The Ben Shapiro Show - Border STANDOFF: Texas Fights Back

00:00:00.000 So yesterday afternoon, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas issued a letter basically announcing that the state of Texas was going to start enforcing the border.

00:00:07.000 They've been doing this for a while.

00:00:08.000 They put a bunch of fencing in the middle of the Rio Grande, barriers in the middle of the Rio Grande to prevent people from crossing the border.

00:00:14.000 The federal government has objected to that.

00:00:16.000 They've used razor wire in state parks that are on the national border.

00:00:21.000 And the federal government has objected to all of that.

00:00:24.000 Well, yesterday, Greg Abbott, looking at the crisis that has been created by Joe Biden on the southern border, issued what is a rather historic letter.

00:00:31.000 And we're going to go through it in its details because what we are watching is now a constitutional crisis that is created entirely by Joe Biden and his evil activities on the border.

00:00:41.000 And they are.

00:00:42.000 I'm sorry.

00:00:42.000 It is an evil thing not to enforce the border of your country, to purposefully say that you're going to leave the border wide open, which is what Joe Biden has done.

00:00:49.000 I've been down to the border.

00:00:50.000 It is wide open.

00:00:52.000 To facilitate that, to basically incentivize the drug cartels to pour millions of people into the United States is a bad thing.

00:01:01.000 It is Joe Biden abandoning his constitutional duties.

00:01:04.000 It is Joe Biden abdicating the presidency of the United States.

00:01:07.000 It is an evil for the president of the United States to do those things.

00:01:11.000 It would be the equivalent of a mayor of a large city simply announcing that they are not going to police crime anymore.

00:01:16.000 The fundamental duty of the federal government is to protect the people of the United States of America.

00:01:21.000 And to protect the borders of the United States of America.

00:01:23.000 That's why it is a federally mandated duty for the government of the United States to do that.

00:01:28.000 That's why it's a federal issue and not a state issue.

00:01:31.000 Andrew Biden has not only signally failed, he has done the opposite of good.

00:01:36.000 He has facilitated all of this.

00:01:39.000 In the estimates on the number of illegal immigrants who have entered the country, It ranges from a low.

00:01:44.000 The low would be like 6 million people have entered the country illegally under Joe Biden.

00:01:49.000 There are certain estimates that put that upwards of 10 million.

00:01:52.000 And there's no real way to know because, of course, there are a bunch of people who ran across the border and got away, and those are unknown gotaways.

00:01:57.000 There are known gotaways and unknown gotaways.

00:02:00.000 But Joe Biden has facilitated all this with terrible border policy.

00:02:05.000 It is wrong.

00:02:06.000 It should be against the law.

00:02:08.000 Again, the federal government has one job and one job only in the end, and that is to protect you, to protect your rights.

00:02:15.000 There are already laws on the books that prevent illegal immigration.

00:02:18.000 Those laws have been in place for decades in the United States.

00:02:21.000 It is up to the president of the United States to enforce those laws.

00:02:25.000 And again, it is worth noting here that leaving the border wide open is not just incentivizing the Mexican drug cartels to move millions of people across the southern border, It is incentivizing the Mexican drug cartels to move tons of fentanyl across the southern border, which is being used to kill effectively 100,000 Americans a year, depending on the numbers that you're using when it comes to drug overdose.

00:02:47.000 Those drugs are pouring over the border.

00:02:49.000 Again, this is all facilitated by Joe Biden's policy.

00:02:52.000 This was not a problem during the latter years of the Trump administration.

00:02:55.000 It just wasn't.

00:02:57.000 And it is under Joe Biden, and it is a manufactured crisis.

00:03:01.000 Because Joe Biden has decided, just legally speaking, that he was going to get rid of Romaine in Mexico.

00:03:05.000 He was going to suggest that if you arrive on America's southern border, throw up your hands and say, I am here because I fear to go to my home country.

00:03:11.000 Then we have to process you and release you into the interior of the United States within 72 hours. 0.50

00:03:16.000 That is basically how Joe Biden's border policies work.

00:03:19.000 And he has staffed 90% of border patrol on busing and administrative duty, leaving the rest of the border wide open for the Mexican drug cartels.

00:03:29.000 He's turned Border Patrol into a ferry service for illegal immigration.

00:03:31.000 You can ask members of Border Patrol.

00:03:33.000 They will openly tell you that that is what they are now.

00:03:35.000 It used to be that it was their job to track down people who were illegally crossing the border so that they could be detained and then deported.

00:03:41.000 And now it is their job to basically act as a facilitation service for illegal entry into the country.

00:03:48.000 Why is Joe Biden doing this?

00:03:49.000 And there must be a rationale because he is so committed to open borders that he is scuttling his own desire for Ukraine aid, for Israel aid, for Taiwan aid in order to keep those borders open.

00:03:58.000 Republicans have proposed fixes on the border that would, for example, most important fix would be not only the Reinforcement of Remain in Mexico, which was a Trump-era policy that Joe Biden refuses to enforce, which would simply say that if you're applying for asylum, you have to wait in Mexico while that asylum request is processed, which would mean that most of those people aren't getting in the country, as opposed to now they arrive, and then again, we detain them for five seconds and then release them, and they quote-unquote wait in the interior and then never show up again.

00:04:24.000 It's not just that.

00:04:25.000 Joe Biden's asylum policies, they need to be fixed.

00:04:29.000 In order to claim asylum in the United States, you should have to show.

00:04:31.000 The burden of proof is on you to show that you actually require asylum.

00:04:35.000 Right now, you don't even have to make a colorable argument that you require asylum.

00:04:38.000 You just claim that you do, and then we release you into the interior.

00:04:41.000 H.R.

00:04:42.000 2, which is the Republican bill that would shore up all this, Joe Biden is rejecting all aspects of that.

00:04:47.000 Even if it means scuttling the aid that Ukraine actually needs in order to maintain its war against Russian invasion.

00:04:54.000 Why would he be doing that?

00:04:54.000 There are only a couple of possible reasons.

00:04:56.000 One is obviously political.

00:04:57.000 That Joe Biden and a lot of Democrats believe that many of the illegal immigrants who are crossing the border are going to eventually become Democratic voters.

00:05:04.000 And for all the people who are saying, well, you know, they can't vote because they're illegal immigrants.

00:05:08.000 You don't need the illegal immigrants to vote. 1.00

00:05:09.000 All you need to do is for them to get married.

00:05:12.000 I have a bunch of young single men who are crossing the border.

00:05:14.000 All they have to do is marry an American citizen, and they are now sponsored for citizenship.

00:05:18.000 They can now get their green card, which moves them towards citizenship.

00:05:20.000 Plus, there is the bet that the Democrats are making that eventually somebody's going to amnesty all these folks, and they'll become American citizens, at which point they're going to vote for Democrats.

00:05:29.000 And why would Democrats not think that, given the fact that many of the people who are crossing the border right now are chanting Joe Biden's name?

00:05:34.000 I mean, there's video of it.

00:05:37.000 Or maybe it's because Joe Biden is ideologically captured by his radical left flank.

00:05:41.000 A radical left flank that believes that America is in fact a guilty country on the world stage and therefore has some sort of moral duty to open its borders wide to anybody who wants to come into the country. 0.87

00:05:51.000 Whatever the reason, Joe Biden has abandoned his duty as president and all of this is the predictable result.

00:05:55.000 So, the predictable result is that the state of Texas is looking at this and they're saying, we are getting smacked in the face by illegal immigration.

00:06:02.000 We are being told that we have to basically swallow it.

00:06:05.000 When the federal government decides not to enforce the law.

00:06:08.000 And this raises a bunch of really deep legal and constitutional issues.

00:06:11.000 But we have to lead with the moral because here is the reality.

00:06:13.000 Joe Biden could solve this tomorrow by simply enforcing the border.

00:06:16.000 And by the way, the American people should solve this by not reelecting Joe Biden.

00:06:20.000 That would solve this too.

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00:07:22.000 So yesterday, Greg Abbott, governor of Texas, put out a statement.

00:07:25.000 Here's what it said, quote, The federal government has broken the compact between the United States and the states.

00:07:30.000 The executive branch of the United States has a constitutional duty to enforce federal laws protecting states, including immigration laws on the books right now.

00:07:37.000 President Biden has refused to enforce those laws, and he's even violated them.

00:07:40.000 The result is that he has smashed records for illegal immigration.

00:07:44.000 Despite having been put on notice in a series of letters, one of which I delivered to him by hand, President Biden has ignored Texas's demand that he perform his constitutional duties.

00:07:51.000 President Biden, says Greg Abbott, has violated his oath to faithfully execute immigration laws enacted by Congress.

00:07:57.000 Instead of prosecuting immigrants for the federal crime of illegal entry, President Biden has sent his lawyers into federal courts to sue Texas for taking action to secure the border.

00:08:04.000 President Biden has instructed his agencies to ignore federal statutes that mandate the detention of illegal immigrants.

00:08:09.000 The effect is to illegally allow their en masse parole into the United States.

00:08:12.000 He's right about that.

00:08:13.000 That's the so-called catch and release program.

00:08:14.000 Instead of detaining people until they actually have their asylum hearing, instead, they have an initial hearing, and then they are released On their own recognizance, into the interior of the United States.

00:08:25.000 And again, it's no more than a week.

00:08:26.000 I mean, the average right now is probably 72 hours, what I've been told by people at Border Patrol.

00:08:31.000 Greg Abbottes, by wasting taxpayer dollars to tear open Texas's border security infrastructure, President Biden has enticed illegal immigrants away from the 28 legal entry points along the state's southern border, bridges where nobody drowns, and into the dangerous waters of the Rio Grande.

00:08:45.000 Which of course is true. 0.75

00:08:46.000 One of the things drug cartels are doing right now is they don't actually want illegal immigrants processed at these stations.

00:08:51.000 They want to flood certain border points With illegal immigrants, so as to draw the Border Patrol to those areas where it is their duty to care for the illegal immigrants who are entering the country and claiming asylum.

00:09:02.000 And then what does that do?

00:09:03.000 Well, if you take all the people who are spaced along the border, and there aren't that many Border Patrol agents, you have them spaced along the border trying to maintain eyes on miles of the border.

00:09:12.000 And then you centralize them at this point right here, which is where all the illegal immigrants are rushing across, not any Border Patrol station.

00:09:18.000 Well, what does that do?

00:09:19.000 It leaves the rest of the border wide open.

00:09:20.000 And that's when you get illegal immigrants, who in fact are drug smugglers, being shifted across the border by the drug cartels.

00:09:27.000 Greg Abbott says, Under President Biden's lawless border policies,

00:09:30.000 more than 6 million illegal immigrants have crossed our southern border in just three years.

00:09:34.000 This is more than the population of 33 different states in this country.

00:09:37.000 The illegal refusal to protect the states has inflicted unprecedented harm

00:09:40.000 on the people all across the United States.

00:09:42.000 He continues, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and the other visionaries

00:09:45.000 who wrote the U.S.

00:09:46.000 Constitution foresaw that states should not be left to the mercy of a lawless president who does nothing to stop external threats like cartels smuggling millions of illegal immigrants across the border.

00:09:54.000 That is why the framers included both Article 4, Section 4, which promises the federal government shall protect each state against invasion, and Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3, which acknowledges the state's sovereign interest in protecting their borders.

00:10:06.000 The failure of the Biden administration to fulfill the duties imposed by Article 4, Section 4 has triggered Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3, which reserves to the state the right of self-defense.

00:10:14.000 For these reasons, I have already declared an invasion under Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3 to invoke Texas's constitutional authority to defend and protect itself.

00:10:21.000 That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary.

00:10:25.000 The Texas National Guard, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and other Texas personnel are acting on that authority as well as state law to secure the Texas border.

00:10:32.000 Okay, so.

00:10:33.000 One of the big questions here is what does that mean?

00:10:34.000 So let's start with the very legal basics here.

00:10:36.000 Greg Abbott has done nothing to violate the law thus far.

00:10:39.000 Nothing.

00:10:39.000 He's not violated federal law.

00:10:41.000 He's not violated state law.

00:10:42.000 People who are accusing him of having done so thus far by having Texas state troopers put out razor wire in state parks, they don't know what they're talking about.

00:10:52.000 The Supreme Court ruled recently that the federal government has the capacity to Withdraw the razor wire, but they said nothing about whether the state of Texas is allowed to put up the razor wire.

00:11:04.000 So the Supreme Court did not rule that it was illegal for the state of Texas to, for example, put barriers in the Rio Grande.

00:11:09.000 They just ruled that the federal government is allowed to remove those barriers.

00:11:12.000 They removed an injunction against the federal government right there.

00:11:15.000 It didn't say what Texas was doing was illegal in any way.

00:11:17.000 So anybody who's telling you different in the media today that Texas is doing something illegally, that is not true.

00:11:22.000 Now, if Texas were to prevent the federal government from actually dismantling the razor wire, for example, then you start to get into some dicey legal issues.

00:11:31.000 So, let's get to exactly what Joe Biden is doing here that is facilitating all of this.

00:11:36.000 So, first of all, he's exploiting the law for his own agenda.

00:11:40.000 Right?

00:11:40.000 He's exploiting it.

00:11:42.000 Now, he's following Barack Obama's example in doing this.

00:11:44.000 He's been using executive action to stop prosecution of so-called dreamers, right?

00:11:48.000 That's the same thing that Barack Obama did.

00:11:51.000 A DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, that's been kicking around the legal system since, like, 2010.

00:11:56.000 And some people have ruled it illegal and others have ruled it not illegal.

00:12:01.000 In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration couldn't even rescind DACA, at least not in the way they did it, which is a ridiculous ruling.

00:12:08.000 So they said that Barack Obama could actually issue DACA, which effectively legalized Millions of illegal immigrants.

00:12:14.000 But Donald Trump couldn't reverse that policy by executive action.

00:12:17.000 He said that he'd fail to go through the Administrative Procedures Act.

00:12:19.000 It's a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. 0.95

00:12:21.000 But it was really, really silly.

00:12:23.000 But it is certainly a very weird legal motion that the president just has the simple ability to not enforce the law.

00:12:29.000 That's a very weird legal idea.

00:12:32.000 In fact, in 1975, for example, there was a federal case in which the President of the United States refused to actually spend money that had been allocated by Congress for a particular purpose.

00:12:43.000 And the Supreme Court found that he couldn't do that.

00:12:45.000 That if the Congress said, you must spend X dollars, the President could not spend half of those dollars.

00:12:51.000 He had to spend X dollars.

00:12:53.000 So if the executive branch is charged with executing the laws, then why in the world would the executive branch have the power to not execute the laws?

00:13:03.000 Now, they can claim that they need more resources, but that's not what Joe Biden is really claiming right now.

00:13:08.000 He says he wants more resources in order to facilitate more illegal immigration, not in order to actually enforce America's southern border.

00:13:14.000 He doesn't want more policing power on the southern border in any real way.

00:13:17.000 That's why Republicans are objecting.

00:13:19.000 We'll get to more on this in just one second.

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00:14:40.000 So, that brings us to a deeper issue, and it's sort of a little bit down the road from where we are right now, because we've not actually gotten there yet, but it's the one that's sort of in everybody's mind, and that is whether the state of Texas can unilaterally enforce immigration law, even if the federal government wants them not to.

00:14:55.000 So the best comp here is from 2010.

00:14:56.000 That year, the state of Arizona passed a law called SB 1070.

00:15:01.000 You may remember this.

00:15:02.000 The Arizona governor at the time was a woman named Jan Brewer. 0.95

00:15:05.000 And that law contained four provisions, the Arizona law.

00:15:08.000 The first provision was that it created a state law crime for being unlawfully present in the United States.

00:15:12.000 So it was just a federal crime for the illegal immigrants to be in the United States that would be prosecuted by the federal government, then you'd be deported. 0.61

00:15:20.000 It would be a state law crime.

00:15:21.000 So Arizona could jail you for being unlawfully present in the United States.

00:15:25.000 Second, it created a state law crime for working or seeking to work while you weren't authorized to do so.

00:15:29.000 So, it's a federal crime for people to use a false social security number, for example, to work illegally in the United States.

00:15:35.000 This created a comparative state law crime based on that.

00:15:38.000 Third, it required state and local officers to verify the citizenship or alien status of anyone who was lawfully arrested or detained.

00:15:44.000 That was an anti-sanctuary city policy.

00:15:46.000 This is the Arizona SB 1070 law that ended up going to the Supreme Court.

00:15:49.000 That's why we're talking about it.

00:15:50.000 Okay, so that required that if you are a cop and you pull somebody over, you have to check whether they are legally here or not.

00:15:57.000 And then fourth, the law authorized warrantless arrests of aliens believed to be removable from the United States.

00:16:03.000 So you could just arrest people and then presumably you would turn them over to the federal government.

00:16:06.000 So the question on the table, so the Obama administration sued Arizona to stop them from putting this law in place in the same way that currently the Biden administration is trying to stop Texas from enforcing border law.

00:16:16.000 The question on the table was whether federal preemption prevented those laws from taking effect.

00:16:21.000 So federal preemption is the doctrine that under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which says that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, so when a state law comes into conflict with a federal law, the state law loses.

00:16:32.000 So let's say that the federal law says, for example, that it is criminal to commit some sort of crime.

00:16:41.000 The state law cannot then exempt that sort of crime from prosecution by the federal government.

00:16:47.000 You can't just know the federal law.

00:16:50.000 And federal preemption actually is a little bit broader than that.

00:16:52.000 It says that if federal law actually takes up a certain portion of the law, if it occupies that portion of the law, the state laws cannot come into conflict with it.

00:17:00.000 So the court in the Arizona case found 5-3, that items 1, 2, and 4 were in violation of the Constitution.

00:17:06.000 Those would be the state-created laws that enforce the federal Constitution.

00:17:11.000 The court did find, for example, that you could get rid of sanctuary status in the state of Arizona.

00:17:18.000 That you could force your state law enforcement officials to check immigration status and report it to ICE.

00:17:21.000 But the court found that the federal laws on immigration prevented state laws that created crimes based on federal status.

00:17:28.000 Which seems like a weird decision.

00:17:30.000 Like a really weird decision.

00:17:32.000 Because effectively speaking, what you are now saying is that the state cannot call the bluff of the federal government by enforcing laws that are already on the federal books.

00:17:40.000 So if the federal government says it is criminal to cross the border and you should be deported, and then the state passes a law that says it is criminal to cross the border using the federal definition and you will be deported, Or criminalized.

00:17:53.000 Or he'll go to state prison.

00:17:54.000 That that's somehow in conflict with the federal law.

00:17:57.000 So Justice Scalia disagreed.

00:17:59.000 And this is a dissent that's referred to in the letter from Greg Abbott.

00:18:02.000 And here's what he stated in dissent.

00:18:04.000 Today's opinion, approving virtually all of the Ninth Circuit's injunction against

00:18:07.000 enforcement of the four challenged provisions of Arizona law, deprived states of what most

00:18:11.000 would consider the defining characteristic of sovereignty, the power to exclude from

00:18:16.000 the sovereign's territory people who have no right to be there.

00:18:19.000 The naturalization power was given to Congress not to abrogate states power to exclude those

00:18:24.000 they did not want, but to vindicate it.

00:18:26.000 So in other words, what he is saying is that originally the reason immigration law was given to the federal government is because everybody at the beginning of the republic was very much afraid of what's happened in the EU.

00:18:36.000 Where say, Italy has open immigration policies and you're Hungary, and you say, I don't want all these immigrants coming to my country. 1.00

00:18:42.000 But the EU says, no, no, no, you must.

00:18:44.000 If one of these countries is wide open, then you have to be wide open.

00:18:47.000 So the federal government took control of this, so as to make homogenous immigration law around the United States, so there'd be freedom of travel and freedom of residency inside the United States.

00:18:56.000 But in order for that bargain to be upheld, the federal government actually does have to police the border.

00:19:02.000 And that's particularly true when you have laws on the books saying that the border must be policed.

00:19:05.000 It's one thing if the federal government has passed laws saying we have basically open immigration at this time.

00:19:11.000 Because, presumably, those federal laws are part of a constitution that was signed onto by the states.

00:19:15.000 It's another thing for the federal government to have laws on the books saying you must police the border and remove illegal immigrants. 0.99

00:19:22.000 And the federal government, the executive branch, just says, no, we're not going to do it.

00:19:25.000 Because now you've abrogated the compact.

00:19:29.000 I mean, Scalia said in that case in the dissent, he said the reason the entire issue was federalized was to prevent open migration to one state from affecting all the states.

00:19:37.000 And that's basically what Greg Abbott is arguing in this letter.

00:19:41.000 And he's right.

00:19:42.000 Now, that doesn't mean that the Supreme Court is going to vindicate him because after all, the Supreme Court voted the other way in that Arizona case.

00:19:48.000 We have no idea what the Supreme Court will do here because the constituency of the Supreme Court has changed since 2010.

00:19:54.000 Now that's argument number one, is that basically the federal government has abrogated its constitutional duty and they must be forced to actually enforce the law.

00:20:02.000 But then, he makes a kind of unique constitutional argument.

00:20:05.000 And this one gets into just, on a legal side, some fascinating and controversial territory.

00:20:10.000 Let's put it that way.

00:20:11.000 We'll get to more on this in just one second.

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00:21:11.000 So Abbott actually makes kind of a unique constitutional argument here.

00:21:15.000 Here's what he says.

00:21:16.000 He says that under Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3, the state can invoke its constitutional authority to defend its citizens from invasion.

00:21:22.000 Now, that could be, as I say, kind of a difficult, controversial legal argument.

00:21:27.000 Here's the actual text of Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3.

00:21:29.000 Quote, So what was that meant to do?

00:21:31.000 What does an invasion mean in that context?

00:21:32.000 Congress, lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops or ships of war in times of peace, enter into

00:21:36.000 any agreement or compact with another state or with a foreign power, or engage in war

00:21:40.000 unless actually invaded or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay." 0.77

00:21:44.000 So what was that meant to do?

00:21:46.000 What does an invasion mean in that context?

00:21:47.000 Presumably it meant like the British show up in Massachusetts with their gunboats and

00:21:51.000 the Massachusetts militia has no time to respond.

00:21:53.000 They have to get together and they have to do something.

00:21:55.000 Right?

00:21:55.000 So because of what that's doing, it's saying the foreign policy of the United States is a federal question.

00:21:59.000 It is not a state question.

00:22:01.000 Unless it's basically an exigent circumstance.

00:22:04.000 Right?

00:22:04.000 It's an urgent, dangerous circumstance in which you have like an actual foreign body that is encroaching over the border, for example, and attacking Texas.

00:22:11.000 So, for example, the Mexican cartels just decide one day that they're going to walk over the border with AK-47s.

00:22:17.000 Can Texas defend itself?

00:22:18.000 Of course. 0.97

00:22:19.000 Texas does not have to call the federal government, at least not until afterward, and they can shoot the Mexican drug cartel members who constitute an invading army.

00:22:26.000 Okay, but what actually Abbott is doing is he is claiming that the massive illegal migration wave doesn't constitute an invasion in sort of a colloquial sense, right?

00:22:38.000 The way that you and I say invasion, like meaning like a vast wave of people being facilitated in entry.

00:22:45.000 He's actually trying to cite the law under the Constitution of invasion in order to apply to illegal migration, which is, again, I think, legally dicey.

00:22:55.000 I think the Supreme Court's gonna have a tough time with that argument, for example.

00:22:59.000 So, Texas, for example, I think has a pretty good argument that they can just shoot down Mexican cartel drones.

00:23:04.000 If the Mexican cartels have drones over the border, for example, that is a military incursion into the United States.

00:23:09.000 Texas should not have to call up the chain to shoot down the drones. 0.97

00:23:12.000 However, can they just start capturing illegal immigrants and treating them as POWs as you would during an invasion, right? 0.86

00:23:17.000 I mean, if a Mexican army crossed the border and Texas had to defend itself, it would shoot people and take them POWs.

00:23:22.000 So, is that really the situation here?

00:23:26.000 Very difficult to say that that's the situation here.

00:23:28.000 So he's not... Let's be real about this.

00:23:30.000 It's not being treated as an invasion.

00:23:31.000 If it were being treated as an invasion, then presumably a lot of people are getting shot on the border, which is not exactly what's happening.

00:23:37.000 So again, the better argument here that Abbott is making is effectively that the federal government has abrogated its duty to protect the border.

00:23:45.000 And they should be forced, by law, to do that.

00:23:47.000 And if they won't do it, then we're gonna do it.

00:23:50.000 The argument that he gets to invoke invasion power in order to sort of defend the state against invasion, I think that's a little bit more legally dicey.

00:23:59.000 But here, again, as I say, this entire thing could be solved tomorrow by Joe Biden enforcing the border.

00:24:05.000 That's all.

00:24:05.000 And this stuff becomes absolutely inevitable.

00:24:07.000 It becomes absolutely inevitable.

00:24:09.000 If you do not protect the people of this country because you have made a political decision not to enforce the law, people are going to get mad and they're going to try to find ways to actually enforce the law and protect themselves.

00:24:19.000 You can't leave people unprotected.

00:24:20.000 What we are seeing on the southern border, writ large, is what you are seeing in the New York subway system, writ small.

00:24:26.000 Which is, if you remove the cops from the subway system, and then you have criminals who are attacking people, you are going to have people like Daniel Penny who defend the people in the subway car from crazy people who are attacking them.

00:24:37.000 And if you leave the border wide open, you are going to start having state authorities say, guys, if you're going to leave, like, we have to defend our citizens.

00:24:43.000 They are our citizens too.

00:24:44.000 They're not just federal citizens.

00:24:45.000 They're state citizens.

00:24:46.000 It's our job to protect them.

00:24:48.000 The way this gets solved is by Joe Biden actually enforcing the border.

00:24:51.000 Okay, so there are a couple on sort of historic precedence for what happens when you have a state-federal standoff.

00:24:57.000 And we're not in that position quite yet.

00:24:59.000 Because, again, the state of Texas is not telling, for example, the federal government they can't cut the razor wire.

00:25:05.000 Greg Abbott has not prevented the entry of CBP onto state lands to cut the razor wire.

00:25:10.000 They're just directing new razor wire, which is totally legal.

00:25:13.000 The federal government has not deployed troops to open the southern border, and the state government has deployed the Texas Rangers to shoot at them or something.

00:25:22.000 But how do these sorts of standoffs historically get solved?

00:25:24.000 Because we've had standoffs, state versus the federal government, much more severe than this in the past.

00:25:29.000 We'll get to more on this in just one second.

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00:26:32.000 So basically there are two paths.

00:26:34.000 One is the federal government just overruns the states.

00:26:37.000 Which, historically, has happened a couple of times.

00:26:39.000 It happened, obviously, during the Civil War, and then it also happened during the Civil Rights Movement.

00:26:43.000 Both to good effect, by the way.

00:26:45.000 The Civil War was basically the states arguing that the federal government did not have the power to enforce laws within their states regarding, for example, the Fugitive Slave Act, or revision of the Fugitive Slave Act.

00:26:58.000 They were afraid that basically the federal government was going to start freeing slaves in the South.

00:27:02.000 They said that violates the state compact.

00:27:04.000 It violates the state theory.

00:27:05.000 And the federal government said, no, no, no.

00:27:06.000 We have the power to do that because you are violating the basic rights of human beings.

00:27:10.000 And so we can, we have to preserve the union.

00:27:13.000 And that's the fight of the Civil War.

00:27:14.000 And the federal government wins that fight, obviously, which is a good thing.

00:27:18.000 And then during the Civil Rights Movement, you had the same sort of thing.

00:27:21.000 In the aftermath of the passage of Brown versus Board by the Supreme Court,

00:27:26.000 you had integration of Southern universities, for example.

00:27:30.000 And people forget just how violent and standoffish it got.

00:27:34.000 The most famous example is in 1962 at the University of Mississippi,

00:27:37.000 which is known also as Ole Miss, that there was a black student named James Meredith,

00:27:42.000 who was the first black student who was admitted to Ole Miss.

00:27:45.000 And the governor of the state of Mississippi tried to obstruct Meredith from attending.

00:27:49.000 And the federal government under JFK actually had to activate first the National Guard, and then they eventually had to activate 31,000 troops.

00:27:57.000 31,000 troops to make sure that the campus stayed open.

00:28:00.000 The federal government refused to compromise, as they should have, because again, James Meredith had a federal civil right to go to the university.

00:28:07.000 Okay, now again, that is the federal government attempting to enforce law, not the federal government attempting to ignore the law.

00:28:13.000 So that's a bit of a different thing.

00:28:15.000 The only other example that we have that has ended a different way is the so-called nullification crisis of 1828.

00:28:21.000 So, in 1828, the federal government passes a tariff.

00:28:26.000 It's a tariff that is designed against foreign goods.

00:28:30.000 that are manufactured, because the idea was you're gonna protect the infant industries of the North, these new manufacturing firms, and so you're gonna pass a tariff that basically jacks up the cost of foreign goods that are manufactured to make room for manufacturing in the North. 0.97

00:28:43.000 And the Southern states are like, this is crap.

00:28:44.000 We didn't sign on to the Constitution to be barred from importing manufactured goods and then to have foreign countries retaliate against non-manufactured goods from the United States, which were typically Southern products. 0.98

00:28:54.000 So the tariffs disproportionately hit the South and disproportionately benefited the North.

00:28:59.000 So, Vice President John C. Calhoun, who was a vicious racist and would later make very similar arguments with regard to slavery, but here he made an interesting constitutional argument.

00:29:08.000 So he argued that the states had what he called the right of nullification.

00:29:13.000 What this meant is that if the state decided that the federal law had gone beyond the remit of the Constitution, states could simply say no and refuse to enforce it.

00:29:22.000 And not only refuse to enforce it, could resist it.

00:29:24.000 Now, that actually was not such an unusual position in 1828.

00:29:27.000 That position had been taken, for example, by Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in a series of missives that became resolutions that are passed by states like Kentucky and Virginia in the late 18th century.

00:29:41.000 He wrote regarding the Alien and Sedition Acts, quote, where powers are assumed, which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy, that every state has a natural right in cases not within the compact, casus non foderis, to nullify of their own authority all

00:29:54.000 assumptions of power by others within their limits. That without this right, they'd be

00:29:57.000 under the dominion absolute and unlimited of what's of whosoever might exercise this right of

00:30:01.000 judgment for them. So in other words, if the federal government decided that tomorrow is going to just

00:30:05.000 violate the constitutional pact and burst its boundaries, that states could have a right to

00:30:10.000 resist that.

00:30:11.000 James Madison actually made a similar suggestion at the time.

00:30:14.000 He's the father of the Constitution.

00:30:14.000 He said, quote, the Constitution of the United States was formed by the sanction of the states

00:30:18.000 given by each in its sovereign capacity.

00:30:20.000 It adds to the stability and dignity as well as to the authority of the Constitution that

00:30:24.000 it rests on this solid foundation.

00:30:26.000 The states then being parties to the constitutional compact and in their sovereign capacity and

00:30:30.000 follows of necessity, there can be no tribunal above their authority to decide in the last

00:30:33.000 resort whether the compact made by them be violated.

00:30:36.000 And consequently, as parties to it, they must themselves decide in the last resort such questions as may be of sufficient magnitude to require their interposition.

00:30:44.000 That's a fancy way of saying that states Should be able to interpret whether the federal constitution is being violated and the federal government is breaking its bonds with the states and states can then resist.

00:30:53.000 Now you can see how this exact logic was then used by the South with regard to slavery.

00:30:59.000 The South made the argument, a la Dred Scott, that the Constitution did not mandate the end of slavery or give the federal government the power to abolish slavery or to curb slavery, and that therefore, they had the right to resist that.

00:31:09.000 Now, Abraham Lincoln made the argument that that was a wild misinterpretation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

00:31:15.000 So that was basically the argument.

00:31:19.000 Again, this argument has early shades in this terror fight.

00:31:23.000 So Calhoun, who's the vice president under Andrew Jackson at this time, he ends up actually resigning the vice presidency in order to become a senator.

00:31:31.000 Meanwhile, James Madison, by this point, had actually reversed his position.

00:31:34.000 He said that to establish a positive and permanent rule, giving such a power to such a minority over such a majority would overturn the first principle of free government, and in practice, necessarily overturn the government itself.

00:31:44.000 So you can see Madison sort of arguing against himself there, right?

00:31:47.000 The earlier Madison is saying, well, if the states can't nullify federal law, what stops the federal government from overrunning its boundaries?

00:31:53.000 And later Madison is saying, yes, but if a state can nullify federal law, what's the purpose of the federal government?

00:31:58.000 So Andrew Jackson, at this point, is the president.

00:32:00.000 He's a Southerner.

00:32:00.000 He took the same position as Madison, which shocked everybody because he was of the South.

00:32:04.000 So people thought he was going to take the Calhoun position.

00:32:06.000 At an event honoring his own birthday, Jackson raised a toast to our federal union, saying, quote, It must be preserved.

00:32:11.000 It was kind of shocking to everybody at the time.

00:32:13.000 And then in December of 1832, he made his position even clearer with a very famous piece of writing

00:32:19.000 called the Nullification Proclamation, where he said, quote, I consider then the power to

00:32:22.000 annul a law of the United States assumed by one state incompatible with the existence of the Union

00:32:27.000 contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution unauthorized by its spirit,

00:32:31.000 inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, destructive of the great object

00:32:34.000 for which it was formed. Disunion by armed force is treason.

00:32:37.000 Okay, now, it is worthwhile to pause here and take stock for a second, because there's a

00:32:42.000 contrast between what Jackson is saying about the enforcement of law here versus the border.

00:32:47.000 So Jackson was saying that because he was president, he had to enforce what the legislature said, which means the state had to listen to him.

00:32:54.000 He was not arguing that he could ignore federal law at the expense of the states.

00:32:58.000 That if a federal law was passed and the White House just decided to ignore that federal law, that the states would then have to listen to it.

00:33:05.000 In any case, things started to really heat up.

00:33:07.000 In 1833, the governor of South Carolina actually began organizing armed resistance, and then Congress passed something called the Force Bill, which allowed the Feds to send armed troops to enforce tariff collections.

00:33:17.000 So you actually ended up with an almost pre-Civil War, Civil War almost.

00:33:20.000 In the end, what ended up happening is that the Feds and the state both backed down, an agreement was reached, which ended up being a compromise tariff.

00:33:27.000 So basically, the states used their power to leverage federal change.

00:33:31.000 So those are the two examples of what happens when states and the feds sort of face off.

00:33:35.000 One is the feds just overrun the states, and the other is they come to some sort of agreement.

00:33:39.000 In this particular case, it is Joe Biden who's refusing to enforce the law.

00:33:43.000 He's refusing to enforce the law.

00:33:45.000 It is that simple.

00:33:46.000 This is a political crisis created by Joe Biden.

00:33:48.000 It should not be a legal crisis.

00:33:49.000 It should not be a constitutional crisis.

00:33:51.000 Enforce the law.

00:33:53.000 Enforce the law.

00:33:54.000 Protect American citizens.

00:33:55.000 These laws are already on the books.

00:33:58.000 This sort of stuff is going to become more and more common, more and more inevitable, when the White House refuses to protect its own citizens for political purposes.

00:34:07.000 We'll get to more on this in just one second.

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00:35:10.000 Okay, meanwhile, obviously all of this is going to play into the 2024 election.

00:35:14.000 Joe Biden's border policies are a disaster for him.

00:35:16.000 They're a top issue for a lot of Americans.

00:35:19.000 And it is amazing to me that Joe Biden thinks that Trump is so weak that he can just continue to run on all of these bad policies.

00:35:25.000 I mean, he's banking on the economy somehow recovering enough for people not to feel so terrible about it.

00:35:31.000 And there's an economic report that just came out in the last couple of hours suggesting that wages are now outpacing inflation, which would be a very good thing for the United States, but it doesn't mean that the inflation that's been baked into the cake over the last several years hasn't had a massive impact on your prices at the grocery store.

00:35:46.000 So if your wages are only now starting to outpace inflation, you still lost money over the course of the last several years under Joe Biden.

00:35:54.000 But he's hoping the economy is going to recover to a certain extent.

00:35:56.000 He's also hoping that all of his foreign policy snafus are going to somehow iron themselves out, which is not going to happen.

00:36:02.000 Plus, Joe Biden happens to, again, be not particularly with it.

00:36:06.000 He is a very weak candidate.

00:36:09.000 Joe Biden yesterday was endorsed by the UAW, which of course is not a great shock because the greatest scam in American life is the combined power of the UAW and Joe Biden.

00:36:21.000 Union power and the Democrats are the single I would put it this simple.

00:36:25.000 in American politics, they have been for a long time, it's particularly true of public sector unions.

00:36:30.000 UAW, of course, is not a public sector union, it's a private sector union,

00:36:33.000 but they've helped bankrupt America's car companies multiple times at this point.

00:36:37.000 Of course, they're endorsing Joe Biden, who's basically suggested that the labor theory of value

00:36:40.000 ought to be mandated by law.

00:36:42.000 Here is the head of the UAW endorsing Joe Biden yesterday.

00:36:45.000 I would put it this simple.

00:36:48.000 The majority of our members voted for President Biden.

00:36:52.000 And do you think the endorsement is a big reason for that?

00:36:54.000 Without the endorsement, might they have more of them gone to Trump, given the demographics and such?

00:37:01.000 I don't think so.

00:37:02.000 I mean, I think, you know, even going forward, when you look at both candidates, it's very clear which one supports working class people and which one doesn't.

00:37:14.000 By two simple sentences, Joe Biden bet on the American worker, and Donald Trump blamed the American worker.

00:37:22.000 How exactly has Joe Biden helped the American worker?

00:37:25.000 I mean, Joe Biden has made everything more expensive for the American worker.

00:37:28.000 And again, this sort of attempt to suggest that unions are the reason for American prosperity is completely ahistorical.

00:37:33.000 The economic data to back that up are extremely scanty.

00:37:37.000 In any case, the UAW endorses Biden.

00:37:39.000 Biden is basically figuring, if I get the base on board, I can be as bad as I want to be as a president.

00:37:44.000 I mean, he's still campaigning on Bidenomics.

00:37:47.000 So yesterday he was out there campaigning.

00:37:48.000 He said he's fundamentally changing the economy of this country.

00:37:50.000 Yeah, we noticed.

00:37:51.000 It's not great.

00:37:53.000 We're fundamentally changing the economy of this country.

00:37:57.000 And everybody's getting a little worried about it.

00:37:59.000 Well, I mean, yes, everybody's getting a little worried about it.

00:38:01.000 Because it turns out that the greatness of America is that America is the world's first commercial republic. 0.99

00:38:07.000 And that's why we kick ass. 0.86

00:38:08.000 I mean, literally visit a foreign country and you realize that America is the country of business for a reason. 0.98

00:38:13.000 America is awesome.

00:38:15.000 Our free market economy is the envy of the world and it should be.

00:38:17.000 It is the driver of virtually all global growth.

00:38:20.000 Like, this is an amazing place.

00:38:21.000 You fundamentally changing it is not a good thing.

00:38:24.000 I will say Joe Biden did make a rather large boo-boo the other day.

00:38:27.000 He thought he was saying something, I think jokingly, and he actually ends up undercutting many of the arguments he himself has made.

00:38:32.000 He says that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy because he's denying elections.

00:38:35.000 And then he went to Virginia and suggested that Terry McAuliffe was the real governor of Virginia, which is weird since literally no one believes that Terry McAuliffe didn't lose to Glenn Youngkin.

00:38:44.000 Hello, Virginia! 1.00

00:38:46.000 And the real governor, Terry McAuliffe.

00:38:52.000 The real Governor Terry McAuliffe?

00:38:53.000 He's not.

00:38:54.000 He's not the real Governor.

00:38:55.000 He lost.

00:38:55.000 So, election denialism.

00:38:57.000 It's fine if you're a Democrat.

00:38:59.000 Hey, Joe Biden, again, he also has troubles with his base.

00:39:01.000 This may be one of the reasons he's so radical on immigration.

00:39:03.000 He's trying to buy back the fact that members of his far-left base really kind of like Hamas.

00:39:08.000 So, yesterday Joe Biden was speaking and he was protested by the Hamasneks. 1.00

00:39:14.000 Look, please don't jump.

00:39:18.000 Not again.

00:39:20.000 Please don't jump.

00:39:21.000 I don't know why he always says that.

00:39:22.000 It's weird.

00:39:22.000 Folks!

00:39:24.000 And extreme laws passed by Dobbs have no place in the United States of America.

00:39:29.000 And then he was jabbering about abortion.

00:39:30.000 But you can hear the protesters there.

00:39:33.000 And the Biden administration cannot dissociate itself from these wild left-wing protesters.

00:39:38.000 Here is John Kirby, the actual presidential spokesperson, because Corny Jean Pierre is awful at her job, saying that everyone has feelings, which is an exciting piece of news.

00:39:47.000 But we're also seeing increased polling among the American public that is clamoring for a ceasefire.

00:39:54.000 Is the President, you know, is his perspective on this changing at all, given the daily mounting casualty toll?

00:40:03.000 Is he starting to rethink whether it might be prudent to ask for a halt in the fighting, and beyond just the pause?

00:40:13.000 I would remind that since a very early We have been urging our Israeli counterparts to be careful and precise.

00:40:23.000 We have talked about the civilian casualties and how we don't want to see any more.

00:40:29.000 We have urged them to take different actions and they have responded to that advice and counsel.

00:40:40.000 There are strong feelings here on all sides, as you would expect.

00:40:44.000 Oh, the strong feelings.

00:40:46.000 Again, how about this?

00:40:47.000 How about dump your wild left-wingers and campaign toward the middle? 0.99

00:40:50.000 But Joe Biden again refuses to do that, which is one of the reasons why he has a problem on his hands.

00:40:55.000 Now, he thinks that problem is solvable by Donald Trump, that if Donald Trump is Donald Trump,

00:41:00.000 then Donald Trump will lose the election.

00:41:01.000 He's not banking on winning the election anymore.

00:41:03.000 He's banking on Donald Trump losing the election.

00:41:05.000 What he's really banking on is Donald Trump being extremely polarizing,

00:41:08.000 particularly with women and independent voters.

00:41:10.000 And there's some evidence for this.

00:41:13.000 So New Hampshire, right, where Nikki Haley I mean, she performed strong against an incumbent president, which is effectively how Republicans are treating Donald Trump.

00:41:22.000 But she performed strong with independents and Democrats.

00:41:25.000 When you look at the New Hampshire primary results, as we observed yesterday, those primary results are largely the effect of independents and Democrats swiveling heavy for Nikki Haley and showing up, and Republicans voting heavily for Donald Trump.

00:41:38.000 Well, if that gap emerges in the general election, that's a real problem for Donald Trump, right?

00:41:41.000 He needs to win independents and he needs to win Democrats.

00:41:44.000 He does need to do that in order to defeat Joe Biden.

00:41:48.000 And in order for that to happen, Donald Trump needs to just point at Joe Biden.

00:41:52.000 That's all he has to do.

00:41:54.000 He and Biden are playing a game of hold my beer.

00:41:56.000 It really is amazing.

00:41:57.000 All Donald Trump has to do is go like this.

00:42:01.000 See that guy? 0.98

00:42:01.000 He's terrible. 0.98

00:42:03.000 He's a bad president. 1.00

00:42:04.000 That's it.

00:42:04.000 And meanwhile, Joe Biden actually is a bad president.

00:42:08.000 And so he's saying dumb stuff and doing dumb stuff. 0.97

00:42:10.000 But meanwhile, all Joe Biden thinks he has to do is point at Donald Trump and go, So that's what this election is probably going to be. 0.88

00:42:20.000 And then the question is, which which candidate is more likely to avoid jumping on the rake?

00:42:26.000 So for Biden, what that means is get out there less.

00:42:29.000 Look a little bit less senile. 0.69

00:42:30.000 Look a little bit less crazy. 0.96

00:42:31.000 Stop being quite so radical.

00:42:33.000 Moderate if you're going to run for this election cycle successfully. 0.95

00:42:36.000 And if you're Donald Trump, what that means is stop acting so crazy. 0.96

00:42:40.000 Like stop acting so crazy. 0.96

00:42:40.000 Like if you act crazy, you're going to alienate all of these people with your personality who are attracted by our policies. 0.96

00:42:46.000 So again, in order for Donald Trump to win the election, all he needs to do is just point at Joe Biden, but he has to stop acting so crazy.

00:42:51.000 I understand there are a lot of Republicans who like when Donald Trump acts really aggressive and a little bit crazy because they think, okay, well, that means he's just going to go hog wild on his opponent on the Democratic side of the aisle in the election cycle, or going to go hog wild on the enemies.

00:43:05.000 In order for that to work, you have to win.

00:43:07.000 In order for that to work, you have to win.

00:43:10.000 Again, he will go hog wild on Joe Biden.

00:43:13.000 The problem is that if he appears to be unstable in the process, that is not going to help him.

00:43:18.000 And I gotta say, the way that he's attacking Nikki Haley right now is not smart.

00:43:21.000 It's just not.

00:43:22.000 Donald Trump, this primary's over.

00:43:24.000 Okay, just statistically speaking, the primary's done.

00:43:26.000 Donald Trump is the nominee.

00:43:27.000 He won Iowa, he won New Hampshire going away, he's gonna win South Carolina going away.

00:43:31.000 This primary is over.

00:43:32.000 So what should he do with Nikki Haley?

00:43:34.000 He should ignore Nikki Haley.

00:43:35.000 You should start focusing in on Joe Biden because everybody knows what this general election is.

00:43:38.000 And instead, he's like doing the worst of Donald Trump.

00:43:42.000 He's attacking Nikki Haley, not really even based on policy, but just because she has the temerity to stay in the race.

00:43:47.000 Now, listen, do I think that it's a waste of time and money for her to stay in the race? 1.00

00:43:50.000 Kind of.

00:43:51.000 I mean, like she has the right to do it.

00:43:53.000 Everybody has the right to stay in the race as long as they want.

00:43:55.000 Iran could have stayed in, but they could have stayed in. 0.98

00:43:57.000 Nikki could stay.

00:43:58.000 Like, that's fine.

00:43:59.000 Trump's the nominee.

00:44:00.000 Hey, but this this sort of wild attack on Haley as though this is something productive and useful is bizarre to me.

00:44:08.000 He's not even attacking her on policy because again, realistically speaking, I mean, here's the I have a dirty little secret for you folks.

00:44:13.000 Here's the dirty little secret.

00:44:14.000 Donald Trump on policy and Nikki Haley on policy are super similar.

00:44:19.000 I know everybody's like, oh, no, but she's a neocon and he and he's he's an anti-war.

00:44:24.000 She was his UN ambassador.

00:44:26.000 He was hawkish on foreign policy when he was the president of the United States.

00:44:30.000 For people like, oh my god, well, she's so soft on Democrats when it comes to domestic policy. 0.77

00:44:34.000 Donald Trump is softer than she is when it comes to abortion and spending. 0.99

00:44:39.000 Like on policy, there's a solid case to be made that Donald Trump is to her left.

00:44:43.000 Now, that doesn't mean that in terms of affect and in terms of militance, that Donald Trump is to her left.

00:44:47.000 He's not, right?

00:44:48.000 He's much more militant in his affect.

00:44:50.000 But again, Donald Trump isn't making policy attacks on Nikki Haley.

00:44:53.000 He's basically making Hannibal Lecter, let me rip off her face attacks on Nikki Haley. 0.96

00:44:58.000 And the problem with that is not about Nikki Haley.

00:45:01.000 The problem with that is if you wish to win independent voters and suburban moms, you know what you don't want to look like? 1.00

00:45:06.000 A person who randomly rips people's faces off at the supermarket.

00:45:09.000 That's not really the look that you're going for.

00:45:11.000 Again, Donald Trump needs to go run Joe Biden's basement campaign from 2020 and he'll be president again.

00:45:15.000 Okay, the reason I bring this up is because the last 48 hours have been all media coverage of Donald Trump's treatment of Nikki Haley.

00:45:23.000 This is exactly why Joe... In fact, there are members of Joe Biden's campaign who have said, this is the guy we want to run against.

00:45:30.000 Not Trump generally.

00:45:31.000 The guy who appeared at the press conference after defeating Nikki Haley in the New Hampshire primaries.

00:45:36.000 So, just to take a couple of examples.

00:45:38.000 After the New Hampshire primary, Donald Trump stands up and behind him is Tim Scott.

00:45:42.000 Tim Scott has endorsed him.

00:45:44.000 Now the reason Tim Scott endorsed him is because Donald Trump's gonna be the nominee!

00:45:48.000 And Tim Scott is thinking, OK, maybe I'll be VP or maybe I'll get a cabinet pick or whatever.

00:45:52.000 I mean, a lot of people have endorsed Donald Trump at this point.

00:45:55.000 And even if you haven't endorsed him, even if you don't endorse people, generally speaking, he's going to be a nominee.

00:46:01.000 So what does Donald Trump do?

00:46:02.000 He immediately not only attacks Nikki Haley, he just takes he takes Tim Scott's face and just mashes it into pie.

00:46:11.000 Like, there's a pie on the table and he takes Tim Scott and he goes wham!

00:46:14.000 And just smacks his face directly into the pie.

00:46:17.000 Because he can't resist.

00:46:19.000 The thing... Donald Trump, when it comes to his opponents, is Joffrey.

00:46:22.000 He's King Joffrey from Game of Thrones.

00:46:24.000 He always has been. 0.98

00:46:26.000 If you bend the knee to Trump, you might have to because you have no other choice, but he will chop off your head. 0.98

00:46:32.000 Right?

00:46:33.000 He will reduce you to Chris Christie going, go... Christie, go get on the plane, Chris.

00:46:37.000 Get on the plane.

00:46:38.000 Like, that's who you become.

00:46:41.000 And that's why these sorts of, they're not good for Trump.

00:46:43.000 Forget about what I think of them on a moral level.

00:46:45.000 And by the way, I don't think it's great to humiliate people politically for no reason, especially when they've endorsed you.

00:46:50.000 I just don't think, I don't understand the morality or the politics of it.

00:46:52.000 But, on a political level, is this the, like, just take yourself out of yourself for a second.

00:46:59.000 You know, listen, I understand a lot of my audience loves Trump and will vote for Trump.

00:47:02.000 I'm gonna vote for Trump against Joe Biden, right?

00:47:04.000 I agree with you.

00:47:05.000 Also, If you take, just analyze the state of American politics right now.

00:47:11.000 You're a suburban mom living in Michigan, in a swing state.

00:47:15.000 And you have Joe Biden, who's very bad on policy.

00:47:18.000 But you don't follow policy all that closely because, let's be real, you're busy, you don't have a lot of time.

00:47:23.000 What you mostly see is an old man doddering around and walking into walls like the Shane Gillis Roomba. 0.88

00:47:27.000 And then you see Donald Trump.

00:47:29.000 And Donald Trump is on your TV, just ripping people's faces off.

00:47:33.000 And you're like, okay, if I have a choice between senile and wild, maybe I'll choose, again, that's not the choice you should make.

00:47:41.000 Because the case that I've made for Trump is that basically politics is like a coffee filter.

00:47:47.000 And the grounds, the stuff, whatever.

00:47:50.000 So you have the coffee filter, right?

00:47:52.000 Got the coffee in there.

00:47:53.000 And then you got the liquid that you're gonna pour in.

00:47:55.000 The case that I've made is that the liquid that you're pouring in with Joe Biden is not only a toxic liquid, The toxicity of the liquid is small enough to escape the filter that what comes out from the bottom of the filter is a bunch of actual toxic sludge.

00:48:10.000 And it's really bad and dangerous.

00:48:12.000 The case that I made for Donald Trump is that Donald Trump, yeah, he's got the liquid is basically not even a pure mix.

00:48:21.000 The liquid that he's pouring into the coffee machine is basically like water and rocks.

00:48:26.000 And the rocks are bad, and you don't want them in your coffee.

00:48:28.000 Good news.

00:48:29.000 They're also getting filtered out by the checks and balances of American government and by the other people in his administration, which is why the stuff that actually comes out the other end of the coffee filter is decent coffee, despite the rocks.

00:48:40.000 Okay, but if you are a person who's just casually watching politics, and that's a little complex, then does this help or hurt?

00:48:47.000 Very simple binary.

00:48:48.000 Does it help or does it hurt?

00:48:49.000 Here is Donald Trump abjectly humiliating Tim Scott for no reason other than he just enjoys doing it.

00:48:56.000 Two great senators, which is hard.

00:48:58.000 I mean, did you ever think that she actually appointed you, Tim?

00:49:05.000 Think of it.

00:49:06.000 Appointed, and you're the senator of his state, and she endorsed me.

00:49:12.000 You must really hate her.

00:49:15.000 No.

00:49:16.000 It's a shame.

00:49:17.000 It's a shame.

00:49:17.000 Uh-oh.

00:49:20.000 I just love you!

00:49:21.000 That's why he's a great politician.

00:49:27.000 Why?

00:49:28.000 What's the purpose of that?

00:49:29.000 Why don't you say, I'm so thankful to Tim Scott for endorsing me, even over the person who actually picked him for the Senate.

00:49:34.000 That's how much he really thinks that I'll be a great president.

00:49:37.000 Same point, without humiliating the person who is now actually a surrogate for your campaign.

00:49:44.000 And then he was ripping on Nikki Haley's dress and all that.

00:49:48.000 Who are you trying to win?

00:49:49.000 Are you trying to win an election?

00:49:52.000 Or is it just trollery?

00:49:53.000 Again, I can appreciate the humor of it.

00:49:55.000 It's trolling, it's funny.

00:49:57.000 Is it going to help you win a general election?

00:49:58.000 Every question from here to the election should be based on, it's just this question.

00:50:03.000 Will this help you or not help you win a general election against Joe Biden?

00:50:07.000 Here he was attacking Nikki Haley's rest. 0.90

00:50:09.000 I felt I should do this because I find in life you can't let people get away with bulls**t, okay? 0.98

00:50:16.000 You can't. 0.70

00:50:17.000 You just can't do that.

00:50:20.000 And when I watched her in the fancy dress, that probably wasn't so fancy, come up, I said, what's she doing? 0.85

00:50:27.000 We won.

00:50:28.000 And she did the same thing last week, but he was much more angry about it than I was.

00:50:34.000 I said, get up there and you let him know.

00:50:37.000 Really?

00:50:37.000 Like, seriously?

00:50:39.000 Okay.

00:50:41.000 Like, we're attacking clothing now?

00:50:43.000 Sure.

00:50:45.000 David Axelrod, again, who wants the Democrats to win.

00:50:47.000 He's like, yeah, this is not a great exhibition.

00:50:50.000 And again, he loves this.

00:50:52.000 I mean, this is like David Axelrod's favorite thing.

00:50:54.000 He wants Democrats to be able to run against this.

00:50:55.000 That's Joe Biden's entire bet. 0.63

00:50:57.000 His entire bet is not even that Trump is a fascist. 0.98

00:50:59.000 And he knows that that dog is not going to hunt super well. 0.97

00:51:03.000 But the Trump's a wild man thing.

00:51:06.000 Basically, the more people have to overlook in order to vote for Trump, the harder it's going to be for him to win.

00:51:12.000 Winning elections is about two things.

00:51:13.000 Making it hard to vote for your opponent, making it easy to vote for you.

00:51:15.000 And as I've said for literally a decade now about Donald Trump, Donald Trump makes it very hard to vote for his opponent because he's great at attacking his opponents.

00:51:22.000 And he also makes it hard to vote for him because the barrier to entry is saying this kind of stuff.

00:51:29.000 Here's David Axelrod going after him. 0.94

00:51:31.000 And I guarantee you that they did not say, go on out there and act like a jackass and go after Nikki Haley in really personal, sexist ways and humiliate Tim Scott. 0.98

00:51:42.000 That was the improvisational Trump. 0.94

00:51:44.000 The challenge for his campaign team is they can do all the blocking and tackling well, and they are, but they can't control him.

00:51:51.000 That was a really...

00:51:53.000 Axelrod is not wrong, okay?

00:52:01.000 He's not wrong when he says that Trump is basically making it harder for people to vote for him who are in the middle.

00:52:10.000 Remember, not everyone is like you.

00:52:12.000 If you listen to a political show, understand.

00:52:13.000 If you listen to a show like this one, that's a news politics show, understand that you represent, in the United States, Two to three percent of the population.

00:52:21.000 Like if you listen to a daily political show in any way, shape, or form, the number of Americans who engage with politics daily in a granular way is really low.

00:52:29.000 Most people have not even engaged with this race yet.

00:52:32.000 Most people are going to engage with this race in the last month of the election.

00:52:35.000 And what they're going to take away is a gestalt of a candidate.

00:52:38.000 They're going to take away like, what do I kind of think?

00:52:39.000 What do I kind of think?

00:52:40.000 And they're going to walk into a ballot place and they're going to cast a ballot.

00:52:44.000 And their vote counts just as much as yours.

00:52:46.000 Donald Trump needs to make it easier to vote for him.

00:52:48.000 That's all I'm saying here.

00:52:49.000 That would be the smart way to pursue this campaign.

00:52:51.000 Alrighty, guys.

00:52:52.000 The rest of the show is continuing right now.

00:52:53.000 You don't want to miss it.

00:52:54.000 We'll be joined by Abe Hamadeh, candidate for Arizona's 8th congressional district.

00:52:57.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

00:52:59.000 Use code Shapiro.

00:52:59.000 Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - January 25, 2024

Border STANDOFF: Texas Fights Back

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