The Ben Shapiro Show - Ep. 46 - Why Jews Should Cheer American Christmas

The Washington Post goes after Ted Cruz's daughter for drawing a picture of him as a snake. Plus, Chris Matthews goes off the rocker, and a crazy thing happened on CNN to a friend of mine, Kurt Schlichter, we'll get to all of it on today's show. Ben Shapiro is a conservative commentator and host of the conservative podcast "The Ben Shapiro Show." He's also the host of "The Weekly Standard" and hosts the conservative radio show "The View From The Top" on SiriusXM Radio's Power 99.1. He's a regular contributor to The Weekly Standard, and is a frequent guest on CNN's "The Situation Room". He is also a frequent contributor to CNN and other conservative media outlets, including the New York Times, CNN, NPR, and the Hill, where he hosts a show called "The FiveThirtyEight" and is one of the most influential conservative voices in the country. He also writes for the conservative newsletter "The Daily Caller" and has his own podcast, "The Civility Project," which he describes as "America's Most Influential Person." You can find him on social media: , and . His new book is out now, "Ted Cruz's Family," which is out in paperback! Thanks for listening to Ben Shapiro's show? Subscribe to the show! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices and become a supporter of the show by becoming a patron of The Ben Shapiro Podcast! If you like what you're listening to this podcast, leave us a review and/or share it on iTunes or share it with a friend, and we'll send you a rating and review it on your fellow podcasting buddies! if you're looking for a chance to become a fellow Ben Shapiro fan! or subscribe to his other podcasting recommendations, we're listening on iTunes! and other links to other great shows like this podcasting great reviews and more! Thank you for listening and sharing the Ben Shapiro podcast! - Ben Shapiro on The Sixteenth Hour Podcasts - subscribe on iTunes and subscribe on Podchronicity! We'll be listening to The Six Sombrero in the Sixteenth episode of Sixteenth Episode of Six Scented Podcasts on Six Months on Tuesday Morning Coffee and other places on the Four Corners Podcasts and other social media on Six Sigma Podcasts!

00:00:00.000 We are here, and it is two days before Christmas.

00:00:03.000 I could not be more excited.

00:00:04.000 At the end of tomorrow's episode, I will carol you a little bit.

00:00:07.000 We do do this in the Shapiro family, so we'll do a little bit of that on tomorrow's episode.

00:00:11.000 But today, we have to talk about the Washington Post going after Ted Cruz's daughter.

00:00:16.000 We'll also be talking about Chris Matthews going off of his rocker, plus something crazy that happened on CNN to a friend of mine, Kurt Schlichter.

00:00:23.000 We'll get to all of it.

00:00:24.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:24.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:26.000 I tend to demonize people who don't care about your feelings.

00:00:32.000 Well, after yesterday, this is the show that you have been schlonging for, as Donald Trump might say.

00:00:40.000 The big story of the evening, and very often lately the news breaks in the evening, the big story of the evening last night was there's this cartoonist who's won a Pulitzer Prize, her name is Ann Telmase, I believe is how it's pronounced.

00:00:52.000 What are the Mexican hats called?

00:01:07.000 A sombrero, thank you.

00:01:08.000 Boy, I'm out of it today.

00:01:09.000 She's wearing a sombrero with tea bags hanging off of it and she's drawn pictures of Senator Cruz as a snake, like a full-on snake.

00:01:17.000 And so she hates Senator Cruz and she despises Senator Cruz and she found an excuse to go after Senator Cruz in Cruz's 0.55

00:01:24.000 He cut an ad, Cruz did an ad, that aired during Saturday Night Live for his presidential campaign.

00:01:29.000 It was actually pretty funny and pretty cute.

00:01:31.000 Here is the ad, it's clip number 10 here, and we will play it in its entirety and then we will show you what the Washington Post thought was appropriate to do about this ad.

00:01:39.000 Imagine the greatest Christmas stories told by the senator who once read Green Eggs and Ham from the Senate floor.

00:01:46.000 "'Twas the night before the shutdown and all through the house, not a bill was stirring, not even to fund a mouse.

00:01:54.000 A proven record presents a collection of timeless Christmas classics read by the trusted conservative leader Ted Cruz.

00:02:02.000 Favorites such as How Obamacare Stole Christmas and Rudolph the Underemployed Reindeer.

00:02:08.000 All of the other reindeer couldn't afford to hire Rudolph.

00:02:12.000 Act now and you'll get a leader who does exactly what he says he's going to do.

00:02:16.000 In this case, read festive stories like Frosty, the Speaker of the House.

00:02:21.000 Look!

00:02:22.000 The Speaker is melting before Congress!

00:02:27.000 And it continues along those lines.

00:02:29.000 And eventually, you see he's got his two daughters there, and one of his daughters reads a little bit, and his daughter... They're very cute kids.

00:02:36.000 I mean, I think they're four years old and seven years old, and the seven-year-old's an actress.

00:02:39.000 I mean, you can see her there doing the googly eyes and being all cute. 1.00

00:02:43.000 And the reason I was laughing, folks, if you can't see, is because when it showed Frosty the Speaker of the House, it was a picture of Frosty the Snowman holding a glass of wine and a cigar.

00:02:51.000 It was clearly John Boehner.

00:02:52.000 And so, I mean, it's funny stuff, and it's cute, and it's poking fun at himself.

00:02:56.000 I mean, there's nothing in here that's a vicious attack, a vicious assault on the Democrats.

00:03:01.000 It's actually Cruz kind of poking fun at himself and showing that he has a sense of humor.

00:03:04.000 Well, this set off Ann Telnaes.

00:03:06.000 As we've said, she's a Pulitzer Prize winner, so here's what we know.

00:03:09.000 She's won a Pulitzer. 0.94

00:03:10.000 Barack Obama has won a Nobel Peace Prize and a Grammy, all of which goes to prove awards suck. 0.99

00:03:16.000 Prizes are useless and the people who win them are even more useless. 0.99

00:03:20.000 Anne Telnaes is a really quite despicable human being. 1.00

00:03:23.000 Here's the cartoon that she drew. 0.89

00:03:25.000 We're going to show it to you if you subscribe.

00:03:27.000 Here's the cartoon that she drew and she put up on Twitter and she also put up at the Washington Post.

00:03:32.000 And what she wrote here, this picture of Senator Cruz in a Christmas outfit, and he is an organ grinder, right?

00:03:38.000 He's grinding an organ like poor people used to do on Christmas in order to get people to throw money in the hat.

00:03:46.000 And she tweeted out, Ted Cruz has put his children in a political ad.

00:03:49.000 Don't start screaming when editorial cartoonists draw them as well.

00:03:52.000 Now, do you see Ted Cruz's kids in this ad?

00:03:55.000 I don't.

00:03:55.000 I see two monkeys, one who's smaller and one that is bigger.

00:03:57.000 That's right, Antone says that she's going to draw Ted Cruz's four-year-old and seven-year-old daughter as actual, honest-to-goodness monkeys.

00:04:04.000 A Hispanic man's daughter as monkeys. 1.00

00:04:07.000 And then she said that Ted Cruz, there's an unspoken rule in editorial cartooning that a politician's children are off-limits, but

00:04:15.000 But, when a politician uses his children as political props, as Ted Cruz recently did in his Christmas parody video in which his eldest daughter read, with her father's dramatic flourish, a passage of an edited Christmas classic, then I figure they are fair game.

00:04:29.000 In other words, they did something that she doesn't like, and now it's not enough to just draw the kids, she's actually going to draw them as monkeys.

00:04:36.000 They're not just kids, they're monkeys.

00:04:38.000 And this old bitty, this nasty piece of goods, she has also in the past drawn on the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, she posted, it said this, quote, today is the 40th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe versus Wade, which made abortion legal in all 50 states.

00:04:55.000 Every year on this day, the pro-life groups descend on Washington, D.C.

00:04:58.000 to march around the court.

00:04:59.000 I live in the area, so I've witnessed these over the years, and it always strikes me how the majority of these protesters are very young children.

00:05:06.000 And there's a caption that says anti-abortion activists march in Washington D.C.

00:05:10.000 And it shows a fat guy wearing black and a mother wearing white, and they're holding crosses, obviously crosses, with strings that come down, and the strings are connected to small children who are carrying anti-abortion signs.

00:05:22.000 So this idea that kids are puppets to their parents, it only applies to right-wingers, because as we've learned when Rush Limbaugh said that, made a joke about Chelsea Clinton looking like a dog back in the 90s and all hell broke loose, you can't make fun of liberal politicians' kids.

00:05:35.000 That's off limits.

00:05:36.000 But if you label Ted Cruz's daughter's monkeys,

00:05:39.000 That is perfectly okay.

00:05:41.000 And it's also worthwhile noting this is not a rarity.

00:05:43.000 If you remember Sarah Palin in 2008, Andrew Sullivan, who was subsequently invited to the White House, claimed that Trig Palin was not actually Sarah Palin's son.

00:05:51.000 Trig Palin was in fact Bristol Palin's son, and Sarah Palin covered it up.

00:05:55.000 She wanted to cover up that her daughter had a kid out of wedlock by trying to claim the kid as her own. 1.00

00:06:00.000 You remember that one. 1.00

00:06:01.000 You remember on MSNBC, that idiot Melissa Harris Perry of Nerdland. 1.00

00:06:06.000 Uh, she, of Nerdland fame, she always does hashtag Nerdland during her show. 1.00

00:06:10.000 She made fun of Mitt Romney having an adopted black grandchild because one of his kids adopted a black baby from Africa.

00:06:17.000 And she made fun of that. 0.83

00:06:17.000 She said, well look, there's the little token in the Romney family. 0.83

00:06:20.000 So it's okay to make fun of Romney's black grandkid.

00:06:23.000 But if you're a Democrat, then you can use kids all the time.

00:06:25.000 As we've talked about on the show, we've had videos that we've shown on the show of Democrats trotting out their kids to push gun control.

00:06:31.000 You remember during Obamacare, President Obama surrounded himself with children when he signed Obamacare into law, when Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House in 2006.

00:06:39.000 You remember she got up there with a bunch of children there.

00:06:42.000 Not unborn kids, those she kills, but the ones who have already been born, she shows up with in the House of Representatives. 1.00

00:06:48.000 Holding her giant gavel, trying to show that little girls can do anything except be born if their parents want to kill them. 0.93

00:06:53.000 But aside from that, they can do anything, including be Speaker of the House.

00:06:56.000 So in other words, Democrats will use children as props all the time, but if a politician has his own kids in a joke about Christmas, which

00:07:05.000 I mean, I'm not sure how else you do that joke without your kids in it.

00:07:08.000 Like, that's the whole joke.

00:07:09.000 And it's obviously him parodying—and they say it right up top—him parodying his own activities during the government shutdown when he read Green Eggs and Ham during his quasi-filibuster.

00:07:19.000 I said that he should have written—that if he really wanted to be effective, he shouldn't have read Green Eggs and Ham.

00:07:23.000 He instead should have read

00:07:24.000 Love you forever, which there's no way to make fun of somebody reading Love You Forever because it is the saddest and most poignant book of all time.

00:07:30.000 But in any case, Cruz's ad, there's nothing wrong with it, but she puts this out there.

00:07:34.000 So what happens?

00:07:36.000 She puts this out there, this bitter old bitty, and she then has to take it down.

00:07:41.000 The Washington Post takes it down, and they release a statement that says, quote,

00:07:45.000 It's generally been the policy of our editorial section to leave children out of it.

00:07:49.000 I failed to look at this cartoon before it was published.

00:07:52.000 I understand why Anne thought an exception to the policy was warranted in this case, but I do not agree.

00:07:58.000 Why would he understand exactly why Telmeis thought an exception was warranted?

00:08:02.000 I don't understand that.

00:08:02.000 Like, what in that makes you say... What exactly would make you think an exception to the rule is... If that rule exists,

00:08:10.000 What here would craft the exception for the rule?

00:08:14.000 It doesn't make any sense to me.

00:08:15.000 That's silliness, and it's just a way for him to say, I'm not firing her.

00:08:19.000 That's really all that is.

00:08:20.000 I'm not going to fire her for doing something that in any other context we would label viciously racist.

00:08:25.000 Okay, let's pretend, let's just substitute President Obama's head for Ted Cruz's head in this exact same cartoon, and now we're talking about how the columnist is a vicious racist who ought to be fired.

00:08:36.000 And in fact, I'm old enough to remember when, just a few years ago, John McCain compared Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the frontman for the Iranian dictatorship, to a monkey, and people suggested he was racist for doing so. 0.95

00:08:48.000 But it's not racist to attack a Hispanic man's kids as monkeys.

00:08:52.000 And it truly is astonishing. 0.96

00:08:54.000 And here's how the media covered it, which is even worse, because the media are just beyond gross. 0.96

00:08:58.000 They are so unbelievably gross.

00:09:01.000 Okay, here's how the media did this, okay? 0.98

00:09:03.000 So,

00:09:05.000 Over at CNN, the headline read this.

00:09:13.000 Monkey-like characters?

00:09:14.000 Did you see monkey-like qualities?

00:09:16.000 Or were those actual monkeys?

00:09:18.000 Those looked like actual monkeys to me, did they not?

00:09:20.000 And then what's even better is the lead, right?

00:09:22.000 Here is the lead for that piece.

00:09:23.000 Quote, Ted Cruz obtained new ammunition Tuesday to shoot at his favorite bogeyman, the mainstream media, after the Washington Post depicted his two young daughters as monkey-like characters doing the bidding of their father.

00:09:36.000 So you see, who's the villain here?

00:09:37.000 It isn't the Washington Post.

00:09:39.000 It's Ted Cruz, because Ted Cruz was just looking for ammunition so that he could smack the media.

00:09:44.000 Right?

00:09:44.000 This was all just a... It was an Admiral Ackbar-type trap, right?

00:09:48.000 He was just... He set this whole thing up so that the jaws of genius would shut closed around Antelmeas, and then he could fundraise off of it.

00:09:55.000 And it wasn't just CNN.

00:09:56.000 Here's the headline from Politico, quote, Ted Cruz lashes out at Washington Post cartoonist for drawing his daughters.

00:10:03.000 Drawing his daughters, or drawing his daughters as monkeys? 1.00

00:10:07.000 And also, Lashes Out, that's the headline, the headline is Cruz lashing out, the headline isn't Washington Post has to pull a cartoon after their cartoonist draws a viciously racist, nasty piece of garbage crap like this. 1.00

00:10:18.000 That isn't the headline? 0.96

00:10:20.000 And by the way, Phil Kirpin, who I believe writes usually for the Weekly Standard, the American thinker, Phil Kirpin, mid-Washington examiner, Phil's a good columnist, and Phil points out, wouldn't it sell more papers?

00:10:32.000 Wouldn't it get more clicks if you included the fact that they were drawn as monkeys?

00:10:36.000 I mean, if the idea is that this is a traffic business, and I run a website, you know, this is a traffic business, include monkeys in the title, you'll get more clicks.

00:10:43.000 If you just say, here's a cartoon that draws Ted Cruz's kids, nobody clicks on that.

00:10:48.000 If you say, here's a cartoon that draws Ted Cruz's kids as monkeys, or even clickbaitier, here's a cartoon, you'll never guess how they depicted Ted Cruz's kids.

00:10:57.000 Right, that's how you gain clicks, but you don't gain clicks by hiding the lead.

00:11:00.000 Right, but that wasn't, it wasn't just political.

00:11:02.000 Here's what Reuters said.

00:11:03.000 Here's the actual, again, headline from Reuters.

00:11:07.000 Quote.

00:11:09.000 Okay, the cartoon didn't accuse him of using his kids as props.

00:11:14.000 The cartoon shows him using his kids as trained monkeys while he's the organ grinder in the background.

00:11:19.000 But it's all about Cruz blasting. 0.96

00:11:22.000 That crazy Cruz and his anti-media aggression. 1.00

00:11:24.000 What a nasty guy he is. 0.99

00:11:25.000 Mediaite, which is a pathetic left-wing site, here was their headline, quote, Well, I mean, if you want to just fly right past that story, that's the way that you would actually bill it. 0.99

00:11:39.000 Caves into pressure? 0.74

00:11:40.000 Right.

00:11:40.000 Well, the bad people are the people pressuring them to take down the cartoon.

00:11:43.000 The Hill, their story says, Washington Post retracts cartoon that calls Cruz's daughter's political props.

00:11:49.000 Again,

00:11:50.000 Monkeys?

00:11:51.000 Anyone?

00:11:52.000 That's the entire headline here.

00:11:54.000 There is no way to do this particular story with this particular cartoon without saying that the kids are monkeys.

00:12:02.000 There's no way to do that.

00:12:04.000 It's like when people were saying there were racist cartoons about Obama.

00:12:07.000 If they said, cartoon about Obama during government shutdown, that means nothing.

00:12:10.000 If they said, cartoon depicting Obama as gorilla, that means it's a racist cartoon, right?

00:12:15.000 Wouldn't you include that in the actual description of the cartoon?

00:12:18.000 And then the Hill reported that Cruz used this cartoon in a Tuesday fundraising pitch.

00:12:24.000 Ooh-hoo-hoo.

00:12:25.000 So he was fundraising off of it, which is called politics.

00:12:27.000 And then the Washington Post ran a piece from Chris Chaliza, who's just exorable, titled, quote, why that now-retracted Washington Post cartoon is a gift to Ted Cruz.

00:12:36.000 You see, it's a gift.

00:12:37.000 See, it turns out that slandering people's kids as monkeys is a gift to them.

00:12:41.000 Now, as somebody with a very young daughter, a daughter who's two years old and is gorgeous and wonderful, I would be rightly pissed

00:12:47.000 If somebody described my kid as a monkey.

00:12:49.000 I'd be rightly miffed about that.

00:12:52.000 It's one of the reasons why I actually make a habit of not bringing my- like, people don't know what my daughter looks like because I don't post pictures of her online.

00:12:59.000 I don't think it's anybody's business what my daughter looks like or what my wife looks like.

00:13:03.000 And let me tell you, my wife is smoking hot and my baby's beautiful, but it's none of your business.

00:13:06.000 Because that's my family and it's none of your business.

00:13:08.000 And one of the things I hate about the way modern politics now works is I'm supposed to open up my personal life to you.

00:13:13.000 My wife has a life, my baby has a life, and their lives really are not much of your business.

00:13:18.000 I understand you want to humanize the people who are around you, but this is why you don't.

00:13:21.000 Because the minute you humanize the people around you, they immediately get slandered as monkeys.

00:13:26.000 This is why it used to be better when the politician's family stayed in the background and it was about the politician.

00:13:30.000 It wasn't about the politician's family.

00:13:33.000 So bottom line, if you're Trig Palin, you're fair game.

00:13:35.000 If you're Malia Obama, you're not.

00:13:37.000 If you're Mitt Romney's adopted grandson, you're fair game.

00:13:39.000 If you're Hillary Clinton's granddaughter who she trots out at every occasion possible to remind people that she is everybody's abuela, this is something else we'll talk about in a second.

00:13:48.000 Then you're not fair game?

00:13:49.000 If you're any child of a Democrat, it's not fair game.

00:13:51.000 If you're a child of a Republican, then it's fair game. 0.97

00:13:53.000 By the way, I mention the Abuela story because it's really ridiculous. 0.94

00:13:57.000 Hillary Clinton is trying to say that she is Hispanic people's grandmother. 0.98

00:14:01.000 I don't know many old white women with one child conceived in one act of sex with their husband, maybe the one time they ever had sex, and then they have a child, and then they proceed to take millions and millions of dollars and hide email servers. 1.00

00:14:17.000 Like, she's not a Hispanic person. 0.56

00:14:19.000 And there was a hashtag that was trending, not my abuela.

00:14:23.000 Yeah.

00:14:23.000 Yeah, I think that that's probably the fairest statement of the day.

00:14:27.000 Hillary Clinton is nobody's grandmother, okay?

00:14:30.000 The idea that Hillary Clinton is sitting around playing with her granddaughter... I heard from Alicia Krauss, who's my co-host on The Morning Answer, which is a morning radio show that I do out of Los Angeles.

00:14:42.000 She said at one point that the way you can tell people, people on the left who don't like kids from the people who do like kids,

00:14:48.000 Is people on the left who don't like kids have either zero or one kid.

00:14:52.000 If you have more than one kid, that means you actually like kids.

00:14:54.000 If you have just one kid, and the reason that you have, and it's not that you have some sort of biological issue so that you couldn't have more than one kid, but if you choose only to have one kid, that's because you wanted a dog or a purse.

00:15:05.000 And that is basically, you know, that's how Chelsea is to Hillary Clinton. 1.00

00:15:11.000 And Hillary is a nasty piece of goods. 1.00

00:15:13.000 In any case,

00:15:15.000 While all of this is going on with Cruz, the headline machine continues to roll about Trump saying that Hillary was schlonged by President Obama in 2008.

00:15:23.000 And I have to say, it's highly amusing to me, really amusing to me, that the folks in the media who are very upset about Trump saying the word schlonged... First of all, let's just put it this way.

00:15:36.000 Bill Clinton.

00:15:37.000 Hillary's husband has the most famous schlong on planet Earth. 0.53

00:15:40.000 Right?

00:15:40.000 Like, of all the schlongs on planet Earth, Hillary Clinton's husband has the number one most famous schlong that ever was.

00:15:47.000 Right?

00:15:47.000 Her chief of staff's husband has the second most famous schlong on planet Earth, because Huma Abedin's husband is Anthony Weiner, who texted his schlong out on the internet to everybody.

00:15:56.000 Right, so she's surrounded by schlongs at all times, so the idea that she's offended by somebody mentioning a schlong seems a little bit weird to me. 0.99

00:16:04.000 But, you know, all the people in the media are schmucks, so they're making a big deal out of this whole thing. 0.89

00:16:08.000 They're kvetching about it, and they're all verklempt over it, and for people who use Yiddish, I mean, this is like, this is such a nothing. 0.98

00:16:15.000 But it just shows you where the media are, that the number one headline of the day is Donald Trump saying the word schlong about Hillary Clinton.

00:16:22.000 But Hillary Clinton lying about Donald Trump, the media, 0.80

00:16:25.000 Painting Ted Cruz's daughters as literal monkeys, that doesn't even compute for them.

00:16:30.000 That doesn't even hit the radar for them.

00:16:33.000 They have to cover it up.

00:16:35.000 By the way, what's amazing is all the same people who say that they're deeply offended by the idea that Obama schlonged Hillary in 2008, which means, you know, screwed Hillary in 2008.

00:16:45.000 He says it means beat Hillary in 2008, whatever it means.

00:16:47.000 But the bottom line is that in 2008, I don't know if you guys remember this, there was an actual YouTube video.

00:16:51.000 It has like 148 million views.

00:16:54.000 And it was a, it was a, there was a song I guess back in the time called Umbrella.

00:16:59.000 And they cut a version of this with a guy playing Obama and a gal playing Hillary Clinton and them having sex with each other.

00:17:06.000 And I remember all the people on the left laughing at this and thinking it was hysterical and thinking it was funny.

00:17:10.000 But what's amazing is these folks who, I mean, they are going so crazy over this.

00:17:17.000 It is truly incredible.

00:17:19.000 Meanwhile, Donald Trump continues to be amusing.

00:17:21.000 Donald Trump didn't just mock Hillary over being shlonged by Clinton in 2008. 0.93

00:17:24.000 And as I said yesterday, to be fair, she's not been shlonged in 30 years.

00:17:28.000 Trump also mocked Hillary Clinton for taking a bathroom break during the Democratic debate.

00:17:32.000 And the reason we talk Trump is because the dude's entertaining.

00:17:35.000 He also happens to be the poll leader.

00:17:37.000 CNN poll today, Trump 39, Cruz 18.

00:17:40.000 So Trump is running away in the national polls.

00:17:42.000 Here is the Donald.

00:17:44.000 So Hillary's going to get beaten, but I haven't started with Hillary yet.

00:17:47.000 What happened to her?

00:17:48.000 I'm watching the debate and she disappeared.

00:17:52.000 Where did she go?

00:17:54.000 Where did she go?

00:17:55.000 I thought she quit. 0.83

00:17:58.000 I thought she gave up.

00:18:00.000 Where did she go?

00:18:01.000 Where did Hillary go? 1.00

00:18:02.000 They had to start the debate without her.

00:18:05.000 Phase two.

00:18:10.000 I know where she went. 0.90

00:18:12.000 It's disgusting. 0.72

00:18:12.000 I don't want to talk about it. 0.72

00:18:15.000 No, it's too disgusting. 0.63

00:18:16.000 Don't say it. 0.93

00:18:17.000 It's disgusting.

00:18:18.000 Let's not do it.

00:18:18.000 We want to be very, very straight up, okay?

00:18:21.000 But I thought that... Wasn't that a weird deal?

00:18:24.000 We're ready to start.

00:18:26.000 They gave her every benefit of the doubt.

00:18:29.000 Because, you know, it's ABC and she practically owns ABC. 1.00

00:18:32.000 She really does.

00:18:33.000 I mean, George Stephanopoulos interviewed me the other day.

00:18:35.000 It was terrible.

00:18:36.000 It was like, it was one of the great interviews.

00:18:38.000 Did anybody see that interview?

00:18:45.000 Okay, see this is, I was listening to Klavan's show the other day, to Andrew Klavan's show, and he made such a good point about Trump, and I thought this is really true.

00:18:53.000 The only person who looks like they're having a good time in this campaign is Donald Trump.

00:18:57.000 Everybody else looks miserable, and you can see, folks, if you're not watching, you miss out on half the joy of Donald Trump, because at the very end, the reason that I'm laughing so hard is because Donald Trump starts to punch the air.

00:19:07.000 About how he beat up George Stephanopoulos, and he's making a face like he's about to cave in somebody's head, and it's pretty spectacular.

00:19:13.000 By the way, I don't know where he buys his ties, but those have to be the most magnificent, widest ties that have ever been created in creation.

00:19:19.000 I mean, it looks like he just went out and got a parachute and put it around his neck, but Trump, he really enjoys the fight.

00:19:24.000 Meanwhile, you want to see the opposite of Donald Trump in terms of enjoying the fight.

00:19:28.000 All this is enjoyable to me, okay?

00:19:29.000 I want to get over the idea that politics was ever civil.

00:19:33.000 I know that there's this idea out there that politics was once a civil profession for the gentlemen.

00:19:38.000 And the gentlemen would get together, and they'd be very civil with one another, and they would all discuss policies over a beer and a whiskey, and then they would come up with the best available policy and pass it for the American people.

00:19:50.000 And they would never insult one another.

00:19:52.000 Instead, they would just sip from their snifters of brandy while wearing cravats. 1.00

00:19:58.000 Okay, this is utter crap. 0.98

00:19:59.000 If you look back to 1800, 0.99

00:20:01.000 All the way back to 1800, the Jeffersonians and the Adams fans were beating the living hell out of each other.

00:20:07.000 Jefferson had a guy on his payroll named James Callender, who was the father of muckraking journalism, and was running stories about how John Adams was literally a senile, insane person throwing his wig around the White House.

00:20:18.000 Meanwhile, the Adams press was going after Alexander Hamilton, who had allied with Thomas Jefferson.

00:20:24.000 And talking and exposing the fact that Alexander Hamilton had been having an affair.

00:20:28.000 John Adams said of Alexander Hamilton, these are both founders, right?

00:20:31.000 These are the people who are the great civil founders of our society.

00:20:35.000 Geniuses all. 1.00

00:20:36.000 Okay, John Adams said of Alexander Hamilton that he had juices that were so plentiful no whore could suck them off. 0.99

00:20:43.000 Hey, John Adams said that about Alexander Hamilton. 0.99

00:20:46.000 Okay, so the idea that politics was ever some sort of clean and decent business is ridiculous.

00:20:51.000 And it's one of these things that there are certain myths to American politics that are highly irritating and the media dragged them out every so often.

00:20:57.000 So when Trump says schlong, we all have to pretend, oh my goodness, we're so offended.

00:21:01.000 Bill Clinton put his schlong in an intern.

00:21:05.000 He treated his intern like a humidor, as Kurt Schlichter said on CNN the other day.

00:21:11.000 And we're supposed to pretend that there's civility in politics anymore?

00:21:13.000 That there's class in politics? 0.98

00:21:15.000 LBJ, going back to the 60s, used to urinate with the door open so people could watch him urinate while he was having political meetings, because LBJ was a disgusting Bulgarian. 1.00

00:21:24.000 And everybody who's ever written about LBJ knows this to be true.

00:21:27.000 JFK was having 18 and sometimes apparently 17 year old interns in the White House pool bouncing around with their shirts off.

00:21:35.000 Okay, so the idea that this was ever a civil society, that politics was ever a civil business, it just is not true.

00:21:42.000 It's just not true.

00:21:43.000 And so I'm not going to buy into this whole Donald Trump is coarsening politics.

00:21:46.000 Barack Obama coarsens politics.

00:21:48.000 Okay, Barack Obama says that whites and blacks can't get along, essentially, and that the police departments are full of racists, and then he suggests, in an open letter, that Republicans are not tea partiers, they are tea baggers.

00:22:00.000 Okay, for folks who don't know what a tea bagger is, there's gonna be a little graphic, okay? 0.99

00:22:04.000 What a tea bagger is, according to people like Anderson Cooper, who apparently knows, it's when a dude dangles his testicles over someone else's mouth. 0.73

00:22:12.000 Okay, that's what a tea bagger is, and that is the reference 0.94

00:22:15.000 That Barack Obama makes to the Tea Party.

00:22:17.000 Right?

00:22:18.000 And by the way, so did Joe Biden.

00:22:20.000 So don't talk to me about Donald Trump coarsening politics.

00:22:22.000 We've been coarse for 200 years, 250 years, and Barack Obama's only made it worse.

00:22:26.000 Everybody's saying, oh, look at this Trump.

00:22:27.000 He's a showman.

00:22:28.000 He's a reality TV star.

00:22:29.000 There are a lot of things to dislike about Trump.

00:22:31.000 He's a strong man. 1.00

00:22:32.000 He says stupid crap. 1.00

00:22:33.000 He says vulgar, stupid things. 1.00

00:22:34.000 He says things that I think are out of bounds, and I'm not even talking about vulgarity. 1.00

00:22:38.000 I'm talking about his politics.

00:22:39.000 But don't give me the, he's coarsening American politics.

00:22:42.000 Barack Obama appeared in an interview with a lady who bathed in Froot Loops. 0.97

00:22:46.000 Barack Obama did an interview with Zach Galifianakis on Between Two Ferns.

00:22:50.000 President Obama, in the Oval Office, is standing there with a selfie stick taking pictures of himself.

00:22:55.000 Don't talk to me about the coarsening and the dumbing down of American politics because of Donald Trump. 0.90

00:23:00.000 What absolute horse bucky. 1.00

00:23:01.000 Just unbelievable crap. 0.99

00:23:03.000 Okay, so the fact that Trump takes pleasure in all of this, I find endearing. 0.99

00:23:07.000 Somebody who clearly does not take pleasure in any of this is Jeb Bush.

00:23:11.000 Jeb Bush clearly takes no pleasure in any of this.

00:23:13.000 Jeb Bush has now cut an ad going after Donald Trump, and he tries to make the case that he is the only one who's willing to take on Trump, as though this is some sort of

00:23:23.000 I don't know.

00:23:44.000 Do you like Vladimir Putin's comments about you?

00:23:46.000 Sure.

00:23:47.000 I'm greatly honored by his statement.

00:23:49.000 I think it's terrific.

00:23:50.000 You know, one of the things that you didn't take an opportunity to do last night was to really go after Donald Trump.

00:23:55.000 Again, he killed journalists that don't agree with him.

00:23:58.000 Well, I think our country does plenty of killing also, Joe, so having no Donald Trump for

00:24:04.000 Senator Cruz, you have not been willing to attack Mr. Trump in public, but you did question his judgment.

00:24:06.000 You better not attack him.

00:24:07.000 I salute Donald Trump.

00:24:08.000 And listen, I commend Donald Trump.

00:24:25.000 Jeb Bush quickly denounced Trump, tweeting, quote, a true freedom-loving conservative wouldn't be flattered by praise from a despot like Putin.

00:24:32.000 Where only Jeb Bush really challenged him.

00:24:34.000 He seemed like he was the only one willing to take on Donald Trump.

00:24:38.000 And certainly he was the most aggressive in doing so.

00:24:41.000 Jeb Bush was the only one who tried to go after Donald Trump.

00:24:47.000 That's your pitch?

00:24:49.000 Really?

00:24:50.000 I mean, $35 million later, and that's what you came up with? 0.99

00:24:53.000 That exclamation point and that piece of crap ad? 0.90

00:24:55.000 Like, that was your big idea, that he was gonna go after Donald Trump based on... First of all, the ad is badly cut. 0.99

00:25:00.000 I mean, it's just badly cut.

00:25:01.000 It's manic, and the music is not useful, and it's distracting.

00:25:05.000 And then beyond that, he tries to cram all this stuff in.

00:25:08.000 And notice there are no live clips of Jeb.

00:25:10.000 Did you notice that?

00:25:10.000 There are no live clips of Jeb, because if they showed the live clip of Jeb, you would have to see Donald Trump face-planting him on national television, because that's what happens at the end of that exchange.

00:25:18.000 Instead, you've just got media people

00:25:20.000 I love that he's calling out Cruz as though he's going to win voters away from Ted Cruz.

00:25:23.000 I mean, Jeb Bush is going to win zero voters away from Ted Cruz, but this is the desperation that has now set in in the Jeb camp.

00:25:29.000 Talk about running a joyless campaign. 1.00

00:25:31.000 Jeb is running an absolutely joyless campaign. 0.99

00:25:34.000 It is pretty ridiculous. 0.77

00:25:36.000 Okay, so now it's time to talk about some things that I like, and some things that I hate.

00:25:41.000 So, first, we'll talk about some things that... Let me try to think of something that I like, because I spend so much time talking about things that I hate on this show, and then I'm always caught up a little bit short when it comes time to talk about things that I like.

00:25:53.000 I was talking short stories yesterday, and, uh, and for anybody who's never read any O. Henry, you should go out and read O. Henry.

00:25:59.000 Have you ever read any O. Henry?

00:26:00.000 O. Henry is fantastic.

00:26:01.000 O. Henry, he... Actually, perfect.

00:26:03.000 Perfect.

00:26:04.000 Just in time for Christmas.

00:26:05.000 I'm sure most people have at least heard of this.

00:26:08.000 If you've never read the short story, The Gift of the Magi, it is a phenomenal short story.

00:26:11.000 It is the best, maybe the best short story ever written.

00:26:13.000 It's actually his second best short story.

00:26:15.000 His best short story is a short story called The Last Leaf, which is just a beautiful piece of writing.

00:26:21.000 O'Henry is a really interesting character because O'Henry actually started off as a criminal.

00:26:26.000 He was in jail.

00:26:27.000 And he started writing short stories while he was in prison.

00:26:30.000 And his short stories are really fantastic.

00:26:32.000 Some of them become the basis for movies.

00:26:34.000 You can buy collections of short stories by O'Henry for like $4, $5 online.

00:26:40.000 And they're great.

00:26:40.000 And they're great bedtime reading because they're all about 10 to 15 pages long.

00:26:44.000 They're really phenomenal.

00:26:45.000 So pick up some O'Henry just in time for Christmas.

00:26:48.000 Okay, so now a couple of things that I hate.

00:26:51.000 The first thing that I really hate is the paganization of Christmas.

00:26:55.000 Now, as a Jew, Christmas is not my thing.

00:26:59.000 When I say it's not my thing, it doesn't mean I don't enjoy it.

00:27:01.000 I think the lights are beautiful.

00:27:02.000 I actually love the Christmas spirit.

00:27:04.000 I love that everybody's in a good mood.

00:27:06.000 I hate the fact that after January 1, everyone goes back to being depressed and looking like they want to get drunk at a bar and just die in an alleyway like Edgar Allan Poe.

00:27:13.000 It's kind of sad.

00:27:14.000 I have to say, for you Christians out there, we Jews have it better than you do.

00:27:18.000 I mean, we have holidays like once every couple of months all the way through the year.

00:27:21.000 You guys pack it all in at the end.

00:27:23.000 Like, one big going-away bash, and then comes January 2nd, like, oh god, there's another year before I come back to Thanksgiving season.

00:27:30.000 And Easter's not done up the way that it should be because, unfortunately, not enough religious people live in the United States, so Easter has become about the Easter bunny and egg hunting at the White House or some such nonsense.

00:27:39.000 But the paganization of Christmas is something that I really, truly despise.

00:27:43.000 And it's not enough just to say Merry Christmas.

00:27:45.000 As a Jew, I'm gonna lecture you now.

00:27:47.000 You should know the reason for the season, right?

00:27:49.000 The purpose of the season is that Christ was born for you guys, and that is a good thing for humanity.

00:27:54.000 It's a great thing for humanity, right?

00:27:56.000 Christianity was a boon for humanity because before Christianity, it was all about paganism, and the left really is a pagan ideology.

00:28:03.000 It's an ideology that government is God, and if you just pray hard enough and make enough sacrifices to it, government will give you whatever you want.

00:28:10.000 So yesterday, we talked about Hillary Clinton saying that government could cure Alzheimer's if we just make the sacrifice of two billion

00:28:15.000 We're good.

00:28:33.000 The pagan sensibility of the left is on full display, particularly during this season. 0.89

00:28:38.000 And when people say that Christmas is too materialistic, it is true.

00:28:42.000 Christmas has become too materialistic.

00:28:44.000 But that is because of what does in fact exist, which is not a full-scale, let's kill the Christians war on Christmas, but the idea that it's offensive for people to say Christmas, it's offensive to talk about Jesus, it's offensive to talk about the message that Jesus brought.

00:28:59.000 And the truth is, the only people who are offended by the message that Jesus brought at this point in time are really the folks on the left, because Jesus came to fight paganism, right?

00:29:07.000 The fact is that, from the Jewish perspective, I'm gonna talk about a Jew's perspective on Jesus, okay? 0.80

00:29:10.000 We don't think that Jesus was God, we don't think that Jesus was the Messiah.

00:29:13.000 From a Jewish historical perspective,

00:29:15.000 Jesus was probably a rebellion leader who's trying to lead a revolt against the Romans to reestablish statehood, Jewish statehood, in the Holy Land.

00:29:23.000 The reason I say that is because the reason that his Jewish followers probably thought he was the Messiah is because those are the criteria for the Jewish Messiah. 0.82

00:29:31.000 So the whole idea of Messiah as God is something that's foreign to Judaism.

00:29:34.000 It's not, it's a graft from other cultures. 0.95

00:29:36.000 It's not something that comes, there's nothing in Judaism that says the Messiah will come, he will be the Son of God.

00:29:41.000 There's nothing like that in Jewish philosophy.

00:29:43.000 However,

00:29:44.000 What Jesus preached, many of his baseline messages, virtually all of them in fact, are messages that are in the Old Testament.

00:29:51.000 I mean, Jesus says he came not to change a jot or a tittle, right?

00:29:54.000 He came to reinforce messages that had been lost.

00:29:57.000 And by the way, messages that were reinforced by prophets ranging from Ezekiel to Zechariah, right?

00:30:02.000 Ranging from Ezekiel

00:30:04.000 We're good to go.

00:30:20.000 Make sure that the people you have goodwill toward are not people who want to destroy the all.

00:30:24.000 So, let's remember why exactly people celebrate Christmas, and when we're sitting around our Christmas trees, or you are sitting around your Christmas trees, I want to thank you, Christians, for making this, America, a Christian country, the best place on earth

00:30:39.000 Thank you very much.

00:30:57.000 The Christmas tree with the pagan notion of what the Christmas tree was.

00:31:01.000 Dennis Prager the other day was talking about the fact that so many religious ceremonies are actually hijackings of pagan rituals.

00:31:08.000 Like we all know that Christmas and Winter Solstice were... that this was originally a hijacking of Winter Solstice.

00:31:13.000 That if you look in the calendar this was probably not when Jesus was even born.

00:31:17.000 But that's not the point.

00:31:18.000 The point is that what religion does is it makes the profane holy. 0.94

00:31:21.000 It takes things from paganism and drags them forward

00:31:25.000 Into the light so that people can, as Prager says, fill old bottles with new wine.

00:31:30.000 And so we should look at the value of the wine, and we should recognize that what's great about the season is the value that the Christmas tree has now attained in the Christian community, not the tree itself.

00:31:41.000 You don't love the tree because you're a druid worshiping trees.

00:31:43.000 You love the tree because of what it represents about your celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ.

00:31:47.000 So, thank you again to Christians, and you have a wonderful Christmas.

00:31:50.000 We'll be back tomorrow, just before Christmas, for another episode.

00:31:53.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:31:53.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

The Ben Shapiro Show - December 23, 2015

Ep. 46 - Why Jews Should Cheer American Christmas

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript