The Ben Shapiro Show - It’s Bernie’s Party Now | Ep. 410

00:00:00.000 Sergeant Beau Bergdahl goes free in breaking news.

00:00:03.000 Plus, Hillary Clinton basically just gave up the Democratic Party to Bernie Sanders, and we'll check the mailbag.

00:00:07.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

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

00:00:14.000 All righty, so breaking news.

00:00:16.000 Sergeant Bo Bergdahl, the guy who just pled guilty to both desertion and misbehavior before the enemy and could have received life in prison, instead goes free.

00:00:24.000 He received zero prison time.

00:00:25.000 I'll explain just how outrageous this is, plus some comments from the judge that are nearly as outrageous in just a second.

00:00:31.000 First,

00:00:32.000 I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Birch Gold.

00:00:34.000 So, right now the economy seems to be doing really well.

00:00:37.000 There's a new economic report out today that shows unemployment is down to 4.1%.

00:00:40.000 The stock market continues to rise.

00:00:42.000 But, the question is going to be, what happens when the bubble bursts?

00:00:45.000 Because the bubble inevitably bursts.

00:00:47.000 Every 8 to 10 years.

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00:00:51.000 The last one was in 2007, so it's been just a little while.

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00:01:52.000 Okay, so the breaking news is that Bo Bergdahl, Sergeant Bo Bergdahl, who, as you recall, was treated as a hero by the Obama administration, was actually a traitor, or at the very least a deserter.

00:02:03.000 He deserted his post while he was in Afghanistan.

00:02:05.000 His fellow soldiers, some of whom I know and have met, some of them have told me that he was a weirdo before that.

00:02:12.000 He wandered off and wandered directly into the hands of the Taliban. 0.85

00:02:16.000 He says he wasn't trying to join the Taliban.

00:02:18.000 Whatever he was trying to do, they ended up basically capturing him and keeping him in captivity for several years.

00:02:23.000 President Obama then traded five Gitmo terrorists

00:02:26.000 We're good to go.

00:02:45.000 That's according to Mark Thompson over at Time Magazine in 2014.

00:02:48.000 He wrote then, According to Politico today, the Associated Press, A military judge has found that Bill Bergdahl should serve no prison time.

00:03:14.000 Zero prison time for endangering his comrades by walking off his Afghanistan post.

00:03:19.000 The judge also gave Bergdahl a dishonorable discharge, reduced his rank to private, said he must forfeit pay equal to $1,000 per month for 10 months.

00:03:26.000 A $10,000 fine for getting six American soldiers killed because you walked off duty.

00:03:30.000 Really?

00:03:30.000 Okay, desertion used to be punishable by trea- it used to be treated like treason, right?

00:03:34.000 Life in prison or you're taken in front of a firing squad.

00:03:36.000 You get your fellow soldiers killed because you decide to wander off your post and join the Taliban, or at least go and hang out with them, and you don't get any prison time at all? 0.56

00:03:44.000 They just bust you down to private and take away some money?

00:03:47.000 According to Politico,

00:03:49.000 Prosecutors have sought stiff punishments because of wounds to service members who searched for Bergdahl after he disappeared in 2009.

00:03:55.000 Some of those wounds are really grievous.

00:03:56.000 There's a guy in a wheelchair because of Bergdahl.

00:03:58.000 The defense sought to counter that evidence with testimony about Bergdahl's suffering during his five years as a captive of Taliban allies, his contributions to military intelligence and survival instruction, and his mental health problems.

00:04:08.000 Bergdahl was 23 years old when, after five months in Afghanistan, he disappeared from his remote infantry post near the Pakistan border, triggering a massive search operation.

00:04:16.000 And then he showed up in the hands of the Taliban.

00:04:19.000 And, of course, in May 2014, he was handed over to U.S.

00:04:22.000 Special Forces in a swap with the Taliban.

00:04:24.000 Here's what's most outrageous about this.

00:04:26.000 What's most outrageous about this was pointed out by Jon Podhoretz over at Commentary magazine.

00:04:30.000 This is just a few days ago.

00:04:31.000 The New York Times reported, quote,

00:04:33.000 The judge in this case, a guy named Colonel Jeffrey Nance, said, quote, Okay, mitigation evidence.

00:04:41.000 I mean, that's insane.

00:04:46.000 So basically, what the defense was trying to say is they were trying to say that Trump was making statements about the case.

00:04:53.000 And they talked about how Trump had made numerous statements during the nomination and in the general election about Bo Bergdahl, and the accused then pled guilty.

00:05:03.000 And then he held a press conference on October 16, 2017, and he said, I can't comment on Bo Bergdahl because I guess he's doing something today, but they're sending up sentencing, so I'm not going to comment on him, but I think people have heard my comments in the past.

00:05:15.000 The defense immediately filed for dismissal saying that Trump had biased the case beyond measure and therefore they should release Bergdahl.

00:05:22.000 The judge said, I'm not going to release Bergdahl based on that, but I will be taking this into account.

00:05:27.000 Right?

00:05:27.000 He said that he would take into account as mitigation evidence what Trump had said.

00:05:33.000 And pretty, pretty ridiculous. 0.76

00:05:48.000 It was a statement regarding military justice and it said quote, 0.88

00:06:14.000 Right, and so the judge said he wasn't going to take this into account, but he did take it into account.

00:06:19.000 It looks a lot like the judge basically said, I'm not going to release Bergdahl because Trump did this, but I'll kind of release Bergdahl because Trump did this.

00:06:26.000 At least that seems to be the implication here.

00:06:29.000 Pretty horrifying stuff.

00:06:30.000 Bergdahl, no doubt, will be treated as a hero by the left in exactly the same way that Chelsea Manning has been treated as a hero by the left.

00:06:36.000 Anyone who turns against the U.S.

00:06:38.000 military is treated, at least by a segment of the left, I don't say the whole left, by a segment of the more extreme left as somebody who has done something worth celebrating.

00:06:46.000 And Bo Bergdahl will, I'm sure, get a large contract from some book company in order to tell his story, while the people who were shot and wounded or killed searching for him end up, you know, with nothing.

00:06:57.000 Just insane, disgusting stuff. 0.71

00:06:59.000 Okay, well. 0.74

00:07:00.000 Meanwhile, the Democrats are in complete disarray.

00:07:03.000 One thing that is very clear is that Bernie Sanders now runs the Democratic Party.

00:07:06.000 Bernie Sanders is the king of the Democratic Party.

00:07:08.000 He lost the battle, but he won the war.

00:07:10.000 He lost in 2016, but he won the war.

00:07:12.000 Because now, every Democrat goes on bended knee to pay homage to Bernie Sanders.

00:07:16.000 All of his agenda items must be treated with respect.

00:07:20.000 When he talks about Medicare for all, you have people like Elizabeth Warren and people like Cory Booker and people like Kamala Harris all paying homage to Bernie Sanders' priorities.

00:07:28.000 It's amazing how a loon bag old socialist who's never passed a serious piece of legislation in his life was kicked out of a commune in the 1970s for being too useless for a commune. 0.57

00:07:37.000 That guy is now the leader of the Democratic Party. 0.89

00:07:40.000 Yeah, it's no more absurd, certainly, than Donald Trump being the leader of the Republican Party.

00:07:44.000 But it does demonstrate the loss of faith in the parties themselves have led to the takeover of those parties by outside forces.

00:07:49.000 Sanders is an outside force.

00:07:50.000 Trump is an outside force.

00:07:52.000 And this demonstrates, again, that when you have parties that have lost their way, when you have parties that don't have a reason for existence, they are susceptible to being taken over.

00:08:00.000 It's really obvious now that folks like Elizabeth Warren are crowning Bernie Sanders king, and the only question is what Bernie Sanders is going to do with that.

00:08:07.000 Elizabeth Warren was asked yesterday by Jake Tapper on CNN whether Bernie was robbed in the 2016 election cycle by Hillary Clinton and the DNC.

00:08:15.000 She had said last year that he was not robbed, but now she's switched her tune because obviously everyone must now must now bend before Bernie.

00:08:23.000 This is a test for Tom Perez.

00:08:26.000 And either he's going to succeed by bringing Bernie Sanders and Bernie Sanders' representatives into this process, and they're going to say it's fair, it works, we all believe it, or he's going to fail.

00:08:39.000 And I very much hope he succeeds.

00:08:41.000 I hope for Democrats everywhere.

00:08:43.000 I hope for Bernie and for all of Bernie's supporters that he's going to succeed.

00:08:46.000 Very quickly, Senator, do you agree with the notion that it was rigged?

00:08:50.000 Yes.

00:08:51.000 Okay, so suddenly she agrees with the notion that it was rigged.

00:08:54.000 Funny how that works, right?

00:08:55.000 Five seconds ago, five seconds ago, she was saying it wasn't rigged.

00:08:58.000 Now she's saying it's rigged.

00:08:59.000 Does that sound honest to you?

00:09:01.000 Or does that sound like playing political games?

00:09:03.000 Does that sound like she knows that Bernie Sanders is the power inside the party, this loon-bag old septuagenarian socialist from Vermont? 0.97

00:09:10.000 That guy, the guy who you can find recordings of singing, this land is your land, this land is my land, in his crazy voice. 0.87

00:09:16.000 Really, it's worth watching.

00:09:18.000 We'll have to pull it at some point.

00:09:19.000 That guy now runs the Democratic Party.

00:09:20.000 So the question becomes this.

00:09:22.000 Is Bernie Sanders going to actually run for president again in 2020? 0.98

00:09:27.000 I think he would be a fool not to.

00:09:28.000 I think that if he ran in 2020, he'd win the nomination, and he would likely win the presidency. 0.99

00:09:33.000 Truly.

00:09:34.000 I think that is a very high possibility.

00:09:36.000 Now, he also has the possibility that he could sit outside and just become the patron to the Democratic Party.

00:09:41.000 He could sit outside, he could campaign for all the candidates, he could make them come to him.

00:09:46.000 That may be his best move in certain ways because then he gets to be the leader of a movement as opposed to the guy who's expected to actually implement. 0.96

00:09:52.000 And Bernie's not going to be able to implement a damn thing.

00:09:53.000 I mean, Bernie doesn't have the power, he doesn't have the support of legislators in order to do all of this, but if he just sits outside and he talks about all of his socialist priorities and Democrats mirror his socialist priorities, he can actually pose more of a threat from the outside than he does from the inside. 0.65

00:10:09.000 But it is very clear that the DNC is moving in Bernie's direction.

00:10:11.000 Tom Perez, who took over the DNC from Donna Brazile.

00:10:14.000 We talked about Donna Brazile yesterday.

00:10:15.000 The reason all this is coming up is because Donna Brazile has a new book where she says Hillary Clinton took over the Democratic Party wholesale in August of 2015, long before she was the nominee.

00:10:23.000 Now Perez runs the party and he's just trying to keep his head down saying we're going to move forward.

00:10:27.000 What he means by move forward is follow Bernie down the primrose path here.

00:10:31.000 Well, hey, we're moving forward.

00:10:32.000 We're building, you know, I've been asked that question a number of times since I started.

00:10:36.000 And one of my goals here as the DNC chair is to make sure that the nominating process for 2020 is a process that's totally fair and transparent for everybody.

00:10:46.000 That's what we're fighting for.

00:10:47.000 That's what we will do.

00:10:49.000 And we're going to set the primary debate schedule well in advance of when we know who the candidates will be there.

00:10:57.000 We have to make sure that everything is fair and open.

00:11:00.000 Everybody has a fair shake.

00:11:02.000 Okay, so obviously he's now paying lip service to Bernie Sanders amid all of this.

00:11:07.000 One of the points that's worth making here is it really is fascinating how the 2016 election played out in light of the fact that Hillary Clinton was picking up all of Barack Obama's bills at the DNC.

00:11:15.000 One thing that Donna Brazile said in that piece is that Barack Obama had run up $24 million in debt against the DNC, and then Hillary Clinton came in and backfilled that debt.

00:11:24.000 Well, maybe that was one of the reasons why Barack Obama kept saying to Joe Biden he wasn't going to endorse him.

00:11:28.000 Because this was one of the questions during the primaries.

00:11:30.000 What if Barack Obama had endorsed Joe Biden?

00:11:33.000 Wouldn't Biden then have beaten Hillary Clinton in the primaries?

00:11:35.000 And nobody could really understand why it was that Joe Biden wasn't getting Obama's endorsement.

00:11:39.000 Obama had talked in warm terms about Biden.

00:11:42.000 He obviously likes Joe Biden a lot.

00:11:43.000 He felt that Joe Biden was a good support for him.

00:11:46.000 And yet he was standing aside and letting Hillary Clinton basically take the lead.

00:11:49.000 It is not unheard of for presidents to endorse their vice presidents during the primary cycle.

00:11:55.000 That is not unheard of at all.

00:11:56.000 In fact, it happens relatively routinely.

00:11:58.000 Obama didn't do that.

00:11:58.000 Maybe one of the reasons he didn't do that is because Hillary Clinton was basically signing the checks for all of his bills.

00:12:03.000 A lot of Obama consultants were still being paid by the DNC with Hillary cash while all of this was going on, which shows how corrupt Obama is if that's the case.

00:12:12.000 Joe Biden, by the way, is probably going to run again in 2020, but now Joe Biden could run into the Bernie Sanders buzzsaw.

00:12:17.000 Biden is still making the rounds talking about Trump tweeting and all the rest of this.

00:12:20.000 Trump had a long tweet storm today about how the DNC is corrupt and how it should be investigated by the FBI and the DOJ.

00:12:27.000 I'll talk about that in just a second.

00:12:28.000 But here is Joe Biden desperately trying to cling to relevance.

00:12:31.000 We've got to stop this tweeting.

00:12:32.000 We've got to stop this sort of... No, it is so... I've tried to stay out of the mosh pit the President and I, Obama and I have.

00:12:43.000 But it's childish.

00:12:45.000 It's time to grow up.

00:12:47.000 Pretty amazing.

00:12:48.000 And so Joe Biden continues to try and maintain his place as a possible 2020 frontrunner.

00:12:53.000 Now, I do want to talk in just a second about why it is that this is a problem for the Democratic Party and why it's going to continue to be a problem for the Democratic Party.

00:13:01.000 Plus, Hillary's corruption still looms as a specter on the horizon and why neither party will let it go in just a second.

00:13:07.000 I also want to talk about Republicans on taxes and a big loophole that they created that's kind of disastrous.

00:13:13.000 First, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at the USCCA.

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00:14:14.000 Okay, so again, Joe Biden versus Bernie Sanders.

00:14:17.000 It's looking like the battle of the walker riding titans.

00:14:21.000 They're just going to beat each other with walkers with tennis balls at the end of them. 0.99

00:14:24.000 And then they'll run against Donald Trump, who will also be in a walker.

00:14:26.000 It'll just be wildly entertaining in 2020.

00:14:29.000 But Joe Biden looks like he will get the short end of the stick.

00:14:31.000 He got it from Hillary last time.

00:14:33.000 Now it looks like he's going to get it from Bernie Sanders.

00:14:35.000 Big problem for the Democratic Party because all of the splits that pre-existed are now going to be exacerbated.

00:14:40.000 Bernie Sanders is not a unifying figure.

00:14:42.000 Bernie Sanders is a very divisive figure inside the Democratic Party.

00:14:45.000 The Hillary wing still thinks she got jobbed. 1.00

00:14:48.000 The Hillary wing still thinks she should be president. 1.00

00:14:50.000 Hillary is still out there defending herself. 0.90

00:14:51.000 The best thing that could happen for the Democratic Party is for Hillary to just disappear. 1.00

00:14:55.000 This is why there's a concerted attempt now to do away with all of the Hillary Clinton people. 1.00

00:15:00.000 Tom Perez, five minutes ago, just fired the top DNC fundraiser claiming that basically this person was involved in the Hillary stuff.

00:15:08.000 They aren't explicitly saying that, but that seems to be the implication, because slow fundraising has plagued the party.

00:15:13.000 Bernie Sanders is the only capable fundraiser in the party anymore, along with Nancy Pelosi.

00:15:17.000 That's it.

00:15:18.000 So the Democrats are now going to fight an internal battle.

00:15:20.000 Hillary continues to cling to her relevance.

00:15:22.000 So you've got Biden clinging to his relevance, Hillary clinging to her relevance, and Bernie Sanders ascendant.

00:15:27.000 Pretty amazing.

00:15:28.000 Here's Hillary Clinton yesterday trying to explain why she didn't collude with Russia, even though she paid millions of dollars, apparently, in order to get a dossier on Donald Trump that involved getting information directly from Russian governmental sources.

00:15:38.000 Okay, so she says that she's going to blame it on the FBI, but that's really not the question here.

00:15:42.000 The question is, why was she paying Russian sources to obtain information on President Trump?

00:15:47.000 And she's not able to shake this.

00:15:48.000 The fact that she continues to be in the public eye is a disaster for Democrats.

00:15:51.000 It is a disaster.

00:15:52.000 It is great for President Trump, however, because President Trump needs Hillary Clinton to be out there.

00:15:57.000 The reason he needs Hillary Clinton to be out there is so long as Hillary Clinton is out there, the specter of Hillary looms large, all the folks who voted for President Trump don't have to consider whether they would vote for him again.

00:16:08.000 Because now it's the same election over and over and over.

00:16:10.000 They can just do the same election over and over in their heads.

00:16:12.000 If you voted for Donald Trump, it's not that he has to do a good job, all you have to do is look on the TV screen, there's Hillary Clinton, and you breathe a sigh of relief.

00:16:18.000 At least we didn't get her.

00:16:19.000 And this is the way people are gauging President Trump's performance at this point.

00:16:22.000 Not by whether he's doing a good job, not by whether he's been successful, not where he's been successful or how he's been successful, but at least he's not that lady.

00:16:29.000 So her continued presence on the national stage

00:16:33.000 The ubiquity of her mug on the television set.

00:16:37.000 Very, very good for President Trump.

00:16:39.000 And Trump jazzes up his bass when he says stuff like this.

00:16:41.000 So Trump told my friend Larry O'Connor over in Washington, D.C.

00:16:45.000 He told Larry that he's very frustrated he can't personally go after Hillary Clinton.

00:16:49.000 The left is going nuts over this.

00:16:51.000 But Trump knows exactly what he's doing when he says it.

00:16:54.000 The saddest thing is that because I'm the President of the United States, I am not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department.

00:17:01.000 I'm not supposed to be involved with the FBI.

00:17:04.000 I'm not supposed to be doing the kind of things that I would love to be doing.

00:17:07.000 And I am very frustrated by it.

00:17:10.000 Okay, so a lot of people on the left went nuts over this.

00:17:12.000 A lot of people on the left suggested that this is President Trump's dictatorial sensibility coming to the fore.

00:17:17.000 He wants to prosecute Hillary Clinton.

00:17:18.000 Let's be very real about this.

00:17:20.000 This is Trump saying he can't do it.

00:17:22.000 Right?

00:17:22.000 This is Trump saying he can't do it.

00:17:23.000 For all of his fulminations on Twitter,

00:17:25.000 What Trump is doing here is certainly no worse than what President Obama did repeatedly with the IRS, where he kept saying that it'd be great if someone would go after these 501c3s, these conservative 501c3s, and then administrators at the IRS got the picture and they went ahead and went after the conservative 501c3s.

00:17:40.000 It's very funny to watch the left, which seriously objects to what Trump is saying publicly,

00:17:45.000 Basically gloss over the IRS scandal and pretend that it never happened.

00:17:48.000 Now listen, I don't think that the president should be telling the FBI what to do.

00:17:52.000 It does require a certain level of independence.

00:17:54.000 He has power over the FBI because he has power over his DOJ.

00:17:56.000 But we don't want the DOJ to simply become an arm of the White House.

00:18:00.000 It was under President Obama.

00:18:02.000 It's not under President Trump.

00:18:03.000 This is something that even the left should acknowledge.

00:18:05.000 Okay, the DOJ under President Trump is not an arm of the White House.

00:18:08.000 It really has not been.

00:18:10.000 Eric Holder was the guy who described himself as Barack Obama's wingman.

00:18:13.000 If you want to talk about perversion of the DOJ to the uses of the White House, it was a lot worse under Obama than it was under Trump.

00:18:19.000 And this is coming from someone who's very skeptical of Trump's perspective on the Constitution and the rule of law.

00:18:24.000 Trump has certainly not used the DOJ as his weapon against political opponents in nearly the way that Democrats use the DOJ as a weapon on behalf of their political allies.

00:18:33.000 That is clearly true.

00:18:34.000 Tucker J. Christian Adams, who's over at the DOJ during the Obama administration, and the DOJ Civil Rights Division, was basically throwing out cases against the Black Panthers, even as the Black Panthers, the new Black Panthers, were wielding nightsticks outside of voting places.

00:18:47.000 The DOJ under Obama was much more wing of the White House than it is under President Trump, so I don't buy a lot of the kind of left-wing outrage that Trump is trying to sick the DOJ and the FBI on Hillary Clinton.

00:18:57.000 If he wanted to do it, he actually has the power to do it, but he is not doing that right now, so the left needs to just calm down.

00:19:04.000 Okay, so in a second I want to talk about the Republican tax plan, then we have the mailbag today.

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00:20:21.000 Okay, so I want to talk a little bit about the Republican tax plan.

00:20:24.000 So yesterday, I ran through some of the things you need to know about the Republican tax plan.

00:20:27.000 What I basically said is, it makes some difference for people in the middle class, it raises taxes a little bit on people who are in the upper bracket, and it definitely lowers taxes on corporate taxes.

00:20:39.000 The corporate tax rate reduction from 35% to 20% is definitely a massive improvement.

00:20:44.000 35% is the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world.

00:20:47.000 So that would be a big move.

00:20:48.000 However, the Republicans, as always,

00:20:51.000 Fail to make their argument.

00:20:52.000 They always buy into left-wing premises, and then they use those to make bad arguments.

00:20:56.000 So, an example today.

00:20:58.000 There's a loophole in the new Republican tax bill.

00:21:01.000 Remember, the Republicans run the House, they run the Senate, they run everything, right?

00:21:05.000 The Republicans run the whole shebang.

00:21:06.000 They don't have to bargain with the Democrats.

00:21:08.000 And yet now, they are basically preemptively bargaining, here is what they did.

00:21:13.000 The new House tax bill doesn't just leave taxes in place for people who earn more than $500,000 and couples earning more than $1 million.

00:21:19.000 It increases taxes by 6% on each dollar earned from $1 million to $1.2 million for single people and $1.2 million to $1.6 million for married couples.

00:21:31.000 So in other words, it actually raises taxes on people who are high income earners.

00:21:35.000 That is designed to make up for the reduction in the lowest tax bracket to 12%.

00:21:39.000 So the low tax bracket is moving down to 12% from something like 25%.

00:21:44.000 As Phil Kirpin has pointed out, this means the effective rate in the bubble is 46%.

00:21:49.000 So if I make between a million bucks and 1.6 million bucks, or between 1.2 and 1.6 million bucks, I'm married, that means that every dollar I earn there, 50% of it will go to the federal government.

00:21:58.000 Almost 50% of it will go to the federal government.

00:22:00.000 Plus, that also means that because this tax bill basically gets rid of the state tax deduction, meaning that California has 10% state income tax,

00:22:09.000 And then there's a business tax in the city of Los Angeles.

00:22:11.000 That means that every dollar that I earn between 1.2 and 1.6 million dollars, that looks more like 60% of my income leaving my pocket in that case, which is an insane amount of money.

00:22:22.000 That's an insane amount of money.

00:22:23.000 Let's just be frank about this.

00:22:24.000 You know, the fact that I have to make a lot of money in order to pay the tax, I'm very grateful for the fact that I make a lot of money.

00:22:30.000 It's my money.

00:22:32.000 It is not the government's money.

00:22:33.000 It is not your money.

00:22:34.000 It is my money.

00:22:35.000 Just as when I was making $60,000 a year, that was my money.

00:22:39.000 I'm the same person.

00:22:40.000 I'm earning the same way.

00:22:41.000 That means that the money is mine.

00:22:43.000 The money is not yours. 1.00

00:22:44.000 Republicans fail to understand this basic point, and so they engage in class warfare in a stupid way. 0.99

00:22:49.000 They're constantly granting the point. 1.00

00:22:51.000 This is the sort of idiotic populism that I keep hearing from people on the right. 0.99

00:22:56.000 They grant the left's point that it is fairer to tax people at the upper end of the income spectrum. 1.00

00:23:01.000 Nonsense.

00:23:02.000 Nonsense.

00:23:03.000 Taking a dollar from someone's pocket without an exchange of services is theft.

00:23:08.000 Okay, the exchange of services in the Constitution is roads, bridges, defense, right, because you have the equal capacity to use these things, but

00:23:17.000 Not for redistributive programs.

00:23:19.000 Not for Social Security.

00:23:20.000 Not for Medicare.

00:23:21.000 Okay, the idea that you get to remove money from my pocket and give me nothing in return just because I'm earning more money than I was five years ago seems to me morally unprincipled.

00:23:30.000 I give lots of charity.

00:23:31.000 That's good.

00:23:32.000 That's on me.

00:23:33.000 But the government seizing money from people's pockets

00:23:36.000 They can do it to me, they can do it to you, and that's exactly what they do in socialistic countries like Denmark.

00:23:40.000 Denmark has low corporate tax rates, by the way, but really high individual tax rates.

00:23:43.000 If they can take 60% of my income between 1.2 and 1.6 mil if I'm lucky enough to make that this year, then they can move that down tax bracket-wise until they're making up this deficit.

00:23:52.000 Because bottom line is, both parties want to blow out the debt.

00:23:55.000 Here's the other thing that Republicans fail.

00:23:57.000 Republicans should make this argument, okay?

00:23:58.000 The reality is,

00:24:00.000 The money in my pocket is better for the economy than the money in the pocket of somebody who is lower on the income spectrum.

00:24:07.000 That is not a rip on the person who's lower on the income spectrum.

00:24:09.000 That person may need the money more than I do.

00:24:11.000 I will freely admit that.

00:24:12.000 But in terms of who pays that person to have a job, it is me.

00:24:16.000 There are a lot of people who are at my company who are making, you know, 60 grand a year, 75 grand a year.

00:24:22.000 There are a lot of people at this company who are earning at the middle class income, in the income bracket.

00:24:28.000 If I'm not making as much money, if my company isn't making as much money, okay, and it's being redistributed to the people who work for me, is that supposed to be a benefit of them?

00:24:35.000 Because what happens if I just decide to shut it down?

00:24:37.000 The case in point of this is that Joe Ricketts, who owns the, he owns Gothamist, or did, and New Yorkist, he just shut down the companies.

00:24:45.000 Why?

00:24:45.000 Because all of the employees decided to unionize.

00:24:47.000 A week later, he said, screw this, I'm not making enough money on it, he shut it down.

00:24:50.000 Was that good for them?

00:24:51.000 Was it good for the economy?

00:24:53.000 Or would it have been better for them not to unionize, and instead go in and ask for a raise if they thought they deserved it?

00:24:57.000 Well, basically, when the government removes income from my pocket, it's the government unionizing my workers against me, right?

00:25:02.000 I mean, that's basically what it's doing.

00:25:03.000 It's basically them saying, your workers should get more of your profits, and therefore, we are going to take your money out of your pocket and give it to your workers.

00:25:10.000 It doesn't work that way.

00:25:11.000 This is why businesses shut down.

00:25:13.000 You increase the rate of taxation high enough and businesses will shut down.

00:25:16.000 Again,

00:25:16.000 Is this particular tax increase the biggest deal?

00:25:19.000 Do I think that it's not worth voting for the tax bill over?

00:25:21.000 No, I don't.

00:25:22.000 Will I survive?

00:25:23.000 Of course I'll survive.

00:25:24.000 I'm not complaining about the amount of taxes breaking me or anything.

00:25:28.000 I don't think that's real.

00:25:29.000 What I am saying is that Republicans fail to make honest economic arguments and they fail to make honest moral arguments.

00:25:33.000 Taxation at root is theft unless you are giving back products and services in exchange for the taxation.

00:25:39.000 And it is also true 0.96

00:25:41.000 That people at the upper end of the income spectrum are the people who are creating the vast majority of jobs in the country and paying, by the way, nearly all of the net taxes in the country.

00:25:48.000 The top tax bracket paid 95% of all net income taxes in the United States.

00:25:53.000 Net meaning they don't get any services back, but people in the lower income brackets do.

00:25:57.000 Republicans don't make these arguments because they think it's politically unpalatable, that people won't understand them.

00:26:02.000 I don't think that's right.

00:26:03.000 I think people get this.

00:26:04.000 I think everybody works for a rich person, right?

00:26:06.000 Until I was rich, I worked for rich people.

00:26:08.000 I still work for people richer than I am.

00:26:10.000 Okay, that's the way this works.

00:26:11.000 Okay, the fact is that an economy runs based on the expenditure of capital in pursuit of better jobs and services, better goods and services.

00:26:20.000 And if the people at the upper end are going to be punished for doing that, you're going to see the jobs market go down.

00:26:25.000 The reason I hate this is not, again, because I think it's a huge deal, but because when you use Democratic arguments, you're never going to win.

00:26:30.000 Because what the Democrats are going to do is they're going to say, listen, the Republicans are right.

00:26:33.000 Of course we should tax the people at the upper end more.

00:26:35.000 Why don't we tax them 90%? 0.63

00:26:36.000 Right?

00:26:36.000 This is the argument that Cenk Eiger made when we debated.

00:26:39.000 He said, well, the economy was better when we had people at the upper income brackets, people making more than a million dollars, paying 90% of their income to the federal government.

00:26:47.000 First of all, important to note, virtually everyone avoided taxes, right?

00:26:51.000 The effective tax rate for people making more than a million dollars in those years was incredibly low because everybody was just using every loophole available.

00:26:58.000 So that tax rate was never achieved.

00:27:00.000 But beyond that, the Democrats can use this argument for anything.

00:27:03.000 Once you acknowledge that people who earn more should pay more taxes, not as an absolute amount, which is fine, but on a percentage basis, once you say that, you're basically acknowledging that you get to rob Peter to pay Paul.

00:27:16.000 And eventually, Peter gets sick of being robbed, and he's going to stop hiring people.

00:27:20.000 So, you know, again, the GOP needs to get out of this rut where they continue to nonsensically mirror the things the Democrats say about tax policy.

00:27:28.000 Okay, time for some things I like, and then some things I hate, and then we'll get to the mailbag.

00:27:32.000 So, things I like.

00:27:33.000 This week I've been doing books about children, and books about parenting.

00:27:37.000 Amy Chua has a really fun book called Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

00:27:39.000 It made a lot of noise at the time.

00:27:42.000 Amy Chua is a professor, I believe, at Yale, and her book is basically about raising her children in a sort of traditional Chinese way, meaning achievement-oriented, that self-esteem is not given, it is earned.

00:27:54.000 And I think that there's a lot to this.

00:27:57.000 I mean, if you want to look at areas of the world where children are the best educated, areas of the world where children are high achievers, they're all areas of the world where parents don't shy away from putting pressure on their children to achieve.

00:28:08.000 It's a world where they demonstrate high expectations for their children.

00:28:11.000 We in America have this bizarre notion that if we treat our children like Rousseau treats a meal, that we just let our kids run around free naked on a playground somewhere, that they're going to end up being a Nobel Prize winning scientist.

00:28:21.000 That's not the reality, okay?

00:28:22.000 The push to achieve is something that is deeply necessary.

00:28:25.000 Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is a really fascinating memoir about her raising of her children and how to sort of balance American tendencies with Chinese tendencies, as she puts it.

00:28:35.000 So check it out, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua.

00:28:38.000 Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate and then I want to spend some real time with the mailbag today.

00:28:47.000 So Tucker Carlson, who is an immensely talented guy, but who has done this mirroring of the populist shtick for at least the last several years, he decided to go off on what he calls the ruling class.

00:29:00.000 Now, I have real objections to this notion, the quote-unquote ruling class.

00:29:04.000 Who are the ruling class? 1.00

00:29:05.000 I mean, Tucker Carlson grew up about as Tony as it gets, right?

00:29:07.000 I mean, Tucker Carlson grew up in the lap of privilege.

00:29:09.000 His mother, I believe, is Margaret Carlson.

00:29:11.000 He grew up like a multi-multi-millionaire.

00:29:12.000 Tucker Carlson has been earning his entire career.

00:29:14.000 That's not a rip on Tucker, but all of this sort of class warfare, you hear this from Laura Ingraham, too, the elite. 0.97

00:29:20.000 When you're making as much money and you went to the best schools as Laura did and you clerked for Justice Thomas, I'm pretty sure we can call you an elite.

00:29:27.000 This idea that the ruling class prefers immigrants to Americans, here's what Tucker Carlson has to say about this.

00:29:32.000 Now, I think that there is something to be said for the idea that there are folks on the left, that leftist ideology favors the importation of people who do not buy into American culture over people who actually buy into American culture.

00:29:44.000 What Tucker's about to say here smacks to me of both class warfare and a little bit of anti-immigrant sentiment.

00:29:50.000 I'll explain why in a second.

00:29:52.000 Why was this man even in our country?

00:29:55.000 Well, he was here because this country's leaders have decided that diversity, in and of itself, is of greater importance than the well-being of this country's people.

00:30:04.000 That's literally true.

00:30:05.000 Saipov was admitted to the U.S.

00:30:07.000 under the so-called Diversity Lottery, something you've likely never even heard of until today.

00:30:12.000 And then he continued.

00:30:13.000 That part, what he said, is not so bad.

00:30:15.000 But then he said this.

00:30:16.000 He said, quote, Well, that's not really true.

00:30:18.000 I mean, the amount of ire that's been poured on the opioid epidemic is pretty significant.

00:30:21.000 But the idea that our ruling class prefers immigrants to Americans, here's why I say this is sort of anti-immigrant sentiment.

00:30:24.000 Not all immigrants are the same. 1.00

00:30:42.000 We're good to go.

00:31:02.000 There are lots of Americans who are better than some immigrants, and there are some immigrants who are better than lots of Americans. 1.00

00:31:06.000 To pretend that all immigrants are the same and all Americans are the same, or that you are of higher moral value or worth because you are an American, or that we shouldn't attempt to import people who have good moral values, is stupidity. 0.99

00:31:17.000 Some of the people who we are proudest of in American history were immigrants, obviously, and some of the people who we are least proud of are immigrants. 0.99

00:31:24.000 Saipov, we're not proud of him, right?

00:31:26.000 Immigrant.

00:31:27.000 Albert Einstein, kind of proud of him.

00:31:28.000 Immigrant.

00:31:29.000 Okay, the fact is, not all immigrants are created the same.

00:31:31.000 So when he says, you know, they prefer immigrants to Americans, I prefer people who buy into American ideology.

00:31:37.000 I prefer people who buy into traditional political philosophy of the United States over everyone, whether they are immigrants or native-born.

00:31:45.000 That's why I've said, and I've said it before and I'll say it again, I would prefer to deport a bunch of Americans who don't believe in American philosophy 1.00

00:31:52.000 Rather than illegal immigrants who come here and want to engage in American philosophy. 0.99

00:31:57.000 Because I care about the philosophy.

00:31:59.000 I care much more about the philosophy.

00:32:00.000 I shouldn't say illegal immigrants, but immigrants themselves.

00:32:04.000 Where you came from is of little matter to me.

00:32:06.000 What you believe is of total import to me.

00:32:09.000 Saipov should not have been in the United States.

00:32:11.000 Not because Saipov was an immigrant, but because there was no proof that Saipov actually believed in American ideology when he was allowed into the country.

00:32:19.000 That's why I don't like this particular binary that Tucker is choosing to play on.

00:32:22.000 It smacks me of nativism rather than patriotism.

00:32:26.000 I think patriotism is about upholding American principles and nativism is about upholding the notion that you are better if you are born in the United States.

00:32:32.000 I don't like that idea at all.

00:32:33.000 Okay, other things that I hate.

00:32:35.000 April Ryan. 0.99

00:32:36.000 Asked a question at the White House press conference the other day that was really one of the dumber questions. 0.73

00:32:42.000 She asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders whether Donald Trump believes in slavery, whether he thinks slavery is wrong, and then she defended that the other day.

00:32:47.000 The question is, does this administration believe, does this president believe slavery was wrong?

00:32:53.000 And before you answer, Mary Frances Berry, a historian, said,

00:32:58.000 In 1860, there was a compromise.

00:33:00.000 The compromise was to have southern states keep slavery, but the Confederacy fired on Fort Sumter that caused the Civil War.

00:33:09.000 And because of the Civil War, what happened?

00:33:13.000 I think it is disgusting and absurd to suggest that anyone inside of this building would support slavery.

00:33:21.000 And she's of course exactly right, but this is something Democrats have been doing for decades.

00:33:24.000 Joe Biden suggested about Mitt Romney in 2012, and of course there's no evidence to suggest that anyone in the White House supports slavery.

00:33:32.000 You want to know why you got Trump?

00:33:33.000 Again, for the one millionth time, this is why you got Trump.

00:33:36.000 You accuse everyone who disagrees with you, everyone who basically repeats the Ken Burns version of the Civil War narrative, or the Shelby Foote version of the Civil War narrative, you use that as an excuse to say that they love slavery?

00:33:46.000 It's absurd.

00:33:47.000 Okay.

00:33:47.000 Time for the mailbag.

00:33:48.000 So, if you are in our live, if you're watching this live, you now get to type in your questions and I will answer them as they come up.

00:33:53.000 Okay, so David says, I am a fellow California lawyer who just subscribed to The Daily Wire and have often wondered, why are so many extremely successful entrepreneurs, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Warren Buffett, George Soros, liberal Democrats, thereby supporting a financial system that is antithetical to their success?

00:34:07.000 So I think that some of these people were on the left before they became very wealthy.

00:34:11.000 But I think another thing that happens, and you see this in Hollywood a lot, is a lot of people who get very wealthy then feel the need to sort of make excuses for their wealth.

00:34:19.000 They're not proud of it, right?

00:34:20.000 They don't go around saying, you know, I earned this and I'm proud that I earned this because that shows, you know, that I've done well and made good decisions in business.

00:34:27.000 Instead, it turns into, how can I buy off the public?

00:34:30.000 How can I make the public think I'm a good guy?

00:34:32.000 I can't make the public think I'm a good guy if they just look at my wealth and say he made good decisions.

00:34:36.000 Instead, I'm going to suggest that my wealth is some sort of, it's some sort of cruel burden to be born.

00:34:42.000 And instead, I'm going to handle off my wealth, right?

00:34:44.000 Here's the fact about Bill Gates or Warren Buffett or George Soros or Oprah Winfrey.

00:34:48.000 All of these people have created many, many, many, many, many more jobs in their businesses than they have in giving charity.

00:34:53.000 The Bill Gates Foundation has done less for the world than Bill Gates in his corporate capacity.

00:34:58.000 And that's not a rip on the Bill Gates Foundation doing things, but I think there is a guilt that is associated with wealth in Western countries that is entirely unjust and inappropriate.

00:35:08.000 There are good people who are rich, and there are very bad people who are rich.

00:35:13.000 You know, I don't know enough about that subject to really comment intelligibly on it, so I'm going to read up on it and get back to you, Dawn.

00:35:21.000 Sort of hysterical that one thing that I found sort of hilarious is that the Catalonians are voting for independence that for a long time Catalonians wanted to be independent from Spain.

00:35:31.000 And the Israelis endorsed the Catalonian independence effort, and Spain went nuts.

00:35:35.000 And the Israelis basically laughed at them and said, guys, you're the ones who are pressuring us to make concessions to Hamas, so you shut up.

00:35:40.000 Kyle says, hey Ben, currently applying for law school next fall.

00:35:43.000 Working on my personal statement.

00:35:44.000 Any advice?

00:35:45.000 Kyle, keep politics out of it.

00:35:46.000 You want to get into a good law school?

00:35:48.000 Do not go political.

00:35:49.000 Because the fact is that any excuse that some of these law schools have and law professors have, the admissions boards have, for

00:35:55.000 Kind of covering over your politics, they will do that.

00:35:59.000 So, I dressed up for Halloween on the show because it's sort of a fun gag, but we don't actually celebrate Halloween in the Orthodox community typically because it's sort of considered a pagan holiday, just as in many evangelical communities, Halloween isn't a big thing.

00:36:14.000 When I was growing up and we weren't as Orthodox and I used to dress up for Halloween,

00:36:17.000 But we have a whole holiday in the Jewish community where kids dress up.

00:36:21.000 It's called Purim, and we do that in March.

00:36:25.000 Usually it's March or April.

00:36:26.000 So we'll be doing that.

00:36:27.000 Last year, my kids... We like to do family costumes because that's really fun.

00:36:32.000 So last year, I went as the straw man, my wife went as Dorothy, my dad went as the tin man, my mom went as the Wicked Witch of the West, and my two kids went as, respectively, Glinda and the Cowardly Lion.

00:36:44.000 So it was quite adorable.

00:36:45.000 I have pictures of it. 0.51

00:36:46.000 This is one of the great tragedies, I think, of the social media age and the fact there's so many garbage people out there, is my kids are just adorable.

00:36:53.000 I mean, as people in this room can attest to be fired, my kids are incredibly cute.

00:36:58.000 My kids are very, like, objectively speaking, they are beautiful children, and they also happen to be really sweet, and I wish I could put up pictures of them because it would probably double my social media following, but it's nobody's business what my kids look like, and my kids shouldn't be saddled with the burden

00:37:12.000 of having a public figure for an ad.

00:37:14.000 So I try to keep them out of the public eye as much as possible.

00:37:18.000 Matthew says, Ben, I usually try to ask questions that have either cultural or political significance, but those never get read during the podcast.

00:37:23.000 So in hopes of getting my question read live, I have to ask, boxers or briefs?

00:37:29.000 So I always hesitate to answer these particular questions, but in all candidness, I go with boxer briefs.

00:37:36.000 I go with boxer briefs.

00:37:37.000 I've never actually tried or thought about impersonating Crowder.

00:37:58.000 Or take off my shirt entirely?

00:38:00.000 Second, I'd have to really bulk up, like just guzzle steroids and weight powders and all this sort of thing.

00:38:07.000 And then I'd have to dance geekily to bad music.

00:38:10.000 So that would be the way that I would imitate Steven Crowder.

00:38:15.000 Lots of head motions, I would imagine.

00:38:17.000 But I haven't spent too much time on it.

00:38:19.000 Naftali says, hey Ben, what are your thoughts on the draft?

00:38:22.000 Do you think it is beneficial in countries that have mandatory service?

00:38:24.000 Would it benefit the US if we reinstituted it?

00:38:26.000 Is it legal?

00:38:27.000 I am not sure that... Well, the draft is legal in emergency situations.

00:38:31.000 I am not a huge fan of reinstituting the draft.

00:38:35.000 I think that Israel has national service.

00:38:38.000 I think that a lot of the public education that is done is...

00:38:44.000 It's mandatory that we go to schools.

00:38:45.000 I think that we have a failure of schools, not a failure of public service.

00:38:47.000 So the idea that we have to take two years of everybody's life and dedicate it to the state, not a big fan of if you don't have an emergency situation.

00:38:53.000 If you do have an emergency situation, I'm in favor of a draft, right?

00:38:56.000 If it's World War II and you need to call people up, then you call people up.

00:38:59.000 But the idea that everyone has to serve the nation in some way is not something I'm a huge fan of.

00:39:04.000 I think we just need to do better civil education.

00:39:07.000 Yeah.

00:39:08.000 I mean, if you show up at a synagogue, nobody's going to toss you out.

00:39:10.000 Nobody's going to say, like, do you believe in God?

00:39:11.000 And if you say no, then we just, we hit you with a star of David.

00:39:24.000 That's not how it works.

00:39:27.000 You're welcome to show up at a synagogue.

00:39:29.000 I'd recommend that that's actually not the best way to learn about a church or synagogue is to show up at their services because services can be extremely boring.

00:39:36.000 I would instead recommend that there are some classes you can take online and then you also don't make everybody awkward when you show up wearing

00:39:43.000 Your cut-off genes in the middle of an Orthodox prayer service, which just makes everyone feel weird. 1.00

00:39:52.000 So, I will acknowledge that my favorite pudding cup flavor is vanilla.

00:39:57.000 I truly enjoy vanilla.

00:39:58.000 It is delicious.

00:40:00.000 Also, when you mix the vanilla and the chocolate, it is also delicious.

00:40:03.000 Candy says, is pudding kosher?

00:40:05.000 It depends on the brand of pudding.

00:40:07.000 Daniel says, how long do you think Bernie could survive without pudding?

00:40:10.000 Well, you know, we haven't tried it.

00:40:13.000 I'm not sure how long Bernie could survive without pudding.

00:40:16.000 I wouldn't want to try it, but Bernie should live long.

00:40:19.000 It's the same blessing I have for the czar.

00:40:21.000 May he live well and live far, far away from me.

00:40:25.000 Like, that's my basic Bernie Sanders thing.

00:40:28.000 And I hope that he survives many years on pudding cups.

00:40:34.000 Yeah, actually, I sleep pretty well.

00:40:40.000 I try to pack in all of my work in specific hours of the day and really focus when I'm working.

00:40:45.000 So Twitter does not help with this, but it seems to me that most of the time that's lost during the day is lost to being distracted.

00:40:52.000 You're in the middle of a task and then you look up and ten minutes have gone by and you haven't done anything.

00:40:56.000 When I'm writing, I'm writing.

00:40:57.000 When I'm reading, I'm reading.

00:40:58.000 When I'm on Twitter, I'm on Twitter.

00:41:00.000 I don't think that it's an intentional step in forwarding a morally relativist agenda.

00:41:03.000 I just think that if you read some of the Star Wars literature that have been hints at this, I also think that

00:41:21.000 Basically, at a certain point, people are bored of the dark side of the Force versus the light side of the Force, and they're trying to come up with something new, and the two things that they have come up with that are new are maybe the crossover between the light and dark sides of the Force and a Porg.

00:41:33.000 Those are the two things that they have come up with that are new. 0.79

00:41:37.000 I will say that I'm interested in the merger of the light and the dark side of the Force, because I've always thought that this sort of Zen view of quote-unquote the Force was kind of dumb.

00:41:45.000 This idea that this binary, almost Gnostic view of the Force.

00:41:49.000 That, you know, you fall into the evil side of the Force and it's powered by anger and fear.

00:41:54.000 I really don't like that because sometimes anger is justified.

00:41:56.000 Like, it seems to me that Luke has some pretty good excuse to be pissed at the end of Return of the Jedi.

00:42:01.000 And then they're like, well, you're going to fall to the dark side if you ever get mad.

00:42:04.000 Never get mad.

00:42:06.000 It seems to me there's some good times to get mad.

00:42:08.000 Like, when the Emperor is threatening to kill your sister, you know, that seems to me like a pretty good time to get mad.

00:42:14.000 When he's, like, laughing as your friends are getting blown up in space. 0.86

00:42:17.000 Seems like a good time to get pissed.

00:42:19.000 And by the way, the one thing I've always found weird about Return of the Jedi is that his anger obviously does make him stronger, right?

00:42:26.000 He literally beats Darth Vader down and then chops off his hand.

00:42:29.000 And then he steps back and he turns off the lightsaber.

00:42:32.000 And, like, he's very lucky that Darth Vader decides to turn around and be a nice dad and all.

00:42:38.000 But if Darth Vader decides to get up and kill him, this does not go well for him.

00:42:42.000 Like, how many times can Obi-Wan Kenobi die before you just end up with, like, an afterlife full of Jedi who are glowing but can't actually do anything useful? 0.97

00:42:52.000 Well, I don't think you have to encourage businesses to take advantage of free markets.

00:42:59.000 The only thing you have to do is discourage monopolies, and the way monopolies are generally established is through government.

00:43:04.000 It's through people working with the government and getting the government to ban competition and prevent competition.

00:43:09.000 So if you can get the government out of the business of markets, then monopolies very rarely occur.

00:43:13.000 And many times monopolies are quite good for the market.

00:43:16.000 I mean, Microsoft, when it was broken up, had cheaper prices than after it was broken up.

00:43:20.000 It was good for consumers.

00:43:21.000 The way that you maintain a monopoly is by creating a great product that you continually change.

00:43:28.000 See, Tyra says, So it depends on the drugs, I've said.

00:43:32.000 I think marijuana is a better solution.

00:43:35.000 Libertarian solutions on marriage, I think, are right. 0.80

00:43:37.000 I've said that I think the state should get completely out of the business of marriage. 0.99

00:43:42.000 I'm struggling to come up with examples where conservatism and libertarianism radically differ on matters of economics.

00:43:48.000 Usually they're pretty much on the same page.

00:43:51.000 I think the libertarian solution with regard to incentivization of behavior is generally better.

00:43:56.000 I don't think the government is good at incentivizing behavior.

00:44:00.000 Well, I think the first thing that you should do, you know, first of all,

00:44:18.000 I mean, I hesitate to say this on national air, but I will say that if your kid is continuously falling for conspiracy theories, you should probably get your kid to a psychologist, really.

00:44:28.000 Because that tends to be a little bit pathological.

00:44:30.000 Like, if you believe in lots of conspiracy theories and people are out to get you and everybody's lying to you, there tends to be a certain pathology to that that I don't think is healthy.

00:44:37.000 Beyond that, if it's just a matter of critical thinking, then maybe you should ask him why he believes that people are so capable of putting together these plans.

00:44:45.000 In his own personal experience, are people really good at putting things together?

00:44:48.000 Like, here's my general problem with conspiracy theories.

00:44:52.000 It requires thousands of people to be in on it.

00:44:55.000 Right?

00:44:55.000 Conspiracy theories that involve, like, one guy, I'm generally okay with.

00:44:58.000 Right?

00:44:58.000 Like, the Obama incentivizing the IRS to go after the conservative 501c3s.

00:45:04.000 Makes perfect sense.

00:45:05.000 It's Obama saying things and people taking him up on it.

00:45:07.000 That doesn't require a whole hell of a lot.

00:45:09.000 But the idea that George W. Bush was behind the 9-11 attacks, for example. 1.00

00:45:12.000 Idiotic. 1.00

00:45:13.000 Right? 1.00

00:45:13.000 Because, you know how many people would have to be in on that and keep silent about it? 1.00

00:45:17.000 The biggest scandal in the history of the world?

00:45:20.000 This idea that there was some sort of giant conspiracy to cover up Barack Obama's birth certificate.

00:45:24.000 You know how many people would have to be in on that without it leaking?

00:45:26.000 A lot of people.

00:45:28.000 So I just don't believe that people are that capable.

00:45:30.000 And you should ask your son whether he believes people are that capable.

00:45:33.000 Because I don't think that that is perfectly accurate.

00:45:35.000 Okay, so, we have come to the end of this week's Mailbag.

00:45:38.000 I have to say, I'm disappointed in some of the live questioners who seem to only be interested in pudding.

00:45:43.000 But, apparently you guys are only interested in pudding.

00:45:46.000 To which I suggest you go out, buy some pudding, satisfy your craving, and come back with better questions next week.

00:45:51.000 In the meantime, have a good weekend, we'll see you on Monday.

00:45:53.000 I'm Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.

The Ben Shapiro Show - November 03, 2017

It’s Bernie’s Party Now | Ep. 410

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