Trump's trip down to Mexico is a big deal, and so is the fact that CNN blurred out the Trump logo on a t-shirt that was worn by a man who saved a baby from being trapped in a hot car. Meanwhile, the media continued to celebrate 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who donned a different sort of apparel and practice socks. Ben Shapiro also talks about the left's obsession with the idea that Trump supporters are evil, and why it's a good thing that he's not a nice guy. And, of course, there's a wine review from a company that doesn't actually know anything about wine, but they do know that it's good enough that they sent over some samples of their own, and it's apparently really good! Plus, a new Club W wine that's apparently good enough to make you feel like you're at a dinner party, but you don't have to be a professional wine drinker to enjoy it. If you like wine, then you'll love Club W, and you can get 20% off your first order with discount code: CROWNWINE at Club W. You go to Club W and spend $20 plus shipping and handling fees at checkout, and then you can have a bottle of Club W Malbec for $20. You can't ask for much more! You'll get a lot more than that, right? . Club W is a great place to spend 20% of your total purchase, including shipping, handling, handling and handling of your wine orders, free shipping, and a free bottle of your own wine, and everything else you need to get the best tasting experience in the world. Enjoy, and don't miss out of the best bottle of wine you can t live up to your best day in the best possible tasting experience you can do it in your local wine shop in the whole world! Enjoy! - Ben Shapiro - The Ben Shapiro Show and tweet me what you think of it! on the podcast on to let me know what you thought of the wine you're drinking! Tweet me or what wine you think about it? or your thoughts on the wine and what you'd like to have me know about wine and the best wine you've had so you can try it at your next dinner party in the comments section! and if you're looking for a wine recommendation?
00:00:11.000During his interview on CNN headline news, he wore a Trump 2016 t-shirt.
00:00:15.000The network couldn't do anything about it at the time, but when they rebroadcast the interview, they then blurred out the Donald Trump logo.
00:00:22.000That's fairly typical for a media intent on casting every Trump supporter as an evil pile of human poop.
00:00:27.000Meanwhile, the media continued to celebrate 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who donned a different sort of apparel and practice, socks,
00:00:35.000Really, it's like a picture of a pig with a cop hat on top.
00:00:38.000But Colin Kaepernick is the bravest, most wonderful, most brilliant racial spokesperson in America.
00:00:43.000We must all pay homage to his intellect and courage.
00:00:45.000No wonder college students across America feel triggered by Trump 2016 chalkings but have no problem slandering cops.
00:00:52.000They're learning it from the older generation in media.
00:01:41.000So lots to get to today here on The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:01:43.000Obviously we'll be talking a lot about Donald Trump's trip down to Mexico, way down in Mexico, and he also went up to Phoenix and talked about illegal immigration.
00:02:20.000And it helps if you're looking for just the right wine for the special someone, if you're looking for just the right wine for a dinner party and you don't know anything about wine.
00:02:27.000Like for me, I just like wine that tastes like soda pop.
00:02:29.000This is the place you go if you don't know anything about wine, but you don't want to look like an unsophisticated boor.
00:02:35.000If you go to Club W right now, then it's clubw.com slash ben, you get $20 off your first order right now.
00:02:45.000As I've said, they don't have kosher wine, so I haven't tasted the wine.
00:02:48.000But my entire staff has tasted the wine, to the detriment of the company.
00:02:52.000And they sent the samples here, and people loved the wine a little too much, because not a lot of work got done that day.
00:02:59.000But the wine was apparently really good, from what I'm told by all of the people who tasted the wine.
00:03:03.000Here are some of the descriptions, according to them.
00:03:06.000They said the Sauvignon Blanc was oaked fruit forward with hints of pear.
00:05:23.000He didn't go down and vomit on somebody, so it's a big success.
00:05:26.000And therefore, you know, big win for him.
00:05:28.000He shakes the hand of the president of Mexico.
00:05:30.000The president of Mexico doesn't slam him.
00:05:31.000And then he goes to Phoenix, and he gives a very strong immigration speech, which is very heavy on policy.
00:05:35.000He does walk back a little bit, kind of.
00:05:38.000He kind of vaguely walks back the idea that he's going to deport everybody, but in such a way that it sounds like he might still deport everybody.
00:06:54.000Not just between our two countries, but including the illegal immigration and migration
00:07:00.000From Central and South Americans and from other regions that impact security and finances.
00:07:07.000Number two, having a secure border is a sovereign right and mutually beneficial.
00:07:14.000We recognize and respect the right of either country to build a physical barrier or wall on any of its borders to stop the illegal movement of people, drugs,
00:08:16.000So here's what this was and here's what this wasn't.
00:08:19.000It was Trump appearing sober, which was important because the rip on him from Hillary Clinton and the Democrats is that he's a complete nutcase.
00:08:25.000He's going to go down there and he's going to start launching nuclear weapons.
00:08:28.000He was going to walk in with a mariachi band and a taco bowl, present it to Peña Nieto, and then annex the country, right?
00:08:34.000That's the way that Hillary Clinton was basically speaking about how Donald Trump was going to act.
00:08:41.000Honestly, it looks like he took a couple of Valium, and that wasn't a bad look for him.
00:08:45.000What this does demonstrate, by the way, is that Donald Trump's standard, the standard to which we hold Donald Trump, and I think this is actually smart politically for him, is much lower than it would be for a normal politician.
00:08:53.000He doesn't have to be interesting, he doesn't have to say anything exciting.
00:08:56.000He can go down there, give a normal speech, and we treat him like we treat a two-year-old who just peed in the potty for the first time.
00:09:02.000We just do a big, big round of applause.
00:09:06.000I thought the most amusing aspect of this was Laura Ingraham coming out after this and saying, isn't it great that we just had such a successful meeting with our chief trading partner?
00:10:23.000Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Jonah Goldberg, all the people who you would think of as sort of the people who don't love Trump, to say the least.
00:10:31.000They said that Trump helped himself with this particular jaunt to Mexico.
00:10:34.000And it put Trump on the international stage.
00:11:52.000Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on Wednesday told Donald Trump Mexico would not pay for the Republican presidential candidate's proposed wall along the border.
00:12:00.000According to Eduardo Sanchez, presidential spokesman, he said what the president said is that Mexico, as has been said on several occasions, will not pay for that wall.
00:12:10.000Now, again, I don't think that hurts Trump too badly, because he said right in front of Peña Nieto that we didn't talk about it, and Peña Nieto let it go.
00:12:16.000So it looked like a little bit of sour grapes.
00:12:17.000It looked like kind of Seinfeld jerk-storing, like he's coming about late to the party and trying to buy it back.
00:12:23.000But it does cast a slight gloss on a little bit of a scar on what was a pretty blemish-free appearance by Donald Trump.
00:12:45.000If you're going to give a big pivot policy speech, you don't do it to a rah-rah cheering crowd of people who are also cheering when you said you wanted to deport 11 million people.
00:12:53.000If you're going to actually pivot on that issue, you don't do it in front of the red meat base.
00:12:57.000You actually do it at like Heritage Foundation so that the crowd isn't cheering all of the lines that are the most militant
00:13:03.000And going silent at all the lines that are the most pivot-friendly.
00:13:05.000That's if you're trying to pivot, which Trump, I think, was trying to do.
00:14:20.000One of the problems for Trump was that Trump is a showman.
00:14:23.000Because Trump is a showman, he tends to perform to the live audience in front of him.
00:14:26.000Now, as somebody who's done this before, I give speeches all the time, it's hard not to respond to the audience right in front of you as opposed to the audience that's outside the camera coming through your TV screen.
00:14:37.000Trump should know this because he's been on TV so much, but he tends to respond to the people in the room like a musician would.
00:14:42.000If you're a musician and you're playing a concert, I'm a violinist, if you're a musician, you're playing a concert and people are clanking their way through dinner,
00:14:48.000Then you're going to start getting angry.
00:14:55.000And because he responds to the crowd here,
00:14:58.000He ends up sounding more extreme than the text of the speech makes it out to be.
00:15:03.000And that allows the left to create their own narrative of what Trump was actually doing here.
00:15:07.000What he was trying to do was pivot while still maintaining a strong immigration position.
00:15:10.000I think the text of the speech did that.
00:15:12.000I also see why the left would seize on the sort of militance of Trump's tone as well as the vagary of his language to suggest that he wasn't really pivoting at all.
00:15:21.000So we'll go through that in just a second.
00:15:22.000But first I want to mention our friends at U.S.
00:15:26.000So look, the federal government at this point is going to come after everybody for as much money as they can since we're basically bankrupt.
00:15:31.000So that means that you should really have your taxes in order.
00:15:33.000If you're somebody who has not had their taxes in order, if you're somebody who actually has run into trouble with the IRS, you need to talk to my friends over at US Tax Shield.
00:15:41.000They have an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau.
00:15:54.000It's the one area of the government that is actually efficient at its job because their job is to take your money.
00:15:58.000They specialize in helping people who have problems with the IRS.
00:16:01.000People with personal tax liabilities and business payroll taxes, fees and penalties.
00:16:05.000So you call them for a free consultation at 800-542-2226, 800-542-2226, or you can visit them online at ustaxshield.com slash ben, that's ustaxshield.com slash ben, make sure it's, yeah, the slash ben reminds them that we sent you, and that's great for us, great for you, you get a good product, and they continue to advertise with us and pay for all of the people who haven't paid their taxes in this room.
00:16:28.000When you call for your free consultation, they'll have a tax consultant on the phone and they'll actually call the IRS hotline with you and start the process and they'll walk you through the process and they'll give you a baseline estimate, a guaranteed quote that never increases at any time.
00:16:41.000They have a fresh start program helping you come clean with the IRS and negotiate a solution.
00:16:47.000Tax Shield is 800-542-2226, ustaxshield.com slash ben.
00:16:54.000Okay, unfortunately that brings us to the end of our Facebook Live and YouTube.
00:16:57.000If you want to hear my full analysis of Donald Trump's speech, plus we got the mailbag coming up, plus we have so many things I like and so many things I hate.
00:17:03.000It's a jam-packed show, most jam-packed hour in podcast and in media.
00:17:08.000Dailywire.com is where you subscribe so you can see everything and so you can email us for the mailbag, which we're doing today.
00:17:50.000Because the New York Times got itself in trouble.
00:17:53.000They wrote an entire lead today, the entire lead to their piece about Trump's speech, which they had to release early, was Trump pivot.
00:17:59.000And then it turned out that Trump didn't really pivot very hard.
00:18:02.000They had to rewrite and pull down their entire piece and rewrite it.
00:18:04.000This is the trouble with pre-writing all of your analysis.
00:18:08.000So here's Donald Trump yesterday in Phoenix.
00:18:10.000He says that he's just landed, having returned from Mexico, and here's how he says that went.
00:18:15.000I've just landed, having returned from a very important and special meeting with the President of Mexico, a man I like and respect very much, and a man who truly loves his country, Mexico.
00:18:34.000And by the way, just like I am a man who loves my country, the United States.
00:18:45.000We agreed on the importance of ending the illegal flow of drugs, cash, guns, and people across our border, and to put the cartels out of business.
00:19:08.000We also discussed the great contributions of Mexican-American citizens to our two countries, my love for the people of Mexico, and the leadership and friendship that we have between Mexico and the United States.
00:19:49.000The way that this was supposed to read on the page, this is sort of the problem with reading his speeches as opposed to watching them, the way that it reads on the stage, on the text, is like this.
00:19:57.000I've just landed, having returned from a very important and special meeting with the President of Mexico, a man I respect and like very much, and a man who really loves his country, just as I'm a person who loves the United States.
00:20:11.000It's not supposed to be, I love my country just as much as he loves his, it's supposed to be, he loves his country just as much as I love my country, right?
00:20:19.000He reads it, so the emphasis is, I love my country more than he does, he loves his country, I love my country more, and that's why I'm gonna schlong him in a deal, right?
00:20:25.000That's sort of the way that it reads, just in terms of tonality.
00:20:37.000But if we're going to make our immigration system work, then we have to be prepared to talk honestly and without fear about these important and very sensitive issues.
00:21:00.000To the concerns that working people, our forgotten working people, have over the record pace of immigration and its impact on their jobs, wages, housing, schools, tax bills, and general living conditions.
00:21:17.000These are valid concerns expressed by decent and patriotic citizens from all backgrounds, all over.
00:21:27.000We also have to be honest about the fact that not everyone who seeks to join our country will be able to successfully assimilate.
00:21:37.000Sometimes it's just not going to work out.
00:21:40.000It's our right as a sovereign nation to choose immigrants that we think are the likeliest to thrive and flourish and love us.
00:21:52.000Okay, again, the content here is 100% correct.
00:21:56.000That there are a lot of people in the United States who feel this way about immigration.
00:21:59.000It doesn't mean they're bigots, it doesn't mean they're xenophobes, and people should stop pretending that they are.
00:22:03.000And he's exactly right when he says, not everyone who's joining the country will be able to successfully assimilate.
00:22:08.000And he says it's our right as a sovereign nation to choose people we think are the likeliest to thrive and flourish.
00:22:13.000This should be him trying to convince.
00:22:15.000Instead, it sounds like he's kind of beating people down.
00:22:17.000Again, the contrast between the content and the tone is a little bit of a problem.
00:22:22.000I don't think that it's a huge problem, but I think part of it is, again, he's giving it in a big auditorium with an echoey microphone, with a big crowd behind him cheering what he's saying.
00:22:30.000He continues along the lines, again, the content here is excellent.
00:22:40.000Countless innocent American lives have been stolen because our politicians have failed in their duty to secure our borders and enforce our laws like they have to be enforced.
00:23:24.000What he's saying here is not the problem.
00:23:25.000The crowd cheering, the crowd kind of yelling, it adds the feeling that this is sort of a rabble-rousing speech, when in reality, this is not a rabble-rousing speech.
00:23:55.000This doesn't change the fact that most illegal immigrants are lower skilled workers with less education who compete directly against vulnerable American workers and that these illegal workers draw much more out from the system than they can ever possibly pay back.
00:24:15.000And they're hurting a lot of our people that cannot get jobs under any circumstances.
00:24:22.000Okay, that last line wasn't in the original text, as I understand it.
00:24:24.000They're hurting a lot of people that cannot get any jobs under any circumstances.
00:24:29.000Again, this is putting a moral onus on people who just want to get a job, and it sounds harsher than it actually is.
00:24:34.000The whole tone here should be, I'm just stating facts, okay?
00:24:38.000The vast majority of people who are coming into the country are good people.
00:24:41.000That doesn't change the fact that it does lower the wage rate when you have a broader labor pool, especially of people who are not subject to minimum wage.
00:24:48.000I just said the same thing he did, except it doesn't sound as militant, right?
00:24:52.000He continues, but again, I want to point out the difference between content and tone, because what people tend to take away from these speeches is not the 90 minutes of content, it tends to be the 30 seconds of tone that you get from a YouTube clip, or that you get from listening on the radio.
00:26:31.000The only urgent problem is the safety concern and stopping the continuation of the flow into the country, and then we can figure out what to do with these folks.
00:27:41.000It doesn't matter from that standpoint.
00:27:44.000Anyone who tells you that the core issue is the needs of those living here illegally has simply spent too much time in Washington.
00:27:55.000Only the out-of-touch media elites think the biggest problem facing American side, and you know this, you know this, this is what they talk about,
00:28:06.000Facing American society today is that there are 11 million illegal immigrants who don't have legal status.
00:28:15.000And they also think the biggest thing, and you know this, is not nuclear, it's not ISIS, it's not Russia, it's not China, it's global warming.
00:28:29.000To all the politicians, donors, and special interests,
00:28:34.000Hear these words from me and all of you today.
00:28:41.000There is only one core issue in the immigration debate, and that issue is the well-being of the American people.
00:28:53.000Okay, when you watch this, and when you listen to it, he's saying a lot of things that are true.
00:29:00.000So he thinks his audience are the people right in front of him.
00:29:02.000But his audience for this whole day was supposed to be the working mother in the suburbs, the woman who may vote Republican sometimes, votes Democrat sometimes, is concerned about safety, but also feels the need for compassion.
00:29:15.000And he opened up the speech by talking about how he wanted to be compassionate and fair.
00:29:43.000He goes to Mexico, has a very sober meeting.
00:29:45.000He could have come forth, done a really sober speech in which he laid out this exact same agenda, the exact same agenda, but done so in a way that wasn't yelly, and wasn't screamy, and wasn't cheery, and wasn't people clapping, and wasn't people yelling, but instead was, I'm just going to lay out for you, here are the hard facts about immigration, and we have to be compassionate, and we have to deal with people in a way that's fair, but we also have to make sure that we're protecting America's interests.
00:32:20.000In several years when we have accomplished all of our enforcement and deportation goals and truly ended illegal immigration for good including the construction of a great wall which we will have built in record time and at a reasonable cost which you never hear from the government
00:32:47.000And the establishment of our new lawful immigration system.
00:32:52.000Then, and only then, will we be in a position to consider the appropriate disposition of those individuals who remain.
00:33:04.000That discussion can take place only in an atmosphere in which illegal immigration is a memory of the past, no longer with us, allowing us to weigh the different options available based on the new circumstances at the time.
00:33:26.000So you can't hear it again because he's yelling it at you.
00:33:30.000But what he's saying there is in two paragraphs, right, back to back, he says, you can't obtain legal status, you can't become a citizen by illegally entering the country, you can't hunker down and hope that we're eventually going to amnesty you.
00:33:40.000Then in literally the next paragraph, he says, in several years, in several years, then we can have a discussion about the appropriate disposition of people who hunkered down and stayed here.
00:33:50.000And now it doesn't sound like mass deportation, does it?
00:33:52.000Right, so a minute ago it sounded like mass deportation, now it doesn't sound like mass deportation.
00:33:58.000It was the critical point of the speech, but it got overwhelmed by the image of him with this huge cheering throng, 5,000 people, cheering every time he said he was going to build a wall, cheering every time he said there would be no amnesty, cheering every time he ripped illegal immigrants as criminals.
00:34:11.000So what the media did is they took that and they said, that's the story.
00:34:20.000And so this morning, Politico is reporting that a bunch of Hispanic people on Trump's campaign are now quitting because they didn't see the pivot they wanted to see.
00:34:27.000Now, if you read the speech, the pivot's there.
00:34:29.000If you just read the text, the pivot's present.
00:34:34.000But basically, the media are saying there was no pivot.
00:34:38.000The media are saying there was no pivot, and Trump's people saying there was a pivot.
00:34:42.000And that's why the narrative that this was a big win for Trump on the Trump side I think is not completely correct.
00:34:47.000The narrative on the part of the left that there was no pivot is also not correct.
00:34:51.000Trump's policy on deportation remains just as vague as it ever was after his big immigration speech last night.
00:34:57.000And I think the media is going to glom onto that and then they're just going to ask about deportations nonstop.
00:35:01.000Now if he's smart, what Trump will say is, look,
00:35:04.000As I've said before, as I said in that speech, we'll talk about deportations of non-criminal illegal aliens, meaning, you know, they're already criminals because they're here illegally, but criminal activity beyond that.
00:35:13.000We'll talk about deportations of those people once we've already secured the border.
00:35:16.000We'll talk about what we do with the people who are here once we've secured the border.
00:35:21.000Okay, I think that that's the answer he has to start giving on a regular basis.
00:35:24.000But the image, just even the attitude of Trump in Mexico versus Trump on the stump last night, you can see the difference, right?
00:35:57.000So she sees it as not softening, so the media latched onto that.
00:36:00.000She says, God bless Trump for refusing to go along with the nonsense number of 11 million illegal—it's at least 30 million, could be 60 million.
00:36:42.000Donald Trump made it clear that obviously he understands and respects and admires tremendously the contributions of Mexican-Americans who have come here legally over the years.
00:37:00.000First generation, second generation, third generation.
00:37:04.000Okay, so he's wearing a hat and says, make Mexico great again also.
00:37:07.000I don't know what the point of that was or who decided on this stagecraft, but it's really kind of dumb.
00:38:22.000She says leadership is more than a photo op.
00:38:23.000Well, you know, lady, your leadership led to the death of four Americans in Benghazi, the trashing of Libya, the trashing of Egypt, the trashing of Tunisia, the trashing of Turkey.
00:38:35.000The genocide that's ongoing in Syria, you really don't get to talk about leadership on the foreign sphere.
00:38:40.000And this is why people were panicking, because in the Clinton camp, they're looking, and you hear what she says, we can't have crazy people doing foreign policy.
00:38:46.000Trump goes down to Mexico, and the only bar he had to jump over was, don't be crazy.
00:38:52.000That was legitimately the only bar, right?
00:38:55.000And he wasn't a crazy person, and so the Democrats started to panic because their narrative of Trump is such a nut that you can't trust him, that disappeared.
00:39:02.000Then he did his speech last night, and suddenly they were all happy again.
00:39:05.000Suddenly all of the Democratic frowny faces turned into smiley faces, and people started wondering what was Trump doing, what was his strategy here.
00:39:13.000And you can sort of see relief set in on the Democratic side.
00:39:16.000Trump had the opportunity to make a significant move here.
00:39:19.000He didn't end up making a very significant move because of that speech.
00:39:24.000But to me, it was a bit of a blown opportunity.
00:39:26.000So this is why, you know, in the two-narrative battle that I mentioned at the beginning, the left's narrative that yesterday was a disaster for Trump and the right's narrative that it was great for Trump, I'm in the middle.
00:39:34.000I think that it was a blown opportunity for Trump, an opportunity that he created through good politicking, and then he proceeded to not fulfill through bad politicking.
00:39:43.000Okay, it's time for some things that I like, and then some things that I hate, and then we got some mailbag today.
00:40:24.000One of the more famous Gene Wilder clips from the producers.
00:40:26.000He plays kind of a nebbishy accountant.
00:40:27.000And the plot of the film is that Zero Mostel plays this would-be Broadway producer who discovers that you actually make more money from producing a Broadway flop than you do from producing a Broadway hit.
00:40:37.000And the way you do this is you go out and you raise a bajillion dollars for your opening night.
00:42:35.000So somebody said, I have the world's both greatest and weirdest fans.
00:42:39.000So I had, so yesterday we had a bizarre Japanese anime thing and I have no idea what the Japanese on it said, although I have been informed that there was some stuff in there that was inappropriate.
00:43:43.000They were doing an interview of this guy who had saved a baby who was stuck in a hot car.
00:43:47.000So some terrible mother decided it would be a genius move to leave a four-month-old baby in 80-degree weather in a closed car, which is a good idea if you want to roast the baby and kill the baby.
00:43:57.000So this guy broke the window and saved the baby.
00:43:59.000He was on CNN, and he was wearing a Trump shirt.
00:44:02.000Here's what CNN did with the Trump shirt.
00:44:05.000You're walking through the parking lot, you see the baby.
00:44:07.000Help us understand what went through your mind and why you did what you did.
00:44:12.000As I was walking up, I was parked far back from the car.
00:44:15.000And as I was walking up, I saw this old lady walking out of the store.
00:44:19.000And as we got shoulder-to-shoulder by the back end of this car, she had yelled, oh my God.
00:44:25.000So when I turned around, we heard the baby screaming.
00:45:15.000I mean, clearly this is a deliberate move to blur out the shirt because they don't want people to know that this swell fellow is a Trump supporter because you're not allowed to know he's a Trump supporter.
00:45:25.000There are other items of apparel, however, that the media are willing to hide on behalf of the left.
00:45:30.000Colin Kaepernick, who is just turning out to be a terrible person.
00:45:33.000This is the bench-riding quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers who says he will sit out the National Anthem on Military Appreciation Day because he's a class act.
00:45:41.000These are the socks that he's now wearing at practice.
00:45:44.000There's a story about this at Daily Wire that's linked to Drudge.
00:45:47.000The picture is, on his socks, it is a picture of pigs wearing cop caps.
00:45:55.000So this guy who says that America's a deeply racist place, a really terrible discriminatory place, he has socks with pictures of the police as pigs on them.
00:46:46.000Okay, Jerry, I think this is a perfectly valid argument.
00:46:48.000If Trump makes you feel safer, then of course that's a valid argument.
00:46:50.000I've said myself, I think Trump might make me feel safer on immigration.
00:47:10.000There are a lot of considerations here.
00:47:12.000If that's your paramount concern, if your paramount concern is we have to stop the importation of people who are threats to American citizens, then vote Trump.
00:47:20.000Although I will say that, again, you may be sinking the possibility of stopping future immigration
00:47:26.000Waves if you vote Trump and by doing so you toxify the Republican brand for the next election because my perception is that Trump is going to lose and if you toxify the Republican brand on behalf of Trump, you're not going to be able to defeat Hillary in four years or eight years.
00:47:40.000You guys went along with Donald Trump.
00:47:42.000So I'm not sacrificing victory just for the sake of sacrificing victory here by not voting Trump.
00:47:47.000If I don't vote Trump, if I don't vote Trump,
00:47:50.000Then it's not because I want Hillary to win, or it's because I want Democrats to continue to win, it's because I want Democrats to lose to somebody who's actually going to fix the problem in the near future, as opposed to somebody who's going to pay lip service to fixing the problem.
00:48:01.000So this is a very complex calculation.
00:48:03.000I've never pretended, and I've said it over and over.
00:48:05.000I'm not saying this is an easy decision either way.
00:48:08.000There's a bunch of different things on the table.
00:48:09.000The toxification of the Republican conservative brand, the attempt to turn conservatism into Trumpism, the absolute hatred with which many Americans view Donald Trump, the fact that young people despise Trump.
00:48:22.000I mean, his poll numbers with young people are awful.
00:48:24.000These are things that we have to think about for the future beyond just this election.
00:48:27.000As I've said before, if you think this is the last election, if you think this is the last election, it's the last chance to save the country, vote Trump.
00:48:37.000If you think this is the last chance to save the country, vote Trump.
00:48:39.000If you think that the real saving of the country rests on the election of a real conservative sometime in the near future and the non-wiping-out-of-the-Republican brand, then you might want to think about it twice.
00:48:49.000Well, I mean, to be fair, I don't think that the brand— not all brands of Christianity are equal.
00:49:06.000Greek Orthodox brand of religion that's practiced in Russia, from what I know, and that isn't very much, is not the same as, you know, the American brand of religion, just as European Christianity is not the same as American Christianity.
00:49:17.000There are many different strains of Christianity.
00:49:20.000American Christianity rests also in this kind of rationalistic, largely Protestant upbringing that most of our founding fathers had.
00:49:32.000Not all brands of Christianity are exactly the same.
00:49:34.000Catholicism, obviously, is not the same as Anglicanism, which is not the same as Protestantism.
00:49:39.000And all of these have different political considerations.
00:49:42.000There's a reason why Catholicism is very heavy in South America, but heavily Catholic countries in South America also turn into socialist dictatorships very often.
00:50:16.000How do I become more solid in the ideas of free market capitalism and individual freedom so that when I'm in that situation I can rebut in a coherent way?
00:51:11.000Again, if you want to vote Trump, that's fine.
00:51:13.000Just be eyes wide open about who these people are.
00:51:18.000As far as nation building, it's not nation building to support democracies that exist.
00:51:21.000It's nation building to suggest that you can take places that have never experienced democracy and magically turn them democratic.
00:51:26.000So you should be more exact when it comes to this terminology, you know, taking
00:51:30.000Taking Afghanistan and saying we're gonna take this tribal state that's never seen anything remotely approaching Western liberalism and suddenly, boom, we're gonna turn them into, you know, Idaho.
00:51:53.000Alex, if you mean race-based affirmative action, no, I do not think there are benefits to race-based affirmative action.
00:51:58.000I think it is just another way of distinguishing between people's races without looking at their backgrounds.
00:52:03.000There are many reasons why you would pick somebody who has different experiences.
00:52:08.000Many reasons why you would look at somebody's work experience.
00:52:10.000If you have a 4.0 GPA and you came from a really rough background, that may be more impressive than if you have a 4.0 GPA and you came from a really rich background because you presumably had to work harder to overcome obstacles, and that has relevance.
00:52:24.000But if it's just race-based, like there's a black guy and a white guy, and the black guy gets more points, no, I think that's anti-beneficial.
00:52:31.000Do you think it's likely the conservative party can come back in four years stronger than now?
00:52:47.000And if so, who in your opinion could lead the party to victories?
00:52:50.000And I love you stay objective and lay the information out, and I appreciate it.
00:52:53.000Okay, so Drake, you know, as far as some of the people who I think are solid for 2020, I think Greg Abbott in Texas is somebody who's solid for 2020.
00:53:02.000I think that Ben Sasse in Nebraska is somebody who's solid for 2020.
00:53:06.000There's some other governors who I think would be interesting candidates for 2020.
00:53:09.000I do think the possibility of a real conservative resurgence remains, but this is important.
00:53:14.000I think after this election cycle, if Trump loses, which the polls suggest he will, if Trump loses, there's going to be a big battle, and it's not going to be between the Trumpsters and the conservatives.
00:53:23.000It's going to be the establishment and the conservatives.
00:53:24.000The establishment is going to blame conservatives for Trump and tell the Trump people they were taken for a ride by people like Cruz and bank on the hatred of Trump people for Cruz to form a de facto alliance with the Trump people and then put conservatism in the backseat.
00:53:40.000The Paul Ryans and Mitch McConnells and the Ryan supremacists of the world who have already reached out to Trump in a way that a lot of conservatives haven't.
00:53:46.000People are forgetting the never-Trump people.
00:53:48.000We're all basically Ted Cruz conservatives.
00:53:50.000I mean, it's people who are hardcore conservatives, not people who are wishy-washy.
00:53:55.000There are a few wishy-washy never-Trumpers, but most of the people who are anti-Trump are also people who are very, very hardcore conservatives.
00:54:02.000The establishment has formed common force with Trump.
00:54:04.000They're going to try and maintain that equilibrium after the election and say to the Trump people, look, you got your shot.
00:54:28.000My view on libertarianism, there are multiple types of libertarianism.
00:54:31.000There's strong defense libertarianism, which is sort of Larry Elder libertarianism.
00:54:34.000Then there's weak defense libertarianism, like Ron Paul.
00:54:37.000There are people who are libertarian on social policy, like Gary Johnson is pro-choice, pro-abortion.
00:54:43.000There are people who are libertarian but pro-life, like Rand Paul.
00:54:45.000So there's lots of strains even within libertarianism.
00:54:47.000But my view on libertarianism is that I'm pretty much libertarian when it comes to government policy.
00:54:53.000You should be able to do whatever you want, so long as you're not hurting anybody else, is a pretty good rule for government now.
00:55:00.000The reason I'm a conservative and not a full libertarian is because libertarians, many of them, go further, and they say that even in the social sphere, there shouldn't be institutions that push social standards.
00:55:10.000They say the local communities shouldn't be able to have stigmas.
00:55:13.000Local churches shouldn't be able to throw people out.
00:55:16.000Local organizations shouldn't be able to organize on the basis of the morality of their choosing.
00:55:30.000If you're a member of a church, and everybody in your community is a member of a church, much better shot that you're not going to go to the government to enforce morality, since you already have a quasi morality that's socially enforced.
00:55:40.000Taylor writes, with all the controversy skyrocketing on the left about how America is not the greatest country, could you please give your opinion on this topic?
00:55:47.000What are the five things you appreciate and respect most about the United States?
00:55:50.000Okay, economic freedom and property rights, the belief in God-given rights that are protected from government as well as by government, the idea of checks and balances because human beings can't be trusted, the notion that equality extends to people of all races and all sexes, and that that equality is an equality of rights and opportunity but not an equality of outcome.
00:56:10.000And finally, the basis of all of this, which is freedom of religion, the idea that I can worship as I see fit.
00:56:16.000And a sixth, which is sort of an adjunct to all five of those, is the idea that we have a right to protect ourselves from encroachment by the government, which is, of course, what the Founders did when they rebelled against the British, and that requires a Second Amendment.
00:56:28.000Josh writes, do you think there should be any legal guidelines for treatment of animals?
00:56:31.000What is your stance on the practices of Tyson and other large food processors in regard to animal treatment?
00:56:38.000So, I'm not an animal rights activist in the sense I don't think animals are the same as humans, and I think people for the ethical treatment of animals does grave disservice to animal rights by suggesting things like there's a chicken holocaust.
00:57:00.000I think the idea that all chickens have to be free-range is kind of silly.
00:57:05.000I have to admit, I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I'd like to research it a little bit more and think about it a little bit more before giving a hard and fast answer, because obviously every time you create regulations like this, you increase the price of food.
00:57:16.000Which doesn't hurt rich people, you know, people who earn a lot of money like me, but it does hurt people at the bottom of the economic chain who are looking for, you know, a cheap chicken breast they can feed their kid.
00:57:24.000And so if there are all sorts of regulations, like in California about free-range eggs and all this stuff, and you double the price of eggs, that does have a human cost.
00:57:31.000Okay, Adam writes, and we're gonna do maybe like one or two more of these.
00:57:34.000Hey Ben, my wife and I are expecting our first kid next month.
00:57:37.000We're part of the same crappy millennial generation as you.
00:57:39.000Because our generation sucks so bad, we're considering private school or homeschool.
00:57:43.000Will public education continue to get worse regardless of who is in office?
00:57:47.000No, I'm not sure public education will continue to get worse regardless of who is in office.
00:57:51.000I think that if you break teachers' unions, allow school vouchers, and create competition in the public school system,
00:57:57.000That can increase the quality of education.
00:57:59.000You have to impose some of the same sorts of standards that Michelle Rhee tried to impose in Washington, D.C., and then was thrown out for doing so, including the idea of giving raises to quality teachers and getting rid of tenure rules.
00:58:10.000I think that it depends on your community.
00:58:11.000Where I live, I went to the Burbank Unified School District for elementary school.
00:59:23.000Michael writes, hi Ben, recently the DOJ has said it will no longer use private prisons.
00:59:27.000Many people are excited by this decision, saying this is the end of business profiting off the incarceration of people.
00:59:32.000The assumption seems to be private prisons are somehow driving up the number of people being incarcerated just to make money.
00:59:37.000What's your opinion on the use of private prisons?
00:59:39.000My opinion on the use of private prisons is that the government is terrible at everything, and if you have a competitive bid that is overseen with regulation, and you have people who are monitoring the private prison, private prisons can actually be sued into the ground by both the government and the inmates, whereas the public system, only you get sued.
00:59:54.000So the public school system is bad because of this.
00:59:57.000The public jail system is bad because of this.
01:00:00.000I don't know what improves when you hand everything over to the state, as opposed to handing it over to private companies, who you then hold accountable.
01:00:07.000Okay, we've reached the end of the week.
01:00:10.000And that means, of course, that we're about to end, as Andrew Klavan likes to call it, enter the Klavan-less weekend, in which things get ruined and people die.