On Friday, Donald Trump made a supposedly crucial error of holding a phone call with the President of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen. Since 1979, the United States has held a policy of neutrality with regard to the question of Taiwan's independence. We've agreed in principle with the one China rhetoric that the Commie Chinese espoused, but we fiercely prevented China from aggressive action against Taiwan. Trump s call with Taiwan was supposedly a breach of both the quorum and policy expertise, which is truly frightening. As I wrote last week, Trump either knows what he's doing with Iran, or he really doesn't. If he does, if his goal is to demonstrate to the Chinese that detente is ending thanks to their aggression, that's not the worst thing in the world. China's been building a regional sphere of influence that is only set to expand as Trump pulls out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. What about if he's just winging it? Well, then we'll find out what his real goal is, and whether it's a good one or a bad one. And if it's just amateur hour, sure, we should be worried. But even if it is amateur hour and it's not even remotely professional, Obama blew it worse than Trump did, purposefully, with nefarious intent, over and over again. That'll be the theme of today's show, as well as of the next four years, and a lot to get to about sort of the perversion of conservatism and the soul-sucking of the Republican Party, we'll talk about a lot of that in a lot more. Ben Shapiro's show: Good Trump, bad Trump, Bad Trump, and the Good Trump theme, because we don't just play the Good, we play the Bad Trump theme up front. That's basically why we may have fun with it, so we may just have fun as well, as we begin to get into the good Trump theme of The Good, Bad, Good, Trump, Good Trump. And we have a pretty significant discount that's basically just as good as we do on The Ben Shapiro Show. You get $150 off a Ring of security kits that's a discount for that. . Subscribe to Ben Shapiro s show on that promo code BenShapiro's show on the Ben Shapiro show on Slash Slash Slash to get a discount on that discount promo code BenShawShawShow. You get a chance to get 15% off that discount code .
00:00:00.000On Friday, Donald Trump made the supposedly crucial error of holding a phone call with the president of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen.
00:00:08.000Since 1979, the United States has held a policy of steady neutrality with regard to the question of Taiwanese independence.
00:00:13.000We've sort of agreed in principle with the one-China rhetoric that the Commie Chinese espoused, but we fiercely prevented China from aggressive action against Taiwan.
00:00:20.000Trump's phone call with Taiwan was supposedly, therefore, a breach of both the quorum
00:00:24.000And policy expertise, which is truly frightening, supposedly.
00:00:39.000...to handing Russian dictator Vlad Putin control of Crimea and Syria, from reinforcing the crumbling Castro regime in Cuba to weakening America's military and thus opening the doorway to Chinese aggression in the South China Sea, Obama's foreign policy has been basically a near endless procedures of...
00:00:55.000Placing our enemies in a beneficial position.
00:01:00.000As I wrote last week, Trump either knows what he's doing with Tehran, or he really doesn't.
00:01:04.000If he does, if his goal is to demonstrate to the Chinese that detente is ending thanks to their aggression, that's not the worst thing in the world.
00:01:44.000But the sheer panic over the Taiwan phone call is overblown.
00:01:47.000We don't know yet what the call pre-stage is.
00:01:50.000If it's just amateur hour, sure, we should be worried.
00:01:52.000But even if it is amateur hour, Obama, the supposed professional, blew it worse than Trump did, purposefully, with nefarious intent, over and over again.
00:02:08.000All righty, so much to get to today here on The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:02:12.000There'll be some good Trump, bad Trump, we'll get to that in just a second.
00:02:15.000That'll basically be the theme of today's show, as well as of the next four years, and a lot to get to about sort of the perversion of conservatism and the soul-sucking of the Republican Party.
00:02:23.000We'll talk about a lot of that, plus the Democrats continue to be completely in disarray.
00:02:27.000But first, we have to say hello to one of our friends, Brett.
00:02:32.000So every 13 seconds in the United States, there's a home burglary.
00:02:35.000And one of the ways that home burglars get access to your house is they ring the doorbell and then if they figure nobody's home, they break in.
00:02:50.000There's a camera so you can see who it is that's at your door and they will think that you're at home so they won't break in.
00:02:56.000Plus it allows you to know who's knocking at the front door which is obviously a useful thing.
00:03:00.000When I'm away and my kids are at home, my wife's at home, I like to be able to know who's at home and whether my kids and wife are safe or not.
00:03:08.000They also have what they call the Ring of Security Kit and the Ring of Security Kit
00:03:12.000Includes a Ring video doorbell for the front door and a Ring stick-up cam with wireless weatherproof HD camera that keeps an eye on other parts of your property.
00:03:19.000Again, Ring.com is one of these advertisers I have that's so good that I actually spent my own money on their product.
00:03:24.000I went out and bought extra product from them because I believe in their product so much.
00:04:37.000Way number three is that he's actually saying all these tough things about Taiwan because he wants to broker a better trade deal with China.
00:04:42.000Still not my favorite thing because that would basically be using Taiwan as a chit in some sort of trading game.
00:04:48.000Not my favorite thing, but we don't know the answer to any of this yet, so we can sort of hold off judgment.
00:04:55.000Mike Pence hits it right on the head, the Vice President-Elect hits it right on the head when he says, listen, all you people in the media, you're going nuts over this stuff, but the fact is that Barack Obama and what he did with Cuba, you were fine with.
00:05:07.000It's a little mystifying to me that President Obama can reach out to a murdering dictator in Cuba in the last year and be hailed as a hero for doing it.
00:05:17.000And President-elect Donald Trump takes a courtesy call from a democratically elected leader in Taiwan and it's become something of a controversy.
00:05:43.000The media had been fine with every stupid thing that Obama's done his entire presidency, and so it seems a little bit hypocritical for them to get so upset now.
00:05:51.000One of the things I'm going to say on the program today, and this is a consistent principle, I feel like we sort of have to, in the aftermath of Trump's victory, we sort of have to go back to first moral principles in order to determine how we're going to cover this, right?
00:06:01.000Because the fact is, the way I see it, we don't root for politicians here on the Ben Shapiro Show.
00:06:30.000Number two, a game that we should not get in the habit of playing is the game, well, I'll start worrying about Trump doing X when the Democrats stop doing X.
00:06:39.000Right, so I'll stop worrying about Trump being an amateur when the Democrats stop being amateuresque.
00:06:47.000I should be worried about the president-elect of the United States doing things I don't like, whether or not the Democrats are doing things I don't like.
00:06:53.000I assume the Democrats and the media will do things I don't like.
00:06:56.000So when we get to bad Trump in just a second, I'm going to explain that this sort of silly logic, which doesn't make any sense, this notion that when Trump does something bad, it's okay because Democrats have also done that bad thing.
00:07:57.000Now, I really think that we're going to end up with somebody who was in the original field.
00:08:00.000I think this is sort of a Trumpian reality TV show moment, where he just expands the field in week five of the reality TV show, and then windows it back down to the person that he thought was going to win all along.
00:08:09.000My guess is that in the end, this is going to come down again to John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani,
00:08:14.000The President of the United States should talk to whomever he wants if he thinks it's in the interest of the United States.
00:08:19.000And nobody in Beijing gets to dictate who we talk to.
00:08:37.000And Trump echoed that on Twitter, and I think that's right.
00:08:41.000Listen, if he picks Bolton for Secretary of State, I'm a happy camper.
00:08:44.000Bolton at State, Mattis at Defense, that'd be terrific.
00:08:47.000But then we start getting to bad Trump.
00:08:53.000And bad Trump is the stuff that he's been doing about the economy.
00:08:57.000So I mentioned last Thursday, we talked about the deal that he did with Carrier, where he basically wheedled, threatened, cajoled them into keeping 1,000 jobs in Indiana, and then everybody went,
00:09:06.000Yay, Donald, you did a great job keeping 1,000 jobs.
00:10:54.000But according to Trump, it's vicious because he doesn't want them to do it.
00:10:57.000This is the language of economic totalitarianism, the idea that you're viciously firing your workers.
00:11:03.000Rex Nord is participating in a shift of jobs away from expensive unionized areas out of the country.
00:11:09.000That, by the way, will keep some people employed at Rex Nord in the United States.
00:11:13.000The alternative, presumably, is for them to continue to shell out large dollars for these unions, to shell out large dollars for these jobs.
00:11:20.000Never to outsource, to go out of business, and everybody's unemployed anyway, and the American company no longer produces products for people that are good, and we no longer get any tax revenue.
00:11:36.000It means that people get to consume products at a better price.
00:11:38.000It also means that those companies stay competitive in the global marketplace, which allows them to grow and thrive.
00:11:44.000No company grows and thrives simply based on protectionism.
00:11:47.000The minute that the tariffs are taken away, they collapse.
00:11:49.000That's exactly what happened to the automakers in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s in the United States.
00:11:53.000We used to be the world's dominant automakers.
00:11:55.000In the 70s and the 60s, there was severe protectionism put in place for the auto industries, unionization took place, really, really bad union contracts were signed, and then when those protections were removed, then the auto industry basically collapsed with all the Toyotas flowing into the country.
00:12:10.000That's what happened to the auto industry.
00:12:14.000All that does is build up these bloated, overweight industries that are shivved as soon as they have to enter into a global marketplace.
00:12:20.000But here is Trump targeting Rexnord, saying they're viciously firing, like they're sitting around, like the bosses are sitting around, they're going, you know what?
00:12:25.000It'd be cheaper to keep the jobs here in Indiana, but screw that!
00:12:44.000is going to substantially reduce taxes and regulations on businesses, but any business that leaves our country for another country, fires its employees, builds a new factory or plant in the other country, and then thinks it will sell its product back into the U.S.
00:12:56.000without retribution or consequence is wrong.
00:12:59.000Okay, the language of punishment, again.
00:13:00.000The federal government is going to punish you for engaging in free market activity.
00:13:05.000I wonder if he's going to punish all the auto companies for moving jobs out of Detroit, even if they went bankrupt.
00:13:09.000Says there will be a tax on our soon-to-be strong border of 35% for these companies wanting to sell their products, cars, AEC units, etc.
00:13:18.000This tax will make leaving financially difficult, but these companies are able to move between all 50 states with no tax or tariff being charged.
00:13:24.000Please be forewarned prior to making a very expensive mistake.
00:13:28.000And then all caps, the United States is open for business.
00:13:32.000I've said this is like building an economic Berlin Wall, and it is.
00:13:34.000The idea is to keep the business inside the United States, even at the cost of bankrupting the business.
00:13:40.000Right, because the only way that you're going to be able to make the businesses in the United States competitive, if you tell them they can't outsource their labor, is by increasing tariffs on foreign products, right?
00:13:47.000Increasing the tax on foreign products, which means you and I, all the consumers, we have to spend lots and lots of money to keep these jobs in the United States.
00:14:22.000Does that mean that we ought to just put tariffs on cars and destroy the car industry to make sure that the wheel rights union still gets their pay?
00:14:30.000And if we really want to make sure that quote-unquote jobs stay in the United States regardless of the quality of jobs or the quality of the product, what we really should do is ban technology.
00:15:31.000The Soviet Union had a 100% unemployment rate, a 0% unemployment rate, and everybody was impoverished.
00:15:38.000Cuba has a 100% employment rate because it's a communist country, so they can just force everybody into labor or call them employees for sitting on a park bench and playing dominoes.
00:15:48.000The point of an economy is not to create jobs, the point of an economy is to create products and services that you and I want to trade with each other to make both our lives better.
00:15:55.000An economy that only seeks to create jobs is not worried about making everybody's life better, it's worried about making some people's life better.
00:16:01.000An economy that worries about creating better products and services, that's an economy that is a voluntaristic economy where you and I can engage in trade and barter and come up with the best possible solutions for ourselves.
00:16:20.000If I have an open for business sign on my door, usually there's not an asterisk and then below that it's written, and if you don't come in here and do business, then we'll threaten you.
00:16:28.000Or if you come in here, decide the product is too expensive and then you leave, we'll threaten you.
00:16:33.000Trump wants this big, beautiful Berlin Wall of the economy.
00:16:36.000And what's amazing about this is that so many people are falling into this.
00:16:39.000So Mike Pence, who I'm really disappointed in so far.
00:16:42.000I mean, he was supposed to be the guy who we voted for, essentially, right?
00:16:45.000He was the one who was going to make sure that conservatism won the day in the end.
00:17:17.000I got into an argument with a guy from Market Watch about this over the weekend.
00:17:21.000I said, name the countries that have become wealthy based on tariffs and building infrastructure.
00:17:25.000They said China, and I said that's absolutely false.
00:17:27.000They had tariffs and they were building infrastructure back during Mao's day.
00:17:30.000The difference is they actually took some market liberalizing steps.
00:17:33.000They privatized a bunch of property, they privatized a bunch of businesses, and they still have significant debt problems, and they've had two stock market crashes in the last year.
00:17:41.000The idea that China is an economic rival to the United States, not on a per capita basis, they sure as hell aren't, and they enslaved a billion people in order to do it.
00:17:50.000In the Wall Street Journal, apparently, Penn said, quote, A Trump White House would eschew many of the free market principles that have guided prior Republican administrations, including injecting itself into the personnel and long-term operating decisions of individual companies.
00:18:24.000And the president-elect will make those decisions on a day-by-day basis in the course of the transition, in the course of the administration.
00:19:09.000Guys, can you not shift those jobs down south?
00:19:11.000What I'd like for you to do is instead take a $65 million loss and maybe get like $7 million in tax benefits from the state of India, but basically lose $58 million as one American to another.
00:20:54.000It means an end to eight years in which President Obama, instead of supporting U.S.
00:20:58.000companies, arrogantly scolded business leaders and treated business as either piggy banks to be raided or as enemies to be brought to heel through regulations and mandates.
00:21:07.000Wait, wait, the carrier deal did that?
00:21:59.000And I'm in the business of trying to tell the truth, and I believe that the American people, when they hear the truth, will understand the truth.
00:22:05.000Because if we don't believe the truth means anything, if we don't believe that the truth can win out, then what the hell are we doing in this business?
00:22:23.000By the way, speaking of silliness, apparently Ivanka Trump, who's, remember, Donald Trump said he was going to put his businesses in a blind trust to be run by his children?
00:22:31.000All three of his kids are now moving to DC, so it's going to make that blind trust kind of awkward.
00:22:36.000And Ivanka Trump met with Al Gore today at Trump Tower, and so apparently,