The Ben Shapiro Show - Delusional Democrats’ Failing Foreign Policy | Ep. 537

00:00:00.000 Democrats are confused why President Trump's foreign policy seems to be working.

00:00:03.000 The media experts demonstrate they know nothing about gender or babies.

00:00:06.000 And we checked the mailbag.

00:00:08.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:08.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:14.000 So we have a ton coming up on today's show, plus I'm going to tell you a little bit later in the show who our special guest is for our Sunday special.

00:00:21.000 It's somebody that you know, somebody that I think that you will like.

00:00:24.000 Our lineup is really good.

00:00:25.000 We've been starting to reach out to a lot of folks for the Sunday special, and the guests that we're having are really first-rate.

00:00:31.000 But before I get to any of today's news, first I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at Birchgold.

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00:01:45.000 Okay, so, President Trump's had a very good week on foreign policy.

00:01:48.000 A very good week on foreign policy.

00:01:50.000 First of all, there was the removal of the United States from the Iran deal, which was, as I've said many times, a very strong move, a useful move. 0.99

00:01:57.000 Also, President Trump was able to bring home three American citizens who had been held captive in North Korea.

00:02:04.000 They thanked him for it.

00:02:05.000 All of this, very good for President Trump.

00:02:06.000 And Democrats are sort of baffled by all of this.

00:02:08.000 They don't understand, why is it that Donald Trump, this 1.00

00:02:11.000 Rube, the supposed idiot. 1.00

00:02:13.000 Why is it that his foreign policy seems to be achieving greater results than Barack Obama's awful foreign policy, which was based very much on the idea of a world working together where we reach out our hands, an open hand, and we never threaten. 1.00

00:02:27.000 No, we never threaten.

00:02:28.000 If we do threaten, we don't really mean it, like in Syria.

00:02:30.000 But instead, what we really should do is we should all just hug it out.

00:02:32.000 Why is it that Donald Trump's view is working better?

00:02:35.000 And why does it resonate more with Americans?

00:02:37.000 Why is it?

00:02:38.000 You can see the puzzlement on the faces of the folks in the media.

00:02:40.000 They just cannot understand why it is that Donald Trump seems to be succeeding in this way.

00:02:45.000 The latest indicator comes courtesy of NBC's Haley Jackson.

00:02:48.000 So Haley Jackson was covering President Trump's photo op with the Koreans, with the American citizens in North Korea who had been released.

00:02:57.000 And Trump went to meet them on the tarmac at like 2 a.m., 3 a.m., and then he spoke about it.

00:03:02.000 And watch NBC's coverage here, because it truly is amazing when you juxtapose this coverage with the coverage of the media at Bo Bergdahl's release back to the United States by ISIS.

00:03:13.000 You recall that Bo Bergdahl had been taken prisoner, rather, by al-Qaeda.

00:03:16.000 And you recall that the president of the United States traded five top terrorists for Bo Bergdahl, who was in fact a traitor.

00:03:22.000 It turns out that he was being tried for desertion.

00:03:26.000 And Bo Bergdahl, this was treated as a wonderful thing.

00:03:29.000 Barack Obama had a photo op in the Rose Garden with Bo Bergdahl's parents talking about how wonderful it was to bring Bo Bergdahl home.

00:03:35.000 This American hero bringing him home.

00:03:37.000 Obama didn't call him a hero.

00:03:38.000 Other members of his administration did.

00:03:41.000 And the media covered this straight.

00:03:43.000 Look at what Barack Obama did.

00:03:44.000 That's just so magnificent.

00:03:45.000 It's so wonderful.

00:03:45.000 Well, there's no question that these particular American citizens were not, in fact, deserters from the American military, and we didn't have to trade terrorists to get them back.

00:03:53.000 But watch NBC's coverage of Haley Jackson.

00:03:55.000 But what was striking was that this was, listen, Donald Trump's a former reality show producer.

00:04:00.000 This was a staged production meant for television, meant for the cameras, meant to be shown and seen here in this country and around the world.

00:04:08.000 You had floodlights lighting up this 30 by 50 foot American flag hanging in between two

00:04:14.000 We're good to go.

00:04:33.000 Okay, look at that.

00:04:34.000 Look at that photo-op.

00:04:34.000 That staged photo-op.

00:04:35.000 How terrible that photo-op.

00:04:37.000 You mean like the exact photo-op that Barack Obama did in the Rose Garden with Bo Bergdahl's parents to announce the return of a deserter in exchange for terrorists?

00:04:45.000 You mean like that photo-op?

00:04:46.000 That the media didn't call a photo-op?

00:04:47.000 And if you'd said it was a photo-op, no, you were not allowed to say it was a photo-op.

00:04:50.000 It was bad to say that it was a photo-op.

00:04:52.000 Because obviously, listen, the President of the United States at that point, he was well deserving of a victory lap.

00:04:56.000 Listen, are these all photo-ops?

00:04:58.000 Of course they're photo ops.

00:04:59.000 Of course it's a photo op.

00:05:00.000 When President Trump goes on the tarmac to meet with people at 2 a.m., that's a photo op.

00:05:04.000 If I were to meet somebody at 2 a.m., the only reason I would do that is for a photo op.

00:05:07.000 I'm not even sure I would meet members of my family at 2 a.m.

00:05:09.000 on a tarmac.

00:05:11.000 It's really early in the morning.

00:05:12.000 I need my sleep.

00:05:14.000 But for the media to critique this by saying, oh, look at Trump.

00:05:16.000 He's a reality show producer.

00:05:18.000 This is what's so funny.

00:05:19.000 The media can't understand how a reality TV guy became president of the United States because he was the second reality TV guy to become president of the United States.

00:05:26.000 The first was Barack Obama.

00:05:28.000 All of these photo ops, all the scripted nonsense, it existed for Barack Obama, too.

00:05:31.000 The media just refused to call it out.

00:05:33.000 And then there's John Brennan.

00:05:34.000 John Brennan is former CIA director under Barack Obama.

00:05:37.000 And he says that Kim Jong-un has obviously duped President Trump.

00:05:39.000 How does he know that Kim Jong-un has duped President Trump?

00:05:42.000 Well, he doesn't.

00:05:43.000 But he was there when Barack Obama was being duped by the Iranians. 1.00

00:05:46.000 He was there when North Korea was duping Barack Obama.

00:05:49.000 But apparently he knows better.

00:05:50.000 He knows now that Donald Trump was duped by the North Koreans. 0.99

00:05:53.000 How does he know?

00:05:53.000 Because Donald Trump got to have a photo op.

00:05:55.000 And if he got a photo op, that means that Trump must have given up something awful in exchange.

00:06:00.000 I think he is very smartly and very masterfully, Kim Jong-un, escalated and saber-rattled so that he could then switch and appear much more accommodating and present a more peaceful face.

00:06:16.000 And so now we've gone from Mr. Trump calling him Rocket Man and Sick Puppy to Honorable and Nice.

00:06:23.000 Okay, well, did it ever occur to John Brennan that Donald Trump does that as a fig leaf for his actual policy?

00:06:29.000 Donald Trump says a lot of things.

00:06:31.000 Again, you could put this on Donald Trump's FATAP.

00:06:33.000 The dude said a lot of stuff.

00:06:34.000 Donald Trump says a lot of things.

00:06:36.000 But the question is what he actually does.

00:06:38.000 And this is what the American people are starting to recognize about President Trump.

00:06:41.000 That despite, maybe because of all the pyrotechnics, because of all the craziness,

00:06:46.000 It is sometimes possible to ignore all of the good things that are happening.

00:06:50.000 And you can see that the folks over on MSNBC don't understand this.

00:06:53.000 I do appreciate the silliness of the host there, who refers to Kim Jong-un as Un.

00:06:58.000 That's not the way that Korean names work.

00:07:00.000 His name is Kim, right?

00:07:00.000 His last name is Kim.

00:07:02.000 But in any case, John Brennan making the case that Donald Trump is being duped by the North Koreans, with no evidence that he's actually being duped by the North Koreans to this point, other than Donald Trump said something on a tarmac about these people being treated very nicely by Kim Jong-un, which obviously was untrue.

00:07:16.000 Trump says a lot of stuff, right?

00:07:17.000 File that one in, Trump says a lot of stuff.

00:07:19.000 But for a guy who's a dupe, he seems to be doing pretty decently at this, and at least he's surrounding himself with people who are certainly not being duped.

00:07:26.000 Now, speaking of Democrats who say that Trump is being duped, Nancy Pelosi, she of the moving dentures, she suggested that President Trump had failed in his oath to protect and defend the United States by pulling out of the Iran deal.

00:07:36.000 Very, very sad.

00:07:37.000 We take an oath to protect and defend.

00:07:40.000 That is our first responsibility.

00:07:42.000 I do not think the president is honoring that oath by what he did.

00:07:46.000 Okay, so he's not honoring his oath.

00:07:48.000 What exactly is the oath that he's not honoring?

00:07:50.000 You mean the oath to uphold the Constitution, which was

00:07:53.000 I don't know.

00:08:14.000 When Jon Penhort made a great point over a commentary, he said, one of the reasons that the Democrats were so attached to the Iran deal is because they felt it was a great triumph of them over the public.

00:08:23.000 It was their ability to steamroll everybody and push through a deal that everyone thought was garbage that made them celebrate it. 0.99

00:08:29.000 They thought it was a real demonstration of their power, of their will, of their ability to cram down things the American people didn't want on a stupid, unwilling American public. 0.99

00:08:40.000 But Donald Trump breached some sort of constitutional duty by pulling out of a deal with a terrorist nation? 0.99

00:08:46.000 Donald Trump did that?

00:08:48.000 Or is it Barack Obama breaching his constitutional duty to defend the United States by signing a deal with a regime that has killed American soldiers?

00:08:55.000 Okay, let's be clear about this.

00:08:56.000 During the Iraq War, there were Iran-backed militias that were murdering American soldiers and wounding American soldiers.

00:09:01.000 There's a lot of IEDs set by Iranian troops produced in Iran that were used to maim American troops.

00:09:07.000 Barack Obama signed a deal with those people and got nothing in return.

00:09:11.000 Zero things in return.

00:09:12.000 But Donald Trump is the one who's a dupe? 1.00

00:09:14.000 Donald Trump is the one who's a fool? 0.99

00:09:16.000 There's a reason why the American people are trusting Republicans more on foreign policy these days than they trust Democrats. 0.98

00:09:21.000 And part of that is because the American people, when it comes to foreign policy, they're not as sanguine about the possibilities of a beautiful world as Democrats are.

00:09:29.000 Democrats seem to always believe that if we are just nice to everyone else, everyone else will be nice to us.

00:09:34.000 That is not true.

00:09:35.000 You're nice to everybody else until they are mean to you.

00:09:37.000 At that point, you clock them.

00:09:38.000 That's an American foreign policy that I think that the American people agree with.

00:09:42.000 Another demonstration of this, obviously, is the Democrats' newfound opposition to Gina Haspel.

00:09:47.000 Gina Haspel, of course, is the CIA nominee to be first female director in the history of the CIA, and Democrats are just fighting mad about this. 0.97

00:09:56.000 How could Gina Haspel even be considered, considering that she worked at the CIA at a time when the CIA was engaged in waterboarding of terrorists?

00:10:02.000 How could they possibly do all of this?

00:10:04.000 Now, they were totally fine when John Brennan was at CIA.

00:10:07.000 Didn't matter that John Brennan worked at the CIA at the time when waterboarding had been approved.

00:10:11.000 It didn't matter that half the people at the CIA worked at the CIA at the time when waterboarding was used.

00:10:16.000 But now, even the remote idea that waterboarding was a necessary evil, that it was something that we had to do, but it did not constitute formal torture, that has been thrown out.

00:10:26.000 No, if you say this, it makes you a cruel, inhumane, bad person.

00:10:29.000 Now, John McCain has said some of these same things about waterboarding, but I have a little more sympathy for John McCain saying them, considering the man was actually tortured in custody for seven years.

00:10:36.000 I have a little more sympathy hearing that from John McCain, who was tortured for no reason.

00:10:41.000 Legitimately no reason other than to try and break him.

00:10:44.000 I have more sympathy for that position from McCain than I do from Dianne Feinstein, who knows better than to assume the best about people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. 0.90

00:10:51.000 One of the things that was hilarious this week is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was one of the masterminds of 9-11. 0.96

00:10:57.000 There were suggestions that he was going to be allowed to testify against Gina Haspel, that they were going to bring an actual terrorist responsible for 9-11 out of jail so that he could talk about the horrors he experienced at the hands of Gina Haspel.

00:11:09.000 If you want to make Gina Haspel president of the United States, that is the best way to do that.

00:11:13.000 Seriously, bring a terrorist out there to talk about how Gina Haspel was mean to him.

00:11:17.000 I would vote for her for president after hearing that, because Khalid Sheikh Mohammed deserved every little bit of everything that he got. 1.00

00:11:23.000 But beyond that, he also gave us a lot of actionable intelligence because we waterboarded him.

00:11:28.000 In just a second, I'm going to show you a clip of Dick Cheney.

00:11:30.000 I'm going to play for you a clip of Dick Cheney talking specifically about how Democrats really don't get it, right?

00:11:36.000 He explains why it is that waterboarding was a necessary thing at the time, and again, demonstrates why it is

00:11:42.000 That so many Americans are not going to trust Democrats on foreign policy for quite a while after Barack Obama.

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00:13:00.000 Okay, so.

00:13:02.000 Speaking of democratic inability to understand the heart of the American public, the truth is that in elections in the United States from basically World War II on, Republicans were trusted with security far more than Democrats.

00:13:13.000 So after the end of World War II, and really with the rise of President Eisenhower in the 1952 election, since then Republicans have won every foreign policy election and they lost a lot of domestic elections.

00:13:23.000 So they lost.

00:13:24.000 They won.

00:13:25.000 Eisenhower won on a foreign policy Cold War.

00:13:27.000 I'm going to end the war in Korea based election. 0.99

00:13:29.000 And then Richard Nixon won on a restoration of security based election.

00:13:33.000 We're going to end the war in Vietnam with victory and peace through victory.

00:13:37.000 Right.

00:13:37.000 That was going to be that was going to be the idea from Richard Nixon.

00:13:40.000 And then

00:13:41.000 End of the Cold War.

00:13:42.000 Ronald Reagan ran on the idea that the Soviet Union was an evil empire.

00:13:45.000 And from 1980 to 1988, the Republicans were present.

00:13:47.000 From 1988 to 1992, in the aftermath of that, George H.W.

00:13:50.000 Bush was there to sort of do the cleanup in the aftermath of the Cold War.

00:13:53.000 Then, you got onto domestic issues, right? 0.99

00:13:55.000 It was the economy, stupid, that got Bill Clinton into office in 1992. 0.99

00:13:58.000 But, as terrorism was rising, 0.99

00:14:00.000 Then George W. Bush was trusted more in foreign policy in the 2000 election, and obviously he didn't even win the popular vote there.

00:14:06.000 But by 2004, clearly security was at the top of the agenda, and he won a re-election, a hard-fought re-election battle against John Kerry.

00:14:13.000 By 2008, the American people were ready to move on from national security.

00:14:16.000 They didn't want to hear about the Iraq War anymore.

00:14:18.000 They were tired of the Iraq War.

00:14:19.000 They'd been convinced by the media that the Iraq War was the wrong thing to do because there weren't massive stockpiles of new WMD found in Iraq in the first place.

00:14:26.000 And so we had a domestic policy election and Barack Obama won on the basis of that.

00:14:31.000 But the reality is that when it comes to crises in foreign policy, Republicans are trusted more than Democrats because Republicans are more realistic than Democrats on all this stuff.

00:14:39.000 They are.

00:14:40.000 They see the world as a dark place filled with people who are trying to kill us and we have to strengthen our hand.

00:14:46.000 And this is why Dick Cheney, for all the talk about him being this evil Darth Vader-esque figure, there are a lot of folks in the United States who believe, well, maybe you need Darth Vader if you're staring down somebody even worse.

00:14:55.000 Well, here's Dick Cheney talking about why the use of waterboarding during the War on Terror was a useful thing. 1.00

00:15:01.000 The techniques we used were not torture.

00:15:05.000 A lot of people try to call it that, but it wasn't deemed torture at the time.

00:15:08.000 The techniques we used are techniques we use on our own people in training.

00:15:12.000 We didn't go out and make them up someplace.

00:15:15.000 The President signed off, I signed off, the National Security Council signed off.

00:15:19.000 They did a good job.

00:15:20.000 They got the intelligence they needed.

00:15:22.000 And most Americans, I believe, still feel the same way, despite our sort of softness with regard to waterboarding.

00:15:27.000 If there were another terrorist attack in the United States of 9-11 scale,

00:15:42.000 The United States would quickly shift into, okay, you do what you need to do to get the information, short of actual full torture.

00:15:50.000 You know, waterboarding is not full torture.

00:15:51.000 We do use it to train Navy SEALs.

00:15:53.000 I watched, as I say, Stephen Crowder get waterboarded, and dude is fine, okay?

00:15:57.000 He's just as crazy as he ever was, but Stephen Crowder is totally fine.

00:16:00.000 He's not somebody who's suffering from the long-term aftereffects of torture. 0.96

00:16:04.000 Okay, well, meanwhile,

00:16:06.000 The Mueller probe continues to unfold, and obviously members of the Trump administration are interested in wrapping this thing up.

00:16:12.000 Is this all a prelude to President Trump firing Robert Mueller?

00:16:15.000 I doubt it, but I think that they are trying to push publicly for Mueller to end this probe, and I think that's appropriate, because I think that the Mueller probe does not appear to have come up with anything so far in terms of actionable intelligence about the Trump administration.

00:16:27.000 A lot of the late-breaking news is about Michael Cohen, not about President Trump, and short of anything about President Trump and Russian election collusion,

00:16:33.000 I don't see the evidence at this point.

00:16:35.000 So here's Mike Pence, the vice president, yesterday saying, listen, it's time to wrap this stuff, this stuff up.

00:16:39.000 I mean, we got enough.

00:16:40.000 Enough is enough.

00:16:42.000 About a year since this investigation began, our administration's provided over a million documents.

00:16:48.000 We fully cooperated in it.

00:16:50.000 And in the interest of the country, I think it's time to wrap it up.

00:16:54.000 And I would very respectfully encourage the special counsel and his team to bring their work to completion.

00:17:01.000 He was asked whether it was a witch hunt.

00:17:02.000 He declined to say that it was a witch hunt because he doesn't want to look like he's stepping on Mueller completely.

00:17:07.000 But he's not wrong when he says it's time to wrap this thing up.

00:17:09.000 I mean, the Mueller investigation has now been going on.

00:17:12.000 Mueller was appointed, what, May of last year?

00:17:14.000 So now it's been going on for a full year, the Mueller investigation?

00:17:17.000 And all of the talk about Trump-Russia collusion has been going on since the middle of the 2016 election and nothing.

00:17:22.000 Right, nothing.

00:17:23.000 The FBI has been looking into this for two years, and the best they've been able to come up with is George Papadopoulos, a low-level staffer, met with some Russian agents in London to talk about leaks of Hillary emails, and it went nowhere, and then lied to the FBI about it, Papadopoulos, which is why he is probably going to end up, you know, cutting some sort of bargain.

00:17:39.000 All we've ended up with is a FISA warrant on Carter Page that resulted in no prosecution whatsoever.

00:17:45.000 All we've ended up with is a prosecution of Mike Flynn based on him fibbing to the FBI about having a conversation with the Russians after the election, having nothing to do with Trump-Russia collusion.

00:17:55.000 What any of this stuff has to do with actual Trump-Russia election collusion is beyond me.

00:17:59.000 And I think Trump is rightly angry about this.

00:18:01.000 John Kelly, the chief of staff for President Trump, he says that mostly the president is just embarrassed and annoyed by the investigation at this point.

00:18:08.000 Is there a cloud because of it hanging over this White House?

00:18:10.000 Well, yeah, you know, there may not be a cloud, but certainly the president is somewhat embarrassed, frankly, when world leaders come in.

00:18:19.000 You know, Bibi Netanyahu is here and he was under investigation himself.

00:18:23.000 And it's like you walk in and, you know, the first couple of minutes of every conversation might revolve around that kind of thing.

00:18:28.000 I mean, you've got to sympathize with Trump to the extent that Trump knows he didn't collude with Russia, and yet he's been hearing for two years that he won an illegitimate election because he colluded with Russia.

00:18:37.000 That would annoy me, too.

00:18:37.000 It would annoy you, too.

00:18:38.000 I think it would annoy everyone.

00:18:40.000 You know, this is all based on the assumption he didn't actually collude with Russia, and I've seen no evidence that he did at this point.

00:18:45.000 None has been presented publicly.

00:18:46.000 So if Mueller's got something, at a certain point you've got to say, dude, wrap it up, present your evidence, let's see what you've got to show.

00:18:52.000 If you've got nothing, then you've got nothing.

00:18:55.000 Now, with all of that said, all of the hubbub now surrounding Michael Cohen is obviously not good for President Trump.

00:19:00.000 The president has not surrounded himself with the best people.

00:19:02.000 That is very clear. 0.95

00:19:03.000 Surrounding himself with Michael Cohen was a foolish move from the very beginning. 1.00

00:19:06.000 Michael Cohen is a dunderhead. 1.00

00:19:08.000 That is obvious. 1.00

00:19:09.000 And the fact that Michael Cohen continues to haunt the president is largely a problem of President Trump's own making.

00:19:15.000 AT&T announced today that they apologized for ever having given money to Michael Cohen.

00:19:20.000 They were apparently giving money to Michael Cohen in the hopes that he would essentially lobby the President of the United States on the AT&T Time Warner merger.

00:19:26.000 They gave him about $200,000.

00:19:26.000 The head of AT&T's Legislative Affairs Office actually resigned today over all of this, even though no illegal activity took place.

00:19:34.000 They can give Michael Cohen any amount of money they want.

00:19:36.000 It's really up to Michael Cohen to register as a lobbyist.

00:19:39.000 But it does make it difficult for the President of the United States to claim that he's trying to drain the swamp when all the people around him

00:19:45.000 I reckon in the cash like Michael Cohen.

00:19:51.000 Under my administration, we're fighting against the lobbyists, the special interests and the corrupt Washington politics.

00:20:00.000 After years of rebuilding foreign countries,

00:20:05.000 Of which a lot of people partake in the cost of rebuilding those foreign countries.

00:20:11.000 We are finally rebuilding our country.

00:20:14.000 Okay, so when he says drain the swamp in these rallies, it's difficult to say that while Michael Cohen is pulling down $2 million to be friends with Donald Trump.

00:20:21.000 It makes things very awkward.

00:20:22.000 It's why Donald Trump needs to excise these people from his life.

00:20:25.000 It's why the president needs to not engage us.

00:20:27.000 Now, is he wrong that he's draining the swamp as far as regulation?

00:20:30.000 No.

00:20:30.000 As far as shrinking size of government and regulation, I think that the president is doing his best, although he has signed into law a couple of terrible omnibus packages he never should have signed into law.

00:20:39.000 The real kind of draining the swamp has little to do with firing Michael Cohen as his attorney.

00:20:43.000 It has a lot more to do with cutting the size and scope of government.

00:20:46.000 I think that Trump

00:20:48.000 In some ways has his heart in the right place there, although he's not cutting the size and scope of government, I think, nearly enough to suit me.

00:20:53.000 But it does not help his case when Michael Cohen is running around being Michael Cohen.

00:20:57.000 OK, now, meanwhile, the expertise of the left is on full display.

00:21:01.000 And when it comes to matters of genetics and reality,

00:21:06.000 It's so bizarre.

00:21:06.000 There are a lot of folks on the left.

00:21:08.000 I spend my life going to college campuses and being told that I do not fully understand science, that I do not fully understand science.

00:21:13.000 I'm going to explain in a second why it is the left that apparently does not fully understand science, at least lately.

00:21:18.000 But first, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at American Innovation.

00:21:22.000 So American Innovation is a brand new podcast from Wondery.

00:21:24.000 And it's awesome.

00:21:25.000 I've listened to a few of their first episodes and it really is good.

00:21:29.000 American Innovations is hosted by popular science author Stephen Johnson and they tell you stories behind a lot of the science that you've heard of but you don't know the backstory to.

00:21:36.000 So they tell you the full story behind DNA and the mapping of the human genome.

00:21:40.000 They tell you the whole story, the whole backstory behind the rise of the personal computer, how it happened, artificial intelligence, all of these things.

00:21:46.000 You become smarter just by listening to this podcast.

00:21:48.000 It's not a typical science podcast, just a guy talking into a mic about science.

00:21:52.000 You're not only going to hear about the science behind some of America's greatest innovations, you'll actually be immersed in the dramatic moments behind the people, place, and time that led to the amazing discoveries that we are all living in, that we all get to benefit from in our lives.

00:22:05.000 The first six episodes are actually written by New York Times bestselling author Sam Keen.

00:22:08.000 You can hear the first three episodes right now by searching for American Innovations on Apple Podcasts.

00:22:12.000 So this weekend, when you're not listening to my Sunday special, and when you're not catching up on Ben Shapiro's show, tomorrow is Saturday.

00:22:18.000 No new material tomorrow.

00:22:19.000 That means it's time to listen to American Innovations on Apple Podcasts.

00:22:22.000 Wherever you're listening to this, head over to wondery.fm slash ben.

00:22:25.000 That's wondery.fm slash ben.

00:22:27.000 Go search for American Innovations on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening right now.

00:22:35.000 All right.

00:22:41.000 So, speaking of science, the left obviously is having some trouble with the science.

00:22:46.000 So, this comes up in a couple of different contexts today.

00:22:49.000 Context number one, apparently Donald Trump told John McEnroe, the former number one seeded tennis player,

00:22:56.000 He's got to be pushing 60, John McEnroe.

00:22:58.000 But John McEnroe was apparently at some event and Donald Trump passed a note up to him offering to pay John McEnroe a million dollars if he would play a match with Serena Williams.

00:23:06.000 Here is John McEnroe talking about it.

00:23:08.000 I was calling a match and suddenly I get this envelope and it's from Donald Trump, you know, who's promoter galore.

00:23:16.000 Little did I know what was going to end up happening, nor I believe anyone else.

00:23:20.000 So he wrote me a letter, said, you know, dear John, you know, I want to offer you $1 million again to play either Serena or Venus.

00:23:31.000 And so over the course of time, literally, you know, my kids, you know, my daughters have... Dad.

00:23:38.000 I don't know if you can beat Serena.

00:23:40.000 I'm like, God, I ain't even got my kids on my side.

00:23:44.000 OK, the answer is he could probably beat Serena.

00:23:46.000 OK, but CNN's Christine Brennan says no. 1.00

00:23:49.000 Either Venus or Serena would have pummeled John McEnroe, the former number one player in the world. 0.93

00:23:53.000 First of all, are you talking about in their primes?

00:23:55.000 Because no.

00:23:55.000 Are you talking about when John McEnroe is 60?

00:23:58.000 Still probably knows the truth.

00:24:00.000 But here, here they're talking about it on CNN.

00:24:03.000 And obviously, female power means that women have the same musculature and capacity in sports as men. 1.00

00:24:09.000 If you're stupid. 1.00

00:24:11.000 So here is here is Christine Brennan trying to explain. 1.00

00:24:13.000 Can we talk about him saying that he was sure that he would have beaten Serena or Venus Williams?

00:24:21.000 I mean, I don't think he can be so sure.

00:24:24.000 Well, he's in his late 50s, Brianna, and

00:24:27.000 I don't think anyone would want to see that, but I think Serena Orvinas would have pummeled him a la Billie Jean King over Bobby Riggs back in 1973. 1.00

00:24:36.000 Okay, Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs because Bobby Riggs threw the match. 1.00

00:24:40.000 Okay, he legitimately threw the match and he was a drunk old dude.

00:24:43.000 The idea that that match is one of the great annoyances for anyone who knows anything about sports.

00:24:49.000 It is such an annoyance when people say that Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs straight up.

00:24:53.000 Okay, Bobby Riggs threw the match before the match.

00:24:58.000 There's very little doubt about this at this point.

00:25:00.000 And here is my proof that John McEnroe would in fact beat Serena Williams.

00:25:03.000 And certainly in his prime would have beat Serena Williams, no question.

00:25:06.000 First of all, Serena Williams has said before she doesn't plan the men's tour because she wouldn't win on the men's tour.

00:25:10.000 This is obviously true.

00:25:12.000 Many years ago, very early in Venus and Serena's career, 1998, Serena Williams decided she thought she could beat some men.

00:25:19.000 So she was in an ATP tour office at the Australian Open.

00:25:23.000 And a guy named Karsten Brash, who you've never heard of because he was an OK player, but he wasn't anything special.

00:25:28.000 He was once a top 40 player at his best.

00:25:30.000 But at this point, when he met Serena Williams in 1998, he was ranked 203rd in the world.

00:25:36.000 203rd in the world.

00:25:37.000 So Serena was talking about how she might be able to beat some of the men.

00:25:40.000 And he said, OK, want to play a match?

00:25:41.000 And so both Serena and Venus showed up to play matches with him, just for fun.

00:25:47.000 So Brash, this is according to USA Today,

00:25:57.000 Word had spread around the grounds the event was taking place, which caused tournament officials to restrict admittance to the area to only those with badges.

00:26:03.000 Brash smoked and sipped beers during the changeovers, and to be honest, no longer looked the part of a fit professional athlete.

00:26:09.000 Brash led 5-0 over Serena before winning the set 6-1, and then posted a 6-2 set victory over Venus. 0.92

00:26:16.000 Okay, he was old, he was ranked 203rd in the world, he was smoking and drinking beer between the rounds, and he kicked the crap out of Serena and Venus Williams. 0.69

00:26:22.000 That is not a rip on Serena and Venus Williams as athletes. 0.64

00:26:25.000 They're incredible athletes.

00:26:26.000 They're also women. 1.00

00:26:27.000 And to pretend that women and men are exactly the same when it comes to physical capacity is just idiotic. 1.00

00:26:33.000 It's just stupid. 1.00

00:26:34.000 Okay, she is the greatest female tennis player of all time, but her fastest recorded serve was 129 miles per hour. 1.00

00:26:39.000 Okay?

00:26:42.000 The fastest recorded men's serve is 163 miles per hour.

00:26:46.000 In the 2015 Grand Slam, Serena's average serve traveled 109 miles per hour. 1.00

00:26:51.000 Novak Djokovic averaged 117.

00:26:52.000 Andy Murray averaged 114.

00:26:55.000 So the experts have come up with something called the Universal Tennis Rating.

00:26:58.000 It rates all players on a single scale.

00:27:00.000 Jokovic, this is a couple years ago, ranked at 16.39.

00:27:03.000 That was the highest in the world.

00:27:05.000 Serena ranked at 13.36, which doesn't sound terrible until you realize that that is the same ranking as a mid-ranked male college tennis player.

00:27:14.000 Okay, so men and women, they don't have the same capacity.

00:27:16.000 Okay, this is true when it comes to throwing baseballs as well.

00:27:19.000 Women, on average, cannot throw as fast as men. 1.00

00:27:21.000 There are some women who can throw pretty fast. 1.00

00:27:23.000 There are no women who can throw 95 miles per hour. 1.00

00:27:25.000 Okay, the average woman throws a baseball slower than... This is a real statistic. 0.96

00:27:29.000 This is not me making it up.

00:27:31.000 The average woman throws a baseball slower than, out of 1,000 men, 998 of those men.

00:27:37.000 OK, the average woman throws faster than two out of one thousand men that you pick up the street. 1.00

00:27:43.000 So let's get over this whole women and men are exactly the same. 0.78

00:27:45.000 They're not exactly the same.

00:27:46.000 Again, does this make women worse? 1.00

00:27:48.000 No.

00:27:48.000 Does it make women worse at sports?

00:27:50.000 Yes.

00:27:51.000 By any objective measure.

00:27:52.000 But why is this even?

00:27:54.000 But feminists, don't you understand you undermine your case when you suggest that men and women are exactly the same or they should be treated exactly the same? 1.00

00:28:01.000 Don't you understand that it's really stupid? 1.00

00:28:02.000 Because then you know what happens? 1.00

00:28:04.000 Fallon Fox, who is a dude who is transgender, fights women in MMA and beats the living crap out of them because he still has male musculature. 0.98

00:28:13.000 And it's unfair because it's a man beating the hell out of women? 1.00

00:28:16.000 This whole thing is so stupid. 1.00

00:28:17.000 Speaking of expertise on the left, I have to play this clip because it's just incredible. 1.00

00:28:21.000 So there's an expert in Britain.

00:28:22.000 I love what now passes for being an expert.

00:28:24.000 It's pretty spectacular.

00:28:25.000 This is an expert in Britain trying to explain that parents should ask babies for permission to change their diapers.

00:28:32.000 There's a sexuality expert and author named Deanne Carson.

00:28:36.000 And she was speaking to ABC News in Australia and she was asked what age clients she works with.

00:28:41.000 She said, we work with children from three years old.

00:28:42.000 We work with parents from birth.

00:28:45.000 And then Carson explains exactly what she means by that.

00:28:48.000 We work from children from three years old.

00:28:50.000 We work with parents from birth.

00:28:52.000 From birth?

00:28:53.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:28:54.000 Just about how to set up a culture of consent in their home.

00:28:57.000 So, I'm going to change your nappy now.

00:28:59.000 Is that okay?

00:29:01.000 Of course, the baby's not going to respond.

00:29:02.000 Yes, mum, that's awesome.

00:29:03.000 I'd love to have my nappy changed.

00:29:05.000 But if you leave a space and wait for body language and wait to make eye contact, then you're letting that child know that their response matters.

00:29:17.000 Um, no.

00:29:19.000 Okay, as a parent of two, okay, as a parent of a four-year-old and a two-year-old, one of whom is out of diapers and the other one who will soon be out of diapers, I hope, okay, here's the truth.

00:29:27.000 If you leave your kids to decide when they want their diapers changed, they will have diaper rash forever.

00:29:32.000 Forever.

00:29:32.000 Okay, if I let my two-year-old son explain to me when he wants his diapers changed, first of all, he's really smart, so he actually does.

00:29:38.000 Like, he, as soon as he goes to the bathroom, he immediately tells us.

00:29:41.000 Like, right then, he says, okay, pee-pee, poo-poo, whatever, and then we go and change him.

00:29:46.000 My daughter was not so much like that, right?

00:29:49.000 When she was very young, she was also a clean freak.

00:29:51.000 And so when she was a little baby, she would not eat until she'd been changed.

00:29:54.000 But as she got older, because kids do this, she started getting angry when you would change her diaper.

00:29:59.000 And my son is starting to get to that age now, too, where he gets mad when you change his diaper.

00:30:02.000 He doesn't want his diaper changed.

00:30:02.000 He thrashes around on the changing table.

00:30:04.000 You know what you have to do? 1.00

00:30:05.000 Force your kids to change their diaper if you're not an idiot. 1.00

00:30:08.000 But apparently, being an idiot is an actual qualification for being an expert on parenting on national TV. 1.00

00:30:13.000 Now, listen, I don't want to stereotype this woman, Deanne Carson. 1.00

00:30:18.000 I don't know if she has kids.

00:30:21.000 I don't know who does her hair. 1.00

00:30:22.000 But this is dumb. 0.99

00:30:24.000 OK? 1.00

00:30:24.000 This is incredibly dumb. 1.00

00:30:25.000 And it's amazing what constitutes expertise. 0.99

00:30:28.000 Now, the parenting experts know so little about what actually happens with regard to parenting.

00:30:33.000 So many of them are basing it off of bad social science or based on these tiny, uncontrolled studies that

00:30:40.000 Yeah.

00:30:55.000 Let's go back in just a second.

00:30:56.000 First, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at the USCCA.

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00:31:51.000 Yeah, again, you're a law-abiding citizen.

00:31:53.000 If you don't own a gun, you probably should.

00:31:55.000 For self-defense and for various other reasons, I think that it's worthwhile owning weaponry.

00:31:59.000 And DefendMyFamilyNow.com, go register.

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00:32:02.000 At the very least, you'll be registering with the USCCA, which is a great organization to begin with.

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00:32:06.000 DefendMyFamilyNow.com.

00:32:09.000 Alrighty, so, we are now going to get to the mailbag, but first, you're going to have to go over to DailyWire.com.

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00:32:17.000 You think that you're sending me these emails and I'm going to answer all of them?

00:32:19.000 I get hundreds of emails a day.

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00:32:25.000 How do you know that your question is actually going to be answered?

00:32:27.000 You know it's going to be answered when you actually send it to me via Daily Wire.

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00:32:40.000 Plus, you can ask questions of our other hosts, including the excorable Michael Mowles.

00:32:43.000 It's almost time for our next episode of The Conversation.

00:32:46.000 Tuesday, May 15th, 5.30pm Eastern, 2.30pm Pacific.

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00:33:17.000 Plus, you should subscribe also because it helps us bring you the show.

00:33:19.000 Okay, let's be honest about this.

00:33:21.000 It is your subscriptions that allow us to bring you the show and allow us to bring you the Sunday specials.

00:33:24.000 Our new Sunday special is coming up on Sunday because it's Sunday special, if you didn't get that from the name.

00:33:29.000 And we are featuring Dave Rubin.

00:33:31.000 So Dave Rubin stops by for the full hour, as Larry King might say.

00:33:35.000 And it is excellent.

00:33:36.000 It's really a lot of fun to listen to.

00:33:38.000 You've seen a lot of hubbub about the intellectual dark web this week.

00:33:41.000 Well, Dave is a charter member and a connector within the intellectual dark web, and we'll have full discussions about Dave's philosophy and the stuff that Dave has to say.

00:33:49.000 Well, and here's a little bit of what it sounded like when I sat down with Dave Rubin.

00:33:52.000 One of the great things about Dave Rubin is that the first time I was introduced to you, I think it was probably on your show.

00:33:56.000 I don't know if we knew each other before I was on your show.

00:33:59.000 And you are, I think, one of the best interviewers in the business.

00:34:02.000 So people normally see stuff like this and expect us to see the chairs reversed.

00:34:05.000 Yeah.

00:34:05.000 But what's what's really fun about this, I actually want to ask you about some of your own journey, because you don't actually get to talk about that too much.

00:34:11.000 Very quickly, though, I just for the record, clearly, by you being an interviewer, you stole this from me.

00:34:16.000 I was the one that came up with the idea of the interview.

00:34:18.000 No question.

00:34:19.000 It's full-on cultural appropriation.

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00:34:58.000 Alrighty, it is time to mailbag it up, so let's do this thing!

00:35:01.000 So Jim says...

00:35:16.000 I think in terms of government, that's exactly right.

00:35:17.000 I mean, in terms of government, the blowing out of the national debt and the creation of a fiscally irresponsible deficit that's going to be paid off by our kids and our kids' kids is really awful.

00:35:27.000 It's one of the things that Paul Ryan was trying to push.

00:35:29.000 It's one of the shortcomings of President Trump, who really doesn't care too much about entitlement reform.

00:35:33.000 He thinks it's politically toxic.

00:35:34.000 He may be right that it's politically toxic, but

00:35:37.000 You gotta do it anyway, because if you actually want to save the country, you can't be waiting until 20 years from now when social security goes fully bankrupt.

00:35:44.000 Not even 20 years, probably 10-15 years from now when it goes fully bankrupt, and you're looking at drastically raising taxes or continuing to blow out our national debt, which essentially outsources our foreign policy to people who own our debt, puts us in severe fiscal need.

00:35:57.000 So that's stuff Republicans ought to be pursuing right now, and they ought to be making strong moral arguments for why Social Security needs to be restructured.

00:36:04.000 I think young people in particular are willing to hear that argument, and if they care about Social Security, they're willing to hear it.

00:36:09.000 You don't want your taxes raised and you want more money back from the government?

00:36:12.000 You can have both of these things.

00:36:13.000 All we have to do is make Social Security a private thing as opposed to making it a public thing.

00:36:20.000 He has a bunch of accomplishments that I think are really great.

00:36:27.000 I think the tax cuts are excellent.

00:36:28.000 I think that his stacking of the courts is probably the single best thing.

00:36:32.000 His stacking of the courts with conservatives who are going to be on those courts for

00:36:36.000 Decades is an excellent, excellent, necessary thing, because otherwise the judiciary just becomes a tool of the left.

00:36:42.000 Beyond that, obviously the movement of the embassy to Jerusalem, pulling out of the Iran deal, all of that is terrific.

00:36:47.000 Cutting down on regulation.

00:36:48.000 The man's got a lot of accomplishments.

00:36:49.000 I mean, I can't be unhappy with his policy so far.

00:36:51.000 I think his policy so far has been terrific.

00:36:53.000 As I've said, two top members of the administration.

00:36:56.000 A-minus on executive policy, C-plus on legislative policy, D to F on rhetoric.

00:37:01.000 I think his rhetoric has improved of late.

00:37:03.000 He hasn't had any big Charlottesville boo-boos as he used to.

00:37:07.000 Hopefully that lasts, but it's a day ending in Y, so there'll be a tweet storm coming soon.

00:37:12.000 Susan says, Question.

00:37:13.000 Hey Ben, you clearly have amazing recall.

00:37:14.000 I imagine much of that is IQ, but any tips for the lay person of the world to help us keep our memories sharp?

00:37:18.000 Well, when it comes to actively attempting to memorize, I'm lucky because I have a pretty good memory for things I want to think about.

00:37:26.000 But what I do find helps is writing stuff down.

00:37:28.000 So not even looking back at what you've written down, but the very act of writing things down is very helpful.

00:37:32.000 It's a good study method for kids who are in school.

00:37:34.000 If you're in high school, you're in junior high, you're trying to study for a test, write things and write them by hand, not type.

00:37:40.000 Typing, it doesn't get in your head quite as much.

00:37:41.000 Grab a pen, write down the stuff you want to remember.

00:37:43.000 The very act of writing almost engraves it on your memory.

00:37:46.000 So I would highly recommend that as a memory

00:37:49.000 I think so.

00:38:11.000 It was Glenn Beck.

00:38:31.000 Writing in books, writing stuff down is probably the best way to approach that.

00:38:35.000 This is the big question.

00:38:36.000 After you get rid of the individual mandate, which was the funding mechanism to pay for all of the increased cost and regulation of Obamacare, the only way that you're going to be able to bring costs down in the individual marketplace is by getting rid of regulation or by subsidizing.

00:39:00.000 The federal government has chosen to subsidize, which is why I'm not in love with just getting rid of the individual mandate alone.

00:39:06.000 That's good.

00:39:07.000 But you're going to have to do more than that.

00:39:09.000 Otherwise, you're going to be blamed for an increase in the price of individual health care plans.

00:39:13.000 So this is why getting rid of regulation is what was deeply necessary and unfortunately did not happen.

00:39:18.000 That's a major shortcoming of Republican Congress, and it behooves us to remember that.

00:39:21.000 Chris says, Ben, can you explain the central banking system and the purpose of the Federal Reserve, the positive and negative sides alike, please?

00:39:26.000 So, the Federal Reserve was originally established in the beginning of the Depression, basically.

00:39:33.000 And it was established in order to say to banks that if you lose all of your money, we can provide you a certain percentage of your money back to you.

00:39:43.000 So this is why the FDIC, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, ensures that the first, I believe, $200,000 of money that you have in the bank, you will get back regardless of whether the bank goes bust.

00:39:51.000 This is the federal government saying, it's trying to prevent runs on bank.

00:39:54.000 The way it used to work is that if there was a bank, it had a certain amount of money in the bank, the bank never has as much money in the bank as it owes to people.

00:40:02.000 Because when you give money to the bank, the bank doesn't just keep it in the back room.

00:40:04.000 The bank lends that out to people at interest.

00:40:06.000 That's how the bank makes its money.

00:40:07.000 Well, what happens if everybody who has their money stored in the bank goes and asks for their money at the same time?

00:40:12.000 The bank doesn't have that money.

00:40:14.000 It goes bankrupt.

00:40:14.000 And it starts trying to call in loans.

00:40:16.000 This is what happened at the beginning of the Great Depression.

00:40:18.000 Everybody started going to the bank and withdrawing their money from the bank.

00:40:22.000 So the solution by the federal government was the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which is run by the Fed.

00:40:26.000 And the idea there was that they were going to be able to insure your losses by banks.

00:40:31.000 Now, the problem with this is it does create a significant amount of moral hazard.

00:40:34.000 Moral hazard being that banks can now be loosey-goosey about the amount of money that they lend out, knowing the federal government is going to back their play at the end or bail them out in the end.

00:40:43.000 This has been the problem with the Fed from the beginning, is the possibility of moral hazard where people act irresponsibly and then the federal government bails them out, as we saw actually in 2008-2009.

00:40:51.000 The Fed has some other stuff that it does in conjunction with the Department of the Treasury.

00:40:55.000 The Department of the Treasury sells bonds, stocks and bonds, and the Federal Reserve works with the government

00:41:00.000 The Department of the Treasury, in order to provide the dollars that are used in the sales of stocks and bonds.

00:41:07.000 So when the government buys back bonds, for example, they're trying to take more bonds out of the market.

00:41:12.000 They're trying to inflate the currency or the amount of currency that's in circulation.

00:41:15.000 Milton Friedman was a big fan of the Fed, actually.

00:41:17.000 He thought that the Fed should set a standard growth rate in the amount of money in circulation on a particular year-by-year basis, like 2%.

00:41:25.000 Then there are people who are Chicago School.

00:41:27.000 So, Chicago School economists think the Fed ought to exist and the Fed ought to have control over the amount of money in circulation.

00:41:33.000 And then there's the Vienna School of Economics, which suggests that really we should be on a gold standard and the government shouldn't be able to manipulate the amount of currency that's in circulation.

00:41:41.000 That happens through a sort of complex process between the Fed and the Department of the Treasury.

00:41:46.000 I tend to be on the Vienna School of Economics side.

00:41:48.000 I'm not a big fan of the Federal Reserve.

00:41:50.000 I think the Federal Reserve

00:41:52.000 It creates a sense of security that I think is unwarranted, and that leads, again, companies to rely on the federal government to bail them out, and now bailouts are enshrined in the Dodd-Frank Act, and that really needs to be gutted as well.

00:42:03.000 I mean, that's something else that the Republicans ought to be pursuing right now as well.

00:42:07.000 Okay, let's see.

00:42:09.000 Harrison says, Hey Ben, I was wondering what your opinion is of a negative income tax such as the one proposed by Milton Friedman as an alternative to the welfare state.

00:42:15.000 So as an alternative to the welfare state, I'm for it.

00:42:17.000 As an adjunct to the welfare state, I'm against it.

00:42:19.000 So the negative income tax is that idea that based on your income, we basically guarantee you a minimum income.

00:42:25.000 It's basically a universal basic income.

00:42:28.000 He says that you should have a negative income tax based on the amount of money that you make, and we will sign a check to you back from the federal government for a particular amount of money.

00:42:36.000 But it's not going to be dependent on the amount of money that you make completely, and it's also not going to require that you be single, for example, that you're a single mother, and it's not going to be welfare state-based.

00:42:48.000 It's going to be a certain sliding scale that we give you of a consistent amount of money that goes into your bank account, and that is what it is.

00:42:56.000 And it would be a lot cheaper than the welfare state.

00:42:59.000 No question.

00:42:59.000 You wouldn't need the infrastructure of the welfare state.

00:43:01.000 So I agree that as an alternative to the welfare state, it would be great.

00:43:05.000 I tend to oppose both of them because I don't think that that's a useful thing and rely instead on private charity.

00:43:19.000 I think that what it would take to get us there is to recognize that our moral roots are Judeo-Christian, whether you like it or not.

00:43:24.000 This is an argument that I've been having repeatedly with a lot of folks who are Enlightenment thinkers, Neo-Enlightenment thinkers.

00:43:29.000 I've had this argument now with Sam Harris and with, not really with Jonah Goldberg openly, but I would certainly like to discuss it with Jonah.

00:43:36.000 I think he'd probably agree with me, actually.

00:43:37.000 And I've had this argument with Michael Shermer.

00:43:39.000 There are a lot of people who are, I've had this argument about Steven Pinker.

00:43:43.000 Enlightenment thinking is rooted in Judeo-Christian values.

00:43:46.000 You want to get people back to Judeo-Christian values, what you say is, listen, all the stuff that's around you, that was built by a Judeo-Christian civilization, so maybe it would behoove you to study the foundational documents of the Judeo-Christian vision, and then to see how those documents have been interpreted over the last several thousand years to bring us here.

00:44:00.000 Because there's this myth that's going around that what happened is that in the 18th century, late 18th century, early 19th century, there was a vast shift in public thinking.

00:44:09.000 And the thinking went, we reject the Bible.

00:44:11.000 And from that came everything grand.

00:44:12.000 That is a lie.

00:44:13.000 It is not historically true.

00:44:14.000 It is not philosophically true.

00:44:15.000 It is not morally true.

00:44:16.000 And I think that we need to debunk that if we are actually going to fight for Judeo-Christian values.

00:44:20.000 OK.

00:44:20.000 Derek says, salutations, Ben.

00:44:22.000 I want to ask, why does the left hate Western culture?

00:44:24.000 Almost everything great about the modern world is due to the progress of Western civilization, yet the Left loathes the very foundations that made such an incredible world.

00:44:31.000 It's mind-boggling.

00:44:32.000 Sincerely, Derek."

00:44:33.000 Well, I think that what the Left sees when they see Western civilization is inequality.

00:44:36.000 So the reason the Left hates Western civilization is because the Left says, as Marx said, that individual human beings are created by the system in which we live.

00:44:43.000 We don't have free will in the sense that we can really

00:44:46.000 Move on.

00:45:02.000 I think so.

00:45:21.000 America was finally starting to move beyond its racial problem.

00:45:23.000 I mean, the civil rights movement really starts in the 50s, not the 60s.

00:45:26.000 And there's real change coming in America.

00:45:28.000 All of it good, or at least a large part of it good.

00:45:30.000 Feminism is early, first stage feminism is beginning, and all of that is good. 1.00

00:45:35.000 The left says, no.

00:45:36.000 The reason there is sexism, the reason there is racism, the reason there is brutality is because of this capitalist system.

00:45:41.000 And all of these people who you see, who are engaged in the capitalist system, are truly empty souls.

00:45:46.000 These are people who have nothing to live for.

00:45:48.000 They're just shells of their former self.

00:45:49.000 They're missing meaning.

00:45:51.000 And that missing meaning is a generation of Western civilization.

00:45:55.000 It was generated by Western civilization.

00:45:57.000 So all we have to do is get rid of all of these Western civilized notions about freedom, individual rights.

00:46:05.000 We have to get rid of this whole shtick about capitalism.

00:46:08.000 And when we do that, we'll have a better human being in a better world.

00:46:10.000 So that's that's the reason they're trying to propose a utopian vision to replace the Western civilized vision, failing to recognize, of course, that all the good stuff around them is inextricably intertwined with the principles that generated it in the first place.

00:46:22.000 Fernando says, I got asked this question during dinner with a couple of friends.

00:46:25.000 What is a soul?

00:46:26.000 I did not know how to answer.

00:46:27.000 What do you believe in is the definition of a soul.

00:46:28.000 So this is a hard question because obviously the soul is unprovable.

00:46:33.000 It's not verifiable.

00:46:34.000 There's no real way to tell what a soul is.

00:46:35.000 So, there are various definitions of the soul.

00:46:37.000 So, Thomas Aquinas has an interesting definition of the soul.

00:46:40.000 He says that, basically, people are made up of form and matter.

00:46:44.000 So, you are made up of matter and you are made up of form.

00:46:46.000 So, the form precedes the matter in the Platonic narrative.

00:46:51.000 That there's the form of a dog, that God has in mind, and then there's a dog.

00:46:55.000 We're good to go.

00:47:18.000 But it is more than your constituent parts, in other words.

00:47:21.000 And that's what the soul is.

00:47:21.000 So the form is the soul.

00:47:22.000 So whether that survives death or not, the idea is that the form is you, and it's not just your constituent parts.

00:47:29.000 I think there's something to that.

00:47:31.000 I also think that there's a good case to be made that the soul is what animates you, that when you die, the soul obviously leaves your body.

00:47:38.000 And what we mean by that is that the animating force that allows you to live and think and make decisions freely has now left you.

00:47:47.000 And so that's what I think the soul is.

00:47:49.000 What the soul does after death is beyond me.

00:47:50.000 I don't know the answer.

00:47:51.000 No one knows the answer because unless you're a Christian you believe Jesus came back to tell everybody. 0.98

00:47:55.000 There are very few people who have come back to tell anybody about what happens after death.

00:47:58.000 I have my own theories as to what happens after death.

00:48:01.000 But those theories, actually we'll be discussing that I think in a coming Sunday special sometime pretty soon.

00:48:06.000 Okay, one more of these?

00:48:08.000 Okay, one more.

00:48:09.000 Natalie says,

00:48:10.000 Hi Ben, I'm currently an intern at a big corporate law firm.

00:48:12.000 I'm starting law school next year.

00:48:14.000 While the work of an attorney interests and excites me, I'm growing concerned about balancing the demands of corporate law and family life.

00:48:20.000 I look around at this law firm and see a lot of very successful females, but most of them, especially partners and high-level associates, are not married and do not have kids. 1.00

00:48:26.000 Since more than anything else, I want to get married and have children in the future.

00:48:29.000 Michelle Obama thinks you're a terrible person.

00:48:30.000 Thanks.

00:48:31.000 So I think the answer is it is certainly possible to be a good corporate attorney and a good wife and mother.

00:48:34.000 I do think that there are trade-offs and to pretend that there are no trade-offs is to ignore reality.

00:48:45.000 Hours that you spend at work are hours that you're not spending at home.

00:48:47.000 And hours that you spend at home are not hours that you are spending at work.

00:48:50.000 And I do not think that a good corporate law job substitutes for having a happy home life.

00:48:55.000 I think almost nothing substitutes for having a happy home life.

00:48:58.000 And I'm speaking to someone whose wife works extraordinarily long hours. 1.00

00:49:01.000 My wife works really long hours. 0.99

00:49:03.000 Like today, she took off from the house at 7.45.

00:49:05.000 She'll be back tonight at 6.30.

00:49:06.000 That is a normal day for her.

00:49:07.000 That is a good rotation for her. 0.99

00:49:08.000 Her prior rotation, she was going in at 5 a.m.

00:49:10.000 and she was coming back at 10 p.m.

00:49:12.000 some days.

00:49:13.000 That is hard.

00:49:13.000 And it's hard on the family.

00:49:14.000 And it's hard on the kids.

00:49:16.000 We've made provision for that, right?

00:49:17.000 I'm home a lot more than she is.

00:49:19.000 My parents are over a lot.

00:49:20.000 We have a nanny. 1.00

00:49:21.000 All of these things are great.

00:49:22.000 But is it a trade-off?

00:49:23.000 Of course it's a trade-off.

00:49:24.000 And it's a trade-off that she struggles with and she feels every day.

00:49:26.000 I think one of the great lies that feminism has told to women is you can have it all. 1.00

00:49:30.000 You can have a lot of good things. 0.99

00:49:32.000 But to pretend that there are no trade-offs among those things is to be foolish.

00:49:36.000 I just don't think that that's true in any real sense.

00:49:38.000 Okay.

00:49:39.000 Time for a thing I like and then some things that I hate.

00:49:43.000 So the thing I like, there's a movie that's now available on Amazon Prime.

00:49:46.000 It's called Last Flag Flying.

00:49:48.000 It's really good for the acting.

00:49:49.000 It's very anti-war, obviously, because every movie that Hollywood has ever produced since the Vietnam War has been an anti-war movie, basically.

00:49:56.000 There are a couple of exceptions, like 12 Strong is an exception.

00:49:58.000 But this movie, the acting is really first rate.

00:50:01.000 It's Bryan Cranston and Lawrence Fishburne and Steve Carell.

00:50:04.000 Cranston is, of course, the highlight of the show.

00:50:06.000 He really is terrific in this film.

00:50:08.000 But Lawrence Fishburne turns in a really good performance as well.

00:50:11.000 Basically, the story is these three guys were in the army together in Vietnam, back during the Vietnam War, and now Steve Carell's son was in the Marines, his son was killed, and he tries to go get these two guys to come with him to pick up his son's body and bring it to Arlington, but it turns out that the army has lied to him about how his son died, and now he doesn't want to bury his son in Arlington.

00:50:29.000 Instead, he wants to bury his son back home.

00:50:31.000 Here's a little bit of the preview.

00:50:34.000 You know what amazes me about you?

00:50:35.000 Well, it could be anything.

00:50:36.000 I'm a pretty amazing guy.

00:50:38.000 You turn the keys to your bar over to the guy who's asleep on your pool table, and then you jump in your car and you drive me to hell and gone, and you don't even know where we're going.

00:50:49.000 Ask the question, am I willing to surrender to God?

00:50:53.000 What the hell happened to Mueller the mauler?

00:50:56.000 First class drinker? 0.99

00:50:57.000 Gambler?

00:50:59.000 We have some visitors amongst us here today.

00:51:02.000 We were in the service together with your pastor.

00:51:05.000 I haven't seen these men in decades.

00:51:06.000 They represent a dark period in my life.

00:51:09.000 That went down awfully quick.

00:51:10.000 Drinkin' for tuna, you got old and boring.

00:51:17.000 I'm not a huge Richard Linklater fan as a general rule, but the movie's actually quite good.

00:51:21.000 And the acting, more than anything else, it really is a showcase for the three performers involved.

00:51:24.000 So if you like good acting and the script is entertaining, even if it's anti-war, it's really anti-Iraq war.

00:51:30.000 And there are a couple of lines.

00:51:30.000 The assumption in Hollywood always is that the Iraq war was a terrible, terrible, awful, horrible, terrible, terrible mistake.

00:51:36.000 And so everything they ever say about the Iraq war is based on that argument, which I think is a deeply flawed argument.

00:51:41.000 But it is still worth the watch if you're just looking for some solid performances.

00:51:46.000 Okay, time for some things that I hate.

00:51:53.000 All right, so I have to show you this clip from April Ryan.

00:51:55.000 April Ryan is, of course, a White House correspondent.

00:51:58.000 I can never remember which outlet she is for, but she's a White House reporter.

00:52:02.000 She was on CNN last night, and she was discussing Melania Trump, and she's for American Urban Radio Networks.

00:52:08.000 And here's what April Ryan had to say about Melania Trump. 1.00

00:52:11.000 It's just an amazing thing, right?

00:52:11.000 She's allowed to get away with this.

00:52:12.000 So John Kelly, who's the White House Chief of Staff, is being accused of racism today because he suggested that a lot of illegal immigrants who come to the United States are undereducated, which is technically true. 1.00

00:52:21.000 Okay, that is just a fact.

00:52:22.000 A lot of illegal immigrants who come to the United States are undereducated. 1.00

00:52:25.000 But April Ryan is not considered in any way xenophobic for saying this about Melania Trump.

00:52:30.000 She wants to show young people how it's done and do it right, and they will pick up those habits.

00:52:37.000 I wonder if the president will change.

00:52:40.000 But there are realities.

00:52:42.000 There are a lot of realities that she's dealing with.

00:52:45.000 This is a first lady who is not culturally American, but she is learning the ways.

00:52:53.000 I don't even know what that means, that Melania Trump is not culturally American.

00:52:56.000 What exactly does that mean?

00:52:57.000 She has a foreign accent? 0.53

00:52:58.000 And what about Melania Trump is not culturally American?

00:53:01.000 She seems pretty culturally American to me.

00:53:04.000 Again, it's amazing.

00:53:07.000 If somebody were to say that on the right about anybody on the left with an accent, it would be, oh my god, racism, xenophobia, terrible, how could you?

00:53:13.000 What about that person is bad?

00:53:15.000 My in-laws are culturally American.

00:53:17.000 They have very strong Israeli accents.

00:53:19.000 They're culturally American.

00:53:20.000 They've been living in America since my wife was 12 years old, which means that they've been here.

00:53:25.000 I'm not gonna give away my wife's age, but they've been here for a little while.

00:53:27.000 Okay?

00:53:28.000 My wife wouldn't care, honestly. 1.00

00:53:29.000 She's been there for 18 years.

00:53:30.000 My wife's 30.

00:53:30.000 She doesn't care.

00:53:31.000 But the truth is that

00:53:35.000 April Ryan's allowed to get away with this because April Ryan, obviously, is a member of Minority Group, and if you're a member of Minority Group, then you can say anything about any other member of Minority Group, my proof being that the members of the Women's March, who are members of Minority Groups, can hang out with freaking Louis Farrakhan, and everybody just goes, oh, well, whatever. 1.00

00:53:50.000 Who cares?

00:53:51.000 Keith Ellison can be an actual anti-Semite, and he's being quoted in the media today saying, I'm very upset that people are calling me an anti-Semite.

00:53:57.000 I think that it's awful that they're calling me an anti-Semite.

00:53:59.000 I'm more upset that you are an anti-Semite, dude, but you're allowed to get away with it, because if you have the right skin color, apparently you're allowed to be a racist. 0.95

00:54:06.000 Which is really awful, awful, awful stuff. 0.99

00:54:08.000 Okay, other things that I hate.

00:54:11.000 So George Stephanopoulos just doing yeoman's work on behalf of NBC.

00:54:15.000 George Stephanopoulos does have a long history of defending people who are accused of sexual misconduct, going all the way back to the Clinton days.

00:54:21.000 Tom Brokaw has been accused of sexual harassment by Linda Vester, who is a former reporter at ABC News.

00:54:26.000 And this is pretty funny because George Stephanopoulos rushes to Tom Brokaw's defense.

00:54:34.000 Tom Brokaw is pretty angry.

00:54:36.000 He says he was ambushed, says he was perp walked.

00:54:39.000 What's your response?

00:54:40.000 Well, I expected a denial.

00:54:43.000 That is what harassers generally do. 0.98

00:54:46.000 What I didn't expect was such a personal attack.

00:54:50.000 And what I'm concerned about is the message that that sends to women inside NBC News.

00:54:54.000 About whether or not they are safe to report somebody who is powerful.

00:54:58.000 If they get that kind of backlash.

00:55:00.000 In that letter he describes you as a colleague who has trouble with the truth.

00:55:03.000 Are you absolutely convinced that everything you remember about that incident, those incidents with Tom Brokaw, would happen?

00:55:10.000 George, my memory of those incidents is crystal clear.

00:55:14.000 The notes that I took immediately afterward are crystal clear.

00:55:19.000 Okay, so Linda Vester from NBC News, obviously George Stephanopoulos from ABC News.

00:55:23.000 Imagine him.

00:55:24.000 Would he ask those questions of Stormy Daniels?

00:55:26.000 Right, really.

00:55:26.000 Stormy Daniels, who's an actual porn star, right, who, shall we say, has some problems in her life.

00:55:33.000 I think it's fair to say Stormy Daniels is a person with some problems in her life.

00:55:36.000 Would George Stephanopoulos sit there and ask, you know, Donald Trump has said that you're lying.

00:55:40.000 Do you truly recall what happened?

00:55:43.000 Are you sure you recall every minute of what happened?

00:55:45.000 We say, you know, he's very upset, Donald Trump.

00:55:47.000 He's very, very upset with you.

00:55:48.000 You know, he's pretty angry.

00:55:50.000 Are you absolutely convinced that what you're saying is true?

00:55:53.000 Come on, come on. 0.99

00:55:55.000 I know that NBC News investigated itself and cleared itself, but you don't get to investigate and clear yourself well and then bring out a bunch of women who are not Linda Vester in order to talk about how Tom Brokaw was wonderful to women.

00:56:07.000 Amazing how the media will circle the wagons from the Me Too movement, actually, as soon as it's a member of their own who's really under the gun.

00:56:13.000 Somebody who is considered an iconic figure in the media.

00:56:17.000 Alrighty.

00:56:18.000 So, we will be back here next week.

00:56:20.000 Have yourself a wonderful weekend.

00:56:21.000 Don't try to spoil things too much.

00:56:22.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:56:23.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

The Ben Shapiro Show - May 11, 2018

Delusional Democrats’ Failing Foreign Policy | Ep. 537

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