Trump says he would like to resume the use of waterboarding, and the media goes into a frenzy over it. Ben Shapiro explains why this is actually not a bad idea, and why Americans trust Donald Trump more than the media. Plus, a look at Trump's immigration executive order, and how he's going to pay for it, and much, much more. Ben Shapiro is the host of The Ben Shapiro Show on the Fox News Channel, and is a regular contributor to the Financial Times, CNN, CBS, and other media outlets. He's also a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard and the New York Times, and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and USA Today. He is the author of several books, including "The Dark Side of Islam: A Guide to Islamic Extremism," and has a regular column in The Daily Beast, The Daily Wire, and The Daily Caller. His new book, "Jude Law," is out now, and it's out on all of the social medias, including Amazon Prime and Vimeo, if you search for "Ben Shapiro's Ben Shapiro's The Daily Mail." He also has a new podcast, "The Daily Wire," which you should definitely check out. If you haven't checked it out, you won't want to miss it! Ben's new book is out on Amazon Prime Video, which is also available in Kindle, iBook, and also on Audible, wherever else you get your eardrums can get the best listening experience. and other good listening devices. It's a must-listening devices, so you can get all the latest news and your most up-to-and-down on the best podcasting and social media tips, including the most up to date recommendations, including how to get the most information you need to be the most authentic in the best of the best in the most influential places on the internet. You won't get it all. . Thank you for listening to The Ben's newest book review of the latest in the world on the highest quality of the highest-selling books and most influential podcast on the most important podcast in the place on the web, The New York City podcast, The Dark Lord's newest podcast on everything you'll ever read about it, The Real Good, The Good, the Real Good and The Good and the worst, The Badest, The Worst, The Weirdest and the Weirdest, and so much more!
00:00:00.000Speaking with ABC News on Wednesday night, President Trump said that he would like to resume the use of waterboarding, stating that it works and that we have to fight fire with fire.
00:00:08.000But he acknowledged that he would follow the lead of CIA Director Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary James Mattis, both of whom oppose the use of waterboarding.
00:00:15.000Trump said, If they don't want to do, that's fine.
00:00:18.000If they do want to do, then I will work toward that end.
00:00:20.000I want to do everything within the bounds of what you're legally allowed to do.
00:00:27.000Pompeo has already stated that he would absolutely not comply with an order to waterboard.
00:00:31.000The media, predictably, have gone insane.
00:00:33.000How could Trump say that torture works?
00:00:36.000Well, first of all, it's actually unclear whether waterboarding is torture.
00:00:39.000Some people find it to be self-evidently torture, but as Senator Ted Cruz said during the primaries, under the law, torture is excruciating pain that is equivalent to losing organs and systems.
00:00:49.000It is vigorous interrogation that does not meet the generally recognized definition of torture.
00:00:53.000I've actually watched my friend Steven Crowder get waterboarded.
00:00:56.000It looked highly unpleasant, and Steven's an idiot and nuts for doing it, but he emerged not only unscathed, but he actually joked during the experience.
00:01:02.000Waterboarding is used regularly to train Navy SEALs.
00:01:09.000James Mitchell, a former chief CIA interrogator, wrote in the Wall Street Journal last year, quote, It is understandable that General Mattis would say he never found waterboarding useful.
00:01:17.000Because no one in the military has been authorized to waterboard a detainee.
00:01:22.000military personnel have been waterboarded as part of their training, though the services eventually abandoned the practice after finding it too effective in getting even the most hardened warrior to reveal critical information.
00:01:32.000Mitchell claims that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man behind the 9-11 attacks, a crucial source of American information about Al Qaeda, only broke because of waterboarding.
00:01:43.000Crowder, by the way, was waterboarded several times just during the session that I watched, by way of contrast.
00:01:48.000Jose Rodriguez, who once headed the CIA National Clandestine Service, has claimed that terrorist mastermind Abu Zubaydah also gave up key intelligence after being waterboarded.
00:01:59.000In the media's ardent desire to paint Donald Trump as a nutty dictator-in-waiting, they've actually made Trump more popular.
00:04:09.000Because people are surprised to hear that we do not need new laws.
00:04:11.000We will work within the existing system and framework.
00:04:35.000I'm asking all of you to enforce the laws of the United States of America.
00:04:42.000They will be enforced and enforced strongly.
00:04:45.000We are going to restore the rule of law in the United States.
00:04:52.000A nation without borders is not a nation.
00:04:56.000Beginning today, the United States of America gets back control of its borders, gets back its borders.
00:05:07.000You guys are about to be very, very busy doing your job the way you want to do them.
00:05:14.000Okay, and this is the kind of rhetoric that I think is actually useful with regard to border enforcement.
00:05:19.000So, you know, good for Trump on all of this.
00:05:21.000Now, there are a couple of questions about the executive orders themselves.
00:05:24.000First question is why he's using executive orders and not just passing a law with Congress.
00:05:29.000There is going to have to be some sort of congressional appropriation to build the wall.
00:05:32.000It's going to cost something like $15 billion to build the wall.
00:05:35.000The left, of course, is up in arms about all of this.
00:05:38.000They're saying that they're very upset about the spending, which is ridiculous since the left has never been upset about spending on anything ever.
00:05:44.000In fact, I'm old enough to remember when the left liked infrastructure spending.
00:05:48.000This is an infrastructure spending bill.
00:05:50.000It'd just be an infrastructure spending bill to build a physical barrier with Mexico.
00:05:55.000Now, the physical barrier, by the way, is not just designed to keep out quote-unquote Mexicans, because the fact is that right now we're neutral in terms of the number of Mexicans coming in and leaving in the United States via illegal immigration.
00:06:06.000We've actually had a net decline in the number of Mexican illegal immigrants over the past few years, but what Mexico really right now is a giant thoroughfare for people who are coming from South America
00:07:35.000Now, as far as the executive order itself, this would be a perfectly legal executive order because it exists within the confines of laws that have already been passed by Congress.
00:07:43.000In 2006, Congress said that they wanted to build a border fence.
00:07:48.000So, Trump is not doing anything that is outside the confines of legislation that he is now using the legislation in order to push the policy.
00:07:57.000That's what an executive order is supposed to do.
00:07:59.000The reason that I opposed Barack Obama's executive orders is because many of them just rewrote the law plainly, right?
00:08:04.000He just went in and rewrote Obamacare, for example.
00:08:06.000Or he went in and he rewrote immigration law with regard to DACA and DAPA.
00:08:11.000Trump is saying, and he said it, as you saw at DHS, at Homeland Security, he said clearly,
00:08:17.000This is the existing law, we're acting within the existing law, and that's exactly right.
00:08:21.000So, what exactly is in this executive order?
00:08:23.000So, in this executive order he talks about broadening enforcement priorities as well.
00:08:28.000So it used to be that Barack Obama only wanted to police crimes that were committed other than crossing the border illegally.
00:08:34.000Section 5C of this executive order now grants the Secretary of Homeland Security power to prioritize for removal those who have committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense.
00:08:45.000It's just if you cross the border illegally, and we have reason to believe you cross the border illegally, you've committed acts that constitute a chargeable offense, you cross the border illegally, we can now enforce the law against you.
00:08:56.000This also takes priority to false use of a social security number.
00:09:01.000We're taking public benefits illegally.
00:09:03.000The order also grants the Secretary of Homeland Security the ability to hire 10,000 additional law enforcement officers.
00:09:15.000The executive order allows states to help police immigration.
00:09:18.000So you remember, the Obama administration sued the state of Arizona because the state of Arizona had the temerity to try and enforce immigration law.
00:09:26.000And Barack Obama then tried to sue them for that.
00:09:29.000Trump is saying now that he wants states to be allowed to do that, that they should be allowed to help perform the functions of immigration officers in relation to investigation, apprehension, detention of aliens in the United States, so he's not banning states from actually helping enforce federal law.
00:09:44.000This also kills funding to sanctuary cities.
00:09:45.000That's a little bit of a complicated question, because the question is what strings you can attach to funding to particular cities or states.
00:09:52.000It's actually a complex constitutional question,
00:09:54.000Can you just withdraw funding from every program in San Francisco because you don't like what they're doing with illegal immigrants?
00:10:02.000You actually have to find the funding that is connected to immigration enforcement in San Francisco and then cut off that funding.
00:10:07.000There has to be some sort of rational relation between the grants the federal government is giving to a city or a state and the acts that the city or state is doing constitutionally, just in terms of Supreme Court jurisprudence,
00:10:20.000The executive order also creates a public shaming capacity for the feds so every week they're going to make a public list of criminal actions committed by illegal aliens and any jurisdiction that ignored or failed to otherwise honor federal law.
00:10:33.000Fifth, this is going to restore the Secure Communities Program.
00:10:36.000So originally the Obama administration had a program that allowed the feds to check immigration databases to see local offenders who were here illegally.
00:10:54.000He's saying that he wants to make foreign negotiations contingent on accepting repatriated illegal immigrants.
00:10:58.000So, if Poland has an illegal immigrant and they don't want to accept that illegal immigrant back, Trump's saying, I'm not going to negotiate with Poland, I'm going to tell the Secretary of State not to hold negotiations with countries that don't accept back the illegal immigrants that are coming over here.
00:11:12.000And finally, he wants to make data more transparent.
00:11:14.000So right now, one of the big problems with illegal immigration
00:11:17.000Ben Coulter points this out in her book about illegal immigration, which is actually a very interesting book.
00:11:23.000It's not in Trump We Trust, which is not a particularly interesting book.
00:11:31.000Her book about illegal immigration, which is really interesting.
00:11:34.000She points out that the data on illegal immigration and crime among illegal immigrants is really incredibly weak, and this would make that data more transparent now.
00:11:42.000The Secretary of Homeland Security and Attorney General can collect data on immigration status of all aliens incarcerated in federal prisons as well as federal pretrial detainees and all convicted aliens in state and local prisons.
00:13:04.000I've been saying for literally years that Republicans ought to smack the media when the media does something wrong.
00:13:09.000I don't like it when they smack the media when the media actually is telling the truth, and we'll get to that in a second, but I like when they smack the media for doing things that are wrong.
00:13:16.000So, the media for years has ignored the March for Life in Washington, D.C.
00:13:20.000The March for Life routinely means hundreds of thousands of people marching in the streets of Washington, D.C.
00:13:26.000in the middle of dead winter in order to march in favor of legislation that would restrict abortions and the killing of the unborn.
00:13:49.000Could you hear them from the White House?
00:13:50.000No, I couldn't hear them, but the crowds were large, but you're going to have a large crowd on Friday, too, which is mostly pro-life people.
00:13:57.000You're going to have a lot of people coming on Friday.
00:13:59.000And I will say this, and I didn't realize this, but I was told, you will have a very large crowd of people.
00:16:09.000Okay, so I have no problem with anything that Trump just said there.
00:16:12.000In fact, as we spoke about a little bit earlier on the program, the fact is that there are a lot of people in the intelligence community who disagree with Mattis.
00:16:19.000Mattis doesn't have a lot of experience with waterboarding since he was at Department of Defense.
00:16:35.000I wish that every day we're good Trump, nothing but good Trump.
00:16:38.000And I will say that I think 75% of the stuff he's done is good, I think 25% of the stuff he's done is bad, I think 80% of the stuff he says is silly, and I think 20% is good.
00:16:46.000So if you just pay attention to what he does, he's doing a lot of really good stuff.
00:16:49.000If you pay attention to what he says... Okay, so.
00:16:54.000So, on Twitter, he has decided that he can't just say, we're building the wall and I'm keeping my promise.
00:17:00.000Instead, he feels the necessity to smack around Mexico a little bit more.
00:17:05.000has a $60 billion trade deficit with Mexico.
00:17:08.000It has been a one-sided deal from the beginning of NAFTA with massive numbers of jobs and companies lost.
00:17:12.000If Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting.
00:17:17.000So, in other words, he's now connecting NAFTA, which he hates, with the wall, and he's saying that if you're not going to pay for the wall, then I'm going to cave in and I'm going to destroy NAFTA.
00:18:27.000It means that you're engaged in voluntary trade.
00:18:29.000The supposed trade deficit with Mexico just means that we're buying lots of product from Mexico and that a lot of the money that we're investing in Mexico is coming back to us in the form of capital surplus.
00:18:42.000You can't spend American dollars in Mexico, and so they're going to have to use those dollars someplace.
00:18:46.000The big problem that we have with regard to trade deficits is not the trade deficit itself, it's that the government keeps raising debt and raising debt by selling bonds.
00:18:54.000So what happens is that we end up selling bonds.
00:18:55.000So what happens is that there's a trade deficit with Mexico.
00:18:59.000Instead of taking that surplus of dollars and investing in American businesses, which is normally what happens, instead of doing that, they're taking those dollars and they're buying U.S.
00:19:13.000As far as the idea that NAFTA has made us poorer, that's absolute nonsense.
00:19:16.000The fact is that NAFTA has made us significantly richer because all of the jobs that fled to Mexico, all of those and more would have fled to China.
00:19:23.000The reason that there's this regional North American trade bloc in which people invest is because you can make a car partially in Mexico,
00:19:30.000Ship that same car up to Jackson Mississippi and then you can take that car and sell it at a warehouse in California.
00:19:41.000The point is that we have a physically contiguous territory with Mexico.
00:19:46.000So, if you're a car manufacturer, you'd prefer to be able to find cheap labor on the continent.
00:19:52.000It cuts down on shipping costs, it allows you to actually put factories that are slightly more expensive in the United States.
00:19:57.000If they had to produce all this stuff in China, instead of building another factory in the United States and shipping it between Mexico and the United States, instead of doing that, they would build the stuff in China, ship it to Korea, and then maybe ship it out to the United States.
00:20:08.000You actually create jobs because of all of this, even in the manufacturing sector that wouldn't otherwise exist.
00:20:13.000It's actually really short-sighted economically to look at NAFTA this way.
00:20:17.000There hasn't been this giant sucking sound taking jobs that would have stayed in America except for NAFTA.
00:20:22.000Those jobs were leaving anyway because they were very expensive jobs.
00:20:25.000They're just going to Mexico because Mexico is nearest to the United States.
00:20:29.000Plus, if Donald Trump actually wants to cut down on illegal immigration, the worst way to cut down on illegal immigration, it turns out, is to destroy the economy of our southern neighbor.
00:20:38.000If you want an unstable Mexico, like even more unstable than it is now, if you want Mexico completely unstable with a crappy economy, and you think that's going to have no impact on the number of people rushing to get through the border, you're out of your mind.
00:20:49.000It'll take years to build this thing, by the way.
00:20:51.000So, it's not like tomorrow the border is secure.
00:21:32.000So, we'll do the live mailbag in just a few minutes here.
00:21:35.000So you can go over to Daily Wire, subscribe right now, continue watching the episode, and within minutes you could be asking your question to me and making your life significantly better in every conceivable way.
00:21:45.000So go to dailywire.com right now and subscribe, or you can listen later at iTunes and SoundCloud.
00:21:50.000Make sure you subscribe at iTunes, you can leave a review at iTunes as well, we always appreciate that.
00:21:55.000You are listening to the number one conservative podcast in the United States.