The Ben Shapiro Show

00:00:00.000 General John Kelly emerges to save President Trump from himself.

00:00:03.000 Democrat Frederica Wilson makes a complete fool of herself.

00:00:07.000 And President George W. Bush is back.

00:00:09.000 We'll talk about all of these things.

00:00:10.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:11.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:18.000 So this has been an extraordinarily irritating week in news, and that's largely because of all the disrespect shown toward Gold Star families on pretty much every side of the aisle, from the media, from Democrats, from President Trump.

00:00:30.000 All of it kind of gross, but we'll talk about all of those things in just one second.

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00:01:40.000 Okay, so, let's set the stage, because yesterday was a pretty incredible press conference from General John Kelly, the White House Chief of Staff.

00:01:50.000 So, we need to set the stage because I want to show how there are really only two innocent parties in this whole hubbub that has now lasted the entirety of the week over the treatment of Gold Star families.

00:02:01.000 Those two innocent parties are General Kelly, the White House Chief of Staff, and the Johnson family in Florida.

00:02:06.000 Those are the only two innocent parties.

00:02:08.000 Democrat Frederica Wilson was clearly looking to get Trump.

00:02:12.000 It's pretty clear to me that she was looking to politicize the situation.

00:02:15.000 And President Trump is the one who led this whole thing off by going out and saying that President Obama and President Bush had somehow done something wrong in how they treated Gold Star families and they had insufficiently called all the members of Gold Star families.

00:02:28.000 So, that's how it started, okay?

00:02:29.000 Let's recall that back on Monday, I think it was Monday morning, President Trump gave a press conference in which he was asked specifically about why he had not reached out to all of the soldiers' families of the soldiers who were killed in Niger on October 4th.

00:02:42.000 And the president suggested that he had called all of the soldiers, or at least that other presidents had not called all of the soldiers, and he had, and this caused a bit of a firestorm.

00:02:51.000 And then, because as I say, the media are intent

00:02:54.000 On taking everything Trump says and taking it 10 steps too far, they decide it's important to show that Trump actually is not sympathetic to the troops himself.

00:03:01.000 He, in fact, is cruel and inhumane to the troops.

00:03:04.000 And then, just coincidentally, right then, President Trump calls up Myeshia Johnson, who is the widow of La David Johnson, the sergeant who was killed in Niger.

00:03:13.000 There's still open questions to be asked if you want to know what those open questions are, listen to yesterday's show.

00:03:17.000 But he calls her up,

00:03:19.000 And suddenly there's a huge firestorm because one of the people in the car when the call happens is Frederica Wilson, the Democrat congresswoman from Florida.

00:03:26.000 She is a colorful figure to say the least.

00:03:28.000 She's the woman who wears all the crazy hats.

00:03:30.000 She's the one who had suggested that George Zimmerman be put in prison for his own protection during the Trayvon Martin situation.

00:03:36.000 And she is a publicity hound, to say the very least.

00:03:39.000 But she also is close with the Johnson family, apparently.

00:03:42.000 Apparently she'd known them for quite a while.

00:03:44.000 David Johnson had at one point interned for her, I guess.

00:03:47.000 And she was in the car when Trump made this phone call.

00:03:49.000 So during the course of the phone call, one of the phrases that Trump said was something to the effect of, he knew what he signed up for.

00:03:55.000 And there were two ways to read that phrase, as I suggested at the time.

00:03:57.000 Way one was,

00:03:59.000 Trump saying, he knew what he signed up for, so is it really unexpected?

00:04:03.000 Which is a terrible thing to say.

00:04:04.000 And the other is, he was a hero, and he knew what he signed up for, and he was doing what he wanted to do when he was killed.

00:04:10.000 He was with his buddies trying to defend the country, which is a very different connotation.

00:04:14.000 Now, to be completely innocent in all of this, to take the most innocent view of this, it is quite possible that when you are doing a morning phone call, people can take the same terms the wrong way.

00:04:26.000 Right?

00:04:26.000 We all know this.

00:04:27.000 We go to funerals and you don't know what to say to somebody's family.

00:04:30.000 The family of the person who died.

00:04:32.000 It's very, very difficult.

00:04:33.000 Which is why in Judaism we actually have a formula that you say because we really understand that there isn't much you can say to comfort somebody upon the death of a family member.

00:04:42.000 And so, we say in Hebrew, So the idea is that, may you be comforted among the mourners for Zion and Jerusalem.

00:04:54.000 Right?

00:04:56.000 It's the same thing we say when we hear somebody has died in Judaism.

00:04:58.000 There's also a formula for that.

00:04:59.000 We say, Meaning, blessed is the true judge.

00:05:02.000 Meaning, blessed is God.

00:05:04.000 The reason we do that is not just because we think these things are true, although we do, it's because there really aren't a lot of great things that you can say when somebody dies.

00:05:11.000 And it is very easy to step into a landmine when you're talking with somebody.

00:05:15.000 And so the most innocent take on this situation is that Trump said something that he didn't mean to be offensive, and the family felt offended by it.

00:05:23.000 Which is possible.

00:05:24.000 I mean, that's possible.

00:05:25.000 But whatever the situation,

00:05:28.000 Let's take even that most innocent of scenarios.

00:05:30.000 The people who are to blame for this big controversy are, first, Trump for bringing up the controversy to begin with on Monday, and second, Frederica Wilson, who decides to go public and make a huge issue and suggest that Trump doesn't care about the families of soldiers.

00:05:43.000 So yesterday, so yesterday,

00:05:46.000 Yeah, John Kelly, who had been dragged into this controversy, kicking and screaming.

00:05:51.000 Apparently at one point he had told Trump that President Obama did not call him after his son's death.

00:05:56.000 John Kelly is a gold star father.

00:05:57.000 His son was killed in Afghanistan in 2010.

00:06:00.000 He had told Trump that Obama didn't call him after his son died.

00:06:04.000 And the Trump administration immediately ran to the microphones to throw that information out there.

00:06:08.000 The suggestion being, here is some support for the idea that Obama didn't call everybody.

00:06:12.000 John Kelly must have been angry about that.

00:06:15.000 In his comments yesterday, he came out and basically what he was attempting to do, I think, was restore some dignity to this process.

00:06:21.000 Okay, the calls between the President and the family members, those are sacred.

00:06:25.000 The death of service members, that is sacred.

00:06:28.000 The politicization of these issues is really gross.

00:06:32.000 And I think that's what Kelly was trying to do with this press conference yesterday.

00:06:35.000 Here is John Kelly yesterday, the White House Chief of Staff, who took control of the press conference and really, I think, reshifted the debate.

00:06:43.000 There's no perfect way to make that phone call.

00:06:48.000 When I took this job and talked to President Trump about how to do it, my first recommendation was he not do it.

00:07:01.000 Because it's not the phone call that parents, family members are looking forward to.

00:07:08.000 It's nice to do, in my opinion, in any event.

00:07:11.000 He asked previous presidents, and I said, I can tell you that President Obama, who was my Commander-in-Chief when I was on active duty, did not call my family.

00:07:21.000 That was not a criticism.

00:07:23.000 That was just to simply say, I don't believe President Obama called.

00:07:27.000 That's not a negative thing.

00:07:30.000 I don't believe President Bush called in all cases.

00:07:35.000 I don't believe any president, particularly when the casualty rates are very, very high, that presidents call.

00:07:42.000 But I believe they all write.

00:07:44.000 Okay, so, you know, I think that this was his way of basically trying to take the sting out of the out of the allegation that he was somehow accusing Obama of some shortcoming in this respect.

00:07:54.000 He then went on and he attacked Frederica Wilson for making this into a major issue.

00:07:59.000 It stuns me that a member of Congress would have listened in on that conversation.

00:08:04.000 Absolutely stuns me.

00:08:06.000 And I thought, at least that was sacred.

00:08:09.000 You know, when I was a kid growing up, a lot of things were sacred in our country.

00:08:15.000 And when I listened to this woman and what she was saying and what she was doing on TV, the only thing I could do to collect my thoughts was to go

00:08:27.000 And walk among the finest men and women on this earth.

00:08:30.000 And you can always find them.

00:08:32.000 Because they're in Arlington National Cemetery.

00:08:34.000 Went over there for an hour and a half.

00:08:36.000 Walked among the stones, some of whom I put there.

00:08:40.000 Because they were doing what I told them to do when they were killed.

00:08:44.000 I mean, truly somber stuff, obviously.

00:08:46.000 And what he's saying is basically correct, that this is not the time for congresspeople to be coming out and ripping the president of the United States a new one for stuff that is, at best, a disagreement over meaning.

00:08:57.000 Kelly went further, who's very upset, obviously, with Frederica Wilson.

00:08:59.000 He feels that she was using this as a publicity stunt in order to promote her own career, and he is not shy about saying so.

00:09:06.000 And a congresswoman stood up, and in the long tradition

00:09:13.000 of empty barrels making the most noise stood up there and all of that and talked about how she was instrumental in getting the funding for that building.

00:09:24.000 And how she took care of her constituents because she got the money and she just called up President Obama and on that phone call he gave the money, the twenty million dollars to build the building.

00:09:34.000 And she sat down.

00:09:36.000 And we were stunned.

00:09:38.000 Stunned that she'd done it.

00:09:40.000 Even for someone that is that empty a barrel.

00:09:44.000 We were stunned.

00:09:58.000 We're good.

00:10:17.000 To Frederica Wilson.

00:10:17.000 So Kelly comes out and his basic take here is, guys, this is sacred stuff.

00:10:22.000 Stop playing with fire.

00:10:24.000 Now, I do think that we have to, that that goes both ways.

00:10:27.000 Again, I think that Trump is not innocent here.

00:10:29.000 I think Frederica Wilson clearly is not innocent here.

00:10:31.000 Here's Frederica Wilson yesterday upon being informed.

00:10:33.000 I mean, this is just amazing that she's this incompetent.

00:10:36.000 And here's the colorfully beheaded Frederica Wilson talking after being informed that John Kelly had gone after her from the White House.

00:10:44.000 Threatening phone calls from white nationalists, and now, more harsh words from the White House.

00:10:49.000 You mean to tell me that I have become so important that the White House is following me?

00:10:57.000 And my word, this is amazing!

00:11:00.000 It's amazing.

00:11:02.000 That is absolutely phenomenal.

00:11:04.000 I have to tell my kids that I'm a rock star now.

00:11:08.000 Yeah, just stomach-churning stuff.

00:11:11.000 I mean, when you're talking about whether the memory of an American hero was disgraced, walking around calling yourself a rock star and laughing about it is probably not the way to do it.

00:11:20.000 By this morning, of course, she had changed her tune.

00:11:22.000 Now she's accusing John Kelly of being a racist, really.

00:11:24.000 She was on New Day this morning on CNN, this is clip 14, and she is openly accusing John Kelly of being a racist.

00:11:31.000 And though you're right, he didn't get the facts right on that, was that empty barrels make the most noise.

00:11:39.000 And he was using that, and he was likening that to you.

00:11:43.000 Basically that you're... I think that's a racist term, too.

00:11:47.000 I'm thinking about that when we looked it up in the dictionary because I had never heard of an empty barrel.

00:11:53.000 And I don't like to be dragged into something like that.

00:11:59.000 Okay, the idea that it's a racist term, again, no.

00:12:01.000 No.

00:12:02.000 I hadn't heard the term either, but I'm pretty sure that that was not a racist term.

00:12:06.000 If you had to look it up in the dictionary, good shot, it wasn't.

00:12:09.000 And then she continued along these lines.

00:12:11.000 She said that Kelly had lied about her, and that he had slandered her.

00:12:15.000 So now we're in a Frederica Wilson versus John Kelly fight.

00:12:17.000 Now what's amazing here is that Frederica Wilson is claiming that John Kelly is a racist, and that he is a bigot, and that he is a liar.

00:12:25.000 I'm old enough to remember back in 2016 when Kaiser-Kahn got up, gold star father, got up at the Democratic National Convention and attacked President Trump, and then-candidate Trump came back and attacked Kaiser-Kahn's wife, and there were two weeks of outrage over Trump's treatment of this gold star family.

00:12:39.000 Are we going to hear anything like that about Frederica Wilson's treatment of John Kelly?

00:12:43.000 He is a gold star father, after all.

00:12:44.000 Are we going to hear anything like that from the media?

00:12:47.000 Of course not.

00:12:47.000 Here's Frederica Wilson doing this routine.

00:12:50.000 I heard his remarks and I heard him say that I bragged that I secured the money for the building of the FBI building in Miramar, and that's a lie!

00:13:05.000 No, I feel sorry for General Kelly.

00:13:07.000 He has my sympathy for the loss of his son, but he can't just go on TV and lie on me.

00:13:12.000 I was not even in Congress in 2009 when the money for the building was secured.

00:13:19.000 So that's a lie.

00:13:20.000 How dare he?

00:13:21.000 However, I named the building at the behest of Director Comey, with the help of Speaker Boehner.

00:13:32.000 Working across party lines.

00:13:35.000 So he didn't tell the truth.

00:13:36.000 And he needs to stop telling lies on me.

00:13:40.000 Okay, so obviously now she's very upset.

00:13:42.000 As I say, the main claim that Kelly was making is that she went to this event and then she made it all about herself.

00:13:47.000 I don't know if that's true.

00:13:48.000 I haven't seen the tape.

00:13:49.000 But that is not the claim that she is saying that Kelly lied about.

00:13:52.000 She's saying that Kelly lied about her grabbing the money for the building or something along those lines.

00:13:57.000 In any case, the Democrats are taking precisely the wrong tack on all of this, and I'll explain in just a second.

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00:15:25.000 Okay, so the Democrats naturally felt the need to do the stupidest possible thing here, and so thus they did.

00:15:33.000 Here is Brian Fallon.

00:15:35.000 Brian Fallon is a former Hillary Clinton spokesperson, and he tweeted this out with regard to Kelly's presser yesterday.

00:15:47.000 Don't be distracted by the uniform.

00:15:49.000 I mean, as Eric Erickson said, I'm mostly distracted by the gold star.

00:15:52.000 The fact is that he is a gold star father, is John Kelly.

00:15:55.000 The fact is that a lot of Democrats are now attacking a gold star father.

00:15:58.000 As I said before, if the situation were reversed, which is precisely what they're accusing, they would never stop talking about it.

00:16:05.000 And he's not the only one who's doing this routine.

00:16:07.000 Joy Reid.

00:16:08.000 Tweeted a bunch of times last night, Lawrence O'Donnell, the exorable Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC.

00:16:13.000 He did an entire routine about how John Kelly was actually a racist based on the fact that John Kelly grew up in a segregated area, or a highly racially divided area, I guess in New England somewhere.

00:16:25.000 But here's Joy Reid's tweets, this is 17.

00:16:29.000 So, Joy Reid of MSNBC, she makes the same sorts of claims as Brian Fallon.

00:16:33.000 Wow!

00:16:34.000 Lawrence O'Donnell scorched General Kelly tonight, including calling out his segregated Boston upbringing and dehumanization of a black woman.

00:16:40.000 Wow, wow, wow.

00:16:41.000 Lawrence noted that General Kelly didn't even give Representative Wilson the dignity of using her name.

00:16:46.000 Kelly grew up in segregated Boston, in an Irish Catholic neighborhood where women were bullied, not honored, and blacks scorned and rejected.

00:16:54.000 And then she continued along these lines.

00:16:56.000 Again, what?

00:16:58.000 Like really, you're going after John Kelly being offended by Frederica Wilson because you say that he grew up in an area like Boston?

00:17:05.000 So everyone from Boston now cannot speak out when Frederica Wilson says something exorable about President Trump with regard to the troops?

00:17:12.000 We can't do that now.

00:17:12.000 Now, one thing I think is important to do here is actually play a phone call from President Trump to a military widow.

00:17:19.000 And I want to show you, I think this is fascinating because the line here has been that President Trump is not sympathetic enough to the military families, right?

00:17:27.000 That's how this whole controversy blew up even bigger than it was after Trump got it started.

00:17:31.000 The Washington Post has gotten ahold

00:17:33.000 Natasha?

00:17:34.000 Yes, sir?

00:17:34.000 I am so sorry to hear about Donald's situation.

00:17:38.000 What a horrible thing, except that he's an unbelievable hero.

00:17:40.000 And, you know, all of the people that served with him are saying how incredible he was.

00:17:49.000 Yes, sir.

00:18:04.000 I want to thank you, President Trump.

00:18:09.000 Those words are very kind.

00:18:11.000 He was an amazing man, an amazing husband, and an amazing soldier.

00:18:15.000 I couldn't be more proud of my husband than I am right now, sir, to be honest with you.

00:18:23.000 It's what my husband wanted to do.

00:18:25.000 Yes, he's just an all-around guy and I'm glad that you got to get to know a little bit about him.

00:18:31.000 It goes on like this for about three minutes.

00:18:33.000 Now what's funny about this call is that at some point in here

00:18:47.000 She explains that her son is playing cornerback for the Missouri football team, and apparently got in on an academic scholarship.

00:18:54.000 And Trump, jokingly, says something like, well, are your kids that talented, or are some less talented than others?

00:18:59.000 And she laughs, and then she says, no, all my kids are really talented.

00:19:02.000 The press, right, over at the Washington Post, one of the reporters at the Washington Post takes that one line out of context, in which Trump says, you know, are all your kids talented, or just that one?

00:19:11.000 And uses it as sort of a club, like, oh, Trump's asking her to rank her kids in order of preference.

00:19:17.000 She laughs, okay?

00:19:18.000 Everyone knows that he's kind of joking here.

00:19:20.000 But again, you're listening to the tone from President Trump.

00:19:24.000 Does this sound like somebody who's unsympathetic?

00:19:26.000 Again, I don't think Obama was unsympathetic to the troops.

00:19:28.000 I think he lied about what happened in Benghazi.

00:19:30.000 But I don't think he was unsympathetic to the troops.

00:19:32.000 I don't think he was unsympathetic to Gold Star families.

00:19:34.000 I don't think Bush was unsympathetic to Gold Star families.

00:19:37.000 I don't think Clinton was unsympathetic to Gold Star families.

00:19:39.000 I don't think Trump is unsympathetic to Gold Star families.

00:19:41.000 And the idea

00:19:42.000 That we're now going to play this game where everybody is unsympathetic to gold star families because it's the ultimate insult that you can leverage against someone, I think is truly pretty gross.

00:19:51.000 Now, Trump himself should keep silent.

00:19:54.000 He is not.

00:19:54.000 He tweeted out about Congresswoman Wilson, saying he wants to get in a slap fight with her.

00:19:59.000 He tweeted, the fake news is going crazy with wacky Congresswoman Wilson, who was secretly on a very personal call and gave a total lie on content.

00:20:06.000 This is one thing that John Kelly said I just didn't get.

00:20:09.000 At one point he said, you know, Frederica Wilson shouldn't have even been listening in on that call.

00:20:13.000 Well, I mean, you can see that there are lots of people listening in on these calls, right?

00:20:16.000 Even in the phone call we just showed from the Washington Post, you can see there's a military attache there.

00:20:21.000 John Kelly said openly that he was listening in on that exact same phone call.

00:20:25.000 So if the Johnson family wanted Wilson there, they have every right to have Wilson there if they want.

00:20:30.000 The problem with Wilson is that she decided to go out and blab to the press about it and try and turn it into some sort of politicized issue.

00:20:36.000 That is the problem with what she did here, not that she was present.

00:20:39.000 In any case, should President Trump stop this?

00:20:41.000 Yes.

00:20:42.000 Should Frederica Wilson stop this?

00:20:43.000 Yes.

00:20:43.000 Okay, if this stuff is to remain sacred,

00:20:46.000 I've had members of my extended family die.

00:20:50.000 Both my grandfathers passed away a while ago, my aunt passed away, and in any case where somebody who is close to you in any way dies, the tendency is to go very silent.

00:21:00.000 The tendency is to be very quiet.

00:21:01.000 It's why, again, in Judaism, I think Judaism actually does mourning exactly right.

00:21:05.000 I think Judaism is

00:21:07.000 A religion that does mourning better than any other religion.

00:21:09.000 We actually take a week off of work.

00:21:11.000 It's called sitting shiva.

00:21:12.000 You're not allowed to leave the house.

00:21:14.000 You basically, you sit on a low stool to signify your mourning.

00:21:18.000 People come and visit you.

00:21:19.000 People bring meals.

00:21:20.000 They actually perform the prayer services in the morning in your house.

00:21:23.000 They actually bring Torah over and like an entire group of men come over to pray with you.

00:21:29.000 And the idea here is that it's supposed to be both private and communal.

00:21:33.000 And what's happened here is precisely the opposite.

00:21:35.000 It's public and individual.

00:21:36.000 It's not communal, and it's not private.

00:21:38.000 And that is, I think, the opposite of what should happen here.

00:21:41.000 Thanks to John Kelly for attempting to restore some dignity to this process.

00:21:46.000 I mean, I don't think that's too much to ask.

00:21:48.000 Thanks also to the family.

00:21:49.000 I will say, Myesha Johnson has been incredibly classy throughout this.

00:21:51.000 This is the widow of the sergeant who was slain in Niger.

00:21:56.000 She's been totally silent about this.

00:21:57.000 She hasn't said anything, and she's not obligated to say anything.

00:22:00.000 So, good for her.

00:22:02.000 And everyone else, I think, has been garbage.

00:22:04.000 I think the media's been awful.

00:22:05.000 I think Trump has been awful.

00:22:06.000 I think Frederica Wilson's been awful.

00:22:08.000 I think there's just a generalized lack of class that now has extended to this most sacred of spaces.

00:22:13.000 Okay, so, in other news, President Bush gave a speech yesterday, and I want to go through this speech, I think it's actually important to go through this speech, for a couple of reasons.

00:22:21.000 One, I think the speech itself is quite good.

00:22:22.000 Second, I'm seeing a lot of blowback from conservatives who are saying, well, you know, he's just being mean to Trump.

00:22:29.000 is directed against Trump, and he's impugning my honor.

00:22:32.000 You know, people I like, people who I work with who are saying this.

00:22:35.000 I want to go through Bush's speech because I think what Bush's speech was was just a reiteration of classical conservatism.

00:22:41.000 If you don't like the reiteration of classical conservatism, if you think that's somehow insulting to your point of view, then I think that you ought to look at your own point of view more closely.

00:22:51.000 And if you're on the left and you think that Bush was only slapping Trump in this speech,

00:22:56.000 He wasn't.

00:22:57.000 Okay?

00:22:57.000 Bush was not just slapping Trump in this speech.

00:22:59.000 We'll go through the speech, and I will show you.

00:23:01.000 He slaps the left just as much as he slaps the nationalist, populist right, both of which I think are deserving of slaps.

00:23:08.000 It doesn't matter.

00:23:09.000 He never makes explicit reference to President Trump.

00:23:10.000 It doesn't matter.

00:23:11.000 The media have been doing this pathetic routine where it's Bush slams Trumpism.

00:23:15.000 Okay, Bush also slammed leftism, but you ignored that part, didn't you?

00:23:20.000 You pretended that never happened.

00:23:21.000 You pretended this isn't the same sort of stuff that Bush has been saying his entire career or I've been saying my entire career or

00:23:27.000 Traditional conservatives, Reagan conservatives, have been saying their entire career, you pretended that this was a going-out-of-his-way-to-slap-Trump moment because he had to become part of the resistance.

00:23:36.000 That's not what this was at all.

00:23:38.000 This was Bush reiterating basic conservative principles, and somehow this is now offensive.

00:23:43.000 And by the way, I have to say, the media over the last week or so, over the last few months,

00:23:51.000 They've been doing this utterly pathetic routine.

00:23:53.000 Nancy Pelosi came out two days ago and she said, I sort of wish that Romney were president.

00:23:58.000 You go to hell, lady.

00:24:00.000 You're the one who's suggesting that Romney was a brutal sexist in 2012.

00:24:04.000 I'm hearing people say, oh, you know, Bush, that was a classy guy.

00:24:07.000 You called Bush Hitler.

00:24:08.000 You suggested he was behind 9-11.

00:24:11.000 You can all go to hell.

00:24:12.000 It was your slander of good men like George W. Bush and Mitt Romney that led the Republicans to ignore character quality in nominating President Trump, because they figured at least if you're going to call us a bunch of jackasses anyway, if you're going to call us a bunch of racist, sexist, bigot, homophobes who hate the poor and secretly want to perpetrate terrorist attacks, then we'll just nominate whoever is the guy who hits the hardest regardless as to whether he's a good guy or not.

00:24:35.000 So the left has a lot to answer for here.

00:24:37.000 Anyway, here is some of Bush's speech.

00:24:38.000 I thought this was a great speech and I really want to go through it at length because I think that it speaks to a mode of conservatism that unfortunately has been lost in the modern era when conservatism is apparently, or at least right-wing thought is more about the attitude than it is about the thought.

00:24:56.000 So here is President Bush.

00:24:56.000 He starts off by saying that

00:24:58.000 You know, there was a bipartisan consensus that America's freedom was tied to her security and all of those were tied to our fundamental values.

00:25:07.000 For more than 70 years, the presidents of both parties believed that American security and prosperity were directly tied to the success of freedom in the world.

00:25:19.000 They knew that the success depended in large part on U.S.

00:25:23.000 leadership.

00:25:25.000 The mission came naturally.

00:25:27.000 Because it expressed the DNA of American idealism.

00:25:31.000 Okay, so there is, he said a couple of lines in the speech, I thought it was a good line.

00:25:36.000 He said a couple of lines in the speech I disagreed with, and this is where I think Bush strays from traditional conservatism, which looks at man as inherently sinful, or at least of divided mind.

00:25:44.000 Bush had this kind of Wilsonian notion that there was a yearning in the human heart for freedom.

00:25:48.000 I don't think that's right.

00:25:49.000 I think the value of freedom does not lie in our desire for it.

00:25:53.000 The value of freedom lies in the capacity of freedom to allow us to choose to be more virtuous human beings.

00:25:59.000 Free will is an inherent part of being human.

00:26:02.000 Whatever maximizes our capacity to exercise that free will without invading the rights of others, that's what we should be striving for.

00:26:08.000 That's why freedom is good, not because lots of people like it.

00:26:10.000 Lots of people like ice cream doesn't mean if you eat only ice cream you'll be fine.

00:26:13.000 The fact is enormous swaths, enormous swaths of humanity do not believe in basic freedom.

00:26:18.000 So this is where I disagree with Bush.

00:26:19.000 This is my sole point really in this speech of disagreement with President Bush.

00:26:24.000 Here's what he had to say.

00:26:25.000 We know deep down that repression is not the wave of the future.

00:26:31.000 We know that the desire for freedom is not confined to or owned by any culture.

00:26:37.000 It is the inborn hope of our humanity.

00:26:39.000 I do not think this is true.

00:26:41.000 I think this is a myth.

00:26:42.000 That the desire for freedom is not confined to any culture or owned by any culture.

00:26:46.000 Western civilization has for a long time had a pretty solid monopoly on what we now call freedom.

00:26:53.000 This is an outgrowth of Judeo-Christian civilization.

00:26:56.000 It did not exist in the East.

00:26:59.000 It does not exist now in Islamic countries.

00:27:02.000 The idea that it's not held in by any culture is not true.

00:27:04.000 Culture does have a lot to do with freedom.

00:27:06.000 There are cultures of freedom and cultures of non-freedom.

00:27:08.000 And thankfully, freedom has spread to other cultures.

00:27:10.000 So maybe it can be grafted onto other cultures, but the idea that it wasn't an outgrowth of a particular culture, or that cultures are all equal in their desire for freedom, or that people are all equal in their desire for freedom, I don't think that's true.

00:27:20.000 People are equal in their value before God.

00:27:23.000 We are not all equal in our desire for freedom.

00:27:25.000 That hole in Bush's philosophy is large enough to drive a truck through, and that's what allowed President Trump to act as the realist answer to Bushism, and President Obama to pretend that he was a realist in sort of contravention of these freedom ideals.

00:27:40.000 But the rest of Bush's speech is a basic statement of traditional conservatism, and a bunch of people on the right were mad, and a bunch of people on the left were gleeful because they thought that Bush was attacking Trump.

00:27:49.000 Here is what President Bush had to say.

00:27:52.000 The American dream of upward mobility seems out of reach for some who feel left behind in a changing economy.

00:27:59.000 Discontent deepened and sharpened partisan conflicts.

00:28:05.000 Bigotry seems emboldened.

00:28:07.000 Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication.

00:28:13.000 So people took this as a critique of Trump, specifically.

00:28:16.000 But it's not just a critique of Trump.

00:28:18.000 It's a critique also of the resistance mentality that says the Russians stole the election.

00:28:22.000 It's a critique of the idea that bigotry only exists on one side, as Bush made clear later in the speech.

00:28:28.000 What he's saying here is correct, right?

00:28:30.000 There is a discontent with our institutions, and it has led to a partisanship that is really quite vicious.

00:28:38.000 And that vicious partisanship is coming from a lack of meaning, which is something that I talked about at University of Tennessee.

00:28:44.000 He continues here, and he says that one of the big problems here is that because of that discontent, support for some of the basic ideas that founded the country have waned.

00:28:52.000 There are some signs that the intensity of support for democracy itself has waned.

00:29:00.000 Right, so what he's saying there, this is what the left ignores, right?

00:29:12.000 That's a pretty harsh attack on the left.

00:29:14.000 You guys don't remember the Cold War?

00:29:16.000 You don't remember all the evil communist nations attempting to kill us?

00:29:18.000 You don't remember any of this stuff?

00:29:20.000 Like really?

00:29:22.000 Maybe you ought to remember that socialized central planning has always been a giant fail.

00:29:26.000 They're not willing to pay attention to any of those things.

00:29:29.000 So the reason I'm pointing all this out is because the caricature of Bush's speech is that Bush was just out there attacking Trump.

00:29:35.000 That is not true.

00:29:37.000 And I'll play a little bit more of that speech, but first I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at MVMT.

00:29:41.000 So MVMT watches,

00:29:43.000 Fantastic watches.

00:29:44.000 Here is my MVMT watch.

00:29:45.000 I wear it every day.

00:29:46.000 I wore it before Congress.

00:29:48.000 It is a great watch.

00:29:48.000 I bought one for my wife as well.

00:29:50.000 Everyone around the office is getting MVMT watches.

00:29:52.000 My wife gets complimented on her watch all the time because they are really nice looking.

00:29:56.000 They're minimalist in design, which makes them look really classy, and they are minimalist in price.

00:30:00.000 They start at just 95 bucks.

00:30:02.000 At a department store, you're looking at 400 to 500 bucks for these kinds of watches.

00:30:06.000 They're classic design, quality construction.

00:30:08.000 I mean, I've really banged the crap out of this watch, and it still looks great.

00:30:12.000 I mean, like, I've really knocked the bejesus out of this thing.

00:30:15.000 I have little kids, and so my son really likes holding it and throwing it on the floor for some odd reason.

00:30:20.000 And it just stands up fantastic.

00:30:21.000 It looks the same as the day that I bought it.

00:30:23.000 It's just terrific.

00:30:25.000 They've sold over a million watches in over 160 countries.

00:30:28.000 I think so.

00:30:48.000 Just to finish up President Bush's speech, again, I think it's ridiculous that the right was attacking him on this.

00:30:53.000 All of this is self-evident.

00:30:54.000 All of this is basic conservatism.

00:30:56.000 The fact that we think that George W. Bush's brand of being a mensch... I mean, this is just a menschy speech, okay?

00:31:01.000 Mensch is Yiddish for being a man.

00:31:03.000 It means, like, being a gentleman.

00:31:05.000 Bush, whatever I think of his policy, and I disagree with him on an innumerable number of things, right?

00:31:11.000 I disagree with him on campaign finance reform.

00:31:13.000 I disagree with him on Medicare Part D. I disagree with him on No Child Left Behind.

00:31:16.000 I disagree with him on immigration reform.

00:31:18.000 I disagree with him on the TARP bailouts.

00:31:19.000 I disagree with him on a huge bevy of issues.

00:31:22.000 But!

00:31:22.000 George W. Bush was a classy guy, and his philosophy was basically traditional conservatism, and much more reflective of traditional conservatism than the so-called brand new populist nationalism that really is not an ideology.

00:31:37.000 It's more just an attitude that we're angry at stuff.

00:31:39.000 So here is Bush going on and talking about our discourse being degraded.

00:31:44.000 Again, people are taking this as merely a referendum on Trump.

00:31:47.000 That is ignoring the destruction of our discourse by the left as well.

00:31:54.000 We've seen our discourse degraded by casual cruelty.

00:31:59.000 At times, it can seem like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together.

00:32:06.000 Argument turns too easily into animosity.

00:32:10.000 Disagreement escalates into dehumanization.

00:32:14.000 Too often, we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions.

00:32:22.000 Forgetting the image of God, we should see in each other.

00:32:25.000 What he's saying right here, again, this is basic conservative thought, and he critiqued nativism and isolationism, and then he finished, this is the second to last clip of Bush in his age, he finished by talking about our identity as a nation, suggesting that it's all about these ideals.

00:32:40.000 These are the ideals that both the alt-right and the populist nationalists on the one hand, and the socialist democrat left,

00:32:47.000 Ignore, right?

00:32:47.000 This idea that he's about to say is Americanism in a nutshell.

00:32:50.000 This is why I like the speech.

00:32:51.000 This is classy.

00:32:53.000 Our identity as a nation, unlike many other nations, is not determined by geography or ethnicity, by soil or blood.

00:33:03.000 Being an American involves the embrace of high ideals and civic responsibility.

00:33:09.000 We become the heirs of Thomas Jefferson.

00:33:12.000 By accepting the ideal of human dignity found in the Declaration of Independence.

00:33:18.000 We become the heirs of James Madison by understanding the genius and values of the U.S.

00:33:24.000 Constitution.

00:33:26.000 We become the heirs of Martin Luther King Jr.

00:33:29.000 by recognizing one another not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

00:33:37.000 This means that people of every race, religion, ethnicity can be fully

00:33:44.000 It means that bigotry or white supremacy, in any form, is blasphemy against the American creed.

00:33:52.000 And it means the very identity of our nation depends on the passing of civic ideals to the next generation.

00:33:59.000 How can you be critical of that?

00:34:01.000 How?

00:34:02.000 If you're on the right and you feel like this speech was a critique of Trump, maybe it's because Trump deserves to be critiqued.

00:34:06.000 And if you're on the left and you feel like this is a critique of Trump, maybe it's because you're not looking deep enough into your own heart to realize this was also a critique of you.

00:34:13.000 Okay, George W. Bush's speech I thought yesterday was quite grand, and I don't miss a lot of his policies, but I miss him as a man.

00:34:21.000 He was a good man, and I miss having a good man in the office of the White House.

00:34:25.000 I think it's been a long time since we've had a good man, just a gentleman who's not interested in dividing the country along racial lines for political purposes.

00:34:34.000 It's been a long time, not just Trump, but also Obama.

00:34:37.000 It's been a long time since we've had a person who actually

00:34:41.000 I felt that American unity was necessary and positive in the White House.

00:34:47.000 It's sad, the way our country has spun out of control since 2007, over the last decade or so.

00:34:53.000 Okay, so I do have some stuff that I like and some stuff that I hate, but for that, and the mailbag, you're gonna have to go over to dailywire.com right now and subscribe.

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00:36:07.000 Alrighty, so a couple of things I like and then some things that I hate, so...

00:36:12.000 Things that I like.

00:36:13.000 So on the plane yesterday, I never have a chance to watch movies because I'm busy all the time and I have children, but I was able to watch The Founder yesterday on the plane.

00:36:21.000 The Founder is starring Michael Keaton.

00:36:23.000 It's about Ray Kroc, who was sort of the founder.

00:36:27.000 That's the irony of the title, is that his name isn't McDonald's, right?

00:36:30.000 It was the McDonald's brothers who actually founded McDonald's, and then Ray Kroc came in and turned it into a national chain, and here's a little bit of the preview.

00:36:39.000 I know what you're thinking.

00:36:41.000 How the heck does a 52-year-old, over-the-hill, milkshake machine salesman build a fast food empire with 1,600 restaurants and an annual revenue of $700 million?

00:36:53.000 One word.

00:36:56.000 Persistence.

00:36:59.000 Prince Castle Sales.

00:37:00.000 Hi, Jane.

00:37:00.000 Ray, how's it going down there?

00:37:03.000 Good.

00:37:03.000 Swell.

00:37:04.000 A lot of interest.

00:37:05.000 We got an order.

00:37:06.000 Six mixers.

00:37:07.000 Joining one in particular?

00:37:09.000 McDonald's.

00:37:10.000 Care for a little tour?

00:37:12.000 We wanted something different.

00:37:14.000 And that's when my brother here comes up with one of his brilliant ideas.

00:37:17.000 Orders ready in 30 seconds, not 30 minutes.

00:37:20.000 Unique.

00:37:21.000 Original.

00:37:21.000 There's nothing like this.

00:37:22.000 It's revolutionary?

00:37:23.000 That's exactly what it is.

00:37:24.000 It's revolutionary.

00:37:26.000 What is that?

00:37:26.000 The Golden Arches.

00:37:27.000 It's a way to make the place stand out, huh?

00:37:30.000 There should be McDonald's everywhere.

00:37:32.000 Franchise the damn thing.

00:37:33.000 Mr. Krug.

00:37:34.000 Franchise.

00:37:35.000 Franchise.

00:37:37.000 McDonald's can be the new American church.

00:37:40.000 And it ain't just open on Sundays, boys.

00:37:44.000 How can we be almost out of capital?

00:37:50.000 Did you mortgage our home?

00:37:52.000 We could lose everything.

00:37:53.000 I want to renegotiate my lousy deal.

00:37:56.000 I can't.

00:37:56.000 Can or won't?

00:37:57.000 Ray.

00:37:57.000 What?

00:37:58.000 No!

00:37:58.000 Dammit.

00:37:59.000 What you ought to be doing is owning the land upon which that burger is cooked.

00:38:04.000 You're not in the burger business.

00:38:06.000 You're in the real estate business.

00:38:09.000 Okay, so what's interesting about the preview is it doesn't really show, at least in the beginning of the preview, that the story is really the story of Ray Kroc being a jerk, right?

00:38:18.000 That it starts off and he's just an idealistic guy who wants to make something of himself, and he's kind of a showboat and a salesman.

00:38:25.000 And as the movie goes on, you see that he becomes more of a sleazebag, that he divorces his wife.

00:38:29.000 I mean, this is all history, so it's not really spoiler alert time.

00:38:33.000 And that the brothers, the McDonald brothers, he ends up trying to cut them out of their own business and all the rest of it.

00:38:37.000 And the take of the movie is supposed to be that American capitalism, this consumerist capitalism, screws the little guy.

00:38:43.000 Really screws the little guy.

00:38:45.000 I had a couple of problems with this particular take.

00:38:48.000 So, the movie is really well done.

00:38:50.000 I had a couple of problems with this particular take.

00:38:51.000 So, the whole movie is built around the rivalry between Ray Kroc, who is a salesman, who comes to the McDonald's Brothers and says, we are going to turn this into a franchise, and the McDonald's Brothers, who are trying to maintain quality, and who don't want to compromise quality in favor of money, and all the rest of it.

00:39:11.000 Uh, and in the movie they make a point of saying McDonald's brothers were also Republicans, but they kind of jab at Ronald Reagan near the end because Michael Keaton's character, Ray Kroc, is speaking at an event for Ronald Reagan that sort of closes the movie.

00:39:23.000 Here is my problem.

00:39:25.000 My problem is twofold.

00:39:26.000 One,

00:39:28.000 Ray Kroc is portrayed as the villain of the film, and he is.

00:39:32.000 But Ray Kroc's villainy, and his quote-unquote villainy of capitalism, results in legitimately tens of thousands of people becoming inordinately wealthier.

00:39:43.000 Right?

00:39:43.000 People who actually franchise this thing.

00:39:44.000 If the McDonald's Brothers had just been left to their own devices, as the movie shows, there would have been one McDonald's franchise in San Bernardino.

00:39:50.000 McDonald's would not have been a national chain.

00:39:52.000 It would have been like four stores, and that would have been it.

00:39:55.000 And Ray Kroc did take that and build it into a multinational, enormous corporation doing $700 million worth of business every year.

00:40:03.000 And that made a lot of people wealthier, and made food a lot more available, and a lot cheaper.

00:40:08.000 And you may not like the fast food, but that's none of your business, because it's a free country.

00:40:12.000 I don't

00:40:26.000 He's the one, again, who really takes their franchise, their little store, and turns it into a national franchise.

00:40:32.000 He is the driving force behind making McDonald's an actual thing.

00:40:36.000 And, you know, it's pretty clear that he's cutthroat.

00:40:39.000 They try to make him out to be cutthroat.

00:40:40.000 The brothers end up with making over a million dollars each.

00:40:43.000 One of the weird things about the film, and one of the weird claims the brothers later made, is they claimed that they had a handshake deal with Ray Kroc, that he was going to provide them 1% of all future profits, future net profits, from McDonald's, and that it was a handshake deal.

00:40:55.000 I have a problem with this just because they signed a contract with him, and one of the key components of the beginning of the movie is that they sign a contract with Ray Kroc that he continues to break, and they are very strict about enforcing that contract.

00:41:09.000 The idea that they would have done a handshake deal with Ray Kroc over 1% of the future profits of the company, I find that a little bit hard to believe.

00:41:16.000 Now, again, I don't know enough to know if that's accurate or not, but if that's the claim,

00:41:20.000 Then that's just foolish business.

00:41:22.000 I mean, this is why we have lawyers, and clearly they didn't even trust Kroc at that point.

00:41:25.000 In any case, was Ray Kroc a jerk?

00:41:28.000 I don't know much about him.

00:41:28.000 In the movie, he certainly is.

00:41:31.000 Does capitalism make people better?

00:41:33.000 No.

00:41:34.000 Capitalism can give them the opportunity to be worse people as they make it out for Ray Kroc here.

00:41:39.000 At the same time, capitalism can also make a lot of people much wealthier who are good people and who are trying to do something worthwhile with their lives.

00:41:49.000 I mean, one of the things that the movie does show is a bunch of people who are sort of salt-of-the-earth types who are franchising because they're good at keeping their stores clean and they're doing what they need to do in order to make the store successful.

00:41:59.000 So, it's a really interesting film.

00:42:01.000 I just wouldn't swallow wholesale the anti-capitalist narrative of the film because I don't think it's

00:42:05.000 Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.

00:42:15.000 Okay, so let's begin with Richard Spencer at University of Florida.

00:42:17.000 So Richard Spencer is a garbage human, and Richard Spencer is the leader of this white supremacist movement.

00:42:23.000 He says he's not a white supremacist because everyone should have their own ethnocentric country, but whites created civilization.

00:42:29.000 It's a dumb argument.

00:42:30.000 Whites did not create civilization.

00:42:32.000 Westerners created civilization, and Western culture created civilization.

00:42:35.000 Not every white created Western civilization, and not people from other cultures or other ethnicities.

00:42:41.000 They are capable of assimilating into that civilization.

00:42:44.000 That's just the fact of the matter.

00:42:45.000 As I've said before, people who were considered barbarians at one time are now considered stalwarts in the white supremacist notion, right?

00:42:53.000 The Irish, the Germans, the Italians.

00:42:56.000 These are now considered stalwarts in the white supremacist pantheon?

00:42:59.000 Well, white supremacists back in 1890 thought all of these groups were gross.

00:43:03.000 And they thought Jews were gross too, and a lot of them still do.

00:43:05.000 So, no.

00:43:06.000 So Richard Spencer was speaking at University of Florida.

00:43:09.000 Now, let me give a hint to people on the left.

00:43:11.000 If you really think that Richard Spencer is the most dangerous man alive, if you really think that he's egregious, go outside, protest outside his speech, and then leave the crowd completely empty.

00:43:21.000 Nothing would be as damaging to Richard Spencer as going to University of Florida and him being in an auditorium by himself twiddling his thumbs.

00:43:29.000 Here instead is some tape of what actually happened at University of Florida and Spencer's going to use this to say that he was basically silenced and shut down and he's a victim in the free speech wars.

00:43:50.000 You know it!

00:43:51.000 That's why you're ganging up here like some kind of mob in order to prevent me from saying something.

00:43:58.000 Do you not want to hear something?

00:44:00.000 Do you not want to hear something, poor little babies, that might contradict something your professor told you?

00:44:06.000 The fight doesn't work that way.

00:44:18.000 Okay, so there's Richard Spencer doing his routine.

00:44:23.000 I spoke at University of Florida.

00:44:24.000 I don't think it was in the same auditorium.

00:44:27.000 I spoke in University of Florida a few months ago, and it went great.

00:44:31.000 It was easy.

00:44:32.000 There were a couple protesters outside.

00:44:34.000 Nothing like this.

00:44:34.000 Why?

00:44:35.000 Because I'm not Richard Spencer.

00:44:36.000 Clearly.

00:44:37.000 But also, I want you to look at that auditorium.

00:44:39.000 Can you run it back a little bit?

00:44:40.000 There's a part where it sort of scrolls, it screens through the audience, and you can see that there's a gap of seats, and then there's like two rows of white guys in white shirts.

00:44:49.000 So, you'll see it in just a second.

00:44:51.000 It was really close to the top.

00:44:52.000 So, what you're gonna see here is, there are the gap, right?

00:44:55.000 Gap of empty seats.

00:44:56.000 Lots of empty seats.

00:44:58.000 And then, you'll see that right in front, there's a group of white guys who are standing and clapping.

00:45:02.000 Right?

00:45:02.000 A group of white guys in button-up white shirts who are standing and clapping.

00:45:07.000 And when you see this, what you'll notice is that these are the only Richard Spencer fans in the entire place.

00:45:12.000 Right there.

00:45:12.000 That's it.

00:45:13.000 Right?

00:45:14.000 It's like 12 guys.

00:45:15.000 Maybe 20 guys there.

00:45:17.000 Right?

00:45:17.000 It's like a 500-person theater, minimum.

00:45:19.000 And there were like 20 guys there.

00:45:20.000 Imagine if the protesters had been smart enough to just stay outside.

00:45:24.000 And this entire thing happened, and there were like 15 guys there.

00:45:28.000 How humiliating that would be for Richard Spencer.

00:45:30.000 Richard Spencer operates off your ire.

00:45:32.000 Richard Spencer operates off your anger.

00:45:34.000 I don't feel that that's what I'm here to do, by the way.

00:45:36.000 When I speak on campuses, I say things I think are true.

00:45:39.000 The fact that they piss people off is always kind of a shock to me.

00:45:42.000 But the fact is that you're giving Spencer what he wants.

00:45:45.000 Don't be stupid.

00:45:46.000 Don't give him what he wants.

00:45:47.000 Go protest outside.

00:45:48.000 Leave the auditorium absolutely empty.

00:45:50.000 Demonstrate that, like, he has seven fans, which is the reality.

00:45:53.000 Okay, other things that I hate.

00:45:54.000 We'll do one more thing that I hate.

00:45:55.000 Al Sharpton, uh, he...

00:45:58.000 I don't even know why in the world you would consider Al Sharpton any sort of source for anything.

00:46:02.000 He is now going out there saying that President Trump is the polarizer-in-chief.

00:46:05.000 This is a guy who, as I've said before, was involved in helping incite riots in Crown Heights in 1991 that ended with the murder of Yankel Rosenbaum, an Orthodox Jew.

00:46:14.000 He was involved in inciting violence at Freddy's Fashion Mart.

00:46:18.000 A guy who was a fan of his set a fire and it killed eight people.

00:46:22.000 He is routinely race-baited.

00:46:24.000 He lied about Tawana Browley openly.

00:46:27.000 He's a piece of absolute filth, Al Sharpton.

00:46:29.000 I mean, he's just a garbage person.

00:46:31.000 And yet, he's being trotted out as somebody to talk about the nature of Trump's polarization.

00:46:36.000 But he is not just Donald Trump and New York polarizer people.

00:46:40.000 He's the president of the United States.

00:46:43.000 And for the president to imply that police should defy the rights of citizens under arrest, for the president to throw out police reforms that the Justice Department investigated and found necessary, it warrants us to come out and speak loudly and clearly that he has become the polarizer-in-chief in this country.

00:47:04.000 He's so polarizing, he's so polarizing.

00:47:06.000 He may be polarizing, but Al Sharpton is not the guy you want to trot out to talk about that.

00:47:11.000 Okay.

00:47:12.000 Time for a few mailbag questions.

00:47:13.000 If you are a subscriber, now is the time to send in your live mailbag questions as well.

00:47:17.000 So, congratulations to you.

00:47:19.000 Kevin says,

00:47:20.000 I was wondering why you think the LGBT community, especially the gay community, has increased over the years.

00:47:24.000 I've been wondering this for a while now.

00:47:26.000 Thanks.

00:47:26.000 I'm a big fan.

00:47:27.000 Have a good day.

00:47:28.000 So if you mean sympathy, then I think that's largely because of media attention.

00:47:34.000 If you want to say the number of people who are actually gay or bisexual or trans has increased, there is evidence to this fact.

00:47:43.000 The reason is because I do think that sexual behavior is malleable.

00:47:46.000 I think sexual desire is somewhat malleable.

00:47:48.000 I don't think it's entirely malleable.

00:47:49.000 I think it has a genetic component and an environmental component.

00:47:52.000 I think when you say to people that whatever floats your boat is what floats your boat, people are more apt to try things, right?

00:47:58.000 Just as when you say that single motherhood is no longer to be morally abhorred, you get more single motherhood, when you say that

00:48:05.000 Homosexuality or bisexuality is on an equal moral plane.

00:48:08.000 With heterosexuality, you're likely to get more of that sexual activity.

00:48:11.000 People experiment with sex.

00:48:13.000 People are tempted by the forbidden.

00:48:15.000 And so you get more people identifying with these things.

00:48:18.000 And you see these numbers going up dramatically in places like Britain.

00:48:21.000 Guys saying they're now willing to experiment with other guys, etc.

00:48:24.000 So, I think a lot of it has to do with media attention and changing social mores.

00:48:28.000 I don't think that that's necessarily a good thing.

00:48:31.000 I think that people should make decisions

00:48:34.000 In their sex life, based on what is best for their happiness.

00:48:38.000 And I think that promiscuity is generally not best for your happiness.

00:48:42.000 I think that heterosexual marriage is generally the best for people's happiness, but not for everyone, obviously.

00:48:47.000 Crystal says, I love you.

00:48:49.000 Crystal, I don't know who you are, but my wife I'm sure would not mind if I say I love you too, not knowing who you are and hoping that you're not a horrible person.

00:48:56.000 Ben says, hey Ben, I know quite a few liberals who have stopped being Christians because of the overwhelming support of Trump by evangelical Christians.

00:49:02.000 Well, first of all, if they were liberals and they were Christians, then they have some inherent contradictions in the first place.

00:49:12.000 Because Christianity does not tend toward liberalism on either the economic spectrum or on the social spectrum, for certain.

00:49:19.000 On the religious freedom spectrum, leftism and Christianity are pretty much incompatible as well.

00:49:25.000 If you are, this is one of my key complaints about people who don't understand religion.

00:49:29.000 If what turns you off to religion is the adherence of religion, then you're not really turned off by religion, you're turned off by people.

00:49:36.000 People suck.

00:49:37.000 Okay, people sin.

00:49:38.000 The entire basis of Christianity is that people are born into original sin.

00:49:41.000 Judaism doesn't believe that people are born into original sin, but it does believe that we have a Yetzer Hara, right, an evil desire, an evil inclination, and a Yetzer Hatov, and a good inclination, and they're constantly fighting it out.

00:49:51.000 If you believe that there are people who you disagree with on politics, who did the wrong thing because of their Christian viewpoint, and so you leave Christianity, maybe it's because you weren't a very good Christian to begin with.

00:50:02.000 Maybe you should instead try and convince them, as so many Christians I know who didn't vote for Trump do, that they were wrong to support Trump.

00:50:08.000 And if they support Trump, and they're Christian, maybe they have good reason to do so.

00:50:13.000 So I don't know enough about which exact medical eponyms would be attributable to Nazis.

00:50:17.000 I am not in favor of wiping away

00:50:31.000 Things that are accomplished.

00:50:34.000 I don't like wiping away the history of things and whitewashing the history of things.

00:50:38.000 I'm generally not a big fan of that.

00:50:39.000 So as I've said about Confederate statues, I agree with Condi Rice that they should remain up and we should, every time we walk past a Confederate statue, we should remind people that the Confederates were on the wrong side of this argument and why.

00:50:50.000 And I feel the same way about a lot of the medical advances that were

00:50:55.000 taken under the Nazis.

00:50:57.000 I think it's important to recognize that so that we ourselves recognize the balance between mistreatment of human beings and medical research because we're too apt to think that either history is clean or that we can have it all today, that there's no conflict between, say, human rights and science.

00:51:11.000 There very clearly is when it comes to things like fetal stem cells, right?

00:51:14.000 This is a serious issue.

00:51:16.000 Okay, Maurice says, what do you think about cultural appropriation?

00:51:19.000 If someone that is not Jewish wears a yarmulke as a fashion statement, is that offensive to you as a Jewish person?

00:51:24.000 Well, first of all, if everyone started wearing a yarmulke, it'd make me a lot happier.

00:51:28.000 Then I wouldn't stand out quite as much.

00:51:29.000 I think that'd be hilarious.

00:51:31.000 But as far as them wearing yarmulkes as a fashion statement, it'd be a weird fashion statement.

00:51:35.000 And I don't really see religious icons, per se, being used.

00:51:39.000 I think you can diminish the value of a religious icon.

00:51:41.000 I'm not sure you can diminish the value of a cultural icon.

00:51:43.000 I do think there's a difference between the two.

00:51:45.000 So, if you were to wear a yarmulke around, I would say, well, that has holy meaning to me.

00:51:50.000 And you're sort of defacing the holy meaning.

00:51:52.000 What are your thoughts on the Great Gatsby?

00:52:10.000 Well written, overrated.

00:52:12.000 Those are my thoughts on The Great Gatsby.

00:52:13.000 F. Scott Fitzgerald is a beautiful writer.

00:52:15.000 His word choice is phenomenal.

00:52:17.000 And he writes about some of the most boring people who ever lived.

00:52:20.000 His characters, I'm just not a huge Fitzgerald fan.

00:52:23.000 I just read a Fitzgerald book recently.

00:52:25.000 I'm trying to remember which one it was.

00:52:26.000 It was Tender is the Night.

00:52:29.000 I just read Tender is the Night.

00:52:31.000 Maybe four months ago.

00:52:32.000 And it is not a good book.

00:52:35.000 I know people praise it.

00:52:36.000 There's this whole era of literature that people really praise to the skies.

00:52:40.000 The only one from that era of literature who I really can stand is Hemingway.

00:52:43.000 I am not a huge F. Scott Fitzgerald fan, even though I think his writing is quite beautiful.

00:52:47.000 So this is a big debate between sort of Burkean philosophy

00:52:56.000 And I'd say Montesquieu philosophy, maybe?

00:52:59.000 Burkean philosophy is you elect me to exercise my own independent judgment.

00:53:03.000 This is what the founders thought, too.

00:53:04.000 They thought that the purpose of a republic rather than a democracy is that it's not my job to enforce what you want me to do as my constituent, it is my job

00:53:13.000 to do what you elected me to do, which is exercise my own independent judgment.

00:53:16.000 This is why the character of the people we elect matters.

00:53:19.000 This is why we don't just vote directly on issues.

00:53:21.000 So, no, I don't think it's wrong for you to buck your constituents if you think they're wrong.

00:53:24.000 You just may feel at the ballot box next time.

00:53:26.000 In some cases, they have no work ethic or very little.

00:53:36.000 My concern is one day they will grow up and have to actually work and they won't know how to.

00:53:40.000 So my question is, do you see this with young people?

00:53:42.000 And if you do, what should be done?

00:53:44.000 I'm not saying it's every young person, but I've noticed the shift or disappearance of work ethic since I was younger.

00:53:48.000 I'm only 36.

00:53:49.000 So yes, Jeff, I tend to agree that there are a lot of people across the board who claim they're conservative or have conservative values and they don't work and they blame circumstance.

00:53:58.000 The key conservative—when people ask me why I grew up conservative, it wasn't that my parents grew up talking about George Bush Sr.

00:54:06.000 and Bill Clinton to me when I was a kid.

00:54:08.000 It's that they had one fundamental value.

00:54:11.000 Work hard, and there will be consequences.

00:54:13.000 Don't work hard, and there will be consequences.

00:54:15.000 Actions have consequences.

00:54:16.000 If you believe that, then at root, you're a conservative.

00:54:18.000 If you don't believe that, at root, you're not.

00:54:20.000 Well, honestly, I would recommend that you start by just reading the Bible.

00:54:22.000 I mean, I think that you can actually just—it was meant to be read.

00:54:32.000 And it was meant to be understood.

00:54:49.000 It depends.

00:54:50.000 Elie Wiesel has a couple of books that are eminently readable and really terrific.

00:54:54.000 There's one called Messengers of God that's really good about the figures in Genesis that is really fascinating.

00:55:00.000 And to be honest with you, I have been writing over the past year and a half a compendium of thoughts on the Bible, and I think that we'll probably bring it out sometime next year.

00:55:10.000 So if you can wait for that, then you can have some of my thoughts.

00:55:12.000 You know, I do the Bible thoughts every Wednesday.

00:55:14.000 You can have that in more fleshed out form, at least for the Old Testament, the five books of Moses.

00:55:18.000 You can get that probably next year.

00:55:20.000 Jencene says, Hey Ben, my sisters keep talking about adopting without getting married, even though I've told them that's unwise financially and mentally for the child.

00:55:27.000 They're taught by saying, is it better for him to be an orphan forever then?

00:55:30.000 I'm not sure about this.

00:55:30.000 If marriage is out of the question, is it better to not adopt the child and leave them to be raised an orphan or adopt as a single parent?

00:55:36.000 Thanks.

00:55:37.000 Papa bless Gensine.

00:55:38.000 Okay, so Gensine, my view is that it is not typically about a choice between an orphanage and adoption.

00:55:46.000 Your sisters are probably talking about adopting newborns, and so what you're talking about is them competing with a married family.

00:55:51.000 That's usually what we're talking about here.

00:55:53.000 The biggest problem that we have in the adoption system is that there are too many barriers between families that want to adopt and kids who need to be adopted.

00:56:00.000 That is the biggest problem in the adoption system.

00:56:02.000 I do not think that they should treat it as... Listen, are there gradations of morality?

00:56:08.000 Of course.

00:56:09.000 Meaning that the worst outcome is to grow up in an orphanage.

00:56:12.000 The second worst outcome is to grow up in a home with a single mom who adopted you.

00:56:16.000 And the best outcome is for you to grow up in a home with two parents.

00:56:20.000 I think that if you're going to adopt an unadoptable child who's never been adopted by anybody else and is stuck in the system, I think it's perfectly fair to say that.

00:56:26.000 I think if you're talking about adopting a newborn, and you're up against a couple, then you're doing the wrong thing.

00:56:30.000 Brendan says, hey Ben, what's your opinion on Yankees fans?

00:56:32.000 Can we all come together in agreement that they are the absolute worst people on earth?

00:56:39.000 I'm tempted to say yes.

00:56:41.000 I know a lot of Yankees fans who are quite wonderful people, but you don't get to complain about life if you're a Yankees fan.

00:56:47.000 You just don't.

00:56:49.000 Okay, shut up.

00:56:50.000 Your life is great.

00:56:51.000 I've lived my entire life and watched my White Sox win one championship and suck the entire rest of my life.

00:56:57.000 And that is true of every other team.

00:56:59.000 You guys win championships.

00:57:02.000 You don't win a championship for seven years.

00:57:03.000 You're like, oh, my kid's never seen them win a championship.

00:57:05.000 Your kid's five.

00:57:08.000 By the time the White Sox won a championship in 2005, I was already 19 years old.

00:57:13.000 Well, I was 21 years old, rather.

00:57:15.000 I was 21 years old, and my father, by that time, was 49.

00:57:18.000 And my grandfather never saw it.

00:57:22.000 So you shut it.

00:57:23.000 You just shut it.

00:57:25.000 Oh, poor you.

00:57:26.000 You didn't win a championship for four or five years, and now you have the best player in the majors, Aaron Judge, and you have Gary Sanchez, and you have a crappy pitching staff that suddenly has decided to pitch like they're great.

00:57:36.000 You go away.

00:57:37.000 Okay, Raphael says, Hey Ben, I've been wondering if you have any methods for studying whenever you want to learn a subject or if you simply read about it and end up absorbing it.

00:57:45.000 If you do anything specific, could you share?

00:57:47.000 So, Raphael, I read so much that I tend to just sort of let it wash over me.

00:57:53.000 And then I have a really good memory.

00:57:54.000 Well, I don't necessarily have a great memory for every fact in a book, but I have a good memory for where a fact is in a book.

00:57:59.000 So if I have to answer a question, I know which book to look for and where to look it up.

00:58:02.000 And that's helpful.

00:58:03.000 And then when I write about things, I tend to remember them very well.

00:58:05.000 So I think a good study method is to write down things that you think are important from the book by hand.

00:58:10.000 This is a good way of getting it in your head.

00:58:11.000 Alexander says, is it truly possible to have a complete separation between church, religion, and state when objective values of morality are largely religiously oriented?

00:58:19.000 For example, can our government actually be separated from religion when its structure and powers are based in Judeo-Christian values of ethics and governance?

00:58:25.000 So the answer, of course, is no.

00:58:27.000 There is no idea of separation between church and state.

00:58:30.000 This comes from a letter from Thomas Jefferson.

00:58:32.000 The idea is you cannot establish a religion.

00:58:34.000 That means you cannot establish religious practice and force me to go to a particular church.

00:58:37.000 It does not mean that I cannot vote based on values that I derive from Judeo-Christian sources.

00:58:43.000 So, first of all, I don't think there's really a point to marriage if you don't want to have kids.

00:58:46.000 That's a little bit of an overstatement.

00:58:48.000 There's a point to marriage, and then it would be companionship, but that can be achieved without marriage.

00:58:51.000 I think marriage, the point of marriage itself, the institution, is for you to have kids and your kids to be guaranteed a stable home.

00:59:12.000 In it.

00:59:13.000 How do you know if and when you're ready to have children?

00:59:17.000 I don't think anyone's ever completely ready to have kids.

00:59:20.000 I mean, it's not a fully rational decision to bring someone into life who is going to be reliant on you for the rest of your days and who is going to suck money out of your wallet and be an emotional drain.

00:59:32.000 But, I mean, let's just be real about this.

00:59:35.000 I don't know.

00:59:54.000 Also, the fact that you and the person you love get to create, you and your husband get to create a human being that is part of both of you is an unbelievable thing.

01:00:01.000 It's an unbelievable gift from God.

01:00:03.000 And your husband should love you enough to want to have a child with you that is part you, and you should love your husband enough to want to have a child that is part him.

01:00:11.000 And that's the beauty of having children.

01:00:13.000 As far as financially, just make sure that you are financially responsible and that you are not making decisions that, you know,

01:00:20.000 Necessitate that your child live in poverty, but you're never going to be fully financially ready to have kids because you can't be.

01:00:26.000 It's very expensive, and you know what?

01:00:27.000 You make do.

01:00:28.000 You make do.

01:00:29.000 Okay, so we have reached the end of the week.

01:00:31.000 Congratulations to you, and congratulations to me.

01:00:33.000 We are here.

01:00:34.000 That means that we will be back on Monday.

01:00:36.000 Over the weekend, try not to ruin things more than they already have been ruined.

01:00:39.000 I know.

01:00:40.000 I'm hoping in vain, but what can I do?

01:00:42.000 We'll be back next week.

01:00:43.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

01:00:44.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

General John Kelly To The Rescue | Ep. 400

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