Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, and the man who will one day fire me for real, God King Jeremy Boring, join host Michael A.K.A. The God King for a special episode of Daily Wire Backstage where they discuss the upcoming State of the Union address.
00:01:09.720Last year, Donald Trump went for one hour and 20 minutes, and that was considered a short State of the Union address.
00:01:15.400But we're going to try to make it go fast with our usual, we'll see if Michael Knowles is wearing his best Ralph Northam costume or just that hideous cigar jacket of his, which alone should disqualify him from public office.
00:01:28.820And yes, we will take questions from Daily Wire subscribers.
00:01:32.560And tonight, you can ask questions only if you are a subscriber over at DailyWire.com.
00:02:42.120I mean, you had to go all the way in the iridescent cup.
00:02:44.480But thank you, everyone, for watching.
00:02:46.500As Jeremy said, if you're a subscriber, you can go over to dailywire.com, log in, and type your questions for the guys into the chat box.
00:02:53.900All the questions tonight are going to be about the State of the Union, so be sure to ask us those questions, and only subscribers get to ask them.
00:03:00.800But anyone watching can head over now, because live on Facebook, we're going to be putting up a poll later,
00:03:06.640and we want to know if you guys think it's necessary to have a State of the Union address.
00:03:10.280So let us know your thoughts, and the results are going to be read live on air a little later.
00:19:33.640You're talking about a man whose first tactic was to marry somebody and then have an affair with someone and divorce the first one to marry that one.
00:19:39.600And then his next tactic was to have an affair and divorce that one and then marry the third one.
00:19:54.660To the extent that he ends the shutdown, which, if the purpose of that move is to get his State of the Union address back and to demonstrate that I am the only one compromising.
00:20:11.880They said we won't negotiate while the government shut down, so I opened the government.
00:20:14.880If he actually can now go through with shutting the government down again at the end of this, then I think it was some high-level chess playing.
00:20:21.720You think he'll shut the government down again?
00:20:45.040The problem is that that isn't strategy.
00:20:48.480And so I think that he found a way out of the shutdown conundrum of the moment, but with no thought for the next moment where that was going to leave him.
00:20:56.160I would like to go back, though, to why this would be magnificent if he shuts the government down again.
00:21:32.700I think that if he shuts the government down, it's going to be bad for him again.
00:21:35.020I think that the only way that it was ever going to be good is you have to be willing to go through the pain and take as many hits as you're willing to take.
00:21:41.560If you're playing a game of chicken, you've got to put the brick on the accelerator and just leave it there.
00:21:44.820And when you take the brick off the accelerator, he's already demonstrated he doesn't like the government shutdown.
00:22:36.920But a national emergency, by definition, is an event that happens immediately that requires an immediate response that there's already been delegated power to solve.
00:22:48.000That's what the power of national emergency is that was delegated to the executive branch.
00:22:51.260So there are only two statutes under which the president could theoretically declare a national emergency.
00:22:55.040One is that he could declare that there is a drug corridor along the entire border of Mexico.
00:22:59.560Even that would not allow him, really, to use eminent domain to seize the property.
00:23:03.400You need congressional authorization in order to do that.
00:23:08.440But the idea that he's going to rededicate a bunch of defense funding to build the wall, I think there's some real legal holes in that particular strategy.
00:23:15.160But I don't think that's what he cares about doing at this point.
00:23:18.160What he wants is to be able to say to his people, I did the best that I could, and I couldn't do it, but that's not my fault.
00:24:05.480Well, again, the whole purpose of this whole game was to paint the Democrats as not caring about border security, which he succeeded in doing.
00:24:12.240Except that he should have spent—if you're going to declare a national emergency, if you're going to suggest that this is the end of the world and it's a huge crisis, why are—like, you say that he was great because he went silent.
00:24:21.600It's good that he went silent in the last couple of weeks because Democrats have been making fools of themselves.
00:24:26.280But during the actual government shutdown, why was he not traveling by car to the border and giving a speech every day on why it was a border crisis?
00:26:28.640And I think he's doing the right thing.
00:26:29.940The thing about the emergency measure, and it's a weak strategy, but it is a strategy, is he couldn't delay the decision long enough to reach 2020 and say, well, it's in the courts.
00:26:40.780Believe me, you're going to get your wall.
00:26:42.940They'll put up an injunction within the first month.
00:26:47.700I do think, though, that if Trump came out tonight for his State of the Union speech, and he opens it up and says, my fellow Americans, the state of our union is deeply troubling.
00:26:56.820In the last two weeks, two states have come out in favor of infanticide, the actual killing of babies who have been born.
00:27:05.420You cannot have an abortion once a baby is born.
00:27:11.080And in the last three months, we've seen the Democrats ascend a brand new crop of congressional leaders who are openly calling for socialism within one generation of us defeating our existential enemies in the Socialist Soviet Union.
00:27:28.900And then I think that we would all go, well, yeah, the guy's got it.
00:27:32.020And this is what I was saying on my show today, is that the problem is, like, they're constantly trying to cast him against type.
00:27:39.020And everybody who tries to cast him against type fails.
00:27:41.260He's never going to start being the nice unifier.
00:28:09.640Let him go out there tonight and turn around and say directly to Nancy Pelosi, let him turn around on the podium in front of the American people and say, listen, I offered you legal status for all the dreamers who you are constantly suggesting you want to stay in this country.
00:28:19.920And all I asked for in return is that you give me the money necessary for us to secure that border.
00:45:56.200So one thing I don't know if the president will talk about tonight, but I think we all hope that he does, is the Second Amendment.
00:46:02.060We have, you know, this whole new crop of Democrats.
00:46:04.940Everybody who's running right now, basically, is running on some form of ultimate confiscation.
00:46:11.360I mean, it's the most radical gun positions we've ever heard from mainstream candidates.
00:46:15.760We have friends over at Bravo Company Manufacturing who I think are as good on these issues as anybody in the country.
00:46:20.940No question. Bravo Company Manufacturing was started in a garage by a Marine veteran more than two decades ago to build a professional-grade product that meets combat standards.
00:46:28.020BCM believes the same level of protection should be provided to every American, regardless of whether they're a private citizen or a professional.
00:46:58.780In any case, BCM, they believe that every rifle that comes out of their shop should be available to be used in a life-or-death situation.
00:47:07.040Every component of a BCM rifle is hand-assembled and tested by Americans to a life-saving standard,
00:47:11.560and they feel a moral responsibility to provide the tools that will not fail the user when it's not just a paper target but somebody coming to do you harm.
00:47:17.700To learn more about Bravo Company Manufacturing, head on over to bravocompanymfg.com.
00:47:22.280You can discover more about their products, special offers, and upcoming news.
00:49:06.920Kyle says that this question is for everybody.
00:49:08.680He wants to know, do you think the Democrats will come to the table and negotiate with President Trump on the border wall before this new shutdown deadline or not?
00:49:17.100It's a show of hands who thinks the Democrats are coming to the table to negotiate.
00:49:40.540The narrow circumstance is that Nancy Pelosi loses control of the adults in the party and the people who are on the committee are not so bad that they might.
00:50:23.880No, Ben, but Rashida Tlaib and Omar, Ilhan Omar, they're going to be so busy wiping Israel off the map that Nancy Pelosi won't negotiate with Trump.
01:12:53.620In 2019, we also celebrate 50 years since brave young pilots flew a quarter of a million miles through space to plant the American flag on the face of the moon.
01:13:08.560Half a century later, we are joined by one of the Apollo 11 astronauts who planted that flag, Buzz Aldrin.
01:13:55.220This year, American astronauts will go back to space on American rockets.
01:14:00.920In the 20th century, America saved freedom.
01:14:20.560Transform science, redefine the middle class.
01:14:27.020And when you get down to it, there's nothing anywhere in the world that can compete with America.
01:14:34.980Now we must step boldly and bravely into the next chapter of this great American adventure.
01:14:58.120And we must create a new standard of living for the 21st century.
01:15:04.440An amazing quality of life for all of our citizens is within reach.
01:15:11.900We can make our community safer, our family stronger, our culture richer, our faith deeper, and our middle class bigger and more prosperous than ever before.
01:15:26.800But we must reject the politics of revenge, resistance, and retribution.
01:15:53.620And embrace the boundless potential of cooperation, compromise, and the common good.
01:16:01.540Together, we can break decades of political stalemate.
01:16:23.120Together, we can bridge old divisions, heal old wounds, build new coalitions, forge new solutions, and unlock the extraordinary promise of America's future.
01:16:37.820We must choose between greatness, results, results, or resistance, vision, or vengeance, incredible progress, or pointless destruction.
01:16:55.900Tonight, I ask you to choose greatness.
01:17:00.320Over the last two years, my administration has moved with urgency and historic speed to confront problems
01:17:25.200and elected by leaders of both parties over many decades.
01:17:30.200In just over two years, since the election, we have launched an unprecedented economic boom,
01:17:37.200a boom that has rarely been seen before.
01:19:15.840Unemployment has reached the lowest rate in over half a century.
01:19:21.560African-American, Hispanic-American, and Asian-American unemployment have all reached their lowest levels ever recorded.
01:19:46.860Unemployment for Americans with disabilities has also reached an all-time low.
01:20:09.740More people are working now than at any time in the history of our country.
01:20:27.380One hundred and fifty-seven million people at work.
01:20:31.860We passed a massive tax cut for working families and doubled the child tax credit.
01:20:45.340We virtually ended the estate tax or death tax, as it is often called, on small businesses for ranches and also for family farms.
01:21:11.500We eliminated the very unpopular Obamacare individual mandate penalty.
01:21:27.820And to give critically ill patients access to life-saving cures, we passed, very importantly, right to try.
01:21:47.440My administration has cut more regulations in a short period of time than any other administration during its entire tenure.
01:22:08.680Companies are coming back to our country in large numbers, thanks to our historic reductions in taxes and regulations.
01:22:27.680And we have unleashed a revolution in American energy.
01:22:37.680The United States is now the number one producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world.
01:22:46.680And now, for the first time in 65 years, we are a net exporter of energy.
01:23:11.680After 24 months of rapid progress, our economy is the envy of the world.
01:23:31.680Our military is the most powerful on Earth by far.
01:23:36.680And America is again winning each and every day.
01:23:54.680America is again winning each and every day.
01:24:01.680Members of Congress, the state of our union is strong.
01:24:10.680UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY
01:40:55.540Not one more American life should be lost because our nation failed to control its very dangerous border.
01:41:05.540In the last two years, our brave ICE officers made 266,000 arrests of criminal aliens, including
01:41:17.580those charged or convicted of nearly 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sex crimes, and 4,000 killings or murders.
01:41:32.740We are joined tonight by one of those law enforcement heroes, ICE Special Agent Elvin Hernandez.
01:41:42.360When Elvin was a boy, he and his family legally immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic.
01:42:11.360At the age of eight, Elvin told his dad he wanted to become a special agent.
01:42:18.360Today, he leads investigations into the scourge of international sex trafficking.
01:42:27.360Elvin says that if I can make sure these young girls get their justice, I've really done my job.
01:42:38.360Thanks to his work and that of his incredible colleagues, more than 300 women and girls have been rescued from the horror of this terrible situation.
01:42:53.360And more than 1,500 sadistic traffickers have been put behind bars.
01:43:37.360My administration has sent to Congress a common sense proposal to end the crisis on the southern border.
01:43:58.360It includes humanitarian assistance, more law enforcement, drug detection at our ports, closing loopholes that enable child smuggling, and plans for a new physical barrier or wall to secure the vast areas between our ports of entry.
01:44:21.360In the past, most of the people in this room voted for a wall, but the proper wall never got built.
01:44:50.360This is a smart, strategic, see-through steel barrier, not just a simple concrete wall.
01:44:59.360It will be deployed in the areas identified by the border agents as having the greatest need.
01:45:07.360And these agents will tell you where walls go up, illegal crossings go way, way down.
01:45:20.360San Diego used to have the most illegal border crossings in our country.
01:45:36.360In response, a strong security wall was put in place.
01:45:41.360This powerful barrier almost completely ended illegal crossings.
01:45:49.360The border city of El Paso, Texas, used to have extremely high rates of violent crime, one of the highest in the entire country, and considered one of our nation's most dangerous cities.
01:46:08.360Now, immediately upon its building, with a powerful barrier in place, El Paso is one of the safest cities in our country.
01:46:24.360Simply put, walls work and walls save lives.
01:46:43.360So let's work together, compromise, and reach a deal that will truly make America safe.
01:46:52.360As we work to defend our people's safety, we must also ensure our economic resurgence continues at a rapid pace.
01:47:04.360No one has benefited more from a thriving economy than women who have filled 58% of the newly created jobs last year.
01:48:32.360And exactly one century after Congress passed the Constitutional Amendment, giving women the right to vote, we also have more women serving in Congress than at any time before.
01:49:37.360USA! USA! USA! That's great. Very great. And congratulations. That's great. As part of our commitment to improving opportunity for women everywhere, this Thursday, we are launching the first-ever government-wide initiative focused on economic empowerment for women in developing countries.
01:50:05.660To build on our incredible economic success, one priority is paramount, reversing decades of calamitous trade policies. So bad.
01:50:25.460We are now making it clear to China that after years of targeting our industries and stealing our intellectual property, the theft of American jobs and wealth has come to an end.
01:50:42.240Therefore, we recently imposed tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese goods.
01:51:02.660And now our Treasury is receiving billions and billions of dollars.
01:51:09.000But I don't blame China for taking advantage of us.
01:51:13.640I blame our leaders and representatives for allowing this travesty to happen.
01:51:20.660I have great respect for President Xi, and we are now working on a new trade deal with China.
01:51:28.260But it must include real structural change to end unfair trade practices, reduce our chronic trade deficit, and protect American jobs.
01:51:41.980Another historic trade blunder was the catastrophe known as NAFTA.
01:52:02.240I have met the men and women of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, New Hampshire, and many other states whose dreams were shattered by the signing of NAFTA.
01:52:18.160For years, politicians promised them they would renegotiate for a better deal.
01:52:27.940Our new U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement, the USMCA, will replace NAFTA and deliver for American workers like they haven't had delivered to for a long time.
01:52:44.540I hope you can pass the USMCA into law so that we can bring back our manufacturing jobs in even greater numbers,
01:52:53.140expand American agriculture, protect intellectual property, and ensure that more cars are proudly stamped with our four beautiful words.
02:33:56.160Now, there were a couple of low points for Trump, I thought, during the speech.
02:33:58.840I thought, obviously, his statements that, you know, the economy is great and everything will be great if we can pass legislation and no investigation.
02:34:06.300And it was like this little side note right here.
02:34:19.860And I'm sure he insisted on it being in there, but it's a mistake because the entire speech is him flying over the top of a lot of these controversies.
02:34:26.140And then he just sort of dives right down in the middle of one to say, everything will be great if you leave me alone, which looks far too defensive.
02:34:33.220That was one moment that struck me as particularly bad.
02:34:36.060And the other moment that struck me as particularly bad is when he was suggesting that we would be in the middle of a major war with North Korea or not for his presence in the office, which, of course, is just absurdity on every level.
02:35:17.540I mean, it's an amazing country, and the things that have happened here have happened nowhere else.
02:35:21.340This is the pinnacle of human civilization on Earth forever, forever.
02:35:25.460Never has life been as good as it is right at this moment.
02:35:28.620And the fact that we have a president who gets up and says that after eight years of a president who is always kind of waffling around, apologizing to tyrants, always telling us we could be great.
02:35:39.280We might someday, someday, if we could only follow his lead, we might achieve greatness.
02:35:43.740To have somebody sit there and say, you know what, we have been handed a torch.
02:35:47.860We've been handed a flame of freedom that people died for from the very beginning, and it's our turn, and we have to do something about it.
02:35:54.640Just to hear somebody talk like that, it's uplifting, and it's beautiful.
02:35:58.320And, you know, I wish he could do it more.
02:36:00.060It cuts Stacey Abrams off the knees a little bit.
02:36:01.940So we're not going to be able to see her response because we're not licensed to see her response, apparently.
02:36:06.780But it cuts her off the knees because now if she comes out and she starts talking about all the problems with America, it seems almost petty.
02:36:16.660Moon landing and 10-year-old girls surviving cancer.
02:36:20.320And then if you have Stacey Abrams out there talking about what a problem he is and America is in a terrible place and all this stuff, it's a pretty feel-good speech.
02:36:27.440So, you know, I think he accomplished his goal tonight, which I didn't think he was going to, and he did.
02:36:31.920Yeah, you know, I played this thing on my show today of Don Lemon interviewing Gladys Knight, who sung the national anthem at the Super Bowl.
02:36:40.160And she said, you know, in my day, we sang the national anthem.
02:37:02.620And it's such a core difference that even Donald Trump, for all the problems we have with him, can hit that note and really make it rain.
02:37:08.840This is actually why the woman power thing bothers me.
02:37:10.840It actually, it's a microcosm of the greater problem you're describing, which is that a country where women are the most successful they've ever been in history
02:37:19.220shouldn't be celebrating as though women are, like, finally, someone said something nice about women.
02:37:25.380But that's everything that the Democrats, every position they take is that, that you stand in the most prosperous country that's ever existed.
02:37:32.660And you basically try to make the argument that people here are economically oppressed.
02:37:36.840You stand in the country that innovates the health care that anyone on Earth today getting a pill, it was innovated in America.
02:37:43.540Anyone on Earth today getting a surgery, it was innovated in America.
02:37:46.180And you say that we have the worst health care system in the world, that they peddle this contra-reality.
02:37:53.460And then they all buy into it and form a narrative around it.
02:37:56.560And then they all celebrate as though they're, they legitimately, I think Don Lemon, I thought this watching the Super Bowl.
02:38:02.540You're watching the Super Bowl and they trot out all these civil rights activists from the 1950s and 1960s.
02:38:08.520You know, Dr. Bernadie's King and John Lewis and, and, and all these characters.
02:38:13.600And I thought, you're, you're having to trot out all these 70-year-old civil rights icons because there hasn't been a civil rights problem in this country.
02:38:23.260And the last, you can't find a 40-year-old civil rights icon because there aren't any, because there has been nothing to stand against.
02:38:31.200But, but this perception that's peddled by Don Lemon and, and all the people who couldn't stand during this speech is that, no, no, no.
02:38:37.820If anything, if anything, things are worse now.
02:39:22.240They're the ones who did the heavy lifting.
02:39:23.840We're just here picking up the leftovers.
02:39:25.720And it's our job to push it on to the next generation.
02:39:28.160The one privilege that people will not recognize on the left is the privilege of having been born here and the privilege of standing on the shoulders of giants.
02:39:35.120They act as though the earth began spinning the moment they arrived here and that they've had to overcome such terrible burdens.
02:39:41.220Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez has not had to overcome a burden.
02:39:47.400And neither has anyone who's living in the United States to get a, with very rare exceptions.
02:39:50.640There are some people who have to overcome burdens.
02:39:52.040We live in a country where a young woman in her 20s of Hispanic origin can go from being a bartender to a sitting United States congressman and complain about it.
02:40:05.680And then when she does acknowledge her privilege, her privilege is that she's a cisgender woman, as though that's the privilege.
02:40:11.240You know, the privilege is that you live in this country.
02:40:13.300The privilege is that you are who you are at a time that is this time.
02:40:17.400And that's why when Trump said, this is what the left number understood about Trump's slogan, make America great again.
02:40:21.860It was never about this idea that America was ever at any point in the past a utopia.
02:40:26.380It was about the idea that the people who inhabited America were infused with the idea of an American dream, that they were motivated by that idea.
02:40:32.860And if you want to make America great again, you have to get back to that idea that motivated people, our grandparents, to storm the shores of Normandy.
02:40:39.080You think anybody in that chamber is storming the shores of Normandy today?
02:40:41.540They're barely storming the shores of UC Berkeley.
02:42:40.660Their answer is, yeah, you know, F this country.
02:42:42.520This country, it's a terrible place and it continues to be a terrible place.
02:42:46.500And we have to make the country not a terrible place by abandoning the central values that allowed me to be a 29-year-old bartender from Queens who becomes the most celebrated congressperson in America.
02:42:54.820A country where no one loses their job on the basis of their race.
02:42:59.260Where no one loses their job on the basis of their religion.
02:43:03.200Where no one loses their job on the basis of their gender.
02:43:06.060And where, in fact, a person is immeasurably more likely to get a job on the basis of their gender.
02:44:01.500There are a number of people in the United States who say that they are victims of a system that has not only not made them victims, but has made them famous, in many cases rich, and has made them prominent, and has made them powerful.
02:44:10.100And they are claiming victimhood on the level of the people who actually were victims, who were up there sitting in the rafters.
02:44:15.180And, by the way, not all of whom are Republicans.
02:44:27.240But if you're going to pretend that the young, fresh faces of the Democratic Party are somehow, that they've overcome a thing, you're going to have to explain to me what they overcame.
02:44:35.240Like, really, I want to know, what did they overcome?
02:44:36.740But it also leaves out what you're not thinking about when you're thinking about the injustices of the past.
02:44:40.700And we all agree that there were injustices in the past.
02:45:05.120Because once you're mired in that, once you have to pretend, that idea about stolen value is so true.
02:45:10.380Once you have to pretend that you're a victim, you can't concentrate on what you can contribute, how you can make the next generation great.
02:45:16.380And if you're going to pay attention to that, pay attention to pay homage to the people who made those policemen stop doing that.
02:45:22.300And also the people who were marching and who were actually sicked on, who the dogs were sicked upon.
02:45:27.180I mean, to suggest that you are the equivalent, we are the new civil rights movement, we are the new civil rights marchers, we are the new anything.
02:45:53.340I mean, that's the part that really is, it is upsetting and it's galling.
02:45:57.340And if Democrats keep doing this routine and Trump speaks like he spoke tonight, they're going to have a lot more trouble in 2020 than they think they're going to.
02:46:03.820And you're so right about the fact that if he could be that guy all the time, he would be up to 60 percent his approval.
02:46:09.880I mean, you know, the thing that gets me, that always drives me crazy about him, is on paper, he's doing a good job.
02:46:20.620The power of perception, though, is what allows all of this to flourish.
02:46:25.920And every piece of what we're talking about right now is rooted in perception.
02:46:29.500And one thing the president didn't talk about during his speech tonight, which I think was wise of him, he didn't get into his whole enemy of the people media thing.
02:46:40.920Everything we're talking about here is maintained on the sort of scaffolding of the media and academia, which it requires their full-time effort to prop up these false perceptions and have people be able to live in them as though they were true.
02:47:57.120We are, through coercion, being forced to pay for practically every young person in this country to be inundated with this view that they are either victims or oppressors, basically on the basis of nothing other than their birth.
02:48:15.400I have to tell you, I was back at Yale over the weekend for a reunion.
02:48:20.040I was back there, and we were talking about the problem of academia, higher education, that even at Yale or Harvard or wherever, top schools in the country, it has been hollowed out and just filled in with indoctrination.
02:48:37.500Actually, Yale is probably leading the charge.
02:48:39.920And we were debating some of these proposals, taxing the endowments, pulling funding, this, that, and the other thing.
02:48:45.100I have a sentimental attachment to my alma mater.
02:48:50.360Absent that, I am basically willing to pull the plug on all of these institutions.
02:48:55.660I think it's basically unsalvageable, the way that the system is set up, the administrators, the ever-multiplying administrators, the deans, the deputy deans, the deputy assistant, deputy inclusion dean, all the deans kicking you out of visiting schools.
02:49:08.260I'm very offended because they don't kick me out of visiting schools, but all of those places, to say nothing of the faculty, to say nothing of the students, the craziest people of all, often, a minority of students, but a vocal leftist minority of students.
02:49:20.960I think it's basically unsalvageable if we keep playing by these same rules.
02:49:25.920We've done a great job at creating think tanks.
02:49:28.800We've done a great job at new media, obviously.
02:49:33.000And I think we need a stronger, a more robust solution to higher education.
02:49:39.220So I do think that there are a couple of possibilities that will crop up in the near future.
02:49:42.560One is the possibility of online education, meaning that spending $100,000 to go to one of these colleges, when you could spend $100 to get the same courses, if we can get accreditation for these things, great.
02:49:55.220And I think that there's a case we made that if you started in a real online university, in which people can pay to get in, and then they're weeded out on the basis of their performance in the classroom.
02:50:06.020I mean, this is the way it used to be at a lot of the top law schools.
02:50:08.180It was not that they actually admitted you on the basis of past performance.
02:50:10.920They basically let everyone in, and then they weeded people out as they performed.
02:50:15.140That would be one possibility, and I think that we should be making moves in that direction as a movement and as a people.
02:50:20.760The other possibility is that employers, just conservative employers, need to stop credentialing.
02:50:25.180We need to start going into high schools and recruiting people for internships and then saying, come work, come learn our business, and you'll be a good employee in a year and a half.
02:50:33.260And you saved on college, and then you can work here, and then you have a work record.
02:50:35.960And once you have a work record, you can move place to place, because a poli-sci degree from UCLA, which is what I have, I learned nothing with my poli-sci degree at UCLA.
02:50:43.420Neither does any poli-sci major in America.
02:51:19.640What YAF is doing when they send all of us out to colleges, that is actually taking action.
02:51:24.760But when you just sit and write articles, it does contribute to knowledge and it contributes to conservative research.
02:51:31.100But they're not reaching out to the people.
02:51:32.740But again, my real concern is we pay for these universities to do the work that they do.
02:51:42.580And we, listen, the most rabid right-winger will send their kid to these schools to get liberal arts degrees and pat themselves on the back for doing it.
02:51:52.920I'm so proud of you, honey, that you went to a school and got a degree in absolutely nothing.
02:52:37.100Well, I mean, one of the things that actually has to happen, just on a legal level, is that we have to get rid of regulations that prevent people from going into particular industries.
02:52:44.280So, for example, California actually has it right.
02:52:46.320You do not have to go to an accredited law school in order to take the bar.
02:53:33.040Start actually hiring people without reference to the idea that if you went to Yale, you must be smarter than a guy who went to Hillsdale College because Yale requires a higher SAT.
02:53:39.460It is one of the first things that I did when we started this company and we started having to hire people who weren't my immediate friends.
02:55:04.060I mean, it is a challenge that so many of our elected officials, I mean, that is one thing an elite education does,
02:55:10.960affords you a certain amount of networking, open doors.
02:55:14.800How do we get these guys to actually talk about this kind of issue?
02:55:17.820Because at the end of the day, we actually can't win the future in a world where you can't spend 25 years training kids to think one way and then go,
02:55:26.380You have to build the institutions and then ask people to sign on to them.
02:55:29.680You can't ask Trump or Cruz to do the heavy lifting.
02:55:32.420You can have them endorse programs that already exist and say, you know, this is a great career path.
02:55:37.280Like you see this right now, there's a big move for trade schools.
02:55:39.700The big move for trade schools is specifically because there are a surplus of jobs in certain areas of the country,
02:55:44.640and fracking in, you know, the Midwest, where you actually just go to trade school and you make $100,000 a year if you're willing to move to Wyoming or something.
02:55:52.580And so people are recommending that now.
02:55:54.560People are starting to say, go to trade school.
02:56:10.160We actually have to start also pushing just in terms of messaging the fact that high-achieving high school graduates do better than low-achieving college graduates,
02:56:57.580And we buy these courses, right, as laymen because we're interested in them.
02:57:00.860Like I wrote an entire book just now on pop philosophy, basically.
02:57:04.260That's basically me doing reading outside of school, right?
02:57:06.660I didn't read any of that stuff when I was an undergrad.
02:57:08.560That was me deciding I wanted to delve into it on my own.
02:57:11.560And we're fully capable of doing that stuff.
02:57:13.840The problem is when we linked the idea of a college degree with an automatic income, which is not a false—which is a false statement.
02:57:20.020I mean, if you went and you studied classics at Yale, there is no pot of gold at the end of that rainbow for you unless you're going to be a professor in classics at Yale, right?
02:57:46.480Liberal arts education is specifically not useful.
02:57:49.680Actually, if it is useful, it's not a liberal arts education.
02:57:52.460You're supposed to go, you learn how to think about history for four years, and then if you are ready to do a job, that is a coincidence.
02:57:59.220Or you go to law school or you do something else.
02:58:01.600But we've created this ridiculous idea that studying Shakespeare for four years prepares you to be an analyst in some bank or something like that.
02:59:05.280I'm shocked that so many people I think so highly of could be so wrong.
02:59:09.160Well, we should retake that poll when a Democrat is president because I have a feeling that things will reverse immediately to the other side.
02:59:16.380Again, it was a good, useful State of the Union address.
02:59:19.020Listen, the State of the Union address is a grand opportunity for the sitting president.
02:59:24.080It's an opportunity that they can either take advantage of or choke and botch dramatically.
02:59:31.240But it's useful for the president, which is why if your party's in power, you tend to like it.
03:01:20.640But it doesn't matter because, unfortunately for them, their feelings don't care about the facts.
03:01:24.520It's an interesting point that you raise that even conservative millennials, you know, there is this streak of really sort of left-wing feminism among conservative women that I pick up on quite often,
03:01:36.020which I'm sure if I were paying more attention in other places, I would detect the same thing on other intersectional issues.
03:01:43.980So I think that there's basically two groups of people.
03:01:47.660I don't think either of these groups of people are the cynical manipulators who just figure I'm going to tout the virtues of intersectionality for political gain.
03:05:07.220She says anti-abortion law targets minority women in particular because minority women have most of the abortions.
03:05:12.280And therefore, we have to mobilize as black women, as a group, because we are targeted in the same way black people were targeted by voting laws cracking down on blacks.
03:05:22.260Anti-abortion law is not directed at black women.
03:05:24.520It is directed at saving the lives of children.
03:05:26.420So now you are justifying a group identity attack on everyone else in just the same way that white people were a group identity attacking everyone else.
03:05:34.980So you flip the entire script on its head on the basis of politics.
03:05:38.100What you're describing, though, is you're describing a—and this happens all the time—you're describing an oppressed group adopting the values of the people who oppress them,
03:05:45.820which is satanic, if you think about it.
03:05:47.600And what they should be saying is, yes, we have to gather together as blacks because you have put us in this situation.
03:05:52.620But we reach out to all of you who do not put us in this situation and say we are human beings, not blacks.
03:05:58.800And that's where you have to be going.
03:06:00.340You have to be—you have to not only oppose the people who oppress you, you have to oppose the values of the people who oppress you because that's what they're oppressing you with.
03:06:06.960And that's what—that is what the intersectionalism has failed to do.
03:06:09.660We're not far off from Martin Luther King Jr. actually being a pariah because he is not an intersectional figure.
03:06:34.860He's really great because he understood that you need a socialist superstructure of economics in order to achieve a post-racial society.
03:06:41.660They go to all the stuff that nobody—
03:06:42.680Not for his bourgeois, white, middle-class values that are—
03:06:45.520Not the stuff we built a monument to him for, right?
03:06:47.700It's exactly the same thing they do with Thomas Jefferson now, which is, oh, well, you know, what we really should focus on with Jefferson is not the stuff that made him a hero.
03:06:54.040We should focus on all the other stuff because that's more indicative of who he was as a person, right?
03:06:58.880And so they've decided to deliberately read a counter-history.
03:07:01.420It's the Howard Zinnification of American history.
03:07:03.960Alicia, let's hear from another one of our Daily Wire subscribers.
03:07:07.540Matt wants to know, what are some things that ordinary conservatives like him can do to influence the big power players in Washington, D.C.
03:07:14.500without resorting to the radical tactics of the left?
03:07:19.080Well, I think the two things that I—I mean, obviously, there's all kinds of political action you can take,
03:07:23.840and I don't think you need me to describe the fact that you can call your congressman and get in touch with the people who are in government.
03:12:14.500This was back when, you know, people had rolled up magazines hidden from their mom, right?
03:12:19.180And somebody, his mom had found his rolled up magazine and made such a federal case out of this.
03:12:23.720Because really a lot of these problems started in the church where masculinity just became the only sin that the church cared about.
03:12:30.620Boyhood became the only sin that, that's not to say looking at porn is good.
03:12:34.900It's just to say it isn't the highest evil ever conceived of by anyone, which is what it became, I think, when the church really lost masculinity.
03:12:42.620I don't think in the Dante scheme of it, like at the very bottom is a nudie magazine.
03:12:46.820So this kid had to get up, 19 years old, in front of 300 people in his church and confess that he had looked at pornography.
03:12:54.040And all I thought was, what he should have said is, I'm so sorry, it's obviously not a good thing.
03:13:00.360I'm embarrassed that my mom found this magazine.
03:14:02.180But we all live in this kind of common grace where the truth is the majority of our bad behaviors don't cause the worst possible consequence.
03:14:11.420But we all sit, we all participate in the prudish stoning and shunning of every person who gets caught doing things that we ourselves are done.
03:14:21.000And what's worse is that when people try to redeem themselves, then we still go after them.
03:14:24.440And so we now live in a world where that guy would get up and he would do the confession.
03:15:08.000And if we don't get that back, that idea of original sin, that the guy sitting next to you is a sinner and the guy he's sitting next to also a sinner, you know, we'll never be able to talk.
03:15:17.060And if we all jump on the bandwagons of crucifying the people who get caught while pretending that the fact that we didn't get caught makes us virtuous.
03:15:26.140You can't live in a world where Liam Neeson confesses that he had a horrible thought 40 years ago.
03:15:51.960And then when we fail, then we seek God's grace and his mercy in that sin.
03:15:56.180And that's what we call redemption, which is the core story of every religious experience that virtually anyone has ever had from Yom Kippur to Augustine.
03:16:04.700I mean, this is the common religious tradition.
03:16:07.560The pagan version of sin is you sinned, you will be punished, no mercy.
03:16:11.640It doesn't matter what you do afterward.
03:16:15.640So what exactly are you going to do about it?
03:16:17.600And this has led to a bizarre situation where not only do we destroy people for sins of which they have repented or thoughts of which they have repented, we have made it impossible for you to even acknowledge the sin.
03:16:59.280Well, there was a humiliating point where he tried to ask Naomi Rao, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals nominee, whether she had ever had an LGBTQ clerk, to which she informed him I've never been a judge before.
03:17:07.640But there was also a moment, a big exchange where he basically asked her, do you believe that homosexual activity is a sin?
03:17:39.000But the reason that Booker was doing that is because he has that same pagan notion of sin, which means that the pagan notion of sin is that if you commit a sin, then you will inevitably be punished by the person who finds out about the sin.
03:17:49.600So he thinks that Naomi Rao's version of sin is the same as Cory Booker's version of sin.
03:17:53.620So he thinks that Naomi Rao's version of sin is she thinks that homosexual activity is a sin.
03:17:59.300Now, most traditionally religious people who read the Bible believe homosexual activity is a sin.
03:18:04.320That doesn't mean that we don't think a lot of things are sins or that you can repent of that sin or that you can sin and still be a human being and operate in the good graces of society or that the government should get involved.
03:18:27.360That person must be paid to pay by the government.
03:18:29.660And so he thinks the same thing about religious people.
03:18:31.260He thinks religious people want to actually target people who believe that religious people who believe that homosexual activity is a sin want to go into the bedroom and somehow prosecute or persecute people who are gay, which is eminently untrue.
03:18:42.520If the things that happened on Twitter happened in physical life and you saw mobs moving from place to place, hunting people down, dragging them out of their houses, beating them to death, which is essentially what they're doing, you would notice, you would know the horror of it.
03:19:20.880I got into a conversation on Twitter just last night about whether or not Twitter is the real world, where a pal of ours said Twitter is the real world and people need to treat people on Twitter like they're real people.
03:20:25.680He's trying to run for president on the Democratic side.
03:20:27.100So I tweeted something out about how there's an NBC News article that suggested in the title, basically, that an ice shelf was about to collapse and inundate all the coastal cities in the world with two feet of water.
03:20:38.860And I just pointed out that not in the headline and not in the subheadline did it say, based on a computer model, this might happen in 50 to 100 years.
03:20:45.500So I pointed this out and the left went crazy because am I suggesting we shouldn't do anything about global warming?
03:20:50.940I'm just saying, like, you might want to say in the headline that in 50 to 100 years, this might be a problem, according to a computer model that has not yet been proved to be accurate.
03:21:00.320If there's a headline that said, nuclear weapons set to go off in downtown Manhattan, and then in paragraph 7, it says 100 years from now, you'd go, oh, we may be able to do something about that.
03:21:11.020And so Pete Buttigieg, you know, wrote back to me and he was kind of mocking.
03:21:14.140And I said, he said something like, well, you know, this is, I've never seen such, you know, unwillingness to consider the needs of the next generation.
03:23:53.320It defines what you do, your recreation.
03:23:55.180And it defines what amounts to your religious faith, which is why you see, especially during the Trump era, so many left-wingers ending friendships with right-wingers, not just on social media, but in real media, in the real air, in real life.
03:24:08.880Because you've violated that which is sacred to them, which is their politics.
03:24:13.760Well, I think that, you know, quick distinction.
03:24:16.720So I think that in the 19th century, sometimes entertainment took the form of politics.
03:24:23.540Today, politics takes the form of entertainment.
03:24:25.080In other words, people had to be entertained by something, but it didn't fundamentally change the nature of politics, meaning that people would go and watch a two-hour debate between Lincoln and Douglas.
03:24:32.400And today, people will watch a 30-second clip of AOC owning somebody, or me owning somebody, for that matter, right?
03:24:40.180So politics has actually been shaped to meet the memery of the entertainment world.
03:24:45.160And so, well, I do think that culture, politics was downstream from culture, and now we're seeing a merging of the two.
03:24:50.360I mean, President Trump is a reality TV star, right?
03:24:52.880And the next president will presumably be a new form of reality TV star, as Barack Obama was.
03:24:57.220With all of that said, the part that's dangerous to me is that politics itself has taken the form of entertainment, as opposed to the way it used to be, which was politics remained its own form.
03:25:07.700It's just people were entertained by it.
03:25:09.180Now it's that we view a YouTube clip of a cat falling off a tile in the same way that we view a piece of political commentary.
03:25:19.220Noah Rothman did a segment on MSNBC about his new book, Unjust, which is quite good, about intersectionality.
03:25:23.820And somebody cut a two-minute clip in which it doesn't show him talking at all.
03:25:27.960It's just somebody responding to a claim that we don't know, Noah made, about how he doesn't understand intersectionality, blah, blah, blah.
03:25:33.740This thing that was retweeted by everyone on the left, this was the end.
03:25:37.040And Noah was like, you might want to watch the next 30 seconds where I respond to that so you know.
03:25:40.520But it was like, no, Noah Rothman owned.
03:25:42.820Because we watch WWE in the same way we watch politics now.
03:25:46.600So the actual form of politics has changed.
03:26:04.060It's absurd to me that every single late-night comedian is anti-Trump.
03:26:07.260Everyone, not one, is going to come on and say, oh, yeah, I like Trump, or Nancy Pelosi is also silly.
03:26:11.860You know, in the day when Charlton Heston, the great Hollywood conservative, and Gregory Peck, the great Hollywood liberal,
03:26:19.120could be good friends and could both represent the kinds of American heroes that we all respected, that was a different day.
03:26:25.080Well, at the very least, I mean, Jay Leno, you didn't really know his politics.
03:26:27.340You sort of figured maybe he was a modern Republican, maybe.
03:26:29.680Johnny Carson, who was a Democrat, a lifelong Democrat, had no idea what his politics were.
03:26:32.800Now you have Stephen Colbert basically fellating Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer on air.
03:26:37.220Yeah, and embarrassingly, because he knows nothing about politics, I mean, he'll have some hacked Democrat on and treat her like she's, you know.
03:27:05.320We do have more questions, and your statement just then reminds me of what my mom always said.
03:27:09.060Behind every joke, there's a hint of truth, and as we know, people on the left just don't like the truth, so they won't laugh at it.
03:27:14.480Donald says, hey, guys, with Cory Booker's prejudicial questions to Judge Candidate Rao, why doesn't McConnell remove him from the Judiciary Committee?
03:27:23.380Well, I mean, you know, I think that the restrictions on removing people from the Judiciary Committee are pretty strict.
03:27:29.200It's difficult to just censure somebody.
03:27:31.460Also, if I'm a Republican, I want Cory Booker saying that kind of stuff.
03:27:34.140Like, I want Cory Booker out there every single day being the doof that he is with his weird fingers and googly eyes doing his I am Spartacus routine.
03:27:42.640Well, what I love about Cory Booker the most, honestly, is it's like you guys have any watches where you actually, the face isn't on the watch.
03:27:48.560You can see the gears turning under the watch.
03:28:06.760He chews the scenery like no one I've ever seen.
03:28:09.540I mean, the guy is just, I mean, he's the Nicolas Cage of politics.
03:28:12.880He did this routine today where Ted Cruz responded to him after he did this religious attack on Rao, and Cruz said exactly what is true.
03:28:22.660Ted said, well, you know, this is a religious attack, what you just did.
03:28:26.560And Booker says, you know, Senator, you and I are friends.
03:28:29.580And since we're friends, you know that I would die to protect someone else's religious freedom.
03:28:34.480And I just thought to myself, yeah, go, you know.
03:28:36.340I mean, slow wind up for the middle finger, my friend, because you have got to be kidding me.
03:28:41.980Like, you legitimately just said that this woman should not be able to sit on a federal court because you disagree about her private religious views.
03:28:48.160And then you're saying you would die for her religious freedom.
03:28:50.440Now I'm going to go with I don't believe you.
03:28:51.840So, you know, getting Cory Booker out.
03:30:27.800I mean, the question is how much play there is left in the joints.
03:30:31.340That's always the question for Trump is, is there really any upside left for him?
03:30:34.860If there is upside for him that's available, then he got it tonight.
03:30:37.920Now, the question, the other question is, how long will it maintain?
03:30:41.860Because how many times have we seen the, this was the moment that Trump became president, and then two minutes later, he's kicking himself in the ass and walking around with an accordion.
03:30:57.280I don't think this, I don't think this moved the ball.
03:30:59.860I think it helped his, again, it put him in a position where he is now in charge of the conversation again until he tweets some stupid thing.
03:31:09.360And I think, I don't think it moved, it's going to force anybody to move off the dime on the immigration thing.
03:31:15.020But I do think, you know, he always, there's always a chance with Trump that people will take another look.
03:31:20.080The American public want a good president.
03:33:00.380And I also think that he did a pretty expert job.
03:33:03.740And I don't know if it was on purpose or if favor just broke in his direction, which is by framing so many of his arguments the way that he did,
03:33:13.520he got to really show what Nancy Pelosi will stand for and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won't.
03:33:20.700In several places, he drew out that distinction, which is potentially a really important fault line.
03:33:29.360And it's always the best part of the State of the Union is always what the opposition will not stand for.
03:33:34.740Because if you're not standing for black unemployment, you know, for black employment, who are you?