The Ben Shapiro Show - Hefner Dies, Left Mourns Their Hero | The Ben Shapiro Show Ep. 391

00:00:00.000 So, he spoke last night at the University of Utah.

00:00:02.000 I'll give you the rundown.

00:00:03.000 We have some pretty amazing information from there.

00:00:06.000 Plus, Hugh Hefner is dead.

00:00:08.000 And aside from talking First Amendment boobs, we'll also talk about tax reform and where that is.

00:00:12.000 We'll give you all of the information.

00:00:14.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

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

00:00:22.000 Okay, so I want to start by talking about Hugh Hefner, because Hugh Hefner's death is apparently a deep cultural moment.

00:00:28.000 The obituaries are just endless.

00:00:30.000 The New York Times ran a 3,300-word obituary about a guy who's mostly famous for putting boobs in a magazine, which is pretty incredible. 0.50

00:00:37.000 He lived the life of a Saudi oil chic, but occasionally published John Updike and Norman Mailer, and therefore, I guess, his entire life was just roses and nothing but.

00:00:46.000 We'll get to all of that.

00:00:47.000 And as you may have noticed, I don't abide by this rule that when someone dies, we have to pretend they were awesome.

00:00:51.000 So I'm going to talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly, and what Hugh Hefner meant to culture, and what we should take away from that.

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00:02:03.000 OK, so I was going to begin with Trumponomics, but it's more fun to talk about Hugh Hefner.

00:02:07.000 Right?

00:02:07.000 I mean, this is why Hugh Hefner is a cultural figure, because we have to pretend that Hugh Hefner was a forward-thinking genius of the culture instead of basically a purveyor of pornography.

00:02:16.000 Now, none of this is to say that he doesn't have a First Amendment right to push his pornography.

00:02:20.000 I mean, he did have a First Amendment right to push his pornography, although

00:02:23.000 I think there actually is a fairly decent argument under the First Amendment that the First Amendment was not supposed to cover obscenity.

00:02:29.000 Like, I don't think that John Adams and James Madison were sitting around in 1789 thinking to themselves, you know what we really need to protect?

00:02:35.000 Hugh Hefner with the money shot.

00:02:37.000 That's what we need to protect, right?

00:02:39.000 What Robert Bork argues in his book talking about the First Amendment is that the First Amendment was essentially enshrined to protect political speech.

00:02:45.000 That was the goal.

00:02:46.000 But let's assume that we're going to take a libertarian position on the First Amendment.

00:02:49.000 Better that government should not regulate any of this than that government should regulate the wrong stuff.

00:02:54.000 So let's say that all this stuff is protected.

00:02:56.000 Now the question becomes, was Hugh Hefner's business good for the world, or was it kind of bad for the world?

00:03:02.000 So what I've seen a lot of in the obits today is focus on stuff that is not Hugh Hefner's core business.

00:03:07.000 I've seen a lot of focus on the fact that he supported civil rights.

00:03:10.000 Which is great!

00:03:11.000 Terrific!

00:03:11.000 You know who else supported civil rights?

00:03:13.000 Rosa Parks.

00:03:13.000 You know what she didn't do?

00:03:14.000 Pose nude.

00:03:15.000 So this idea that Hugh Hefner is somehow culturally important because of civil rights is not the case.

00:03:20.000 Let's be real about this. 0.91

00:03:21.000 Hugh Hefner is famous because he was an old perv. 0.96

00:03:24.000 Okay, he was a perv from the time that he was young and he was a perv when he was super old and became a parody of himself. 0.96

00:03:28.000 He didn't become a different human. 0.80

00:03:30.000 He wasn't different at 30 than he was at 91.

00:03:32.000 He's the exact same person. 0.98

00:03:33.000 He never changed and that's why it was so ridiculous watching him try to live the life of a 30-year-old swinging bachelor when he was 91 and somebody had to milk his prostate for him. 0.99

00:03:41.000 The whole thing is ridiculous. 0.95

00:03:43.000 The New York Times runs this glowing obit of Hugh Hefner. 0.78

00:03:47.000 I did look it up.

00:03:48.000 I was trying to figure out whether they granted more time to Hugh Hefner or Ronald Reagan.

00:03:52.000 They did grant more time to Ronald Reagan, so good for the New York Times on that.

00:03:55.000 They granted more time to Hugh Hefner than William F. Buckley, which I think is sort of telling about where the Times stands on this.

00:04:01.000 But here's what they write, and this is, I don't even have to give you indicators like this.

00:04:04.000 I'll just read you this glowing profile of Hugh Hefner, apparently one of the greatest human beings to have ever walked the Earth.

00:04:09.000 It goes, Moses, Jesus, Hugh Hefner.

00:04:11.000 So here is Hugh Hefner.

00:04:12.000 Hugh Hefner, who created Playboy Magazine and spun it into a media and entertainment industry giant, all the while, as its very public avatar, squiring attractive young women and sometimes marrying them well into his 80s, died on Wednesday at his home, the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.

00:04:26.000 He was 91.

00:04:27.000 Hey, let's imagine for a second that Donald Trump, God forbid, had died before he became President of the United States.

00:04:35.000 His obituary would read very much like this from the New York Times.

00:04:37.000 Right, Donald Trump, a man famous for squaring around young women and sometimes marrying them. 0.98

00:04:42.000 But now, the New York Times doesn't like Donald Trump because Donald Trump's a political figure, right, on the right, and therefore he's an evil, vile man with women. 0.97

00:04:50.000 Evil and vile, do you understand? 0.97

00:04:52.000 Now, I think that Hugh Hefner was pretty vile with women. 0.99

00:04:55.000 I think that Trump's history is not particularly great with women.

00:04:57.000 I'm pretty consistent on this stuff, but it is amazing how the politics shift how people view people's treatment of women.

00:05:03.000 I'm old enough to remember when feminists thought Hugh Hefner was gross, but now he's sort of a hero, right?

00:05:07.000 Hugh Hefner's great.

00:05:08.000 He liberated us from the constraints of our own sexual puritanism. 0.99

00:05:13.000 First of all, the arrogance and self-aggrandizement of the 1960s generation feeling that they are the first to discover that it feels good when you put a penis in a vagina is just incredible to me. 0.99

00:05:23.000 Like, I'm sorry, people have known this since forever. 0.99

00:05:26.000 This is how evolution built humans and animals.

00:05:28.000 There's nothing new here.

00:05:30.000 And treating it as though there was some sort of grand movement forward, because Hugh Hefner put boobs that men like in magazines, and then slapped a John Updike article between the boobs.

00:05:39.000 Like, this was always the joke about Playboy, right?

00:05:41.000 He'd put these kind of highfalutin essays in the middle of money shots of 18-year-old girls, and then it was like, ooh, isn't he a sophisticate?

00:05:48.000 Isn't he a sophisticate now?

00:05:50.000 Wouldn't he have been more of a sophisticate if he just, I don't know, published John Updike?

00:05:54.000 Like, maybe the only way he thought he could get people to read Updike was to put it between the boobs, but I'm pretty sure that the main point of Playboy was the boobs and not the John Updike, and he was just trying to facilitate his own fame and reputation for being a sophisticate by publishing highfalutin essays.

00:06:09.000 There's no difference between Playboy and Hustler Magazine except for the essays and this bizarre cultural impression that Hugh Hefner was somehow a force for tremendous good while Larry Flint is just a smut purveyor.

00:06:19.000 Anyway, here's what the New York Times continues to write.

00:06:22.000 You know, before I get to it, I want to say that you want to watch how America has evolved.

00:06:26.000 Don't look at Hefner.

00:06:28.000 Look at the feminist take on Hefner. 1.00

00:06:30.000 So, the feminist take on Hefner in the 1960s was that Hefner was somebody who was helping to objectify women. 0.98

00:06:36.000 Which was 100% true.

00:06:38.000 And then the feminist take became, he's empowering women.

00:06:41.000 He's giving women the opportunity to do what exactly?

00:06:44.000 Disrobe in front of men if they see fit? 1.00

00:06:47.000 And this is empowering? 0.97

00:06:48.000 Okay, like women always had that power because men have lizard brain and we like naked women. 1.00

00:06:53.000 I mean, like, I don't understand why this is like a very difficult concept.

00:06:57.000 And then it turned into, no, he's a cultural hero because he empowered women.

00:07:02.000 Okay, only, really, if you think that it is empowering to women to publish nude photos of them, maybe the woman wants it, but as a general, that's the, it may be empowering to that individual woman in that sense, I suppose, but is it empowering to women all over the United States that men are looking at lots of pictures of naked women?

00:07:19.000 If you think that's the case, I would recommend you talk to a man one time, like this many times.

00:07:24.000 And if you do, you will recognize that men who watch pornography are not on the side, typically, of being more empowered toward women.

00:07:32.000 And it's just not the way that this works.

00:07:34.000 Men who have respect for women don't tend to revel in pornography.

00:07:39.000 Because, again, there is something at odds with seeing something as a human being and seeing someone as an actual object worthy of genuine affection, love, and respect.

00:07:47.000 Anyway, the endless obituary continues.

00:07:50.000 Hefner, the man, and the playboy, the brand, were inseparable.

00:07:53.000 Both advertised themselves as emblems of the sexual revolution, an escape from American prickishness and wider social intolerance.

00:07:59.000 Both were derided over the years as vulgar, as adolescent, as exploitative, and finally as anachronistic.

00:08:04.000 All of those criticisms are true, but Mr. Heffner was a stunning success from the moment he emerged in the early 1950s.

00:08:10.000 His timing was perfect.

00:08:12.000 Don't you understand? 0.76

00:08:13.000 He was slapping those Puritans right in the face. 0.98

00:08:16.000 A note about those sexual puritans of the 1940s. 0.98

00:08:19.000 They had more babies than any generation in American history.

00:08:21.000 They knew what sex was.

00:08:24.000 Again, every generation seems to think that they're the only people who've ever discovered sexual organs, and it's just incredible to me.

00:08:30.000 You get that today from people who are my age, right?

00:08:32.000 People who are younger.

00:08:33.000 Well, my parents didn't know anything about sex, but I know something about sex.

00:08:36.000 Guess what?

00:08:36.000 Your parents did.

00:08:37.000 You know who else did?

00:08:38.000 Their parents.

00:08:38.000 You know how I know this?

00:08:39.000 Because you're here, moron. 0.99

00:08:41.000 Okay, so he was compared to Jay Gatsby, Citizen Kane, and Walt Disney, but Mr. Hefner was his own production. 1.00

00:08:46.000 He repeatedly likened his life to a romantic movie.

00:08:49.000 It starred an ageless sophisticate in silk pajamas and smoking jacket, hosting a never-ending party for famous and fascinating people.

00:08:55.000 Well, that doesn't mean that you have to liken his life to a romantic movie, right?

00:08:58.000 He was a rich guy who got a bunch of women to disrobe in front of him, who didn't have any affection for him, and who were occupying his... Do you really think all these hot, young 21-year-olds were, like, that hot on the 80-year-old creep?

00:09:11.000 He couldn't even sell his house because he insisted that he be allowed to live in the house, and nobody wanted to live in the house with him.

00:09:16.000 He tried to sell his house in LA, like, a couple of years ago, and no one was willing to buy it, because one of his preconditions is that he would be still wandering around the house, and nobody wanted that guy wandering around the house in his bathrobe.

00:09:26.000 Plus, I mean, what would it do to the home price if he blacklighted the place?

00:09:29.000 My goodness.

00:09:30.000 It says, the first issue of Playboy was published in 1953, when Mr. Hefner was 27, a new father married to, by his account, the first woman he had slept with.

00:09:38.000 And I love this.

00:09:39.000 I'm going to skip forward a little bit here because what he says about his wife is really quite incredible about his first wife.

00:09:46.000 He says, still, Mr. Hefner wielded fierce resentment against his era's sexual strictures, which he said had choked off his own youth.

00:09:53.000 A virgin until he was 22, he married his longtime girlfriend.

00:09:57.000 Dun-dun-dun-dun!

00:09:59.000 Horror of horrors!

00:10:00.000 He was a virgin until he was married.

00:10:02.000 Yeah, that's what made his life empty and meaningless. 0.89

00:10:04.000 It wasn't the endless sex with a random bevy of women. 0.99

00:10:07.000 And the uselessness of his own... And the uselessness of his own perspective. 0.97

00:10:11.000 No, it was... What really ruined him is that he didn't have sex until he was 22.

00:10:15.000 I'm sure that ruined his life, just as it made meaningless the lives of Thomas Aquinas, just as it made meaningless the life of Jesus, right?

00:10:22.000 All of these lives were meaningless.

00:10:23.000 If they'd had sex at 15, guess how much better?

00:10:25.000 You know what they could have done? 0.97

00:10:26.000 You know what Thomas Aquinas would have thought if that dude had an orgasm at age 16? 0.90

00:10:29.000 Can you just imagine? 1.00

00:10:31.000 It's so stupid. 1.00

00:10:33.000 I was married at 23. 1.00

00:10:35.000 I was a virgin until I was married.

00:10:37.000 It was a good decision.

00:10:38.000 You know why? 0.89

00:10:39.000 Because the only person I have ever had sex with is my wife. 1.00

00:10:41.000 We were going to be married for 10 years.

00:10:42.000 I promise you, my life is significantly more fulfilling than Hugh Hefner's was.

00:10:46.000 Because I'm not going to die lonely and alone.

00:10:48.000 As Matthew said, he lived as he died in a bed.

00:10:51.000 I'm not going to die lonely and alone, surrounded by people who don't know me and don't really care about me.

00:10:56.000 It's just

00:10:57.000 This idea that the promulgation by the media of the idea that he was living a lifestyle that is something that should be emulated is truly amazing, and it's truly amazing from the same newspaper, by the way, that will talk routinely about toxic masculinity.

00:11:08.000 But it'll talk routinely about, is James Bond sexist?

00:11:13.000 What?

00:11:14.000 What? 0.72

00:11:14.000 I mean, a week ago, everybody in the media was saying that Clay Travis was just a boor for saying on national television that he believed in two things, the First Amendment and boobs. 0.72

00:11:22.000 That was basically Hugh Hefner's slogan, and now it's a 3,300-word obit.

00:11:27.000 In the New York Times.

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00:12:50.000 Okay, so back to Hefner.

00:12:51.000 Now, none of this should be taken, again, as the idea that the government should be banning pornography or that the government should be involved in the process of doing this.

00:12:59.000 The point I'm making is that the cultural celebration of vulgarization of the culture, the idea that this was somehow a broadening of the public mind, that society was made better by this,

00:13:08.000 Not all exercise of rights are useful.

00:13:11.000 Doesn't mean they should be bailed, right?

00:13:13.000 What I said a couple of days ago with regard to, for example, kneeling for the National Anthem, is that do you have a right to do that?

00:13:18.000 Of course you have a right to do that, right?

00:13:20.000 Your employer can do something about it, but you have a right under the First Amendment to not be punished by government for doing that.

00:13:25.000 Every right contains the possibility of misusing the right or using it in a way that's dumb or counterproductive. 0.97

00:13:31.000 The First Amendment may contain the right to publish nude photos of women, but to glorify it, to say that this is some sort of cultural step forward for women, is just ridiculous. 0.98

00:13:40.000 You could have a feminist movement without women posing nude. 1.00

00:13:42.000 You could.

00:13:43.000 This has always been my critique of third wave feminism. 0.89

00:13:46.000 First wave feminism said, men are acting like pigs, they're barring us from the workplace, we should be able to get the jobs that we want, and we should be treated on equal par with men. 0.99

00:13:54.000 Totally agree with that, right? 0.93

00:13:55.000 That's why my wife's a doctor, my mom worked, my dad stayed home.

00:13:58.000 But, 0.99

00:13:59.000 The third wave feminism basically said, men act like pigs. 1.00

00:14:02.000 They're gross. 1.00

00:14:03.000 They treat women badly. 0.99

00:14:04.000 You know what?

00:14:05.000 That's standard.

00:14:06.000 They have a different standard for us.

00:14:07.000 They want us to be all princesses in the ivory tower instead of demanding that men be gentlemen.

00:14:11.000 Instead, get rid of the ivory tower entirely.

00:14:13.000 No rules for anyone.

00:14:15.000 No rules for anyone.

00:14:16.000 That does not mean that I'm in favor of sexual law.

00:14:19.000 Okay?

00:14:19.000 I'm not.

00:14:20.000 Again, I think the government is really bad at promulgating this sort of thing, but I am in favor of social standards that actually instill virtue.

00:14:27.000 This is why I'm in favor of people going to church.

00:14:29.000 Well, I'm in favor of you instilling virtue in your children.

00:14:31.000 You want to have a happier life?

00:14:32.000 Live a virtuous life.

00:14:34.000 This has become very controversial of late, that virtue and happiness are connected.

00:14:37.000 But the ancients never thought that.

00:14:39.000 In fact, Aristotle connected virtue with happiness.

00:14:42.000 The definition of happiness was living in accordance with virtue, which meant living in accordance with your purpose.

00:14:47.000 Unless you think your purpose on this earth is to masturbate as much as humanly possible, Hugh Hefner was not a man driving you toward virtue.

00:14:54.000 He was not a man who was helping to instill virtue. 0.78

00:14:56.000 So, you know, this thing goes on and on and on.

00:14:59.000 It says, The Playboy philosophy advocated freedom of speech in all of its aspects, for which Mr. Heffner won civil liberties awards.

00:15:06.000 He supported progressive social causes and lost some sponsors by inviting black guests to his televised parties at a time when much of the nation still had Jim Crow laws.

00:15:13.000 Again, Leonard Bernstein invited black people to his parties too, but he didn't have naked women running around there. 1.00

00:15:18.000 The idea that it was necessary to use sex as a lever in order to break open the hidebound stupidities of things like Jim Crow, the hidebound evil of things like Jim Crow, I just don't think is true. 0.98

00:15:30.000 And you know who would have agreed with me? 0.97

00:15:32.000 People like Martin Luther King, who was a preacher.

00:15:36.000 I seriously object to the idea that Hugh Hefner is somebody who ought to be emulated or whose life we ought to celebrate, particularly when the central point of his life was not civil rights stuff.

00:15:46.000 The central point of his life was that he wanted people to be able to get nudie magazines.

00:15:51.000 That's all.

00:15:53.000 3,300 words on Hugh Hefner, 3,000 words on William F. Buckley, the founder of the modern conservative movement.

00:15:59.000 Just amazing.

00:16:00.000 Again, we as a society tend to think, it's true in politics too, that we have to swallow the chaff with the wheat.

00:16:09.000 If you want Republicans or conservatives to be in the White House, then it has to come through Donald Trump.

00:16:14.000 If you want to win the culture war, then you have to go along with the vulgarization of the culture.

00:16:18.000 I don't think that's true.

00:16:20.000 I don't think that's true.

00:16:21.000 I think you can fight for good things without utilizing bad methods and without embracing bad things.

00:16:27.000 I think you can fight for civil rights without embracing the idea that men should treat women like disposable objects and when they age out of their beauty, then you just throw them by the side of the road, which is Hugh Hefner's entire ideology.

00:16:39.000 Okay, so enough about Hugh Hefner.

00:16:42.000 He is wherever he is today.

00:16:44.000 I'm sad for him that I think that he wasted his life.

00:16:47.000 I'm not gonna make any bones about that.

00:16:48.000 I do think that he wasted his life because I think he obviously is a very bright guy who could have done a lot more to make the world a better place than promulgate the idea that promiscuity was virtue.

00:16:58.000 And he didn't do all bad things.

00:17:00.000 He did some good things.

00:17:01.000 But when you see somebody who does good things and does bad things, you just wish they had done a lot more good things and a lot fewer bad things.

00:17:05.000 But I want to talk a little bit about the next step for Republicans on Capitol Hill.

00:17:09.000 So Republicans on Capitol Hill have now moved on from health care.

00:17:13.000 So great job on health care, guys.

00:17:15.000 Just stellar, stellar work.

00:17:18.000 So we now have, we're now, what, Trump took office in January.

00:17:21.000 It is now the end of September.

00:17:23.000 So they have been off, they've been in office for nine months.

00:17:26.000 There is no wall.

00:17:27.000 They've not revoked the Iran deal.

00:17:30.000 President Trump is working hard on making sure that DACA is re-enshrined.

00:17:34.000 They've not lowered the budget.

00:17:35.000 They've not cut off funding for Planned Parenthood.

00:17:37.000 And now we're going to move on to not passing tax reform.

00:17:39.000 That, I guess, is the next item on the agenda.

00:17:42.000 So Trump's tax reform that he's proposing increases taxes, apparently, on people who are in the upper tax bracket.

00:17:49.000 Now, what's funny to me is all the people who are lamenting this today, like Trump didn't say this on the campaign trail.

00:17:53.000 Trump said this repeatedly on the campaign trail.

00:17:55.000 Trump said many times on the campaign trail that he would increase taxes on the rich.

00:17:59.000 He did a famous Good Morning America spiel in which he said, taxes on people like me, they'll go up.

00:18:04.000 Those taxes.

00:18:05.000 They'll go up on people like me.

00:18:07.000 I pay, I make enough money.

00:18:08.000 Right?

00:18:09.000 Because this is his populist routine.

00:18:12.000 It's popular. 1.00

00:18:13.000 It's kind of dumb. 0.99

00:18:14.000 The reason it's kind of dumb is because the people who are paying the vast majority of federal taxes in the United States are the people who make the most money. 0.98

00:18:19.000 So when we say we're going to raise taxes on the rich but lower it for everyone else, it's kind of hard to lower taxes for people who are actually getting net benefits from the government. 0.79

00:18:28.000 In the United States, 2011, as of the Congressional Budget Office, the highest quintile, people who make above $235,000 a year in the United States, were paying, on average, to the federal government, nearly $58,000 in taxes per year.

00:18:40.000 The fourth quintile, people making above $84,000 a year,

00:18:44.000 They're paying about $14,800 to the federal government.

00:18:48.000 The third quintile, about $50,000 a year, they were paying $7,400 to the federal government.

00:18:52.000 The second quintile, above $30,000 a year, they're paying $3,200 to the federal government.

00:18:56.000 And the lowest quintile, above $15,500 but lower than $30,000, were paying $500 to the federal government.

00:19:02.000 But that's not the entire story.

00:19:04.000 A lot of these quintiles receive net benefits back from the federal government in the form of disability, in the form of food stamps, in the form of welfare, in the form of state-sponsored benefits.

00:19:13.000 Social Security, right?

00:19:15.000 There are a lot of benefits that go back to these various quintiles.

00:19:17.000 When you factor in how much money people are receiving back from the federal government in checks, in actual transfer payments, what you find out is that the richest 20% of Americans are paying virtually all in net federal revenue to the government.

00:19:31.000 Nearly all of it.

00:19:32.000 According to Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute, the richest 20% of Americans by income aren't just paying a share of federal taxes that would be considered fair,

00:19:40.000 They are shouldering almost 100% of the entire federal tax burden of transfer payments and all other non-financed government spending.

00:19:47.000 So the idea that you're raising taxes on the rich because the rich aren't paying their fair share, it's just not factually true, but this is an unpopular thing.

00:19:55.000 Whenever Republicans try to pass a tax cut because they say it'll spur economic growth, we'll talk about deficits in a second, whenever Republicans say that they want to pass a tax cut because it'll spur economic growth, people on the left go, they just want to cut taxes for their rich, their crony rich friends.

00:20:09.000 Here's the reality.

00:20:10.000 It's very difficult to cut taxes on people who are not paying a lot of taxes in the first place.

00:20:14.000 And if you want to spur economic growth, I have never worked for somebody who only makes $50,000 a year.

00:20:20.000 The people you work for are typically the people in the top quintile.

00:20:23.000 And by the way, those people are not stagnant.

00:20:25.000 People go into the top quintile, people fall out of the top quintile.

00:20:28.000 The idea that there's a 1% screwing the bottom 99% is just not factually true.

00:20:32.000 The number of people who are in the 1% 10 years ago who are now in the 1% is really low.

00:20:37.000 People move up and down in terms of income all throughout their life.

00:20:39.000 When you're 20 years old, you're probably in the bottom three quintiles.

00:20:43.000 By the time you're 40, you're probably in the upper two.

00:20:46.000 You're the same person where you're a bad person when you're 40 and you're a good person when you're 20.

00:20:50.000 So this idea that it's this group of people who are screwing people to get into the top 1%, for example, it's just not true.

00:20:55.000 And if you want economic growth, you're naturally going to have to cut taxes for the people who are capable of investing money.

00:21:01.000 The people who are actually capable of consumption, because those are the people who are paying the taxes.

00:21:05.000 But nobody's willing to say that because that's unpopular.

00:21:07.000 So instead, they say things like, we're going to cut taxes for the middle class and raise them on the wealthy, right?

00:21:11.000 The people who actually pay the vast bulk of taxes.

00:21:13.000 So that is what Trump is saying today, which is a betrayal of his conservative base.

00:21:18.000 But it's not really a betrayal of what he was saying.

00:21:20.000 And this was the problem with Trump all the way through, is that Trump, throughout his campaign, was sending mixed messages.

00:21:25.000 I'll never raise taxes on the rich, but I might raise taxes on the rich, guys.

00:21:29.000 And you see this, you know, even from his own administration, this pretty consistent message.

00:21:33.000 So you'll see Ted Cruz, for example, talking about how we need a tax cut desperately.

00:21:38.000 Here's Senator Cruz from Texas making exactly this point.

00:21:42.000 If you want to see Reagan-era economic growth, if you want to see booming GDP, small businesses growing, you've got to have Reagan-style tax cuts.

00:21:51.000 Real tax cuts.

00:21:52.000 Not just deficit-neutral, adjusting, emptying one bucket and filling another.

00:21:57.000 You've got to have a real tax cut on small businesses, on job producers, on working families.

00:22:02.000 That's how we unleash the economy.

00:22:04.000 Okay, so you have Cruz there making the typical conservative case.

00:22:08.000 Now here's Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury Secretary, making precisely the opposite case from the Trump administration.

00:22:14.000 As it relates to the high end, you know, there's lots of changes.

00:22:17.000 We're getting rid of lots of deductions.

00:22:19.000 We're trying to get rid of state and local deductions to get the federal government out of subsidizing it.

00:22:24.000 And yes, I can tell you the current plan for many, many people, it will not reduce taxes on the high end.

00:22:32.000 Okay, so there you have a mixed message from the Republican Party.

00:22:35.000 This is why tax reform will be difficult.

00:22:37.000 Because there are going to be some people who say, we're not willing to allow you to raise taxes on the highest earners.

00:22:41.000 And then you're going to see a bunch of people who say, we have to raise taxes on the highest earners.

00:22:44.000 So there's no guarantee they even get through tax reform here.

00:22:48.000 Especially because they have to do tax reform through, essentially, a 51-vote majority.

00:22:52.000 They only have 52 votes.

00:22:53.000 And they have to show that the tax reform is deficit-neutral if they want to use reconciliation.

00:22:58.000 Right?

00:22:58.000 So, again, it's going to be very hard to show that a tax cut is revenue-neutral in general unless you show some spending offsets or unless—so that means we need 60 votes in the Senate.

00:23:06.000 In order to pass tax reform.

00:23:08.000 So that's not the easiest thing in the world.

00:23:11.000 I'm going to talk about deficits in just a second and what the Republican and conservative perspective should be on tax cuts versus deficits.

00:23:16.000 It's really a two-sided argument and I'll discuss both sides and you can sort of make up your own mind on that.

00:23:21.000 But first, I want to say thank you to our friends over at Skillshare.

00:23:25.000 As I was saying, if you want to develop a skill set that is going to serve you lifelong, you have to keep developing.

00:23:30.000 It's not the days of your parents' job market where you can develop one skill set and maintain that skill set for the rest of your life, work at a company for 30 years, and retire with the gold watch.

00:23:38.000 That's not how the job market works right now.

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00:23:43.000 You have to get better at things that you don't know anything about.

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00:24:02.000 Right now, I'm taking a Skillshare class on social media marketing, which is something we do a lot here at The Daily Wire.

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00:24:41.000 Okay, so, this brings up a second question with regard to taxes.

00:24:46.000 The Republicans have been split on ever since really the days of Paul Volcker, who was the Treasury Secretary, or the Fed Reserve Chairman, rather, under President Reagan.

00:24:54.000 And that is, do you want to expand the deficit

00:24:58.000 But lower taxes.

00:25:00.000 Is that one of your goals?

00:25:01.000 Now, there's some fiscal hawks who say, listen, the economy this quarter grew at 3.1%.

00:25:05.000 That's a good rate.

00:25:07.000 And the reason it's a good rate, this shows you, by the way, that doing nothing is actually really good for the economy, as a general rule.

00:25:13.000 There's this idea that

00:25:15.000 Radical change to the economy doesn't harm the economy.

00:25:17.000 One of the reasons the economy stagnated during President Obama's recovery, yet the weakest post-war recovery in American history, the reason for that is because there was so much uncertainty about how exactly businesses were going to be able to operate.

00:25:28.000 Was he going to issue a new regulation tomorrow?

00:25:30.000 Was he going to pass a tax increase?

00:25:32.000 Businesses have faith that Trump isn't going to do anything to dramatically harm the economy, and so they're now spending money that they were not spending before, and that is creating new jobs, they're investing, and they're growing, right?

00:25:41.000 So, right now, do we need a tax cut?

00:25:43.000 Listen, we always need lower taxes.

00:25:45.000 As somebody who pays an enormous amount of taxes to the government every year, I would personally be hiring more people if I didn't have to pay those taxes.

00:25:53.000 Trump, by the way, is wavering on some of this.

00:25:55.000 He now says he wants a 20% corporate tax rate after saying he wanted a 15% tax rate the entire election cycle.

00:26:02.000 The real question is if you're going to pass tax cuts and you're not going to focus at all on entitlement reform, you're just going to continue blowing out the deficit in the short term.

00:26:09.000 Now the argument is that you're going to expand the pie too.

00:26:12.000 The government increases in its capacity to bring in tax revenue as the economy increases.

00:26:17.000 So this is the idea of static versus dynamic modeling.

00:26:20.000 Static modeling says that the economy is a given size.

00:26:23.000 If you take a higher tax rate, that means that the government's going to take more of that money.

00:26:27.000 That's static.

00:26:28.000 Dynamic means the economy doesn't stay at that one size.

00:26:31.000 When you give tax cuts, that increases the economy.

00:26:33.000 It did so for JFK. 0.87

00:26:34.000 It did so for Ronald Reagan.

00:26:36.000 It did so for George W. Bush.

00:26:38.000 And that increasing economy is going to mean that a smaller percentage is still a bigger absolute number.

00:26:44.000 Right?

00:26:44.000 A smaller percentage of $100,000 is still a bigger absolute number than 100% of $100.

00:26:50.000 That's sort of the logic here.

00:26:52.000 That's true.

00:26:53.000 But in the long run, what is really going to heal the economy of the United States is not tax cuts so much as it is entitlement reform, which is Paul Ryan's thing.

00:27:00.000 And that's the thing that Trump won't touch.

00:27:02.000 That's the thing that Trump won't touch.

00:27:04.000 Because that is the third rail.

00:27:05.000 Saying to people that we're going to have to restructure Medicare.

00:27:08.000 I'm saying to people that we're going to have to restructure Social Security.

00:27:10.000 That is the truth.

00:27:11.000 That is the truth.

00:27:12.000 What is going to bankrupt this country is not a Bush tax cut.

00:27:15.000 It is not a war in Iraq or Afghanistan.

00:27:17.000 What will bankrupt the country is this looming time bomb of the amount of money that we owe to people who are going to be on Medicare in the very near future, on Social Security in the very near future.

00:27:27.000 The only way those people are going to make their money is if we either increase taxes radically, borrow radically, which we can't do forever, or inflate the dollar.

00:27:35.000 That's really, that's it.

00:27:36.000 Or we can cut benefits, which we shouldn't do now, but we should structure it so that there is a trailing benefit.

00:27:40.000 That's what we should do, because I'm never going to see my Social Security money.

00:27:43.000 Entitlement reform would be better for the future of the country than a tax cut.

00:27:47.000 Tax cuts are more politically profitable.

00:27:49.000 So, with a Republican majority, what I would suggest is that Republicans start pushing both.

00:27:54.000 The Republicans start pushing both.

00:27:56.000 And then entitlement reform is the more important of the two.

00:27:58.000 Do the Republicans have the guts to do that?

00:28:00.000 I doubt it.

00:28:01.000 They couldn't even pass tax reform.

00:28:02.000 I mean, they can't even pass health care reform, which they've been campaigning on for seven years.

00:28:06.000 But that's the real looming time bomb in all of this.

00:28:09.000 So what's interesting about this is with all these divisions inside the Republican Party,

00:28:13.000 Some leadership would be really great right now.

00:28:15.000 You know, President Trump saying, here's what I want.

00:28:17.000 Here's why I want it.

00:28:18.000 Make the case to the American people.

00:28:20.000 Take that bully pulpit that he's got and go out and bully a little bit.

00:28:23.000 Stop talking about the NFL so much and go out and start talking about, here's my plan.

00:28:27.000 Here's why it's good.

00:28:28.000 Do the Ronald Reagan thing.

00:28:29.000 Take out a chart and show people how this works.

00:28:31.000 But that's not what Trump

00:28:33.000 That's not what Trump is doing.

00:28:34.000 And that's a problem.

00:28:35.000 I want to talk about that problem and how Republicans are reacting to that problem.

00:28:39.000 I also want to talk about some more of the NFL follow-up.

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00:30:01.000 So with the Republican Party so split, this is the time where presidential leadership is really necessary.

00:30:06.000 Barack Obama was good at this.

00:30:07.000 George W. Bush was good at this.

00:30:08.000 Trump, unfortunately, gets easily distracted. 0.99

00:30:11.000 If you've ever seen the movie Up, Trump is basically the dog. 0.97

00:30:14.000 Right? 0.67

00:30:15.000 It's just there's a squirrel, and it runs by, and then Trump goes, Squirrel!

00:30:17.000 And then he just runs after the squirrel.

00:30:19.000 And this is not a useful quality when you actually need single-minded focus to wrangle the herd of cats.

00:30:25.000 You need the dog to wrangle the cats.

00:30:26.000 You don't need the dog to chase the squirrel, is what I'm trying to tell you here.

00:30:28.000 And right now, the dog is not wrangling the cats in the Senate.

00:30:32.000 So Trump is spending his time still moaning about why health care didn't pass.

00:30:35.000 And he's saying things that are actually not true about health care.

00:30:38.000 He's saying that health care reforms didn't pass because Dad Copper and the senator from Mississippi was in the hospital.

00:30:44.000 No, that wouldn't make any difference at all.

00:30:45.000 They didn't have the votes for it.

00:30:47.000 But Trump keeps saying this kind of stuff, right?

00:30:49.000 Here's Trump talking about health care.

00:30:52.000 I also want to provide a brief update on health care.

00:30:56.000 We have the votes on Graham Cassidy.

00:31:02.000 Okay, he said that we, but he didn't.

00:31:04.000 So there's that.

00:31:05.000 Um, and then you have Paul Ryan.

00:31:07.000 And what's weird is that you can have the situation where Trump is really necessary to push this thing forward and he's not doing what he needs to do, but everybody is afraid enough of crossing him that they're just going to continue paying him homage, which doesn't create an incentive for him to actually do the right thing.

00:31:20.000 So Paul Ryan, who

00:31:22.000 I mean, I've never seen a person become as uncomfortable in his own skin as Paul Ryan over the last year.

00:31:28.000 There's something desperately funny about watching videos of Paul Ryan trying to push policy into the absolute void that is our current political discussion.

00:31:35.000 Like, in the middle of the NFL debate earlier this week, Paul Ryan just tweeted out a video of himself talking about tax reform and how he's pushing for a better way.

00:31:44.000 And it was like, it really was like Kevin Bacon in Animal House.

00:31:47.000 And everybody behind him is just screaming and beating each other with gloves.

00:31:50.000 And he's going, everyone stay calm.

00:31:52.000 It's all fine.

00:31:53.000 Everything is good here.

00:31:54.000 So he's on with Sean Hannity last night, and Sean obviously is a huge Trump fan.

00:31:57.000 And here is Paul Ryan bending the knee to President Trump.

00:32:02.000 What's your relationship with it?

00:32:03.000 It's very good.

00:32:04.000 It's the opposite of that.

00:32:05.000 We have a great relationship.

00:32:06.000 Are you happy with his presidency?

00:32:08.000 I'm very happy, but you don't have that in the House of Representatives.

00:32:10.000 We have caucuses every week.

00:32:12.000 You don't hear that kind of talk from the House of Representatives.

00:32:15.000 I have not heard it from House members.

00:32:16.000 So you don't hear that from House members.

00:32:18.000 Look, I think the President is giving us the kind of leadership we need to get this country back on the right track.

00:32:22.000 He's so happy.

00:32:24.000 He's so happy with the leadership!

00:32:27.000 Yeah, I don't think Paul Ryan's super happy with the leadership, but he knows that if he crosses President Trump, then Trump starts slapping Ryan instead of slapping McConnell.

00:32:34.000 And it's actually really funny.

00:32:35.000 It's turned into basically a Three Stooges routine, where Trump knocks Ryan on the head and Ryan pokes, takes his fingers and pokes McConnell in the eyes.

00:32:43.000 And that's basically why nothing's getting done, because we're all laughing at slapstick.

00:32:47.000 Here's Ryan bashing McConnell yesterday on Sean's show.

00:32:50.000 Of course I'd like to see them do majority votes on these things.

00:32:52.000 Have you ever asked McConnell that?

00:32:54.000 We've talked about it a lot.

00:32:54.000 I don't think they don't have the votes there for it.

00:32:56.000 That's just the flat, simple answer.

00:32:58.000 So, what do I do as a House leader?

00:32:59.000 You don't think he'd even get the votes to get that done?

00:33:01.000 That's right.

00:33:02.000 Doesn't he have in charge of the rules?

00:33:03.000 No, but I don't think there's enough Republicans to vote for that.

00:33:05.000 Because they worry that when liberals take over government, liberals will ram through liberalism.

00:33:12.000 Okay, so, and then he pulls out a chart, actually, and he shows a chart of how many bills the House has passed, and how many bills the Senate has passed, and of course the Senate's passed nothing, so he's slapping McConnell for that.

00:33:21.000 And basically, it's a signal to Trump, please don't slap me.

00:33:24.000 I'm your friend, Mr. Trump.

00:33:25.000 Please leave me alone.

00:33:27.000 The president's fear is not being used in the proper way.

00:33:30.000 Okay?

00:33:30.000 The fear of the presidency is not being used in the proper way.

00:33:32.000 You gotta wield.

00:33:33.000 You gotta deal.

00:33:34.000 This was the stuff Trump said he was good at.

00:33:36.000 Remember, Trump promised this was all going to be easy.

00:33:38.000 He said it over and over.

00:33:40.000 And the guarantee it was gonna be easy is that he was a great businessman who was awesome at making deals, right?

00:33:44.000 This was his shtick.

00:33:45.000 His entire shtick was, it's gonna be so easy, it's gonna make your head swim.

00:33:48.000 We're gonna win.

00:33:48.000 And we're gonna win.

00:33:49.000 And we're never gonna stop winning.

00:33:51.000 We're just gonna win forever.

00:33:52.000 Right?

00:33:52.000 Why?

00:33:53.000 Because all these people can't make deals.

00:33:54.000 Right?

00:33:55.000 I'm a dealmaker.

00:33:56.000 Look at me.

00:33:57.000 I make deals. 0.97

00:33:58.000 Huns.

00:33:58.000 Boobies.

00:34:00.000 But that's not what's happening.

00:34:01.000 And instead, it's funny because where he should be herding cats instead,

00:34:06.000 It's just him running after the latest squirrel, and the Republicans using that as an excuse to bolt.

00:34:10.000 And look, some of this isn't Trump's fault.

00:34:13.000 Like, it's not Trump's fault that the Senate can't get together.

00:34:15.000 But it is a missed opportunity, and that's Trump's fault.

00:34:18.000 So it's not Trump's fault that McCain and Susan Collins and Rand Paul can't get on the same page. 0.99

00:34:22.000 Of course they can't get on the same page, but it certainly doesn't help when the President of the United States' final healthcare push is that Colin Kaepernick's a jerk. 0.99

00:34:29.000 His last healthcare push, if you recall, a few months ago, his final healthcare push there was, Jeff Sessions is a jerk. 0.99

00:34:34.000 His own attorney general. 0.95

00:34:35.000 So, like, if he would focus a little bit, that would be really, really helpful.

00:34:39.000 And I don't see an incentive for him to focus, so long as Republicans keep saying how great he is, and Trump threatens them that if they don't work with him, he's just gonna walk across the street to his good friends Nancy and Chuck.

00:34:50.000 Here's the thing.

00:34:51.000 I'm not sure that the fear of Trump is particularly justified.

00:34:54.000 What I mean by this is that people are not voting, like people, as I said yesterday, if you slap Trump openly, then people get mad at you.

00:35:03.000 If you say as a politician that I think Trump's doing a crappy job, then people get angry at you in the Republican Party because they think you're being disloyal to a guy they all voted for.

00:35:11.000 That much is true.

00:35:12.000 And that's why I don't think that it's incumbent on Paul Ryan to say, I think Trump's doing a crappy job.

00:35:16.000 But I think that when he's asked about it, he should say, I think President Trump has the right principles in mind, but I would love to see him really push that to the American public more.

00:35:26.000 Try and prompt him in the right direction.

00:35:28.000 That he can do, and that's not being done.

00:35:30.000 The reason that I think that can be done is because you actually saw that happen in Alabama, right?

00:35:34.000 Trump actually endorsed the candidate who lost, and the Tea Party people, who have been really driving this movement since 2010, pushed Roy Moore instead, and they went right over Trump's head.

00:35:45.000 And Roy Moore wasn't seen as an enemy of Trump.

00:35:47.000 So long as he said that he liked Trump, everything was fine.

00:35:49.000 So I think so long as you say that you don't hate Trump, then you can actually make the case for conservative principles.

00:35:55.000 I'm not sure that the fear of Trump is justified.

00:35:57.000 If Trump brings the hammer to you, you're inherently finished.

00:36:00.000 I think that you have to do one very specific thing, and that is go after Trump personally, and then people get mad at you.

00:36:05.000 But if you say you think Trump needs to do a better job, I don't think that people are going to get particularly happy with you.

00:36:10.000 Plus, the idea that Trump is somebody who is going to do anything beyond just fulminating on Twitter is, I think, a little bit exaggerated.

00:36:17.000 The deep truth about Trump is that Trump doesn't actually like getting into conflict where he's personally responsible.

00:36:24.000 It's kind of weird.

00:36:25.000 Trump likes to talk the language of conflict, but he doesn't like to fire people.

00:36:29.000 He doesn't like to openly break with people.

00:36:30.000 He likes to keep his options open.

00:36:33.000 Uh, much like Hugh Hefner.

00:36:33.000 He likes to keep his options open.

00:36:35.000 And so here is, for example, you know, Tom Price, his Health and Human Services Secretary.

00:36:39.000 He can't be happy with Tom Price.

00:36:41.000 Tom Price was taking government jets to different places and spent a lot of money, didn't do much on the healthcare vote.

00:36:47.000 And here was Trump being asked about Tom Price yesterday, and here is Trump's response.

00:36:51.000 Uh, I, I was looking into it, and I will look into it, and I will tell you personally, I'm not happy about it.

00:36:59.000 I am not happy about it.

00:37:01.000 I'm going to look at it.

00:37:02.000 I am not happy about it, and I let him know it.

00:37:05.000 Do you have confidence in Secretary Price?

00:37:09.000 We'll have to ask Senators about that.

00:37:11.000 He's not happy about it.

00:37:12.000 And that's what Trump said, if you recall, about Jeff Sessions.

00:37:15.000 He says this about a lot of his people, that he's not happy about them, but then he doesn't really fire them.

00:37:19.000 He doesn't really fire them.

00:37:20.000 The only person that he's legitimately fired in his administration was James Comey.

00:37:24.000 He tried to pawn that off on Rod Rosenstein.

00:37:26.000 Right, so he actually doesn't like firing people.

00:37:29.000 So, you know, I think that you can push Trump without him spewing all over you, except maybe a little bit on Twitter.

00:37:35.000 And I think the Republicans should prod him in the right direction, because if they don't, then it's just going to be squirrel chasing from here for the rest of the presidency.

00:37:42.000 Okay, so now on to the NFL fallout.

00:37:44.000 Meanwhile, while I talk about the dysfunction on the right, the dysfunction on the left is just increasing at an equal or greater pace.

00:37:50.000 Whatever the poop storm that is that has begun on the right, it is twice that on the left.

00:37:55.000 The language that is being used, the polarizing language that really alienates Americans on these issues being used by the left, being embraced by Democrats, is truly astonishing.

00:38:04.000 So Spike Lee, who is obviously somebody who is considered by the left a civil rights hero and a civil rights leader,

00:38:10.000 The filmmaker, he is using a sort of polarizing language that is not going to benefit Democrats.

00:38:15.000 It really doubles down on the identity politics that Democrats have embraced.

00:38:19.000 It's not going to be good for Democrats, and it's not good for the country. 1.00

00:38:22.000 They're taking the opportunity of, they don't like Trump, to go as radical as they possibly can, which I think is so stupid. 0.99

00:38:28.000 I mean, if Trump makes a mistake, why don't you just call him on the mistake? 0.99

00:38:30.000 This is what I've been saying to people on the left forever.

00:38:32.000 I don't get it. 0.97

00:38:34.000 If you think Trump's making a mistake, why don't you just say, here's the mistake you're making and here's why it's bad, instead of, it's the end of the world, the sky is falling, we're all gonna die, he's a racist, the KKK will be outside my house in the morning.

00:38:45.000 Like, you're not doing anyone any favors by always turning that knob to 11.

00:38:49.000 Here's Spike Lee turning the knob past 11, actually turning the knob off the stereo.

00:38:52.000 It's just gone now.

00:38:53.000 It's rolling around on the floor somewhere.

00:38:54.000 Here's Spike Lee.

00:38:56.000 It's like the owners, or the plantation owners, and the guys playing a league,

00:39:02.000 You know, they're on the plantation and you can't say anything.

00:39:06.000 And so, the thing is really escalating.

00:39:09.000 Okay, so he compares the NFL owners to members of a plant- plantation owners.

00:39:14.000 Those guys make millions of dollars a year, and they are paid to play a sport.

00:39:17.000 It is not like a plantation, and it's deeply insulting to people who lived in slavery, and some who still live in slavery, to suggest that people in the NFL are like plantation owners.

00:39:27.000 Every business, if the NFL decided tomorrow that they actually wanted to make the players stand up, or they would suspend them or fine them, they'd be well within their rights to do that.

00:39:33.000 Do I think they ought to do that?

00:39:34.000 At this point, I don't think they ought to do that, but

00:39:36.000 Is that something that the NFL could do and has the right to do?

00:39:39.000 Yes.

00:39:39.000 Would that make them plantation owners?

00:39:41.000 Absolutely not.

00:39:42.000 Any more than any business has rules.

00:39:44.000 I said this even about James Damore at Google.

00:39:45.000 I think Google was wrong to fire James Damore for putting out a memo that seemed to me largely well-reasoned.

00:39:51.000 Did they have the right to do it?

00:39:52.000 Of course they had the right to do it.

00:39:53.000 Did it make them plantation owners?

00:39:55.000 No.

00:39:55.000 I mean, he had a job for which he was being paid.

00:39:57.000 They didn't like him, so they fired him.

00:39:59.000 That was bad.

00:39:59.000 That was wrong.

00:40:00.000 But that's not the equivalent of living on a plantation.

00:40:03.000 Steph Curry is doing some of this polarizing language too. 0.88

00:40:06.000 So he was talking about the Sports Illustrated cover we mentioned yesterday.

00:40:08.000 Sports Illustrated is trying to take the tactic of the kneeling isn't about the anthem and it's not about the flag and it's not even about police brutality.

00:40:15.000 It's about opposition to Trump.

00:40:16.000 So what they did is they elided Colin Kaepernick from their cover.

00:40:20.000 And so people on the left are understandably angry about this.

00:40:22.000 They say Kaepernick started this movement.

00:40:24.000 Why isn't he on the cover with the rest of us standing up to police brutality?

00:40:28.000 What they don't understand is the more you tie yourself to Colin Kaepernick, that dude is an anchor on your movement.

00:40:33.000 If you want to tie your leg to Colin Kaepernick's leg, you are going down and those waves will swallow you immediately.

00:40:39.000 Steph Curry doesn't seem to really get that.

00:40:40.000 Here he is.

00:40:41.000 Sports Illustrated cover, you're right in the middle, but there's no sign of Kaepernick.

00:40:48.000 How do you feel about that?

00:40:50.000 That was terrible.

00:40:53.000 Just kind of capitalizing on the hoopla and the media and all that nonsense.

00:41:00.000 The real people that understand exactly what's been going on and who's really been active and vocal.

00:41:08.000 Truly making a difference?

00:41:32.000 Again, that overreach is not smart politics.

00:41:35.000 Michelle Obama engaged in some very not smart identity politics yesterday.

00:41:39.000 Here she is saying that any woman who voted against Hillary Clinton voted against women generally. 0.89

00:41:45.000 She told this audience at this conference in Boston, here's just one piece of it, quote, any woman who voted against Hillary Clinton voted against their own voice.

00:41:56.000 What does it mean for us as women that we look at these two candidates as women? 0.56

00:42:00.000 And many of us said, that guy, he's better for me.

00:42:03.000 His voice is more true to me.

00:42:05.000 Well, to me, that just says you don't like your voice.

00:42:09.000 You like the thing.

00:42:10.000 So she's saying women don't like their own voice if they didn't vote for Hillary Clinton. 1.00

00:42:13.000 Maybe they just didn't like Hillary Clinton's voice because she's a crazy old bat. 1.00

00:42:16.000 Like, maybe people just didn't like Hillary Clinton because she's really off-putting as a candidate and off-putting as a human being. 1.00

00:42:22.000 Maybe that's why.

00:42:23.000 But the left has to engage in this identity politics.

00:42:25.000 You really think you're going to win back the white women who voted majority for Trump by saying that they didn't understand what it was like to be a woman and so they didn't vote for Hillary Clinton? 0.54

00:42:33.000 Is that really the direction that you want to go, leftists?

00:42:35.000 Is that really the pitch you want to make?

00:42:37.000 So when I say there's dysfunction on the left, this is the dysfunction on the left.

00:42:40.000 The dysfunction on the right is that they can't get their act together, they don't have any centralizing principle, and so they're fragmenting in every possible direction and unable to get anything done.

00:42:47.000 The fragmentation on the left is less a fragmentation than a movement toward a more unpopular politics that makes the country worse in the nature of identity politics.

00:42:55.000 I'm frankly, I'm shocked that Michelle Obama came out and said that because I think that she's smarter than that. 0.98

00:42:59.000 That's just dumb politics. 0.97

00:43:00.000 But for her to do that, 0.99

00:43:02.000 It just demonstrates how far down the rabbit hole the Democrats are with regards to this identity politics.

00:43:06.000 Okay.

00:43:07.000 Time for some things I like, and then we'll do some things that I hate.

00:43:09.000 So, things that I like.

00:43:11.000 So, I was at University of Utah last night.

00:43:12.000 We had a fantastic event.

00:43:14.000 Packed house.

00:43:14.000 Enthusiastic audience.

00:43:16.000 It was really quite wonderful.

00:43:17.000 There were protesters outside, some people got violent, three people were arrested.

00:43:21.000 Watch Steven Crowder's show tonight.

00:43:22.000 Okay, Steven Crowder has a show tonight.

00:43:24.000 He apparently went undercover, not Gay Jared, went undercover, he's a producer, went undercover with Antifa and the film is truly amazing.

00:43:33.000 So we'll play clips of it tomorrow on the show, but if you don't

00:43:36.000 Get a chance.

00:43:37.000 Watch Crowder's show tonight.

00:43:38.000 Crowder, I mean, this is great journalistic work.

00:43:40.000 You should go check it out tonight on Louder with Crowder.

00:43:42.000 Go check it out.

00:43:43.000 It's really, really amazing stuff.

00:43:45.000 I've seen some of the footage.

00:43:46.000 It's truly amazing.

00:43:47.000 So, we're gonna do, because we're in Utah, we're gonna do Mormon-related things that I like and things that I hate. 0.81

00:43:50.000 So, things that I like.

00:43:52.000 Mormon-related.

00:43:52.000 So there's a movie that came out in 2003.

00:43:54.000 It didn't get a lot of play, but it's actually quite a good movie.

00:43:56.000 It's called Saints and Soldiers.

00:43:57.000 It's about World War II.

00:43:59.000 It's a World War II movie in which it's basically a band of American soldiers trying to make it out from behind enemy lines in, I think it's in Belgium, and back across to American lines.

00:44:10.000 And the main character is a guy who carries around the Book of Mormon with him.

00:44:14.000 And it's actually quite a moving film.

00:44:17.000 Sort of about the role of religion in imbuing virtue, and the role of heroism, and also the role of redemption.

00:44:25.000 You've made mistakes, you've done things that are wrong, and what can you do to redeem yourself?

00:44:29.000 The movie is Saints and Soldiers.

00:44:30.000 Here's a little bit of the preview.

00:44:32.000 This is Armed Today.

00:44:33.000 Supreme Allied Headquarters reported American combat troops taken prisoner, then famously executed by their German captors near the Belgian town of Malmedy.

00:44:45.000 An unknown number of Germans are making a push towards this little town.

00:44:47.000 They're shooting prisoners who are behind enemy lines.

00:44:49.000 They've punched through all along here.

00:44:51.000 Trapped deep behind enemy lines.

00:44:54.000 Possession of some crucial intelligence.

00:44:56.000 This is a major German offensive! 1.00

00:44:59.000 Okay, so the movie's actually quite good, and you should check it out.

00:45:01.000 It's on Amazon Prime.

00:45:02.000 So if you're a Prime member, then you can watch that for free.

00:45:04.000 I don't know if it's on Netflix, but it is well worth watching.

00:45:07.000 And again, I like movies that take seriously the contentions of religion, even if you don't believe in all the particular doctrines of a particular faith.

00:45:14.000 Like, take religion seriously.

00:45:15.000 One of my pet peeves about a lot of atheists is they do this routine where they'll say things like, if you're a religious person, how do you, you know, do religious people even know?

00:45:22.000 Like, how can there be a God if bad things happen in the world?

00:45:25.000 Have you even thought of that?

00:45:26.000 Hmm?

00:45:27.000 It's like, yes, we've thought of that.

00:45:29.000 Yes, we, yes.

00:45:31.000 Every religious thinker in history has taken on this question.

00:45:33.000 Like, do some basic research.

00:45:35.000 Like, please, for the love of Pete, if you're gonna rip on religion, like, do some research.

00:45:39.000 Okay, time for some things I hate, and we'll do Mormon-related things I hate. 1.00

00:45:47.000 Okay, so the thing that I hate today is the musical The Book of Mormon.

00:45:50.000 The Book of Mormon is very clever.

00:45:52.000 I mean, I think that it's got stuff that's funny.

00:45:55.000 It's super vulgar, which makes sense because the guys who wrote South Park wrote The Book of Mormon.

00:45:59.000 It is clever.

00:46:01.000 The thing that I hate about it is the scorn that it shows for Mormonism as a faith by mocking its central beliefs.

00:46:08.000 Let's be straight about religion in general, organized religion in general.

00:46:12.000 Most religions make miraculous claims.

00:46:14.000 Now, I think some of those miraculous claims are more ludicrous than others, but virtually every major religion makes claims about miracles, and at a certain point you're going to have to take a leap of faith.

00:46:24.000 Mocking those leaps of faith to me is just sneering at somebody else without recognizing your own vulnerability on these issues.

00:46:34.000 There's also something to me that's a little bit off-putting about targeting Mormons, who are legitimately like the nicest people in America.

00:46:40.000 I said last night at the beginning of my speech that this is the only state in the union where I'm the least clean-cut guy in the state.

00:46:44.000 I mean, Mormons, the Mormons that I know, the Mormons in general that I know are the nicest, cleanest-cut people with wonderful families, and ripping on the Mormons is like hitting a puppy.

00:46:56.000 Like, really?

00:46:57.000 The Mormons?

00:46:58.000 Those are the people that you're going to rip on?

00:46:59.000 If you really had any guts.

00:47:00.000 And Traystone and Matt Parker do have guts, because they've actually tried to go after, like, drawing cartoons of Muhammad on South Park.

00:47:08.000 But let's just put it this way.

00:47:09.000 Book of Mormon came out, and the people in the Mormon church, they said they were actually happy about it, because it gave them an opportunity to actually hand out more copies of the Book of Mormon and recruit.

00:47:18.000 Right?

00:47:20.000 If they had done the Book of Muhammad, every theater in the United States would now be on fire. 1.00

00:47:25.000 There would be legitimate ISIS terrorist attacks on theaters in the United States if they put out the Book of Muhammad. 0.80

00:47:29.000 So it seems like it's an easy target.

00:47:31.000 Here's one of the songs from the show that is supposed to demonstrate sort of the naïveté of Mormons. 0.99

00:47:38.000 By the way, it's

00:47:40.000 When I say they're the sweetest people, here's what I mean.

00:47:41.000 I get off the plane yesterday.

00:47:43.000 And I come down into the baggage claim area.

00:47:46.000 And there's a huge crowd of people.

00:47:47.000 They're not waiting for me, of course.

00:47:49.000 They're there waiting for people who are coming back from mission.

00:47:52.000 A huge crowd of people.

00:47:52.000 Families with signs.

00:47:54.000 People who have gone abroad trying to help people.

00:47:57.000 And these kids who are out helping people.

00:47:59.000 How many 17, 18 year old kids do you know who are spending a couple of years of their life going out and helping random people who are in dire poverty?

00:48:06.000 And they're being celebrated by their families, these beautiful families, who are saying to them, congratulations on doing something good for the world.

00:48:13.000 I mean, it's the opposite of Hugh Hefner.

00:48:14.000 Congratulations on doing something good for the world.

00:48:16.000 These are the people who you're going to mock?

00:48:18.000 These are the people who you're going to say are the problem?

00:48:20.000 So here's the number from the Book of Mormon.

00:48:22.000 Again, doing the very easy thing of mocking somebody's ludicrous religious beliefs, which, again, I can do the same thing about scientific materialism.

00:48:29.000 Scientific materialism is based on premises that cannot uphold the central contentions of scientific materialism.

00:48:34.000 Under scientific materialism, you cannot argue for truth, you cannot argue for reason, you cannot argue for logic, you can't even argue for the scientific method by the tenets of scientific materialism.

00:48:43.000 So I can mock to death this stuff.

00:48:46.000 I don't do that because I think that it's worth taking seriously other people's claims.

00:48:49.000 Anyway, here's a number from the Book of Mormon.

00:48:59.000 Ever since I was a child, I tried to be the best.

00:49:04.000 So what happened?

00:49:06.000 My family and friends all said I was blessed.

00:49:10.000 So what happened?

00:49:12.000 It was supposed to be all so exciting.

00:49:15.000 To be teaching of Christ across the sea.

00:49:18.000 But I allowed my faith to be shaken.

00:49:21.000 Oh, what's the matter with me?

00:49:24.000 I've always longed to help the needy.

00:49:27.000 To do the things I never dared.

00:49:31.000 This was the time for me to step up.

00:49:33.000 So then why was I so scared?

00:49:36.000 A warlord who shoots people in the face?

00:49:40.000 What's so scary about that?

00:49:43.000 I must trust that my Lord is mightier and always has my back.

00:49:49.000 Now I must be completely devout.

00:49:52.000 I can't have even one trend of doubt.

00:49:57.000 I believe that the Lord God created the universe.

00:50:03.000 I believe that he sent his only son to die for my sins.

00:50:09.000 And I believe

00:50:11.000 Ancient Jews built boats and sailed to America.

00:50:16.000 I am a Mormon.

00:50:18.000 And a Mormon trusts.

00:50:24.000 Okay, so this is the part that I hate about this, is the idea, that last lyric there, again, is it funny?

00:50:29.000 Of course.

00:50:30.000 It's easy to make fun of people's religious beliefs.

00:50:32.000 It's super, super easy. 1.00

00:50:33.000 But when he says things like, I believe that the Lord God created the universe, I believe that Jesus died for my sins, I believe that the ancient Jews sailed on boats to America, and then the audience laughs, the idea is that all of these beliefs are equally stupid, and all of these beliefs are equally ignorant, and what this guy is doing, he's just doing because he's a naive fool. 0.99

00:50:52.000 That's the idea, is that religious people are naive fools who believe they can make the world a better place with their belief in this giant spaghetti monster in the sky. 1.00

00:50:58.000 That is super dismissive of what religious people have done, what religious people have built, and what religious people actually believe. 0.99

00:51:03.000 Talk to a religious person sometime.

00:51:05.000 If you think that religious people have never thought about the ridiculousness of some of the things that we believe, and the leaps of faith that we have to make, you've never talked to a religious person.

00:51:13.000 And we're not just all fools who go around thinking to ourselves, well, you know, every word of the Bible is not only literally true, but I don't see why anyone can't believe it. 0.52

00:51:20.000 Okay? 0.92

00:51:21.000 If you don't doubt, you're not a religious person.

00:51:24.000 That's what faith means.

00:51:25.000 Faith means not only that you have doubts, but that you live with the doubts and you wrestle with the doubts every day.

00:51:30.000 This is why I love to say that the word Israel, right? 0.99

00:51:33.000 I'm a member of the nation of Israel.

00:51:34.000 You know, I'm Israel, right?

00:51:36.000 That word in the Bible,

00:51:39.000 That's what it means.

00:51:42.000 That's what it means to be a religious person.

00:51:44.000 And it seems to me that if you're going to do a musical about religious people, it should look a lot more like the movie Silence from Martin Scorsese and a lot less like the Book of Mormon.

00:51:51.000 OK, so we'll be back here tomorrow.

00:51:53.000 And I will be back from our beautiful studios in Los Angeles.

00:51:57.000 And I look forward to seeing you then.

00:51:58.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:51:59.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

The Ben Shapiro Show - September 28, 2017

Hefner Dies, Left Mourns Their Hero | The Ben Shapiro Show Ep. 391

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