The Ben Shapiro Show

00:00:00.000 So yeah, we all got it wrong.

00:00:02.000 Everybody who wrote Donald Trump off as a political charlatan destined to flame out, and everybody who called Trump a clown who would probably return to his reality show and leave us all alone, and everybody who suggested that this circus couldn't, just couldn't continue,

00:00:15.000 Yeah, we were all wrong.

00:00:17.000 Maybe we were guilty of believing that Trump's mistakes would break out into the mainstream rather than dying slow deaths on cable TV.

00:00:24.000 Maybe we thought that voters would wake up to Trump's bombastic narcissism and just sort of turn away.

00:00:29.000 Or maybe, as statistician Nate Silver put it, we were guilty of not predicting that the Republican Party would lose its effing mind.

00:00:36.000 Whatever the rationale, Trump's definitely a shock to everybody but the political commentator Ann Coulter and a few other Trump stalwarts.

00:00:43.000 So, here are five lessons to take away from Trump winning the nomination.

00:00:46.000 First, failure to utilize ideological purity tests actually leads to the rise of leftist candidates in your own party.

00:00:54.000 So the bizarre paradox of people who think like Trump is that the same people complaining about Republicans caving to Obama now want to nominate a lifelong Democrat ad hoc politician with no centralizing principle other than his own glorification, a guy who brags openly he'll cut more deals with Democrats.

00:01:10.000 And when conservatives object, Trump supporters point to GOP nominations of Mitt Romney, who created Obamacare, and John McCain, who created campaign finance reform and amnesty, and they're being hypocritical, these people say.

00:01:21.000 McCain and Romney were, by any measure, more conservative overall than Trump, but the feeling that conservatism doesn't matter any longer, it's hard to quell when, to so many major Republicans, it really didn't matter that much in 2008 and 2012.

00:01:33.000 Second lesson.

00:01:36.000 If you ignore social issues, that means that the only way to now appeal to disgruntled blue-collar voters is if you move left on economics.

00:01:43.000 We talked about this a couple of days ago.

00:01:45.000 There's been a lot of loose talk about Donald Trump's appeal with disenchanted white voters who didn't show up for Mitt Romney.

00:01:51.000 Trump does indeed appeal to them with lies about how he's going to create tariffs that bring back jobs and taxing the rich.

00:01:57.000 This is straight from the Bernie Sanders playbook.

00:01:59.000 Now these people did used to vote Republican,

00:02:01.000 Before the Republican Party decided to toss social policy, same-sex marriage, abortion, out the window to pander to New Yorkers like Donald Trump.

00:02:09.000 Third lesson.

00:02:10.000 The moral narrative?

00:02:11.000 Way more important than policy knowledge.

00:02:14.000 Trump knows way less, way less, about policy than my four-day-old child.

00:02:18.000 And he cares less about the Constitution than my boy does.

00:02:21.000 But that doesn't matter because he's fighting the establishment.

00:02:24.000 By which Trump means everyone who disagrees with him.

00:02:26.000 And because he's conflating the establishment with a political establishment that insists on cutting deals with Obama, Republican voters buy in.

00:02:33.000 Fourth lesson.

00:02:34.000 When there are no good guys in politics, character just stops mattering.

00:02:37.000 There was an Indiana voter last week.

00:02:39.000 She was asked about the fact that Trump always lies.

00:02:41.000 She said, yeah, well, you know, all the politicians lie.

00:02:43.000 At least Trump lies differently than other politicians.

00:02:46.000 That's kind of weird, but it's true.

00:02:48.000 If all the politicians are automatic liars, then Trump's lack of character and credibility, that sort of fades into the woodwork, and all that's left is him saying outrageous things that need to be said.

00:02:57.000 Final lesson.

00:02:58.000 Lack of institutional trust leads to a rise in fascism, not to liberty.

00:03:03.000 Okay, we hate the media, but instead of seeking honest members of the media, we revel in people who lie to the media and get away with it, like Trump.

00:03:10.000 We hate the political establishment,

00:03:12.000 Instead of looking for people who will abide by constitutional limitations and minimize the role of government, we look for a strong man, a bad strong man, to break apart the system.

00:03:22.000 Trump's rise reflects and foreshadows a really ugly future for the country.

00:03:25.000 I hope I'm wrong on that prediction.

00:03:27.000 I certainly was about Trump's rise.

00:03:30.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:03:30.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:03:39.000 Alrighty, here we are, and you should subscribe.

00:03:41.000 Go to Daily Wire right now, you can subscribe.

00:03:43.000 This allows you also, if you subscribe to my podcast and to Daily Wire, it allows you to email me directly.

00:03:48.000 So we're not doing the magic numbers routine anymore if you want to get your email to the top of the chain.

00:03:53.000 If you're a subscriber, then you should be able to go on your account and email me directly, and your emails go to the top of the pile.

00:03:59.000 And I know the mailing

00:04:01.000 The mailbag, the vaunted Ben Shapiro show mailbag is tomorrow, so it's not too late to get in on that.

00:04:07.000 Okay, lots to talk about today, including Mathis's new podcast, which we'll get to later.

00:04:11.000 But we will also be talking about Donald Trump and his various promises to various interest groups.

00:04:17.000 So Donald Trump is playing this double game right now.

00:04:20.000 He's playing one game for the conservatives and one game for everybody else.

00:04:23.000 So to the conservatives, he's sort of making his usual overtures.

00:04:26.000 And what this does is we don't believe him.

00:04:28.000 We think he's lying and we think that he's full of it.

00:04:31.000 But by him saying this, it gives cover to people like Rick Perry and people like Bobby Jindal who say, oh, he'll definitely better be better than Hillary.

00:04:37.000 So, for example, yesterday Trump said that he would appoint pro-life judges.

00:04:41.000 Here's what it looked like.

00:04:43.000 I will protect it, and the biggest way you can protect it is through the Supreme Court and putting people on the court.

00:04:50.000 Actually, the biggest way you can protect it, I guess, is by electing me president.

00:04:54.000 Alright, so you're going to get a judge who would overthrow, overturn Roe v. Wade.

00:05:00.000 That's a specific thing that you would do?

00:05:04.000 Overturned.

00:05:04.000 Look, I'm going to put conservative judges on.

00:05:07.000 I think one of the biggest things happening in terms of this election are, you know, it could be as many as five judges will be appointed over the next four and a half years.

00:05:16.000 So we're talking about five judges.

00:05:18.000 And I think probably the most important thing that one of the most important thing other than the security itself of the country is going to be the appointment of

00:05:26.000 Four to five Supreme Court Justices and I'll be doing that.

00:05:29.000 Diane's question is answered.

00:05:30.000 Your specific thing to protect the sanctity of life would be appointing a Supreme Court Justice that would overturn Roe v. Wade.

00:05:38.000 Do I have it?

00:05:39.000 Well, they'll be pro-life, and we'll see what about overturning, but they will be, we will appoint, I will appoint judges that will be pro-life, yes.

00:05:47.000 He's absolutely meaningless.

00:05:48.000 The man's absolutely meaningless, because O'Reilly asks him the specific question, right?

00:05:52.000 The only thing that matters, if you're a pro-life person, the number one obstacle to the pro-life position in America is Roe v. Wade.

00:05:58.000 So O'Reilly asks him, you say that you'll appoint pro-life justices.

00:06:01.000 First of all, I love that Trump doesn't know the difference between judges and justices.

00:06:05.000 Okay, you're appointing five justices to the Supreme Court.

00:06:07.000 At the Supreme Court level, they're called justices.

00:06:09.000 At the lower court level, they're called judges.

00:06:11.000 In any case, he says that he's going to appoint all these judges, these justices, and then he says, I'll appoint pro-life justices.

00:06:17.000 I don't know what they'll do about Roe v. Wade.

00:06:19.000 Then they're not pro-life.

00:06:21.000 They're also not pro-Constitution because it's a really, really bad constitutional decision by any order.

00:06:26.000 But what this does is it allows people like O'Reilly and Sean Hannity and allows people like Laura Ingram and Ann Coulter to say, what are you pro-life people whining about?

00:06:33.000 He said he was pro-life.

00:06:35.000 He said he's going to appoint pro-life judges.

00:06:37.000 Well, I don't believe him.

00:06:38.000 And the reason I don't believe him is because he reverses himself every five minutes on policy, and you can tell what he cares about.

00:06:43.000 And the only thing Donald Trump cares about is his own personal aggrandizement, his own personal power.

00:06:49.000 So, for instance, I'm supposed to believe him now that he's going to appoint a pro-life justice to overturn Roe v. Wade when he won't even say that the justice that he appoints will have a litmus test

00:06:58.000 Of overturning Roe v. Wade.

00:06:59.000 I mean, look at his specific language.

00:07:01.000 You can always tell where people stand when you lock them down to the specifics.

00:07:04.000 It's easy to say things in broad terms.

00:07:06.000 It's very hard to get down to specifics.

00:07:08.000 The left loves talking in broad terms about gun control.

00:07:11.000 When you try to narrow them down to specifics, okay, what do you suggest that we do, and what does that look like, then they run from the fight immediately.

00:07:18.000 They don't want any part of it, because the fact is they don't know what they're talking about.

00:07:21.000 And it's the same thing with Trump on Pro-Life.

00:07:23.000 I'm supposed to trust him anyway, even if he had said,

00:07:25.000 I'm going to appoint justices who will reverse Roe v. Wade.

00:07:28.000 Would I believe him?

00:07:29.000 Well, given the fact that he flip-flops on all of his positions simultaneously, and it's kaleidoscopic nonsense, probably not.

00:07:36.000 Here's Donald Trump, for example, on taxes just today.

00:07:40.000 I was a little upset because my taxes are going to go up if you win.

00:07:44.000 I'm going to be paying more now.

00:07:45.000 I thought I was going to be paying less.

00:07:48.000 No.

00:07:48.000 No?

00:07:48.000 It was incorrectly, if you read the Wall Street Journal front page today, they covered it exactly correct.

00:07:53.000 I am going, I have the biggest tax cut of anybody running by far, and that includes the 16 people that are vanquished, okay?

00:08:03.000 Nobody even came close, but I may have to raise it from that point.

00:08:08.000 It was incorrectly reported.

00:08:09.000 So your original statement in the debate, you might have to go up a little for me.

00:08:13.000 For me, I might have to pay more.

00:08:16.000 No, you're going to actually perhaps go down, actually.

00:08:19.000 Everybody's going to go down.

00:08:20.000 But who's really going to go down is the middle class, who have been absolutely destroyed by taxes.

00:08:24.000 But you said you wouldn't mind paying more.

00:08:26.000 You yourself wouldn't mind paying more.

00:08:28.000 I would not mind paying more.

00:08:29.000 No, honestly, I would not mind paying more.

00:08:30.000 That's kind of an indication.

00:08:31.000 That's kind of an indication to guys in your bracket.

00:08:33.000 No.

00:08:33.000 No?

00:08:34.000 No.

00:08:35.000 The question was asked, would I mind paying more?

00:08:37.000 I wouldn't mind, but the fact is that everybody's going to be paying less and we're going to run a much better, a much better, we're going to run a, hey Bill, we're going to run a country that works.

00:08:48.000 We're going to get this country going again because right now this country is stalled so badly and taxes are going to go down and that's one of the ways we're going to get it to work.

00:08:57.000 Man, it's just, it's so incoherent, and it's so back and forth.

00:09:00.000 He did say he would raise taxes on the wealthiest.

00:09:02.000 Then he said, what I mean is, I'm gonna lower taxes on the wealthiest, but then they might have to rise again.

00:09:07.000 Sort of like his immigration plan.

00:09:08.000 I'm gonna deport everybody, but then they can all come back in.

00:09:11.000 Right?

00:09:11.000 This is what he has said, right?

00:09:12.000 Touchback amnesty.

00:09:13.000 They leave, they come back, and now they're here and they're citizens again.

00:09:16.000 And this is all nonsense.

00:09:17.000 So when he makes promises, I wrote a piece for National Review today, I'm now a contributor over there.

00:09:21.000 I wrote a piece for National Review today, and one of the things that I said is, he has to, if Trump actually wanted to woo conservatives, and I'll explain why he doesn't in just a moment.

00:09:30.000 If he actually wanted to woo us, what he would actually be doing is he would actually be attempting to prove to us that his promises can be kept.

00:09:37.000 That he's actually going to be consistent.

00:09:38.000 He has to show like a little bit of consistency because otherwise he can make all the conservative promises he wants.

00:09:43.000 I'm not going to believe him.

00:09:44.000 You know, I don't believe people who routinely cheat me in business that next time they won't cheat me.

00:09:49.000 They have to give me a long record of now they've gotten past all the cheating in order for me to start trusting them with my money.

00:09:53.000 I'm not going to trust Donald Trump on his positions when the man legitimately flip-flops every position he has ever held in a matter of moments depending on who's asking him the questions.

00:10:02.000 So, there's Trump.

00:10:03.000 Now, I say again,

00:10:04.000 He's doing a lot of this as cover.

00:10:06.000 So he's saying something to everyone that they presumably like, so that when they're asked about it, why do you support Trump?

00:10:12.000 They can give their version of the positions that they like.

00:10:14.000 So when Rick Perry is asked, what about Trump do you like?

00:10:17.000 Rick Perry, the same guy who called Donald Trump a, quote, cancer on conservatism, who's now backing Donald Trump.

00:10:22.000 When people ask him, okay, so why do you support Donald Trump?

00:10:25.000 He can say, well, he says he's gonna lower taxes for the rich.

00:10:27.000 Well, he says he's gonna appoint pro-life justices.

00:10:29.000 And then you find somebody who's pro-choice, and the person who's pro-choice will say,

00:10:33.000 Well, you know, he's not really that pro-life.

00:10:34.000 I mean, he said that he's not going to touch Roe v. Wade, basically.

00:10:37.000 He says he backs Planned Parenthood.

00:10:38.000 The person who wants higher taxes?

00:10:40.000 Well, you know, he says that sort of for public consumption.

00:10:43.000 When you signal to people that you're lying all the time, then you are going to draw, actually, a larger group of people to you, because the bottom line is, there's always something somebody can find a reason to back you.

00:10:54.000 And so, you know, this is sort of Trump's campaign in a political nutshell.

00:10:58.000 Now, there's another element to Trump's campaign that is very telling, and this is why I think that Trump is a relatively scary character, and that is that Trump has never apologized for anything.

00:11:08.000 He's never apologized for anything.

00:11:10.000 Now, I remember, a few months back, there was a host on NPR, and I'm trying to remember her name, but there was a host on NPR, Diane Rehm, I think?

00:11:17.000 And she's a host on NPR.

00:11:19.000 And she has a very... It's hard to listen to her voice.

00:11:22.000 It's very hard to listen to her voice.

00:11:23.000 And I was on my morning show out here in LA, and I mocked her voice on air.

00:11:27.000 And I found out during a break that she actually had a throat condition.

00:11:30.000 She had something that's wrong with her throat, and that's why her voice sounds back.

00:11:32.000 So we came back from the break, and I said, you know, I really want to apologize for that.

00:11:36.000 I didn't know she had a throat condition.

00:11:37.000 Obviously, that changes the nature of the mockery, and that's not any fault of her own.

00:11:41.000 Not only that, she actually has a disability.

00:11:43.000 That's really sad, and I'm sorry I did that.

00:11:45.000 That was not nice.

00:11:46.000 That was bad.

00:11:47.000 That's what normal, decent people do.

00:11:49.000 When you hurt people, you apologize to people.

00:11:51.000 When you're wrong, you apologize to people.

00:11:54.000 Donald Trump never apologizes for anything, because Donald Trump is the candidate of might makes right.

00:11:59.000 Donald Trump is the candidate of, if I am more popular after saying something than I was before saying that thing, then it must have been that I was right.

00:12:07.000 Popularity means that I was right.

00:12:09.000 Me being popular means, it's justification for what I do.

00:12:12.000 If people like that I did something, that means that it's an okay thing that I did.

00:12:16.000 And if people don't like it, then it must be because they misconstrued what I said, like on the tax proposal there.

00:12:20.000 So, you're about to see Donald Trump, this is his new routine.

00:12:23.000 It really isn't new, but it's now coming to the forefront because he's won the nomination.

00:12:27.000 Katrina Pearson, who is his really kind of nasty spokesperson, she's on with Fox, and she's asked by Martha McCallum about why he doesn't just apologize to women for saying nasty things about women, and here's what she says.

00:12:40.000 And he closed that gap drastically.

00:12:55.000 I beg to differ with that, that some of those comments have continued on into the present.

00:12:59.000 But if that's the case, why doesn't he come out and talk about that?

00:13:02.000 Why doesn't he say, you know what?

00:13:04.000 I said things that might have been off-color, that I wouldn't really want my children or my grandchildren to say.

00:13:09.000 I was trying to be funny with Howard Stern.

00:13:11.000 And he has said that to a certain extent.

00:13:12.000 But perhaps apologize.

00:13:14.000 Say, if I've offended any of you, I apologize.

00:13:17.000 And I don't mean, you know, to be mean-spirited against women.

00:13:20.000 Why not do that?

00:13:22.000 Well, because that's the politically correct thing to say.

00:13:24.000 No, it's not.

00:13:24.000 It's the polite thing to say, Katrina.

00:13:27.000 In this case, it's just the polite thing to say.

00:13:29.000 It's what I would imagine he would expect from his children or anyone else.

00:13:32.000 But let me tell you this, Martha.

00:13:33.000 At the same time, this is a response.

00:13:36.000 If he has said anything like that since the entertainment world, it's in response to criticism of him.

00:13:41.000 He doesn't just wake up in the morning and wanting to offend people.

00:13:44.000 He's responding to people who are offending him, his supporters, even his staff for that matter.

00:13:49.000 This is a response.

00:13:50.000 Mr. Trump has always said,

00:13:51.000 It is a counter punch.

00:13:53.000 And just because you criticize a woman after she criticizes you, that doesn't make you a sexist or a misogynist.

00:14:00.000 I get what you're saying.

00:14:01.000 I mean, your argument is that he's an equal opportunity offender.

00:14:04.000 That, you know, he, Carly Fiorina made him mad.

00:14:06.000 He said what he said about her.

00:14:07.000 He also called, you know, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz lots of names as well.

00:14:12.000 And in some ways, I can understand that that's interpreted as basically, you know, equality, right?

00:14:18.000 He's treating everybody exactly the same.

00:14:20.000 But the fact remains that he does not do well with women in many of these polls.

00:14:25.000 So when you look at the national polls, right?

00:14:27.000 So politically, wouldn't it be smart for him to maybe, you know, speak a little bit differently on these issues?

00:14:35.000 Well, he has said on The Stump and in some interviews that some of those comments were pulled out of context for the entertainment realm.

00:14:41.000 But I also think that taking his message out to the public and showing that many of these women have no idea who Mr. Trump really is when it comes to women, because they don't get to hear about all the women that Mr. Trump brought into his organization.

00:14:55.000 They don't know that the majority of his executives are women.

00:15:00.000 We can stop it here.

00:15:01.000 So bottom line is you see even how Fox is covering this, the way that they're showing pictures of Melania while we're talking about women that Donald Trump was mean to, right?

00:15:08.000 No pictures of Megyn Kelly, no pictures, excuse me, of Michelle Fields, or no pictures of Carly Fiorina, no pictures of Heidi Cruz.

00:15:15.000 What did Heidi Cruz do to him that caused him to come out against Heidi Cruz, right?

00:15:18.000 Well, what exactly caused that?

00:15:20.000 But Donald Trump, his people say, bottom line, he's not going to apologize because it's not hurting him and because he's a winner.

00:15:25.000 He's a big winner, so he's never going to apologize for anything that he says.

00:15:29.000 Now, as you remember, you remember way back in August, Donald Trump said this about John McCain, right?

00:15:35.000 So I never liked him as much after that because I don't like losers.

00:15:38.000 But, Frank, Frank, let me get to it.

00:15:40.000 He hit me.

00:15:41.000 He's not a war hero.

00:15:42.000 He's a war hero.

00:15:43.000 He's a war hero.

00:15:45.000 He's a war hero because he was captured.

00:15:47.000 I like people that weren't captured, okay?

00:15:49.000 I hate to tell you.

00:15:50.000 Okay, we'll stop it there.

00:15:51.000 He likes war heroes who were captured, who were not captured.

00:15:54.000 You know, he doesn't like war heroes who were captured.

00:15:56.000 He's not a war hero.

00:15:57.000 Right?

00:15:57.000 So he was asked about this yesterday.

00:15:59.000 And here was Donald Trump's response.

00:16:01.000 Because McCain said, why don't you just apologize to veterans?

00:16:03.000 Why don't you just say, I shouldn't have said that.

00:16:05.000 You know, that was a nasty thing to say.

00:16:07.000 You know, it's my fault.

00:16:08.000 Why won't you just apologize for that?

00:16:10.000 Here's Donald Trump.

00:16:11.000 Listen to his response.

00:16:12.000 Again, this is the Might Makes Right campaign.

00:16:14.000 Here's Trump.

00:16:17.000 Has said that he doesn't want an apology from you for him personally, but he thinks you ought to apologize to the tens of thousands of POWs who were captured by no fault of their own.

00:16:29.000 Well, I've actually done that, Don, and I've, you know, frankly, I like John McCain and John McCain is a hero.

00:16:37.000 Also heroes are people that are, you know, whether they get caught or don't get caught, they're all heroes as far as I'm concerned.

00:16:44.000 And that's the way it should be.

00:16:45.000 So do you regret saying that?

00:16:48.000 I don't, you know, I like not to regret anything.

00:16:51.000 I mean, you know, you say things and what I said, frankly, is what I said.

00:16:58.000 And, you know, some people like what I said, if you want to know the truth.

00:17:01.000 I mean, there are many people that like what I said.

00:17:03.000 You know, after I said that, my poll numbers went up seven points.

00:17:07.000 No, I understand a lot.

00:17:09.000 Do you understand that?

00:17:10.000 I mean, some people liked what I said.

00:17:12.000 I like John McCain.

00:17:13.000 In my eyes, John McCain is a hero.

00:17:15.000 Okay, we can cut it off there.

00:17:16.000 That's all that matters.

00:17:17.000 That's all that matters.

00:17:18.000 Okay, so now he wants it both ways, right?

00:17:21.000 John McCain, he quasi-apologizes.

00:17:23.000 Well, John McCain's a war hero, but do you regret saying that?

00:17:25.000 No, I don't regret saying that, because I'm popular, because people liked it.

00:17:29.000 It made me rise in the polls.

00:17:31.000 Guess what?

00:17:31.000 Saying lots of terrible things, doing lots of terrible things can make you rise in the polls.

00:17:36.000 Doing terrible, terrible things to people can make you rise in the polls, it turns out.

00:17:40.000 It turns out that there are places in the United States where holding slaves and standing for slavery made you rise in the polls.

00:17:45.000 Today, it will help you rise in the polls in California if you say that babies should be aborted the day of birth.

00:17:51.000 You'll rise in New York in the polls if you do as they said yesterday.

00:17:55.000 There's a new law in New York that if you are a bartender and a pregnant woman walks into your bar, you are not allowed to deny her alcohol.

00:18:01.000 Maybe this makes you rise in the polls in New York.

00:18:03.000 It's also evil because you're now participating.

00:18:05.000 You're forcing bartenders to participate in the possible harm to an unborn child, right?

00:18:10.000 But all these things could make a rise that doesn't make them right?

00:18:12.000 Doesn't make them right?

00:18:14.000 And this might-makes-right idea from the Trump campaign is really quite troubling.

00:18:18.000 It's really problematic because the bottom line is that what's going to happen now is that as Trump goes forward, if he wins, if he wins, everything that he does now is justified on the basis that he's the president.

00:18:28.000 Everything that he does is justified on the basis that might makes right.

00:18:31.000 And when you're the president, you're the most mighty person alive, you're the most powerful man on planet Earth.

00:18:36.000 Once that's the case, nothing he does... He says he doesn't like to have regrets.

00:18:39.000 No regrets.

00:18:40.000 Right?

00:18:40.000 He's the YOLO president.

00:18:42.000 He's gonna come along and it's YOLO.

00:18:43.000 He only gets to do this one time, and so he might as well go for broke.

00:18:46.000 And you have no way to argue with him because he's popular.

00:18:49.000 The people like it.

00:18:50.000 And here's the thing about Trump.

00:18:51.000 He doesn't even pay attention to the polls, so it doesn't even matter whether the people like it.

00:18:55.000 It doesn't even matter whether the people like it.

00:18:58.000 He just has this world in which everything he says is popular.

00:19:01.000 If he likes what he says, it's popular.

00:19:03.000 If he doesn't like what he says, then somebody made a mistake about it.

00:19:05.000 This is the recipe for authoritarianism.

00:19:08.000 This is the recipe for being an authoritarian.

00:19:10.000 Is the idea that popularity is equal to decency.

00:19:14.000 I get this argument on art all the time, by the way.

00:19:16.000 It extends all the way across the board.

00:19:18.000 I think there is such a thing as quality, I think there is such a thing as good, and there is such a thing as bad.

00:19:22.000 There is such a thing as moral, and there is such a thing as immoral.

00:19:24.000 And these things don't change based on their level of popularity.

00:19:27.000 The morality of abortion does not change because a million abortions a year take place in the United States.

00:19:33.000 The morality is the same as it ever was.

00:19:35.000 You know, the fact that rap sucks is not a... that's not affected by the fact that so many Americans think that rap is great.

00:19:44.000 It still sucks.

00:19:45.000 The fact that so many Americans love Barack Obama doesn't mean that he's a great president.

00:19:48.000 Popularity is not a reflection of quality.

00:19:51.000 Popularity is a reflection of popularity alone.

00:19:56.000 That's all that's happening here.

00:19:57.000 And so when Trump says this sort of stuff, and when you hear his folks saying, well the will of the people must be respected, how dare you disrespect the voters?

00:20:04.000 Listen, I disrespect the voters all the time when they make bad decisions.

00:20:07.000 The decision doesn't become better just because somebody made it with a majority, or plurality in this case.

00:20:12.000 The founders feared exactly this kind of logic.

00:20:14.000 The founders thought this stuff was nonsense.

00:20:16.000 Why do you think we have a constitution?

00:20:17.000 There are many countries, many liberal western countries, that do not have a constitution.

00:20:21.000 Why do you think the United States has a constitution?

00:20:24.000 The reason is, the reason for a Bill of Rights, is because the founders did not trust the people not to be stupid.

00:20:30.000 The founders felt like, okay, there will be a time, probably, when freedom of speech becomes unpopular.

00:20:34.000 That time, it turns out, is now, when freedom of speech becomes unpopular.

00:20:37.000 Doesn't matter if people don't like it.

00:20:39.000 It's still a right.

00:20:40.000 It still exists.

00:20:41.000 The basis of the Declaration of Independence is not, we're rebelling because it's popular to rebel.

00:20:46.000 A third of Americans supported rebellion against Great Britain.

00:20:49.000 They said, we're rebelling because there are certain inalienable rights that adhere to all of us that have been violated by the British Crown, and we're not going to stand for that.

00:20:57.000 Right and wrong are not adjudicated based on the popularity of the issue in question.

00:21:01.000 And yet, that's exactly Trump's entire case.

00:21:03.000 He says, I don't even have to apologize for slandering veterans.

00:21:06.000 I don't have to apologize for slandering POWs because, hey, I went up in the polls and that's all that matters.

00:21:11.000 And you can see, and this is the part that scares me, you can see everybody in the Republican Party or large segments of the Republican Party falling in line.

00:21:18.000 Trump is popular, therefore he's right.

00:21:20.000 Ann Coulter, with whom I've been friends for a very long time, but I've been very disappointed by Ann's take on this particular election, and I think that she's been saying untrue things about Donald Trump and about his opponents.

00:21:31.000 Here's Ann Coulter saying that we all need to get on the Trump train or be run over because obviously he's popular.

00:21:38.000 Um, no, I think you're absolutely right.

00:21:40.000 I think it shows that Trump is being unbelievably gracious.

00:21:43.000 He doesn't need to have this meeting.

00:21:45.000 He is the party.

00:21:46.000 He is the heart and soul of the party.

00:21:49.000 Um, and I mean, I think he could have just said, um, hope he comes aboard.

00:21:55.000 We're going to have a lot of fun, but if he doesn't, oh well.

00:21:58.000 So no, I think it's very nice, but I don't think you should waste a lot of time on these meetings going forward.

00:22:05.000 Right, so she's saying he shouldn't even bother meeting with Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House.

00:22:13.000 The Speaker of the House, which is, by the way, the most powerful position in Congress, that Trump should not bother meeting with Paul Ryan because Paul Ryan has said he's not sure he's ready to jump on the Trump train.

00:22:22.000 She says he shouldn't even bother because obviously the heart and soul is with Trump.

00:22:27.000 And the people are with Trump.

00:22:29.000 The people are with Trump is not a good argument.

00:22:31.000 It is not a good argument.

00:22:32.000 It doesn't mean that he's right.

00:22:33.000 It doesn't mean that he doesn't have work to do on his candidacy.

00:22:35.000 You know, I have to tell you, folks, on a very personal level, I was having this conversation with Andrew Klavan the other day.

00:22:40.000 You know, when you're in the fight all the time, when you fought the left your entire career, now you see the left begin to infiltrate your own party, when you begin to see top-down, daddy government ideas begin to infiltrate your own party,

00:22:53.000 It's very difficult because a lot of people who you thought were friendly allies, it turns out they're not allies.

00:22:58.000 They were just fellow travelers.

00:23:00.000 And when the pedal hits the metal, they're willing to break off and do whatever is necessary for them to win politically against their enemies.

00:23:08.000 And yeah, I've spent more time.

00:23:10.000 Here's the thing about the Trump supporters.

00:23:11.000 I've spent more time in this election second-guessing myself than I think any time in my political life.

00:23:16.000 Because when I fight the left, I don't have to second-guess myself.

00:23:18.000 I know where they are.

00:23:18.000 I know what they're saying.

00:23:19.000 I know who they are.

00:23:21.000 This new right is something with which I'm not familiar, because it's something, honestly, I didn't believe existed on the right.

00:23:25.000 This sort of ugly, white nationalist bent that you see online, or the know-nothingism of Trump, the kind of stupidity of Trump's policy positions.

00:23:33.000 I didn't think that this was a thing on the right.

00:23:35.000 I didn't think this was a thing in the conservative movement.

00:23:37.000 And so I've spent an awful lot of time thinking, okay, maybe I've just got it wrong.

00:23:40.000 Maybe I've just got it wrong.

00:23:41.000 Maybe Trump isn't what I think he is.

00:23:43.000 Maybe Trump isn't the sort of authoritarian thug he seems to be.

00:23:46.000 Maybe Donald Trump is, you know, he will be better than Hillary Clinton.

00:23:49.000 He won't do damage to the Republican brand.

00:23:51.000 Maybe I'm getting it wrong.

00:23:53.000 I don't see that sort of doubt anywhere on the other side of the aisle.

00:23:57.000 I don't see that doubt anywhere in the Trump camp.

00:23:59.000 The doubt, well, maybe these critiques of Trump are true.

00:24:04.000 Maybe there's something that's a little bit off-putting and disquieting about Donald Trump.

00:24:08.000 Now, there are people like Bobby Jindal, as we mentioned, or Dennis Prager, people who say, I don't like Trump, but he's better than Hillary.

00:24:13.000 Again, that's an argument I respect, but I'm talking about the ardent pro-Trump people.

00:24:18.000 Even as an ardent anti-Trump person, I spend a lot of time thinking, maybe I'm getting this wrong.

00:24:22.000 Listen, I would love to give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt, except that he doesn't provide me any reason to do so.

00:24:28.000 You think I want to be sitting out an election where Hillary Clinton's on the other side?

00:24:31.000 You think that makes me feel good?

00:24:33.000 You think it makes me feel good about myself or about my movement?

00:24:36.000 That I feel morally compelled to sit out an election where the worst example of democratic corruption in my lifetime is on the other side?

00:24:43.000 You think that makes me feel good about myself or makes me feel good about politics or what I do?

00:24:47.000 Of course it doesn't.

00:24:48.000 It's painful.

00:24:49.000 It's difficult.

00:24:51.000 But, as I am fond of saying, of course facts don't care about your feelings and Donald Trump is who Donald Trump is.

00:24:57.000 Donald Trump, and I don't care how many people line up behind him, he's still wrong.

00:25:02.000 And the things that he says are still wrong.

00:25:03.000 I don't care how many people liked that he called John McCain not a war hero because he was captured.

00:25:07.000 I don't care who liked that.

00:25:08.000 That makes those people bad people.

00:25:10.000 I don't care how many people.

00:25:11.000 And Donald Trump does this on a routine basis.

00:25:14.000 He does it on a routine basis.

00:25:15.000 If he knows people like it, then he just lets it go.

00:25:19.000 I know that I mentioned before this exchange that Trump had with with Wolf Blitzer.

00:25:25.000 I don't think we have it today.

00:25:26.000 I think that Clavin played on a show yesterday.

00:25:28.000 But there's there's a there's an exchange that Trump had with Wolf Blitzer about this this journalist Julia Yaffe or EO if it's spelled with an I.

00:25:37.000 And she is a journalist for GQ.

00:25:39.000 She wrote a piece that was not flattering about Trump or Melania.

00:25:41.000 And a bunch of anti-Semitic Trump supporters began sending her death threats via mail and on the phone.

00:25:47.000 And Trump was on Wolf Blitzer about it.

00:25:49.000 And Blitzer asks him about it.

00:25:50.000 And Trump says, well, I don't know anything about those people.

00:25:52.000 I don't know anything about those threats.

00:25:53.000 But the article was really bad.

00:25:55.000 The idea being, all these people like me, they must be okay.

00:25:58.000 Vladimir Putin likes me, he must be okay.

00:26:00.000 Right and wrong change based on whether these people like or dislike Donald Trump.

00:26:04.000 Donald Trump's North Star is his own personal popularity.

00:26:08.000 That is his moral North Star.

00:26:10.000 It's his guidepost.

00:26:11.000 Some of us actually use the idea of a godly, objective morality that guides us.

00:26:15.000 Some of us actually use the idea of the Constitution of the United States as our governmental North Star.

00:26:20.000 The idea of constitutional liberty as our governmental North Star.

00:26:24.000 Donald Trump's North Star is Donald Trump, which means it's constantly moving, and the people who follow that North Star are likely to get lost at sea.

00:26:30.000 People like Ann, by the way.

00:26:32.000 And that makes me sad to say, and you see it all over the place.

00:26:35.000 Look at this debate between Stephen Hayes over at the Weekly Standard and Tucker Carlson from Daily Caller.

00:26:39.000 This was with Brett Baer yesterday, and it's making some headlines because you'll see the debate, and I think it's an interesting one.

00:26:46.000 It doesn't mean you should back it.

00:26:47.000 It does mean you need to rethink your comfortable assumptions about immigration, if you're the Republican Party.

00:26:51.000 Sure, but if you have principles, if you believe that we shouldn't, in effect, ban a religion, don't ban a religion.

00:26:58.000 In a country founded on freedom of religion, it's not a good idea to ban a religion, even with asterisks.

00:27:04.000 Republicans can't just cast aside their principles and free trade because Donald Trump comes around and, you know, this orange guy suggests that free trade is bad.

00:27:12.000 We're going to throw away 300 years of Adam Smith.

00:27:13.000 I've been here a long time.

00:27:14.000 I haven't noticed a lot of principles among Republicans in Washington.

00:27:16.000 Perhaps they're there.

00:27:17.000 They're hiding them.

00:27:17.000 Well, I would just say look at Europe.

00:27:19.000 Look at the destruction of Europe underway now.

00:27:21.000 What are the lessons we've dropped?

00:27:22.000 It doesn't mean you need to ban people who are Muslims.

00:27:24.000 I agree.

00:27:24.000 That's an overstatement and kind of crazy.

00:27:26.000 But it does mean keeping your immigration regime the same in the face of what's happening now.

00:27:29.000 It's equally crazy.

00:27:31.000 No, I agree with you entirely.

00:27:32.000 I think they need to respond to this.

00:27:33.000 Clearly there's a massive consensus.

00:27:34.000 And they have, but they refuse to.

00:27:35.000 But if you make the argument, you're not making it, others have made it, that they just cast aside these pillars of conservatism.

00:27:42.000 But open borders is not a pillar of conservatism.

00:27:45.000 Because Donald Trump is making certain arguments about trade and about other things.

00:27:49.000 I think that's unwise, and I think that's one of the reasons that you're seeing this resistance from some people.

00:27:53.000 They don't want to support somebody who opposes the things that they fought for and held most dear for years.

00:27:59.000 So if open borders is one of the things they held most dear for years, they're going to have to give up on it because the country just doesn't support it, they've defended it, and they need to change.

00:28:07.000 Okay, so he keeps coming back to open borders, says Tucker Carlson.

00:28:10.000 It's such a Trump lie, this idea that everyone who opposes him opposes him on the basis of open borders policy.

00:28:17.000 Are you kidding me?

00:28:18.000 I've been for a while, long before Trump was.

00:28:20.000 I was in favor of restricting immigration long before Trump was.

00:28:22.000 Look at an interview I did with Ann Coulter last year on her book, Adios America, about restricting immigration flow.

00:28:28.000 No, what Stephen Hayes is saying, and he keeps mentioning free trade, and you notice Tucker Carlson deliberately avoiding talk about free trade, right?

00:28:34.000 He keeps going back to immigration, he won't talk free trade.

00:28:37.000 What Hayes is saying is, look, there are certain principles that guide us.

00:28:40.000 And Tucker Carlson is saying, even about immigration there, he's saying, well, it's unpopular.

00:28:44.000 Just got to abandon it.

00:28:45.000 Just got to move beyond it.

00:28:47.000 Truth does not change just because it's unpopular.

00:28:50.000 It's still truth.

00:28:51.000 But what you're seeing the Republican Party do, because it's a vehicle for victory, it's not a vehicle for conservatism.

00:28:55.000 And this has always been the tension inside the Republican Party.

00:28:58.000 Is it a vehicle for conservatism or is it a vehicle for victory?

00:29:01.000 Right now, it's pretty clear this has become a vehicle for victory, not a vehicle for conservatism.

00:29:06.000 You're seeing all the Republicans jump on board behind Trump, including people like Marco Rubio.

00:29:10.000 Rubio, who again, basically suggested that Trump's politics are egregious, he says he'll support the nominee too.

00:29:17.000 Would those reservations keep you?

00:29:19.000 Do they right now preclude you from endorsing him?

00:29:22.000 Well, I've set out... I've signed a pledge that said I'd support the Republican nominee and I intend to continue to do that, but we're... Look, here's a situation that we're in.

00:29:30.000 On the one hand, I don't want Hillary Clinton to be the President of the United States.

00:29:34.000 I don't want her to win this election.

00:29:36.000 On the other hand, as I said, I have well-defined differences with the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party.

00:29:42.000 And like millions of Republicans who try to reconcile those two things, I intend to live up to the pledge that we made.

00:29:49.000 But that said, these concerns that I have about policy, they remain and they're there.

00:29:54.000 You know, that doesn't mean that Donald needs to change his positions in order to get my support or what have you.

00:30:00.000 As I said earlier today, I think he should be true to what he believes in and continue to campaign on those things and make his case to the American people.

00:30:07.000 You know what, Marco?

00:30:08.000 Stick it.

00:30:09.000 Stick it.

00:30:10.000 Of course you should change his positions if they're wrong.

00:30:13.000 If they're wrong.

00:30:13.000 And this whole, I'm gonna support the nominee, I signed a pledge.

00:30:16.000 You know, I'm maybe the only person in American commentariat who said that that question was stupid in the first Republican debate.

00:30:22.000 That no one should be forced to sign a loyalty pledge to anybody else.

00:30:26.000 You should be loyal to principle, not to people or organizations.

00:30:29.000 Loyalty to principle, over people or organizations, is what keeps people alive.

00:30:34.000 Loyalty to organizations and individuals leads to death.

00:30:37.000 Okay, it leads to legitimate death.

00:30:38.000 Because if you are more loyal to an organization or a bad guy than you are to basic principles like decency, you're going to do very, very bad things.

00:30:45.000 And that's what the Republican Party is about to do.

00:30:48.000 The final kind of domino here is going to be Paul Ryan.

00:30:51.000 There's sort of an open question.

00:30:52.000 Paul Ryan is meeting today with Trump.

00:30:53.000 Not clear how that's going to go.

00:30:55.000 Paul Ryan was asked about this yesterday.

00:30:57.000 He said, well, you know, we have to unify the party.

00:30:59.000 This is his routine.

00:31:00.000 He just keeps saying, unify the party, unify the party.

00:31:03.000 This is all prelude to him saying,

00:31:05.000 Okay, well, in order to unify the party, I'm going to have to back Trump, even though he's expressed his reservations.

00:31:09.000 Here's Paul Ryan.

00:31:11.000 Look, we've got a process we're just getting started.

00:31:13.000 So the last thing I'm going to do is say exactly what the end of this process is going to be when we're just beginning this process.

00:31:19.000 The point, I'll just make one more time, is I really believe that if we're going to be successful this fall, we have to unify our party.

00:31:25.000 We have to go forward with a positive message that Americans see that we have solutions to their problems.

00:31:30.000 When 7 out of 10 Americans don't like the path that this country is on, and Hillary Clinton is basically promising to keep going down the same path, we have an obligation to merge and to unify around our common principles to offer this country a choice, a better way forward, and that's going to take some party unification to do that.

00:31:46.000 We just finished probably one of the most grueling primaries in modern history.

00:31:51.000 It's going to take some work, and that's the kind of work we're dedicated to doing.

00:31:54.000 Okay, so he says unify the party, and here is Trump.

00:31:57.000 This is why I think all of this is a prelude to a big conciliation.

00:32:00.000 Here's Trump last night trying to woo Paul Ryan.

00:32:03.000 Number one, I have a lot of respect for Paul, and I think we're gonna have a very good meeting, I hope.

00:32:07.000 He's a very good man, he wants what's good for the party, and I think we're gonna have very positive results.

00:32:12.000 And I'd love, frankly, for him to stay and be chairman.

00:32:15.000 Okay, so he had said earlier that maybe Ryan should be removed as chairman of the party because he opposes Trump, or has said that he won't support Trump.

00:32:24.000 Alright, so the bottom line is that this could all change.

00:32:26.000 I mean, tonight if Ryan says he's not endorsing Trump, Trump will be on O'Reilly talking about how Paul Ryan is a terrible man, a chameleon, somebody who lies, and all the rest of it.

00:32:34.000 The worst liar since the snake in the garden.

00:32:37.000 And we'll get that whole routine.

00:32:39.000 Okay, so, bottom line is the Might Make Right campaign does have followers because might does attract followers.

00:32:44.000 Might does attract followers.

00:32:45.000 It doesn't make right, however.

00:32:47.000 That said, Donald Trump is running, and there's a new poll out today from Reuters.

00:32:51.000 This poll had Hillary up by 13 points last week, and now has them running dead even, and now has Trump at 40, and it has Hillary at 41%, well within the margin of error.

00:32:59.000 Of course, that shows that there is a 19% gap between that and full voting.

00:33:05.000 So where do those other 19% go?

00:33:07.000 Nobody really knows.

00:33:08.000 Trump says that he's going to run a new sort of operation.

00:33:10.000 He says that in this campaign, he's not going to run a data-driven operation.

00:33:14.000 He's not going to invest in a robust ground game.

00:33:16.000 He's going to invest in his rallies.

00:33:18.000 He's going to have big rallies because he's hoping that sort of the free media that he generates is going to be like the primaries.

00:33:22.000 He generates big media, big rallies, and then all these people go out and vote for him sort of spontaneously.

00:33:28.000 This seems to me unbelievably stupid.

00:33:30.000 You need both.

00:33:30.000 You need a good ground game too.

00:33:32.000 Apparently there are some super PACs who may or may not pick up the slack for it, but this is dumb.

00:33:36.000 But Trump, again, because it's all about, look, ground game is not about self-aggrandizement.

00:33:41.000 Ground game is about organization.

00:33:42.000 Trump hates that stuff because it requires work.

00:33:45.000 It's much easier to just say things on TV.

00:33:47.000 And so Trump's, one of Trump's top aides, Paul Manafort, he's on TV and he says that Trump is not going to run this thing like a normal campaign.

00:33:56.000 Listen to what he compares American politics to.

00:33:58.000 It's kind of amazing.

00:33:59.000 Well, I'm going to Cleveland on Thursday and Friday.

00:34:01.000 We're sitting down with the RNC leadership, running the convention, and we're going to begin to start talking about that.

00:34:06.000 We have some ideas, but we want to listen to the RNC.

00:34:08.000 You're going to have to break some eggs, though, right?

00:34:10.000 I don't think we have to break any eggs.

00:34:11.000 Ryan's Priebus is going to give us an exciting convention?

00:34:14.000 Come on!

00:34:15.000 Donald Trump is going to give you an exciting convention.

00:34:17.000 Okay, how?

00:34:17.000 What do you do?

00:34:18.000 Do you have movies?

00:34:19.000 We're going to put a program together.

00:34:20.000 It's not put together yet.

00:34:21.000 We have ideas.

00:34:22.000 A reality show of some kind?

00:34:23.000 Well, this is the ultimate reality show.

00:34:24.000 It's the presidency of the United States.

00:34:27.000 So it will be a program where we will be talking to America about not just Donald Trump but the Republican Party and we put it in ways that we hope will be entertaining but more important informative.

00:34:39.000 Okay, so it's going to be like a reality show, which it already has been.

00:34:43.000 Has this been good for American politics, this whole reality show?

00:34:45.000 Does it make you feel better that it's turned into a game of Survivor and the only thing we're lacking is Donald Trump tromping naked through the woods?

00:34:52.000 Is that really what is making you feel better about American politics?

00:34:55.000 Look, here's one thing about Trump.

00:34:57.000 He understands that right now politics has become a reality show.

00:34:59.000 He's living inside reality, right?

00:35:01.000 Reality is now the reality show.

00:35:03.000 I mentioned the Truman Show yesterday.

00:35:05.000 We are all living now in the Truman Show.

00:35:07.000 This is the Truman Show.

00:35:07.000 We are all inside reality TV.

00:35:09.000 This is Donald Trump's world and we're all strangers in it if we don't believe that.

00:35:13.000 So that, you know, he's got it right.

00:35:15.000 We need some more glitz and glamour at the convention.

00:35:16.000 The fact that it takes Donald Trump to do it is sort of amazing.

00:35:19.000 Okay, meanwhile, as we say, Donald Trump is doing the Might Makes Right campaign.

00:35:22.000 Hillary is just falling apart.

00:35:23.000 She's terrible at all of this.

00:35:24.000 And even her own people are looking at her and saying, what is wrong with you?

00:35:28.000 Joe Biden came out this morning on Good Morning America.

00:35:30.000 He said, yeah, you know, I probably would have been a better president.

00:35:35.000 I had planned on running.

00:35:37.000 It's an awful thing to say.

00:35:39.000 I think I would have been the best president.

00:35:41.000 But it was the right thing, not just for my family, for me.

00:35:46.000 No one should ever seek the presidency unless they're able to devote their whole heart and soul and passion into just doing that.

00:35:58.000 Bo was my soul.

00:36:00.000 I just wasn't ready to be able to do that.

00:36:04.000 My one regret is my Bo's not here.

00:36:06.000 I don't have any other regrets.

00:36:08.000 Okay, so he says that he wishes that he'd run, basically.

00:36:11.000 And if he had run, he would have beaten Hillary.

00:36:14.000 Excuse me.

00:36:14.000 And then he probably also would have won the election.

00:36:17.000 So if he had run, he probably would have been the president.

00:36:19.000 But she's in trouble, and that's why you're seeing these people feeling freer to speak about it.

00:36:23.000 Bernie Sanders, he's come out and he says he's not quitting.

00:36:26.000 He's not going anywhere.

00:36:26.000 He says the polls show that he continues to, that he, not only would he beat Hillary, he'd beat Trump.

00:36:31.000 If you look over the last month or six weeks at every national poll, Bernie Sanders defeats Donald Trump by big numbers.

00:36:44.000 But it is not only national polls where we defeat Trump by bigger numbers than Secretary Clinton.

00:36:52.000 It is state poll after state poll after state poll.

00:36:57.000 Just in the last day, just in the last day,

00:37:01.000 Okay, so he's now doing the reverse Trump routine.

00:37:05.000 He's saying that I would crush Trump and the polls show it.

00:37:08.000 The polls, the polls, the polls, the polls.

00:37:17.000 Okay, so Hillary's got a problem, and even her own biggest supporters are saying she has a problem.

00:37:21.000 George Stephanopoulos, the Keebler elf, who said in his autobiography that he loves Hillary Clinton.

00:37:27.000 George Stephanopoulos, he says these losses she lost in West Virginia last night in the West Virginia primary because she was stupid enough to say several years ago that she wanted to put coal miners out of jobs.

00:37:36.000 Just a genius thing to say.

00:37:37.000 Here's George Stephanopoulos lamenting the fact that his former boss has some problems.

00:37:43.000 Bernie Sanders cannot catch up, can't get 98% of the delegates, and the Clinton team is explaining away this loss in West Virginia, but it is bogging her campaign down.

00:37:55.000 Well, yeah, you know, they say they did not advertise in West Virginia.

00:37:58.000 They say the demographics favor him there.

00:38:00.000 But the reality is she's got a real problem going forward.

00:38:02.000 She's had a hard time winning over white working class voters, George.

00:38:06.000 And that, as you know, is a group that Donald Trump has done especially well with.

00:38:10.000 Okay, so even Democrats beginning to acknowledge now that Hillary's a terrible candidate and has problems.

00:38:14.000 Chris Matthews said the same thing last night over on MSNBC.

00:38:17.000 Gotta brush it down to this show.

00:38:19.000 And then he says, let's talk about Hillary and her problems in this campaign.

00:38:22.000 Go!

00:38:23.000 The early elections in the 50s and 60s and the Kennedy races.

00:38:26.000 And I have to tell you, back then being a Democrat was great.

00:38:28.000 You talked about unemployment, you talked about jobs, you talked about putting people to work, you talked about minimum wage, you talked about Medicare.

00:38:33.000 Now you've got to talk about guns, which the people don't want to hear.

00:38:36.000 You've got to talk about how coal is bad for the country and bad for the world.

00:38:39.000 You've got to talk about same-sex in a part of the country that isn't too keen on that kind of cultural stuff.

00:38:43.000 Abortion.

00:38:44.000 So all of a sudden you're talking about things that aren't really well received.

00:38:47.000 But in the old days, a Democrat could just say, a lot of poverty here, let's do something about it.

00:38:51.000 And he's saying basically that Hillary can say those things, but Trump is also saying those same things.

00:38:56.000 This is why if the Republican Party is a vehicle for victory, basically you just make it the Democratic Party, and put a loudmouth in charge, and yay, everything is happy-dappy-do.

00:39:06.000 The Democrats have a problem here.

00:39:07.000 I mean, listen, I'm a never-Trump guy in the sense that, and I said I won't vote for Trump as he currently stands.

00:39:12.000 That was never based on the idea Trump can't win.

00:39:15.000 There are some people who say Trump can't win.

00:39:17.000 You know, my head says that he's going to have a tough time winning, but he could certainly win.

00:39:20.000 I mean, there's certainly a possibility that he can win.

00:39:22.000 The point of not voting for him is that I don't want him to win.

00:39:25.000 I don't want Hillary to win either.

00:39:26.000 I want both of them to drift off in a lifeboat somewhere in the middle of the sea.

00:39:30.000 I think that would probably be the best solution for America.

00:39:32.000 But Debbie Wasserman Schultz, she's now in the position that Mitt Romney's campaign was in the last days of the 2012 campaign.

00:39:39.000 Jar Jar Binks, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, she says that she no longer trusts the polls.

00:39:44.000 She doesn't put a lot of stock in the polls that show that Trump is doing well against Hillary.

00:39:47.000 What's embarrassing is that the Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump doesn't have the support of his own Speaker of the House, doesn't have support of either Bush President, has many United States Senators and candidates questioning or outright rejecting that they're going to attend their own party's convention because Donald Trump is radioactive and they know it.

00:40:13.000 The national polls are a little early to be hanging your hat on national polls, but the polls that I have seen across the board, the Quinnipiac result is an outlier, but I'm, in May, not one that puts a lot of stock in the polls.

00:40:29.000 Okay, so she's saying that the polls don't exist anymore, even though three days ago she was saying that Trump was getting crushed in all the polls, that she was going to run to victory.

00:40:36.000 So, Hillary has some problems of her own, and, you know, so this could be a competitive election.

00:40:42.000 The part, again, about Trump that scares me is that the authoritarian nature of Trump, the never-apologize-I'm-right-because-I'm-winning routine is not good for American politics.

00:40:50.000 In any sense.

00:40:51.000 Okay.

00:40:52.000 Time for some things that I like, and then some things that I hate.

00:40:55.000 So, things that I like... I haven't... I can't fully vouch for this yet.

00:40:58.000 I can't fully vouch for this yet.

00:40:59.000 I'll have to listen to it.

00:41:00.000 But our producer, Mathis, has a podcast called Hello & Ado.

00:41:04.000 And I suggest you check it out.

00:41:05.000 It looks like fun.

00:41:06.000 It's all culture talk.

00:41:07.000 I guess the latest episode is talking about Captain America.

00:41:10.000 It's him and his best friend, and they live across the country, and they talk to each other.

00:41:13.000 So that's kind of fun.

00:41:13.000 So check that out, his podcast, Hello & Ado.

00:41:16.000 Um, if it sucks, I'll come back and I'll put it in the things I hate like a couple of days from now, so I'll let you know, but for now it's in the things that I like.

00:41:22.000 Other things that I like, there's a movie that came out that really did not get, I thought, the plaudits that it deserved a couple of years ago.

00:41:28.000 I'm a huge Christopher Nolan fan, and I think that this is his best film, although he's made many really good films.

00:41:34.000 Yeah, Dark Knight.

00:41:34.000 It's hard to say this is better than Dark Knight, but this is a really, really good film that was underrated by a lot of people because they thought that it was too bulky and they didn't like the plotting.

00:41:43.000 This is the movie Interstellar with Matthew McConaughey, which I thought was just a riveting film.

00:41:47.000 I saw it twice.

00:41:48.000 I rarely see films twice.

00:41:50.000 And here is the trailer for those who missed it.

00:42:02.000 What are you going to do with it?

00:42:03.000 I'm gonna give it something socially responsible to do.

00:42:07.000 Can't we just let it go?

00:42:09.000 This thing needs to learn how to adapt, Murph.

00:42:11.000 Okay, let's mask up.

00:42:14.000 Like the rest of us.

00:42:23.000 So basically, if you can't see the visuals, you're missing, you know, everything that's good here, because the visuals are really pretty.

00:42:27.000 This world was treasured.

00:42:28.000 But it's been telling us to leave for a while now.

00:42:33.000 Your daughter's generation will be the last to survive on Earth.

00:42:36.000 You're the best pilot we ever had.

00:42:40.000 Get out there and save the world.

00:42:42.000 Everybody ready to say goodbye to our solar system?

00:42:43.000 To our galaxy?

00:42:44.000 Here we go.

00:42:56.000 It's really good.

00:42:57.000 So, okay, we can stop it there.

00:42:58.000 It's really good.

00:42:58.000 The bottom line is that the premise of the movie is that Earth is having an environmental crisis.

00:43:03.000 Basically, people are going to die, and so we need to find a different place to live.

00:43:07.000 And so they go out and investigate.

00:43:08.000 It's Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway.

00:43:10.000 They go out and they investigate other universes for places that human beings can live.

00:43:15.000 And it's cool, and it's spiritual.

00:43:17.000 It's a really neat movie.

00:43:19.000 I like it a lot.

00:43:19.000 Okay, other things that I like.

00:43:21.000 On the lighter side, there's this... I don't know if you've seen this clip.

00:43:24.000 Sometimes local news just provides you joy.

00:43:27.000 And this is a local news clip from Kentucky, where apparently there's some sort of tornado.

00:43:31.000 And if you can't see this, you're missing the joy also.

00:43:33.000 This is why you need to subscribe at Daily Wire.

00:43:35.000 But there's a man who has to be 111 years old, standing there, and he's wearing a shirt that says, Young and Getting It.

00:43:42.000 And he's standing, and we'll just play a little bit of this clip, because it's pretty ridiculous.

00:43:47.000 God is good, because that van, it tipped it a little bit, and that tornado just went over that van, because it came straight to us.

00:43:55.000 And when I said, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, that tornado went up over his van.

00:44:00.000 You guys are very lucky.

00:44:01.000 Thank you for talking with us.

00:44:03.000 Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

00:44:04.000 The tornado went up and over his van.

00:44:06.000 It's this black lady standing next to a guy who is 190,000 years old wearing a shirt that says young and getting it.

00:44:13.000 Pretty awesome.

00:44:14.000 Okay, a couple of things that I hate.

00:44:16.000 Baltimore's mayor just did this routine where she banned travel to North Carolina for all government employees.

00:44:21.000 Of course, nobody needs to ban travel to Baltimore.

00:44:23.000 Because no one's going to Baltimore, okay?

00:44:26.000 No one wants any part of Baltimore.

00:44:27.000 So, someone suggested online, some Twitter follower of mine suggested online, I think this is right, that North Carolina should just identify itself, self-identify as Baltimore, and then really put the mayor of Baltimore in a bind.

00:44:38.000 It would really be a problem.

00:44:40.000 It may not be Baltimore, but if it identifies as Baltimore, we have to treat it as Baltimore, correct?

00:44:44.000 So that's all very exciting.

00:44:46.000 Other things that I hate.

00:44:47.000 Samantha Bee has this show on TBS, and you knew it was gonna suck.

00:44:50.000 You knew from the first moment you saw it, it was going to be bad.

00:44:54.000 Its tagline was something like, if you don't watch this, you're a sexist, and you just knew it was gonna be lefty garbage.

00:44:59.000 So she has on absolute troll Patton Oswalt, who is in fact like a human, he's like a troll in human form.

00:45:06.000 And Patton Oswalt, he and I have gotten into it on Twitter a little bit.

00:45:09.000 Because he's a very, very wealthy socialist who refuses to answer how much he's worth and how much he gave to charity last year.

00:45:15.000 Patton Oswalt was on with Samantha Bee and they just make fun of pro-life pregnancy centers.

00:45:19.000 These are places that women who are pregnant go to get more information about their child.

00:45:24.000 And Patton Oswalt thinks this is just awful.

00:45:26.000 It's just the worst thing that ever happened.

00:45:29.000 The best cons are the lies that hide in plain sight.

00:45:34.000 The Electoral College.

00:45:36.000 God.

00:45:38.000 But tonight, we'll look at both sides of the coin.

00:45:42.000 The truth and the illusion.

00:45:46.000 This is not funny at all, by the way.

00:45:51.000 We are casting our gaze toward the ultimate hustle.

00:45:58.000 A conception deception.

00:46:00.000 A masterpiece of gynecological grift.

00:46:03.000 Crisis pregnancy centers.

00:46:09.000 A crisis pregnancy center is a fake abortion clinic.

00:46:12.000 They spread these lies, hoping to frighten women and to persuade them not to go ahead with obtaining the abortion that they want.

00:46:22.000 They create the illusion that they're an abortion clinic.

00:46:27.000 Illusion.

00:46:28.000 By adopting names that are similar to abortion clinics, adopting the same logos and fonts.

00:46:37.000 Copperplate Gothic Bold.

00:46:40.000 They try to have women come in to have a free pregnancy test or a free ultrasound and then their goal is to detain them.

00:46:50.000 So I ended up at a crisis pregnancy center after looking in the yellow pages.

00:46:53.000 I chose that listing because it was the largest ad.

00:46:57.000 They locate next to an abortion clinic, sometimes in the same building.

00:47:04.000 They con women into thinking that they provide the full range of reproductive health care services when they absolutely do not.

00:47:15.000 I did feel like when I was in the facility for the ultrasound that I was talking to a real nurse, giving me real medical information about my body.

00:47:24.000 Most of these fake clinics do not have licensed medical staff.

00:47:29.000 Women are often given false ultrasound results.

00:47:33.000 Okay, so we can stop it here.

00:47:35.000 So the whole idea is that these crisis pregnancy centers are the worst place on earth.

00:47:39.000 First of all, it would be illegal to impersonate a medical professional without a license.

00:47:42.000 Okay, that's illegal.

00:47:43.000 So you can report that and these people would be prosecuted.

00:47:45.000 That's number one.

00:47:46.000 Number two, they say they give them false ultrasound results.

00:47:49.000 Okay, Planned Parenthood refuses to perform 3D ultrasounds.

00:47:53.000 They've stumped against 3D ultrasounds because they're afraid that women are going to look at their babies and realize that they're babies.

00:48:00.000 Okay, one, even if you were to grant all of these premises, right?

00:48:03.000 It would be bad.

00:48:03.000 You don't want to deceive people because lying is not worthwhile.

00:48:06.000 But, even if you were to grant all these premises, lying in order to get a woman not to kill her baby seems to me less objectionable than lying to a woman in order to get her to kill her baby, which is what Planned Parenthood actually does.

00:48:16.000 So, you know, but this is how the media treat all this.

00:48:19.000 The media are really quite terrible.

00:48:20.000 Okay, the last thing that I want to talk about that I really dislike here is, um, well, now I have to decide.

00:48:27.000 Should we play the most ridiculous Trump question in history from Fox & Friends, or should we do Joe Biden talking about cancer?

00:48:32.000 Lindsey, which one?

00:48:33.000 Biden about cancer, or Trump?

00:48:35.000 Okay, it's always Trump.

00:48:36.000 Okay, so Fox & Friends asked Donald Trump legitimately the most ridiculous question in television history yesterday.

00:48:41.000 Here's what it looked like this morning.

00:48:43.000 Donald Trump, do you think you had something to do with Budweiser changing the name of their beer for the summer?

00:48:47.000 Are they Budweiser to America?

00:48:49.000 I think so.

00:48:50.000 They're so impressed with what our country will become that they decided to do this before the fact.

00:48:56.000 Yeah, okay, so Trump replies, as he should, with a joke, but they're asking Trump, of course, Budweiser is going to rename itself America for the summer, and so he's asked whether they think that they renamed Budweiser after Donald Trump's campaign slogan.

00:49:10.000 Yes.

00:49:10.000 Yes, this is how our media treat things these days.

00:49:13.000 But don't buy the hype, folks.

00:49:14.000 It turns out that truth is still truth, lies are still lies, and it doesn't matter who's speaking truth and who's speaking lies.

00:49:20.000 All that matters is what is a truth,

00:49:21.000 And what is a lie?

00:49:22.000 You don't just get to follow the person who you think is going to be the nicest to you or the person who is the most popular.

00:49:28.000 Speaking of popularity, we'll be back tomorrow with the Vaunted Mailbag, where apparently I am both unpopular and deeply unpopular this week, so we'll talk about all of that.

00:49:37.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:49:37.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

Ep. 116 - Trump: I'm Popular, So I Can Be Awful As I Wanna Be

Summary

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