The Ben Shapiro Show

00:00:00.000 The rules of bigotry.

00:00:01.000 According to the left, they are constantly shifting beautiful kaleidoscope of stupid crap.

00:00:06.000 This week, we learned that if you don't want your small daughter peeing next to a giant man who thinks he's a woman, you're a bigot.

00:00:12.000 If you're a woman who's slightly uncomfortable with a man who thinks he is a woman, whipping out his penis to urinate in front of you, you're also a bigot.

00:00:19.000 If you're a religious person who doesn't want to participate in an activity you consider sinful, you're also a bigot.

00:00:25.000 Now, on the other hand, if you're a man who thinks you're a woman and you want to force a small girl to pee next to you, you are fighting for freedom.

00:00:32.000 If you're a large man who thinks he's a woman and you want to be one of the girls and hulk right down onto the Macy's ladies room, you are a hero.

00:00:39.000 And if you are a gay man and you want to force a religious person to serve you, you are also a hero.

00:00:43.000 Now, if all of this seems slightly weird, that's because it is.

00:00:47.000 First of all, it's logically incoherent.

00:00:49.000 The left insists that a man who thinks he is a woman must be treated as one, even if his biology says he's a dude.

00:00:56.000 However, if a man believes he is a man, he can't discuss vital issues of national import like abortion because he lacks the vital prerequisite, a womb.

00:01:04.000 Men cannot understand women, the logic runs, unless they are women.

00:01:07.000 But men cannot be women, of course, except in the fevered imaginations of crazy people on the left.

00:01:12.000 And even the left doesn't really believe this.

00:01:13.000 Leftists simultaneously want to enshrine unchangeable sexual differences, even though, according to them, men and womenly can shift places all the time.

00:01:23.000 And then they want to deny that the differences exist in the first place.

00:01:25.000 So if you're talking about abortion, men and women are inherently different, can't change it.

00:01:29.000 If you're talking about Caitlyn Jenner having a twig in berries,

00:01:32.000 Caitlyn Jenner's still a woman.

00:01:32.000 Now the baseline definition of freedom in Western civilization has been this.

00:01:37.000 You don't get to force me to serve you, and you don't get to force me to think the way you want me to think.

00:01:50.000 As follows, you cannot force me to think that you are a woman if you are a biological man.

00:01:54.000 You can't force me to spend my taxpayer dollars to pretend along with your mental illness.

00:01:58.000 You can't force me to run my business as you see fit because I don't have a duty to you.

00:02:03.000 The left doesn't believe in freedom except the freedom to destroy the right.

00:02:07.000 So leftists believe Bruce Springsteen has an absolute right to pick the people for whom he performs in North Carolina, but bakers in North Carolina can't pick the people to whom they cater.

00:02:16.000 If they're same-sex couples.

00:02:17.000 The left believes the government must compel higher pay rates for women, but government should compel men to be treated as women based on their subjective feelings on the subject.

00:02:27.000 This magical kaleidoscope of morality never stops shifting, but in the end there's only one moral that counts.

00:02:33.000 The left's ultimate insistence on use of government force to compel that we all obey their kaleidoscopic morality.

00:02:39.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:02:40.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:02:47.000 So, a lot breaking in the news.

00:02:50.000 Alexander Hamilton remains on the $10 bill.

00:02:52.000 Apparently Andrew Jackson is off the $20, and he's been replaced with Harriet Tubman.

00:02:56.000 We'll talk about that.

00:02:57.000 We'll talk about the New York primaries at great length.

00:03:00.000 Length that will make my producers want to bash their head against the wall.

00:03:03.000 We'll talk about all of that.

00:03:04.000 But first, we have to say hello to our friends at Hillsdale College.

00:03:07.000 Hillsdale College, a great institution, and an institution

00:03:10.000 It's not just for your kid.

00:03:11.000 It's not just you should send your kid to Hillsdale.

00:03:12.000 If you are in a different college or you are or you're a teenager or you're a kid or you're an adult and you just want to learn more about the Constitution, go to hillsdale.edu slash ben.

00:03:22.000 Right now they have a course there called Presidency and the Constitution.

00:03:25.000 It talks about the fact that the presidency is not, in fact, a monarchy.

00:03:29.000 It's not the seat of ultimate power in the United States.

00:03:32.000 There are actual divisions of power, and the Constitution lays those forth.

00:03:35.000 Hillsdale teaches you how those work.

00:03:37.000 Hillsdale.edu slash ben for the free course.

00:03:39.000 You go there, you register, they send it right to your inbox.

00:03:42.000 Very cool, and they have a lot of other courses you'll want to check out as well.

00:03:45.000 It's hillsdale.edu slash ben.

00:03:47.000 Okay, so Donald Trump ends up the big winner last night.

00:03:51.000 As we thought would happen, because New Yorkers, being the tough-minded, intelligent people they are, had to vote for their own version of George Wallace.

00:03:58.000 It was imperative.

00:04:00.000 Just to show how sophisticated they are, they had to vote for an old, sack-of-crap, lying con man on the right, and an old, sack-of-crap, lying con woman on the left.

00:04:09.000 This really shows that New Yorkers really get it.

00:04:12.000 New Yorkers are really sophisticated.

00:04:13.000 And Donald Trump was super happy about all this.

00:04:16.000 Whenever New Yorkers claim that they're really sophisticated, that they're just the most sophisticated people, they have a long history, a long history of voting for stupid nonsense, going all the way back to when they abstained from the vote on the Declaration of Independence, going all the way back then to voting for Horatio Seymour, a Democrat in the middle of the Civil War, somebody who didn't want to be in the Civil War, who opposed Lincoln actively.

00:04:39.000 New York voted for him in the middle of the Civil War, to Teddy Roosevelt, the father of progressivism, to FDR, to Robert F. Kennedy, who wasn't even from New York, he was from Massachusetts, leading Tom Lehrer, the comedian, to say Massachusetts is the only state with three governors, with three senators.

00:04:55.000 New York has a long history of this.

00:04:57.000 We're voting for Hillary Clinton, who has only visited New York, but then it was her home state.

00:05:01.000 Voting for Bill de Blasio, who's an open communist.

00:05:03.000 Voting for the Cuomos.

00:05:04.000 They have a long history of voting for absolutely bizarre people and then claiming that this is just because they're sophisticated and they understand things.

00:05:12.000 Well, the latest sophisticate for whom they voted was this bloviating old con man, Donald Trump.

00:05:19.000 And Trump is now in good position to win the nomination.

00:05:22.000 Now, as I said before, you know, there are really three scenarios here.

00:05:25.000 One is Trump doesn't get the numbers at the convention.

00:05:28.000 It goes to Cruz.

00:05:29.000 Trump doesn't get the number two is he gets to the convention.

00:05:31.000 He doesn't have the numbers.

00:05:32.000 It goes to some third party.

00:05:34.000 And the final is he gets the numbers.

00:05:37.000 There are two ways he can get the numbers.

00:05:38.000 One is he can outright win 1,237 delegates.

00:05:41.000 The conventional wisdom has been he needs to get all the way there because delegates don't like Donald Trump.

00:05:46.000 That's beginning to change.

00:05:48.000 Politico has a piece today basically stating, as I've been claiming now for a couple of weeks, that the establishment are beginning to make peace with the idea of a Trump nomination.

00:05:56.000 They're beginning to swallow the idea of a Trump nomination.

00:05:58.000 That Trump's dueling theories of, I'm a victim and also I'm going to threaten you to burn down your convention if I don't get what I want, this has scared the Republican establishment into compliance.

00:06:08.000 They believe that if Trump is stopped now, that the party will be broken and all they care about is not

00:06:13.000 The future, all they care about is this year.

00:06:14.000 All they care about is this election cycle, because that's how they make their money.

00:06:18.000 If Trump is ousted, then presumably all the Trump people go away, Republicans lose, and they don't get to make a lot of money off the Trump people.

00:06:24.000 If the Trump people win, everybody falls into line, and they get to make all of their money, and...

00:06:30.000 And then it's a win-win for them.

00:06:31.000 If Trump wins, then they get to deal with him, because the truth is that aside from being a nutjob, he's establishment.

00:06:36.000 But number two, and when I say establishment, I mean his politics, are the politics of the establishment.

00:06:41.000 Making deals with Democrats, cutting deals with members of the establishment, ad hoc policy.

00:06:47.000 This is something that the Republican establishment is comfortable with.

00:06:50.000 If he wins, they can live with that and claim victory.

00:06:52.000 If he loses, then they can say, oh, it was those crazy anti-establishment Tea Party right-wingers who gave us Trump in the first place.

00:06:58.000 Now let's go back to the Halcyon era of the Bushes.

00:07:01.000 Let's find George P. Bush and bring him up and we'll run him.

00:07:04.000 So Donald Trump wins and he wins big.

00:07:06.000 He wins 60%.

00:07:08.000 Right now, the math is basically that there are something like 680 possible delegates.

00:07:15.000 Well, let's see, there are 734 total delegates available right now.

00:07:20.000 Some of those are pledged, some of those are unpledged.

00:07:21.000 Like 612 that are pledged delegates.

00:07:23.000 He has to win 392 delegates to get all the way there.

00:07:28.000 A lot of the unpledged delegates are going to go for him.

00:07:30.000 Pennsylvania he will win.

00:07:31.000 The unpledged delegates have already said they will probably vote for Trump on the first ballot if he wins, even though they are unpledged.

00:07:37.000 Which means that he really only needs to win 338 out of the remaining delegates.

00:07:42.000 Which really means that Donald Trump just has to...

00:07:45.000 Hit about 50% of the remaining delegates, and he will be fine.

00:07:50.000 So, you know, that puts Trump in a very solid position, and he was basically saying that yesterday.

00:07:55.000 This show is going to be about surrender, and why people are surrendering, and why that is not, in fact, a good idea.

00:08:02.000 But if the surrender happens, it's not our surrender, it's not my surrender.

00:08:05.000 I don't surrender to, as I say, a race between the spawn of Satan and the Antichrist.

00:08:09.000 If that is my choice, between A and B, I choose C. Donald Trump yesterday, he says,

00:08:14.000 He won the delegates.

00:08:15.000 He's the big winner.

00:08:16.000 People are saying he's very disciplined.

00:08:17.000 This is what disciplined Donald Trump looks like.

00:08:20.000 It's really nice to win the delegates with the votes.

00:08:24.000 You know, it's really nice.

00:08:38.000 Nobody should be given delegates, which is a ticket to victory, and it's not a fair ticket.

00:08:45.000 And even though we're leading by a lot and we can't be caught, it's impossible to catch us.

00:08:50.000 Nobody should take delegates and claim victory unless they get those delegates with voters and voting.

00:08:57.000 And that's what's going to happen.

00:08:59.000 And you watch.

00:09:00.000 Because the people aren't going to stand for it.

00:09:03.000 It's a crooked system.

00:09:04.000 It's a system that's rigged.

00:09:06.000 And we're going to go back to the old way.

00:09:08.000 It's called, you vote and you win.

00:09:10.000 OK, we're going to go back to the old way.

00:09:11.000 It's called, you vote and you win.

00:09:12.000 Except that that's not really how the process works.

00:09:15.000 So let's take an example.

00:09:17.000 Donald Trump won about 450,000, 500,000 votes in New York last night.

00:09:19.000 He ended up with 90 to 91 delegates.

00:09:24.000 Right?

00:09:24.000 That's just the delegate count.

00:09:26.000 Ted Cruz won 1.2 million votes in the state of Texas.

00:09:29.000 1.2 million votes, right?

00:09:30.000 More than twice as many votes as Trump won in New York.

00:09:34.000 Cruz won in Texas.

00:09:35.000 He walked away with 101 delegates.

00:09:37.000 So in other words, he won more than twice as many votes and yet ended up with almost the same number of delegates as Trump did in New York.

00:09:44.000 This is a rigged system, but it's not rigged for Trump or for Cruz.

00:09:46.000 It's rigged in favor of blue states that have not voted Republican in years and years and years and years.

00:09:52.000 And that's the way that the system works.

00:09:53.000 And we all knew this going in.

00:09:55.000 And I had suggested going in.

00:09:56.000 There are certain systemic advantages for people like Jeb Bush, people like Donald Trump, people who can do better in blue areas than folks like Ted Cruz.

00:10:04.000 And so when he says, I won the delegates with the votes, well, realistically, you kinda didn't.

00:10:10.000 You kinda didn't.

00:10:11.000 Because the fact is that you won 60% of the vote, but you won nearly 100% of the delegates.

00:10:15.000 So again, not really.

00:10:17.000 Trump says, the race is basically over, you should all unite behind me, and the temptation of the establishment is to just do this.

00:10:23.000 We don't have much of a race anymore, based on what I'm seeing on television.

00:10:29.000 Senator Cruz is just about mathematically eliminated.

00:10:39.000 And we've won another state.

00:10:41.000 As you know, we have won millions of more votes than Senator Cruz.

00:10:45.000 Millions and millions of more votes than Governor Kasich.

00:10:50.000 We've won, and now especially after tonight, close to 300 delegates more than Senator Cruz.

00:10:58.000 We're really, really rocking.

00:11:01.000 We're really, really rocking.

00:11:03.000 We have so many more delegates than Senator Cruz.

00:11:04.000 Again, now he's arguing the delegates, notice.

00:11:06.000 He's not arguing the popular vote margin because the popular vote margin still puts him at a plurality, but not even close to a majority.

00:11:13.000 So now he's actually arguing that he's winning the delegate race, right?

00:11:15.000 Five minutes ago, the delegates were the end of the world.

00:11:18.000 Now the delegates are back to being his friends because he just won a bunch of delegates.

00:11:22.000 And then Trump concluded that New Yorkers who voted for Cruz, they're not really New Yorkers in the first place.

00:11:28.000 Cruz actually has a dislike for New York, and he came up with that whole thing with New York values, with a lot of anger about the city and about the state, and I think that he won't do very well.

00:11:39.000 I think any New Yorker that votes for him would be maybe not a New Yorker.

00:11:44.000 Okay, any New Yorker votes for him wouldn't be a New Yorker.

00:11:46.000 Presumably that worked because New Yorkers proclaim to be thick-skinned, tough-minded, rude individuals.

00:11:52.000 The rude is right, but the thick-skinned is obviously not right.

00:11:55.000 Okay, so Trump makes the case, right?

00:11:58.000 I'm winning.

00:11:58.000 I'm ahead.

00:11:59.000 I have the most delegates.

00:12:00.000 Give it to me.

00:12:02.000 And the problem is that there is not really a good counterpunch from the Cruz campaign.

00:12:06.000 The only good counterpunch is the one that Cruz won't say because he can't say it.

00:12:11.000 And that Republicans won't say because they don't want to say it.

00:12:13.000 And that is, Trump must be stopped.

00:12:16.000 Trump himself must be stopped.

00:12:17.000 It's not a principle argument about plurality versus majority.

00:12:20.000 It's not an argument that the guy with the second most votes should come from behind, win 500 more delegates.

00:12:25.000 It's not a great argument that you can recruit more delegates than Trump.

00:12:29.000 Yes, that's the way the system works.

00:12:31.000 That doesn't mean that people think the system is fair.

00:12:33.000 You know, the system, there are two definitions of fairness.

00:12:36.000 There's two definitions of fairness.

00:12:37.000 There's, the system is fair in that everyone knew the rules going in, and then there's the rules themselves aren't fair.

00:12:43.000 Cruz is arguing number one, Trump is arguing number two.

00:12:46.000 Right, Cruz is saying everyone knew the rules going in, you can't claim unfairness when you knew the rules going in.

00:12:50.000 Trump is arguing the rules themselves are skewed.

00:12:52.000 The rules themselves are a problem.

00:12:54.000 You can't overcome that because even Cruz is not willing to argue that the rules themselves

00:12:59.000 They're arguing past each other, and Trump's argument is a more effective argument.

00:13:05.000 The rules are unfair.

00:13:06.000 Then Cruz's argument, yeah, the rules are unfair, but you knew the rules going in, so you don't get to bitch about it now.

00:13:11.000 So Cruz, anyway, he comes forward and he says, well, we need to come together.

00:13:13.000 The problem is all of Cruz's arguments can now be turned back on Cruz.

00:13:16.000 This is what you're seeing now.

00:13:17.000 Cruz is going to make a bunch of arguments.

00:13:19.000 We're going to go through them.

00:13:20.000 And they're being turned back on Cruz now by the Trump people and the media, especially media on the right, who desperately want Trump to wrap this thing up because they're tired of this now.

00:13:29.000 Now it's boring to them.

00:13:30.000 They want to move on to the general election, the main match.

00:13:33.000 They want to move on to the heavyweight battle between Trump and Hillary, the guy who gave money to Hillary and the woman who gave money to Hillary, facing off against each other in a general election.

00:13:41.000 Cruz gave a speech last night in Philadelphia.

00:13:43.000 It was an onward to victory speech.

00:13:44.000 All of these speeches always ring weird.

00:13:47.000 After you get absolutely just devastated in an election.

00:13:50.000 Here's Senator Cruz.

00:13:52.000 Join me now on this journey of less talk and more action.

00:13:57.000 Real solutions.

00:14:00.000 Because I know you.

00:14:02.000 You may have been knocked down, but America has always been best when she is lying down with her back on the mat and the crowd has given the final count.

00:14:12.000 It is time for us as a nation to get up, to shake it off and be who we were destined to be.

00:14:21.000 Don't let anyone try to convince you otherwise.

00:14:24.000 Here's the truth.

00:14:26.000 You don't need me or any politician.

00:14:30.000 But we do need each other.

00:14:32.000 all of us, coming together as one, as we, the people.

00:14:38.000 Because not only do we say yes,

00:14:48.000 You might want to rewrite that one in the future.

00:14:50.000 Not really the world's best choice of verbiage there by Senator Cruz, but his idea is that we all have to come together.

00:14:57.000 I'll tell you the problem with that in just a second.

00:14:59.000 First, however, if you're concerned about your privacy, if you're concerned that the government is looking at your emails, if you're concerned that the corporations are using your email data in order to market to you, you don't want anybody getting into your personal business, then you need to go to reaganprivacy.com and you need to get an email address yournameatreagan.com.

00:15:16.000 So, menschapiro at reagan.com.

00:15:18.000 And reaganprivacy.com, it guarantees you a couple things.

00:15:22.000 One, you get to be associated with Reagan, the last good president of the United States.

00:15:25.000 And the second thing is that all of your data will be protected.

00:15:29.000 Unlike a lot of other email providers like Google and Yahoo and AOL, and Hotmail, Reagan does not copy or give any information to the government.

00:15:38.000 Or to the marketing companies that seek it and pay a lot of these companies for the privilege.

00:15:42.000 So, this is reagan.com, reaganprivacy.com.

00:15:45.000 That's where you go.

00:15:45.000 And if you go there right now, you get two months for free, which is a pretty solid deal.

00:15:50.000 reaganprivacy.com.

00:15:51.000 Okay, so you heard Senator Cruz give his unity speech right after Donald Trump gave his we're winning speech.

00:15:57.000 The human tendency, the normal human tendency, is when you're down to quit.

00:16:00.000 Right?

00:16:00.000 That it's not that when you when it looks like the battle is lost,

00:16:04.000 You just give up.

00:16:06.000 Right?

00:16:06.000 Enough, okay, we're wasting time, let's just move on to the general election, let's just consolidate around somebody.

00:16:11.000 And there are people who I know and like who have said this sort of thing.

00:16:14.000 Dennis Prager said this morning, he spent the entire morning basically saying Trump is lying about the delegates, and then he says, well, but if it comes down to Trump versus Hillary, then I'll still vote for Trump because Democrats are worse.

00:16:23.000 Which will bring us to our second argument in such a moment, in a moment.

00:16:26.000 So, what they say, so Cruz says unity.

00:16:29.000 The Cruz opponents, the Trump supporters, and people who are just tired of this, they say, OK, unity?

00:16:33.000 Well, we're not going to get unity because Trump is threatening to blow apart the party with a suicide bomb.

00:16:38.000 So he'll just destroy the party wholesale.

00:16:39.000 He'll nuke the convention.

00:16:41.000 So if we want unity, we have to go with Trump.

00:16:43.000 It's the only way.

00:16:45.000 The only way that we come together is if we go along with the blackmail and we just come together around Donald Trump.

00:16:51.000 So the unity argument is used against Cruz.

00:16:53.000 And then Cruz has to fall back on the second argument.

00:16:56.000 Right?

00:16:56.000 Because what they say is what Prager and many others would say.

00:16:59.000 First of all, I'm not saying Dennis votes for Trump in a primary.

00:17:02.000 He wouldn't.

00:17:02.000 He doesn't like Trump.

00:17:03.000 But there are a lot of other people who are saying, OK, enough is enough.

00:17:06.000 Let's just consolidate and move on.

00:17:09.000 The second argument, the argument they make is, OK, we need unity.

00:17:13.000 And the reason we need unity is at least Trump is better than Hillary.

00:17:16.000 At least Trump is better than Hillary.

00:17:19.000 And the problem with that is that they say Trump is going to be better than Hillary.

00:17:22.000 I don't believe that for the conservative movement or for the country, Trump is necessarily better than Hillary.

00:17:27.000 I think Hillary is a disaster area and Trump is a disaster area.

00:17:30.000 I can't tell the future, but I can say, I can say that Trump is a, that Trump is a disaster for the conservative movement.

00:17:38.000 And if he's a disaster for the conservative movement, then he's a disaster for the country.

00:17:42.000 In any case, Ted Cruz's father makes the counter-argument to Dennis' Trump is at least better than Hillary.

00:17:49.000 He says Trump will actually be worse than Hillary.

00:17:51.000 I agree with Cruz's father.

00:17:52.000 Here's the explanation.

00:17:54.000 We've got to realize Donald Trump really is more of a Democrat than a Republican.

00:18:00.000 He has been funding Democratic people like

00:18:05.000 It's

00:18:35.000 Okay, so his argument is basically that Trump is a leftist in sheep's clothing, which is true.

00:18:40.000 I've argued this a million times.

00:18:41.000 I've gone through all of Trump's policies.

00:18:43.000 He agrees with Bernie Sanders on trade.

00:18:45.000 He agrees with the nativists on immigration.

00:18:48.000 He agrees with leftist policies on big government and redistribution of wealth.

00:18:52.000 He's somebody who agrees with the idea that entitlements have to stay.

00:18:55.000 He doesn't want a bigger military.

00:18:57.000 He wants an isolationist foreign policy.

00:18:59.000 On social policy, he is an awkward advocate at best, and in reality he doesn't really care about social policy.

00:19:05.000 He believes that same-sex marriage should stay how it is at the Supreme Court level, and he believes that abortion really should stay how it is on the national level.

00:19:12.000 All these things, I think, are true of Trump.

00:19:15.000 But, here's the problem.

00:19:16.000 On the one hand, you have Cruz arguing, we need to come together.

00:19:19.000 On the other hand, because he has to, he's arguing... So, back up.

00:19:24.000 He says, we need to come together.

00:19:26.000 Then, the Trump people say, okay, let's come together around me.

00:19:29.000 So Cruz's argument, it has to be, he can't make the argument, I'm better than Trump, because he's losing to Trump.

00:19:35.000 So the argument has to be, but Trump is worse than whoever comes next.

00:19:38.000 Trump is worse than Hillary.

00:19:39.000 But he can't make that argument and still call for unity.

00:19:42.000 Because if you make the argument that Trump is worse than Hillary, unifying behind me, then you're telling all the Trump supporters that they're supporting somebody who's worse than Hillary, they don't unify behind Cruz.

00:19:50.000 So these are two mutually exclusive arguments, and Trump is utilizing the conflict between the two arguments to run down the middle.

00:19:58.000 Unify around me and I'm better than Hillary.

00:20:00.000 And these are arguments that a lot of people are falling for.

00:20:03.000 One of the people who apparently has fallen for this is Sean Hannity.

00:20:06.000 Sean has become a very strong advocate for Donald Trump.

00:20:11.000 In the past few months, there are a lot of people who have noted that Sean seems to be giving very favorable coverage to Trump.

00:20:15.000 He's given him well over 40 interviews.

00:20:17.000 He tends to coach him through the Trump interviews.

00:20:20.000 That's his prerogative.

00:20:21.000 It's his show.

00:20:21.000 He can do that.

00:20:23.000 What I object to is Sean or anybody else not making their biases clear.

00:20:26.000 If you've been listening to the show for any period of time, you know I support Senator Cruz and that I think that Donald Trump is, as I put it, on national television a smoking garbage heap of human debris.

00:20:35.000 Right?

00:20:35.000 I think he's terrible.

00:20:37.000 What I object to is that Sean has been doing the same thing a lot of the folks in the mainstream media have been doing.

00:20:42.000 And I don't think he's, I don't know that he's doing it consciously.

00:20:45.000 There are a lot of folks in the mainstream media who pretend they are objective when they clearly have biases.

00:20:49.000 Sean clearly likes Trump more than he likes Cruz.

00:20:52.000 It comes out in this interview.

00:20:53.000 Here's what it sounded like when Trump asks Cruz about the you're winning delegates without the popular vote routine and Cruz answers him and Sean doesn't like the answer.

00:21:02.000 People that, I guess, on the first ballot are going to Donald Trump, but representatives of yours talk to them and are persuading them to vote for you on a second ballot.

00:21:12.000 That is an important question, because I think most people would like to know how this works, and I really am asking you, it's more than a process question.

00:21:21.000 It's an integrity of the election question, and everybody's asking me this question.

00:21:26.000 So I'm giving you an opportunity to explain it.

00:21:28.000 Sean, the only people asking this question are the hardcore Donald Trump supporters.

00:21:32.000 Why do you do this every single time?

00:21:36.000 No, you've got to stop.

00:21:37.000 Every time I have you on the air and I ask a legitimate question, you try to throw this in my face.

00:21:41.000 I'm getting sick of it.

00:21:43.000 I've had you on more than any other candidate on radio and TV.

00:21:47.000 So if I ask you, Senator, a legitimate question to explain to the audience, why don't you just answer it?

00:21:51.000 Sean, can I answer your question without being interrupted?

00:21:53.000 Go ahead.

00:21:54.000 In the last three weeks, there have been five elections in five states.

00:21:58.000 Utah, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Colorado, Wyoming.

00:22:03.000 We've won all five.

00:22:05.000 Over 1.3 million people voted in those five states.

00:22:09.000 We won all five.

00:22:11.000 All of this noise and complaining and whining has come from the Trump campaign, because they don't like the fact

00:22:17.000 That they've lost five elections in a row.

00:22:19.000 That Republicans are uniting behind our campaign so they're screaming on drudge and it's getting echoed.

00:22:25.000 This notion of voterless election.

00:22:27.000 It is nonsense.

00:22:28.000 They are making it up.

00:22:30.000 Over 1.3 million people voted.

00:22:33.000 So everything Cruz is saying here is true.

00:22:35.000 What led to the outburst from Hannity about, you're not answering my questions, you have to answer my questions, it's terrible you won't answer my questions, you keep coming on here and accusing me of things, was that Hannity had asked him the question twice.

00:22:58.000 First, Cruz tried to misdirect jobs.

00:23:00.000 Then he gave an answer that Hannity didn't like, and then basically you heard Hannity essentially say that the elections are rigged.

00:23:05.000 Right?

00:23:06.000 That's what he's saying.

00:23:06.000 When he says this calls into question the integrity of the elections, the elections are rigged, he's saying to Cruz, you're cheating, basically.

00:23:12.000 And so Cruz responds with, the only people who think I'm cheating are Trump people.

00:23:15.000 And Hannity says, basically, how dare you call me a Trump person?

00:23:20.000 Again, if Sean wants to back Trump, that's his prerogative.

00:23:23.000 Levin backs Cruz.

00:23:24.000 I back Cruz.

00:23:25.000 You know, there are a lot of people who back different candidates.

00:23:27.000 That's okay.

00:23:27.000 But, let's take a different example.

00:23:30.000 Sean is saying that he treats all the candidates at least relatively equally.

00:23:32.000 He has Trump on a lot.

00:23:33.000 He has Cruz on a lot.

00:23:36.000 The day after,

00:23:37.000 Donald Trump went on national TV and was asked about the KKK by Jake Tapper and David Duke, who had expressed their support for Donald Trump.

00:23:44.000 And Donald Trump pretended he didn't know who either of these people were.

00:23:46.000 He didn't know what the group was, he'd never heard of the KKK, and David Duke was just some weird guy he'd never heard of, right?

00:23:52.000 Literally the day after that happened, Sean did a 30-minute interview with Donald Trump.

00:23:56.000 A 30-minute interview.

00:23:57.000 Zero times in that 30-minute interview did he ask him about that issue.

00:24:01.000 So he says, I'm getting this question a lot from people who are asking me about, you know, the election cycle and how this is working, and I feel like I have to ask you the question.

00:24:09.000 He doesn't feel the need to ask Donald Trump very many hard questions.

00:24:11.000 And again, his prerogative, his prerogative.

00:24:14.000 But the media, I think that Sean is endemic of a media establishment that have decided that Trump is going to be the guy.

00:24:21.000 And there are a lot of folks at Fox News who have decided Trump is going to be the guy.

00:24:23.000 It's not just Sean who likes the idea of Trump as the nominee.

00:24:27.000 Obviously, Andrea Tanteros likes it.

00:24:28.000 The folks at Fox and friends like it.

00:24:30.000 Eric Bolling likes it.

00:24:31.000 There are a lot of people on the Trump train over at Fox headquarters.

00:24:34.000 There are a lot of people on the Trump train at the New York Post.

00:24:37.000 There are some people on the Trump train at the Wall Street Journal.

00:24:39.000 There are lots of people who are on the Trump train and so they're buying into the dueling Trump narratives of I'm winning but they're not going to give it to me so they're cheating me and also you need to unify behind me because I will be better than Hillary and Cruz doesn't have a great comeback to either of these unless he's willing to say what his father says and he's not.

00:24:58.000 Right?

00:24:58.000 He's not.

00:24:58.000 He's not willing to say that Trump will be worse than Hillary.

00:25:01.000 I fully believe that for conservatism, Trump will be worse than Hillary because he will rip away the heart of conservatism, plant in its place an ugly nationalist populism that does not represent anything conservatism, and then call it conservatism, damning generations of conservatives to have to fight within the conservative movement for the meaning of conservatism.

00:25:20.000 That's what Donald Trump has done.

00:25:22.000 But again, the media are now interested in consolidating and ending this whole thing.

00:25:25.000 They want this race to be over.

00:25:27.000 They want this race over right now.

00:25:28.000 And technically, it's still not over.

00:25:30.000 Technically, it's still not over.

00:25:31.000 I am with Andrew Klavan.

00:25:33.000 Yesterday, I heard Clavin on his show.

00:25:35.000 He said, if Trump comes up one delegate short, then Cruz should not only attempt to take the nomination from Donald Trump, who doesn't own it.

00:25:43.000 He shouldn't only attempt to take the nomination.

00:25:45.000 He should also steal his underwear and tie his shoelaces together.

00:25:48.000 I am fully on board with this.

00:25:49.000 Whatever it takes, within the rules, to stop Donald Trump, I'm willing to do.

00:25:54.000 If he wins outright, then he wins outright.

00:25:56.000 And that's just the way the rules work.

00:25:57.000 I'm not willing to change the rules in order to stop Donald Trump.

00:26:00.000 And then people will get what they deserve.

00:26:01.000 Because I'm not going to show up to the polls.

00:26:02.000 And by the way,

00:26:03.000 The idea that all the never-Trump people, that all of us are to blame if Trump loses?

00:26:07.000 You can't have it both ways, gang.

00:26:09.000 I've been hearing nothing, nothing from the Trump people, but you never-Trump people don't matter.

00:26:14.000 You're a minority.

00:26:14.000 Get on the train or you'll be run over.

00:26:16.000 You're a nonsensical movement that has no consolidated hold.

00:26:20.000 It doesn't matter what you do.

00:26:21.000 Okay, you can't claim that we're ineffective and then blame us if your boy loses the election.

00:26:25.000 If your boy's such a powerhouse he can run to the nomination without us, then boy, oh boy, shouldn't he be such a powerhouse that he can run all the way to the presidency without me?

00:26:32.000 Shouldn't he?

00:26:33.000 Or does he need my vote, it turns out?

00:26:35.000 And if he needs my vote, then perhaps he should stop acting like the Donald Trump that we've seen for the past few months.

00:26:40.000 Because if you'll recall, there are some people who are Never Trump all along.

00:26:43.000 I'm a recently converted Never Trump guy on the calendar.

00:26:48.000 I always thought there were questions about Trump, but very early on I was enthusiastic about the idea that Donald Trump was going to speak some truth to people who needed to hear it, that Donald Trump was going to raise issues that other people couldn't because he was a celebrity.

00:26:59.000 I wrote all about this at the time.

00:27:00.000 And then Donald Trump gradually revealed himself, like the layers of an onion.

00:27:03.000 He gradually burned off the layers of the onion to reveal that deep down inside of him is a leftist core and an arrogant narcissism that cannot be shaken.

00:27:12.000 And that's when I got off the train.

00:27:14.000 If you want to win people over, I don't understand the argument from the Trump folks.

00:27:16.000 The argument from the Trump folks is, Trump deserves to win the nomination, and in fact, he should be handed the nomination, because Donald Trump is winning all the votes, right?

00:27:25.000 He's winning all the votes, and therefore, Donald Trump should be handed the nomination, and more than that, he should be given the nomination because he's bringing in people that Romney couldn't.

00:27:33.000 Okay, you can't argue those people should be pandered to, but if I decide to stay home because I don't like Donald Trump, then I should be punished.

00:27:40.000 Right?

00:27:40.000 You gotta cater to someone.

00:27:42.000 You can either cater to the conservative movement or you can cater to the people who stayed home for Mitt Romney because they were too upset with the idea that they were being out-competed by foreign sources of labor, for example.

00:27:52.000 Or they were too upset that Mitt Romney wasn't overtly endorsing the alt-right.

00:27:57.000 But again, all of Trump's media friends have come to the rescue.

00:27:59.000 Joe Scarborough

00:28:00.000 And they're working with a candidate who is special, who has talents without a doubt.

00:28:05.000 But getting the delegates and mastering the rules, it's not going to be easy.

00:28:08.000 You watch the power of the headlines.

00:28:30.000 of this massive New York landslide.

00:28:32.000 You watch the power of the landslide in Pennsylvania, in Connecticut, across the Northeast.

00:28:39.000 I've said it for some time, if you want to stop a frontrunner, you stop them when they're leaving South Carolina.

00:28:45.000 I will tell you there is a cumulative impact, Mike, and it's like you're going down a hill and the hill gets steeper and the, you know,

00:28:55.000 Everything starts going faster.

00:28:57.000 It's gonna... Ted Cruz, and if Ted Cruz finishes in third place, I'm sorry, his entire argument goes up in smoke.

00:29:06.000 I don't disagree with you on that.

00:29:08.000 His entire argument goes up in smoke if New Yorkers, the same people who just elected Bill de Blasio, don't like him.

00:29:14.000 Right?

00:29:14.000 If New York, a state that has not gone Republican since 19... When's the last time New York went Republican?

00:29:19.000 It's been a long time.

00:29:20.000 It was 84, I think.

00:29:21.000 Since Ronald Reagan, they haven't gone Republican in New York.

00:29:24.000 It's been a while.

00:29:25.000 Maybe 88.

00:29:26.000 It's been a long time.

00:29:27.000 84 for short.

00:29:28.000 Yeah, 84 was the last time they went Republican.

00:29:31.000 That's the state that decides who the Republican nominee should be.

00:29:34.000 The media are ready to consolidate.

00:29:35.000 They're ready for this to be over.

00:29:36.000 They want their unity.

00:29:37.000 Rudy Giuliani says the same thing.

00:29:39.000 He says, these never-Trump people, they need to calm down and just get behind the guy.

00:29:42.000 They just need to get behind Trump.

00:29:43.000 I think we've got to calm this down.

00:29:45.000 We need some objectivity.

00:29:47.000 I have a lot of very good friends, who you know, that don't support Donald Trump.

00:29:54.000 I want to bring them along.

00:29:57.000 I think it's possible to bring them along.

00:29:58.000 Because I know when they calm down, and I've been in tough elections, and I know what happens when you calm down, they're going to realize that Donald Trump is much better for this country than Hillary Clinton.

00:30:09.000 What do you make of what's happening on the delegate side of things?

00:30:12.000 In other words... This is going to turn some of those delegates.

00:30:16.000 You know some of those delegates that were moving toward Cruz?

00:30:19.000 When they see a big win in New York like this, when they see the kind of cross-sectional support that Trump has that Cruz does not have,

00:30:29.000 When they see that tiny little number that Cruz got in New York, how could he ever win New York?

00:30:35.000 How could he ever win Massachusetts?

00:30:37.000 How could he ever win California?

00:30:38.000 Do you think Trump can win those states?

00:30:40.000 Those are deep blue states.

00:30:42.000 I think Trump is viable in almost everywhere.

00:30:46.000 Trump is Hillary's worst nightmare.

00:30:49.000 Why do you say that?

00:30:50.000 I say that because she knows how to run against

00:30:53.000 That's true.

00:30:54.000 And he did for years.

00:31:11.000 I would want to run against Senator Cruz.

00:31:14.000 This is no disrespect to Senator Cruz.

00:31:16.000 I have great respect for him.

00:31:17.000 So they're already moving on to general election talk, right?

00:31:20.000 Trump will beat Hillary.

00:31:21.000 Trump will not beat Hillary.

00:31:22.000 Again, Hillary last night got more than two times as many votes in the state of New York as Donald Trump, and he's the one bragging about his massive turnout.

00:31:29.000 She got over a million votes in the state of New York.

00:31:31.000 He got 500,000 votes in the state of New York.

00:31:34.000 She more than doubled his output.

00:31:36.000 She crushes him in New York.

00:31:37.000 She crushes him in Massachusetts.

00:31:38.000 This argument, this electoral argument in favor of him doesn't work either.

00:31:41.000 But again, the point is, even the left media, they're now consolidating around the... And you knew this was how the narrative was going to shift.

00:31:47.000 So here's what I'm going to say to you today.

00:31:49.000 Don't be taken in by the narrative that this has to be over.

00:31:53.000 Don't be taken in by the narrative that Trump has to be the nominee.

00:31:57.000 Don't be taken in by the idea that the only way we achieve unity is if these Trumpsters get what they want and the Cruz people just sit down and shut up and conservatives just go home and cry.

00:32:06.000 Don't be taken in by that.

00:32:07.000 Don't be taken in by the idea that Donald Trump, if he gets anywhere close to the nomination, he has to be handed it, lest Hillary win the presidency.

00:32:14.000 I don't believe that, number one.

00:32:16.000 And number two, Donald Trump is a bad man.

00:32:19.000 I am not in the habit of putting bad men in positions where they get to win power.

00:32:22.000 This is not what I stand for.

00:32:24.000 And so I'm not going to stand with that and neither should anybody else, despite the kind of, let's just move on and let's attack Hillary Clinton.

00:32:30.000 Let's not spend more time on Trump.

00:32:31.000 I get this all the time from people because I've spent my entire career attacking the left.

00:32:35.000 And again, people ask, okay, why do you spend your career attacking the left and then attack Donald Trump?

00:32:39.000 Because Donald Trump is the left.

00:32:40.000 You infiltrate my party, you infiltrate my ideology, and then you try to bend it to your populist, tyrannical,

00:32:47.000 I expect Hillary to be a snake.

00:32:49.000 I expect Hillary to be a snake.

00:32:50.000 There's a difference between a snake in the garden and a snake in my kitchen.

00:33:00.000 They get treated slightly differently.

00:33:02.000 And Donald Trump is a snake in my kitchen, for sure.

00:33:05.000 Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, Hillary's already consolidated.

00:33:08.000 So she's won, and now she's ready to do to—basically, she's trying to do to Sanders what Trump is trying to do to Cruz, although Hillary actually will win this outright, whereas it's still questionable whether Trump can.

00:33:22.000 Hillary is obviously pivoting to the general election.

00:33:24.000 She's trying to appeal.

00:33:25.000 She's doing something Trump didn't.

00:33:26.000 You didn't see Trump turn to the Cruz people and say, look, I'm a conservative.

00:33:30.000 I know we've had our fights with Ted Cruz.

00:33:32.000 I know that we've had our disagreements about policy, but I'm better than Hillary and here's why.

00:33:38.000 He spent zero minutes doing that last night.

00:33:40.000 Hillary did exactly that with regard to the Bernie Sanders supporters last night in New York state.

00:33:44.000 Here's, by the way, Bernie Sanders won more votes in New York state than Donald Trump did.

00:33:48.000 And to all the people who supported Senator Sanders, I believe there is much more that unites us than divides us.

00:33:52.000 I hope you will join the 1.1 million people who've already contributed at HillaryClinton.com.

00:34:20.000 And by the way, most with less than $100 because we have more work to do.

00:34:30.000 Under the bright lights of New York, we have seen that it's not enough to diagnose problems.

00:34:38.000 You have to explain how you'd actually solve the problems.

00:34:43.000 Okay, so there's Hillary Clinton apparently wearing her mother's carpet.

00:34:48.000 Yeah, I'm not sure.

00:34:48.000 Her sartorial choices are deeply lacking.

00:34:52.000 Hillary Clinton says, OK, we're going to come around me, come around me, and now we're going to go attack the Republicans.

00:34:57.000 That's not an argument.

00:34:58.000 You heard that argument from Cruz.

00:34:59.000 You didn't hear that argument from Trump.

00:35:01.000 You didn't hear that argument from Trump.

00:35:02.000 Because the Trump people are vindictive, and they're going to come after anybody who disagrees with Trump.

00:35:07.000 And that's just the way that this is going to go.

00:35:09.000 This doesn't have to be handed to Trump.

00:35:11.000 Hillary already is preparing for the general.

00:35:13.000 The fact that this Harriton, the most defeatable Democrat candidate in modern history, that this person is likely to be the next president.

00:35:22.000 The betting markets, by the way, have her upward of 70% in terms of winning not only the nomination, but the presidency itself.

00:35:29.000 The fact that she is so eminently defeatable, but she's going to be able to win because we're going to nominate somebody like Donald Trump is quite astonishing.

00:35:37.000 Okay, time for some things that I like and then some things that I hate.

00:35:40.000 So first, a couple of things that I like.

00:35:43.000 So yesterday, I spoke at Young America's Foundation event over at a college.

00:35:52.000 In Santa Barbara and they tried that the college did their best to sort of shut down the events as best they could without formally shutting it down So they forgot to put out signs directing people where to go.

00:36:01.000 It was a packed house.

00:36:01.000 Anyway, they they Insisted that a professor both preface and also finish my speech with little statements at the beginning and end To kind of surround my evil statements so that he could he could put them in their proper their proper context And they insisted there be no taping

00:36:17.000 And so we came up with a creative solution to the, we're not going to allow you to tape this and we're not going to allow you to stream this.

00:36:23.000 I just taped the whole thing myself on a selfie stick because there's no violation of privacy if I give me permission to tape me.

00:36:30.000 So this is what it looked like yesterday at this college.

00:36:33.000 So, number one, for people watching me online, the reason you got this odd angle is because I give me permission to tape me.

00:36:42.000 Okay, because Les Mons has these ridiculous rules about people not taping people for public reasons.

00:36:47.000 I am a fan of tape for the same reason I am a fan of cops wearing body cams.

00:36:51.000 I think the tape allows people to understand what is and is not happening in given places.

00:36:56.000 So instead of there being a bunch of varying reports made, this is...

00:37:00.000 And this is reflecting on me.

00:37:01.000 Okay.

00:37:02.000 So first of all, thanks to Young America's Foundation.

00:37:05.000 And then went on like that.

00:37:06.000 So we did the entire speech with me holding the selfie stick.

00:37:09.000 This is what I've been working out for and training for all of these years.

00:37:12.000 And for people who are asking, no, that's not my selfie stick.

00:37:15.000 That in fact is Lindsay's selfie stick.

00:37:17.000 So thank you.

00:37:17.000 Thank you, Lindsay, for being narcissistic enough to own a selfie stick.

00:37:20.000 Really appreciate it.

00:37:23.000 Okay, other things that I like.

00:37:25.000 So, we've been doing musicals this week.

00:37:27.000 Things that I like musicals.

00:37:28.000 There's a great musical, I'm sure a lot of people know, called The King and I. And there are a couple numbers from The King and I that are very famous.

00:37:34.000 But one of the lesser known numbers from The King and I, which is really quite grand, is a number called Something Wonderful.

00:37:39.000 And the lyrics to it are just beautiful.

00:37:40.000 So yesterday we talked about masculinity in musicals.

00:37:44.000 We talked about how Seven Brides for Seven Brothers was about the notion that the male aggressive instinct must be channeled

00:37:50.000 Toward marriage, and procreation, and creation, and protection, right?

00:37:55.000 That's what Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is about.

00:37:57.000 Oh, this is a scene in King and I, which is my wife's favorite musical, in which one of the wives, it's the king of Siam, so he has many, many wives, but his kind of chief wife, his number one wife, she sings this song about why she sticks with the king, even though the king is a tyrant, and is personally authoritarian, and here's what she sings, and it's quite beautiful.

00:38:20.000 Please, Lady Tiang, I... I simply cannot go to him, especially without his having asked for me.

00:38:28.000 What more can I say to you?

00:38:32.000 This is a man who thinks with his heart.

00:38:37.000 His heart is not always wise.

00:38:43.000 This is a man who stumbles and falls, but this is a man who tries.

00:38:53.000 This is a man you forgive and forgive and help and protect as long as you live.

00:39:19.000 He will not always say what you would have him say.

00:39:30.000 But now and then he'll say something wonderful.

00:39:42.000 The thoughtless things he'll do will hurt and worry you.

00:39:53.000 Then all at once he'll do something wonderful.

00:40:04.000 He has a thousand dreams that won't come true.

00:40:13.000 You know that he believes in them and that's enough.

00:40:25.000 Okay, so it's a beautiful number, and that sentiment, which is what a wife is for.

00:40:31.000 And there's also what a husband is for, by the way.

00:40:33.000 What a wife is for, that last line that she says there, and Oscar Hammerstein is an unparalleled lyricist.

00:40:38.000 I mean, this is what good lyrics sound like.

00:40:40.000 It's not about the showy, it's not about how many syllables you can fit in a line, it's about the conveying of human emotion in terms that people can understand with rhythm and lilt, and it's just, it's beautiful.

00:40:51.000 That last line, he

00:40:54.000 He has a thousand dreams that won't come true.

00:40:56.000 You know that he believes in them and that's enough for you.

00:40:58.000 That's a beautiful sentiment because it's true for everyone.

00:41:01.000 It's true for everyone.

00:41:01.000 We all have dreams that won't come true.

00:41:03.000 But if you love somebody, then you believe in the dream because you believe in the person.

00:41:06.000 And even if they don't achieve the dream, you've achieved a dream by being part of the journey toward that with the person you love.

00:41:14.000 It's an amazing sentiment.

00:41:15.000 It's a beautiful musical, it really is.

00:41:17.000 And don't bother seeing any of the newer versions.

00:41:20.000 Go back, watch the movie.

00:41:21.000 The movie's really good.

00:41:22.000 Marnie Nixon sings for Deborah Carr.

00:41:25.000 And Yul Brynner, of course, gives one of the iconic screen performances and stage performances of all time, the one of Tony.

00:41:29.000 He is the only king in The King and I. It's a great musical.

00:41:33.000 Okay, so, now for a couple of things that I hate.

00:41:35.000 So, today, this is actually not a thing I hate.

00:41:37.000 Today, they announced that Andrew Jackson, who was in fact a very bad guy, will be taking off the $20 bill in favor of Harriet Tubman.

00:41:44.000 This is generally fine with me.

00:41:46.000 I think that there's a good reason to take Jackson off the 20.

00:41:48.000 I think there's a good reason to put Harriet Tubman on some sort of monument.

00:41:52.000 I don't know if the 20 is the best place.

00:41:54.000 It seems to me that there are people like Ronald Reagan would probably be a better choice for me because I don't make a judgment as to who should be put

00:42:01.000 On money based on we need a woman we need a black person or any of the rest of it Harriet Tubman is just as deserving as a lot of other people and she was a hero and by the way a gun-toting Republican so there's that but Harriet Tubman you know who I think there's an open question as to whether Harriet Tubman is more deserving of being on money than say Ronald Reagan

00:42:19.000 But I don't think that there's any question that Harriet Tubman is more deserving of being on money than Andrew Jackson.

00:42:23.000 That, I think, is almost inarguable.

00:42:25.000 So, that I have no problem with as a general matter at all.

00:42:28.000 There's some people like Ben Carson who are very upset about this.

00:42:31.000 It's like, Ben, you just endorsed Donald Trump.

00:42:33.000 Like, you know, like, really?

00:42:34.000 This is where you're gonna put your energies?

00:42:36.000 Okay, I do have one objection.

00:42:38.000 The objection is, Alexander Hamilton's on the 10.

00:42:42.000 He stays on the 10.

00:42:43.000 It's the reason he stays on the 10.

00:42:45.000 So the reason that he stays on the 10 is not because he deserves to stay on the 10, which he does as the father of monetary policy in the country.

00:42:51.000 The reason that Alexander Hamilton stays on the 10 is because a bunch of effete Upper West Side leftists like the musical Hamilton.

00:42:58.000 This is really what it is.

00:42:59.000 And they liked this musical, and they didn't know anything about Hamilton until they watched this musical.

00:43:04.000 They hadn't read Ron Chernow's book.

00:43:05.000 They didn't know a damn thing about him.

00:43:07.000 But now there's a musical with a bunch of people of color starring as the Founding Fathers and as Alexander Hamilton and George Washington and rapping about it.

00:43:15.000 And now they realize Hamilton's cool, so we have to leave him.

00:43:19.000 So, I object to this on two grounds.

00:43:21.000 One, if you are so stupid that you are voting for the popularity of the Founding Fathers based on somebody writing a bad musical, you shouldn't be making policy at all.

00:43:29.000 Okay?

00:43:29.000 It's just dumb.

00:43:30.000 And my next hope, by the way, is that somebody writes a bad rap musical about the Constitution, and maybe the left will decide to defend that too.

00:43:37.000 Because apparently that's how leftists decide to like things, is if somebody writes a crappy rap musical about it.

00:43:42.000 The second thing I don't like is the actual musical itself.

00:43:44.000 So, there are a couple things I want to say about Hamilton the Musical.

00:43:47.000 I mentioned it yesterday.

00:43:48.000 And a lot of people I know, friends who have seen it, who love it, just think it's great.

00:43:53.000 Okay, I have listened to it.

00:43:54.000 I think it is garbaggio.

00:43:56.000 I think that it is crapola.

00:43:58.000 Not the plot.

00:43:58.000 The plot is fine, because it turns out the plot is very close to Hamilton's actual history, which is fascinating.

00:44:04.000 What I hate about Hamilton the Musical is really two things.

00:44:07.000 One is the idea behind Hamilton the Musical and the reason that it's cast with a bunch of minority folks is specifically because the idea is we have to bring it to a younger generation who won't understand it if it's a bunch of white people who are walking around singing about things.

00:44:21.000 Right?

00:44:21.000 It has to be people of color.

00:44:23.000 This is racist.

00:44:25.000 This is racist.

00:44:26.000 When I was growing up, I grew up, as I've mentioned before, on the musical 1776.

00:44:29.000 There are this many Jews in 1776, right?

00:44:33.000 I'm making a big zero with my hand, folks.

00:44:35.000 There are zero Jews in 1776.

00:44:36.000 I used to dress up as John Adams every single Purim, right?

00:44:40.000 That's like the Jewish Halloween.

00:44:41.000 Every single time, I would dress up as John Adams.

00:44:43.000 I had the full-length red coat, I had the white powdered wig, I had the whole deal.

00:44:48.000 I used to tuck my...

00:44:49.000 My pants into my socks.

00:44:51.000 Right, so he had the knee breaches.

00:44:52.000 Like, I used to do the whole deal.

00:44:55.000 I didn't need John Adams to be a Jew.

00:44:57.000 Right, this comes from the same place where people decide that Jesus has to, if you're white, Jesus has to look like an Aryan.

00:45:01.000 Or if you're black, Jesus was black.

00:45:03.000 Right, this is this whole routine where I can only root for people who look like me.

00:45:07.000 Right?

00:45:07.000 I'm sorry, but most people don't look like you.

00:45:10.000 People are either good or bad based on what they do, not on what they look like.

00:45:13.000 So, the idea that if you had cast Hamilton as a white guy, because he was actually a white guy, I mean, like, I'm waiting to hear the excuse for casting Martin Luther King as a white guy, because we have to make his message appeal to white people.

00:45:23.000 Right?

00:45:24.000 It's backwards.

00:45:25.000 If you have trained your children that the only people they can root for are people who look like you, you have done a terrible job with your children.

00:45:33.000 So maybe that's the truth.

00:45:34.000 Maybe that's the tribal world in which we now live.

00:45:36.000 If so, it's an ugly world, and I don't like it.

00:45:38.000 The second reason I don't like Hamilton is the critics are just going nuts for this thing.

00:45:42.000 I've listened to it, and this is not a work of craft.

00:45:46.000 It's not a work of craft.

00:45:47.000 I was talking to my father about this yesterday, because my dad writes musicals, and we were talking about the fact that if you look at classical music, right?

00:45:55.000 The worst classical musicians, the people who you don't- the composers I don't like, right?

00:45:59.000 I'm not a big fan of Wagner.

00:46:01.000 The man was a master at his craft.

00:46:02.000 He at least knew how to write music.

00:46:04.000 He knew how to write for all the various instruments.

00:46:06.000 He knew how to orchestrate.

00:46:07.000 It took him time to learn.

00:46:08.000 He didn't fall out of bed one morning and then write Tristan and Isolde, right?

00:46:12.000 That's not what happened.

00:46:14.000 And this is true for most things in life.

00:46:16.000 I tend to like crap, particularly in the arts.

00:46:19.000 People who have had training, and now that you have the training, sometimes you can violate rules or write new rules, but you have to at least have had the training.

00:46:26.000 And it's reflected in what you do.

00:46:27.000 This is why I hate rap, because there are a bunch of people who think that they're rappers because they woke up one morning and discovered how to rhyme, as Jeremy Boring put it, like a third grader.

00:46:35.000 And now, okay, now I'm a craftsman.

00:46:36.000 No, you're not a craftsman.

00:46:37.000 If you decided to be something today, and you're good at it four hours from now,

00:46:41.000 It's not a craft.

00:46:43.000 Okay?

00:46:43.000 It didn't take craft, and it didn't take skill.

00:46:45.000 There's a great scene in a movie called Whiplash, which I've recommended highly.

00:46:48.000 Great movie.

00:46:48.000 There's a great scene where this guy who's a trained drummer is sitting at a table, and he's talking about how there's this jazz competition, and somebody says to him, you know, isn't the whole thing just subjective, right?

00:46:59.000 Isn't it all just subjective?

00:47:02.000 Like, no one can tell who's better and who's worse.

00:47:04.000 And he says, no.

00:47:06.000 No, it's not subjective.

00:47:07.000 It is not subjective.

00:47:08.000 There is such a thing as objective skill.

00:47:10.000 Okay, what I don't like about Hamilton is that, objectively speaking, it does not take very much skill to write this musical.

00:47:16.000 It doesn't.

00:47:17.000 Okay, it's a lot of syllables, and the more syllables you have, actually, the easier it is to write lyrics, because you have more room to play.

00:47:24.000 Writing pitter-patter lyrics is actually the easiest thing.

00:47:26.000 The hardest thing is to do what you saw Hammerstein do there, which is write the lyrics and you don't even notice the lyricist.

00:47:31.000 You don't even notice him.

00:47:32.000 He's just there.

00:47:33.000 Right?

00:47:33.000 Like, the person is speaking and you don't even know who wrote the lyrics.

00:47:36.000 The problem I have with Sondheim, generally, is that you can tell it's Sondheim.

00:47:39.000 It's like Aaron Sorkin's writing in movies.

00:47:40.000 It's always Aaron Sorkin.

00:47:42.000 And you go, oh, that's a brilliant line, because that's a Sorkin line.

00:47:44.000 But you're not supposed to notice.

00:47:46.000 Right?

00:47:46.000 It's supposed to be the character who's saying the line.

00:47:48.000 Well, in Hamilton, it is this.

00:47:50.000 It's somebody who fell out of bed one morning and said, I'm going to write a rap musical about Alexander Hamilton.

00:47:56.000 So, by way of contrast, I'm going to show you what Kraft looks like versus what Kraft does not look like.

00:48:02.000 This is the opening number from Hamilton the musical.

00:48:04.000 We're not going to show the video, but here's what it sounds like.

00:48:06.000 And then I'm going to play you what is probably the best musical theater number ever written, which is the very end of a quartet.

00:48:15.000 Actually, it's a quintet in Sweeney Todd, which I've referred to before, but we haven't played on the show.

00:48:20.000 Here's the segment from Hamilton.

00:48:22.000 I'll explain what I don't like about it, pretty much everything, and then we'll get to Sweeney, just to show you the back-to-back contrast of craft versus no craft.

00:48:29.000 Here's no craft.

00:48:34.000 How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore, and a Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean, by Providence, impoverished and squalor, grow up to be a hero and a scholar?

00:48:50.000 The ten dollar founding father without a father, got a lot farther by working a lot harder, by being a lot smarter, by being a self starter, by fourteen,

00:49:02.000 They placed him in charge of a trading charter.

00:49:05.000 And every day while slaves were being slaughtered and carted away across the waves, he struggled and kept his guard up.

00:49:12.000 Inside he was longing for something to be a part of.

00:49:15.000 The brother was ready to beg still.

00:49:18.000 Okay, so it goes on like this for four solid minutes.

00:49:25.000 There's no melody.

00:49:26.000 There's no harmony.

00:49:27.000 It's just rhythm.

00:49:30.000 And this is my problem with rap generally.

00:49:31.000 I'll also point out that there are a lot of forced rhymes that aren't actually rhymes there.

00:49:35.000 Father does not rhyme with harder.

00:49:37.000 They're not even close.

00:49:38.000 Right?

00:49:39.000 When they say, he says, slaughtered and carded.

00:49:42.000 Carded does not rhyme with slaughtered.

00:49:43.000 Right?

00:49:44.000 These are, this is very sloppy rhyming.

00:49:46.000 So just from a craft perspective, you know, he's using the accent to cover for the fact that these things do not rhyme.

00:49:52.000 And if you speak vaguely, then these things sort of sound the same, but not really.

00:49:56.000 Right?

00:49:56.000 So that's real, that's, it's not precise.

00:49:59.000 It's imprecise.

00:49:59.000 And imprecise is sloppy, and sloppy is bad craft.

00:50:02.000 Beyond that,

00:50:03.000 No, if your entire theme underneath is just you hitting two notes on a piano, I'm sorry, no.

00:50:09.000 Okay, now, here's what Kraft looks like.

00:50:11.000 Okay, this is the second half of a number called Kiss Me from Sweeney Todd.

00:50:14.000 This is the second act, and what you're gonna hear is two lovers singing with each other, and they're both very frantic, which is why they're speaking very quickly, and then above them you're gonna hear the Beatle, who's the constable, the town constable, and the judge,

00:50:27.000 Who is the bad guy, and you're gonna hear, and also, I believe it's just the four of them in this particular number.

00:50:33.000 So it's the four of them, and it is just magnificent.

00:50:37.000 Here's what actual craft sounds like, trained, honed by Stephen Sondheim over the course of decades.

00:50:42.000 Right, the guy started by writing the lyrics to West Side Story, infinitely more sophisticated than anything in the Alexander Hamilton musical.

00:50:50.000 But here's Sweeney Todd, this is the best thing Sondheim ever wrote right here.

00:51:02.000 He means to marry me Monday.

00:51:04.000 What shall I do?

00:51:05.000 I'd rather die.

00:51:06.000 I have a plan.

00:51:06.000 I'll swallow poison on Sunday.

00:51:08.000 That's what I'll do.

00:51:09.000 I'll get some time.

00:51:10.000 I have a plan.

00:51:11.000 Dear, is that a noise?

00:51:11.000 A plan.

00:51:12.000 I think I heard a noise.

00:51:13.000 A plan.

00:51:13.000 Could it be he's in court?

00:51:14.000 He's in court today.

00:51:15.000 Still, that was a noise.

00:51:16.000 Wasn't that a noise?

00:51:16.000 You must have heard that.

00:51:17.000 Kiss me!

00:51:18.000 Oh, sir!

00:51:18.000 Oh, miss!

00:51:18.000 Oh, sir!

00:51:19.000 If he should marry me Monday, what shall I do on my own?

00:51:20.000 We'll fly tonight!

00:51:20.000 Tis Friday, virtually Sunday, what can we do in time so frail?

00:51:22.000 We'll fly tonight!

00:51:22.000 Behind the curtain quick!

00:51:23.000 Tonight!

00:51:23.000 I think I heard a click!

00:51:24.000 Tonight!

00:51:24.000 It was the gate, it's the gate!

00:51:24.000 There's no gate, there's no gate, there's no gate, there's no gate, there's no gate, there's no gate, there's no gate, there's no gate, there's no gate, there's no gate, there's no gate, there's no gate, there's no gate, there's no gate, there's no gate, there's no gate, there's no gate, there's no gate, there's no gate, there's no gate, there's no gate, there's no gate, there's no gate, there's no gate, there's no gate, there's no gate, there's no gate, there's no gate, there's no gate

00:51:38.000 Kiss me!

00:51:39.000 You mean to lie!

00:51:40.000 The plan is made!

00:51:41.000 So sad!

00:51:42.000 So kiss me!

00:51:43.000 I feel afraid!

00:51:44.000 Be not afraid, tonight we're still!

00:51:46.000 And I can't help it!

00:51:48.000 I can't help it!

00:51:50.000 I can't help it!

00:51:51.000 It did not matter that I did not love you!

00:52:01.000 This is craft.

00:52:03.000 This is craft.

00:52:05.000 This is unity of lyric and melody and harmony.

00:52:10.000 Every person in the show actually is a master of their craft.

00:52:12.000 They've actually studied.

00:52:14.000 This is what craft sounds like.

00:52:15.000 So I don't like when art is degraded to no craft.

00:52:19.000 It's just art can be anything.

00:52:20.000 I don't think art can be anything.

00:52:22.000 If you want to define it that way, it's meaningless.

00:52:24.000 Either- if you want to say that art is anything, fine.

00:52:26.000 Good art.

00:52:27.000 Good art requires craft.

00:52:29.000 It requires craft.

00:52:30.000 And I don't hear that in Hamilton, and that's what annoys me, and the kind of sycophantic love for it, which reminds me very much of the sycophantic love for Rent, just because people love the concept of it, even though Rent's a horrible music.

00:52:42.000 It's garbage.

00:52:43.000 Rent is garb- pure garbage.

00:52:45.000 It's a- it's- it's the- it's- Rent is the- the

00:52:48.000 Town dump that you can see from space that exists in New York.

00:52:51.000 It's that bad.

00:52:53.000 But the worship for these musicals is largely based on concept.

00:52:56.000 So, I guarantee you, if Hamilton starred a bunch of white people and it were orchestrated the way that Sweeney Todd is, the critics would have nothing for it.

00:53:02.000 Nothing.

00:53:03.000 It's a hip-hop musical about founding fathers who are black.

00:53:07.000 And so therefore you get away with it, and that's just the way that the critics work.

00:53:10.000 Okay, a couple of quick things that I hate.

00:53:13.000 One is there's a piece now from Daily Beast suggesting that North Carolina's transgender law, which is saying that basically you have to go to the bathroom in the place where you are biologically... that matches your biological sex.

00:53:27.000 They're saying people are committing suicide because of this.

00:53:30.000 And they're saying they're getting more calls to suicide hotlines.

00:53:34.000 The suicide rate in the transgender community is 40%.

00:53:36.000 That has nothing to do with transgender laws.

00:53:39.000 San Francisco has a 40% suicide rate.

00:53:42.000 North Carolina has a 40% suicide rate.

00:53:44.000 Mental illness that is comorbid with depression has a very high suicide rate.

00:53:48.000 That's what's happening in the transgender community, suggesting it's just people being mean to transgenders so they're killing themselves.

00:53:54.000 This is ridiculous.

00:53:55.000 Why weren't black people who weren't allowed to use white water fountains killing themselves?

00:53:58.000 Why?

00:53:59.000 Right?

00:53:59.000 I mean, back during segregation days, why weren't the suicide rates 40% among black people who couldn't use white water fountains?

00:54:04.000 And there were actual signs there that said, white water fountain only.

00:54:07.000 Right?

00:54:07.000 Why weren't they killing themselves?

00:54:09.000 Because this is a bunch of crap.

00:54:10.000 That's why.

00:54:11.000 Okay, second thing.

00:54:12.000 University of North Carolina

00:54:15.000 A bunch of the feminist students.

00:54:16.000 They've decided to embrace being just horrible human beings overall.

00:54:20.000 And the way they've decided to embrace just being horrible human beings overall is they had a bake sale with cookies.

00:54:24.000 The cookies were cut in the shape of babies.

00:54:27.000 And then they broke apart the baby cookies.

00:54:30.000 To give reasons why abortion should remain legal.

00:54:32.000 So they literally ate the heads off the baby cookies.

00:54:35.000 So proving that evil now just enjoys itself totally, they are celebrating abortion.

00:54:40.000 And this is no more safe, legal, and rare.

00:54:42.000 Now they're celebrating abortion.

00:54:44.000 My personal favorite caption, for people who can't see, it shows these baby cookies, these quote-unquote fetus cookies.

00:54:49.000 And you can see sperm cookies there, right?

00:54:51.000 These fetus cookies that they're eating.

00:54:54.000 My favorite one is this caption right here.

00:54:56.000 Let's see if I can read it.

00:54:57.000 It says,

00:54:58.000 My vagina is too pretty to let a fetus crawl out.

00:55:01.000 Well, maybe your mouth is pretty too, but you're happy to let crap crawl out of that.

00:55:05.000 And it turns out that your vagina wasn't too pretty to let a penis in, apparently.

00:55:10.000 So, you know, this whole thing is just, it's... The left now revels in its sin.

00:55:14.000 It's no longer enough to say, people sin, we have to deal with it.

00:55:18.000 Now it's, we have to celebrate the sin.

00:55:19.000 And if you don't celebrate the sin along with us, that means you're intolerant and terrible in every way.

00:55:24.000 Well, I'm not somebody who celebrates sin.

00:55:25.000 I'm not somebody who celebrates the crudities and nastiness of the Trump campaign.

00:55:30.000 I'm not somebody who celebrates the crudity and nastiness of the feminists.

00:55:34.000 I'm not somebody who celebrates crudity and nastiness.

00:55:36.000 I believe that, to bring this all together, I believe that life is a craft.

00:55:40.000 Right?

00:55:41.000 The better you practice, the better you're going to do.

00:55:43.000 The better the decisions you make, the better your life will be, and the better the product will be.

00:55:47.000 I don't believe the product is always equal if you don't spend any time making your decisions, if you don't spend any time thinking things through.

00:55:53.000 Your elected officials are not better if you just rolled out of bed angry one day and voted for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.

00:55:59.000 Take some time to perfect your craft.

00:56:00.000 Take some time to learn about the things that matter to you.

00:56:03.000 Take some time to make your life a better place and that will make other people's lives better and our politics better as well.

00:56:09.000 We'll see you tomorrow, the mailbag.

00:56:10.000 Tomorrow.

00:56:11.000 And we'll give a new number for last-minute emails.

00:56:14.000 New number for last-minute emails.

00:56:16.000 Here it is.

00:56:16.000 And you get first priority.

00:56:18.000 And I will see you tomorrow with the mailbag.

00:56:22.000 Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.

Ep. 108 - Here's My Problem With 'Hamilton'

Summary

Transcript