The Ben Shapiro Show - Ep. 168 - No, I'm Not Going To Lie For Trump

00:00:00.000 So, Hillary and Obama lied again.

00:00:02.000 Because, of course, they did.

00:00:03.000 President Obama claimed last week $400 million sent to Iran at the exact same time Iran was releasing American hostages.

00:00:10.000 Now, it wasn't a ransom payment.

00:00:12.000 It was all just a big ol' big coincidence.

00:00:14.000 Hillary Clinton said, quote, The White House has talked about this, and this is kind of old news.

00:00:18.000 It was first reported about seven or eight months ago.

00:00:21.000 Except it wasn't.

00:00:22.000 And it turns out that not only was the payment a ransom, everybody saw it that way at the time.

00:00:26.000 According to the Wall Street Journal today, quote, new details of the $400 million U.S.

00:00:31.000 payment to Iran earlier this year depict a tightly scripted exchange specifically timed to the release of several American prisoners held in Iran.

00:00:39.000 U.S.

00:00:39.000 officials wouldn't let Iranians take control of the money until a Swiss Air Force plane carrying three freed Americans departed from Tehran on January 17th, unquote.

00:00:48.000 This means that the American government has now become the PR spokes agency for the Iranian terror regime.

00:00:54.000 The Obama administration lied about whether Iran had captured American sailors.

00:00:58.000 You remember this.

00:00:58.000 Secretary of State John Kerry even thanked the Iranians for their help as Americans were humiliated and disarmed and they took pictures of them and then they built statues of them being disarmed.

00:01:07.000 The Obama administration continues to lie.

00:01:09.000 That Iran is abiding by the nuclear deal even as reports emerge that Iran tried to buy in technology to build a military nuclear program according to Germany's intelligence services.

00:01:19.000 The entire Iran deal was built on the back of a gigantic lie peddled by the media openly mocked inside the Obama administration.

00:01:25.000 The lie that Obama had only opened negotiations after spotting a moderate new regime in Tehran.

00:01:30.000 In reality, Obama always wanted to deal with the Iranians.

00:01:33.000 The lies mean nothing, of course.

00:01:35.000 The media have no desire to report them.

00:01:37.000 The Obama administration has no need to answer questions that are rarely asked.

00:01:41.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:01:41.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:01:48.000 So today's word of the day is despondency, gang.

00:01:50.000 Despondency.

00:01:51.000 Yes, it turns out that today I'm in a very depressed mood.

00:01:54.000 I'm not in a depressed mood because of the whole Steve Bannon joining the Trump campaign thing.

00:01:59.000 I'm in a depressed mood because I don't think that truth matters anymore in American politics.

00:02:05.000 Or at least it seems not to matter as much in American politics as it once did.

00:02:10.000 And that's a problem to me.

00:02:12.000 Now, I'm going to preface this discussion by saying, as always, if you're voting for Donald Trump, do stop Hillary Clinton.

00:02:16.000 I read you.

00:02:17.000 I sympathize with you.

00:02:18.000 I may do the same thing myself when I get into the voting booth.

00:02:21.000 What I've said all along is I will not lie for Donald Trump.

00:02:25.000 I will not fib.

00:02:26.000 I will not give you information that is not true.

00:02:28.000 I will not pretend that the government can do things that it can't do.

00:02:31.000 I will not rip on things that I know are obviously true.

00:02:35.000 Okay, with that in mind, let's jump right into what was, by any measure, the most viewed clip of the day yesterday from cable news.

00:02:44.000 And I know this because I was the second most viewed clip yesterday on cable news.

00:02:47.000 But the most viewed clip on cable news, and it's well deserving of it, was Michael Cohen.

00:02:52.000 Michael Cohen is the lawyer for Donald Trump and Donald Trump's campaign, apparently.

00:02:56.000 And so he's on with Breonna Keillor.

00:02:58.000 I was on with her as well yesterday.

00:02:59.000 We'll play that clip in a few minutes.

00:03:00.000 But she's on with Michael Cohen.

00:03:02.000 And I want you to watch

00:03:03.000 Michael Cohen's reaction to basic facts.

00:03:06.000 Okay, Breonna Keillor, I'm sure, is on the left.

00:03:08.000 I don't know much about her.

00:03:09.000 She works for CNN.

00:03:11.000 My guess is she's on the left.

00:03:12.000 Okay, that doesn't change the basic fact.

00:03:15.000 The polls right now are not good for Trump.

00:03:17.000 By the way, there's a new poll out today.

00:03:19.000 That's not horrendous for Trump.

00:03:20.000 It's a new poll from Pew, and I think it has Trump down by four points, 41 to 37.

00:03:23.000 So still trailing, but at least within spitting distance.

00:03:26.000 At least within spitting distance.

00:03:28.000 Again, Trump cannot break with a pickaxe 43% in any poll.

00:03:32.000 Lately, he can't even break 40% in any poll.

00:03:34.000 But this is a better poll because Hillary continues to be the world's worst candidate, except for Donald Trump. 1.00

00:03:40.000 Okay, all of that said, Breonna Keillor is questioning Michael Cohen, and for very good reason, this became the clip of the day.

00:03:46.000 You say it's not a shake-up, but you guys are down.

00:03:50.000 And it makes sense that there would... Says who?

00:03:53.000 Polls.

00:03:54.000 Most of them.

00:03:55.000 All of them?

00:04:00.000 Says who? 0.65

00:04:01.000 Polls.

00:04:02.000 I just told you.

00:04:03.000 I answered your question.

00:04:04.000 Okay.

00:04:05.000 Which polls?

00:04:06.000 All of them.

00:04:08.000 Okay.

00:04:08.000 And your question is?

00:04:10.000 Okay, so my question is...

00:04:13.000 And there's nowhere to go from there.

00:04:15.000 I mean, and see, she goes on to answer the question, but yes, yes, it turns out that Donald Trump is down in all of the polls.

00:04:22.000 Okay, I'm looking right now at the RealClearPolitics poll average.

00:04:26.000 The last poll that Donald Trump led in, the last poll, it is now August 18th, is today's date correct?

00:04:32.000 It is now August 18th.

00:04:33.000 The last poll that Donald Trump led in was taken ending July 24th.

00:04:37.000 Okay, he has not led a poll in a month.

00:04:39.000 I'm looking at the RealClearPolitics poll average right now.

00:04:42.000 I'm looking at the entire list of polls.

00:04:44.000 Now, I think that the race will probably tighten because this is what races tend to do. 1.00

00:04:47.000 They tighten and they widen and they tighten and they widen.

00:04:49.000 But I think that right now the polls are the polls.

00:04:51.000 And you can't argue that polls don't exist just because you don't want them to exist.

00:04:55.000 Unfortunately, you're about to see Eric Bolling do exactly that.

00:04:58.000 I don't know whether he huffed glue before this particular segment, but here's Eric Bolling on Fox News pretending that polls no longer exist.

00:05:06.000 They're figments of your imagination.

00:05:09.000 These polls, Dana.

00:05:11.000 Honestly, we have to stop with these polls.

00:05:13.000 They're insane with the polls.

00:05:15.000 You look at these, just look what's going on.

00:05:17.000 You look at a Trump rally and there's 12, 15,000, 10,000 people.

00:05:19.000 And then you look at Hillary Clinton and you have, I don't know, 1,500, 2,000.

00:05:22.000 But that speaks volumes to me versus a poll 82 days out.

00:05:30.000 It's a real disservice to his supporters to lie to them that those polls don't matter.

00:05:38.000 You cannot take 12,000 people at a rally that are your definite supporters.

00:05:42.000 They are going to show up at the campaign and then say the polls are wrong.

00:05:46.000 But one person sitting at home still cancels out somebody at a rally.

00:05:49.000 It's just not fair.

00:05:50.000 It's not fair to them.

00:05:50.000 Here's why polls really shouldn't matter or shouldn't ever matter.

00:05:53.000 You pick up the phone and you say, who are you going to vote for?

00:05:56.000 That person on the other end of the phone says, well, I'm going to vote for Hillary Clinton.

00:05:59.000 They're not out there voting.

00:06:01.000 If people are getting out in the street and going to a rally, those are people who get up off the couch and go hear something and go say something.

00:06:09.000 That's why I think the size of crowds is more indicative of following or even polling than actual people.

00:06:19.000 Okay, what he is saying is, it's a lie.

00:06:22.000 It's actually an insane lie, what he's saying.

00:06:24.000 I remember back in 2012, right before the election, there was a very, very big rally for Mitt Romney in Pennsylvania, very well covered, huge stadium full of people, 30,000 people, and people saying the whole time, look at that, look at the size of that, shows the enthusiasm Romney's gonna win.

00:06:38.000 I remember back in 2012, because I did some of this,

00:06:40.000 We all looked at the polls and we said, we think these polls are skewed, right?

00:06:43.000 This is where the whole mockery of un-skewing polls comes from.

00:06:46.000 In 2012, we looked at the polls and we said, and it was at least a plausible theory that turned out not to be true.

00:06:51.000 The plausible theory was they're looking at a model, they're looking at a model that is based on a turnout model from 2008.

00:06:57.000 Why don't they look at a turnout model that includes 2010?

00:07:00.000 Why don't they look at a turnout model that includes the higher Republican turnout in the midterm election?

00:07:05.000 And it turns out the polls were not skewed.

00:07:07.000 The polls were all exactly correct.

00:07:08.000 And if you followed the polls, then you got it right.

00:07:11.000 Now, even after that lesson, there are people who are Trump fans, Trump supporters, who are simply going to lie to people.

00:07:16.000 So I was on the air this morning with a friend of mine, Jen Horn, and we were talking about the polls, and she was saying, a lot of Americans, a lot of the base, they think that polls are establishment tools.

00:07:24.000 And I was talking to somebody else this morning who is a fan of Trump, and she was saying the same thing.

00:07:27.000 Yeah, polls, you know, can we trust the polls?

00:07:29.000 Are the polls just biased in favor of Hillary?

00:07:32.000 And I said to her, let me explain something.

00:07:34.000 The media are biased in favor of Hillary.

00:07:37.000 This is eminently true.

00:07:38.000 It is clearly true.

00:07:39.000 The media hate Donald Trump.

00:07:40.000 The media want Hillary to win. 1.00

00:07:41.000 It wouldn't matter who the Republican is.

00:07:42.000 The media would want Hillary to win. 1.00

00:07:44.000 That's true.

00:07:45.000 I'm not arguing with that because that's silly to argue with.

00:07:48.000 It's obviously true that the media despise Trump and want Hillary to win. 0.97

00:07:52.000 Polls don't work that way.

00:07:54.000 You have many, many, many polling companies.

00:07:56.000 Their entire credibility is based on their capacity to correctly measure public opinion.

00:08:01.000 There is a methodology to making a poll.

00:08:03.000 I don't know how to make a poll because I'm not an expert in polling.

00:08:06.000 This is why you have poll experts.

00:08:08.000 What poll experts do is they determine what is the breakdown racially, in terms of viewpoint, in terms of location, that best represents the electorate.

00:08:16.000 They have to actually reconstruct a mini, a kind of microcosm of the electorate, and that's how they do these polls.

00:08:22.000 The polls aren't done randomly in the sense that they just call people up on the phone randomly and then that's the poll.

00:08:27.000 It's not the end of the polling data.

00:08:29.000 There's a whole art to it.

00:08:30.000 There's a whole science, more importantly, there's a whole science to it.

00:08:32.000 And yet I'm hearing from people that polls are an establishment tool.

00:08:36.000 Truth matters.

00:08:38.000 I'm not going to lie to you that polls only matter when Donald Trump is winning in the polls. 0.99

00:08:43.000 That's crap. 1.00

00:08:44.000 It's nonsense. 1.00

00:08:45.000 It's stupid. 1.00

00:08:46.000 And you're breeding a nation of morons when you tell people that facts don't matter. 1.00

00:08:50.000 When you tell people science doesn't matter. 1.00

00:08:52.000 Now, the left has done this for years.

00:08:53.000 This is what drives me absolutely up a wall.

00:08:55.000 We're supposed to be better than they are.

00:08:58.000 We're not supposed to have to lie to our own people.

00:09:00.000 We're not lying to the rest of America.

00:09:01.000 Lie to our own people about what polls say.

00:09:05.000 Eric Bolling knows what the polls say, and he knows that Trump is down in the polls.

00:09:09.000 Michael Cohen knows what the polls say.

00:09:10.000 That's why he's not even able to come back when Breonna Keller says, all of the polls say he's losing.

00:09:14.000 There's nothing he can say about that, right?

00:09:16.000 Because there's nothing to say.

00:09:18.000 The polls matter.

00:09:19.000 But it's like somebody with a fever taking the thermometer, taking their temperature, and then going, screw this thermometer.

00:09:25.000 This thing's biased.

00:09:26.000 This is an establishment thermometer.

00:09:27.000 This thermometer isn't science. 0.93

00:09:30.000 Basically, there's a whole segment of Trump supporters, the most ardent Trump supporters, who have now decided to treat polls the way the insane clown posse treats magnets. 0.95

00:09:41.000 Frickin' magnets, how do they work and don't tell me none of that science stuff? 0.81

00:09:44.000 Okay, that's what we now have in part of the Trump train.

00:09:48.000 What are polls?

00:09:49.000 How do they work?

00:09:49.000 And don't give me none of that science stuff.

00:09:51.000 It's magic.

00:09:52.000 It isn't magic, folks.

00:09:53.000 There's an actual science to it.

00:09:55.000 And you're not doing anybody any service when you do this.

00:09:57.000 You're lying to them.

00:09:58.000 You're telling them that they can just ignore the polls.

00:10:00.000 You're telling Donald Trump he can ignore the polls. 1.00

00:10:02.000 He can be as dumb as he wants to be. 1.00

00:10:03.000 He can be as bad at campaigning as he wants to be. 1.00

00:10:05.000 All that matters is the size of the crowd.

00:10:08.000 Let me explain something to you.

00:10:09.000 There are about 7,000 people who show up to every WNBA game. 0.94

00:10:13.000 Does that mean that the polls are wrong when it comes to the unpopularity of the WNBA? 0.64

00:10:17.000 After all, 7,000 people is not a few people, it's a lot of people showing up to every single crappy WNBA game. 1.00

00:10:24.000 The size of the crowd is not indicative of the level of support publicly.

00:10:27.000 I mean, Gutfeld makes that point there, and he's exactly right.

00:10:30.000 The person who's sitting home counts just as much at the ballot box as the person who goes to the Trump rally.

00:10:36.000 You don't get extra credit for going to a Trump rally. 0.99

00:10:39.000 This is just, it's just dumb stuff. 1.00

00:10:41.000 It's just dumb. 0.99

00:10:41.000 And it has an impact. 0.99

00:10:43.000 And the impact is that people believe lies, and they believe that they can no longer trust any information that comes forth.

00:10:47.000 They can't trust the polls anymore.

00:10:49.000 They can't trust the media.

00:10:50.000 I agree that you have to take everything the media say with a grain of salt and double-check it, but pretending that everything that the media say is an outright 100% lie isn't true either.

00:10:59.000 It's just the beginning of the conversation to ask, what are the biases of the reporter?

00:11:03.000 It doesn't mean that what they're reporting never occurred.

00:11:06.000 You actually have to check it out before you determine that.

00:11:09.000 Evidence, folks.

00:11:10.000 I require it on all sides.

00:11:11.000 Evidence, evidence, evidence, evidence.

00:11:13.000 And I'll give you another example.

00:11:15.000 Today, there's a Pew poll out.

00:11:16.000 It shows 61% of Republicans now say that they don't like free trade.

00:11:21.000 That number was a majority that liked free trade before Donald Trump came along and started lying to people that free trade was stealing your jobs and sending them south of the border to that rich nation known as Mexico.

00:11:33.000 Before Donald Trump started fibbing and giving the papucanin lie that Vietnam was schlonging us economically and that China was stealing all of our jobs.

00:11:42.000 Before that, people understood, hey, the reason I have a nice cell phone here is because of outsourcing, because there is comparative advantage, because of free trade.

00:11:50.000 The reason a lot of Americans have jobs is because of free trade.

00:11:52.000 Millions and millions and millions of Americans have jobs thanks to free trade.

00:11:56.000 But Donald Trump has told this lie, and people believe the lie, and so now there's a bunch of people who are expecting, and here's the thing, it sets up expectations that cannot be fulfilled.

00:12:04.000 The expectation now is that Donald Trump is gonna bring your job back to Ohio by shutting down free trade.

00:12:10.000 Ain't gonna happen, folks.

00:12:11.000 Not happening.

00:12:12.000 That job is not coming back to Ohio because Donald Trump shut down free trade.

00:12:15.000 And if it does come back to Ohio because Donald Trump shut down free trade, you just put three other people out of work.

00:12:21.000 Here's another lie that they've been telling.

00:12:24.000 Okay, the Republican establishment told us the lie in 2010 that if we elect them, they would stop Obamacare.

00:12:29.000 That's what they said.

00:12:30.000 That was their pledge.

00:12:32.000 If you elect us, we will stop Obamacare debt.

00:12:34.000 They didn't do it.

00:12:35.000 They didn't do it.

00:12:37.000 Right?

00:12:37.000 When Ted Cruz tried to do it with the government shut down, everybody lost their minds.

00:12:41.000 Hey, then, in 2014, they said, if you elect us, we'll stop Obama's executive amnesty.

00:12:45.000 They get into power, they fund Obama's executive amnesty.

00:12:48.000 And naturally, this makes people angry.

00:12:50.000 When you lie to people, and then you disappoint them, they get mad.

00:12:54.000 They get mad.

00:12:55.000 And so that's where Donald Trump comes from.

00:12:57.000 But Donald Trump isn't honest. 0.90

00:12:58.000 Donald Trump is lying, too.

00:13:00.000 And so there will be disappointment.

00:13:02.000 But the disappointment won't be blamed on Trump.

00:13:05.000 The disappointment won't be blamed on Trump's incompetence and lies.

00:13:07.000 The disappointment will be blamed on the people who told the truth.

00:13:09.000 And this is the part that's super frustrating to me.

00:13:11.000 In a binary race, everyone understands on the right side of the aisle that Hillary Clinton is a terrible, terrible person who should never be President of the United States.

00:13:19.000 It's why despite all of the problems that I have with Donald Trump, and my God, I've spent the last few months describing them.

00:13:24.000 Despite all the problems I have with Donald Trump, I wake up every single morning considering whether I can vote for this man.

00:13:31.000 Every single morning, the first thought that goes through my head at this point is me personally, can I vote for Donald Trump?

00:13:36.000 But the one thing that I've never had to reconsider is do I lie for Donald Trump?

00:13:40.000 Because I'm not going to lie to anybody because I'll tell you what the impact of the lie is going to be.

00:13:43.000 The next lie is going to be when Donald Trump, he's going to say the polls are wrong.

00:13:46.000 The polls are a lie.

00:13:47.000 The polls aren't a lie.

00:13:49.000 And then if he loses, and he may not, but if he loses, and he loses while the polls are saying he's going to lose, he's going to say, well, the polls were wrong.

00:13:55.000 You know, people are going to say, well, the polls said you were going to lose.

00:13:57.000 You lost, right?

00:13:58.000 I mean, that's how it works.

00:13:59.000 Trump is going to say no.

00:14:00.000 The polls were lying to you.

00:14:01.000 They were just an establishment cuck tool.

00:14:04.000 Right?

00:14:04.000 And therefore, what really happened?

00:14:06.000 Ah, we were stabbed in the back.

00:14:07.000 That's what happened.

00:14:07.000 We were stabbed in the back by our own people.

00:14:10.000 That's what happened here.

00:14:11.000 That's why we lost.

00:14:12.000 Now you want to make the argument that the never-Trump people are the ones who are responsible for Trump losing.

00:14:16.000 You're going to have to do better than that because there are five of us left, okay?

00:14:19.000 If Trump loses by one vote in California, and I'm the guy who didn't vote, you're free to blame me.

00:14:24.000 Okay, that's how this works.

00:14:25.000 If I vote for Donald Trump right now, according to the polls, he loses by 9,999,999 votes instead of 10 million.

00:14:32.000 Okay, but that doesn't make a difference.

00:14:34.000 The only thing I care about, because my vote doesn't mean anything, I'm in California, the only thing I care about is no one should be lying to you, including lies you yourself want to hear.

00:14:43.000 The pretty little lies that tell you that everything will be all better if we just pretend that polls don't exist.

00:14:48.000 The pretty lies that say that free trade is destroying your life.

00:14:51.000 The pretty little lies that say that free trade, if we abolish it, it won't hurt the economy.

00:14:56.000 The lies that, if we elect a Republican Congress, they were going to stop Obama and Obamacare and executive amnesty.

00:15:03.000 Lies don't pay off.

00:15:04.000 They don't pay off.

00:15:06.000 And anyone who lies to you should be blamed for lying to you.

00:15:09.000 I'm sick of hearing lies.

00:15:26.000 Lies from Trump about polling data.

00:15:28.000 I'm sick of hearing lies from Trump about policy. 0.85

00:15:31.000 I'm sick of hearing Hillary open her mouth because every time she opens her mouth she lies. 1.00

00:15:34.000 We now live in a world that is completely filled with lies and we just pick the lies that are most convenient for us to hear because then we feel better about our own lives.

00:15:43.000 But guess what?

00:15:44.000 Those lies aren't going to make you feel good in the end.

00:15:46.000 Because it'll be proven that they were wrong and that they were false.

00:15:49.000 And people who told the truth, you can either blame them or you can blame the people who told you lies.

00:15:54.000 I'm increasingly fearing that in this country, the people who told the truth will be blamed because they're ruining the utopian visions of the people who lie to you and tell you things that are impossible are about to occur.

00:16:04.000 Well, sorry for that depressing note, but as we're going to continue this, obviously, the rest of the show at DailyWire.com, a lot more to get to, including updates on Steve Bannon joining the Trump campaign, as well as what Trump's debate strategy can be.

00:16:18.000 Can he salvage this?

00:16:19.000 I mean, he's starting to pull up in the polls.

00:16:20.000 He can if he has the right debate strategy.

00:16:22.000 We'll talk about what his debate strategy ought to be.

00:16:24.000 Plus, the vaunted Ben Shapiro show mailbag coming up.

00:16:26.000 DailyWire, $8 a month.

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00:16:54.000 Okay, so let's talk about what kind of reckoning is going to happen now that Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway have joined the campaign.

00:17:01.000 So yesterday, I talked about who these people are and what these people mean, and I would be remiss if I didn't play the second most played cable clip on the news yesterday because I was a part of it, and that was this amusing little tete-a-tete with Breonna Keller on CNN.

00:17:18.000 I mean, as you probably know, I think Donald Trump's a turd tornado, but I also understand that he has no capacity whatsoever to control himself and be the sort of staid politician that so many people want him to be.

00:17:27.000 I mean, Reince Priebus isn't going to convince him to become Mitt Romney, and Trump doesn't want to become Mitt Romney.

00:17:32.000 I'm not sure he should want to become Mitt Romney.

00:17:33.000 So telling him to double down is not necessarily a terrible strategy.

00:17:36.000 If he's going to go down, he's going to go down being Trump, and I think that's probably what Steve Bannon is telling him to do.

00:17:42.000 A what tornado?

00:17:44.000 A turd tornado.

00:17:45.000 What is that? 0.94

00:17:47.000 Well, it's like a shark, NATO, except with poop.

00:17:54.000 And she said she wasn't expecting that.

00:17:55.000 I'm not sure what she was expecting.

00:17:56.000 I mean, I thought the turd tornado was rather evocative.

00:17:59.000 And, you know, when she asked me to describe it, that was the best I could do on the spur of the moment.

00:18:04.000 It was sort of amusing to me that she was confused by this simply because you can't say bleep storm on the air.

00:18:10.000 I mean, I can on the podcast if I wanted people to get angry at me for cursing, but you can't say bleep storm on national TV without there being an FCC fine attached.

00:18:18.000 So I came up with the next best alternative.

00:18:20.000 So that's what was happening there.

00:18:22.000 Meanwhile, Steve Bannon has joined the campaign.

00:18:24.000 Steve, as I've said, is a highly intelligent Machiavellian character who's mainly interested in his own power and self-aggrandizement.

00:18:31.000 I don't think that he has principle.

00:18:32.000 I think he has interests.

00:18:34.000 And so the Trump campaign continues to maintain—I don't know where they hired their surrogates.

00:18:38.000 I don't know if they went down to the local homeless shelter and hired surrogates or what.

00:18:41.000 But Katrina Pearson was on national TV, on CNN, and she was talking about the move to bring in Bannon.

00:18:48.000 Who basically is just a Trump mirror.

00:18:49.000 He makes Trump feel good.

00:18:51.000 Charlie Sykes had a great tweet yesterday.

00:18:52.000 He basically said that Bannon may be a sign that the Trump campaign is on hospice care, and he's bringing in friends and family for his dying days.

00:19:01.000 But, you know, they say it's not a campaign shake-up.

00:19:04.000 I don't know why they care.

00:19:05.000 I don't know why they don't just say that it is a campaign shake-up.

00:19:08.000 What they really should have done.

00:19:09.000 Okay, so just to point out politically what they should have done.

00:19:11.000 And again, I'm removing my animus for Steve Bannon from this particular conversation, even though I think he is legitimately one of the worst people in America.

00:19:19.000 But putting that aside, what they should have done to roll this sucker out is they should have rolled it out on Sunday, right?

00:19:24.000 Apparently, this had been in the works on Sunday.

00:19:26.000 They should have said on Sunday, we're making a campaign shift.

00:19:29.000 Bannon's in.

00:19:30.000 Kellyanne Conway's in.

00:19:31.000 Manafort's been demoted a little.

00:19:32.000 And then have Trump come out on Monday, give his ISIS speech, which was really good. 1.00

00:19:36.000 Come out Tuesday, give his race speech, which was actually great.

00:19:39.000 And then they can say, look, the relaunch is going fantastic, right?

00:19:42.000 It's new Coke, everything is great.

00:19:44.000 We relaunched it, everything's awesome, it's going really well.

00:19:47.000 Instead, what they did, because they're incompetent, is they waited until the day after Trump gives the best speech of his campaign, and maybe the best speech a Republican has given in several years,

00:19:55.000 And then they dump this news out there so the media can latch onto that, which is just a genius move.

00:20:00.000 So Katrina Pearson is now stuck in the unenviable position of having to explain that moving Paul Manafort down the ladder and moving Steve Bannon, who has not managed a campaign for dog catchers.

00:20:10.000 Steve Bannon has not been anywhere near a political campaign ever.

00:20:14.000 He has never managed a campaign.

00:20:15.000 And he is now the CEO, which is a made-up position.

00:20:17.000 There's no such thing as a campaign CEO.

00:20:19.000 He's now the CEO of the campaign.

00:20:20.000 She's in the unenviable position of having to explain that this is all planned.

00:20:24.000 It's all 4D chess.

00:20:25.000 Here she is.

00:20:27.000 But that brings me to my next point.

00:20:28.000 We have not spent nearly as much time talking about Hillary Clinton's campaign infrastructure, particularly Uma Abedin and her dual role at the State Department and the Clinton Foundation.

00:20:41.000 Okay, I know you want to deflect, and I appreciate that because that's your job.

00:20:44.000 John Podesta and his brother Tony and their direct ties to the Russian government.

00:20:48.000 We spend so much time talking about Russia.

00:20:50.000 There is no connection with Mr. Trump, but there is definitely a connection with Hillary Clinton.

00:20:57.000 Yeah, let's talk about John Podesta.

00:20:59.000 Let's talk about his brother, Tony.

00:21:00.000 Let's talk about the banks that they're involved with.

00:21:02.000 Let's talk about the boards that they sit on.

00:21:04.000 We're not talking about that here on CNN because we just want to focus on Mr. Trump.

00:21:07.000 That's because Donald Trump just shook up his campaign for the second time in the two-month period.

00:21:12.000 No, he didn't.

00:21:12.000 He added.

00:21:13.000 Donald Trump adds people to his campaign.

00:21:15.000 Oh, come on, Katrina. 1.00

00:21:17.000 No one's out.

00:21:18.000 When you shake up your campaign, that usually means someone is out, Carol.

00:21:22.000 This was announced as an expansion.

00:21:24.000 I can point to several messages we have sent out on the campaign website under press releases.

00:21:29.000 We've had multiple expansions of this campaign, but for some reason, CNN is probably the only one reporting that there's some shakeup that's happened.

00:21:38.000 I dare to suggest this.

00:21:39.000 I dare to suggest this, that no one was ousted simply because

00:21:44.000 Mr. Trump didn't want this to appear to be a shakeup.

00:21:47.000 Carol, if I could jump in here.

00:21:50.000 Anybody who knows anything about presidential politics and how campaigns are run,

00:21:55.000 Okay, so this is true.

00:21:56.000 It's a shake-up.

00:21:56.000 The question is why they care.

00:21:57.000 Why don't they just say, okay, fine, it's a shake-up.

00:22:14.000 Why do they care?

00:22:15.000 Like, does anyone get the impression that there's great stability at Trump headquarters these days?

00:22:20.000 Like, I'm missing that.

00:22:20.000 Like, why not just say, yeah, we shook it up, and you know what?

00:22:23.000 Things have been going better.

00:22:24.000 Did you see our speeches on Monday and Tuesday?

00:22:25.000 Why don't we talk about those things?

00:22:27.000 If they think Bannon is all that he's cracked up to be, and I don't, I think that Steve Bannon is going to cause Donald Trump to double down on everything that Trump is.

00:22:34.000 I think he's going to enable all of his worst instincts.

00:22:37.000 I think Steve Bannon, personally, is very much like Donald Trump.

00:22:40.000 And so, basically, Donald Trump should have just saved himself some money and bought a mirror, and then he could just talk to himself in the mirror, and that would basically be the same thing that Steve Bannon is going to do for him. 0.98

00:22:48.000 You know, instead of that, they get sucked into this whole stupid conversation about whether it's a shake-up or not, because this is just wild incompetence. 0.98

00:22:55.000 It just is. 1.00

00:22:56.000 It's really, really incompetent.

00:22:58.000 By the way, I will point out, I'm not the only person in America who is saying that Steve Bannon is a bad guy.

00:23:02.000 Dana Lash, who worked at Breitbart News, she was there about the same time that I was.

00:23:07.000 She left a little bit after I got there.

00:23:09.000 Dana was pretty strident on Donald Trump's new campaign CEO yesterday.

00:23:16.000 Here's what Dana had to say.

00:23:18.000 If we knew that NBC and Jeff Zucker and everybody else, CNN and over at MSNBC and NBC, if we knew that their CEO, that their president, if we knew that they were still retaining an influential position in that company and determining programming while at the same time advising Hillary Clinton, we would be up in arms and you know damn well you would be. 0.99

00:23:42.000 This is a different story for me, because I went through a very personal, hellacious period in my life, brought on by someone's idiocy. 0.85

00:23:50.000 So this has taken a bit of a turn, and I'm not quite sure how to approach it, to be honest with you. 0.96

00:23:57.000 But all I know is that one of the worst people on God's green earth was just instituted as the chairman and CEO of the Trump campaign.

00:24:06.000 And that's exactly right.

00:24:07.000 That's exactly right.

00:24:07.000 So, you know, putting aside the fact that Bannon's a bad guy, and he is.

00:24:10.000 He's a bad guy. 0.96

00:24:11.000 He's a vicious guy. 0.78

00:24:12.000 He's somebody who I legitimately fear that if he were the chief of staff in a Trump White House, I would have to start preparing my IRS audit annually.

00:24:20.000 He's that sort of fellow.

00:24:21.000 He brings along some other unpleasantness to this.

00:24:24.000 There are multiple reports today, things in the Washington Post, in the New York Times, that Bannon feels victorious that the nationalist populist movement has now been embraced fully by Trump, and now they're going to run a full-on nationalist populist campaign.

00:24:38.000 If that's the case, then presumably Trump, you know, you can attribute his loss to the fact that he's running a campaign that is nationalist populist and not actually conservative, at least in part.

00:24:47.000 But I think it's important to point out that under Steve Bannon's auspices, Breitbart News

00:24:52.000 Okay, and the alt-right, I mean I've talked about this ad nauseum on this program before, the alt-right is a group of people, to define them, they're a group of people who believe in nationalism and populism.

00:25:09.000 Nationalism not moored to the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of the United States.

00:25:14.000 They don't believe that those two documents are very important.

00:25:16.000 They just think America is great because America is great.

00:25:20.000 When Trump says, make America great again, they think to themselves, America was great when America was great, but not because of the values that made America great.

00:25:28.000 This is why Trump doesn't think that there are 12 articles in the Constitution.

00:25:32.000 Alt-right people believe that what makes America great is the people in it.

00:25:35.000 If you were born here, you're better than the people who were born elsewhere. 1.00

00:25:38.000 The problem with this is there's a certain racial component to this for the alt-right that is unmistakable in the way that they tweet, in the way that they email, in the way that they talk.

00:25:46.000 This sort of idea that it's not just European culture, it's not just European culture that matters, it's European ethnocentrism that matters.

00:25:54.000 It's the ethnicity of the people from Europe.

00:25:56.000 It's the ethnicity of the founding fathers that mattered.

00:25:58.000 It's the ethnicity of the immigrants that mattered. 0.99

00:26:01.000 I've never believed that for a heartbeat.

00:26:03.000 I believe that it's the creed of the founding fathers that matters.

00:26:06.000 We're a country that's united by creed, not by race.

00:26:09.000 The alt-right is united by a resistance to political correctness, but their resistance to political correctness is a tribalism of their own.

00:26:17.000 They say, well, political correctness says you can't say bad things about black people and gay people and Jews and various other subgroups and stifling.

00:26:25.000 You can't say true things about anybody.

00:26:27.000 And there's some truth to that, obviously.

00:26:29.000 I hate political correctness.

00:26:30.000 I think that it stifles actual open debate.

00:26:32.000 What the alt-right says is, well, we should have a tribalism all our own.

00:26:35.000 We should have a white tribalism all our own, a European tribalism all our own. 0.98

00:26:39.000 If those people get to be tribal, why can't we be tribal?

00:26:41.000 Instead of just saying, tribalism is bad all the way across the board.

00:26:45.000 The nationalism of the alt-right has nothing to do with constitutional conservatism or preserving limited government values.

00:26:53.000 It has to do with a vague concept of Western civilization that can only be prevented by limiting immigration, not just illegal immigration, legal immigration, and even legal immigration by people who may

00:27:04.000 In fact, share your values.

00:27:06.000 And that's troublesome.

00:27:07.000 Then there's the populism aspect to the alt-right, which suggests that the best way to please the people in America is to act as though everything is a zero-sum game.

00:27:16.000 So this is why they're anti-free trade.

00:27:17.000 The idea is that free trade is not a zero-sum game.

00:27:19.000 Everybody gets richer.

00:27:21.000 When I go to the grocery store, I give them money for a loaf of bread.

00:27:23.000 We both got richer.

00:27:24.000 I got richer by a loaf of bread that I needed.

00:27:26.000 They got richer by money that they needed.

00:27:27.000 The alt-right says, if you are for you, then you lost that transaction.

00:27:31.000 Go make your own bread.

00:27:32.000 And you have the money and you can make your own bread.

00:27:34.000 Even if it's more expensive for you to make your own bread, then it would be to go to the grocery store and buy the loaf of bread.

00:27:39.000 Populism is basically, that's their sort of nationalism.

00:27:42.000 Populism is the idea that the will of the people should always govern.

00:27:45.000 And the will of the people can only be expressed in sort of majoritarianism or through a cult figure like Donald Trump.

00:27:52.000 This stuff is very troubling because the alt-right has been infused with anti-Semitism, has been infused with racism, has been infused, and is in fact, I don't think, fully separable from this sort of white supremacist undertone.

00:28:05.000 That white people are better, that Europeans are better, not because of their values, but just because of who they are. 0.84

00:28:11.000 So Bannon is not an alt-right guy, as far as I know.

00:28:14.000 I don't think Bannon has convictions, really, of any sort.

00:28:16.000 I don't think he has many convictions.

00:28:17.000 I think that he considers himself a nationalist populist, but I don't think that he's full-scale white supremacist alt-right.

00:28:22.000 However, under his tenure, under his auspices, Breitbart News turned from an edgy anti-media website into a place that openly tolerates the alt-right.

00:28:32.000 I mean, I wrote this for the Washington Post today.

00:28:35.000 That Trump obviously has been flirting with the alt-right for months, everything from going soft on the KKK to refusing to disown his alt-right supporters who have made anti-Semitic threats against journalists.

00:28:47.000 But Breitbart has embraced that.

00:28:49.000 Milo Yiannopoulos is the leader of this alt-white friendly gang, and he declares himself an alt-right ally.

00:28:54.000 He wrote an entire piece in which he discussed the glories of the alt-right, and there's a line from that piece in which he said, quote, That's not much of a separation.

00:29:01.000 I mean, if it comes down to their smarger and how they couch their nastiness,

00:29:16.000 Then that's not much of a separation at all.

00:29:18.000 I mean, Yiannopoulos has gone on interviews and he said, it's true, Jews run the banks. 1.00

00:29:21.000 It's true, Jews run the media, as though that's relevant. 1.00

00:29:24.000 And he's dismissed anti-Semitic memes that we've talked about on the program and shown as just mischievous and dissident and trolly, and because he's British, everybody thinks this is amusing. 0.64

00:29:34.000 This is the cast of characters that Bannon sort of brings with him into the campaign and that is co-opting the campaign apparatus because the RNC isn't going to force Trump to disown Bannon or disown the alt-right.

00:29:44.000 They haven't been able to do that so far.

00:29:46.000 This is the thing that's troubling about the Trump campaign.

00:29:49.000 It's what makes Trump more toxic than other Republican candidates have been.

00:29:52.000 It's why Trump is getting historically beaten in the polls among young people, among minorities, among women.

00:29:57.000 It's why

00:29:58.000 This is very toxic for the next generation.

00:30:01.000 It's a serious issue.

00:30:03.000 It's a serious problem.

00:30:04.000 It doesn't mean that Bannon isn't going to be able to rein Trump in a little bit.

00:30:07.000 Maybe he will.

00:30:08.000 Maybe he'll be able, as Trump's mirror, as his confidant, as somebody who can rub Trump's shoulders late at night and tell him he's doing a wonderful job.

00:30:15.000 Maybe all Trump needs is just a boost of self-confidence.

00:30:18.000 Or maybe this is just destined to fail and Bannon doesn't really care because all Bannon cares about is Bannon.

00:30:23.000 And so if Trump fails, then great.

00:30:26.000 He just gets to launch a new media enterprise with Trump at the center of it.

00:30:28.000 He already has a website with 200 million page views a month that was built, a lot of that traffic was built by riding the Trump train.

00:30:37.000 Okay, so let's ask a different question.

00:30:39.000 What can Trump do to recover?

00:30:41.000 What can Trump do to recover now?

00:30:42.000 Because I don't think that Bannon is going to fix things.

00:30:44.000 He started to recover, I thought, earlier this week.

00:30:46.000 Again, I think he gave a very good speech on ISIS.

00:30:48.000 I thought he gave a very solid speech—not solid, a great speech—on race and policing on Tuesday.

00:30:54.000 I thought he was beginning to get on track, then he hired... 0.98

00:30:57.000 A nasty, nasty human being. 0.63

00:30:59.000 But the beginning of his campaign revival, I thought, began Monday, Tuesday. 0.97

00:31:03.000 And the polls are beginning to narrow a little bit, right?

00:31:06.000 Remember those polls that Trump people say don't matter?

00:31:08.000 Those polls are beginning to narrow a little bit.

00:31:09.000 So I'm going to read you a set of numbers, okay?

00:31:10.000 Here's a set of numbers.

00:31:11.000 These are all the polls since the beginning of August.

00:31:13.000 Okay, ready?

00:31:14.000 Clinton plus 8, Clinton plus 6, Clinton plus 13, Clinton plus 6, Clinton plus 5, plus 5, plus 3, plus 4, plus 6, plus 6, plus 4, plus 2.

00:31:22.000 So you can see there's a gradual narrowing.

00:31:24.000 It's slow and it's gradual, but it is a gradual narrowing because the polls before that had him down 6, 8, 14, 9.

00:31:31.000 So there's a gradual narrowing that's happening leading into the debates.

00:31:35.000 Now if the debates happen, I don't know that Hillary is going to do a debate because she may chicken out or she may decide that it's not worth risking anything to do this. 1.00

00:31:44.000 If there are debates, then Trump is going to need an actual strategy.

00:31:47.000 So Kellyanne Conway, who is the actual decent half of the team that just came into the Trump campaign, Kellyanne Conway, she was on the TVs, and she said, she said, yeah, the polls matter.

00:31:59.000 The polls are not good for us, but that's why the debates are going to matter.

00:32:01.000 This is an actual defensible position.

00:32:04.000 I think my role will be TV, but also flying on the plane with Mr. Trump more, and certainly working with our many different messaging partners and our coalitions.

00:32:17.000 She's exactly right, of course.

00:32:18.000 What she says is that we're looking forward to the debate and we're going to be able to really change it up.

00:32:24.000 She says there we'll never have Clinton's money, but she says in another place that we're going to look forward to the debates and we're going to do better in the debates.

00:32:31.000 The bad polling helps us because it spurs us to do better.

00:32:33.000 Correct answer by Kellyanne Conway there.

00:32:35.000 If you understand that, then Trump needs to have a good debate.

00:32:39.000 So there's been a little bit of a hubbub over whether he's hired Roger Ailes to be his debate coach.

00:32:44.000 Hiring Roger Ailes to be his debate coach is not a terrible idea.

00:32:46.000 I mean, put aside the fact that Ailes is now under suspicion for having sexually harassed the entire USC female cheerleading squad.

00:32:53.000 If you look at Ailes and his history of debate tactics, he advised Reagan.

00:32:58.000 So Ailes is very good at that stuff.

00:32:59.000 So the better of the trainers you have, the better you're going to do in the debates.

00:33:03.000 Trump is going to have to prep.

00:33:04.000 The question is whether he will.

00:33:05.000 So here is Donald Trump talking about how he likes to operate in the debates.

00:33:10.000 He says he likes being off the cuff.

00:33:12.000 One more month until the debates.

00:33:13.000 What are your thoughts?

00:33:14.000 Because you won't be using a teleprompter there.

00:33:16.000 This will be off the cusp.

00:33:17.000 Well, I look very much forward to it.

00:33:18.000 I like being off the cusp.

00:33:20.000 You know, I've been in 11 debates.

00:33:21.000 I never debated before.

00:33:22.000 My whole life is a debate, but I've never debated before.

00:33:25.000 And I really enjoyed the debates.

00:33:27.000 I guess I did well in the debates based on all of those polls that they did after the debates.

00:33:32.000 But I look forward to it.

00:33:33.000 I think that, you know, Hillary really has made tremendous mistakes. 0.98

00:33:36.000 She's got terribly bad judgment.

00:33:38.000 If you think about Bernie Sanders, what he used to say all the time is,

00:33:42.000 She suffers from bad judgment, and she does.

00:33:45.000 And I look forward to the debates.

00:33:46.000 I think it'll be a very interesting evening.

00:33:49.000 Okay, so what is he going to do in the debates?

00:33:50.000 Now, everybody has been hoping and praying and waiting for the debates because they figured Trump has no rules.

00:33:56.000 He's going to hit her every place. 0.96

00:33:57.000 He's going to just smack her into the ground. 0.98

00:34:00.000 And Hillary's preparing for that, apparently. 1.00

00:34:01.000 Apparently, she's preparing for him to go after her on Lewinsky, and she's preparing for him to go after her on Vince Foster, which would be, like, there's no reason to go after her on Vince Foster. 0.71

00:34:10.000 That's silly.

00:34:11.000 He should go after Juanita Broderick. 0.94

00:34:13.000 That'd be a good place to start.

00:34:14.000 Juanita Broderick, the email scandal, Chinagate.

00:34:17.000 I mean, the list of Hillary corruption and evil goes on forever. 0.99

00:34:21.000 I mean, she's really a nefarious, terrible human being. 1.00

00:34:24.000 He could hit her everywhere. 0.98

00:34:25.000 Chris Matthews on MSNBC, who knows Trump and knows Hillary, because they all walk in the same circles.

00:34:31.000 Chris Matthews on MSNBC, man, it comes out of the show!

00:34:34.000 He said Donald Trump isn't even going to attack Hillary over Lewinsky.

00:34:38.000 You know, Susan, there was a sense not too many years ago when you wouldn't talk about the dress the way he just did.

00:34:43.000 You know, because we're really talking about DNA evidence in the whole routine.

00:34:47.000 Hey, it's hard to believe there's a corner of the unpleasant he's not willing to go into.

00:34:51.000 How would you play it if you were a debate challenger?

00:34:53.000 If you had to play the sparring partner, how would you do it?

00:34:56.000 Would you come in like that?

00:34:57.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:34:58.000 What would you say?

00:34:59.000 What about Monica? 0.89

00:35:00.000 You knew about it, didn't you?

00:35:01.000 You didn't know about it.

00:35:03.000 I don't think she didn't know about it myself, but I know what she would say.

00:35:06.000 Okay, so thank you Chris Matthews for that.

00:35:10.000 The question is going to be, how hard does Trump hit?

00:35:12.000 How hard does Trump hit?

00:35:13.000 We had a couple indicators last night that should be troubling to people who are Trump fans, or at least people who like solid WWE entertainment.

00:35:21.000 Okay, and that is, watch Donald Trump.

00:35:24.000 He's on Sean Hannity last night and he's talking about the Clinton Foundation.

00:35:27.000 The Clinton Foundation is so dirty that the Boston Globe just came out and said that if Hillary is elected, the Clinton Foundation should be actually shut down.

00:35:34.000 They should shut down the Clinton Foundation wholesale until after she's president because there's just too much conflict of interest. 1.00

00:35:40.000 Watch this weird, this is a weird exchange between Donald Trump and Sean Hannity over Hillary Clinton and it's, yeah, it's bizarre.

00:35:49.000 You talked about countries that live under Sharia and about people that want to come here from countries. 1.00

00:35:56.000 If you grow up, for example, in Saudi Arabia, which gave the Clinton Foundation up to $25 million.

00:36:02.000 The Clinton Library, $10 million.

00:36:06.000 And I can't find any instances where Hillary criticized them.

00:36:10.000 Women can't drive. 1.00

00:36:11.000 Women are told how to dress. 0.99

00:36:12.000 Women are told if they can go to school or if they can go to work. 1.00

00:36:16.000 We know that gays and lesbians in Saudi Arabia can get the death penalty. 0.99

00:36:20.000 You can't build a Jewish temple. 1.00

00:36:22.000 There's a guy over here with a sign that says Jews for Trump.

00:36:27.000 And you can't build a Christian church.

00:36:30.000 Would you ever take money from a country that treats gays, lesbians, Jews, and Christians that way?

00:36:37.000 Well, you don't want to do that.

00:36:38.000 And women? 1.00

00:36:39.000 If they knew about it, that would be one thing, and I assume they knew about it, big league, but certainly they know about it now, so maybe they can give the money back.

00:36:46.000 I've actually called...

00:36:48.000 I've actually called... Wait a minute.

00:36:50.000 They knew about it because that has been Saudi Arabia's practice for years.

00:36:52.000 But you know what?

00:36:53.000 Let's give them the benefit of a doubt.

00:36:55.000 They certainly knew about it over the last little while.

00:36:56.000 You're going to give Hillary the benefit of the doubt? 0.96

00:36:58.000 I'm not.

00:36:58.000 Okay, go ahead.

00:36:58.000 You know what?

00:36:59.000 You know what?

00:37:00.000 They should give the money back.

00:37:02.000 And I've been saying this for a long time.

00:37:03.000 They should give the money back.

00:37:04.000 Should they give the money back?

00:37:07.000 Okay, and then he's got Sean Hannity there doing the cheerleading for him. 0.99

00:37:10.000 Should he give the money back?

00:37:11.000 That's not the question.

00:37:12.000 The question is, did criminal activity occur?

00:37:14.000 It's not about giving the money back to Saudi Arabia.

00:37:16.000 It's about you took it in the first place.

00:37:18.000 Look how hesitant Trump is to go hard after Hillary.

00:37:22.000 If Trump went after Hillary as hard as he goes after the Never Trump crowd, he might be winning right now.

00:37:26.000 Is he going to give the benefit of the doubt?

00:37:28.000 That wasn't the only thing that he backed down off of.

00:37:30.000 Here is Donald Trump, this is clip 18.

00:37:31.000 This is Donald Trump talking about the wall with his good friend Sean Hannity.

00:37:35.000 How certain does the wall get built?

00:37:37.000 How certain does Obamacare get repealed?

00:37:40.000 You can never say 100%, but I'm telling you pretty close to 100% the wall gets built.

00:37:44.000 We need it.

00:37:44.000 You know, the Border Patrol agents... The Border Patrol agents have...

00:37:51.000 Endorse me.

00:37:52.000 Along with Sheriff Joe and everyone else.

00:37:53.000 But I'm running out of time.

00:37:54.000 So when you say- It gets built.

00:37:56.000 And you will rebuild the military.

00:37:59.000 That's a promise.

00:37:59.000 We have to rebuild.

00:38:00.000 It's all depleted.

00:38:02.000 And you will send education back to the states.

00:38:05.000 And you will make America energy independent.

00:38:07.000 Can you do it in four years?

00:38:08.000 100%.

00:38:08.000 It could be done faster than that.

00:38:10.000 We have regulations that are absolutely destroying our energy economy.

00:38:15.000 And will you appoint originalist justices like Scalia?

00:38:18.000 Yeah, I've already announced who the 11 could be.

00:38:21.000 Okay, so we go through the whole litany here, right?

00:38:23.000 Notice at the very beginning, I'm not 100% on the wall, but as close to 100% as I can be.

00:38:27.000 And then as he realizes that Sean is coaching him through his list of things he's supposed to do, then he gets more and more definitive as the list goes on.

00:38:34.000 Okay, folks, I'm gonna tell you something right now.

00:38:36.000 Okay, I'm gonna tell you something right now that I cannot, you're just gonna have to trust me on this.

00:38:40.000 I know, I know 100%, this is not a 90% thing, I know 100% for a fact

00:38:51.000 For a fact that if Donald Trump were to nominate a conservative justice for the Supreme Court and the Democrats were to filibuster that justice, there is no way, no way that Mitch McConnell and the Republicans would use the nuclear option to ram that justice through.

00:39:06.000 You're just gonna have to trust me on that.

00:39:08.000 This is not an opinion.

00:39:10.000 I don't know.

00:39:29.000 There's this uncomfortable shyness when he talks about attacking her full scale on some of this stuff.

00:39:33.000 Maybe it's because when he's ripping, when Sean Hannity asks him about taking money from Saudi Arabia, and he sits there and he goes, I would never take money from Saudi Arabia.

00:39:41.000 There is a Trump Tower in Dubai.

00:39:44.000 He's a Trump Tower in the United Arab Emirates, which has a bunch of anti-gay, anti-women laws on the books.

00:39:49.000 So he wasn't averse to that, apparently.

00:39:50.000 But in any case, it doesn't really matter.

00:39:52.000 If he's going to recover in this election cycle, he needs to do well in the debates.

00:39:56.000 If he's going to do well in the debates, he needs to take out the kitchen sink and he needs to hit her with it. 0.61

00:39:59.000 And then he needs to take out the pipes underneath the kitchen sinks and hit her with those. 1.00

00:40:04.000 Maybe Bannon will allow him to do that.

00:40:05.000 Maybe he'll get focused.

00:40:06.000 We'll find out.

00:40:07.000 We'll find out.

00:40:07.000 And we'll find out probably over the weekend because, you know, there's always news that breaks.

00:40:12.000 Okay, time for things I like and then things I hate in the mailbag.

00:40:15.000 Okay, things I like.

00:40:16.000 We're doing true crime stories.

00:40:17.000 This one is obviously a very fictionalized version of a true crime story, but it's a fun movie.

00:40:22.000 The score to this movie is one of the worst scores of all time.

00:40:24.000 It's a truly awful score, but I should do a list at some point of good movies, bad scores.

00:40:29.000 Because there are a bunch of really great movies that have truly terrible scores.

00:40:33.000 The Untouchables with Robert De Niro and Kevin Costner and Sean Connery of course.

00:40:40.000 It's a really good movie.

00:40:42.000 It's a fun movie.

00:40:43.000 Not fun in the sense that you can watch with your kids but fun in the sense that it moves quickly.

00:40:48.000 I grew up in a tough neighborhood.

00:41:16.000 Sometimes, reputation follows you.

00:41:18.000 Robert De Niro is Al Capone.

00:41:21.000 There is violence in Chicago, of course, but not by me and not by anybody I employ and I'll tell you why.

00:41:26.000 Because it's not good business.

00:41:32.000 Kevin Costner is Elliot Ness.

00:41:35.000 I have sworn to put this man away with any and all legal means at my disposal and I will do so.

00:41:41.000 Sean Connery is Jimmy Malone.

00:41:43.000 You wanna get Capone?

00:41:44.000 Here's how you get him. 0.98

00:41:45.000 He pulls a knife, you pull a gun.

00:41:47.000 He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue.

00:41:50.000 That's the Chicago way.

00:41:55.000 You just joined the Treasury Department, son.

00:41:57.000 Everybody knows you.

00:41:59.000 David Mamet, I think, wrote the script to this, and it's a really great script.

00:42:02.000 It's got a lot of iconic lines, and it's fun.

00:42:05.000 And it is a true story, for the most part.

00:42:07.000 I mean, there are some liberties that they take, but the sort of Elliot Ness story versus Al Capone story, that's essentially true.

00:42:15.000 Okay, time for some things that I hate.

00:42:17.000 So, you know, things I hate.

00:42:19.000 Let's do it. 0.99

00:42:24.000 Alright, so, now that we've played the brand new Things I Hate graphic that I'm still getting used to, clearly, Things I Hate, let's, let's, Jill Stein is stupid, so I'm not going to pay attention to what Jill Stein said. 0.98

00:42:34.000 Let's skip that one. 0.97

00:42:35.000 Let's go to South Side With You. 1.00

00:42:38.000 So, I've begun seeing billboards for this horrific piece of crap. 0.99

00:42:42.000 I haven't even seen this movie yet. 0.99

00:42:44.000 This looks terrible.

00:42:45.000 Do you remember they made that movie about the beautiful romance between Ronald and Nancy Reagan?

00:42:49.000 Neither do I, but there's a whole book of letters that Ronald Reagan wrote a love letter to Nancy Reagan literally every day that he was healthy enough to do so, which is an amazing thing.

00:42:58.000 As a guy who writes the occasional love letter to his wife, the idea of doing it every day is a little bit over the top for me.

00:43:05.000 That was the kind of relationship Ronald and Nancy had.

00:43:07.000 Was there any movie about that?

00:43:09.000 No.

00:43:09.000 Obviously, there was not going to be any romantic movie made about Bill and Hillary.

00:43:12.000 I mean, that would be just... I mean, unless it's a comedy.

00:43:14.000 Unless it's like a sex comedy.

00:43:15.000 That would actually be really funny.

00:43:16.000 There wasn't one about George and Laura, even though George basically said that Laura saved his life, essentially.

00:43:22.000 But there's a new movie called South Side With You, and I've seen the billboards now all around town, because Barack Obama is an inspiring God among men.

00:43:32.000 And he and Michelle have the most beautiful relationship that ever was.

00:43:35.000 Never mind the rumors they were going to divorce early in the 2000s.

00:43:37.000 No, they have the most beautiful relationship that has ever been committed to humanity.

00:43:43.000 Now they're making a film about Barack and Michelle Obama's romance.

00:43:48.000 You can play it.

00:44:00.000 Michelle thought it wasn't a date.

00:44:02.000 It isn't.

00:44:03.000 Going to an awful lot of trouble for just another smooth-talking brother.

00:44:07.000 He's the summer associate I told y'all about.

00:44:09.000 The one from Harvard Law.

00:44:11.000 He invited me to a community event.

00:44:14.000 So what's this boy's name?

00:44:16.000 Barack Obama.

00:44:17.000 Barack a winner.

00:44:23.000 Hi.

00:44:24.000 Hello.

00:44:25.000 You're late.

00:44:25.000 I was hoping you wouldn't notice.

00:44:27.000 I expected it.

00:44:28.000 You were late for your first day of work.

00:44:30.000 You noticed that, too.

00:44:31.000 I'm your advisor.

00:44:32.000 I'm supposed to notice.

00:44:35.000 I love.

00:44:36.000 Wow.

00:44:37.000 Well, Michelle, all set.

00:44:39.000 Hmm?

00:44:40.000 Shouldn't we be getting to the meeting?

00:44:42.000 We have some time.

00:44:43.000 I thought we'd swing by the art center, see some paintings, maybe grab a bite to eat.

00:44:46.000 This is not a date.

00:44:47.000 How's it gonna look if I start dating the first cute black guy who walks through the firm's doors? 1.00

00:44:51.000 It would be tacky. 0.94

00:44:53.000 You think I'm cute?

00:44:55.000 I didn't say that.

00:45:01.000 I would rather stick my face in a cheese grater than watch this entire film.

00:45:05.000 But this is what they do.

00:45:06.000 They have to create a hagiography of every Democrat.

00:45:09.000 Every Democrat.

00:45:10.000 And don't worry, it'll be racially...

00:45:14.000 All right.

00:45:14.000 Time for the mailbag.

00:45:35.000 So as always, folks, if you're listening, you should subscribe so that you can be part of the mailbag, because if you don't subscribe, you can't be part of the mailbag and tough nuts for you.

00:45:41.000 So, alright.

00:45:43.000 Jacob writes, Hi Ben, I'm an atheist listener of yours and agree with you on almost everything.

00:45:47.000 I was wondering your opinion on something.

00:45:48.000 Why do you think a majority of atheists believe in leftist, Marxist, socialist political ideologies?

00:45:53.000 Do you believe this is due to a lack of morals instilled by religion?

00:45:57.000 Thanks for answering.

00:45:57.000 Keep up the great content.

00:45:58.000 Okay, so.

00:46:00.000 I think the reason that a majority of atheists believe in leftism is because human beings have a need to believe that there is such a thing as cosmic justice, that in the end we all get what we deserve.

00:46:09.000 Religion says God provides you with cosmic justice, either in the afterlife or through a complex calculation that you can't understand in this life.

00:46:17.000 Religion says God knows better than you, right? 0.93

00:46:19.000 Whatever happens to you is essentially what you deserve to get, including the afterlife.

00:46:26.000 Atheists look at Earth and they see all sorts of injustice.

00:46:29.000 And they're right.

00:46:29.000 There is tremendous injustice on planet Earth.

00:46:31.000 Terrible things happen to good people.

00:46:33.000 Great things happen to horrible people.

00:46:34.000 Some horrible people become chief of staffs to the White House or the lead people on presidential campaigns.

00:46:40.000 You know, terrible things happen to wonderful people and vice versa.

00:46:43.000 And so atheists look at that and they say, okay, it's our job here on Earth to do something about that.

00:46:47.000 And the only way you can have the power to do something about that is through the power of the collective, because the government is so powerful, the collective is so powerful, the only way that you can cure the ills of social and income inequality is through a vast government infrastructure that restores cosmic justice.

00:47:03.000 That's why atheists tend to move to the left. 0.99

00:47:05.000 It's why religious people tend to say, okay, justice is... cosmic justice, what you deserve in the universe, that's God's job.

00:47:11.000 Individual responsibility, that's your job.

00:47:14.000 And you don't need a government to mandate that.

00:47:16.000 You are the one who's responsible for your own life.

00:47:18.000 Okay, Jordan writes, Hey Ben, in terms of morality, what do you think of Batman's no-kill rule?

00:47:23.000 Is he putting his own ego above the lives of Gothamites, or is it what separates him from his enemies?

00:47:27.000 So I've actually written about this, believe it or not.

00:47:29.000 I wrote a piece a few months back about this. 1.00

00:47:31.000 It's a stupid rule. 0.99

00:47:32.000 And it's not an original Batman rule. 1.00

00:47:34.000 Batman originally used to kill people.

00:47:36.000 The idea that Batman keeps putting... It's actually irresponsible.

00:47:39.000 Batman keeps putting the Joker in Arkham Asylum and every two days the Joker escapes and murders 10,000 people.

00:47:44.000 Like, every two days.

00:47:46.000 He's basically Obama with Gitmo.

00:47:48.000 He's Batman with the Joker.

00:47:50.000 So, you know, letting the Joker... Even putting him in Arkham in the first place is dumb. 0.99

00:47:56.000 If you really wanted to finish this, you would just kill the Joker, because clearly, you're operating... Here's the thing. 0.99

00:48:00.000 In a normal society, the police and the law enforcement system are supposed to keep bad people behind bars.

00:48:06.000 Clearly, the police are corrupt in Gotham, and Arkham Asylum can't keep anybody locked up there for more than five minutes at a time.

00:48:11.000 Harley Quinn and Joker are constantly tooling around the city, killing, murdering people.

00:48:15.000 So, given that backdrop, it is actually immoral for Batman not to kill these people, because law enforcement is working on behalf of the bad guys, except for the Chief, and the Arkham Asylum system doesn't work at all.

00:48:29.000 Okay.

00:48:30.000 Nicholas writes, do you think Gary Johnson will be in the debate?

00:48:32.000 Do you think he'll be better or worse for the conservative movement?

00:48:35.000 No, I don't think Gary Johnson will be in the debate.

00:48:37.000 Two, I don't think it will matter one iota because Gary Johnson is the worst libertarian ever. 0.98

00:48:43.000 Hillary Clinton is the best democrat ever in that she's a lying leftist. 1.00

00:48:46.000 Donald Trump is a terrible Republican in that he believes virtually none of the Republican principles and is personally dishonest.

00:48:52.000 And Gary Johnson is the worst libertarian ever, considering, he says, he agrees with 70% of Bernie Sanders' agenda and also thinks that individual religious people should be forced to serve at same-sex weddings.

00:49:04.000 Igor writes, Hey Ben, great show.

00:49:06.000 Thanks for the Bible section.

00:49:07.000 I'd like to know what your stance is on the creation story in Genesis and how Orthodox Jews interpret it.

00:49:11.000 As an evangelical Christian, I have a lot of discussions with fellow Christians about the literacy of the text.

00:49:16.000 And whether the Earth is indeed billions of years old.

00:49:19.000 How do you see that?

00:49:20.000 Okay, so my view is that science comes from God, and my view as a Jew is that the Bible comes from God, and therefore they can't be in conflict.

00:49:27.000 And so when science says the Earth is billions of years old, I believe that the Earth is billions of years old.

00:49:33.000 And I believe that the Bible is being metaphorical when it speaks about days.

00:49:36.000 And the reason the Bible is being metaphorical is because it's speaking to people, and people have to understand what it means, these epics.

00:49:45.000 If the Bible had said, you know, at the time that the Bible was committed to writing, if God had said to Moses, let me explain to you how carbon dating works.

00:49:54.000 Moses would have looked at him and crossed his eyes.

00:49:55.000 I mean, then that wouldn't make any sense, right?

00:49:57.000 So you have to speak in the language that people understand.

00:49:59.000 And so, the proof, by the way, that it's not literal, is the fact that on the first day, God says, let there be light, but He doesn't create the sun until a couple of days later.

00:50:10.000 Right, so what does a day even mean in the absence of the sun, in the absence of the earth?

00:50:15.000 But it still talks about the first day and the second day, right?

00:50:17.000 So what does that even mean?

00:50:19.000 There's a great book by a guy named Gerald Schroeder, who's a scientist, he does physics, called The Science of God, in which he specifically talks about what does it mean by day, and he talks about

00:50:30.000 It's a little complex to explain, but the basic theory is that there's a certain amount of background radiation in the universe, and over the course of a 24-hour period, a certain number of wavelengths occur.

00:50:43.000 And based on the number of wavelengths, you can sort of measure a day by that.

00:50:48.000 And it has to do with the distance, the size of the universe, and the rapidity of the wavelength.

00:50:54.000 And if you do that, then actually the biblical account calculates out rather well when you take into account the expansion of the universe and its impact on time.

00:51:04.000 So I didn't explain that very well at all, but the book does a much better job of it.

00:51:06.000 Gerald Schroeder is the author.

00:51:07.000 Sahil writes, I've heard you say before one of the reasons you're such an adept debater is because you've learned leftist philosophy back and forth and know how to argue for it as easily as you know how to argue against it.

00:51:16.000 What are some books containing pillars of leftist philosophy you'd recommend?

00:51:19.000 Okay, well, the one that the left likes to use very often with regard to kind of social justice, which is their big thing, is they really like John Rawls' book.

00:51:28.000 on social justice.

00:51:29.000 I think that John Rawls' book on social justice is muddled thinking.

00:51:33.000 If you read that, then you'll get a pretty good indicator of what they think about general theories of justice.

00:51:39.000 If you read the Communist Manifesto, you get a pretty good idea of what they think about what economics is supposed to do.

00:51:43.000 If you want to know what they think about history, Howard Zinn is a pretty typical Pablum take on what leftists think about history.

00:51:49.000 John Dewey has a pretty good take on what he thinks the U.S.

00:51:52.000 government is designed for and what

00:51:54.000 And what communities are supposed to do.

00:51:58.000 All of Western philosophy has a leftist strain running from Rousseau, through Marx, through Dewey, including Woodrow Wilson, all the way up to modern times with people like Thomas Piketty.

00:52:08.000 And they're basically repeating the same message, which is the world is an unjust place.

00:52:13.000 Social justice requires a big government that comes in and fixes everything.

00:52:17.000 Aaron writes, love the show.

00:52:18.000 You mentioned most riots have occurred in democratically controlled areas.

00:52:21.000 Is this possible because most large cities, period, are democratically controlled?

00:52:26.000 Are there even enough Republican-controlled major metropolitan areas in the U.S.

00:52:29.000 to support your statement?

00:52:30.000 So, yes, there are some major metropolitan areas in the U.S.

00:52:33.000 It is true that as cities get larger, people tend to vote Democrat more often, because as cities get larger and people are crammed together more and more often, people tend to think they need more government to help kind of separate them from their neighbors, and so they vote for Democrats.

00:52:46.000 But the question really is, are riots occurring in big cities or are they occurring in Democratic cities?

00:52:51.000 And the answer is both.

00:52:53.000 The answer is both.

00:52:54.000 But the solutions the Democrats have attempted to stop the riots obviously haven't done anything to quell the riots or fix the conditions that apparently lead to the riots in the first place.

00:53:02.000 So what I'm suggesting is, if you don't want riots, maybe you should try a different public policy and maybe that will impact.

00:53:07.000 Maybe it won't.

00:53:07.000 Maybe the size of the city means that there will always be riots.

00:53:10.000 But you may as well try something different because clearly Democrats aren't doing a good job.

00:53:14.000 Christopher writes, hey Ben, the show is awesome.

00:53:16.000 Thanks for doing what you do.

00:53:17.000 I want your opinion on the current questions being asked about Hillary Clinton's health. 0.78

00:53:20.000 Infowars recently did two pieces bringing into question her health, highlighting erratic behavior, suggesting potential links between the behavior and a fall she sustained in 2012.

00:53:29.000 Initially, it seems fairly conspiratorial, but the buildup of evidence is becoming more convincing.

00:53:33.000 What are your thoughts?

00:53:34.000 Is this another cover-up?

00:53:35.000 Could this be damaging to her?

00:53:36.000 Okay, the last question is the most important.

00:53:39.000 No.

00:53:39.000 No one on the Democratic side of the aisle, no Independent, is going to say, she looks too frail.

00:53:43.000 I'm voting Trump.

00:53:45.000 Not gonna happen.

00:53:46.000 Not gonna happen.

00:53:47.000 And it looks like a desperate campaign gambit at this point.

00:53:50.000 If the best you can come up with against the most corrupt person in the modern history of American politics is, she looks like she has leprosy, then you're going to lose.

00:53:59.000 As far as her own health condition, she should release her health record, she hasn't.

00:54:03.000 That makes me suspicious, just like Trump not releasing his tax records makes me suspicious.

00:54:07.000 But again, I have no hard evidence that she has serious health problems.

00:54:10.000 If she does have serious health problems, I'm not sure how that changes the math.

00:54:13.000 So what, you're electing Tim Kaine?

00:54:15.000 Alright.

00:54:16.000 Kevin writes,

00:54:34.000 He says, as a sergeant with Phoenix Police, I'd like to thank you for your understanding of how rough things have gotten for us.

00:54:39.000 Kevin, I appreciate the comments, and definitely I appreciate how rough it is for cops out there.

00:54:45.000 Thank God for you guys, because you're doing a job that nobody else really wants to do at this point.

00:54:49.000 You know, as far as the correlation to the Bolshevik Revolution, I would say that that's what the anarchists would like to portray America as on the verge of anarchy.

00:54:55.000 But I don't think that that is exactly where we are.

00:54:58.000 I think this is much closer to 1960s America than it is to 1917 Russia.

00:55:00.000 Okay, Royce King says,

00:55:14.000 They already signed unison when anything right-wing is mentioned.

00:55:16.000 Well, I mean, don't lose sleep or your grade over it.

00:55:20.000 Recognize that not everything you say is going to be heard, and don't waste your efforts on things that are going to be wasted.

00:55:26.000 Ethan says, a couple of episodes back you mentioned the state of our government is like the Kobayashi Maru test.

00:55:30.000 There's no trick Captain Kirk can pull to get us through it. 0.95

00:55:33.000 We just have to plow through the crap as it is.

00:55:35.000 At what point do you think a reboot would be the only solution? 0.70

00:55:39.000 Well, I mean, I do think a reboot is the only solution, but the reboot is not going to come through violent revolution.

00:55:43.000 The reboot is going to come when we re-jigger the test and we actually have an option that doesn't suck.

00:55:48.000 Unfortunately, we have a couple options that really, really suck.

00:55:52.000 Josh, okay, final one. 0.61

00:55:53.000 Josh writes,

00:55:57.000 I'm best man.

00:55:58.000 Can you provide some thoughts on the goodness and importance of marriage that I can steal from my speech?

00:56:02.000 Thanks, Josh.

00:56:02.000 Okay, sure.

00:56:03.000 So, the institution of marriage is the foundational bedrock of Western civilization.

00:56:08.000 Marriage is the idea that you and your beloved are now a new family, and that family is a bulwark against the vicissitudes of fate and the vicissitudes of reality.

00:56:17.000 You are a team, and your goal is to both survive and flourish as a team, and you're not going to do it separately. 0.99

00:56:22.000 You're going to do better together, to grab a phrase from Hillary Clinton's idiotic campaign. 0.99

00:56:27.000 She wants to do it better together as a government. 0.99

00:56:29.000 Family exists in opposition to the forces of nature, it exists in opposition to the forces of government, it exists in opposition to communitarianism, and it exists in direct opposition to the idea that the individual on his own is enough.

00:56:43.000 An individual on his own isn't enough.

00:56:45.000 You need a wife or you need a husband because that person makes you a better person, completes you, and is the only person in the world who has the same agenda that you do in your life.

00:56:56.000 Everybody needs both a cheerleader and a person for whom to cheerlead. 0.99

00:56:59.000 That's what marriage provides. 0.82

00:57:01.000 Aside from that, without marriage, the world simply ceases to function.

00:57:04.000 The human world simply ceases to function because your creation of a new life is in both spiritual and physical form.

00:57:11.000 the significant unification of humanity.

00:57:15.000 Every time you have a child, you're recreating humanity anew, and you're expressing faith in God, faith in the future, and a belief that things will get better.

00:57:23.000 Okay, if that's not good enough for you, then I'm sorry, your friend is too demanding.

00:57:26.000 Okay, so, we've reached the end of the week.

00:57:28.000 It is time for, as Claven likes to call it, the Claven-less weekend.

00:57:32.000 I'm already depressed enough, so try not to ruin things while I'm gone any more than you already have. 0.98

00:57:37.000 I mean, my God, you've already wiped your butt on the curtains. 0.98

00:57:40.000 Can you people? 0.99

00:57:41.000 Ugh, I can't.

00:57:41.000 What?

00:57:42.000 I just can't.

00:57:42.000 I can't.

00:57:43.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:57:43.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

The Ben Shapiro Show - August 18, 2016

Ep. 168 - No, I'm Not Going To Lie For Trump

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Summary

Transcript