The Ben Shapiro Show - David Limbaugh | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 30

00:00:00.000 Some people say we need to fight as dirty as the left or we're gonna lose.

00:00:03.000 I don't agree with that.

00:00:04.000 We don't have to fight as dirty, but we have to fight as aggressively and as relentlessly.

00:00:08.000 So here we are on the Sunday special with David Limbaugh, author of Jesus is Risen, which, if true, is bad news for me.

00:00:21.000 We'll get to all that in just one second.

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00:01:27.000 Well, David Limbaugh, thank you for coming.

00:01:29.000 I really appreciate it.

00:01:30.000 Thanks for having me.

00:01:31.000 So for folks who don't know, and this means nobody knows because I haven't told the story before.

00:01:35.000 The way that I got started in political commentary was at least partially due to David Limbaugh, who I met for the first time in person today.

00:01:42.000 So we have been talking and corresponding for legitimately 17 years.

00:01:46.000 And this is the first time we've ever met in person, actually.

00:01:49.000 So the way that this started is I was writing a column for the UCLA paper.

00:01:53.000 I applied to Creator Syndicate, which was your syndicator for your column.

00:01:57.000 And I applied cold, and they picked me up.

00:01:59.000 And then I had to get blurbs for the column so we could send it off to various newspapers.

00:02:02.000 And I emailed you out of the blue.

00:02:03.000 I was just some random kid.

00:02:04.000 And I was like, can you give me a blurb for my column?

00:02:06.000 You kindly said, sure.

00:02:07.000 And then you said, and also, if you decide to write a book on college campuses, then I would be happy to be the agent for it.

00:02:13.000 And I thought, OK, well, then I should probably go ahead and do that.

00:02:15.000 And then I wrote Brainwashed.

00:02:17.000 So, we have been friends for 17 years now, and it's pretty amazing.

00:02:21.000 It took us this long to actually meet in person.

00:02:23.000 I don't mean to put you on the spot, but tell us the story of how we met.

00:02:28.000 That's more specific than I remember, but that's exactly right.

00:02:31.000 And I don't remember actually engaging in solicitation for your legal business, but But I did want to encourage you to write.

00:02:42.000 Amazing prodigy.

00:02:43.000 And what has always amazed me, too, about you is that you didn't take off in an explosive way until maybe, what, the last year or two?

00:02:54.000 Five years, maybe the last four or five years, yeah.

00:02:56.000 And maybe the Piers Morgan thing was the catalyst.

00:02:58.000 Exactly, like 2013.

00:02:59.000 Yeah, that's how fast time goes.

00:03:01.000 But, haven't I always told you that it's going to happen?

00:03:05.000 Many times, many times.

00:03:07.000 And so it's gratifying.

00:03:08.000 And I don't take any credit for it at all, but I just love having been present as this thing develops.

00:03:14.000 Well, you should take some credit for it, because David was one of the people who, when I felt like crying because I wasn't actually progressing at the speed at which I was hoping to, David, you were always one of the people who was telling me that stick with it, everything's going to be okay, people will eventually come around.

00:03:29.000 Yeah, and our mutual friend Ann Coulter wanted to get you on the Supreme Court.

00:03:32.000 I had a different path for you.

00:03:34.000 Okay, so let's talk about ways that the church and synagogues have screwed up.

00:03:39.000 Because if you look at religious observation in the country, it's been markedly declining since the 1950s.

00:03:45.000 The number of people who are affiliated with an official religion is much lower now than it used to be.

00:03:50.000 People say that they are spiritual but not religious, which is the most empty phrase that I could possibly think of.

00:03:54.000 It's like you get to say that you believe in God without actually having to do anything about it.

00:03:59.000 But it seems to me that there are three problems, three various approaches that have been taken, all of which have their problems.

00:04:05.000 Approach number one is the approach that you mentioned, which is the let's have pizza and a guitar and come to church for the pizza and the guitar.

00:04:12.000 And we won't talk politics at all.

00:04:14.000 We will never threaten anything that you think about life.

00:04:16.000 This seems to me the direction in which a lot of churches have gone, thinking this is going to draw in young people.

00:04:21.000 Young people don't want that.

00:04:22.000 Young people want eternal values.

00:04:23.000 They want to know why they're here and not in a movie right now.

00:04:26.000 They want to know what it is that makes church special.

00:04:28.000 What it is about our 3,000 year history in Judaism and 2,000 year history in Christianity that makes it worthwhile to give up your Sunday morning when you could be out playing video games.

00:04:37.000 Do you think that the churches are doing a good enough job of leaving behind that sort of soft approach?

00:04:43.000 Because I think that too many of them are falling into this in an attempt to fill the pews in short order without actually getting to the root of the matter.

00:04:50.000 Yeah, I agree.

00:04:51.000 And it worries me that, for example, a pastor, a preacher, has got to be willing to talk about sin from the pulpit.

00:05:01.000 If he's afraid to turn people off, then he's doing a disservice.

00:05:05.000 Now, I don't think I don't want pastors to inject politics overtly.

00:05:12.000 I want them to advocate values that are consistent with the Bible and that may be consistent with conservative political values, but not do it in a political or partisan way.

00:05:23.000 I don't mean to do it furtively.

00:05:25.000 I just mean preach the Bible and preach Christian values.

00:05:28.000 But some of them are afraid and they stay away from these issues.

00:05:32.000 I visited one church where the pastor said, right after Trump won, we're going to pray for the people here who weren't in favor of Trump's...

00:05:42.000 And I was so turned off by that because what about...

00:05:45.000 Did they ever say that about Obama?

00:05:48.000 And here's the thing.

00:05:49.000 I don't want pastors to be political conservatives or political liberals.

00:05:55.000 I want them to leave all of that out and just preach the gospel, preach the Bible.

00:06:01.000 But some of them are afraid to do that.

00:06:03.000 And even if they do get people in the door, I think ultimately they're not going to keep them in the way that they want to keep them because they're not going to fill them with what they need.

00:06:15.000 So I think that...

00:06:16.000 So we agree on Problem number two is something you mentioned a little bit earlier, which is a feeling that you get from a lot of people who don't have a lot of familiarity with church or maybe they do with the wrong churches when they're young.

00:06:26.000 This feeling of incipient theocracy, you know, the folks who think Mike Pence is going to reinstitute the Handmaid's Tale because he's a religious person, and they think back to their youths when they had a priest or a pastor or a rabbi who used to feel very oppressive.

00:06:40.000 I think it's important for, you know, religious communities to point out, look, we're here to help guide you and provide you the social fabric so that you can do the right thing, but we're not interested in grabbing the reins of government and then cramming down our version of life on you other than protecting life, liberty, and property.

00:06:55.000 That's exactly right.

00:06:56.000 And while you can look at world history and say, well, they did.

00:07:01.000 We did dabble a lot in theocracy and intermixing church state in that sense.

00:07:06.000 But I think our framers were very clear.

00:07:09.000 They wanted to prohibit the establishment of a national church.

00:07:13.000 And the reason they wanted to do that is because they knew that if you have one church that's mandated, then you don't have religious liberty.

00:07:21.000 They wanted religious liberty for everyone.

00:07:24.000 And you can argue about whether it's ultimately about Christians and all denominations being whatever, but I don't care. 0.83

00:07:30.000 The spirit of it is the same.

00:07:32.000 I don't, as a Christian, I don't want to muzzle anyone.

00:07:36.000 I want the freedom of religion and speech and association to be robust.

00:07:42.000 And that's one thing, one telltale sign of the difference between libs and conservatives.

00:07:48.000 Liberals are censors.

00:07:50.000 Liberals suppress liberty. 0.91

00:07:52.000 Liberals are intolerant.

00:07:55.000 Conservatives and Christians are tolerant.

00:07:58.000 We have nothing to fear from the marketplace of ideas.

00:08:00.000 We just don't want people to keep us from saying what we want to say, such as we're seeing now in the social media.

00:08:06.000 But I'm on record on this.

00:08:08.000 I'm against theocracy.

00:08:09.000 Affirmative.

00:08:10.000 It's the worst thing you could ever do.

00:08:12.000 We're not supposed to do that.

00:08:13.000 Now, I think the Jews were supposed to do that in the Old Testament.

00:08:17.000 God wanted to be their king directly.

00:08:20.000 They demanded a king, and he ultimately gave it to them.

00:08:22.000 But I think you would probably agree with that history.

00:08:24.000 Maybe you wouldn't.

00:08:25.000 In fact, I'd be interested if you didn't.

00:08:26.000 But Christians for sure, and Jews today, we don't want theocracy, do we? 0.99

00:08:31.000 I mean, even in the Old Testament, God is really dicey about kingship and monarchy.

00:08:37.000 I mean, Samuel is really not happy with the concept of the Jews wanting a king.

00:08:41.000 That's my point.

00:08:42.000 It's supposed to be a much more direct relationship between people and God without this sort of intermediary cramming things down from the top.

00:08:49.000 It's supposed to be a relationship between God and his children as opposed to somebody who's actually the enforcement mechanism for God from the top.

00:08:56.000 That's a point.

00:08:57.000 So even that theocracy was not what we think of theocracy today.

00:09:00.000 Right.

00:09:01.000 And that theocracy existed in a different setting and at a different time, obviously.

00:09:06.000 There are many rabbinic responses to specifically this issue because Jews have never been in control of land for a couple of thousand years up until 1947-1948 again.

00:09:14.000 So then there's the third issue with church and synagogue And that is, I think, the most troublesome one for a lot of conservatives and Republicans.

00:09:26.000 And it gets into some pretty dicey political territory, which is, of course, what makes this fun.

00:09:30.000 I see it a lot among young people, which is the feeling that, OK, so you don't want theocracy, and you have values that you're preaching.

00:09:39.000 What are you willing to say about politicians who are doing good stuff for you, but may not share your values?

00:09:45.000 And this, obviously, I'm referring to President Trump.

00:09:46.000 There's a lot of controversy over how the evangelical community has treated President Trump, with some people saying that the evangelical community has acted unfaithfully, in a certain sense, by green-lighting his bad behavior.

00:09:58.000 Other people saying, well, you have to back him.

00:09:59.000 I mean, the opposition is legitimately anti-life.

00:10:02.000 I mean, not Pro-choice, but affirmatively celebrating abortion.

00:10:07.000 So how do you separate out the various strands of how Trump should be treated by Christians, if they want to reach out particularly in an intellectually honest way to young people?

00:10:17.000 I think that obviously it was a dilemma going in for me when I didn't support him during the primaries and there are a lot of things about him I didn't like, as you well know.

00:10:27.000 I see Trump as kind of the general in a culture war and in a war for our salvation of the country.

00:10:37.000 Secular salvation, I don't mean literally. 0.89

00:10:40.000 I see the left as so crazy and so Antithetical to our views and our vision of America.

00:10:49.000 That I applaud Trump fighting.

00:10:52.000 Now, I don't like all the things he does, obviously.

00:10:56.000 And I don't want to lose my credibility or intellectual honesty by defending things that he does that I don't think are right.

00:11:05.000 But since he's been in office, as opposed to before, I don't see him misbehaving that much, no sexual dalliances, none of that kind of thing.

00:11:15.000 He hasn't been accused of any of those kinds of things.

00:11:17.000 Everything that's come up is about what has occurred prior to being in office.

00:11:22.000 I think Trump, one of the reasons I was for Cruz and not for Trump originally, I didn't believe he was a conservative.

00:11:30.000 And I think I was rational in believing that when you look at his past.

00:11:33.000 I don't believe I'm selling out by now saying I'm supporting the fact, the welcome fact that he has changed, at least he's changed in terms of his policies.

00:11:43.000 What we anticipated and what he's doing.

00:11:45.000 He's governing for the most part as a conservative.

00:11:48.000 And that's gratifying to me.

00:11:50.000 His tweets.

00:11:52.000 Yeah, I don't like the tone of some of them, obviously, and you've mentioned some of them, I won't even say it, but I do like the fact that he's fighting.

00:11:59.000 See, I think one of the reasons we have this problem, Trump is a symptom of, to me, we have a perception that the Republican Party wasn't fighting, that they were squishes, that they wouldn't ever fight Obama on budget battles, that they're always catering.

00:12:14.000 Every time there's a compromise between Republicans and Democrats, The, the ball of socialism is marched a little bit incrementally down the field.

00:12:23.000 You never see it go the other way when there's a compromise.

00:12:26.000 It's only when we win and we force it down their throats.

00:12:29.000 I mean, not force it, but we do it democratically.

00:12:31.000 They force it down our throats, i.e.

00:12:32.000 with Obamacare.

00:12:33.000 So, I, I don't, I, I see Trump as governing conservatively, uh, and I, I, the, some of the things he says, oh, let me say this.

00:12:45.000 I know that you and I, I hear, I watch and listen to your podcast a lot.

00:12:49.000 I agree with you 99% of the time.

00:12:51.000 I think we have a different perception though about Trump.

00:12:55.000 And this is what bothers me about Never Trumpers.

00:12:57.000 They think we're sellouts.

00:12:59.000 I haven't sold out.

00:13:00.000 I have five kids.

00:13:01.000 I have nothing to sell.

00:13:02.000 I love America as much as I ever have.

00:13:05.000 I am not offended by Trump's nationalism.

00:13:08.000 I don't see code in Trump's nationalism to white supremacy or alt-right or any of that.

00:13:15.000 Trump and code don't mix.

00:13:17.000 Trump is, whatever he says is what he says.

00:13:20.000 And so I don't see any of these sinister motives that Trump has.

00:13:24.000 He may say things that aren't true, but I don't take him that seriously.

00:13:27.000 So as before, when I, some of the things he did, I was just appalled.

00:13:31.000 Now I kind of laugh when I see these videos of him in the wrestling thing.

00:13:36.000 Now I look back at him accusing Ted Cruz's dad of assassinating.

00:13:41.000 I just laugh at that because I don't, it's so absurd.

00:13:44.000 And I don't even take him seriously.

00:13:45.000 It was dirty pool at the time.

00:13:47.000 Don't get me wrong.

00:13:48.000 But I don't, I just don't take, see Trump as some sinister guy.

00:13:52.000 I think he's really working for the good of America.

00:13:55.000 And I mean, I really, of all the things he believes, I really believe he loves America.

00:13:59.000 And, and I don't see a lot of evil in him.

00:14:02.000 And I think as a Christian, I have a duty to support him because he's the guy that's standing in the way of, he's standing athwart the advance of leftism.

00:14:11.000 Okay, so I want to ask you in a second about the response to that.

00:14:14.000 And this is coming from somebody who said I'm much more likely now to support him than I was in 2016.

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00:15:30.000 All right.

00:15:31.000 So the response to that, particularly when you talk to young people, is that some of the language that you're using to describe President Trump is pretty flattering.

00:15:39.000 So you say that he's the general in the culture war, for example, or that you think that he's doing what's best for the country.

00:15:45.000 And the other way of saying it, sort of the other side of the coin is... 0.99

00:15:50.000 Dude's kind of a schmuck, right? 0.99

00:15:51.000 Which is like, personally, he doesn't have a history of treating women well, obviously. 1.00

00:15:55.000 He's been very skeezy in his business dealings.

00:15:58.000 He lies a lot.

00:15:59.000 He says a lot of things that aren't true.

00:16:00.000 But he's a perfectly serviceable and better than serviceable vessel for a lot of my political priorities.

00:16:07.000 And for that reason alone, since all the damage that he was going to do has now been done, right?

00:16:12.000 I mean, I was afraid that he was going to coarsen the public culture, even though it's already coarsed.

00:16:16.000 He's done that.

00:16:16.000 It's over.

00:16:17.000 Can't put that cat back in the bag.

00:16:18.000 All right, he's going to say things that I don't like.

00:16:22.000 He's done that.

00:16:23.000 Not sure that can be undone. 0.98

00:16:24.000 He's going to soul suck the Republican Party.

00:16:26.000 I think he hasn't really done that to too much of an extent. 0.66

00:16:29.000 But when you say to young people, particularly, that he is a The feeling that he's a great leader, or that he's a good man, or that he's even a decent fellow.

00:16:41.000 I don't think that he's a particularly decent fellow.

00:16:43.000 I wouldn't want him as a business partner.

00:16:45.000 I don't think that he's a good man.

00:16:46.000 I wouldn't want him around my wife, unsupervised.

00:16:50.000 But as a vehicle for my political viewpoint, which is a reflection of my values, I would certainly prefer him in the White House, too.

00:16:59.000 To Hillary Clinton or any other Democrat that they are willing to run at this point or probably in the near future.

00:17:06.000 So with that being the case, you know, we're both coming at it from the perspective of people who are going to vote for Trump in 2020.

00:17:12.000 But I do wonder if it undercuts the message of people who are value centric to lead with the, like, to what extent do you feel the need to defend Trump as a human as opposed to defending your vote for Trump as a politician?

00:17:28.000 Well, it depends on the charge against him.

00:17:33.000 I think the facts ought to speak for themselves on a case-by-case basis.

00:17:37.000 I do believe that he has become more conservative, substantively.

00:17:41.000 I agree with that.

00:17:42.000 But let me tell you my theory why.

00:17:44.000 I don't think he was ever ideological.

00:17:46.000 He did have strong beliefs on tariffs and trade wars and that kind of thing.

00:17:51.000 And immigration.

00:17:52.000 But he hung around New York liberals, and he thought they were nice guys.

00:17:56.000 They were nice to him, and he's very much a product of who, I mean, he responds to people personally, if they like him and all that.

00:18:03.000 And you can say that's a negative, and I understand.

00:18:06.000 But now he sees the left for what they are.

00:18:10.000 And now he sees who the good guys are, including the Christians.

00:18:13.000 And I actually think there's been a transformation.

00:18:15.000 I don't know about a conversion.

00:18:16.000 I have no idea where he is spiritually.

00:18:20.000 But I think he's moved in the right direction substantively and idealized, even beyond how he's governing.

00:18:26.000 I think he's come to see who the good guys are in this existential struggle for America.

00:18:32.000 I don't want to say that to young people or anybody else that if he's doing something wrong that it's right.

00:18:41.000 I don't want to say that it is.

00:18:42.000 But I might give him some slack on things that I don't take him that seriously about.

00:18:47.000 So, if he says, I want to wrestle somebody to the floor, or he talks about it, I don't want him to curse in public, obviously.

00:18:55.000 But, if he's combative, that doesn't bother me.

00:18:57.000 I want him to be combative, because that's what we've missed, and that's why the base is so, that's why there's a rallying around him, because they see, I really believe this, that the conservatives thought, the Tea Party thought, that we weren't, that there were no leaders standing up for our values, and our ideas.

00:19:16.000 Something that does bother me.

00:19:18.000 I'm probably as idealistic as you are.

00:19:21.000 I consider myself a constitutional conservative.

00:19:23.000 I was for Ted Cruz because I saw him as the vintage, pure constitutional conservative.

00:19:31.000 I know Trump isn't that, and he isn't the kind of guy that can give me goosebumps about someone who will read constitutional law and all that.

00:19:40.000 And I didn't agree with these people who I argued with during the primaries that we need somebody who's going to come in and break everything to fix it.

00:19:48.000 Because I believe what we needed to do was return to our principles, our constitutional principles.

00:19:53.000 But since he's been in office, I've had a rethinking even of that.

00:19:59.000 I've come to believe, and it may be rationalization, I don't know.

00:20:04.000 I've come to believe that we did need somebody to really shake things up because I see, if Ted Cruz had come in, and I still love Ted and I'm friends with him, I don't know that the country would have allowed him to do what Trump has done.

00:20:15.000 Trump is so unorthodox, whether you give him credit for it, just say that his nature as being so unorthodox has resulted in some things really happening.

00:20:25.000 I don't agree with the people who have now analyzed it.

00:20:28.000 I think they got it right for the wrong reasons.

00:20:30.000 But I think in retrospect, they were right, that we needed to have things just broken, not our system.

00:20:37.000 And you're going to say, well, not you, but I say to myself, then how do we restore the purity of our system and the constitutionality and all that stuff?

00:20:47.000 Well, I think we can look to him as honoring the Constitution.

00:20:50.000 I don't agree with the people who say he's so authoritarian.

00:20:52.000 Yeah, he likes Putin because Putin liked him.

00:20:55.000 He might admire tough guys, but he's not doing anything that's a threat.

00:21:00.000 In fact, the only thing he really did, the only executive order that he ever did that I thought was blatantly unconstitutional was when he reversed himself at the pressure of liberals on the border thing.

00:21:12.000 Now, there are probably other examples.

00:21:14.000 I don't fear him.

00:21:15.000 I don't see that he wants to do any of that.

00:21:16.000 And when he makes these statements, I wish I could be king.

00:21:19.000 Obama said that stuff in a minute.

00:21:20.000 I don't think Trump means it. - So let's go back to this topic about President Trump shaking things up.

00:21:25.000 So my view of President Trump shaking things up is I can name maybe one place where I think that no other Republican would have done it.

00:21:32.000 And that is moving the embassy to Jerusalem.

00:21:33.000 I think no other Republican does that.

00:21:35.000 I think that he is so out of the box and so unorthodox a thinker that he thought, OK, there's no reason for this.

00:21:39.000 Let's just do it.

00:21:40.000 It's obvious that we should do it.

00:21:41.000 Let's do it.

00:21:42.000 I think even Ted Cruz would have had difficulty doing it.

00:21:44.000 But in terms of shaking things up, I think Ted Cruz probably gets the tax cut.

00:21:47.000 I think that Ted Cruz probably gets whatever reversal of Obamacare happened because it's just whatever Republican votes are there.

00:21:54.000 I think he probably appoints the same justices, maybe better justices in the case of Kavanaugh.

00:21:58.000 We'll have to see how Kavanaugh goes.

00:22:00.000 So where do you think that the shaking things up has really benefited the country and the conservative movement?

00:22:06.000 When I say, I don't want to make the statement that he could have done it better than Cruz in the sense of Uh, I don't mean he would have advocated better.

00:22:16.000 I just think because of his personality and his charisma, he's able to get things done that Ted might not.

00:22:22.000 Ted, they had so demonized Cruz, uh, that they, I think they would have neutered him politically.

00:22:28.000 I don't think he would have backed down one bit.

00:22:30.000 I just don't think he would have, and I don't want to say he might, he's the one exception.

00:22:35.000 I don't want to say anything negative about him.

00:22:37.000 Uh, cause I don't regret my support for him.

00:22:39.000 Right.

00:22:40.000 But I just think in the end, Trump, Because of his unorthodoxy might have, even on Kavanaugh, he defends Kavanaugh.

00:22:48.000 He says, somebody more circumspect may say, we got to wait for the evidence to come in.

00:22:52.000 And Trump waited, but then he finally said, this woman is not telling the truth. 0.66

00:22:56.000 Those kinds of things, Trump has more courage for whatever reason.

00:23:00.000 You may attribute it to the wrong things, but he's just a street fighter.

00:23:05.000 He's a brawler.

00:23:06.000 And I don't have any problem with that.

00:23:07.000 In fact, some people say, we need to fight as dirty as the left or we're going to lose.

00:23:11.000 I don't agree with that.

00:23:12.000 We don't have to fight as dirty, but we have to fight as aggressively and as relentlessly as they do.

00:23:17.000 So how do you think this plays out in 2020?

00:23:19.000 So I will admit that I was a skeptic leading up to 2016, obviously, because the data suggested skepticism.

00:23:25.000 Trump wins the shock victory.

00:23:27.000 My theory is that no one showed up to vote for Hillary Clinton.

00:23:29.000 My evidence for that is that he won fewer votes in Wisconsin than Mitt Romney did, Trump did, and won the state.

00:23:34.000 Hillary Clinton lost the state because no one likes Hillary Clinton. 0.89

00:23:36.000 And the dirty little secret of 2016 is that it was not, in fact, a referendum on President Trump.

00:23:40.000 It was a referendum on the worst candidate in the history of the Republic who everyone despised, including Democrats who voted for Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sanders in the primaries.

00:23:47.000 So 2018 comes around and we get shellacked.

00:23:50.000 I mean, it looks now like we're going to lose 40 seats when all is said and done in the House, which is a shellacking.

00:23:56.000 We are only able to gain two seats.

00:23:59.000 I'm not optimistic, but I'm not pessimistic.

00:24:01.000 I thought we were going to make it closer in the House, but I don't think we got shellacked from a historical perspective.

00:24:05.000 going into 2020.

00:24:06.000 Are you optimistic that Trump is able to win re-election?

00:24:10.000 If so, why?

00:24:12.000 I'm not optimistic, but I'm not pessimistic.

00:24:15.000 I thought we were gonna make it closer in the House, but I don't think we got shellacked in historical, from a historical perspective, but we lost way worse than we wanted to, and that looked like we were going to before.

00:24:29.000 I do think that Trump has something that other people didn't have that contributed that contributed to his victory.

00:24:34.000 He can really rally his base, like nobody I've ever seen.

00:24:39.000 He came to Cape Girardeau for the Hawley rally, and you can't believe the way he energizes people.

00:24:46.000 He gives a good stump speech and gets people motivated.

00:24:51.000 We've talked about whether Not we've talked about, but I've been reading.

00:24:55.000 Trump can do this with his base, but he has to go beyond his base.

00:24:58.000 I think Newt just says, and nobody can deny Newt Gingrich's brilliance, and especially as a strategist, if he really gets the base multi-hyper expanded, we will win anyway.

00:25:12.000 I don't believe that.

00:25:13.000 But I believe, again, that what the left will probably do in the next two years will reveal them more and more for How unreasonable they are and how extreme they are.

00:25:25.000 They might get smart and not be extreme.

00:25:27.000 But we, Trump, we have to have a good economy.

00:25:32.000 Remember, Trump wasn't running.

00:25:33.000 He was and he wasn't running in this election.

00:25:35.000 But these elections weren't nationalized.

00:25:38.000 And the presidential election will be, obviously, by definition.

00:25:43.000 And they're all voting for one candidate versus the other, as opposed to 450, 435 different districts.

00:25:51.000 I think that he has a very good chance of winning, but it depends on... I saw Steve Dace write a column the other day saying, I'll tell you right now whether Trump's going to win.

00:26:01.000 It's whether the Democrats put up somebody likable.

00:26:04.000 If they put up somebody that's not likable, he'll win.

00:26:07.000 If the person's likable, he won't.

00:26:10.000 Now that kind of goes with your 2016 theory that Hillary wasn't and all that.

00:26:14.000 But I don't think it's that simple.

00:26:16.000 Steve Dace is a very smart guy.

00:26:17.000 But I think that the economy is going to make a big difference, and who the Democrats put up, obviously.

00:26:24.000 But I don't think likability is all there is to it.

00:26:27.000 These people who purported to know what was going to happen a year out, to me that's just folly.

00:26:33.000 Things can change overnight, and we've seen it literally change overnight.

00:26:38.000 I think we've got to do much better messaging going forward.

00:26:43.000 And Trump has, I wish there was a way that Trump, you could have the good Trump without the bad Trump.

00:26:48.000 When I say the bad Trump, I'm talking about the shooting himself in the foot on certain of his tweets.

00:26:53.000 And, but, but I like a lot of his tweets.

00:26:56.000 He can, like I say, he could be combative without being personal.

00:26:59.000 I mean, he can even be personal as long as he isn't.

00:27:02.000 Um, rude and insulting in ways that he shouldn't be.

00:27:06.000 I mean, I've, I've suggested that we actually create a fake Twitter app and we put it on his phone and then we can actually screen his tweets.

00:27:06.000 Right.

00:27:11.000 It gives him fake feedback.

00:27:11.000 He actually tweets it out.

00:27:12.000 He thinks that it's real feedback and then he goes around the rest of the day all happy and it never sees the light of day outside of the White House.

00:27:19.000 Because obviously I agree there, there are a lot of great benefits to a guy with as much charisma, as much magnetism.

00:27:19.000 Something like that.

00:27:25.000 I mean, the guy can bring a spotlight like nobody, Well, I don't have as jaded a view as you do of him.

00:27:29.000 I probably did during the primaries.

00:27:30.000 I don't see him as a person that is just all negative.

00:27:32.000 You've got to remember something else.

00:27:35.000 be caught between his brain mouth filter would definitely be a good thing.

00:27:38.000 Well, I don't have as jaded a view as you do of him.

00:27:40.000 I probably did during the primaries.

00:27:42.000 I don't see him as a person that is just all negative.

00:27:47.000 I see if he, you got to remember something else.

00:27:51.000 They have attacked him so much.

00:27:54.000 And yes, he's in one sense thin skinned or whatever you want to call it.

00:28:00.000 But he's legitimately responding to a relentless assault, personal assault.

00:28:07.000 And so he's defending himself and he's got a forum to do it.

00:28:10.000 Sometimes I think he goes overboard with the Adam Schiff thing, that kind of thing.

00:28:14.000 Even though Schiff deserves ridicule.

00:28:16.000 But he doesn't need to gratuitously put that in.

00:28:19.000 Like a lot of people on Twitter, you know the urge to be rude and funny.

00:28:23.000 And then you wake up the next day, I wish I hadn't done it.

00:28:26.000 And what I try to do on Twitter is to live a good example and try to be nice to people, even people that are mean to me, but I'm biting my tongue the whole time. - You're much nicer on Twitter than I am.

00:28:34.000 I know, but I don't want to be.

00:28:36.000 My instinct is to go for blood.

00:28:39.000 And I can see Trump, he's a brawler and he just, he doesn't, but I don't see him as some sinister guy.

00:28:44.000 I see him as really wanting to help the country.

00:28:46.000 Yeah, he gets too personal and stuff.

00:28:48.000 But I just, with young people, I think young people have got to be, we've got to educate young people to what we face, how they're going to lose their liberties and everything that was built for them if the left continues to win.

00:29:04.000 Well, so this seems like a question as to what the future of the Democratic Party you would hope to see looks like.

00:29:11.000 Because in the one sense, it sounds like you would like to see the Democratic Party reveal their full-scale radicalism for everybody, so that way we have a better chance of victory in 2020.

00:29:19.000 At the same time, if that full-scale radicalism wins out, then you have a full-scale radical Democratic Party in charge of the government.

00:29:25.000 So which direction would you like to see the Democratic Party take?

00:29:28.000 Well, they're impotent now, though.

00:29:30.000 All they can do is obstruct.

00:29:31.000 All they have is the House.

00:29:33.000 And so, no, I don't subscribe to this view.

00:29:36.000 Let them in charge so they can show just how bad they are and destroy the country.

00:29:39.000 I don't think we have many years left.

00:29:41.000 I don't think we have many chances left.

00:29:42.000 That's not what I mean.

00:29:43.000 But if you had your druthers, would they run in 2020 a more moderate candidate who appeals to the Rust Belt because you want two viable parties?

00:29:52.000 Or would you prefer they run somebody completely radical so that the country can see, and then we risk whether that person wins or not?

00:29:57.000 Well, that would be a calculation.

00:29:59.000 If I thought the person could win, I wouldn't want him to run.

00:30:02.000 But I don't believe there's many, almost any such thing as a moderate Democrat anymore.

00:30:07.000 They build people like that, Sherrod and all that.

00:30:10.000 I don't believe it.

00:30:11.000 All these Democrats vote and enable the radicalism that we see in the country.

00:30:16.000 So I think that's one of the reasons, I think the things that separate Never Trumpers, by the way, I don't consider you Never Trumpers.

00:30:23.000 I'm not a Never Trumper.

00:30:24.000 I was during the election, but to me, just so folks understand the sort of breakdown of what Never Trump is.

00:30:31.000 Never Trump was a movement that existed.

00:30:33.000 It wasn't really even a movement.

00:30:34.000 It was more like a self-definition.

00:30:36.000 In 2016, will you vote for Trump in a general?

00:30:38.000 Will you not vote for Trump in a general?

00:30:40.000 I did not vote for Trump in the general, so I was a Never Trumper.

00:30:42.000 But after the election happened, There's nothing to vote for anymore now.

00:30:46.000 He's the president.

00:30:46.000 So the question becomes, is he good or is he bad?

00:30:49.000 And so I've declared myself a sometimes-Trumper when he's good.

00:30:51.000 But also, if you had had a crystal ball... And you would have governed like this... Yeah, then you would have voted for him.

00:30:59.000 Yes.

00:31:00.000 I mean, yeah.

00:31:01.000 The difference our calculation is I think I think that Hillary was so bad and I think we're closer to the precipice to losing this country.

00:31:09.000 I don't know about you, but I think I see Tom Nichols.

00:31:12.000 I've been friendly with him on Twitter, but he advocated voting for all Democrats.

00:31:16.000 Max boot. 0.98

00:31:17.000 These people are unhinged.

00:31:18.000 I can't understand how you could be a conservative and advocate because they think that if you do that, you'll ultimately bring the Republican Party back to its census.

00:31:29.000 I don't think we have the time and I think we're already back to our census.

00:31:32.000 I don't think we've sold our soul.

00:31:34.000 I think we are in a desperate war with the left to preserve America and Trump's the guy leading the charge right now and he's just the one doing it and we're supporting him for that reason.

00:31:46.000 But I don't think they see the gravity of the threat, the existential nature of the threat, and the immediacy, the urgency of it, to the extent that I do.

00:31:53.000 I may be wrong, but I don't see that we have a lot of time left.

00:31:56.000 Okay, so I want to ask you in a second about your book, Jesus is Risen, which, as I say, contrasts sharply with the Jewish version of this book, Nope.

00:32:05.000 But I do want to talk about your religious writing.

00:32:07.000 We'll get to that in just a second.

00:32:09.000 But first, when the Founders crafted the Constitution, the first thing they did was make sacred the rights of the individual to share ideas without limitation by the government.

00:32:16.000 The second right they enumerated was the right of the population to protect that speech and their own persons with force.

00:32:21.000 You know how strongly I believe in these principles?

00:32:23.000 I'm a gun owner.

00:32:24.000 Owning a rifle is an awesome responsibility.

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00:33:14.000 You can find out all about BCM and the awesome people who make their products.

00:33:17.000 YouTube.com slash BravoCompanyUSA.

00:33:20.000 Okay, first let's start with your political writing, because you're well known for your political writing.

00:33:23.000 You've written a bunch of New York Times bestsellers on politics before you ever started writing about religion.

00:33:28.000 What got you into writing politically in the first place?

00:33:30.000 Regnery Publishing asked me to write my first book on the Clinton-Reno Justice Department.

00:33:37.000 They saw that I had a column, and I'm a lawyer, and so I agreed to do it, having no idea what I was doing.

00:33:43.000 I started doing it.

00:33:44.000 I mean, I started writing the book and studying to write the book, researching.

00:33:48.000 And the more I researched, the more I floundered, realizing, the more I read about it, the less I think I know.

00:33:55.000 I don't know how to organize this.

00:33:57.000 And not to bring up Coulter again.

00:34:00.000 She told me, she was an author for Regnery at the time, and she said, just start writing and all of a sudden your organization will be a byproduct of that.

00:34:10.000 And I really think that was simple but profound advice.

00:34:13.000 Once you start writing, you necessarily become organized, because you have to focus on what you're writing about.

00:34:20.000 So what was your family like growing up?

00:34:21.000 Because obviously there's you, you're obviously very political, your brother is Rush Limbaugh, your father was a judge, correct?

00:34:28.000 My dad was a lawyer.

00:34:29.000 My grandfather was a lawyer.

00:34:31.000 My uncle was a judge.

00:34:33.000 So we grew up as Republicans.

00:34:37.000 My dad was a Goldwater conservative.

00:34:39.000 Very smart politically.

00:34:41.000 He would hold court in our house.

00:34:42.000 A lot of times our friends would go out and look for girls and all that, but other people's friends.

00:34:49.000 Our friends would come to our house and listen to my dad pontificate.

00:34:53.000 He was kind of Russia's predecessor, but he just did it in the living room.

00:34:57.000 And so, what was it like to grow up in that house?

00:35:00.000 People always say, it must have been fascinating around the dinner table.

00:35:03.000 And the truth is, no, we just listened to my dad.

00:35:05.000 We never talked.

00:35:07.000 But we did absorb it.

00:35:09.000 In fact, when Rush first got into radio, I mean, he always wanted to be a radio guy.

00:35:17.000 And that didn't surprise me, but when he started talking about politics, I couldn't believe how insightful he was and how knowledgeable he was, because he didn't talk about it that much.

00:35:27.000 He moved away when he was 18 or 19, and we got closer the older we got.

00:35:32.000 But he left, and once I first saw him make a speech at the Lions Club when I came to visit him in Sacramento, and he had a radio show out here, which was his forerunner to his national show.

00:35:42.000 Man, he's like my dad.

00:35:43.000 He knows all this stuff.

00:35:44.000 I can't believe how good he is, how knowledgeable.

00:35:47.000 But at our house, it was mainly we listened and we absorbed.

00:35:50.000 So how did you move from political writing into religious writing?

00:35:54.000 Because you've written several books on the Gospels and the New Testament and the historicity of Jesus.

00:35:59.000 How did you move into the religious space after writing all these New York Times bestsellers on politics?

00:36:03.000 Well, the first book I tried was about the Old Testament.

00:36:07.000 I think we've talked about this before, but one of the things that convinced me of Christ's deity is the Messianic prophecies.

00:36:17.000 Obviously, Judaism doesn't accept those.

00:36:19.000 We've laughingly discussed that before.

00:36:22.000 But that kind of tipped me over the edge when I looked at the messianic prophecies.

00:36:26.000 I've always been a doubter.

00:36:27.000 I believed in God, but I didn't believe in the God of the Bible.

00:36:30.000 But it wasn't that I'd ever investigated the God of the Bible.

00:36:34.000 I just negligently and recklessly rejected Him without ever studying it.

00:36:40.000 Once I began studying it, I came to the conclusion that the Bible is the Word of God.

00:36:47.000 It kind of hit me like an epiphany, and I wanted to inhale everything I could about it.

00:36:52.000 So I started writing a book about the Old Testament, the first three books, and I submitted that to a Christian agent.

00:37:01.000 He said it's a little highfalutin for a person with no credentials.

00:37:06.000 And it's not informal enough for the other, so basically, buzz off.

00:37:11.000 And so this was when I was in my 30s, and I was a little bit discouraged, so I thought, okay.

00:37:17.000 But I still continue to study for the next 20 years.

00:37:20.000 I've continued to study pretty intensely Christianity and theology.

00:37:25.000 And it was only after, and by the way, at that point I had no platform.

00:37:28.000 I had no columns, written no books, and done nothing along these lines other than practice law.

00:37:35.000 And so, after five political books and a syndicated column for 15, however many years it was, I decided to revisit this.

00:37:44.000 I still didn't know if I had the credentials.

00:37:47.000 I mean, I knew I didn't, because I'm not a pastor and all that.

00:37:50.000 But I felt like there are so many people that are not They don't hear the message of theologians and pastors.

00:37:57.000 They don't have access to some of the great writings that I do, and they don't read apologetics.

00:38:04.000 I thought, well, I can bridge this gap for the lay people, and I can introduce them to all this research and all the things that finally convince me.

00:38:13.000 So I wrote the first book, Jesus on Trial.

00:38:16.000 As a chronological history of my faith journey, and also as a book on apologetics.

00:38:23.000 And then I continued after that into the Emmaus Code, and then the last book before this one was The True Jesus, which is about the Gospels, where I just consolidated all four Gospels into one running narrative and had commentary along with it.

00:38:37.000 This book, Jesus is Risen, It's a history of the church insofar as it tracks the Bible.

00:38:41.000 Acts was the history of the early church, and six of the Apostle Paul's 13 epistles.

00:38:46.000 So it's really not a history of the church.

00:38:50.000 It's a history of the church insofar as it tracks the Bible.

00:38:52.000 What this book does is track those books, every verse in the Bible, either stated or paraphrased, and then a commentary with some of the great Christian thinkers, and then my own insights.

00:39:03.000 So where do you think the real gap, since obviously you're very familiar with the Old Testament and the New Testament, where do you see the real differences philosophically coming in between Old Testament, the religions of Judaism, and the New Testament?

00:39:16.000 Because there seem to be a couple of different views about this.

00:39:18.000 One is that Jesus radically shifts kind of the narrative of the Old Testament in a different direction.

00:39:22.000 One is that he comes to complete the law, and so it's more of a newer and more complete gloss on the Old Testament.

00:39:27.000 But where do you see the differences between Old and New Testament?

00:39:30.000 Okay, I believe that the Christian theology believes, and I believe, that the New Covenant supersedes the Old Covenant, but the New Testament doesn't supersede the Old Testament.

00:39:42.000 It is the second part of a two-part story of God's salvation history.

00:39:48.000 And, you know, I'm amused by all these secular critics who say, Jesus is all salt and light and love, and he never got mad, never reprimanded anyone.

00:39:58.000 And what they don't realize is, if Christian theology is true, the God we worship is Triune.

00:40:06.000 And so Jesus was with the Father and the Holy Spirit at the creation.

00:40:10.000 So of course he embraced everything in the Old Testament.

00:40:14.000 And it was intended to be.

00:40:15.000 And the Jews were the chosen people, are the chosen people.

00:40:19.000 Of course, the Christian view is that they're the chosen people to bring the gospel, ultimately, to the rest of the world.

00:40:25.000 They anticipated a Messiah who would be a political deliverer, a military deliverer, and they, according to Christian theology, not through their own fault, but misapprehended what the Old Testament Scripture was saying.

00:40:40.000 What it was really saying is Christ would be a suffering servant, and he would die for his sins.

00:40:44.000 So when he died, Not only did he not deliver a political victory, he was humiliated and didn't even lift a finger to defend himself, and he died.

00:40:53.000 And even some of his disciples at that point, Peter denied him after he died, even after having lived with him and seeing all his miracles.

00:41:00.000 It wasn't until they witnessed his bodily resurrection that they were transformed from cowards and skeptics to bold proclaimers of the gospel.

00:41:08.000 But I believe that the Old Testament is absolutely true, absolutely the word of God, every bit inspired.

00:41:14.000 And that there is total consistency.

00:41:19.000 Now, as to whether the Mosaic Law is still valid, I mean, obviously, the Apostle Paul talks about Christians not having to be circumcised and all that because it's about faith in Jesus Christ.

00:41:31.000 It's not about works.

00:41:32.000 But the Christian view is that it was never about works and that salvation has nothing to do with works because we can't.

00:41:41.000 Save ourselves.

00:41:42.000 We're all sinners.

00:41:44.000 And so you have to put aside your pride and put all your trust or faith in Jesus to bridge that gap between sinfulness and God's perfect.

00:41:57.000 Sinlessness.

00:41:58.000 So this is one of the descriptions I'd heard between Judaism and Christianity, is that Judaism is much more acts-based, whereas Christianity is much more faith-based.

00:42:04.000 So one might say, OK, if you're a Christian, some people say, why is in Christ there's liberty?

00:42:13.000 People say, you know, get rid of your chains, you're a Christian. 0.98

00:42:16.000 And then other people say, no, because you Christians are skulls. 0.64

00:42:20.000 You have to live to a higher standard. 0.77

00:42:22.000 Well, in fact, here's the difference.

00:42:25.000 Christians believe that we do not have to follow the law as a matter of following them in terms of some strict requirement, but that when you're under the law of Christ, the law of Christ isn't really a law, it's a matter of love and obedience, and you even hold yourself to a higher standard, supposedly.

00:42:47.000 But we believe that you can't fulfill the Ten Commandments on your own strength.

00:42:54.000 It's impossible for any sinful human being, and we're all sinners, to live up to that standard.

00:42:58.000 God can't allow sin in his presence, so there's got to be a way to cancel out that sin, and that's Jesus.

00:43:06.000 We don't believe that, I don't believe, that all these laws have been eradicated.

00:43:10.000 The Mosaic Law, in fact, all of them are still in force. 1.00

00:43:13.000 They're still God's perfect laws.

00:43:15.000 We still live by those precepts.

00:43:18.000 There's a debate about whether we follow the Sabbath and all that, and that hasn't been reaffirmed.

00:43:23.000 Some people believe, some people don't.

00:43:25.000 But basically, those were God's laws.

00:43:27.000 They were perfect laws, but the Christian view is they couldn't deliver salvation, they were to demonstrate to people their inadequacies.

00:43:35.000 So the law was given to show people how they couldn't live sinless lives and that would draw them to Christ.

00:43:42.000 It's more complex than that.

00:43:44.000 So in this view of Christianity, is it better to be a sinner with faith or a saint without?

00:43:48.000 So you're a person who fulfills as many, you're a good person, you fulfill all 10 commandments better than most people, but you don't believe in Jesus.

00:43:56.000 What is What does that mean in the Christian faith?

00:44:00.000 The Christian faith is that salvation is only through Jesus.

00:44:04.000 Now when you say better, I think there's a lot better acting people that aren't Christians. 1.00

00:44:08.000 A lot of non-Christians are better acting than I am. 1.00

00:44:12.000 I don't like this judgmental stuff that some Christians have.

00:44:16.000 One of the things that turned me off originally was the scold aspect.

00:44:21.000 The theory is that when you accept Christ and you're converted, you're justified.

00:44:28.000 Upon that moment, you're freed from the penalty of sin.

00:44:33.000 For salvation purposes, when God looks at you, He doesn't see you.

00:44:37.000 He sees Christ's sinlessness.

00:44:40.000 He can't see you.

00:44:41.000 Spurgeon, one of the great British pastors, wrote about this.

00:44:45.000 God can't help, but when he looks upon you and you've accepted Christ, all he can see is his son.

00:44:52.000 That's for salvation purposes, but also something happens when you accept Christ.

00:44:56.000 And that is, you're also freed from the power of sin, meaning the Holy Spirit begins to indwell you and empowers you to combat sin on a daily basis.

00:45:07.000 Doesn't mean that you will ever overcome sin as a practical matter, but you will become holier, you will become more Christ-like, more sanctified the more you avail yourself of the Holy Spirit.

00:45:18.000 And so you will become a better person in that sense, in an active sense, but you'll never be sin-free this side of eternity.

00:45:25.000 I want to ask about a misapprehension that seems to be had by a lot of folks, particularly in the Jewish community, about the evangelical Christian view of Israel.

00:45:33.000 The misperception seems to be the only reason that evangelical Christians care about the state of Israel and the Jews generally is because the goal is to get all the Jews back to Israel, at which point Jesus makes his reappearance, the rapture happens, and everything is great from then on in. 0.96

00:45:48.000 But if it weren't for all that, then Israel, screw them. 0.99

00:45:51.000 That obviously is inaccurate. 0.97

00:45:53.000 I am particularly offended by that.

00:45:55.000 In the first place, Christ was a Jew. 0.98

00:45:58.000 Jesus was a Jew. 0.99

00:45:59.000 That's indisputable.

00:46:00.000 I believe we have a duty to love Jews.

00:46:07.000 We believe that Christians derive their salvation Through Judaism and through Jews.

00:46:13.000 And it's open to everyone, by the way.

00:46:15.000 It's not just open to Gentiles. 0.95

00:46:17.000 It's open to everyone.

00:46:18.000 I also don't, I reject this notion and I also don't understand it.

00:46:22.000 And I know a lot of Christians who feel this way.

00:46:24.000 This is a little bit different, but it's analogous point.

00:46:26.000 They want Jesus to come back.

00:46:28.000 They want him to return.

00:46:29.000 And they, I can't wait for Jesus to come back.

00:46:31.000 I don't get that because if you believe you're saved and if you believe you're going to spend eternity with God, Anyway, what difference does it make if he comes back and exacts revenge on your enemies or whatever?

00:46:45.000 I don't even understand that.

00:46:51.000 Israel is the Jews' everlasting possession. 1.00

00:46:56.000 I believe in the Abrahamic covenant.

00:46:58.000 I believe that it has not been eradicated.

00:47:00.000 I don't agree with the covenantal theologians, as opposed to the dispensationalists or whatever, who believe that the church has been substituted for Israel.

00:47:08.000 I believe Israel is Israel. 0.78

00:47:09.000 That land is theirs forever.

00:47:11.000 And when I think about The Jews returning to Israel in 1947, 1948, that gives me goosebumps about the validity of the Bible and God's superintendence and sovereignty. 0.80

00:47:22.000 That's just too unbelievable that that happened, for God not to be behind it.

00:47:27.000 And I believe that those who bless Israel will be blessed, those who curse Israel will be cursed. 0.71

00:47:37.000 My allegiance to Israel and to Jews isn't because I'm afraid I'll be smacked down.

00:47:41.000 I believe it's just part of it.

00:47:44.000 I have an affinity.

00:47:45.000 I'm not trying to patronize you, but I've felt that way.

00:47:49.000 I think believing Jews feel that way. 0.93

00:47:52.000 They can sense it.

00:47:53.000 The idea that we want to usher in I know there's some looney tunes out there that have that, and some people I guess, but I don't know anybody, nobody that I respect wants to do it for that reason.

00:48:09.000 They want to do it because they're so sick of how crazy the world has become, and that I can understand, but not for the sake of ushering it in for any other reason, and not for utilitarian purposes about the Jews. 0.94

00:48:21.000 That's pretty cynical.

00:48:22.000 But I know I'm not saying you're Sennacline, that's true. 1.00

00:48:24.000 No, no, there are a lot of misapprehensions about all of this and I think that it's really important to elucidate that because when I say it, people don't believe it the same way they would from somebody who actually studies this stuff.

00:48:33.000 So we've spent a lot of time talking about sort of the divisions between Christianity and Judaism, but it seems to me that right now in the United States and more broadly, The grave division is between believers in the Judeo-Christian value system and everybody else.

00:48:47.000 Right now, there are a group of people who believe that essentially the values of the Bible are the correct values as filtered down through thousands of years of thought, history, and evidence, and that that is what has created Western civilization.

00:49:00.000 And there's a whole other group of people who believe that Judeo-Christian civilization basically stands in the way I totally agree. 1.00

00:49:06.000 and that all of the hallmarks of Judeo-Christian civilization have to be obliterated in the name of that progress.

00:49:12.000 And this seems to me to mirror a lot the division between right and left.

00:49:16.000 What do you make of that generalized thesis?

00:49:17.000 Totally agree.

00:49:19.000 I think that the Judeo-Christian tradition is what has given rise to this unique system that we have, this unique country, the freest, most prosperous, most benevolent nation in the history of the world.

00:49:34.000 And if I had to, I mean, We could go in and we could talk about how the majority of the Founding Fathers were strong practicing Christians.

00:49:43.000 There's debate about that.

00:49:44.000 I mean, some people point to the high-profile Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, who are arguably not strong Christians.

00:49:51.000 They might have been deists or whatever.

00:49:55.000 But the overwhelming majority of them were Christian, and they believed in the Judeo-Christian ethic.

00:50:01.000 And by the way, just so people don't think I'm patronizing, Judeo-Christian is not some euphemism.

00:50:07.000 I consider it Old Testament, New Testament, as a piece.

00:50:11.000 And so that's what we're talking about.

00:50:13.000 And so I think you can look at our founding and trace it.

00:50:16.000 And I also think that the development of all these ideas, you can trace back to Christianity.

00:50:22.000 And Judaism and Christianity.

00:50:24.000 Okay, so I do have one final question to ask you.

00:50:28.000 Specifically, I want to ask you to give your elevator pitch for why people should go back to church in accordance with your book.

00:50:34.000 But if you want to hear David's answer, you have to be a Daily Wire subscriber.

00:50:36.000 To subscribe, go to dailywire.com, click subscribe, you can hear the end of our conversation there.

00:50:41.000 Well, David, thank you so much for stopping by, and it is so cool that we finally get to meet after nearly 20 years.

00:50:45.000 Thank you so much.

00:50:46.000 Thanks so much for coming in.

00:50:47.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is produced by Jonathan Hay.

00:50:56.000 Executive producer Jeremy Boring.

00:50:58.000 Associate producer Mathis Glover.

00:50:59.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:51:01.000 Audio is mixed by Dylan Case.

00:51:03.000 Hair and makeup is by Jeswa Alvera.

00:51:04.000 And title graphics by Cynthia Angulo.

00:51:06.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

The Ben Shapiro Show - December 09, 2018

David Limbaugh | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 30

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