The Ben Shapiro Show - Ep. 236 - Is Trump Illegitimate?

The 8 richest men are worth $426 billion, while the world s poorest 3.7 billion people together own $409 billion, $17 billion less. Where exactly is the great sin? Is it that wealth belongs to the rich elite, and we must reallocate it? Or is there some other way to distribute it? Ben Shapiro explains why this is a fool's errand, and why we should focus on free market economics, rather than income inequality. He also explains why the world's poor are doing better than the middle class in most places on Earth, thanks to the glories of free markets and free trade. And he offers his favorite gift for Martin Luther King Day: a recipe for a delicious, home-cooked meal prepared by the crew at Blue Apron. Ben's birthday gift to himself is a recipe from the folks at the Daily Mail's Blue Aproned, a company that makes delicious, pre-portioned ingredients that you can make at home. You can choose a variety of preportioned recipes from a wide array of preported ingredients, so you can cook up a delicious homecooked meal that tastes delicious and tastes good. You can t ask for much more than that, can you? Let's cook up something delicious and share it with the rest of the world. Ben Shapiro's birthday present to himself and his friends! The Ben Shapiro Show is a must-listen to this week's episode of The Daily Mail. Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast, wherever you get your eardrums are listening to the latest news and your favorite hipster podcast! Subscribe and let me know what you think of it! Tweet me what your favorite gift you're listening to this episode of the most delicious thing you got me on your social media platforms! Timestamps: 3:00 - What s your favorite meal? 4:30 - What's your favorite thing you ve eaten so far this week? 5:15 - Which meal you ve been up to? 6:20 - What kind of meal you dabbled in the past week so far? 7:40 - What do you're most excited about? 8:00 9:00 | What s a good meal you're going to cook for me? 11:30 | What would you like to hear me cook in the next 5 days? 12:15 | How do you d have me cook?

00:00:00.000 On Monday, BuzzFeed headlined, These eight men own as much wealth as half the world.

00:00:05.000 This vital bit of information came with this supporting fact, courtesy of BuzzFeed special correspondent James Ball and UK editorial developer Chris Applegate, quote, The world's eight richest men are worth $426 billion.

00:00:15.000 The world's poorest 3.7 billion people together own $409 billion, $17 billion less.

00:00:24.000 These statistics came courtesy of Oxfam.

00:00:26.000 BuzzFeed Tut Tut's quote,

00:00:44.000 Thank you so much.

00:01:03.000 He said, quote, while one in nine people on the planet will go to bed hungry tonight, a small handful of billionaires have so much wealth they would need several lifetimes to spend it.

00:01:11.000 The fact that a super-rich elite are able to prosper at the expense of the rest of us at home and overseas shows how warped our economy has become.

00:01:19.000 Inequality is not only keeping millions of people trapped in poverty, it is fracturing our societies and poisoning our politics.

00:01:25.000 First off, there is no indicator anywhere in this report that the wealth of the world's eight wealthiest men was ill-gotten.

00:01:31.000 There is no record of them enslaving people or robbing banks or burning down rival businesses.

00:01:36.000 The reason these people are rich is because they have founded businesses that created better products and services and engaged in more consensual transactions than any other people on planet Earth.

00:01:45.000 Bill Gates' Microsoft created a reputed 12,000 millionaires among his employees.

00:01:49.000 Microsoft currently employs more than 100,000 people.

00:01:52.000 Microsoft employees have given more than $1 billion to charity.

00:01:57.000 Microsoft products have made millions of lives easier and better, and millions of businesses cheaper to run.

00:02:02.000 The same is true for Amazon, one of the world's great companies.

00:02:04.000 Certainly, as a consumer, I benefit from Amazon every single day.

00:02:07.000 It's true of Zara.

00:02:08.000 My wife loves it.

00:02:08.000 It's true of Facebook.

00:02:09.000 It's true of Oracle, among others.

00:02:11.000 Where exactly is the great sin?

00:02:13.000 Oxfam's implication seems to be that wealth belongs to the collected and we must therefore reallocate it.

00:02:19.000 Hence their language about a super rich elite prospering at our expense.

00:02:23.000 But these rich people aren't prospering at the expense of others.

00:02:26.000 Since 1981, the global extreme poverty rate has been sliced in half.

00:02:31.000 Meanwhile, from 1979 to 2014, the upper middle class in America grew from 12% of the population to 30% of the population.

00:02:39.000 America's poor are doing better than the middle class in most places on Earth, thanks to the glories of free market economics.

00:02:45.000 Here's what Pew Research said in 2015, quote, The U.S.

00:02:48.000 stands head and shoulders above the rest of the world.

00:02:50.000 More than half, 56% of Americans, were high income by the global standard.

00:02:54.000 More than 32% were upper middle income.

00:02:57.000 In other words, almost 9 in 10 Americans had a standard of living that was above the global middle income standard.

00:03:02.000 Only 7% of people in the United States were middle income, 3% were low income, and only 2% were poor.

00:03:09.000 The quest for income inequality is a fool's errand.

00:03:11.000 That's because the only way to rectify imbalances is to punish successful risk-taking.

00:03:16.000 The reason that investors make greater profits than those who do the actual work is because the investor takes the risk necessary in order to create a profit margin with which to pay those people.

00:03:25.000 Oxfam neglects to mention where the world's poorest people live.

00:03:28.000 According to the World Bank, two-thirds of the world's poorest human beings live in India, China, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Congo.

00:03:34.000 The Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom ranks these countries thusly in terms of their participation in free markets and their governmental dedication to rule of law and private property rights.

00:03:44.000 India ranks 120th.

00:03:45.000 Congo ranks 168th.

00:03:45.000 China ranks 137th.

00:03:46.000 Nigeria ranks 129th.

00:03:46.000 Bangladesh ranks 131st.

00:03:54.000 Oxfam's solution is to regulate markets more.

00:03:57.000 A richer world relies on freer markets both at home and abroad.

00:04:00.000 But the foolish, inconsistent focus on income inequality merely provides cover for policies that actually enhance human suffering rather than mitigating it.

00:04:09.000 I'm Ben Shapiro. 0.89

00:04:09.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show. 0.89

00:04:15.000 So, so glad that you could join us here on Martin Luther King Day, a great day for America.

00:04:19.000 It's also a great day for me.

00:04:20.000 Yesterday was my birthday, so woohoo to me.

00:04:23.000 I'm now Christian's second favorite 33-year-old Jew.

00:04:26.000 I'm 33 today, so that's very exciting.

00:04:29.000 Among my favorite gifts

00:04:31.000 I don't think so.

00:04:53.000 The good folks at the Daily Wire, Mathis and Jonathan and Austin and the rest of the crew, Bailey and Cynthia, everybody, they got me these wonderful gifts.

00:05:00.000 So let's just open one right now.

00:05:02.000 Let's see what's in here.

00:05:03.000 I'm very excited to open these gifts on air.

00:05:06.000 Let's see what we've got.

00:05:09.000 Oh, wow.

00:05:39.000 Blue Apron delivers those seasonal recipes along with pre-portioned ingredients to make a delicious home-cooked meal.

00:05:45.000 There's variety.

00:05:46.000 You can choose from a variety of new recipes every week, or you can let Blue Apron's culinary team surprise you.

00:05:51.000 The recipes are not repeated within a year, so you're never going to get bored, which is great because at our house we have like a weekly rotating menu, and it gets boring really, really fast.

00:05:59.000 Blue Apron makes sure that doesn't happen. 1.00

00:06:01.000 Again, they all have the step-by-step, easy-to-follow recipe, and everything is guaranteed for freshness.

00:06:05.000 Check out this week's menu, and you get the first

00:06:07.000 Three meals for free with free shipping.

00:06:09.000 If you go to blueapron.com slash Shapiro.

00:06:12.000 It's a big thing in LA.

00:06:12.000 Like everybody in LA is using Blue Apron now, which is just fantastic.

00:06:16.000 It's blueapron.com slash Shapiro.

00:06:18.000 You will love it.

00:06:19.000 Everybody I know who's tried it absolutely loves it.

00:06:21.000 Blueapron.com slash Shapiro.

00:06:24.000 So check that out.

00:06:25.000 Blue Apron is a better way to cook. 1.00

00:06:27.000 Oh, thanks guys.

00:06:29.000 Oh, you got me a cupcake.

00:06:31.000 Oh, that's so nice.

00:06:32.000 Look at that.

00:06:33.000 Is it kosher?

00:06:34.000 Yes, it is.

00:06:35.000 Wow!

00:06:36.000 A kosher cupcake.

00:06:37.000 Well, happy birthday to me, gang!

00:06:39.000 Woo! 0.99

00:06:42.000 Oh yeah.

00:06:43.000 That's right.

00:06:44.000 So that means I won't go to jail this year.

00:06:45.000 Woo! 0.99

00:06:46.000 All right.

00:06:46.000 So now we can actually jump into the news of the day with all the birthday paraphernalia put aside.

00:06:52.000 We can jump into the news of the day.

00:06:54.000 So the big news of the day, obviously, it's Martin Luther King Day.

00:06:57.000 And we'll get to how Democrats are exploiting race because it's Martin Luther King Day.

00:07:01.000 But I want to start that with an article from a guy named Oliver Thomas.

00:07:05.000 Oliver Thomas writes this piece for

00:07:08.000 Yeah.

00:07:23.000 Yeah, my parents were around at that time.

00:07:24.000 Wasn't them.

00:07:25.000 In fact, there were lots of white people who were around at that time, and it wasn't those people, actually.

00:07:31.000 It was just, like, the guy who did it.

00:07:33.000 But what is this thing really about?

00:07:34.000 It's all about virtue signaling.

00:07:35.000 It's about virtue signaling.

00:07:36.000 So what the piece says is, quote,

00:07:43.000 Not me, of course.

00:07:44.000 I'm not a racist.

00:07:45.000 But who thinks he is?

00:07:46.000 So we tried to fix it.

00:07:48.000 Made his birthday a national holiday.

00:07:49.000 Put him on a pedestal where we can honor him and he can't poke us in the eye.

00:07:54.000 This neglects a few kind of crucial issues with regard to the civil rights movement.

00:07:58.000 A lot of white Americans back the civil rights movement, which is why it was successful. 0.70

00:08:02.000 It turns out that the black population of the United States is approximately 10%.

00:08:05.000 You need a lot of other race allies in order to make a success if you are a minority group.

00:08:09.000 That's just the reality of politics.

00:08:11.000 Okay, second, if you look at the faces in the Selma march, pretty diverse group.

00:08:14.000 And it was Martin Luther King's recognition, unlike Malcolm X, early Malcolm X, it was Martin Luther King's recognition that you actually needed to work with people across the racial spectrum in order to move forward with individual civil rights that made him successful.

00:08:28.000 He was successful not just because he was a fantastic orator and a really profound thinker on racial matters, but because he actually had the foresight to reach out to people who are not black as allies.

00:08:37.000 But today's civil rights leaders are not interested in that.

00:08:39.000 Malcolm X actually won the war.

00:08:41.000 I think Martin Luther King won the battle and Malcolm X won the war in a lot of ways because now we have racial polarization on all fronts.

00:08:47.000 Not even late Malcolm X, like after Malcolm X became an actual Muslim as opposed to a member of the Nation of Islam. 0.86

00:08:53.000 I don't know.

00:09:08.000 Well, so this white preacher, this fellow Thomas, Oliver Thomas, he continues along these lines.

00:09:13.000 He says, quote, I'll let Ta-Nehisi Coates boil it down for you.

00:09:16.000 First of all, you should never let Ta-Nehisi Coates boil down anything for you.

00:09:19.000 Ta-Nehisi Coates is a wildly overrated writer.

00:09:22.000 He's a wildly overrated thinker.

00:09:24.000 I mean, I think that Ta-Nehisi Coates' worldview can be summed up by the fact that he wrote in one of his pieces or in his book that during 9-11 he was sitting on the top of his apartment building watching 9-11 happen and he didn't feel anything.

00:09:37.000 Ta-Nehisi Coates said, quote, so this is from Oliver Thomas, White society was not achieved through wine tastings and ice cream socials, but rather through the pillaging of life, liberty, labor, and land. 0.63

00:09:47.000 In short, through three centuries of kidnapping, torture, murder, and rape.

00:09:51.000 We built an entire society on these bruised and broken backs, that and countless Native Americans driven off their land. 1.00

00:09:56.000 I have been asked to speak at a Martin Luther King Day event.

00:09:58.000 Me, a white preacher, speaking to a predominantly black audience filled with gifted preachers.

00:10:03.000 Well, here's the message. 0.87

00:10:04.000 No white person understands the black experience.

00:10:07.000 And this is what the left wants you to take away from Martin Luther King Day, is that you should judge people by the color of their skin, not the contents of their character.

00:10:12.000 And we can never have a situation in which a little black child and a little white child hold hands and walk into the future together. 0.91

00:10:19.000 We can't have that because the black kid can't understand the white kid, and mostly the white kid really can never understand the black kid. 0.99

00:10:24.000 First of all, this is just not factually true. 0.95

00:10:27.000 Obviously we should lament and decry and remember the absolute evils of slavery and the horrors of Jim Crow, but to suggest that American power was built on the back of slavery is economically illiterate and morally obtuse.

00:10:39.000 It really is.

00:10:39.000 Slavery is not an institution that benefits societies economically speaking.

00:10:46.000 It doesn't.

00:10:47.000 Slavery is actually backwards.

00:10:49.000 This is one of the reasons why the North was wildly out-competing the South during the Civil War.

00:10:53.000 I mean, you would have imagined that the side with all the slaves would have won if slavery were all that great for the economy.

00:10:57.000 Slavery is not good for the economy, it turns out.

00:10:59.000 It turns out that wages are much better for the economy than slavery is.

00:11:02.000 So the idea that we built our economic power on the back of slavery is just not true.

00:11:06.000 We actually built our economic power in spite of slavery.

00:11:09.000 The Great British Empire really became the Great British Empire after outlawing slavery.

00:11:14.000 America got more powerful in spite of slavery.

00:11:16.000 We got more powerful in spite of Jim Crow, not because of Jim Crow.

00:11:19.000 One of the things that a lot of the kind of revisionist racialists like to say is America only became powerful and wealthy because of Jim Crow.

00:11:25.000 Are you kidding?

00:11:25.000 It turns out that taking 10% of your population and treating them like animals is not good for the economy.

00:11:31.000 It's not actually good for the economy.

00:11:32.000 You're losing all of the intellectual... Forget about the moral issues involved.

00:11:35.000 Forget about the moral evil of that.

00:11:37.000 You're losing all the intellectual capital.

00:11:38.000 You're losing all the hard work.

00:11:40.000 You're losing all the marketable skills.

00:11:42.000 The Constitution of the United States is great, not because it enshrines slavery permanently, but because it was a step toward abolishing slavery.

00:11:49.000 That's what the Constitution was designed to do.

00:11:51.000 When you hear people talk about the Three-Fifths Law and how racist the Three-Fifths Law was, the whole purpose of the Three-Fifths Law in the Constitution, the whole purpose of the Three-Fifths provision, is because the North did not want the South to be able to vote for continuing slavery by counting slaves as citizens for purposes of allocation of votes.

00:12:08.000 They came up with this compromise so they could actually have a functional country.

00:12:12.000 But the purpose of the Three-Fifths Clause was partially to get rid of slavery.

00:12:16.000 The Declaration of Independence, as Frederick Douglass made clear, was not because it was particular to white people, but because it was universal.

00:12:23.000 Frederick Douglass was very passionate about the Declaration of Independence.

00:12:25.000 So all of this is just historically not true, but it's the message of it that's really gross.

00:12:30.000 So, Martin Luther King did, and the reason that, you know, you're proud to show videos of Martin Luther King to your kids, my daughter is a little too young to understand it, she's only just turning three next week, but as soon as she's old enough to understand it, I'm going to be proud and honored to show her speeches of Martin Luther King at the March on Washington.

00:12:47.000 Because King appealed to our common humanities, individual human beings.

00:12:50.000 Thank you.

00:13:11.000 What exactly to do about that?

00:13:14.000 That's the whole point.

00:13:15.000 Common understanding is necessary in order to cure anything.

00:13:18.000 If you're starting from the point of, I can never understand you, that actually leads to more tribalism, not less tribalism.

00:13:23.000 Why would I care about somebody I can't understand?

00:13:26.000 If a species of alien came down and there was no way to understand them, would that generate more sympathy or less sympathy?

00:13:30.000 The whole purpose of establishing lines of communication is to understand each other better.

00:13:35.000 This is counterproductive racially.

00:13:37.000 Martin Luther King's whole schtick, his whole spiel, was that individual decency trumps group grievance.

00:13:43.000 Particularly for white folks. 0.98

00:13:44.000 Like white folks can't do this group grievance routine against black folks. 0.97

00:13:48.000 They actually have to treat black folks as individuals. 0.96

00:13:50.000 And black folks likewise have to treat white folks as individuals. 0.99

00:13:52.000 So saying that all whites killed Martin Luther King is just as inane as saying all Democrats killed Martin Luther King. 0.99

00:13:59.000 It's just as inane as saying all Muslims are responsible for every terror attack. 1.00

00:14:03.000 It's silly. 1.00

00:14:04.000 It's counterproductive. 0.84

00:14:05.000 It doesn't actually establish the ties that need to happen in order to achieve.

00:14:10.000 Beyond which, Islam is actually a philosophy. 0.99

00:14:12.000 White is not a philosophy. 0.88

00:14:13.000 It's a color. 0.88

00:14:15.000 And the fact is, the Civil Rights Act was passed by a bunch of white people. 0.79

00:14:18.000 The fact is, Jim Crow was ended by a bunch of white people. 0.85

00:14:21.000 Yes, it took black leadership to do that. 0.93

00:14:22.000 Thank God for the black leaders.

00:14:24.000 Thank God for people like John Lewis, who we'll get to in a second.

00:14:27.000 But that doesn't mean that it didn't take a coalition of people across racial lines in order to reach success.

00:14:33.000 I mean, if you want racial reconciliation, the reason that Martin Luther King is a great figure and Malcolm X is not a great figure is because Malcolm X's perspective on race is counterproductive and leads to polarization.

00:14:44.000 Martin Luther King's perspective on race is a deeply American one.

00:14:48.000 A uniquely American one.

00:14:49.000 And that's why we celebrate his birthday today.

00:14:52.000 Now, meanwhile, Donald Trump has been elected president. 0.99

00:14:55.000 And of course, that means it's time for the left to completely lose its freaking mind. 0.99

00:14:58.000 I mean, they've gone completely nuts. 0.99

00:14:59.000 Representative John Lewis led it off.

00:15:01.000 John Lewis, of course, was famous because he led the attempt to break the segregation in the South.

00:15:09.000 He was clubbed about the ears for his trouble.

00:15:11.000 And so a real civil rights hero, John Lewis.

00:15:12.000 But just because, you know, as I get older, one of the things that I tend to realize

00:15:18.000 Is that

00:15:42.000 John Lewis was a civil rights hero.

00:15:44.000 He did very heroic things during the civil rights struggle.

00:15:46.000 That does not mean he's anywhere close to right on what he's about to say about Donald Trump here.

00:15:49.000 I don't see this president-elect as a legitimate president.

00:15:56.000 You do not consider him a legitimate president?

00:15:58.000 Why is that?

00:16:00.000 I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected.

00:16:06.000 And they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton.

00:16:13.000 I don't plan to attend the inauguration.

00:16:16.000 It will be the first one that I miss since I've been in the Congress.

00:16:22.000 You cannot be at home with something that you feel that is wrong.

00:16:28.000 That's going to send a big message to a lot of people in this country that you don't believe he's a legitimate president.

00:16:36.000 I think that was a conspiracy on the part of the Russians and others. 0.61

00:16:43.000 To help him get elected.

00:16:45.000 That's not right.

00:16:46.000 That's not fair.

00:16:48.000 That's not an open, democratic process.

00:16:52.000 Okay, so, you know, whatever you think of the Russian interference in the election, the fact is there was a legitimate vote held based on the information that was available to the public, and Hillary Clinton lost.

00:17:00.000 So John Lewis is wrong here.

00:17:02.000 So Donald Trump naturally goes to Twitter to respond, and here are his tweets.

00:17:06.000 Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart,

00:17:11.000 Not to mention crime-infested, rather than falsely complaining about the election results.

00:17:15.000 All talk, talk, talk.

00:17:16.000 No action or results.

00:17:17.000 Sad!

00:17:18.000 Right?

00:17:18.000 There's that typical Trump sad with the exclamation point.

00:17:21.000 Congressman John Lewis should finally focus on the burning and crime-infested inner cities of the U.S.

00:17:25.000 I can use all the help I can get.

00:17:28.000 So, you know, is this typically subtly worded Donald Trump?

00:17:32.000 No, this is pretty typical Trump.

00:17:33.000 But Trump's not wrong about the fact that if this were reversed, everybody on the left would lose their mind, right?

00:17:38.000 If this were somebody saying that Hillary Clinton were not a legitimate president.

00:17:42.000 In fact, when Donald Trump said that Barack Obama was not a legitimate president, that he was born outside the United States, everybody rightly went nuts.

00:17:49.000 Now, everybody's getting on Trump for this.

00:17:50.000 And there are a bunch of people on the left who said that Trump was attacking John Lewis racially.

00:17:55.000 Nina Turner.

00:17:56.000 Thank you.

00:18:07.000 Well, he's Congressman John Lewis.

00:18:08.000 I just want to say that to make sure that we give him the requisite respect that he deserves.

00:18:14.000 And 50 years ago, everything that he did is still important today.

00:18:17.000 Now, I, as a Democrat, we know that the Russians had some impact, but they didn't go vote on Election Day.

00:18:23.000 They didn't mess with the electronic data.

00:18:24.000 So there are some Democrats that get that.

00:18:26.000 And they didn't write the emails.

00:18:28.000 Democrats are going to have to wear that. 0.99

00:18:30.000 But at the same time, what

00:18:33.000 The president-elect needs to do, this is not The Apprentice, the White House edition.

00:18:37.000 His tweets were insensitive.

00:18:39.000 For him to categorize Congressman Trump, excuse me, Congressman Lewis' district as in bad shape.

00:18:47.000 Crime infested.

00:18:48.000 Crime infested.

00:18:49.000 It's not, by the way.

00:18:49.000 Fortune 500 companies.

00:18:51.000 It's about 58% African American.

00:18:52.000 More house installment.

00:18:53.000 Right.

00:18:54.000 Institutions of higher learning.

00:18:55.000 It is diverse ethnically and it is diverse economically.

00:18:59.000 So my memo to my white elected officials, not just President Elect Trump, but a lot of white elected officials make this mistake in making the African American community a very

00:19:11.000 Homogeneous. 0.53

00:19:12.000 They read us the wrong way.

00:19:13.000 They think everybody's poor, everybody's broken down.

00:19:15.000 That is not the truth.

00:19:17.000 So they need to come and visit some African-American communities.

00:19:20.000 Okay, so she's implying that Trump is a racist because he said that Lewis's district was crime-infested and in bad shape.

00:19:28.000 Here are the actual facts about John Lewis's district.

00:19:31.000 This is Georgia's fifth congressional district as compared to the state average and the national average.

00:19:35.000 Okay, here it is from the Census Bureau.

00:19:37.000 The unemployment rate in John Lewis's district as of 2015 was 8.2%.

00:19:40.000 The state average was 5.5%.

00:19:43.000 The national average was 5%.

00:19:45.000 So, is there way higher unemployment in John Lewis's district?

00:19:48.000 Answer, yes.

00:19:49.000 There is much higher unemployment in John Lewis's district.

00:19:54.000 Okay, when you look at the poverty rate, the poverty rate is 17.3% in Georgia's 5th district, it's 17% state average, 13.5% nationally, a little bit higher than the state average, a lot higher than the national average.

00:20:05.000 Now there's some major businesses that are located in John Lewis' district, but the crime rates are also

00:20:13.000 They are higher in John Lewis's district.

00:20:15.000 Okay, so Atlanta is located inside Lewis's district.

00:20:18.000 It had the 14th highest violent crime rate in the United States in 2015 with 1,120 violent crimes per 100,000 residents, which is triple the national average.

00:20:27.000 That's triple the national average.

00:20:29.000 Okay, so is Trump wildly wrong on all of this?

00:20:33.000 No, Trump isn't wildly wrong on all of this.

00:20:35.000 Should Lewis be doing a better job for his district?

00:20:37.000 Yes.

00:20:38.000 He should be doing a better job for his district.

00:20:40.000 Does one thing have to do with another?

00:20:41.000 No.

00:20:42.000 Is it the way that I would have phrased it?

00:20:44.000 No.

00:20:44.000 But to claim that Trump is a big racist because he's pointing out that Lewis's district isn't in the greatest shape ever, that is a stretch.

00:20:50.000 By the way, he would say the same thing about some white person's district, right?

00:20:53.000 If a white person had insulted him, he would have said exactly the same thing, and you know he would if you're on the left.

00:20:57.000 You know Trump has no holds barred.

00:20:58.000 If you attack him in any way, he is going to loose the hounds of Twitter on you.

00:21:02.000 And that means that he's going to call your district crime-ridden, and he'll compare it to Mad Max.

00:21:08.000 And it'll just be Mel Gibson running through the Australian wasteland, according to Donald Trump.

00:21:11.000 It doesn't matter, right?

00:21:12.000 I mean, he said Meryl Streep was an overrated actress because she insulted him at the Golden Globes.

00:21:17.000 Do you really think that if John Lewis were white, he wouldn't have said the same thing? 0.97

00:21:21.000 It's just really silly all around. 0.82

00:21:23.000 But the left is really attempting now to push this notion that Donald Trump is an illegitimate president. 0.57

00:21:28.000 We'll talk about that a little bit more in just a second.

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00:23:32.000 Okay, so final note before we have to sign off here on Facebook and YouTube.

00:23:36.000 So, the left is fully invested in calling Donald Trump illegitimate.

00:23:40.000 I don't know.

00:23:57.000 Every time a Republican is elected, it's illegitimate, right?

00:24:00.000 Everything is illegitimate that the right does.

00:24:01.000 And it's now coming from both sides, right?

00:24:04.000 Donald Trump said that Barack Obama was basically illegitimate.

00:24:07.000 Paul Krugman, who just a week ago was saying that Republicans are alienating too many people and polarizing the political discourse, wrote a column today in which he said, let's not talk about Mr. Trump's ravings.

00:24:17.000 Instead, let's ask whether Mr. Lewis was right to say what he said.

00:24:20.000 Is it okay?

00:24:21.000 Morally and politically, to declare the man about to move into the White House illegitimate?

00:24:24.000 Yes, it is.

00:24:25.000 In fact, it's an act of patriotism.

00:24:27.000 So, now we're back in the space where dissent is the highest form of patriotism.

00:24:31.000 Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:24:33.000 It's just amazing how the positions switch as soon as the shoe is on the other foot.

00:24:37.000 As soon as Trump gets elected, then it's fine to say that the president is illegitimate.

00:24:41.000 If the results had been exactly the same and Republicans had said Hillary is illegitimate, she shouldn't have been running, she's a criminal, the left would have said, how dare you? 1.00

00:24:48.000 You accept her, she's your president.

00:24:49.000 She's your president.

00:24:50.000 You accept that.

00:24:52.000 It's just amazing.

00:24:53.000 There is no penalty, by the way, for calling the president just on a political note.

00:24:57.000 It's actually beneficial.

00:24:57.000 We've reached the point in American politics where casting the other side's winners as illegitimate is actually a very useful tactic.

00:25:05.000 Really, the left did this for George W. Bush for years and years and years.

00:25:09.000 Nancy Pelosi did it for years and years and years. 0.92

00:25:11.000 It was very successful for her.

00:25:13.000 Donald Trump did it for Barack Obama.

00:25:15.000 It was very successful for him.

00:25:16.000 I think this is just part of the new political discourse, and we're all going to have to get used to it, is calling the other side illegitimate no matter what the actual results.

00:25:23.000 The only time I haven't seen that is with Obama 2012.

00:25:25.000 To Obama 2012, I didn't see a lot of Obama is an illegitimate president from the right, even though he'd obviously lied about what happened in Benghazi in order to prop himself up at the end of the election cycle, even though the media were obviously propping him up.

00:25:37.000 He was a legitimate president.

00:25:38.000 I didn't see a lot of that from the right.

00:25:39.000 But it's become sort of a ball to be batted around.

00:25:43.000 By both sides.

00:25:44.000 So none of this is particularly surprising.

00:25:46.000 Dianne Feinstein is also saying that Donald Trump is illegitimate because Russia interfered.

00:25:51.000 We've got a huge destruction of our system going on.

00:25:54.000 So we have to be full and robust in this look.

00:26:00.000 And I trust that we are.

00:26:01.000 I have worked with Chairman Burr for a long time, and I believe that this can happen.

00:26:08.000 If it doesn't, we will sing out loud and clear.

00:26:10.000 Let me buttonhole something, though.

00:26:12.000 You said you believe that Russia's interference altered the outcome of the election.

00:26:17.000 I do.

00:26:17.000 I believe that.

00:26:19.000 It's a combination of a couple of things.

00:26:23.000 I think that and I think the FBI in the October surprise, I call it an October surprise, of announcing a subsequent investigation did have an impact.

00:26:38.000 Wow, she invented the term October Surprise, who knew?

00:26:40.000 But yes, the Democrats are just going to keep saying this.

00:26:43.000 The Democratic chair candidate is saying the same thing, that Trump was allegedly elected.

00:26:48.000 We can play that as well.

00:26:50.000 He's truth telling.

00:26:51.000 I don't think this is about just Democrats.

00:26:54.000 This is Americans.

00:26:55.000 Anyone with a smidgen of common sense can remember Donald Trump looking in the camera, encouraging Russia to hack into our electoral process.

00:27:06.000 Cheerleading them on, and the idea that whatever information these members of Congress are getting out of this classified briefing had them storm out of that room makes it very clear that the decisions that the FBI made that were unprecedented to get involved in the election against Hillary Clinton, pick a winner, pick a loser, when they had so much information that was so damaging, what have we been talking about since this man was allegedly elected?

00:27:34.000 All allegedly elected are now coming out of Russia.

00:27:37.000 You acknowledge that he achieved the necessary electoral votes and is a legitimately elected President of the United States, would you not?

00:27:44.000 Well, I haven't seen the classified briefing that the members of Congress did.

00:27:48.000 I imagine that I won the election.

00:27:49.000 Okay, so one of the questions that we're going to be asking as we continue here on the Ben Shapiro Show is whether this is good strategy or not, because there's a bit of a split opening up in the Democratic Party.

00:27:57.000 We've also got to talk about Trump going after SNL.

00:28:00.000 We've got to talk about Trump on Obamacare.

00:28:01.000 We've got to talk about Trump on NATO, EU, the intelligence community.

00:28:06.000 We have tons coming up, like a lot, and these guys worked really hard to cut all of this audio, so you're going to want to be around.

00:28:11.000 We're good to go.

00:28:31.000 We're good to go.

00:28:58.000 So go to iTunes and you can review us there.

00:29:01.000 So make sure that you can do that for free.

00:29:03.000 But to subscribe you go to dailywire.com

The Ben Shapiro Show - January 23, 2017

Ep. 236 - Is Trump Illegitimate?

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