The Ben Shapiro Show - Hollywood’s God Is Gross | Ep. 546

00:00:00.000 Harvey Weinstein prepares for prison.

00:00:01.000 Morgan Freeman is accused of sexual misconduct.

00:00:04.000 Joe Biden reemerges to challenge President Trump.

00:00:07.000 And we checked the mailbag.

00:00:08.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:08.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:14.000 So it's a real bad day in Hollywood.

00:00:16.000 Apparently, if you are a famous actor, there is a good chance that you may go to prison or be run out of the business.

00:00:22.000 We'll talk about all of that in just one second.

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00:01:55.000 So we begin today with the big news being Harvey Weinstein has now turned himself in.

00:02:00.000 He has been arrested.

00:02:01.000 Now, what is he being arrested on?

00:02:02.000 According to Joseph Curl over at Daily Wire, former Hollywood movie mogul Harvey Weinstein on Friday turned himself into police in New York, where he likely will face serious charges in connection to sexual assault of at least two women.

00:02:16.000 More than a hundred reporters, countermen, and photographers were on hand as Weinstein made the perp walk at the New York Police Department's First Precinct in Lower Manhattan.

00:02:23.000 Weinstein, who is 66, quote, stepped back from a black SUV wearing a blazer and carrying books under his arm and lumbered into a Manhattan police station before a crowd of news cameras.

00:02:32.000 He didn't respond to shouts of Harvey, according to the Associated Press.

00:02:35.000 After several accusations ranging from inappropriate touching to rape emerged against Weinstein last year, dozens of women came out to join the barrage.

00:02:42.000 The chorus grew by the day.

00:02:43.000 More than 75 women have now accused the former movie producer.

00:02:46.000 But Weinstein escaped criminal charges until now.

00:02:48.000 On what charges he will face, the AP said, quote,

00:02:50.000 The exact charges against Weinstein still had not been made public early on Friday.

00:02:54.000 Two law enforcement officials told the AP the case would include allegations by Lucia Evans, an aspiring actress who has said the Hollywood mogul forced her to perform oral sex on him in his office.

00:03:02.000 She was among the first women to speak out about the producer.

00:03:05.000 One official said it's likely the case will also include at least one other victim who has not come forward publicly as of yet.

00:03:11.000 So the crime could carry up to 25 years in prison.

00:03:13.000 So presumably Weinstein would die in prison.

00:03:17.000 In the interview with the New Yorker last October, Evans said that Weinstein forced her into the sex act during a meeting at his office in 2004. 0.92

00:03:23.000 She was then a rising senior at Middlebury College.

00:03:25.000 She said over and over, I don't want to do this.

00:03:26.000 Stop.

00:03:27.000 Don't.

00:03:27.000 I tried to get him away, but maybe I didn't try hard enough.

00:03:29.000 I didn't want to kick him or fight him.

00:03:31.000 Actress Rose McGowan, of course, has come out and said that Weinstein raped her in 1997 in Utah. 0.89

00:03:35.000 Sopranos actress Annabella Ciara said he raped her in a New York City apartment in 1992. 0.63

00:03:40.000 Norwegian actress Natasja Malthy said he attacked her in a London hotel room in 2008, according to the Associated Press.

00:03:46.000 And of course, at the Cannes Film Festival, an actress named Asia Argento delivered an intense speech before presenting the Best Actress Award, telling a horrific story about Hollywood movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, quote, So, obviously this is a big...

00:04:02.000 Blow to sort of Hollywood prestige as it has been for months.

00:04:05.000 Remember the entire Me Too movement was launched on the back of the Harvey Weinstein scandal.

00:04:09.000 Weinstein, for his part, his lawyer said in court that Harvey Weinstein did not create the casting couch.

00:04:14.000 Harvey Weinstein was not the creator of the casting couch.

00:04:17.000 The casting couch, as I've discussed before on the show, is this old Hollywood trope that men who are in charge of Hollywood would cast you in a film if you slept with them.

00:04:24.000 The casting couch was kept in the office, and then if you wanted to be cast in a film, you wanted to make your way in Hollywood, then you were forced to sleep with the producer.

00:04:31.000 And they made light of it in movies going all the way back to All About Eve, right?

00:04:34.000 In All About Eve, which won Oscar for Best Picture, Marilyn Monroe plays this young, up-and-coming kind of floozy who wants to get on the Broadway stage, and so she is trying to woo a fat, ugly old producer who's kind of portrayed in the movie as this kindly old gentleman, right?

00:04:50.000 This kind-hearted old gentleman who's kind of a goofball generally.

00:04:53.000 Hollywood casting couch has been a part of Hollywood for as long as power has been a part of Hollywood. 0.55

00:04:58.000 And the truth is that this sort of behavior by men toward women has been around as long as men have wielded power in order to gain sex for themselves.

00:05:05.000 It's also been largely true in Hollywood for years without any sort of repercussions because many women were willing to use the casting couch in order to get ahead. 1.00

00:05:12.000 There are a lot of women who 1.00

00:05:14.000 Might not have wanted to do that in the best of all possible worlds, but they were willing to do it.

00:05:18.000 So you get into some dicey areas of consent when you have particular people who are okay with sleeping with a director.

00:05:24.000 It's not like their first choice.

00:05:25.000 It's not their first option.

00:05:26.000 It's not something that they would love to do in a scenario where they had the option not to do it, but they weren't exactly forcibly raped.

00:05:33.000 Right, so we're not talking about Harvey Weinstein, who apparently forcibly raped people, but there are a lot of situations in Hollywood in which young women know that the best way to get ahead is to use their sexuality to get ahead, and then you run into some dicey areas with regard to consent, because if you say to women, you shouldn't be doing this, right, this is a problem, you should try to be avoiding this, then those women might say, well, you're violating my grounds of consent.

00:05:53.000 You're saying that I can't be a fully autonomous individual capable of making my own decisions.

00:05:58.000 And then what you end up with is weird situations in some cases, I assume, where you could have the possibility that a woman goes to an office, the producer hits on her, she sleeps with the producer, and then ten years later when it comes out that the producer is actually a rapist, in this case Harvey Weinstein, then women come forward and they say, well, I was pressured into sex too, which is true informally if not formally.

00:06:18.000 This is the problem with an entire culture that prizes promiscuity as a high value.

00:06:21.000 Now, again, that's no excuse for actual rape.

00:06:24.000 It's not any excuse for actual use of force.

00:06:27.000 Harvey Weinstein should go to jail for the rest of his life.

00:06:30.000 If any of these allegations are true, he should go to jail for the rest of his life.

00:06:34.000 But it is also true that Hollywood has forwarded this kind of conduct for a very, very long time, and it is widespread in Hollywood.

00:06:40.000 Just the latest case in point, a bunch of women are now accusing Morgan Freeman of inappropriate behavior and harassment. 1.00

00:06:44.000 According to CNN yesterday, quote,

00:06:46.000 A young production assistant thought she had landed the job of her dreams when, in the summer of 2015, she started working on Going in Style, a bank heist comedy starring Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, and Alan Arkin.

00:06:56.000 But the job quickly devolved into several months of harassment, she told CNN.

00:06:59.000 She alleged that Freeman subjected her to unwanted touching and comments about her figure and clothing on a near-daily basis,

00:07:04.000 Freeman would rest his hand on her lower back or rub her lower back, she said. 0.95

00:07:07.000 In one incident, she said, Freeman kept trying to lift up my skirt and asking if I was wearing underwear.

00:07:11.000 He never successfully lifted her skirt, she said.

00:07:13.000 He would touch it and try to lift it.

00:07:14.000 She would move away and then he'd try again.

00:07:16.000 Eventually, she said, Alan Arkin made a comment telling him to stop.

00:07:18.000 Morgan got freaked out and didn't know what to say.

00:07:21.000 Well, this raises the question as to why no one else on staff was willing to tell Morgan Freeman to stop.

00:07:24.000 And the answer is because if you tell powerful Hollywood men to stop, this is the other side of the coin, you tell powerful Hollywood men to stop, you will never get a job again.

00:07:32.000 And this is exactly what happened with Harvey Weinstein.

00:07:34.000 If anyone complained about Harvey Weinstein, he made sure that nobody in town worked again.

00:07:38.000 Quentin Tarantino admitted as much.

00:07:40.000 He said that Harvey would call around and say, this person's a bad person to work with.

00:07:43.000 You don't want to work with this girl because she's trouble. 1.00

00:07:46.000 And then these people wouldn't get jobs ever again.

00:07:48.000 So when you have powerful men in positions of high power,

00:07:50.000 This is why you need more virtuous men in the industry.

00:07:53.000 This is why you need more virtuous standards in the industry.

00:07:56.000 You need a bunch of people there who are not engaged in the sexual revolution ethos of consent is the only value because consent is sort of fungible in a lot of these cases.

00:08:04.000 In some cases, it is not.

00:08:05.000 In some cases, like it sounds like with Morgan Freeman, it is not.

00:08:08.000 But there are some cases in which there are a bunch of men who've had women saying yes to them for their entire career because women want to get ahead in some of these cases. 0.99

00:08:15.000 And then these men decide, OK, well, that means all women want it because they're scumbags. 0.99

00:08:20.000 This sort of activity is going to be more common in any society in which there is a certain amount of credibility given to men with power to do whatever they want, and there is a certain amount of reluctance to call out women for acting in fashions that forward this particular standard. 0.97

00:08:37.000 So you need two things in order to stop.

00:08:38.000 Okay, let's come at this from the other end.

00:08:40.000 You need two things in order to stop what's happening in Hollywood.

00:08:43.000 What you need is number one,

00:08:45.000 A bunch of women who are willing to say no to directors and then report on them. 1.00

00:08:49.000 And number two, you need a society willing to hear that and a bunch of men in Hollywood who are willing to stand with those women. 0.99

00:08:53.000 And I think I should reverse the order of those.

00:08:55.000 What you really first need is a bunch of men who are willing to report other men for doing these terrible things.

00:09:00.000 And those men need to stand up and they need to say no to people like Harvey Weinstein and Morgan Freeman.

00:09:03.000 You need more Alan Arkin situations.

00:09:05.000 You need fewer Jason Batemans.

00:09:07.000 The reason I mentioned Jason Bateman is because you now have a situation with Jason Bateman where he did an interview with the New York Times and a bunch of these men, it was the Arrested Development cast in this lengthy Q&A in the New York Times with the cast of Arrested Development.

00:09:19.000 Jeffrey Tambor is still included on the show, of course, one of the stars of the show.

00:09:23.000 He was recently fired from Transparent after sexual harassment allegations, and the conversation eventually turned to Tambor's behavior on the set of Arrested Development, according to Jezebel.

00:09:30.000 Reportedly, there was an incident on set in which Tambor yelled at his co-star, Jessica Walter,

00:09:34.000 Who is it?

00:09:50.000 We're good to go.

00:10:11.000 But I do know a lot about arrested development, and I can say that no matter what anybody in this room has ever done, and we've all done a lot with each other, for each other, against each other, I wouldn't trade it for the world and I have zero complaints.

00:10:19.000 Well, nobody asked you.

00:10:20.000 They were talking to Jessica Walter.

00:10:22.000 And then David Cross.

00:10:23.000 Again, all these people are on the left.

00:10:25.000 All these people are big believers in the feminist movement and the MeToo movement.

00:10:29.000 So you have to ask yourself, why is it that all these believers in the MeToo movement and the feminist movement are so willing to overlook the misconduct of people with whom they work?

00:10:36.000 And the answer is, because in Hollywood, this is the way Hollywood works.

00:10:40.000 It is the way Hollywood has always worked.

00:10:41.000 So when Harvey Weinstein goes out there and says, I didn't invent the casting couch, 0.97

00:10:45.000 Yes, he's disgusting. 0.99

00:10:46.000 Yes, the casting couch is disgusting. 0.99

00:10:48.000 Yes, moral people like me have been saying for a long time, people who are religious have been saying for a very long time the casting couch is disgusting and the morality of Hollywood is disgusting.

00:10:56.000 But Harvey Weinstein, when he says the casting couch was not invented by Harvey Weinstein, he's not entirely wrong in that sense.

00:11:03.000 He's wrong that he's not a rapist. 0.85

00:11:04.000 I mean, it sounds like he probably is a rapist, but 0.97

00:11:06.000 Again, this puts you in a weird position because all of these men who are supposedly in favor of feminism are standing around defending guys who are acting like utter greaseballs. 0.99

00:11:16.000 So here is David Cross.

00:11:18.000 He says, you know, one thing Jeffrey has said a lot of times that I think is important that you don't often hear from somebody in his position is that he has learned from the experience and he's listening and learning and growing.

00:11:26.000 That's important to remember.

00:11:28.000 Well, it's sort of more important to remember that you shouldn't have acted like that in the first place.

00:11:31.000 And then the New York Times reporter asked, if somebody approached you and said, OK, here's an actor that admits he routinely yells at directors and assistant directors, at co-workers, assistants, would you hire that person?

00:11:41.000 And Tambor said, I would hire that person if that person said, you know, I've reckoned with this.

00:11:45.000 And then Bateman said, again, not to belittle it or excuse it or anything, but in the entertainment industry, it's incredibly common to have people who are, in quotes, difficult.

00:11:51.000 And when you're in a privileged position to hire people or have an influence in who does get hired, you make phone calls and you say, hey, so I've heard about, I've heard X about person Y tell me about that.

00:11:58.000 And what you learn is context and you learn about character and you learn about work habits, work ethics.

00:12:03.000 And you start to understand because it's a very amorphous process, this sort of bleeping that you do, you know, making up fake life.

00:12:09.000 It's a weird thing and is a breeding ground for atypical behavior.

00:12:12.000 And certain people have certain processes.

00:12:14.000 In other words, all of these people are difficult people because they're artistes.

00:12:17.000 And artistes have to be given more leeway to do what it is they do, except those people have victims.

00:12:22.000 And then, a bunch of women who don't want to get involved in the casting couch system are forced into the casting couch system specifically because they will lose jobs if they do not. 1.00

00:12:32.000 It's a real disaster area all the way through.

00:12:34.000 I have a little more to say on this.

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00:13:47.000 So, you've got Harvey Weinstein.

00:13:49.000 You've got Morgan Freeman.

00:13:50.000 You've got a bunch of people defending people like this.

00:13:53.000 You know, it's really troublesome.

00:13:55.000 And it's troublesome, again, because so many folks in Hollywood proclaim that they are the moral standards that we must follow.

00:14:02.000 These are the moral standards.

00:14:03.000 They are the light bringers when it comes to morality and decency.

00:14:07.000 And when it comes to feminism, too, they're the light bringers. 1.00

00:14:09.000 Okay, well, they're gonna have to learn how to balance two things.

00:14:12.000 One is the ability of women to consent to relationships with more powerful men.

00:14:17.000 And the second is to call out men who are doing terrible things.

00:14:21.000 And they haven't learned how to balance these two things yet.

00:14:23.000 They haven't learned how to balance these two things because these two things are sort of hard to balance in an era where is it power relationships that are supposed to define what's wrong?

00:14:32.000 Or is it consent that's supposed to define what's wrong?

00:14:34.000 This has not been made clear by anybody on the left yet.

00:14:37.000 Now, I'm of the opinion that all relationships should, number one, be consensual.

00:14:41.000 And number two, power should not be abused in this way by powerful people.

00:14:45.000 And women should not give in, if they can help it, to abuse of power in this way if physical force is not being used. 0.99

00:14:50.000 Like, be willing to lose the job in order not to be abused by a man.

00:14:53.000 But I understand it's a difficult decision that women should not have to make, and that's why we need to change the system from within. 1.00

00:14:59.000 Well, that's going to require two things.

00:15:00.000 It's going to require, again, powerful people coming out and speaking out against this, and it's going to require an embrace of a different sexual ethos that does not value the art,

00:15:08.000 And the artiste and promiscuity above everything else.

00:15:11.000 It's going to require a reversion back to more traditional morality regarding how people interact, men and women interact.

00:15:18.000 And I understand this makes a lot of people on the left uncomfortable.

00:15:20.000 But it's very difficult to have it both ways.

00:15:22.000 You can't say that men and women are just playing around and then also be surprised when it turns out that men are willing to abuse that system in order to do terrible things.

00:15:30.000 That doesn't mean the men shouldn't be punished.

00:15:31.000 They should be punished.

00:15:32.000 But the snapback is what some people in Hollywood are finding so odd to deal with.

00:15:39.000 And again, I think that there is I think there's a way to fix all of this, but I don't think it can be fixed in the absence of a root change in mentality about how men ought to treat women, how women ought to treat men.

00:15:49.000 Fortunately, there is good news.

00:15:51.000 The good news is Hollywood has its priorities straight when it comes to President Trump.

00:15:54.000 So Robert De Niro, who's a frequent critic of President Trump, and he's been playing special counsel Robert Mueller on Saturday Night Live, he talked Tuesday about he'd like to bar the president from eating at his Nobu restaurant chain, which I'm sure Trump will just be

00:16:06.000 Devastated to learn.

00:16:07.000 Well, Chef Nobu Matsuhisa, who's De Niro's co-owner, then joked it was his dream for Trump to sit next to De Niro so he could make them sushi.

00:16:26.000 De Niro, of course, has spent a lot of time ripping on Trump.

00:16:27.000 This is the way it works in Hollywood.

00:16:28.000 The sort of virtue signaling that matters is not the virtue signaling where you stand up and you call out actual predators in Hollywood.

00:16:34.000 That's not virtue signaling.

00:16:36.000 Real virtue signaling, real virtue signaling, of course, is going and talking about how Trump should not come into your restaurant.

00:16:43.000 And by the way, it's not because Trump has this record with women.

00:16:46.000 Okay, again, people in Hollywood probably don't care about Trump's record with women. 0.81

00:16:49.000 They care a lot more about President Trump's politics.

00:16:51.000 They'd say the same thing about George W. Bush when Mitt Romney was running in 2012.

00:16:54.000 They would have said the same thing about Mitt Romney because these are the actual values in Hollywood.

00:16:59.000 Hollywood likes to pretend that it has values with regard to treatment of women. 0.97

00:17:03.000 It doesn't.

00:17:03.000 Okay, Hollywood has no regard for the values of women.

00:17:05.000 It has no regard for the sexual autonomy of women. 0.86

00:17:09.000 It has no regard

00:17:11.000 Yeah.

00:17:28.000 You can do that, so long as you're a powerful dude.

00:17:30.000 And most people will go along with it.

00:17:31.000 And that's why, as soon as you see a gap in the particular dam that's holding back all these revelations in cases like Harvey Weinstein or Morgan Freeman, you watch.

00:17:40.000 There will now be 15 women who come forward and say all this stuff, because they've been held back by this entire wall of silence that's been created around Hollywood, by Hollywood, about this sort of evil behavior by people like Harvey Weinstein and people like Morgan Freeman.

00:17:54.000 All these women are going to come forward now because now they feel it's safe.

00:17:56.000 There's safety in numbers to come forward.

00:17:58.000 But you don't want to be the first one, because if you're the first one, you end up like Rose McGowan and you lose your job and you never work again.

00:18:03.000 That's Hollywood's fault.

00:18:05.000 Really, truly egregious and disgusting stuff.

00:18:08.000 OK, well, meanwhile, Joe Biden, former vice president of the United States, he is out there politicking.

00:18:14.000 He obviously wants to run for president.

00:18:16.000 Again, he wants to run for president.

00:18:18.000 He ran in 2008, didn't go anywhere.

00:18:20.000 He wants to run for president again in 2020 against President Trump.

00:18:23.000 And he has a serious shot of winning the nomination because presumably President Obama would endorse him as his former VP.

00:18:28.000 Well, Joe Biden is doing this routine where he is suggesting that President Trump has abandoned GOP values. 0.90

00:18:34.000 I find this utterly hypocritical and hysterical. 0.90

00:18:38.000 This is not your father's Republican Party. 0.98

00:18:41.000 This is a different deal.

00:18:44.000 They are not.

00:18:45.000 They are not.

00:18:47.000 Who we are.

00:18:49.000 They're not who America is, but what they are doing is they're sending a vision of America around the world that's distorted, that's damaging, that is hurting us with this phony populism and this fake nationalism.

00:19:09.000 I love that Joe Biden is out there.

00:19:10.000 It's a different Republican Party.

00:19:11.000 The Republican Party has changed at root.

00:19:14.000 Here's what the studies show.

00:19:15.000 The studies show that the Republican Party has been, since 2010, absolutely stagnant in terms of its politics.

00:19:20.000 It has not moved to the right.

00:19:21.000 It has not moved to the left.

00:19:22.000 Its policies are exactly the same as they were after the Tea Party.

00:19:24.000 Those have not changed.

00:19:25.000 The only party that has moved is the Democratic Party, which has shifted radically to the left.

00:19:29.000 When Joe Biden ran in 2008, every Democratic candidate on stage endorsed traditional marriage.

00:19:35.000 Okay, when he ran in 2008, nobody on stage would have been paying homage to Bernie Sanders. 0.94

00:19:39.000 They all thought he was a kook and a nut job.

00:19:41.000 And now the entire Democratic Party has moved radically to the left.

00:19:43.000 And when you hear Joe Biden talk about how much the Republican Party has changed and moved, remember, Joe Biden is the guy who said in 2012, just six years ago, he was saying that Mitt Romney wanted to put y'all back in chains.

00:19:54.000 So Mitt Romney was the great outlier.

00:19:56.000 It was Mitt Romney who changed the Republican Party.

00:19:58.000 Mitt Romney is about as moderate a candidate as Republicans have run in the last 25 to 30 years.

00:20:04.000 And yet there was Joe Biden ripping on the Republican Party.

00:20:06.000 So when you hear Democrats rip on the extremism of Republicans, understand that they've been ripping on the supposed extremism of Republicans, no matter how moderate at any point. 0.57

00:20:13.000 The hypocrisy of Joe Biden is truly astonishing here.

00:20:17.000 But I guess we shouldn't be astonished by Joe Biden. 0.91

00:20:19.000 The guy wants to run for president.

00:20:20.000 He understands he has to run to the hard left if he wants to cut off people like Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

00:20:26.000 Okay, so I want to give you the update on the house in just a second, on the house race for control of the house in just a second.

00:20:32.000 First, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at Skillshare.

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00:22:00.000 Okay, so here's an update on the battle for the House.

00:22:03.000 So with the Democrats still struggling for an actual message,

00:22:08.000 The battle for the House has turned not in their favor.

00:22:11.000 Sean Trent, who's an excellent analyst over at RealClearPolitics, he says this,

00:22:26.000 With a raft of GOP retirements and highly vulnerable open seats, a president with job approval ratings in the 30s, and a generic ballot lead for Democrats in the double digits, it was increasingly difficult to spell out a path to victory for Republicans.

00:22:37.000 In fact, things were bad enough that it appeared their losses could grow into the 40 or even 50 seat range.

00:22:42.000 Things have changed, says Sean Trend.

00:22:44.000 If the election were held today, it is not clear who would hold the chamber.

00:22:47.000 I might put a thumb on the scale for Republicans, but right now, and it is still early, the House is likely to be close.

00:22:52.000 Like, really close.

00:22:53.000 Once again, conventional wisdom seems slow to catch up, with analysts still discussing the toxic environment for Republicans.

00:22:59.000 Okay, President Trump's job approval rating has been rising.

00:23:01.000 There are a bunch of reasons for it.

00:23:03.000 People are tired of the Mueller investigation, the passage of the tax cut, the good economic news.

00:23:07.000 The generic ballot is moving.

00:23:08.000 Look at the polls.

00:23:09.000 It is narrowing dramatically.

00:23:11.000 In mid-December, the Democratic lead was around 13 points.

00:23:14.000 Today, it is at three points.

00:23:15.000 That is a massive movement.

00:23:16.000 And special elections are not a good metric.

00:23:18.000 This is the most important thing.

00:23:19.000 You've been hearing a lot about Democratic turnout in special elections.

00:23:22.000 And Sean Trent says, hold up a second.

00:23:23.000 He says, some point to Democrats' performance in special elections as a sign that their voters are energized.

00:23:28.000 This is undoubtedly true.

00:23:29.000 I pointed to a similar phenomenon in late 2013, so I do think special election outcomes are interesting.

00:23:34.000 But there are three problems here.

00:23:36.000 I did not make specific projections from these in 2013, because we don't have a lot of experience projecting a midterm election from special election results.

00:23:43.000 These are informative data points, but until we have more experience seeing how models based upon them perform, we should prefer established metrics like job approval and the generic ballot.

00:23:52.000 Second, special elections all involve open seats.

00:23:54.000 The one set of elections that didn't involve open seats exclusively in Virginia and New Jersey brought about a set of results that are a lot less encouraging for Democrats.

00:24:01.000 They lost in Trump districts and they won in Hillary districts.

00:24:04.000 Well, if that's replicated in 2018, Democrats would fall just shy of winning the House.

00:24:08.000 So bottom line is the prospects are looking much better for Republicans than they were even a few weeks ago.

00:24:14.000 And a lot of that is the extremism of Democrats.

00:24:16.000 Well, I got Joe Biden out there claiming that Donald Trump has moved the Republican Party in radical new ways.

00:24:22.000 My God, look at these Republicans with their populism.

00:24:26.000 Here's the reality.

00:24:26.000 The Democrats are radical.

00:24:29.000 The latest point being, obviously, the MS-13 argument, where President Trump called MS-13 a bunch of animals, and then he doubled down on it, and Nancy Pelosi said that this was terrible.

00:24:39.000 She said, She's defending MS-13 now.

00:24:49.000 As I said earlier this week, President Trump has a magic power.

00:24:52.000 His magic power is he can make Democrats defend legitimately anything.

00:24:56.000 So what do the polls say about the MS-13 issue?

00:24:58.000 Well, according to The Hill, 56% of American adults in the Harvard-Capps-Harris poll said referring to members of the gang as animals is fair, compared to 44% who said the characterization was unfair.

00:25:09.000 A slimmer majority, 52%, added that the comments that dehumanize members of MS-13

00:25:13.000 Are acceptable.

00:25:14.000 So in other words, Trump's on the right side of the American public on this particular issue.

00:25:18.000 By the way, he is also on the right side of the American public with regard to the kneeling situation, the kneeling in the NFL situation.

00:25:23.000 As I mentioned yesterday, I'm not a fan of the president interjecting himself into arguments about what a private corporation, the NFL, should do about its own employees exercising their right to kneel.

00:25:34.000 It's a private company.

00:25:35.000 They can do what they want.

00:25:36.000 I think the president Trump polarizing the issue is not good for the country.

00:25:39.000 But as I mentioned yesterday, it is good for him.

00:25:41.000 There's no question. 1.00

00:25:42.000 He's an idiot. 1.00

00:25:42.000 Plain and simple. 1.00

00:25:43.000 For me.

00:26:12.000 Listen, you know, I respect the man because he's a human being, you know, first and foremost, but he's just being more divisive, which is not surprising.

00:26:23.000 It is what it is.

00:26:25.000 Can most Americans look at the situation in the NFL?

00:26:28.000 They don't think Trump was the one who was originally divisive on this.

00:26:31.000 Most Americans think that it was the NFL players who decided to kneel for the national anthem, a signal of unity in the United States, who are actually being divisive in this entire process.

00:26:40.000 So the more people react to Trump by taking the side of the people who are kneeling, that's exactly what Trump wants.

00:26:44.000 This is what's so funny.

00:26:45.000 If the left even half understood what was going on in this particular debate, maybe they might make a more shaded argument.

00:26:51.000 Maybe they would argue, as actually people like me have argued, that Trump should not involve himself in these particular issues because it polarizes the country, but they are in favor of people standing for the national anthem.

00:27:03.000 The NFL has a right to do what it wants to do.

00:27:05.000 The hilarious thing about all of this is the NFL is getting just shellacked over this decision.

00:27:10.000 Fox Sports 1 has a show with Skip Bayless, and Skip Bayless and his co-host, I can't remember who it is, they were talking about this NFL controversy.

00:27:18.000 They called it a dark day in American sports.

00:27:22.000 Bell is highly respected.

00:27:23.000 He's not a shock jock.

00:27:25.000 He's not over the top with his criticism.

00:27:28.000 He's very even handed.

00:27:30.000 He is a black man, but that's a strong, powerful conclusion from Jarrett Bell about what just happened.

00:27:38.000 And it does feel to me from this side of the desk like it was a dark day in American sports.

00:27:45.000 Okay, it's so hilarious that this is the, this quote, dark day in American sports.

00:27:48.000 Let's call host to Shannon Sharp there.

00:27:50.000 This is such a dark day in American sports.

00:27:51.000 The NBA has had this exact same policy, this exact same policy for a long time.

00:27:57.000 Okay, the NBA has had this policy since like 1994, 1995.

00:28:01.000 And yet nobody's complaining about that.

00:28:02.000 They only complain when the NFL changes the policy because it looks like a quote-unquote win for Trump.

00:28:06.000 And by the way, the implication that Trump is a racist and that's the reason he cares about all of this?

00:28:10.000 Yesterday, Donald Trump pardoned the late black boxing champion Jack Johnson.

00:28:14.000 Okay, Jack Johnson was issued a posthumous pardon.

00:28:16.000 He was the first African-American heavyweight champion.

00:28:19.000 He was jailed a century ago due to his relationship with a white woman.

00:28:22.000 Okay, he was accused of violating federal law by transporting his white wife, a woman who later became his wife, named Lucille Cameron, in 1912 across state lines.

00:28:30.000 He supposedly violated the Mann Act in sexual trafficking.

00:28:33.000 Of course, that wasn't true.

00:28:34.000 It was trumped up.

00:28:35.000 But Jack Johnson was... was...

00:28:38.000 Okay, so I have a little bit more to say about sports and where America stands in just a second.

00:28:42.000 First, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at Tommy John's.

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00:29:43.000 Okay, go to TommyJohn.com slash Shapiro.

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00:30:04.000 Okay, so before I go any further on the sports front, first, I want to say that you have to go over and subscribe.

00:30:09.000 You have to, okay?

00:30:09.000 We're gonna do the mailbag in just a little while here.

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00:30:14.000 Ask me all of your deepest, darkest questions.

00:30:17.000 And we'll answer them publicly, and hopefully not humiliate you too badly.

00:30:20.000 You get all of that when you subscribe, so go over for $9.99 a month at Daily Wire.

00:30:23.000 You can subscribe, $99 a year gets the annual subscription.

00:30:26.000 The subscriptions also come with some other great features, such as we are doing events in Dallas and Phoenix.

00:30:31.000 If you had been a subscriber, you would have been able to buy first seats at these events.

00:30:35.000 You would have been able to get a VIP ticket.

00:30:37.000 at these events as a subscriber before anyone else.

00:30:40.000 And that means we could have met.

00:30:41.000 But now we can't meet because you're not a subscriber.

00:30:42.000 So if you want to meet, then you should subscribe.

00:30:44.000 I mean, this is what I'm saying to you, folks.

00:30:45.000 I don't know what to tell you.

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00:30:53.000 Also, I'd like to point out that on Sunday, we are bringing you our Sunday special.

00:30:57.000 Our Sunday special this week features Dr. Drew, which is pretty cool.

00:31:00.000 So Dr. Drew, stop by.

00:31:01.000 And the conversation, I will say, is definitely freewheeling.

00:31:03.000 Here's Dr. Drew talking about how awesome it is.

00:31:05.000 Hey, I'm Dr. Drew.

00:31:06.000 I'm very excited to be a part of the Ben Shapiro Show Sunday special.

00:31:10.000 And we, Ben and I, are going to talk about everything.

00:31:13.000 I want him to change my mind.

00:31:15.000 I want to grow and build.

00:31:17.000 And maybe a little philosophy, maybe a little psychology.

00:31:19.000 Listen, you won't want to miss it.

00:31:20.000 Okay, it's really a lot of fun, so check it out on Sunday.

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00:31:27.000 If not, go subscribe right now on this podcast, and you'll get my conversation with Dr. Drew for the full hour, as Larry King would say.

00:31:33.000 Please subscribe, please leave us a review if you just want to listen for free.

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00:31:44.000 Okay, so final note on this whole NFL controversy.

00:31:48.000 I think the whole thing is overblown.

00:31:50.000 I think it's overblown because two things can be true at once.

00:31:52.000 One, we do not want to pressure corporations to crack down on people for their speech.

00:31:57.000 Second, if it is actively impeding a corporation's ability to distribute the product.

00:32:01.000 Okay, if the free speech amounts to you providing a design flaw in the product itself, then the corporation, it seems to me, has every right to do something about you. 0.99

00:32:09.000 Okay, so, as I say, me speaking at a private college and being barred from a private college, they can do it, but I think it's stupid. 0.99

00:32:15.000 You boycotting the NCAA over an unrelated bathroom policy in the state, I think, is stupid. 0.98

00:32:21.000 You boycotting Brendan Eich from Mozilla Firefox because Brendan Eich was pro-traditional marriage and has no effect on the product. 1.00

00:32:27.000 That's stupid. 0.98

00:32:28.000 But the product the NFL puts on the field includes all of the visual product before the game, including the national anthem. 0.99

00:32:34.000 So if the NFL says, listen, we're losing money because of this because the product we are putting on, we believe to be inferior, at least in terms of how it is grabbing audiences.

00:32:41.000 Well, they have every right to do what they're going to do.

00:32:43.000 And I think that's how you balance these two things.

00:32:45.000 There are certain things that are inherent to the development of the product.

00:32:47.000 There are certain things that are not.

00:32:48.000 Again, if they wanted to kneel for the national anthem every day before they started their factory work, I don't see how that would really be a problem.

00:32:55.000 But all of this is televised and has an impact on whether people watch the games or not.

00:32:59.000 So people who are failing to make this distinction, they're friends of mine who I think are failing to make this distinction.

00:33:03.000 I rarely disagree with my good friend David French.

00:33:05.000 David had a piece in the New York Times in which he argued that the NFL should not have changed policy.

00:33:08.000 They should have allowed everybody to continue kneeling.

00:33:11.000 I'm not quite as sold on that, and I don't equate every situation in which a private corporation is trying to save its product with every other situation.

00:33:19.000 A college campus is a place, obviously, for exchange of ideas.

00:33:23.000 NFL pregame doesn't seem to me like that's what it was generally for, as a rule.

00:33:27.000 Okay, so let's go through some mailbag.

00:33:30.000 Let's do some mailbag. 0.88

00:33:30.000 So, Aslan says, Hey Ben, I'm a subscriber and watch you all the time. 0.88

00:33:34.000 Well, thank you, Aslan. 0.73

00:33:35.000 I know how to combat the general ridiculous nature of the left and their meltdown over current events.

00:33:38.000 I'm a bit confused about one of my friends who worked for the Bush administration, and since President Trump has been elected, he's gone full SJW and left ideals.

00:33:45.000 He argues that his era of the Republican Party is dead because of Trump, and everything Trump does is against his view of what the Republican Party was in the president's past. 0.92

00:33:52.000 My question, is the Republican Party so very different under Trump than some of his great Republicans of old, or is he just being ridiculous? 0.92

00:33:57.000 Most of Trump's policies are great, I think, as far as conservative values, but he's just a buffoon at times in a way no president has been before. 0.86

00:34:03.000 Thanks, huge fan.

00:34:04.000 OK, so this is the serious question, right?

00:34:06.000 We talked a little bit earlier about Joe Biden and Joe Biden saying the Republican Party has massively shifted. 0.94

00:34:11.000 What was stupid about what Joe Biden said is he was saying that there is this populist move in the Republican Party. 0.94

00:34:16.000 The policy is exactly the same as it has been for years. 0.99

00:34:20.000 President Trump has governed more conservatively than George W. Bush.

00:34:23.000 President Trump's first year and a half of policy is a conservative dream in many ways, really.

00:34:28.000 Like, as a conservative, as somebody who's very, very skeptical of President Trump's policies, I can say I've been very pleased by his policy decisions.

00:34:34.000 That said, is Trump a difference in kind for the Republican Party?

00:34:38.000 Yes.

00:34:38.000 I mean, he is.

00:34:39.000 I mean, there's no question that he's a man of different character than Republicans have elected before.

00:34:43.000 In some ways, that's a good thing, right?

00:34:44.000 In some ways, it means that he violates certain taboos that need to be violated.

00:34:47.000 And that was certainly true when he moved the U.S.

00:34:49.000 Embassy to Jerusalem, for example.

00:34:50.000 It's also true when he attacks actual fake news.

00:34:53.000 But there are obviously downsides to this.

00:34:55.000 President Trump lacks character when it comes to women.

00:34:57.000 I think this is obviously clear.

00:34:59.000 President Trump has made statements that I find absolutely morally egregious.

00:35:02.000 I've called them out on this show many times.

00:35:04.000 That is a sea change for Republicans, particularly if they go along with that sort of thing publicly, which is why I've always said that if Republicans want to maintain their moral center, they should clap for President Trump when he does good things, and he's doing a lot of those things, and they should boo President Trump when he does something bad, because President Trump can take it, and he's a human, and that means that all humans should be treated equally, not as idols, not as objects of pandering, but President Trump, when he says something truly bad, everybody should say, hey, that's truly bad, you shouldn't say that.

00:35:30.000 And when he does something truly bad, they should say, hey, that's truly bad.

00:35:32.000 You shouldn't do that.

00:35:33.000 And when he does something good, you have to praise him.

00:35:35.000 I think if you take this tack with your friend, then maybe you'll be a little bit more open to your messaging about the fact that Trump really hasn't changed a lot of policy on the Republican side of the aisle because he hasn't.

00:35:43.000 Thanks.

00:35:50.000 No, I don't think they should.

00:35:51.000 I don't think that the government has any business telling food producers what information to put on their products.

00:35:57.000 In fact, I'm a libertarian on this.

00:35:59.000 I'm not a big fan of the FDA. 1.00

00:36:00.000 I think that the Food and Drug Administration, the idea that you needed a government agency to ensure the safety of your food, I think that's largely stupidity. 0.98

00:36:07.000 I think there are private companies that could do just the same thing. 0.98

00:36:10.000 We have Sagets that rates restaurants.

00:36:11.000 I don't see any reason you couldn't have a private organization that essentially licenses food.

00:36:15.000 Not licenses in the sense they can ban a food, but looks at a food and says whether it is healthy or not, whether it is good or not.

00:36:23.000 There are private organizations that I think could do this fairly well.

00:36:27.000 You know, if one was dishonest, then there would be others that competed with it.

00:36:30.000 I think this is something the market certainly has room for.

00:36:32.000 I don't think there's a market failure taking place in food, in other words, right?

00:36:36.000 You don't actually have to have an FDA telling you the ingredients in your light bulbs, although presumably they do.

00:36:41.000 There are government regulations that force that sort of thing.

00:36:44.000 I don't think that's necessary because I don't think that most producers have an interest in killing their consumers or making food so bad for them that they never want to eat that food again.

00:36:52.000 And competition allows you to do this.

00:36:53.000 First of all, I think that the nutritional product information would end up on the bottles anyway, because I think that some creative producer would say, you know what?

00:36:59.000 We should undercut our competition by saying we are completely transparent about what's in our food as opposed to our competition, which presumably would then drive the competition to actually put the nutritional products out there.

00:37:10.000 I mean, you see this all the time, right?

00:37:11.000 You see this in terms of diet products.

00:37:13.000 So I'm not sure why it shouldn't apply to food more generally.

00:37:15.000 Richard said, You've mentioned, usually when talking about one of your sponsors, about how you use an electric razor on only part of your face for religious reasons.

00:37:21.000 Could you explain the doctrine in more detail, please?

00:37:23.000 Sure.

00:37:23.000 I mean, the quick answer is that in the Bible, it says that you're not supposed to shave the corners of your beard.

00:37:27.000 And Orthodox Jews take that to mean that you are not supposed to use a straight edge to shave your face.

00:37:33.000 And so I use an electric razor around my entire face and then the jawline and then below the jawline,

00:37:39.000 There are certain commentators who say that you're allowed to use a straight edge below there because, you know, when you're shaving your neck, that's really not a part of your beard.

00:37:50.000 Okay, Dylan says, So, my gut reaction is that it is important for wives to take their husband's last name because you are now forming an independent unit and you should have the last name because now you are part of a team.

00:38:00.000 If you join the New York Yankees, you don't maintain that you are a Yankee cardinal.

00:38:04.000 Right, if you sign as a free agent, then you become a Yankee.

00:38:07.000 And it seems to me the same thing should be true now.

00:38:09.000 There are people who say, well, why shouldn't you take your wife's last name?

00:38:12.000 Well, listen, if you want to do that, you can.

00:38:14.000 And I think that's sort of emasculating to dudes, because I do think that there are male and female roles in a relationship, and a man who feels that he doesn't have any sort of leadership in his relationship with his wife is going to feel emasculated.

00:38:25.000 This is just the natural human process.

00:38:26.000 I'm not saying whether it's right or wrong, that is just natural.

00:38:29.000 I'll tell you this, when we got married, when I got married to my wife, I said she didn't have a middle name.

00:38:34.000 And her last name, her maiden name was Toledano.

00:38:37.000 And my wife wanted to... I said to her that she could do like my mom and she could actually take her maiden name and make it her middle name. 1.00

00:38:43.000 Like, I shouldn't even have permission.

00:38:45.000 She can do whatever she wants, right?

00:38:46.000 She's an autonomous human being.

00:38:47.000 But I said, if you want to do that, it's fine with me.

00:38:48.000 I don't care.

00:38:49.000 And it came time for us to go over to the social security office for her to formally change her name to...

00:38:55.000 I'm still a member of my old family, but this is our family now.

00:38:58.000 Our family is the Shapiro family.

00:39:15.000 And it meant a lot to me.

00:39:16.000 It did mean a lot to me as a man.

00:39:17.000 I promise you, women, if you ask men whether it means something to them, most men will say it means something to them because it is a sacrifice a woman is making of her family name, and that should mean something.

00:39:26.000 That's a sacrifice.

00:39:27.000 Okay, so yes, I think it's important, and I think that it's enough of an important thing that you should ask your potential spouse about it.

00:39:34.000 I don't think that if... Let's put it this way.

00:39:36.000 I think that...

00:39:37.000 The types of people do different things on this issue.

00:39:39.000 If you are a hardcore feminist and you think that it's a real sacrifice to give up your last name for your husband's last name because this means he owns you now, I would suggest that you're not being generous enough to the husband that you're marrying. 1.00

00:39:48.000 I don't think it's a matter of ownership.

00:39:50.000 I think it's a matter of, let's be on the same team.

00:39:53.000 That's just my general take.

00:39:54.000 David says,

00:39:56.000 We often talk about the left's ideas and practices as self-destructive, and I agree on those points, but do you have an expectation that the left will ever actually destroy itself and become genuinely relevant in American culture and policy?

00:40:06.000 It seems like they keep drinking poison, but it's only making them stronger.

00:40:08.000 They shoot themselves in the foot, and it never really slows them down.

00:40:10.000 No, I don't think the left is ever going to go away.

00:40:12.000 I think it will always be with us.

00:40:13.000 I think that leftism springs from a couple of elements of human nature.

00:40:17.000 One is jealousy, and the other is utopianism.

00:40:19.000 And I think as long as jealousy and utopianism are parts of human nature, there will be a left to fight.

00:40:25.000 Because jealousy is the basis for economic policy.

00:40:28.000 You earn more than I do, therefore I deserve your money.

00:40:30.000 And utopianism is the idea that if we just shift government policy, there will be a huge number of new human beings will be created.

00:40:37.000 And these new human beings will be transcendent human beings, better human beings, more generous human beings.

00:40:42.000 And then we'll all have a beautiful world where the unicorns prance and play in the meadows with raindrop smiles.

00:40:48.000 Right?

00:40:48.000 It's just... It's stupid, but unfortunately this is part of human nature.

00:40:51.000 We think we can change everything. 0.99

00:40:53.000 It's why whenever anything bad happens, anything bad in the United States, our first reaction is, why didn't the government do something about it?

00:40:59.000 And we should really be asking ourselves, why didn't I do anything about it?

00:41:02.000 And if I didn't do anything about it, can anyone do anything about it?

00:41:05.000 And is it possible that the collective can't solve everything?

00:41:08.000 And then maybe you say, OK, well, maybe the collective can solve this one.

00:41:10.000 But we should at least ask ourselves the question, leftism is rooted in human nature.

00:41:15.000 Just as conservatism, I think, is actually more of a... I think conservatism is actually more of a departure from human nature.

00:41:20.000 Right, your kid is a leftist.

00:41:21.000 Your two-year-old is a leftist.

00:41:23.000 My two-year-old is a leftist.

00:41:23.000 My two-year-old wants stuff when he wants it, and he wants it right now.

00:41:27.000 He doesn't care how he got it.

00:41:27.000 He doesn't care what it came about.

00:41:28.000 He doesn't care that if he screams, now, now, now, now, now, it's not just going to appear.

00:41:32.000 And he thinks that if I give things to him, then life will magically be transformed.

00:41:36.000 And you are a communist in your relationship with your own family, right?

00:41:38.000 You have a joint bank account, you share with your family, you earn from each according to his ability to each according to his need is basically the rule inside my house anyway.

00:41:48.000 But that does not mean that that is a good idea for the governance of society as a whole or that it instills any sort of responsibility, which is why you have to fight that communistic nature of the family with the idea of teaching responsibility and inculcating responsibility in your children.

00:42:01.000 Well, in many ways, this answer is the same as my last answer.

00:42:21.000 Any organization that is not overtly embracing particular principles about personal responsibility and God-given rights eventually is going to be eaten up by this quest for cosmic justice that Thomas Sowell talks about.

00:42:34.000 And Thomas Sowell has a great book called The Quest for Cosmic Justice.

00:42:36.000 I highly recommend that everybody read it.

00:42:38.000 And it basically explains the desire of human beings to look for answers in places where they can't get answers.

00:42:44.000 And organizations particularly are collective in nature.

00:42:47.000 And that means that they tend to think they can solve everything through the collective.

00:42:50.000 All right, so it's not really a surprise they move in a collectivist direction.

00:42:53.000 Wow, I like that.

00:42:53.000 Well, Michael, I appreciate it, and I appreciate that Michael is the person who wrote that.

00:42:56.000 All right, it says, What are you getting His Holiness Pope Saint Michael Knowles and the person who wrote this is Michael.

00:43:01.000 So, Michael, nice try.

00:43:02.000 But Michael already knows what I got, Michael, because we were sitting next to each other.

00:43:04.000 OK, so this is a good story.

00:43:05.000 So the other day,

00:43:21.000 There was an event that we had to go to.

00:43:23.000 It was a really terrific event with some big-name Hollywood folks at like a lunch.

00:43:27.000 It was really fun.

00:43:29.000 And our entire company went.

00:43:31.000 So there were a bunch of people from our company who were supposed to go.

00:43:33.000 We were all supposed to carpool over.

00:43:35.000 So I come out.

00:43:36.000 It's like 12 noon.

00:43:37.000 I'm supposed to be there at like 1225 and I have been told that we are all going to carpool out together.

00:43:41.000 So I'm in my studio at the Daily Wire offices.

00:43:44.000 And I saunter my way on out at about 1210 because I've been doing work, you know, to make everyone money.

00:43:50.000 And then I walk out of my office and I look around and everyone is gone.

00:43:53.000 Everyone is gone.

00:43:54.000 And I look around and then I ask my assistant, the only person left in the office, you know, where'd everybody go?

00:44:01.000 And she said, where are you supposed to be somewhere?

00:44:02.000 I said, well, I don't know.

00:44:03.000 I mean, you tell me.

00:44:04.000 And I call my business partner and he says, you're supposed to be here right now.

00:44:08.000 And right at that moment, all of my co-workers and employees walk in without me, because they left me there.

00:44:13.000 That's the kind of office we have here at Daily Wire.

00:44:16.000 So anyway, we go to this lunch, and I sit down, and unfortunately, I was seated directly next to the excorable Michael Knowles.

00:44:22.000 And, I mean, listen, I didn't make the seating chart, okay?

00:44:24.000 Not on me.

00:44:25.000 So I sit down, and Michael Knowles is sitting next to me, and then it hits me that Michael's wedding is coming up in the next week.

00:44:31.000 And that I have not gotten him anything for his wedding.

00:44:34.000 Frankly, I hadn't really thought about it, because who cares?

00:44:36.000 I mean, it's Knowles' wedding, like, really?

00:44:38.000 So anyway, I'm sitting next to him, and it strikes me that, you know, if I don't get him anything, like, right now, I will forget about it five minutes later, and then I just won't get him anything.

00:44:45.000 And I wouldn't care, it would save me money, but I think he'd feel bad about it, and then we'd all have to feel bad, and then it would cause a lot of drama, because that's who Knowles is, and anyway...

00:44:53.000 He's sitting next to me.

00:44:54.000 So I pull up his wedding registry, I get him a blender, and then I turn to him and say, congratulations, you have a blender.

00:45:00.000 So that's basically what I got him.

00:45:01.000 I got him a blender.

00:45:01.000 Okay, there's your answer.

00:45:02.000 Long story for a short question.

00:45:03.000 Okay, Christian says,

00:45:13.000 Well, I think the executive branch obviously has the veto power. 0.97

00:45:17.000 But in terms of enforcing laws that are already on the books by Congress, it is job to enforce laws, not to decide not to enforce the laws unless those laws are expressly unconstitutional.

00:45:25.000 Now, this is a serious issue.

00:45:26.000 The executive branch does have the ability to say, listen, this law is unconstitutional.

00:45:30.000 I'm not going to enforce it.

00:45:31.000 Unfortunately, we've now shifted our vision of the government so that the executive branch does not have the duty to independently say that this is not actually constitutional.

00:45:40.000 I'm not going to enforce it.

00:45:41.000 Instead, they kick it over to the judicial branch.

00:45:43.000 And they kick it all the way over to the judicial branch and they say, well, I'll enforce it whether it's constitutional or not.

00:45:47.000 It's up to the judiciary to decide.

00:45:49.000 That is false.

00:45:50.000 That is false.

00:45:51.000 The system was not built for that.

00:45:52.000 The system was built so that members of the executive branch take a constitutional oath to uphold the Constitution.

00:45:59.000 And that means if a law is passed that is unconstitutional, even over their veto,

00:46:02.000 They should at least be able to challenge Congress on it, and then if Congress wants to impeach, Congress can impeach.

00:46:07.000 But everybody was supposed to uphold their constitutional duty, not just the judicial branch.

00:46:13.000 Mostly I'm interested in how you'd want to collect taxes from citizens, like income tax, tax brackets, if at all, how much to tax, etc.

00:46:23.000 Well, you know, I've moved sort of in favor of the idea of a fair tax, which is essentially a national sales tax, with certain exceptions for people who are more impoverished.

00:46:33.000 I like that idea better than the income tax.

00:46:34.000 I don't think it's the government's business how much money I earn, and I think the income tax is rife with corruption.

00:46:39.000 There's a reason that the state of California has the highest income taxes in the nation, and also the number one rate of tax deductions in the nation. 0.94

00:46:45.000 So we pass all these stupid high taxes, and we vote for all the politicians to pass the stupid high taxes, and then we all take enormous deductions in order to avoid the high taxes we just voted for. 0.96

00:46:53.000 I don't like the income tax. 0.99

00:46:54.000 I think that the fair tax is probably the way that I would go.

00:46:57.000 Okay, a couple of more here.

00:46:58.000 Matthew says, Well, I find that a weird argument.

00:47:00.000 I mean, frankly, I think faith should be the value system that undergirds your politics.

00:47:04.000 And then you should be able to make a secular argument for whatever politics you hold.

00:47:07.000 But I think that we all have certain basic assumptions about the nature of life.

00:47:24.000 As I say in my new book.

00:47:25.000 And I think that those values are allowed to come from a religious place.

00:47:29.000 So this is a weird argument to me.

00:47:30.000 I don't really understand it.

00:47:31.000 For instance, would Bernie be condemned to forever reach for pudding cups that recede out of his grasp?

00:47:35.000 And to what gruesome tortures would you consign Michael Knowles in the afterlife?

00:47:38.000 I shudder to think of it.

00:47:48.000 So the gruesome torture to which I would consign Michael Mowles is that he would have to talk constantly into a camera that was dead.

00:47:55.000 That would be his gruesome torture.

00:47:56.000 And also, he would have to wear a shirt at all times.

00:47:59.000 Wouldn't matter.

00:47:59.000 He goes in the shower, he has to wear a shirt.

00:48:01.000 He's never allowed to take off his shirt.

00:48:03.000 That's the rules.

00:48:04.000 Those are the rules.

00:48:05.000 As far as Trump, Bernie, and Hillary, I think life has a beautiful way of giving certain punishments to people who deserve them.

00:48:11.000 Hillary's already got her punishment. 1.00

00:48:12.000 She's not President of the United States, and she got humiliated by Donald Trump.

00:48:15.000 So I think that eternal that would probably be her punishment. 0.97

00:48:18.000 And also, she'd have to probably sit there and grin as people made speech after speech about how great her husband was.

00:48:24.000 I think that would be an excellent eternal punishment for Hillary Clinton. 1.00

00:48:27.000 For Bernie Sanders, I think that the eternal punishment is that he should actually have to work for a living.

00:48:32.000 Like, he should actually have to go work, like, get a real job, like a normal person.

00:48:37.000 And then he should have to give charity, like a normal good person would.

00:48:40.000 That would be his eternal punishment, which sounds to me pretty good, but for him it would just be terrible.

00:48:44.000 And President Trump's eternal punishment, he'd eternally be forced to stare at a Playboy centerfold forever, but he can't do anything about it.

00:48:52.000 She just stands there forever, and he just stares at her, and there's nothing he can do.

00:48:54.000 It's just an eternal case of, uh...

00:48:57.000 I think that would be pretty fair for President Trump.

00:48:58.000 I'm super excited, but with all that has been going on lately, my family's worried about my safety.

00:49:10.000 Since you're more familiar with Jerusalem, what would you say to help ease their minds about my safety things?

00:49:14.000 Well, terrorism is extraordinarily uncommon in Israel.

00:49:17.000 It is the source of very few injuries and deaths in Israel.

00:49:20.000 Israel is actually really safe at this point. 0.96

00:49:22.000 There are soldiers on every corner, and there are certain things that you can avoid that the Israeli government will tell you to avoid.

00:49:28.000 But there are certain ways to make yourself safer.

00:49:29.000 Just assure your family that you will take the safest possible measures.

00:49:33.000 I know this is controversial inside Israel.

00:49:35.000 A lot of people take the bus.

00:49:36.000 If I were in Israel, I probably wouldn't take the bus.

00:49:38.000 That's a very common site for terrorist attacks to occur, but that's because I'm overcautious.

00:49:42.000 Again, Israel is an extraordinarily safe place at this time.

00:49:46.000 Okay, so we'll be back here next week with more Mailbag.

00:49:49.000 Let's do a quick thing I like, and then a quick thing that I hate.

00:49:52.000 So yesterday I mentioned a show called The White Queen, all about Richard III.

00:49:55.000 The last three episodes of the show are about Richard III, and they paint Richard III in very positive light.

00:49:59.000 Another book

00:50:00.000 That sort of paints Richard III in a positive light is a book called The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tay, one of the great mysteries of all time.

00:50:06.000 The book is all about basically a detective who's a frequent character in Josephine Tay's novels, and this detective this time is laid up in bed, and he decides that he is going to unravel the mystery of what actually happened to Richard III's nephews.

00:50:21.000 Did Richard III actually kill his nephews?

00:50:23.000 And the book is really gripping and really interesting and really historical, so check it out.

00:50:26.000 One of the great mystery novels of all time, The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tay.

00:50:30.000 Mixed for a good weekend read for sure.

00:50:32.000 Okay, a quick thing that I hate.

00:50:38.000 So when I say Hollywood is out of touch, I mean Hollywood is really out of touch.

00:50:40.000 They made a movie called Show Dogs.

00:50:42.000 Show Dogs is a movie about what you would think.

00:50:46.000 Show Dogs stars Will Arnett as an FBI agent named Frank who is forced into partnering with a talking dog named Max, voiced by Ludacris, to infiltrate a prestigious dog show in the hopes of rescuing a kidnapped panda.

00:50:56.000 Yep, sounds awesome.

00:50:57.000 But that's not the best part.

00:50:58.000 So the best part of this is that apparently there is a plot point involving Max learning to cope with the idea of having a judge examine his genitals while competing in the dog show.

00:51:07.000 The problem is this is a movie for children, okay?

00:51:10.000 And as Daily Wire pointed out, having a judge fondle a dog and then the dog talk about how good it feels is not really a great message to be forwarding for small children.

00:51:19.000 Well, now Show Dogs has actually been pulled from the theaters.

00:51:22.000 Even leftist sources like Slate were saying this is not really particularly great.

00:51:26.000 Daily Wire, I will say, was, I think, involved in pulling it.

00:51:29.000 A week after its debut, it pulled an abysmal $6 million on its opening weekend, a rotten score of 23% on the Tomatometer.

00:51:34.000 Well, now the film's producers have released a statement apologizing to offended parents, and they're going to fix the film.

00:51:38.000 They've decided to remove those two scenes from the movie, which were not appropriate for children.

00:51:43.000 That seems appropriate to me, since I don't think that children should be taught that it feels good to have your genitals stimulated by an adult. 0.98

00:51:49.000 That's really disgusting. 0.99

00:51:50.000 So thanks, Hollywood. 0.99

00:51:51.000 I can't imagine why you're so screwed up in every possible way.

00:51:54.000 OK, well, we will be back here next week with much, much more. 0.93

00:51:56.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:51:57.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:52:02.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.

00:52:08.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:52:12.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:52:14.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.

00:52:15.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:52:17.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.

00:52:20.000 Copyright Ford Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - May 25, 2018

Hollywood’s God Is Gross | Ep. 546

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