The Ben Shapiro Show


Dana Perino | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 73


Summary

Former White House Press Secretary and Fox News anchor Dana Perino talks about her family's ranch in Wyoming and how she became the first female White House correspondent for Fox News. She also talks about how she got her start as a reporter at the New York Times, and why she decided to go to college at the University of Wyoming instead of becoming a lawyer. Dana also discusses how she and her family became ranchers in the late 1800s in the Black Hills of Wyoming. And she shares the story of how she met her husband, George H.W. Bush, when she was a young reporter for the Denver Post. She also explains how she was introduced to the world of journalism and politics by her father, who was a well-known conservative commentator. Dana also shares how she went on to become the first woman to work for President George W. Bush as his White House press secretary. And how she ended up as one of the most successful White House correspondents in the history of the modern press corps. at Fox News, where she became a regular guest on the Sunday show. The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special with Ben Shapiro. Ben Shapiro is the host of the Ben Shapiro show on Fox News and hosts the Daily Briefing and the FiveThirtyEight podcast, and is a regular contributor on the conservative network HOST of the Weekly Standard. and hosts The FiveThirtyeight. He is a frequent contributor on conservative radio host and host of The Weekly Standard, where he also hosts a weekly political show, and hosts a podcast called The View from the Ground Zero with his good friend and former White House Correspondent, David Axelrod. His new book, is out this week, The Devil's Eye. is available on Amazon Prime and Vimeo, and you can get a copy of his book, Too Effing Goodbyes, Too Good To See It on the Four Seasons, too! and much more. Subscribe to Ben Shapiro's newest book, "Ben Shapiro's New Book is out now on Amazon, too Good to See It Too Good, Too Bad, and Good to Read It, on the Kindle, Good To Read It on Good To Hear It on Your Kindle and Good To Watch It on His Podcasts, Good to Watch It On Your Kindle or Kindle, and Subscribe on Itunes and Other Podcasts on the Podchronicity, and Other Places on Your Local Podcasts and Other Shirts on the Podcasts.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 I remember prepping him for interviews at the end of the administration, saying, they're going to ask you what your legacy is going to be.
00:00:06.000 And he said, look, I read three books about George Washington last year.
00:00:09.000 And if historians are still analyzing the first president, then the 43rd doesn't have a lot to worry about because he'll never know.
00:00:22.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special, and I'm really excited to be joined today by Dana Perino.
00:00:22.000 Hey, hey, and welcome.
00:00:26.000 She's host of The Daily Briefing and co-host of The 5Dana.
00:00:29.000 Great to see you.
00:00:30.000 It's amazing to finally get to do the Sunday show.
00:00:32.000 I know.
00:00:33.000 The best Sunday show.
00:00:34.000 No offense, Chris Wallace.
00:00:34.000 Oh, thank you.
00:00:36.000 Well, for people who don't know your background and have only seen you on Fox News, you first rose to prominence as President Bush's press secretary.
00:00:44.000 But what was, how did you I worked on Karl Rove's book and a couple of others and I remember Karl wanted to write just from when he was the president's campaign manager.
00:00:57.000 In 1998.
00:00:58.000 And I remember the editor saying, you can't just show up as the president's campaign manager.
00:01:03.000 You have to understand how.
00:01:04.000 And those are always the kind of the hardest first chapters for people to write.
00:01:09.000 Charles Krauthammer was the same when I worked with him.
00:01:11.000 Peggy Noonan didn't even want to do it.
00:01:13.000 But I do think it's really important.
00:01:15.000 And it's one of the things I love about your show is to dig a little deeper.
00:01:17.000 Like, how did you get to be this person?
00:01:20.000 And, well, my family's from Wyoming.
00:01:22.000 Both of my great-grandparents on my maternal and my paternal side homesteaded in Wyoming.
00:01:29.000 One became more of an entrepreneur, like with a motel that there'sā€”I-80 goes right through Wyoming.
00:01:37.000 Big trucking route.
00:01:39.000 And so they had a motel there and a couple of other things.
00:01:43.000 But I feel like maybe where I identify the most is with my great-grandparents' ranch in Wyoming.
00:01:49.000 So it was the late 1800s.
00:01:52.000 They came from Italy.
00:01:53.000 My great-grandfather was a coal miner.
00:01:55.000 He did that all the way up to the 60s.
00:01:57.000 He did die of black lung.
00:01:59.000 He and my great-grandmother had Eight children, seven survived.
00:02:03.000 One of them was my grandfather.
00:02:05.000 And it's in the Black Hills of Wyoming.
00:02:07.000 A lot of people think, because I work for the president, I'm either from Texas, and I knew the Bushes, or that when I say I'm from Wyoming, there's sort of this, oh, then you must know the Cheneys.
00:02:16.000 I'm like, I didn't know the Cheneys either.
00:02:18.000 The Cheneys were from the other side of the state.
00:02:20.000 The Black Hills is about 80 miles west of Mount Rushmore, well, the ranches.
00:02:25.000 Right by Devil's Tower, so it's a pretty rugged country, good cattle country.
00:02:31.000 And my grandfather thought that he wanted to be a doctor, and so he was on that path.
00:02:38.000 However, World War II happened, and he then went and fought in the Pacific, and the Marines had him train as a medic.
00:02:47.000 But, like with many of those veterans, they felt like they had seen the world at that point, and they were done with it.
00:02:54.000 And he was needed back on the ranch.
00:02:56.000 He goes home.
00:02:57.000 But before he went home, he comes down through the Panama Canal, up in the dock in Philly.
00:03:02.000 That's when he's going to decommission.
00:03:04.000 The war was over.
00:03:06.000 And a friend of his said, we want to set you up on a blind date tonight.
00:03:11.000 And my grandmother's friends said, we want to set you on a blind date tonight.
00:03:14.000 Both of them refused to go until the last minute.
00:03:17.000 And it was love at first sight.
00:03:18.000 And they got married and had three children.
00:03:21.000 So my dad was the oldest of three.
00:03:24.000 I think he knew early on that he didn't want to be A lifelong rancher.
00:03:27.000 He's the first one to go to college at University of Wyoming.
00:03:31.000 One of the things about my dad that maybe helps explain me later is he loved news and he loved debate.
00:03:38.000 And so he used to, so this is before like speech teams existed, at the University of Wyoming at least, he and his roommates would take a topic And they would debate it, take one side, take a break, and then have to argue the other side.
00:03:53.000 So, he and my mom met at Casper College, and I was the oldest of two.
00:04:00.000 When I was two and a half, my dad got a job with Western Farm Bureau Life Insurance Company.
00:04:05.000 We moved to Denver.
00:04:06.000 And my dad, when the third grade started this tradition where I had to read the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post before he got home from work, and I had to choose two articles to discuss before dinner.
00:04:17.000 And I flash forward a little bit for you.
00:04:19.000 I know you have a daughter.
00:04:22.000 For anyone that has a daughter and there may be concern like how do you raise a confident young person?
00:04:29.000 I'm not excluding boys.
00:04:30.000 I just know my own experience.
00:04:33.000 This is the early days of feminist marketing.
00:04:35.000 There was this yellow T-shirt my dad bought me and in all black capital letters it said anything boys can do girls can do better.
00:04:42.000 Of course it's not true but it's one of those things where my dad was always like you can do whatever you want.
00:04:48.000 But having that opportunity to express myself and defend my positions about why I chose this article, why do I think it's important, gave me, I think, the confidence later on to do that with the President of the United States.
00:05:05.000 And I really encourage that kind of interaction with young women at their earliest ages, if anybody that's watching, if they can do that.
00:05:16.000 One thing that people don't realize, I don't think, until the Kamala Harris-Biden dust-up at that first debate this year, is that Denver was the city that was the subject of the busing desegregation that lost in the Supreme Court.
00:05:31.000 Denver then was the first to try to integrate schools using busing.
00:05:34.000 And so when I was in the fourth grade, instead of going to the school that was three blocks away from my home, I got bused 20 miles into the city.
00:05:42.000 I was one of only four white kids in the whole school.
00:05:45.000 I was talking to my mom about it, and she said, it's not that you didn't make friends, though I remember it kind of differently.
00:05:51.000 She said that on the weekends or after school, there was no one to play with.
00:05:55.000 She didn't know anybody.
00:05:56.000 And then because I got bullied and all the rest, I would have this anxiety about, well, what if they get mad at me?
00:06:02.000 What if they don't like me tomorrow?
00:06:03.000 And I would pray over and over again in this rote fashion, like, I hope they're not mad at me tomorrow, if they're not mad at me tomorrow.
00:06:09.000 So my parents ended up, after two years of that, Moving to a rural part of Colorado and that's where we grew up.
00:06:16.000 Went to University of Southern Colorado on a speech team scholarship.
00:06:20.000 Went to graduate school, University of Illinois Springfield.
00:06:23.000 I was getting a degree, I was going to be a reporter.
00:06:28.000 And I like covering politics.
00:06:30.000 That was what I really wanted to do.
00:06:31.000 But you can't always cover politics if the state legislature is not in session.
00:06:35.000 You've got to do other things.
00:06:36.000 And one day, the station I worked for, a CBS affiliate, said they wanted me to go cover this murder trial.
00:06:42.000 This young boy, two years old, had been murdered by this woman's best friend, who she'd been living with.
00:06:48.000 And the trial was starting, and they said, go and get an interview with this woman.
00:06:53.000 And I went to the courthouse, and I circled her three times.
00:06:57.000 And I said, oh, I can't do this.
00:06:59.000 And I went home and I told my dad, I said, I think I just got a graduate degree in something I don't want to do.
00:07:06.000 And he was great.
00:07:07.000 He said, As soon as you graduate, we'll just come home and figure it out.
00:07:12.000 Ended up going to Washington and worked as a House Press Secretary for a congressman from Colorado.
00:07:16.000 He was chairman of the Energy and Power Subcommittee, which is how I kind of unnerred on climate change issues, environmental issues.
00:07:23.000 I know them very well.
00:07:24.000 That's actually how I get back to the White House after 9-11.
00:07:27.000 My girlfriend called and said, could you come join us at the Justice Department?
00:07:30.000 And then from there I became Press Secretary.
00:07:32.000 So in a second I'm going to ask you about working in the Bush administration, what that was like, and I'm going to ask you about President Bush and being press secretary, but first let's talk about life insurance.
00:07:41.000 Now, there are a lot of folks who think about getting life insurance like, ah, why bother, you know, is that really such a big deal?
00:07:47.000 The answer is yes.
00:07:48.000 It's a giant deal.
00:07:49.000 You should have life insurance.
00:07:50.000 If you're an adult, you've got to make sure that your family is taken care of.
00:07:52.000 So don't be chicken about going to get life insurance, especially when it's easy.
00:07:57.000 If you've got a family, you might be dealing with something a little scarier right now than searching for life insurance, not having life insurance.
00:08:03.000 So go shop for life insurance.
00:08:04.000 If the idea of looking for life insurance, though, does intimidate you, there's an easy solution.
00:08:08.000 Policygenius.com.
00:08:10.000 Policygenius is the easy way to shop for life insurance online.
00:08:12.000 In just minutes, you can compare quotes from top insurers and find your best price.
00:08:16.000 And PolicyGenius doesn't just make life insurance easy.
00:08:18.000 They can also help you find the right home insurance and auto insurance and disability insurance.
00:08:23.000 PolicyGenius will give you the peace of mind that you require when you go out into the world.
00:08:26.000 Because, you know, God forbid you get hit by a bus.
00:08:28.000 At least your family is taken care of.
00:08:29.000 This October, take the scariness out of buying life insurance with PolicyGenius.
00:08:33.000 Go to PolicyGenius.com, get quotes, apply in minutes.
00:08:36.000 You can do the whole thing on your phone right now.
00:08:38.000 PolicyGenius, the easy way to compare and buy life insurance.
00:08:41.000 Okay, so let's talk about your time in the Bush administration.
00:08:43.000 So when did you actually first get to know President Bush?
00:08:45.000 So you joined the administration in the DOJ, but that doesn't necessarily mean you know the president.
00:08:50.000 So how did you actually get to know the president?
00:08:52.000 I started trying to think of when I first... He might have known about me.
00:08:58.000 I had worked with Ari Fleischer on Capitol Hill.
00:09:02.000 Josh Bolton was a big fan of mine, so was Andy Card, because I had been doing the White House Council on Environmental Quality press for the White House for a long time now.
00:09:11.000 Media bias is not new, okay?
00:09:13.000 And being hard on Republicans on environmental and conservation issues is not new.
00:09:18.000 We were on the front page every single day.
00:09:19.000 In fact, I'll tell you something that a lot of people don't know.
00:09:22.000 On September 10th, 2001, what was the White House Communications Office working on?
00:09:27.000 Stayed till 10 p.m.
00:09:28.000 at the White House.
00:09:29.000 Big issue.
00:09:30.000 Front page New York Times story coming the next day.
00:09:32.000 They got a problem on their hands.
00:09:34.000 It was the Cheney Energy Task Force.
00:09:37.000 Right?
00:09:38.000 The next morning, the world changes forever.
00:09:41.000 And you look back on that now and like, oh my gosh, we should have just said, yeah, of course Cheney's chairing the Energy Task Force, you idiots, of course!
00:09:48.000 But it's just a different time.
00:09:50.000 But I did all this stuff on Bureau of Land Management, all the climate change issues.
00:09:54.000 There was an issue about coal-fired power plants called New Source Review that the Clinton administration had been very clever in filing these little lawsuits.
00:10:03.000 Little time bombs that would pop up, and then the administration and the next administration would have to decide, are you going to pursue this ridiculous lawsuit against these coal-fired power plants?
00:10:12.000 And if you're not, does that mean you're a dirty polluter?
00:10:15.000 So we dealt with a lot of that.
00:10:17.000 But I started in the White House press office as the deputy on the first day of the second term, and got to know me then.
00:10:25.000 It's actually kind of a funny story.
00:10:27.000 I feel like the first time he ever really knew who I was, I got kicked out of the Oval Office.
00:10:34.000 This is one of my most embarrassing moments, but Dan Bartlow's communications director, he said, Dana, would you mind sitting in with the president as he does this interview with David Ignatius?
00:10:43.000 David Ignatius has just returned from Iran.
00:10:45.000 The president's agreed to sit down with him, and they're going to have this conversation.
00:10:50.000 And I'll come for the pre-brief for the president, but I have to go to this other meeting.
00:10:53.000 Can you just sit?
00:10:54.000 And I was like, yeah, I know how to do that.
00:10:56.000 But I was pretty nervous.
00:10:57.000 My first time sitting with the president, Oval Office, syndicated columnist.
00:11:02.000 So we get to the Oval Office.
00:11:04.000 Dan's starting to explain what's happening.
00:11:07.000 He said, Mr. President, David Ignatius is here.
00:11:09.000 And the president says, oh, I'm not doing an interview with Ignatius.
00:11:14.000 And Dan said, no, you are, remember?
00:11:16.000 He said, no.
00:11:17.000 I said I would talk to David Ignatius about his trip, but I'm not going to do an interview with David Ignatius because then he'll write about it, and then it will look like I'm negotiating with the Iranians.
00:11:30.000 Through David Ignatius, and I'm not doing it.
00:11:33.000 And therefore, she doesn't need to be here.
00:11:36.000 And he looked at me, I don't even think he knew my name, and he gave me one of these head nods to basically get out of the Oval Office.
00:11:42.000 So I leave by the grandfather clock, and I think my office was like 30 steps away.
00:11:50.000 Go down to the lower press office, I had a pocket door, I closed it, and I called Peter, my husband, and said, I was tearful.
00:11:57.000 I wasn't crying, but I was tearful.
00:11:58.000 And he said, what happened?
00:11:59.000 Tell the story.
00:12:00.000 And he said, well, just think for the rest of your life, you can say I've been kicked out of better places than this.
00:12:06.000 But then over time, the president got to know me.
00:12:08.000 One of the things I think was one of my highest compliments I got from him is that he was never surprised by a question from the press when I briefed him.
00:12:16.000 I was like super covered.
00:12:19.000 I have all the bases covered.
00:12:21.000 What was his relationship with the press like?
00:12:22.000 Because obviously now we have short memories and everybody pretends that, as you say, the fake news began with President Trump and that no president has ever been hit by the press like President Trump.
00:12:31.000 Some of us are old enough to remember when George W. Bush was president and they were calling him Bush Hitler and suggesting that he was a war criminal.
00:12:36.000 So how did you handle press relations?
00:12:39.000 Well, yeah, you kind of do have to go back in time a little bit.
00:12:42.000 Remember, he had watched his father go through media bias.
00:12:46.000 Remember the wimp?
00:12:48.000 The wimp factor?
00:12:50.000 That was in the front cover of Newsweek, I believe.
00:12:53.000 President Bush kind of never got over that on his dad's behalf.
00:12:56.000 Like, if you insulted ā€” 41 and 43, as we'll call them, both said it was harder to be the father of a president and the son of a president than it was to be the president because of the criticism.
00:13:06.000 When the criticism is aimed at you, You can kind of handle it, but if it's about your loved one, it's different.
00:13:14.000 By the time I come on the scene, he's seen his dad go through it, he's been elected governor of Texas twice, he's gone through the recount, he's in war, and he's been re-elected.
00:13:29.000 He had a respect for the First Amendment, and he also was his father's son, and so respect was to be given to the press.
00:13:41.000 And also, the president gave me a real leg up.
00:13:44.000 He told everybody in the administration, if you are at a meeting and you go back to your desk and you have a message that Dana Perino called, she's the first person you call back.
00:13:52.000 Because I would say, unlike today, it's just different now, but I would spend 85% of my day preparing for the press briefing.
00:14:00.000 And part of that was being in meetings, listening, helping shape the message and all of those things, but it was really press relations.
00:14:07.000 I do remember Ed Gillespie, however, the communications director at the time, strategic advisor for the president, started a thing called setting the record straight.
00:14:15.000 And it was a document that we used to put out, we would take an article, and now it's just like, common, this happens on Twitter all the time, or it happened to the, well you think about the New York Times and Kavanaugh, that happened immediately.
00:14:26.000 We would try to do that from the White House or from the RNC, they would give that a shot.
00:14:29.000 I have this one young man, Carlton Carroll, I remember, we used to have to announce over the intercom that we had put a press release in the bins of people at the White House.
00:14:40.000 And Carlton Carroll over the intercom said, there's a setting the record straight in the bins, and I suggest you read it.
00:14:47.000 That was kind of our pushback.
00:14:49.000 Bill O'Reilly used to give me a little bit of a hard time in commercial breaks saying that I was too easy on the press.
00:14:54.000 And looking back, I think maybe that's true.
00:14:57.000 Maybe that's true.
00:14:58.000 But I also had good relations where, especially with the White House press corps, I don't think I would change how I handled it.
00:15:05.000 Because I used to think if I'm speaking in front of At the podium.
00:15:10.000 If the president were watching me, I would think, would he be proud of what I was saying?
00:15:15.000 And if the answer was no, I didn't say it.
00:15:18.000 So how has the job of press secretary changed?
00:15:20.000 Because now we've seen, obviously, that position elevated to such an important point in American life that people aren't allowed to appear on Dancing with the Stars if they apparently dissembled from the podium.
00:15:31.000 Honestly, roasting you at the commentary magazine on the same night that Sean Spicer did Dancing with the Stars, I think I was probably even more nervous than Sean Spicer was.
00:15:40.000 Because he loves life.
00:15:43.000 I mean, you weren't wearing like a green No, I knew that I was the only female roaster, so I was like, I'm wearing the white dress to be a little different.
00:15:52.000 I think technology has changed a lot of things.
00:15:57.000 Marlon Fitzwater is one of my favorite people.
00:15:59.000 He was press secretary to Reagan and Bush.
00:16:01.000 Imagine being press secretary for eight years.
00:16:04.000 His book called The Briefing is probably one of the best ever written about Washington experiences, and I recommend it highly to anybody who's thinking about going to Washington.
00:16:13.000 Well, fast forward from Marlon Fitzwater to Mike McCurry.
00:16:17.000 Now, he's President Clinton's press secretary.
00:16:19.000 He's the first to allow cameras into the briefing room.
00:16:22.000 That changes the dynamic a lot.
00:16:24.000 He says he regrets it.
00:16:25.000 I think it was kind of inevitable.
00:16:27.000 People want the video.
00:16:28.000 In January of 2009, on the day that I leave the White House, I didn't even have a Twitter account.
00:16:34.000 And the Obama team really takes social media to the next level to win the election.
00:16:40.000 They use it a little bit differently, but I do think that, this is my own perspective, I've done no research on this, but it's my gut, that just as radio changed things for FDR and forever, and at the time, people were like, what is he doing?
00:16:55.000 This is so inappropriate, he's on the radio.
00:16:58.000 And then you get to Kennedy, all the way through Reagan, and the use of television.
00:17:02.000 And that changes everything.
00:17:03.000 And I do think that whether you like the tweets or you don't like the tweets, the fact that the President of the United States communicates directly, not through the media, that has changed things.
00:17:14.000 I don't think it's for the better or the worse.
00:17:16.000 I think it's fascinating.
00:17:18.000 And I still think there is a role for the press.
00:17:20.000 It's interesting.
00:17:22.000 Conservatives tend to hate the press.
00:17:25.000 Until the press writes a good article, then it's like, well, look what the New York Times.
00:17:29.000 Even the New York Times wrote that.
00:17:30.000 I had a rule in my office, always read the article twice before you complain about it.
00:17:34.000 And that helps soften things.
00:17:37.000 So your relationship with President Bush was obviously very close, and that meant that when you were Press Secretary, your message was much more on message with President Bush's.
00:17:45.000 How would you answer questions where you didn't quite know what the President thought?
00:17:49.000 Because that obviously, the gap between the President and the Press Secretary has been very obvious in this administration, where the Press Secretary will go out there at least early on, say something, the President will then undercut that, or The press secretary, in fear that they might cross the president, will give some bizarre answer on something that might normally seem sort of obvious to everybody.
00:18:08.000 This is a great question.
00:18:09.000 I have a great story about our connection.
00:18:13.000 One of the things is Dede Meyers was given bad information.
00:18:17.000 Actually, given.
00:18:18.000 Bad information from the National Security Council about a strike.
00:18:22.000 I think it was in Afghanistan, actually.
00:18:25.000 And she had been at the White House on a Saturday.
00:18:27.000 Reporters asked her, like, hey, we're hearing about activity.
00:18:30.000 She goes and she asks the National Security Council.
00:18:32.000 They say, no, it's not happening.
00:18:34.000 She tells that to the press because they were afraid.
00:18:37.000 They didn't want to upset the operation.
00:18:40.000 But that hurt her incredibly.
00:18:43.000 Fast forward, Scott McClellan gets into this thing.
00:18:47.000 Whatever he said, he heard.
00:18:48.000 I was hyper aware.
00:18:50.000 One, I never, ever, ever want to get in trouble for anything.
00:18:53.000 I like the gold star on the chart at the end of the day.
00:18:56.000 So I would be super cautious about things like that.
00:18:59.000 The other thing is, and I think Obama and Trump are like this as well.
00:19:04.000 President Bush let me be with him anytime I wanted.
00:19:08.000 So I would listen to all of the things that he would say.
00:19:13.000 I didn't always raise my hand.
00:19:14.000 I could raise my hand if I wanted to, but I could observe everything.
00:19:17.000 So the story I was going to say about this is the only time I didn't double check to make sure was really high stakes.
00:19:24.000 I woke up one morning, four o'clock in the morning, I used to get 4.12.
00:19:28.000 I would wake up.
00:19:29.000 My alarm was at 4.20, but I woke up at 4.12.
00:19:31.000 And there's all these emails that say from reporters, they want to know what the president thinks about Prime Minister Maliki of Iraq sending troops into Basra.
00:19:39.000 And I'm like, let me, you know, I'm just still drying my hair, guys.
00:19:43.000 I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
00:19:45.000 And they're all, and I don't know what.
00:19:47.000 That came over me except for that I had been with the president so much.
00:19:50.000 I'd been in all the secure video teleconferences with Maliki and Karzai.
00:19:54.000 And finally, I say about 5.45 in the morning.
00:19:58.000 I think I gave it to Reuters.
00:19:59.000 I said, the President of the United States supports Prime Minister Maliki and reminds everyone that this is exactly what the world was thinking Maliki wouldn't do, but he did it to help protect the minority there in Iraq, in Basra, because Basra was a mess.
00:20:16.000 About five minutes later, all these articles start coming in from the wire services.
00:20:21.000 Petraeus is furious with Malachy.
00:20:23.000 Gates is furious.
00:20:25.000 Rice is furious.
00:20:27.000 Nobody knew that this was happening.
00:20:28.000 They're so mad at Malachy, and I thought, Oh, my gosh.
00:20:33.000 I could get fired today.
00:20:34.000 I really did think that.
00:20:35.000 My stomach sank.
00:20:36.000 I was so nervous.
00:20:37.000 Get to the White House.
00:20:38.000 Senior staff meeting's late.
00:20:41.000 Bush White House was never late.
00:20:42.000 Josh Bolton comes into the Roosevelt Room from the Oval Office side, not his office, and he's standing there.
00:20:50.000 Instead of sitting down, he said, I just came from the Oval Office.
00:20:54.000 I'm going to tell everybody in this room that if anyone here says that the president doesn't support Prime Minister Maliki, they are wrong.
00:21:02.000 And I had the little piece of paper.
00:21:03.000 I was like, I said it.
00:21:04.000 I said it.
00:21:05.000 He's on record.
00:21:06.000 I have it.
00:21:08.000 It's there.
00:21:10.000 Late 2008, 2009, we did interviews with Charles Krauthammer, four of them, that Charles decided never to publish.
00:21:16.000 It was up to him.
00:21:18.000 And Charles says to the president, when did you know that The Surge was going to be a success?
00:21:23.000 The president says, well, Basra and Maliki sent the troops in, and nobody thought he would do it.
00:21:30.000 And he says, you know, Charles, Nobody in my administration was with me, except for Dana, and that he remembered meant a lot to me.
00:21:39.000 I tell that story to say that we were super close.
00:21:41.000 I understood him, he understood me.
00:21:44.000 In a lot of ways, he was like a second father to me, but if he, as Commander-in-Chief, had asked me to mop the floors for eight years, I would have done it.
00:21:51.000 So in a second, I want to ask you about what the press always gets wrong about George W. Bush.
00:21:57.000 We'll get to that in one second.
00:21:58.000 First, who really wants to go to the post office?
00:22:00.000 I mean, the post office is great.
00:22:02.000 I mean, they provide great services, but do you really want to schlep all your stuff to the post office in the back of your car and unload it all and then you have to wait in line?
00:22:10.000 Here's what you need.
00:22:11.000 A way to get all the services of the post office without actually going to the post office.
00:22:14.000 You need Stamps.com.
00:22:15.000 It's one of the most popular time-saving tools for small businesses.
00:22:18.000 Stamps.com will eliminate trips to the post office and save you time and money with discounts that you can't even get at the post office.
00:22:25.000 Stamps.com brings all the amazing services of the U.S.
00:22:27.000 Postal Office directly to your computer.
00:22:29.000 Whether you're a small office sending invoices, or an online seller shipping out products, or even a warehouse sending thousands of packages a day, Stamps.com can handle it all with ease.
00:22:37.000 Simply use your computer to print official U.S.
00:22:39.000 postage 24-7.
00:22:41.000 For any letter, any package, any class of mail, anywhere you want to send it.
00:22:44.000 Once your mail is ready, just hand it to your mail carrier or drop it off in a mailbox.
00:22:47.000 It is indeed that simple.
00:22:48.000 With stamps.com, you get 5 cents off every first class stamp and up to 40% off priority mail.
00:22:53.000 Not to mention, it's a fraction of the cost of those expensive postage meters.
00:22:57.000 Stamps.com, it's a no-brainer.
00:22:58.000 They'll save you time.
00:22:59.000 It's no wonder over 700,000 small businesses already use stamps.com.
00:22:59.000 It'll save you money.
00:23:04.000 Right now, my listeners get a special offer.
00:23:06.000 It includes a four-week trial plus free postage and a digital scale with no long-term commitment.
00:23:10.000 Just go to stamps.com, click on that microphone at the top of the homepage, type in Shapiro.
00:23:14.000 That's stamps.com, enter Shapiro.
00:23:17.000 Okay, so let's talk about what the press gets wrong about George W. Bush.
00:23:20.000 So, I mean, I was covering from afar what was happening with the Bush administration and the typical press It was frustrating.
00:23:26.000 sort of account of President Bush is that he was a bumbler and that he was a clod and that he and that he was indecisive.
00:23:33.000 And that still kind of maintains to a certain extent in the press to be the narrative, although now they're redrawing it because they hate Trump so much that any Republican who came before is is by proxy now normal and good.
00:23:45.000 But what was that like?
00:23:47.000 I mean, you knew him personally, obviously.
00:23:49.000 It was frustrating.
00:23:50.000 I don't know if you've ever worked with somebody that you know to have so much respect for them and you see them behind closed doors and And then in front of the camera, it just doesn't translate sometimes.
00:23:50.000 It was frustrating.
00:24:04.000 And I think he tried really hard to connect with Common Man.
00:24:11.000 Like if we went and did an interview He loved the crew.
00:24:14.000 He didn't care about the talent.
00:24:16.000 He loved the crew, right?
00:24:17.000 So behind the scenes, people knew.
00:24:19.000 So we started doing these things, these off-the-record meetings on foreign policy.
00:24:23.000 We would invite reporters in.
00:24:25.000 The New York Times, I think, refused to come because it was off the record, but everybody else came.
00:24:28.000 It was like, fine, well, if you don't want to get the president's thinking, whatever.
00:24:32.000 Fine, don't come.
00:24:33.000 And to a person, they would leave and say, Why isn't that the person that you see on TV?
00:24:40.000 You know, a president has multiple audiences that they're talking to all at the same time.
00:24:46.000 The American people, our troops, our allies, and our enemies.
00:24:53.000 And you have to keep all of those things in mind.
00:24:56.000 And I think, I don't know if they realize how funny he was.
00:25:01.000 And also, here's another thing that really bothers me.
00:25:04.000 This is how I had a reporter who wrote a book about working in Washington, women working in Washington, and she called me and she says, so, how hard was it to be in the Bush bro White House?
00:25:20.000 What are you talking about?
00:25:22.000 I was the press secretary.
00:25:23.000 If I needed something on foreign policy, I called Condi Rice.
00:25:26.000 If it was homeland security, I called Fran Townsend.
00:25:28.000 Got an education question, I'm going to call Margaret Spellings.
00:25:31.000 You know, council's office, Harriet Meyers, ledge affairs, that was Candy Wolf.
00:25:36.000 I could go on, but I think I've made my point here.
00:25:38.000 It's very frustrating.
00:25:42.000 He was a promoter of women, but we didn't promote it in terms of, we didn't put out a press release every time a woman Achieved a new position because it was on the merits.
00:25:53.000 It was just a meritorious situation.
00:25:56.000 There were gay people that worked in the Bush administration.
00:25:59.000 Now, a lot of people did come out after the administration, but I also think when gay marriage became accepted and the Supreme Court ruled, that changed so fast with society.
00:26:10.000 I feel like people think he was quite an intolerant person, and he was not.
00:26:15.000 How did you handle leaks in the White House?
00:26:16.000 So that's obviously been a huge issue with this administration.
00:26:19.000 There were some problems with leaks in the early Bush administration.
00:26:22.000 By the second term, it seemed like that had been locked down pretty well.
00:26:25.000 I can't even remember a leak that we had to deal with, actually.
00:26:29.000 One time, I did think there was a leak, and then the president said, no, that was Hadley.
00:26:34.000 Because Steve Hadley had given some information about it.
00:26:38.000 Anyway, no, we didn't really have leaks.
00:26:40.000 Though, if there ever was a leak, I think it's so interesting.
00:26:44.000 You can take it to the bank.
00:26:45.000 The press office never leaks.
00:26:48.000 Because they have to clean up the leaks, but they're always suspected of the leak.
00:26:51.000 But I tell you, it's almost 100% foolproof that the first person to complain about a leak is the leaker.
00:26:59.000 Absolutely.
00:27:02.000 I remember it from the John Roberts nomination.
00:27:05.000 There was somebody in the council's office and something was in the paper like, that's not accurate, that's not true.
00:27:12.000 I get this call at 6.40 in the morning from a guy I never even really talked to and I realized like, oh, he's the leaker.
00:27:19.000 So let's fast forward from the Bush administration to now you're on Fox News.
00:27:22.000 So what was that transition back into TV and news like for you?
00:27:26.000 Because you started off there and you ended up there.
00:27:28.000 Although what I was doing when I couldn't land the interview at the courthouse was very different from what I do now.
00:27:34.000 I knew when I left the Bush administration that I wanted to Stay in the conversation.
00:27:39.000 I also wanted to be somebody that could continue to defend and promote the legacy of George W. Bush.
00:27:45.000 And I enjoyed explaining things to people.
00:27:49.000 I enjoyed that.
00:27:51.000 One of the things I made the mistake of doing, and a lot of people do this when they leave public service, is you say yes to everything.
00:27:57.000 I was burning the candle at both ends.
00:27:59.000 I was working later hours than I had when I had been at the White House.
00:28:07.000 Eventually, after just being a contributor for a while, being the guest, I almost always, for those first two years, was defending the Bush administration.
00:28:16.000 Because you remember, President Obama, remember, get a mop?
00:28:20.000 He would say it over and over again.
00:28:22.000 It was a constant, a gentle, respectful way of pushing back and setting the record straight.
00:28:28.000 And then I got nominated by McConnell, and then President Obama agreed, and I got Senate confirmed to the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees Voice of America and the like.
00:28:28.000 So I did that.
00:28:41.000 I do a lot of work, care a lot about Africa.
00:28:43.000 It was kind of put into me by the bushes.
00:28:46.000 And I was coming back from Nigeria.
00:28:48.000 I was at Dulles Airport, and I got a call asking me if I could come up to New York for five weeks to do this temporary program with five people at a table, and that was eight years ago.
00:29:01.000 So we moved up here and did that.
00:29:02.000 I think the hardest thing was, as press secretary, I was very used to Explaining somebody else's decisions, explaining their decision-making.
00:29:12.000 I could tell you exactly why he did it, what his opinion was.
00:29:16.000 I knew all of that.
00:29:17.000 It wasn't until I came on The Five that I was challenged to say, well, what do you think?
00:29:21.000 And I realized that there's a big buffer in that.
00:29:24.000 Because if I'm your spokesperson, it's not me that they're criticizing.
00:29:30.000 So that was new for me.
00:29:30.000 Right.
00:29:33.000 I remember Greg Gutfeld at one point turned to me and said, no, what do you think?
00:29:37.000 Not what the administration thought.
00:29:39.000 Like, what do you think about?
00:29:40.000 I think it was the legalization of marijuana.
00:29:43.000 And I really had to spend some time thinking about it and think about how I would articulate.
00:29:47.000 I think that was the hardest part.
00:29:48.000 And then also for a while, maybe this is just true of every It might not be true of every network, but for a while, because the show was called Temporary, and everything is temporary, right?
00:29:59.000 You can be fired at any time.
00:30:00.000 That can happen.
00:30:02.000 Am I going to have to leave doing this commentary work and go back and being a spokesperson for somebody or doing PR work, etc.?
00:30:02.000 I wasn't sure.
00:30:11.000 And when I finally realized, oh, I can let go, I started having more fun.
00:30:16.000 So I want to go back for a second.
00:30:17.000 You mentioned the legacy of George W. Bush, and President Bush has famously said that, you know, he only thinks that his legacy is going to be written 100 years after his presidency, and then we'll really sort of know.
00:30:26.000 Well, we're not 100 years out, but we are 11 years out from his presidency or 10 years out from his presidency.
00:30:31.000 What do you think that the Bush administration's legacy is and President Bush's legacy will be?
00:30:36.000 I really have to hand it to him for having this viewpoint.
00:30:40.000 I remember prepping him for interviews at the end of the administration, saying, they're going to ask you, what your legacy is going to be.
00:30:45.000 And he said, look, I read three books about George Washington last year.
00:30:49.000 And if historians are still analyzing the first president, then the 43rd doesn't have a lot to worry about because he'll never know.
00:30:55.000 Abraham Lincoln went, unfortunately, murdered, dies thinking he's unpopular.
00:31:02.000 I don't think that they'll ever really know.
00:31:07.000 That looking through the prism of today, you know, I'll even have people say to me, oh, you know, I really miss real Republicans.
00:31:12.000 And I understand what they mean in terms of civility, like if that's if they're looking for civility.
00:31:18.000 But I also believe, and I learned this from President Bush, democracy is self-healing.
00:31:24.000 And we have the greatest country.
00:31:25.000 We've been through so much.
00:31:27.000 We've been through a lot worse.
00:31:30.000 Forty-three used to talk to me about when he graduated from college, how terrible the country was actually fighting each other in the streets in the late 60s.
00:31:37.000 And we're a long way from that.
00:31:40.000 I think that his work with veterans will continue.
00:31:43.000 Obviously 9-11 is the turning point for so many things.
00:31:49.000 And for a presidency that was supposed to be about returning To domestic policy, tax cuts early on, right?
00:31:56.000 Improve education, less government, no foreign nation building.
00:32:03.000 That all changes in a moment out of necessity.
00:32:06.000 And I think that is something I think people will look back and say, he was able to focus the mind and through His strategy was to help other presidents for the future have tools in place to help protect the country from it ever happening again.
00:32:22.000 I think that that will be the most important part of the legacy.
00:32:27.000 I'd be remiss if I didn't talk a little bit about the war in Iraq, because you mentioned it a little bit earlier.
00:32:30.000 And it is fascinating to see how so many people on the right have now run headlong from the war in Iraq, suggesting that not only was it based on bad information, which is fairly Fairly true, at least with regards to the weapons of mass destruction, but that it was immoral or that it was fought for nefarious reasons.
00:32:50.000 For oil.
00:32:50.000 For oil.
00:32:51.000 And I mean, I'm talking about leaders in the Republican Party suggesting this, that the Bush era foreign policy was truly a liberal foreign policy.
00:32:57.000 I've heard folks on various networks suggest.
00:33:00.000 And what do you make of that sort of recasting of the Iraq War as something that, I mean, I'm old enough to remember when Republicans spent eight years defending it.
00:33:08.000 So what do you make of that?
00:33:10.000 So I really like Decision Points, President Bush's autobiography.
00:33:14.000 He takes 14 decisions of his presidency and explains them.
00:33:17.000 And what I also like about it is he said, I'm done debating it.
00:33:21.000 So I'm going to tell you what I knew at the time.
00:33:25.000 You can't force people to have a legacy based on information they didn't have at the time.
00:33:33.000 And I still maintain that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein.
00:33:39.000 And I hurt for our veterans that have come back and have injury and for the ones who didn't come back, for the Gold Star families.
00:33:47.000 I do think that defending what they did, why they went.
00:33:52.000 How many young people volunteered?
00:33:55.000 It's an incredible number because they believed in freedom.
00:33:59.000 That was the other thing was that this innate belief in freedom.
00:34:03.000 That was a rallying cry.
00:34:05.000 And now it seems quaint.
00:34:08.000 And to me, I look at all around the world, solving problems at their source Will help a lot of things.
00:34:16.000 Would help a lot of things.
00:34:17.000 Our immigration problem at the border, for example.
00:34:19.000 Law and order, things like that.
00:34:22.000 I also feel like the national security reasons for why you go to war.
00:34:29.000 Was there a threat?
00:34:30.000 Was there a credible threat?
00:34:31.000 One thing I admire about President Bush, as well, is that he never blamed the intelligence agency.
00:34:36.000 He never did that because he knew, as president, he needed them.
00:34:40.000 Right?
00:34:40.000 And that they had it wrong.
00:34:42.000 Things can go wrong.
00:34:45.000 And I think that he, as he writes in his book, if he had other information at the time, would he have gone to war?
00:34:55.000 No.
00:34:56.000 That's not the information that he has.
00:34:58.000 So let's fast forward to today's politics and talk about what's going on now.
00:35:01.000 So obviously things are incredibly different than they were in 2008, even 2004.
00:35:08.000 And we are living in this bizarro world in which President Trump is the president.
00:35:14.000 And that is a shocking development for people who are traditional followers of politics because obviously he came from literally nowhere in the political landscape.
00:35:22.000 And just steamrolled over all the other primary Everybody.
00:35:25.000 So first I want to get your sort of analysis of what the hell happened in 2016, because we have a bunch of competing sort of narratives about what happened in 2016.
00:35:33.000 On the right you have this narrative that President Trump put together this brand new coalition that had never been done before, driving people out to vote like no one in history.
00:35:39.000 And on the left you have this idea that President Trump stole the election and that truly Hillary Clinton was just sort of a failure at recreating the coalition of Barack Obama, but that the new normal is Obama's coalition and Trump is an outlier.
00:35:52.000 How do you analyze that?
00:35:53.000 Well, I'm definitely with the former.
00:35:54.000 I think the latter is really dangerous.
00:35:57.000 If Democrats think that, they're going to lose again.
00:36:00.000 I'm also troubled by this notion that you have actual Democrats and many women Democrats saying a woman can't put a woman up in 2020 because a woman just can't beat President Trump because America's not ready to vote for a woman.
00:36:14.000 Wait, Hillary actually won the popular vote.
00:36:18.000 She screwed up her strategy in three states.
00:36:22.000 And so I feel like all this women's empowerment nonsense that you hear from Democrats basically saying, oh, wait, actually we can't beat him.
00:36:31.000 OK.
00:36:32.000 I actually think that the popular vote might not be achievable for President Trump, though he's given it a shot, going to New Mexico, going to California, if he can increase those vote totals there, even if he doesn't win those states.
00:36:45.000 New Mexico might be in the cards, California obviously is not, but if you can increase the number of people that vote for you and improve on the popular vote, that would be something.
00:36:54.000 I also think that Americans were much more ready for change than traditional politicians or political observers thought.
00:37:05.000 They were much more comfortable with it.
00:37:07.000 They had had it.
00:37:08.000 I'm very interested in the voters that voted for Obama and then Trump.
00:37:17.000 I don't feel like the Democrats have done anything to win back those votes.
00:37:23.000 I haven't.
00:37:23.000 I feel like their economic arguments are pretty poor.
00:37:26.000 And I remember Mitch McConnell saying on air at the first State of the Union after Trump wins, after that first year of his presidency, he's like, Dana, look at this list.
00:37:36.000 Look at all these things.
00:37:37.000 And in any Republican administration, if you didn't know who the president was, would Republicans be pleased?
00:37:43.000 And the answer is arguably yes.
00:37:46.000 From judges and policy, deregulation, all of these things have made sense.
00:37:50.000 I also think that Republicans are quite lucky that President Trump decided to go with them.
00:37:55.000 Right?
00:37:56.000 Because had he thought that there was an opportunity and the timing was right, he could have.
00:38:02.000 Steamrolled over the Democratic Party as well.
00:38:05.000 Well, now he's doing that.
00:38:07.000 He did that with the Republicans, and now he's doing it with them.
00:38:09.000 I did recognize about two years ago, I said, they're going to come after the Electoral College.
00:38:16.000 This is going to be the new thing.
00:38:17.000 Even though Obama won the Electoral College, they never talked about it again.
00:38:20.000 But now, they try to say that it's racist, that it's unfair.
00:38:26.000 And I said, I'm talking about Carlton's show.
00:38:27.000 I'm like, watch, they're going to come for the Electoral College.
00:38:30.000 It won't happen in our lifetime, but it is under threat.
00:38:33.000 So in a second, I want to ask you about sort of my theory that Trump is reaction to not only the Obama years, but in part to the Bush years in an interesting way.
00:38:41.000 But first, big tech, a lot of big tech, it ain't friendly to conservatives.
00:38:45.000 There are a bunch of companies out there who just don't like conservatives very much.
00:38:47.000 I mean, take a look at Twitter and what they choose to trend and how they choose to describe it.
00:38:52.000 Well, if you can't trust certain elements in Silicon Valley to treat conservatives fairly, how can you trust them to handle your privacy and personal online data?
00:38:52.000 It's just terrible.
00:38:59.000 That's why I recommend using ExpressVPN every single time you go online.
00:39:03.000 Big tech companies can use your IP address to match your internet activity to your identity or location.
00:39:08.000 When I use ExpressVPN, search engines and media sites can't see my IP address at all.
00:39:13.000 My identity is masked and anonymized.
00:39:15.000 ExpressVPN has the added benefit of encrypting 100% of your data to keep you safe from people who you don't want to have your data.
00:39:21.000 ExpressVPN software takes just a minute to set up on your computer or phone.
00:39:24.000 You tap one button and you are now protected.
00:39:26.000 So, if you're like me and you believe that your internet data belongs to you, not to giant tech companies who may not be friendly to your values, ExpressVPN is the answer.
00:39:35.000 Protect your online activity today with the VPN I trust to keep my data safe.
00:39:39.000 Visit expressvpn.com slash ben to claim an exclusive offer for my fans.
00:39:44.000 That's e-x-p-r-e-s-s-vpn.com slash ben for three months free with a one-year package.
00:39:49.000 Again, that's visit expressvpn.com slash ben to get started.
00:39:53.000 Visit expressvpn.com slash Ben right now.
00:39:55.000 Get that three months free with a one-year package and protect all of your information.
00:39:59.000 No reason for everybody else to monetize your data when you should be in control of that data.
00:40:03.000 Expressvpn.com slash Ben.
00:40:05.000 I want to throw out a theory about what drove Trump directly over everybody in the Republican Party, including President Bush's brother, right?
00:40:12.000 President Bush's brother, right?
00:40:13.000 And just steamrolled everybody.
00:40:14.000 And just steamrolled everybody.
00:40:15.000 And that is there was this roiling anger inside the Republican Party dating all the way back to the Bush administration in which Republicans, I think, to a certain extent rightly felt that Republicans had not defended themselves against the predations of the press.
00:40:15.000 And that is there was this roiling anger inside the Republican Party dating all the way back to the Bush administration in which Republicans, I think to a certain extent, rightly felt that Republicans had not defended themselves against the predations of the press.
00:40:28.000 President Trump has spent an enormous amount of time bashing the press.
00:40:28.000 President Trump has spent an enormous amount of time bashing the press.
00:40:31.000 It's one of the things that for all of my quibbles with the way that he acts, for all of my serious criticisms of his character, and even for my criticisms of his overuse of the term fake news, when he's a hammer in search of a nail, and there are a lot of nails for him to hit.
00:40:46.000 And for Republicans, it felt a lot during the Bush administration, like, why won't President Bush come out and defend himself?
00:40:52.000 We're out here fighting for him.
00:40:54.000 Why won't he defend himself?
00:40:55.000 It was really frustrating.
00:40:56.000 And then in 2008, John McCain had somewhat of the same thing going on, where it was he was being savaged in the press as a racist and as a bigot.
00:41:04.000 And then it was suggested that he was Bush term three, even though he had significant differences with President Bush.
00:41:09.000 And And then he was in the background saying, well, I'm never ever going to mention Jeremiah Wright.
00:41:12.000 And Republicans are going, what the?
00:41:14.000 Why?
00:41:15.000 And then in 2012, it was Mitt Romney, the most genteel, milquetoast human being ever to walk the planet, running.
00:41:20.000 And his entire campaign was basically, Barack Obama's a really good dude, but marginal tax rates are out of control.
00:41:26.000 And so along comes Trump in 2016, and he's a giant, pulsating middle finger.
00:41:30.000 And a lot of Republicans just say, OK, that guy, because we're sick of this.
00:41:33.000 What do you make of that theory?
00:41:34.000 I think that's right.
00:41:37.000 I also feel like, but also back in time, if you go like after 9-11 and the country's at war, one of the worst things is inauthentic behavior.
00:41:51.000 It wasn't in President Bush's nature.
00:41:54.000 Although when Kanye West suggested that he was a racist after Hurricane Katrina, he says that was the thing that hurt him the most when he was president.
00:42:03.000 As a leader, he was a turn-the-other-cheek kind of guy, focused on the goal.
00:42:09.000 And I'm like that too.
00:42:13.000 I just have to be who I am, but sometimes that doesn't work so well on cable news.
00:42:17.000 I'm not a fighter, really.
00:42:19.000 I will argue my point, but I also have a longer-term view of life and a legacy, and I think that he probably did too.
00:42:26.000 I imagine when I say that I thought about what he would be thinking of me, I imagine he thought, what would my parents be thinking of me?
00:42:35.000 And that he has a deep faith and a relationship with God, and he was going to live that faith.
00:42:43.000 So fast forward when people are thinking that their culture, their very way of life, their very being is under assault.
00:42:53.000 And then here comes somebody who is willing to stick up for you.
00:42:57.000 There's power in that.
00:42:59.000 And I was very good friends, I am very good friends, with Brett Kavanaugh.
00:43:03.000 I worked with him in the White House.
00:43:05.000 I remember when I was spokesperson for Justice Roberts, then Judge Roberts, that confirmation wasn't easy.
00:43:12.000 People think that it was easy.
00:43:13.000 It was easy after Chief Rehnquist passed away, because then there was another opening and it was fine, then Alito became the target.
00:43:22.000 But at the time, I remember, I didn't understand, I'm not a lawyer.
00:43:26.000 I didn't understand why I was getting all these questions about the right to privacy.
00:43:29.000 I was like, I thought this was supposed to be about Roe v. Wade.
00:43:31.000 What are we doing?
00:43:32.000 And I went to Brett Kavanaugh on a Friday night, 7 p.m.
00:43:35.000 He was, of course, still there.
00:43:36.000 Knock on the door.
00:43:36.000 I'm like, could you help me?
00:43:38.000 And he does.
00:43:40.000 He helps walk me through it, watching what Brett Kavanaugh went through when he was confirmed.
00:43:46.000 Now, when I was his spokesperson in 05, The big controversy about Brett Kavanaugh going to the circuit court was that he had written a torture memo or something, or he had said a torture... But, arguably, all of these accusations about his character in high school and college would have been brought up in 04 and 05.
00:44:07.000 Never heard a whisper of it.
00:44:08.000 Nothing.
00:44:09.000 And I was with my husband in Spain on our 20th anniversary when Kavanaugh did the second hearing, the second testimony, and I've never seen my husband outraged.
00:44:21.000 And I cried the entire time.
00:44:24.000 And I really thought nothing will unite conservatives like this.
00:44:29.000 And when it's a choice between two people, whoever the Democrats come up with and President Trump, I think that the Democrats are going to have a really hard time.
00:44:39.000 I mean, so what the hell happened to the Democratic Party?
00:44:42.000 Because something has gone deeply awry here.
00:44:46.000 Well, maybe it's that they're having their own moment, right?
00:44:48.000 They're having... Fast forward eight years from now, if we do this interview again, we'll look back and go, oh, the Democrats were really mad because...
00:44:58.000 Whatever it might be.
00:44:59.000 I mean, I understand why they're angry.
00:45:00.000 I do think that there was this sense inside the Democratic Party that they were never going to lose another election, and that Barack Obama had forged a coalition that was unbreakable because it did not rely on traditional white voters, and that this was the growing demographic.
00:45:14.000 So as long as that demographic kept growing, he was never going to lose again.
00:45:17.000 They had kind of a parallel situation.
00:45:19.000 They didn't deal with Bernie Sanders early.
00:45:23.000 They changed the rules to accommodate him.
00:45:26.000 He has a following and movement.
00:45:27.000 He wasn't even a Democrat.
00:45:29.000 And it just so happened that Trump ran the tables, Bernie ran into the Hillary Clinton bulwark, basically, and now they're all still paying for it.
00:45:40.000 And they're going through transitions.
00:45:42.000 It's quite common for a party, if they get two terms at a White House, which is almost always the case, that that next eight years It's pretty turbulent for whatever part.
00:45:54.000 I don't know how the Democrats will end up.
00:45:57.000 There's a lot of realignment going on.
00:45:59.000 It's kind of fun to live through it now.
00:46:01.000 I would say in 2015 and 2016, I don't know if I loved watching Republicans fight amongst themselves, but now I feel much more like an observer.
00:46:13.000 And it's pretty fun to watch.
00:46:14.000 I kind of hope there's a contested convention for the Democrats.
00:46:17.000 That'd be fun.
00:46:18.000 I asked Brad Hume, I said, what's it like to cover a contested convention?
00:46:18.000 It hasn't happened.
00:46:21.000 I've never done it.
00:46:21.000 He said, I don't know.
00:46:22.000 So it could be really great history making.
00:46:25.000 So who do you think emerges, and we're going to get in the political prognostication game here, and I've lost too much money betting on politics to actually do this much anymore, but I'm going to ask you to.
00:46:34.000 It's fake money.
00:46:35.000 It's like house money.
00:46:37.000 But let's talk about the Democratic primary process.
00:46:39.000 So right now you've got Joe Biden, who is well-liked by a lot of Republicans.
00:46:43.000 I know a lot of Senator Cruz, who is really opposed to him, talks about him.
00:46:48.000 Very friendly.
00:46:48.000 A lot of Republicans are very friendly with Joe Biden.
00:46:51.000 Obviously, I've spent my entire career commenting from the outside, so I know very few Democratic senators.
00:46:54.000 I know a lot of Republicans and very few Democrats.
00:46:56.000 And so from the outside, it has always appeared to me that Joe Biden is a political manipulator, that he is fairly good at that, but that he is actually sort of just a genial kind of bumbly guy.
00:47:10.000 Does he look hungry for it?
00:47:11.000 No.
00:47:13.000 It's sort of like, remember when you read in the New York Times that Barack Obama tells Joe, you don't have to do this.
00:47:20.000 And it seems like that is kind of the slogan for the campaign.
00:47:25.000 There's no real verve.
00:47:27.000 Where's the energy?
00:47:29.000 And even in his crowds, it's like, he's the next thing.
00:47:34.000 I do think there's a lot of similarities to the Romney candidacy.
00:47:40.000 The thing is that the Democrats keep hoping, his opponents, that he's going to crater.
00:47:46.000 He's not.
00:47:48.000 He stays atop the poll, so he won't crater until one of them decides to go after him.
00:47:52.000 Castro tried.
00:47:52.000 Right.
00:47:54.000 Failed.
00:47:54.000 Think about Marco Rubio.
00:47:56.000 Marco Rubio tries to go after Trump.
00:47:58.000 Fails.
00:47:59.000 And I think Bernie is kind of a non-entity.
00:48:03.000 He has a core base of support.
00:48:05.000 They'll always be with him, but it's not growing.
00:48:08.000 Not really shrinking, it's not growing.
00:48:10.000 Kamala Harris, you know, when you're pulling fifth in your home state, and Andrew Yang, who is authentic and likable, does crowd surfing, it's just different.
00:48:22.000 If you're fifth behind him in your home state, you've got problems.
00:48:27.000 Now, changing strategies.
00:48:29.000 I think that Elizabeth Warren It's getting a lot of positive press right now.
00:48:35.000 She has a lot of energy.
00:48:36.000 When I talk about that energy, we saw the media talking about her four hours of taking selfies.
00:48:41.000 It's called a photo line, but like selfies, whatever you want to call it.
00:48:45.000 There's energy in her speech.
00:48:47.000 And now at her speeches, people are finishing her lines.
00:48:50.000 Like, they've gone back multiple times.
00:48:52.000 They like her.
00:48:52.000 So there is something there with Elizabeth Warren.
00:48:55.000 But I would say this.
00:48:56.000 She missed her moment.
00:48:57.000 She should have ran in 2016.
00:48:58.000 She should not have endorsed Hillary.
00:49:01.000 She should have taken on Bernie.
00:49:03.000 And she would have been the candidate against Trump.
00:49:06.000 I don't know how that would have turned out.
00:49:07.000 Yeah, I mean, I feel the same way, because I feel like, as you say, her press has been inerringly glowing.
00:49:14.000 I mean, since the Pocahontas stuff, it's been just endless great press for her.
00:49:19.000 And I think that now that Bernie is starting to drop in the polls, he's going to have to come after her with a hot poker.
00:49:23.000 I mean, he really has no choice.
00:49:25.000 Right.
00:49:25.000 And when that happens, he's going to hit her for inauthenticity, and he's going to be right, because she is inauthentic.
00:49:30.000 I mean, she's been playing at, I'm the authentic, progressive voice in the room.
00:49:34.000 She is certainly not.
00:49:35.000 I mean, if you go back and you read what she was writing in 2003, 2004, she was actually kind of interesting and heterodox.
00:49:40.000 And now she's cribbing off a Bernie sheet and then pretending that she came up with all these ideas herself.
00:49:44.000 I mean, even Stephen Colbert exposed her on the middle class tax stuff.
00:49:47.000 So I think that Biden is default candidate.
00:49:52.000 I do think that Biden's candidacy has a serious shot against Trump just because default Democrat could do fairly well against Trump because of his personal foibles.
00:50:00.000 Meaning that running a dead person against Trump might not actually be the worst strategy.
00:50:06.000 You don't necessarily need somebody who is transformational and feels energetic.
00:50:09.000 I do think it's going to be close no matter what.
00:50:11.000 Also think about this with the Democrats.
00:50:13.000 And maybe this is true for Republicans as well.
00:50:16.000 Probably is.
00:50:18.000 The governors.
00:50:19.000 That used to be seen as great presidential candidates because they've been executives of a state, they're not from Washington.
00:50:27.000 But here's the thing, they're not on TV all the time.
00:50:29.000 Nobody knows them.
00:50:30.000 So here you have Governor Hickenlooper and Governor Bullock, two very accomplished people that can't get a foothold.
00:50:38.000 And I think part of that is that there's just so much national attention now rather than state-based.
00:50:44.000 Let's talk for a second about the transformation of the Republican Party.
00:50:46.000 So you mentioned all the chaos inside the party in 2015, 2016.
00:50:50.000 So how do you think that the new Republican Party stacks up to sort of the Bush-era Republican Party?
00:50:55.000 What's changed and what's the same?
00:50:57.000 Well, I think that a lot of the people who were Reaganites come through, even to today.
00:51:05.000 But one thing also, I thought you would mention that Republicans were very frustrated with the Bush administration for spending.
00:51:10.000 I think that was the Tea Party, but it didn't seem to matter with Trump.
00:51:13.000 It doesn't now, right?
00:51:14.000 So that's a quick change in eight years.
00:51:17.000 But Kristen Soltis Anderson, she's not the only one, but she told me about this chart where the majority of people are not fiscally conservative and socially liberal.
00:51:27.000 Right, no one is basically, yeah.
00:51:29.000 They're socially conservative and fiscally liberal.
00:51:33.000 And that's where you have somebody like Elizabeth Warren saying, I will increase the average Social Security check by $200 a month.
00:51:42.000 Nobody cares how she's going to pay for it.
00:51:46.000 I actually think on that, what would President Trump say?
00:51:49.000 All of a sudden, he's going to say, well, we can't do that.
00:51:51.000 No, I think up the ante.
00:51:54.000 Just keep going.
00:51:55.000 And the consequences of this kind of spending and debt, deficit, It seems to me that we took a lot of grief for that in the Bush administration, that you don't hear so much now.
00:52:08.000 Maybe that's okay.
00:52:09.000 Maybe it doesn't matter.
00:52:10.000 Maybe you could get to higher growth.
00:52:12.000 Maybe deficits.
00:52:14.000 I don't know.
00:52:15.000 It is kind of a partisan thing, spending.
00:52:18.000 Republicans care about it during the Obama years, maybe not so much during the Trump years.
00:52:22.000 Democrats railed about it in the Bush years.
00:52:26.000 I think the spending issue is super important.
00:52:30.000 I also think that there's some innovation that needs to be done.
00:52:35.000 And I like states doing the experiments, especially when it comes to health care.
00:52:39.000 If we could figure out a way to unleash the free market, to be able to allow competition in some way to help with health care, I do think that Americans would realize we don't have to go to a Medicare for All model that will break the country.
00:52:52.000 There's some rallying to be done, but the Republicans right now You have to ask yourself, on the Trump campaign, what do you want to do in a second term?
00:53:02.000 Can we answer that?
00:53:03.000 Like, what do you want to do?
00:53:05.000 Now, most people would say, stave off the crazy.
00:53:10.000 And that might be enough.
00:53:11.000 It really might be.
00:53:12.000 It might be enough.
00:53:13.000 But I also wonder, the other thing is, and I always keep this in mind, remember I said that President Bush ran to do these things?
00:53:22.000 9-11 happened, changes everything.
00:53:23.000 I'm always like, something could happen.
00:53:25.000 I think for President Obama, it was when Ed Snowden released all of those documents.
00:53:29.000 Changes everything.
00:53:31.000 Reveals all the nation's secrets.
00:53:33.000 Caused huge problems all around the world.
00:53:35.000 Nothing has ever really been the same.
00:53:37.000 For President Trump, hasn't happened yet.
00:53:41.000 But the Iranians hitting a Saudi oil facility?
00:53:44.000 It's a pretty big deal.
00:53:46.000 So let's talk about how you maintain being a happy, well-adjusted, nice person in this space, because that is indeed a rarity.
00:53:53.000 And there are nice people, but I have yet to hear anyone say a bad word about you, which is an amazing thing.
00:53:59.000 I haven't talked to Greg Gutfeld.
00:54:01.000 He might give you a few.
00:54:02.000 He might give you a few.
00:54:03.000 Yeah, but everybody has bad things to say about Greg, so that's different.
00:54:06.000 Yeah, I really don't think that I would actually have the career I have now without Greg, because he really gave me the confidence to come out of my shell.
00:54:16.000 I remember Brian Kilmeade one time filled in for Greg and he said, I had no idea you were funny.
00:54:20.000 I was like, well we were at war, what was I supposed to say?
00:54:26.000 I was raised Lutheran.
00:54:29.000 The gold star on the chart extended to Sunday school.
00:54:38.000 I've relied on my faith many times and I'm grateful to have it.
00:54:42.000 It's funny, sometimes you forget that you can be a little bit lax in your relationship with God and then something will yank you back to reality and you think, You think you can try to fix it, and you realize, oh, actually, you need to turn it over.
00:54:59.000 And the serenity prayer is really important to me.
00:55:02.000 So knowing what I can do, what I can't do, and the wisdom to know the difference is something that I think is important.
00:55:11.000 I also think there's just, maybe it's not a Wyoming thing, but I feel like this is where I got it.
00:55:17.000 There's a dignity And for example, at the podium I never let anyone see me rattled.
00:55:29.000 And President Bush used to say, you might think she's nice, but she's tougher than you realize.
00:55:35.000 And maybe a little bit of that, too, is that I hold a lot of it in.
00:55:40.000 But I learned a lot from President Bush.
00:55:43.000 I remember towards the end, there was an interview with these two great guys, Terry Hunt and Steve Holland, AP and Reuters.
00:55:51.000 They were like frick and frack.
00:55:52.000 They came everywhere with us.
00:55:54.000 And Holland is still there at the White House today.
00:55:58.000 They came in to interview the president at the last moment, and the president said something about, oh yeah, Bill Clinton was here yesterday for lunch.
00:56:03.000 And they're like, really?
00:56:05.000 And I'm like, we didn't know.
00:56:07.000 He didn't put out a press release every time.
00:56:09.000 And they asked, are you friendly?
00:56:11.000 He's like, yeah, we are.
00:56:13.000 He said, you know, I call him on the days when nobody else would.
00:56:17.000 Remember when the Obama team went after him in South Carolina, suggesting that he was a racist?
00:56:24.000 And he said, I called him on that day.
00:56:26.000 And I always remember that.
00:56:27.000 Like, oh, call your friends on their hardest day.
00:56:30.000 You called me once on a hard day.
00:56:33.000 And I also remember this.
00:56:36.000 At the end of the administration, Peter and I were headed to Africa.
00:56:39.000 We're going to do a little vacation, but also volunteer at a PEPFAR site.
00:56:44.000 And I leaned my head back against the chair and I said, nothing I do for the rest of my life will ever be this difficult or this important.
00:56:52.000 And I'm so grateful to be an American, to have the opportunities that I've been given.
00:56:52.000 And it really hasn't.
00:56:57.000 I haven't had a lot of hardship.
00:56:59.000 I also can't stand disruption, drama.
00:57:05.000 I hate it when others are mean.
00:57:09.000 And maybe it has to do also if I go back to being bused.
00:57:14.000 I think that had a real impact on me, like the worry that somebody wasn't going to like me or seeing somebody else be hurt.
00:57:22.000 And my parents were very helpful to refugees.
00:57:26.000 So on the weekends, through Lutheran Family Services and Lutheran World Relief, we would help resettle refugees from the former Soviet Union.
00:57:34.000 And I think that gave me a real appreciation for being out of your comfort zone.
00:57:40.000 Also, life's short.
00:57:43.000 You don't want to live mean.
00:57:45.000 Sometimes I laugh in spite of myself about President Trump's nicknames.
00:57:50.000 The only one I really liked was Little Rocket Man.
00:57:52.000 For personal reasons and personal bias reasons, Sloppy Steve was my personal favorite.
00:57:57.000 That's pretty good.
00:57:57.000 Actually, Sloppy Steve.
00:57:58.000 That's pretty good.
00:58:00.000 I understand the power of it and the marketing and the skill and the political acumen.
00:58:06.000 The president's super smart about that, right?
00:58:08.000 He has the strategy.
00:58:09.000 I just know, like, it would hurt me to see somebody made fun of.
00:58:12.000 It's probably why I'll never run for office.
00:58:14.000 I'm never running for office.
00:58:14.000 Probably.
00:58:16.000 Don't ever.
00:58:16.000 Nobody.
00:58:18.000 No, I'm not going.
00:58:19.000 I'm not going to do it.
00:58:20.000 So for folks who don't know your husband, Peter is just a delight.
00:58:24.000 So how did you guys meet?
00:58:26.000 Like I only met him recently.
00:58:27.000 I've known you for a while, but I've only met him recently.
00:58:29.000 I'm so glad you got to meet him because ā€“ He's such a kick.
00:58:31.000 Also because he listens to Ben Shapiro every day.
00:58:34.000 And he does this long walk in the mornings with Jasper at the park and sometimes he comes back and says, did you hear what Ben said?
00:58:40.000 Of course I heard what Ben said because I listen too.
00:58:43.000 So I'm glad that Peter and I have you to share in our fandom.
00:58:49.000 I have an 18-year age difference.
00:58:52.000 I was 25 when I met him on an airplane.
00:58:54.000 We were seated next to each other by our seat assignments.
00:58:58.000 We were going from Denver to Chicago, and then I was going on from Chicago to D.C., and it was really love at first sight.
00:59:05.000 And I moved to England eight months later, lived there for a year with him, and then we came back to the States in 1998ā€”99.
00:59:15.000 And then 9-11 happened and we came back.
00:59:19.000 One of the things in my book and the good news is that I talk about is my favorite piece of advice is that choosing to be loved is not a career limiting decision.
00:59:28.000 A lot of people put off relationships or marriage or family because they think they want to achieve a certain level of professional success and then they'll find love and do all of those things.
00:59:39.000 And I try to tell people it doesn't have to work that way.
00:59:42.000 I actually feel like I couldn't have done any of this without Peter.
00:59:47.000 And then of course there's Jasper.
00:59:48.000 So you've written full books about Jasper.
00:59:51.000 You're not a dog guy.
00:59:54.000 My wife is trying to get me into it right now.
00:59:56.000 You're totally going to cave.
00:59:58.000 I am.
00:59:59.000 For security reasons too.
01:00:00.000 Because I keep being told that if you really want to be secure in your house then you need to have a dog outside.
01:00:05.000 I've always maintained this when Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped.
01:00:08.000 If they had had a dog, it never would have happened.
01:00:10.000 Yeah, I mean, I get this a lot.
01:00:11.000 So my kids are into it, my wife is into it.
01:00:12.000 I have a feeling within two years I'll be... Oh good, you're getting a dog.
01:00:14.000 Yeah, exactly.
01:00:15.000 I will be a dog acolyte in all of my prior anti-dog positions.
01:00:19.000 Do you remember the time that you sent me, you were going to do an ad for some sort of dog thing, and you said to me, like, no, you should take this one.
01:00:25.000 This is more for Dana.
01:00:26.000 That is exactly right.
01:00:27.000 It is one of the more awkward ad reads in the history of The Ben Shapiro Show.
01:00:31.000 And that's saying something.
01:00:32.000 Oh yeah.
01:00:33.000 There have been some real bad ones and that one definitely is like right up at the top.
01:00:36.000 I grew up with dogs.
01:00:37.000 And especially on the ranch.
01:00:38.000 And my grandfather was such a good dog trainer.
01:00:41.000 My uncles too.
01:00:42.000 Very, very good dog trainers.
01:00:43.000 So I learned that.
01:00:44.000 I had a dog with Peter.
01:00:47.000 We got him in Scotland.
01:00:49.000 Hungarian Vizsla breed.
01:00:52.000 Short hair, sleek, they're sweet, smart.
01:00:56.000 Henry was with me from when I was 26 to when I was 40.
01:00:59.000 One of the things I love about dogs is that they don't care that in that time I became the White House Press Secretary and moved to New York and was on The Five.
01:01:07.000 They're just your constant, it really is, you know, man's best friend.
01:01:10.000 The other thing is Greta Van Susteren called me the night Henry died about six months after we moved to New York and she said, you'll have to get another one.
01:01:16.000 I said, well how can I do that?
01:01:17.000 I live in New York and there's no grass.
01:01:20.000 Well, she was right.
01:01:21.000 And so we got Jasper.
01:01:22.000 Jasper has grown up with the five.
01:01:24.000 He is seven and a half years old.
01:01:26.000 I believe that dogs help bring a family closer together.
01:01:29.000 Not that you need that.
01:01:29.000 I know I'm not trying to... Oh, no, no, no.
01:01:31.000 Listen, keep making the case.
01:01:32.000 If you are arguing with your spouse or you're having a tough day, but you go out for a walk with the dog, it really is a tension reliever because you laugh at them.
01:01:42.000 They worry about them, whatever it might be.
01:01:42.000 It's funny.
01:01:45.000 Also, they're a great buffer for politics.
01:01:48.000 Like, when I go to the dog park, I don't talk to politics or anybody.
01:01:51.000 I'm like, oh, sorry, dog park.
01:01:54.000 And you have to try to find commonalities with your fellow humans.
01:01:59.000 And right now people feel very polarized or they feel like that.
01:02:02.000 I don't know if you get this.
01:02:03.000 This lady ran into me in the street the other day.
01:02:05.000 Oh, Dana, I just want to say hi.
01:02:07.000 I love your show.
01:02:08.000 I'm a Democrat, but I love your show.
01:02:10.000 Why do you have to say that?
01:02:12.000 Right.
01:02:12.000 And what I found is that if you have a dog, it's like, oh, your dog's so cute.
01:02:18.000 And then it becomes like, oh, your dog's cute.
01:02:21.000 And then you don't have to have the thing of, oh, well, I'm a Republican.
01:02:23.000 I'm a Democrat.
01:02:24.000 I'm a libertarian.
01:02:24.000 I'm so conservative.
01:02:25.000 Whatever it is, there's no identity politics at the dog park.
01:02:28.000 Except if you have a Bichel, which is a superior breed.
01:02:31.000 So in one second, I want to ask you a final question, which is going to be whether Dana Perino believes that there is hope for a nicer America.
01:02:39.000 We'll get to that question in just one second.
01:02:40.000 If you want to hear Dana's answer, you have to be a Daily Wire subscriber.
01:02:43.000 To subscribe, head on over to dailywire.com, click subscribe, watch the rest of our conversation there.
01:02:47.000 Well, Dana Perino, thank you so much for stopping by.
01:02:49.000 It's always great to see you and look forward to having you on when we start doing repeats.
01:02:53.000 Oh great, I would love that, if I make the cut.
01:02:56.000 In the meantime, we'll continue to allow the Ben Shapiro Show to bring your marriage closer together.
01:02:59.000 Okay, thank you.
01:03:00.000 That's what we do here.
01:03:01.000 Thank you so much, great to see you.
01:03:02.000 Great to see you.
01:03:02.000 Thank you.
01:03:11.000 special is directed by Mathis Glover and produced by Jonathan Hay.
01:03:14.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
01:03:16.000 Associate producer, Colton Haas.
01:03:18.000 Our guests are booked by Caitlin Maynor.
01:03:20.000 Post-production is supervised by Alex Zingara.
01:03:23.000 Editing by Donovan Fowler.
01:03:25.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Karamina.
01:03:27.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
01:03:29.000 Title graphics by Cynthia Angulo.
01:03:31.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire production.