The Ben Shapiro Show - Being Radical Means Never Having To Say True Things | Ep. 689

00:00:00.000 Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez accidentally spills the beans, we examine Tucker Carlson's populism, and the border wall war continues.

00:00:07.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:13.000 Oh man, so much to get to today.

00:00:15.000 Wow, a lot of news breaking over the weekend.

00:00:17.000 Plus, plus, as you know, later today, if you are a subscriber over at Daily Wire, then you're gonna get two extra hours of me every single day.

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00:00:25.000 We're gonna get to all of the news of the day.

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00:01:45.000 Okay, so we begin today with a reminder.

00:01:49.000 That the Democratic Party has now taken over the House, which means that we have to take them seriously.

00:01:54.000 We are now supposed to take all of their policy prescriptions and all the things they say seriously.

00:01:58.000 And which Democrats should we take seriously?

00:02:00.000 Well, presumably, we should take seriously the Democrats that the Democrats are taking seriously.

00:02:04.000 You know, the ones who are considered the new leaders.

00:02:07.000 We should be taking serious stock of the Democrats that the media say are the ones we should be paying attention to.

00:02:14.000 How do we know which ones?

00:02:15.000 Well, let's say that there were a Democrat who'd been ballyhooed as the new wave in the Democratic Party.

00:02:20.000 A Democrat who'd been featured on social media.

00:02:22.000 A Democrat who'd been featured with profiles in Vanity Fair, in the New York Times, in the Washington Post.

00:02:27.000 A Democrat who was featured on 60 Minutes over the weekend.

00:02:29.000 Would it be fair to pay attention to that person?

00:02:32.000 I think yes.

00:02:32.000 And I think that if people said we shouldn't pay attention to that person, that that would be a bit of media sophistry.

00:02:38.000 If the game were to be that Democrats pay attention to a person and we're supposed to ignore that person, lest we be accused of being obsessed with that person, that would be a bunch of crap. 0.84

00:02:46.000 So the person of whom I'm speaking, of course, is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 0.99

00:02:50.000 Now the reason that a lot of folks on the right like to cover Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is because she says dumb things. 1.00

00:02:56.000 A lot. 0.99

00:02:57.000 Sometimes she says dumb things only sometimes. 0.99

00:02:59.000 She says dumb things routinely. 1.00

00:03:02.000 Like all the things she says, 90% of the things she says are dumb. 0.99

00:03:05.000 The only thing she says that are not dumb are things that are pop culturally related. 0.99

00:03:08.000 So when Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez talks about like instant pot recipes on Instagram, not so dumb. 0.99

00:03:16.000 When she talks about how she's a pretty good dancer, not so dumb. 0.99

00:03:20.000 When she talks about economics, it's like she stuck her head in an oven, okay? 1.00

00:03:23.000 The things she says are just idiotic, and she gets caught out saying idiotic things on a routine basis. 1.00

00:03:29.000 But this does not seem to dim her appeal any for Democrats, which leads to an ironic situation. 1.00

00:03:34.000 The same Democrats, who have accused Donald Trump of lowering the standards of truth and fact.

00:03:39.000 The same Democrats who say that Donald Trump lies on a routine basis about matters of policy are worshipping at the altar of this brash new persona, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is brash and new precisely because she won 12,000 votes in a Democratic primary in a heavily blue district that is majority-minority and where the representative happened to be a white person until Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took over.

00:04:02.000 The racial issue is only interesting insofar as it had an impact on the voting pattern in that primary.

00:04:08.000 Okay, the reason that I bring this up is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was on 60 Minutes. 0.97

00:04:11.000 Last week, she proposed what she called a Green New Deal.

00:04:14.000 The Green New Deal would have required, within 12 years, 100% of the United States economy to be on renewable energy sources.

00:04:22.000 Right now, only 17% of the U.S.

00:04:25.000 economy is supported by renewable energy sources.

00:04:27.000 So we're talking about the cost of tens of trillions of dollars at a minimum using the current technologies that we have.

00:04:33.000 And if we wanted to develop new technologies, we are probably talking about hundreds of trillions of dollars in order to get to a completely green New Deal.

00:04:41.000 She also suggested that we should have racial and gender-based equity handled by the Congress of the United States.

00:04:47.000 And that we should raise the tax rates radically.

00:04:49.000 So she did this interview on 60 Minutes because she is the new ideological thought leader, which makes sense. 0.90

00:04:53.000 I mean, we've already had the idiocy of watching Bernie Sanders be the ideological thought leader for the Democrats. 0.89

00:04:59.000 We've already watched the Democrats trot out a 70... a near-octogenarian socialist loon bag who's never passed a single piece of decent legislation from Vermont be the ideological thought leader for the Democrats. 1.00

00:05:10.000 So why not prettier, dumber Bernie Sanders? 0.98

00:05:13.000 How about that? 1.00

00:05:14.000 We can go with that, right?

00:05:15.000 So 60 Minutes brings out Ocasio-Cortez, and she says some things about policy.

00:05:19.000 So she begins by pushing a 70% marginal tax rate.

00:05:22.000 This is her big policy proposal, is that what we should do is we should pay for her Green New Deal, which, as I say, would cost tens of trillions of dollars by, you guessed it, taxing rich people more. 0.93

00:05:34.000 You have a progressive tax rate system, your tax rate, you know, let's say from zero to $75,000 may be 10% or 15%, etc.

00:05:45.000 But once you get to like the tippy tops, on your 10 millionth dollar, sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60 or 70%.

00:05:53.000 That doesn't mean all $10 million are taxed.

00:05:58.000 At an extremely high rate, but it means that as you climb up this ladder, you should be contributing more.

00:06:05.000 Okay, this is like watching my four-year-old daughter explain basic addition to me.

00:06:09.000 I mean, that she has like a certain amount of kind of baseline understanding, but she doesn't really get it.

00:06:14.000 I like that Alexander Ocasio-Cortez is explaining to Anderson Cooper, who I promise you pays the top marginal tax rate, she's explaining how marginal tax bracket works.

00:06:23.000 to Anderson Cooper on national television.

00:06:25.000 This is the new wave of the Democratic Party.

00:06:27.000 You see, like, when you get up to, like, the very tippy-top and the toppity-tip toes, and when you get to, like, the $10 million, that's taxed at a different rate than, like, if you made $5.

00:06:35.000 Yes, Alexandria, we know.

00:06:36.000 And it's still immoral to steal 70% of a dollar that somebody makes for your own private purposes.

00:06:42.000 Also, the notion that this is going to pay for virtually anything is nuts.

00:06:47.000 She basically says, OK, if you make over $10 million, then we should tax all of that at a 70% rate.

00:06:51.000 And one of my favorite things about this is that people in the Democratic Party are then repeating this.

00:06:56.000 No, it's not that bad.

00:06:57.000 Like, why would that be so bad?

00:06:58.000 There is a thread.

00:06:59.000 On Twitter, this had 75,000 retweets from a person named Diana Anderson.

00:07:04.000 I don't know who this person is.

00:07:05.000 This person wrote, "Okay, so a lot of rich white folks "are freaking out about what a 70% tax rate "on the wealthy would look like, "and they're scared about it and bleep, "even though it's literally what rich baby boomers "are he dealt with." First of all, rich baby boomers did not deal with it.

00:07:17.000 They had massive tax loopholes that were applicable during the Eisenhower era when the top tax bracket, starting at about $3.4 million jointly for households, was at 91%.

00:07:26.000 The effective tax rate for those households was about 45%.

00:07:30.000 Here's what this person says, though.

00:07:31.000 They say, post-World War II, the tax rate peaked at 94% on annual income over $200,000.

00:07:36.000 This is post-World War II.

00:07:38.000 You will remember when we were still paying off, you know, a massive military spend.

00:07:42.000 By the way, $200,000 in 1946 was like 3 million bucks in 2018.

00:07:48.000 In the decades following, it dropped to a marginal tax rate of 70% of all income over $200,000 annually.

00:07:54.000 Yes, and if you'll recall, the 1970s sucked economically before Ronald Reagan massively cut the top marginal tax rate.

00:08:01.000 And this person says, let's take an example of what would happen if we had a 70% income tax rate for people making above $10 million.

00:08:10.000 So let's say you're Dwayne The Rock Johnson.

00:08:12.000 You made $65 million last year in one year.

00:08:15.000 So that $10 million cutoff is going to hit you.

00:08:18.000 70% off everything above $10 million.

00:08:20.000 That leaves you with $16.5 million.

00:08:22.000 Wow, that's a big hit, you think.

00:08:24.000 On paper, yeah, that's a lot of money to just give up in taxes.

00:08:27.000 No, not on paper.

00:08:29.000 In reality, giving up $45 million is a lot of money to give up.

00:08:35.000 But this person says, that rate still leaves The Rock with nearly $20 million, considering his $10 million is also taxed at a lower rate.

00:08:41.000 That's $20 million in net pay for a year, which is still a lot of money.

00:08:44.000 So what's The Rock whining about? 1.00

00:08:46.000 Here's why this is so intensely stupid. 1.00

00:08:48.000 The reason that this is so intensely stupid is because everyone will start using tax avoidance strategies. 1.00

00:08:53.000 How do I know this? 0.99

00:08:54.000 Because France tried to do exactly this.

00:08:57.000 A few years back, let's go back in the way back machine to like 2017, like two years ago.

00:09:03.000 The prime minister of France was a guy named Edouard Philippe.

00:09:07.000 OK, and he had to and he had tried to impose, he had tried to impose, along with Emmanuel Macron, economic reforms that have led to a massive wealth tax.

00:09:16.000 And what happened?

00:09:17.000 All the millionaires left France.

00:09:19.000 In 2016, 12,000 millionaires immigrated from France.

00:09:25.000 In 2015, 10,000 millionaires left France.

00:09:28.000 It turns out, you know what rich people are really good at?

00:09:30.000 Picking up and moving.

00:09:32.000 It turns out that rich people, if you try to tax them at a 70% rate above $10 million, you know what they'll do?

00:09:37.000 They will just sell their houses and leave and go live in Monte Carlo. 1.00

00:09:41.000 If you think The Rock is sticking around to watch 40 million bucks of his disappear every year so Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez can pay off her Green Solyndra supporters, you are out of your damned mind. 1.00

00:09:53.000 You're crazy. 1.00

00:09:54.000 It's not going to happen. 0.98

00:09:55.000 And even the Washington Post basically acknowledges this.

00:09:57.000 They do a full economic workup.

00:09:59.000 This is my favorite part.

00:10:00.000 I love this.

00:10:00.000 This is what they say.

00:10:01.000 They say, Ocasio-Cortez's suggestion for nearly doubling taxes on people earning more than $10 million would bring in $720 billion per decade, $72 billion a year.

00:10:11.000 Except that...

00:10:13.000 Accept that.

00:10:13.000 That's not what's going to happen.

00:10:14.000 Here's buried deep in this article from the Washington Post.

00:10:18.000 The real number is probably smaller than that.

00:10:19.000 Because wealthy Americans would probably find ways around paying this much higher tax.

00:10:23.000 Ya think?

00:10:25.000 Ya think maybe Iraq just wouldn't do as many movies?

00:10:28.000 I wouldn't work as hard if I knew 70% of my money were going to the federal government.

00:10:33.000 Already an enormous amount of my money goes to the federal government. 0.99

00:10:35.000 You think I would take on extra jobs just so I could pay the bills for the stupid ideas of our congresspeople? 0.99

00:10:41.000 There's something deeply immoral about stealing 70% of any dollar that anyone makes. 0.99

00:10:46.000 And if you think that Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez knows how to spend her money better than The Rock knows how to spend his money, I don't know what to tell you.

00:10:52.000 I'm with Cardi B. I don't know what the government does with my bleeping money, and neither do you.

00:10:57.000 And the fact that the federal government is now trying to seize that money and people are cheering this on is nuts.

00:11:02.000 So this is the new Democratic push, is that they are going to massively raise taxes.

00:11:05.000 Yeah, go with that.

00:11:06.000 I also love the baseline lie that is being told here, which is that if you raise the top marginal tax bracket 70%, that's going to pay for everything.

00:11:15.000 You crazy?

00:11:16.000 It ain't.

00:11:17.000 People in Denmark are paying 60% of their income off the top in income tax if you make above $60,000 a year.

00:11:24.000 You want to pay for Bernie Sanders-like programs?

00:11:27.000 You can have Bernie Sanders-like taxes.

00:11:28.000 And those Bernie Sanders-like taxes do not look like a top marginal tax bracket increase.

00:11:33.000 They look like a massive middle class and lower class tax increase because you must expand the tax base.

00:11:39.000 If you do not expand the tax base, you're not going to take in more income.

00:11:43.000 But that wasn't the dumbest thing Ocasio-Cortez said.

00:11:45.000 She really spilled the beans here, and I'll explain in just one second.

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00:12:59.000 All right, so that was not the dumbest thing Ocasio-Cortez had to say, but we're not supposed to talk about the dumb things she says again. 0.98

00:13:05.000 Because she's good at Instagram, and she dances sometimes. 0.98

00:13:07.000 Ooh hoo hoo hoo hoo.

00:13:08.000 So we can't talk about that stuff.

00:13:10.000 Let's talk instead about how charming she is.

00:13:12.000 It's amazing. 1.00

00:13:13.000 If you're a Democrat, and you're charming, doesn't matter how dumb you are. 1.00

00:13:16.000 Doesn't matter how many stupid things you say. 1.00

00:13:18.000 If you're a Republican, and you're dumb, doesn't matter how charming you are. 1.00

00:13:21.000 And if you're a Republican, who is both charming and smart, then we call you corrupt. 1.00

00:13:25.000 Dan Crenshaw.

00:13:26.000 I mean, let's just take, you want to see media bias in a nutshell.

00:13:29.000 Dan Crenshaw is a war veteran who lost an eye in combat, is clever, is witty, was great when he went on Saturday Night Live.

00:13:37.000 Has he received one one-hundredth of the media attention that this 29-year-old former bartender socialist from New York is receiving?

00:13:45.000 Like one iota? 0.89

00:13:46.000 And Dan Crenshaw doesn't say dumb things all the time.

00:13:48.000 And he actually has a record of service.

00:13:51.000 And he happens to be smart.

00:13:53.000 But, you know, if you're the media, then none of that matters, right?

00:13:56.000 If you're the media, the only thing that matters is that she's a Democrat.

00:14:00.000 And because she's a Democrat, we have to give her all sorts of leeway. 0.99

00:14:02.000 And if you attack her, if you say that her ideas are bad, then this is because you are a sexist. 0.55

00:14:07.000 Just the same way that if you say Elizabeth Warren is a charmless hack, then this is because you are also a sexist. 0.99

00:14:12.000 Because if you talk about likability, but you're talking about a Democrat, this means that you're a racist or a sexist or a bigot in some way. 0.95

00:14:17.000 Okay, so. 0.99

00:14:19.000 The dumbest thing that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said was so dumb on the 60 Minutes interview that even Anderson Cooper looked at her and almost vomited in her lap. 1.00

00:14:28.000 So Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was asked specifically about the fact that she says a lot of things that are not true, that in common parlance, she lies a lot. 0.99

00:14:35.000 She will just trot out arguments that make no sense.

00:14:37.000 She will say things that are blatantly, factually false.

00:14:40.000 Listen to her response, because it is telling about the way so many folks on the political left think about what politics is, and it explains why younger generation folks are turning socialist.

00:14:49.000 What she's about to say is a sign of deep immorality.

00:14:52.000 Deep philosophical immorality.

00:14:55.000 But she says it with a straight face, and so we take it seriously.

00:14:59.000 I think that there's a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right.

00:15:11.000 But being factually correct is important.

00:15:13.000 It's absolutely important.

00:15:15.000 And whenever I make a mistake, I say, okay, this was clumsy.

00:15:20.000 And then I restate what my point was.

00:15:24.000 But it's not the same thing as The president lying about immigrants.

00:15:30.000 It's not the same thing at all.

00:15:32.000 Um, yeah, it is.

00:15:35.000 So what she says there is that feelings don't matter about your facts, right?

00:15:40.000 My slogan is facts don't care about your feelings.

00:15:42.000 For her, feelings don't care about your facts.

00:15:43.000 So if she's morally right, she can lie.

00:15:46.000 She can get facts wrong.

00:15:48.000 We shouldn't worry about her being semantically or factually accurate.

00:15:51.000 We shouldn't worry about any of those things.

00:15:52.000 Accuracy is of no consequence when what you're saying is morally right.

00:15:56.000 So you might say that We should take her seriously, but not literally.

00:16:01.000 Now, I was informed by Democrats that Donald Trump had lowered the standards of the presidency when it came to truth.

00:16:06.000 I was informed by Democrats that Donald Trump had destroyed our politics because he says a lot of things that are factually untrue.

00:16:12.000 And I've said in the past that when Donald Trump says things that are factually untrue, that he should correct them, and that he's wrong, and that sometimes he's lying, and that that's bad.

00:16:20.000 But Democrats don't actually care about all that. 0.75

00:16:22.000 What Democrats actually care about is the narrative.

00:16:24.000 So, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, when she says, Facts don't actually matter.

00:16:28.000 What matters is being morally right.

00:16:30.000 This shows why we are in the state that we are.

00:16:34.000 She is not actually saying anything different from what Democrats have said for years.

00:16:37.000 For literally my entire lifetime.

00:16:40.000 Democrats have been saying my entire lifetime that it is okay to lie so long as you get to the end point that you are seeking.

00:16:45.000 If you are Barack Obama, you can lie about liking your doctor and keeping your doctor because the ends justify the means.

00:16:51.000 The ends are morally right, therefore the means, not telling the truth to the American people, that's okay too. 0.59

00:16:57.000 So when Ocasio-Cortez says, I don't have time to tell the truth, people worry too much about me being factually accurate instead of morally right.

00:17:04.000 One of the ways we decide whether you are morally right is if you are factually accurate.

00:17:09.000 It's pretty easy to tell.

00:17:10.000 If somebody's lying all the time to you to get you to do something, Pretty obvious giveaway that what they are trying to get you to do is probably not morally right, because the truth shall set us free.

00:17:19.000 When we hear a group of facts that are laid together to form an argument, then it is inherently more convincing than a group of lies that are put together to form an endpoint if we know they are lies.

00:17:30.000 If you have to lie to get somebody to identify with your conclusion, then you are not only doing it wrong, you are doing something immoral itself.

00:17:38.000 There are certain cases in life where lying is necessary.

00:17:41.000 And there's certainly the Nazis at your door, and you've got somebody who's a resistor to the Nazis hiding in your basement.

00:17:46.000 Do you lie to the Nazi? 0.72

00:17:47.000 The typical moral answer would be yes, although Kant would say no.

00:17:51.000 That is not what we're talking about here.

00:17:52.000 What we are talking about here is basically lying to the American people because you think that your point is better than their point.

00:18:00.000 And this is what the Democrats are doing these days.

00:18:03.000 I don't like it when Republicans do it.

00:18:04.000 I don't like it when Democrats do it.

00:18:05.000 I don't like it when Donald Trump says things that are not true about the economy, or about immigration, or about the state of the Middle East.

00:18:12.000 I don't like when he does any of those things to support his political viewpoint.

00:18:16.000 It's no better when a Democrat does it. 0.83

00:18:18.000 But to pretend that the standard has only been lowered on one side is a joke.

00:18:21.000 The standard has been lowered on both sides for years, and it was lowered by Democrats a lot earlier than it was lowered for Republicans.

00:18:28.000 She just let the cat out of the bag. 1.00

00:18:30.000 So spare me your lectures about Donald Trump undermining American politics.

00:18:34.000 The same left that disdains Donald Trump for his supposed abolition of basic principles of the presidency, that same left cheers on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez every step of the way.

00:18:45.000 That same left tells us that Barack Obama never had a scandal.

00:18:48.000 That same left says that Barack Obama never told a lie.

00:18:50.000 That same left says that Bill Clinton should still be held up as some sort of halcyon of the presidency and that his wife should have won in 2016.

00:18:59.000 I'm not going to take moral guidance from these folks.

00:19:02.000 Which is not going to happen.

00:19:04.000 And I'm certainly not going to listen to Democrats when they also claim that they actually want to compromise.

00:19:08.000 That Donald Trump is the one standing in the way of compromise.

00:19:11.000 And this becomes particularly galling when you're hearing it about the wall.

00:19:15.000 So the Democrats are claiming now they don't want to compromise, or that Donald Trump doesn't want to compromise.

00:19:20.000 That they'd love to reach a compromise, but Trump won't compromise.

00:19:22.000 Again, Ocasio-Cortez, she just says things that are inadvertently true. 0.98

00:19:27.000 Like, Democrats don't care about the truth, and also we'd like to tax the crap out of you. 0.69

00:19:31.000 She also says, Democrats have compromised too much in the past. 0.87

00:19:33.000 She can't name a compromise.

00:19:35.000 Like, name a Democratic compromise of the last, say, 15 years.

00:19:39.000 The last time Republicans and Democrats compromised on a bill, honestly, maybe sequestration, even that was not really a compromise.

00:19:46.000 That was like 2011.

00:19:46.000 So that was seven years, eight years ago now.

00:19:50.000 But she says Democrats have compromised too much.

00:19:53.000 And there's something, I think, deeply telling about the fact that she thinks the Democrats have compromised too much when she can't name a single Democrat a compromise in the last 10 years.

00:20:02.000 We as a party have compromised too much, and we've lost too much of who we're supposed to be and who we are.

00:20:09.000 The Democratic Party has lost too much?

00:20:12.000 I think so.

00:20:13.000 I think we've compromised things that we shouldn't have compromised, whether it's judgeships with Mitch McConnell, whether it's Compromising on climate change.

00:20:23.000 I think there are some things that we've compromised a little bit too much on.

00:20:27.000 Okay, they have not compromised on judgeships.

00:20:29.000 Harry Reid nuked the filibuster and Mitch McConnell has ran through judges.

00:20:33.000 And on climate change, Democrats have not compromised on one iota.

00:20:35.000 They just haven't had the power to get through their radical agenda.

00:20:38.000 So, again, just a bunch of nonsense.

00:20:41.000 But it does demonstrate where the Democratic Party's head is at.

00:20:43.000 They are radical.

00:20:44.000 They don't care about truth when it comes to, at least if she's a representative of them.

00:20:48.000 I'm not saying every Democrat.

00:20:49.000 There are a lot of Democrats out there, I assume, who are still caring about truth, who would still like some compromise, who would still like some moderation, but...

00:20:55.000 Not in the leadership.

00:20:57.000 Not in the leadership.

00:20:57.000 Because Pelosi can't step on Ocasio-Cortez because she knows the passions with Ocasio-Cortez in the same way that the leadership couldn't step on Bernie Sanders because they knew that the passion was with Bernie Sanders.

00:21:07.000 So what does this lead to?

00:21:08.000 Well, it leads to the government shutdown that's happening over the border wall.

00:21:11.000 So let's talk about the latest on the border wall in just one second.

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00:22:25.000 Okay, so The Democratic intransigence that has been pushed forth by the Democratic base is exactly what I predicted last year and what anybody who's been watching the Democratic Party predicted last year.

00:22:36.000 This is not a party that was going to come in and be reasonable.

00:22:38.000 This was a party that was going to come in and push the most radical agenda they could and refuse to compromise on anything.

00:22:43.000 So Donald Trump has asked for something like $5 billion for a border wall, which, let's face it, would not be sufficient to actually build the border wall.

00:22:50.000 The actual cost of a border wall apparently is between $11 and $13 billion, not $5 billion.

00:22:55.000 In any case, $5 billion is a pittance compared to what we spend every year on virtually everything else.

00:23:01.000 And we do, in fact, have a border problem.

00:23:03.000 Huge numbers of people are coming across the border.

00:23:06.000 In 2015, this is according to the Washington Post, the year Donald Trump launched his White House bid with a promise to build a wall on the Mexico border, illegal migration to the United States plunged 31 percent.

00:23:16.000 Falling near its lowest levels in 50 years.

00:23:18.000 In 2017, President Trump's first year in office, he continued to insist on the urgent need for a border wall, even as illegal crossings dropped even further.

00:23:26.000 With parts of the federal government shut down over what has morphed into a defining symbol of Trump's presidency, administration officials are clamoring louder than ever.

00:23:33.000 Only this time, they face a bona fide emergency on the border.

00:23:35.000 This is according to the Washington Post.

00:23:37.000 Again, not the Washington Times.

00:23:38.000 The Washington Post.

00:23:40.000 And they're struggling to make the case there's truly a problem.

00:23:42.000 Record numbers of migrant families are streaming into the United States, overwhelming border agents and leaving them holding cells dangerously overcrowded with children, many of whom are falling sick.

00:23:52.000 In a letter to lawmakers on Friday, the White House and Department of Homeland Security made a fresh appeal to amend immigration laws they'd announced as legal loopholes and blame for creating a border security and humanitarian crisis.

00:24:02.000 But this is not going to happen so long as Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats refuse to compromise.

00:24:06.000 Now, That humanitarian crisis is not being created only by the lack of a border wall.

00:24:11.000 It's also being created by our immigration procedures, which require us to arrest people and then people have to go to an immigration court.

00:24:18.000 And while they're not in an immigration court, we either have to imprison them or let them go, which would be catch and release.

00:24:22.000 All of that is a mess.

00:24:23.000 And cleaning that up should be top priority.

00:24:25.000 But Democrats are not interested in cleaning up any of this.

00:24:28.000 And they are particularly anti the idea of a wall because they don't want Trump to have a victory. 0.98

00:24:31.000 So you end up with idiocies like this. 0.95

00:24:33.000 Nancy Pelosi, Out front and center saying that the wall itself is immoral. 0.99

00:24:37.000 This is what she said last week.

00:24:39.000 A wall is an immorality.

00:24:42.000 It's not who we are as a nation.

00:24:44.000 And this is not a wall between Mexico and the United States that the president is creating here.

00:24:50.000 It's a wall between reality and his constituents, his supporters.

00:24:56.000 What the hell does that mean?

00:24:58.000 A wall between reality and his supporters?

00:25:01.000 How?

00:25:02.000 How?

00:25:02.000 I love that nobody in the media just asks how.

00:25:04.000 Explain.

00:25:05.000 When it says this isn't a wall between the US and Mexico, that is literally what it is.

00:25:08.000 A wall between the United States and Mexico. 0.68

00:25:11.000 Some sort of physical barrier that allows our border patrol agents to know when people are crossing illegally.

00:25:16.000 Why this is immoral in any way, Democrats have yet to explain.

00:25:19.000 I love that they can just shout slogans like, it's immoral and it's not who we are.

00:25:24.000 Whenever a politician assures you it's not who we are, Be aware that all they are trying to do is shame you into not asking the question, why?

00:25:32.000 Why is it not who we are to protect our own border?

00:25:35.000 Why?

00:25:35.000 I will imagine there are certain things that make us not who we are, right?

00:25:39.000 Imprisoning children, not who we are, because that's not who we are, but building a wall on the border?

00:25:44.000 That's not who we are.

00:25:45.000 President Trump responds by saying, we would like a steel barrier, please.

00:25:47.000 This isn't that tough.

00:25:48.000 He tweeted out, VP Mike Pence and group had a productive meeting with the Schumer-Pelosi representatives today.

00:25:53.000 Many details of border security were discussed.

00:25:55.000 We are now planning a steel barrier rather than concrete.

00:25:57.000 It is both stronger and less obtrusive.

00:25:59.000 Good solution and made in the USA. 0.99

00:26:01.000 I don't know why Trump thinks this comes across Obviously, it does not come across as a compromise.

00:26:06.000 Nonetheless, he is trotting out members of his administration to claim that it is.

00:26:10.000 Mick Mulvaney, who is his new chief of staff, was on Meet the Press, and he said that President Trump is compromising by shifting from a wall to a fence, which is not actually a compromise, but here he is.

00:26:19.000 Fences that we have built on the southern border, the ones that were already there under Republican leadership, Democrat leadership, they're in San Diego, they're in El Paso, more than 90% effective in preventing criminal immigration. 0.81

00:26:31.000 We need more of that.

00:26:33.000 Do we need it from coast to coast, 2,000 miles all the way across?

00:26:36.000 No, and the President has admitted as such.

00:26:38.000 There are places in the middle of nowhere where technology will be better.

00:26:41.000 But a barrier?

00:26:42.000 Call it a wall, call it a fence.

00:26:44.000 The President actually said he didn't care what you call it.

00:26:46.000 He even offered to let the Democrats help him design something.

00:26:50.000 He says as long as it's effective, he doesn't care what you call it.

00:26:53.000 We need something to prevent people from coming into this country illegally. 1.00

00:26:56.000 The president isn't wrong on this and Mick Mulvaney is not wrong on this.

00:26:59.000 I will say that the tactics that are being used by both sides are obviously pandering to their respective bases.

00:27:03.000 So when it comes to the Democrats, they are pandering to their base by saying we don't need a barrier of any kind.

00:27:09.000 That walls themselves are an imposition.

00:27:11.000 Ooh, it's so terrible.

00:27:12.000 Eric Swalwell, who wants to run for president for some odd reason, he tweeted out that a wall separates us and them.

00:27:19.000 Right, like citizens and people trying to get in illegally.

00:27:23.000 Correct, Eric Swalwell.

00:27:24.000 And then he said that's not who we are in the U.S.

00:27:26.000 Literally, that's how you define a nation, is by separating us from them.

00:27:29.000 That doesn't mean that them are bad, but it does mean that you have to separate populations, otherwise you don't know who's a citizen and who is not a citizen.

00:27:36.000 So Democrats are pandering to their most radical base, and then President Trump is pandering to his base in the sense that he should have done this immediately upon entering office.

00:27:43.000 He had a Republican Congress, he had a Republican Senate.

00:27:45.000 Holding his own Senate's feet to the fire would have been a better move than trying to hold Nancy Pelosi's feet to the fire.

00:27:50.000 Now President Trump is supposedly considering using emergency powers to build the wall.

00:27:55.000 According to CNN on Friday, President Trump said he was considering using emergency powers which would allow him to use military funding to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

00:28:03.000 He said, I can do it if I want.

00:28:05.000 He said, we can call a national emergency because of the security.

00:28:08.000 I haven't done it.

00:28:09.000 I may do it, but we can call a national emergency and build it very quickly.

00:28:13.000 So presumably he would be talking about invoking two separate laws.

00:28:16.000 One is 10 U.S.

00:28:17.000 Code Section 284, support for counter drug activities and activities to counter transnational organized crime.

00:28:23.000 That provision says that the Secretary of Defense may provide support for the counter drug activities or activities to counter transnational organized crime of any department or agency of the federal government if Such support is requested by the official responsible for the counter-drug activities or by the appropriate state officials, and this could amount to the maintenance and repair of equipment that has been used to stop such drug-related activity.

00:28:48.000 So, it's never been invoked in this way, that you have somebody on the border and then they say to the president, we need border wall, please misdirect funding from other Department of Defense priorities to the wall because of counter-drug activity.

00:29:01.000 Also, it would be kind of a stretch to suggest that This would fall under maintenance or repair or upgrading of equipment that usually amounts to, you know, making the equipment better, not building an entirely new barrier that spans thousands of miles of United States border.

00:29:14.000 Legally speaking, it would be difficult for the president to do this, nor really should he, because we don't want the president routinely using national emergency powers to do stuff he can't otherwise get congressional approval for.

00:29:24.000 10 U.S.

00:29:24.000 Code 2808 is the other one that he theoretically could use.

00:29:27.000 This is construction authority in the event of a declaration of war or national emergency.

00:29:32.000 This is what he's talking about with a national emergency under this provision of U.S.

00:29:36.000 law.

00:29:36.000 In the event of a declaration of war or the declaration by the president of a national emergency in accordance with the National Emergencies Act that requires the use of the armed forces, the secretary of defense, without regard to any other provision of law, may undertake military construction projects.

00:29:50.000 This has only been used in the aftermath of 9-11 to build up military bases in certain areas.

00:29:55.000 And it's supposed to be an emergency use.

00:29:57.000 It's supposed to be that Congress just hasn't had time to consider the reprioritization of defense funding.

00:30:03.000 It is not really supposed to be a way of overruling Congress when Congress doesn't want to do something.

00:30:07.000 Listen, again, I'm in favor of the wall.

00:30:11.000 I'm in favor of Trump putting pressure on Congress over the wall.

00:30:13.000 I'm in favor of Trump saying that he's happy to shut down the government.

00:30:15.000 I don't really care about any of that.

00:30:16.000 What I do care about is you don't get to expand the national emergency powers of the executive branch without understanding that Democrats will do exactly the same thing the other way.

00:30:25.000 Wait until the shoe's on the other foot and Democrats declare that they are going to have to build out some sort of facility that you don't want them to build out, some national surveillance facility that you don't want them to build out because Congress won't give them what they want and it's a national emergency.

00:30:39.000 Wait until they do that. 0.96

00:30:40.000 Expanding the powers of the presidency is never a good idea, even when you think that the president is somebody of your party who's doing something that you like.

00:30:48.000 This would be struck down in court, and it should be struck down in court.

00:30:50.000 Now, in just a second, I want to talk about an ideological rift that's broken out inside the Republican Party that I think is really deeply, deeply important.

00:30:58.000 It's because of a monologue Tucker Carlson gave that brings it up.

00:31:02.000 I want to get to this.

00:31:03.000 I really think it may be the most important thing that we talk about today.

00:31:06.000 But first, let's talk about your investment strategy.

00:31:08.000 So you don't know all that much about investment, right?

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00:32:21.000 Okay, I want to get to what I think is actually the most important section of today's show, which is Tucker Carlson's take on populism and the debate that's now broken out on the right over the role of government in American life and in the economy.

00:32:33.000 But first, you're going to have to go over to dailyware.com and subscribe.

00:32:35.000 So today it begins.

00:32:38.000 Starting today, The Ben Shapiro Show is rolling out two more hours of me.

00:32:44.000 You can listen live on radio in a bunch of markets across the country, but only subscribers will be able to get the full three hour show On demand, meaning my podcast and the two additional hours we're doing a little bit later this afternoon.

00:32:55.000 So make sure to subscribe to dailywire.com right now.

00:32:59.000 It's just $9.99 a month, means you get all the old episodes and it means you get all the new episodes.

00:33:03.000 Like you really will not be able to get this stuff, right?

00:33:05.000 Even if you're in a big talk radio market where my show is broadcast.

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00:33:13.000 You're not going to get all three hours in the car unless you're a truck driver or something, which is great.

00:33:17.000 But most people are not going to be able to do that.

00:33:19.000 And that means that really what you ought to be doing is going and subscribing so you can get all the hours on demand whenever you want them.

00:33:25.000 And you can see the clips.

00:33:26.000 And we're going to be doing a thing as the time rolls forward where we take your subscriber questions during some of the breaks.

00:33:32.000 It's going to be a blast.

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00:33:39.000 Go check it out.

00:33:39.000 I mean, Senya is getting up at like four o'clock in the morning, my producer, to make sure that you have the content that you need.

00:33:45.000 The least you can do is pay for her coffee.

00:33:47.000 She's a charming person.

00:33:48.000 I promise you, Senya's a wonderful person.

00:33:50.000 How dare you, sir, not pay for her coffee?

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00:34:12.000 We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast in the nation.

00:34:15.000 So one of the things I love talking about on the show is obviously conservative philosophy and ideology.

00:34:25.000 You know, the things that are really important that we like to discuss.

00:34:28.000 Because while the left is a real threat, there is also a serious debate that is broken out inside the right over the role of the free market.

00:34:35.000 Now, I know that a lot of folks who are kind of older conservatives, Reagan conservatives, they're not necessarily aware that this debate has broken out because it's been glossed over by a lot of politicians.

00:34:44.000 A lot of politicians say things like, I love the free market, but...

00:34:48.000 Well, once you add that but to the end of I love the free market, what you're really talking about is government interventionism in the market.

00:34:54.000 The person who made, I think, the best case for such interventionism made that case last week.

00:34:59.000 He gave a monologue on his Fox News show, Tucker Carlson.

00:35:01.000 It was about a 15-minute monologue regarding the future of economics and politics in the United States.

00:35:05.000 Now, I've interviewed Tucker Carlson.

00:35:07.000 We did a Sunday special on my podcast with Tucker where we discussed a lot of these issues.

00:35:12.000 I really think that Tucker is wrong on a lot of this, but I think that the economic populism he's espousing is becoming increasingly popular in a Republican Party that has forgotten a lot of its free market capitalistic roots.

00:35:23.000 And is ignoring the benefits of the free market in favor of government interventionism.

00:35:27.000 I think they are looking for fixes in the wrong places.

00:35:30.000 I think what ails America right now is a crisis of soul.

00:35:33.000 What ails America right now is a hole in the American heart.

00:35:37.000 A hole that used to be filled by community and social fabric and religion and that has fallen apart and now people are seeking to fill that hole with economic solutions.

00:35:45.000 In the same way that some folks on the left seek to fill that hole in the American heart with economic solutions, they attribute the problems in America to bad policy.

00:35:53.000 And there's truth to the idea that the American government has pursued bad policy, but I would say that bad policy is largely welfare-based.

00:36:00.000 Tucker and a lot of members of the Republican Party are now claiming That the bad policy is trade-based, for example, that we need tariffs.

00:36:06.000 Or that it is a failure of redistributionism, that we need higher taxes.

00:36:10.000 These are cases being made by actual populists inside the Republican coalition.

00:36:15.000 So I think the strongest possible case for this was made by Tucker over the last week.

00:36:20.000 And he basically argues that the social breakdown that we are seeing is a result of government non-interventionism.

00:36:26.000 We actually need more government in our lives.

00:36:28.000 So here is how Tucker let off his monologue.

00:36:32.000 What kind of country will it be then?

00:36:34.000 How do we want our grandchildren to live?

00:36:36.000 Those are the only questions that matter.

00:36:38.000 The answer to them used to be obvious.

00:36:40.000 The overriding goal for America is more prosperity, meaning cheaper consumer goods.

00:36:45.000 But is that still true?

00:36:46.000 Does anyone still believe that cheaper iPhones or more Amazon deliveries of plastic garbage from China are going to make us happy?

00:36:54.000 They haven't so far.

00:36:55.000 A lot of Americans are drowning in stuff, and yet drug addiction and suicide are depopulating large parts of the country. 1.00

00:37:02.000 Anyone who thinks the health of a nation can be summed up in GDP is an idiot. 1.00

00:37:06.000 Okay, the health of a nation cannot be summed up in GDP. 1.00

00:37:09.000 I don't know a single Republican conservative who believes that the health of a nation overall can be summed up in GDP.

00:37:15.000 I have decried the breakdown of our social fabric in a time when we are freer and more prosperous than we have ever been.

00:37:21.000 That breakdown, though, is not attributable to economics.

00:37:23.000 And here's where Tucker goes wrong.

00:37:25.000 So what Tucker says is, our GDP has gone up and our life expectancy in the last couple of years has gone down.

00:37:30.000 Obviously, that's an economic problem.

00:37:32.000 I would say no.

00:37:33.000 What we've seen over the past two centuries is a massive rise in life expectancy, a massive decline in child mortality.

00:37:40.000 Our children are alive and our parents are alive because of the rise of free markets and capitalism and innovation and entrepreneurship, low taxes, less government regulation.

00:37:48.000 All of that has led to the prosperity we enjoy.

00:37:50.000 If we are blowing that, That is our own fault.

00:37:52.000 That doesn't have to do with our capacity to get those cheap products.

00:37:56.000 He can decry cheap products from Amazon as much as he wants, but you have a nicer phone, you have a nicer car, you have a nicer house, you have a nicer table, you have a nicer microwave, you have a nicer refrigerator, you have all those things because of the free market.

00:38:07.000 Now, nobody said that that stuff was going to make you happy.

00:38:10.000 But to conflate the two problems as though the nicer refrigerator is what has made you unhappy is a huge mistake.

00:38:16.000 And it's a mistake made by people who are on the left and also on the right.

00:38:21.000 So what I would say is, yes, all this stuff has made us more prosperous.

00:38:25.000 It hasn't necessarily made us more happy.

00:38:26.000 I don't know a single religious person who's ever made an opposite contention, by the way.

00:38:30.000 Moses says this, Jesus says this, every major prophet of the Old Testament says this, that stuff isn't going to make you happy.

00:38:36.000 The Beatles said it, right?

00:38:38.000 Stuff ain't gonna make you happy.

00:38:40.000 But Tucker seems to think that if you redistribute the stuff, then that may make you more happy.

00:38:44.000 So Tucker goes on and he says that what we really need is an economy that is structured for us, the people.

00:38:50.000 Now this sounds a lot more like Bernie Sanders than it does like Ronald Reagan.

00:38:53.000 And this is happening inside the Republican Party.

00:38:55.000 So here is what Tucker had to say.

00:38:56.000 The goal for America is both simpler and more elusive than mere prosperity.

00:39:01.000 It's happiness.

00:39:03.000 There are a lot of ingredients in being happy.

00:39:06.000 Dignity, purpose, self-control, independence, above all, deep relationships with other people.

00:39:12.000 Those are the things that you want for your children.

00:39:14.000 They're what our leaders should want for us, and would want if they cared.

00:39:17.000 So I agree that our leaders don't want enough social fabric for us, but again, this is not an economic problem.

00:39:22.000 And when Tucker says this is an economic problem, he's got a problem himself.

00:39:26.000 When he says that the goal in America is happiness, no, the goal in America is pursuit of happiness.

00:39:30.000 If you fail to pursue happiness properly, that is your fault.

00:39:33.000 Freedom is about getting everyone out of the way, and then it's your job To pursue happiness, which the founders saw as an actual goal.

00:39:40.000 Happiness was not just like what you want to do today.

00:39:42.000 Happiness was pursuing virtue in accordance with reason.

00:39:46.000 That's what happiness was to the founders.

00:39:48.000 And so the idea was government was going to get in your way, get government out of your way, and now it's your job to pursue happiness.

00:39:52.000 And a free economy allows you to alienate your labor and to act like a free person in doing so.

00:39:57.000 All of that is good and necessary and vital.

00:40:00.000 But the economy and your spiritual existence are two different things.

00:40:05.000 So in a second, I want to get to more from Tucker on this.

00:40:08.000 Because I think that he's not wrong when he points out that we have a sole problem in the United States.

00:40:12.000 He's wrong when he says we can fill that sole problem with an economics solution.

00:40:16.000 When he says that we want dignity and purpose and self-control and independence for our children, that's true.

00:40:22.000 But that's not a problem that can be solved by simply slapping a tariff on China.

00:40:26.000 As a parent, these are problems that are solved by you talking to your children about values, and morality, and decency.

00:40:33.000 That's where the lack comes in.

00:40:35.000 17-year-olds are not committing suicide because Pops lost his job at the factory in 1994.

00:40:40.000 17-year-olds are committing suicide because their parents got divorced.

00:40:43.000 17-year-olds are committing suicide because they live in a world without values, without social fabric, and without guidance.

00:40:49.000 That's why 17-year-olds are killing themselves.

00:40:52.000 That's why the opioid epidemic is happening.

00:40:55.000 It's happening because, yes, there were markets created for addictive substances.

00:40:59.000 And that's a place where we can talk about how the market has failed.

00:41:02.000 But that's not really what Tucker's talking about.

00:41:03.000 What he's talking about is the idea that an economy ought to be chained up and it ought to work for us.

00:41:09.000 Except you can't enslave an economy any more than you can properly enslave a person.

00:41:13.000 Nor should you.

00:41:14.000 Freedom matters.

00:41:16.000 So Tucker continues by saying that the big problem here is not that we don't know what to do, it's that our leaders just don't care about us.

00:41:24.000 And this I object to.

00:41:25.000 I think that our leaders do care about us. 0.99

00:41:27.000 I just think they suck at their jobs. 0.96

00:41:29.000 I think they care about pandering to us for votes. 0.96

00:41:31.000 I think maybe what we ought to have is a leadership class that is more concerned with doing right Then is concerned with pleasing its own population.

00:41:40.000 Edmund Burke talked about this a lot, the British statesman.

00:41:42.000 He suggested that being a representative of your public didn't just mean channeling what your public wants at any given moment.

00:41:48.000 It also meant sometimes standing up to that public and saying that what's best for them is not necessarily what they think it is.

00:41:54.000 Maybe what's best for them is freedom.

00:41:57.000 Being an elitist, it's so funny, Tucker rails against the elites.

00:41:59.000 I rail against elitists.

00:42:01.000 I think people who think they can control your life are the people who are wrong.

00:42:04.000 Tucker seems to think that the people who control your life ought to simply take control of the ring that is the government, like the J.R.R.

00:42:12.000 Tolkien ring that is the government, and use it on behalf of you.

00:42:15.000 My view is that that is an elitist point of view.

00:42:18.000 Nobody should control that ring because that ring does not belong to anyone.

00:42:23.000 The market is something we hold in common.

00:42:24.000 Our society is something we hold in common.

00:42:25.000 You don't get to seize the power from that society and then administer it top-down for the benefit of any particular group, no matter how much that group happens to be suffering.

00:42:34.000 Here's Tucker, though, making this case.

00:42:36.000 But our leaders don't care.

00:42:38.000 We are ruled by mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule.

00:42:42.000 One of the biggest lies our leaders tell us is that you can separate economics from everything else that matters.

00:42:48.000 Economics is a topic for public debate.

00:42:50.000 Family and faith and culture, meanwhile, those are personal matters.

00:42:54.000 Both parties believe this.

00:42:56.000 That is not true at all.

00:42:57.000 Okay, the Democratic Party does not actually believe that economics is a topic for public debate, but family, faith, and culture are personal matters.

00:43:04.000 That's nonsense.

00:43:05.000 He called the Democratic Party in this monologue, functionally libertarian.

00:43:09.000 How disconnected do you have to be to believe that the Democratic Party is functionally libertarian?

00:43:13.000 They want to control every aspect of your life, but they are functionally libertarian.

00:43:17.000 It's because Tucker and a lot of populists are trying to create a third wave, right?

00:43:20.000 A new wave of people who are not Republicans and not Democrats.

00:43:23.000 They're populists.

00:43:25.000 Except it turns out that both, if there is some sort of consensus, it is from the Democratic Party and the Republican Party that they ought to control too much of your life.

00:43:32.000 Not that they agree that we shouldn't control any of your life, but that they ought to control too much of your life and restructure the economy to their liking.

00:43:40.000 Tucker makes the case that social conservatives have blown it.

00:43:43.000 Why?

00:43:43.000 Because he says that market forces have destroyed the family.

00:43:47.000 So again, this is Tucker railing against the free market.

00:43:49.000 This is happening inside the conservative movement.

00:43:51.000 Now, I like and respect Tucker a lot.

00:43:52.000 I think Tucker's a smart guy.

00:43:53.000 I think he's really talented.

00:43:55.000 But I think that this is dangerous stuff from a conservative point of view.

00:43:59.000 Tucker suggests that families are being crushed by market forces.

00:44:02.000 Here's what he has to say.

00:44:05.000 by market forces never seems to occur to them.

00:44:08.000 They refuse to consider it.

00:44:10.000 Questioning markets feels like apostasy.

00:44:13.000 Both sides in this miss the obvious point.

00:44:16.000 Culture and economics are inseparably intertwined.

00:44:21.000 Certain economic systems allow families to thrive.

00:44:23.000 You know which economic systems allow families to thrive?

00:44:26.000 The same economic systems that allow individuals to thrive.

00:44:28.000 Free markets allow families to thrive.

00:44:30.000 Socialist countries do not have solid families.

00:44:32.000 Communist countries do not have solid families.

00:44:34.000 When the government becomes your family, your family falls apart.

00:44:38.000 If you believe that capitalism has undermined the free market, I mean, it has undermined the family, what I would suggest is that cultural forces have undermined the family at the same time that capitalism has eliminated poverty globally.

00:44:50.000 Again, that's our fault.

00:44:52.000 Cultural forces and economic forces may be intertwined, but not so much so that added prosperity means that families are falling apart.

00:45:00.000 So how exactly does Tucker make that case?

00:45:02.000 So I would make the case that the economic forces that have led to the decline of families largely lie in the welfare state.

00:45:08.000 So the welfare state that has convinced people that they don't need to stay with their partner when raising a child.

00:45:14.000 That has destroyed the family.

00:45:16.000 And you can see the statistics.

00:45:17.000 In 1960, basically the White illegitimacy rate to make this a non-racial issue. 0.52

00:45:22.000 The white illegitimacy rate was near zero. 0.91

00:45:24.000 Today it's 36%.

00:45:27.000 That doesn't happen because of simple freedom in the free market.

00:45:32.000 That happens because people have been incentivized not to stick around with their kids and with their wives.

00:45:38.000 And women have been incentivized not to stick around with their husbands. 0.99

00:45:41.000 But Tucker basically proclaims that the free markets have led to the decline of family.

00:45:46.000 He says that male wages declined because manufacturing has declined.

00:45:50.000 First of all, it's not factually true.

00:45:51.000 Manufacturing has not disappeared.

00:45:52.000 It's remarkably stable.

00:45:54.000 The rest of our economy has grown.

00:45:56.000 Manufacturing represents less of a percentage of our overall economy than it did 50 years ago, but it represents exactly the same amount of productivity that it did 50 years ago.

00:46:04.000 The middle class in the United States is not disappearing.

00:46:07.000 And then he suggests that women are making too much money and that's why they're not getting married, which again is contrary to what's actually happening.

00:46:13.000 The women who are not getting married are not women making $100,000 a year and then having a baby out of wedlock.

00:46:18.000 The women who are not getting married are the women who are making $20,000 a year and don't have a marriageable husband. 0.99

00:46:25.000 And are getting knocked up.

00:46:26.000 I mean, that's where single motherhood is coming from. 1.00

00:46:29.000 Now, the real problem that I have, where it finally comes down, is that Tucker basically suggests that we have a rich class in the United States of elites who are not helping out the poor class in the United States enough, and they ought to be doing so with money.

00:46:39.000 My contention is that this is not a money problem.

00:46:42.000 This is not a money problem.

00:46:43.000 There are plenty of market failures, there are plenty of problems with the market, and we can talk about those.

00:46:47.000 But to pretend that capitalism, that market capitalism, he says, market capitalism is a tool like a staple gun or a toaster.

00:46:53.000 No, market capitalism is a representation of our deepest values, a value that suggests that we are free individuals with the capacity to alienate our own labor, to contract with each other, to make deals with each other, to make free choices in our own life.

00:47:07.000 Market capitalism is not one choice among many.

00:47:09.000 It is the only free choice in a land of tyranny.

00:47:13.000 Market capitalism isn't the problem here.

00:47:15.000 The problem is a problem of the human soul and the breakdown of the social institutions that inculcated virtue and that virtue was necessary to upholding a stable free market in which people could live together in peace and solidarity.

00:47:27.000 Okay, with all that said, time for some things that I like and then some things that I hate.

00:47:30.000 So...

00:47:32.000 Things that I like today.

00:47:33.000 So over the weekend, I went and I saw Aquaman.

00:47:35.000 Now, I know everyone thinks I'm a DC partisan because I am a DC partisan, but hey, I'll say it.

00:47:39.000 I thought Justice League was abysmal, right?

00:47:41.000 I said it at the time. 0.72

00:47:41.000 I thought Justice League stunk. 0.72

00:47:43.000 And when I saw the preview for Aquaman, I didn't know what to think.

00:47:45.000 I mean, it looked kind of cheesy.

00:47:47.000 And it is.

00:47:48.000 And it's great.

00:47:49.000 OK, Aquaman, first of all, the special effects are better than anything you've seen in a Marvel movie in the recent past at all.

00:47:57.000 I mean, the special effects in this movie are actually first rate.

00:47:59.000 There are a couple of scenes that just look great.

00:48:02.000 And Jason Momoa, who plays Aquaman, it's not that he's a great actor, but he plays Jason Momoa.

00:48:08.000 And it turns out Jason Momoa is really good at playing Jason Momoa.

00:48:11.000 Aquaman is basically a dude bro.

00:48:12.000 And it's kind of great.

00:48:14.000 It's kind of fun.

00:48:15.000 So here's a little bit of the preview, which doesn't do justice to the actual movie, which is raking in the money, as well it should, because it's a pretty good movie.

00:48:21.000 And it's certainly a lot of fun to watch and look at.

00:48:23.000 Here's a little bit of the preview.

00:48:26.000 My father was a lighthouse keeper.

00:48:29.000 My mother was a queen.

00:48:32.000 But life is a way of bringing people together.

00:48:36.000 We could unite our worlds one day.

00:48:39.000 Check it out!

00:48:40.000 Arthur is talking to the fish.

00:48:42.000 Oh, let me go!

00:48:44.000 They made me what I am. - Okay, so it's kind of great, and Jason Momoa is kind of great, and there's some really terrific action set pieces.

00:49:01.000 What's amazing about the DC Universe is that they really blew it in how they rolled this thing out.

00:49:05.000 So, they rolled out Man of Steel, which is the Superman movie, and then they did not do a standalone Batman movie, and then they did not do a standalone Wonder Woman movie, and then they did not do a standalone Aquaman or Cyborg movie.

00:49:15.000 Instead, they rolled out Justice League, right?

00:49:17.000 They did Man of Steel, and then they did Batman v. Superman, and then they did Justice League.

00:49:21.000 Like, all of these right back-to-back.

00:49:23.000 I think they did Wonder Woman right before Justice League, actually.

00:49:25.000 What you have to do is what Marvel did, right?

00:49:27.000 You bring out each of these heroes individually in their own movie, and then you have the crossover.

00:49:32.000 So they blew that.

00:49:34.000 But anybody who says the DC Universe is dead, Wonder Woman is a standalone franchise, and that's making all sorts of money.

00:49:39.000 Aquaman is now a standalone franchise.

00:49:41.000 This movie is going to make more money than Wonder Woman by leaps and bounds.

00:49:44.000 It's made a bunch, a bunch of money because it's a pretty good movie.

00:49:47.000 So that means Aquaman is alive, and it means that Wonder Woman is alive.

00:49:51.000 It means you need to recast Superman.

00:49:53.000 It means you need to recast Batman.

00:49:54.000 It means that you need to do a cyborg movie that's actually pretty good.

00:49:57.000 And then it means that you need to do another crossover movie and basically act like Justice League didn't exist.

00:50:01.000 That's what has to happen in the DC Universe.

00:50:03.000 But the DC Universe is very much alive and kicking and good for the people who put together Aquaman, which is a fun movie, okay?

00:50:10.000 Okay, other things that I like today.

00:50:11.000 So, there is a rule in politics that there are certain things that you're not allowed to say, that you just can't say.

00:50:20.000 One of the things you're not allowed to say and you're not allowed to talk about is what they call rapid-onset gender dysphoria.

00:50:24.000 So we talked about this a few months back.

00:50:26.000 There was an abstract from Brown University that specifically talked about how basically gender dysphoria was being treated like cutting or like bulimia or anorexia.

00:50:35.000 It was becoming a trendy thing among certain groups.

00:50:38.000 of particularly young women, and then people were sort of doing it in groups, that people who were surrounded by folks who considered themselves transgender were more likely to start considering themselves transgender.

00:50:47.000 Abigail Schreier has a very, very gutsy column in today's Wall Street Journal talking about all of this, saying, like other social contagions, such as cutting and bulimia, rapid onset gender dysphoria overwhelmingly afflicts girls, but unlike other conditions, this one, though not necessarily at sufferers, gets full support from the medical community.

00:51:04.000 The standard for dealing with teens who assert they are transgender is affirmative care, immediately granting the patient's stated identity. 0.56

00:51:10.000 There are, to be sure, a few dissenters.

00:51:11.000 This idea of what we're supposed to do as therapists is to affirm?

00:51:14.000 That's not my job, says psychotherapist Lisa Marciano.

00:51:17.000 If I work with somebody who's really suicidal because his wife left him, I don't call his wife up and say, hey, you've got to come back.

00:51:23.000 We don't treat suicide by giving people exactly what they want, but giving in to patients' demands is exactly what most medical professionals do when faced with ROGD.

00:51:31.000 Like fashionable and tragic misdiagnoses of the past, this one comes with irreversible physical trauma.

00:51:37.000 And this column is a gutsy column talking about something you're not supposed to talk about, which is the fact that rapid-onset gender dysphoria is a thing, that it is not a reflection of a deep-seated biological need to change your gender, that the treatment for it is not always effective, and that maybe we ought to consider more seriously before we go along with the, it's time to mutilate your body because you said six months ago and discovered six months ago that you're a member of the opposite gender because you went to a gender studies course at Brown.

00:52:03.000 It's a pretty gutsy column, you should go check it out in today's Wall Street Journal.

00:52:06.000 Okay, time for a couple of quick things that I hate.

00:52:12.000 So the Golden Globes were, last night, they were predictably terrible.

00:52:16.000 The Golden Globes, I don't even know why anyone pays attention to them.

00:52:18.000 It's the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which is like seven guys who are really old from places we don't care about.

00:52:23.000 And they gave the top musical or drama award, or musical or comedy award, to the Queen movie.

00:52:30.000 Which, apparently, to Bohemian Rhapsody, which apparently wasn't even very good.

00:52:33.000 And then they gave the best drama award to, I believe, Green Book?

00:52:36.000 Correct?

00:52:38.000 Which is, by all accounts, rather mediocre.

00:52:41.000 Like, it's okay, but it's something special.

00:52:44.000 Not a shock there.

00:52:45.000 Also not a shock when a bunch of people got up and made leftist messaging points because this is what we do now.

00:52:50.000 So here is Christian Bale.

00:52:52.000 Christian Bale won a Best Actor in a Comedy award for Vice because we have to give lots of awards to a movie that no one has ever seen or will see.

00:53:01.000 Vice, a movie about Dick Cheney, apparently scrawled in crayon by Adam McKay.

00:53:07.000 Christian Bale gets up and credits Satan for his inspiration in playing Dick Cheney.

00:53:12.000 He should know, since he allegedly had a physical altercation with his own mother and was screaming at the light people famously on set.

00:53:19.000 Christian Bale, famous crazy person, talking about how Satan was his inspiration for Dick Cheney.

00:53:26.000 Thank you to that geezer over there, Adam. 0.61

00:53:29.000 He said, he said, uh, he said, I've got to find somebody who can, who can be absolutely charisma-free and reviled by everybody.

00:53:39.000 So he went, that's got to be Bale.

00:53:41.000 What do you think?

00:53:41.000 Mitch McConnell?

00:53:42.000 Next?

00:53:43.000 That could be good, couldn't it?

00:53:48.000 Thank you to Satan for giving me inspiration on how to play this role.

00:53:54.000 Okay, so he's the second prominent leftist after Saul Alinsky to thank Satan for his inspiration.

00:54:00.000 But it is amazing how everybody claps and cheers in Hollywood for all this sort of stuff. 0.94

00:54:03.000 Do you think anybody in Hollywood would ever have the balls to do a movie like this about Hillary Clinton, who actually is extraordinarily Parodical? 0.95

00:54:10.000 Like you could just do a parody of her full time? 0.99

00:54:13.000 Of course not.

00:54:13.000 The best part of this Golden Globes, by the way, was the opening monologue where Andy Samberg, along with Sandra Oh, is that who that is?

00:54:21.000 So the two of them did a monologue in which they made no jokes because this is what they have been relegated to. 0.52

00:54:27.000 What's funny about this is that everybody gets the joke, but nobody's willing to say that the joke is that everyone in Hollywood is a nasty, nasty, horrible human being who will destroy somebody's career on a whim.

00:54:36.000 Here is the opening monologue where they deliberately make no jokes.

00:54:39.000 Without mentioning that the real reason they're making no jokes is because everyone is scared crapless in Hollywood of having their career destroyed like Kevin Hart has had his career destroyed.

00:54:48.000 We're gonna have some fun, give out some awards, and one lucky audience member will host the Oscars!

00:54:56.000 Now, some of you may be wondering why the two of us are hosting together.

00:55:00.000 And the reason is, we're the only two people left in Hollywood who haven't gotten in trouble for saying something offensive.

00:55:06.000 Oh, Sandra, that reminds me.

00:55:08.000 You know what race of people really gets under my skin?

00:55:11.000 Andy?

00:55:11.000 The Hollywood half-marathon.

00:55:14.000 Because it messes up all the traffic, you know?

00:55:16.000 Oh, yeah. 0.98

00:55:17.000 I hate that race of people. 1.00

00:55:19.000 It's the worst race of people. 1.00

00:55:21.000 Okay, so again, this is what humor has been relegated to, and they don't even get that this is what they've done, right?

00:55:26.000 This is what Hollywood has done.

00:55:27.000 They're laughing at their own inability to laugh at things.

00:55:29.000 So, well done, Hollywood.

00:55:30.000 Just really, really expert stuff right there.

00:55:33.000 Okay, final point in the things that I hate today.

00:55:34.000 So, I want to mention this.

00:55:36.000 Last week, I had a meeting with some folks at a charity.

00:55:38.000 I don't want to mention which charity because it's really not relevant.

00:55:40.000 It was a non-partisan charity involved in a cause that is supremely non-partisan.

00:55:45.000 It was a charity in the arts, right?

00:55:47.000 And they were looking for a board member.

00:55:48.000 And I was seriously considering joining the board of this charity because why the hell not?

00:55:53.000 And then it occurred to me, I mean, I warned them, look, I'm political, which means that probably there'll be other people on the board who don't like what I have to say, but who cares?

00:55:59.000 I don't like what they have to say.

00:56:00.000 We're all here to help out people in the arts.

00:56:03.000 And one of the board members said, well, there may come a point where there's a bunch of resistance to you and we have to throw you off the board.

00:56:09.000 And it occurred to me that we now live in a reality so nasty and terrible that if you are of the right wing, you cannot actually be on a nonpartisan board helping people in completely nonpartisan ways, in completely anodyne ways, out of fear that somebody will target you and other members of the left who are on the nonpartisan board will see fit to destroy your life for having tried to do something charitable.

00:56:33.000 That's where we are.

00:56:34.000 Well, the same thing is true in comedy.

00:56:35.000 The same thing is true in Hollywood.

00:56:36.000 It's true across the board. 0.87

00:56:37.000 It's really nasty and it's really ugly.

00:56:40.000 If we can't get together on nonpartisan boards to even do good things out of fear that someday somebody is going to come down on one of the members of the board and the other members of the board will see fit to destroy that person who is just there trying to do a good thing, I don't know how we're going to get along.

00:56:52.000 I mean, you want to talk about the breakdown of the social fabric that has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with values, principles, and decency, all of which seem to have fled via the back door.

00:57:00.000 All right.

00:57:01.000 Well, we will be back here a little bit later today.

00:57:03.000 So go check it out over at dailywire.com.

00:57:05.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:57:06.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:57:10.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.

00:57:16.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:57:21.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:57:22.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.

00:57:24.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:57:26.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.

The Ben Shapiro Show - January 07, 2019

Being Radical Means Never Having To Say True Things | Ep. 689

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