The Ben Shapiro Show - Facebook On The Hot Seat | Ep. 501

00:00:00.000 It's fight night at the White House.

00:00:02.000 President Trump, Joe Biden going mano y mano.

00:00:05.000 Plus, Mark Zuckerberg's week just got worse and Republicans struggle to pass their big omnibus spending bill.

00:00:10.000 We'll go through all of this stuff and an exclusive interview with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.

00:00:14.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:14.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:20.000 So, indeed, yesterday we were in Washington, D.C.

00:00:22.000 We had a great time.

00:00:23.000 We got to go to see all of the sites from the inside.

00:00:26.000 We got to meet with Speaker Ryan.

00:00:27.000 We'll have our exclusive interview with Speaker Ryan a little bit later in the program, which I'm very much looking forward to showing you, because it was a lot of fun.

00:00:34.000 We didn't talk a lot, actually, about kind of day-to-day politics.

00:00:36.000 We talked more about broad things that he should be doing in Congress to change the nature of government, which I think is a little more important, because we talk day-to-day politics on the show.

00:00:43.000 We'll get to all of that, plus the greatest story of the last

00:00:47.000 Two years?

00:00:48.000 Maybe?

00:00:49.000 Maybe.

00:00:49.000 It's pretty great.

00:00:50.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

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00:02:19.000 OK, so there is a lot of actual news to talk about, but the most important news, the thing that we all care about the most is that there's going to be a fight, fight, fight, fight.

00:02:27.000 Fight between Joe Biden, the former vice president of the United States, in this corner.

00:02:32.000 And in this corner, Donald J. McFace Trump.

00:02:35.000 It's going to be so great.

00:02:37.000 OK, so here's how it all started.

00:02:39.000 So Biden has been trying to outman Trump.

00:02:41.000 OK, Biden understands something a lot of other politicians don't.

00:02:44.000 You can't actually just fly over the top of Trump.

00:02:46.000 You can't say, I'll play the high road and he'll play the low road and we'll be in Scotland before you.

00:02:50.000 You can't actually do that with Trump.

00:02:52.000 You actually have to get down in the mud with him.

00:02:53.000 So Biden gets this.

00:02:54.000 And so Biden speaks Trump's language.

00:02:56.000 So

00:02:57.000 They're sort of weird reverse mirror images of one another.

00:03:00.000 It's like Bizarro Trump is Joe Biden and Bizarro Biden is Trump.

00:03:03.000 So it's very weird.

00:03:04.000 So it starts off, clip 13, Joe Biden yesterday saying that he would have beaten up Trump in high school, which is a real weird thing to say.

00:03:30.000 When I was in high school, I beat the hell out of the President of the United States.

00:03:33.000 And then he continues this way. 1.00

00:03:45.000 So Trump is a fat, ugly SOB, and the only people who talk like that are the biggest, fattest, ugliest SOBs in the room. 1.00

00:03:50.000 Funny, because you're talking like that right now, Senator Biden, or Vice President Biden. 1.00

00:03:55.000 And then Trump fires back.

00:03:56.000 So here's what Trump tweets.

00:03:58.000 Come on, this is great stuff.

00:04:00.000 This is great stuff.

00:04:00.000 God, how can you not love this?

00:04:02.000 OK, here's what he tweets back this morning.

00:04:05.000 It's so phenomenal.

00:04:06.000 Crazy Joe Biden is trying to act like a tough guy. 0.99

00:04:08.000 Actually, he is weak, both mentally and physically. 0.99

00:04:12.000 And yet he threatens me for the second time with physical assault.

00:04:15.000 He doesn't know me, but he would go down fast and hard, crying all the way.

00:04:18.000 Don't threaten people, Joe!

00:04:22.000 It's the best!

00:04:23.000 Okay, so Joe Biden had threatened to beat Trump up actually several months ago, saying that if they got in a fight, he would take down Trump.

00:04:29.000 And now you got the President of the United States.

00:04:30.000 Imagine this, there's a very funny Twitter account that takes all of Trump's tweets and puts them in the format of presidential statements.

00:04:36.000 Imagine the presidential statement, like you wake up from a coma and this is what you see.

00:04:40.000 And you're like, oh, Donald Trump's in a fight with, wait, Donald Trump's the president and he tweeted that?

00:04:44.000 So yeah, that's the thing that happened.

00:04:46.000 And I love it.

00:04:46.000 I gotta say, I love it.

00:04:48.000 Right? 0.64

00:04:48.000 He is weak, both mentally and physically. 0.64

00:04:50.000 And yet he threatens me for the second time with physical assault. 0.98

00:04:53.000 He doesn't know me.

00:04:54.000 He would go down fast and hard, crying all the way.

00:04:57.000 Love it.

00:04:58.000 Fast and hard, crying all the way.

00:05:00.000 Yes!

00:05:01.000 And actually, so they're now booking a fight.

00:05:04.000 And the fight will be booked.

00:05:05.000 And we actually have some training footage of what's been going on in the run-up to this massive fight.

00:05:10.000 Yeah.

00:05:13.000 Yeah.

00:05:15.000 I do a million of these a day.

00:05:16.000 So just give me five.

00:05:32.000 Oh man, that's hilarious.

00:05:36.000 That's Joe Biden pumping iron.

00:05:38.000 He's on the phone, he's got like a dumbbell and he's pumping iron.

00:05:41.000 Then it's Trump from WWE just knocking people over.

00:05:44.000 It's so great.

00:05:44.000 So, I have volunteered.

00:05:46.000 If they do this fight, first of all, there's no way this is bad for America.

00:05:48.000 OK, America's already toast when it comes to our vulgar political culture. 1.00

00:05:52.000 We're done.

00:05:52.000 OK, Donald Trump is the president.

00:05:54.000 Hillary ran. 1.00

00:05:54.000 Joe Biden is an idiot. 1.00

00:05:56.000 He's going to run. 1.00

00:05:57.000 He may win in 2020.

00:05:58.000 Oh, my goodness.

00:06:00.000 OK, so I volunteer.

00:06:02.000 OK, I volunteer.

00:06:02.000 I won't I won't get paid for it.

00:06:04.000 I want to be the announcer on this.

00:06:06.000 OK, I want to be the announcer on this.

00:06:07.000 I tweeted out some of the things that I thought would happen.

00:06:09.000 Some people tweeted back some lines.

00:06:10.000 So not all of these lines that you're about to hear on my own, but

00:06:14.000 I do want to announce this fight.

00:06:15.000 I think it would sound something like this.

00:06:17.000 Something like this.

00:06:17.000 Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the ruckus in the hospice.

00:06:20.000 The brawl on Geritol, the melee over the Jell-O tray, the headlock on Matlock.

00:06:25.000 This is a 12-round bout between 74-year-old Donald J. Trump and 78-year-old Joseph R. Biden, fought at the catchweight of 245 pounds.

00:06:34.000 Biden has had to drink four ensures per day to make weight.

00:06:38.000 Bernie Sanders was invited, but there was not enough pudding in the world to ensure that he reached catchweight.

00:06:43.000 Let's get ready to stumble!

00:06:45.000 And here we go.

00:06:46.000 Trump comes out jabbing insulin.

00:06:48.000 Biden hits him with a hard left.

00:06:49.000 And Trump is spitting dentures.

00:06:51.000 Trump responds with a clap to Biden's cheek.

00:06:53.000 He clapped on and Biden clapped off.

00:06:55.000 Biden's going to feel that in his walk-in bath tomorrow.

00:06:57.000 Trump's out there looking a little bit fuzzy out there, as fuzzy as a tennis ball is on his walker.

00:07:01.000 And now they're both down on the mat!

00:07:02.000 They're both down on the mat!

00:07:04.000 They are both napping!

00:07:06.000 Oh, and they're back up again, circling each other warily, looking for an opening, and boom!

00:07:10.000 Trump just pulled the old reverse mortgage on Biden, and Biden is down!

00:07:14.000 Biden is down!

00:07:15.000 He's fallen, and he can't get up!

00:07:17.000 He's punching his life alert button!

00:07:20.000 Oh my goodness, both of them now being carted off in wheelchairs, but to be honest, both of them were carted in in wheelchairs.

00:07:25.000 But still.

00:07:27.000 So, it would sound something like that.

00:07:28.000 I mean, wouldn't that be great?

00:07:29.000 Come on! 0.61

00:07:30.000 Come on! 0.61

00:07:30.000 This would be great for American politics. 0.61

00:07:32.000 There's no way this goes wrong. 1.00

00:07:34.000 Yes, things are incredibly stupid, ladies and gentlemen. 1.00

00:07:39.000 Things are incredibly stupid. 1.00

00:07:40.000 Well, in other stupid news, it's time for Congress to pass another crappy omnibus package, so... 1.00

00:07:45.000 There's a big omnibus package coming out. 0.99

00:07:47.000 Congress is no longer capable of actually just passing appropriations bills.

00:07:51.000 Here is the problem.

00:07:52.000 The Congress, the House of Representatives, will go forward with appropriations bills.

00:07:56.000 They will pass through the normal appropriations process.

00:07:58.000 The way that you're supposed to do budgets is you are supposed to fund individual departments, and then you're supposed to send a bill to the Senate, and the Senate is supposed to fund that individual department, and then the President signs it.

00:08:07.000 Instead, what has happened, because Mitch McConnell does not have a governing majority in the Senate, he has 51 votes, but they're all fractious, instead,

00:08:15.000 They just slap everything together in a crap sandwich of a bill that's 2232 pages long.

00:08:21.000 And then they give people 48 hours to read it and say, we got to vote. 0.86

00:08:24.000 And they put a bunch of good stuff in there and they put a bunch of bad stuff in there.

00:08:26.000 So some of the good stuff that is in there, OK, there is there is some funding for the wall, like a very, very, very little bit of funding for the wall.

00:08:35.000 There's some things that are being pushed by sort of the left wing of the Republican Party.

00:08:40.000 There's increased funding for the Child Care Access Means Parents in Schools program, which means that parents will have access to on-campus child care and this sort of thing if this is your stuff, if this is the stuff that you like.

00:08:51.000 The funding is there for the military.

00:08:54.000 We're good to go.

00:09:13.000 We're good.

00:09:29.000 Literally years at this point on this show.

00:09:31.000 Democrats want to use illegal immigration as a hot-button issue when it comes to the elections, but they don't actually want to solve the problems for illegal immigrants.

00:09:39.000 In fact, Paul Ryan went to the Democrats and he offered them a really sweetheart deal.

00:09:44.000 He offered them three years of funding for the wall.

00:09:46.000 So $25 billion over three years for the wall.

00:09:48.000 And in exchange, three years of additional funding for the DACA program, right?

00:09:52.000 We'd push off DACA, nobody would get supported.

00:09:54.000 Democrats turned that down flat, okay?

00:09:57.000 And they waited until the last minute to do it, and now they'll vote against the bill saying that Republicans didn't give enough.

00:10:01.000 So Democrats were offered what they wanted on DACA and would have brought them past the next presidential election, actually, and they turned it down anyway because they just want to run on this issue.

00:10:09.000 Here are some of the conservative concerns with all this.

00:10:11.000 The Freedom Caucus, the House Freedom Caucus,

00:10:14.000 I've spoken to a lot of members of the House Freedom Caucus, spoken to several senators who have opposed the bill.

00:10:19.000 Senator Mike Lee in Utah is opposed to the bill. 0.92

00:10:21.000 He says it's just unconscionable that Mitch McConnell is forcing through another one of these omnibus packages that is essentially a giant crap sandwich that nobody is going to read. 0.88

00:10:29.000 Here's what the Freedom Caucus says in their statement. 0.91

00:10:32.000 They say, Many of the policies in the bill are, in fact, the opposite

00:10:42.000 Of course.

00:11:04.000 It makes no changes to reduce Obamacare's burdensome regulations on America's families.

00:11:08.000 It doesn't get rid of Obamacare regulations.

00:11:09.000 And on top of the massive price tag, leadership is forcing a vote on this 2,232-page bill in under 36 hours.

00:11:15.000 It's an insult to America's taxpayers, as well as many rank-and-file representatives who had no say in the omnibus negotiations.

00:11:21.000 So the House Freedom Caucus coming out extraordinarily strong against all of this.

00:11:25.000 Now, will it probably pass anyway?

00:11:27.000 Sure, because a majority of Republicans will vote for it, and then there will be a bunch of Democrats who vote for it because it's a big omnibus package.

00:11:33.000 But there's a procedural hurdle they have to jump today.

00:11:35.000 It'll be interesting to see whether they are able to do so, because in order for that procedural hurdle to be jumped, every Democrat's going to jump against it.

00:11:41.000 It's possible that this bill gets voted down and is brought back for further changes.

00:11:46.000 So one of the things that the Freedom Caucus talks about there is the fixed NICS bill.

00:11:51.000 So, what exactly is that?

00:11:52.000 Jacob Solom over at Reason Magazine says this.

00:12:12.000 But there are also substantive concerns about the bill raised by supporters of gun rights who worry that it will help block firearm sales to people who pose no threat to others.

00:12:20.000 I'll explain why in just a second.

00:12:21.000 First, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Lending Club.

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00:13:35.000 And it doesn't impact your credit rating.

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00:13:38.000 So, what exactly is the problem with the Fix NICS program that is embedded in this bill?

00:13:42.000 Well, Senator Cornyn from Texas introduced this last November in response to the Sutherland Springs shooting.

00:13:48.000 Cornyn's bill aims to prevent the screw-ups that prevented the sharing of information with the National Instant Background Check System.

00:13:56.000 They would also encourage sharing of local and state records.

00:13:59.000 But, for example, Senator Lee has due process objections to the bill.

00:14:02.000 He argues that the Department of Veterans Affairs wrongly identifies veterans as mental defectives, which disqualifies them from gun ownerships when they need help managing their benefits.

00:14:10.000 This was a serious problem with an executive order that Obama had tried to put out last year that was revoked by President Trump.

00:14:15.000 That executive order was an attempt to prohibit seniors who had other people do their finances from owning weapons.

00:14:22.000 Well, this sort of does the same thing because the Department of Veterans Affairs

00:14:26.000 We're good.

00:14:42.000 So, nobody's against more transparency in the National Instant Background Check system, but the question is what standard is going to be used to deny people a gun?

00:14:49.000 And that standard does have to be changed.

00:14:50.000 Other conservative concerns with this bill, aside from the process, aside from the fact that these omnibus packages stink, that they are garbage, and again, I think this is less on Speaker Ryan, because the House has consistently passed appropriations bills, and it's more on Senator McConnell.

00:15:04.000 Now listen, it's up to Ryan to please McConnell, right?

00:15:08.000 He could just tell McConnell, listen, Bob, you're on your own.

00:15:10.000 Get it right.

00:15:10.000 Do the appropriations process.

00:15:11.000 Do what you need to do.

00:15:13.000 You do this.

00:15:14.000 But he's not.

00:15:14.000 He's working with McConnell.

00:15:15.000 Back channel.

00:15:16.000 This is one of the great tensions that exists on the Hill.

00:15:19.000 I just was in Washington, D.C.

00:15:21.000 yesterday.

00:15:22.000 My speech at Georgetown was canceled by actual snowflakes, not like the students, by like actual snow.

00:15:27.000 I spent some time talking with a bunch of congressional staffers and a bunch of Congress people, including members of the Freedom Caucus, and this is the difficulty, okay?

00:15:34.000 People like me actually have a relatively easy job.

00:15:36.000 My job is to get on the air every day and to talk to you about the things that are going on and to explain what I think is right and wrong about these bills and to analyze and to stump for better bills.

00:15:43.000 When you're in Congress, there's also a tendency to try and get things done, right?

00:15:47.000 The government needs to be funded.

00:15:48.000 We need to somehow bridge the gap between what we want and what we can get.

00:15:53.000 Well, sometimes that makes things pretty awkward, because there are a lot of Republicans who are going to vote from an omnibus package.

00:15:58.000 Number one, because they want to maintain their seats, and it's better to have a Republican in that seat than a Democrat.

00:16:02.000 And number two, because they are seriously concerned about things like military spending.

00:16:06.000 So what's the easiest way to do this?

00:16:07.000 The easiest way to do this is to slap together a crappy omnibus package, and then you say to your constituents, listen,

00:16:12.000 I didn't like a lot of the stuff in there, but I liked some of the stuff in there, and I needed to vote for it because of that.

00:16:17.000 This is why it's up to Mitch McConnell to do a better job of keeping his members in line.

00:16:20.000 Now, what's amazing is that a lot of senators are afraid of Senate Majority Leader McConnell.

00:16:23.000 A lot of senators are afraid that he is sort of in de facto control of the National Senatorial Committee for the Republicans, the NRSC, that he is going to remove money from them or undercut them.

00:16:34.000 And so they are willing to go along, get along with Senate Majority Leader McConnell.

00:16:39.000 But the reality is that if they don't stand up at a certain point and say to McConnell, listen, we're not going to vote for these omnibus packages anymore.

00:16:46.000 We're going to only vote for packages that we like.

00:16:48.000 Then you're never going to get anything better.

00:16:49.000 The government is just going to continue to grow.

00:16:51.000 So the Republican Study Committee stayed up all night last night to try and read through this egregious bill.

00:16:56.000 And some of the stuff that they found in there truly is not great.

00:17:00.000 So let's start going through it.

00:17:02.000 So here's what they say.

00:17:03.000 Here's the statement from the Republican Study Committee.

00:17:05.000 They say,

00:17:17.000 Particularly concerning is the increase in non-defense discretionary spending, which exceeds the cap by $63 billion, and fiscal year spending by $60 billion.

00:17:26.000 The boost in non-defense discretionary spending represents the largest single-year increase in non-defense discretionary spending since the BCA caps, this would be the sequestration caps, were created.

00:17:36.000 Conservatives may believe this is a reflection of the fact that Democrats have been successful in handcuffing NDD spending to fully funding the national defense.

00:17:43.000 Together, the omnibus's increase in defense and non-defense spending will increase the deficit by $143 billion.

00:17:49.000 This goes to a point that I've been making for a long time.

00:17:52.000 Republicans are in the business of cutting taxes.

00:17:53.000 They're not actually in the business of cutting spending.

00:17:55.000 Too many Republicans don't care about cutting spending.

00:17:57.000 See, it's fiscally hard to cut spending.

00:18:00.000 It is politically hard to cut spending. 0.99

00:18:01.000 You take a lot of crap for cutting spending. 0.98

00:18:03.000 You never take crap for increasing spending. 0.99

00:18:05.000 And this is one of the problems here, is that so many folks are focused on being popular and not enough focused on doing the right thing, especially in an off-year election, right?

00:18:15.000 In 2018, there's a fear that Republicans are going to lose the House, and then what do you have?

00:18:18.000 Then you have Nancy Pelosi in charge of making these laws. 0.99

00:18:20.000 So, listen, I have a lot of sympathy for Republican staffers and Republican House members trying to figure out what to do here.

00:18:25.000 Go back to the drawing board.

00:18:26.000 Give us something better.

00:18:27.000 This bill is not up to the standards.

00:18:29.000 And what's the point of you winning elections if you're not going to do anything with the power once you finally have the power?

00:18:34.000 Right?

00:18:34.000 It continues to fund things like local transit programs.

00:18:36.000 It funds the D.C.

00:18:37.000 Opera House. 1.00

00:18:38.000 It has large spending increases in the Agriculture Appropriations Division, which is idiotic. 0.97

00:18:42.000 It funds the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities. 0.96

00:18:45.000 It funds the Refugee and Entrance Assistance Programs.

00:18:48.000 It funds the Social Security Block Grant Program.

00:18:50.000 It doesn't change Obamacare in any significant way.

00:18:52.000 It does not include Dodd-Frank rollback language.

00:18:55.000 It doesn't include a provision prohibiting funding for administrative expenses of an Obamacare multi-state plan that provides coverage for abortion.

00:19:01.000 It doesn't include a provision to prevent federal funding for ICE enforcement to provide for abortions.

00:19:06.000 The bill does not contain the Conscience Protection Act.

00:19:08.000 The bill contains a Treasury forfeiture fund, no explicit prohibition on the Gateway Tunnel funding.

00:19:14.000 The bill doesn't include a provision to prohibit the EPA from implementing greenhouse gas regulations.

00:19:18.000 In other words, it's a garbage program to fund the government so that people don't actually have to do anything.

00:19:22.000 And now again, is there some good stuff here? 0.90

00:19:24.000 Yes.

00:19:24.000 I mean, we do have to fund defense.

00:19:26.000 Defense has been just slashed tremendously by the number of, by the Obama era cuts.

00:19:32.000 And that's really, you know, quite disastrous that Obama did that in the first place.

00:19:37.000 We have to ramp up our defense spending again.

00:19:39.000 Republicans are in charge, and it's on Republicans' head what they pass here.

00:19:43.000 Go back to the drawing board, make some changes.

00:19:45.000 I have a feeling you can get at least something better.

00:19:47.000 You can get at least something better, because this is just not a thing.

00:19:51.000 This is just not good enough for a Republican House to pass.

00:19:56.000 Okay, meanwhile,

00:19:58.000 Meanwhile, Facebook is finding itself in additional trouble.

00:20:01.000 So, Mark Zuckerberg has been on the hot seat for quite a while here, and he's continuing to be on the hot seat, but not for good reason.

00:20:08.000 I think there are lots of good reasons for Mark Zuckerberg to be on the hot seat.

00:20:10.000 I think as a conservative, the discrimination against conservative news outlets has been egregious over the past several months, and that's why you've seen traffic decline for every conservative website, like all of them.

00:20:21.000 Okay, but the reason that he's really getting flack is because the left has decided that Mark Zuckerberg is responsible for Hillary losing.

00:20:26.000 So, let's count all the people responsible for Hillary losing.

00:20:28.000 According to the media, it's not Trump, right?

00:20:30.000 Trump didn't win the election, he lost.

00:20:32.000 The people responsible for Hillary losing are, in order, James Comey, the Russians, the conservative media,

00:20:39.000 And social media.

00:20:59.000 If you join FarmVille on Facebook, if you play FarmVille, you are having your information drawn from Facebook.

00:21:04.000 Every time you click on anything on the internet, somebody is gathering that information in order to drive an ad program to you.

00:21:10.000 This is how people make money on the internet.

00:21:11.000 But CNN grilled Zuckerberg and they asked, can people trust Facebook?

00:21:14.000 The answer is, of course people can't trust Facebook.

00:21:16.000 They never could trust Facebook.

00:21:18.000 If you thought that Facebook was your friend and that Facebook wasn't attempting to market to you, how do you think they made their money? 0.97

00:21:23.000 It's ridiculous.

00:21:24.000 Facebook has asked us to share our data, to share our lives on this platform, and has wanted us to be transparent.

00:21:30.000 And people don't feel like they've received that same amount of transparency.

00:21:33.000 They're wondering what's happening to their data.

00:21:36.000 Can they trust Facebook?

00:21:38.000 Yeah, so one of the most important things that I think we need to do here is make sure that we tell everyone whose data was affected by one of these rogue apps.

00:21:46.000 And we're going to do that.

00:21:48.000 We're going to build a tool where anyone can go and see if their data was a part of this.

00:21:53.000 So the 50 million people that were impacted, they will be able to tell if they were impacted by this?

00:21:59.000 Yeah, and we're going to be even conservative on that.

00:22:01.000 So, you know, we may not have all the data in our system today, so anyone whose data might have been affected by this.

00:22:06.000 Okay, this is such nonsense.

00:22:07.000 I mean, okay, want to know whose data was affected?

00:22:09.000 Everyone's.

00:22:10.000 Okay, on Facebook, because everyone is gathering information from you all the time.

00:22:14.000 On Facebook, it's how Facebook makes their money. 0.71

00:22:16.000 Okay, this is just silly talk. 0.93

00:22:17.000 It's silly talk. 0.88

00:22:18.000 And Zuckerberg pretending, oh, we'll be fully transparent.

00:22:21.000 Oh, we'll finally reveal everything that we know.

00:22:23.000 Oh, we're finally going to show you the inside workings of our company.

00:22:26.000 None of this is going to happen.

00:22:27.000 None of this is going to happen.

00:22:28.000 Zuckerberg's pandering, by the way, is really egregious.

00:22:30.000 I mean, he even says that he would love to see regulations on Facebook.

00:22:34.000 OK, this is just nonsense.

00:22:35.000 Here's Zuckerberg saying that he's not even sure that they shouldn't be regulated.

00:22:38.000 Given the stakes here, why shouldn't Facebook be regulated?

00:22:42.000 Um, I actually am not sure we shouldn't be regulated.

00:22:45.000 What the hell?

00:22:46.000 Okay, of course he's sure they shouldn't be regulated. 0.77

00:22:48.000 Why do you think he's attempting to self-regulate right now?

00:22:50.000 He doesn't want to be regulated because he's afraid it will cut into his bottom line.

00:22:53.000 So what's he doing?

00:22:54.000 He's doing what Democrats want so they don't regulate him.

00:22:56.000 Okay, this is outside Democratic pressure in order to ensure that social media companies do what Democrats want.

00:23:02.000 In a second, I'm going to give you the update on what Zuckerberg posted, because he posted this long, ridiculous letter about what's been going on with the Cambridge Analytica situation.

00:23:10.000 I'm going to read it to you in just a second and analyze it.

00:23:12.000 But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Zeal.

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00:24:23.000 OK, so Mark Zuckerberg issues a letter yesterday about the Cambridge Analytica situation.

00:24:29.000 And here's what he says, quote,

00:24:40.000 Let's do it!

00:24:59.000 We're good to go.

00:25:20.000 Okay, so here's what I want to point out here.

00:25:22.000 Okay, what happened in this timeline?

00:25:23.000 He goes from 2007 to 2014.

00:25:24.000 He just skips over everything else.

00:25:27.000 What, hmm, what happened between 2008 and 2012?

00:25:29.000 We're like, there's some things that happened.

00:25:32.000 Like, I seem to remember in 2012, for example, the Obama administration using exactly the same strategy in order to gather data on people.

00:25:38.000 He just skips right over that.

00:25:39.000 It's just Cambridge Analytica that's doing terrible, terrible things.

00:25:42.000 Listen, do I think Cambridge Analytica may have been a little shady?

00:25:45.000 Sure.

00:25:45.000 Do I think they did anything dramatically different, as far as I'm aware, than the stuff that Obama was doing?

00:25:51.000 Am I supposed to be angry that people gather data on Facebook?

00:25:53.000 This is all nonsense. 0.92

00:25:54.000 It's all nonsense. 0.98

00:25:56.000 I mean, this is all crazy. 0.95

00:25:57.000 He says,

00:26:17.000 OK, Facebook is is increasingly a disastrous medium and Zuckerberg seems to have lost control of his own pet project, which is an amazing it's an amazing thing.

00:26:27.000 I mean, there's a reason that the stock is dropping.

00:26:29.000 OK, so yesterday I had the opportunity to sit down with Paul Ryan.

00:26:33.000 And some of the folks who helped us make this happen were the folks, my friends over at Young America's Foundation, which is the exclusive home of my college tour.

00:26:40.000 So we were in D.C.

00:26:41.000 this past week.

00:26:41.000 And even though the city shut down for the snow day, YAF helped us make sure that we were able to sit down with Speaker Ryan for a few minutes to talk about some of the issues Republicans are working on, as well as the future of the conservative movement.

00:26:51.000 And here is what it sounds like.

00:26:53.000 Well, we are here with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, which is pretty awesome.

00:26:56.000 And we are here in the ceremonial room outside the Speaker's office, where apparently they sign bills and have heads of state, which I'm sure you're honored to be here with me.

00:27:04.000 I am.

00:27:05.000 Good to have you.

00:27:06.000 Good to have you, Ben.

00:27:07.000 Welcome.

00:27:08.000 Thank you so much.

00:27:09.000 I appreciate it.

00:27:09.000 So, you know, there's a lot to talk about.

00:27:11.000 Obviously, the elections are coming up.

00:27:13.000 And first, let me get your thoughts on where you think things are going to head, you know,

00:27:18.000 It's a long ways away.

00:27:19.000 I feel good about our chances.

00:27:21.000 Midterm elections are hard on the majority party.

00:27:23.000 Midterm elections for a president's first midterm, on average, you lose like 32 seats.

00:27:29.000 We've got a 24-seat majority.

00:27:30.000 So just clearly, with the headwind of history in front of us,

00:27:34.000 That's not a good thing.

00:27:36.000 But I feel like we're going to have a tailwind of accomplishments to get us into the midterms.

00:27:41.000 We can get into all the agenda, but we've done so many things in such a short period of time that will actually make a positive difference in people's lives.

00:27:48.000 And I think we're going to have a really good story to tell, not to mention the fact that our candidates, our members, are battle-hardened.

00:27:54.000 They know how to run tough races.

00:27:57.000 So I feel very, very good about where we are.

00:27:59.000 So I want to start by talking about some of those accomplishments, and then I want to get to sort of the tactics that you guys are going to use in the election campaign.

00:28:05.000 So, obviously, the top of the list for accomplishments is the tax bill, and Democrats losing their minds over the tax bill did not look particularly good.

00:28:13.000 So it's fair to point to Nancy Pelosi saying that you've given the American people crumbs and say that that's wrong.

00:28:18.000 So how much do you think that will impact the election?

00:28:20.000 That's going to be the gift that keeps giving, just that statement.

00:28:23.000 But every single Democrat voted against this.

00:28:26.000 I really think they did that because they thought they were going to psych us into defeating ourselves, particularly in the Senate.

00:28:33.000 And when they kept pushing this line, they went so far left, so hard progressive, that every single Democrat voted against it.

00:28:39.000 They're on the wrong side of history, and they're on the wrong side of results.

00:28:43.000 I've been working on this issue a long time.

00:28:46.000 We have.

00:28:47.000 This is bigger than 1986 tax reform.

00:28:49.000 So this is the first time in 31 years we've done tax reform.

00:28:52.000 But it's much more profound than the tax reform we did back then in 1986.

00:28:57.000 Because this completely changes the way we tax ourselves on an international competitive basis.

00:29:03.000 And this will put such a strong foundation of growth and opportunity and free enterprise in America, more so than any kind of economic reform in my lifetime.

00:29:12.000 I'm convinced of that.

00:29:13.000 And so, they're on the wrong side of history.

00:29:16.000 This takes a tax system that was the worst in the industrialized world and gives us a tax system that we think is in the top three of the industrialized world's tax systems.

00:29:25.000 That means more jobs in America, more opportunity in America, businesses coming back to America, bringing capital back to America, expanding.

00:29:31.000 And that is a phenomenally good thing.

00:29:33.000 It's going to get more careers, better wages, better benefits, more entrepreneurship, and the Democrats are against all of that.

00:29:40.000 Well, one of the things that's really difficult in the job that you have, Mr. Speaker, is obviously that you are forced to do... I mean, your job is to do policy.

00:29:48.000 Yeah.

00:30:04.000 I mean, if good policy won, Republicans would never lose.

00:30:06.000 But the problem is obviously that, particularly if you look at the polls among young people, they're really, really egregiously bad.

00:30:11.000 I mean, 70% of my audience is under the age of 35, and the polls, even among conservative youngsters about Republicans, are not good.

00:30:19.000 How are you going to win the battle of ideas when you're so focused on talking policy?

00:30:23.000 And is there a way to shift away from that?

00:30:23.000 That's always been my issue.

00:30:25.000 I've always strongly believed that elections need to be about choices and about ideas.

00:30:30.000 And that's why in 2016 I got our House Republicans together to come up with an agenda and to run on it.

00:30:36.000 We called it The Better Way, so that we would have a game plan, we would give the country a very clear choice, and that if we won the election we would have earned the right to put that agenda in place.

00:30:45.000 We're two-thirds of the way through doing that right now.

00:30:48.000 And that gives us a good story to tell, which is, here's what we said we would do, here's what we did.

00:30:53.000 This is what we did in Wisconsin, by the way, in 2010, the state legislature, our governor.

00:30:58.000 It's a model that I believe in, that I saw work there.

00:31:00.000 It's something we're trying to apply here nationally.

00:31:03.000 And then we also have to go with new ideas in the election to continue this reform agenda, to disrupt it.

00:31:10.000 Now, the point you made, I think, is important, but what about young people?

00:31:13.000 The thing that bothers me the most, and I know you've talked about this a bit, is identity politics.

00:31:17.000 I hate identity politics.

00:31:19.000 It's wrong.

00:31:19.000 It's morally wrong, but also it's insidious, and it's practiced on both sides.

00:31:24.000 Our job is to reject identity politics and try and replace it with better ideas and idea and aspirational politics.

00:31:31.000 I'm a Jack Kemp acolyte.

00:31:32.000 I'm a big believer in using our core founding principles, applying to the problems, and show that there are solutions for everybody.

00:31:39.000 And that, to me, is the kind of an agenda and temperament we have to have going into the 2018 elections.

00:31:46.000 And so I wanted to ask you about that specifically, not in terms of, you know, efficiencies and economics, but about the moral differences that you see between right and left, because I think that's the real issue, particularly for young people, because, you know, you and I are both big fans.

00:31:58.000 Obviously, you long before I was, and in a much more prominent way, but you're big on entitlement reform.

00:32:04.000 Right, right, right.

00:32:30.000 Yeah, we believe in equality of opportunity.

00:32:32.000 They believe in equality of outcome.

00:32:34.000 Equality of opportunity means we want to make sure that we use these guiding principles that built this country, liberty, freedom, free enterprise, self-determination, government by consent, which gives you an open economy, which gives you freedom, which gives you the ability to chart your life the way you want to.

00:32:49.000 And we strive to promote equality of opportunity so that the most people can get the most opportunities possible.

00:32:54.000 And nowhere else is that ever made more clear than a free enterprise system, than a freedom

00:32:59.000 Democratic capitalism like we have, like our system is built on natural rights.

00:33:03.000 What the left believes in, and look, you're asking a conservative what the left believes in, but they believe in equality of outcome.

00:33:09.000 The difference in the kind and size and role of government you have between what we're saying and what they're saying is enormous.

00:33:15.000 Having an equality of outcome agenda means elites in Washington, unelected bureaucrats, micromanage our lives and everything we do in such a way that they believe they have to decide what the results of our lives are.

00:33:28.000 That's very different.

00:33:30.000 That's the sense of equality, which is they make things equal in the end and the outcome of things.

00:33:34.000 That gives you a stagnant society.

00:33:36.000 That gives you a top-down society.

00:33:38.000 I come from Wisconsin, which is the birthplace of the Progressive Party.

00:33:43.000 They believe in all this early 20th century progressivism and Hegel and Bismarck and all these guys who basically

00:33:49.000 I think that we're all rubes and dubes and we don't know enough, so we need to delegate our power to these smart bureaucrats that are insulated from elections so they can harmonize and micromanage our lives. 1.00

00:34:00.000 And that is an equality of outcome philosophy.

00:34:02.000 It's antithetical to our founding philosophy.

00:34:05.000 And that, at the end of the day, is the big difference here.

00:34:07.000 And so the fights we have up here, in many cases, not every one, but in many cases, are fights of that origin.

00:34:15.000 And I think that, you know, I've been watching, obviously, your political ascent for my entire life because you're younger.

00:34:25.000 But certainly over the last, you know, 15 years.

00:34:27.000 And one of the things that I wish that you had the opportunity to speak more about that

00:34:32.000 Because it seems like you're sucked more into speaking about the efficiency outcomes.

00:34:35.000 Yeah, I'm in the day job.

00:34:35.000 Yeah, right.

00:34:36.000 Exactly, exactly.

00:34:37.000 Because we do need thought leaders in the conservative movement who are talking specifically about the roots of the left and talking specifically about the way that natural rights have been overcome by a different regime of how rights are thought about, right?

00:34:48.000 The difference between positive and negative rights.

00:34:50.000 So when I go to... I talk to schools all the time, young people.

00:34:53.000 I always say, look, these are our rights given to us pre-government.

00:34:57.000 You don't even have to believe in God to believe that they come from God.

00:35:00.000 They're pre-government.

00:35:02.000 So government can't take those away from us.

00:35:03.000 That's us.

00:35:04.000 We're sovereign.

00:35:06.000 I don't even like the idea of negative versus positive.

00:35:07.000 That's more of a left construct.

00:35:09.000 But the idea of government-granted rights means we give our power to the government.

00:35:14.000 I always say the healthcare debate.

00:35:16.000 Everybody says healthcare is a right.

00:35:18.000 If you buy into that premise, then we're saying we're giving our power to our government to tell us how, when, where, and under what circumstances we get to exercise that right.

00:35:26.000 We're giving the government way too much power than we should.

00:35:29.000 That's what the left is saying when they say they want to grant us these new rights.

00:35:33.000 The best thing that I've found when I talk to young crowds is if we do not get entitlements under control, which we can with more choice and competition and free enterprise and choice, if we don't get these things under control, we are going to bankrupt the next generation.

00:35:48.000 We've run the federal government, I round the numbers, we've run the federal government

00:35:51.000 For the last 60 years, by taking about 20 cents out of every dollar made in America, produced in America to pay for the federal government, if we do nothing, and no new programs do nothing, by the time my kids are having kids, we're going to have to take 40 cents out of every single dollar made in America to pay for this government at that time.

00:36:09.000 Before they even get on to doing something else they want to do with their government.

00:36:12.000 So we will bankrupt the next generation. 0.96

00:36:15.000 I actually had the CBO run numbers years ago on what tax rates would have to be.

00:36:19.000 It goes up as high as 88% for tax rates just to pay for this government at that time.

00:36:23.000 So I try to explain to people in dollars and cents

00:36:27.000 Just what's going to happen to them if the left gets their way, they produce this equality of outcome agenda, we don't reform entitlements, and we stick with these kind of command and control systems.

00:36:37.000 So I try to find a way of explaining in dollars and cents what their future will look like from an economic and tax standpoint and how liberty and opportunity will be crushed if we stay in this particular path.

00:36:49.000 Okay, so I also, while I have the opportunity, wanted to ask you about sort of the legislative versus executive balance, because one of the things that I've been critiquing for a long time in the country, and I was doing it under Bush, I was doing it under Obama, I'm doing it now under the Trump administration, is the increasing power of the executive branch, seemingly at the expense of the legislative branch, the growing bureaucracy, and the feeling that the legislative branch, over the last century and a half really, has abdicated its duty by kicking it over to the bureaucracy.

00:37:15.000 A good example of this being trade.

00:37:16.000 You know, the President obviously is pushing a particular agenda on trade.

00:37:20.000 This was not in the purview of the Executive Branch originally.

00:37:22.000 This is in the purview of the Legislative Branch.

00:37:24.000 You're the Speaker of the House.

00:37:25.000 How do you hope to, if you do, hope to reestablish the balance originally drawn?

00:37:32.000 I wrote the Trade Promotion Authority law, which was to allow us to go get trade agreements.

00:37:35.000 And we brought some of that power back into the Legislative Branch, but not nearly as much as we'd like.

00:37:40.000 So I can go into the particulars of that.

00:37:42.000 There's a couple of things that we're trying to do here that we've passed out of the House.

00:37:46.000 The biggest complaint you'll hear from a House Republican is the Senate filibuster and getting things through the Senate.

00:37:52.000 We have this thing called the REINS Act, which we think is sort of the catch-all of reclaiming Article 1, which is, 32 state legislatures do this.

00:38:01.000 You pass a big law, it's vague, and then the bureaucracy fills in the details with its rules and regulations.

00:38:08.000 And that just then happens.

00:38:09.000 And so you end up having all these unelected bureaucracies effectively writing the laws we experience.

00:38:15.000 We think that's wrong.

00:38:16.000 So what we're saying with this REINS Act, which is you pass a law, the rules and regulations get published, and then those rules and regulations come back to Congress for a final vote, approval, or amendment before they go into effect.

00:38:29.000 So that they're consented to by the elected branch of government, the people who are elected to write the laws before they go into effect.

00:38:35.000 And that holds us accountable, too.

00:38:37.000 So to that end, what we do is we try to, in the bills we pass, since we can't get that through the Senate yet, we try to do it on an individual basis, on a bill-by-bill basis.

00:38:46.000 And then I did something else.

00:38:48.000 We had these lawyers called the Legislative Council.

00:38:51.000 It's the Office of Legislative Council.

00:38:52.000 This is the actual bill drafters.

00:38:54.000 I used to chair the Ways and Means Committee, which is mostly tax laws and healthcare laws.

00:38:58.000 Tax laws have to be written really tightly, very, very prescriptively.

00:39:03.000 And so, I was worried we were writing too vague of a law.

00:39:07.000 We were just writing really vague laws and giving all this discretion to the bureaucracy.

00:39:11.000 Except in tax laws.

00:39:12.000 So what I did was I promoted the guy who was head of the tax law writing department to run the entire legislative council department to train the other lawyers of the legislative council how do you write laws really prescriptively so that we can reduce the kind of open-ended discretion we end up getting the executive branch.

00:39:30.000 So I'm trying to change sort of the culture of the way we legislate here so that we're far more detailed and prescriptive to not give all this discretion to the executive branch.

00:39:38.000 I really appreciate you taking the time, and again, you have one of the hardest jobs in all of America.

00:39:43.000 I do not envy you, but I appreciate that you're trying to make philosophical arguments in a time when it seems that a lot of people are caught up in tribal politics.

00:39:49.000 It's actually the best part of my day, so thank you.

00:39:51.000 I appreciate it, thank you.

00:39:52.000 Okay, so that was our sit-down with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.

00:39:55.000 We expect to do a longer sit-down with him sometime in the near future, and then I can ask him about things like today's budget bill, which is garbage.

00:40:02.000 And we can talk a little bit more about what he intends to do to stop the overreach of the Senate, which seems to only want to pass these omnibus packages that should not really be passed.

00:40:13.000 OK, so I'm going to talk a little bit about other scandals brewing.

00:40:16.000 Apparently Stormy Daniels is going to be on 60 Minutes. 0.99

00:40:19.000 The weather is getting stormy.

00:40:20.000 And so we'll talk about all of that.

00:40:22.000 But first, you're going to have to go over to Daily Wire and subscribe.

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00:41:29.000 All righty, so a quick roundup of other news.

00:41:31.000 So, meanwhile, 60 Minutes is now ready to do its interview with Stormy Daniels.

00:41:38.000 According to the Daily Mail, the head of CBS News said Tuesday that a 60 Minutes interview with Stormy Daniels, who is of course the porn star that Trump stopped, is on its way, but that more journalistic work needs to be done on the story.

00:41:47.000 David Rhodes is the president over at CBS News.

00:41:49.000 I've met him.

00:41:50.000 He's actually a reasonable fellow, I think.

00:41:52.000 He said at a conference in Israel on Tuesday that the first time CBS had confirmed that it interviewed Daniels, who has alleged an extramarital affair with Trump before he became president, she passed a lie detector.

00:42:02.000 Listen, of course he had an affair with her.

00:42:04.000 Of course.

00:42:05.000 I'm so tired of people futzing around this issue.

00:42:08.000 Oh, she's lying.

00:42:08.000 You're right.

00:42:09.000 She's lying, as is every other porn star. 0.99

00:42:11.000 All the women are lying. 1.00

00:42:12.000 They're all lying.

00:42:12.000 It's just not credible.

00:42:13.000 I'm sorry.

00:42:14.000 Michael Avenatti is a lawyer for the actress, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.

00:42:17.000 Last week, he tweeted a picture of himself, Clifford, and Anderson Cooper.

00:42:22.000 No air date has yet been set for the interview, but they are preparing.

00:42:27.000 This is one of the weird things about the Stormy Daniels story.

00:42:33.000 Jonah Goldberg pointed this out.

00:42:34.000 A lot of people saying, well, you know, Trump denied all the sorts of activity during the campaign.

00:42:38.000 But he's not, you know, he's denying that he had an affair with Stormy Daniels.

00:42:41.000 But then why would he be paying Stormy Daniels $130,000 in order to shut her up?

00:42:45.000 Like, to talk about an affair they didn't have?

00:42:48.000 Then he could sue her for libel.

00:42:49.000 So, what exactly would be the point of any of this?

00:42:51.000 It doesn't make any sense at all.

00:42:53.000 So, all of this continues to roll out over the Trump White House.

00:42:59.000 None of it is obviously particularly good for President Trump.

00:43:03.000 Meanwhile, President Trump continues to fulminate about Russia and Vladimir Putin.

00:43:07.000 He is

00:43:08.000 Obviously very sensitive about comments made about Russia.

00:43:10.000 A lot of people were very critical of the president, including me, when he congratulated the Russian president on his dictatorial victory in the new fake elections over in Russia.

00:43:21.000 He'd been bashed by some people, including Ben Sasse, the senator from Nebraska, who I think says a lot of very intelligent things.

00:43:26.000 Sasse said a couple of things on the floor of the Senate the other day.

00:43:29.000 He said, number one, Trump obviously should not be praising Putin, and number two, that material should not be leaking from the White House.

00:43:36.000 Which obviously is true, okay?

00:43:37.000 There's no way that there should be material leaking from the White House that says that people were telling Trump not to—that it was written on a memo in front of him, do not congratulate Putin.

00:43:45.000 There are only a certain number of people in that room.

00:43:47.000 If Trump really wants to be sure, he can just fire everybody who was in the room when he made the phone call, or everybody who had seen that memo.

00:43:51.000 In any case, here was Ben Sasse saying what he said, and then Trump responding.

00:43:54.000 Vladimir Putin is not a friend. 0.99

00:43:57.000 Vladimir Putin is a despot. 0.78

00:43:59.000 The President of the United States was wrong to congratulate him, and the White House Press Secretary was wrong to duck a simple question about whether or not Putin's re-election was free and fair. 0.93

00:44:12.000 It was not.

00:44:13.000 The American people know that, the Russian people know that, and the world knows that.

00:44:19.000 And yesterday, when the White House refused to speak directly and clearly about this matter, we were weakened as a nation, and a tyrant was strengthened.

00:44:29.000 And Sass went on to talk about how none of this stuff should have been leaked from the White House anyway, which is of course true.

00:44:33.000 Trump responded by ripping on everybody else about his own comments about Putin.

00:44:38.000 So here were some of his tweets on this topic.

00:44:40.000 He said, I called President Putin of Russia to congratulate him on his election victory.

00:44:44.000 In past, Obama called him also.

00:44:45.000 Okay, that's true.

00:44:46.000 This is true.

00:44:49.000 Okay, so far, this is all somewhat fair, right?

00:44:57.000 They never would have called for Barack Obama to rip on Putin.

00:45:00.000 In fact, they were fine with Barack Obama offering flexibility to Putin right before a presidential election, and then handing over control of Syria in the midst of a genocide to Vladimir Putin.

00:45:08.000 So, he's not wrong to be critical of the media.

00:45:10.000 But this is where he begins to go wrong.

00:45:13.000 Then he tweets this.

00:45:15.000 They can help solve problems with North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, ISIS, Iran, and even the coming arms race.

00:45:21.000 Bush tried to get along, but didn't have the smarts.

00:45:23.000 Quote-unquote smarts.

00:45:24.000 Nothing says that you are a smart person who can use the word smarts like using scare quotes improperly.

00:45:29.000 Obama and Clinton tried, but didn't have the energy or chemistry.

00:45:31.000 Remember, reset peace through strength!

00:45:35.000 OK, that's not what peace through strength means.

00:45:38.000 They cannot help us solve problems with North Korea. 0.96

00:45:40.000 They have dealings with North Korea.

00:45:41.000 They cannot help us solve problems in Syria, where they've been bolstering the Assad regime and its genocide. 0.66

00:45:45.000 They certainly cannot help us solve problems in Ukraine, which they invaded. 0.98

00:45:48.000 They are not going to help us with problems with Iran, considering that they are fans of Iran. 1.00

00:45:52.000 And as far as the coming arms race, it's Vladimir Putin who is currently testing long-range missiles again and talking about how they're upgrading their entire missile system to avoid missile defense.

00:46:01.000 Trump ripping on Bush and saying that he didn't have the smarts is just yuck.

00:46:05.000 It's, I'm sorry, it's just, it's classless.

00:46:08.000 And I love that it's, that he thinks, here's the thing about Trump.

00:46:11.000 Trump thinks that everything comes down to personal relationship because in essence, President Trump is a salesman.

00:46:15.000 So he thinks that his relationship with Putin is going to go well because he's a good salesman.

00:46:18.000 Okay, Trump is a good salesman, but that's not how international relations work.

00:46:22.000 Good salesmanship does not mean that you are better on the international stage.

00:46:25.000 Proper use of the iron fist and the velvet glove, power and threat of force and the use of those things, right?

00:46:32.000 That is the essence of diplomacy.

00:46:34.000 Trump is not good at those things. 0.95

00:46:35.000 When he says peace through strength, Ronald Reagan's peace through strength was that there would be peace because they knew that if they crossed the line, we'd bash them in the head.

00:46:42.000 That's what peace through strength meant.

00:46:43.000 Trump is saying nice things about Putin for no reason, then calling it peace through strength. 0.97

00:46:46.000 That's not what that is, and it's foolish of President Trump to say that.

00:46:49.000 Okay, time for a thing I like and then a thing I hate, and then we'll be back here tomorrow with the mailbag.

00:46:54.000 So, things I like.

00:46:56.000 So, this is not for the kiddies.

00:46:58.000 It's probably not for many of the adults.

00:46:59.000 There's a show on Netflix called Altered Carbon.

00:47:02.000 It is heavily nudified.

00:47:04.000 Okay, it's like Game of Thrones-style nudity.

00:47:07.000 Lots of lots of boobies on this particular show and it's not particularly necessary I guess you can make the argument that it's sort of artistically necessary because the whole point of the show is that there is a future in which human beings have a Have their personality embedded in essentially a computer chip

00:47:23.000 And that computer chip is in the base of their skull and that computer chip can actually be removed and implanted in other bodies.

00:47:30.000 So you actually don't die when your body dies.

00:47:32.000 They just take that computer chip and they take all your memories and everything.

00:47:34.000 They just stick it into another body and you're good to go.

00:47:37.000 And so this body substitution regime is sort of the point of the series.

00:47:40.000 I'm about five episodes in.

00:47:42.000 It's sort of noir-ish.

00:47:43.000 If you like Blade Runner 2049, it's that sort of feel.

00:47:47.000 It's this kind of dark futuristic vision with neon colors.

00:47:50.000 It looks a lot like that movie.

00:47:52.000 Here's a little bit of the preview.

00:47:57.000 Your body is not who you are.

00:48:01.000 You shed it like a snake sheds its skin.

00:48:03.000 You transfer the human consciousness between bodies to live eternal life.

00:48:12.000 How long have I been down?

00:48:15.000 250 years.

00:48:23.000 You are the property of Bancroft Industries.

00:48:26.000 You've been provided with this body.

00:48:36.000 Mr. Kovacs.

00:48:37.000 I didn't ask.

00:48:54.000 The message of the series is that your body is not all you are.

00:49:00.000 In fact, it's very little of who you are.

00:49:02.000 But it is something.

00:49:03.000 It raises some interesting philosophical questions.

00:49:04.000 So, worth watching if you can stand the NC-17 rated of it.

00:49:09.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.

00:49:15.000 Alrighty, so there are two quick things that I hate.

00:49:18.000 First of all, apparently there's a student in the UK who is now alleging that he was reprimanded by his school for watching a video on a public computer of me talking with Dave Rubin.

00:49:28.000 Here's what he said.

00:49:29.000 I got reported by someone for watching disturbing, hateful content in university premises and received an email from faculty course officer who wanted to be summoned for a student meeting.

00:49:37.000 And apparently the student says that because they were watching this video of Rubin and me,

00:49:44.000 That they were threatened with suspension from school.

00:49:48.000 This is certainly crazy, but it is unfortunately not all that uncommon.

00:49:53.000 The left likes to lump into the category of hate speech anyone that it doesn't like.

00:49:56.000 This is why they're trying to say that Jordan Peterson is responsible for hate speech.

00:49:59.000 It's that Harris, who's not even on the right, is responsible for hate speech. 1.00

00:50:02.000 All of it is stupid. 1.00

00:50:03.000 All of it is nonsense. 1.00

00:50:04.000 And it's why hate speech legislation like they have in Britain is insanely dangerous, because you can just start banning viewpoints that you don't like.

00:50:09.000 OK, the other thing that I don't like is Ellen Dershowitz had a debate with Jeffrey Toobin 0.74

00:50:13.000 Over on, I believe, CNN, about the Mueller investigation.

00:50:17.000 And Dershowitz has been making—Dersh, as we used to call him at Harvard Law School—has been making the case that I think is a pretty solid case, that the investigation, the Mueller investigation, has exceeded its legal boundaries, and he's now digging in areas where he was not originally designed to go.

00:50:32.000 Jeffrey Toobin, who's a former Dershowitz student, he says that Dershowitz is now a shill of the Trump administration.

00:50:37.000 They go at it on CNN.

00:50:38.000 Here's what it looked like.

00:50:39.000 How has this come about that in every situation over the past year you have been carrying water for Donald Trump?

00:50:46.000 This is not who you used to be and you are doing this over and over again in situations that are just obviously ripe with conflict of interest and it's just like what's happened to you?

00:50:58.000 What conflict of interest?

00:50:59.000 I attacked President Trump... Not you!

00:51:01.000 I'm talking about not your conflict of interest, these conflicts of interest. 0.61

00:51:03.000 I attacked President Trump for his banning of Muslims.

00:51:08.000 I attacked President Trump for leaking material to Russia.

00:51:14.000 I have attacked President Trump for many, many things.

00:51:16.000 I'm not carrying his water.

00:51:18.000 I'm saying exactly the same thing I said.

00:51:20.000 Okay, and Dershowitz is exactly correct here, of course.

00:51:23.000 You may disagree with Dershowitz's analysis, but it's getting tiresome to watch people who don't like Trump simply suggest that anyone who defends Trump at any juncture, even if we've been very critical of Trump at other junctures, that those people have now become shills for the Trump administration.

00:51:34.000 This polarized political environment is really gross.

00:51:36.000 Just because you defend Trump when he's worth defending does not mean that you like Trump overall or you think everything that he's doing is right.

00:51:42.000 And just because you say that Trump does something wrong doesn't mean that you hate Trump overall.

00:51:47.000 You may still like Trump overall.

00:51:48.000 You know, we should be able to say what we think is right and what we think is wrong.

00:51:51.000 I think Dershowitz has done a pretty good job of that.

00:51:52.000 All right, we will be back here tomorrow with the mailbag.

00:51:55.000 I look forward to seeing you then.

00:51:56.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:51:56.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:52:01.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Mathis Glover.

00:52:04.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:52:05.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:52:07.000 Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:52:09.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:52:10.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.

00:52:12.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:52:14.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

00:52:16.000 Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - March 22, 2018

Facebook On The Hot Seat | Ep. 501

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