Trump is a hero to the right, and a villain to the left. That s why the media loves him so much, and why it s so hard to figure out if he s a conservative or not a conservative. In this episode, I explain why Trump is a monster to the media, and how the media's hatred of him is actually a reflection of the fact that they don t give him the time of day, and don t care enough to give him a chance to shine, and that s why they care so much about what he says and how he says it, because they care too much about who he thinks he is and what he thinks they think he thinks about him and why they think that he s not a good enough or bad enough man to be president. The enemy of your enemy isn t always your enemy. Sometimes your enemy is your enemy, and sometimes he s your friend. - Robert Downey journo, John McCain, on CNN's Meet the Press with Chuck Todd and Chris Wallace, on the importance of identity politics and identity politics, and the role identity politics plays in the media s hatred of Donald Trump and the Trump administration, and what it means to be a conservative and a hero. If you don t like Donald Trump, you re in for a special episode of The New York Times article on the next episode of the new season of New York Magazine's Hard Knocks with John Rocha, coming soon, on Hard Knucklehead, on Monday, March 5th, at 7/23rd, at 9/28th at The FiveThirtyEight, at 8/30th at the New York, and check out the linktr.ee/TheNew York Times/The FiveThirtyeight on the right and the New Republic. . and The New Republic's new podcast on the left, The Weekly Standard's new book on Trump's newest podcast, "Trump's New York Review of Trump's Most Powerful Person on the Right and the Left's Most Influential Person of the Week, by John McCain's new novel, "The White House Correspondent's Notebook." by Tom Connolly. by by David Axelrod, on his new book, . . by Michael Bloomberg, by John Ralderman, and , and by Mark Cuban, is in the new book "Trump s Most Powerful Man in America's Most Effective Person in the World, and .
00:00:00.000In November, students at a historically black university in New Orleans led a massive protest against a speaker heavily supportive of Donald Trump.
00:00:07.000Socially engaged Dillard University students, the group organizing against the speaker, wrote an open letter.
00:00:11.000They said, quote, His presence on our campus is not welcome and overtly subjects the entire student body to safety risks and social ridicule.
00:00:47.000It was David Duke, who also said at the same event, quote, If you did not answer that the story provided too little information for you to judge, it's time for you to check your biases.
00:01:03.000Did you decide that the speaker was on the right because the protesters were on the left?
00:01:07.000Did you decide the Speaker had something valuable to say if he ticked off the left enough?
00:01:48.000During the 2016 primaries, when the media attacked Donald Trump incessantly, driving Republicans into his outstretched arms, the media's obvious hatred for Trump was one of the chief arguments for Trump from his advocates.
00:01:58.000They said, if, as his detractors claimed, he wasn't conservative, why would the leftist media hate him so much?
00:02:04.000Now, to be fair, after Mitt Romney was bludgeoned at the hands of the media, there was at least a shred of justification for this logic.
00:02:09.000Romney wasn't a hardcore conservative.
00:02:26.000It was a combination of factors, including the fact Trump was amazing press, and the press thought Trump was really weak.
00:02:31.000More honest leftist commentators openly preferred Trump to more conservative candidates like Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, but Trump's war with the media carried him to the nomination, and from there to the presidency.
00:02:40.000In fact, Trump continues to live off of this backward logic.
00:02:43.000His press conference last week, it wasn't a ballet of informational expertise and policy knowledge, nor was it a brilliant recasting of his policy successes.
00:02:51.000It was a blunderbuss attack on the media, and it was extremely entertaining, it was occasionally daft, it was occasionally ridiculous, but a lot of people on the right immediately concluded it was the most successful press conference in the history of the world.
00:03:01.000Not because it was actually successful with Americans, there was not a lot of evidence of that, but because it was successfully assaulting the media who had it coming.
00:03:08.000Never mind if Trump lied to the media, the media were angry, which meant it worked.
00:03:11.000Watching Chuck Todd fulminate, and Chris Wallace rage, and Don Lemon bemusedly tut-tut, it scratched conservatives where they itch, and it made Trump a hero.
00:03:20.000None of which is to argue that Trump is lefty, or that conservatives are wrong to support a lot of his policies.
00:03:24.000We'll talk about his policies in a second.
00:03:26.000But if your standard of right and wrong is whether the left hates it, you're making a category error.
00:03:31.000It is not good enough to just be opposed by the left.
00:03:35.000We must ask what someone is fighting against, not merely whom.
00:03:39.000We must ask what tools they're using, and we must insist they use the truth.
00:03:43.000Ideas and values matter more than identity, but not anymore.
00:03:46.000The left's identity politics focuses on race and ethnicity and sexual identity, aspects of identity that place you somewhere in the hierarchy of intersectionality.
00:03:55.000The right's identity politics comes with a label, enemy of the left.
00:03:58.000So long as you're wearing that button, you're presumptively on our side and you're nearly bulletproof.
00:04:04.000Until we jump the wrong way because we substituted political laziness for a philosophy.
00:04:09.000Until we embrace somebody nasty because the other side hated him or her and stopped caring about the truth so long as the other side is triggered.
00:04:25.000Okay, so I want to talk a lot more about sort of this enemy of my enemy is my friend routine that we're getting from a lot of folks on the right, why that isn't true, and how we can actually identify enemies.
00:04:33.000In a second, we're also going to talk about Donald Trump's policies.
00:04:36.000He's rolled out a bunch of policy that's actually pretty good, and I want to talk about a lot of the policy that he's been rolling out.
00:04:42.000But first, we have to say thank you to our sponsors over at Legacy Box.
00:04:44.000So, I've been saying for a long time that one of the most important things that you can do in your life is preserve your memories, because
00:04:56.000And what Legacy Box does, it makes sure that you can preserve all those old memories.
00:04:59.000So you've got a big box of moldering film in your basement, or in your attic, in your garage.
00:05:05.000Instead of it just sitting there, you take all that stuff, you pack it up, you ship it off to Legacy Box, and they immediately transfer it.
00:05:15.000It's a simple, affordable way to get your recorded moments digitally preserved on DVD or thumb drive.
00:05:21.000250,000 families have used them, including my own parents.
00:05:24.000For a limited time, go to Legacybox.com slash Ben.
00:05:27.000You get 40% off your order, which is a pretty major discount.
00:05:30.00040% off your order when you go to Legacybox.com slash Ben.
00:05:34.000Use the slash Ben so they know that we sent you.
00:05:36.000And again, I think that this is about the best use of your money that there is because, you know,
00:05:40.000Once those memories are gone, they're gone.
00:05:41.000And if something happens, if your basement floods, if there's a fire, you don't want to be in a position where you lose all those memories just because they were all packed in a box somewhere in the back of the garage and you forgot about it.
00:05:50.000Much better to have them handy on your computer, on a thumb drive, on a DVD.
00:06:29.000So, that whole Mike Flynn debacle with the National Security Advisor, that ended up actually working out pretty well for the country because Mike Flynn is out and the guy who replaced him is a guy named H.R.
00:06:42.000I've read his book, Dereliction of Duty.
00:06:44.000I read it, must have been now, seven, eight years ago, because there was a point when I think the Army, the War College, they posted online their recommended reading list.
00:06:51.000I read everything on the recommended reading list, and one of those books was H.R.
00:06:54.000McMaster's book on the Vietnam War called Dereliction of Duty, about the strategy that came out of the JFK and LBJ administrations with regard to the Vietnam War, why the strategy was flawed, and why the military should have stood up
00:07:25.000Second of all, his army resume is really, really extensive.
00:07:29.000His previous command assignments included the Eagle Troop, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Germany, and then Southwest Asia during the First Gulf War.
00:07:36.000He was a commander during Afghanistan, he was a commander during Iraq.
00:07:41.000He wrote Dereliction of Duty, which as I say is a really good book.
00:07:43.000You should go to Amazon right now and pick it up.
00:07:47.000He's a great writer and he's a really good thinker.
00:07:49.000He was critical of both how Afghanistan and Iraq were planned.
00:07:52.000So, what he wrote in Survival Magazine, he wrote, gaps between prior visions of future warfare and the nature of the eventual wars themselves complicated efforts to adapt strategy over time.
00:08:02.000Minimalist linear plans in place at the outset of both wars were disconnected from the ambition of broader policy objectives and the complexity of the operating environment.
00:08:10.000Indeed, recent war plans have at times been essentially narcissistic, failing to account for interactions with determined enemies and other complicating variables.
00:08:18.000He was saying in real time, our strategy is not going to meet your objectives.
00:08:21.000If you want a long-term occupation, this ain't going to work.
00:08:24.000He used his own strategy in a place called Tal Afar in Iraq, and George W. Bush called it a model of a successful strategy.
00:08:31.000He figured that Iraq could not build its own institutions, political or military, until safety was secured, so he devised his own plan in which he and his troops cleared the towns of insurgents and formed alliances, built trust with the local sheikhs and tribal leaders, and the campaign worked for a while, but only because McMaster flooded the area, right?
00:08:47.000He actually did what he had suggested in Dereliction of Duty.
00:08:49.000He flooded the area, and that was what they called the Clear Hold Build strategy.
00:08:53.000Petraeus used McMaster as sort of his brain in devising his strategy with regard to Iraq.
00:08:59.000He was not selected for a Brigadier General promotion before he finally received it in 2014.
00:09:04.000One of the reasons for that is because there are a bunch of retired generals who said that he was upending the system too much.
00:09:13.000He's about the best guy you could have in this particular slot.
00:09:16.000And he has also, in short, he says that he would not come in, he said that he would not join, basically, unless he was guaranteed the picking of his own staff.
00:09:29.000So this was actually a big issue as Flynn left, was Trump wanted to maintain Flynn's staff, and McMaster came in and said, listen, you want me?
00:09:35.000You're going to have to let me pick my own guys, which is great.
00:09:37.000You want people like McMaster surrounding himself with really good people and giving Donald Trump really good advice.
00:09:42.000So whether Trump takes that advice, we'll find out.
00:09:44.000But good for Donald Trump for picking McMaster.
00:09:48.000Other things that are good that Donald Trump is doing.
00:09:49.000So, he's getting a lot of flack today because the White House has now stepped away from the transgender bathroom nonsense that Barack Obama foisted on the nation when he suggested that the federal government was going to cram down on local schools all around the country.
00:10:03.000The idea that people could go to the bathroom, basically, of their choice.
00:10:08.000Or that accommodated the sex with which they identify, not their actual biological sex.
00:10:14.000Trump has stepped away from that as well he should.
00:10:16.000However you stand on the transgender bathroom debate, which is really a silly debate in my opinion, however you stand on it, this should be a local control issue.
00:10:41.000Other good things that are happening under Trump.
00:10:43.000Scott Pruitt, who's the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, he gave a speech at the EPA in which he basically told the regulators, look guys, your job is not to punish businesses.
00:10:51.000Your job is to create a stable set of regulations that are predictable
00:10:55.000Regulations ought to make things regular.
00:10:57.000Regulators exist to give certainty to those that they regulate.
00:11:12.000Those that we regulate ought to know what's expected of them so that they can plan and allocate resources to comply.
00:11:29.000It sends a message that we take seriously our role of taking comment and offering response, and then making informed decisions on how it's going to impact those in the marketplace.
00:11:41.000This all sounds very vague, but what he's actually saying is that what regulators very often do is they make their own priorities the priority.
00:11:47.000They don't care about creating a stable business environment so that people know what the rules are, and they're constantly throwing monkey wrenches into the works.
00:11:56.000Scott Pruitt's a very good pick at EPA.
00:11:58.000I think he's really going to reform things over there.
00:12:00.000Where things are a little bit more vague remains on the deportation policy, what that's actually going to look like.
00:12:04.000So I wanted to talk about an email that I received yesterday, which I thought was really an interesting and good email that is worthy of thought and discussion.
00:12:12.000So I got an email yesterday from a person who suggested that yesterday when I said, you know, when we're overrating, you know, the level of change here,
00:12:22.000Everybody needs to calm down a little bit.
00:12:24.000Everybody needs to stop worrying quite so much because not that much has happened yet.
00:12:27.000You know, why is everybody really going crazy?
00:12:30.000And this immigration lawyer wrote to me, who listens to the program, and he said, well, you know, I think that that's a little bit overstated.
00:12:37.000Like, there are people whose lives have actually changed.
00:12:39.000There are people whose lives have actually changed.
00:12:41.000And he said, particularly in the immigration sphere.
00:13:14.000But then they've also said that they're not going to be in favor of mass deportations, but then they've also arrested people who have come in to report their immigration compliance, to check in with the court, and then these people have been arrested and deported, which has been a problem.
00:13:43.000Look, I think what we have to get back to is understanding a couple things.
00:13:48.000There's a law in place that says, you know, if you're in this country illegally, that we have an obligation to make sure that the people who are in our country are here legally.
00:13:58.000What the order sets out today is ensures that the million or so people that have been adjudicated already
00:14:05.000That there's a, that ICE prioritizes, creates a system of prioritization, and make sure that we walk through that system in a way that protects this country.
00:14:14.000This is consistent with everything the President has talked about, which is prioritizing the people who are here who represent a threat to public safety or have a criminal record.
00:14:24.000And all this does is lay out the exact procedures to make sure that that subgroup of people
00:14:29.000who pose a threat to our nation because of a conviction or a violation of public safety or have a criminal record are adjudicated first and foremost.
00:14:40.000Okay, so that's fine, except for the fact that the executive order does a little bit more than that.
00:14:44.000So what you're getting from the Trump administration is we're not going to mass deport, we're not knocking down doors, and then what you're getting in terms of the actual policy that's written out is that they have the capacity to do that.
00:14:53.000A little bit of clarity would be good.
00:14:54.000I think that it would be good for Ann Coulter's heart rate if we could get a little clarity on what this policy actually looks like because it's still a little bit vague.
00:15:03.000So when I say don't panic yet, I'm not saying that we shouldn't keep an eye on it.
00:15:07.000I'm saying that we need better definition before we panic.
00:15:10.000We need a little bit of a better definition before we panic on any of that.
00:15:14.000And before we go any further, we have to say thank you to another one of our great sponsors, Blue Apron.
00:15:17.000So, if you're somebody who loves a home-cooked meal, but you don't actually know how to cook, you don't know what you're doing, you don't know what ingredients to get, and every home-cooked meal for you is macaroni and cheese from a box, then you need to talk with our friends over at Blue Apron.
00:15:29.000Blue Apron is this fantastic, fantastic company where you go to their website, you subscribe, basically, and you can buy meals that are shipped to you
00:15:37.000But they ship the ingredients to you and then you cook it yourself.
00:15:40.000All of the meals take 40 minutes or less to prepare.
00:16:39.000And it makes mealtime into kind of a celebration of family and food, and that's what it should be.
00:16:44.000If you go right now to BlueApron.com slash Shapiro, you get the first three meals free, with free shipping, which is a pretty awesome deal.
00:17:02.000Okay, so with all of this said, with all of the stuff that Trump is doing, a lot of which is really good, now we have to discuss how we define and how we determine
00:17:19.000Whether conservatives, when conservatives should stick with Trump and when they shouldn't stick with Trump.
00:17:49.000I think that his policies are important.
00:17:51.000I think the things he says are important because he's president of the United States and so it's a big mistake to identify your friends and enemies by simply defining a friend who you will always follow no matter what or defining an enemy you will always go against no matter what and you'll always assume they're wrong no matter what.
00:18:05.000That's a big mistake and I want to talk a little bit more about that but you're gonna have to go over to dailywire.com to hear all of that.
00:18:30.000If not, then we'll have the trailer for it tomorrow and we'll play that on Daily Wire so you can check out what it is that you're getting if you become a subscriber at dailywire.com.
00:18:37.000We're going to play the whole movie on Friday on our Facebook page, so check that out.
00:18:41.000So dailywire.com, $8 a month for subscribing.
00:18:44.000Annual subscription, you get that video, plus you get
00:19:03.000So I wore a button that said, me against you sucking.
00:19:06.000So I think that we'll make some goods like that available to you as well, because you should let all your friends know that you are against them sucking.
00:19:12.000So we'll definitely make that available.