusted.
00:09:19.000Okay, so the idea here is that she's a bad person, she's Catholic, can't be trusted.
00:09:24.000And this is what the left, hard left, truly believes about religion, moving into the mainstream left.
00:09:28.000Remember, Hillary Clinton said in the last election cycle that people who are religious, who believe certain things about same-sex marriage, for example, they have to update their religion to take account of the times.
00:09:42.000And yet, it's so funny because the left will then use religion as a club when they feel that it's convenient, right?
00:09:47.000So James Clyburn, who is a representative, he came out and he said that anybody who is Christian or Jewish should obviously be in favor of the Dreamers because otherwise they'd be violating their own religious precepts.
00:10:01.000This is Representative Clyburn, a Democrat of South Carolina.
00:10:04.000They love this country, and many of them, this is the only country they have ever known.
00:10:09.000And for us to hold the children responsible for the sins of their parents defies who and what we are as a nation, and those people who believe in the minimalism of Christianity and Judaism ought to practice what we say we preach.
00:10:28.000Okay, again, so the idea is that religion is bad, unless I wish to invoke it, in which case religion becomes good.
00:10:33.000There's no actual concerted principle here.
00:10:36.000There's no actual line of demarcation.
00:10:38.000The Boston Globe ran a long piece this week talking specifically about Elizabeth Warren's faith.
00:10:43.000Okay, Elizabeth Warren is the most pro-abortion member of the U.S.
00:11:32.000The cops show up, they're gonna ask you a bunch of questions, they may arrest you because that's just the way the law works.
00:11:37.000Well, this is why you need to talk to my friends over at the USCCA.
00:11:40.000Go to defendmyfamilynow.com right now.
00:11:42.000They have a copy of a free guide that will uncover the six things you didn't know would happen when the police arrive.
00:11:48.000Again, it's called the six things you didn't know would happen when the police arrived, because the fact is, you think the end of the story is the shooting.
00:12:05.000Also, they will provide for you insurance that
00:12:10.000Prevents against loss in these cases meaning that if you have to hire a lawyer if you have to have bail, right?
00:12:15.000They have services that provide for all of these things That's what defendmyfamilynow.com is for and right now you get the USCCA's free guide that will uncover the things you need to know in case of a shooting scenario Because again, you're not going to be immediately hailed as a hero.
00:12:42.000Barack Obama spent a lot of time between 2008 and 2016 polarizing us along racial lines for political gain.
00:12:49.000And I do think that there was an element in the 2016 election in which President Trump basically signaled to a lot of people that there was going to be a new white identity politics in response to the Barack Obama
00:13:23.000And Trump said to them, listen, I'm your guy, right?
00:13:25.000I'm the guy who's going to defend you against the people who say that you need to not have any power in the system anymore.
00:13:30.000So a white identity politics sort of sprung up.
00:13:32.000And you can see that in the voting statistics.
00:13:34.000The voting statistics in the 2016 election cycle, I mean, if you look at blue collar white voters, they voted overwhelmingly for President Trump.
00:13:48.000And in these areas, whites without a college degree, whites with no college degree, well, okay, Disney, whites with no college degree, they shifted from about 25 points more Republican in 2004 to nearly 40 points more Republican in 2016.
00:14:26.000Then we've been polarized along class lines.
00:14:28.000This is what Bernie Sanders wants to do.
00:14:30.000He wants to polarize us along lines of class.
00:14:32.000All the poor people versus the 1%, the 1%, the evil 1%, which does include people like me, but don't worry, I am great, right?
00:14:40.000He wants to polarize us along those lines, and that's why you see Occupy Wall Street, and that's why you see all of these social justice movements designed to tear down the rich.
00:14:49.000And then you've got polarizations along sex lines.
00:14:51.000This is what Hillary Clinton was trying to do.
00:14:53.000There's a war on women, and that's why I'm not president.
00:14:57.000This is the routine that you got from the entire Democratic Party, Katy Perry and the like, that there was some sort of glass ceiling Republicans had set up, and we have to bust through it.
00:16:06.000We all used to be people in America who aspired to be rich, but we didn't rip each other down for what we earned.
00:16:11.000We all used to be people who were men and women, people who loved each other, but we didn't break each other down according to which member of this sexual identity group you were.
00:16:20.000And we all used to be people who had religion, didn't have religion, but that was your personal decision, and that could infuse your life how you saw fit.
00:16:27.000Small government allows for all of that.
00:16:29.000Small government means that I'm not going to use the government as a weapon against you, and you're not going to use the government as a weapon against me.
00:16:48.000They want me to give up on how I raise my children.
00:16:51.000They want me to give up my religious values.
00:16:53.000They think they know better than I do right now.
00:16:56.000That's why the Masterpiece Cake Shop case that is going to go to the Supreme Court next year,
00:17:00.000is going to be so crucial in, I think, the next step of societal breakdown.
00:17:04.000Very good shot that Justice Anthony Kennedy rules that you as a religious person cannot live out your religious faith in a business setting.
00:17:17.000I'm not up for catering your same-sex wedding.
00:17:18.000I'm not using the government's crackdown on you.
00:17:21.000Good shot that Democrats and Anthony Kennedy, all these people get together and basically say, religious people do not have the ability to live out their religious lifestyle.
00:18:33.000So, yesterday, Betsy DeVos, who is the Secretary of Education, she rescinded the so-called Dear Colleague letter.
00:18:39.000The Dear Colleague letter was a letter from the Obama administration to college administrators, I believe it was 2013, and it basically said to them,
00:18:46.000If there is sexual assault or sexual harassment on your campus, then you are not allowed to simply dump it off on the police.
00:18:53.000This constitutes a Title IX violation under the Civil Rights Act.
00:18:57.000And that means that we will either prosecute you or remove your funding because this is sexual discrimination.
00:19:03.000That if somebody is raped on your campus, and you don't do enough to stop it,
00:19:09.000Then this will actually create an excuse for us to remove all of the cash from your campus.
00:19:18.000The Obama administration told them what you need to do right now is you need to set up tribunals, campus tribunals, these kangaroo courts, like a Spanish Inquisition.
00:19:28.000There needs to be a Spanish Inquisition on campuses.
00:19:30.000Anybody who's accused of sexual harassment or sexual assault has to be tried by you, but we're not going to use a beyond a reasonable doubt standard.
00:19:38.000And we're not even going to use a strong, clear, and convincing evidence standard.
00:19:42.000Instead, we're going to use a preponderance of the evidence standard.
00:19:46.000So, Elliot Hamilton has a very good piece on this over at Daily Wire today, and he talks about this.
00:19:50.000That the Dear Colleague letter substantially lowered the burden of proof required for college administrators to determine whether an alleged rapist or sexual assault or committed a heinous act.
00:19:58.000The preponderance of evidence is the standard of proof required for civil offenses to show that evidence is at least 50% more likely to have shown responsibility for an act.
00:20:07.000One of the most fundamental aspects of criminal law is that prosecutors need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that an alleged criminal both acted in a moral manner and possessed the requisite mental intent to commit the crime, but the Dear Colleague letter gets rid of that.
00:20:19.000And these are kangaroo courts abused by radicals.
00:20:23.000Explain, quote, there's another side to the system's evil, one that has been drowned out by social justice blathering and a select few girls who cried rape.
00:20:30.000Because the guidelines are vague and uninstructed in crucial aspects, such as the rights of sexual assault victims and the accused, as well as the standards for keeping public statistics of conviction rates, schools vary widely in how they treat these cases, ranging from extreme bias against men accused of sexual assault to cruel prejudice against sexual assault victims.
00:20:48.000Every school that reaches a guilty verdict without so much as text messages submitted as evidence, there's another willing to exonerate a wealthy student at any cost.
00:20:57.000This gets rid of the due rights for the accused.
00:21:13.000But what the Democrats do, what people on the left do, is they say if you want any sort of legal standard actually upheld here for people accused of sexual assault, then that means that you must side with the rapists.
00:21:28.000If you decide that you don't like these standards, then that must mean that you are a witch, right?
00:21:33.000Obviously you're pro-rape if you want people convicted of rape to actually have to have evidence proved against them.
00:21:39.000This is a religious standard, and that's because the left has a religious belief that anybody who claims victimhood must be considered a victim, unless of course you are a straight white male.
00:21:46.000If you're a straight white male, and you claim victimhood, that's because you're a whiner.
00:21:49.000But if you're not a straight white male, and you claim that you've been victimized in any sort of scenario, then that means we have to believe you without evidence.
00:21:55.000Now, you may have been a victim, okay?
00:21:56.000I'm not making light of people who are actual sexual assault victims.
00:21:59.000People who sexually assault, as I've said a thousand times, should be put in jail for life, castrated, or killed.
00:22:06.000Like, all of these are acceptable to me.
00:22:07.000But, the idea that you're going to set up your own sort of religious tribunal, that secularism doesn't come with radicalism, that secularism doesn't come with this sort of inquisitorial mindset of his own, it's just not true.
00:22:23.000Now, in a minute, I want to talk about what President Trump is doing to work with Democrats and what impact this is going to have on Republicans going forward.
00:22:29.000But first, I want to say thank you to Dollar Shave Club.
00:22:32.000So, Dollar Shave Club is the smarter choice.
00:22:35.000As an Orthodox Jew, I don't shave above my jawline with a straightedge, but I do shave below my jawline with a straightedge.
00:22:41.000According to my monodies, that is perfectly okay.
00:22:43.000And I can tell you, the Dollar Shave Club makes the best razors, they make the best shave butter.
00:22:47.000When I use my DSC Executive Razor with their Dr. Carver Shave Butter, the blade gently glides, giving a really smooth shave.
00:22:54.000It helps prevent ingrown hairs and fights razor bumps.
00:22:57.000It's transparent for a more precise shave.
00:22:58.000You don't have all of the white gunk on yourself, so you don't have to worry about not being able to see the hair.
00:23:04.000You're sort of randomly poking around with the razor, trying to get the hair that's underneath.
00:23:13.000And right now, for a limited time, new members get their first month of the Executive Razor with a tube of Dr. Carver's shave butter for only $5 with free shipping.
00:23:20.000And after that, they send you razors, right, for just a few bucks a month.
00:23:23.000You subscribe and they send you razors every month.
00:23:25.000That means that you're never gonna be stuck with a dull blade, which is the worst.
00:23:52.000Again, when you use that slash Ben, you can get your first month of the Executive Razor with a tube of their Dr. Carver Shave Butter for just $5 plus free shipping instead of $15.
00:24:33.000On the debt ceiling, I'll let Mark Meadows, who's one of the heads of the Freedom Caucus, explain why this is a serious problem with the debt ceiling.
00:24:39.000Because it is a serious problem with the debt ceiling.
00:24:41.000I think the cliff that it sets up in December right before Christmas is certainly not good.
00:24:48.000But it does show, and you always look for a silver lining, and that's one of the things that I'm looking for, is in this particular thing, it shows that the president is myopically focused on tax reform.
00:25:00.000I think what we have is certainly were people blindsided?
00:25:07.000And I think for many of us, there was not a conservative solution out there.
00:25:13.000You know, and so people want to criticize the Trump administration for making this call.
00:25:18.000We were talking about a clean debt ceiling, you know, months ago.
00:25:21.000You and I talked about that months ago.
00:25:23.000And so as we look at this, if there's not a conservative alternative, why should you get surprised?
00:25:29.000Okay, so there is a conservative alternative.
00:25:31.000Meadows could have provided it, and Trump could have gone along with it, but Trump didn't do any of those things.
00:25:35.000The idea there was nothing on the table that was better than what Trump did here is just not true.
00:25:38.000What he's saying here about this cliff, this fiscal cliff, you remember, we've done this a few times before.
00:25:44.000Basically, in December we're going to hit the end of the budget, and Republicans are going to have to pass a new continuing resolution to fund the budget, plus we're going to hit the debt ceiling again, and that means Republicans are going to have to push off the debt ceiling.
00:25:55.000Democrats are going to try to extract some sort of concessions in return for the budget and the debt ceiling.
00:26:00.000Now, Meadows says, the good news is that gives us three months to pass tax reform.
00:26:09.000When Ben Sasse says, the problem is that if we really wanted to set up for tax reform,
00:26:15.000Then we would have gotten the government funded now, and we would have pushed off the debt ceiling for longer than three months, because the problem is, now Republicans know in the back of their mind they're going to have to make some concessions to Chuck Schumer in order for them to get the debt ceiling and the budget.
00:26:27.000And that means they can't push for such a harsh tax reform package, because Schumer can hold it hostage.
00:26:32.000Schumer can just say, listen, you're not going to get a single Democrat vote on that, and if you pass the tax reform, no debt ceiling increase and no budget.
00:26:43.000Alaa Pandit over at Hot Air gets this exactly right.
00:26:46.000He says, I think Trump honestly believes Democrats are going to fund the border wall in December as part of a grand bargain to raise the debt ceiling and avert a shutdown.
00:26:53.000He didn't want a shutdown with them over that right now because the country's focused on storm damage and won't stand for a needless crisis of Uncle Sam's own making.
00:27:00.000But he does want a showdown with them eventually, sooner rather than later.
00:27:03.000That's the best explanation I can manage for why he preferred a short-term solution to the long-term one.
00:27:07.000Unless, of course, he and his new friend Chuck managed to blow up the debt ceiling altogether before then, that also wouldn't be conducive to draining the swamp, but it would make fiscal standoffs much harder for conservatives like Sass to engineer.
00:27:17.000So in other words, he's saying maybe the best salute, maybe the best rationale for Trump doing this is that he just didn't want to fight like this moment because of Hurricane Harvey, but he had the upper hand in this fight because if Democrats hold up funding for Hurricane Harvey,
00:27:33.000We know this because Democrats actually did this over Hurricane Sandy, and Republicans lost.
00:27:37.000Whichever party says, we're going to hold up the debt ceiling because we don't like what you're doing with hurricane funding, pays the price.
00:28:37.000It doesn't magically appear in front of you.
00:28:40.000And this idea that Trump has this weird idea of the presidency that was promoted by some people who I like, like Grover Norquist, that McConnell and Ryan were just going to put legislation on his desk.
00:29:06.000There are a bunch of Republicans who are happy to vote with Democrats on this stuff, and Trump, by doing this, is actually granting them cover.
00:29:13.000If you don't get anything done now, Trump is basically gonna say, well, you know, the Republicans just couldn't get it done.
00:29:20.000And unless you're conservative, in which case you get bashed by your own base for not supporting Trump.
00:29:40.000The whole critique of Republicans is that they were too willing to work with Democrats, threatening Republicans by saying, listen, if you guys won't work together, I'm gonna go work with the Democrats.
00:29:53.000I mean, that's legitimately like saying, listen, arsonist who wants to burn down my house, if you try to burn down my house, I'm telling you right now, if you try to burn down my house and you don't succeed, I'm gonna set it on fire myself.
00:30:06.000That doesn't, no, no, that's not how any of this works.
00:30:09.000The fact that this is being driven by personal ire does not make it good.
00:30:12.000Mick Mulvaney, who is Trump's head of Office of Management and Budget, he basically came out and said that this is all because Trump is mad at Ryan and McConnell.
00:30:20.000Do you know whether the president is genuinely annoyed at Republicans in Niagara, at the leadership?
00:30:26.000And that's why he's reaching across the aisle, because he's fed up with them.
00:30:29.000I just read into what he did with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi on this dead thing as a sign.
00:31:09.000I've been ripping on Ryan McConnell all year long.
00:31:12.000I mean, of course we're all annoyed by it, but the solution to being annoyed by it is not to go over to the other side.
00:31:16.000I mean, that was the entire logic of Trump vs. Hillary.
00:31:19.000Literally the entire logic of Trump vs. Hillary was, we have to stop the Democratic agenda.
00:31:24.000It's not stopping the Democratic agenda to vote with Pelosi and Schumer.
00:31:27.000Okay, that's just madness, what we're talking about right now.
00:31:30.000And, by the way, if you think that this is all just a slap at Paul Ryan and he's really upset and Mitch McConnell, they're sitting around crying into their beer because Trump is working with Pelosi and Schumer, recognize something.
00:31:38.000Republicans just passed Trump's deal with Pelosi and Schumer with majorities in both houses.
00:31:45.000Literally yesterday, two days ago, Paul Ryan said that any attempt to connect Hurricane Harvey funding with the debt ceiling was ridiculous, irresponsible, terrible.
00:31:53.000Trump flips, and boom, look at Paul Ryan now.
00:31:57.000We're getting hit with two hurricanes.
00:31:59.000We're still dealing with Harvey in Texas, Louisiana.
00:32:01.000We're just now getting hit with Irma, and he wanted to make this a bipartisan moment.
00:32:06.000He wanted to make this a bipartisan moment where we weren't fighting each other up in Washington about hurricane aid.
00:32:11.000He just wanted to get it done, get it out of the way, so that aid is flowing to the states that need it right now, so that we can go and then focus on things like tax reform.
00:32:20.000So it's perfectly reasonable and rational why he's doing what he's doing.
00:32:25.000Trump does it, and all of a sudden he's fine with it.
00:32:26.000Does that look like Ryan is very disappointed and upset?
00:32:29.000Or does it look like he's kind of willing to work with Democrats, which was the whole rip on him a year ago.
00:32:34.000The whole reason Trump was elected is because it was conservatives, right, not even conservatives, Republicans like Ryan and McConnell, these rhinos constantly working with Democrats.
00:32:43.000And then Trump goes and works with Democrats in revenge?
00:32:59.000Here's Jeb Bush in 2012 talking about how he supports the so-called Dream Act.
00:33:04.000This was an act to legalize all of the dreamers.
00:33:07.000If the law says clearly that you have a case-by-case right to review cases, and you blanket, say, 800,000 people comply, that is way beyond the purview of executive power.
00:33:24.000I think to use the power of the presidency effectively, you don't have to use it for cynical reasons.
00:33:30.000You don't have to use it beyond what your power, what the Constitution allows.
00:33:34.000But having a solution to the fact that we have all these young people, many of whom are making great contributions, don't have a connection to their parents' former country, yeah, of course I'm for it.
00:33:48.000Okay, so that is him taking Trump's exact position today.
00:35:23.000In the space of five years, Trump went from, Jeb Bush is the weakest, in the space of a year, he went from Jeb Bush is the weakest on immigration to embracing Jeb Bush's exact position on the Dreamers.
00:35:32.000Like, word for word, the exact position.
00:35:34.000Hey, is that a slap in the face to the establishment, guys?
00:35:37.000Like, I understand that we've now redefined anti-establishment to just mean whatever we want it to mean.
00:35:42.000I understand we've redefined RINO to mean whatever we want it to mean.
00:35:45.000But these things used to have meanings, right?
00:35:46.000Anti-establishment used to mean you opposed policies like Jeb Bush, and you didn't want to stand with the Democrats.
00:35:51.000Now, anti-establishment means that you want to stand against the Democrats because Trump.
00:35:56.000Okay, so if Trump declared himself a Democrat tomorrow, there would be a contingent of Republicans who would simply say, well, you know, you're a real rhino if you don't go with Trump.
00:36:03.000Because Trump's the ultimate Republican.
00:36:05.000So if Trump becomes a Democrat, you should become a Democrat too, or you're a rhino.
00:36:32.000Please, Mr. President, these are not the policies that got you elected.
00:36:35.000These are not the people who got you elected.
00:36:37.000Pelosi and Schumer will impeach you the first chance they get.
00:36:40.000For the love of Mike, please, for goodness sake, put a head back on your shoulders and recognize you may hate Ryan, you may hate McConnell.
00:36:49.000But this notion that you are going to sit around making deals with the Democrats because you must in order to tick off members of your own party is just a waste.
00:36:56.000Okay, so we're going to do things I like, things I hate, and the mailbag.
00:36:59.000But if you want to be part of the mailbag today, you need to subscribe.
00:37:01.000$9.99 a month gets you a subscription to dailywire.com.
00:37:04.000And when you head over there, you not only get my show live, you also get Andrew Klavan's show live, you get Michael Knowles' show live.
00:37:09.000I recommended Knowles' show yesterday.
00:38:09.000We are the largest and fastest growing conservative podcast in the nation.
00:38:19.000Okay, time for some things I like, and then some things I hate, and the mailbag.
00:38:22.000So things I like, before I get to an entertainment thing I like, I first want to point out that Berkeley has now released the tickets.
00:38:31.000It's too late, they sold out in 45 minutes.
00:38:33.000In legitimately 45 minutes, they sold out 1,000 tickets.
00:38:35.000They cut off the other 1,000 tickets because that's what Berkeley does, because they're afraid Antifa is going to come in and grab chairs and fling them over the railings and murder people, basically.
00:38:44.000But Berkeley should obviously release the other 1,000 tickets.
00:38:47.000We have at least 3,000 people who want the tickets.
00:38:52.000Probably 4,000 or 5,000 people want the tickets, and Berkeley has restricted the venue because they can't protect it.
00:38:57.000But they're taking security measures that are absolutely amazing.
00:39:00.000I mean, the security measures that they're taking because of Antifa are extraordinary.
00:39:04.000They're actually locking down six separate buildings, apparently.
00:39:08.000Six buildings, outside the one I'm speaking in.
00:39:10.000Okay, in a campus-wide email on Thursday, this is according to James Barrett over at Daily Wire, Berkeley's Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, Paul Alivisatos, detailed the steps the university is taking in order to keep things on campus from devolving into chaos, because I am arriving.
00:39:26.000Apparently, they are locking down a bunch of buildings.
00:39:28.000They're shutting down multiple buildings and parking lots to create a closed perimeter around Zellerbach Hall, where I am speaking.
00:39:36.000They're creating a secure perimeter by shutting down buildings, providing alternative options for faculty, staff, and students so they can try to engage in their regular academic activities without fear of violence erupting.
00:39:45.000So if there's still classes going on around that time, they're trying to find them alternative classrooms with police guards, basically, so that Antifa doesn't attack normal students.
00:39:54.000Imposing special restrictions on tickets and IDs.
00:40:26.000You know, despite the fact that I have spent my entire career being anti-fascist, and ripping the alt-right, and suggesting the alt-right are garbage people with garbage beliefs, and fighting fascism my entire career.
00:40:39.000Also, worth noting, the Berkeley Student Senate wanted to pass a resolution condemning Berkeley subsidizing my event next week, but it failed by a vote of 15-5.
00:40:49.000That vote failed by a vote of 15-5 because there were a bunch of student senators who were upset that the resolution was too broad.
00:40:57.000He wanted to create two bills, one condemning the subsidization of my event, and the other condemning hate speech in general.
00:41:04.000Then that's because they didn't want to lump me in with other people who were engaged in hate speech.
00:41:07.000So, good on some of the Berkeley students who recognize that not all speech is exactly the same, although the hate speech notion itself is sort of ridiculous because it's absolutely changeable under any circumstances.
00:41:19.000Okay, so, the event at Berkeley is going to go forward.
00:41:22.000If you're upset that you can't get a ticket,
00:41:24.000Feel free to call in and register your disapproval politely.
00:42:16.000We live on the one place on Earth where we're guaranteed a quiet life.
00:42:24.000Where lovers of the wilderness, lovers of the Northern Lights, or just lovers, can witness the wildest things they'll ever see from the safest place on Earth.
00:42:46.000So naturally, it doesn't end up being the safest place on Earth.
00:42:48.000You might have gotten that from, like, the fact that it's a show.
00:42:51.000If it was just the safest place on Earth, that'd be the most boring show ever.
00:42:53.000But it's... I'm interested to see where it's going.
00:42:56.000It's got sort of a slightly supernatural element to it.
00:43:22.000Okay, so let's just go straight to the mailbag.
00:43:24.000And we'll take your questions live as well.
00:43:25.000Stephen says, what made you choose the violin?
00:43:27.000So, when you're five years old, which is when I started playing, you don't actually have the capacity to choose anything.
00:43:31.000So it was my parents who chose the violin for me.
00:43:33.000The reason was because, just sort of by random coincidence, I had a blankie, and the blankie had letters on it, and it had pictures for each letter.
00:43:40.000And in one corner was a V for violin, and I was constantly kind of sucking on the corner of the blankie when I was like three.
00:44:30.000If you're old enough to make a decision about voting, you're old enough to make a decision about drinking, and also don't make stupid decisions generally.
00:44:36.000But yeah, if we're gonna set the voting age at 18, or you can serve in the military at 18, or get a job at 18, yes, you should be able to drink if you see fit.
00:44:43.000Devon says, thank you for all the great content.
00:44:45.000I'm a store manager for a large company.
00:44:47.000My company loves to hire 18 to 22 year olds for high pressure sales jobs.
00:44:51.000I'm having trouble getting them motivated to do the work necessary to be successful.
00:44:54.000Any suggestions on managing immature young people?
00:44:57.000Well, I mean, I think the only advice that I would give is the hard advice, which is do the job or you're fired, basically.
00:45:13.000This is the funny thing about parenting now, is that, as a parent, I know, because you love your children so much, and this is true of young people, you love your children so much,
00:45:22.000That you think that the worst thing you can do to them is set boundaries and rules.
00:45:28.000They want to know that the world is safe, and they want to know that there's a set of rules that if they follow, everything's going to be okay.
00:45:34.000This is also true for people who are 18 to 22.
00:45:36.000It's true for all people, that they want to know what the rules are.
00:45:39.000They want to know the rules of the game.
00:45:41.000You know, I've worked with young people at this company for a long time.
00:47:16.000The whole point of you repenting is that you stop doing what you're doing.
00:47:19.000Now in this particular case, it sounds like your parents are currently getting divorced and it's not getting put back together.
00:47:24.000I think that your best move is probably just to accept that your dad is a deeply flawed human being.
00:47:29.000I don't think it's inappropriate for you to be angry at your father or feel anger with him.
00:47:33.000Your feelings are totally justified, I think.
00:47:35.000But if you want to live a happier life, I think that you're going to have to just accept that your dad is a flawed person.
00:47:40.000That the relationship between your parents is really between them.
00:47:44.000I think your mom will probably understand this as well and I Listen if God forbid that happened with my parents I would certainly have trust issues with my father for the rest of his life for certain so I can't blame you for having those trust issues but I think that reliving this over and over is not going to be a Productive experience if you want to have a relationship with him if you don't want to have a relationship with him then that's a choice you can make as well and that
00:48:07.000Also, I don't think it's a completely unreasonable choice.
00:48:09.000So, tribalism in Judaism is supposed to be about the ideas of Judaism.
00:48:12.000So, religious tribalism is about the ideas.
00:48:23.000Okay, ethnic tribalism is about nothing having to do with ideas.
00:48:26.000It's about outward manifestations, right?
00:48:29.000It's about race or sex or stuff that's not supposed to make a difference, right?
00:48:33.000There is a real philosophical and political difference between Judaism and other religions, just like there is between Christianity and other religions or Islam and other religions.
00:48:41.000These are distinctions that make a difference in how you lead your life.
00:48:44.000So, there can be ideological tribalism.
00:48:46.000That's not really tribalism, that's ideology.
00:48:48.000Now, what's weird about Judaism is that Judaism does have an ethnic component, but you can convert into Judaism, right?
00:48:55.000If you decide that you want to become a Jew, you can convert and become a Jew.
00:48:58.000If Judaism were purely ethnic, then the suggestion would be that you can't become a Jew no matter what, and that if you, and that, and therefore, we only accept people of a particular bloodline.
00:49:28.000People ask me all the time, from a Jewish perspective, and I'm not going to give the halakhic, the Jewish perspective, I'm going to give my own perspective.
00:49:33.000Now, there's a lot about ethnic Judaism and Judaism, this idea that you have allegiance to people who are ethnically Jewish.
00:49:39.000Okay, I don't really feel strong allegiance to people who are quote-unquote ethnically Jewish, just because they were born and have a last name that ends in Gold or Steen.
00:49:46.000Like, that doesn't seem to, like, Noam Chomsky, if I had a choice between saving Mathis and Noam Chomsky, that is the easiest choice in the world.
00:50:16.000My question is, in the eyes of God, how is killing during war different than murder?
00:50:19.000And what about collateral damage when so-called innocents lose their lives?
00:50:22.000FYI, totally obsessed with you, not in a Glenn Close fatal attraction type of way, but really close, lol.
00:50:27.000Well, that would explain the dead rabbit, but as far as how is killing during war different than murder?
00:50:32.000Killing during war is different than murder because presumably the people on the other side are trying to kill you, so it's more self-defense.
00:50:37.000This is why there's all sorts, reams of religious literature and moral literature about what justifies war.
00:50:43.000Is preemptive war justified if you're protecting your own life?
00:50:46.000The idea of a purely aggressive war is sort of foreign to moral concepts.
00:50:49.000The idea of, I'm just gonna go to war because I want your resources?
00:50:52.000Most moral people don't believe that's a thing.
00:50:55.000But, if you are fighting an army that's determined to conquer you, invade your rights, kill you, change your way of life, then that changes the math somewhat.
00:51:06.000This is a serious problem that moral people also have to consider, which is, if I have to fight that army, how guilty are the innocents who are associated with that army?
00:51:16.000So this actually has a lot of moral complexity to it.
00:51:18.000So going back to the time of Napoleon, before Napoleon, actually these were very easy questions, because there were civilians and then there were people who were military.
00:51:25.000And the military people were basically lords who would ride around in their armor and hit each other.
00:51:29.000And then they'd have armies that they hired to hit each other, and they'd go out to the middle of a field and fight each other.
00:51:35.000Napoleon was the first world leader who actually integrated civilian with military.
00:51:39.000So he said, all Frenchmen are now soldiers, right?
00:51:41.000If you are a Frenchman and you have a farm, your farm is now a stock place for goods for the military.
00:51:47.000There is no distinction anymore between civilian and military.
00:51:49.000This move has really changed the nature of warfare in large scale.
00:51:54.000So has democracy, because the argument is made that if you voted for Hitler, then you're part of Hitler's army, sort of.
00:51:59.000You know, it's an argument, but the chief rule for moral folks is you try to avoid collateral damage as much as possible.
00:52:07.000That's why the Geneva Conventions exist.
00:52:09.000It's to try to avoid collateral damage.
00:52:11.000It's also why it's so incredibly stupid when people say that terrorists ought to have rights under the Geneva Convention.
00:52:16.000The whole point of a terrorist is that a terrorist hides in a civilian area not wearing a military uniform.
00:52:22.000The whole point of the Geneva Conventions is to try to make your enemy wear a military uniform so you know who it's okay to kill.
00:52:28.000If they hide as a civilian and they hide in a civilian area, you don't know who it's okay to kill, and then you end up killing a bunch of innocent people.
00:52:35.000It's why you shouldn't give the same right to people who dress up like civilians and then act as terrorists as people who are in military uniform, right?
00:52:42.000This is why there's an in-uniform, out-of-uniform distinction in international law.
00:52:57.000Well, so I believe in the Clarence Thomas, Justice Scalia originalism view of cruel and unusual punishment, so you'd have to go back and look at what was considered cruel and unusual at the time.
00:53:08.000There's this very, very weird notion on the left that cruel and unusual punishment includes the death penalty.
00:53:13.000Clearly it does not include the death penalty.
00:53:15.000There's an actual penalty prescribed in the Constitution for treason, and it is death.
00:53:19.000So the same people who wrote the cruel and unusual punishment ban would not have also prescribed death if they thought it was a cruel and unusual punishment.
00:53:26.000What they're probably talking about is forms of torture that were used pretty commonly at the time in monarchies, and you can look up the forms of torture that were used largely at the time and considered cruel and unusual, but you have to go back to the time and measure it by those standards.
00:53:53.000These are people who presumably, legally speaking anyway, these are people who presumably are coming from a place where they are in danger, and we try to grant them asylum to protect them from the country that they are fleeing.
00:54:04.000There are refugees, who are people of any sort who are just fleeing from a dangerous country.
00:54:09.000Asylum seekers usually are specific targets.
00:54:11.000Refugees are just people fleeing from a bad situation.
00:54:14.000And migrants are people who are coming for work.
00:54:17.000A lot of the people who are coming to Europe right now, a huge percentage of them are male and they're young and they're setting up, so the argument is that a lot of them are coming over and setting up sort of a financially secure situation before bringing the rest of their family in.
00:54:29.000But this also does create some questions about whether these are actual refugees or they're more economic migrants.
00:54:34.000Are these people who are using the refugee situation as a lever in order to get into Europe?
00:54:39.000Or are these people who are actually fleeing?
00:54:41.000Just getting out wholesale, you would expect more women and children.
00:54:43.000So, I think that supply and demand is... Here's... So, let's put it this way.
00:54:46.000Let's say that you're a grocery store.
00:54:48.000You have 100 bottles of water in your grocery store.
00:54:49.000And there are 400 people who want the bottles of water.
00:55:07.000How exactly are you going to decide which hundred people get the bottles of water?
00:55:10.000Is it wrong for you to say the people who can afford the bottles of water ought to get the bottles of water?
00:55:14.000Should you go to first come first serve and not raise your prices?
00:55:17.000Well maybe you might think that out of charity you're going to do that but here is the problem if you are a company that is shipping the water bottles down to that area and now it's more dangerous to ship the bottles down to that area because there's a hurricane how are you going to incentivize that company to get those bottles down into that area?
00:55:31.000Now during a natural disaster there's a feeling that everyone should unite and basically put profit aside but
00:56:04.000I think that's a recognition of economic reality, and I think it also incentivizes people who are not charitable to bring more goods in to a bad area.
00:56:12.000I think it's charitable if you can do it, to lower prices voluntarily.
00:56:16.000Adam says, Would you rather have dinner with Barack Obama or Donald Trump?
00:56:19.000Which one could you see yourself having a better conversation with?
00:56:24.000That sounds like a horror of a dinner choice.
00:56:26.000I mean, that's like F. Mary Kill with Michael Moore, Rosie O'Donnell, and Noam Chomsky.
00:56:38.000I think I could have a conversation about literature and movies with Barack Obama.
00:56:41.000I'm not sure I could with Donald Trump.
00:56:42.000Yeah, I think that Donald Trump and I, like, it seems to me that all of his conversations, like, it would just be awful anyway.
00:56:49.000Barack would just sit there talking about how great he is, and then Trump would sit there talking about how great he is, and I'd be so bored, but I get the feeling that conversation with Obama would just be, on an intellectual level, a little more stimulating than conversation with Trump.
00:57:01.000But that's not because I agree with Obama.
00:57:03.000I think they're both, I think Obama's a horror show.
00:57:05.000I think I agree with Trump on more things, but I actually enjoy sometimes talking with people with whom I disagree.
00:57:11.000Anyway, okay, Evan says, what TV shows do you let your kids watch?
00:57:14.000So I don't actually let my kids watch TV shows.
00:58:18.000The government should always be the lender of last resort, essentially.
00:58:21.000Because the fact is that foster care and government care is very, very difficult.
00:58:29.000And the adoption process is far too complex, thanks to government.
00:58:31.000Okay, that brings us to the end of today's Mailbag.
00:58:34.000If you did not get into today's Mailbag, then you should subscribe, because next week is going to be a fun Mailbag.
00:58:38.000If I survive Berkeley next Thursday, there will be a Mailbag next Friday, and we can talk all about it.
00:58:43.000Next week will be a big, important week, not just because of Berkeley, but also because we will see where President Trump goes next, which will be fascinating.
00:58:49.000Plus, we'll keep you updated on all the hurricanes and the disasters, because clearly something weird is going on.