Trump gets a Trump-style dressing down at a meeting with the media, and it's not good news for Americans who want access to the White House. Plus, the media will seek revenge by turning up the volume on Trump's criticism, and we'll talk about why that's bad news for the country. Ben Shapiro's full take on it all, plus a call-in from Brandon Snipes, author of "Good Trump, Bad Trump," on why you should be worried about a president who doesn't grant access to journalists, even if you're happy that he's slapping them. Plus, we discuss the best way to hedge against inflation, and why you don't want to bet against the stock market against it. All that and much more on today's episode of The Ben Shapiro Show! Subscribe to my new podcast, "The Besties," wherever you get your stuff, and don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to my other podcast, The Besties. I'm a big fan of the show and the podcast is a must-listen if you haven't already checked it out. If you're interested in investing in precious metals, you can do so at least once a week, and if you think the market is overvalued, then you need to put a little bit of precious metals in your portfolio at least 16 pages into your 401k or Precious Precious Metals, because you'll have a better chance of making a safe bet against inflation and wild returns in the next 4 years. I'll tell you what to do so you won't have to have the best chance of beating inflation in the long-term. - Ben Shapiro and I'll explain it all in this episode of the Ben Shapiro show, coming soon! - Subscribe to our newsletter! Subscribe at bit.ly/TheBen Shapiro Show - subscribe to our new weekly newsletter, The Good Trump Good Trump Bad Trump Good Bad Trump, Good Trump, Great Trump, and Bad Trump: The Best of Ben Shapiro & Bad Trump Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices, Subscribe to Ben Shapiro Podcasts, and much, much more. Subscribe and more! Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and other links to help spread the word to your friends and support Ben Shapiro on social media? Subscribe on iTunes and other places like it's a good day in the world of business and finance? Thanks Ben Shapiro, too, Ben Shapiro
00:00:00.000On Monday, President-elect Trump held a meeting at Trump Tower with top members of the media.
00:00:04.000The New York Post reported, quote, Donald Trump scolded media big shots during an off-the-record Trump Tower sit-down on Monday, sources told the Post.
00:00:11.000It was like an effing firing squad, one source said of the encounter.
00:00:14.000Trump started with CNN chief Jeff Zucker and said, I hate your network.
00:00:17.000Everyone at CNN is a liar, and you should be ashamed, the source said.
00:00:22.000The TV execs and anchors went in there thinking they'd be discussing the access they'd get to the Trump administration, but instead they got a Trump-style dressing down, the source added.
00:00:29.000According to the Post, attendees included NBC's Lester Holt and Chuck Todd, ABC's George Stephanopoulos, David Muir and Martha Raddatz, Fox News' Bill Shine, MSNBC's Phil Griffin, and CNN's Jeff Zucker and Aaron Burnett, among others.
00:00:41.000Here, in no particular order, are a few random thoughts.
00:00:43.000First of all, the media totally deserve this.
00:00:45.000The media destroyed Mitt Romney in 2012 by turning him from an honorable family man and excellent business person into the scourge of the earth, searching far and wide for gay kids so he could practice his haircutting skills, hunting down dogs to strap them to his car.
00:00:58.000The media then decided to treat Barack Obama with kid gloves for eight years, soft-peddling his lies on everything from Obamacare to Benghazi.
00:01:04.000Then finally, the media built up Donald Trump in the primaries and then attempted to tear him down in the general.
00:01:09.000They've earned every bit of scorn Trump can level at them.
00:01:18.000The Post was one of the friendliest publications in the country to Trump.
00:01:21.000And this bolsters Trump's favorite case, that he's a powerful god-king, willing to face down the scurrilous media and hammer them into the ground.
00:01:28.000Trump relishes this sort of fisticuffs.
00:01:30.000It's why he singled out reporters during his campaign.
00:01:32.000It's why he went to war with Hamilton in Saturday Night Live over the weekend.
00:01:36.000Trump gets that most of his voters are sick of watching the media monopoly, and they're more than willing to countenance a president blasting away at the media if it means destroying that monopoly.
00:01:45.000Third, the media will seek revenge by turning up the volume.
00:01:48.000The media just don't know how to handle a Republican who doesn't seem to care about their adoration.
00:01:53.000Their solution thus far is turning up the volume to 11.
00:01:56.000They're treating every Trump tweet as apocalyptic, every Trump outrage as plumbing new depths of Dante's Inferno.
00:02:02.000That only succeeds in making Trump look justified in slapping them with both hands, then poking them in the eyes like a member of the Three Stooges.
00:02:08.000The only way the media could cover Trump properly would be to understate their case, rather than trotting out Howard Dean to label Trump cabinet appointees Nazis, or covering Richard Spencer's alt-right hate fest as an extension of Trump world.
00:02:20.000Finally, this is not actually great news for Americans.
00:02:23.000Despite the delicious scheidenfreude, this is not good news.
00:02:26.000Americans are best served when the press of every stripe have access to information about the executive branch.
00:02:32.000Closing off access for political gain was bad when Obama did it, and it isn't good when Trump does it.
00:02:37.000Many conservatives can't see past their own shortling over the media shamefacedly shuffling from Trump Tower tails between their legs, which is understandable, but the presidency is still a government office.
00:03:10.000So, once again, we say thank you to Brandon Snipes, the author of the Good Trump, Bad Trump theme, because there's going to be so much invocation of that over the next four years, I can't even begin to describe it.
00:03:20.000But first, we have to say hello to our friends over at Birch Gold.
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00:03:38.000The people at Birch Gold are folks who can help you move your 401k or IRA into Precious Metals without the tax consequences.
00:03:47.000If you go to birchgold.com slash ben, birchgold.com slash ben, they have an A-plus rating from the Better Business Bureau, a lot of five-star reviews.
00:03:55.000They're the folks I trust for investment in Precious Metals.
00:04:36.000Donald Trump does a lot of silly, silly things.
00:04:39.000And in a minute I'm going to go over all the things that he's telling the New York Times as we speak, because he's doing some live interview.
00:04:46.000And they're tweeting out the interview.
00:04:48.000This is after he spent most of last night ripping on the New York Times and explaining why he wouldn't do an interview.
00:04:52.000And then it turned out that the real reason that he wasn't doing the interview, supposedly, is because his chief of staff, Reince Priebus, told him not to do the interview and then supposedly lied to Trump about the terms of the interview because he thought that Trump wouldn't be prepared for the interview and would look stupid.
00:05:07.000The Chief of Staff to the President-Elect of the United States thinks that the President-Elect is too dumb to handle the New York Times, so he just lies to him about the New York Times interview.
00:05:17.000This is according to Trump's camp, okay?
00:05:22.000Either Trump said, I'm not interviewing with those terrible people at the New York Times, or Reince Priebus told him not to and lied to him, and so Reince Priebus's body goes SHOOP!
00:05:47.000My agenda will be based on a simple core principle, putting America first.
00:05:52.000Whether it's producing steel, building cars, or curing disease, I want the next generation of production and innovation to happen right here on our great homeland, America, creating wealth and jobs for American workers.
00:06:07.000As part of this plan, I've asked my transition team to develop a list of executive actions we can take on day one to restore our laws and bring back our jobs.
00:06:21.000On trade, I am going to issue our notification of intent to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a potential disaster for our country.
00:06:30.000Instead, we will negotiate fair bilateral trade deals that bring jobs and industry back onto American shores.
00:06:38.000On energy, I will cancel job-killing restrictions on the production of American energy, including shale energy and clean coal, creating many millions of high-paying jobs.
00:06:49.000So here's a bit of the mixed bag, right?
00:06:51.000So on energy policy, this is great, right?
00:06:53.000When he's talking about getting rid of these restrictions.
00:06:54.000Now, the truth is that the biggest problem the fracking industry faces right now is not regulation, although the regulation should go.
00:07:01.000The biggest problem they face is that the price of gas is minuscule.
00:07:03.000I mean, because all of the OPEC countries are attempting to out pump each other.
00:07:08.000Saudi Arabia is trying to pump Iran into the ground.
00:07:10.000Iran is trying to pump Saudi Arabia into the ground.
00:07:12.000That means there's a glut of oil, and that means that the prices have gone down, so the profit margin in fracking has gone down too.
00:07:18.000So that's the biggest problem facing the fracking industry, is actual pricing in the market, not the regulations.
00:07:23.000But it's good that Trump is saying that.
00:07:24.000On the bad side, when he talks about TPP and revoking it, there are only two reasons to oppose TPP.
00:07:29.000Okay, reason number one is that it included a lot of secret side clauses that Obama had negotiated and reason number two is because the Congress of the United States should actually have the entire agreement in front of them before they approve it and they didn't in the case of TPP.
00:07:43.000The idea that we're going to pull out of multilateral trade agreements and then just negotiate bilateral trade agreements
00:07:48.000When Trump says fair for us, what he means is he wants to make foreign products more expensive for you, the consumer, because he wants to protect certain classes of people in the United States.
00:07:58.000So he wants to protect steel workers in Ohio or farm workers in Iowa.
00:08:02.000When Democrats do this sort of subsidies, that's bad.
00:08:05.000When Republicans do that sort of subsidies, it's also bad.
00:08:07.000So I'm not in favor of this kind of stuff.
00:08:10.000Cracking down on free trade is just a welfare program for people who are protected.
00:08:14.000Okay, if it really helped economies to put up tariffs, if it really helped economies, then the greatest economy on earth would be Venezuela.
00:08:20.000Venezuela has tariffs on virtually every product, and people are literally eating dogs.
00:08:23.000They're shooting dogs and eating them.
00:08:25.000The fact is that you as an American have the freedom and the ability to purchase any product you like.
00:08:30.000In the marketplace at the lowest price that you can find.
00:08:33.000That's one of the things that's beautiful about free market capitalism.
00:09:36.000How do you get your arms around the fact that you've got people like that supporting him?
00:09:40.000But you had what you describe as a positive, frank and candid meeting and you think he's committed to reaching out to black America.
00:09:47.000You know, as an African-American who's been in business and had to come up and grow up from someone who was the first to go to college to create successful businesses and create wealth for myself and a number of other African-Americans, I know that there are people like that in America.
00:10:07.000It's been that way ever since slavery existed in this country.
00:10:11.000They're not going to go away tomorrow or the next day.
00:10:16.000Okay, so he actually came out and he said that he was happy that he met with Trump and they're hoping that they can work together.
00:10:21.000Again, smart of Trump to reach out in that way.
00:10:23.000Okay, so all of that is good Trump, or at least decent Trump.
00:10:33.000First of all, you remember that Trump had in Mitt Romney to the White House and said that he wanted to, or to Trump Tower, and said that he wanted to consider him for Secretary of State.
00:10:42.000In this off-the-record meeting with the press, he then started bragging that Romney desperately wanted to be Secretary of State.
00:10:48.000He also had Kelly Ayotte, the senator from New Hampshire, who didn't back him, and there was talk about her possibly being Secretary of State or SEC defense, and Trump just said to the New York Times,
00:11:09.000I spoke with a higher-up in one of these people, who is not a big Trump backer, met with Trump, and I spoke with a higher-up in this person's team, and I said, um, you should just be aware he's gonna stomp on your face at the first available opportunity.
00:11:24.000Now, Trump is also backing away from, you recall, just a few short days ago, you recall, stadiums full of people shouting, lock her up, lock her up, lock her up about Hillary Clinton.
00:12:03.000This is the shoe that says, take what Trump is doing, pretend Hillary was doing it, and then see if you like it.
00:12:09.000If Hillary Clinton had been elected and she said, I am not going to pursue investigation of the Clinton Foundation, we would have said, that's bad, the president doesn't get to decide those sorts of things.
00:12:18.000When Barack Obama took office, if he had said before taking office, I am going to tell Eric Holder to ignore all possible prosecution of the Black Panthers,
00:12:26.000People would have said, oh, that's bad.
00:12:29.000The President of the United States or the President-elect is not supposed to direct the Attorney General to investigate or not investigate anything.
00:12:36.000By Kellyanne Conway, she says, don't worry, Donald Trump isn't going to prosecute Hillary Clinton again.
00:12:40.000Just for people who don't understand the Constitution, prosecutorial power lies with the Department of Justice.
00:12:45.000The President doesn't get to prosecute people.
00:12:47.000The Supreme Court, Trump didn't know this, but the Supreme Court doesn't get to prosecute people.
00:12:51.000The Congress only gets to impeach people.
00:12:54.000Okay, they get to issue contempt orders also, but here's Kellyanne Conway saying something that if Hillary said it, we'd be a little bit upset about.
00:13:02.000I think when the president-elect, who's also the head of your party now, Joe, tells you before he's even inaugurated he doesn't wish to pursue these charges, it sends a very strong message, tone, and content to the members.
00:13:13.000And I think Hillary Clinton still has to face the fact that a majority of Americans don't find her to be honest or trustworthy, but if Donald Trump can help her heal, then perhaps that's a good thing.
00:14:07.000Was it just because he likes speaking in front of crowds?
00:14:10.000Okay, so you've got, look, he's not president yet.
00:14:12.000We'll hold off judgment on what he does as president until we know what he's actually going to do, right?
00:14:17.000But the idea that you're going to get all the things that you wanted, remember he was saying this, he actually said, all your dreams will come true if he's elected.
00:14:24.000Well, that first dream that Hillary would go to prison, that dream is not coming true because he's actually actively interfering with the criminal justice system.
00:14:37.000This interview with the New York Times is truly astonishing, and it just demonstrates that there are not really... Trump kept talking during the campaign about how he would turn into presidential Trump, how he would just become, magically, presidential Trump.
00:14:51.000And I'm trying to be intellectually honest, folks.
00:14:52.000I know I'm saying things that people don't want to hear.
00:14:54.000That's because we're being intellectually honest here.
00:14:56.000We're trying to analyze this guy like he's the leader of the free world or the president-elect of the United States, not like he's our best friend and we're so excited he got elected, oh, let's grant him all the opportunities.
00:16:28.000And the reason they like Donald Trump is because Donald Trump has done a few things where he sort of winged and nodded at them.
00:16:33.000So, for example, when he refused to condemn the KKK, the alt-right got a big boost out of that.
00:16:37.000When Donald Trump hired Steve Bannon, Steve Bannon, who's his new chief strategist, a person I know,
00:16:42.000Bannon is somebody who has called Breitbart the platform for the alt-right.
00:16:46.000Breitbart has printed pieces praising the alt-right and Richard Spencer, the alt-right neo-Nazi leader, basically.
00:16:52.000Specifically, praising Richard Spencer as an intellectual.
00:16:55.000So Steve Bannon, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he downplayed the alt-right as, oh, they're just a group of people who don't like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and they don't care.
00:17:26.000Perhaps you shouldn't have hired the guy who said that he created Breitbart into a platform for the alt-right, and then proceeded to downplay what the alt-right was in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, and then say that the alt-right's racism and anti-Semitism are not really part of the movement, okay?
00:17:40.000Maybe that's why the alt-right is really excited.
00:17:42.000About your administration, and maybe you should think about that a little bit more deeply.
00:17:45.000And then Trump reiterated that he was not interested in investigating the Clintons.
00:17:50.000And then he said that he's keeping his mind open on anthropogenic climate change.
00:17:54.000So he's saying that the climate change treaties he'll think about deeply, which is for sure Obama in his ear.
00:17:59.000And then this is the part that's truly amazing, right?
00:18:32.000We're going to be doing that tomorrow.
00:18:33.000We're going to deconstruct the culture a little bit later, and you get to watch us deconstruct the culture a little bit later in the program.
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00:18:58.000But dailywire.com is the place to go if you want to subscribe.