The Ben Shapiro Show


Ep. 47 - The Republican Elites Prepare to Sink The Party


Summary

On today's show, Ben Shapiro is joined by David Brock, Lawrence O'Donnell, and Ted Cruz' campaign manager, Bobby Jindal. Plus, a Christmas surprise from Ben Shapiro. Plus, the establishment is going absolutely insane over Ted Cruz, and I have to discuss that at length. And, of course, there's still time for a Christmas Surprise for you! Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas from The Ben Shapiro Show! -Ben Shapiro Subscribe to the full show on Apple Podcasts and other Podcasts. Click here to get immediate access to all of Ben Shapiro's latest videos and listen to the rest of his videos wherever you get your favorite podcasting platform. Use the promo code: CRIMINALS at checkout for $5 off your first purchase of a copy of his new book, "Conspiracy Theories: The White Supremacist Guide to the Trump Campaign." If you don't like the book, you can buy the book for only $99.99 on Amazon Prime, or you can get a copy for free by clicking here. $49.99 gets you an ad-free version of the book in Kindle, iBook, Paperback, Hardcover or Hardcover, and Audible. Kindle $99, and also Paperback is Free! All Audible is Free with an Audible membership starting at $99 and includes Audible Free trial pricing of $99 plus shipping and VaynerSpeaker is Free for Prime memberships from $179.99, plus shipping on Prime Video + Vimeo for $99/Vimeo, and Vimeo is Free, too! Thanks for listening to Ben Shapiro and I'm giving you the chance to review the book on Audible, Podcoin, and vimeo Freebie! Thank you for listening and reviewing the book and reviewing it on your own copy of the podcast! You'll get 20% off the book! Shoutout to: . Thanks to: Ben Shapiro for sponsoring the show. Ben Shapiro, and & for supporting the show Thank You for listening, and Good Morning America at Podulters, & Good Morning Coffee - Thank you Ben Shapiro for your support and Good Luck and Good Hustle and Good Relationships by: Good Luck, and Thank You, Sarah, Sarah Gooding, Sarah Gooden, for all the work you do for me.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Here we are.
00:00:00.000 It is Christmas Eve, and there's so much to celebrate.
00:00:03.000 So much Christmas to celebrate.
00:00:04.000 We'll do that at the end of the show.
00:00:05.000 If you stick around all the way until the end, I have a little Christmas surprise for you.
00:00:10.000 Not like Bill Clinton's Christmas surprises.
00:00:12.000 Like an actual Christmas surprise for you.
00:00:15.000 We'll be discussing in just a few moments some things that I hate.
00:00:18.000 Plus, plus, the establishment is going absolutely insane over Ted Cruz, and I have to discuss that at length.
00:00:24.000 I am Ben Shapiro.
00:00:25.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:00:25.000 I tend to demonize people who don't care about your feelings.
00:00:32.000 All righty, so we begin today with the man with the wildest hair in the West, David Brock.
00:00:36.000 David Brock is the head of Media Matters.
00:00:39.000 He's a former right-wing guy.
00:00:40.000 He tried to write a book about Hillary Clinton that was an anti-Hillary Clinton book.
00:00:45.000 After it bombed, he realized that he'd make more money on the left.
00:00:48.000 And David Brock also felt not accepted because he's a very gay guy, and so he felt not accepted by the Republican Party, and he is famous for his alleged severe drug habit.
00:00:58.000 In any case, he is one of Hillary Clinton's closest confidants.
00:01:01.000 She helped start Media Matters specifically as an organization to defend her.
00:01:06.000 And I just have to start with this clip because this clip is so hysterically funny.
00:01:08.000 Here's David Brock discussing Donald Trump, and we're now in day four of Schlongate.
00:01:15.000 And as you recall, Donald Trump said that Barack Obama schlonged Hillary in 2008 and the entire world went insane because no schlong must ever come near to Hillary Clinton.
00:01:26.000 And so David Brock has now come up with his deep analysis of schlongate 2015.
00:01:34.000 We're going to see, and what we got a taste of last night, was the misogynistic attacks on Hillary Clinton, which also had a racial appeal as well.
00:01:42.000 The idea of a black rapist basically using the schlong to defeat Hillary.
00:01:48.000 I think that's what that really was about.
00:01:50.000 You think that there is a deeply racial animus and violent subtext.
00:01:53.000 And the crowd loved it.
00:01:55.000 We can't say that enough.
00:01:57.000 And the crowd loved it, we can't say that.
00:01:58.000 Man, this is so insane.
00:02:01.000 Is there anyone who heard this?
00:02:02.000 Like, I mean, if you watch those Trump comments, where you're thinking, oh, black guys raping a white woman.
00:02:06.000 That's what this is.
00:02:08.000 Ground up, birth of a nation.
00:02:09.000 Let's all get our sheets and go all black hunting.
00:02:11.000 Like, what?
00:02:13.000 What is he talking about?
00:02:14.000 Like, I understand that David Brock may or may not be obsessed with schlong, but this has nothing to do with anything at this point.
00:02:21.000 It's truly amazing.
00:02:22.000 But this is actually part of the left-wing pitch now.
00:02:24.000 So the left-wing pitch was that we can't get Donald Trump on being a racist, because no one really thinks Donald Trump is that racist.
00:02:29.000 They just kind of think that Donald Trump is a loudmouth.
00:02:32.000 Because Donald Trump is kind of a loudmouth.
00:02:34.000 So what the left instead has done is they have said that Donald Trump is, in fact, that his supporters are crazy white supremacist racists.
00:02:41.000 So Lawrence O'Donnell, who, you want to know how left-wing Hollywood is, folks?
00:02:45.000 This is something nobody knows.
00:02:47.000 Here's how left-wing Hollywood is.
00:02:48.000 Apparently, Lawrence O'Donnell,
00:02:50.000 Who do you think wrote the right-wing dialogue on the West Wing?
00:03:10.000 Lawrence O'Donnell.
00:03:11.000 He was the actual designated writer to write the right-wing dialogue on the West Wing, which shows you where Hollywood is.
00:03:16.000 So Lawrence O'Donnell, anyway, he says that all you have to know about Trump is that Trump is supported by the white supremacists.
00:03:24.000 Here's Lawrence O'Donnell from MSNBC.
00:03:27.000 Take away the white supremacists from the Donald Trump support base.
00:03:31.000 If you took away all of the people
00:03:34.000 who believe President Obama is not a legal citizen of the United States.
00:03:38.000 If you took away the people who believe Barack Obama is a Muslim, Donald Trump would be polling in single digits.
00:03:46.000 He would not be a factor in this presidential campaign and would soon be going the way of Bobby Jindal and Lindsey Graham.
00:03:53.000 But instead, the haters of the President, the believers of lies, have made Donald Trump the frontrunner
00:04:01.000 Oh, it's the haters.
00:04:02.000 It's the haters and he's Taylor Swift over here, right?
00:04:06.000 To all you haters, listen to his sick beat.
00:04:08.000 So it's just the whole thing is absurd.
00:04:11.000 So there it is.
00:04:12.000 Donald Trump is only supported by white supremacists.
00:04:14.000 And of course, all of the all of the minorities in the party tend to support him.
00:04:20.000 Also, actually, he has disproportionate shares of black support, does Donald Trump, and he has 39% of the votes.
00:04:26.000 Unless you're gonna say that, I guess this is the point, that Republicans are all vicious racists who secretly burn crosses on people's lawns in the middle of the night and beat up Muslims and all this kind of stuff.
00:04:35.000 This is what the left wants to portray Donald Trump and his supporters.
00:04:38.000 Yes, and they've extended it out from Donald Trump.
00:04:40.000 Chris Matthews, who, as I say every time I mention Chris Matthews, rolls out of bed and directly onto set.
00:04:46.000 He actually has a cot that's just off set, and he sleeps in his suit, and he doesn't do his hair, and he just sort of rolls off the set, and rolls onto set, and he's not fully awake, so you can say,
00:05:00.000 He says that Ted Cruz, too, is another one of these insane white supremacists, white people, Hispanic.
00:05:05.000 And as you can see from the still of Chris Matthews, Chris Matthews apparently hit the scotch a little bit too hard the previous night.
00:05:12.000 So here we go with Chris Matthews.
00:05:18.000 The Cruz is scarier than Trump.
00:05:20.000 And that will be a frightening prospect to realize.
00:05:23.000 If we weren't talking about Trump, we'd be talking about the horror of this country possibly being led by Cruz.
00:05:28.000 Do you know him?
00:05:29.000 Have you ever met Cruz?
00:05:30.000 I have not.
00:05:30.000 I don't know him.
00:05:31.000 Well, when you do, you'll know what I'm talking about.
00:05:33.000 Well, I mean, I've seen all of his comments.
00:05:34.000 I follow him, obviously, a lot throughout the campaign trip.
00:05:36.000 But nobody likes him.
00:05:37.000 No one who knows him likes him.
00:05:39.000 White people, if you will, working white people, whatever that category gets defined as, are so angry, especially the very religious people, that they're willing to put somebody in there who's a complete enemy of the state.
00:05:50.000 He's an enemy of the state, he's a traitor.
00:05:52.000 Ted Cruz is a traitor now.
00:05:54.000 So it's all white supremacists, nobody likes him, he's Hitler.
00:05:58.000 Without the mustache, and with a bit of Hispanic blood, and also no relation or any similarity to Hitler.
00:06:03.000 But except for that, he's totally like Hitler.
00:06:05.000 And nobody likes him, except for the 40% of Iowa voters and the 24% of Republican voters nationally.
00:06:10.000 Nobody likes him.
00:06:11.000 And also, he's just like Trump.
00:06:12.000 So the entire Republican base is just filled with white supremacists.
00:06:15.000 It's amazing how this works, by the way.
00:06:17.000 All of the black supremacists of Black Lives Matter, their slogan inherently is Black Supremacists, right?
00:06:22.000 Only Black Lives Matter, not other lives.
00:06:25.000 They are all wonderful, generous, diverse, multicultural people, but all of the white folks who support Ted Cruz and just want the government out of our business, they're all a bunch of racists.
00:06:34.000 Now, all of this would not be noteworthy because it's coming from leftists, and this has been their constant refrain for as long as I've been alive, certainly.
00:06:41.000 I think that it's probably been the refrain longer than that.
00:06:43.000 If you go back to Goldwater vs. LBJ, they were doing the same routine.
00:06:46.000 But, certainly since I've been alive, the refrain has been, Republicans are white, they're angry white men.
00:06:52.000 It's the falling down crowd.
00:06:54.000 For anybody who ever saw that movie with Michael Douglas, if you've ever seen this movie, pretty good movie, but the entire premise of the movie is that there are these angry white men who are the silent majority in America, and eventually are going to go off.
00:07:05.000 And just nuke things, basically.
00:07:07.000 And so this is how they see it.
00:07:09.000 Okay, the left has always seen us this way.
00:07:11.000 This is why Barack Obama thinks every time there's a criticism of him, it is a criticism of him personally, it's because of the level of melanin in his skin, or because we don't think he's a citizen, or some such stupid crap like that.
00:07:23.000 Okay, all of that would not be bothersome.
00:07:25.000 What is bothersome?
00:07:27.000 Is that there are folks on the right now doing the same routine.
00:07:29.000 And these folks on the right doing the same routine are people at the Wall Street Journal, and people at National Review, and a lot of these people I respect, and I think they're good thinkers.
00:07:37.000 But there is an elitism that now dominates among some members of the Republican Party that I truly find off-putting.
00:07:44.000 As a member of the elite, okay, by any standard I'm a member of the quote-unquote elite.
00:07:47.000 I grew up in Los Angeles.
00:07:49.000 I'm a Jew from Los Angeles who's a conservative, who went to a private high school, UCLA, and then Harvard Law School.
00:07:54.000 I scored 176 out of 180 on my LSAT.
00:07:57.000 I'm in the top 1% of income earners.
00:08:01.000 By any measure, I am a member of the elite.
00:08:03.000 I find this elitism off-putting because the fact is that
00:08:07.000 For me, the purpose of government is to keep everyone else out of my business.
00:08:11.000 And so I don't believe that there's this group of wise and prescient rulers who know better than we do.
00:08:16.000 I remember when I was first at Harvard Law School, we met in this giant, it was Widener Hall, we met at this giant library.
00:08:24.000 They had all of the first-year Harvard students meet here.
00:08:27.000 It was 500 students, each Harvard class 500 students.
00:08:29.000 And it looks like something out of Harry Potter.
00:08:31.000 I mean, the hall is magnificent, and it's all mahogany and carvings and busts of people you've never heard of, and it really is quite grand.
00:08:37.000 And you're sitting there, and Elena Kagan, now a justice on the Supreme Court, was the dean at the time, and she walks out in front of this whole crowd, and she says, don't worry, you've made it.
00:08:47.000 The competition is over.
00:08:49.000 You got in.
00:08:50.000 No matter what happens, you'll have a job.
00:08:52.000 We dominate the Supreme Court.
00:08:53.000 We dominate the Senate.
00:08:56.000 The last several presidents have all been from Harvard.
00:08:58.000 Bush went to Harvard Business School.
00:08:59.000 And Obama went to Harvard Law School.
00:09:02.000 Bill was a Yalie.
00:09:03.000 But before that, you had a bunch of people who were from Harvard as well.
00:09:06.000 And she says, basically, you've got it made.
00:09:08.000 And you just have to decide.
00:09:09.000 Since you are going to basically be the rulers of the universe, you have to decide how you are going to rule.
00:09:15.000 Pretty lofty stuff for a bunch of people who are 22 years old.
00:09:18.000 For me, I was 20.
00:09:18.000 I was the second youngest kid in the class.
00:09:21.000 Pretty lofty stuff for a bunch of people who have no moral experience and no real life experience as a general rule.
00:09:27.000 And by the way, lofty stuff for anybody, because nobody should have that kind of control.
00:09:30.000 The whole idea of American Republicanism, small r, is the idea that the people should not be dominated by a group of upper-class elitists who think that they're a bunch of nudniks and idiots and fools.
00:09:41.000 But there is this feeling that is now coming over the self-styled elite in the Republican Party, as well as the Democrat elite we've already known about.
00:09:49.000 They score in their own base.
00:09:50.000 They always think that people who vote for them are idiots, but they can use them to get ahead.
00:09:53.000 People in the Republican Party have started to treat their base like this.
00:09:57.000 Brett Stevens is a columnist for The Wall Street Journal.
00:10:00.000 And I generally really like Bret Stephens stuff.
00:10:01.000 I think he's a very good writer.
00:10:03.000 I think he's a talented guy, particularly on foreign policy.
00:10:05.000 But he wrote one of the truly one of the worst columns that I have ever read.
00:10:09.000 He came out a couple of days ago and it's worth going through at length because it is a window into the mind of so many people in the upper echelon Republican Party.
00:10:17.000 I talked a few days ago on this broadcast about how Bill Kristol over at the Weekly Standard was already talking.
00:10:23.000 If Trump gets the nomination, what do we call our new third party?
00:10:27.000 And I was saying, this is amazing, because these are the same people saying Trump wouldn't take the allegiance pledge, the loyalty pledge, and so Trump has to be cast out, but now we won't do it, because we are the great ones.
00:10:39.000 We are the ones who get to decide, and if it's not going to be us deciding, nobody decides.
00:10:43.000 If somebody else is going to play with the football, we take the football, and we don't just take it home, we take a knife and we stab that football.
00:10:49.000 We let all of the air out of it, right?
00:10:50.000 We're like my cousin,
00:10:51.000 That's basically how the establishment is now about the party.
00:10:54.000 So Bret Stephens writes in the Wall Street Journal,
00:11:09.000 Let us now pledge to elect Hillary Clinton as the 45th President of the United States.
00:11:14.000 Let's skip the petty dramas of primaries and caucuses that abate histrionics, the sour spectacle of the convention in Cleveland.
00:11:21.000 Let's fast forward past that sinking October feeling when we belatedly realize we're going to lose and lose badly.
00:11:27.000 Let's do this because it's what we want.
00:11:29.000 Maybe secretly, maybe unconsciously, but desperately.
00:11:32.000 We want four and probably eight more years of cable news neuralgia.
00:11:36.000 We want to drive ourselves to work as Mark Levin or Laura Ingram scratch our ideological itches until they bleed a little.
00:11:42.000 We want the refiner's fire that is our righteous indignation at a country we claim no longer to recognize, ruled by imposters and overrun by foreigners.
00:11:50.000 This is very cynical stuff, right?
00:11:52.000 He's saying that everybody in the base who likes Trump or Cruz is somebody who wants to lose to Hillary Clinton, and not only that, we enjoy the masochism.
00:11:59.000 We enjoy the masochism of having a Democrat as president and Democrats running the show.
00:12:04.000 That's what we really like.
00:12:05.000 What we want is to elect the bad guys so that we can complain about it, so we can bitch about it.
00:12:09.000 That's basically Bret Stephens' point.
00:12:11.000 This is such stupidity.
00:12:13.000 He is saying, and people in his party are saying, we're going to start our own third party if Trump is the nominee, and he's accusing the Trump supporters of wanting to get Hillary elected?
00:12:22.000 You can't have it both ways.
00:12:23.000 Either you call for the party to unify around the nominee, or you're calling for Hillary to be elected.
00:12:28.000 Right now, let's be fair about one other thing, which is that there are good reasons why you might have a higher priority than defeating Hillary Clinton at the ballot box.
00:12:35.000 If, for example, you think the Republican Party has been so drilled through with corruption and nastiness that it has to be cleansed, there has to be a shift in the way the party is run,
00:12:46.000 And so if it takes a loss to Hillary Clinton to purify the party so that in four years we can come back and have a legitimately conservative party, it's an argument I have some sympathy for, I ultimately disagree with it, but that's at least a rationale.
00:12:59.000 But this idea that people are just stupidly throwing up their hands and saying, more Democrats, it's so nasty and untrue.
00:13:07.000 And then he goes on to say, Bret Stephens does, that Ted Cruz is a part of this.
00:13:10.000 It's not just Trump.
00:13:12.000 Right?
00:13:12.000 So you thought that it was just scorn for Donald Trump.
00:13:14.000 No, it turns out it's not just scorn for Donald Trump.
00:13:16.000 He also hates Cruz.
00:13:17.000 The Wall Street Journal, by the way, despises Ted Cruz.
00:13:20.000 Despises Ted Cruz.
00:13:21.000 And Cruz pointed this out, which makes the Wall Street Journal despise them even more.
00:13:24.000 I'll tell you, I submitted a piece to the Wall Street Journal last week, in which I did a very basic statistical analysis.
00:13:30.000 And I said, if you don't want Trump to be the nominee,
00:13:33.000 Cruz is probably your second best bet.
00:13:34.000 So why isn't the establishment getting behind Cruz?
00:13:36.000 Because they don't like Cruz.
00:13:37.000 They actually like Cruz less than they like Trump.
00:13:40.000 The Wall Street Journal turned it down.
00:13:42.000 Maybe they didn't want it because they disagreed with the premise.
00:13:44.000 Maybe they didn't want it because it didn't fit their needs.
00:13:46.000 Whatever it was, they then ran this piece by Bret Stephens about how Ted Cruz is, quote, happy to be on any side of an issue so long as he can paint himself as a real Republican.
00:13:56.000 The implicit goal here being the automatic excommunication of anyone who disagrees with him.
00:14:00.000 Naturally, he's rising.
00:14:02.000 Okay, the stunning cynicism of this, this entire column says, if you agree with Cruz or Trump, then you're automatically excommunicated because you disagree with us, and then he's accusing Cruz of the same thing.
00:14:12.000 Cruz is legitimately the most conservative candidate in this race, by any measure.
00:14:16.000 By any measure, Ted Cruz is the most conservative candidate in this race, but that's not good enough for Bret Stephens.
00:14:22.000 He says that if you vote for Cruz, it's because you want Hillary to win.
00:14:26.000 And then they go even, this goes even further, and this is the craziness, okay?
00:14:29.000 If you're a moderate in the Republican Party,
00:14:31.000 It doesn't even matter what the question is, you already know the answer.
00:14:34.000 The answer is going to be more moderation.
00:14:36.000 John McCain wasn't moderate enough, that's why he lost.
00:14:38.000 Mitt Romney wasn't moderate enough, that's why he lost.
00:14:40.000 Okay, you guys picked Romney.
00:14:43.000 I opposed Romney.
00:14:44.000 I wrote a column in January of 2012 called No on Mitt Romney.
00:14:47.000 That was the name of the column.
00:14:48.000 And the reason I said that is because I said no one whose chief accomplishment in office is Obamacare can run against a guy whose chief accomplishment in office is Obamacare.
00:14:57.000 Right?
00:14:57.000 You're going to lose.
00:14:58.000 Maybe you'll lose with somebody else too.
00:15:00.000 But you can't run as a Republican on Romneycare and expect people to see the contrast.
00:15:04.000 It's just stupid and silly.
00:15:06.000 Right?
00:15:06.000 But we ran him anyway.
00:15:07.000 But here's what the establishment takes away from that.
00:15:09.000 So, you know, as a member of sort of the grassroots conservative base,
00:15:13.000 I think the reason Romney lost is because Romney did not take the fight to President Obama.
00:15:18.000 I think he was passive.
00:15:19.000 I think that he tried to paint Obama as incompetent rather than ill-intentioned.
00:15:23.000 I think that he left Obama basically unscathed throughout the race and still it was a relatively close race.
00:15:28.000 If he had really taken out the hatchet for Obama, I think things would have been different.
00:15:31.000 In 2008, I know things would have been different if John McCain had hit President Obama with Jeremiah Wright one week out of the gate instead of waiting for one week before the election when it was too late to do anything.
00:15:41.000 But here's what the establishment takes away from Mitt Romney's defeat.
00:15:44.000 Quote.
00:15:46.000 If the lesson of Mitt Romney's predictable loss in 2012 was that it's bad politics to tell America's fastest-growing ethnic group that some of their relatives should self-deport or to castigate 47% of the country as a bunch of moochers, well, so what?
00:15:59.000 Abraham Lincoln once said, if you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend.
00:16:04.000 Whatever.
00:16:05.000 Now the party of Lincoln has as its frontrunner an insult machine
00:16:08.000 Okay, put aside his critique of Trump.
00:16:10.000 Focus in on why he says Romney lost.
00:16:11.000 He says Romney lost because of self-deportation and because of his 47% comments.
00:16:31.000 Mitt Romney did not lose because of self-deportation.
00:16:34.000 Mitt Romney would have had to win 73% of the Hispanic vote in order to beat Barack Obama in the 2012 election.
00:16:40.000 He didn't lose because of self-deportation.
00:16:42.000 He lost because blue-collar whites did not show up to vote for him, and because blacks showed up in mass numbers to vote for President Obama, far more than their demographic share of the United States population.
00:16:52.000 As far as this castigating 47% of the country as a bunch of moochers, I remember when this happened, and the first thing I thought is, he should double down on it!
00:16:59.000 Why in the world is he running from it?
00:17:01.000 What Trump is showing people is you don't run even from your mistakes, but that wasn't even a mistake.
00:17:06.000 The fact is, if you don't want to be counted among the people dependent on government, don't be dependent on government.
00:17:11.000 If you don't want to be counted among people who vote for a bigger government for your own enrichment, then don't do it.
00:17:17.000 The fact is a high percentage of Americans will vote for Hillary Clinton no matter how corrupt she is.
00:17:22.000 Right now, polls show Bernie Sanders, a socialist, has 45% of the vote.
00:17:27.000 In every poll, 45% of the vote.
00:17:29.000 Okay, so don't tell me that Mitt Romney, he wasn't.
00:17:31.000 And by the way, the idea that you alienate people with this language.
00:17:34.000 Who do you think coined the term welfare queen?
00:17:37.000 It was Ronald Reagan.
00:17:38.000 It was Ronald Reagan who talked about welfare queens who were taking Americans' money and using it on their Cadillacs as opposed to being poor.
00:17:45.000 Right?
00:17:45.000 So this idea that harsh language is what causes loss, but you can only come to this... How you come up with the notion?
00:17:51.000 That Mitt Romney, the most milquetoast candidate the Republicans maybe have ever run, that he was too harsh and that's why he lost?
00:17:58.000 You have to find a way to blame the base for something, I guess, since we didn't want Romney in the first place.
00:18:03.000 We came out for him anyway.
00:18:05.000 We did our job.
00:18:06.000 You guys didn't do your job and you picked him.
00:18:08.000 And then you're gonna turn around and blast us for it?
00:18:09.000 Now, Bret Stephens opposed Romney, but he opposed everybody.
00:18:11.000 I mean, if you look back at his columns in 2012, he opposed everyone.
00:18:15.000 So you can't say, well, you know, he was specifically anti-Romney.
00:18:19.000 He was anti-everybody.
00:18:20.000 He basically said Romney was the best of the worst, essentially.
00:18:24.000 And by the way, when you quote Lincoln, and you quote Lincoln saying that if you would win a man to your cause first, convince him you're his sincere friend,
00:18:30.000 How well did it work for Lincoln?
00:18:32.000 Let's be straight about Lincoln for a second.
00:18:34.000 Lincoln's had a lot of stuff.
00:18:35.000 Lincoln then won 39.8% of the vote in the 1816 election, and in 1864, half the country couldn't vote, because they were busy seceding.
00:18:44.000 Talking about convincing people that you're on their side, and that you're his sincere friend, Lincoln was unsuccessful enough at that that half the country tried to kill the other half of the country.
00:18:53.000 So, no.
00:18:55.000 That's not to say Lincoln was wrong, it is to say that politics is a blood sport.
00:18:59.000 And to pretend that it's anything else, and that it's all about the friendly appeal?
00:19:03.000 Mitt Romney tried the friendly appeal, so did John McCain.
00:19:05.000 Don't you remember, my friends?
00:19:07.000 We tried this routine.
00:19:09.000 Anybody who disagrees with Bret Stephens, though, wants to lose.
00:19:12.000 It's amazing.
00:19:13.000 He says, So he thinks the only reason that we don't like Rubio is because Rubio would win.
00:19:15.000 I don't think Rubio would win.
00:19:32.000 I don't think Rubio would win.
00:19:33.000 I've said this before.
00:19:34.000 I don't see who is the voting base that Rubio draws that Romney didn't.
00:19:37.000 Can anyone name this base?
00:19:39.000 Does anyone really think that Marco Rubio is going to draw a significantly bigger chunk of the Hispanic population to the point where he wins the election based on that?
00:19:46.000 Who are the blue-collar voters that Marco Rubio is going to drive to the polls?
00:19:51.000 Everybody's looking at these polls right now and saying, well, Marco Rubio's running competitive with Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump is like, it's like 47-40 Hillary over Trump, and 45-44 Hillary over Rubio, or 44-44, they're tied.
00:20:03.000 Okay, the reason for that, folks, is because the media... Have you seen anything about Trump on TV?
00:20:07.000 Anything?
00:20:09.000 The reason Trump's at 40 is because they've hit him with everything, including the kitchen sink.
00:20:12.000 The reason that Marco Rubio's at 45 is because nobody knows who he is.
00:20:16.000 He's the handsome guy with the funny haircut, who's well-spoken, but has a kind of fear behind his eyes.
00:20:22.000 That's the guy who we're all talking about.
00:20:25.000 But this is how the establishment feels about the base.
00:20:27.000 The establishment feels that the base are the bad guys.
00:20:29.000 The base are the people who are driving us to defeat.
00:20:32.000 And it really is, it makes me a little sick to my stomach, because the fact is that the only way you're ever going to win elections in this country is to bridge that divide, and every time the base says, okay, well here's somebody we like, the establishment tries to clock them.
00:20:44.000 By the way, the establishment tried to clock them over Marco Rubio.
00:20:47.000 Everybody forgets about this, but Marco Rubio was a Tea Party guy.
00:20:50.000 The establishment backed,
00:20:51.000 Charlie Crist, who went on to become an Independent and then a Democrat.
00:20:54.000 He'll make his way eventually to the Green Party and then the Reform Party.
00:20:57.000 He's running out of parties.
00:20:59.000 But, the establishment did not back him.
00:21:02.000 Right?
00:21:02.000 The Tea Party backed Ted Cruz over the guy who was the Lieutenant Governor of Texas at the time, David Dewhurst.
00:21:08.000 And the establishment liked Dewhurst.
00:21:10.000 Cruz has become a powerful force in American politics.
00:21:13.000 Dewhurst, nobody's really heard of him again.
00:21:15.000 And they hate them for that.
00:21:17.000 For all the talk about how the Tea Party is the death of the party, I'll tell you what's the death of the party.
00:21:21.000 When you hate your own base.
00:21:23.000 When you hate your own base, that is the death of the party.
00:21:25.000 You cannot, it's amazing, they'll say, oh you're slicing off the independent vote.
00:21:29.000 How about slicing off 40% of your own party?
00:21:32.000 And if you look at the support for Cruz and Trump in these primaries, you're talking about well in excess of 50% of your own party.
00:21:39.000 So these establishment figures who are saying, like, for me, would I support Rubio if he were the nominee?
00:21:43.000 Yes.
00:21:44.000 Would I support Trump if he were the nominee?
00:21:45.000 Yes, reluctantly.
00:21:46.000 Would I support Cruz if he were the nominee?
00:21:48.000 Absolutely.
00:21:49.000 Would I support pretty much anybody if they were the nominee?
00:21:51.000 Yes, because I would support a steaming bowl of horse manure over Hillary Clinton.
00:21:56.000 Gladly.
00:21:58.000 But these folks in the establishment don't want it that way.
00:22:00.000 And it really is very, very frustrating.
00:22:03.000 It really is.
00:22:04.000 It's gross.
00:22:05.000 It's very upsetting, because these are the people who are supposed to be our great thought leaders, and then they walk around, oh, we're not elitists, we're not elitists.
00:22:11.000 And people I like, people whose writing I think is great.
00:22:14.000 Kevin Williamson in National Review, not just going after Trump, which is fair game, but saying that his supporters are basically a bunch of rubes who hate everything and are racist and hate women and children and small puppies.
00:22:26.000 Enough.
00:22:26.000 Just enough, guys.
00:22:28.000 They disagree with you.
00:22:29.000 And they disagree- And again, I've been victimized by the Trumpsters, okay?
00:22:32.000 I don't- For the 1000th time, I do not support Donald Trump in this primary race.
00:22:38.000 And I've been hit my fair share by the Trumpsters, who, the people who are devotees of Donald Trump are some of the most annoying people on the planet.
00:22:44.000 I'm not talking about people who support him, I'm talking about the people who are fully crazed on board with Trump.
00:22:50.000 I'm talking about the people who, when I spoke at the Nixon Library after the last debate, and I was about to give Donald Trump an A in my debate grades, got up and started screaming at me, we don't want your opinion.
00:23:00.000 Right?
00:23:00.000 Wearing Trump t-shirts.
00:23:02.000 Those people are very annoying.
00:23:03.000 But to label everyone who supports Trump, and more than that, anybody who supports Cruz, for goodness sake.
00:23:09.000 Those people are outliers to the party.
00:23:11.000 They're the ones that we have to fight.
00:23:13.000 It's just, it's just ridiculous.
00:23:14.000 It's just, it's silly and it's ridiculous.
00:23:17.000 And it shows that
00:23:19.000 If it really came down to it, if Ted Cruz were the nominee, I think there are members of the Establishment Republican Party who would significantly prefer to see Hillary win than Ted Cruz.
00:23:27.000 And I don't think it's unique to Cruz.
00:23:29.000 I think any significantly conservative candidate would face the same battles.
00:23:33.000 Because, look, Rubio's not conservative.
00:23:37.000 He's 94% conservative, according to the American Conservative Union.
00:23:40.000 But when it comes to some of his key votes, he's been movable.
00:23:44.000 And that's what the Establishment likes about Rubio.
00:23:46.000 Cruz is not movable.
00:23:48.000 Rubio is movable.
00:23:49.000 Remember, Rubio entered the Senate saying he understood that amnesty was a bad idea, and then immediately within six months, boom, he was pushing amnesty.
00:23:56.000 They feel like they can push Marco Rubio around.
00:23:58.000 They don't feel like they can push Ted Cruz around.
00:24:01.000 They don't feel like they can push Trump around, even though they agree with Trump more than they agree with Ted Cruz.
00:24:06.000 All right, well on the other side of the aisle, Hillary Clinton is doing the, oh poor me, routine.
00:24:12.000 Hillary Clinton in 2008, when she started to lose, if you recall all the way back to 2008, it feels like forever ago, but when Hillary Clinton was running in 2008, she lost Iowa.
00:24:20.000 She actually finished third in Iowa.
00:24:21.000 She finished behind Obama and John Edwards.
00:24:23.000 In New Hampshire, as you recall, she had her big crying moment.
00:24:27.000 Which, by the way, shows you
00:24:29.000 How stupid American politics has become.
00:24:31.000 In 1968, there was a guy named Edmund Muskie.
00:24:33.000 He was the governor of Minnesota, and he was running for the nomination on the Democratic side.
00:24:37.000 And Edmund Muskie was running in New Hampshire, and there was one point at which somebody insulted his wife, and he apparently teared up while he was on the campaign trail.
00:24:46.000 This ended his campaign.
00:24:47.000 He was considered a serious candidate.
00:24:48.000 It ended his campaign.
00:24:50.000 He always maintained he wasn't crying, that snow had sort of hit his face and then started to melt.
00:24:54.000 But, it ended his campaign.
00:24:55.000 Hillary in 2008, she cries in New Hampshire.
00:24:57.000 Oh, poor Hillary!
00:24:59.000 What a victim!
00:24:59.000 She's being bullied by that mean Obama and the mean media!
00:25:04.000 And Hillary wins New Hampshire, and almost ends up winning the nomination.
00:25:07.000 Well, Hillary's doing that again now.
00:25:09.000 So, clip 7, Hillary is now staging photo ops with little children.
00:25:14.000 Yesterday we discussed, by the way, how Ted Cruz's kids are fair game, but when Hillary Clinton obviously stages photo ops like this, and you'll see, it's so obviously staged, then all of a sudden, it's not staged and not mock-worthy at all.
00:25:27.000 Here's Hillary Clinton in Iowa Town Hall.
00:25:30.000 What are we going to do about all this bullying?
00:25:33.000 Not just because of just people who want to be mean, but mental and physical and diseases that people have that they're able to live with every day.
00:25:46.000 Can you tell me a little bit more about why that's on your mind?
00:25:49.000 I have asthma, and occasionally I've heard people talking behind my back about not wanting to be near me because I have asthma.
00:25:58.000 I mean, people, it's not contagious.
00:26:00.000 It's not contagious.
00:26:02.000 Oh, another kid.
00:26:09.000 She's a grandma.
00:26:15.000 That was really brave.
00:26:17.000 I know it's sort of odd coming from a person running for president, but I really do think we need more love and kindness in our country.
00:26:27.000 I think we are not treating each other with the respect and...
00:26:39.000 And the care that we should show toward each other.
00:26:43.000 That's why it's important to stand up to bullies wherever they are and why we shouldn't let anybody
00:26:50.000 Oh, well, look at that transition.
00:26:58.000 Oh, that's not who we are as Americans.
00:26:59.000 Okay, everything about this is sick-making.
00:27:01.000 Every single element of this is absolutely sick-making.
00:27:04.000 From the little girl who says she's being bullied about her asthma.
00:27:07.000 Okay, kids, first of all, are cruel and will bully kids about anything.
00:27:10.000 Okay, as somebody who is seriously victimized by bullying, I can tell you,
00:27:14.000 I don't know.
00:27:29.000 Let's say that she's telling the truth here.
00:27:31.000 Let's say that she's telling the truth, and this wasn't staged at all, that magically a nine-year-old girl gets the microphone to ask Hillary Clinton a question in the front row of her town hall.
00:27:37.000 Let's pretend that none of this happened because it was planned.
00:27:42.000 It all happened by happenstance.
00:27:43.000 And then you get Hillary with her little hug there, and then saying, we need more love and kindness and apple pie and ice cream and motherhood.
00:27:50.000 And then everybody starts, yeah, love, kindness, woo!
00:27:53.000 Yeah!
00:27:54.000 And then she finishes with, we can't have anyone bully their way into the White House?
00:27:59.000 Your husband sexually harassed people from his position of power and then you threatened them, Hillary Clinton.
00:28:06.000 Hillary Clinton, you laughed about defending a child rapist.
00:28:10.000 Hillary Clinton, you are campaigning in Iowa with a woman who sexually abused her own sister.
00:28:16.000 In the last Democratic debate before this one, you said that Republicans half the country were your enemies.
00:28:22.000 Love and kindness?
00:28:23.000 I mean, the cynicism here is just overwhelming.
00:28:25.000 It's absolutely appalling.
00:28:27.000 And that really shows you... But I guess that this is, I guess, what the establishment right wants the right to do.
00:28:33.000 They want us to talk about love and kindness and we can't let them cast us as bullies.
00:28:38.000 They're gonna cast us as bullies anyway, folks.
00:28:40.000 Okay?
00:28:40.000 It doesn't matter what we do.
00:28:41.000 This is the line.
00:28:42.000 This is the line.
00:28:42.000 It doesn't matter that Hillary Clinton is not just a liar, she's a damn liar.
00:28:45.000 It doesn't matter that Hillary Clinton is one of the worst political bullies of my lifetime and has been for 20 years.
00:28:51.000 She had basically a hit squad inside the Clinton White House to go after all of Bill's, it was the bimbo, the bimbo eruption unit, going after all of, all of the women that Bill was screwing, both legitimately and illegitimately.
00:29:02.000 It's, for her to sit there and lecture us all on bullying, this is what the left does.
00:29:06.000 What the left does is they say that there are individuals who do bad things, therefore government has to come in and do bad things to everyone.
00:29:13.000 Right?
00:29:13.000 That's the goal here.
00:29:14.000 Right?
00:29:14.000 You were bullied in school by a mean kid?
00:29:16.000 Well, I think we need more loving kindness and I as president will fix that.
00:29:19.000 How?
00:29:20.000 Hell, are you Jesus?
00:29:21.000 Are you God?
00:29:21.000 Like, what do you do?
00:29:23.000 What's your magic solution?
00:29:25.000 Oh, we need more love and kindness.
00:29:26.000 Thank you, Hillary.
00:29:27.000 You've solved her problem.
00:29:28.000 That little girl will never be bullied again because of her asthma because you said the words love and kindness.
00:29:33.000 What absolute, nonsensical, disgusting bleh.
00:29:39.000 Okay, well, it's time for some things I like and some things that I hate.
00:29:43.000 So, first, something that I like.
00:29:46.000 So there's a great—it's Christmas season, so we'll talk about a great Christian movie, although this one has a bit of a sad ending.
00:29:53.000 There's a great movie, it was based on a play called The Man for All Seasons.
00:29:56.000 If you've never seen it, it is a great take on the difference between law and morality, and it's
00:30:02.000 About Sir Thomas More.
00:30:03.000 Now it's not a full, it's not fully historically accurate about who Thomas More was.
00:30:07.000 It makes Thomas More, he was sainted later, but it makes Thomas More out to be just this wonderful beacon for liberty and truth.
00:30:14.000 And there were some good things about Thomas More, there were some not so good things about Thomas More.
00:30:17.000 If you read Thomas More's Utopia,
00:30:19.000 He had some rather tyrannical tendencies, but the film itself is great, and it has some important things to say about the nature of law, and what government can do, and what government cannot do, and God's law being higher than man's law.
00:30:31.000 So it's a really good movie, and Paul Schofield gives a tremendous performance.
00:30:33.000 He's a really great actor.
00:30:35.000 Schofield's great in everything.
00:30:36.000 There's an audio version that he did of King Lear that's tremendous, and that you should pick up if you have a chance.
00:30:41.000 Okay, now on to things that I hate.
00:30:43.000 On Christmas,
00:30:44.000 The NBA plays about five games on Christmas because this is what we do.
00:30:48.000 All of our holidays now center around these shared cultural moments and many of them are sports because you thought, as a sports fan, and I watch a lot of sports, as a sports fan, one of the things I hate is when politics now infects my sports.
00:31:01.000 I don't want to hear your political point of view.
00:31:04.000 I don't want to hear about Black Lives Matter.
00:31:06.000 I don't want to hear Bob Costas jabbering about gun control.
00:31:08.000 All I want to do is watch people hit each other over an oblong ball, or watch a couple of guys throw a ball through a hoop, or watch someone throw a spherical object past another guy swinging a wooden bat.
00:31:18.000 Right?
00:31:20.000 Simple needs.
00:31:21.000 Is it so much to ask?
00:31:23.000 It is.
00:31:24.000 So it turns out that Everytown for Gun Safety, which is an organization that was started up in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shootings, Everytown for Gun Safety, they have now cut a new public service announcement pushing for gun control, and they're using NBA stars.
00:31:37.000 So the NBA stars that you're going to see here are Steph Curry, who is the best player in the league right now, and you're also going to see Joaquin Noah.
00:31:43.000 It used to be good, but it's sort of a has-been for the Chicago Bulls.
00:31:46.000 And you'll see Chris Paul, who is the point guard for the Los Angeles Clippers.
00:31:49.000 And you'll see Carmelo Anthony, who's become kind of an afterthought on the horrible New York Knicks.
00:31:54.000 So you'll see all of them appear in here talking about gun control.
00:31:57.000 This is supposed to air consistently through all five games all over Christmas.
00:32:02.000 Here is the ad.
00:32:03.000 I heard about a shooting involving a three-year-old girl over the summer.
00:32:06.000 My daughter Riley is that age.
00:32:08.000 There was a point when I felt that I was going to die.
00:32:11.000 My parents used to always say, a bullet doesn't have a name on it.
00:32:14.000 Someone put a bullet in the back of my 14-year-old son's head.
00:32:17.000 The gun should never be an option.
00:32:18.000 We're Americans.
00:32:19.000 We don't have to live like this.
00:32:21.000 We can all make a difference.
00:32:24.000 In the United States, 88 million people die of gun violence every day.
00:32:30.000 We can end gun violence.
00:32:32.000 WeCanEndGunViolence.org, and then underneath it says a message from the NBA and its players.
00:32:37.000 Presumably not all of its players, because a lot of its players own guns.
00:32:40.000 In fact, a couple of years ago, Gilbert Arenas of the Washington Wizards was suspended for the league because he and a guy named Javaris Crittenden, I think, they got into almost a gunfight in the locker room.
00:32:49.000 They both brought guns into the locker room.
00:32:54.000 But the reason that I singled this out
00:32:56.000 Is it?
00:33:10.000 The vast majority of people dying of gun violence are not dying in mass shootings.
00:33:13.000 It's not like Sandy Hook.
00:33:15.000 Sandy Hook is actually a relatively statistically rare occurrence.
00:33:18.000 The vast majority of people who die in the United States from gun violence are killed by people that they know, people from their community.
00:33:24.000 They're not killed in random acts of violence.
00:33:27.000 They're killed because gun violence is just like every other type of violence, it is a crime.
00:33:31.000 And so they are killed
00:33:32.000 Unfortunately, disproportionately too in the black community.
00:33:35.000 Wildly disproportionately in the black community.
00:33:38.000 Right?
00:33:39.000 In the black community, according to the Centers for Disease Control, every other subgroup of the American population, the most common cause of death is car accident.
00:33:47.000 Everyone dies the most of car accident until you get really old.
00:33:49.000 So if you're a young person, your most likely cause of death is you're texting and driving and someone plows into you and you're dead.
00:33:54.000 If you are black, if you are a young black man between the ages of 20 and 24, you are four times, not just more likely, four times more likely to die of gun homicide than you are to die in a car accident.
00:34:06.000 It's wildly disproportionate.
00:34:08.000 According to Bloomberg, quote, a young black man is nearly five times more likely to be killed by a gun than a young white man.
00:34:15.000 You have to read in between the words here.
00:34:37.000 These numbers, dramatic as they are, actually understate the problem.
00:34:40.000 If a black person is killed by a gun, it is judged a homicide 82% of the time.
00:34:44.000 For the broad population, and this is also included in that statistic, most guns are ruled accidental or the result of suicide.
00:34:50.000 Only 34% of gun deaths are attributed to murder.
00:34:53.000 So when they say 88 people die every day from gun violence, they're including in that statistic somebody who shoots themselves in the head.
00:34:59.000 Well, it turns out that if you want to commit suicide, you can, right?
00:35:02.000 I mean, the gun is not the real instrument here.
00:35:04.000 Who's the perp?
00:35:05.000 It isn't the gun, it's you putting the gun to the back of your head, or the side of your head, and shooting yourself, or in your mouth, or whatever.
00:35:10.000 So, it's, but, wouldn't this be a great opportunity?
00:35:12.000 So, young black men die in disproportionate numbers from gun violence.
00:35:16.000 As it so happens, as it so happens, a vastly disproportionate share of the NBA-watching population are young black men.
00:35:23.000 Okay, young black men watch an enormous amount of NBA.
00:35:27.000 According to Nielsen, black viewers of the NBA have increased their watch time 63%, they've almost doubled it apparently, from 2003 to 2013.
00:35:34.000 Black viewers spend an average, an average,
00:35:39.000 Not not you know a not a maximum an average of 844 minutes every season compared to 290 minutes for white viewers and the NBA fan base is disproportionately young black viewers aged 18 to 34 this is the key statistic right young black men who are more likely to die in gun crimes averaged 884 minutes of NBA watching that season which is how many hours that would be
00:36:04.000 13, 14, almost 15 hours of NBA every season.
00:36:07.000 And probably on Christmas, there's a good shot a lot of people are going to be watching.
00:36:09.000 They're off of work.
00:36:10.000 They don't have things to do.
00:36:11.000 Compared with only 392 minutes for white viewers of the same age group.
00:36:15.000 So in other words, you have a disproportionate black audience watching black superstars talk about guns.
00:36:21.000 Wouldn't this be a nice time to talk about maybe don't shoot each other?
00:36:24.000 Wouldn't that be a better pitch than we need legislation to put background checks?
00:36:29.000 But again, this is not about making anybody's life better.
00:36:32.000 It's about feeling good about yourself.
00:36:35.000 Political correctness gets people killed.
00:36:36.000 This would be an opportunity to save some lives.
00:36:38.000 One of the things that they could also push, for that matter, would be, hey, if you're a young black man watching this, if you're going to knock somebody up, marry the mother.
00:36:46.000 Would that be so much to ask?
00:36:48.000 Like, seriously.
00:36:49.000 And the reason that I say young black men is because young black men wildly disproportionately are not marrying the mothers of their children.
00:36:56.000 And what's amazing about this particular ad and what it shows, it's kind of cool, actually.
00:36:59.000 Steph Curry, right, the first guy in this ad, he grew up in a two-parent household.
00:37:03.000 His father's name was Del, and Del Curry played in the NBA, and he grew up in pretty privileged circumstances.
00:37:08.000 Joachim Noah, who's the guy who has the curly hair and kind of the scrawny beard for the Chicago Bulls.
00:37:13.000 Joachim Noah, his father was a French tennis star, and his mother was Miss Sweden 1978.
00:37:18.000 And he grew up in a home with both of his parents involved.
00:37:21.000 And Chris Paul grew up in a home with both his parents involved, and he did, during summers, he would work for his granddad at a gas station.
00:37:28.000 Solid family structure.
00:37:30.000 And all three of these guys are pros, and they're in the NBA.
00:37:32.000 In fact, the only person there who didn't have this sort of family structure is Carmelo Anthony, who grew up in the Red Hook projects in New York City, and apparently saw dead bodies on a pretty regular basis.
00:37:42.000 Wouldn't he be speaking up in favor of a less violent
00:37:45.000 We're good to go.
00:38:06.000 Why is that the message?
00:38:07.000 The answer is, of course, as always.
00:38:10.000 As always.
00:38:11.000 When it comes to the left, achieving good results is secondary to achieving good feelings.
00:38:17.000 Achieving good results is secondary to achieving good feelings, and it doesn't matter if you have a group of people.
00:38:21.000 You know, it's the same thing that happened when I was down at O.T.
00:38:23.000 Ranch High School.
00:38:24.000 If I have a group of poor kids in front of me,
00:38:26.000 I have two choices.
00:38:27.000 I can either tell them it's the fault of the system, lobby your legislator to give your parents more money, or I can say, make your way in the world, make good decisions, here are some good decisions you can make, and you won't be poor, your life is in your hands.
00:38:38.000 Which is a better message?
00:38:40.000 Mine didn't go over as well because it ain't quite as friendly.
00:38:43.000 And this is the problem with the political debate right now, is that the people on the left are willing to exploit people so long as it makes them feel good, and people on the right typically are not.
00:38:53.000 Okay, I promised you a bit of a surprise at the end of this Ben Shapiro show, and so we'll fade out doing something that my family used to do as sort of a prank.
00:39:02.000 As you can see, I'm not just Jewish, I am super Jew.
00:39:05.000 And so my family, on Christmas Eve, when we go to people's houses, we would knock on the...
00:39:10.000 Specifically Jews.
00:39:11.000 We would knock on their door, my sister's friends, we would knock on their door, and my sisters and I, I have three younger sisters, and my sisters and I would sing Silent Night in four-part harmony.
00:39:20.000 We'd actually carol all the other Jews in the neighborhood as sort of a joke, but obviously it's a joke in the sense that I don't believe in Jesus as Christ.
00:39:29.000 I believe that Jesus existed.
00:39:30.000 I believe he was a Jew.
00:39:32.000 As I explained yesterday, the Jewish vision of Jesus is not the Christian vision of Jesus, which is why I am a Jew, right?
00:39:37.000 There are distinctions between religions that are important, but it is important
00:39:40.000 Very, very important in the United States to be grateful for the American brand of Christianity, which has been a boon for the world and a boon for the Jews.
00:39:47.000 And so we'll fade out as I sing Silent Night.
00:39:50.000 My sister played an elf, I think, when she was in public school, actually, in the Christmas play.
00:39:53.000 And I remember I was also in the Christmas play when we were allowed to have Christmas plays in public school.
00:39:58.000 So I do know virtually all of the words to Silent Night.
00:40:01.000 I brought them up in front of me so I don't have, like, a national anthem slip-up.
00:40:05.000 But we'll at least sing the first verse.
00:40:08.000 Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright, round yon virgin mother and child.