On Thursday, left-wing fact-checker PolitiFact stepped into a pile of doo-doo once again, this time they blasted President Trump with a fake news fact check that demonstrates just how dishonest they are. Today, Ben Shapiro talks about it, the Senate version of Trumpcare, and why the Democratic Party has nothing in common except their hatred for Donald Trump. Plus, he talks about how the hate for Trump is a symptom of deep-rooted institutional racism, and how the party should have been focused on Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, not the other way around. Ben Shapiro is a regular contributor to the New York Times and host of the conservative podcast "The Weekly Standard" and is one of the most influential conservative voices in the country. He is also the host of "The Ben Shapiro Show" on Fox News Radio and hosts the conservative radio show "The Right Turn" on SiriusXM Radio. He is a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard and has been featured on CNN, NPR, CBS Radio, and other media outlets. You can reach Ben at: and Ben on social media at . He is the author of the book, as well as his new podcast, . and his new book which is out now, , which you can find on Amazon Prime and wherever else you get your news and information. If you're looking for a good deal, listen to Ben Shapiro's newest podcast, "Ben Shapiro's new book, "The Truth or Fiction." Subscribe to his newest novel, "Mr. Shapiro's New York Magazine's "New York Times Square" wherever else he is on the internet, click here. Watch him on the airwaves wherever you get his podcast is available. Thanks for listening to his podcast? Subscribe on Audible and subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform? Subscribe on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about him on Podchaser and subscribe to his other podcast on the Four Corners Podcasts or wherever you re listening to him on your favourite podcast, The FiveThirtyEight app? or his newest podcast on PODCAST? Subscribe and review his latest podcast on Podcoin? and more! Watch this episode of The Ben Shapiro s newest book "The FiveThirtyeight Podcast? on iTunes on Stik and learn more about Ben Shapiro on The Six Sigma Podcasts on The Five Thirty Eight Podcasts?
00:00:00.000On Thursday, left-wing fact-checker PolitiFact, a site known more for its biases than its quality fact-checking, stepped into a pile of doo-doo once again.
00:00:07.000This time they blasted President Trump with a fake news fact-check that demonstrates just how dishonest they are.
00:02:21.000I first want to say thank you to our sponsors over at My Patriot Supply.
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00:03:30.000I do want to talk about the Senate version of Trumpcare slash Obamacare repeal.
00:03:36.000Before we get to that, I think it's important to talk about the Democrats and their aftermath of their reaction to the loss of John Ossoff in Georgia's 6th against Karen Handel.
00:03:43.000So, finally, all of the conflict that has been brewing under the surface of the resistance has broken open.
00:03:48.000The hatred for Trump covered up the fact that the Democrats really have nothing in common anymore.
00:03:52.000There are three branches of the Democratic Party and they are at war with one another.
00:03:58.000This is the progressive socialist Michael Moore branch of the party that says capitalism is evil and we need to redistribute all the income and all the problems in the country are created by income inequality.
00:04:08.000These people are not intersectional politicians.
00:04:52.0002, and these are the Obama people, and they say, we need our intersectional hierarchy, the Hillary people, we need our intersectional hierarchy.
00:05:01.000This is the Democrat congressperson from Massachusetts who was making the rounds yesterday because he said, what we need is a broader tent party where we have some pro-life Democrats, where we have some people who are not so anti-business, where we are not
00:05:14.000And these three factions are now at war with one another.
00:05:17.000And that's breaking out into the open because Democrats, for the first time, are realizing that it's not enough just to scream at President Trump alone.
00:05:25.000It's going to get them most of the way.
00:05:26.000But if they have no unity, if they can't figure out what they're doing, then they've got a problem.
00:05:30.000Rahm Emanuel acknowledged that they are in serious trouble.
00:05:33.000He says, we are 1,000 seats behind, says the former chief of staff for President Obama.
00:05:39.000We are a thousand seats shorter today than we were in 2009 or 2008.
00:06:10.000Jay Johnson, who is the former Homeland Security Secretary under President Obama, helps contribute to the collapse of the Democrats' key talking point that Trump is some sort of Russian stooge.
00:06:20.000Not beyond what has been out there open source and not beyond anything that I'm sure this committee has already seen and heard before directly from the intelligence community.
00:06:33.000So the only thing I'd have on that is derivative of what the intelligence community has and the law enforcement community.
00:06:39.000Okay, so you can see that with that narrative falling apart, they now have to come up with a new narrative.
00:06:44.000So on the one hand, you have the people who are more in favor of this broad tent Democratic Party.
00:06:51.000That's the one that's actually going to be better for Democrats, right?
00:06:53.000This would be kind of the Joe Biden wing of the party.
00:06:55.000We need to get beyond intersectional politics.
00:06:58.000Representative Dingell, who I guess replaced
00:07:01.000I think she replaced her husband, right?
00:07:03.000She spoke with MSNBC yesterday, and she talked about this.
00:07:06.000She said that basically we need to get beyond the intersectional Obama era, and we need to move toward a more solid era of we're all Americans.
00:07:16.000And this is what Democrats would do if they were smart, but they're not.
00:07:18.000So here's Debbie Dingell from Michigan.
00:07:20.000If we don't figure out how we become we again, we're going to keep losing.
00:07:24.000So I think it's important that we need to understand each of these groups has issues.
00:07:30.000So she says that we can't be African Americans for Obama or for Hillary.
00:07:34.000We can't be Hispanic Americans for Obama or Hillary.
00:07:40.000This is the real reason that Trump won.
00:07:41.000The reason Trump won is because he wasn't insulting Americans by categorizing them into small groups and then implying that there was this broad, vast, white mass out there that was out to get them.
00:07:50.000That's the real reason that Trump won.
00:07:51.000It wasn't about his populist politics.
00:08:06.000So you have this wing of the party, the Debbie Dingell wing, that is starting to figure it out.
00:08:10.000Unfortunately for Debbie Dingell, that's being undercut by the Bernie Sanders wing.
00:08:13.000So the Bernie Sanders wing says that Nancy Pelosi should continue to rule the party.
00:08:17.000Nancy Pelosi is a wonderful far-left politician.
00:08:20.000Who's just done Yeoman's work, even though it was Nancy Pelosi's name just being dropped a couple of times in the Georgia 6 that led to the Democratic defeat.
00:08:26.000Paul Begala says we can't get rid of Nancy Pelosi.
00:08:47.000And then finally, there is the intersectional wing.
00:08:51.000So here's what Democrats need to unify.
00:08:53.000And this is where it's kind of interesting what's going on right now, because I think it plays into what Democrats need in order to unify.
00:09:00.000What Democrats need in order to unify is not only for Trump to be unpopular, but for there to be some piece of legislation that they can all jump on and smack him with.
00:09:09.000So in 1994, Bill Clinton was very unpopular, but it took Hillarycare and the threat of Hillarycare to lead to this vast Republican wave that wiped out 60 seats in the House for Democrats and led to the rise of the Republican majority in the House that has basically been steady with the brief period between 06 and 10.
00:09:29.000So, the fact is that it needs two things.
00:09:32.000In order for the out-of-party, the out-of-power party to take over, what they need is an unpopular president, number one, and then, that goes in the mix, and then you need an enzyme to catalyze the resistance, and that is some piece of unpopular legislation.
00:09:45.000Well, so far, Trump hasn't actually done anything.
00:09:47.000So far, the only thing he's done is nominate Neil Gorsuch, and that's not enough of a slap to Democrats for them to really catalyze around it, for them to coagulate around that and then become the quote-unquote resistance.
00:09:58.000And so Chuck Schumer is interested in Obamacare appeal.
00:10:01.000He thinks that the Democrats are going to be able to whip the base into a fury over the supposed repeal of Obamacare.
00:10:10.000We're going to look at every single thing and find out the best way, but this is full-scale warfare.
00:10:14.000This is the most important advancement since probably Medicare in terms of helping people, and we're not going to be complacent or go along or business as usual in any way.
00:10:29.000So Democrats need something to oppose.
00:11:06.000As I said, I think they probably will because I think that Republicans are stupid and they just want the immediate headline that they repealed Obamacare, even though that means they now own what comes next.
00:11:16.000They also want to be able to say to their constituency that they repealed all the funding for Planned Parenthood.
00:11:21.000Although, again, is that a big enough deal to... Is that a huge enough advance for the Republicans to own Obamacare for the foreseeable future?
00:11:32.000It's sort of reminiscent of what President Trump did with illegal immigration.
00:11:36.000He said that he was going to get rid of DAPA, which is the protection for parents of illegal immigrants who came in when they were children.
00:11:41.000He said he was going to get rid of DAPA, which wasn't even in place, and then he re-enshrined DACA, which was Obama's executive amnesty.
00:11:47.000Republicans are basically re-enshrining Obamacare and then calling it Obamacare repeal, which is the worst of all available worlds.
00:11:54.000Even the creator, even the creator of Obamacare, Jonathan Gruber, you remember, he's the guy who was caught on tape saying, yes, we lied to the American public about what Obamacare was going to do.
00:12:03.000Even he is now out there saying that this Senate version doesn't actually repeal Obamacare in any significant way.
00:12:09.000Does this bill have more heart, as the president would say, Jonathan?
00:12:19.000On the other hand, this is just a giant cut in Medicaid.
00:12:21.000That's what this bill now amounts to, and that's bad.
00:12:25.000Okay, and so he's upset about the Medicaid cuts, but he says that basically Trumpcare is Obamacare, and this is essentially correct.
00:12:32.000There's a poll that just came out from NBC Wall Street Journal.
00:12:34.000They found only 34% of Republicans like the House GOP health care bill, and only 16% of Americans overall say that that House GOP health care bill is a good idea.
00:12:48.000Peter Suderman over at Reason.com has a good rundown on what exactly is in the bill.
00:12:53.000What he says is the Senate plan looks even closer to the health care law that is already on the books.
00:12:57.000In other words, it is exactly what critics predicted.
00:12:59.000A bill that, at least in the near term, retains weakened versions of nearly all of Obamacare's core features, while fixing few, if any, of the problems Republicans say they want to fix.
00:13:07.000It is Obamacare lite, the health law Republicans claim to oppose, but less of it.
00:13:11.000It represents a total failure of Republican policy imagination.
00:13:15.000And then he goes on, he says, to understand the Senate plan, it helps to recall Obamacare's underlying framework.
00:13:19.000The centerpiece of the law was a reform of the individual market intended to give those who do not get coverage through work or a federal program access to subsidized regulated coverage.
00:13:28.000The law created a new federal subsidy based on income for lower and middle income households to purchase health insurance.
00:13:34.000It also set up federal rules requiring insurers to cover preexisting conditions.
00:14:03.000So it keeps all of the mandates on insurance companies, which means that the so-called Obamacare death spiral will be accelerated.
00:14:09.000All these insurance companies are going to be forced to take on people they can't afford, and nothing makes up the gap, except for more government subsidies.
00:14:15.000Those government subsidies, of course, come from borrowing.
00:14:18.000And Republicans are cutting the taxes, so they won't come from taxes.
00:14:21.000The reason Republicans are cutting Medicaid in the future is they're playing an accounting game.
00:14:25.000What they're hoping to do is come across as revenue neutral
00:14:28.000In fact, they're hoping that this quote-unquote saves revenue to the federal government, even though it really will not in the long run, so they can pass tax reform.
00:14:36.000If you understand that the Obamacare repeal plan from the Senate is designed to do two things, neither of which is repealing Obamacare, you'll understand all you need to know about this Obamacare repeal program.
00:14:45.000It is designed to, number one, tell Republicans that it repealed Obamacare without actually repealing it, and number two, it is designed to make room for a tax cut under reconciliation.
00:14:54.000Under reconciliation, in order for Republicans to pass a bill through the Senate with 51 votes instead of 60 necessary to shut down a filibuster, Republicans have to get a score from the Congressional Budget Office that says that any bill that they pass is quote-unquote revenue neutral.
00:15:08.000Okay, tax cuts are not revenue neutral because, in the short term at least, they reduce the amount of money that comes into the federal government.
00:15:14.000So what Republicans are trying to do is pass a health care bill that cuts the amount of outlay by the federal government so they can then take that amount and translate it into a tax reform bill.
00:15:23.000So all the Republicans really want from Obamacare repeal is the headline that says they repealed it, even though they didn't, and two, the ability to pass a tax cut.
00:16:01.000Right now, under Obamacare, there are subsidies that go up to 400% of the poverty line for a family of four.
00:16:08.000So if you're trying to buy health care in the Obamacare plan, you get some sort of subsidy up to 400% of the poverty line.
00:16:15.000That's about $100,000 for a family of four.
00:16:17.000Starting in 2020, the Senate bill ratchets that back to 350% of the poverty line, about $86,000 for the same family.
00:16:24.000Well, that hurts the middle class people who have been reliant on those subsidies.
00:16:27.000And two, we shouldn't be subsidizing this stuff anyway, okay?
00:16:30.000The idea that we should be subsidizing a family of four that makes $100,000 a year to buy Obamacare, it doesn't actually help anything in the sense that it continues to drive up costs because healthy people are still not getting insured once you remove the mandate.
00:16:45.000So if you have an unhealthy family of four, even with the subsidy, they lose money.
00:16:48.000If they're healthy, then they shouldn't really need the subsidy, should they?
00:16:53.000It's an entitlement program, basically, that Republicans are signing off on.
00:16:57.000And then, they're proposing to authorize certain payments called CSR payments.
00:17:01.000These are cost-sharing reduction subsidies to insurers.
00:17:04.000So we are now going to subsidize the insurance companies, even the same way that Obama was going to.
00:17:08.000Remember, Obama tried to subsidize the insurers and Republicans sued to stop him.
00:17:13.000And now Republicans are going to backtrack on that.
00:17:15.000Republicans are now going to provide the same subsidies they sued Obama for providing, under the Senate version.
00:17:22.000So, the reports, by the way, indicate that those subsidies for families of four, they're pegged to lower cost plans, which means smaller subsidies for crappier health insurance.
00:17:30.000As Suderman says, the scheme undercuts the GOP's complaints Obamacare hurts the middle class.
00:17:34.000In addition to higher deductibles, it creates a subsidy cliff for middle class families purchasing health insurance on the individual market.
00:17:40.000And of course, it still spends an enormous amount of money.
00:17:44.000So if you look at the Senate bill and how it handles Medicaid, it's like the House bill.
00:17:49.000It slowly rolls back Medicaid expansion over a period of years and converts it into a per capita system rather than a need-based system.
00:17:57.000But it delays the start of that phase out until 2021, which means it's never going to happen because a Republican president and Republican Congress would have to be elected from here all the way until 2020 in order to ensure that this kicks in.
00:18:08.000Otherwise, the Democrats will come in and they'll just roll it back.
00:18:11.000It says, starting in 2025, who places a stricter cap on the growth of Medicaid spending than the House bill?
00:18:17.000Yeah, except by 2025, who thinks that Republicans are going to be able to withhold the pressure all the way to 2025?
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00:20:56.000Okay, so with all of this said, the fact that the Senate bill sucks, right now we are now learning there are at least a couple of Republican senators who are probably not going to vote for it, which means that it may not pass at all.
00:21:07.000The question becomes, do Republicans even want to pass this thing?
00:21:10.000Do Republicans even want to pass this thing?
00:21:14.000It's not clear that Republicans actually want to do much of anything.
00:21:17.000Because Republicans, number one, never want to do much of anything because they're afraid that if they do something, there will be a backlash.
00:21:22.000And number two, because if you run the entire federal government, you pass something massive, again, this could catalyze the left into opposition.
00:21:32.000For example, take the Ossoff race in Georgia 6.
00:22:06.000Let's say they'd just come in and done that.
00:22:07.000And then, they negotiated around the edges for what we're gonna do to fix the problems that Obamacare was designed to solve.
00:22:13.000Then, Republicans would be in pretty good shape.
00:22:15.000But now, because they're trying this omnibus fix to Obamacare that doesn't actually fix it, leaves it in place, increases subsidies in certain areas, decreases subsidies in certain other areas, gets rid of the underlying mechanism for funding the whole damn thing, so we're just gonna borrow up the wazoo for it, and then pretend we're gonna cut later.
00:22:31.000If Republicans do that, then Democrats will have something to coalesce around.
00:22:35.000Which is silly, because the fact is that if you're going to pass policies, they ought to be good policies.
00:22:39.000If you're going to take political risk, it ought to be for a good potential payoff.
00:22:42.000There is an alternative strategy that Republicans could pursue if they really don't want to do anything.
00:22:46.000There's an alternative strategy that they could pursue that unfortunately, I think unfortunately, would actually work with the Republican crowd and would also prevent them from sustaining massive losses in 2018 because they wouldn't actually pass anything deeply unpopular.
00:22:58.000But for that, you're gonna have to go over to dailywire.com and become a subscriber.
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