The Ben Shapiro Show - Ep. 246 - Promise Kept: Trump Picks Gorsuch!

The New York Times calls Neil Gorsuch a "stolen" Supreme Court seat. Ben Shapiro explains why the Times is wrong, and why Donald Trump's pick of Neil Gorsuch is an excellent one. Plus, tips on how to make the most out of your time with Blue Apron's easy-to-prepare meals. Ben Shapiro is the host of the conservative podcast "The Weekly Standard" and host of "The Ben Shapiro Show" on Fox News Radio. He's also a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard and has written for The Daily Wire and The Daily Caller, and is a regular contributor to Rolling Stone and The Huffington Post. His latest book, "The Dark Side of Politics," is out now, and it's available for pre-order on Amazon Prime and Vimeo worldwide. Click here to buy a copy of the book for just $19.99. Thanks for listening and share it with your friends! You can also join our FB group, and use the hashtag on that hashtag , and find Ben on Insta: if you re a fan of the show, . to help spread the word about it. . And don t forget to rate, review, and subscribe to Ben Shapiro's new show on Apple Podcasts! and leave us your thoughts on the show! And don't forget to tell us what you think of it! in the comments section below! Thank you for listening, Ben and Ben! ! Timestamps: 5 stars is a star! 6 stars is much appreciated! 7 stars! 9 stars is more than you could count! 10 stars is enough! 11 stars is not enough? 12 stars is too much? 13 stars is better than a star? 15 stars is good enough for me? 14 stars is really enough, right? 16 thanks, Ben? 17? 18 stars is great? 19 stars is even better than you can help me make it better than that? 21st wheeling it out there? 22 more than I can be good to go? 25 stars is pretty good to help me do it? 20 more stars are more than enough, thank me out there?? 21 more? 26 stars are better than I could count me out? 27 more like that than you re not enough, can I help me help me

00:00:00.000 On Wednesday, the New York Times issued an editorial filled with impotent rage and unexplored angst over President Trump.

00:00:07.000 Supreme Court nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

00:00:10.000 They called Gorsuch's seat a stolen seat since Republicans refused to grant Democrats an up-or-down vote on Judge Merrick Garland, President Obama's nominee to fill Antonin Scalia's seat.

00:00:19.000 Instead of recognizing that the Constitution gives the Senate the ability to determine whether to vote on a given candidate or not, The Times suggested that Senate Republicans, quote, took an empty Supreme Court seat hostage.

00:00:30.000 Inaccurate, since usually there's a ransom demand with a hostage, and Republicans didn't have one.

00:00:34.000 Then, the Times characterized Gorsuch, a man unanimously approved for the Tenth Circuit by a Senate that included Barack Obama and Joe Biden, as extreme.

00:00:42.000 Of course.

00:00:43.000 Here's the New York Times, quote, President Obama had a great opportunity to repair some of that damage by nominating a moderate candidate for the vacancy, which was created when Justice Antonin Scalia died last February.

00:00:54.000 Instead, he chose Neil Gorsuch, a very conservative judge from the Federal Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

00:00:59.000 Whose jurisprudence and writing style are often compared to those of Scalia.

00:01:03.000 You mean Republicans appointed someone like Scalia to fill his seat?

00:01:05.000 What horror!

00:01:06.000 The Times acknowledged that normally they'd have no leg to stand on with regard to complaining about Gorsuch.

00:01:11.000 But these, they say, are not normal times.

00:01:13.000 The destructive lesson Senate Republicans taught is that obstruction pays off.

00:01:17.000 Yes, it does.

00:01:18.000 That's part of the constitutional system.

00:01:20.000 And that's not actually a problem.

00:01:22.000 The give and take, the grind and groan of politics, that's how the system is supposed to work.

00:01:25.000 If Democrats don't like the outcome, tough!

00:01:28.000 The Times is actually upset that the Supreme Court may no longer be a super legislature of leftists rewriting the Constitution to fit leftist ends.

00:01:35.000 Here's their real complaint, quote,

00:01:56.000 Or maybe Democrats could stop passing unconstitutional laws and demanding that the Supreme Court green light them. 0.95

00:02:01.000 But that would be asking Democrats to, you know, stop being Democrats. 0.60

00:02:04.000 Perhaps the most foolish suggestion from the Times is the notion that Trump should actually govern like Hillary Clinton after beating her.

00:02:09.000 Why? 0.78

00:02:10.000 Because he refuses to, quote, acknowledge his historic unpopularity and his nearly three million vote loss to Hillary Clinton.

00:02:16.000 A wiser president faced with such circumstances would govern with humility and respect for the views of all Americans, unquote.

00:02:23.000 If the situation were reversed, does anyone think the Times would be calling for Hillary to nominate a moderate?

00:02:28.000 Or would they be pushing for a gung-ho revision of the Constitution by judicial fiat, proclaiming a win is a win?

00:02:34.000 Look, Trump promised a textualist for the court.

00:02:36.000 He won.

00:02:36.000 He fulfilled that promise.

00:02:37.000 The Senate is doing its job.

00:02:39.000 The Times is doing its job, too, whining endlessly in incoherent fashion about losing.

00:02:43.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:02:44.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:02:51.000 Yes, what you're seeing is reality.

00:02:54.000 That's right.

00:02:54.000 See, a bet is a bet.

00:02:55.000 And when I make bets with cultural correspondent Michael Knowles about whether Donald Trump is actually going to appoint a conservative to the court, and then I lose, I fulfill my end of the bet.

00:03:05.000 Now, all I ask is that if I end up being right when Trump does bad things, then other people recognize that's true.

00:03:12.000 I am honest.

00:03:13.000 I was wrong.

00:03:14.000 I was totally wrong about this.

00:03:15.000 I said there was zero chance that Trump would nominate a textualist to the court because he didn't really care about the court, and also because Mitch McConnell was not going to invoke the nuclear option.

00:03:23.000 We'll see about McConnell.

00:03:24.000 But I have never been happier to be wrong.

00:03:26.000 Donald Trump's pick of Neil Gorsuch is an excellent, excellent pick.

00:03:29.000 Good for Donald Trump for proving me wrong.

00:03:31.000 I hope he continues to do so.

00:03:32.000 We'll get to all that in a second.

00:03:34.000 First, we have to say thank you to our sponsors today over at Blue Apron.

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00:05:06.000 Okay, so, the big news of the day, of course, is that Donald Trump fulfills his promise.

00:05:10.000 And as I said, and I will repeat, I got it wrong.

00:05:13.000 And I am very, very happy that I got it wrong.

00:05:15.000 I said right after Trump was elected that I would be more than overjoyed if Trump would prove me wrong on things.

00:05:23.000 And this is something he proved me wrong about.

00:05:24.000 He went out, then he picked an actual textualist.

00:05:28.000 And so, in honor of Michael Mulls defeating me in a bet, instead of firing him, which I actually do technically have the power to do, I decided to fulfill my end of the bet.

00:05:36.000 Also, I know that he was celebrating a Donald Trump executive order that apparently came down last night.

00:05:42.000 Yeah.

00:05:46.000 So I'm not going to pay up on all our bets.

00:05:49.000 So he can just forget about that.

00:05:51.000 That's not going to happen.

00:05:53.000 For those who are listening to this later, it's Donald Trump signing an executive order that says I'm going to pay Michael Knowles $800 or $400.

00:06:01.000 We're good.

00:06:22.000 And so, Hardiman has no record, there's no long-standing kind of judicial philosophy you can attribute to Hardiman, and Hardiman is recommended by Trump's sister.

00:06:31.000 So, all of the signs therefore point to Hardiman.

00:06:34.000 Instead, he picks Gorsuch.

00:06:36.000 Very, very smart move.

00:06:37.000 Smart move for a number of reasons.

00:06:39.000 Politically, it's very smart because it shores up his base.

00:06:41.000 You know, Trump's had a chaotic first 10 days, to say the least, and this shores up his base.

00:06:45.000 I would not be surprised if in the next couple of weeks, Donald Trump starts to push something like a trillion dollar infrastructure package saying, look, I gave you your judge, now give me my infrastructure package.

00:06:54.000 That would be the smart political move if he wants to triangulate.

00:06:57.000 So he's pointing that out now.

00:06:58.000 But you got to be overjoyed if you're a conservative about Judge Gorsuch.

00:07:04.000 I want to get one other thing out of the way here, and that is everybody is already breaking out the chisels for Rushmore for Trump because of all of this.

00:07:09.000 Listen, a great thing is a great thing.

00:07:11.000 I'm wearing the frickin' hat.

00:07:12.000 What do you want from me?

00:07:13.000 Okay?

00:07:14.000 It's terrific.

00:07:15.000 You know, good things happen, and that's fantastic.

00:07:17.000 And good for Trump, again, for the ninth time already in the first four minutes of the program.

00:07:22.000 I was wrong about this.

00:07:23.000 So good for Donald Trump.

00:07:24.000 Now, there's a player on the Colorado Rockies last year.

00:07:27.000 His name is Trevor Story.

00:07:28.000 In the first three games, he had home runs.

00:07:30.000 Did he finish with 162 home runs?

00:07:32.000 Okay, this is one of the mistakes people make in evaluating sports.

00:07:35.000 Somebody goes on a hot streak and the idea is they're never going to miss again.

00:07:39.000 Listen, I'm happy to evaluate Donald Trump in two years and determine whether his presidency is a success or a failure.

00:07:44.000 In the first ten days, so far, it's a wild success.

00:07:47.000 Obviously.

00:07:48.000 Okay, so, we'll determine in two years whether it is an overall success or failure.

00:07:51.000 At that point,

00:07:52.000 Then you will get an ultimate I was wrong from me if I was wrong.

00:07:55.000 But I'm not going to say that yet because we're 10 days in for God's sake, okay?

00:07:58.000 Trevor's story is not Babe Ruth.

00:08:00.000 He finished the season with 27 home runs.

00:08:02.000 He did not finish with 162 home runs.

00:08:04.000 But when a good thing happens, a good thing happens.

00:08:06.000 Okay, so here's Donald.

00:08:08.000 So Donald Trump does, leading up to this,

00:08:11.000 A lot of people think he is going to do, which is he brings in Hardeman and then he brings in Gorsuch, and then they think there's going to be an actual rose ceremony.

00:08:18.000 And so the media is all abuzz with this.

00:08:20.000 And then it turns out that Trump actually does something great, not just picking Gorsuch, doing it in a dignified way.

00:08:25.000 So he has the ceremony last night where he hands the rose to Gorsuch, basically.

00:08:29.000 But it's really dignified.

00:08:30.000 It's really low key.

00:08:31.000 He does it professionally.

00:08:32.000 Here's Donald Trump introducing Judge Gorsuch.

00:08:35.000 When Justice Scalia passed away suddenly last February, I made a promise to the American people.

00:08:42.000 If I were elected President, I would find the very best judge in the country for the Supreme Court.

00:08:51.000 I promised to select someone who respects our laws and is representative of our Constitution, and who loves our Constitution, and someone who will interpret them as written.

00:09:06.000 Okay, I don't know who's writing this stuff for him, but it's great.

00:09:08.000 Okay, this is all terrific, and again, do I think that Trump deeply cares about this stuff?

00:09:12.000 No, but I don't care whether he cares about this stuff, since all I care about is the result, right?

00:09:15.000 I don't care about what his thinking process is.

00:09:17.000 The result is great, and the result is Judge Gorsuch.

00:09:20.000 So Gorsuch then comes to the stage, and here's what Gorsuch has to say about the Constitution.

00:09:26.000 Standing here, in a house of history, and acutely aware of my own imperfections,

00:09:32.000 I pledge that if I am confirmed, I will do all my powers permit to be a faithful servant of the Constitution and laws of this great country.

00:09:41.000 Okay, and then he continues along those lines by saying that he talks about Justice Scalia, who he was friends with.

00:09:45.000 He said that he cried when Scalia died.

00:09:47.000 Here's what he said about Justice Scalia.

00:09:49.000 The towering judges that have served in this particular seat of the Supreme Court, including Antonin Scalia and Robert Jackson, are much in my mind at this moment.

00:10:00.000 Justice Scalia was a lion of the law.

00:10:20.000 I like Gorsuch.

00:10:21.000 I think Gorsuch is going to be very much like Alito.

00:10:23.000 He'll actually be to the right of Alito.

00:10:25.000 And the reason I say this is because, from what we can tell, from what we can tell based on the best available evidence, this is a guy who actually has a coherent judicial philosophy.

00:10:33.000 And his judicial philosophy is that you ought to read the Constitution as it was meant, when it was written.

00:10:39.000 That's his philosophy, which is Scalia's philosophy as well.

00:10:43.000 He's great on a lot of issues.

00:10:45.000 He ruled that Obamacare could not stamp on the Little Sisters of the Poor, for example.

00:10:49.000 He was on the appeals court that ruled that.

00:10:52.000 Here's what he wrote in that case.

00:10:54.000 All of us face the problem of complicity.

00:10:56.000 All of us must answer for ourselves whether and to what degree we are willing to be involved in the wrongdoing of others.

00:11:01.000 For some, religion provides an essential source of guidance both about what constitutes wrongful conduct and the degree to which those who assist others in committing wrongful conduct themselves bear moral culpability.

00:11:11.000 This statute violates their faith, representing a degree of complicity their religion disallows.

00:11:16.000 And here's what he wrote in 2005 at National Review.

00:11:31.000 American liberals have become addicted to the courtroom, relying on judges and lawyers rather than elected leaders in the ballot box as the primary means of affecting their social agenda on everything from gay marriage to assisted suicide to the use of vouchers for private school education.

00:11:45.000 This overweening addiction to the courtroom as the place to debate social policy is bad for the country and bad for the judiciary.

00:11:52.000 Gorsuch has said,

00:11:53.000 I don't

00:12:15.000 That's a pretty hard slap in that lecture at Justice Roberts, who rewrote the law in Obamacare in order to achieve a result that he thought was best.

00:12:36.000 In one area, actually, Gorsuch is better than Scalia.

00:12:38.000 He's not as good a writer as Scalia, because Scalia is one of the great judicial writers of all time, but in one area he's better, and that's what they call Chevron deference.

00:12:44.000 So Chevron deference, there's a case from 1984, I believe, it's called Chevron, and the basic case was that there was an environmental regulation that was interpreted by the EPA in a certain way, and people sued, and they said the EPA is interpreting this law wrong, and the EPA judged that those people were wrong, so these people went to court and they sued the EPA.

00:13:03.000 And the EPA said, listen, we're the ones tasked with interpreting the law.

00:13:07.000 Our interpretation is reasonable.

00:13:09.000 You don't get to review our interpretation of the law because our interpretation is reasonable.

00:13:13.000 And the court said, okay.

00:13:15.000 Gorsuch does something different.

00:13:16.000 He says, no, that allows for impermissible abdication of duty by Congress.

00:13:20.000 Because if Congress were to send a law to the EPA saying, we want you to interpret all environmental policy, that doesn't now mean that the EPA gets to be its own legislature.

00:13:28.000 It's Congress's job to pass laws, it's the executive's branch to implement them, if the executive branch implements them in ways that are not

00:13:36.000 According to what a reasonable definition of the statute would be, then the judiciary can overrule them.

00:13:43.000 If they don't pick the most reasonable interpretation, the judiciary can overrule them.

00:13:47.000 In 2016, he said, quote, that the Chevron rule, excuse me,

00:13:53.000 He's also a federalist.

00:13:54.000 He's a big fan of states' rights.

00:13:56.000 So, Gorsuch is a terrific pick.

00:13:57.000 I don't see any particular red flags for Gorsuch.

00:14:15.000 As opposed to a lot of the other judges who have been named.

00:14:17.000 Even Pryor had some red flags.

00:14:18.000 I think Gorsuch has a cleaner record.

00:14:20.000 But we'll see.

00:14:21.000 In the hearings, maybe the red flag will crop up.

00:14:23.000 But I don't see anything wrong with Gorsuch.

00:14:24.000 Good for Donald Trump.

00:14:25.000 Good for Donald Trump.

00:14:26.000 Good for Donald Trump.

00:14:27.000 This is a home run pick for Donald Trump.

00:14:29.000 I'm not sure that he could have done any better.

00:14:32.000 And again, he comes to conclusions, Gorsuch does, based on the law, not based on what he would want the law to be.

00:14:37.000 Which sometimes means that conservatives aren't going to like the outcome.

00:14:40.000 But that's not what the Supreme Court is for.

00:14:41.000 The Supreme Court is not just to get a conservative outcome, it's to get a constitutional outcome.

00:14:46.000 He voted the right way on Hobby Lobby.

00:14:49.000 Most important, for Trump's purposes, he was easily confirmed in 2006, he was confirmed unanimously, they didn't even take a roll call vote, they took a voice vote on Gorsuch, which means Obama voted for him, Biden voted for him, they all voted for him.

00:15:02.000 Okay, we have to pause and say thank you to another one of our advertisers.

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00:16:24.000 So, Republicans, naturally, are responding to all of this with great excitement, as well they should.

00:16:31.000 So, Ted Cruz comes out, he says Neil Gorsuch is a homerun.

00:16:35.000 He's absolutely right.

00:16:38.000 And tonight, President Trump honored that commitment.

00:16:40.000 He followed through on the commitment he made.

00:16:43.000 I think Judge Gorsuch is a home run.

00:16:46.000 He has a decade of proven experience on the Court of Appeals, being faithful to the Constitution, following the law, protecting the Bill of Rights and our fundamental liberties.

00:16:57.000 And I think that record

00:16:58.000 will yield a swift confirmation in the United States Senate.

00:17:02.000 And we'll find out about the swift confirmation, but to talk about what the Democrats are going to do about this, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com right now and subscribe.

00:17:08.000 And if you want to watch the rest of this episode with me being humiliated by wearing the MAGA hat, then you're going to have to go over and subscribe right now.

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00:17:27.000 Thank you.

The Ben Shapiro Show - February 03, 2017

Ep. 246 - Promise Kept: Trump Picks Gorsuch!

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