The Ben Shapiro Show - Is Everything Sexual Assault Now? | Ep. 404

00:00:00.000 Alrighty, did George H.W.

00:00:02.000 Bush sexually harass actresses? 0.96

00:00:04.000 And why is Mark Halperin in the news?

00:00:06.000 And also, why was the left actually cheering in abortion yesterday?

00:00:10.000 Not just saying it was okay, cheering it openly.

00:00:13.000 Plus, we're going to talk about the divisions inside the Republican Party.

00:00:15.000 Are Steve Bannon and Donald Trump really in charge of the Republican Party now?

00:00:19.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:20.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:25.000 So many interesting things to talk about today.

00:00:26.000 It's not often that we get a news cycle as interesting as this one, and we will talk about all of them.

00:00:31.000 But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Birch Gold.

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00:01:18.000 Birchgold.com slash Ben.

00:01:19.000 Ask all your

00:01:20.000 We're good to go.

00:01:42.000 Let me give you the information, and then I'll explain my perspective on this.

00:01:46.000 So basically, this week there was an actress named Heather Lynn. 0.99

00:01:48.000 She was most famously on Turn, where she played Abigail, and she accused former President George H.W.

00:01:53.000 Bush of sexual harassment in 2014, when Bush was 91 and already in a wheelchair.

00:01:57.000 Bush apologized through his spokesman on Wednesday morning, saying that President Bush would never intentionally cause anyone distress, and he sincerely apologizes if his attempted humor offended Ms.

00:02:06.000 Lynn.

00:02:07.000 And then,

00:02:08.000 They released another statement, and here is the statement that they released.

00:02:10.000 Okay, quote.

00:02:30.000 So, Deadspin, of course, doing the hard yeomanly work of reporting, found out that the dirty joke that Lynn referred to in her statement went something like this.

00:02:38.000 Apparently, a tipster passed word about the Heather Lynn incident to Deadspin.

00:02:42.000 We were told that Bush had, during a photo op, groped her and told her that his favorite magician was David Coppifield, while fondling her.

00:02:50.000 Which, I mean, okay.

00:02:54.000 Really, is that human?

00:02:54.000 In any case, so here, there was another actress who came out, and she said that he'd done the same thing.

00:03:00.000 There's this actress named Jordana Grolnik, and she was working at a main production of Hunchback of Notre Dame when Bush attended.

00:03:05.000 And she said, we all circled around him and Barbara for a photo.

00:03:08.000 I was right next to him.

00:03:09.000 He reached his right hand around to my behind.

00:03:10.000 And as we smiled for the photo, he asked the group, do you want to know who my favorite magician is?

00:03:14.000 And as I felt his hand dig into my flesh, he said, David Coppefeel. 0.89

00:03:18.000 Okay, so the reason I'm smiling is because this is all ridiculous. 0.97

00:03:22.000 Because it's ridiculous in one sense and not ridiculous in the other. 0.92

00:03:25.000 I mean, just the image of a 93-year-old president shouting David Copperfield as he grabs someone is a little bit humorous. 0.52

00:03:30.000 In any case, there are a couple things about this that I think are worthy of note.

00:03:35.000 Is President H.W.

00:03:37.000 Bush, is George H.W.

00:03:38.000 Bush now in the throes of dementia?

00:03:40.000 So he has Parkinson's disease.

00:03:42.000 There are associations between Parkinson's disease and dementia.

00:03:47.000 Over the past eight years or so, I've heard from people he has been slipping a little bit, has President H.W.

00:03:51.000 Bush.

00:03:52.000 And so if you go to an old age home, people act inappropriately all the time.

00:03:56.000 Now, there's two types of old people who act inappropriately. 0.99

00:03:58.000 Some who are actually suffering from dementia, and some who just feel like, screw it, F it to life, I'm old, I can do what I want.

00:04:04.000 If this is the latter, then I'm not going to make excuses for this behavior, because here's the reality.

00:04:09.000 If my wife were groped on the behind while some old guy shouted David Copperfield, I would not be a happy camper.

00:04:15.000 And I assume neither would she.

00:04:16.000 Now, this idea that it's okay because Bush is old or because he was a war hero,

00:04:21.000 I don't buy that.

00:04:22.000 If it's okay, it's only okay because he was, you know, in the throes of dementia, right?

00:04:26.000 If you want to say that he's not responsible for his actions, then that's something I buy.

00:04:30.000 But this idea that it's not some form of sexual harassment for him to do that, I don't buy if he is doing this out of his own free will and volition and there's no mental attitude.

00:04:39.000 And I will give you the case in point, bringing back our old campaign shoe, right?

00:04:44.000 I used to have a shoe on the desk or put it on the other foot.

00:04:46.000 If this were Bill Clinton, 0.98

00:04:47.000 I think Bill Clinton grabbed a woman's butt and shouted, David Coppefeil. 0.99

00:04:50.000 Everyone on the right would go nuts and say, right, because this is Bill Clinton. 0.98

00:04:52.000 So there are people who say, right, because Bill Clinton has a record of this, H.W.

00:04:56.000 doesn't.

00:04:56.000 That's true.

00:04:57.000 But that's why I suggest that maybe we ought to hold off until there's more information on exactly what H.W.'

00:05:02.000 's mental state is.

00:05:03.000 But people who are making light of this, I don't think that it's something that ought to be completely made light of or dismissed out of hand.

00:05:08.000 People are saying that Heather Lynch should be ashamed for even saying anything about it.

00:05:11.000 I just don't, again, I'm really more torn on this than I think a lot of other people are.

00:05:16.000 On the right.

00:05:16.000 Okay, and maybe that's an unpopular point of view, but frankly, I don't really care.

00:05:19.000 I think it's inappropriate for guys to grab girls behind and shout cop a feel, whether they're 23 or 93, if they are in control of their actions.

00:05:25.000 And just because you've done some good things in your life doesn't mean everything becomes good.

00:05:29.000 This is one of my chief complaints about how people gauge human beings.

00:05:31.000 They'll say, he's a good man.

00:05:33.000 And then by saying he's a good man, they mean everything that he does forever, we have to see as good.

00:05:36.000 Good people do bad things. 1.00

00:05:38.000 Good people do stupid things. 0.99

00:05:40.000 Overall, the judgment can be that a person's good, and the person can still do some dumb things, or still do some bad things. 0.99

00:05:47.000 In any case, this is case in point of sexual harassment number one from today's news.

00:05:53.000 Case in point number two is one that the left will immediately say is not sexual harassment in any way, and that's because the person at issue is Ellen DeGeneres, and Ellen DeGeneres is a famous and well-beloved Hollywood lesbian.

00:06:02.000 So, the reason that that is relevant, her sexuality, is because Ellen DeGeneres tweeted this out yesterday.

00:06:07.000 This is a tweet.

00:06:09.000 of course.

00:06:32.000 Now let me just suggest, if any man tweeted out this exact photo, this exact photo, if Ellen's head were Harvey Weinstein's head, we would be talking about how this was more evidence of sexual harassment in Hollywood.

00:06:45.000 Ellen DeGeneres is a very, very powerful host. 1.00

00:06:47.000 And the fact that Katy Perry seems to be smiling here is not

00:06:51.000 The issue, right?

00:06:52.000 I mean there are plenty of pictures where Harvey Weinstein is posing with smiling women who he sexually harassed or sexually assaulted.

00:06:58.000 The fact is that there's a double standard with how we treat these situations and as I've been now saying for weeks, we need some sort of singular standard as to what constitutes appropriate behavior and what does not.

00:07:08.000 Ellen DeGeneres is a lesbian which means that this is 1.00

00:07:10.000 You know, her acting upon objects of her sexual desire. 0.99

00:07:13.000 If a man did the same thing, we would be saying, this is totally inappropriate, how dare he?

00:07:18.000 And it doesn't matter that Katy Perry's smiling, it just shows how toxic masculinity has infused everyone. 0.99

00:07:24.000 The whole point here is the double standard.

00:07:26.000 And the double standard applies everywhere.

00:07:27.000 Mark Halperin.

00:07:28.000 It just was essentially fired from NBC News. 0.99

00:07:31.000 He said he resigned or took time off to spend more time with his genitals. 0.99

00:07:36.000 But in any case, Mark Halperin, the accusations are that he allegedly sexually assaulted up to five women, sexually harassed or assaulted up to five women, that he would push them up against the wall, grope them, press his genitals against them. 0.97

00:07:48.000 This is Mark Halperin, the guy who wrote Game Change, very famous reporter, he's on NBC News every day, has talked about sexual assault in the most 0.78

00:07:55.000 In the most indignant of terms, sexual assault is horrible, sexual harassment is horrible, and then meanwhile in the back room he's grabbing the interns apparently.

00:08:04.000 This goes to show you also, not only do we have a double standard with regard to people we like, we have a double standard with regard to ourselves.

00:08:10.000 The stuff that we do, human beings have a unique capacity to do this.

00:08:14.000 We can engage in many of the sins that we condemn other people for, and the mark of a good human being is that you think enough about this to think whether, in fact, you are upholding the standard that you seek to promulgate, that you're upholding the standard that you seek to push.

00:08:26.000 If you're not doing that, then we all need to do better, and I think we can all do better on these scores.

00:08:31.000 But the reason I'm pointing out these three differing scenarios, the HW, the Ellen DeGeneres, and the Mark Halperin situations, is because these double standards have been in place for a very long time, and we need to decide as a society what sort of behavior we are willing to accept.

00:08:43.000 I think the behavior should be this.

00:08:45.000 Men do not touch women without their permission.

00:08:48.000 That's the behavior.

00:08:49.000 Right?

00:08:49.000 We're done here.

00:08:50.000 And it's not the same thing if a man asks out a girl to a bar.

00:08:53.000 It's not the same thing if a man says that a girl is beautiful today.

00:08:56.000 It's not the same thing if a man says that he likes a girl's dress.

00:08:59.000 Okay, a woman's dress. 0.96

00:09:00.000 Not the same thing at all.

00:09:01.000 We need to make some actual separations here.

00:09:04.000 Instead, what I feel like this has devolved into is now we're just, as usual, conversations in America devolve into, who's the victim today?

00:09:12.000 And then we all come out and say, it's terrible that person was victimized.

00:09:15.000 And then we set no standard by which we can determine whether someone is a victim or not until they proclaim themselves a victim, at which point we say they're a victim.

00:09:22.000 Right, so if we had found out the H.W.

00:09:24.000 Bush-Heather Lynde thing just through a third-party source, not through Heather Lynde, then we would have had to decide as a society, is this something okay or not?

00:09:31.000 She declared that she was offended, therefore it was bad.

00:09:33.000 If she had declared that she was not offended, then it would have been fine.

00:09:36.000 Action is not subjective when it comes to societal standards.

00:09:40.000 It's

00:09:57.000 Those lines.

00:09:58.000 I want to talk a little bit about another story that's pretty devastating out of the state of Texas yesterday.

00:10:04.000 And then I want to get into what I really want to talk about today at length, which is the split inside the Republican Party.

00:10:09.000 But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Da Vinci.

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00:11:48.000 Okay, so, in other news that was making a splash yesterday, the Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia, the D.C.

00:11:57.000 Court of Appeals,

00:11:58.000 ruled that a 17-year-old illegal immigrant could abort her baby in the United States without going through the hoops that Texas law requires.

00:12:08.000 So here's the story.

00:12:09.000 The 17-year-old girl jumped the border while she was pregnant and then decided to obtain an abortion. 0.62

00:12:13.000 Under Texas law, minors have to receive parental consent or a judicial waiver for an abortion, and Texas bans abortion after week 20.

00:12:20.000 So the clock was sort of ticking here.

00:12:22.000 She wanted to get an abortion before week 20 so that it would be legal, even though, you know, she jumped the border illegally. 1.00

00:12:26.000 And while the young woman ended up receiving a judicial waiver, she then had to schedule a sonogram and a consultation with a doctor, which is also under Texas law.

00:12:33.000 They say you have to actually look at what the baby is before you kill the baby so that you are not abiding by the mythology that this is just a cluster of cells.

00:12:41.000 I mean, this is what a 16-week-old baby looks like.

00:12:43.000 Okay, when we talk about she aborted a 16-week-old baby yesterday, this is what a 16-week-old baby looks like.

00:12:48.000 Do we have that graphic?

00:12:50.000 Yeah, this is what, I mean, it's a human, right?

00:12:52.000 I mean, I've seen the ultrasounds of my own children at this age.

00:12:57.000 To pretend this is anything other than a human baby is just to be scientifically illiterate and also block yourself from basic facts.

00:13:04.000 In any case, she was kept in the detention center, so she couldn't go to her appointment.

00:13:09.000 So she sued, and the government contended that she had options for leaving federal custody, right?

00:13:14.000 She could just go home.

00:13:16.000 Right, they could deport her.

00:13:17.000 They could send her back to her home country, or she could find a sponsor, you know, she could find somebody who's willing to take her in, that would then be her legal guardian, the legal guardian would give permission, and then she'd be good to go.

00:13:27.000 But the idea the Texas law would have to change because she's an illegal immigrant, that's something Texas wasn't willing to do. 1.00

00:13:32.000 So the D.C. 0.91

00:13:33.000 Court of Appeals instead ruled that this woman had a right to an abortion. 1.00

00:13:36.000 The woman immediately headed off to an abortion clinic before it could be appealed, and she went and had the baby killed. 1.00

00:13:41.000 She said, Again, abortion is not just a matter between you and God.

00:13:49.000 It's a matter as to which society has a say, just as if you were to murder a baby after birth.

00:13:53.000 We all have a say in that.

00:13:54.000 That's not between you and God.

00:13:55.000 That's between you, the baby, society, and God.

00:13:58.000 Right?

00:13:58.000 We all have a say in this one.

00:14:00.000 The part of this that's really horrifying is not just, you know, a girl having an abortion at 16 weeks, which is inherently horrifying from any view that places the sanctity of human life at the center.

00:14:10.000 It's horrifying the way that some people on the left responded.

00:14:12.000 So the ACLU tweeted this out.

00:14:14.000 They tweeted, breaking, Justice prevailed today for Jane Doe.

00:14:19.000 She was able to get an abortion early this morning. 1.00

00:14:21.000 Hashtag justice for Jane.

00:14:23.000 Yay, dead baby! 1.00

00:14:24.000 Justice for Jane. 0.99

00:14:25.000 This is one movement that I've seen on the left that really is quite horrifying.

00:14:30.000 This idea that abortion is not something to be ashamed of or to be morally conflicted about, it's something to celebrate.

00:14:36.000 That her obtaining an abortion is a victory for justice in the United States. 0.51

00:14:40.000 Certainly not justice for the baby.

00:14:42.000 Okay, a baby at 16 weeks is about the size of an avocado.

00:14:45.000 It's 4 1⁄2 inches long, head to rump, about 3 1⁄2 ounces.

00:14:47.000 The legs are developed.

00:14:48.000 The head is more erect.

00:14:49.000 They've started growing toenails.

00:14:51.000 The heart is pumping about 25 quarts of blood every day.

00:14:53.000 Okay, a baby has an independent blood type, has an independent DNA.

00:14:57.000 You saw the picture.

00:14:58.000 I mean, the baby's a baby.

00:14:59.000 But the left celebrates nonetheless.

00:15:01.000 Treating the U.S.

00:15:02.000 as an abortion haven should be something of which we are deeply ashamed.

00:15:06.000 And the idea that you come to the United States and therefore you have a right to an abortion, and even if you're here illegally, is pretty astonishing to me and should be astonishing, I think, to a lot of other folks.

00:15:17.000 Now I want to get to the topic that has preoccupied me this morning.

00:15:21.000 There's an article over the Daily Beast that I find quite fascinating about the future of the Republican Party in the aftermath of Jeff Flake, in the aftermath of Bob Corker, in the aftermath of all of these people who are leaving the Republican Party or retiring or suggesting that it's the end of the Republican Party and all the rest of it.

00:15:40.000 One of the theories that has been out there is that Steve Bannon and Donald Trump are now solely in charge of the Republican Party, and that these people cannot be stopped.

00:15:50.000 That basically, they run the place.

00:15:52.000 So Sam Stein, Asawin Soobsang, I think that's how it's pronounced, and Lachlan Markey have an article today out of the Daily Beast, and it says, Establishment Republicans agree. 1.00

00:16:02.000 Steve Bannon is kicking our ass. 0.98

00:16:04.000 So far this cycle, even his critics concede he's encountered light pushback. 0.99

00:16:06.000 And then Rick Wilson, who is an anti-Trump GOP strategist,

00:16:34.000 He compared Bannon to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, which is a wild overstatement.

00:16:39.000 They say he's funded by billionaires.

00:16:40.000 He has a shallow, catchy message that appeals to marginally educated fanatics and the like.

00:16:45.000 And the idea here is that Bannon is now the force inside the Republican Party.

00:16:49.000 That if you oppose Trump, you cannot survive on anything.

00:16:52.000 Not just you oppose him generally, you oppose him on any issue, you will not survive and Bannon will lead the charge.

00:16:58.000 So I'm trying to break down this theory because I'm trying to see what exactly is true and what is not here.

00:17:05.000 Number one, there seems to be an idea out here that philosophical Bannonism and philosophical Trumpism are on the rise.

00:17:10.000 This is the nationalist populist movement we've heard so much about that says that we have to close all our borders and we can't engage in trade anymore and that immigrants are not welcome here anymore and that we ought to spend enormous amounts of money on public works projects and all of this, right?

00:17:23.000 This is the nationalist populist sort of far-right European movement and this is what's on the rise in the United States, we are told.

00:17:29.000 I do not see the evidence of that.

00:17:31.000 I don't see the evidence of that.

00:17:33.000 The reason I don't see the evidence of that is there's a poll that's out today from Pew Research Center, and they do a political typology looking at fishers on the right.

00:17:45.000 And they break down conservatives into several different groups.

00:17:49.000 They're core conservatives, country-first conservatives, market-skeptic Republicans, and new-era enterprisers.

00:17:57.000 So core conservatives are basically described as people

00:18:01.000 Who believe that the future of the country is bright and that involvement in global economy is good because it provides the U.S.

00:18:07.000 with new markets and opportunities for growth.

00:18:10.000 And they believe that immigration is generally good because it's providing more people for the economy to work with.

00:18:15.000 And they believe that the government has already done enough on environmental regulations.

00:18:19.000 And they believe that the United States has basically achieved racial parity, at least in terms of law.

00:18:23.000 You know, this is sort of the core conservative message.

00:18:25.000 That by far represents the largest share of politically engaged Republicans.

00:18:30.000 43% of politically engaged Republicans are core conservatives.

00:18:32.000 I am a core conservative.

00:18:33.000 I know because they have a little quiz over at Pew Research, and you can tell which one you are.

00:18:38.000 I am a core conservative, okay?

00:18:39.000 So I am with the majority, or at least the plurality, of the politically engaged Republicans.

00:18:45.000 Next come what they call the country-first conservatives.

00:18:49.000 These are people who are unhappy with the nation's course, they're highly critical of immigration, and they're wary of U.S.

00:18:53.000 global involvement.

00:18:54.000 So this would be the nationalist populist group.

00:18:56.000 It's a much smaller segment of the base, according to Pew Research, a much smaller segment of the base.

00:19:01.000 Then there's the market skeptic Republicans, and these are people who say banks and financial institutions have a positive effect on the way things are going in the country.

00:19:10.000 So these would be, these are, rather, sorry,

00:19:15.000 The opposite.

00:19:15.000 Most of them say that banks and other financial institutions have a negative effect on the way things are going in the country.

00:19:20.000 So this would be the populists.

00:19:21.000 Okay, this is a very small group.

00:19:22.000 And then finally you have the new era enterprisers, who are sort of open borders, open trade.

00:19:27.000 And they say everything is great, but they also want more regulations of the environment.

00:19:30.000 This would basically be the Jeff Flake wing of the party.

00:19:31.000 So when you break it down, what you see is that by far the largest group, by far the largest group, are people who are the core conservatives.

00:19:39.000 Right?

00:19:40.000 43% of all politically engaged Republicans.

00:19:43.000 And then a much smaller percentage are market-skeptic Republicans, who would be the nationalist populists and country-first conservatives, and then the new-era enterprisers.

00:19:50.000 So where is the shift toward Trump?

00:19:52.000 If the idea was that President Trump was going to be the guy who ushered in a new era of philosophy, or that Bannonism was on the rise, there's not much to actually suggest that's true.

00:20:04.000 There's really not much to suggest that's true.

00:20:06.000 Instead, what it looks like is that core conservatives still are the moving force inside the party, and core conservatives, along with the New Era enterprisers, along with Jeff Flake, would represent 59% of the Republican Party.

00:20:17.000 That is a solid majority.

00:20:19.000 Those numbers really haven't changed.

00:20:21.000 So Trumpism and Bannonism are not a thing.

00:20:23.000 There's no philosophically consistent Trumpism or Bannonism.

00:20:25.000 The other proof of this is the fact that all of the candidates that Bannon himself has approved of don't agree with each other.

00:20:32.000 So there's this idea that Bannon's philosophy is now ascendant in the Republican Party.

00:20:36.000 That's not true.

00:20:37.000 Okay, Roy Moore has very little in common with Danny Tarkanyan, the guy who Bannon has endorsed in the Nevada Senate run.

00:20:43.000 They both have very little in common with Ted Cruz, who apparently Bannon likes.

00:20:47.000 They have very little in common.

00:20:49.000 With Kelly Ward, Roy Moore is sort of more in line with Kelly Ward than Danny Tarkanian is.

00:20:54.000 There's a congressman named Michael Grimm out in New York, who's pretty socially liberal as far as I can see, and Bannon has endorsed him.

00:21:00.000 None of these people have anything in common, right?

00:21:01.000 They're all over the place.

00:21:03.000 So why is Bannon endorsing them?

00:21:04.000 I'll explain in just a second.

00:21:05.000 What this suggests is that Bannonism and Trumpism are not a philosophy driving the Republican Party.

00:21:09.000 This is why I objected to Jeff Flake's analysis yesterday, in which Jeff Flake suggested that it's hard for a pro-free markets, pro-immigration Republican to get elected.

00:21:19.000 That is not true.

00:21:21.000 59% of Republicans agree with that basic principle, according to this Pew poll.

00:21:24.000 So no, that's not true.

00:21:25.000 Okay, so, maybe if it's not the Bannonism as a philosophy or Trumpism as a philosophy driving the future of the Republicans, it's Trump or Bannon themselves.

00:21:34.000 And here again, I disagree.

00:21:35.000 The reason I disagree is because Trump went to war on behalf of Luther Strange in Alabama, and Luther Strange lost.

00:21:41.000 Steve Bannon tried to take credit for Luther Strange losing, but the fact is Luther Strange was going to lose anyway because Roy Moore was the outsider, and Roy Moore was way more well-known than Steve Bannon was in Alabama.

00:21:50.000 Steve Bannon is an afterthought in Alabama.

00:21:52.000 And the fact is that Steve Bannon's Breitbart didn't even back Roy Moore in the original primary in Alabama.

00:21:58.000 They backed Mo Brooks, who finished third.

00:22:00.000 So this idea that Bannon has some sort of outsized influence as a human being, like as a person, like he's the leader of a movement, it's not true.

00:22:06.000 He has a lot of money from the Mercers behind him, but he's not somebody who's actually leading the movement.

00:22:10.000 He's not somebody who's actually crafting the movement around him, and he is the great leader.

00:22:15.000 Again, there's not a lot of evidence to back any of this.

00:22:17.000 There's not a lot of evidence to back any of this.

00:22:20.000 So what exactly is going on?

00:22:23.000 What exactly is going on here?

00:22:25.000 I'll explain in just a second, but first I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at blinds.com.

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00:23:41.000 Okay, so, if it's not that Trumpism and Bannonism are dominant in a sentence, if it's not that Trump himself is the moving force in the Republican Party, or Bannon isn't the moving force in the Republican Party, then what exactly is going on?

00:23:53.000 Why are Trump and Bannon important figures?

00:23:55.000 Why are we even talking about them?

00:23:57.000 Well, I think it has much more to do with attitude than anything else.

00:24:00.000 What exactly unifies all of the candidates that Bannon's endorsing?

00:24:03.000 What exactly unifies all of the candidates that Trump has backed?

00:24:06.000 What unifies the support for Trump?

00:24:07.000 It's all attitude.

00:24:09.000 It's a feeling from Republicans that Republicans have been squishes for too long.

00:24:13.000 That Jeff Flake was a squish.

00:24:14.000 That he was more intent on earning strange new respect from the left than he was on actually fighting for conservative principles.

00:24:21.000 This is why the right is a lot more tolerant of Ben Sasse, who's very anti-Trump, than it is of Jeff Flake.

00:24:26.000 Sasse is widely perceived as somebody who's actually conservative, because he is.

00:24:29.000 He has the third most conservative voting record in the United States Senate.

00:24:32.000 But we're willing to overlook, you know, a lot of his anti-Trump rhetoric, at least Trump supporters are, because he is very conservative and because he's shown that he's willing to fight the left.

00:24:42.000 If you're willing to fight the left, then you can fight Trump too when Trump does something wrong.

00:24:46.000 But if you're not willing to fight the left and it seems like all of your criticism is reserved for Trump, people assume bad motivations.

00:24:52.000 And I think not entirely without cause.

00:24:54.000 Not entirely without cause.

00:24:55.000 The truth is that the Republican Party has been motivated by an anti-establishment anger since 2009.

00:25:01.000 Long before anyone knew about Trump.

00:25:03.000 Long before anyone knew about Bannon.

00:25:05.000 No one cared about Trump.

00:25:05.000 Trump was just some guy who did The Apprentice.

00:25:07.000 And Bannon was just some schmuck who walked around Los Angeles pretending it was important. 0.98

00:25:11.000 Steve Bannon was not a thing in 2009. 0.97

00:25:13.000 In 2009, the movement started to cast out these Republican establishment types who apparently had caved to the Democrats.

00:25:21.000 The Tea Party was launched in opposition to Republican establishment types.

00:25:24.000 Mitch McConnell was already a curse word in 2009-2010 among Republicans.

00:25:29.000 He was.

00:25:29.000 This is just a fact.

00:25:32.000 Dave Brat defeated Eric Cantor in I think it was 2010 specifically because of this.

00:25:38.000 Dave Brat defeated, I want to see when he was elected, so sorry, I guess he was elected in 2014.

00:25:44.000 Dave Brat defeated the incumbent Eric Cantor in 2014

00:25:49.000 In a huge shock, because this had already been a burgeoning movement.

00:25:52.000 Trump wasn't running, Bannon wasn't important at that point.

00:25:55.000 So what exactly happened here?

00:25:57.000 The answer is there's a lot of anger.

00:25:59.000 There's a lot of anger.

00:26:00.000 And some of it is proper, and some of it is correct, but some of it is not.

00:26:05.000 Some of this is, some of this is not.

00:26:07.000 And this is the problem.

00:26:08.000 What is driving the Republican bus right now is the anger.

00:26:11.000 The elephant has always been anger.

00:26:13.000 The elephant in the room has always been anger.

00:26:14.000 Some of that time it's been directed in proper directions against Obamacare, against stimulus packages, against establishment Republicans who are weak.

00:26:21.000 But some of the time, the person who has hopped up atop the elephant is leading the anger elephant in the wrong direction.

00:26:27.000 And the anger elephant is basically willing to go wherever there is the most anger.

00:26:30.000 It feeds off of anger.

00:26:32.000 I wrote a piece this morning based on a George R. R. Martin short story.

00:26:36.000 This George R. R. Martin short story, which I really like, it was a short story called The Monkey Treatment.

00:26:43.000 And the monkey treatment is about this guy named Kenny Dorchester, this obese, fat guy, and he wants to get skinny, and one day in a restaurant he runs into a guy he used to go to basically a Jen and Craig program with named Henry Maroney.

00:26:55.000 And Henry Maroney is looking skinny, he's looking a little bit gaunt, but it looks like he's lost a ton of weight.

00:27:00.000 And so, Kenny Dorchester asks Henry Maroney, where'd you do this?

00:27:03.000 He says, well, there's this place where you can get the monkey treatment.

00:27:06.000 And so, Kenny goes there, and the monkey treatment is exactly what it sounds like.

00:27:11.000 It is literally a monkey.

00:27:13.000 It turns out it's an invisible monkey.

00:27:14.000 It's literally a monkey that jumps on your back, and then whenever you try to eat something, it grabs the food out of your hand and eats it.

00:27:22.000 And over the course of the story, the monkey continues to grow bigger and bigger.

00:27:25.000 It's a horror story.

00:27:26.000 The monkey continues to grow bigger and bigger and bigger until it's this 800-pound gorilla on top of his back.

00:27:31.000 Kenny Dorchester has lost the weight, but now he's basically reduced to nothing but skin and bones.

00:27:37.000 In the very end of the story, he ends up basically throwing himself from the eighth story of a building.

00:27:41.000 He survives by crushing the monkey on his back.

00:27:43.000 And then he goes right back to eating enormous amounts of food.

00:27:46.000 This is the basic idea.

00:27:48.000 The reason that I cite this story is because I think that's sort of what the anger monkey has become on the right.

00:27:54.000 I've said for many years that I think one of the problems with anger is that anger has to be properly directed.

00:27:59.000 Righteous indignation is a useful thing.

00:28:01.000 And righteous indignation is something worthwhile.

00:28:03.000 Andrew Breitbart wrote a book by that name.

00:28:05.000 Being indignant, being angry because something has angered you is worthwhile, if it has a specific target.

00:28:10.000 But what is not worthwhile, what is not useful, is this misdirected anger at anything and everything, and whoever seems the angriest, whoever projects anger the best, becomes your ally.

00:28:21.000 I don't know.

00:28:37.000 If Bannon goes up against the Anger Elephant, the Anger Elephant wins, which is exactly what happened in Alabama.

00:28:41.000 If Bannon goes up against the Anger Elephant, the Anger Elephant wins.

00:28:44.000 Bannon does have a gift, and so does Trump, for channeling the Anger Elephant, but they are not in charge of the Anger Elephant any more than the rider is in charge of the elephant if the elephant really wants to buck him.

00:28:53.000 The biggest problem for conservative Republicans who oppose Trump is that they have to acknowledge that a lot of the anger is justified and then they have to channel that anger in positive directions.

00:29:02.000 They can't just say all anger is wrong because that's not true and they can't just say all anger is right because that's not true either.

00:29:08.000 They have to say some anger is right and some anger is wrong and here's how I propose channeling our outrage and here's why the outrage is justified.

00:29:14.000 The outrage is justified when you're talking about things against which it's justified.

00:29:18.000 It is not justified just as a generalized sense of grievance.

00:29:22.000 And if we don't realize that, then the anger is going to take over the party and destroy the party.

00:29:25.000 The anger is going to reduce conservatism.

00:29:28.000 This is how Republicans treated anger.

00:29:30.000 In 2009, we felt like the Republican Party was fat, it was morbidly obese, it was lazy, it didn't fight, and so we took the anger monkey and we put it right on the back of the obese Republican Party. 0.58

00:29:41.000 And the anger monkey immediately started eating all of the goods. 0.98

00:29:45.000 And that was good for a while, right?

00:29:46.000 We were taking away democratic power all across the state legislatures.

00:29:51.000 We were winning 13 governorships.

00:29:52.000 We were winning 1,000 seats across the country.

00:29:55.000 We were winning the House.

00:29:56.000 We were winning the Senate.

00:29:57.000 All of that was good.

00:29:58.000 But there came a point at which we stopped depriving the anger monkey of food, right?

00:30:04.000 We just kept feeding it.

00:30:05.000 And the anger monkey just kept eating.

00:30:06.000 And now we are being reduced to the sad sack of bones, conservatism is at least,

00:30:11.000 When it goes up against the anger monkey.

00:30:12.000 So the anger monkey has to be deprived when the anger monkey is not correct.

00:30:16.000 And that requires us to use our reason and not just our amygdala, okay?

00:30:18.000 Emotional response is not enough anymore at this point.

00:30:21.000 Okay, so I do want to talk at length about the latest on the dossier, the Trump-Russia dossier that people are going nuts over.

00:30:29.000 But first, I have to say goodbye over on Facebook.

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00:31:50.000 So with all this said about the anger monkey, what is the proper angle to take with regard to President Trump?

00:31:55.000 The proper angle to take with regard to President Trump is exactly the same angle that I've used with every other president, and that I used for Trump during the campaign.

00:32:02.000 It is the good Trump, bad Trump model.

00:32:03.000 When Trump does bad things, you criticize him heartily.

00:32:06.000 And when he does good things, you praise him heartily.

00:32:09.000 But I'll tell you two things that you don't do.

00:32:11.000 You don't do the everything Trump has ever done is bad, because that's not true, because that's not how human beings work.

00:32:16.000 And you don't do the everyone should just shut up and ignore what Trump is doing, because that's not right either.

00:32:20.000 When Trump does something wrong, then he should be hit for it.

00:32:22.000 So here are the two things you should not do.

00:32:24.000 The first is Jeff Flake basically saying, despairing of the party, I can't win a primary because I'm too anti-Trump, because I am too glorious, too wonderful.

00:32:31.000 The reason Jeff Flake can't win a primary is because he's perceived as an establishment squish because he moved to the left upon being elected to the Senate and then he spent the rest of his time bashing Trump without ever once lifting a finger against the left.

00:32:42.000 And so people perceived him as a squish but that's not the way he's gonna play it.

00:32:45.000 Well the bottom line is if I were to run a campaign that I could be proud of

00:32:49.000 And where I didn't have to cozy up to the president and his positions or his behavior, I could not win in a Republican primary.

00:32:58.000 That's the bottom line.

00:33:00.000 It's not that you have to just be with the president on policy.

00:33:04.000 You can't question his behavior and still be a Republican in good standing, apparently, in a Republican primary.

00:33:13.000 I don't see the evidence for that at all.

00:33:14.000 I really don't.

00:33:15.000 Jeff Flake was, again, really unpopular.

00:33:17.000 He was down to 18% approval rating.

00:33:19.000 He was really unpopular upon being elected.

00:33:21.000 So that's just not factually accurate.

00:33:22.000 But this idea that the Republican Party has to be thrown under the bus in order to save Trump, that's something Trump wants you to believe and it's something Jeff Flake wants you to believe.

00:33:30.000 I don't think it's something that's true.

00:33:31.000 The other thing you shouldn't do is what Ted Cruz did here.

00:33:33.000 I like Senator Cruz.

00:33:34.000 But when Ted Cruz says, you know, everybody in Congress should just shut up and stop talking about Trump.

00:33:39.000 We've got a job to do.

00:33:41.000 When Trump says bad things, you have to speak out because you still have moral credibility on your own, right?

00:33:46.000 You're still an individual with the capacity to say when bad things happen, regardless from whom these bad things spring.

00:33:52.000 Here's Cruz making this point.

00:33:54.000 Well, look, I think everybody should stop.

00:33:57.000 Bickering and engaging in just personal attacks.

00:34:00.000 I think we should focus on doing our job.

00:34:03.000 That's what my focus is.

00:34:04.000 I'll tell you every day, walking down the hall of the Capitol, that there is a swarm of reporters like Locust that stands on me.

00:34:12.000 And they want to comment on, so-and-so said this, so-and-so said this, and it's like you're back in junior high.

00:34:18.000 I really don't care who passed a note to the cute girls in pigtails. 0.99

00:34:23.000 We got a job to do, damn it. 0.99

00:34:25.000 And so all of this nonsense 0.99

00:34:27.000 I got nothing to say on it. 0.97

00:34:28.000 Everyone shut up and do your job. 0.88

00:34:30.000 Okay, well, you should have something to say when the nonsense actually impacts policy. 0.98

00:34:33.000 There are some times when it's just Trump mouthing off about Bob Corker or something.

00:34:37.000 And they're, you know, like, really, that's between them.

00:34:39.000 But when Trump says stuff that's actually egregious, when he attacks a gold star widow, for example.

00:34:44.000 Then you should sound off, and if you're not sounding off, I think you're doing something wrong just from a moral point of view.

00:34:49.000 I don't think the Republican Party opposes that.

00:34:50.000 I don't think most conservatives oppose that.

00:34:52.000 I think most conservatives just want to know that you're not more interested in tearing down Trump than you are in fighting the left.

00:34:58.000 That's all most conservatives want to know.

00:35:00.000 That's all.

00:35:01.000 And if you're willing to do that, I think you win a primary.

00:35:03.000 But if you are more concerned with tearing down Trump personally than you are with fighting bad stuff wherever you see it, whether it's the left or Trump, then I think that it's going to be hard for you to buy credibility in a Republican primary.

00:35:14.000 Okay, so, in other news, an FEC complaint has now been filed against the Hillary Clinton campaign.

00:35:19.000 This is according to Mediaite.

00:35:22.000 The DNC and Hillary Clinton's campaign violated campaign finance laws by failing to accurately disclose payments related to the so-called Trump dossier, the nonpartisan campaign legal center said in a complaint filed today with the Federal Election Commission.

00:35:34.000 According to recent reports in the media, Mark Elias, who also serves as the Clinton campaign lawyer, paid OPPO research firm Fusion GPS to produce the dossier, which exposed alleged connections between Trump and the Russian government.

00:35:44.000 It also contained salacious allegations about Trump's personal escapades.

00:35:48.000 There are a couple issues that still have to be resolved, as I said yesterday, about the Trump dossier in order for Hillary and her team to have done anything deeply wrong.

00:35:55.000 Number one, you can pay for OPPO research.

00:35:58.000 Number one, you can pay for OPPO research.

00:36:01.000 People do it all the time.

00:36:03.000 There are two questions.

00:36:04.000 One, why did they lie about it?

00:36:06.000 Why did Mark Elias say that they had nothing to do with paying for the OPPO research?

00:36:10.000 Number two,

00:36:11.000 Did Hillary Clinton or people on her team know that Christopher Steele was being funneled information by members of the Russian government?

00:36:17.000 The dossier itself contains all of this, okay?

00:36:20.000 The dossier itself.

00:36:21.000 Byron York points this out.

00:36:23.000 So this does raise questions as to whether Christopher Steele was basically acting as go-between for Russian intel that was trying to dig up dirt on Trump and then pass it through the election system in an attempt to screw up the election system.

00:36:48.000 If Hillary knew that was the case, then it looks a lot more like the Donald Trump Jr. 0.99

00:36:51.000 situation, right?

00:36:52.000 The Donald Trump Jr.

00:36:53.000 situation was, somebody emailed him, said, I have a lawyer from the Russian government who wants to talk to you because Russia wants to help, and Trump Jr.

00:36:58.000 says, sounds great, maybe they have OPPO.

00:37:00.000 That was basically the story.

00:37:01.000 And it turns out the OPPO didn't pass hands, nothing may have come of it, but it showed Trump Jr.'

00:37:06.000 's willingness to work with members, people who are close to the Russian government in order to do this.

00:37:11.000 It is possible that's what happened here if Christopher Steele was working with the Russian government to come up with this information.

00:37:17.000 We don't know that, and we don't know that Hillary Clinton knew that was true, even if she knew the dossier existed.

00:37:22.000 So those are questions that still have to be answered, but the idea that there was some sort of collusion on the other side going on is not as implausible as it was four days ago.

00:37:31.000 Let's put it this way.

00:37:32.000 And Trump makes exactly that point.

00:37:34.000 Here is President Trump saying, the hoax is all turned around now.

00:37:37.000 They lost it by a lot.

00:37:39.000 They didn't know what to say, so they made up the whole Russia hoax.

00:37:44.000 Now it's turning out that the hoax has turned around, and you look at what's happened with Russia, and you look at the uranium deal, and you look at the fake dossier, so that's all turned around.

00:37:56.000 Okay, so one of the big questions here is whether it discredits the entire dossier, that some of these allegations that were in the dossier were false, or whether some of the allegations were true.

00:38:04.000 The reason that's important is because the FBI investigation is at least in part predicated on some of the allegations inside the Steele dossier.

00:38:10.000 Apparently some of them have actually been confirmed, meetings between Trump officials and Russian sources, for example.

00:38:17.000 Most of them have not, right?

00:38:18.000 Like the pee tape. 0.97

00:38:19.000 The idea that Trump, there was tape of Trump hiring prostitutes to pee on a bed that Obama and his wife slept on in Moscow or something. 0.95

00:38:26.000 But even people on the left are beginning to recognize that this is a problem for Hillary Clinton. 0.99

00:38:31.000 A New York Times reporter named Nick Confessori, he said yesterday, openly, that this situation looks sort of like the reverse of the Trump Jr.

00:38:38.000 Russia meeting.

00:38:38.000 Donald Trump Jr.

00:38:39.000 and another campaign official's meeting with the Kremlin-connected Russian attorney.

00:38:45.000 We've been reporting on that, ostensibly to gather dirt on Hillary Clinton.

00:38:51.000 How is this different from that?

00:38:55.000 It's kind of a mirror image, and look, you know, parties engage in opposition research all the time.

00:39:01.000 Admittedly, this is an extreme example to hire a former intelligence agency, but these firms like Fusion GPS are

00:39:09.000 There is a market for them.

00:39:10.000 Companies and trade associations pay them for this research.

00:39:13.000 Sometimes campaigns perform this kind of research on their own.

00:39:17.000 I've gotten plenty of research documents from the RNC under President Trump, and I've gotten research documents from the DNC under Tom Perez.

00:39:25.000 Right, so the only question of separation, people are trying to say that it's exactly like the Trump Jr.

00:39:28.000 thing.

00:39:29.000 The question of separation is, did the Hillary Clinton campaign know that the information was coming from the Russian government?

00:39:36.000 Did Steele know the information was coming from the Russian government and is therefore compromised?

00:39:40.000 Did the FBI know all of that?

00:39:41.000 If all those parties knew, then you can actually make the case that there was some sort of collusion going on with the Russian government.

00:39:46.000 If you can't, then you're saying that without any basis in evidence.

00:39:48.000 So all I'm suggesting is that we be objective about how we view the situation, what the evidence says, and what the evidence does not.

00:39:54.000 Where Trump is on more solid ground is where he continues to rip on Hillary Clinton and the Obama DOJ and FBI for allowing the uranium sale to Rosatom in 2010.

00:40:06.000 This was, of course, the scandal in which Hillary Clinton was the head of the State Department, the State Department gave the green light. 0.99

00:40:11.000 Here's Trump going off on that yesterday.

00:40:27.000 Well, I think the uranium sale to Russia and the way it was done, so underhanded, with tremendous amounts of money being passed, I actually think that's Watergate modern age.

00:40:40.000 He may be right.

00:40:40.000 I mean, it is not good.

00:40:42.000 I don't really like the Watergate comparison, generally, because there is actual evidence and hard proof, but it's not great stuff.

00:40:50.000 Now, it is also worth noting that everyone's hands look a little bit dirty here.

00:40:53.000 There's a story out today that Trump's data guru from Cambridge Analytica was reaching out actively to the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

00:41:01.000 WikiLeaks is largely assumed to be a Russian cutout for help in locating and publicizing 33,000 missing emails from Hillary's private server.

00:41:08.000 Again, this demonstrates willingness by Trump officials to reach out to people connected with Russia for information.

00:41:13.000 So all of this is dirty.

00:41:15.000 All of this is ugly.

00:41:16.000 The question is going to be how much of it broke the law and how much of it amounts to actual collusion with a foreign government that has interests that are opposite to those of the United States.

00:41:24.000 Okay, time for some things I like, things I hate, and then a very brief, big idea.

00:41:28.000 So, things I like today.

00:41:29.000 So, as I said, over my vacation I read War and Peace.

00:41:33.000 It took a while.

00:41:34.000 It was long.

00:41:35.000 It is quite good.

00:41:36.000 I was rereading an essay that my father showed me yesterday from Commentary magazine, I'm trying to remember the author of the essay, on Anna Karenina.

00:41:43.000 We're good to go.

00:42:06.000 13.

00:42:07.000 And it is, I loved it then, I love it now.

00:42:11.000 Levin, who is one of the main characters of the book, he's sort of a secondary character in a certain sense, because Anna Karenina's kind of love triangle with her husband and Vronsky is the main part of the book, but Levin and his falling in love with the Marion Kitty presents the other part of the book.

00:42:27.000 Levin's

00:42:28.000 Discovery of why life is, at the end of the book, is one of the great uplifting passages in all of world literature.

00:42:34.000 Tolstoy is always more uplifting than Dostoevsky.

00:42:37.000 Dostoevsky is much more about looking at the fact that all of us are fallen creatures and can fall, and Tolstoy is about the fact that all of us have the possibility for uplift.

00:42:47.000 And there's sort of two sides of the same coin in that sense.

00:42:50.000 Tolstoy was a very conservative guy in certain ways, and when you read his books, which are largely about

00:42:55.000 We're good to go.

00:43:25.000 That's it.

00:43:26.000 Too often.

00:43:26.000 Okay, time for some things that I hate.

00:43:32.000 So the thing I hate today is the use of Ivy League College to associate, to dismiss everything.

00:43:38.000 So yesterday, President Trump was being, you know, it was suggested that he was uncivil, that he was unkind and uncivil.

00:43:45.000 And so President Trump responded this way.

00:44:05.000 I'm pretty sure that Trump creates his own image.

00:44:08.000 I mean, he's one of the most gifted image makers in the history of American life.

00:44:12.000 But the idea, this in and of itself demonstrates a certain lack of class.

00:44:17.000 If you think civility is connected to intelligence, you know nothing either about civility or intelligence.

00:44:22.000 Really, if you think civility, class, decency, these things are connected to intelligence, let me introduce you to all the people that I went to school with.

00:44:28.000 Okay, there are a lot of people who I went to school with with very high IQs.

00:44:31.000 I went to a junior high magnet school where you had to have an IQ above, you know, quote-unquote genius level IQ.

00:44:37.000 They gave you a basic IQ test to get into this magnet school.

00:44:40.000 And I was at the very low end of getting in.

00:44:42.000 And so there were people there with IQs of 180.

00:44:44.000 There were people there with IQs of 170.

00:44:47.000 And I remember thinking, half these people are going to end up in prison.

00:44:53.000 And sure enough, it turns out that some of them are actually in prison.

00:44:56.000 I can name a couple of them off the top of my head.

00:44:58.000 The reason being that intelligence and decency are not always aligned. 0.97

00:45:02.000 And so for Trump to respond to a question about civility and decency by saying, I went to an Ivy League college, is pretty ridiculous.

00:45:07.000 Also, by the way, intelligent people don't have to go around on a daily basis expressing that they are very smart people.

00:45:13.000 That's just not something that they have to do generally.

00:45:15.000 I know because I hang out with a lot of very intelligent people all the time.

00:45:19.000 But this is Trump's shtick.

00:45:20.000 I'm not going to fault him too much on that because this is his deal.

00:45:23.000 He also said yesterday he has one of the great memories of all time.

00:45:26.000 Really, this is what he said.

00:45:28.000 I was born with a certain intellect.

00:45:29.000 The fact is, you have to be born and blessed with something up here.

00:45:34.000 God helped me by giving me a certain brain.

00:45:36.000 It's this.

00:45:37.000 It's not my salesmanship.

00:45:39.000 It's what?

00:45:40.000 This.

00:45:40.000 You know what that is?

00:45:41.000 It's the brain power.

00:45:43.000 I have Ivy League education.

00:45:44.000 Smart guy.

00:45:45.000 I have, like, a very, very high aptitude.

00:45:47.000 I'm pretty good at English.

00:45:48.000 I always did very nicely in English.

00:45:50.000 I mean, like, I'm a smart person.

00:45:52.000 I'm very good at English.

00:45:53.000 Okay, again, this isn't going to turn into a riff on Donald Trump's intelligence level.

00:45:58.000 Suffice it to say, I think his own opinion of his IQ is probably inflated, but he said he has one of the great memories of all time.

00:46:04.000 Again, just showing once again that intelligence and decency are not always aligned.

00:46:11.000 Okay, time for the big idea.

00:46:12.000 So the big idea today...

00:46:15.000 By the way, that was not, again, that's not a specific group on Trump.

00:46:16.000 There are people on the left who think the same thing.

00:46:18.000 They think that because they live in big cities and they're very smart, that this therefore confers some sort of decency on them.

00:46:23.000 They're better people because of this.

00:46:25.000 No.

00:46:25.000 Being a decent person means acting decently, not being smart and reading a lot of Nabokov.

00:46:30.000 Okay.

00:46:30.000 The big idea today, very quickly, people have been using the term trickle-down economics a lot in the media recently.

00:46:36.000 That's because of the tax cuts that have been proposed, the idea that people at the top of the spectrum are going to get

00:46:41.000 A lot more of their money back than people at the bottom of the spectrum, which makes sense, because they're paying a lot more of their money into the government.

00:46:46.000 And they say, this is trickle-down economics.

00:46:48.000 And what do you think?

00:46:49.000 That those rich people are just going to trickle that money down to other people?

00:46:52.000 No.

00:46:52.000 Trickle-down economics is a term that was not coined by the right.

00:46:54.000 It's a term coined by the left.

00:46:56.000 The idea here is that the people at the top of the income spectrum are the people most likely to invest in new products and services.

00:47:02.000 Why?

00:47:02.000 Because they don't have to worry about that extra income going toward feeding their families.

00:47:06.000 If you have an excess of capital, that excess of capital either goes into a bank, or it is lent out by the bank

00:47:11.000 at risk to other places that are innovating, or the rich people go and spend that money on new innovations that make your life better.

00:47:19.000 People who are, as I've said many, many times, the person who's earning $40,000 a year and gets back $800, that's great.

00:47:25.000 That's terrific.

00:47:25.000 But that $800 is not going to create an iPhone.

00:47:28.000 Apple, getting its money back, is going to create an iPhone.

00:47:32.000 And the reason for that is because excess capital means investment in new products.

00:47:36.000 And the greater the concentration of excess capital, the greater the possibility of that.

00:47:42.000 You know, the idea is not to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich, or from the rich to the poor.

00:47:48.000 The point is that everybody should be able to invest in the products they see fit, but the products that require the most research and the most time and expenditure are the ones that are going to change the most lives.

00:47:55.000 And so the idea that trickle-down economics is about some rich guy spending on a yacht, that's not really the suggestion.

00:48:01.000 The suggestion instead is that rich people, having more of their own money back, are likely to put it into a bank which will lend it out to other business projects, or they're more likely to invest it in up-and-coming business projects because they don't have to put dinner

00:48:12.000 Okay.

00:48:14.000 We'll be back here tomorrow for The Mailbag.

00:48:15.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:48:16.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

The Ben Shapiro Show - October 26, 2017

Is Everything Sexual Assault Now? | Ep. 404

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