The Ben Shapiro Show - Goodbye, 41 | Ep. 671

00:00:00.000 President George H.W.

00:00:01.000 Bush passes away, Russiagate continues to unfold, and Paris bursts into flame.

00:00:05.000 We'll get into all of it.

00:00:06.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:07.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:08.000 Oh, man, so much to get to.

00:00:15.000 A lot happened over the weekend in Russiagate, and of course, President George H.W.

00:00:20.000 Bush passes away, and this leads the media to discover that honor did exist in the Republican Party at one time, but no longer does.

00:00:26.000 We'll get into all of that in just one second.

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00:01:39.000 Over the weekend, President George H.W. Bush, Bush 41, as they call him, passed away at the age of 94.

00:01:46.000 H.W.

00:01:47.000 was, in fact, an American hero.

00:01:48.000 His entire life was dedicated to American public service.

00:01:52.000 According to the Associated Press, the public viewing for President George H.W.

00:01:56.000 Bush will kick off four days of events that will include a state funeral at Washington's National Cathedral on Wednesday and a private service at President Bush's longtime church in Houston on Thursday.

00:02:07.000 His body is supposed to arrive in Washington today for public viewing in the Capitol Rotunda, which is a rare honor that is only bestowed on a few.

00:02:14.000 Former Secretary of State Colin Powell called him a perfect American for how he served his country in so many capacities.

00:02:20.000 He died at his Houston home at age 94 over the weekend.

00:02:24.000 His crowning achievement as president was assembling the International Military Coalition, according to the Associated Press, that liberated Kuwait from invading Iraq in 1991 in a war that lasted just 100 hours.

00:02:34.000 At the time, he was ripped up and down for not invading Iraq directly and going after Saddam Hussein.

00:02:38.000 He said that was beyond the mission.

00:02:40.000 And obviously, later events seem to have justified that to at least a certain extent.

00:02:46.000 He was a humble hero of World War Two.

00:02:47.000 He was just 20 when he survived being shot down during a bombing run over Japan.

00:02:52.000 He enlisted in the Navy on his 18th birthday.

00:02:54.000 He, in fact, forewent his actual gale Scholarship to instead go into the Navy.

00:03:02.000 He was shot down while he was in the Navy.

00:03:04.000 In fact, they have tape that was played during the 1992 and 1988 presidential runs that showed him actually being dragged out of the ocean by fellow members of the Navy.

00:03:13.000 He's the youngest Navy pilot in America at the time.

00:03:15.000 He was dragged out of the water.

00:03:17.000 Here's some of that footage.

00:03:18.000 Here's what it looked like.

00:03:19.000 September 2, 1944, USS Finback rescued Lieutenant Junior Grade George H.W.

00:03:24.000 Bush, who was shot down while attacking Chichijima.

00:03:27.000 During this time, Bush was attached to USS San Jacinto while serving with Torpedo Squadron 51.

00:03:33.000 Bush later becomes the 41st president of the United States.

00:03:36.000 Well, it's interesting because Michael Dukakis' campaign manager said in 1988 that the moment they saw that footage on television, they knew that Michael Dukakis was never going to be president because, again, the footage is pretty heroic.

00:03:49.000 Shortly after he left the service, he married his 19-year-old sweetheart, Barbara Pierce, in a union that lasted until her death earlier this year.

00:03:55.000 He turned his attention to politics in the 1960s.

00:03:57.000 He was elected to his first two terms in Congress in 1967.

00:04:00.000 He then went on to serve as ambassador to the UN and China, head of the CIA, chairman of the Republican National Committee before he was elected to two terms as vice president of the United States.

00:04:10.000 And then, of course, he served one term as president of the United States before being defeated by Bill Clinton in 1992 in a hotly contested election that saw Ross Perot win 19 percent of the popular vote.

00:04:20.000 Now, what's been fascinating to watch in the aftermath of George H.W.

00:04:23.000 Bush's death is the sort of sepia glow that has been cast on George H.W.

00:04:28.000 Bush by all of his political opponents.

00:04:30.000 We saw the same thing happen to Senator John McCain after McCain's death earlier this year.

00:04:34.000 Suddenly, all the people who spent their careers talking about how John McCain was a warmonger were saying that he was just the great example of American statesmanship.

00:04:42.000 We saw the same thing with George H.W. Bush immediately after his death this weekend.

00:04:46.000 Suddenly, he was a great American statesman.

00:04:48.000 Suddenly, he was a wonderful man.

00:04:50.000 Suddenly, he was just an example of the kind of person who could unify the country.

00:04:56.000 We saw this with Mitt Romney after he lost in 2012.

00:04:57.000 He gave a concession speech and suddenly the left was like, wow, look at that.

00:05:01.000 That guy's great.

00:05:02.000 Where was that guy during the campaign?

00:05:03.000 And many of us were saying, well, he was there the whole time.

00:05:06.000 You were just forcibly ignoring the fact that Mitt Romney was a good man so that you could slander him and attack him so he wouldn't become president.

00:05:12.000 It was the same thing with George H.W.

00:05:13.000 Bush, who in 1991 was ripped by the left as a warmonger, who was ripped by the left as an incompetent, who was ripped by the left as Cold, aloof, not in touch with the American people, a racist in 1988 for running the Willie Horton ad, right?

00:05:26.000 He didn't even run it.

00:05:26.000 It was a super PAC kind of quasi-associated with his campaign that ran the Willie Horton ad.

00:05:31.000 But who was George H.W.

00:05:32.000 Bush as a man?

00:05:33.000 I think that the best clip that shows who he was as a man, this comes circa 1979.

00:05:36.000 So in 1979, George H.W.

00:05:39.000 Bush, who was coming off running the CIA, he ran for president in 1979.

00:05:44.000 And he ran against Ronald Reagan.

00:05:46.000 He ran against Bob Dole.

00:05:48.000 All these people would go on to become presidential candidates in their own right.

00:05:51.000 And he was asked specifically about whether he was tough enough to be president, which is an amazing question to ask a guy who volunteered for the Navy and then was shot down, going on to complete his mission, by the way.

00:06:02.000 Here is George H.W.

00:06:03.000 Bush being asked about his toughness circa 1979.

00:06:06.000 I don't equate toughness with just attacking some individual.

00:06:09.000 I don't attack... I equate toughness with moral fiber, with character, with principle, with demonstrated leadership in tough jobs where you emerge, not bullying somebody, but with the respect of the people you led.

00:06:24.000 That's toughness.

00:06:25.000 That's fiber.

00:06:26.000 That's character.

00:06:27.000 I've got it.

00:06:28.000 And if I happen to be decent in the process, that should not be a liability.

00:06:32.000 Okay, and then he was asked specifically about his political opponents in that clip.

00:06:35.000 He's asked about Bob Dole.

00:06:37.000 He says, is Bob Dole too aloof?

00:06:38.000 And he says, no.

00:06:39.000 He says, is Ronald Reagan too old?

00:06:41.000 He says, no.

00:06:41.000 And then he specifically refuses to attack his other political opponents on the stage.

00:06:46.000 And that was fairly common for George H.W.

00:06:48.000 Bush.

00:06:48.000 Now look, As a very conservative Republican, was I the biggest fan of George H.W.

00:06:54.000 Bush's presidency?

00:06:54.000 I mean, to be frank, I wasn't there for most of it, at least into politics.

00:06:58.000 I was four years old when he took office and I was eight when he left.

00:07:02.000 But in retrospect, do I look back at his presidency and say that was a shining example of what an American presidency should be?

00:07:07.000 No, I have severe policy differences with George H.W.

00:07:10.000 Bush.

00:07:10.000 George H.W.

00:07:11.000 Bush.

00:07:12.000 Did not keep his promise not to raise taxes.

00:07:14.000 George H.W.

00:07:15.000 Bush sold AWACS to the Saudis.

00:07:16.000 George H.W.

00:07:17.000 Bush, you know, on foreign policy.

00:07:20.000 I am not with the common consensus that in 1991 he shouldn't have gone and deposed Saddam Hussein at the time.

00:07:26.000 It would have certainly saved America a lot of trouble in the long run if he had done so.

00:07:29.000 But With all of that said, was George H.W.

00:07:32.000 Bush a deeply honorable human being?

00:07:33.000 There's no question he was a deeply honorable human being.

00:07:36.000 He was a good man.

00:07:37.000 This is a good man with a good wife and a good family.

00:07:39.000 And we're seeing the same thing happen to George W. Bush in the aftermath of his presidency.

00:07:43.000 Suddenly a guy they were attacking as Bush-Hitler is now being recast as a man who wanted Americans to get along.

00:07:50.000 Totem of a kinder, gentler era.

00:07:53.000 And this is exactly what you're seeing folks on the left say about George H.W.

00:07:56.000 Bush.

00:07:56.000 Juan Williams says, you know, the transformation of H.W.

00:08:00.000 Bush into the party of Donald Trump demonstrates that there was a kinder, gentler time in America.

00:08:06.000 The way I think of it, Chris, is sort of optimism versus pessimism.

00:08:11.000 Mourning in America, a kinder, gentler America, versus American carnage, as a message coming from the leader to the American people.

00:08:19.000 So when I think of President Bush, I think of someone who crossed the aisle.

00:08:24.000 You know, I was really taken by what Carl just said about his best friend being a Democrat and, well, he's served those two terms in Congress.

00:08:31.000 And, of course, he followed Reagan's So I'm not a huge fan of George H.W.

00:08:40.000 Bush's bipartisanship while he was in office and while he was president of the United States, but I'm getting rather tired of a bunch of folks on the left who would have ripped George H.W.

00:08:48.000 Bush while he was president, now turning around saying it was a kinder, gentler America.

00:08:52.000 No, it wasn't.

00:08:53.000 It's just that you like every Republican once that Republican is no longer in office, and you specifically use those Republicans as clubs to hit the current Republican.

00:09:00.000 Let's be frank about this.

00:09:02.000 When Senator John McCain died, there were all these tributes that came in from the left.

00:09:05.000 People who had called him a warmonger and said that John McCain was the guy who was joking about bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, and ran.

00:09:12.000 They were doing this whole routine while he was alive, he dies, and suddenly the man is just a semblance of a time gone by.

00:09:18.000 And now it's the same thing with George H.W.

00:09:20.000 Bush.

00:09:20.000 Are you sensing a sort of pattern here, a pattern from the left that because Donald Trump is president, every Republican who is not Donald Trump is now seen in a kinder, gentler light.

00:09:33.000 The fact is, the reason the press are paying this sort of attention to George H.W.

00:09:36.000 Bush is not because they've suddenly been struck by the honor and decency of the man, George H.W.

00:09:40.000 Bush.

00:09:41.000 It is also because of the fact that so many folks on the left want to see George H.W.

00:09:46.000 Bush contrasted unkindly with Donald Trump.

00:09:48.000 And I'm not going to pretend that in terms of character, Donald Trump and George H.W.

00:09:52.000 Bush are on the same plane.

00:09:54.000 I don't think they're on the same plane.

00:09:56.000 I don't think that George H.W.

00:09:57.000 Bush is the kind of man that Donald Trump is, nor do I think Donald Trump is the same kind of man as George H.W.

00:10:01.000 Bush.

00:10:01.000 They're very different human beings.

00:10:03.000 George H.W.

00:10:03.000 Bush was a man who volunteered to serve in the military.

00:10:06.000 Donald Trump is a man who did not.

00:10:08.000 And not only that, you know, used a number of excuses to get out of the draft.

00:10:12.000 George H.W.

00:10:13.000 Bush is the kind of man who devoted his life to public service.

00:10:16.000 Donald Trump is the kind of man who has devoted his life to, you know, to business and fame.

00:10:23.000 None of that is specifically a rip on Donald Trump, but the contrast is not kind to Donald Trump between George H.W.

00:10:29.000 Bush and Trump, which is, of course, exactly why the press is making that contrast in the first place.

00:10:34.000 Don't trust the press when suddenly they start telling you that a Republican is wonderful, because the only Republicans that the left thinks are wonderful are ones who are out of office or dead.

00:10:43.000 I mean, that's the basic rule of thumb here.

00:10:45.000 And every so often, Every so often, they sort of let the mask slip.

00:10:49.000 Franklin Fuller let the mask slip over at the Atlantic when he suggested that George H.W.

00:10:54.000 Bush was not a man of courage, right?

00:10:57.000 He actually did not.

00:10:58.000 Here's how he concluded his eulogy of George H.W.

00:11:02.000 Bush.

00:11:02.000 And this is a rare Example of honesty from the left on how they actually felt about George H.W.

00:11:06.000 Bush while he was alive.

00:11:07.000 Here's what Franklin Foer, who is disgusting, said over at The Atlantic.

00:11:10.000 Obituaries present George H.W. Bush as the last of the Republican moderates.

00:11:14.000 In reality, he was an archetypal representative of the modern party, a man whose sense of duty failed him when it came to resisting the rise of racially revanchist libertarian forces.

00:11:23.000 He embodied an establishment that wrote a very nice thank you note.

00:11:26.000 But good manners are hardly the same as moral courage.

00:11:28.000 Prudence is sometimes hard-hearted.

00:11:30.000 Those who are mourning the passing of the old establishment should mourn its many failures, too.

00:11:34.000 That's how the left really felt about George H.W.

00:11:36.000 Bush.

00:11:37.000 And don't let them put on the mask of mourning in order to pretend that George H.W.

00:11:41.000 Bush was something different for them than Donald Trump.

00:11:44.000 You and I, we can see the differences between George H.W.

00:11:46.000 Bush and Donald Trump, which were many and myriad, some in favor of Bush in terms of character, some not in favor of Bush, maybe in terms of policy.

00:11:52.000 But for the left, the only reason that they are now donning the mask of mourning when it comes to George H.W.

00:11:58.000 Bush is that they can attempt to proclaim that Donald Trump is significantly worse by any sort of comparison.

00:12:03.000 Hey, in just a second, I want to talk to you about George H.W.

00:12:06.000 Bush's final words.

00:12:07.000 I mean, whenever a man of honor dies, it's a loss, obviously, to the country.

00:12:12.000 And the stories of his death are pretty moving and talk about that in just one second.

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00:13:36.000 All right.

00:13:36.000 So the stories of President Bush's death are really moving.

00:13:40.000 I mean, this is a man with it's hard to imagine a better American family.

00:13:44.000 A son who is a governor, another son who is president of the United States and governor of Texas, a family and third generation of politics.

00:13:51.000 Pretty amazing stuff.

00:13:53.000 Again, as I emphasize, I think that it is fair for people on the right to talk about the goodness of George H.W.

00:14:00.000 Bush if they didn't spend their careers attacking him as a bad man.

00:14:03.000 People like Franklin Fuller over at The Atlantic, I think, are more reflective of what the left really thinks about George H.W.

00:14:09.000 Bush.

00:14:09.000 Again, Franklin Fuller ripping into George H.W.

00:14:11.000 Bush, saying he didn't have any moral courage.

00:14:13.000 When's the last time Franklin Foer signed up for the military in the middle of World War II?

00:14:17.000 It's just, it's just amazing.

00:14:19.000 Just a quick final note from Franklin Foer before we get to the last words of George H.W.

00:14:22.000 Bush.

00:14:23.000 Franklin Foer writes, one of the great counterfactuals of American history is pondering what would have happened if George Bush had exerted greater control over the destiny of the Republican Party.

00:14:31.000 What if the moderate Republicans of the late 50s and early 60s had aggressively owned the civil rights agenda and rendered the cause of racial justice a bipartisan concern?

00:14:38.000 By the way, they did.

00:14:41.000 More Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act as a percentage than Democrats did.

00:14:44.000 If the old-money Republicans could have mustered that leadership, stood firm against the flow of segregationists into their club, it might have precluded the invention of Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy and the generations of racialized politics that followed.

00:14:56.000 Does anyone really believe, by the way, that this was all about George H.W.

00:15:01.000 Bush failing to stem the flow of racists into the Republican Party?

00:15:05.000 But this is how the left really thinks about all of these folks.

00:15:08.000 This is how the left really thinks about all of these folks.

00:15:09.000 In any case, James Baker, who was George H.W.

00:15:12.000 Bush's lifelong friend and Secretary of State, he was on CNN, which actually, their coverage of H.W.

00:15:16.000 was excellent.

00:15:17.000 And James Baker was talking to Jake Tapper about H.W.' 's final words.

00:15:22.000 They got the kids on the phone, and each one of them spoke to him, and he spoke back, or mumbled back anyway.

00:15:29.000 And then they got 43 on the phone, and 43 said, I love you, Dad, and I'll see you in heaven.

00:15:36.000 And 41 said, I love you, too.

00:15:40.000 And those were the last words that he ever spoke.

00:15:43.000 I mean, that's pretty amazing.

00:15:44.000 You can't ask for more from a life than that.

00:15:47.000 It is amazing when somebody gets to live the life that they sought to live, even when they pass away.

00:15:52.000 It's obviously a credit to them as a human being.

00:15:56.000 If you can live your entire life and die saying, I love you, your children, it doesn't get a lot better than that, especially when your child happens to also have been president of the United States.

00:16:06.000 Pretty amazing stuff.

00:16:06.000 All right.

00:16:07.000 Meanwhile, Russiagate continues, and the left is fully invested in Russiagate, that this is what's going to take down President Trump.

00:16:17.000 You can see the excitement from so many folks on the left.

00:16:19.000 Now again, the evidence is not in that President Trump actively colluded with the Russians to steal the 2016 election or anything like that, and so the left is now shifting their argument.

00:16:28.000 They've shifted their argument several times.

00:16:29.000 The first was that the Trump campaign had been compromised by the Russians.

00:16:34.000 The Russians basically had compromat, you remember, on President Trump, and they were going to use that compromat in order to affect his role in office. 0.51

00:16:42.000 That has not been proved.

00:16:43.000 There is no evidence of that.

00:16:44.000 Then they shifted the argument to President Trump was coordinating with the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton's emails and the DNC, and then to militarize the release of those emails to win the election.

00:16:52.000 Again, that has not been proved either.

00:16:54.000 Then it turned into President Trump maybe received some of those emails.

00:16:58.000 And they point out connections between Roger Stone and other members of the sort of Trump coterie.

00:17:04.000 And that has not been proved yet either.

00:17:05.000 So now it's moved to President Trump had business relationships in Russia at the same time that he was running for president.

00:17:11.000 And that's true.

00:17:12.000 But that's also not criminal, as even Andrea Mitchell over at MSNBC was recognizing.

00:17:16.000 She says, you know, President Trump is saying it's not illegal for him to do business in Russia.

00:17:19.000 That, of course, is exactly true. 0.60

00:17:20.000 President is correct.

00:17:21.000 It's not illegal for an international businessman to be doing the business.

00:17:25.000 The conflicts of interest are profound.

00:17:28.000 It's not illegal yet.

00:17:30.000 And she is right about this.

00:17:31.000 Jake Tapper made this point last week also.

00:17:33.000 That's not stopping Democrats from now trying to say that because Trump had business contacts in Russia, that means that he was in some way compromised.

00:17:40.000 So Adam Schiff The representative from California who has his pup tent set up outside the media headquarters.

00:17:46.000 I mean, again, it's amazing.

00:17:47.000 He's actually brought an electric generator.

00:17:49.000 He's dug a pit for the outhouse.

00:17:51.000 He's starting to hook up the plumbing, but he hasn't actually connected it to the main line yet, right outside these headquarters.

00:17:57.000 He was on ABC's This Week talking, again, about Michael Cohen and Russiagate and President Trump.

00:18:03.000 What Michael Cohen was saying and others were saying about when this business deal ended was not true.

00:18:10.000 And what's more, the Russians knew it wasn't true.

00:18:13.000 That at the same time that Donald Trump was the presumptive nominee of the GOP and arguing in favor of doing away with sanctions, he was working on a deal that would require doing away with sanctions for him to make money in Russia.

00:18:27.000 That is a real problem.

00:18:29.000 It means that the compromise is far broader than we thought.

00:18:32.000 There we go.

00:18:32.000 So it's compromise.

00:18:33.000 We're back to the original theory, except again, the theory is not supported by any evidence.

00:18:37.000 Donna Brazile, former head of the DNC, she was saying the same thing.

00:18:40.000 And Michael Cohen pleading guilty to lying to the FBI that this is, in fact, a smoking gun.

00:18:45.000 It is not a smoking gun of anything other than Michael Cohen lied to the FBI because he lies to a lot of people, Michael Cohen.

00:18:51.000 Michael Cohen once boasted that he would take a bullet for Donald Trump, but instead this week he delivered a smoking gun.

00:18:58.000 The fact that, oh yeah, that's a smoking gun.

00:19:01.000 Because, once again, he said that what I provided before was consistent with what the President wanted me to say because I wanted to stay loyal to the President.

00:19:10.000 Smoking gun, saying, he said essentially that the White House, the President was lying at the time that he had no business dealing with Russia when he was looking to Okay, the president has not testified.

00:19:24.000 The president, you know, did say that he had no business ties with Russia.

00:19:28.000 Again, it's gonna come down to what is the meaning of is, right?

00:19:31.000 The president's gonna say, I didn't have business ties with Russia, right?

00:19:34.000 We were in negotiations, it didn't happen.

00:19:36.000 So that's not me lying.

00:19:37.000 People on the left gonna say, well, you know, you're implying that there were no, at any time, business ties with Russia, and there were.

00:19:42.000 In any case, none of that is criminal, as Andrea Mitchell says.

00:19:45.000 And this is leading a lot of folks on the right to More and more rip into the Mueller report.

00:19:49.000 Rudy Giuliani, the president's attorney on these matters, he says that Robert Mueller is acting unethically, that basically he's culling together a bunch of people he says have lied to him, but there's been no underlying crime.

00:20:00.000 So at no point has anybody been actually convicted or pled guilty to collusion with Russia regarding the election, which was the original charge.

00:20:07.000 Instead, everybody's being gotten on ancillary crimes of lying to the FBI about matters that really have nothing to do with the central contention.

00:20:14.000 That's what Giuliani is saying.

00:20:15.000 He's not wrong. 0.53

00:20:17.000 I think the special prosecutor has stepped over the line now with the way he's intimidating people in order to tell what he believes is his version of the truth.

00:20:26.000 This is what's wrong with these special prosecutors and independent counsels.

00:20:30.000 They think they're God.

00:20:32.000 I mean, they think they know the only truth that exists, even if there's a lot of doubt about it.

00:20:38.000 They seem to want to people at any cost, including the cost of ethical behavior or the rights of people.

00:20:46.000 Okay, so Rudy Giuliani obviously quite upset about all this.

00:20:49.000 So is President Trump.

00:20:50.000 Trump, President Trump tweeted out this morning, a series of tweets says, Michael Cohen asked judge for no prison time.

00:20:55.000 You mean he can do all the terrible, unrelated to Trump things, having to do with fraud, big loans, taxis, et cetera, and not serve a long prison term?

00:21:03.000 He makes up stories to get a great and already reduced deal for himself and get his wife and father-in-law, who has the money off Scott Frey.

00:21:10.000 I do like that he spelled Scott Free capital S-C-O-T-T.

00:21:14.000 Free.

00:21:14.000 So there's a dude named Scott Free.

00:21:16.000 He lied for this outcome and should, in my opinion, serve a full and complete sentence.

00:21:19.000 I will never testify against Trump.

00:21:21.000 This statement was recently made by Roger Stone, essentially stating he will not be forced by a rogue and out-of-control prosecutor to make up lies and stories about President Trump.

00:21:30.000 Nice to know that some people still have quote-unquote guts.

00:21:33.000 Bob Mueller, who's a much different man than people think, and his out-of-control band of angry Democrats don't want the truth.

00:21:39.000 They only want lies.

00:21:40.000 The truth is very bad for their mission.

00:21:42.000 Okay, so in a second, I'm gonna say why I think that President Trump's sort of half right and why he's sort of half wrong.

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00:22:59.000 So President Trump obviously upset with the Mueller investigation.

00:23:02.000 Why?

00:23:02.000 Because the theory is that Mueller is basically getting a bunch of people to cop to things that are not major crimes in order to get them to flip on the president and say things that are untrue.

00:23:13.000 Now, a couple things can be true at once.

00:23:15.000 One can be that there is no underlying crime here.

00:23:18.000 Two can be that the Mueller report is actually just a report and not a criminal indictment.

00:23:22.000 That it turns out that what Mueller is actually attempting to do is compile a bunch of mean stuff about Trump without any sort of criminal indictment in the offing.

00:23:30.000 And thing number three can also be true, which is that Mueller, in order to get that information, is going after people for Relatively minor crimes.

00:23:38.000 Lying to the FBI is not a minor crime, but about issues that are not exactly criminal is not exactly a major crime either.

00:23:44.000 The person making this case is, of course, Andrew McCarthy over at National Review.

00:23:49.000 And it is important to note before we start into McCarthy's case that That Mueller is not allowed to suborn perjury himself.

00:23:57.000 So if Mueller were to get Cohen to lie about Trump, if he knew that Cohen were lying about something, and he said, listen, I'm going to prosecute you and put you in jail unless you lie about Trump, that is in and of itself a crime.

00:24:06.000 So Mueller is not doing that.

00:24:08.000 But it is also true that it is possible Cohen is going to testify about a lot of stuff that's not actually criminal.

00:24:13.000 It just makes Trump look bad.

00:24:14.000 And that's McCarthy's take on all of this.

00:24:17.000 He says no prosecutor builds a case the way Mueller is going about it.

00:24:21.000 What prosecutor says, here's our witness lineup, Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, Alex Van Der Zwaan, Rick Gates, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, and what is it they have in common, ladies and gentlemen? 0.81

00:24:29.000 Bingo, they're all convicted liars.

00:24:31.000 For a prosecutor, like any trial lawyer, what the jury thinks is at least as important as what the law says. 0.93

00:24:36.000 If the most memorable thing the jury takes into the deliberation room is that no one should believe a word your witnesses say, you're not going to convict a lowliest grifter, much less the President of the United States.

00:24:46.000 Instead, what you have to do is build your case by having your cooperating accomplice, witnesses, plead guilty to the big scheme you're trying to pin on the main culprit.

00:24:53.000 They say there was a big thing Trump was trying to do, I was a part of it, now I'm testifying about it, but no one's actually testifying to any of that stuff.

00:25:00.000 He says, in short, you build a case by first establishing the foundational criminal offense.

00:25:05.000 Juries do not convict people because they like or trust the prosecution's witnesses.

00:25:09.000 They convict because they are persuaded that justice demands redress for a real crime.

00:25:13.000 Note that word, crime.

00:25:15.000 But there is no crime here.

00:25:16.000 That is why from the beginning of the Trump-Russia investigation, and certainly since Mueller's appointment on May 17th, 2017, we have stressed that the probe is a counterintelligence investigation, not a criminal investigation.

00:25:27.000 Mueller does not have a crime he is investigating.

00:25:30.000 He is investigating in hopes of finding a crime, which is a day and night different thing.

00:25:35.000 So here's what McCarthy concludes, I think correctly.

00:25:38.000 He says, that brings us to the where there's smoke, there must be fire talking point Mueller fans have been trying out.

00:25:42.000 If all these people are lying to cover up something, that something must involve some egregious criminality. 0.97

00:25:48.000 That's ridiculous.

00:25:49.000 We know from our own daily lives that crimes account for only a very small percentage of the things people lie about. 0.95

00:25:53.000 Indeed, throughout the 1990s, Democrats insisted that prosecutors should leave Bill Clinton alone because everybody lies about sex.

00:25:59.000 People lie about things they are embarrassed or ashamed of.

00:26:02.000 Politics is a seamy business, but politics is not a crime.

00:26:05.000 Consequently, if you criminalize politics, if you turn a prosecutor loose to investigate political campaign activities, you are apt to find unsavory conduct that is not criminal, but that some people will lie about.

00:26:15.000 So why exactly is Mueller turning lies into guilty pleas?

00:26:18.000 First, he's not going to indict the president, so Mueller is not worried about the lack of credibility of these witnesses.

00:26:24.000 Second, he knows the media is going to cheer everything that he does.

00:26:28.000 The media reports Mueller is investigating the Trump-Russia collusion.

00:26:31.000 Dozens of people have been charged or convicted, but they will not report that no one has been charged, much less convicted, of any crime involving collusion between Trump and Russia.

00:26:40.000 And third, defendants convicted of making false statements are useful because Mueller is writing a report, not preparing for a jury trial.

00:26:46.000 Convicted liars never get cross-examined in a report, nor do they give the bumpy, inconsistent testimony you hear in a courtroom.

00:26:53.000 So this is really so Mueller is just putting together a report.

00:26:55.000 He's not actually putting together a criminal indictment.

00:26:57.000 And that means that he is cobbling together all of these various guilty pleas on lies that have nothing to do with the main topic to get these people to spill the beans about a non-criminal scheme that embarrasses Trump.

00:27:09.000 And that's Trump's main case here.

00:27:10.000 And that's the case you're going to see Trump's legal team make.

00:27:12.000 None of this is impeachable.

00:27:14.000 Some of it may be embarrassing.

00:27:15.000 But what is Robert Mueller doing here?

00:27:17.000 And Robert Mueller's case is going to be, listen, when people lie to the FBI, that's a crime.

00:27:20.000 And it is my job to prosecute people who commit crimes.

00:27:23.000 This means that the real danger that President Trump is in, legally speaking, is of suborning perjury.

00:27:28.000 If Trump told Michael Cohen or anybody else that they ought to lie to the FBI, that would be the only criminality that I think Mueller is going to uncover here.

00:27:37.000 Maybe I'm wrong.

00:27:37.000 Maybe there is an underlying crime.

00:27:39.000 And after all this time, after two years, Mueller comes forward with the big reveal.

00:27:43.000 And the big reveal is that Trump and Putin were in the back room hacking Hillary Clinton's emails together, like Matthew Broderick in war games.

00:27:49.000 Maybe that's what was happening.

00:27:50.000 But absent that big reveal, all that's happening here is Trump is turning all the people around Trump Into criminals in order to get them to testify to material that is non-criminal, but very damaging to President Trump going into 2020.

00:28:04.000 And that's why Team Trump is so upset.

00:28:06.000 And that's why President Trump is so upset.

00:28:08.000 And I think at least part of that seems to be justified.

00:28:11.000 Now, I'm waiting to I'm going to wait until the Mueller report comes out to say whether I think that this is terrible or dishonest.

00:28:16.000 And again, two things can be true at once.

00:28:18.000 One, Mueller can be honest.

00:28:19.000 Mueller can be doing his job and that job Again, Bill Clinton was not impeached for committing an underlying crime.

00:28:34.000 He was not impeached for committing sexual assault against Paula Jones.

00:28:37.000 He was impeached for committing perjury.

00:28:40.000 He was impeached because he suborned perjury.

00:28:44.000 President Trump could get caught in the same trap here simply by dint of the underlying crime.

00:28:48.000 So we'll see how all of this plays out.

00:28:50.000 Now, meanwhile, we'd be remiss if we did not talk about the situation in France, because right now France is basically on fire.

00:28:56.000 The footage from France is absolutely astonishing.

00:28:59.000 Here is some footage of the police firing rubber bullets into crowds over by the Arc de Triomphe.

00:29:04.000 People marching down the center of Paris.

00:29:06.000 And the police, who you will see in black here behind the barricades, firing rubber bullets into the crowd of people who are wearing yellow.

00:29:15.000 It's pretty amazing stuff.

00:29:18.000 And so, I mean, full-scale rioting in the streets of France.

00:29:23.000 You can see, I mean, it's legitimately like a pitched street battle.

00:29:25.000 People throwing rocks at each other, the police officers who are ducking behind their shields and then firing rubber bullets into the crowd.

00:29:32.000 The destruction is pretty astonishing as well.

00:29:35.000 We have some of the pictures of the destruction.

00:29:37.000 Here's what some of the destruction looks like.

00:29:40.000 Not just the smoke in the streets.

00:29:41.000 People burning cars in the streets.

00:29:45.000 People being water-hosed in the streets.

00:29:48.000 Pretty amazing.

00:29:48.000 People who are graffitying all over the historic sites in France.

00:29:53.000 People broke into the museum gift shop over at the Louvre, I believe.

00:29:58.000 People overturning stuff in the streets.

00:29:59.000 People destroying some of the historic artifacts and statues from the First French Republic in the Arc de Triomphe.

00:30:06.000 Pretty incredible stuff.

00:30:07.000 So what are all these riots about?

00:30:09.000 It turns out that reality has its day.

00:30:11.000 Reality suggests that people are going to riot when they feel economically dispossessed.

00:30:18.000 And they feel economically dispossessed when you decide to tax them extraordinary amounts of money to pay for your global warming agenda.

00:30:23.000 That's really what's happening in France right now.

00:30:25.000 I'm going to talk more about that in just one second.

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00:31:56.000 Also, before we go any further, and I have a lot more to get to on today's show, trade policy and the New York Times ripping on Hanukkah because what would a day be in the New York Times without a bit of anti-Semitism or self-hating Jewry?

00:32:08.000 We'll get to all that in just a second.

00:32:09.000 But first, you have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.

00:32:11.000 Tonight, if you are a subscriber, That's right.

00:32:17.000 I'm sacrificing my evening once again to be here with you.

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00:32:36.000 Coming up in 2019, I have to announce this, The Ben Shapiro radio show will be extended to three hours is what you get when you subscribe.

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00:33:01.000 You can watch the full three hour show.

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00:33:52.000 We had a great Sunday special this week with Pastor John MacArthur.

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00:34:16.000 So over in France, Emmanuel Macron, who was the newly elected French prime minister who defeated Marine Le Pen in a runoff that was hotly contested.

00:34:31.000 He is wildly unpopular.

00:34:33.000 His His popularity ratings are now like 26%.

00:34:35.000 The press loves him.

00:34:36.000 People of France, not so much.

00:34:38.000 Now, this is breaking out into riots.

00:34:40.000 According to the UK Daily Mail, graffiti was removed from the Arc de Triomphe today after anti-Macron protesters stormed through Paris on Saturday.

00:34:46.000 The protesters occupied the city center.

00:34:48.000 They torched cars, smashed windows with clubs and axes, stole an assault rifle from riot police, firing tear gas and water cannon in France's worst urban rioting in years.

00:34:57.000 The French president today vowed to bring the rioters to justice as he has inspected wreckage on the Champs-Élysées.

00:35:03.000 The Yellow Vest protesters, which began as a rebellion against a fuel tax hike, but have expanded into weeks of civil unrest today.

00:35:09.000 There's a massive strike of ambulance employees, which is, I'm sure, great for folks who need to get to the hospital.

00:35:14.000 And spread across the country on Saturday, ended with 133 people injured, including 23 police officers and 412 arrested last night.

00:35:22.000 I want to correct myself, by the way, Macron is the president of France, not the prime minister.

00:35:25.000 Two separate offices.

00:35:26.000 Macron was jeered by lingering Yellow Vest supporters before chairing a crisis meeting with ministers amid calls to declare a state of emergency or even send in the army to quell the violence.

00:35:35.000 So why exactly are people protesting?

00:35:37.000 Because gas prices in France are out of control and 60% of those gas prices are due to fuel taxes.

00:35:42.000 Those fuel taxes are largely created to pay for the crackdown in global warming.

00:35:48.000 Now, is the earth cooling specifically faster because of all this?

00:35:51.000 No evidence of that, but it's sure hitting the pocketbooks of a bunch of people in France.

00:35:55.000 This is why when folks on the left say, listen, there's no cost to good carbon policy.

00:36:00.000 There is no cost to raising the carbon tax.

00:36:02.000 It's going to create jobs. 0.99

00:36:04.000 Everyone will be happier.

00:36:05.000 Mm hmm.

00:36:06.000 Yeah, going great in France, isn't it?

00:36:08.000 So, Macron, Held talks with his prime minister and interior minister at the Elysee Palace nearby.

00:36:13.000 Images showed the inside of the Arc de Triomphe ransacked, with the statue of Marianne, a symbol of the French Republic, smashed and graffiti scrawled on the exterior.

00:36:22.000 The French leader spoke with police and firefighters on one of the avenues near the Champs-Elysees, with some yellow-jacketed protesters shouting, Macron, resign!

00:36:30.000 A government spokesman said it was out of the question that each weekend becomes a meeting or ritual for violence because this was the second consecutive Saturday ending in violent carnage in Paris.

00:36:39.000 The capital was calm on Sunday, but a motorway was blocked by yellow-vested protesters in Lyon. 0.99

00:36:43.000 So things are breaking down.

00:36:45.000 And they are breaking down because it turns out that when you want to pay for socialistic programs, then people get angry.

00:36:51.000 This is why when everybody says, look, all the people in Europe, they're so happy.

00:36:54.000 Everything is so great.

00:36:56.000 Why don't you spend some time over in these places and see what the civil unrest looks like in places like France before you talk about radically raising the taxes on American citizens to pay for carbon emissions.

00:37:06.000 For example, protesters said the riots yesterday were the start of a revolution and violence which echoed the near revolution of 1968.

00:37:12.000 Frederick Lagasche of the Alliance Police Union, he called for a state of emergency.

00:37:15.000 He said we are in an insurrectional climate.

00:37:17.000 Lagasche said army reinforcements should be brought in to guard public monuments, freeing up the police to deal with other trouble spots.

00:37:25.000 And so things have gotten very ugly over in France.

00:37:28.000 There are consequences to public policy.

00:37:31.000 Euronews has a pretty good summary of what exactly is happening in France.

00:37:34.000 They say discontent was triggered by the government's measures to keep increasing a direct tax on diesel, a fuel commonly used by motorists in France, as well as the carbon tax.

00:37:42.000 Protesters see these as disproportionately affecting those who use their cars to get to and from their jobs every day.

00:37:47.000 Their core demands are to put a freeze on fuel tax increases due in January and measures to boost spending power.

00:37:54.000 The hike in fuel prices is due to three things, according to Euronews.

00:37:58.000 Volatile crude oil prices, the carbon tax, and diesel and petrol taxes.

00:38:03.000 And the taxes are used to help finance the general budget of the state.

00:38:06.000 So it is not just that they are used for carbon taxation, they're also used to pay for the exorbitant social system in France.

00:38:12.000 France has serious problems. 0.93

00:38:14.000 The riots in France over the past few years have come in part from Radical Muslim immigrants. 1.00

00:38:20.000 You've seen riots in France that have been disproportionately from those folks in particular areas of the country.

00:38:26.000 And you've also seen from the right in France, which is very upset with the taxation policy in France.

00:38:32.000 Civil unrest tends to follow giant government and this is what's happening.

00:38:36.000 In France, because again, you can't have these policies without some consequences accompanying them.

00:38:43.000 Policies have consequences, sort of the theme of today's show, at least in part.

00:38:47.000 And that is why President Trump is now backing off tariffs on the Chinese, because President Trump is looking at the economy and starting to realize the tariff policy Undercuts everything that he is currently trying to do.

00:38:57.000 In an announcement yesterday, Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump put their bilateral trade war on pause momentarily, striking an agreement to hold off on slapping additional tariffs on each other's goods after January 1st, as talks continue between both countries.

00:39:11.000 President Trump decided this was a big win for him, even though the reality is that if Trump hadn't threatened tariffs in the first place, we wouldn't be lowering tariffs in the second place.

00:39:18.000 President Trump created a lot of trade Chaos.

00:39:21.000 And then when the trade chaos is temporarily postponed, the stock market jumps, which is exactly what you're seeing today.

00:39:26.000 In a White House readout of a dinner at the G20 summit in Argentina, Xi and Trump discussed a range of nettlesome issues, among them the trade dispute that has left over $200 billion worth of goods hanging in the balance.

00:39:36.000 The statement read, President Trump has agreed that on January 1st, 2019, he will leave the tariffs on $200 billion worth of product at the 10% rate and not raise it to 25% at this time.

00:39:47.000 American and Chinese officials will continue over the next three months to negotiate lingering disagreements on technology transfer, intellectual property, and agriculture.

00:39:55.000 Meanwhile, China will agree to purchase a not-yet-agreed-upon but very substantial amount of agricultural, energy, industrial, and other products from the United States to reduce the trade imbalance between our two countries.

00:40:05.000 China has agreed to start purchasing agricultural product from our farmers immediately.

00:40:08.000 Well, it sounds like a win for us, except for the fact that they were already purchasing an enormous amount of agriculture from us before, right?

00:40:15.000 They were purchasing basically our entire soybean supply, for example.

00:40:18.000 And it turns out that President Trump's tariff policies, rather than lowering the trade deficit, actually increased the trade deficit in expectation of the tariffs.

00:40:25.000 According to Bloomberg, the U.S.

00:40:27.000 trade deficit widened in July by the most in three years.

00:40:29.000 The gap with China hit a record as the Trump administration imposed tariffs on a range of Chinese goods, prompting retaliatory levies from Beijing.

00:40:37.000 Turns out that trade policy is all fun and games until the actual consequences of the trade policy become known.

00:40:42.000 I'm glad the president is backing off of all of this.

00:40:45.000 It is one thing to crack down on the Chinese for fraud and intellectual property infringement. 0.99

00:40:49.000 It's another thing to impose tariffs just because President Trump thinks he's protecting domestic industry.

00:40:54.000 He is not, in fact, protecting the domestic economy by taxing American citizens for Cheaper goods from abroad. 0.99

00:41:01.000 OK, meanwhile, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has gotten herself in the headlines again, this time by tweeting something insanely stupid again. 1.00

00:41:08.000 Now, I know, according to the media, we're not supposed to cover Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, right? 0.95

00:41:12.000 This is the way this works, is that the media say that the new congresswoman from New York is a godsend. 0.96

00:41:18.000 She's a fresh face.

00:41:19.000 She's wonderful in every way.

00:41:20.000 And then if we talk about her in places like this, it's, oh, you're obsessed with her.

00:41:24.000 Oh, you're obsessed with her.

00:41:25.000 I mean, this is just high-level media trollery.

00:41:28.000 If you decide to make her a celebrity, and then we talk about the fact that she can't legitimately add numbers together, like basic numbers together, then it's our fault.

00:41:36.000 And then it's our fault.

00:41:37.000 How dare we?

00:41:38.000 You make her a celebrity, but if we comment, oh, we're obsessed, we're obsessed.

00:41:42.000 Listen, she's a public figure. 0.98

00:41:43.000 When she tweets something dumb, then she should be called out for it. 0.98

00:41:46.000 This is a tweet that has 66,000 likes. 0.99

00:41:49.000 Here is what she tweeted.

00:41:51.000 $21 trillion of Pentagon financial transactions could not be traced, documented, or explained.

00:41:56.000 $21 trillion in Pentagon accounting errors.

00:41:59.000 Medicare for All costs $32 trillion.

00:42:01.000 That means 66% of Medicare for All could have been funded already by the Pentagon.

00:42:05.000 And that's before our premiums.

00:42:07.000 This is mathematically illiterate. 0.89

00:42:10.000 Illiterate.

00:42:11.000 The reason it is mathematically illiterate is that we have not actually spent $21 trillion in the entire history of the Republic of the United States on defense.

00:42:19.000 Okay, we spent $700 billion in total last year.

00:42:23.000 She also claimed at one point, I believe, that we had $700 billion in fraud that same year.

00:42:28.000 Okay, this number does not add up.

00:42:30.000 That is not a correct interpretation of the numbers that she is looking at.

00:42:34.000 Also, acknowledging that your program is massively expensive to own the cons. 0.56

00:42:38.000 Big win for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but oh, sorry, I'm not supposed to point out when she says something really dumb because that means that we are obsessed with her here. 0.90

00:42:45.000 We're supposed to just pretend that none of this is happening.

00:42:50.000 So, good stuff from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 0.96

00:42:54.000 Meanwhile, in other things stupid, the New York Times has a piece today about the Rockettes. 0.99

00:43:01.000 The Rockettes are too white. 0.99

00:43:02.000 This is according to Ginia Belafonte.

00:43:04.000 Now, if you think that folks at the New York Times are race-obsessed, you would be correct, because everyone at the New York Times has lost their minds.

00:43:10.000 Here is what they write over at the New York Times.

00:43:12.000 Ginnia Belafonte, November 30th.

00:43:13.000 She says, I was by myself.

00:43:13.000 It says, Plenty of old people and middle-aged people.

00:43:36.000 Many of them were wearing Santa hats.

00:43:37.000 The crowd was overwhelmingly white.

00:43:39.000 This means that it's a bad show.

00:43:41.000 If a crowd is overwhelmingly white, it must be bad. 0.99

00:43:43.000 If the crowd at the latest Beethoven concert is overwhelmingly white, that means Beethoven is bad. 1.00

00:43:48.000 I mention this fact...

00:43:50.000 Because at the end of the second decade of the 21st century, the Rockettes, whose performances are taken in by almost one million people every holiday season, are themselves almost all white. 0.87

00:43:59.000 So not all white, almost all white. 0.94

00:44:01.000 It's not enough that they have some non-white members of the cast.

00:44:04.000 It's not diverse enough. 0.87

00:44:06.000 It's just like segregation.

00:44:07.000 The show I saw featured, as far as I could tell, only one African-American dancer in the lineup of close to 40.

00:44:12.000 There were, in the end, more camels on stage than black women. 1.00

00:44:15.000 By the way, if you go to a Rockettes show and your first inclination is to start counting the black women, I'd say you have a problem. 0.84

00:44:20.000 Among the 80 dancers who made up the Rockettes core, 10% are women of color, a spokesperson for the company told me.

00:44:25.000 You're only seeing half the cast during any given show because there are so many performances to fill, on weekends up to six a day.

00:44:30.000 Regardless of that, any variance in skin tone is obscured by lighting and makeup that have the effect of creating a stultifying homogeneity. 0.98

00:44:37.000 They need a New York Times columnist to tell them how to run the Rockettes, which has been a continuous show on Broadway for decades.

00:44:44.000 Ancillary cast members in the pageant, non-rockettes, include a black man playing an elf and a black man playing a bell man.

00:44:50.000 Oh no!

00:44:51.000 By the way, speaking of playing an elf, my sister, a Jewish girl, played an elf in her elementary school public school production of A Christmas Thing.

00:44:59.000 I guess that was also anti-Semitic or something.

00:45:01.000 The Rockettes are the creation of someone named Russell Markert, who first brought them to stage in St.

00:45:05.000 Louis in 1925, oversaw their direction at the Radio City Music Hall from the 30s until the 70s.

00:45:10.000 His goal had been to build the most precise and uniform dancing troupe in the world, and to that end, he imposed height requirements for the women in the line.

00:45:17.000 These expectations have continued, unabated.

00:45:19.000 Such a vision accommodates little tolerance for difference.

00:45:22.000 I agree.

00:45:22.000 I think that the Radio City Rockettes should be forced to perform with people who are paraplegic, for example.

00:45:28.000 I think that the Radio City Rockettes, half of them should be in wheelchairs.

00:45:31.000 I think it wouldn't change the nature of the show at all, and it would show a massive understanding of the diversity of modern America, if that were to happen.

00:45:39.000 We should have a bunch of people who are short.

00:45:40.000 We should have a bunch of people who are super tall.

00:45:43.000 They should dance to whatever they want to dance to, actually.

00:45:44.000 There shouldn't actually be any sort of attempt to make them dance in line or in lockstep.

00:45:49.000 That's fascistic.

00:45:50.000 We should actually just let them dance how they want to dance. 1.00

00:45:53.000 If some want to dance jazz, that's cool.

00:45:54.000 If some want to breakdance, that's totally fine as well.

00:45:57.000 If some want to scoot along on their butt for no reason at all, like my two-and-a-half-year-old son, I think they should do that too.

00:46:01.000 Because that's diversity. 0.94

00:46:03.000 That's diversity.

00:46:04.000 And all those people should be racially diverse.

00:46:06.000 Those people should be diverse in terms of sexual orientation.

00:46:08.000 They should be diverse in terms of gender identification.

00:46:11.000 I don't see why the Radio City Rockettes can't be a bunch of mustachioed men.

00:46:15.000 I don't see, like, all of this I think is just un-American.

00:46:18.000 So thank you, New York Times, for really hitting in on the spirit of the holiday.

00:46:22.000 Really honing in on what makes the Radio City Rockettes run the way they're supposed to run.

00:46:26.000 Okay, time for some things that I like and then some things that I hate.

00:46:29.000 So, things that I like.

00:46:32.000 As we watch France burst into flame, and as we recognize that America still is the greatest democratic republic in the history of the planet, despite all of the problems that we experience, it is worth reviewing why.

00:46:42.000 That is, the book that best describes this is Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville.

00:46:46.000 I know, you were recommended this in high school, and then you didn't read it.

00:46:48.000 And then you were recommended it in college, and then you didn't read it.

00:46:50.000 And then you were recommended it in grad school, and you still didn't read it.

00:46:53.000 Well, now I'm recommending it, and you should read it.

00:46:55.000 Okay?

00:46:55.000 This edition is particularly good.

00:46:57.000 It's an edition That is edited by Harvey Mansfield, the brilliant professor over at Harvard, East Coast Straussian, as well as Delba Winthrop.

00:47:04.000 It is a very, very good edition.

00:47:07.000 The translation is excellent.

00:47:10.000 It is well edited.

00:47:11.000 The introduction is really good.

00:47:12.000 Alexis de Tocqueville describes well what makes democracy in America different from democracy in other nations.

00:47:17.000 He talks about localism.

00:47:19.000 He talks about the prevalence of the social fabric.

00:47:21.000 He talks about the fact that a democratic republic is not quite a democracy and not quite a republic.

00:47:26.000 And he talks about the foolish idea that the people will always be a cure.

00:47:31.000 And then the main message of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America in a nutshell is that democracy in America can only work if there's a vibrant social fabric that supports the democracy and the system of checks and balances designed to facilitate democracy not only checks the excesses of the people, but in the end does in fact rely on a good and moral people.

00:47:48.000 It's a long book.

00:47:49.000 It'll take you a long time to complete.

00:47:50.000 But once you do, you'll have a better understanding of what makes America tick and why, for example, the French Republic has not worked in nearly the same way as the American Republic.

00:47:58.000 OK, other things that I like.

00:48:00.000 So speaking of books that everyone should read yesterday.

00:48:04.000 I went to Barnes & Noble with my kids, because this is one of the things we like to do.

00:48:07.000 My daughter, who is a very smart human, for her age, I always add for her age, because whenever I say a child is smart, people are like, well, you should let her decide her own gender. 0.79

00:48:15.000 It's like, no, that's not, no.

00:48:16.000 She's smart for a four and a half year old, which means she can read.

00:48:19.000 In any case, there is a book on the shelf.

00:48:21.000 Let me first note.

00:48:23.000 Over at Barnes & Noble, the children's section is basically a propaganda tool.

00:48:27.000 I say this only because I walk in, and the first display you see is feminism for babies. 1.00

00:48:33.000 There's literally a book called Baby Feminism, and what it is is a picture of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and then it's a board book.

00:48:39.000 It's made out of thick cardboard, so if your kids chew on it, it doesn't ruin the book.

00:48:42.000 And it's a picture of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and if you flip it, if you flip the page, it's then a picture of Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a baby, because every feminist was once a baby.

00:48:51.000 Now, it doesn't actually have the punchline, which is, if feminists had their way, many of these babies would never have been born. 1.00

00:48:55.000 But nonetheless, that is one of the books on the shelf.

00:48:58.000 Also, a Michelle Obama biography is on the shelf.

00:49:01.000 It is a bunch of left-leaning books.

00:49:03.000 My favorite, though, was this one.

00:49:04.000 My mom actually spotted this one.

00:49:06.000 And let it be known that just as my wife is a doctor, my mom runs companies.

00:49:10.000 She ran business affairs for major television and film companies in Los Angeles for years.

00:49:15.000 So my mom actually worked outside the house, and my dad was home with the kids.

00:49:19.000 My mom is a first-rate, first-wave feminist. 1.00

00:49:21.000 In any case, she spots this book and I see her sit down and start reading it.

00:49:25.000 And she just starts laughing. 0.65

00:49:26.000 The title of the book is My First Book of Feminism for Boys.

00:49:30.000 And it is just incredible.

00:49:32.000 It is just the best.

00:49:33.000 So she hands it to me to read.

00:49:36.000 And I will say this book is so informative and so great.

00:49:39.000 It's by Julie Marburg, illustrated by Michelle Brumer Everett.

00:49:43.000 The best page is a picture of a girl in a firefighter's uniform who is lugging a hose because she wants to be a firefighter, which is fine.

00:49:52.000 Although I will say that female upper body strength is not as great as male upper body strength on average.

00:49:57.000 And if you just had to pick a guy to be a firefighter or a girl to be a firefighter knowing nothing else about them, you have to pick the guy.

00:50:03.000 Because, obviously, you have to go by the average.

00:50:05.000 The average is that men have more upper body strength.

00:50:07.000 Also, I do love the accuracy of one woman carrying a fire hose, which generates like a thousand pounds of pressure and requires at least two or three guys to carry. 0.99

00:50:16.000 In any case, here is... But I'm not going to rip on the accuracy of a children's book.

00:50:19.000 It's just a children's book.

00:50:20.000 But here is the caption.

00:50:21.000 Find a job that you'll love heading off to each day.

00:50:24.000 Know the women you work with must earn equal pay. 1.00

00:50:27.000 You're supposed to read this like a two and a half year old.

00:50:29.000 So I sat there and I read it to my two and a half year old and he looked at me very solemnly and he said, this claim does not adjust for job choice, time out of the workforce or hours work.

00:50:38.000 And I said, my boy, you are just you.

00:50:42.000 You have been well put on your way, sir.

00:50:45.000 And that was and that was our actual conversation word for word.

00:50:49.000 It was really incredible.

00:50:50.000 I mean, I didn't know that he knew about adjustments for job choice.

00:50:53.000 I didn't know he knew about statistical regressions and multiple regression linear analysis.

00:50:57.000 I didn't know he knew about all that stuff.

00:50:58.000 It turns out not only did he know all this stuff, I let him drive home.

00:51:01.000 It was really amazing.

00:51:02.000 So check out that book, my first book of feminism for boys. 1.00

00:51:06.000 I'm buying it for my business partner.

00:51:08.000 As his Christmas gift, because I think he needs to know more about feminism. 1.00

00:51:11.000 So he should go check that.

00:51:12.000 OK, final final thing that I like today.

00:51:14.000 So over the weekend.

00:51:16.000 So first of all, you should go check out on Friday.

00:51:17.000 I did a two hour conversation with Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin all about Christianity and Judaism and religion and meaning and purpose.

00:51:25.000 It's really good stuff.

00:51:26.000 It's really fun.

00:51:27.000 Jordan and I are good friends at this point, and there's a lot to delve into.

00:51:30.000 I think that it's really worthwhile.

00:51:32.000 And then Jordan and Dave suggested that I stop by Jordan's show, which was fantastic.

00:51:35.000 He did a show at the L.A.

00:51:36.000 Orpheum over the weekend.

00:51:38.000 A couple thousand people.

00:51:40.000 I got to come out and I got to say hello and as a gesture of solidarity I brought Dave Rubin a cupcake.

00:51:46.000 The reason being last time I was on Dave's show he asked me whether I would bake a cake for his same-sex wedding and I said no because I'm a religious person and I do not participate in Ceremonies that I think are a sin, even though we are friends, right? 0.98

00:51:58.000 And this is true with regard to intermarriage. 0.59

00:52:00.000 This is true with regard to Sabbath violation.

00:52:03.000 I mean, this is true for a wide variety of things that as a religious person, I consider sinful.

00:52:06.000 Now, Dave can do what he likes, right?

00:52:08.000 I mean, he's married to a guy, right?

00:52:09.000 I mean, he can do what he wants.

00:52:10.000 It's a free country, and that's fine.

00:52:12.000 I'm good friends with Dave.

00:52:13.000 I'm friends with his husband.

00:52:15.000 All that's fine, but...

00:52:16.000 I, as a religious person, am not going to be compelled by a government or anyone else to violate my religious scruples and celebrate something that I believe is personally a sin.

00:52:25.000 Okay, that's my perspective.

00:52:26.000 I said that.

00:52:27.000 People went nuts.

00:52:27.000 So, to prove that Dave and I are friends, and that also I have no objection to actually baking a cupcake for a gay guy, I baked him a cupcake, I brought it to him on stage, and I pointed out that I'm happy to bake a small cake for a gay man.

00:52:40.000 So, that is a thing that happened over the weekend.

00:52:41.000 And then I also pointed out that I had, in fact, brought A cake for Jordan Peterson backstage as well, but it wasn't a physical cake.

00:52:50.000 It was a mythological cake.

00:52:52.000 It had lots of layers and it's the layers that made it so bloody important.

00:52:56.000 You see, I didn't want to bring him an actual physical cake.

00:52:59.000 A physical cake connotes sweetness and life isn't sweet.

00:53:03.000 Life is pain and suffering in which your journey is to make order out of chaos.

00:53:09.000 And that's what you're supposed to learn from the metaphysical mythological cake that has been bubbling up in our biologies and from a deeper place for legitimately Hundreds of thousands of years.

00:53:19.000 Once you understand the suffering of the mythological cake, then you understand the sweetness, which is far sweeter than any physical cake could be in the hierarchy.

00:53:28.000 And that's why it's so bloody important.

00:53:30.000 In any case, it was really a lot of fun.

00:53:33.000 And I love Jordan.

00:53:34.000 Jordan's great.

00:53:35.000 So, it's unfortunately not on tape, but that's my best recreation of what I actually said on stage at the event at the LA Orpheum.

00:53:43.000 If Jordan's in your town, you should go see his events.

00:53:45.000 They're really, really cool and really a lot of fun.

00:53:47.000 Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.

00:53:53.000 OK, so this weekend began the holiday of Hanukkah.

00:53:57.000 Hanukkah is a great holiday.

00:53:59.000 Hanukkah is also an anti-secularist holiday.

00:54:01.000 So Hanukkah is all about the Jews defeating the Hellenists, a group of members of the Seleucid Empire who are attempting to take over the Jewish temple, transform it into a pagan temple. 0.93

00:54:10.000 And a lot of Jews who are going along with this because better to assimilate than to be part of the Jewish people. 0.67

00:54:14.000 The Maccabees rise up in a religious revolt and they say, no, we are taking back our holy places and we refuse to bow before the Hellenization of our religion.

00:54:21.000 This is very uncomfortable for a lot of people.

00:54:24.000 It's particularly uncomfortable for secular Jews who don't actually care all that much about Judaism and for whom Hanukkah is largely a reverse Christmas.

00:54:32.000 It's basically like Christmas for our kids.

00:54:34.000 So we're uncomfortable with having a Christmas tree in our house because we don't believe in the Jesus.

00:54:38.000 But by the same token, it's like, let's get gifts for our kids.

00:54:41.000 We have to have like Hanukkah Harry and we'll have like a Hanukkah bush and all this kind of stuff.

00:54:46.000 That is precisely the opposite.

00:54:49.000 This is precisely the opposite of what actually has been the history of celebrating the holiday. 0.78

00:54:55.000 Now, what's hilarious about this is that there was a secular Jew in the New York Times who recognized the hypocrisy, his own hypocrisy in this. 0.93

00:55:03.000 His name is Michael David Lucas. 0.96

00:55:06.000 And he says, it's the question that Jewish parents instinctively dread.

00:55:09.000 A few months ago, I was sitting on the couch with my three-year-old daughter watching YouTube videos about animals in space, when out of nowhere, she looked up at me and asked, Dada, can we celebrate Christmas?

00:55:17.000 We don't celebrate Christmas, I told her, putting on my serious voice.

00:55:19.000 We celebrate Hanukkah.

00:55:20.000 Like generations of Jewish parents before me, I did my best to sell her on the relative merits of Hanukkah.

00:55:24.000 True, Christmas might have sparkly trees, ornaments, and fruitcake, but we have latkes, jelly doughnuts, and eight nights of presents.

00:55:30.000 Do we have Santa?

00:55:30.000 She asked hopefully.

00:55:31.000 No, I said, and her face dropped.

00:55:32.000 They do.

00:55:33.000 I tried to reiterate the part about jelly doughnuts and the eight nights of presents, but she wasn't having any of it.

00:55:37.000 I can't say I blame her.

00:55:38.000 During the rest of the year, the Jewish holidays we celebrate are like special bonus celebrations we get to have on top of everything else going on in the calendar.

00:55:44.000 With Hanukkah and Christmas, however, it's a zero-sum game.

00:55:47.000 Most of the year, it isn't hard for our family to feel both American and Jewish.

00:55:50.000 But in December, that dual identity becomes more of a question, which is why Hanukkah is a big deal for mostly assimilated Jews like myself.

00:55:57.000 The only trouble is the actual holiday, not the latkes and dreidels, but the story of Hanukkah, which at its heart is an eight-night-long celebration of religious fundamentalism and violence. 0.81

00:56:05.000 I like that they just discovered that the preservation of the Jewish people is based on, you know, Judaism, and also on the preservation of Judaism.

00:56:13.000 It's amazing.

00:56:14.000 So watching secular Jews discover that Hanukkah isn't actually just reverse Christmas is really amusing to me. 0.96

00:56:20.000 For people who actually live the Jewish lifestyle and take the Bible seriously and take Judaism seriously and allow Judaism to... 0.96

00:56:26.000 Really permeate their lives?

00:56:28.000 Hanukkah is just another celebration of the fact that Judaism is a deep-rooted part of our life that will not allow encroachment by Hellenizing forces.

00:56:36.000 For a bunch of secular Jews who've basically been Hellenized, they suddenly realize, oh wait, we're celebrating something that we totally disagree with. 0.98

00:56:42.000 Real weird.

00:56:44.000 He says, for most of the past 2,000 years, Hanukkah was an afterthought on the Jewish calendar, a wintertime festival of lights during which people spun tops and ate greasy food to commemorate what has to be one of God's least impressive miracles. 0.86

00:56:54.000 A small container of oil lasted for eight nights.

00:56:57.000 There's a big argument in even the Talmud about what exactly is being celebrated, whether what's being celebrated is the oil or whether what's actually being celebrated is the victory of the Jews over the Seleucid Empire.

00:57:09.000 Suffice it to say, I think it's the latter.

00:57:11.000 More recently, as Jews have become assimilated into American society, the holiday has evolved into a kind of Semitic sidekick for Christmas. 0.80

00:57:17.000 And then he talks about how uncomfortable he is.

00:57:20.000 He says, the more I thought about all this, the more it disturbed me.

00:57:22.000 For what am I, if not a Hellenized Jew?

00:57:24.000 I eat pork every so often.

00:57:26.000 Before having children, my wife and I agonized over the question of circumcision.

00:57:29.000 And while I've never offered burn sacrifices to Zeus, I do go to yoga occasionally.

00:57:33.000 When it comes down to it, it's pretty clear the Maccabees would have hated me.

00:57:36.000 Yeah.

00:57:37.000 Yeah, fair.

00:57:38.000 They would have hated me because I'm assimilated and because I'm the product of intermarriage.

00:57:42.000 Well, I'm not sure they would have hated you per se, but they would not have liked if you were speaking up on behalf of Judaism. 0.53

00:57:48.000 And while I can't say for certain what the Maccabees would have thought about my fondness for Bernie Sanders or my practice of Reconstructionist Judaism, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have liked those things either.

00:57:56.000 Yes, that is correct.

00:57:58.000 And then he says, so why should I do all of this?

00:57:59.000 The answer, frankly, is that it's not my choice.

00:58:01.000 With my daughter ready to sign up for Team Santa, we have to celebrate something and I'm not quite Hellenized enough to get a Christmas tree.

00:58:06.000 And this is secular Judaism in a nutshell in the United States. 0.79

00:58:09.000 Secular Judaism in a nutshell is, I don't want to be known as a Christian because it makes me culturally uncomfortable, but I don't actually give a damn about Jewish things and Jewish things make me uncomfortable. 0.96

00:58:18.000 So instead, I sort of keep the hallmarks without uncomfortably recognizing what it is that Judaism has stood for for so long.

00:58:25.000 When people ask me, one of the big questions I get, why are Jews so liberal?

00:58:27.000 The answer is many Jews are liberal because they are this kind of Jew. 1.00

00:58:30.000 They're a Jew who actually doesn't like a lot of the central tenets of Judaism and is Hellenized beyond all measure, but simply does not have the guts to simply say goodbye to the religion as a whole. 0.90

00:58:42.000 Judaism is not for the faint of heart.

00:58:44.000 And Judaism does have central tenets, just like Christianity is not for the faint of heart.

00:58:47.000 And it does have central tenets.

00:58:48.000 And trying to secularize holidays is a huge, huge mistake.

00:58:52.000 Your kids won't be celebrating.

00:58:53.000 This guy's worried about his kids.

00:58:54.000 He won't have to worry about it.

00:58:55.000 His kids and his grandkids will not be celebrating Hanukkah anytime in the near future, as soon as they are adults, because people instinctively recognize hypocrisy.

00:59:02.000 And by the way, What's what's what's sad about all of this is that all the folks who think that secularizing and hellenizing is going to protect them from anti-semitism.

00:59:11.000 Good luck with that.

00:59:12.000 Historically speaking, that has certainly not been true, which is why in a new survey, 43 percent of Dutch Jews hide their Jewish identity.

00:59:19.000 OK, so that's not going to work for them either.

00:59:23.000 And Jews are still going to be Jews. 1.00

00:59:24.000 All righty.

00:59:25.000 So we will have a lot more to discuss, but we'll be back here tomorrow for all of it.

00:59:28.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:59:28.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:59:34.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.

00:59:39.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:59:44.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:59:45.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Karamina.

00:59:47.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:59:49.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.

The Ben Shapiro Show - December 03, 2018

Goodbye, 41 | Ep. 671

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