The Ben Shapiro Show - Ep. 239 - Obama's Final Presser! Get Out, Dude.

Barack Obama will be remembered as one of the greatest presidents of all time, according to Lanny Davis, former special counsel to President Bill Clinton and longtime Democratic consultant. But where does that rank in comparison to other presidents, and how does he stack up against other presidents in terms of accomplishments and impact on the nation's economic and social well-being? In this episode, we'll take a look at how Obama stacks up against the other presidents of his time, including George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan. We'll also talk about how he stacks up in comparison with other presidents and how he compares to the other two-term presidents, George H.W. Bush and Richard Nixon, who are two of the most successful presidents in American history, and John F. Kennedy, who was the first African-American to become president and the first man to serve two terms in the White House. And, of course, we ll talk about what makes a good president and a bad president, and where he ranks in the pantheon of greats. President Obama ranks in that list. Thanks for listening and tweet us if you liked this episode! Timestamps: 1:00:00 - What makes a great president? 2:30 - Who was the worst? 3:40 - Where does Obama stack up historically? 4:00 5: Where does he rank against other Presidents? 6: How does Obama rank among other presidents? 7: Who was better? 8:20 - What would you rank higher than Obama? 9:10 - What are you would like to see him rank higher? 10: How will he rank? 11:00 -- Who is a better president than Carter? 13:30 -- What makes him better than Nixon? 14:40 -- Who would you put him in your top-tier? 15:20 -- What does he have the most impact on American history? 16:10 -- Where would you like him? 17:10 What s the worst president you'd like him to be next? 18:40 19: What s his legacy? 21:00-- What would he rank in your favorite? 22:00 Obama s greatest accomplishments? 27:30 Is he better than Carter or Obama s? 26:30 Is he the best? 23:30 Does he have more impact?

00:00:00.000 According to Lanny Davis, former special counsel to President Clinton and longtime Democratic consultant, Barack Obama will be considered one of history's great presidents.

00:00:08.000 What makes Obama so spectacular?

00:00:10.000 Well, according to Davis, to be a great president requires a combination of four factors.

00:00:13.000 First, unique circumstances making a major impact on the nation's history, like Washington and Jefferson as framers and setting important precedents for the presidency for future generations.

00:00:23.000 Second,

00:00:23.000 Successfully addressing one or more major national crises, Lincoln with the Civil War, or FDR with World War II.

00:00:29.000 Third, having significant positive impacts on economic and social changes or on foreign policy.

00:00:34.000 And fourth, enhancing the powers and effectiveness of the presidency and the future of their political parties.

00:00:40.000 Davis then goes ahead and ranks his top-tier presidents.

00:00:42.000 He says those are Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Teddy, and FDR.

00:00:46.000 And he lists his second-tier presidents, Monroe, Pope, McKinley, Wilson, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Reagan, Clinton.

00:00:52.000 So, where does Obama stack up in all of this?

00:00:54.000 According to Davis, quote, there is little doubt that future historians will rank him high in this second tier.

00:01:00.000 What were Obama's accomplishments?

00:01:01.000 Obamacare, quote, digging the country out of an economic Great Recession, and his election as the first black president.

00:01:06.000 That's the whole thing.

00:01:08.000 And that's pretty weak.

00:01:09.000 So here's where Obama actually stacks up on these four factors.

00:01:11.000 First, unique circumstances.

00:01:13.000 Obama did face a severe economic downturn when he assumed office.

00:01:17.000 That is not that rare in American history.

00:01:19.000 According to 247wallstreet.com, America has had either depressions or recessions.

00:01:23.000 In 1797 under Adams, 1807 under Jefferson, 1815 to 1821 under Madison and Monroe.

00:01:29.000 1837 under Van Buren, 1857 under Buchanan, 1873 under Grant, 1893 under Cleveland, 1907 under Teddy, 1920 and 21 under Harding, the Great Depression under Hoover and FDR, 1973 under Nixon, and the Carter years and early Reagan years.

00:01:42.000 Which leaves aside the stock market crashes under Reagan, the mild economic downturn under George H.W.

00:01:46.000 Bush, and the bursting of the internet bubble under Bill Clinton.

00:01:49.000 So, the question isn't, did he actually experience a downturn, it's what he did with that.

00:01:54.000 He proceeded to lead, Obama did, one of the worst recoveries in American history.

00:01:58.000 Second, successfully addressing one or more national crises.

00:02:01.000 This is the second criteria.

00:02:02.000 Davis gives Obama credit for addressing the Great Recession, although his recovery was tepid at best, actually the worst since the Great Depression.

00:02:09.000 Average annual growth has been the weakest since 1949, at just 2.1% growth per year.

00:02:14.000 The expansion has been long, but it's been seriously underproductive.

00:02:17.000 On foreign policy, Obama has exacerbated national crises surrounding terror, presided over a massive increase in the number of terror attacks on American soil.

00:02:25.000 He's also presided over the collapse of race relations in the United States.

00:02:29.000 When he took office, two out of three Americans thought race relations were good.

00:02:32.000 He leaves office with nearly two in three Americans thinking precisely the reverse.

00:02:37.000 A good president has significant impacts on domestic reform policy.

00:02:40.000 Obama's biggest domestic policy achievement, Obamacare, has increased costs and premiums, thrown Americans off their preferred insurance plans, and separated them from their doctors, all while overburdening medical care providers and placing insurance companies under the financial gun.

00:02:54.000 It will be repealed as soon as Obama's gone.

00:02:56.000 His immigration policy has left millions of illegal immigrants adrift.

00:02:59.000 His foreign policy has been a series of appeasements and blunders resulting in the rise of ISIS, a genocide in Syria, the unilateral surrender of Iraq, the incompetent prosecution of the war in Afghanistan, the regional empowerment and global legitimization of the Iranian terror regime, the creation of a dictatorship in Turkey, the empowerment of a dictatorship in Russia, the expansion of Chinese power.

00:03:17.000 He's weakened American allies all around the globe.

00:03:19.000 Fourth,

00:03:20.000 Fourth factor, enhancing the future of the presidency and his political party.

00:03:24.000 The presidency is more powerful now than it was under Obama's predecessors, but that's not a particularly good measure of greatness since he'll be handing over that power to Donald Trump.

00:03:33.000 And Obama has devastated his political party.

00:03:35.000 He's lost nearly a thousand seats across the country for his party.

00:03:38.000 His party controls just 18 governorships.

00:03:40.000 He's lost the Senate, he's lost the House, he's lost the White House.

00:03:42.000 The Democrats are in the weakest position they've occupied since 1920 on the state level. 0.57

00:03:47.000 And no, Barack Obama doesn't just get extra credit because he's black.

00:03:50.000 So, where does Obama stack up historically?

00:03:52.000 It's actually kind of rare that historians rank two-term presidents among the nation's worst.

00:03:56.000 The only two-term president often included in that list is W, and that's largely due to the economic collapse of 2007-2008.

00:04:03.000 If not for that, he'd probably be somewhere in the middle.

00:04:05.000 In all likelihood, Obama will rank slightly above Jimmy Carter, but below Richard Nixon.

00:04:09.000 Historians will probably place him above George W., but well below Bill Clinton or even LBJ.

00:04:14.000 He'll rank as a rotten president, not the worst ever, but certainly not among the best.

00:04:17.000 Which is fitting. 0.85

00:04:19.000 In the end, Obama was kind of forgettable.

00:04:21.000 He was a forgettable president domestically.

00:04:23.000 He was a disastrous term.

00:04:25.000 He was a disastrous president in terms of foreign policy.

00:04:27.000 History is not going to treat him kindly.

00:04:29.000 He'll fade into obscurity rather than growing into historical prominence.

00:04:32.000 Which, actually, is probably his worst nightmare.

00:04:34.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:04:35.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:04:40.000 So many feelings!

00:04:43.000 Ah, Obama is finally leaving.

00:04:45.000 Donald Trump is becoming president.

00:04:46.000 So much confusion.

00:04:48.000 So much chaos.

00:04:50.000 So much excitement.

00:04:51.000 So much to talk about.

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00:06:32.000 Okay, so, as I say, lots of feelings.

00:06:35.000 Just joy that Barack Obama is leaving.

00:06:37.000 Like, that is a wonderful, wonderful thing. 0.99

00:06:39.000 Barack Obama has been a barnacle on the ass of the United States for eight years. 1.00

00:06:45.000 He's been awful. 0.99

00:06:46.000 He's been just an abscess in terms of politics for the entirety of his term, and it is great to see him leave.

00:06:52.000 I am very, very happy about that.

00:06:54.000 We'll go through his final press conference and savor every last minute of angst and upset that Barack Obama can leverage.

00:07:02.000 First, I do have to note, Donald Trump

00:07:04.000 Today, he's headed to Washington, D.C.

00:07:06.000 to prepare for the inauguration, which happens tomorrow.

00:07:08.000 This time tomorrow, if you're listening right now, by this time tomorrow, Donald Trump will be not president-elect, he'll be president of the United States.

00:07:14.000 And there's pictures of him getting off the military jet with Melania and saluting the troops, which is nice, because you feel like he actually likes the troops as opposed to the president we currently have in office.

00:07:25.000 I will say this.

00:07:26.000 If you're watching Donald Trump, the guy from The Apprentice, become President of the United States, and you don't feel at least a little bit of trepidation about that, it's because you're not watching closely enough.

00:07:35.000 And I'm going to talk a little bit later about what we can expect from Trump, and what our hopes should be, and what we should actually look for from Donald Trump.

00:07:42.000 I will just say this in summary.

00:07:44.000 Here is how I'm feeling about Donald Trump taking office tomorrow.

00:07:51.000 Yeah, that's pretty much it.

00:07:52.000 I think that we can be, as I like to say, optimistically skeptical.

00:08:00.000 We should be skeptical of every... Listen, I've been very skeptical.

00:08:03.000 I was skeptical of Bush.

00:08:04.000 I was very skeptical of Obama.

00:08:06.000 I'm going to be skeptical of Trump.

00:08:07.000 I'm skeptical of all politicians because politicians are in the business of lying to you for money.

00:08:11.000 That's what they do for a living. 0.98

00:08:12.000 So if you trust Donald Trump, let me just recommend to you that Donald Trump is, again, a politician.

00:08:18.000 He shifted his positions a lot.

00:08:19.000 Hold his feet to the fire.

00:08:20.000 But we'll get to that in just a second.

00:08:22.000 First, we have to celebrate, because it's a day of celebration.

00:08:24.000 Today is Barack Obama's final day in office.

00:08:28.000 Yay! 0.99

00:08:29.000 Woo! 0.99

00:08:30.000 Very, very exciting stuff.

00:08:31.000 Barack Obama has been disastrous president of the United States.

00:08:35.000 What's amazing is watching as Democrats struggle with this, CNN ran a story desperately hoping that Donald Trump would actually be assassinated, really.

00:08:42.000 Because they hoped that if he were assassinated and the rest of the cabinet that Trump has picked were assassinated, they haven't actually been voted on yet.

00:08:48.000 So there's nobody in the cabinet yet.

00:08:50.000 If you assassinate Trump and you assassinate Pence, then right now, as it goes, Barack Obama remains, he's still the president today.

00:08:57.000 So if he killed Trump and Pence today, this is seriously what CNN reported.

00:09:00.000 Here is what the CNN report looked like.

00:09:02.000 And while officials stress there's no specific credible threat to this inauguration, tonight, due to a quirk in America's rules for succession, questions remain about just who would be in charge if an attack hit the incoming president, vice president, and congressional leaders just as the transfer of power is underway.

00:09:20.000 Here you have a very confusing line of succession.

00:09:22.000 According to the Constitution, if the President and Vice President are killed or incapacitated, next in line is the House Speaker, then the President pro tempore of the Senate.

00:09:32.000 But what if something happened to them at the inauguration, too?

00:09:35.000 After that, it goes down the list of cabinet secretaries, starting with Secretary of State.

00:09:40.000 On the day of the inauguration, as a precaution, a cabinet secretary called the Designated Presidential Successor will not attend the inauguration, ready to step in if something happens.

00:09:50.000 But it won't be a Trump cabinet secretary, since none of them have been confirmed yet.

00:09:55.000 It will be an Obama appointee.

00:09:58.000 So if Obama and Biden were killed, and then if Trump and Pence were killed before the inauguration, it would have to happen before the inauguration, right?

00:10:06.000 They're basically saying, well, you know what could happen, theoretically, what if Trump and Pence died, and Obama and Biden died, John Kerry would become president.

00:10:14.000 I mean, this is like, this is insanity.

00:10:16.000 So they're now living in this crazy fantasy world.

00:10:19.000 And let's face it, okay, everyone's in some sort of bizarre fever dream here, because there was a story today that Donald Trump at the inauguration might dance with Caitlyn Jenner.

00:10:25.000 Okay, I'm just gonna say, I don't know what the hell is going on.

00:10:28.000 I don't know what's happening.

00:10:29.000 If that actually happens, well I guess that would be kind of a fitting capstone to 2016 when nothing made any sense and we're pretty much living inside God's burp right now, but...

00:10:40.000 Let's just focus for a second, instead of getting into the Trump stuff, which is a lot of fun, let's focus on something else fun, which is Barack Obama leaving.

00:10:46.000 So, Obama's preparing to get out.

00:10:49.000 Good, don't let the door hit you on the way out.

00:10:51.000 And he gives this press conference yesterday, and the final presser is just the press licking him.

00:10:56.000 I mean, it's just the press doing its best to give him that final send-off he's been waiting for, give him that happy ending.

00:11:02.000 So, here is Barack Obama

00:11:04.000 We are the only country in the advanced world that makes it harder to vote rather than easier.

00:11:09.000 And that dates back.

00:11:10.000 There's an ugly history to that that we should not be shy about talking about.

00:11:14.000 Voting rights?

00:11:14.000 Yes, I'm talking about voting rights.

00:11:36.000 The reason that we are the only country among advanced democracies that makes it harder to vote is... So President Obama on his way out, he's still riffing on Jim Crow, which ended in the 1960s.

00:11:51.000 And in talking about how voting rights are being impinged.

00:11:54.000 He still cannot name a single instance in which a black person has been turned away from the polls illegitimately.

00:11:58.000 He still can't name a single instance of that across the country.

00:12:01.000 So while the left claims that voter fraud has never happened and will never happen without any evidence, they also claim that there's an attempt, a market attempt to get black people to stop voting.

00:12:10.000 Which again has no evidence to support it.

00:12:12.000 But he's not done there.

00:12:13.000 Barack Obama is asked specifically about Julian Assange because yesterday he released Chelsea Manning, the WikiLeaks traitor.

00:12:21.000 And so he's asked about Julian Assange, and here was Obama's answer about Assange.

00:12:26.000 I don't pay a lot of attention to Mr. Assange's tweets, so that wasn't a consideration in this instance.

00:12:33.000 And I'd refer you to the Justice Department for

00:12:37.000 Uh, any criminal investigations, indictments, extradition issues, uh, that may come up.

00:12:43.000 ...doesn't pay any attention to Assange's tweets except for the fact that he thinks that WikiLeaks affected the election, and Julian Assange is the head of WikiLeaks, so there's that as well.

00:12:50.000 Obama also couldn't leave without riffing on race and talking about how America's racially divided.

00:12:54.000 It's more racially divided than when he took office because he blew his opportunity as the first black president to bring everybody together, instead using race-baiting as a political tool and tactic.

00:13:03.000 Here's Barack Obama on race relations as he leaves.

00:13:07.000 And by the way, it's no longer a black and white issue alone.

00:13:11.000 You've got Hispanic folks and you've got Asian folks.

00:13:15.000 This is not just the same old battles.

00:13:23.000 We've got this stew that's bubbling up of people from everywhere.

00:13:28.000 I've got a stoop.

00:13:29.000 Lots of people.

00:13:30.000 It's not very tasty.

00:13:31.000 This stoop.

00:13:31.000 Because I'm not going to be there to spice it.

00:13:33.000 This stoop.

00:13:34.000 Again, he's now trying to make race relations more complicated on his way out, just as he has during his administration.

00:13:40.000 He also defended his commutation of Chelsea Manning's prison sentence, his decision to free the person who was responsible for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks, which resulted in the endangerment of American soldiers and American allies.

00:13:54.000 Here's Obama defending that yesterday.

00:13:56.000 First of all,

00:13:59.000 Let's be clear, Chelsea Manning has served a tough prison sentence. 1.00

00:14:09.000 So the notion that the average person who was thinking about disclosing vital classified information would think that it goes unpunished

00:14:23.000 I don't think would get that impression from the sentence that Chelsea Manning has served. 1.00

00:14:33.000 It has been my view that given she went to trial, that due process was carried out, that she took responsibility for her crime, that

00:14:54.000 This that she received was

00:14:58.000 Very disproportionate relative to what other leakers had received.

00:15:05.000 Okay, so we can stop it there.

00:15:07.000 Get the F out, dude.

00:15:08.000 I mean, when you're talking about Chelsea Manning having served this really, really harsh sentence, it was a 35-year sentence.

00:15:12.000 Chelsea Manning served 7 to 8 years and was given hormone treatments by the federal government because Chelsea Manning thinks he is a woman. 1.00

00:15:19.000 Barack Obama then frees Chelsea Manning and we're supposed to believe that that doesn't send a signal to leakers that you're basically going to get away with it?

00:15:27.000 The most laugh-worthy line of all of this, though, was when Barack Obama starts talking to the press.

00:15:31.000 Because this is just, this is just... If you don't spit your coffee listening to this line, it's only because you're not drinking coffee.

00:15:38.000 Here's Obama.

00:15:39.000 You're not supposed to be sycophants.

00:15:42.000 You're supposed to be skeptics.

00:15:44.000 You're supposed to ask me tough questions.

00:15:47.000 You're not supposed to be complimentary.

00:15:49.000 But you're supposed to cast a critical eye on folks who hold enormous power.

00:15:55.000 And make sure that we are accountable to the people who sent us here.

00:16:00.000 And you have done that.

00:16:02.000 And you've done it, for the most part, in ways that I could appreciate for fairness, even if I didn't always agree with your conclusions.

00:16:15.000 And having you in this building has made

00:16:20.000 This place work better.

00:16:38.000 But they say that they hear all the pictures of him and his beautiful family.

00:16:41.000 Here are all the great moments that you don't remember from Barack Obama's presidency.

00:16:45.000 Here's how sad we are.

00:16:46.000 BuzzFeed did this.

00:16:47.000 They did a whole thing about how sad they were that Barack Obama was leaving.

00:16:50.000 And then he says the press has just been really tough on him.

00:16:52.000 No, this is just an excuse for him to say that the press should be tough on Trump.

00:16:55.000 And they will be tough on Trump.

00:16:56.000 In fact, they'll be crazy about Trump.

00:16:58.000 So this is a pretty nutty story from today.

00:17:01.000 The Washington Post ran a story about Sonny Perdue.

00:17:05.000 And this story about Sonny Perdue, he's the new pick for agriculture secretary under Trump.

00:17:11.000 And here is the headline the Washington Post ran.

00:17:13.000 Sonny Perdue is a former two-term governor of Georgia.

00:17:15.000 Here is the headline from the Washington Post.

00:17:18.000 Trump picks former Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue, who once led a prayer for rain, for Agriculture Secretary.

00:17:25.000 I think it's clip 21 here, if you want to see that headline.

00:17:29.000 So, the headline here is that, here it is, you can see it right there on the bottom.

00:17:35.000 Trump picks former Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue, who once led a prayer for rain for Agriculture Secretary.

00:17:40.000 Not two-term Georgia Governor, first Georgia Republican Governor in 130 years,

00:17:45.000 No, the guy who led a prayer for rain.

00:17:47.000 Because that's how much the press hates conservatives, hates Republicans, hates religious people.

00:17:51.000 That's how the press is going to treat Trump.

00:17:53.000 But the way that they treated Obama was just with kid gloves. 0.97

00:17:56.000 By the way, it really is quite disgusting.

00:17:57.000 The press does not understand why anyone would pray for rain.

00:18:01.000 Every major religion has times when you pray for weather events.

00:18:05.000 That doesn't mean that you're going to get them, by the way.

00:18:07.000 But the left doesn't understand how prayer works.

00:18:09.000 And so they scorn all of this.

00:18:10.000 And that's one of the reasons why Trump is going to be inaugurated as president tomorrow, is specifically because

00:18:15.000 Of all of this.

00:18:17.000 So, Barack Obama's leaving.

00:18:19.000 I don't actually want to waste more time talking.

00:18:21.000 We cut a bunch of clips and then I realized that I'm bored with him and I'm just excited to see him leave.

00:18:25.000 So, he's actually, he'll be going, thank God, but the Democrats are not going to be going.

00:18:30.000 And the Democrats are going to continue to push forward a narrative that really is counterproductive.

00:18:34.000 Bernie Sanders, I think, led this one off and then we'll have to break.

00:18:38.000 Bernie Sanders led this one off.

00:18:40.000 He was questioning

00:18:41.000 The United States of America

00:18:56.000 is the only major country on earth that does not guarantee health care to all people as a right.

00:19:02.000 Canada does it, every major country in Europe does it.

00:19:06.000 Do you believe that health care is a right of all Americans, whether they're rich or they're poor?

00:19:13.000 Should people, because they are Americans, be able to go to the doctor when they need to, be able to go into a hospital because they are Americans?

00:19:22.000 Yes, we're a compassionate society.

00:19:24.000 No, we're not a compassionate society.

00:19:25.000 In terms of our relationship to poor and working people, our record is worse than virtually any other country on earth. 1.00

00:19:31.000 We have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any other major country on earth.

00:19:35.000 And half of our senior older workers have nothing set aside for retirement.

00:19:40.000 So I don't think, compared to other countries, we are particularly compassionate.

00:19:44.000 But my question is, in Canada, in other countries, all people have the right to get healthcare.

00:19:49.000 Do you believe we should move in that direction?

00:19:52.000 If you want to talk about other countries' healthcare systems, there are consequences to the decisions that they've made, just as there are consequences to the decisions that we've made.

00:20:00.000 I believe, and I look forward to working with you, to make certain that every single American has access to the highest quality care and coverage that is possible.

00:20:08.000 As access to does not mean that they are guaranteed health care.

00:20:12.000 I have access to buying a ten million dollar home.

00:20:15.000 I don't have the money to do that.

00:20:17.000 And that's why we believe it's appropriate to put in place a system that gives every person the financial feasibility to be able to purchase the coverage that they want for themselves and for their family.

00:20:26.000 Let me stop there.

00:20:27.000 The part that's really telling here is where Bernie Sanders just lashes out.

00:20:31.000 No, we are not a compassionate society.

00:20:33.000 Sure, we're compassionate enough to put me in the Senate for a thousand terms even though I'm 1,000 years old and completely senile and have never done anything useful in my entire life.

00:20:42.000 Sure.

00:20:43.000 You give me a pudding cup every so often and tell me to stand in the closet.

00:20:46.000 Sure you do that!

00:20:47.000 But we're not a compassionate society. 0.77

00:20:49.000 Okay, that's such utter nonsense.

00:20:51.000 America is by far the most generous society on the face of the earth.

00:20:54.000 Americans out-donate Britain and Canada 2 to 1, nations like Italy and Germany 20 to 1, according to the Almanac of American Philanthropy.

00:21:01.000 Every single income class, except those earning less than $25,000, more than half of the people in that income class in the United States donate to charity.

00:21:08.000 That top 1% that Bernie Sanders loves to hate?

00:21:11.000 They give one-third of all charity given in the United States.

00:21:14.000 The wealthiest 1.4% of Americans are responsible for 86% of all charitable donations made at death.

00:21:21.000 More Americans give charity than vote for presidents of the United States.

00:21:25.000 As far as, are we a compassionate society?

00:21:27.000 America's growing economy, our blockbuster economy, has made the world rich.

00:21:32.000 We have sliced global extreme poverty in half in the last 25 years thanks to the American economy.

00:21:37.000 We've freed people all over the world.

00:21:39.000 We've sacrificed American lives, hundreds of thousands of American lives, to free Japan, France, Norway, Austria, Greece, Denmark, Korea, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Germany itself.

00:21:51.000 Bernie Sanders, by the way, he spent that time making friends with communists in Nicaragua.

00:21:56.000 By the way, as far as poverty in the United States, here's a few research from last year on poverty in the United States.

00:22:01.000 The U.S.

00:22:02.000 stands head and shoulders above the rest of the world.

00:22:05.000 More than half of Americans were high income by the global standard.

00:22:08.000 Another 32% were upper middle income.

00:22:10.000 In other words, almost 9 in 10 Americans had a standard of living that was above the global middle income standard.

00:22:16.000 How about the American poor?

00:22:17.000 Are they really hard off?

00:22:18.000 Are they having a hard time?

00:22:19.000 Certainly not compared to global standards, but not even according to basic standards of what you would consider super poor.

00:22:25.000 Some 96% of poor parents in the United States report their children were never hungry at any time in the prior year.

00:22:31.000 A poor child in the United States is more likely to have cable TV, a computer, a widescreen plasma TV, an Xbox, or a TiVo in their home than to be hungry.

00:22:39.000 Poor Americans have more living space in their homes than the average non-poor Swede, Frenchman, or German, according to the Heritage Foundation.

00:22:46.000 And then you heard Sanders say that our old people, they don't have savings.

00:22:49.000 One of the reasons they don't have a lot of savings is because they have Social Security.

00:22:52.000 People don't save because they think Social Security is their savings plan.

00:22:56.000 The fact is, according to Andrew Biggs and Sylvester Schreiber in the Wall Street Journal, despite a supposedly stingy social security program and ineffective retirement savings vehicles, the average U.S.

00:23:06.000 retiree has an income equal to 92% of the average American income, handily outpacing the Scandinavian countries 81%, Germany 85%, Belgium 77%, and many others.

00:23:18.000 And by the way, that's more money since our average income is actually higher than the average income in those other countries.

00:23:24.000 It's also worth noting again that Social Security eats up a huge chunk of our budget.

00:23:28.000 But if this is the play that Democrats are going to make, if this is the way that they're going to campaign from here on in, that Americans are stingy and terrible, it's no wonder that Donald Trump is going to become president tomorrow.

00:23:38.000 And Donald Trump should have an easy ride of it if this is the direction in which Democrats and the left are going to move.

00:23:43.000 Now we have to break here, but we have much more to discuss.

00:23:45.000 I want to talk about what we can expect from the incoming Trump administration.

00:23:48.000 You know, how we should treat the incoming Trump administration.

00:23:51.000 Plus, we have the mailbag coming as well.

00:23:54.000 So we'll talk about all of that.

00:23:55.000 But to do that, you have to go to dailywire.com and subscribe if you want to watch live right now.

00:23:59.000 Eight bucks a month will get you a subscription to dailywire.com.

00:24:01.000 You get an annual subscription.

00:24:03.000 You still get a free signed copy of my book, True Allegiance, my novel, True Allegiance.

00:24:07.000 We have some other big goodies coming out in the very near future, which I'm very excited to announce in the next couple of weeks.

00:24:12.000 Thank you.

The Ben Shapiro Show - January 23, 2017

Ep. 239 - Obama's Final Presser! Get Out, Dude.

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