The Ben Shapiro Show

00:00:00.000 If Democrats could have constructed a candidate in a laboratory designed to do two things this fall, those things would have been one, lose dramatically to Hillary Clinton, and two, destroy the conservative brand at the same time.

00:00:11.000 Which begs the question, was Donald Trump actually constructed in a laboratory by Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Barack Obama?

00:00:19.000 Polls show Donald Trump will lose by double digits to Hillary Clinton.

00:00:22.000 At this point in the 2012 presidential race, the last 10 polls in the RealClearPolitics polling average showed Mitt Romney trailing Barack Obama by 2.2 percentage points on average.

00:00:32.000 Romney ended up losing by 3.9 percentage points.

00:00:35.000 At the same point in 2008, Senator John McCain trailed Obama by an average of 2.4 percentage points in the prior 10 polls.

00:00:41.000 McCain ended up losing by 7.3%.

00:00:44.000 Today, Donald Trump trails Hillary Clinton by an average of 6.9 percentage points.

00:00:50.000 Such results are mirrored in state polling.

00:00:52.000 Trump is way more unpopular than McCain or Romney ever were.

00:00:56.000 Unlike McCain and Romney, he has far less room for movement given his 100% name recognition.

00:01:02.000 And the left has already spent most of its media attention treating Donald Trump with kid gloves for ratings purposes.

00:01:06.000 They haven't even opened up their guns yet.

00:01:08.000 Get ready, there's a tsunami coming.

00:01:10.000 But here's the thing.

00:01:11.000 It's not merely enough for Trump to lose.

00:01:13.000 He also has to lose after consolidating the support of all the mainstream Republicans.

00:01:18.000 So the Democrats can then claim that Republicanism is really just a reflection of Trumpism.

00:01:24.000 A brand of big government politics with a real nativist streak, a white power politics agenda, an isolationist international approach.

00:01:31.000 Fortunately for Democrats, Republican leaders are morons and are therefore falling right into this trap in the name of stopping Hillary Clinton.

00:01:38.000 Leaders ranging from Texas Governor Greg Abbott to South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, they're already lining up to embrace the guy who burned conservatism down inside the Republican Party.

00:01:47.000 And the left could not be happier, gang.

00:01:49.000 For decades, they've been falsely accusing Republicans of being just what Trump is.

00:01:54.000 Now they can claim they were right all along.

00:01:56.000 They can paint conservatism with the broad brush of Trump.

00:01:58.000 Here's Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine today, quote.

00:02:02.000 Virtually the entire Republican apparatus will follow Trump sooner or later because without the voters they have no power.

00:02:08.000 And those voters have revealed things about the nature of the party many Republicans prefer to deny.

00:02:13.000 On the ground, Republican politics boils down to ethno-nationalistic passions, ungoverned by reason,

00:02:18.000 The paranoid mendacity of Joe McCarthy, the racial pandering of Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and George Bush, the jingoism and anti-intellectualism of Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Sarah Palin, all these forces have embodied the essence of American conservative politics as it is actually practiced, rather than as conservative intellectuals like to imagine it.

00:02:36.000 Trump has finally turned that which was always there against itself.

00:02:39.000 It's Andrew Sullivan talking about it.

00:02:43.000 This is a brutal libel on conservative politics, of course.

00:02:46.000 It's a libel on Goldwater and Bush and Reagan, but it is true of Trump.

00:02:50.000 And so now that truth will be read back into history to justify all the left's favorite lies about the right.

00:02:56.000 Here's Democratic National Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

00:02:59.000 She says, quote, Here's the New York Times editorial board yesterday, quote,

00:03:23.000 That brand of fool's gold, it's going to mar the Republican Party for the next generation, thanks to both the minority of voters who handed Trump the nomination, and the establishment that refused to consolidate to stop him, and who now support him in the name of raising cash and stopping Hillary Clinton.

00:03:38.000 Donald Trump, he's a Democrat's dream come true.

00:03:41.000 He is conservatism's nightmare, and we're all living in that nightmare now.

00:03:44.000 I'm Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:03:54.000 So the most unsurprising news of the week happened yesterday when John Kasich, his mission in life fulfilled, having split the vote with Ted Cruz to prevent either one of them from winning the nomination, John Kasich finally dropped out, demonstrating that there, I guess, was at least an ounce of sanity to him.

00:04:09.000 I thought maybe he was just going to come out yesterday and declare himself president.

00:04:12.000 I mean, it's been that kind of race.

00:04:14.000 He's won one state, his home state, and he kept declaring that he was

00:04:18.000 You see, I have always said that the Lord has a purpose for me as he has for everyone.

00:04:22.000 And as I suspend my campaign today, I have renewed faith

00:04:47.000 Deeper faith that the Lord will show me the way forward and fulfill the purpose of my life.

00:04:58.000 Thank you, and God bless.

00:04:59.000 It's all about him.

00:05:01.000 It was always all about him, right?

00:05:02.000 I mean, it's all about God had a purpose for me, and I don't know what God's purpose for me anymore.

00:05:06.000 Apparently God's purpose was for you to be a giant douche and stay in the race a month too long to split the votes so that Donald Trump could be our nominee.

00:05:13.000 Good job, God!

00:05:15.000 Well played, God, if that was your plan.

00:05:17.000 Ah, God.

00:05:19.000 He must hate us.

00:05:20.000 It's all coming to fruition.

00:05:21.000 Okay, so, meanwhile, the Trump consolidation has begun.

00:05:26.000 We talked a little bit earlier about Greg Abbott and Nikki Haley and all the rest of these folks jumping into the fray on behalf of Donald Trump.

00:05:32.000 They're sort of jumping into the frays a little much.

00:05:35.000 Mitch McConnell, all these people, they've issued kind of tepid statements of endorsement.

00:05:39.000 It's kind of like, ew, okay, I guess.

00:05:43.000 It's kind of like when my wife asks me to kill a bug and it's like, oh god, fine, okay.

00:05:49.000 That's sort of what it's like.

00:05:51.000 There's that feeling that's creeping up.

00:05:52.000 And to see all these people's faces, by the way, you should subscribe because it is amusing to watch all these people kowtow to legitimately one of the worst people in the United States.

00:06:01.000 If you subscribe, then you get to see my face, the face of skepticism, the face of joy,

00:06:07.000 Right?

00:06:08.000 And so you'll get to see all those variations of my face, which I know everyone loves.

00:06:13.000 So go to DailyWire for that.

00:06:14.000 More importantly, you also get to take part in the mailbag.

00:06:16.000 Yay!

00:06:17.000 We now have an actual mailbag submission system over at DailyWire.com.

00:06:20.000 So you'll get to take a look at that.

00:06:22.000 So you'll want to stop on by DailyWire.com and subscribe.

00:06:25.000 But the Never Trump movement is now getting it from all sides.

00:06:28.000 People like me, oh, you have to vote for Trump or you're a bad person.

00:06:32.000 You're making Hillary the president.

00:06:33.000 In a minute, I'm going to go through the five most common arguments and I'm going to go through them realistically and talk about why I think they're wrong.

00:06:40.000 First, here's Newt Gingrich, who's irrelevant, Washington, D.C., corrupt politician, talking as though he has credibility about the Never Trump movement harming the country after backing Donald Trump for the presidency.

00:06:54.000 Well, first of all, I'd urge them to drop Never Trump and put in Never Hillary.

00:06:58.000 The risk they're running of Hillary Clinton appointing a truly radical Supreme Court, eliminating the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, eliminating religious liberty, imposing further radical values on the country, I think that by itself, just the issue of the Supreme Court, should convince most rational people that Never Hillary is a lot more powerful slogan than Never Trump.

00:07:23.000 So I am both never Trump and never Hillary.

00:07:25.000 I will not vote for either one of them.

00:07:27.000 So being never Trump doesn't mean that I'm pro-Hillary, it means that I'm never Hillary and never Trump.

00:07:31.000 And I'm indifferent as to who wins this election on that level.

00:07:35.000 Because I'm not involving myself in this moral turd fight.

00:07:39.000 That's not something I'm interested in.

00:07:42.000 But to directly address this particular argument, this one's the one they like to bring up.

00:07:46.000 Justice Scalia dies.

00:07:47.000 So, I guess the suggestion is if Justice Scalia hadn't died, then we'd be okay, right?

00:07:50.000 If Justice Scalia were still alive and 79 years old, then we would just be sitting around going, oh, well, we'd have some sort of different excuse.

00:07:57.000 But let's go directly at this.

00:07:58.000 Okay.

00:07:59.000 So, the logic says that Trump is going to suggest a more conservative Supreme Court justice than Hillary Clinton.

00:08:04.000 There is zero evidence to support this.

00:08:07.000 Zero.

00:08:08.000 Republicans, number one, are probably going to lose the Senate to Democrats.

00:08:11.000 Do you really think that Donald Trump is going to nominate a hardcore conservative to pass through a Democratic Senate?

00:08:17.000 Does anyone really believe that, for even an instant?

00:08:20.000 Of course he won't do that.

00:08:21.000 Of course he won't do that.

00:08:22.000 Beyond that, does anybody think that Trump, in any case, has the stomach to fight for a constitutional conservative when he hasn't read the Constitution or know anything about it?

00:08:30.000 Ronald Reagan had three Supreme Court picks.

00:08:32.000 Hey, two of the three were terrible.

00:08:34.000 George W. Bush had two.

00:08:36.000 Only one was okay.

00:08:38.000 Ronald Reagan, again, two out of three.

00:08:39.000 George H.W.

00:08:40.000 went one for two.

00:08:41.000 Ford went zero for one.

00:08:42.000 Nixon went one for four.

00:08:44.000 Okay, so the idea that Donald Trump is going to do better than all these other folks, he's going to select exactly the right justice.

00:08:50.000 Does anybody really believe this?

00:08:51.000 Trump has never backed a constitutional balance of power or separation of powers.

00:08:55.000 He doesn't believe in restrictions on the executive branch.

00:08:57.000 He doesn't believe in the Second Amendment strongly enough to fight for it.

00:09:00.000 He doesn't believe in somebody who's going to overturn Roe v. Wade.

00:09:02.000 He's basically said that openly.

00:09:04.000 The idea he's going to... that your real reason for voting Trump is because he'll put in a great justice.

00:09:11.000 Again, no evidence whatsoever to support that.

00:09:13.000 If you actually want to support the Constitution, elect good governors who are going to resist federal encroachment.

00:09:18.000 That's the actual way to support the Constitution, not to rely on Donald Trump to pick a lawyer.

00:09:23.000 That's ridiculous.

00:09:25.000 Beyond that, Donald Trump is just untrustworthy through and through.

00:09:27.000 If you're trusting him to do anything, you're making a grave mistake.

00:09:30.000 So just in the last 24 hours, Trump has lied to you this many times.

00:09:34.000 This is a big four for those who can't see.

00:09:36.000 He's flipped on four separate positions.

00:09:38.000 That he took during the primaries.

00:09:40.000 This is Trump pivoting to shore up his base, by the way.

00:09:43.000 We're not even in general election mode yet, right?

00:09:45.000 This is just him shoring up his base.

00:09:48.000 So here is Donald Trump on the minimum wage, for example.

00:09:51.000 So Bernie Sanders says he wants $15 an hour minimum wage.

00:09:57.000 And he has really gone after you lately for saying you're happy with $7.25, the current federal minimum wage.

00:10:04.000 You can't live on $7.25 an hour.

00:10:07.000 And I'm actually looking at that because I'm very different from most Republicans.

00:10:10.000 I mean, you have to have something that you can live on.

00:10:12.000 But what I'm really looking to do is get people great jobs so they make much more money than that.

00:10:17.000 So they make much more money than the $15.

00:10:20.000 Now if you start playing around too much with the lower level, the lower level number, you're not going to be competitive.

00:10:27.000 Okay, so there's Donald Trump basically saying, I'll consider raising the minimum wage.

00:10:32.000 I'm old enough to remember, like five minutes ago, when he was saying that the wages in the United States were too high and they were uncompetitive, and that's why raising the minimum wage would be a bad idea.

00:10:41.000 So now he's flipped on raising the minimum wage, or at least he's different than most Republicans.

00:10:45.000 I love that he can say this now.

00:10:46.000 We can all say this now.

00:10:47.000 Now it's okay.

00:10:48.000 When he said he was a New York values Republican,

00:10:51.000 That was the end of the world!

00:10:53.000 No, how dare you!

00:10:54.000 Now he comes out and he says, I'm a different type of Republican.

00:10:57.000 We like to, it's pronounced, in my world, we spell Republican D-E-M-O-C-R-A-T.

00:11:01.000 I'm that kind of Republican.

00:11:03.000 I'm the kind of Republican who's not a Republican.

00:11:06.000 You might call me a Republican in name only, actually.

00:11:09.000 When he says this, it's totally fine.

00:11:11.000 Okay, that was lie number one.

00:11:13.000 Lie number two, remember all through the campaign, I'm self-funding.

00:11:16.000 Anyone who is funded by someone else is being bribed.

00:11:19.000 Ted Cruz, he's taking money from all these various super PACs, and that means that he is being bribed.

00:11:24.000 Here's Donald Trump, is he going to self-fund?

00:11:26.000 Of course not, that would be money out of his pocket.

00:11:29.000 Let's be real, here he is.

00:11:31.000 Setting an audacious fundraising goal.

00:11:33.000 I'm making decisions right now, but probably we'll work with the Republican National Committee, raise a lot of money, and go out and beat Hillary.

00:11:41.000 We're gonna try and raise over a billion dollars, which is what's gonna be necessary.

00:11:45.000 Okay, line number three.

00:11:46.000 Donald Trump, you remember he said about Ted Cruz, for example, that Ted Cruz was bought and paid for by Goldman Sachs.

00:11:52.000 So is Hillary Clinton.

00:11:53.000 Goldman Sachs this and Goldman Sachs that.

00:11:55.000 So, he now has a new fundraiser, the head of his fundraising campaign.

00:11:59.000 The guy's name is Steve Mnuchin.

00:12:00.000 Now, you may recognize that name.

00:12:02.000 That's because he is the former Goldman Sachs partner, Steve Mnuchin, who's heading up his fundraising campaign.

00:12:08.000 Also, happen to work at a little place we like to call Soros Fund Management.

00:12:13.000 Yes, that's Soros.

00:12:14.000 George Soros.

00:12:15.000 This guy's a lifelong Democrat who worked with George Soros and at Goldman Sachs, he's leading up Donald Trump's fundraising campaign.

00:12:21.000 Yes, all you people who voted for Donald Trump on the notion that he was gonna shake up Washington, you're all a bunch of suckers.

00:12:28.000 You're suckers and he's proving you suckers in the first five minutes after you confirmed his nomination.

00:12:33.000 Finally, Donald Trump bashed his own tax plan today.

00:12:36.000 He was on CNBC.

00:12:38.000 And he was asked about his tax plan, which originally was slated to lower the taxes for people in the top bracket.

00:12:44.000 He said, quote, I am not necessarily a huge fan of that.

00:12:47.000 I am much more into middle class who have been absolutely forgotten in our country.

00:12:51.000 What did he say about his tax plan?

00:12:52.000 Exactly what he said about his amnesty plan.

00:12:54.000 He said it's a starting negotiation position.

00:12:57.000 Right.

00:12:57.000 He says, don't worry is what I say, but I don't really mean it.

00:13:00.000 Quote.

00:13:01.000 You know, when you put out a tax plan, you're going to start negotiating.

00:13:05.000 You don't say, OK, this is our tax plan.

00:13:07.000 Lots of luck, folks.

00:13:08.000 There'll be a negotiation back and forth.

00:13:10.000 And you can see that going up, to be honest with you.

00:13:13.000 Right, okay, so that's legitimately what he says.

00:13:15.000 His tax plan was just a starting negotiation.

00:13:17.000 Yeah, I trust that guy to pick Supreme Court justices so much that I'm willing to sacrifice the Republican brand, the conservative brand, to his ethno-nationalistic idiocies just because I think he'll be that trustworthy.

00:13:28.000 I think he's just gonna be that trustworthy.

00:13:30.000 And in case you thought he was gonna be some sort of financial whiz kid, by the way, here's Donald Trump on debt.

00:13:35.000 Okay, Donald Trump on debt.

00:13:37.000 Here we go.

00:13:37.000 So I've seen what can happen, and it's not a good picture.

00:13:42.000 But what do we do with all of the money that we owe everybody when rates go up and now all of a sudden we have to borrow at two points more, one point more even is devastating, but two, three, four, five points more.

00:13:55.000 It's a real dilemma and we have to be very, very careful.

00:13:59.000 And I am the king of debt.

00:14:01.000 I do love debt.

00:14:02.000 I love debt.

00:14:02.000 I love playing with it.

00:14:03.000 But of course, now you're talking about, you know, you're talking about something that's very, very fragile.

00:14:09.000 I do love debt.

00:14:10.000 I do love playing with it.

00:14:11.000 Remember that time when he said that he was totally solvent?

00:14:14.000 And people like me said he built his empire on the back of massive loans that he still hasn't paid back?

00:14:19.000 Yeah.

00:14:20.000 Yeah.

00:14:20.000 A lot of suckers out there, gang.

00:14:22.000 A lot of suckers.

00:14:23.000 Okay, so I already talked about the one argument for voting Trump over Hillary, the Supreme Court argument.

00:14:28.000 As someone who actually studied the Constitution, as someone who believes in the Constitution, which Donald Trump has never read, as someone who got an A-plus at Harvard Law in Constitutional Law,

00:14:37.000 I can tell you, Donald Trump doesn't know, doesn't care about, and doesn't believe in the Constitution.

00:14:41.000 This is a guy who literally said, literally said, his litmus test for Supreme Court justices would be appointing someone to prosecute Hillary Clinton.

00:14:49.000 Note to Donald Trump, Supreme Court justices are not federal prosecutors.

00:14:54.000 You don't.

00:14:55.000 And Donald Trump is also the guy who talks about how various judges had signed bills.

00:15:00.000 He does not know what government does.

00:15:02.000 He doesn't even know what it does.

00:15:03.000 Why would I think that he's going to appoint a great Supreme Court justice or that he's just going to sign off on whatever his advisors say?

00:15:09.000 When has he ever signed off on something his advisors just tell him?

00:15:12.000 This notion that Trump is going to be swung by his advisors behind good ideas

00:15:16.000 Who believes this?

00:15:17.000 When has he ever done this?

00:15:18.000 Paul Manafort said, start acting more presidential.

00:15:20.000 So he fired him and brought back in Corey Lewandowski, who said, let Mr. Trump be Mr. Trump.

00:15:24.000 By the way, I'm an adult.

00:15:26.000 As an adult, the last time I called another adult Mr. Something was when they were somebody who I had known as a child and I called Mr. Something.

00:15:34.000 I would never call my employers Mr. Something.

00:15:37.000 It's ridiculous.

00:15:38.000 It's ridiculous.

00:15:39.000 But everybody who surrounds Donald Trump calls him Mr. Trump.

00:15:43.000 So, of course, to do all the media members who work for him, but we'll get to them in a little bit.

00:15:47.000 So here's a couple more arguments that have been posited for why you should vote Trump above Hillary, why I don't think they wash.

00:15:52.000 One is the Hillary's worse argument.

00:15:54.000 This is probably the most common, aside from the Supreme Court.

00:15:57.000 Hillary is worse.

00:15:58.000 Okay, two things.

00:15:59.000 Yes, Hillary is corrupt and evil.

00:16:01.000 Trump is also corrupt, and he is also a believer in personal self-aggrandizement and ad hoc authoritarianism.

00:16:09.000 So what he believes is evil, too.

00:16:10.000 It's just a different kind of evil.

00:16:11.000 Hillary's an ideologue who's evil.

00:16:13.000 Donald Trump is a narcissist who's evil.

00:16:15.000 And so they're brands of evil.

00:16:17.000 Neither of them are good for the country.

00:16:19.000 People who are saying, well, you know, this is just the... I hear this all the time.

00:16:22.000 This is like when we supported Stalin to stop Hitler during World War II.

00:16:26.000 No, it's actually more like supporting Hitler to stop Stalin, first of all, considering that a nationalist populist is more Hitlerian, and a communist is more Stalin-esque, so it's more like if you sided with Hitler to stop Stalin.

00:16:38.000 But number two, this is more like having that debate not in 1941, when it was clear what Hitler was doing.

00:16:44.000 It's more like having the debate in 1936, when it's not clear what either one is going to do.

00:16:49.000 We know they're both gonna be bad, it's just a question of how bad.

00:16:52.000 So, you know, there is a risk there, and people who fail to acknowledge the risk are just lying to you.

00:16:57.000 Because what we know about Trump is that he's not conservative, as we just showed over and over and over.

00:17:01.000 Hillary's actually more conservative than he is on free trade.

00:17:03.000 She's more conservative than he is on European alliances.

00:17:07.000 Hillary may present a vulnerable email server to Vladimir Putin and hand him a reset button.

00:17:12.000 Donald Trump was asked yesterday, have you been talking to Putin?

00:17:16.000 He said, I don't want to answer that question.

00:17:19.000 I don't want to answer that question.

00:17:21.000 Yeah, that guy's gonna be getting classified briefings.

00:17:22.000 I can't imagine this going poorly at any point in the future.

00:17:26.000 Beyond that, my standard for Republicans and Democrats is not the same, gang.

00:17:30.000 I don't want a Democrat taking over the Republican Party.

00:17:33.000 I'd prefer to keep the Republican Party conservative.

00:17:35.000 I heard Dennis Prager say today on his show, and of course I love Dennis, but Dennis said today, well, if you sit out this election as a conservative to prove something to the Republican Party, all you're gonna prove is that you're irrelevant.

00:17:45.000 This seems nonsensical to me.

00:17:47.000 It seems nonsensical to me.

00:17:48.000 I will give you an example of how nonsensical it is.

00:17:51.000 Trump's voters sat out 2012.

00:17:52.000 Now they own the party.

00:17:53.000 Okay?

00:17:54.000 The fact that if you sit out, and the candidate loses, then they're gonna have to find some way to bring you back.

00:18:00.000 When you become irrelevant is when they know that your vote is in their pocket already.

00:18:03.000 That's when you become irrelevant.

00:18:05.000 The second argument is that Trump is going to change.

00:18:07.000 Trump is not going to change.

00:18:08.000 This idea that Trump is going to change ignores the fact that he's 8,000 years old and he has never changed in his life except changed his wives.

00:18:16.000 Then there's the Trump will work with Republicans argument that if he had a Republican Congress he'd work with them, Hillary wouldn't.

00:18:21.000 This presumes there will be a Republican Congress.

00:18:23.000 There won't be.

00:18:23.000 Senate Democrats are probably going to win out.

00:18:26.000 But let's assume that Trump ended up with a Republican House and Senate.

00:18:29.000 George W. Bush had a Republican House and Senate.

00:18:31.000 Was that any basket of roses?

00:18:33.000 Well, Trump will be a lot worse than Bush was.

00:18:37.000 The fact is, Congress tends to follow the lead of the President, not the other way around.

00:18:42.000 Not the other way around.

00:18:43.000 Finally, there's the argument that if you just sit out, if you don't vote, that you're abdicating the decision, it's moral cowardice.

00:18:49.000 Well, I'll tell you what's moral cowardice is pretending that your vote is only an instrument of policy as opposed to a moral imprimatur.

00:18:55.000 You put your stink on Donald Trump, and his stink goes right back on you.

00:18:59.000 You put your vote on Donald Trump, you own that.

00:19:02.000 You break it, you bought it.

00:19:03.000 So, that's my case against voting for Donald Trump, and they're the most common arguments that you hear in favor of voting for Donald Trump.

00:19:09.000 Okay, with all of that said, the race is now on.

00:19:12.000 Rush Limbaugh believes that Donald Trump is going to schlong Hillary.

00:19:15.000 He's gonna beat her in a landslide.

00:19:16.000 Here's Rush talking about it.

00:19:18.000 My instinctive feeling right now is that Trump is gonna win, beat Hillary badly.

00:19:24.000 That it could be landslide proportions?

00:19:28.000 I still don't think people understand why Trump won this.

00:19:34.000 I don't think they understand at all the reason people support Trump.

00:19:43.000 Okay, the reason people support Trump is because they're pissed.

00:19:46.000 That's the reason people support Trump.

00:19:47.000 And presumably what Rush is saying is that they're still going to be pissed when Hillary Clinton is up.

00:19:52.000 Now, I'm going to make the case for why Trump can win.

00:19:56.000 It really has nothing to do... There are only two reasons that Trump could actually win.

00:19:59.000 And I'm not going to pretend that Trump can't win because I thought that during the primaries and I was wrong.

00:20:04.000 So I'm not going to make that same mistake again, obviously.

00:20:06.000 So there's only two reasons that Trump can win.

00:20:09.000 One is that Hillary Clinton has no idea how to deal with Trump.

00:20:13.000 No clue how to deal with Trump whatsoever.

00:20:16.000 Trump is a wild card.

00:20:18.000 He's a wild card.

00:20:19.000 And he says things that are going to be popular because he's pugnacious.

00:20:22.000 And people like pugnacious.

00:20:23.000 People like the guy who stands up to them.

00:20:24.000 So here's Donald Trump yesterday.

00:20:26.000 Vincente Fox, who was the former president of Mexico, he came out and he said that he apologized to Trump.

00:20:33.000 He wanted Trump to come visit Mexico.

00:20:34.000 Here's Donald Trump responding to Vincente Fox.

00:20:37.000 Alright, Vicente Fox coming up later on in the program.

00:20:40.000 Got any message for the former president of Mexico?

00:20:45.000 Yeah, get your money ready, because you're going to pay for the wall.

00:20:48.000 You're not backing off that, right?

00:20:50.000 No, of course not.

00:20:51.000 Look, we lose a fortune with Mexico, trade deficit.

00:20:55.000 Fifty-eight billion dollars a year.

00:20:57.000 The wall's going to cost ten.

00:20:59.000 Believe me, they'll be able to afford it.

00:21:01.000 And we're going to end up having a very good relationship with Mexico.

00:21:04.000 But right now, sadly, like everybody else, they're taking advantage of our country on trade and at the border.

00:21:11.000 So we'll get it straightened out.

00:21:13.000 They're taking advantage of our country on trade, which is why Mexico is one of the poorer countries on planet Earth.

00:21:17.000 They're defeating us on trade.

00:21:18.000 But put all that aside, the attitude of Trump is appealing to people who feel like they've been let down by a pansy-esque and intentionally negative, on America, Obama administration.

00:21:30.000 And Hillary doesn't know how to deal with this kind of attitude.

00:21:32.000 She doesn't know how to deal with it at all.

00:21:34.000 So here's Hillary's case against Trump, and this is weak tea gang.

00:21:39.000 You know, Anderson, I've seen the presidency up close from two different perspectives, and I think I know what it takes.

00:21:46.000 And I don't think we can take a risk on a loose cannon like Donald Trump running our country.

00:21:52.000 You know, Donald Trump has said it's okay for other countries to get nuclear weapons.

00:21:57.000 I think that's just downright dangerous.

00:21:59.000 He has said wages are too high.

00:22:01.000 I think we need

00:22:02.000 He did walk that back.

00:22:21.000 He's a loose cannon.

00:22:22.000 I mean, he's somebody who has said so many things, and I'm sure he'll be scrambling, and his advisors will be scrambling, but he's already said all of these things.

00:22:31.000 He says climate change is a Chinese hoax, and I think it's real, and we've got to pull the world together to deal with it.

00:22:38.000 So you can go down a long list, some of which he's tried to bob and weave a little bit, but I think it's a risk.

00:22:45.000 I think he is a loose cannon, and loose cannons tend to misfire.

00:22:48.000 Okay, she is the mother telling you to take out the garbage.

00:22:51.000 That's not going to work.

00:22:52.000 It's not.

00:22:53.000 This is Jeb Bush tut-tutting Donald Trump about his tone and tenor on stage.

00:22:57.000 And I'll explain why this is going to fail in just a second, why this is insufficient, because what normal politics would say is that a loose cannon like Trump should not be president, but people are saying, okay, well, I'd rather have a loose cannon who speaks the truth than a rehearsed

00:23:11.000 Ridiculously corrupt politician like Hillary Clinton who's tut-tutting everybody from the sidelines.

00:23:16.000 Jeb Bush, again, tried the same tactic and it didn't work.

00:23:19.000 By the way, when she says that she's seen the presidency up close twice and we can't afford a loose cannon, that's the easiest response for Trump in the world.

00:23:26.000 Your husband was unslinging his loose cannon on the closest available intern.

00:23:32.000 Routinely.

00:23:33.000 So you can't talk about loose cannons that way.

00:23:35.000 And the president you served next was getting people killed in Benghazi and going off to hang out with Beyonce at the same time.

00:23:40.000 So don't talk to me about loose cannons.

00:23:43.000 Right?

00:23:43.000 You're the one who's getting drunk, you know, and dancing.

00:23:46.000 And then he shows the video of her dancing with the black lady that's been making the rounds all over the internet for years.

00:23:51.000 So that's not gonna work at all.

00:23:53.000 And then Hillary tries this one.

00:23:54.000 She says, I dare Trump to come after me with everything he's got.

00:23:57.000 You know who started the Breast Head Movement?

00:24:27.000 Do you know who started it?

00:24:28.000 Do you know who questioned his birth certificate?

00:24:31.000 One of the first?

00:24:32.000 Hillary Clinton.

00:24:33.000 She's the one that started it.

00:24:35.000 She brought it up years before it was brought up by me.

00:24:38.000 Let me just clarify.

00:24:39.000 The whole birther thing.

00:24:40.000 Where do you stand on that now?

00:24:41.000 I don't talk about it anymore because every time I talk about it, it becomes a story.

00:24:45.000 So I don't want to waste my time talking about it anymore.

00:24:47.000 But she's going to raise this issue against you.

00:24:49.000 I don't care.

00:24:50.000 I'm going to raise it against her.

00:24:52.000 And this is exactly it, right?

00:24:54.000 Trump is gonna... So Trump, again, he still hasn't answered the question, does he think Obama was born in Kenya or not?

00:25:00.000 This idiotic conspiracy theory.

00:25:01.000 But he's just gonna avoid it, and if Hillary brings it up, he's gonna say, you're the one who originally said it.

00:25:05.000 She does not have a playbook against him.

00:25:07.000 She doesn't have a playbook against him.

00:25:09.000 And so that's one element of why, you know, if he becomes president, it's because Hillary is so terrible at this, and terrible in general.

00:25:19.000 And also because Hillary can't get her own people together.

00:25:21.000 So, Michael Moore and Bernie Sanders are sort of the representatives of the hard left.

00:25:25.000 Barack Obama went down to Flint, Michigan, or up to Flint, Michigan, rather, to drink water there yesterday.

00:25:31.000 And he said that it was all government neglect that caused all of this.

00:25:34.000 Yes, Democrat government neglect.

00:25:35.000 The people who you ally with.

00:25:36.000 Michael Moore says, well, Obama has not done anything to help Flint.

00:25:40.000 I'm very disappointed in this.

00:25:44.000 I've been listening to the speech.

00:25:45.000 It's still going on right now at Northwestern High School.

00:25:48.000 And he is just trying to reassure people that everything's okay.

00:25:54.000 To drink from a glass of water, a flint water, when a number of experts are still saying that this water is not safe, it's still going through the same corroded lead pipes

00:26:08.000 It was such a disappointing thing to see.

00:26:12.000 Your clip you just showed about he hopes that Flint can get back to where it was.

00:26:15.000 Where was that?

00:26:17.000 You mean before the water crisis two years ago?

00:26:19.000 After we'd lost 75,000 General Motors jobs back to then?

00:26:24.000 Or are we talking about back to 20 or 30 years ago?

00:26:27.000 Okay, so there it is.

00:26:30.000 And I think that's evidence that the left is even fed up with the typical politics of the Democratic Party.

00:26:36.000 Bernie Sanders is, meanwhile, tearing the party apart.

00:26:39.000 He's saying he's going to stand until the last vote is counted.

00:26:41.000 Point of fact, Bernie Sanders could finish California with more pledged delegates than Hillary Clinton.

00:26:47.000 Right now, all the delegate counts you see with Hillary at 2,200 and Bernie Sanders at

00:26:51.000 Like 1,300 or 1,400?

00:26:53.000 Those count 500 superdelegates for Hillary Clinton.

00:26:57.000 Those superdelegates are not like unpledged delegates who are elected in the Republican Party.

00:27:01.000 They were chosen by Democratic Party insiders specifically to give Hillary the nomination.

00:27:05.000 There are 538 delegates in California alone.

00:27:09.000 Sanders is going to win California and he's going to win it pretty big.

00:27:11.000 There's a real possibility that Bernie Sanders leaves California at parity with Hillary Clinton in the unpledged delegates, or rather in the pledged delegates.

00:27:19.000 Here's Bernie Sanders saying he's not going to stop fighting this fight until it's all the way at the convention.

00:27:24.000 I think we have a path toward victory.

00:27:26.000 I admit that it is a narrow path.

00:27:29.000 But we think everybody in this country, people in California, in Kentucky, in West Virginia, have a right to determine who they want to see as President of the United States and what kind of agenda they want the Democratic Party to have.

00:27:42.000 So we're going to fight, Scott, for the very last vote that we can get.

00:27:46.000 Okay, so he's going to stick around for evas and evas and evas.

00:27:49.000 And the fact is that because he does so, it's going to be a problem for Hillary.

00:27:53.000 She can't put Sanders away.

00:27:56.000 It's going to be difficult to put Trump away.

00:27:57.000 Trump and Sanders are basically the same character.

00:28:00.000 Right?

00:28:00.000 The difference is that Sanders is an ideologue who believes what he's saying.

00:28:03.000 Trump believes what he's saying, but he's a narcissist, so it's whatever goes through his head at that given instant.

00:28:08.000 Hillary will have a tough time dealing with Trump.

00:28:11.000 The reason that Hillary will have a tough time dealing with Trump, one of the reasons is because the media are totally in the tank for Trump.

00:28:19.000 And for Hillary.

00:28:20.000 So it's actually both.

00:28:21.000 So here's the way that it works.

00:28:22.000 So the media may have created a Frankenstein monster in Trump.

00:28:25.000 The truth is, David French pointed this out yesterday, and I thought this was totally right.

00:28:30.000 David French pointed out that most people in the United States don't know Trump from this presidential run.

00:28:35.000 Most people in the United States know Trump from being on the cover of Playboy, and 14 years on The Apprentice, and he's always on TV talking about business, and they think of him as some sort of James Bond slash Richie Rich

00:28:49.000 Enormously wealthy real estate genius who's great at business and has the guts to fire people.

00:28:55.000 That's how most people think of Donald Trump.

00:28:57.000 And they've spent decades building this up.

00:28:59.000 The media have built this myth of the business god king.

00:29:03.000 Fox and Friends interviews talking about politics with him for 20 years.

00:29:06.000 Tim Russert asking him in 1999.

00:29:12.000 He's been around longer in the public eye than I've been alive, Donald Trump.

00:29:16.000 And so most people had an image of Donald Trump long before he ran.

00:29:19.000 That's been a good thing for him in the sense that when he says crazy things, it doesn't break out of the pocket of people who care about that and into the general ledger.

00:29:27.000 When people are told that this man who they've gotten to know and admire and like and find amusing, when they're told that he's a racist con man, that he panders to the lowest common denominator, a lot of people

00:29:38.000 We're good to go.

00:29:54.000 Most people would reject that.

00:29:55.000 If you watch Survivor or any of these other reality TV shows, if you watch Shark Tank, and you've been watching Shark Tank, and Mark Cuban's on it every week, and you've been sold this bill of goods that Mark Cuban is a genius businessman who makes great business decisions, and then somebody comes along and they say, he's really not a very good businessman.

00:30:13.000 Also, he's a racist.

00:30:14.000 You're gonna say, well, wait, I watched him on TV the other night.

00:30:16.000 He didn't look like a racist to me.

00:30:17.000 What are you talking about?

00:30:18.000 You know, you're saying he's a bad businessman?

00:30:20.000 He doesn't look like a bad businessman to me.

00:30:22.000 There he is, with all the other rich people, talking about just throwing $100,000 around.

00:30:26.000 Doesn't look like he's a bad businessman to me.

00:30:28.000 Well, Mark Cuban, take Mark Cuban and multiply him by about 15, and that's the size that Donald Trump is in the public sphere.

00:30:35.000 And so, there are a lot of viewers of Donald Trump who are not going to buy into the old Democratic playbook that they tried to use against Romney and McCain, that these are bad people, you don't know them, you've never met these people, but I'm telling you, now that you're meeting them, they're bad guys.

00:30:47.000 It's going to be very hard for the media to tear them down.

00:30:49.000 Beyond that, the media want Trump in the public eye all the time.

00:30:53.000 They can't resist the temptation.

00:30:54.000 The only way to stop Trump would be if the media deprived him of air.

00:30:58.000 If the media actually deprived him of air.

00:30:59.000 When he says stupid things, they just didn't cover it.

00:31:02.000 Or they just didn't cover it.

00:31:02.000 They let it kind of simmer under the surface and all you got were tastes of the stupid.

00:31:06.000 But instead, they're gonna cover him every minute because he drives up the ratings.

00:31:09.000 He drives up the ratings.

00:31:10.000 Chris Wallace said exactly this.

00:31:12.000 Chris Wallace said, yeah, the reason we cover him so much is because he's good TV.

00:31:15.000 He's ratings.

00:31:16.000 Did the Trump support drive the media or did the media drive the Trump support by diminishing real estate for other candidates?

00:31:25.000 Now, you know, I get asked this question a lot.

00:31:27.000 I have to say, I think to a certain degree it became a vicious or virtuous cycle, depending on how you view the Trump campaign.

00:31:35.000 But I think we were followers, not leaders in this.

00:31:37.000 In other words, I think that the reason we put him on so much, and I think we did, all of us, whether it was cable, whether it was broadcast, all of us put him on too much.

00:31:47.000 I think to a large degree it was because

00:31:50.000 Every time we did, it spiked the ratings.

00:31:52.000 We were, in a sense, following what the ratings were, which was the response of the public.

00:31:57.000 Having said that, the fact that we put them on so much, it did crowd out, take a lot of the oxygen away from the other candidates.

00:32:04.000 But I think at least the initial impulse was, you know, if you put them on, you get ratings, and we're in the news business.

00:32:11.000 And there it is.

00:32:12.000 So, you know, they're in the news business, and so they get ratings.

00:32:15.000 That's an amazing acknowledgement.

00:32:16.000 It really is because there's something linked to that.

00:32:19.000 There's a human tendency to always justify your own behavior.

00:32:21.000 Always.

00:32:22.000 And so let's say that you've spent your entire time in this election cycle putting Donald Trump on the air.

00:32:29.000 And now you're being asked to give your objective opinion of Donald Trump.

00:32:31.000 That he's a bad guy.

00:32:33.000 That he's somebody who's unstable.

00:32:34.000 That he's somebody who hangs out with, who panders to the David Duke types.

00:32:39.000 He's somebody who says ridiculous things about disabled people and veterans and women.

00:32:44.000 How do you justify that to everybody when they come back and say, well, you knew all of this way back when.

00:32:48.000 Why did you put him on the air?

00:32:50.000 Right?

00:32:50.000 All the NBC executives, you knew this.

00:32:52.000 You knew this about him.

00:32:53.000 He was always like this.

00:32:54.000 You put him on the air.

00:32:55.000 You made him into a thing.

00:32:57.000 When you unconsciously are the Lenny Reifenstahl for this supposed Hitler, what do you do except for get in his corner?

00:33:05.000 And justify to yourself, okay, well, I did it for ratings, but he's not that bad a guy.

00:33:09.000 He's not that bad a guy.

00:33:10.000 How do you justify putting this guy on all the time?

00:33:11.000 If it had been David Duke and they gave him that much attention, people would say, oh, you're pro-David Duke, that makes you a bad guy.

00:33:17.000 But he's not.

00:33:17.000 They made him famous knowing all these bad things about him, but he was a ratings bonanza, and then they had to justify themselves post-facto, and it becomes, okay, well, he must not be that bad a guy, right?

00:33:28.000 Network executives have to sleep at night, too.

00:33:31.000 Network executives have to sleep at night, too.

00:33:33.000 And so it's amazing to watch some of these media figures now trying to buy it back.

00:33:36.000 So Joe Scarborough, who has spent this entire campaign cycle with his lips firmly plastered to Donald Trump's anus,

00:33:44.000 Joe Scarborough came out yesterday and he said, no, you know what?

00:33:47.000 I'm not going to vote for Trump after all.

00:33:48.000 I'm not going to, you know, now I'm going to buy it back.

00:33:49.000 I don't like Trump.

00:33:50.000 After all this time, talking up Trump, writing post after post in the Washington Post about the glories of Donald Trump, I'm going to buy it back now.

00:33:58.000 I was surprised and disappointed, Willie, that yesterday he stuck by the Muslim ban.

00:34:03.000 Yeah.

00:34:03.000 That's a loser.

00:34:05.000 It's a loser with the majority of Americans and you've got Republicans like me.

00:34:08.000 I just, I'm not going to vote for a guy.

00:34:11.000 I'm not going to vote.

00:34:13.000 Okay, well that's what he's got to do.

00:34:14.000 He's got to make the turn and say, okay, this is a system we can put in place where we can get Muslims, allow Muslims to come into America, but maybe not from Syria if they don't have the proper...

00:34:26.000 But he's got to start making turns like that, because I can tell you, I'm never going to vote for a guy that is saying he's going to ban somebody just because of the God they worship.

00:34:36.000 And he's got to make that turn fast.

00:34:37.000 He didn't do it yesterday, maybe he does it over the next couple weeks.

00:34:41.000 Uh-huh.

00:34:42.000 So now Joe Scarborough has found his anti-Trump spine after months of him and Mika just pushing Trump up the wazoo.

00:34:52.000 Yeah, now they've found it.

00:34:53.000 This is them buying it back a little bit now, now that they have to turn toward Hillary, so they've got to buy it back, and it's just awkward.

00:34:59.000 Rob Reiner, who is never right about anything, you know, the director,

00:35:02.000 of Sleepless in Seattle and Princess Bride.

00:35:06.000 Rob Reiner, he came out and he bashed, this is the first time ever I'm going to agree with Rob Reiner.

00:35:11.000 Here he is going after Joe Scarborough.

00:35:13.000 What does this man say?

00:35:15.000 What does he say?

00:35:16.000 Of course we do.

00:35:18.000 He's not pinned down.

00:35:19.000 I want to hear how he's going to deport 12 million people.

00:35:23.000 I want to hear how he's going to, how is he going to wait?

00:35:27.000 Because you're just talking and you're not letting anybody else talk.

00:35:29.000 We have asked those questions.

00:35:31.000 I could, I would bet you your proceeds for your next 20 films that I could find you any question that you bring up.

00:35:37.000 Now about the wall, which Mika tried to nail him down.

00:35:40.000 The Muslim ban.

00:35:43.000 We gave Bob Woodward 20 minutes.

00:35:44.000 We said go for it.

00:35:45.000 And what he does is he talks around in circles.

00:35:47.000 So the questions are asked and they're repeated.

00:35:50.000 And we've asked repeatedly.

00:35:52.000 So then the next question is?

00:35:54.000 Why are you talking around in circles?

00:35:57.000 Why are you not answering my question?

00:35:59.000 Yes, we've asked that question.

00:36:00.000 And then what does he say?

00:36:01.000 He says, I am.

00:36:02.000 Believe me.

00:36:04.000 Well, wait a minute, I'll be you.

00:36:08.000 I'll be you.

00:36:09.000 Believe me is not an answer.

00:36:12.000 That's what I said to him, Rob Reiner.

00:36:15.000 No wait, then what does he say?

00:36:16.000 He keeps going on and on and on, in circles.

00:36:19.000 You act like you have some special sauce that you think we're not adding to the equation.

00:36:23.000 This is what everybody thinks, and it's one of the great frustrations of covering Donald Trump.

00:36:27.000 People say, you know what you should really ask him?

00:36:29.000 I go, well we did.

00:36:31.000 Okay, the frustration is not just that you don't ask him, it's that when he talks around in circles, afterward, you laugh with him.

00:37:00.000 After he lies to your face, you laugh with him.

00:37:02.000 If Ted Cruz did that, you wouldn't be laughing with him.

00:37:04.000 You'd pull the plug on his interview.

00:37:06.000 If Donald Trump talks like that, the final word is, you keep lying to me by talking around in circles.

00:37:12.000 If you do that, I'm pulling the plug on this interview.

00:37:15.000 They never have done that.

00:37:16.000 That has never happened.

00:37:17.000 And it will never happen.

00:37:18.000 Because the fact is, they like Donald Trump, and they laugh right along with this whole routine.

00:37:23.000 They ask a few questions for cover, but in the end, they never pull the plug.

00:37:26.000 And they never will pull the plug.

00:37:27.000 You got people like Sean Hannity, and this pains me because I like Sean a lot personally.

00:37:31.000 I think Sean...

00:37:31.000 He's a good guy, but Sean has really done yeoman work pushing Trump and making him the nominee.

00:37:37.000 It's really sad.

00:37:39.000 Last night, Sean did a full-on monologue trying to justify why he had pushed so hard for Trump as the nominee and basically disowned his own impact.

00:37:46.000 He basically said, it's not my fault.

00:37:47.000 Sure, I just spent the last six months really, really pushing Trump, like getting behind him with a bulldozer and pushing Trump, but not my fault.

00:37:53.000 Don't blame me.

00:37:54.000 It's just the people.

00:37:55.000 It's just what the people want.

00:37:57.000 Now, some of you out there, you're blaming, let's see, Fox News or blaming talk radio.

00:38:01.000 By the way, personally, I wish I had that much power and that much influence.

00:38:05.000 I don't.

00:38:06.000 Neither does anybody else.

00:38:07.000 If I did, Obama never would have been president.

00:38:10.000 Now, those of you who have that analysis, I think it's extremely shallow.

00:38:14.000 And by the way, also predicated on this notion that, well, people are stupid.

00:38:18.000 People were bamboozled.

00:38:20.000 Sorry, I don't buy that for one second.

00:38:21.000 Okay, so he's making two arguments there.

00:38:23.000 One is he doesn't have enough power to push Trump.

00:38:25.000 If he had, he would have stopped Obama.

00:38:28.000 What?

00:38:28.000 This is just numerical idiocy.

00:38:30.000 The fact is that he has way more impact as people like Sean Hannity in a Republican primary than in a general election where none of the swing voters are watching Fox News, right?

00:38:38.000 I mean, we all understand this.

00:38:40.000 And then his second argument is, the voters did it, I didn't have anything to do with it.

00:38:43.000 Well, then why are you on TV?

00:38:45.000 Then what are you doing there?

00:38:47.000 I hope I have some impact.

00:38:48.000 I hope people believe what I say.

00:38:50.000 I hope that I'm helping to push people.

00:38:52.000 The reason people are disappointed in Sean is that he's actually a conservative, and he just helped nominate the single most leftist candidate in the history of the Republican Party.

00:39:00.000 That's why people are frustrated that the media will defend themselves in this defense, this kind of self-serving defense.

00:39:05.000 Oh, we did our best to stop Trump, but we just couldn't.

00:39:08.000 There's a good book by Ed Morrissey called Going Red that's out now.

00:39:09.000 I'm in the middle of it.

00:39:10.000 I want to do a Q&A with Ed for our website.

00:39:11.000 He focuses in

00:39:26.000 On seven different counties in the United States that are sort of swing counties and what exactly do they want?

00:39:31.000 Instead of focusing on 300 million Americans, most of whom don't vote, he focuses in on the swing counties.

00:39:37.000 It's a very interesting book and worth going to get.

00:39:39.000 It's at Amazon and your local bookstore.

00:39:42.000 Next, things I like.

00:39:43.000 Chris Matthews got caught on a hot mic.

00:39:45.000 This is always entertaining.

00:39:46.000 So Chris Matthews is talking about Melania Trump.

00:39:50.000 There she is, Melania!

00:39:51.000 And he feels a thrill run up his leg higher and higher and higher in this clip.

00:39:57.000 You'll hear it.

00:39:58.000 And the party will trust Trump to be able to make that decision?

00:40:01.000 Well, I think the party won't have a role in it.

00:40:05.000 We just heard from the likely nominee of the Republican Party.

00:40:10.000 We will go to a break here.

00:40:11.000 The discussion continues right after this.

00:40:15.000 So if you can't hear what he's saying, he's saying, I think it's like a runway walk.

00:40:19.000 It's unbelievable!

00:40:19.000 I didn't watch you do that all day.

00:40:21.000 I went, God, Melania.

00:40:22.000 Just walk it.

00:40:23.000 Walk it.

00:40:23.000 Oh!

00:40:24.000 Oh!

00:40:24.000 This is even better than when I was with President Obama in the Oval Office.

00:40:27.000 It's unbelievable!

00:40:28.000 Melania Trump!

00:40:29.000 Unbelievable!

00:40:30.000 Hey, Kathleen, I hope she's not watching this.

00:40:32.000 I hope I'm not in a hot mic or something.

00:40:33.000 I mean, this would be really awkward if people found that.

00:40:35.000 I don't know what to do!

00:40:36.000 I get up in the morning and just come in here, brush my hair with a shoe, get in front of here.

00:40:40.000 Not a lot to enjoy.

00:40:41.000 I mean, come on.

00:40:41.000 I'm looking across the desk at Rachel Maddow.

00:40:43.000 Come on.

00:40:44.000 I'm looking across the desk at Michael Isikoff.

00:40:46.000 Come on.

00:40:47.000 I got Melania.

00:40:48.000 Gotta look at that.

00:40:49.000 Come on.

00:40:49.000 I mean, look at that.

00:40:50.000 She's a model.

00:40:51.000 She's beautiful.

00:40:52.000 Walks that line.

00:40:54.000 I mean, I could look at that all day.

00:40:55.000 Oh boy, could I look at that all day.

00:40:57.000 I could look at that like I was looking at Ted Kennedy right in the face while he's drinking and guffawing.

00:41:03.000 Oh my God, this is great.

00:41:05.000 Chris Matthews on MSNBC doing the kind of coverage that no one else does.

00:41:10.000 Okay, couple of things that I hate.

00:41:11.000 Yesterday, I had a 20-year subscription.

00:41:14.000 Since I was like 12, I've been subscribing to Sports Illustrated and enjoying it every week.

00:41:18.000 In the last few years, Sports Illustrated has become a wild leftist outlet, and it's really irritating.

00:41:23.000 I have a basic rule.

00:41:25.000 During my day job, I watch politics.

00:41:27.000 During my evenings, I don't watch anything about politics.

00:41:29.000 I won't watch House of Cards.

00:41:31.000 I won't watch political movies.

00:41:32.000 I only do things that have nothing to do with politics, right?

00:41:35.000 I like to watch sports, and I like to watch Daredevil.

00:41:38.000 And that's pretty much it.

00:41:40.000 And I like to hang out with my kid and my wife.

00:41:41.000 That's my life.

00:41:43.000 I don't like my sports being infiltrated with stupid garbage.

00:41:47.000 So, Caitlyn Jenner is apparently going to pose nude with the American flag on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

00:41:54.000 Caitlyn Jenner, right?

00:41:55.000 So first of all, good luck to that American flag.

00:41:58.000 Second of all, Caitlyn Jenner posing nude on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

00:42:03.000 Bruce Jenner was the relevant athlete.

00:42:05.000 Caitlyn Jenner is not a relevant athlete.

00:42:07.000 Caitlyn Jenner has never done anything in athletics if you assume that now Bruce Jenner is a woman.

00:42:12.000 If you assume that Bruce Jenner is still a man,

00:42:14.000 Then it is just a circus, and a ridiculous circus at that, to slap this nonsense in my face.

00:42:20.000 It is cruel to the mentally ill.

00:42:22.000 It is cruel to the rest of society to suppose that Caitlyn Jenner is some sort of hero for getting a boob job and retaining his male appendages.

00:42:31.000 Because he's mentally ill?

00:42:32.000 This is not something that I want to hear about generally as something that is good for society, and it's certainly not something that I care to subsidize with my dollars and have to read about in a sports magazine when all I really want to read about is how the NBA playoffs went.

00:42:46.000 I mean, for God's sake, can't I just watch the NBA playoffs?

00:42:48.000 Can't I just watch the NBA playoffs?

00:42:51.000 There are certain bouncing balls that I'm interested in watching, but they are not on Caitlyn Jenner.

00:42:56.000 Okay, I'm not interested in that, in those sorts, in those sorts of balls.

00:43:01.000 Okay, so that's one thing.

00:43:03.000 Second thing, the Department of Justice has now declared that the North Carolina bathroom law that says men should go to the bathroom in men's bathrooms and women should go into the bathroom in women's bathrooms, they've declared that this violates federal law, that this is discrimination against women.

00:43:17.000 This is what they're saying now, it's discrimination against women if men can't pee in the women's bathrooms.

00:43:22.000 Yes, we've reached the end of the world.

00:43:24.000 Okay, couple of mailbag questions.

00:43:26.000 I know that we're running a little bit late, so we'll pick a couple of short ones.

00:43:29.000 Sorry to skimp on the mailbag, but...

00:43:32.000 We do what we can.

00:43:33.000 Okay, Rosemary says, Is Trump still capable of destroying the media?

00:43:37.000 You commented in the past if you had to choose between destroying the media and Hillary, you would destroy the media.

00:43:41.000 My vote is unearned at this particular time.

00:43:43.000 Trump is not capable of destroying the media.

00:43:45.000 He's capable of exploiting the media.

00:43:47.000 The media will remain just as powerful as they ever did because they are happy to promulgate Trump's lies because Trump is a leftist.

00:43:53.000 Because Trump is a leftist.

00:43:54.000 So,

00:43:56.000 He's an exception to the rules.

00:43:57.000 They can call him a racist and it won't apply, but when they turn around and they call someone who's less well-known a racist, it will still apply.

00:44:03.000 This is sort of like the question I get about Hollywood conservatives.

00:44:05.000 People will say, well, you know, there's some Hollywood conservatives who work, like Gary Sinise and Adam Baldwin.

00:44:10.000 And the truth is, if you even ask people like Gary or Adam, do you feel like you've been discriminated against in Hollywood, usually they say no.

00:44:17.000 Usually they say, no, you know, I've had a very successful career.

00:44:20.000 Right, because you were successful before you became conservative.

00:44:24.000 For the grip, who's starting on the film, the last thing you want to do is start by saying, by opening up with, oh yeah, by the way, I backed Ted Cruz in the primaries.

00:44:32.000 The fact is that Donald Trump is like that with the media.

00:44:34.000 For the unknowns, going up against the media, the media will still crush you underfoot.

00:44:38.000 Donald Trump was built by the media, so now he's an exception to all of the media rules.

00:44:43.000 Tyler writes, hey Ben, is protectionism ever justified?

00:44:46.000 What if foreign countries impose tariffs on our goods?

00:44:48.000 Should we do the same to make up for the trade deficit with specific entities?

00:44:52.000 Thanks.

00:44:53.000 Protectionism is only justified on moral grounds, not economic grounds.

00:44:56.000 It is not justified on economic grounds.

00:44:58.000 So, assume for a second that, for example, you do business with a grocery, right?

00:45:04.000 You do business with a grocery, and the grocery offers the lowest prices.

00:45:08.000 You also happen to sell shelves to the grocery.

00:45:11.000 You're in the shelving business, and you sell shelves to the grocery.

00:45:13.000 Let's say that the grocery decides that they're not going to buy shelves from you.

00:45:17.000 Okay.

00:45:18.000 Does it benefit you now to say, oh, well, I'm not gonna buy food from that grocery?

00:45:22.000 Of course not.

00:45:22.000 If they're still selling the lowest priced groceries, it benefits you because you can take the money left over and can spend it on marketing so that you can go sell your shelves someplace else.

00:45:30.000 That's why, if they raise trade barriers and we're still getting cheap goods, okay, so we find somewhere else to export.

00:45:36.000 But spending our own money at a higher level in order to... in order to...

00:45:41.000 Presumably subsidized industries that can't get into these tariff-laden countries.

00:45:45.000 That's economic foolishness.

00:45:47.000 It doesn't work that way.

00:45:48.000 It is for me.

00:45:57.000 Unfortunately, the Libertarian Party is the height of incompetence.

00:46:01.000 Okay, let's see, who else?

00:46:03.000 Colin, we got a bunch of letters like this this week.

00:46:05.000 Hey Ben, I was wondering if you would consider jumping in the presidential race.

00:46:08.000 I know the Constitution says you are not old enough to be president, and since none of the remaining candidates or their supporters care about the Constitution, you may as well run.

00:46:16.000 This is a fair point, and I cannot argue with that.

00:46:19.000 I can't argue with that.

00:46:21.000 Vince writes,

00:46:38.000 The fact is that many of these transgendered men will use the ladies room and nobody will ever know.

00:46:42.000 If pervs enter a ladies room and behave like pervs, they'll be arrested and prosecuted.

00:46:45.000 Where am I wrong?

00:46:46.000 This is a good analysis.

00:46:47.000 I agree.

00:46:48.000 This is why I don't think that the main argument against the transgender bathroom thing is that men are going to go in and victimize women.

00:46:54.000 I think the main argument is that women deserve to be able to pee in privacy.

00:46:58.000 That's the main argument.

00:46:59.000 It's not that I think that men are going to go in and start randomly raping women.

00:47:03.000 If rapists want to rape, they'll rape.

00:47:04.000 What I am saying is that I will say that there's more of an excuse for men to leer and ogle at women under the guise of being transgender if they do this.

00:47:11.000 It doesn't have to be outright rape.

00:47:13.000 And then when they're asked about it, then they can claim discrimination.

00:47:15.000 This could happen.

00:47:16.000 But the main argument is, why is it bad for women to want to feel comfortable in a place where they're exposing themselves?

00:47:22.000 Why is it bad for them to not want to look at a penis when they are going to pee in the women's room?

00:47:27.000 Why is that a bad thing?

00:47:28.000 I don't understand.

00:47:29.000 It seems to me a bit of mansplaining, if you ask me, to say to women, no, no matter what you say, that penis you're looking at in the bathroom without your consent, that is, that's a woman.

00:47:39.000 That's a woman.

00:47:40.000 And you just don't understand because you're not a proper woman.

00:47:42.000 If you were really a proper woman, you'd understand that that penis is quite female.

00:47:46.000 Right?

00:47:46.000 This seems to me a little bit of mansplaining.

00:47:49.000 Okay.

00:47:50.000 Final question.

00:47:52.000 Someone writes, Vaccines.

00:47:53.000 Do you believe the government should require parents to vaccinate their child?

00:47:56.000 Should parents be held responsible for the death of their child or other children due to lack of vaccination?

00:48:01.000 Is it acceptable for schools to require students to be vaccinated?

00:48:04.000 As I've said many times, yes, I'm in favor of regulations that force vaccinations.

00:48:11.000 The reason I'm in favor of this is because I'm in favor of regulations that prohibit externalities.

00:48:16.000 The point of vaccination is herd immunity.

00:48:19.000 The idea is if you don't vaccinate your child, somebody else could get sick.

00:48:22.000 There are women who are pregnant who can't get the vaccination.

00:48:24.000 There are kids who have leukemia who can't get the vaccination.

00:48:27.000 If you're an idiot and you didn't get the MMR for your kid, and your kid gets measles, yeah, it's your kid.

00:48:32.000 Until it turns out that you got a pregnant woman sick with the measles, and now her kid is put in danger.

00:48:37.000 That is a problem.

00:48:38.000 That's a problem.

00:48:39.000 And by the way, a lot of these vaccinations, like Pertussis, are not 100% effective.

00:48:43.000 They're like 80% effective, which means that if 100% of the population is 80% effective, then there's a much lower chance of an epidemic of Pertussis than if 50% of the population is 80% effective.

00:48:54.000 Right?

00:48:55.000 That's the basic math.

00:48:57.000 Okay, actually we'll do one more.

00:48:58.000 Hey Ben, I'm a young college student.

00:49:01.000 Majoring in criminal justice, I want to practice law.

00:49:03.000 What advice would you have for being able to perform well in school and on the LSATs?

00:49:07.000 Love the show, keep the faith.

00:49:08.000 Okay, so the LSATs, I recommend Testmasters, very good testing program if you can afford it.

00:49:12.000 They're not that expensive, I don't think.

00:49:14.000 And they're a very good test prep program as far as doing well in school.

00:49:19.000 You know, the same rules always apply.

00:49:21.000 Buckle down, study hard, and tell your professors what they want to hear.

00:49:25.000 Don't fight them on the tests.

00:49:27.000 And I lied, one more.

00:49:28.000 Okay, Daniel writes,

00:49:36.000 Daniel, no, I don't have a right to exchange with you.

00:49:39.000 I have a right to offer you my services and you have a right to reject my services.

00:49:42.000 I have a right to... I have a right to offer my services and you have a right to reject them.

00:49:47.000 And that's the bottom line.

00:49:48.000 Yes, I can reject service to you for any reason.

00:49:51.000 That's the essence of freedom.

00:49:52.000 Anything else is indentured servitude.

00:49:54.000 Now, that doesn't mean that I may not be a jerk for picking the reason.

00:49:58.000 But, there are lots of things in America where I think you have a right to do them even if you're a jerk.

00:50:01.000 I think people in the United States have a right against the government to say the N-word.

00:50:05.000 I also think that they're pieces of human crap.

00:50:07.000 But, you have a right to do that.

00:50:09.000 I think people have a right to get people pregnant out of wedlock.

00:50:11.000 I don't think there has to be a prohibition on that.

00:50:14.000 Do I think you're a bad person if you do that?

00:50:15.000 Yeah.

00:50:16.000 I think there are lots of things in America with which I don't agree.

00:50:18.000 This is why I'm a believer in freedom.

00:50:20.000 This is why the left is not.

00:50:21.000 The left believes that if they don't like something, it has to be made illegal.

00:50:24.000 That is the only way for the society to function properly.

00:50:28.000 Okay, we've reached the end of the week.

00:50:29.000 I would say that don't ruin things over the weekend, but screw you, you already did.

00:50:33.000 It's already been ruined.

00:50:34.000 So have yourself a merry little weekend, but don't worry, we'll be back on Monday.

00:50:38.000 Maybe with a new baby.

00:50:40.000 Maybe.

00:50:40.000 We'll see, we'll see.

00:50:41.000 So we'll keep you updated on that.

00:50:44.000 Have a wonderful weekend.

00:50:44.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:50:45.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

Ep. 113 - Why The Media Can't Stop Trump

Summary

Transcript