The Ben Shapiro Show - Bill Maher | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 124

00:00:00.000 All people talk about is politics all the time.

00:00:02.000 What is Facebook?

00:00:03.000 It's arguing with some kid you went to high school with.

00:00:06.000 You were in chem lab together, and now you have to talk about who's on the Supreme Court?

00:00:11.000 That's, I think, what is tearing America apart.

00:00:14.000 Because there's a million things you could talk about that aren't political, and you find out, oh, this person is not that different from me.

00:00:24.000 You know the crowd is not with you.

00:00:26.000 I got that impression, yeah.

00:00:28.000 I've joined Bill Maher on his show a couple of times in the last couple of years.

00:00:32.000 It's always a blast.

00:00:39.000 In this episode, Bill returns the favor.

00:00:41.000 His long-running show, Real Time with Bill Maher, hits its 20th year on the air next year.

00:00:46.000 It's been Bill's vehicle to challenge, and often mock, politics of the day from his liberal perspective.

00:00:51.000 But Bill's one of those old-school liberals you don't see too much of these days.

00:00:54.000 Progressive ideas on taking care of people and the environment, but also an adamant defender of free speech and a critic of wokeness, meaning his commentary and joking about news and politics often hits the left, too.

00:01:04.000 ...of the Andrew Cuomo death watch.

00:01:06.000 Biden called on him to resign.

00:01:08.000 Nancy Pelosi called on him to resign.

00:01:11.000 Chuck Schumer, yes, called on him to resign.

00:01:13.000 Anthony Weiner called for a double date.

00:01:15.000 That's a different kind of guy.

00:01:19.000 Given the Russia and Ukraine news right now, in this episode, we revisit President Trump's presence on the world stage and his relationship with Russia versus that of President Biden.

00:01:27.000 We'll also discuss left-wing media misinformation and dishonesty on COVID the last couple of years, and what it would take for Bill to cross that political aisle and finally vote Republican.

00:01:45.000 Hey and welcome.

00:01:46.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special.

00:01:48.000 This show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.

00:01:50.000 I talk about them every single show.

00:01:51.000 Why haven't you gotten a VPN yet?

00:01:53.000 Get ExpressVPN right now at expressvpn.com slash ben.

00:01:56.000 Speaking of which, what do big tech and big government have in common?

00:02:00.000 They both want to silence any dissenting voices.

00:02:02.000 Let's say you're a proud gun owner.

00:02:03.000 You want to talk on social media about the right to bear arms.

00:02:05.000 Well, chances are very, very good that your post will be flagged by a content moderator You might end up on some kind of government watch list.

00:02:11.000 If you want to fight back against having your voice censored by both Big Tech and Big Government, I recommend ExpressVPN.

00:02:17.000 See, the problem with Big Tech is that not only do they attempt to censor you, they also track what you do online.

00:02:22.000 What you're searching for, the videos you watch, everything you click.

00:02:25.000 And they can match your activities, your true identity, using your device's unique IP address.

00:02:29.000 When I use ExpressVPN, they can't see my IP address at all.

00:02:32.000 My identity is anonymized by a secure VPN server.

00:02:34.000 Plus, ExpressVPN encrypts 100% of my internet data for protection, from hackers and eavesdroppers.

00:02:40.000 ExpressVPN, it's by far the best VPN I've tried.

00:02:42.000 You don't have to take my word for it, by the way.

00:02:44.000 It's rated number one by Business Insider and countless other tech publications.

00:02:48.000 What I love most about ExpressVPN, it's super easy to use.

00:02:50.000 The app has one button, you tap it, you're protected, you're done.

00:02:53.000 It's that simple.

00:02:54.000 So, stop letting big tech and big government censor and track you.

00:02:57.000 Defend your rights.

00:02:58.000 Protect yourself at expressvpn.com slash ben.

00:03:01.000 That's e-x-p-r-e-s-s-vpn.com slash ben.

00:03:03.000 Get three months for free.

00:03:05.000 Visit expressvpn.com slash ben to learn more.

00:03:08.000 Bill, thanks so much for stopping by.

00:03:09.000 I appreciate it.

00:03:10.000 What's VPN?

00:03:11.000 Well, that's where they disguise your internet address.

00:03:14.000 Already I'm lost, Ben.

00:03:15.000 We just started and I'm lost.

00:03:16.000 It's the Russians can't monitor your internet traffic and then bomb your home, I think.

00:03:20.000 I think that's the basic idea.

00:03:21.000 So, how's Florida treating you?

00:03:24.000 You know, I love Florida.

00:03:26.000 I'm here to do a special, an HBO stand-up special, which I did the last two days, Friday and Saturday, and here we are on Sunday.

00:03:36.000 I chose Florida to do it.

00:03:37.000 I could have done it anywhere in the country.

00:03:40.000 First of all, I was afraid of COVID protocols that were going to be onerous.

00:03:45.000 So I was like, I'm not going to do it in a blue state.

00:03:48.000 But it turned out there was a lot of protocols last night from the city of Miami and the theater.

00:03:52.000 There's so many people with their hands in the protocol pie now.

00:03:55.000 The unions can get involved, the networks.

00:03:58.000 So it's not just the government or the CDC.

00:04:00.000 Everybody who wants to indicate how much better a person they are than you by showing how much more safety they can get.

00:04:08.000 I honestly think we need any of this now.

00:04:12.000 But that's why I chose to do it in Florida, because I've been to Florida a couple of times.

00:04:17.000 It was the first place I went after I got back on the road, I think about a year ago.

00:04:24.000 And I've been back a couple of other times for gigs here, and there just was much more of a feeling.

00:04:30.000 And I know people who live here who say, yes, we never acted like this was the end of the world.

00:04:36.000 This is not the Andromeda Strain.

00:04:38.000 Yes, it's a serious thing that we should respect and take seriously.

00:04:41.000 But Florida had the reputation, well-deserved, for life goes on.

00:04:47.000 And so that's why I chose to do it in Florida.

00:04:49.000 And that's why, I mean, that's the one thing I'm going to say.

00:04:54.000 I like that better.

00:04:56.000 You know, I have a lot of quarrels about how this coronavirus was handled.

00:05:01.000 I mean, you can respect it and have compassion for the people who suffered from it, and still have, as I do, and I have made this very known to my audience, who mostly doesn't like me for it, that I don't think it was handled the right way.

00:05:17.000 Yeah, I mean, for us, I mean, for my family, we actually moved mid-COVID from L.A.

00:05:21.000 to Florida, and this is one of the reasons.

00:05:24.000 I mean, in L.A., they shut down all the public parks.

00:05:26.000 You couldn't take your kid outdoors.

00:05:27.000 And then there were a bunch of riots, and it was like, well, if I could take my kids rioting, it would have been okay, but I couldn't take my kids rioting, so I had to be double quarantined in my home.

00:05:34.000 I was quarantined for the virus and then quarantined because there were riots outside my door, and it was like, I'm getting out of here.

00:05:39.000 I mean, one of the first editorials I did when I had to be doing the show from my backyard was about how Just in general, I think we should handle any disease, but especially this one, more internally, not just externally.

00:05:55.000 Yes, there is that element.

00:05:57.000 Externally meaning vaccines.

00:05:59.000 Okay.

00:05:59.000 Yes, I'm glad we have the vaccine.

00:06:01.000 I personally would not have wanted to get it, but I did.

00:06:05.000 Took one for the team.

00:06:08.000 I would have rather had my own immune system handle this one.

00:06:13.000 Now, to me, it's a case-by-case basis.

00:06:15.000 I'm not an anti-vaxxer.

00:06:17.000 I just think everybody's different.

00:06:19.000 Now, there are some diseases out there I would fight you for the vaccine.

00:06:24.000 OK.

00:06:24.000 But this one because America is so unhealthy.

00:06:28.000 That's the essential part we don't address.

00:06:30.000 So unhealthy to begin with that it's great we have a vaccine because that is what is saving the lives of everyone smart enough to get the vaccine who is not in good health to begin with.

00:06:41.000 But you know.

00:06:43.000 That certainly wouldn't have been my way to handle it.

00:07:07.000 If you're young and you're healthy and if you're in decent shape, your chances of death from this were really not particularly high.

00:07:13.000 We're not talking about the black death here with a one-third death ratio.

00:07:16.000 And yet this turned into not only that you need to mask up forever, but that you needed to triple vax and mask post-triple vaccination.

00:07:23.000 I mean, my view of this was I was basically quarantined with my parents.

00:07:28.000 My parents were 65, so I want to make sure they didn't get it.

00:07:30.000 And so we basically holed up with them and we didn't go outside in L.A.

00:07:34.000 for a long time.

00:07:35.000 And then the minute the vaccines were available and we took the vaccines, my parents got them mainly.

00:07:39.000 As soon as that was over, We were done.

00:07:41.000 I mean, we had enough faith in what we were being told about the vaccine to figure, OK, we're done here.

00:07:45.000 But following the data has become a bad thing.

00:07:48.000 And you're labeled an anti-vaxxer, even if you're pro-vax.

00:07:51.000 I mean, I got double-vaxed.

00:07:52.000 My parents got triple-vaxed.

00:07:53.000 My wife, who's a doctor, is triple-vaxed. 0.77

00:07:54.000 And we were labeled anti-vax anyway, because we weren't saying that you should lose your job if you didn't vax.

00:07:59.000 Right.

00:08:00.000 I mean, there's a lot of silliness on both sides, a lot of bad information on both sides.

00:08:06.000 I don't think the liberals liked it when I pointed out That I think it was something like 41% of Democrats, when asked the question, I mean, and this was in the New York Times, they had Republican versus Democrat views on COVID.

00:08:22.000 And something like 41% of Democrats, when asked the key question, how many people who get COVID need to be hospitalized, thought it was over 50%.

00:08:34.000 When it was, of course, around 1%.

00:08:36.000 I mean, that's a crazy number.

00:08:39.000 To be off that much about the... No wonder they think you need a mask everywhere.

00:08:44.000 If you think half the people who get it need to go to the hospital and it's really 1%, how did they get that bad information in their head?

00:08:52.000 And I said, you know, Fox News and the right wing has a lot to answer for, for a lot of misinformation out there.

00:08:59.000 I would put climate change as top of that list.

00:09:03.000 But the left-wing media should answer for that.

00:09:06.000 How did your audience get that bad idea in their head that so many people need to go to the hospital who don't?

00:09:15.000 And, you know, as you started to say, I did an editorial about this about a month ago.

00:09:18.000 Again, not well-received by a lot of people, but I was just, again, giving the facts.

00:09:23.000 We know who gets this and dies from this.

00:09:27.000 Who gets it?

00:09:28.000 Everybody.

00:09:29.000 Everybody gets it, including if you've had the vaccine.

00:09:32.000 Which they were wrong about.

00:09:33.000 Okay, they weren't trying to be wrong about it, but, you know, my overarching opinion was, modern medicine, it's wonderful, but you're wrong about a lot. 0.74

00:09:42.000 Stop being arrogant.

00:09:44.000 Don't look at me like, we've got the white coat on and the stethoscope around our neck.

00:09:48.000 Just do whatever we say, because when have we ever been wrong?

00:09:51.000 My answer, a lot.

00:09:54.000 You've been wrong about a lot.

00:09:55.000 Not because you're corrupt, although sometimes there's that too.

00:09:58.000 But you've just been wrong about a lot, including a lot about this vaccine.

00:10:03.000 I mean, about this disease.

00:10:05.000 So, we know who gets it.

00:10:07.000 Okay.

00:10:07.000 75% of the people who died over 65.

00:10:13.000 Now, that's sad.

00:10:14.000 Death is always sad.

00:10:16.000 I'm against death.

00:10:16.000 I don't care who knows it.

00:10:20.000 But, you know, Earth is a timeshare.

00:10:22.000 We can't all be here at the same time.

00:10:25.000 Some of us have to go to make room for others.

00:10:28.000 People are going to die when they start being over 65.

00:10:33.000 Something.

00:10:33.000 I mean, you can't stop aging.

00:10:34.000 Believe me, Ben, I've tried.

00:10:38.000 So that's 75%.

00:10:42.000 99% unvaccinated!

00:10:43.000 99%!

00:10:44.000 Where do you ever see that in any story about anything?

00:10:49.000 And of course, 78% of the people who died or are hospitalized were obese.

00:10:56.000 And that's another one that's not a popular opinion to talk about, but I Feel like I have to because it's such a salient fact in this.

00:11:04.000 If you just said to somebody, okay, there's an X factor in this of 78% of the people who get it, this X factor accounts for 78% who die or go to the hospital.

00:11:19.000 Wouldn't you be a little curious, if you were a news organization, wouldn't you be talking about that fact all the time?

00:11:25.000 And yet we're at such a crazy place with obesity.

00:11:29.000 It is the ultimate third rail in discourse.

00:11:33.000 I'm talking about everything you could possibly talk about.

00:11:36.000 That is the ultimate third rail.

00:11:38.000 You just do not talk about it.

00:11:40.000 And of course, we need to talk about it.

00:11:42.000 That's the real epidemic.

00:11:44.000 Not coronavirus.

00:11:46.000 That's going to become, as it has now, I think, become a much more mild disease.

00:11:50.000 And it's going to be with us forever, as all viruses are.

00:11:53.000 It's not going to disappear, I don't think.

00:11:57.000 But the real epidemic is obesity, and that we don't talk about.

00:12:00.000 I mean, I wonder why you think that is, just out of curiosity, why you think that everybody's scared to talk about it.

00:12:05.000 I mean, I have a theory, but I want to hear yours.

00:12:08.000 Let's hear yours first.

00:12:09.000 Okay, sure.

00:12:09.000 So my basic theory is that as a society, we've really cracked down very hard on the idea that people have any sort of control over their lives, and whenever you imply that somebody has control over their life and they have a problem, and that maybe they can avoid that problem, they get very, very angry at you.

00:12:23.000 And obesity is a great example of this, because the vast majority of people who are obese are people who probably should be eating less and creating caloric deficit.

00:12:32.000 You silver-tongued it beautifully, Ben.

00:12:34.000 I was just gonna say they love to stuff their face.

00:12:36.000 But it's really the same idea, isn't it?

00:12:39.000 Yes, I mean, that's... But we are in a different place with it than we were even five years ago.

00:12:46.000 Five years ago, it at least was thought to be a good thing to try to lose weight.

00:12:53.000 Right?

00:12:54.000 Now, that's what they shame.

00:12:57.000 Adele.

00:12:58.000 Famously lost weight and they shamed her for that. 0.96

00:12:58.000 Right. 0.96

00:13:02.000 That's through the looking glass.

00:13:04.000 When you're the bad person because you lost weight and it's just seen as a different way of living.

00:13:12.000 There's no judgment to it.

00:13:13.000 And look, I don't believe in shaming.

00:13:16.000 I'm not fat-shaming.

00:13:17.000 I'm fat-splaining.

00:13:19.000 I'm splaining.

00:13:21.000 That, you know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

00:13:23.000 Absolutely.

00:13:24.000 But science is not.

00:13:26.000 Science is not.

00:13:27.000 And those facts are unforgiving when you look at the number of people who died.

00:13:32.000 And you didn't have to be that much overweight to have a much worse outcome, having to go to the hospital, having to get ventilated.

00:13:38.000 I think 40% of the people who died had diabetes.

00:13:43.000 And again, even take COVID out of the picture.

00:13:47.000 I was talking about this before COVID and got lambasted by James Corden and other people.

00:13:53.000 Who attacked me.

00:13:54.000 Oh, Bill, you're such a bad person. 0.57

00:13:57.000 Again, I'm not shaming people.

00:13:59.000 I'm just saying we were never going to solve the health care crisis in this country until we get our arms around this thing.

00:14:08.000 And we're not allowed to talk about it or else you're a bad person.

00:14:12.000 And anyone who doesn't, I'm sorry, you have blood on your hands.

00:14:17.000 Anyone in the media who doesn't talk about this because you're so afraid of the reaction, you have blood on your hands because you're not doing these people a favor.

00:14:25.000 You're not doing people a favor.

00:14:26.000 Like I always say, ever see a fat 90-year-old?

00:14:31.000 Never.

00:14:32.000 Shouldn't that tell you something?

00:14:34.000 I mean, you're either going to die fast from COVID, especially if you're not vaccinated from this, or slowly.

00:14:41.000 And also, it's going to bring down, as it was before this, The economy of the country.

00:14:47.000 Because, I mean, when we were debating health care in this country for years, and Obamacare, and on and after, it was always about, we would look at the charts, we would see how much health care spending is going up, and people would say, we can't do it.

00:15:01.000 We can't just not do anything.

00:15:03.000 Right?

00:15:04.000 Whether you thought Obamacare was a good idea or some other program.

00:15:07.000 We need some program to deal with this.

00:15:10.000 But never part of that program was, let's ask the people to participate in their own health.

00:15:18.000 I think this is what you were getting at.

00:15:20.000 We don't ask people to, you have to participate.

00:15:23.000 It can't all just be, the government can't solve this On their own.

00:15:29.000 Vaccines can't solve this on their own. 0.98

00:15:32.000 You have to do it.

00:15:34.000 You know, I said at one point, it's not between you and the government, it's between you and the waitress.

00:15:38.000 Yeah.

00:15:39.000 I mean, this is one of the areas where it's sort of fascinating.

00:15:42.000 The way that we've treated in public policy vaccines with, for example, Vax mandates.

00:15:46.000 You must get the Vax or you will lose your job.

00:15:48.000 And at the same time, if I so much as say to you that you might need to lose 10 pounds, this is the great sin.

00:15:55.000 I don't see how you can hold both of those ideas in your head at the same time.

00:15:58.000 And look, we all do something.

00:15:58.000 Right.

00:16:01.000 Again, not shaming, I drank too much for years.

00:16:07.000 But when someone would say to me...

00:16:09.000 You know, maybe you should scale that back a little.

00:16:13.000 I didn't say, how dare you?

00:16:15.000 You're drink shaming me.

00:16:17.000 It's just an alternative lifestyle.

00:16:18.000 What are you talking about?

00:16:19.000 I'm just as wonderful and perfect the way I... No, I would say, yeah, you know what?

00:16:24.000 You're right.

00:16:25.000 And then I wouldn't do it.

00:16:27.000 But I would at least exceed the point.

00:16:30.000 I wasn't offended by that.

00:16:32.000 I was like, yeah, you're right.

00:16:35.000 I drink probably too Irishly.

00:16:37.000 And I shouldn't.

00:16:39.000 But, boy, you're just a bad guy if you say that about food.

00:16:43.000 So in a second, I want to ask you about how that kind of ties into broader issues of identity politics.

00:16:47.000 But first, since we're talking about your imminent death, let's talk about life insurance.

00:16:51.000 If somebody relies on your financial support, whether it's a child, an aging parent, even a business partner, you need life insurance.

00:16:57.000 Typically, life insurance gets more expensive as you age, so you should really get it sooner rather than later, because every single minute that passes, you are getting older, which means you're getting more expensive to insure.

00:17:07.000 This is why there's PolicyGenius.

00:17:08.000 PolicyGenius is your one-stop shop to find and buy the insurance you need.

00:17:12.000 Simply head on over to PolicyGenius.com, answer a few questions about yourself.

00:17:16.000 In minutes, you can work out how much life insurance coverage you need and compare personalized quotes to find your best price.

00:17:21.000 You could save 50% or more on life insurance by comparing quotes with PolicyGenius.

00:17:25.000 The team of licensed experts at PolicyGenius will help you understand your options and apply for the policy you choose.

00:17:31.000 The PolicyGenius team works for you, not the insurance companies.

00:17:34.000 You can trust them to offer unbiased help and advocate for you every step until you are covered.

00:17:38.000 And PolicyGenius doesn't add on extra fees.

00:17:39.000 They don't sell your information to third parties.

00:17:42.000 If you're still not convinced, you can check out their thousands of five-star reviews across Google and Trustpilot.

00:17:47.000 Since 2014, PolicyGenius has helped over 30 million people shop for insurance and placed $120 billion in coverage.

00:17:53.000 So head on over to PolicyGenius.com.

00:17:54.000 I work hard at it, you know.

00:17:56.000 That is a segue, my brother.

00:18:02.000 That's why they pay me the big bucks around here.

00:18:06.000 Oh, I see.

00:18:08.000 Beautiful.

00:18:08.000 So let's talk about identity politics.

00:18:10.000 So one of the things I think that we're speaking about here is the attempt to turn everything into an identity.

00:18:16.000 And so if you are, Adele is bad because she shed her identity as an overweight singer for a new identity as just a singer who's not overweight. 1.00

00:18:25.000 And there's this feeling about nearly everything in American life.

00:18:28.000 Everything can be boiled down to an issue of identity.

00:18:30.000 And the problem with that, of course, on a broader political level is once everything's an identity, including your political perspective, every political argument becomes an attack on you as a person.

00:18:38.000 Because if your identity is your politics, and then I disagree with your politics, that's not us having a rational debate.

00:18:44.000 That's me attacking your character.

00:18:46.000 That's me saying you're a bad person.

00:18:47.000 It's me trying to un-person you.

00:18:49.000 You hear this sort of language all the time in a variety of issues.

00:18:53.000 You're trying to erase me as a human being.

00:18:55.000 If I disagree with you, obviously the most obvious example is on transgenderism where the argument is that if you don't want Leah Thomas, the biologically male swimmer, swimming against women, this is because you're trying to erase Leah Thomas's transgender identity.

00:19:08.000 Once everything becomes an identity, even putting that example aside, then It prohibits you from actually having rational conversations with people.

00:19:17.000 The entire basis of rational conversation is my identity doesn't matter.

00:19:19.000 What I'm arguing up here with you is what matters.

00:19:22.000 Yeah, I would agree with all that, but you would, or I would ask you if you would agree that there's certainly a lot of that on the right too.

00:19:28.000 What is more of an identity than the Trump voter, the white person who thinks that America is being taken away and becoming a different kind of country than they remember it?

00:19:40.000 You know, let's make America great again, wink wink, you know, white again. 1.00

00:19:44.000 I mean, that is also a type of identity politics, yes?

00:19:48.000 I mean, for the people who actually believe that, sure.

00:19:53.000 But I wonder how much of that is reading into somebody else's politics, your desired, you know, character flaw.

00:19:58.000 I mean, you see that on the right doing that to the left, too.

00:20:00.000 I mean, there have been good studies showing that people on the right tend to think that people on the left don't care about family, people on the left don't care about Personal values.

00:20:08.000 And then when you actually ask people on the left what they care about, they care about a lot of those things.

00:20:11.000 Right.

00:20:11.000 And on the left, you see the same thing with the right.

00:20:13.000 If you voted for Trump, it's because you want to make America white again. 0.81

00:20:15.000 It's not because you're concerned about, for example, taking the immigration issue.

00:20:19.000 Let's say you're not concerned about the race of immigration.

00:20:23.000 You're worried about how people are going to vote once they move here and how that changes the legal structure of the system.

00:20:29.000 Or you're worried about the income level or education level of people moving here.

00:20:32.000 Those are not the same thing as the skin color of the person.

00:20:35.000 No, and immigration is an issue where I think the Democrats are really not getting it, you know.

00:20:41.000 I mean, they're losing the Hispanic vote.

00:20:45.000 It's an amazing thing.

00:20:46.000 Along the border in Texas.

00:20:48.000 You know, their idea, again, it's sort of your point about identity politics, their conception, I think, and it's wrong, Is that every Latino in America is thinking, boy, more immigration. 0.94

00:21:02.000 That would be the best thing.

00:21:03.000 And a lot of them are thinking, no, I'm here.

00:21:06.000 The last thing I want is someone else coming over who's going to do my job for a little less money.

00:21:15.000 And, you know, I wonder when this is going to sink in, in the Democratic Party leadership.

00:21:23.000 I think it's going to be very difficult for them because I think that there is a sort of math that was done in the early part of the 20th century with people like Reuters share writing about this talking about how there was this new emerging Democratic majority was going to be a majority minority coalition as the demographics of the country changed and became less white.

00:21:38.000 Inevitably, these minority groups would continue to vote at the same rates that they were voting for Democrats.

00:21:43.000 So if you get more Hispanics, you get more black voters, you get more Asian voters, inevitably this would be sort of the new rising wave.

00:21:48.000 And Obama really did model that in 2012.

00:21:50.000 He had a very diverse coalition combined with college-educated white liberals.

00:21:54.000 And so they thought this was going to be the formula here on out, and that was always going to be the formula.

00:21:58.000 And it turns out...

00:22:01.000 The guy who wrote that piece, he came out recently and he said, yeah, I got that completely wrong.

00:22:05.000 It's just not true.

00:22:05.000 Because the Hispanic vote, it turns out, is malleable.

00:22:07.000 A lot of people who are Hispanic identify as white Hispanic, right?

00:22:12.000 A lot of people who are Hispanic don't think of themselves primarily in terms of a certain racial identity that dictates politics.

00:22:19.000 They may vote differently.

00:22:19.000 I mean, Cuban-Americans don't vote the same way that Venezuelan-Americans vote, who don't vote the same way the Mexican-Americans vote.

00:22:24.000 The question is whether they're so tied into this sort of intersectional coalition where everybody is described based on their race, as opposed to a broad platform that anybody can ascribe to no matter what, that they can't get out of that sort of mindset.

00:22:37.000 And it feels like, sort of, yeah, I mean, I think that's the disappointment of Biden in some ways.

00:22:41.000 Biden was supposed to be a moderate who was above all that, and he really hasn't governed that way.

00:22:45.000 Right.

00:22:45.000 And they assimilate quickly.

00:22:48.000 Very quickly.

00:22:49.000 And then, you know, they're like, well, I made it, and I'm sorry, but I'm pulling up the ladder.

00:22:55.000 Because if I leave the latter down, then again, you're going to come in and take my job.

00:22:59.000 And I don't identify that way.

00:23:02.000 I'm an American now.

00:23:03.000 And that's sort of what we want.

00:23:04.000 I can't remember, I read this recently, but somebody wrote an article and said that the Hispanic vote is starting to look a lot like what happened with the Italian vote.

00:23:15.000 Or the Germans, or the Irish, or everybody except the Jews who just kept voting Democrat forever. 0.87

00:23:20.000 But didn't the Italian become much more of a Republican bloc?

00:23:20.000 But yes.

00:23:24.000 And I mean, that could happen.

00:23:26.000 And if the Democrats lose that, they're in a lot of trouble.

00:23:29.000 Because that is a rising demographic as far as numbers.

00:23:33.000 And if that number even becomes like 50-50, I mean, it's funny because it was only a few years ago that people were saying, oh, well, the Republicans are cooked.

00:23:44.000 Right.

00:23:45.000 Because look at the numbers.

00:23:46.000 The whites are going down and the people of color. 1.00

00:23:49.000 And of course, if the people of color are going up, but they're voting the wrong way, as far as the Democrats are concerned, then you're really in a lot of trouble as far as winning elections, which I assume is what they're still trying to do. 0.91

00:24:04.000 Yeah, I mean, I think wokeness is such electoral poison for Democrats, not just because it's treating people as members of identity groups that they may not see as their chief signifier, but also because, to a certain extent, they're only appealing to certain identity groups.

00:24:19.000 I think that there are a lot of Hispanics in America who looked at the platform of Black Lives Matter in 2020, which said, get rid of the cops, the cops don't need to be here, defund the police.

00:24:27.000 And there are a lot of Hispanics who are saying, wait a second, I'm upwardly mobile economically.

00:24:32.000 I'm socially mobile.

00:24:34.000 I also may live in an area that has high crime.

00:24:36.000 This does not seem like a good plan to me.

00:24:38.000 And so, moving in terms of this agenda and making this kind of tip of the spear, the argument for a lot of Hispanics that America is a deeply racist, unfixable place, that doesn't apply to a lot of people.

00:24:50.000 It's an argument that really applies to a very narrow segment of the American population.

00:24:54.000 No, I always say, let's live in the year we're living in.

00:24:58.000 You know, because sometimes when the people you're talking about, you know, you think it was, you know, 1960 or 1860, and it's like, yes, we have a very sorry history, racially, in this country, including a lot of stuff that's still going on right now.

00:25:14.000 I mean, it's not like racism is extirpated here in America.

00:25:18.000 But it is very different than it was, and we need to live in the present era, in the present time, with the present conditions.

00:25:28.000 But when you say woke, you know, it's become, and I make fun of it too, because it's become an eye roll in many ways.

00:25:35.000 If woke, I assume at a certain moment, and it wasn't that long ago before we didn't have the term.

00:25:41.000 I only heard it, I don't know, what, it was three, four years ago?

00:25:45.000 Five years ago at most when we heard the term woke, and it was like alert to injustice.

00:25:49.000 Okay, I'm down with that.

00:25:51.000 I always have been.

00:25:53.000 People still understand that about me.

00:25:56.000 But, yes, it became sort of a byword for a lot of this goofy stuff.

00:26:02.000 That's what I'm always railing against.

00:26:04.000 That's why, like, they play me on Fox News now.

00:26:06.000 Yeah, I mean, how do you feel about that?

00:26:07.000 Because you went from the guy who was... I feel... Look, I haven't changed.

00:26:14.000 At all.

00:26:15.000 My politics hasn't changed.

00:26:16.000 They've changed.

00:26:17.000 People say to me, sometimes, you know, have you changed?

00:26:20.000 No.

00:26:21.000 It's that five years ago, no one was talking about defunding the police.

00:26:26.000 I never heard that phrase five years ago.

00:26:28.000 That's not me changing.

00:26:30.000 That's things changing.

00:26:32.000 I'm reacting to it, as I've always been.

00:26:35.000 You know, letting three-year-olds decide what gender they are. 0.95

00:26:39.000 This wasn't something five years ago.

00:26:43.000 Free speech, you know, used to be a left-wing thing that we were proud and owned, and now that seems to be under attack.

00:26:51.000 So again, I think I've stayed the same.

00:26:54.000 And look, as long as the Republicans are a party who, in my view, does not take seriously the emergency of climate change, and I'm not sure if they even believe in American democracy anymore, certainly most Republicans, I think, did not, and Congress So let's get to those two issues in just one second.

00:27:14.000 trying to not count the votes in an honest election.

00:27:17.000 As long as those two issues are what they are for Republicans, I don't think they're even savable.

00:27:23.000 Whereas the Democrats, maybe I'm being a cockeyed optimist, but I still think they are savable.

00:27:29.000 So let's get to those two issues in just one second.

00:27:31.000 First, let's talk about your sleep quality.

00:27:34.000 Helix sleep.

00:27:35.000 This is the mattress you need.

00:27:36.000 They have a quiz that takes just two minutes to complete and matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you.

00:27:42.000 Why would you buy a mattress made for somebody else? 0.99

00:27:44.000 It's a dumb idea. 0.99

00:27:44.000 You really shouldn't. 0.99

00:27:45.000 With Helix, you're getting a mattress you know will be perfect for the way you sleep.

00:27:49.000 Everybody is unique.

00:27:50.000 Helix knows that.

00:27:51.000 They have several different mattress models to choose from.

00:27:52.000 They've got soft, medium, and firm mattresses.

00:27:55.000 Mattresses great for cooling you down if you sleep hot.

00:27:57.000 Even a Helix Plus mattress for plus-size folks.

00:27:59.000 I love my Helix Sleep mattress.

00:28:00.000 It was made just for me, made just for my wife.

00:28:03.000 We actually were able to Tailor the mattress so that there are different settings on each side of the bed.

00:28:07.000 If you're looking for a mattress, you take the quiz, you order the mattress you're matched to, the mattress comes right to your door, shipped for free.

00:28:12.000 You don't ever need to go to a mattress store again.

00:28:14.000 Helix is awesome, but you don't need to take my word for it.

00:28:17.000 Helix was awarded the number one best overall mattress pick of 2020 by both GQ and Wired Magazine.

00:28:21.000 So, head on over to helixsleep.com slash Ben.

00:28:24.000 Take that two-minute sleep quiz.

00:28:25.000 They will match you to a customized mattress that will give you the best sleep of your life.

00:28:28.000 They have a 10-year warranty.

00:28:29.000 You get to try it out for 100 nights, risk-free.

00:28:32.000 They'll even pick it up for you if you don't love it.

00:28:33.000 But you will.

00:28:34.000 Helix is offering up to $200 off all mattress orders and two free pillows for our listeners at helixsleep.com slash Ben.

00:28:41.000 Boy, do I need that.

00:28:43.000 Sleep quality.

00:28:44.000 Will you send one to my house tomorrow, because I had a terrible time sleeping.

00:28:44.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:28:48.000 I absolutely will.

00:28:49.000 It's personalized just for you.

00:28:50.000 Two-minute sleep quiz.

00:28:51.000 Yeah, we'll make the magic happen for you.

00:28:52.000 Ben, I love you.

00:28:54.000 Thank you.

00:28:55.000 So let's talk about those two issues, because I know there are a lot of people in my audience who are thinking, OK, so if we just solve those two issues, then maybe Bill Maher votes Republican for the first time.

00:29:04.000 Have you ever voted Republican?

00:29:05.000 Absolutely.

00:29:07.000 Bob Dole in 96.

00:29:09.000 Now, I admit that was a sentimental vote because, you know, I don't think I ever told you this.

00:29:15.000 My parents, both World War II veterans, met in World War II.

00:29:19.000 My mother was a nurse.

00:29:21.000 I think he was the last one from the World War II era, and he was going to lose.

00:29:29.000 So it's an easy vote.

00:29:30.000 That's the other thing about voting in California.

00:29:33.000 It's so different than where the Republican Party is now.

00:29:36.000 It's not like if he won he was a crazy person who was, you know, going to start not counting the votes or do the crazy things that Trump did when he was president or, you know, not concede elections or something.

00:29:48.000 He was just, you know, he was a Kansas conservative.

00:29:53.000 And I voted for McCain in the 2000 primary, I think.

00:29:59.000 When he was the original maverick.

00:30:02.000 And I may have voted for him in that election.

00:30:07.000 If he had gotten the nomination.

00:30:14.000 I have come to really like Al Gore and know him personally and I like him a lot.

00:30:20.000 But I was not happy the way he distanced himself because of Monica Lewinsky.

00:30:27.000 That, to me, was always the big flaw with the Democrats.

00:30:30.000 It's like, come on guys, just man up a little bit.

00:30:33.000 Just remember he kissed his wife real hard at the convention.

00:30:37.000 It was very awkward.

00:30:38.000 It was very awkward.

00:30:39.000 And now in retrospect it was even more awkward.

00:30:41.000 And terrible politics.

00:30:42.000 Yes.

00:30:43.000 You know, they should have just said, OK, you know, Bill Clinton, as I think Hillary herself once said, he's a hard dog to keep on the porch.

00:30:52.000 That's just... You know, I knew Roger for a while.

00:30:57.000 I met Bill a few times.

00:30:58.000 I can tell you some funny stories.

00:31:01.000 That's who they are.

00:31:02.000 They're good old boys, they like ladies. 0.98

00:31:06.000 And it's just some of the stuff that went on back then about if he cheated on his wife, how can we know he's not going to cheat on the country? 0.88

00:31:15.000 Dumb things that people said.

00:31:18.000 It's very different. 0.99

00:31:19.000 So let's start with the climate change thing and then we'll get to the voting thing.

00:31:23.000 So on climate change, there's I think sort of a reasonable spectrum of opinion inside the Republican Party and then there are the people who just outright say climate change is not happening, it's not human cost.

00:31:33.000 The position that's been taken by a lot of Republicans, including me, I say that climate change is happening, I fully accept the IPCC estimates and the range of estimates from the IPCC.

00:31:43.000 I just think that the solutions that are being proposed are completely unreasonable.

00:31:47.000 So I think this idea that we're going to just pour money into green energy and this is going to magically solve the problem does not solve the basic problem, which is that most of the forms of energy we're talking about are not nearly competitive on the world stage with carbon-based energy.

00:31:58.000 What about a carbon tax?

00:32:00.000 So, a carbon tax would be almost impossible to do globally, is the issue.

00:32:03.000 So the biggest emitters, not on a per capita basis, but on an absolute basis, are China and India right now.

00:32:08.000 And they're not going to carbon tax anything.

00:32:10.000 We still have a global competition with China and India in terms of foreign policy and allowing them to pollute up the wazoo while we sacrifice our own energy ambitions. 1.00

00:32:19.000 That seems like a bad recipe for Europe right now, for example, with regard to Russia, which means that if you're actually going to do something, what I've talked about before is doing things like building sea walls.

00:32:29.000 Exploring geoengineering.

00:32:31.000 Adapting.

00:32:32.000 Because humans are great at adapting, and we suck at actually preventing. 0.63

00:32:35.000 We're very good at adapting, suck at preventing.

00:32:37.000 I mean, does adapting include going to Mars?

00:32:41.000 Elon Musk won't do it.

00:32:42.000 Really?

00:32:42.000 Mars?

00:32:42.000 I'm a big Elon Musk fan.

00:32:43.000 But Mars?

00:32:44.000 But sure, I mean, I like space travel as much as the next guy, but I don't think...

00:32:44.000 Come on.

00:32:48.000 Really? Mars? I mean, I'm a big fan...

00:32:50.000 I'm not going to spend lots of money on it, but you're... I mean, like, this isn't, like, top of my proposal list.

00:32:54.000 Okay, I'm a big Elon Musk fan, but Mars? Come on. If it gets that bad, I mean, I'm sure I won't be around for this, but Mars, please.

00:33:07.000 I mean, there's no air.

00:33:08.000 Do I get to be there by myself?

00:33:11.000 Am I bothered off?

00:33:13.000 There's no air.

00:33:14.000 Yeah, there's some problems.

00:33:15.000 It's 200 below zero.

00:33:17.000 There are sandstorms that last for months at a time.

00:33:20.000 It's, no matter how bad we screwed the earth, it couldn't be worse than that.

00:33:25.000 There are fewer people.

00:33:26.000 There are fewer people.

00:33:28.000 Is that good?

00:33:28.000 The company isn't as bad.

00:33:29.000 I mean, it depends where you're living.

00:33:31.000 I mean, the restaurants, there's no atmosphere.

00:33:33.000 I mean, either on the planet or in the restaurant.

00:33:33.000 That's true.

00:33:36.000 It's just... But, I mean, this adapter, and it's funny you say that, because I was having dinner with a friend of mine, Just a regular liberal person, not a crazy person, left or right, but generally a liberal person, lives in Los Angeles.

00:33:50.000 And I heard him say exactly what you said.

00:33:52.000 I thought, oh, that's interesting that he's where you are.

00:33:55.000 He said, you know, we're not going to do anything about this.

00:33:58.000 Let's be honest.

00:33:59.000 We're going to have to start just adapting.

00:34:02.000 I still think we should try a little harder for a little while more to do something about it.

00:34:07.000 And I mean, you don't think if we led the way at some point that would have some influence on other countries?

00:34:14.000 Do you think China and India would just say, OK, forget it, we're just going to hold hands like Tom and Louise and drive off the dreadnought? 0.99

00:34:21.000 I mean, China would.

00:34:22.000 I mean, I think China would immediately take advantage of our Sacrifice on the on the economic front in order to gain more power. 0.87

00:34:30.000 I mean, this is the reason I say this is because this is precisely what you're seeing from Russia, right? 0.91

00:34:34.000 Europe has gone way more in a green direction than the United States has, and they're still basically powering their economy with Russian natural gas and oil.

00:34:41.000 I mean, 50% of Germany's natural gas and oil were coming from Russia.

00:34:45.000 And so the minute that Russia invades Ukraine, all of a sudden the price is double in these places.

00:34:49.000 And it turns out all these investments in green energy were making them dependent on one of the world's most aggressive powers.

00:34:56.000 Like, they're real, they're real unintended consequences to listening to Greta Thunberg when you make policy.

00:35:01.000 Well, I did a whole thing on Greta and Kylie Jenner about three or four months ago, which was an indictment really of the younger generations, because they're the ones who would have to care about this more than me.

00:35:17.000 I'm 66.

00:35:18.000 I've had my fun with the Earth.

00:35:20.000 You know?

00:35:21.000 I mean, I want to save it for the future, but they're the ones who are like, you ruined the planet, and we're environmentalists.

00:35:27.000 And I showed I think Greta has like 13 million followers and Kylie has 289 million.

00:35:36.000 And she's always getting on board a private jet.

00:35:39.000 And that generation, they seem to care so much about that kind of thing.

00:35:44.000 They want materialism.

00:35:46.000 Bitcoin, which is horrible cryptocurrency for the environment, uses more Currency than some entire nations.

00:35:56.000 They love it.

00:35:57.000 Don't even know it's bad for the earth.

00:35:58.000 I've asked them.

00:35:59.000 They, oh no, that's news to me.

00:36:02.000 So, until the younger generation cares more than they do, and I don't mean, you know, the Greta's, there aren't those, but in general, you know, I just think people are just gonna use up what we have until it's gone, and that's a bigger problem if you're 25 than if you're my age.

00:36:20.000 So on the climate change thing, if the proposals were for seawalls from the Republican Party and not, this snowball means there's no global warming, then you'd be in the ballpark.

00:36:32.000 Yeah, I also think we could lead more.

00:36:34.000 Maybe I'm wrong, but I do think if we took the lead, if we planted our flag on the ground and said, we're doing this, I think you can get people.

00:36:43.000 I think you can shame people a little bit.

00:36:45.000 Now, I understand it's very hard.

00:36:49.000 Can you still use the term third world or is that bad?

00:36:53.000 I do.

00:36:55.000 That's right.

00:36:55.000 Okay, well it's bad.

00:36:58.000 Developing world, which nation are we talking about here?

00:37:00.000 Are we talking about nations where people are burning dung for fuel?

00:37:03.000 Because, I mean, by the way, we should mention that when it comes to green energy, it's very easy for first world people to care a lot about solar panels, but when you're burning dung for fuel in Africa, that makes it very, very difficult for you to care.

00:37:13.000 But what I'm saying is, third world, okay, places that have not had air conditioning, places that have not had cars, Okay, and now they finally are getting them.

00:37:26.000 It's very hard to say to them, look, we've been enjoying these things for quite a long time now.

00:37:31.000 You stop that right now.

00:37:34.000 Now, bad timing!

00:37:36.000 Bad timing for you.

00:37:38.000 You have to forego these things.

00:37:41.000 Yeah, so I take your point.

00:37:42.000 It's going to be very hard for India and China. 0.98

00:37:44.000 But I mean, they're not stupid. 0.75

00:37:46.000 I mean, they must understand that what good is it to win the economic race if you can't breathe? 0.60

00:37:53.000 The air in Beijing, don't they sometimes have to like Take drastic measures because you can't breathe there?

00:37:59.000 The nice thing about being in communist dictatorship is that if you more people die, you know, what's a few more beans worth more or less is the nice thing about being a horrific tyrannical dictatorship.

00:38:09.000 I mean, unfortunately, you know, communist authoritarian nations don't have a great environmental track record from Chernobyl to Beijing today.

00:38:17.000 I mean, a case could be made that we very often are callous about people's life in this country as well.

00:38:24.000 I mean, I will say we haven't killed 100 million people for an ideology recently.

00:38:28.000 What are you talking about?

00:38:29.000 Communism.

00:38:30.000 Absolutely.

00:38:33.000 You know, what I said before about woke and like why it's an eye roll, it's like among the many goofy things they believe that they didn't used to is that, you know, maybe communism is worth a try again and capitalism is bad.

00:38:47.000 You know, things like that.

00:38:49.000 Right.

00:38:49.000 Again, I didn't change.

00:38:53.000 You changed.

00:38:54.000 So in a second, I do want to get to the kind of big elephant in the room, of course, when it comes to all this stuff, which is voting and Trump and all of the sort of insanity of the last couple of years.

00:39:05.000 First, let's talk about if you need to recruit more employees and better employees.

00:39:10.000 You do.

00:39:10.000 You need better employees.

00:39:11.000 And here's the thing.

00:39:12.000 If you are a prospective employee, it's always a great idea to keep learning new skills.

00:39:16.000 Whether you want to learn how to save more money, or how to own a plant without killing it, or how to make the perfect pizza crust, if you're always learning, it keeps you sharp.

00:39:22.000 Well, here's the thing.

00:39:22.000 ZipRecruiter believes this as well.

00:39:24.000 They have an AI.

00:39:25.000 That AI is magical because it is always learning.

00:39:27.000 So if you are hiring, their AI gets better and faster at finding the right candidates for all of your roles.

00:39:33.000 And right now, you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Ben Guest.

00:39:37.000 ZipRecruiter uses its powerful technology to find and match the right candidates up with your job.

00:39:41.000 Then it proactively presents these candidates to you.

00:39:44.000 You can easily review these recommended candidates and then you invite your top choices to apply for your job.

00:39:48.000 That encourages them to apply even faster.

00:39:50.000 No wonder ZipRecruiter is the number one rated hiring site in the United States based on G2 ratings.

00:39:55.000 Right now, you can try ZipRecruiter for free at this exclusive web address.

00:39:59.000 ZipRecruiter.com slash BenGuest.

00:40:01.000 That's ZipRecruiter.com slash BenGuest.

00:40:04.000 B-E-N-G-U-E-S-T because I have a guest.

00:40:07.000 ZipRecruiter is indeed the smartest way to hire. 0.73

00:40:09.000 Check them out at ZipRecruiter.com slash BenGuest to get started today.

00:40:16.000 It's half the fun.

00:40:18.000 Okay.

00:40:18.000 Okay, so let's talk about the notion that the entire Republican Party is sort of held hostage to the voting priorities of Donald Trump when it comes to his belief that the 2020 election was stolen, or maybe him saying that that's what he believes.

00:40:30.000 It's sort of difficult to tell what he once believed, what he convinced himself to believe, or whatever.

00:40:35.000 But getting outside of his head... I think he really believes it.

00:40:37.000 I think at this point he definitely believes it.

00:40:39.000 I don't know if he believed it the day that the election happened, but I think within a couple of hours he had I think they have proved in psychology that if you tell yourself a lie enough, you, you, you know, I think O.J.

00:40:49.000 thinks he did not kill his wife.

00:40:52.000 I think if you live a lie long enough, I mean, I know people who literally have changed their age.

00:40:59.000 You think that would be something that's kind of like easy to remember, and they really think they're a different age, because they've been telling the lie for so long.

00:41:06.000 So I really think Trump thinks he won that election, but... Okay, so that, that...

00:41:11.000 Given.

00:41:12.000 The basic idea here is that the Republican Party is a threat to sort of the very health of democracy.

00:41:17.000 And that if the Republicans are in charge, again, of say all three branches of government, they can pass whatever they want, that their first move is to stymie the ability of people to vote.

00:41:25.000 It seems to me that regardless of what Trump says or what he does, and I've been very vocal about the fact that the election was not stolen in 2020.

00:41:34.000 I know you have.

00:41:36.000 I know that.

00:41:37.000 It was as legit as any other vote.

00:41:38.000 I know.

00:41:39.000 And so I don't buy that.

00:41:41.000 With all of that said, the evidence of widespread voter suppression that has been alleged by, for example, Stacey Abrams in Georgia does not exist in the same way that the voter fraud evidence that Donald Trump suggests is widespread does not exist.

00:41:54.000 In fact, there's probably better evidence of mild voter fraud in particular areas than there is voter suppression.

00:41:59.000 You really can't name a person in the United States who said, I desperately wanted to vote.

00:42:02.000 I'm not going to argue with you a lot about that.

00:42:03.000 It is a little bit overblown, that issue.

00:42:04.000 And so the idea that Republicans are going to step in and just quash people's ability to vote and this ends democracy, I find that difficult to believe.

00:42:12.000 I'm not going to argue with you a lot about that.

00:42:15.000 It is a little bit overblown, that issue.

00:42:17.000 I do think that the Republicans do want to suppress votes.

00:42:21.000 I think when the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, I think that was not a good move because I think they were naive, that such a thing was not necessary anymore.

00:42:34.000 But I think they have studied this and found that, at the end of the day, it doesn't really make that much of a difference.

00:42:40.000 The people who want to vote are going to vote.

00:42:42.000 Now, we shouldn't make it harder for them.

00:42:44.000 There shouldn't be long lines.

00:42:47.000 In black neighborhoods and no lines in white neighborhoods. 0.65

00:42:50.000 Sure.

00:42:51.000 There shouldn't be like one drop box in all of Houston County or something for two million people.

00:42:58.000 Drop boxes are typically not the way people vote in the last five minutes.

00:43:01.000 There are a lot of examples of chicanery that you must admit should not be going on. 1.00

00:43:05.000 To me the greatest form of chicanery is what we see in California with ballot harvesting. 1.00

00:43:08.000 If I'm looking at something that I think is really corrupt, ballot harvesting is the practice where Parties can go door-to-door and pick up ballots from particular doors.

00:43:15.000 And so if you have a really well-funded Republican machine, then you go to all of the Republican houses, you pick up their ballots.

00:43:21.000 That seems like a real possibility of either voter fraud or intimidation.

00:43:24.000 That's more dangerous to me than some drop boxes get taken away.

00:43:29.000 But this is not even where we have the major contention.

00:43:31.000 Or even such a thing as voter ID.

00:43:35.000 They've done surveys on this.

00:43:38.000 Most people are okay with getting a voter ID.

00:43:41.000 Even gerrymandering, which everybody's all up and hot and bothered about.

00:43:44.000 I mean, it happens when Republicans are in charge and when Democrats are in charge, and it doesn't seem to have all that much of an impact on a broad national scale in terms of the allocation of the vote.

00:43:52.000 Yes, it does.

00:43:52.000 Gerrymandering is horrible because what it does is that it just encourages the extremes of either party.

00:44:00.000 I mean, I don't disagree with that.

00:44:01.000 I just don't think that... If we had fair districts, People would have to come to the middle.

00:44:08.000 And that's what would, I think, more than anything else, save this country.

00:44:11.000 Because we're breaking down into this country where the only people who get elected are the far extremes of either party.

00:44:18.000 And of course, you can't legislate, you can't come together, you can't compromise when you have those two kind of factions in the Congress.

00:44:30.000 My worry more about what we're talking about is what Trump is doing now, which is trying to, behind the scenes, put people in place so that in the next election, When he tries to do what he did in the last one, it works.

00:44:46.000 When he calls up, as he did, and why he wasn't impeached for this, I don't know, when he calls up... Brad Raffensperger, the Secretary of State of Georgia.

00:44:54.000 Georgia, correct.

00:44:55.000 And says, can you fine me 11,000 votes?

00:44:58.000 The next time, he'll have somebody who will say, yes, I can.

00:45:01.000 In fact, I can fine 12,000.

00:45:03.000 How about that?

00:45:05.000 That's what I'm worried about.

00:45:06.000 It's what Stalin said.

00:45:08.000 It doesn't matter who votes, it matters who counts the votes.

00:45:11.000 That's where they're heading.

00:45:12.000 So if that were to happen, obviously, that would be a crime, and if people were to be falsifying... But you don't think that's going on right now?

00:45:17.000 You don't think that's what Trump is trying to do?

00:45:19.000 Put his stooges, his loyalists, in places where there were Brad Raffsenburgers before? 0.87

00:45:24.000 Everybody who's run in a primary with the platform that they wish to do that has lost.

00:45:29.000 And so my great worry about the... The platform for... I'm going to be throwing out votes, for example.

00:45:36.000 Like if you're running for state election official in... I'm not sure about that.

00:45:41.000 In particular counties in Arizona.

00:45:42.000 If you're running on the platform, then I'm going to be able to throw out ballots that I just don't like, or I'm going to... Well, send electors.

00:45:49.000 Well, alternative slates of electors have to be selected by the state legislature.

00:45:51.000 I mean, I've seen no evidence that their state legislature... They're changing the law sometimes where it's not the state legislature who gets to make that call.

00:45:58.000 Well, this is why they need to reform the Electoral Account Act, right, at the federal level.

00:46:01.000 Okay.

00:46:01.000 I mean, that needs to be radically revised.

00:46:03.000 And where's the Republican Party on that?

00:46:05.000 I mean, they have enough support to do that in the Senate.

00:46:07.000 It's been Chuck Schumer who doesn't want to do that because he's been holding it up based on him wanting to do a broader voting bill.

00:46:13.000 That's always the Democrats.

00:46:16.000 They can never just take... Romney, Collins, even McConnell's on board for the electoral contact provision.

00:46:22.000 Everybody's on board for that one.

00:46:23.000 Like if they had just broken that thing up into... 90 pieces.

00:46:27.000 Right.

00:46:27.000 They'd have passed half of them easily.

00:46:29.000 It's just crazy.

00:46:30.000 It is complete insanity.

00:46:32.000 So, you know, with sort of all of this said, and I think that you're right that it feels like the country is separating right now in some pretty extreme ways, it seems like, to me, that that's a problem but it could be partially a solution.

00:46:46.000 The reason I say it could be partially a solution, as a member of the great sort, as somebody who moved from a blue state as a person who votes conservative to a red state, and Florida's growing increasingly red and California's growing increasingly blue, As that happens, it seems like to me, the hope for the country is not that we start electing moderates at the national level who start coming together and doing things.

00:47:03.000 It seems like the hope is that everybody sort of says, if we're going to stick around in the same country, it's got to be weapons down.

00:47:09.000 In other words, the federal government needs to let California be California, it needs to let Florida be Florida, it needs to get the hell out of the way, because otherwise it's going to be a bare majority.

00:47:16.000 I think it has to start with an attitude adjustment.

00:47:18.000 their views on the 49% of blue or vice versa.

00:47:21.000 So either we go back to a much more strong federalist system in which all of the localities that are now much more sorted politically sort of govern how they want to, and then we all share a couple of things like national defense and roads, or we're going to just get this kind of rock em, sock em robots till the end of time.

00:47:39.000 I don't think it's going to get better.

00:47:41.000 I think it has to start with an attitude adjustment.

00:47:43.000 I mean, when I sat down, that cup you have there that says leftist.

00:47:48.000 Oh, yes.

00:47:49.000 Available with your subscription today.

00:47:51.000 Your producer said, would you like one?

00:47:52.000 And I said, no.

00:47:53.000 I don't want to endorse that attitude on either side that, bleh, make you cry your leftist tears.

00:48:00.000 I mean, I understand.

00:48:02.000 I understand you.

00:48:03.000 I mean, it's a joke, but yeah.

00:48:04.000 I know, but it's the attitude you have.

00:48:06.000 And look, I've said horrible things about lots of people, including many on the right, and used words I probably shouldn't have.

00:48:13.000 Yeah.

00:48:14.000 But I think we've got to step back from that, because we're at a place now where we're just loathing each other.

00:48:22.000 Maybe, I don't know, I wasn't alive for it, but I don't think people all through the history of this country had this kind of loathing for each other, where we see people with t-shirts on the right that say, I'd rather be with Russia than the Democrats.

00:48:35.000 That's right, it's insane.

00:48:36.000 I mean, that is insane.

00:48:37.000 But that's the feeling of a lot of people.

00:48:40.000 Yeah, and on the left, vice versa, for sure.

00:48:42.000 Well, I don't know if anybody on the left is wishing they'd rather be with another foreign entity than the Republican Party.

00:48:50.000 I've never seen an equivalent of that on the left.

00:48:55.000 The hatred for Trump, in particular, was strong enough that if you'd given people... Of course, he was everything that was wrong with a human stuffed into one man.

00:49:03.000 You can't hate them for that.

00:49:06.000 I wouldn't say that about Joe Biden.

00:49:07.000 I wouldn't say that about Bill Clinton.

00:49:08.000 I wouldn't say that about Barack Obama, all presidents who I really loathe.

00:49:11.000 I mean, this is not...

00:49:12.000 Right.

00:49:13.000 But they didn't, like, stand with Putin and say, I believe him over my own intelligence agencies.

00:49:22.000 They didn't rob charities and make fun of the handicapped and do a million things that that nut did. 0.99

00:49:28.000 What do you mean, well?

00:49:31.000 What I mean is that Barack Obama literally sat with Dmitry Medvedev in 2012 and pledged him flexibility post-election if Russia would back off.

00:49:38.000 What I mean is that the Democratic Party... You're saying that's an equivalent to... I'm saying it's much worse than Trump saying That he believes whatever he believes because no one took Trump seriously about anything.

00:49:52.000 You said?

00:49:53.000 You and I had this conversation in 2018. 0.98

00:49:55.000 That's a ridiculous argument for the President of the United States. 0.97

00:49:58.000 Oh, don't bother with him. 0.94

00:49:59.000 Did you take him seriously about everything?

00:50:02.000 You took Trump seriously about everything?

00:50:03.000 He's the President!

00:50:03.000 Of course I did!

00:50:05.000 But you've seen him, like, really?

00:50:05.000 Really?

00:50:09.000 Okay, but if you're the president... You didn't take Bill Clinton seriously when he was banging everything inside.

00:50:14.000 I don't really see why you're taking him... What does that have to do with this?

00:50:16.000 No, I mean... I mean, you're talking about what the president... Bill Clinton in his life is... the comparison is Bill Clinton in his sexual life is frivolous.

00:50:22.000 Donald Trump in many of the things that he does, including his political life, is frivolous.

00:50:26.000 I don't treat him with the same seriousness I would treat Barack Obama.

00:50:28.000 But his political life is the life.

00:50:29.000 You can't compare those two things.

00:50:31.000 I don't really care.

00:50:32.000 It doesn't matter.

00:50:32.000 It doesn't affect me or the nation what Bill Clinton did in his personal life, his sexual life.

00:50:37.000 It matters very much what the president does in his political life when he stands with a foreign leader who is an adversary, almost an enemy, now an enemy, for sure, and says, I believe him over the people in my own government, my intelligence agencies, the people who keep us safe, and then lied about it when they came after him.

00:50:56.000 Believe me, in that Helsinki press conference, I went after him with a blowtorch, but the actual impact of that was far more negligible than the impact of Barack Obama saying to Dmitry Medvedev what he said.

00:51:08.000 Vladimir Putin invaded Crimea two years later.

00:51:11.000 And Barack Obama, one year later, was handing over Syria to the Russians.

00:51:14.000 So I mean, like, in terms of actual hard policy, this is one of the problems with trying to gauge Trump that I always had, is that for every other president, you could see a direct connect between the thing they were trying to do and what they actually accomplished.

00:51:25.000 The things they were saying were intended to accomplish a particular purpose, and then it would either accomplish the purpose or not accomplish the purpose. 1.00

00:51:31.000 And with Trump, as I've said before, I feel like on his epitaph, it will say Donald Trump, 45th president of the United States, he said a lot of shit. 1.00

00:51:38.000 Because he did. 0.99

00:51:39.000 He said a lot of s**t. And we all know that, instinctively, that when you read his Twitter feed, you weren't reading the well-thought-out press, you know, focus-grouped comments of Barack Obama, who actually, as much as I dislike Barack Obama's policy, he thought through what he was doing. 0.97

00:51:55.000 I don't think anybody thought that Donald Trump was anything more than a bundle of impulses in a lot of ways. 0.98

00:51:59.000 But he was not a game show host at the time that he was saying this s**t. What was the impact of it? 1.00

00:52:07.000 Of a lot of the shit he was saying. 0.99

00:52:09.000 I mean, that's really the question. 1.00

00:52:12.000 Well, I don't know.

00:52:13.000 We're going to find out how this war goes in Ukraine, won't we?

00:52:16.000 The question there is whether that was incentivized by Donald Trump or whether it was the pullout from Afghanistan, whether it was the last six months of saying we would do nothing.

00:52:23.000 At that very press conference, they asked Putin, would you like Donald Trump to be an officer?

00:52:28.000 Duh! 1.00

00:52:29.000 Duh! 1.00

00:52:30.000 Right.

00:52:31.000 Absolutely.

00:52:32.000 Why do you believe Vladimir Putin?

00:52:35.000 You just said it's bad to believe Vladimir Putin.

00:52:36.000 Because he was just so convincing in that moment. 1.00

00:52:39.000 And why wouldn't he want a useful idiot in office? 1.00

00:52:42.000 Someone... It seems like he's taken more territory under Democrats than Republicans. 1.00

00:52:45.000 Well, I don't know if that has to do with us at all.

00:52:47.000 Not everything has to do with us, you know.

00:52:49.000 What's going on in Ukraine, I don't... Okay, but now you've created a bit of a non-falsifiable argument.

00:52:53.000 When something bad doesn't happen, then it has to do with Donald Trump.

00:52:57.000 And when something bad happens, it doesn't have to do with the Democrats.

00:53:00.000 Well, no, that's not what I'm saying at all.

00:53:01.000 I'm saying Donald Trump encouraged Russia, encouraged them to meddle in our election.

00:53:06.000 He stood there in public and said, if you can find something, Russia, please, I hope you're listening.

00:53:11.000 I mean, really, what would your reaction be if a Democrat did that?

00:53:14.000 I ripped him up when he said that.

00:53:15.000 Again, I'm not saying that what he said is good.

00:53:17.000 I'm saying that to take Donald Trump's commentary with no grain of giant salt is a mistake.

00:53:23.000 Let me ask you what you think is going to happen in 2024.

00:53:25.000 You think Trump's going to run, right?

00:53:27.000 I'd be shocked if he doesn't.

00:53:29.000 I would be shocked, too.

00:53:30.000 Okay.

00:53:31.000 And what about getting the nomination?

00:53:32.000 Now, I was talking on my show, the very last one we did, about how his numbers are way down.

00:53:37.000 I said, this is a great opportunity now for Democrats.

00:53:41.000 Don't do that.

00:53:43.000 Don't do the version of cry your leftist tears. 1.00

00:53:46.000 Don't be like, ah, you morons, you voted for this guy, and now just handle this with graciousness. 1.00

00:53:52.000 Handle this the way Lincoln did. 1.00

00:53:54.000 After the Civil War, you know, with malice toward none, charity for all, this is how we have to come back together.

00:54:02.000 So, he's gonna run.

00:54:04.000 Is he gonna get the nomination, or is maybe your boy here, DeSantis, gonna fight him?

00:54:08.000 I mean, the big problem for the Republicans is going to be whether anybody runs against him, because he's a giant wrecking ball.

00:54:14.000 I mean, and if you run against Trump, you run the risk that he wrecks you so hard in the primary that you have no chance in the general.

00:54:19.000 And so that is the big question.

00:54:23.000 So what do you think will happen?

00:54:24.000 I mean, I think that if he runs, it's going to clear the field.

00:54:26.000 Right.

00:54:27.000 OK, so he's running again.

00:54:28.000 From a political analysis point of view, yeah.

00:54:30.000 So he's running again.

00:54:32.000 OK, so it's November of 2024.

00:54:37.000 He loses, just the way he did last time, let's say that.

00:54:40.000 He's running against, I don't know, say the Democrats come up with something.

00:54:45.000 They roll out the body of Joe Biden.

00:54:48.000 Yeah, weekend at Bernie.

00:54:49.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:54:51.000 No, I mean, they certainly, I don't know.

00:54:53.000 I wish I could say, well, they've got this guy in the wings and he's going to be great.

00:54:58.000 I can't even think.

00:55:00.000 Yeah, it's difficult.

00:55:02.000 Yeah.

00:55:03.000 So I completely concede Trump could win.

00:55:06.000 The hologram of Barack Obama.

00:55:07.000 Yeah.

00:55:09.000 Well, I suggested that he gay-marry Biden, and Biden would win and he'd actually be president, although he'd be the first lady. 0.59

00:55:16.000 Like Edith Wilson.

00:55:17.000 Right, exactly.

00:55:18.000 He'd be one of those.

00:55:18.000 Exactly.

00:55:21.000 So I could see that Trump could actually win that election easily, especially if the Democrats keep doing the stuff they are doing to piss people off, like in schools, with all that kind of stuff.

00:55:32.000 And that's what my theme has been.

00:55:34.000 Yes, both parties have a lot to answer for.

00:55:37.000 Again, I told you where my politics are in general, okay?

00:55:40.000 I'm not coming over to this side.

00:55:42.000 I do think that Republicans are more dangerous.

00:55:44.000 But what pisses people off with Democrats is so much closer to home.

00:55:51.000 It's so much up close and personal.

00:55:53.000 I mean, when you look at Ukraine, I mean, the Ukraine issue that he was impeached over, yes, I think it was an impeachable offense, absolutely.

00:56:01.000 But to most people, it's like Ukraine.

00:56:04.000 I mean, the Palin family working as a team couldn't find it on a map.

00:56:09.000 That's where most Americans are. 0.62

00:56:11.000 It's very far away.

00:56:12.000 It doesn't really influence my life a lot.

00:56:15.000 But when you have my kid coming home from school and saying, Mommy, am I a racist?

00:56:21.000 And you're five.

00:56:23.000 You just learned the word.

00:56:27.000 That's what I worry about with the Democrats.

00:56:29.000 And in that scenario, Trump could win.

00:56:33.000 But if he doesn't, if he loses like say about the way he lost last time, not by a lot, but you don't think, you think he's going to go gently into that night?

00:56:43.000 No, and I don't think it's going to matter.

00:56:45.000 And the reason I think it's not going to matter is because I think that the constitutional structures have proved themselves extraordinarily durable.

00:56:50.000 To all parties, by the way.

00:56:52.000 Well, we'll see.

00:56:53.000 We could make a small bet.

00:56:56.000 You're a wealthy man now.

00:56:58.000 Sure, let's do it.

00:56:59.000 What is the bet and what are we betting on?

00:57:01.000 One million pesos.

00:57:04.000 One million rubles.

00:57:05.000 It is worth one dollar right now, yeah.

00:57:07.000 Right.

00:57:07.000 Just a friendly gentleman's hundred dollar bet.

00:57:10.000 Okay.

00:57:10.000 I don't, I think what I, the scenario I laid out, I think is much more likely that he tries to, that it's, you know.

00:57:16.000 I'm not saying that that's an unlikely scenario.

00:57:18.000 I mean, this is why I'm asking, what are we betting on?

00:57:19.000 Like, the question is, does he succeed or not?

00:57:22.000 If he doesn't succeed, then... See, here's the thing.

00:57:26.000 I think that we actually may agree on a lot of this stuff.

00:57:28.000 Meaning, I would be surprised if he loses an election, if he went quietly into the night.

00:57:31.000 That would be counter-character, it would be counter-history.

00:57:34.000 That's not what he does.

00:57:35.000 Look, what we're doing is what America needs to do.

00:57:38.000 Two guys who don't agree on everything, who are basically on two different sides, but who can talk without hating each other.

00:57:45.000 You know, I'm doing a... Like you, I'm doing a podcast now.

00:57:50.000 And it's not political.

00:57:52.000 It's so much fun to get away from politics sometimes.

00:57:57.000 I would love to have you on.

00:57:58.000 That'd be a blast.

00:57:59.000 I think it drops like the 21st of March or something like that.

00:58:02.000 I think you can even subscribe now.

00:58:05.000 But I would love to talk to you and find out what's under the amica.

00:58:11.000 And talk about any of what we talked about today.

00:58:18.000 Because my theme is often, this is how we get our country back.

00:58:23.000 People talk politics too much.

00:58:25.000 When I was a kid, people never talked politics.

00:58:28.000 It was almost considered impolite to talk about politics or religion.

00:58:32.000 I remember my parents with their friends.

00:58:34.000 And these were people who were very close.

00:58:37.000 They never talked.

00:58:38.000 I think sometimes they didn't even know what religion they were.

00:58:41.000 They were like, I think they're Episcopalian.

00:58:43.000 We don't get it.

00:58:44.000 And now all people talk about is politics all the time.

00:58:47.000 What is Facebook?

00:58:48.000 It's arguing with some kid you went to high school with.

00:58:51.000 You were in chem lab together.

00:58:53.000 And now you have to talk about who's on the Supreme Court?

00:58:56.000 That's, I think, what is tearing America apart.

00:58:59.000 Because there's a million things you could talk about that aren't political.

00:59:03.000 And you find out, oh, this person is not that different from me.

00:59:08.000 Unless we wander into whether Democrats eat babies.

00:59:11.000 So, let's just say, maybe they do, maybe they don't.

00:59:16.000 Maybe they order it, they just push it around on the plate, they don't really eat it, but it's... But just stay away from that stuff.

00:59:23.000 I would love to do that with you.

00:59:25.000 That'd be a blast, that'd be super fun.

00:59:26.000 Really?

00:59:26.000 Yeah, no, I'd 100% do that.

00:59:28.000 I mean, I don't know, you know, I know so much about you from listening to you.

00:59:33.000 You're so good at what you do.

00:59:36.000 Politically, and about important weighty issues.

00:59:39.000 And I know so little about everything else about you.

00:59:42.000 You know?

00:59:42.000 Yeah, that'd be fun.

00:59:43.000 I don't know who you root for the Florida teams now that you left L.A.?

00:59:46.000 Nah, I'm a lifer.

00:59:48.000 My dad's from Chicago, so I'm a Chicago White Sox fan.

00:59:51.000 I'm the same way.

00:59:52.000 See, look at that.

00:59:53.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:59:53.000 I've been in L.A.

00:59:54.000 since 1983.

00:59:55.000 I never left the New York teams.

00:59:58.000 Even though they stink.

01:00:01.000 I still root for the Knicks.

01:00:03.000 So in a second I want to ask you about, you know, kind of America on the world stage since Ukraine is obviously in the news and where you think that's going.

01:00:10.000 First, let's talk about another podcast you should be giving a listen to.

01:00:16.000 The Jordan Harbinger Show.

01:00:17.000 That is the show of which I speak.

01:00:19.000 It's a top-shelf podcast named Best of Apple in 2018.

01:00:22.000 So don't just ignore my suggestion to listen to this one like you probably do when all your other friends tell you to listen to a podcast.

01:00:26.000 We here at the Daily Wire, we are fans.

01:00:28.000 Jordan dives into the minds of fascinating people from athletes, authors, and scientists to mobsters, spies, and hostage negotiators.

01:00:35.000 Harbinger has an undeniable talent for getting his guests to share never-been-heard-before stories and thought-provoking insights.

01:00:40.000 Without fail, he pulls out tactical bits of wisdom in each episode.

01:00:43.000 All with the noble cause to make you a more informed, critical thinker to better operate in today's world.

01:00:48.000 Even though I don't always agree with Jordan and what he says on his show, he is definitely one of the sharpest guys in the non-political interview game.

01:00:53.000 He gives great advice.

01:00:54.000 I always learn a ton from him each time I listen.

01:00:57.000 You can't go wrong by adding The Jordan Harbinger Show to your rotation.

01:01:01.000 It's interesting.

01:01:01.000 There's never a dull moment.

01:01:03.000 Search for The Jordan Harbinger Show.

01:01:04.000 That's H-A-R-B as in boy, I-N as in Nancy, G-E-R on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, go check out the Jordan Harbinger show today.

01:01:13.000 I promise you, once you put it in that podcast rotation, you're going to want to listen to every single episode.

01:01:18.000 Alrighty, so let's talk about the Ukraine situation.

01:01:21.000 So, it seems to me that when it comes to Ukraine, there are, I mean, not just seems to me, it's pretty obvious, there are no good options.

01:01:28.000 When deterrence fails, there are no good options anymore.

01:01:31.000 And the grave failure of the West was that we spent 30 years basically thinking that bad people are not bad people if we talk to them strong enough and if we negotiate with them or if we ignore them taking pieces of territory in Georgia under Bush or under Or Crimea under Obama.

01:01:45.000 If we just ignore it hard enough, then maybe it sort of goes away.

01:01:48.000 And now deterrence has failed.

01:01:49.000 And it seems like the world order is radically reshifting.

01:01:52.000 Like the United States, we seem to treat this as almost a natural disaster, like a thing happening far away.

01:01:56.000 But in Europe, they're treating this as an epic shifting event.

01:01:59.000 And they're talking about rearming.

01:02:01.000 They're talking about forming new security alliances with Eastern European countries.

01:02:04.000 Where do you think this ends up?

01:02:06.000 I think this is actually turning out to be, I mean, obviously what's going on for the people of Ukraine is horrible right now.

01:02:12.000 But I think in the long run, I think it's going to be a good thing because, first of all, Putin is being shown to be way less strong than we thought he was.

01:02:21.000 I mean, this is, I don't know what the opposite of Blitzkrieg is.

01:02:23.000 Quagmire.

01:02:26.000 Yeah, he's quagmiring. 0.89

01:02:27.000 Right.

01:02:28.000 It was supposed to be a cakewalk.

01:02:31.000 So was Iraq. 0.97

01:02:33.000 You know, I'm so surprised that he actually did it because it wasn't really necessary.

01:02:41.000 I tried to explain one night on my show that I think a lot of this comes from he thinks he's the savior of the Russian people.

01:02:48.000 I think when you get to that level where he's been in office, he's been in absolute power for 20 years, what is left?

01:02:56.000 You know, what's in the soul of a man?

01:02:58.000 He wants to be a hero.

01:03:00.000 And he thinks this is the way to do it.

01:03:02.000 I think people know this is history major stuff.

01:03:05.000 Kiev, I guess we say it now.

01:03:09.000 You know, it's the ancestral home of Russia.

01:03:12.000 It's the beginning of the Russian state from around the year 1000.

01:03:16.000 I'm not saying that that gives them a right to take it.

01:03:18.000 It is a completely different nation now.

01:03:20.000 It changed.

01:03:21.000 It's not even part of Russia anymore.

01:03:24.000 But that is, and I think that's what is in his mind, is I'm going to reclaim this.

01:03:29.000 Yes, the Russian state moved to Moscow, but it's almost similar to the way Kosovo, I mean, when Milosevic started the Balkan Wars.

01:03:37.000 It was all about, the year was 1989, it was the 600th anniversary.

01:03:44.000 In that part of the world, that's like yesterday.

01:03:47.000 You know, that's so far into the way Americans think, but it was 1389.

01:03:50.000 There's this battle in Kosovo, which again, not even part of Serbia anymore, but it was the ancestral home of Serbia, and we got to get it back.

01:04:00.000 This, I think, is what Putin wants.

01:04:02.000 That is what he thinks in his mind, and what he's finding out is that not only the Ukrainian people hate him for doing this, but the Russian people hate him for doing this. 0.95

01:04:09.000 They're like, are you crazy?

01:04:10.000 This is not the world we live in anymore.

01:04:12.000 We're on TikTok now.

01:04:14.000 We can see dogs getting shot, and families being torn apart, and things blown up, and we're a modern country, or trying to be one.

01:04:25.000 What are you doing?

01:04:26.000 So I think it's just going to turn out horribly for Russia.

01:04:29.000 The question I was going to ask you is, do you think it was the right thing to Not only keep NATO going after the Soviet Union fell, but to encroach right up to Russia's borders.

01:04:42.000 Because a lot of people don't.

01:04:43.000 I don't.

01:04:45.000 I actually do think that, well, I think that, here's the thing, if you are going to make overtures to a nation that they should try to join NATO, and then not back it up, that's the worst thing you could do.

01:04:54.000 So we took sort of the worst path with Ukraine. 1.00

01:04:56.000 We were encouraging them, maybe you'll join NATO, maybe you won't join NATO.

01:04:59.000 If you make an overture, maybe we'll consider it.

01:05:01.000 And so that leaves them in an incredibly vulnerable spot, because we're basically saying to them that you have to make overtures to us.

01:05:06.000 And meanwhile, Russia is on your eastern border.

01:05:08.000 And so Russia is looking at that going, no, we're not going to do this at all.

01:05:12.000 If you're going to make a move, make it strong.

01:05:14.000 In other words, if you're going to have Ukraine join NATO, make Ukraine join NATO and you make sure that they have the armaments necessary to defend themselves and you have a mutual alliance pact.

01:05:22.000 If you're an independent armed nation, by the way, right now, like to me, the one long-lasting ramification that's incredibly dangerous, if you're a non-aligned nation right now, you don't have a mutual defense guarantee with either China or Russia or the United States, how fast are you looking for a nuclear weapon right now?

01:05:36.000 I mean, you are looking like hell for a nuclear weapon right now because you don't want to be in a conventional war with a major power.

01:05:41.000 But that's not what I'm asking you.

01:05:42.000 I'm asking you, 30 years ago, 1991, okay, what should we have done then?

01:05:49.000 The Soviet Union fell.

01:05:51.000 NATO was formed specifically to counter the Soviet Union.

01:05:55.000 And communism, which now was no more.

01:05:58.000 Why keep that up?

01:06:00.000 Why not invite Russia at that moment? 0.70

01:06:05.000 Boris Yeltsin took over, right?

01:06:07.000 Invite them.

01:06:08.000 You're one of us now.

01:06:10.000 As opposed to keeping this organization going, Past the point where it had a reason to be going.

01:06:16.000 I mean, the question is whether you really thought that Russia was going to be and develop toward being a friendly nation to the West or not.

01:06:22.000 If you were a skeptical... But that caused them not to be.

01:06:25.000 I mean, I wonder if that's the case.

01:06:26.000 Well, we'll never know.

01:06:28.000 But if they had disbanded NATO and said, look, we're all capitalist countries now.

01:06:33.000 We're not fighting communism anymore and we're not fighting the Soviet Union because it doesn't exist.

01:06:38.000 So we should stop Having this organization which treats you like the enemy, and bring you in.

01:06:44.000 So I disagree to one extent, which is that you'll notice that there are a bunch of nations that Putin has attempted to invade.

01:06:50.000 Not one of them is a member of NATO.

01:06:52.000 So I think Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia would all be Russia right now, if we had gotten rid of NATO.

01:06:56.000 I mean, Finland has been bordering Russia since 1949 as a member of NATO.

01:07:01.000 All of these nations joined NATO in the 90s.

01:07:04.000 Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, I think they all joined either 99 or 2004.

01:07:07.000 Yeah.

01:07:08.000 And that was indirect opposition to, at that point, Putin, right?

01:07:12.000 You're talking late 90s, early 2000s, since Putin took power in 1999.

01:07:15.000 So I think the sort of optimistic vision, which is that if we had made more nice overtures to Boris Yeltsin, Yeltsin was a plutocrat and he was an incompetent plutocrat at that.

01:07:24.000 And then he was replaced by a much more competent plutocrat and a dictatorial plutocrat who had territorial ambition.

01:07:30.000 And so I tend to be much more, you know, hawkish in terms of not trusting other nations to spin on a dime and suddenly become our friends.

01:07:39.000 And so the idea that... It worked with Japan and Germany, didn't it?

01:07:41.000 Well, no.

01:07:42.000 We fully occupied Japan and Germany after nuking Japan twice and after firebombing the living hell out of Germany. 0.99

01:07:47.000 So we didn't actually do any of that to Russia.

01:07:50.000 But we welcomed Japan and Germany.

01:07:53.000 We occupied them and forcibly deposed their emperor.

01:07:55.000 Of course, right after the war we had to.

01:07:57.000 Oh no, we still have troops there right now. 0.65

01:07:59.000 Because they want them there.

01:08:01.000 Yes, but for decades.

01:08:01.000 They want them there.

01:08:02.000 And they're on our side.

01:08:03.000 They're not occupying them.

01:08:05.000 They're not treating Germany and Japan as an enemy.

01:08:07.000 We treat them as an ally.

01:08:09.000 What I'm saying is we forcibly turned them into an ally.

01:08:11.000 I mean, we literally had American troops.

01:08:13.000 We still have American bases in Germany.

01:08:15.000 We have no American bases in Russia.

01:08:16.000 meaning the idea that we were going to take a...

01:08:18.000 We have bases in Germany to fight Russia, to fight the Soviet Union, which doesn't exist anymore.

01:08:22.000 Yes, but in the aftermath of that, we fully toppled the regime, and then we proceeded to occupy and help reconstitute the government in that regime.

01:08:29.000 We had to occupy them right after the war.

01:08:31.000 I'm not making the argument against occupation of Germany or Japan.

01:08:33.000 Okay, but then we occupied them until they were able to stand on their own feet, and then we left.

01:08:38.000 The bases there were for them because they were our allies now.

01:08:42.000 Well, I mean, we, we.

01:08:43.000 We needed to keep the bases there also in order to encourage Japan, for example, not to go after nuclear weapons.

01:08:47.000 The idea is we'll defend you so you don't have to defend yourself.

01:08:49.000 We don't want you rearming militarily.

01:08:51.000 We built an entire European Union in E.C.

01:08:53.000 in order to keep Germany down. 0.89

01:08:55.000 We also made the emperor go on the radio and admit he wasn't a god.

01:08:59.000 Right, so there's a really good book by a woman whose name escapes me right now, it's called Secondhand Time, won the Nobel Prize a few years back, and it was an oral history of Russians talking about the Soviet Union post-Russia.

01:09:13.000 So it's just her interviewing a bunch of people who are standing around in 2000 talking about what the Soviet Union was like, and there's one particular Interview that's really striking, where she's talking to an old Soviet who had been imprisoned, tortured in Lubyanka by the KGB, who'd had friends and family members shot by the KGB, and ended up, or the GRB at the time, and ended up, GRU at the time, and ended up in World War II seeing a person who'd tortured him.

01:09:39.000 And the person looked at him and said, we're both Russian.

01:09:41.000 And he says now, he says, I don't understand the world I'm living in.

01:09:44.000 My kids want Levi's and they want radios.

01:09:46.000 Why can't we have that Russian greatness back?

01:09:48.000 And I think the biggest mistake the West makes generally, and this is true with Russia today, it's true with China as well, is that we tend to think that everybody wants the same things that we want.

01:09:58.000 They want material well-being.

01:10:00.000 They want longer lives.

01:10:01.000 They want their kids to go to good schools.

01:10:03.000 On a fundamental level, unfortunately, I think that that's not always true.

01:10:06.000 I think that there are a lot of people who want... George Orwell wrote this about Hitler in 1940.

01:10:11.000 You know, one of the reasons Hitler is successful is because what Hitler realizes is something that we in the West don't, which is we say we want a washing machine and we want nice radio. 0.90

01:10:20.000 What Hitler understands is sometimes people want blood, struggle, toil, and tears. 0.77

01:10:23.000 And if they don't want that, then it takes them a while to realize that the cost of that is too high.

01:10:28.000 And maybe that's what we're seeing right now in Ukraine, we can hope, is that the Russian people are beginning to realize... The Russian people, by the way, five years ago were polled about Stalin, and 70% of whom said, good guy.

01:10:38.000 Maybe they're starting to realize there are too many costs to this.

01:10:40.000 Well, that's a poll he took.

01:10:42.000 There have been multiple polls that show that Stalin is still held in fairly high esteem by a significant percentage of the population.

01:10:48.000 Oh, Stalin.

01:10:49.000 I thought you meant Putin.

01:10:50.000 No, not Putin.

01:10:50.000 Stalin.

01:10:52.000 Yes, well, because strongman is built into the Russian culture.

01:10:56.000 And I also would say this about the Russian people.

01:11:00.000 You can't have communism for as long as they had it.

01:11:02.000 And it's a little like being from a broken home.

01:11:06.000 And I'm being abused as a child.

01:11:08.000 Communism was so evil, I mean, what it did to the psyche, the cynicism that it incurred in people, that you're not going to get over that in just a generation.

01:11:17.000 I think it's a very cynical country, a very cynical mentality there.

01:11:21.000 And, you know, when I hear people nowadays, fact free, talking about how, you know, a lot of, you know, if you look at Gen Z, it's like a lot of them think, oh, maybe communism Be good to give that another try.

01:11:35.000 You know, they just don't understand.

01:11:39.000 Because they have this idea in their head that if something happened before they were alive, what does it matter?

01:11:45.000 It didn't really happen.

01:11:47.000 It's like, but stuff did happen.

01:11:49.000 Stuff did happen.

01:11:50.000 I know you weren't around for it, but it really did.

01:11:52.000 And other people noticed it.

01:11:54.000 And we learned that lesson.

01:11:56.000 You know, communism doesn't work.

01:11:57.000 And it makes people very cynical.

01:11:58.000 Remember that old joke they had about, we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us?

01:12:03.000 That was the system?

01:12:04.000 I mean, that's not going to go away overnight.

01:12:09.000 Well, Bill Martin, it's a pleasure to have you here.

01:12:10.000 I'm glad we could finally make it work.

01:12:12.000 This is a blast.

01:12:13.000 Yeah.

01:12:13.000 We should definitely do this again soon.

01:12:14.000 Absolutely, we'll do it again.

01:12:15.000 And you come on Club Random, my podcast.

01:12:17.000 I would love to do that.

01:12:18.000 And we'll have a whole different kind of discussion.

01:12:20.000 Well, thanks so much for stopping by.

01:12:21.000 Great to see you.

01:12:21.000 Thank you, Ben.

01:12:22.000 I'll see you next time.

01:12:34.000 Executive Producer Jeremy Boring.

01:12:36.000 Production Manager Paweł Lajdowski.

01:12:38.000 Associate Producer Justine Turley.

01:12:40.000 Editing is by Jim Nickel.

01:12:41.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.

01:12:43.000 Hair and Makeup is by Fabiola Cristina.

01:12:45.000 Title Graphics are by Cynthia Angulo.

01:12:47.000 Production Assistant Jessica Crand.

01:12:49.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire production.

The Ben Shapiro Show - March 13, 2022

Bill Maher | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 124

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript