The Ben Shapiro Show - Ep. 190 - VP Debate: Pence Dominates, Kaine Loses It

00:00:00.000 During Tuesday's night's vice presidential debate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence shined a spotlight directly on former Virginia Governor Tim Kaine's extreme abortion position.

00:00:08.000 Pence said he could not understand, quote, with Hillary Clinton and now Senator Kaine at her side, why they would support a practice like partial birth abortion.

00:00:15.000 The very idea that a child is almost born into the world could still have their life taken from them is just anathema to me.

00:00:20.000 Kaine maintained that, quote, we really feel like you should live fully and with enthusiasm the commands of your faith.

00:00:26.000 But it is not the role of the public servant to mandate that for everybody else.

00:00:30.000 First off, that isn't even accurate.

00:00:31.000 Cain stands with a candidate who has said that millions of Americans must change their religious persuasions in order to encompass her view that men can become women and women can become men and gay people can marry each other.

00:00:42.000 But beyond that, pro-life does not require religious belief.

00:00:45.000 It requires scientific belief.

00:00:47.000 Unborn children are still children.

00:00:49.000 Cain didn't acknowledge that.

00:00:50.000 Instead, he said he supported Roe v. Wade, which he mischaracterized as allowing, quote, American women to consult their own conscience.

00:00:56.000 That's not what Roe does.

00:00:58.000 It allows American women to define someone else's life, their baby's life, as non-life for whatever reason they choose.

00:01:04.000 Of course, Cain also now says he wants to reject the so-called Hyde Amendment, which makes it, which says that federal funding isn't necessary for abortion, which means that it isn't just women making decisions for their babies, it's us subsidizing those decisions.

00:01:17.000 So the whole let's agree to disagree thing doesn't even apply.

00:01:20.000 Then, most disgustingly, the Catholic Cain quoted the Gospel of Matthew.

00:01:24.000 To tear into Donald Trump's nutty declaration months ago, women should be prosecuted for abortion.

00:01:28.000 Now, Trump was wrong on that.

00:01:30.000 But Cain quoting the New Testament in order to defend the killing of the unborn isn't merely disgusting, it's blasphemous.

00:01:35.000 It's taking the name of God in vain if you're a religious Christian.

00:01:39.000 But Cain continued along those lines.

00:01:40.000 He said, quote,

00:01:54.000 Except that, as a society, we don't do that on fundamental issues of morality.

00:01:59.000 Women don't get to commit murder because they decide to do so.

00:02:01.000 Women can't hold slaves.

00:02:03.000 Women can't redefine away inconvenient humans simply because they have, quote, different moral judgments.

00:02:07.000 By relegating the status of fellow human beings to the do-what-you-feel category of government, Cain undermines any concept of a government worth defending.

00:02:16.000 No government that refuses to defend human life is worthy of existence.

00:02:20.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:02:20.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:02:26.000 Ah, here we are, it is a brand new Jewish year, and we started the year off right, with a vice presidential debate.

00:02:33.000 Oh God, at least the Christians do it right.

00:02:35.000 They hit January 1st, it's a brand new year, everybody sort of takes one extra day, they have fun.

00:02:40.000 We do our brand new year, we come back and watch Mike Pence and Tim Kaine debate about who's the whiter guy.

00:02:46.000 Okay, so, before we get any further, Birchgold.

00:02:49.000 Obviously, one of our sponsors, and they do a wonderful job.

00:02:51.000 If you're interested in investing in precious metals, then you need to talk with our friends at Birch Gold Group.

00:02:56.000 They can be reached at birchgold.com.

00:03:00.000 Their number is 800-496-6663.

00:03:05.000 And that's if you want to invest in precious metals, if you're looking at the economy and it just doesn't seem stable to you, you can legally move your IRA or 401k out of risky stocks and bonds into the precious metals.

00:03:15.000 IRA.

00:03:15.000 Get all the information.

00:03:16.000 Ask all your questions.

00:03:17.000 They'll send you the comprehensive 16-page kit revealing how precious metals can help protect your savings.

00:03:22.000 Everybody's savings should at least be a little bit precious metals.

00:03:25.000 Mine is.

00:03:25.000 And Birch Gold Group is the group that I would choose to invest with precious metals.

00:03:29.000 They have an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau.

00:03:31.000 Again, birchgold.com, slash, Ben, 800-496-6663.

00:03:35.000 Don't put all of your money, obviously, in precious metals, but put some of it in there.

00:03:39.000 And if you're going to do so, talk to my friends at birchgold.com, slash, Ben.

00:03:42.000 Make sure that you use the slash, Ben.

00:03:44.000 So they know that we sent you.

00:03:46.000 All righty, so, last night, the huge, long-awaited vice presidential debate.

00:03:53.000 Okay, so no one was awaiting it, and it was not huge, and vice presidential debates make no difference, but for the sake of this show, we're gonna pretend they do.

00:04:00.000 Okay, so here's the thing.

00:04:01.000 Vice presidential debates, just to be historically accurate, they don't really do anything.

00:04:05.000 Tim Kaine, Mike Pence fighting it out.

00:04:07.000 When's the last time a VP debate mattered?

00:04:09.000 Well, everyone likes to cite Lloyd Benson and Dan Quayle.

00:04:12.000 Lloyd Benson, of course, dropped that famous line on Dan Quayle in the 1988 vice presidential debate, where Quayle said, yeah, he's really young, but JFK, Jack Kennedy was really young, and Lloyd Benson said, Senator, I knew Jack Kennedy, you're no Jack Kennedy, right?

00:04:25.000 And everyone goes, oh my god, he's not Jack Kennedy!

00:04:28.000 Which is probably true, he wasn't doing LSD in the White House and screwing interns.

00:04:31.000 But, aside from that, it was this big, you know, everybody went crazy, wow, Lloyd Benson, what a great, okay.

00:04:37.000 Except that Lloyd Benson's candidate, Michael Dukakis, went on to lose 40 states.

00:04:41.000 So, VP debates don't matter very much.

00:04:43.000 But, maybe this one will matter, because...

00:04:46.000 Donald Trump has really hit the skids.

00:04:48.000 Donald Trump, his campaign is in a lot of trouble.

00:04:50.000 He spent the last week and a half being an idiot.

00:04:52.000 He reverted to type.

00:04:53.000 That was always the big question here.

00:04:55.000 Was Donald Trump going to revert to type?

00:04:58.000 And the polls are showing that that's had a pretty significant impact on his campaign.

00:05:01.000 There are two separate polls out that now show that he's trailing in Ohio, which is not good.

00:05:06.000 According to the YouGov,

00:05:08.000 We're good to go.

00:05:24.000 One in Ohio, tied in Georgia.

00:05:26.000 If that is anything like reality, Donald Trump has a serious problem on his hands.

00:05:30.000 He has a pretty major problem on his hands.

00:05:32.000 So he needed something to shift the debate away from the latest stupid thing that he decided to tweet.

00:05:37.000 And the debate, I think, provides him that opening.

00:05:40.000 Because Mike Pence did what Donald Trump couldn't.

00:05:42.000 He actually debated really well.

00:05:45.000 Tim Kaine absolutely collapsed.

00:05:46.000 The former governor of Virginia just looked awful all the way through.

00:05:49.000 He looked like garbage.

00:05:50.000 He couldn't stop interrupting Donald Trump.

00:05:52.000 Now, I'm old enough to remember.

00:05:54.000 I'm old enough to remember when somebody interrupting a moderator or interrupting a fellow candidate, a lot of times that was mansplaining.

00:06:01.000 That was sexism.

00:06:03.000 When Tim Kaine does it to Mike Pence or to the moderator, then it's totally fine because he's a Democrat.

00:06:07.000 Here is a montage of Tim Kaine not shutting his piehole.

00:06:12.000 ...employed tens of thousands of people in this country... ...and paid a few taxes and lost a million dollars a year... ...the newly emboldened aggression of Russia, whether it was in Ukraine... ...she had a Clinton Foundation accepting contributions from foreign governments...

00:06:30.000 You are Donald Trump's apprentice.

00:06:32.000 Instead of Hillary Clinton expanding the Syrian refugee program.

00:06:35.000 Or instead of violating the Constitution.

00:06:37.000 We can't know for certain who these people are coming from Syria.

00:06:41.000 And we don't let them know.

00:06:42.000 We don't let them in.

00:06:43.000 Senator, I think I'm still on my time.

00:06:45.000 Isn't this a discussion?

00:06:46.000 This is our open discussion.

00:06:49.000 Let me interrupt you.

00:07:19.000 Mike Pence is a normal conservative politician, and he wiped the floor with Tim Kaine, wiped the floor with him.

00:07:25.000 So all these Trump fans, people who are ardent Trump supporters in the primaries, they were sitting around during this debate going, this is great, look what this conservative, normal conservative politician can do.

00:07:35.000 And the rest of us were like,

00:07:37.000 Right.

00:07:38.000 We know.

00:07:39.000 We were there.

00:07:41.000 You picked Trump, right?

00:07:43.000 There are a bunch of normal conservative politicians in the primaries.

00:07:45.000 Instead, we got the one guy who could make Hillary Clinton look stable and composed.

00:07:50.000 Okay, that's number one.

00:07:51.000 Number two...

00:07:52.000 Mike Pence did a great job during this debate of redirecting.

00:08:22.000 With his avoiding, kind of defending the stupider comments that Donald Trump has made, that was smart, but he did what I like to call construction of fantasy Trump, and this is something that a lot of people who I respect have been doing, and I find it just absolutely obnoxious.

00:08:36.000 Every time Tim Kaine would say something true about Donald Trump, it wasn't just that Mike Pence would swivel from it to another topic.

00:08:44.000 Instead, what Mike Pence would do is pretend that it never happened, like Donald Trump didn't exist.

00:08:47.000 According to Mike Pence—it's good news for me—according to Mike Pence, Donald Trump has never existed.

00:08:51.000 It's all been a figment of our imagination.

00:08:53.000 All the terrible things Donald Trump said during the primary season, they just went away.

00:08:57.000 They never happened at all.

00:08:59.000 And you must be crazy if you thought that they were real.

00:09:02.000 They weren't real.

00:09:03.000 How dare you?

00:09:04.000 And he's great at it.

00:09:05.000 He does the kind of tut-tutting every so often.

00:09:07.000 You'll see Mike Pence just...

00:09:08.000 Just shake his head like, I can't believe this guy Cain.

00:09:11.000 I can't believe what this guy Cain is saying that Donald Trump is done.

00:09:13.000 And it's like, we have him on tape doing it, but that's the routine.

00:09:17.000 And since this is a non-truth election, since truth has no bearing on this election whatsoever, the person who lied better about their candidate last night did better, and that was Pence.

00:09:27.000 This construction of fantasy Trump is one of the things that drives me nuts, because it actually prevents the consolidation of the conservative movement.

00:09:34.000 Like, I understand, Pete, for the one millionth time now, I think we have a running count, the one millionth time, celebration, we hit one million, the one millionth time during this election cycle, I totally understand voting for Trump to stop Hillary Clinton.

00:09:45.000 What I do not understand is lying for Trump to stop Hillary Clinton, because I wouldn't lie for members of my own family.

00:09:51.000 And I'm not going to sell out my basic moral principles in order to fib about a guy who I think is kind of a crap heap.

00:09:57.000 You know, there are people who feel the necessity to create this fantasy Trump.

00:10:00.000 So there are people who I think are really smart who do things like they say, well, if Donald Trump would just talk in detail about Egypt or Russia or Syria or about Obamacare.

00:10:09.000 And then you say, right, but he's not going to because he doesn't have the capacity to do that.

00:10:13.000 And they say, right, but he could.

00:10:14.000 Why don't you support him?

00:10:15.000 You need to support him.

00:10:16.000 It's like, right, but the guy who you say exists doesn't exist.

00:10:20.000 And the guy who does exist, you say doesn't exist.

00:10:23.000 They've created this fantasy, this kind of blow-up doll of Trump.

00:10:25.000 And then they say, well, this blow-up doll is real.

00:10:27.000 And if you say, no, that's just a blow-up doll.

00:10:29.000 Trump is real.

00:10:30.000 You can still say he's there and he's bad, but you're going to vote for him anyway.

00:10:33.000 But don't tell me the blow-up doll is Trump.

00:10:35.000 They say, no, the blow-up doll is Trump.

00:10:37.000 And if you refuse to acknowledge that this blow-up doll is Trump, you're helping Hillary.

00:10:41.000 Saying, well, no, gang.

00:10:44.000 No, I'm not.

00:10:45.000 He is, by not being a better candidate.

00:10:47.000 Okay, so, you'll see Mike Pence did some of that.

00:10:49.000 So, we'll jump right in.

00:10:50.000 Tim Kaine led off.

00:10:51.000 He started talking about Hillary Clinton and why he's so happy to be at the debate.

00:10:57.000 This is a very special place.

00:10:59.000 65 years ago, a young, courageous woman, Barbara Johns, led a walkout of her high school, Moton High School.

00:11:07.000 She made history by protesting school segregation.

00:11:10.000 She believed our nation was stronger together, and that walkout led to the Brown v. Board of Education decision that moved us down the path toward equality.

00:11:20.000 I am so proud to be running with another strong, history-making woman, Hillary Clinton, to be President of the United States.

00:11:26.000 Okay, Hillary Clinton has nothing to do with LAD.

00:11:29.000 Nothing.

00:11:29.000 So he's immediately citing some other woman, and then he's going, but they both have vaginas.

00:11:34.000 That's why you need to vote for Hillary.

00:11:36.000 Okay, very weak opener.

00:11:37.000 And then he continues, he's asked why we should trust Hillary Clinton, and his answer is not good.

00:11:42.000 We trust Hillary Clinton, my wife and I, and we trust her with the most important thing in our life.

00:11:46.000 We have a son deployed overseas in the Marine Corps right now.

00:11:49.000 We trust Hillary Clinton as President and Commander-in-Chief, but the thought of Donald Trump as Commander-in-Chief scares us to death.

00:11:57.000 By the way, both Pence and Kane have kids in the military.

00:12:00.000 When Kane says that he trusts Hillary with his son, he just better hope that his son doesn't get stuck in an embassy in the middle of the night in a country that Hillary invaded and then forgot to care about because it was politically inconvenient.

00:12:11.000 Pence started this way.

00:12:12.000 He started by thanking Donald Trump.

00:12:14.000 I also want to thank Donald Trump.

00:12:17.000 for making that call and inviting us to be a part of this ticket.

00:12:20.000 I have to tell you, I'm a small-town boy from a place not too different from Farmville.

00:12:25.000 I grew up with a cornfield in my backyard.

00:12:27.000 My grandfather had immigrated to this country when he was about my son's age.

00:12:31.000 My mom and dad built everything that matters in a small town in southern Indiana.

00:12:36.000 They built a family and a good name and a business, and they raised a family.

00:12:41.000 I dream someday of representing my hometown in Washington, D.C., but I

00:12:46.000 Honestly, Elaine, I never imagined I'd have the opportunity to be governor of the state that I love, let alone be sitting at a table like this, in this kind of a position.

00:12:55.000 Okay, so Pence obviously is better.

00:12:58.000 He's a better speaker.

00:12:59.000 He addresses direct to camera sometimes because he knows that the real audience is out there.

00:13:03.000 Now, forgive me, I have my own, you know, predilections when it comes to candidates.

00:13:08.000 I find Pence just personally kind of smarmy.

00:13:10.000 I look at Kaine and Kaine drives me nuts because Kaine is obviously just out there, like, he's hyperactive.

00:13:15.000 Pence's kind of soft-spoken smarmyness hits me the wrong way, the same way that for a lot of people Ted Cruz is kind of smarmy.

00:13:22.000 I don't know.

00:13:36.000 Elaine, let me tell you why I trust Hillary Clinton.

00:13:39.000 Here's what people should look at as they look at a public servant.

00:13:42.000 Do they have a passion in their life that showed up before they were in public life?

00:13:47.000 And have they held on to that passion throughout their life, regardless of whether they were in office or not, succeeding or failing?

00:13:54.000 Hillary Clinton has that passion.

00:13:57.000 Okay, so we're supposed to trust Hillary because she has a passion for public life by turning public life into a giant coffer for her.

00:14:03.000 Just a giant piggy bank for her.

00:14:05.000 Very, very weak answer on that.

00:14:07.000 Here's Kane on Donald Trump.

00:14:09.000 Donald Trump always puts himself first.

00:14:12.000 He built a business career, in the words of one of his own campaign staffers, off the backs of the little guy.

00:14:18.000 And as a candidate, he started his campaign with a speech where he called Mexicans rapists and criminals, and he has pursued the

00:14:27.000 Discredited and really outrageous lie that President Obama wasn't born in the United States.

00:14:32.000 It is so painful to suggest that we go back to think about these days where an African American could not be a citizen of the United States.

00:14:39.000 And I can't imagine how Governor Pence can defend the insult-driven, selfish, me-first style of Donald Trump.

00:14:46.000 Okay, so what he's saying is partially true, right?

00:14:49.000 He didn't say all Mexicans are rapists and criminals, but what he's saying about Trump and birtherism and all this stuff, some of that's true.

00:14:56.000 Look at Pence's expression.

00:14:57.000 Look what Pence is doing.

00:14:57.000 He knows he's on split screen, and he looks like he just can't wait to jump in, right?

00:15:01.000 He's doing kind of smirk, like, what kind of BS is this guy spouting?

00:15:05.000 And as you're watching the split screen, if you don't know any better, you assume that Kane is not telling the truth, because who would say such outrageous things?

00:15:12.000 Two such outrageous things.

00:15:13.000 This was the fantasy Trump that Mike Pence did a wonderful job of creating last night, this magical Trump who didn't actually exist in reality.

00:15:21.000 And he continued along these lines.

00:15:22.000 The moderator, who's awful, Quahano, Elaine Quahano, she asked Trump about, asked Pence about Trump's personality, and here's Pence's answer.

00:15:31.000 Governor Pence, let me ask you.

00:15:33.000 You have said Donald Trump is, quote, thoughtful, compassionate, and steady.

00:15:37.000 Yet 67% of voters feel he is a risky choice.

00:15:41.000 And 65% feel he does not have the right kind of temperament to be president.

00:15:45.000 Why do so many Americans think Mr. Trump is simply too erratic?

00:15:49.000 Well, let me say first and foremost that, Senator, you and Hillary Clinton would know a lot about an insult-driven campaign.

00:15:57.000 It really is remarkable.

00:15:59.000 At a time when literally, in the wake of Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State,

00:16:04.000 Where she was the architect of the Obama administration's foreign policy.

00:16:08.000 We see entire portions of the world, particularly the wider Middle East, literally spinning out of control.

00:16:13.000 I mean, the situation we're watching hour by hour in Syria today is the result of the failed foreign policy and the weak foreign policy that Hillary Clinton helped lead in this administration and create.

00:16:24.000 Okay, so look at Kaine.

00:16:25.000 Kaine looks pissed, right?

00:16:27.000 Kaine looks angry, he looks sullen, he looks annoyed by what Pence is saying.

00:16:32.000 Now notice, Pence didn't even remotely come close to answering the question, right?

00:16:36.000 The question was, why do you think that Trump isn't erratic?

00:16:38.000 And his answer was, Hillary Clinton's foreign policy is garbage.

00:16:41.000 This is what Pence is smart at.

00:16:43.000 Every time he was asked about Trump, he redirected over to Hillary Clinton.

00:16:47.000 Very, very smart.

00:16:49.000 If Trump does the same thing on Sunday, he'll be in much better shape.

00:16:52.000 Now, we've got to take a quick break here and say hello to our friends over at Ring.

00:16:56.000 So, this morning, actually, this morning, I got a notice on my phone that somebody was ringing our doorbell at 6 o'clock in the morning.

00:17:03.000 And I got the notice on my phone because we have Ring, we have the Ring security kit, we have Ring.com.

00:17:09.000 And it's fantastic.

00:17:10.000 I was able to immediately step out of the meeting that I was in and hit it and see who was at the front door, make sure there was somebody safe.

00:17:16.000 That's what Ring does.

00:17:17.000 Most home burglaries happen after somebody hits the Ring and it hits the doorbell and then they realize nobody's home and then they burgle your house.

00:17:24.000 What do you think?

00:17:42.000 We're good to go.

00:17:59.000 I think so.

00:18:15.000 Uh, and it is a great product.

00:18:16.000 I mean, it's a product that I swear by.

00:18:18.000 My wife loves it.

00:18:19.000 Ring is, uh, it's so good that we get free products from Ring.

00:18:22.000 We actually went out and bought extra products ourselves.

00:18:24.000 We spent our own money on it because we believe in the product so much.

00:18:27.000 It's ring.com slash Ben if you want to participate in that.

00:18:30.000 So, Mike Pence is trying desperately to avoid being connected with Donald Trump.

00:18:34.000 And Tim Kaine's entire schtick last night was to try and connect

00:18:39.000 Mike Pence with Donald Trump.

00:18:57.000 Mike, you're Donald Trump's apprentice.

00:18:58.000 You've humiliated yourself on behalf of Donald Trump, and for an honorable, upstanding guy like you to do that is really something, right?

00:19:04.000 I mean, you should have dropped the hammer on him.

00:19:05.000 Kaine can't do it, but one of the questions from this debate is going to be—is going to be, yes, Pence won the debate walking away.

00:19:12.000 He appeared more serious.

00:19:14.000 Kaine appeared frivolous, and we'll—we have plenty more to go through here.

00:19:17.000 We'll talk about it, but—but did Kaine do damage to Trump?

00:19:21.000 Pence was attacking Kaine and Hillary.

00:19:23.000 He may have done damage to Kaine.

00:19:25.000 Kane was attacking, not Pence really, he was attacking Trump.

00:19:28.000 He brought up every comment Trump has ever made that was bad.

00:19:31.000 Now, Kane looks uncomfortable in the role of attack dog.

00:19:33.000 He doesn't look like he's capable of doing it well.

00:19:35.000 But, if you actually hear what Kane is saying, and you're just a normal voter, does this make you feel more secure with Trump?

00:19:40.000 It might make you feel more secure with Pence.

00:19:42.000 It doesn't make you feel more secure with Trump.

00:19:44.000 I don't think it goes that far because I don't think VP candidates ever really make you feel that much more secure.

00:19:48.000 Okay, we gotta let you go now.

00:19:50.000 You got a little extra time here, but if you go to dailywire.com, become a subscriber.

00:19:54.000 Right now, $8 a month.

00:19:56.000 You go to Daily Wire, you can watch the show live.

00:19:58.000 You can continue after this break.

00:20:00.000 Plus, you become a subscriber and that means that you can participate in our mailbag.

00:20:04.000 We do a live mailbag tomorrow.

00:20:06.000 We're good to go.

00:20:24.000 So, Kane's whole tack last night is paint Mike Pence as mini-Trump.

00:20:29.000 And Pence doesn't let him do it because Pence obviously doesn't act like Trump.

00:20:32.000 What Kane should have done instead is instead of trying to paint Pence as mini-Trump, he should have forgotten about Pence entirely.

00:20:38.000 He should have just said, look, Mike, I think you're a wonderful guy.

00:20:41.000 Maybe you'd make a wonderful president.

00:20:42.000 Your guy is just awful.

00:20:44.000 Your guy is just awful.

00:20:45.000 And he sort of tried to do that a little bit.

00:20:48.000 Pence is better at it than he is, though.

00:20:49.000 Pence is a better attack dog.

00:20:51.000 And so here's Mike Pence going after Tim Kaine over the Clinton Foundation and Hillary's private server.

00:20:57.000 On that point, Governor Pence recently, the New York Times, released part of Mr. Trump's 1995 tax return and reported that he could have avoided paying federal income taxes for years.

00:21:07.000 Yesterday, Mr. Trump said he brilliantly used the laws to pay as little tax as legally possible.

00:21:14.000 Does that seem fair to you?

00:21:17.000 Well, first, let me say I appreciate the you're hired, you're fired thing.

00:21:22.000 Senator, you used that a whole lot, and I think your running mate used a lot of pre-done lines.

00:21:27.000 Look, what you all just heard out there is more taxes, $2 trillion in more spending, more deficits, more debt, more government.

00:21:40.000 And if you think that's all working, then you look at the other side of the table.

00:21:43.000 I mean, the truth of the matter is... The clip here, the one that he's talking about here, this is again Pence being smart.

00:21:49.000 The question was, and we have to play this game because I want to show you what Pence is doing, which Trump should do on Sunday.

00:21:55.000 He was asked about Trump's tax return.

00:21:57.000 His answer was Hillary wants to raise your taxes.

00:21:59.000 Right?

00:21:59.000 Has nothing to do with the question asked.

00:22:01.000 But it's a long answer.

00:22:03.000 He's doing it sincerely.

00:22:04.000 He looks good doing it, and that's all that matters.

00:22:07.000 Kane continues to try and pin Pence down, and Pence just continues to spin away from it.

00:22:12.000 It's as though they're boxing, and Pence is a great defensive boxer.

00:22:16.000 He's kind of Floyd Mayweather here.

00:22:17.000 Here's Kane trying to hit him, and here is Pence evading the punch, talking about whether he'll defend Donald Trump not releasing his tax returns.

00:22:27.000 I am interested in hearing whether he'll defend his running mates not releasing taxes.

00:22:30.000 Absolutely, I will.

00:22:31.000 Governor, with all due respect, the question was about whether it seems fair to you that Mr. Trump said he brilliantly used the laws to pay as little tax as legally possible.

00:22:41.000 Well, this is probably the difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and Senator Kaine.

00:22:46.000 I mean, Hillary Clinton and Senator Kaine, and God bless you for it, career public servants, that's great.

00:22:52.000 Donald Trump is a businessman, not a career politician.

00:22:56.000 He actually built a business.

00:22:58.000 Those tax returns that came out publicly this week showed that he faced some pretty tough times 20 years ago.

00:23:05.000 But like virtually every other business, including the New York Times not too long ago, he used what's called net operating loss.

00:23:11.000 We have a tax code, Senator,

00:23:13.000 That actually is designed to encourage entrepreneurship.

00:23:16.000 But why won't he release his tax return?

00:23:18.000 Well, we're answering the question about the business thing.

00:23:22.000 I do want to come back on this.

00:23:24.000 His tax return showed he went through a very difficult time, but he used the tax code just the way it's supposed to be used, and he did it brilliantly.

00:23:32.000 How do you know that?

00:23:33.000 You haven't seen his tax return.

00:23:34.000 Because he's created a business that's worth billions of dollars.

00:23:37.000 How do you know that?

00:23:38.000 And with regard to paying taxes, this whole riff about not paying taxes and people saying he didn't pay taxes for years.

00:23:45.000 Donald Trump has created tens of thousands of jobs.

00:23:49.000 So what Cain is saying here is actually correct.

00:23:51.000 He's saying you didn't turn over your tax returns.

00:23:53.000 How do you know what's in your tax returns?

00:23:54.000 How do we know?

00:23:55.000 What Pence is saying is also correct.

00:23:57.000 But he's answering a different question.

00:23:58.000 He's saying, why didn't Trump pay more tax?

00:24:01.000 Well, because he doesn't have to, which is the right answer.

00:24:02.000 He created a business.

00:24:04.000 You guys are career public servants.

00:24:05.000 He paid the taxes he owed.

00:24:07.000 And Kaine is right.

00:24:08.000 He keeps saying, well, how do you know any of this?

00:24:10.000 I mean, you won't turn over the tax returns.

00:24:12.000 And Pence keeps evading his grasp.

00:24:14.000 And you'll see, he just keeps evading it.

00:24:16.000 Here's Kaine doing it again.

00:24:18.000 Kaine says, you know, Governor Pence, you had to turn over your tax returns to Donald Trump.

00:24:21.000 Why doesn't he have to turn over his tax returns?

00:24:23.000 Governor Pence had to give Donald Trump his tax returns to show he was qualified to be vice president.

00:24:30.000 Donald Trump must give the American public his tax returns to show that he's qualified to be president, and he's breaking his promise.

00:24:37.000 Elaine, I have to respond to this.

00:24:38.000 You get very little time here.

00:24:40.000 20 seconds.

00:24:40.000 I'll be very respectful.

00:24:42.000 Look, Donald Trump has filed over 100 pages of financial disclosure, which is what the law requires.

00:24:47.000 But he said he would release his tax returns.

00:24:49.000 And the American people can review that, and he's going... Senator, he's going to release his tax returns when the audit is over.

00:24:55.000 All right, gentlemen, I need to ask you about Social Security.

00:24:56.000 Richard Nixon released tax returns when he was under audit.

00:25:00.000 Gentlemen, if you can't meet the Nixon standard... Gentlemen, the people at home cannot understand either one of you when you speak over each other.

00:25:06.000 I would please ask you to wait until it is that the other is finished.

00:25:11.000 Okay, so this is Pence, again, evading Cain's grasp.

00:25:15.000 And Cain is hitting him correctly, and Pence is evading it, because Pence is much better at this than Cain is.

00:25:21.000 And just as final proof that Pence is significantly better at this than Cain is, look at Mike Pence go after Tim Cain.

00:25:27.000 Cain starts talking about Hillary's record, so Pence does a great job of never really having to defend Trump.

00:25:31.000 He sort of defends fantasy Trump, or he defends the aspects of Trump that don't really need defense, because he's not going to defend Trump on the parts where he's really bad.

00:25:38.000 Here is Tim Kaine just getting smoked by Mike Pence on foreign policy.

00:25:43.000 Under Secretary Clinton's leadership, she was part of the national team, public safety team, that went after and revived the dormant hunt against bin Laden and wiped him off the face of the earth.

00:25:54.000 She worked to deal with the Russians to reduce their chemical weapons stockpile.

00:25:57.000 She worked a tough negotiation with nations around the world to

00:26:03.000 Eliminate the Iranian nuclear weapons program without firing a shot.

00:26:06.000 Eliminate the Iranian nuclear weapons program?

00:26:08.000 Absolutely, without firing a shot.

00:26:10.000 And instead of 175,000 American troops deployed overseas, we now have 15,000.

00:26:14.000 These are very, very important things.

00:26:16.000 And Iraq has been overrun by ISIS.

00:26:19.000 Because Hillary Clinton failed to renegotiate.

00:26:21.000 If you want to put more American troops in Iraq, you can propose that.

00:26:24.000 Hillary Clinton failed to renegotiate a status of forces agreement.

00:26:28.000 No, that is incorrect.

00:26:29.000 And so we removed all of our troops from Iraq and ISIS was able to be conjured up in that vacuum and overrun vast areas of Iraq.

00:26:37.000 Okay, so that is Pence just destroying Cain.

00:26:40.000 And his pacing is great, his tone is great.

00:26:42.000 It really is first-rate debating.

00:26:44.000 It's first-rate debating, which is what makes this so frustrating.

00:26:46.000 We could have had somebody like Mike Pence at the top of the ticket.

00:26:48.000 Instead, we have Donald Trump who can't string two sentences together without talking about the size of his junk.

00:26:54.000 But I guess this is the business we have chosen.

00:26:57.000 Kane, again, his whole point here was not to defeat Mike Pence.

00:27:00.000 His whole point here was Mike Pence is not Donald Trump.

00:27:03.000 Here is, I thought, the most effective part of Tim Kaine's shtick.

00:27:07.000 This is clip 14 that we're going to play here.

00:27:10.000 And here he goes after Donald Trump directly, again, about all the comments he's made.

00:27:14.000 And I just want to talk about the tone that's set from the top.

00:27:18.000 Donald Trump during his campaign is called Mexicans, rapists, and criminals.

00:27:21.000 He's called women, slobs, pigs, dogs, disgusting.

00:27:26.000 I don't like saying that in front of my wife and my mother.

00:27:29.000 He attacked an Indiana-born federal judge and said he was unqualified to hear a federal lawsuit because his parents were Mexican.

00:27:36.000 He went after John McCain, a POW, and said he wasn't a hero because he'd been captured.

00:27:42.000 He said African Americans are living in hell.

00:27:45.000 And he perpetrated this outrageous and bigoted lie that President Obama is not a U.S.

00:27:50.000 citizen.

00:27:51.000 If you want to have a society where people are respected and respect laws, you can't have somebody at the top who demeans every group that he talks about.

00:28:00.000 And I just, again, I cannot believe that Governor Pence will defend the insult-driven campaign that Donald Trump has run.

00:28:07.000 And look at, again, look at Pence, right?

00:28:09.000 It's an effective attack, but look at Pence, just sitting there.

00:28:12.000 Nah, Tim.

00:28:13.000 Donald never said those things.

00:28:14.000 What are you, crazy?

00:28:16.000 Who would say those things?

00:28:17.000 Donald Trump never heard of the guy.

00:28:19.000 Is there such a guy?

00:28:20.000 I don't think so.

00:28:21.000 The people don't think so.

00:28:23.000 Come on!

00:28:23.000 No one would believe anybody said that.

00:28:25.000 And that's what he does, right?

00:28:26.000 Here's the next clip.

00:28:27.000 And here's Mike Pence evading this one and basically ignoring the fact that Trump did say all these things.

00:28:33.000 I apologize, this is your two minutes.

00:28:34.000 Thanks, I forgive you.

00:28:36.000 He says ours is an insult-driven campaign?

00:28:40.000 Did you all just hear that?

00:28:41.000 Ours is an insult-driven campaign?

00:28:43.000 I mean, to be honest with you, Donald- Pause it for one second.

00:28:46.000 I just want to point something out.

00:28:46.000 While he's saying incredulously into camera, ours is an insult-driven campaign, Donald Trump is legitimately tweeting, at this point retweeting, jokes about how Tim Kaine looks like the Joker from the original Batman.

00:28:57.000 Seriously.

00:28:58.000 So at the same time, yeah, yeah, a little bit.

00:29:02.000 Okay, so here's Mike Pence continuing.

00:29:04.000 Trump had said all the things that you said he said in the way you said he said them.

00:29:09.000 He still wouldn't have a fraction of the insults that Hillary Clinton level when she said that half of our supporters were a basket of deplorables.

00:29:21.000 She said they were irredeemable.

00:29:23.000 They were not America.

00:29:25.000 I mean, it's extraordinary.

00:29:26.000 And then she lailed one after another ism on millions of Americans who believe that we can have a stronger America at home and abroad, who believe we can get this economy moving again, who believe that we can end illegal immigration once and for all.

00:29:41.000 So, Senator, this insult-driven campaign, I mean, that's small potatoes compared to Hillary Clinton calling... So, again, the key part here is, first of all, he's doing righteous indignation better than Kaine, right?

00:29:54.000 He's doing it better.

00:29:55.000 I mean, this is an acting job.

00:29:56.000 He's doing it... I mean, they called us deplorables?

00:29:59.000 I mean, that's just so terrible?

00:30:01.000 Really, like, okay, fine.

00:30:02.000 But—and Tim Kaine doesn't do it as well, so Pence wins that exchange.

00:30:06.000 Even—my favorite line there, he says, if Donald Trump had said all of the things that you say, he did.

00:30:11.000 He said those things, right?

00:30:12.000 He didn't make—Kaine didn't make that up.

00:30:14.000 But again, we're now creating fantasy Kaine—fantasy Trump in the minds of the general public.

00:30:19.000 Now, here's some more fantasy Trump.

00:30:20.000 Here's Mike Pence talking about abortion.

00:30:25.000 No, it's really not.

00:30:27.000 Donald Trump and I would never support legislation that punished women who made the heartbreaking choice to end a pregnancy.

00:30:34.000 And why did Donald Trump say that?

00:30:35.000 We just never would.

00:30:36.000 Why did he say that?

00:30:37.000 Well, look, he's not a polished politician like you and Hillary Clinton.

00:30:42.000 And so, you know, the lines don't always come out exactly the way he means them, but I'm telling you what other policy or administration would be.

00:30:48.000 Great line from the Gospel of Matthew.

00:30:50.000 From the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks.

00:30:54.000 Yeah.

00:30:54.000 When Donald Trump says women should be punished, or Mexicans are rapists and criminals, or John McCain's not a hero, he is showing you who he is.

00:31:03.000 Senator, you whipped out that Mexican thing again.

00:31:08.000 Okay, first of all, whipping out the Mexican thing again, not the greatest line by Mike Pence right there.

00:31:12.000 But, again, yeah, I love that he says, we just never would support such legislation.

00:31:16.000 We never—okay, so why did he say it?

00:31:17.000 Well, he's not a businessman.

00:31:18.000 Well, he's not a politician.

00:31:20.000 He's not a polished politician.

00:31:21.000 Again, this is one of my least favorite Trumpian excuses, is Trump says something utterly incoherent and stupid.

00:31:26.000 Something

00:31:42.000 We're good to go.

00:31:58.000 Look for Donald Trump apologizing to John McCain for saying he wasn't a hero.

00:32:03.000 Did Donald Trump apologize for calling women slobs, pigs, dogs, disgusting?

00:32:08.000 She apologized for saying... Governor, it is his two minutes, please.

00:32:11.000 Did Donald Trump apologize for taking after somebody in a Twitter war and making fun of her weight?

00:32:17.000 Did he apologize for saying African Americans are living in hell?

00:32:20.000 What Pence is doing... Look at this crazy guy, just going, just going, just saying things like a crazy guy.

00:32:28.000 He's not, he's not lying.

00:32:29.000 I mean, like, again, it must be frustrating to watch this as a Democrat.

00:32:32.000 For me, it's just amusing because at this point we're so far beyond the truth that it doesn't matter anymore.

00:32:36.000 But this fantasy Trump that's being created is really quite amazing.

00:32:38.000 And then, here's another one.

00:32:40.000 Cain says that Trump wanted a deportation force.

00:32:43.000 Okay, Trump did say at one point, many times actually, he wanted a deportation force and he would deport every single illegal immigrant in the country.

00:32:50.000 He did say that.

00:32:51.000 Here's Mike Pence denying that ever happened.

00:32:53.000 These guys, and Donald Trump has said it, deportation force.

00:32:56.000 They want to go house to house, school to school, business to business, and kick out 16 million people.

00:33:04.000 And I cannot believe that Governor Pence would sit here and defend his running mate's claim that we should create a deportation force so that they'll all be gone.

00:33:14.000 Senator, we have a deportee.

00:33:16.000 It's just nonsense.

00:33:16.000 It's not true.

00:33:17.000 It is true, okay?

00:33:18.000 I could actually show you the clip if I wanted to.

00:33:20.000 It is actually true.

00:33:21.000 Okay, here's another one of these, right?

00:33:23.000 Again, again and again and again.

00:33:25.000 Here is clip 21.

00:33:27.000 Here's Tim Kaine going after Donald Trump on NATO.

00:33:29.000 Again, what he's about to say about Trump is accurate.

00:33:31.000 Watch as Pence just flat out denies it.

00:33:34.000 That's why Donald Trump's claim that he wants to, that NATO is obsolete and that we need to get rid of NATO is so dangerous.

00:33:41.000 It's not his plan.

00:33:42.000 Well, he said NATO is obsolete.

00:33:44.000 And look, if you put aside, push aside your alliances, who are you going to share intelligence with?

00:33:49.000 NATO's obsolete?

00:33:50.000 Who would say that?

00:33:53.000 Donald Trump said it, like a lot.

00:33:55.000 He tweeted it out.

00:33:56.000 Unbelievable.

00:33:57.000 I love it.

00:33:58.000 It's just amazing.

00:33:59.000 It's just amazing.

00:34:00.000 Okay, here's another one, okay?

00:34:03.000 Tim Kaine asks about, this is clip 23.

00:34:06.000 This is Tim Kaine going after Trump on Russia.

00:34:10.000 And again, Mike Pence is just gonna pretend that Donald Trump doesn't exist.

00:34:13.000 He's like a child on a milk carton.

00:34:15.000 He's just gone missing somewhere.

00:34:16.000 We don't know where he is.

00:34:17.000 He's probably kidnapped by a van that said free candy on it.

00:34:19.000 Here's Tim Kaine again.

00:34:23.000 And Hillary also has the ability to stand up to Russia in a way that this ticket does not.

00:34:28.000 Donald Trump again and again has praised Vladimir Putin and it's clear that he has business dealings with Russian oligarchs who are very connected to Putin.

00:34:36.000 The Trump campaign management team had to be fired a month or so ago because of those shadowy connections with pro-Putin forces.

00:34:44.000 Governor Pence made the odd claim, he said inarguably,

00:34:48.000 Vladimir Putin is a better leader than President Obama.

00:34:52.000 Vladimir Putin's run his economy into the ground.

00:34:55.000 He persecutes LGBT folks and journalists.

00:34:58.000 If you don't know the difference between dictatorship and leadership, then you gotta go back to a fifth grade civics class.

00:35:06.000 I'll tell you what offends me.

00:35:09.000 Governor Pence just said that.

00:35:31.000 What world are you living in?

00:35:32.000 You must be crazy.

00:35:34.000 And again, and again, here's Tim Kaine going after Trump over his ridiculous assertion that we'll just stop defending other countries and they can develop their own nuclear weapons.

00:35:43.000 Donald Trump's idea that more nations should get nuclear weapons.

00:35:46.000 Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea.

00:35:49.000 Ronald Reagan said something really interesting about nuclear proliferation back in the 1980s.

00:35:54.000 He said, the problem with nuclear proliferation

00:35:57.000 Is that some fool or maniac could trigger a catastrophic event.

00:36:02.000 And I think that's who Governor Pence's running mate is, exactly who President Reagan warned us about.

00:36:07.000 Senator.

00:36:08.000 Senator, that was even beneath you and Hillary Clinton, and that's pretty low.

00:36:12.000 But do you think we should have more nuclear weapons in the world that will make us safer?

00:36:18.000 Senator, Ronald Reagan also said nuclear war should never be fought because it can never be won.

00:36:26.000 And the United States of America needs to make it.

00:36:29.000 He's got nothing there.

00:36:30.000 But again, oh, come on, Senator.

00:36:32.000 That's low.

00:36:33.000 That's low.

00:36:34.000 How dare anyone sink into the mud?

00:36:37.000 You're running mate is Donald Trump, okay?

00:36:40.000 Like, oh my god.

00:36:41.000 It's just, it's maddening to watch this because both campaigns are operating in this alternative reality.

00:36:46.000 And I'm picking on Mike Pence here, but the fact is that Kaine did the same thing on the flaws on his candidate.

00:36:50.000 You know, there's one point where Pence just starts hammering him on foreign policy and he's got nothing.

00:36:56.000 I mean, Pence hammers him.

00:36:58.000 Tim Kaine

00:37:13.000 They're speaking something that's true.

00:37:15.000 Anytime they're on defense, they're lying.

00:37:17.000 And so the lies are just insane.

00:37:20.000 They're just insane.

00:37:21.000 And so we've created these fake versions of each candidate.

00:37:24.000 If you're someone who buys into Trump, you buy into the idea that he's this great, wonderful guy.

00:37:28.000 Because, hey, Mike Pence is saying so, and that guy looks honest.

00:37:30.000 And if you like Hillary Clinton, you're buying into the idea she's not corrupt.

00:37:32.000 I mean, Tim Kaine, what a nice guy.

00:37:34.000 Would he hang out with Hillary Clinton if he were corrupt?

00:37:36.000 Meanwhile, they're both lying like fury.

00:37:37.000 I mean, it's really, really frustrating from any perspective where you like truth and not falsehood.

00:37:43.000 Now again, Pence won, and this provides Donald Trump another chance to try and save himself.

00:37:49.000 So this takes us to the final part of the debate.

00:37:52.000 First of all, I want to play one more clip of this.

00:37:54.000 I think this is the one where, let's see, the one where they talk about the insult-driven campaign again.

00:38:01.000 This is clip 28, clip 28.

00:38:06.000 Well, thanks.

00:38:08.000 I'm just trying to keep up with the insult-driven campaign on the other side of the table.

00:38:14.000 You know what?

00:38:15.000 I'm just saying facts about your running mate.

00:38:16.000 Yeah.

00:38:17.000 And I know you can't defend him.

00:38:18.000 Senator, please, this is Governor's two minutes.

00:38:19.000 I'm happy to defend him, Senator.

00:38:20.000 Don't put words in my mouth that I'm not defending him.

00:38:22.000 You're not.

00:38:23.000 I'm happy to defend him.

00:38:24.000 Most of what you said is completely false.

00:38:27.000 And the American people know that.

00:38:28.000 I'll run through the list of things where you can defend him.

00:38:30.000 Senator, please, this is Governor Pence's two minutes.

00:38:32.000 Okay, and again, Cain is not wrong here, but the lies just don't matter.

00:38:37.000 The fake Trump must—and the problem is that so many people believe in the fake Trump now.

00:38:41.000 They believe the blow-up doll Trump that Mike Pence is blowing up for them right here, that they think, okay, why couldn't people like Shapiro just back this Trump?

00:38:47.000 And here's the thing.

00:38:48.000 If the Trump that were real were the Trump being presented by Pence, I would support that Trump.

00:38:53.000 I would support that Trump, but that's not real Trump.

00:38:55.000 That's fake Trump.

00:38:56.000 That's fake Trump.

00:38:57.000 So, yes, Pence won, but what he really did was he gave Donald Trump a chance to put one over on the American people come Sunday, because now there's this gap.

00:39:05.000 Now people are saying, okay, what do I believe about Trump again?

00:39:08.000 Do I believe that he's this crazy person that Tim Kaine is describing, or do I believe that he's this gentle, nice guy just like Tim Kaine, the kind of fellow who would pick Tim Kaine?

00:39:17.000 Okay, well, an argument I don't buy, by the way.

00:39:18.000 Donald Trump must have wonderful judgment because he picked Mike Pence as his VP.

00:39:22.000 I just, I don't buy that, in the slightest.

00:39:25.000 There are plenty of great presidents who had crappy VPs.

00:39:28.000 There are plenty of crappy presidents who had great VPs.

00:39:30.000 I don't think your VP pick says a lot about you, particularly when we know Donald Trump desperately wanted Shinebox Chris Christie as his VP, and only his family forced him into Pence.

00:39:39.000 In any case,

00:39:40.000 I thought that Mike Pence did all the things right that Donald Trump did wrong.

00:39:45.000 His body language was excellent.

00:39:47.000 He was very good on reaction.

00:39:49.000 He looked like a grown up every time, whatever his words were.

00:39:51.000 And of course, he was playing with a couple of deuces against the guy with a full house.

00:39:55.000 So it was very difficult for him.

00:40:09.000 In terms of the issues.

00:40:10.000 I mean, he had to defend Donald Trump.

00:40:12.000 But he came across as a grown-up, strong.

00:40:14.000 I thought he was very effective at being a conservative.

00:40:16.000 But I really think that Convis tonight has made himself probably the front-runner for the Republican nomination in 2020.

00:40:22.000 He hit all the bases on the conservative side.

00:40:24.000 He was pro-life and rather eloquent on it at the end.

00:40:26.000 You may not agree with him, but he was eloquent.

00:40:28.000 I also thought that he was very good on the policing issue for the conservative side, very strong against illegal immigration on the conservative side.

00:40:35.000 So I thought he was very effective at securing Trump's right-wing flank.

00:40:39.000 And I think that may be important in the numbers the next couple of days, to stop this hemorrhaging of Trump, to hold him on the right and hold him on the conservative side.

00:40:47.000 Okay, so, Matthews thinks that this was important for Trump.

00:40:50.000 I think that it was maybe—I'm not going to guarantee it was important for Trump.

00:40:54.000 I think that, again, people don't pay that much attention to VP candidates.

00:40:58.000 In the end, the polls showed that—I think it was the SNAP poll from CNN was 48% for Pence, 42% for Kaine.

00:41:05.000 I think that it was pretty clear that Kaine lost.

00:41:07.000 It was pretty clear that Pence won.

00:41:09.000 How much impact that has, it's up to Donald Trump.

00:41:11.000 Donald Trump now has to capitalize.

00:41:12.000 It's up to Trump.

00:41:13.000 It's Donald Trump's turn to actually see if he can be any good at this.

00:41:17.000 And you can see the media are upset about it.

00:41:19.000 Andrea Mitchell, who's a Hillary worshipper through and through, she says it was very clear that Cain was awful.

00:41:25.000 Andrea Mitchell.

00:41:26.000 A lot of people feel that Tim Cain was too aggressive, that the impression that the viewers had was that there were too many interruptions.

00:41:36.000 And so she wasn't the only one.

00:41:37.000 Joy Reid from MSNBC, she came out and she said that Cain really did an awful job.

00:41:42.000 Yeah, you know, it's interesting, Rachel.

00:41:44.000 I, too, was extremely distracted by the cross-talking.

00:41:47.000 I thought it made it very difficult to listen to and understand what they were doing.

00:41:50.000 And Tim Kaine was the more aggressive interrupter and cross-talker.

00:41:55.000 I don't think that helped him.

00:41:56.000 And he was firing so many attacks, so rapid-fire and so broad at Mike Pence that he was sort of losing the point.

00:42:04.000 Now, I came into this debate thinking that, you know, Tim Kaine's the guy they put on the ticket to solve their

00:42:08.000 White man problem.

00:42:09.000 That of course cannot be done.

00:42:10.000 They're not going to do well with white male voters.

00:42:13.000 But then the secondary audience for him would be your white suburban voter to try to pull them over if they could.

00:42:18.000 That wasn't his audience tonight.

00:42:19.000 Clearly Tim Kaine came in with one mission only.

00:42:22.000 Fire off as many salvos at Mike Pence as he could and try to force Pence to defend Donald Trump.

00:42:28.000 Mm-hmm.

00:42:29.000 And in that sense, if that was his goal, he was successful.

00:42:31.000 Look, if you're a Republican voter, you probably watch — if you're an old-fashioned Republican, and you probably said, wow, that Mike Pence guy seems interesting.

00:42:38.000 I wonder who he'll pick for his running mate, right?

00:42:40.000 He came across as if he were the candidate.

00:42:42.000 He stated his own positions on Russia, his own ideas.

00:42:45.000 He defended the Mike Pence brand.

00:42:47.000 But if Tim Kaine's goal was to try to force him to defend Donald Trump and to force the viewer to watch him not do that, then if that was his mission, he succeeded.

00:42:57.000 But I think the overcast —

00:42:59.000 I don't think he succeeded because I think Pence was too slick for him.

00:43:02.000 I think that he was too slippery for him.

00:43:03.000 I think that the casual watcher did not get the impression that Pence ran away from Trump so much as he just ignored Trump utterly.

00:43:10.000 That he ignored Trump utterly.

00:43:12.000 And so that means that now Trump has to redefine himself because Pence can't do it for him.

00:43:16.000 Pence can't do it

00:43:17.000 For him at all.

00:43:18.000 Meanwhile, Hillary is increasingly confident.

00:43:20.000 You can see it.

00:43:21.000 It's clear that she thinks that she is going to win this thing now.

00:43:25.000 She's got her base rallied around her and that's allowing some fishers to appear in the Democratic base a little bit.

00:43:31.000 Michelle Obama is out there rallying for Hillary Clinton, but meanwhile Hillary is undermining the Obamas.

00:43:37.000 It's really kind of interesting.

00:43:37.000 Here's Michelle Obama pushing for Hillary Clinton.

00:43:41.000 Because when making life or death, war or peace decisions,

00:43:46.000 A president can't just pop off or lash out irrationally.

00:43:50.000 And I think we can all agree that someone who's roaming around at 3 a.m.

00:43:56.000 tweeting should not have their fingers on the nuclear codes.

00:44:02.000 Okay, so she's making the strong case in favor of Hillary Clinton.

00:44:05.000 The Clintons, you'll notice, are now starting to draw away from the Obamas.

00:44:08.000 So, this shows Hillary's confidence.

00:44:10.000 A year and a half ago, when Hillary first talked about announcing, she was already drawing contrast between herself and Obama.

00:44:15.000 She was saying, yes, but.

00:44:17.000 I like a lot of what Obama does, but.

00:44:20.000 And then for a year, she didn't do that because she was afraid that Obama would pull the rug out from under her and support Joe Biden or throw some silent support to Bernie Sanders.

00:44:28.000 Now, the Clintons are feeling confident.

00:44:30.000 They feel like they're up in the polls again.

00:44:31.000 They can afford to tick off Obama a little bit.

00:44:34.000 And so Bill, yesterday, he came out and he ripped into Obamacare.

00:44:37.000 But the people that are getting killed in this deal are small business people and individuals who make just a little too much to get any of these subsidies.

00:44:45.000 Why?

00:44:46.000 Because they're not organized, they don't have any bargaining power with insurance companies, and they're getting whacked.

00:44:52.000 So you've got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care, and then the people are out there busting it sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half.

00:45:05.000 It's the craziest thing in the world.

00:45:07.000 He's ripping into Obamacare like that, right?

00:45:09.000 And this is—people are taking this as this is just Bill popping off, undermining the campaign.

00:45:13.000 No, this is a concerted effort now for Hillary Clinton to draw a little bit away from Barack Obama, create enough distance that she's not tied to him at the polls, make that overture to some of those white suburban voters that Joy Reid was mentioning, and then hopefully win a broad victory.

00:45:26.000 So, that's one idea.

00:45:28.000 Maybe that's what she's doing.

00:45:29.000 Or maybe she's just incompetent, because here's what we found out today.

00:45:32.000 Hillary Clinton wants to make an appeal to millennials, to young people, the way she wants to appeal to millennials.

00:45:37.000 is by trotting out Al Gore.

00:45:39.000 Really, like people my age.

00:45:40.000 She wants to appeal to me by trotting out Al Gore.

00:45:44.000 Honestly, the only contact that I've had with Al Gore since I was 16 years old, or I was 16 when the 2000 election happened, the last contact I had with Al Gore since 2000 was in ManBearPig, like from South Park, like this.

00:45:57.000 I'm here to educate you about the single biggest threat to our planet.

00:46:02.000 You see, there is something out there which threatens our very existence, and may be the end to the human race as we know it.

00:46:10.000 What do you mean, the cave-in is over?

00:46:12.000 I'm afraid you have a much bigger problem than a cave-in.

00:46:16.000 What's that?

00:46:19.000 It is a creature which roams the earth alone.

00:46:23.000 It is half man, half bear, and half pig.

00:46:29.000 Honestly, our fluency with Al Gore is now, I mean, it's been 16 years since he ran for president.

00:46:34.000 It's that crappy documentary, Inconvenient Truth, that they made us watch in high school, but that was full of lies.

00:46:38.000 It was Al Gore having his chakras touched by a masseuse and then getting divorced from Tipper, who he was making out with in 2000.

00:46:44.000 And it was man, bear, pig.

00:46:45.000 Half man, half bear, half pig.

00:46:47.000 from South Park, and that's the person that Hillary's trotting out.

00:46:50.000 He's 68, by the way.

00:46:51.000 She's trotting him out to rally the millennials.

00:46:54.000 OK, maybe she doesn't know what she's doing.

00:46:55.000 Maybe Bill is sinking the campaign.

00:46:58.000 Clearly, they have a problem.

00:46:59.000 OK, time for some things I like, some things I hate, and then some Bible talk.

00:47:04.000 OK, so things I like.

00:47:05.000 Over the weekend, I was reading William F. Buckley's The Unmaking of a Mayor.

00:47:10.000 And it is a really interesting book.

00:47:13.000 It's particularly interesting—people don't know this about Buckley.

00:47:15.000 Buckley ran for mayor of New York in 1965, not because he thought he was going to win, but because he thought that there was no one representing the conservative position.

00:47:22.000 He ran against a Republican who ended up winning and was expected to win named John Lindsay.

00:47:26.000 John Lindsay was the most liberal Republican in the U.S.

00:47:28.000 Congress.

00:47:29.000 He was running for mayor of New York, was running on a very, very left platform.

00:47:34.000 Buckley ran against him, got all sorts of crap for it.

00:47:36.000 Oh, it's because of you the Republican's gonna lose.

00:47:39.000 How dare you go against your party?

00:47:40.000 You're gonna let the Democrat win.

00:47:42.000 Why don't you just support him?

00:47:43.000 Why don't you just acknowledge that when he gets into office, he's gonna be a lot more conservative than you think he will?

00:47:48.000 If any of these arguments sound familiar, that's because all of them are familiar.

00:47:52.000 Right?

00:47:52.000 And there's one point in the book, I talk about it in my National Review piece today, there's one point where somebody wrote to Buckley and they say, why can't you just acknowledge that John Lindsay is going to be much more conservative than you give him credit for?

00:48:03.000 And Buckley writes back, I don't think John Lindsay's a liar.

00:48:06.000 I think when he says he's going to govern like a liberal, he'll govern like a liberal.

00:48:09.000 Sure enough, after John Lindsay is elected, he governs like a far leftist.

00:48:12.000 He's the most left mayor in New York history to that point, and he helps destroy the city wholesale.

00:48:18.000 Buckley was right.

00:48:19.000 Lindsay and his supporters were wrong.

00:48:22.000 And I think that that's worth noting.

00:48:24.000 The book is really interesting, and you'll be astonished at how much of it is still relevant.

00:48:28.000 I mean, talk about race and talk about the police and talk about the media.

00:48:32.000 Really an interesting book, The Unmaking of a Mayor.

00:48:34.000 I know it's back in print now.

00:48:35.000 This is an older version, but it's back in print with Encounter Books.

00:48:38.000 Uh, and it's really, really good.

00:48:40.000 Okay, things that I hate, so...

00:48:45.000 After the debate, it turns out that it was time for a bit of dancing.

00:48:49.000 It was time for a bit of dancing and prancing.

00:48:50.000 Terry McAuliffe is the deeply, deeply destructive and corrupt governor of the state of Virginia.

00:48:56.000 He was Hillary's bag man for years and years and years.

00:48:58.000 Here is some tape of Terry McAuliffe dancing after the debate.

00:49:01.000 That is governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, doing a little bit of the cabbage patch.

00:49:07.000 He's stirring it up a little bit.

00:49:08.000 He's feeling good.

00:49:09.000 He's getting his shoulders moving.

00:49:10.000 The governor joins us now.

00:49:12.000 What are you so happy about, governor?

00:49:14.000 Well, Chris, first of all, I apologized to my staff yesterday.

00:49:17.000 I broke the cardinal rule.

00:49:18.000 I danced in public.

00:49:24.000 Oh God, that was horrifying.

00:49:25.000 Okay, so, Terry McAuliffe dancing.

00:49:27.000 Just note to people, don't dance in public.

00:49:29.000 It's awful.

00:49:30.000 Always.

00:49:31.000 Even if you want to pretend they're cool, like you pretend Michelle can dance and Barack can dance.

00:49:34.000 None of them can dance.

00:49:35.000 Okay.

00:49:35.000 The second thing that I hate, Eric Trump was on CNN on taxes and he's talking about his father's tax returns and things get ugly.

00:49:45.000 Can you just put this to rest?

00:49:46.000 Has your father paid federal income taxes?

00:49:49.000 We pay a tremendous amount of taxes.

00:49:51.000 Federal income taxes?

00:49:52.000 Yes.

00:49:53.000 And beyond taxes, we also employ tens and tens and tens of thousands of people.

00:50:00.000 The difference between my father and Hillary Clinton is Hillary Clinton has lived off of the government her entire life.

00:50:05.000 She's never created a single job.

00:50:06.000 Eric, my question though is, has he paid federal income taxes over the last 18 years?

00:50:11.000 Yes or no?

00:50:11.000 Of course, yes.

00:50:12.000 Absolutely.

00:50:13.000 My father pays a tremendous

00:50:15.000 amount of tax.

00:50:15.000 We as a company pay a tremendous amount of tax.

00:50:18.000 We as a company also hire a tremendous amount of people, which leads to people being able to provide for their families, people being able to take care of their families, people being able to educate their children.

00:50:29.000 If you look at Hillary on the other hand, she has never signed the front of a check once.

00:50:33.000 She's never balanced a budget.

00:50:34.000 So if we ever see your father's income taxes, it will show that he has paid federal income taxes.

00:50:41.000 There is no question about it.

00:50:42.000 We pay tremendous

00:50:43.000 Will we see it?

00:50:44.000 Have you seen his tax returns?

00:50:46.000 Have you seen his federal income taxes?

00:51:12.000 Eric, I'm pretty impressed actually.

00:51:14.000 You should show up at the event for that.

00:51:16.000 Exactly!

00:51:16.000 You haven't been in politics that long and you're doing the pivot quite well.

00:51:20.000 If you can just put a button on this.

00:51:23.000 Have you seen your father's income taxes?

00:51:25.000 Yeah, I don't study our tax returns.

00:51:26.000 No, but have you seen them?

00:51:27.000 Of course you see tax returns.

00:51:29.000 No, have you seen your father's tax returns?

00:51:31.000 I'm answering the question.

00:51:32.000 Of course I've seen my father's tax returns.

00:51:34.000 He's paid federal taxes.

00:51:35.000 My father pays a tremendous amount of tax.

00:51:37.000 As a company, we pay a tremendous amount of tax and it goes so far beyond federal income taxes.

00:51:41.000 How about

00:51:42.000 Real estate taxes.

00:51:43.000 How about employment taxes?

00:51:45.000 How about sales taxes?

00:51:46.000 How about every other type of tax that goes into that?

00:51:49.000 We pay a tremendous amount of tax as a company.

00:51:52.000 That is very, very, very different than Hillary Clinton, who's lived off the government for the last 40 years.

00:51:58.000 Okay, so the thing I hate about this is not Eric Trump.

00:52:00.000 Eric Trump actually does a very good job with this.

00:52:02.000 What I hate about this is Dana Bash is just bashing him over the head with the same question that he answers six different times.

00:52:08.000 Six different times, same answer, yes, he has paid federal income tax.

00:52:13.000 And instead of her just saying, okay, so why won't he turn it over, and the audit is not an appropriate response,

00:52:18.000 She just keeps hitting him over and over, like, he's going to give a different answer one of these times?

00:52:22.000 It shows you the absolute unwillingness of the press to believe anything that Trump's people have to say, where they would be sitting there just nodding along to anything Hillary Clinton had to say about her emails.

00:52:32.000 Like, if that were Hillary, sorry, if that were Chelsea sitting right there, you think they would ask her six straight times?

00:52:37.000 So, it was all yoga emails, those 33,000 emails?

00:52:39.000 All yoga?

00:52:40.000 All wedding emails?

00:52:41.000 That's all it was?

00:52:41.000 You think they'd ask her that six straight times?

00:52:43.000 Why did your mom set up a private email server?

00:52:45.000 No, but really, why did she do it?

00:52:47.000 You think they would do that?

00:52:47.000 Of course not.

00:52:48.000 The media bias here is astounding.

00:52:50.000 It really is.

00:52:51.000 And what Pence showed, by the way, in this debate, is that even with a biased moderator, and Elaine Quintao was a very biased moderator, even despite that, he was able to win.

00:53:01.000 If conservatives are on point, if Republicans are on point, they can still brush back the media.

00:53:05.000 But they have to be on point, and weakness is not a recipe for victory.

00:53:09.000 Okay, time for a slight bit of Bible talk.

00:53:11.000 So, a quick preliminary note on Bible talk today.

00:53:14.000 I want to make a mention of something Mike Pence did in the debate last night that I didn't like.

00:53:18.000 And that was, at the end of the debate, he was talking about abortion.

00:53:21.000 And he said, at the very beginning of this part of the debate, he said, the reason that I believe, and the reason I'm pro-life, is because God talks in the Bible, and he's specifically citing the Psalms, I think, about God knits you together in the womb.

00:53:34.000 Right?

00:53:34.000 And so that's why I think that that's why I'm pro-life.

00:53:36.000 The reason I hate this, and I'm a religious Jew, okay?

00:53:39.000 Look, I mean, I took off two days because of Rosh Hashanah.

00:53:42.000 The reason that I hate this is because the reason that you're pro-life, the real reason that you're pro-life on a public policy level, is not because of what you think God said in the Bible.

00:53:51.000 The reason that you're pro-life on a public policy level is because that is a human in there.

00:53:55.000 Not because you have a religious belief it's a human in there, but because that is a human in there.

00:53:59.000 Science shows that is a human life in there.

00:54:02.000 And the problem is he opened himself right up and Cain immediately says, well, we can't make your religious belief the law of the country.

00:54:07.000 This is the problem.

00:54:08.000 I understand Pence is trying to make an overture to religious people.

00:54:11.000 I understand that this pleases people like Chris Matthews because Chris Matthews can call him eloquent while still disagreeing.

00:54:17.000 He said, well, you know, we just disagree on our faith interpretations.

00:54:19.000 What Pence ought to have said is, I don't understand how any human being could contemplate the notion that a baby that's seven months old should be forcibly aborted, that that baby should be, should be, its brain should be mashed in and its brain sucked out.

00:54:33.000 That seems to me a much more effective tact than God said in the Bible.

00:54:36.000 Because guess what?

00:54:36.000 For people who don't believe in the Bible, that cuts no ice whatsoever.

00:54:39.000 And it allows even people who do believe in the Bible, but who are leftists, which I don't understand, but it allows even those people to kind of slide out of it by saying, yes, I believe in the Bible, but that's my personal belief, not the society's belief.

00:54:50.000 Okay, now.

00:54:52.000 As I mentioned, every week the Jews read a different portion of the Bible.

00:54:57.000 This week's portion is from Deuteronomy.

00:54:58.000 We're getting close to the end of Deuteronomy.

00:55:00.000 This one is from Vayelech.

00:55:01.000 So this is Deuteronomy 31, 26 to 30.

00:55:04.000 So this is God giving his—this is Moses giving a final

00:55:09.000 Order to the Jewish people.

00:55:11.000 He's about to die.

00:55:12.000 And really, this whole—at the end of the Torah, the end of the Old Testament, the five books of Moses, is really, really devastating.

00:55:18.000 When you read it as just a human being, talking about Moses, this guy leads these people, this entire people, this rebellious, stiff-necked, obnoxious people from slavery through the desert for 40 years, and finally gets to the cusp, and God says, you can't go in.

00:55:30.000 God says, you can't go in.

00:55:31.000 Not only does He say that, God says to Moses, by the way,

00:55:35.000 After you die, these people are gonna go right off the rails.

00:55:37.000 Just want you to know, you did all this hard work, after you die, these people, boom, they're just gonna go right off the rails.

00:55:43.000 It's, you know, God really delivering the coup de grace to Moses here.

00:55:46.000 But this is what Moses says to the people right before he takes his leave.

00:55:48.000 He says, Take this Torah scroll and place it alongside the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God, and it will be there as a witness.

00:55:54.000 For I know your rebellious spirit and your stubbornness, even while I am alive with you today, you're rebelling against the Lord, surely after my death.

00:56:01.000 Assemble to me all the elders of your tribes and your officers.

00:56:04.000 I will speak these words into their ears.

00:56:05.000 I will call upon the heaven and the earth as witnesses against them.

00:56:08.000 For I know that after my death you will surely become corrupted and deviate from the way which I had commanded you.

00:56:13.000 Consequently, the evil will befall you at the end of days because you did evil in the eyes of the Lord to provoke him to anger through the work of your hands.

00:56:19.000 Then Moses spoke into the ears of the entire assembly the following song until their completion.

00:56:24.000 The idea that Moses is chiding people right before he's going to die, that his final message is, guys, I know you're going to go off the track.

00:56:30.000 And it's not even him warning people, if you go off the track, then bad things will happen.

00:56:34.000 It's him, you will definitely, definitely go off the track.

00:56:38.000 I think that this is, it just demonstrates the humility of Moses as a leader, of Moshe Rabbeinu, as we call him, Moses our rabbi, our teacher, as a leader.

00:56:46.000 Because if you're given your valedictory, if you're given your valedictory and you're about to say to these people, you're about to die, you're about to leave them, you've led them for the better part of the last 40 years, the last 45 years.

00:56:59.000 As you finish, wouldn't it be nice to say, look at how far we've come?

00:57:01.000 You know, the Ronald Reagan's Shining City on a Hill speech.

00:57:05.000 Look how far we've come.

00:57:06.000 Look what we've accomplished together.

00:57:08.000 We took an entire people out of slavery, took them to the foot of Mount Sinai, heard the new moral law from God directly, and here we are, and now I have to go, but look how far we've come.

00:57:18.000 Instead, Moses is telling people, you're going to fail.

00:57:20.000 I know you're going to fail.

00:57:22.000 I know you're going to fail.

00:57:23.000 Now, why does God have Moses do that?

00:57:25.000 Why doesn't God allow Moses that one last moment in the sunshine here?

00:57:29.000 And the answer is that God understands that Moses is the ultimate tool for godly teaching.

00:57:35.000 And so what Moses is doing is Moses is saying, look, you guys are going to fail.

00:57:38.000 And then the next thing that happens, what's happening here is God goes to Joshua, Moses' successor.

00:57:42.000 Not his own children, not Moses' children.

00:57:44.000 He goes to Joshua, the successor, and Joshua says, we're going to go up into the land, and we're going to be victorious.

00:57:49.000 And so what he's doing there is he's shifting the burden of leadership from Moses to Joshua by making Joshua the hopeful voice and making Moses the call of rebuke.

00:57:58.000 And Moses goes along with it.

00:58:00.000 Moses goes along with it because Moses knows his role now.

00:58:02.000 He can't lead them into the land.

00:58:03.000 So the last thing they have to hear from him is, you guys, you really, you're terrible.

00:58:07.000 You're awful.

00:58:08.000 I mean, you're gonna fail.

00:58:09.000 You're really awful.

00:58:10.000 And not an if.

00:58:12.000 I know you'll fail because I've had to deal with you people for 40 years.

00:58:15.000 And then the next thing they hear is from Joshua saying, Guys, it'll be okay.

00:58:19.000 We're gonna go up.

00:58:20.000 We're gonna take control of the land.

00:58:21.000 God is going to help us.

00:58:22.000 It's an amazing thing.

00:58:23.000 And Moses isn't lying, of course, because everybody goes off the rails, and obviously his prophecy is correct, and people do all of these things.

00:58:29.000 And he calls the heaven and the earth as witnesses against them, and he says all of these things are going to witness, all these objects are going to long outlast any human witness.

00:58:39.000 You know, the covenant, the Torah scroll, the earth and the heaven, they're all going to witness that I warned you about this today.

00:58:48.000 But what this really is, more than anything else, is the handing over of leadership.

00:58:51.000 And the problem is, it's very difficult, as George H.W.

00:58:54.000 Bush learned about Ronald Reagan, very difficult to take leadership from a guy who's deeply popular and optimistic.

00:58:59.000 Much easier to take leadership from somebody who is chiding people.

00:59:03.000 And then you come along and you say, OK, now I'm the voice of hope.

00:59:05.000 Joshua's the new voice of hope.

00:59:07.000 It just shows that the length of Moses' final sacrifice, that he's willing to let the valedictory go in order to serve as the final tool of transition of power.

00:59:15.000 And then, of course,

00:59:16.000 This beautiful kind of romantic moment, and it is, not romantic sexually, obviously, but a romantic kind of notion that Moses goes up, and we'll talk about this next week, he goes up to the top of the mountain, and God kisses him.

00:59:28.000 It says that God kisses him and takes his soul, and they say that, the rabbis describe it this way, they say that, you know, when people die, typically, you're having your soul extricated from your physical body, and it's very painful for Moses, because Moses was such a holy person, it was like a hair being drawn from a glass of milk, that there was no friction whatsoever.

00:59:45.000 Okay, so we'll talk about all that next week, but tomorrow is the mailbag, so make sure you get in your final mail and you tune in tomorrow live.

00:59:51.000 You can send me questions and we'll talk about all of these things.

00:59:53.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:59:54.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

The Ben Shapiro Show - October 05, 2016

Ep. 190 - VP Debate: Pence Dominates, Kaine Loses It

Episode Stats

Length

Words per Minute

Word Count

Sentence Count

Misogynist Sentences

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript