The Ben Shapiro Show - June 23, 2019


Mark Levin | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 56

Topics
social media regulation Republican Party division nationalism freedom of religion vs. association spending bills tariffs and China threats founding principles conservative origins and politics
Hosted by
Ben Shapiro
Guests
Mark Levin
Mentioned
Donald Trump Obama Mark Levin Steven Crowder Bernie Sanders Ronald Reagan Joe Biden Goldwater Dwight Eisenhower Roman George W. Bush The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday John Doe Sam Harris Judy Holliday Nancy Pelosi Rousseau Marx Ruth Bader Ginsburg F. Lee Levin and 46 more
War Drums | Ep. 806 Calculation or Chaos? | Ep. 807

Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 2 minutes

Words per minute

194.81

Word count

12,088

Sentence count

969

Harmful content

Misogyny

10

sentences flagged

Toxicity

28

sentences flagged

Hate speech

11

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Mark Levin, author of the brand new book, Freedom of the Press, joins The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special with host Ben Shapiro to discuss his new book on the history of freedom of the press, and why it s important to have a healthy relationship with the media. Mark Levin's book is out now, and is a must-read for anyone who has ever been a journalist, or someone who wants to learn how to be a better one, and especially someone who doesn t want to be governed by the big government agenda pushed by the left. He also talks about why he thinks the media should be allowed to be left alone and why big government is not the answer to our problems, and what we should do about it. Thanks to Mark Levin for coming on the show and for all of the questions he answered! If you like the show, please consider becoming a patron patron and leaving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts! Ben Shapiro is the most influential conservative commentator on the planet and is one of the most listened to conservative voices in the world. He is also a regular contributor to the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal, among many other publications. Ben is a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard, The Huffington Post, and has been featured on CNN, NPR, CBS, and NPR. and many other outlets. . Ben's new book is available in paperback now! and is available for purchase on Amazon, Podchaser, wherever you get your copy of his work is available, if you search for it, and subscribe to Ben Shapiro's podcast, Ben Shapiro s podcast is available on Audible, you can also get a free copy of the book, "Un Freedom of The Press by Ben Shapiro will be listening to it on your favorite podcast on the internet, too! by clicking here. Enjoyed the book? Thank you for listening to this episode? Ben s book is also available in Kindle and Audible Subscribe to Ben s podcast on Podcharity and subscribe on PodCharity? Subscribe on Podcoin, and other good books on amazon, wherever else you get the best listening options are listening to the best of the best Ben Shapiro works best listening to Ben's work? and other things that Ben s listening to him on the best podcast on all things Ben Shapiro can be found on the podcast, too?

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Ben Shapiro Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Autocracy is a bad thing, whether it's practiced one-on-one in the playground or whether it's practiced by government.
00:00:05.000 And that's why I started to say, wait a minute, I like liberty, I like individualism, I like to be left alone, I like to kind of do what I want to do.
00:00:12.000 And if that's the way you think, then big government on the left is not your answer.
00:00:26.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show Sunday special.
00:00:28.000 I am super excited to welcome to the show the great one, Mark Levin, author of the brand new book, Unfreedom of the Press.
00:00:32.000 We're going to get to all of our questions from Mark Levin in just one second.
00:00:35.000 But first, some topics in life are uncomfortable to talk about.
00:00:38.000 Sex is one of those things, but sex is also one of the most important things in life, especially within the context of marriage.
00:00:44.000 Studies show that 70% of dudes who experience erectile dysfunction don't get treated for it for just that reason.
00:00:49.000 It can be awkward to discuss, but sometimes things just don't work the way they are supposed to.
00:00:52.000 It's a medical problem.
00:00:53.000 That's something to get solved, not something to be ashamed of.
00:00:56.000 That's where our friends at Roman come in.
00:00:57.000 Thankfully, Roman has created an easy way to get checked out by a doctor and get treated for ED online.
00:01:03.000 With Roman, you can get medical care for ED if appropriate from the comfort and privacy of your own home.
00:01:07.000 You can handle everything online in a convenient, discreet manner.
00:01:10.000 Getting started is really simple.
00:01:11.000 Just go to GetRoman.com slash Ben, complete an online visit.
00:01:15.000 If your doctor decides treatment would be appropriate, they can prescribe genuine medication that can be delivered in discreet packaging direct to your door with free two-day shipping.
00:01:22.000 Dudes, go talk to the doctor. 1.00
00:01:23.000 Erectile dysfunction can be really tough to tackle.
00:01:25.000 It's really important to get it checked out.
00:01:27.000 With Roman, it's easy to connect with a doctor.
00:01:29.000 Just go to GetRoman.com slash Ben, get a free online visit and free two-day shipping.
00:01:34.000 That is GetRoman.com slash Ben for a free visit to get started.
00:01:37.000 GetRoman.com slash Ben.
00:01:40.000 GetRoman.com slash Ben.
00:01:42.000 Go check it out right now.
00:01:43.000 Well, Mark, thanks so much for stopping by.
00:01:45.000 It's a great honor, great pleasure.
00:01:47.000 So we have a new book out on freedom of the press, where you talk about really the history of the press, and obviously this has become hot topic, probably hot topic number one in the country, given President Trump's use of the phrase fake news so often.
00:01:58.000 So let's talk a little bit about where we are with the press.
00:02:01.000 So obviously you look at the polls, people hate the press, they don't trust the press.
00:02:06.000 Aside from the obvious, which is that the press is left-wing, why do you think that that trust was undermined?
00:02:11.000 Because 20 years ago people did trust the press and the press was similarly left-wing.
00:02:15.000 You get a lot more competition in the press today.
00:02:17.000 You've got the internet, you've got your show, you've got my show, you've got other platforms that are out there.
00:02:25.000 A citizen can go on the internet and get news from anywhere in the world, different bloggers they may follow, different sites they may follow, and then they're watching CNN.
00:02:33.000 Or they're watching MSNBC.
00:02:36.000 Not particularly bright people.
00:02:38.000 Just pounding away, pounding away the same thing every day and from one perspective.
00:02:42.000 There's no diversity in the newsroom.
00:02:44.000 There's no diversity on these stations.
00:02:46.000 And also, they combine news with opinion.
00:02:49.000 You cannot tell who the news host is, for the most part, on CNN or MSNBC.
00:02:55.000 The same blurring is occurring at the New York Times and the Washington Post between their news and editorial pages.
00:03:02.000 And it's particularly crystallized now because they so hate Trump they can't control themselves.
00:03:07.000 And they'll tell you they hate Trump and they can't control themselves.
00:03:11.000 And in many ways it's become very political.
00:03:13.000 That is, they play like to the Democrat Party base.
00:03:16.000 That's where they play for their ratings, and they're not getting any.
00:03:19.000 That's where they play for their hits.
00:03:22.000 And it's not that it just happened now.
00:03:25.000 This has been building.
00:03:27.000 This is an ideology that's also taught in many of the journalism schools.
00:03:31.000 Most of the journalists today didn't go to journalism school.
00:03:33.000 A lot of them come out of the Democrat party or Democrat administration.
00:03:36.000 Some Republicans, but mostly the other.
00:03:39.000 And so they come with an ideological point of view.
00:03:42.000 And there's this whole new movement called social activism journalism.
00:03:46.000 They call it public journalism, community journalism, but it is what it is.
00:03:49.000 And they're pushing the progressive agenda.
00:03:51.000 And they say a lot of these guys Let's stop hiding this.
00:03:54.000 You know, but for us, there wouldn't have been a civil rights movement.
00:03:57.000 Well, actually, there was, but for them.
00:04:00.000 But for us, you know, women wouldn't have voted. 0.99
00:04:02.000 Well, actually, they would have.
00:04:03.000 And but for us, there wouldn't be Obamacare. 0.99
00:04:05.000 So we should proudly say who we are and interpret the news and analyze the news and give it to the public, who are, number one, too stupid, they think, or too busy to understand it anyway. 0.97
00:04:17.000 So this whole notion of objective truth-seeking, for the most part, is dying on the vine. 0.94
00:04:23.000 Do you think that it was better when people called themselves objective truth seekers?
00:04:27.000 There's sort of this weird bifurcation in conservative thought about what the media should be.
00:04:31.000 There are some of us, I'm on the side that says, don't even bother to pretend you're objective.
00:04:34.000 Just give me who you are.
00:04:36.000 I'd rather listen to your show, or my show, or even Pod Save America, where they say, OK, here's who we are.
00:04:40.000 We're Democratic staffers, and this is what we think about the issues.
00:04:43.000 Then have to hear from Chris Cuomo or Don Lemon pretending that they represent some sort of higher objective truth.
00:04:48.000 And then there are folks who say, well, You know, the problem there is the conflation.
00:04:51.000 What we do need is journalists who are going to get back to objective journalism.
00:04:55.000 What do you think is the solution here?
00:04:56.000 Is it going back to sort of the founding era partisan newspapers, or is it the pursuit of actual objective journalism?
00:05:02.000 And this is the core of it.
00:05:03.000 It's a great point.
00:05:05.000 I think they're fighting among themselves in their newsrooms.
00:05:08.000 Do we come out of the closet fully and say who we are, or do we continue to pretend that we're nonpartisan and objective?
00:05:14.000 And about a hundred years ago, the rise of the progressive movement also infected the so-called press.
00:05:21.000 We had the party press, where they were very transparent.
00:05:24.000 You had papers like the Arkansas Democrat Gazette and the Arizona Republican, now the Arizona Republic.
00:05:30.000 They aligned with political parties and candidates and ideologies, really starting about 1780, moving into the beginning of the Civil War.
00:05:38.000 In the beginning of the last century you had this progressive movement and they were not going to leave the press alone, John Dewey and others, and so they decided we won't decide really what the news is, we of the masterminds and so forth, same people are going to run the government, run the economy, we're going to run the media too.
00:05:57.000 And Walter Lippmann is very outspoken about this.
00:06:00.000 He was iconic at the time, a reporter, and he said, so we're going to apply a scientific approach, a knowledge approach to all of this.
00:06:08.000 We'll gather the information.
00:06:10.000 Then we'll determine what the public needs to know.
00:06:12.000 We'll use our intelligence to tell the very busy public what the news is.
00:06:16.000 So this has been going on for about a century.
00:06:19.000 But the difference today is this fight that's going on on the left, which really has pretty much monopoly control of news as an aggregate.
00:06:28.000 And it's whether or not to be very blunt about it or not.
00:06:32.000 And I think you can see that playing out on television too.
00:06:35.000 And this commingling of news and opinion, you can see that playing out on television too.
00:06:40.000 The answer is technology.
00:06:43.000 The answer is Progressive creativity, not ideology.
00:06:47.000 Progressive creativity.
00:06:49.000 Because what is technology?
00:06:50.000 Technology is this.
00:06:52.000 Technology is the brain.
00:06:53.000 Technology is people trying to figure out how to do things differently, how to do things better, to improve upon what is.
00:06:59.000 And you can see some of that now, on the internet, these new platforms.
00:07:03.000 And I was, George Gilder, who I had on my Fox show not that long ago, he said these current platforms, which in many ways are anti-speech, Facebook, Google, whatever you want to call it.
00:07:17.000 He said they're going to go by the wayside because the Israelis and the Japanese are working on new platforms.
00:07:23.000 And this is why I have a problem sometimes when people say technology puts Americans out of work, technology is a threat to America.
00:07:30.000 No, technology is America because the freer the country, the more technology, the more creativity, the more productivity.
00:07:38.000 So we develop our ways out of these things.
00:07:39.000 We think our ways out of these things.
00:07:42.000 I make a distinction between the modern mass media In a free press.
00:07:49.000 The modern mass media is not upholding a free press.
00:07:51.000 There's nothing to do with a free press, other than government not interfering.
00:07:55.000 It's killing a free press.
00:07:57.000 And that's why it celebrates certain people who are really nobodies, like AOC, one of your favorites, or Talib, or Omar. 0.96
00:08:04.000 These are really detestable people.
00:08:06.000 But the media play them up, the media defend them, and so forth, versus others who they either ignore, Or they try to destroy.
00:08:15.000 That's not free speech.
00:08:17.000 So I think free speech is in good shape, as long as we have technology, development, and no government interference.
00:08:24.000 I think the mass media is in deep trouble.
00:08:26.000 The New York Times would probably be out of business today, but for a billionaire out of Mexico, a telecommunications magnate bought about 20% of it.
00:08:35.000 Washington Post would be dead, but for Bezos.
00:08:38.000 buying it.
00:08:39.000 CNN's ratings are in the tank just a matter of time.
00:08:41.000 And MSNBC doesn't have a business plan after Trump leaves.
00:08:44.000 When you talk about the contrast between the media outlets and a free press, I mean, you can certainly see that playing out even with the Blaze TV, where you do some work.
00:08:53.000 You know, the fact is that, you know, over the past few weeks, we've seen, as Vox.com openly, I mean, they issued a letter, the editors issued a letter to YouTube asking for them to rewrite their rules to ban Steven Crowder, a comedian, because one of their journalists was offended by jokes that Crowder was making.
00:09:09.000 It's amazing to watch pseudo-journalistic outlets that are basically activist outlets Calling for the silencing of an enormous number of voices on the other side.
00:09:18.000 And they don't just do it by going to the big tech companies and telling them to silence.
00:09:21.000 They don't just go to Facebook or YouTube.
00:09:23.000 They also AstroTurf boycotts against shows like yours.
00:09:26.000 They AstroTurf boycotts against shows like mine.
00:09:28.000 They go after advertisers.
00:09:30.000 They do this routine where a Huffington Post reporter will call up one of your advertisers and then say, do you agree with what Mark Levin just said on X?
00:09:38.000 What does it matter what the advertiser thinks?
00:09:39.000 The advertiser advertises on lots of stuff, but they're creating this pseudo-journalistic patina around an activist core, and I think that's what's driving people up a wall.
00:09:50.000 The greatest threat to free speech is this phony journalism.
00:09:57.000 What is freedom of the press?
00:09:58.000 It's an extension of freedom of speech.
00:10:00.000 And really, freedom of the press is sort of a community, aggregate people communicating with each other.
00:10:06.000 I mean, they're only press pushing for revolution, pushing America's principles, having debates, having discussions, all that sort of thing.
00:10:14.000 The left has no tolerance for diversity of viewpoints, has no tolerance for independent thinking, it believes in conformity and uniformity.
00:10:23.000 And so they're attacking these platforms and these platforms are buckling if they don't believe in themselves and promote that agenda.
00:10:31.000 YouTube is going to die if it follows Vox.
00:10:35.000 YouTube will marginalize itself.
00:10:37.000 YouTube will be viewed as just another left-wing I'll give you an example.
00:10:42.000 left-wing enterprise and half the country will leave it.
00:10:45.000 Eighty percent of Republicans right now distrust the media.
00:10:48.000 Eighty percent of Democrats like the media.
00:10:51.000 That's why I call it the Democratic Party media.
00:10:53.000 That's what they are, that's what they want to be.
00:10:55.000 If YouTube wants to be an appendage to a crackpot left-wing, vicious individual and website, fine.
00:11:03.000 I'll give you an example.
00:11:04.000 I was absolutely flirting with the idea of putting my radio show on YouTube.
00:11:08.000 Now I won't do it.
00:11:09.000 I want nothing to do with YouTube, the way that they've treated Steven Crowder.
00:11:13.000 And please, don't tell me you don't like what Crowder says or the things he says.
00:11:17.000 I mean, the left is embracing anti-Semites.
00:11:19.000 The left is embracing all kinds of kooks.
00:11:22.000 You have comedians out there who've said a hell of a lot worse than Crowder ever said 20, 30, 40 years ago.
00:11:28.000 You have comedians who can't even go on college campuses anymore because of the speech codes and all the rest that's going on.
00:11:34.000 We support free speech.
00:11:35.000 We support freedom of the press.
00:11:37.000 We support competition because we think the American people are smart.
00:11:41.000 They'll discern one or the other what they like or what they don't like.
00:11:45.000 What do you think ought to be done with some of these social media companies?
00:11:47.000 There's a really interesting and sort of rich debate now happening inside the conservative movement about Facebook and YouTube and Twitter particularly.
00:11:53.000 A lot of folks saying these are monopolies and they ought to be broken up.
00:11:56.000 Some people suggesting that the government ought to come in and regulate them.
00:12:00.000 I've made the argument in the past that either they're a platform or they're a publisher, that they don't get to act like Vox.com and then be treated as though they're an AT&T phone line.
00:12:09.000 Do you think that the government has any role here or will the free market, should we just let the free market take its course, which is an argument I'm certainly I think the free market should take its course, but it's not.
00:12:18.000 The government protects these sites.
00:12:20.000 So the government ought to remove the protection, and now they're really in the free market.
00:12:24.000 Let's see how they handle themselves.
00:12:26.000 Whether it's litigation, whether it's public opinion, whatever it is, YouTube won't survive doing what it's doing.
00:12:33.000 It's not going to survive doing what it's doing.
00:12:35.000 It ought not be protected in any way.
00:12:37.000 I feel the same way with the press.
00:12:39.000 Since 1964, the Sullivan case.
00:12:43.000 We had a very free, robust press before the Supreme Court jumped in.
00:12:48.000 Even when we had the First Amendment originally, you still had state libel laws and so forth.
00:12:53.000 You could still be sued under state libel laws.
00:12:56.000 So there's no check whatsoever, not on a free press, but on absolute outrageous comments.
00:13:01.000 That's fine.
00:13:03.000 So let that system play out.
00:13:05.000 Let our legal system play out.
00:13:07.000 I don't think these entities should be protected by federal law in any respect.
00:13:12.000 Let them be out there with the rest of us and deal with the rest of the issues and figure out their business model that way.
00:13:18.000 The government's going to step in and do what, exactly?
00:13:21.000 Who's going to step in and do it?
00:13:22.000 I get very nervous when Congress steps in.
00:13:24.000 It's filled with knuckleheads who do not respect the Constitution. 1.00
00:13:29.000 You can see them today. 0.94
00:13:31.000 You've had a number of administrations that have wanted to kill talk radio.
00:13:36.000 You've had presidents like Obama that wanted to kill Fox.
00:13:40.000 You've had this nonsense about net neutrality.
00:13:42.000 Those are the people who are now going to manage.
00:13:45.000 I don't think that's any better.
00:13:46.000 The market works.
00:13:48.000 No protections and let them die or live.
00:13:52.000 So in a second I want to ask you about sort of broader ramifications of that conversation, particularly in the conservative movement, the battle between the so-called nationalist populists and sort of free market slash libertarian folks.
00:14:03.000 I'm going to ask you about that in just one second.
00:14:04.000 First, the fact is going to the post office, a lot of good stuff at the post office, but you know what's not fun?
00:14:08.000 Actually being at the post office.
00:14:10.000 Last time I was at the post office I got a $100 ticket.
00:14:11.000 Let me tell you something about LA.
00:14:14.000 You stop outside the post office for five seconds and you're in the red zone et al.
00:14:18.000 They can't clean up the homeless problem, but they will give you a traffic ticket like nobody's business.
00:14:22.000 Who's got time for all that traffic?
00:14:23.000 Parking, lugging all your mail and packages.
00:14:25.000 It's a hassle, which is why you need Stamps.com, one of the most popular time-saving tools for small businesses.
00:14:30.000 Stamps.com eliminates trips to the post office and saves you money with discounts you can't even get at the post office.
00:14:35.000 Stamps.com brings all the amazing services of the U.S.
00:14:38.000 Post Office direct to your computer.
00:14:39.000 Whether you're a small office sending invoices or an online seller shipping out products, even a warehouse if you're sending thousands of packages a day, Stamps.com can handle all of it with ease.
00:14:48.000 With Stamps.com, you get five cents off every first-class stamp and up to 40% off priority mail, which is a heck of a deal.
00:14:53.000 Not to mention, it's a fraction of the cost of those expensive postage meters.
00:14:57.000 Stamps.com is a true no-brainer.
00:14:59.000 It saves you time, it saves you money.
00:15:00.000 Right now, my listeners get a special offer.
00:15:02.000 I want to talk a little bit about this division that's broken out inside the Republican Party.
00:15:17.000 It seems like almost a tripartite division.
00:15:20.000 There's sort of the libertarian contingent, people who say government should be as small as humanly possible, it shouldn't be involved in nearly any way in American life.
00:15:29.000 social fabric should fill in the gaps, leave everybody to their own.
00:15:32.000 That's the only way we're going to get along.
00:15:33.000 Then there are folks who are sort of social conservatives who say, listen, government was left alone and government then started cramming down leftism.
00:15:41.000 So we need to retake the means of production effectively and start promulgating a virtuous reform-econ agenda.
00:15:49.000 We have to try and create certain incentives for people to get married.
00:15:53.000 We have to start teaching certain values from the government side.
00:15:56.000 And then we have to use the tools of government in order to promulgate certain messages.
00:15:59.000 And then there are a group of folks who have come about who really suggest that the government ought to ratify A couple things here.
00:16:07.000 It's very complex.
00:16:07.000 That's a great question.
00:16:08.000 in pretty major ways.
00:16:09.000 They're afraid of technological development.
00:16:10.000 They believe that the free market has led to the emptying out of the American family.
00:16:14.000 They're afraid that market forces have hyper-individualized the country and that only government regulation can put all of this back together.
00:16:21.000 Where do you come down in this debate?
00:16:23.000 Where do you think the role of government lies? - Couple things here.
00:16:26.000 That's a great question, it's very complex.
00:16:28.000 First of all, I'm a constitutionalist when it comes to the government.
00:16:32.000 I'm not a libertarian when it comes to the government.
00:16:34.000 To me, that's a way of life, okay?
00:16:36.000 If you want to live that way, in many ways I do.
00:16:39.000 If you believe in a free market economy, when we're talking about the government, I'm a constitutionalist.
00:16:45.000 And what does the Constitution say, basically?
00:16:48.000 You're the powers of the federal government, no more.
00:16:50.000 You want to expand them?
00:16:51.000 You amend the Constitution.
00:16:53.000 That's where my head is as a gentleman.
00:16:55.000 That's where I start from.
00:16:56.000 As far as libertarianism goes, I don't interpret the Constitution from a libertarian perspective.
00:17:02.000 I interpret what it says, and I try to apply what was intended at the time.
00:17:06.000 There's history or there's not history, and you do the best job you can.
00:17:10.000 But in terms of libertarianism, I'm pretty much a libertarian when it comes to economic matters.
00:17:15.000 I can be convinced that this matter or that matter, depending on what the situation is, but that's where I start from.
00:17:20.000 I am not a national populist, because there's not a dime's worth of difference between national populism of Bernie Sanders and somebody on the right, because I can't define it, neither can they.
00:17:30.000 As a matter of fact, they like to quote each other.
00:17:31.000 They like to embrace each other.
00:17:33.000 It is an odd thing to say that I'm a constitutionalist, but I'm also a national populist.
00:17:38.000 What does that mean?
00:17:39.000 The framers rejected both nationalism and populism.
00:17:42.000 They created federalism.
00:17:44.000 Moreover, they rejected populism because we don't have a democracy, we have a republic.
00:17:49.000 Populism scares the hell out of me.
00:17:50.000 You're telling me my neighbors get to vote if I have unalienable rights?
00:17:54.000 My neighbors get to vote on my property rights?
00:17:56.000 My neighbors get to make decisions like this?
00:17:58.000 Or if that's not what populism is, what is populism?
00:18:01.000 Are there certain politicians who get to tell us what the American people think and what the American people feel?
00:18:06.000 I don't think so.
00:18:07.000 So what I tell my audience is, look at the Declaration of Independence.
00:18:10.000 That's not about populism.
00:18:12.000 It's not about nationalism.
00:18:14.000 It's about Americanism.
00:18:15.000 There's a difference between nationalism and Americanism.
00:18:19.000 Americanism is patriotic, right?
00:18:21.000 Americanism is supporting our culture, supporting the principles of the revolution.
00:18:27.000 I can't even... the so-called nationalists can't really define nationalism.
00:18:31.000 And yet they tell us they're concerned about the central government and big government and they're disconnected from the people.
00:18:36.000 Well, how do they think this is going to work?
00:18:38.000 We're going to have plebiscites every week? 0.66
00:18:39.000 No.
00:18:40.000 Those same people are going to be making those same decisions in lieu of us, or in lieu of states, or in lieu of towns, or in lieu of families, or in lieu of so forth and so on.
00:18:50.000 So nationalism clearly is not the answer.
00:18:52.000 Populism is ill-defined.
00:18:54.000 That's clearly not the answer.
00:18:56.000 I don't believe in mobocracy.
00:18:59.000 We have to do a better job, perhaps, of explaining constitutionalism and capitalism and all these things that have made us such a magnificent country.
00:19:06.000 Any country can be nationalist, populist country.
00:19:09.000 But that's not what our Constitution is.
00:19:11.000 That's not what our founding is.
00:19:12.000 So, with that said, what do you think that the role of government is?
00:19:15.000 When you talk about the role of government under the Constitution, that really applies to the federal government, obviously.
00:19:19.000 What do you think the role of government, let's say state and locally, ought to be?
00:19:22.000 You're constructing the ideal Mark Levin society.
00:19:25.000 What would government do and what would government not do?
00:19:29.000 Probably a mix of Idaho, Utah, and Florida.
00:19:32.000 In other words, that is a great question, separate question.
00:19:36.000 Okay, so what kind of state?
00:19:39.000 Like this magnificent state of California has gone to hell.
00:19:42.000 And it shouldn't.
00:19:44.000 The resources it has, the geography it has, the people it has, but the government is horrendous.
00:19:48.000 And you have one party government.
00:19:50.000 I lived here briefly.
00:19:52.000 Well, again, I would look at the Constitution to see what the role of the government is there as well.
00:19:55.000 But it has a bigger role than the federal government.
00:19:57.000 and then a fairly Republican legislature.
00:20:02.000 So what is the role of state government?
00:20:04.000 Well, again, I would look at the Constitution to see what the role of the government is there as well.
00:20:08.000 But it has a bigger role than the federal government.
00:20:10.000 It's supposed to have a bigger role than the federal government.
00:20:13.000 Roads, bridges, all this.
00:20:15.000 I'll give you another issue where people are going to have a problem with me.
00:20:19.000 I don't believe in a $2 trillion infrastructure program.
00:20:22.000 I think that's nuts.
00:20:24.000 All that does is featherbed the states and the localities and they send in a big list and all it allows is the Democrats to put in about $800 billion worth of non-road stuff and so forth.
00:20:36.000 I joke in my community, they wind a road from two to four lanes.
00:20:40.000 Now we have more traffic than ever before because people, oh, there's now four lanes.
00:20:46.000 So my attitude is, even at the state level, the less government the better, but it depends.
00:20:51.000 I mean, I want law enforcement.
00:20:54.000 There are other things that the state government does that are important to me.
00:20:57.000 Maybe they should be doing more.
00:20:58.000 Rather than a federal EPA, let's leave it to the state equivalent of the EPAs.
00:21:04.000 When it comes to states, maybe they don't have more of a say in immigration, particularly if they're on the border than they should in Washington, D.C., where they're largely unaffected or even benefit from open borders and the politics that comes with that.
00:21:17.000 So I am of the belief that states get it wrong a lot.
00:21:21.000 There are some terrible, terrible states, places where I wouldn't want to live.
00:21:25.000 But that's the point, isn't it?
00:21:26.000 I don't have to live there.
00:21:27.000 The United States is a country. - One of the things that's been happening, and it's really, I think, a problem, is the nationalization of the locals.
00:21:34.000 So you see this with abortion law, particularly, is that I haven't seen a lot of people from Georgia threatening not to go to New York, because New York liberalized its abortion law to the ultimate extreme.
00:21:43.000 And yet I'm seeing businesses across the country say that they're not going to do business with the state of Georgia or with the state of Alabama because of their abortion law.
00:21:50.000 Every local decision now becomes a national referendum on the issue itself.
00:21:54.000 It's as though federalism, I mean, I think that it's probably dying.
00:21:58.000 It may be well dead.
00:21:59.000 Where do you think we stand in terms of federalism?
00:22:01.000 And if it falls apart, do you think the country can stick together?
00:22:03.000 First of all, I think the Supreme Court has largely nationalized these social issues.
00:22:08.000 And it's very troubling to me.
00:22:10.000 You know, for a lot of people in a lot of communities, they quote unquote evolve on these issues.
00:22:16.000 You know, like the anti-sodomy laws that were used as an excuse in the 1960s for the federal government to get it, for the federal Supreme Court to get involved in a lot of these cases.
00:22:25.000 Even though there were only 14 states that had them and they were dying on the vine anyway.
00:22:31.000 but it's not a good thing.
00:22:32.000 But they always want to use some event to make the case.
00:22:36.000 It's like same-sex marriage. 0.84
00:22:37.000 There's no constitutional basis for same-sex marriage.
00:22:40.000 I'm sorry to upset people.
00:22:42.000 That is a state issue.
00:22:45.000 But over time, and you can see it with Lawrence and other cases they went through, Anthony Kennedy in particular, they worked their way through.
00:22:53.000 They knew they'd be there 20, 25 years on the bench, and they decided to nationalize that issue.
00:22:59.000 And what people need to understand is there's winners and losers when that happens.
00:23:03.000 And a court can change.
00:23:05.000 And they may nationalize an issue you don't like.
00:23:08.000 And it's just hard for me to believe that a 5-4 decision with one justice all of a sudden can determine what a fundamental right is and what a fundamental right isn't depending on whether the justice votes this way or votes that way.
00:23:21.000 On the abortion issue, my view is that it ought to be absolutely a state issue.
00:23:24.000 Everybody knows Roe v. Wade is a judicial joke.
00:23:28.000 Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg thinks it's a judicial joke.
00:23:32.000 If they want abortion on demand nationally, then try and get it through an amendment. 0.93
00:23:36.000 If it is that popular in every corner of the country, and if every woman in the country believes in this, then go get your amendment. 1.00
00:23:43.000 They don't even try, because they can't.
00:23:46.000 Abortion is one issue, but there's a whole host of issues that are being nationalized, centralized, imposed on the American people.
00:23:53.000 And the problem with that is, you're right, it undermines the whole notion of diversity in this country.
00:23:57.000 One of the things that has kept this diverse country together, people with different religions and backgrounds and histories and all the rest, is the fact that you have states that have different approaches.
00:24:08.000 It'd be like the death penalty.
00:24:09.000 If they eliminate the death penalty all across the country, and they may one day, That means the death penalty in states that have them, aggressively, like Florida and Virginia, and I might add I have homes in both, thankfully, that will change the landscape of these states.
00:24:24.000 And I think to myself, why is it that we don't leave people in these states alone to make these decisions? 0.98
00:24:29.000 In other words, is it because they're dumber? 0.98
00:24:31.000 Is it because, no, it's because they don't agree with us. 0.99
00:24:34.000 So we're going to force our will on them.
00:24:36.000 And when it comes to the Hyde Amendment, as an example, which is a question of whether the federal taxpayers should pay for abortion, we've now reached a point where they're saying we must pay for the abortions, even if we disagree with them.
00:24:47.000 And it's even gotten worse.
00:24:49.000 I think Kamala Harris has made a proposal where she says, like the Voting Rights Act, the federal government should look at it in advance.
00:24:56.000 And I'm going, whoa, whoa, whoa.
00:24:57.000 This is tyranny.
00:24:58.000 And it's close to fascism, quite frankly.
00:25:02.000 So federalism, which allows mobility, which allows diversity, is the glue that keeps the country together, ironically enough.
00:25:11.000 Centralization, uniformity, is what tears us apart and will destroy this country.
00:25:16.000 I also noticed that Kamala Harris proposal, and I thought exactly the same thing, talked about it on my show.
00:25:20.000 It feels like what's happened is that all authority has now been sucked up to the federal level and then delegated from the vestigial organ that is the legislature over to the executive, which basically runs like a dictatorship regardless of which party is in charge, though the bureaucracy does everything.
00:25:35.000 You know what's interesting about this?
00:25:38.000 Meanwhile, they're out there with their sanctuary cities, so they don't always support federal control.
00:25:44.000 It really is the ends justifies the means for the left.
00:25:47.000 They'll talk about free speech for Nazis marching in Skokie and then they'll try and shut down Stephen Crowder because they don't like his speech in particular because he's effective.
00:25:58.000 But really, do they really believe in the vote?
00:26:01.000 They say every vote should count.
00:26:04.000 They believe every vote should count when they win.
00:26:06.000 They don't believe every vote should count what they lose.
00:26:08.000 Then they turn to the courts, or they turn to the bureaucracy, the unelected parts of the government, to impose their will.
00:26:16.000 If the President of the United States says, you know what, I'm going to get rid of DACA, And then we have a federal judge appointed by Obama who says, no, that's the law.
00:26:22.000 No, it's not the law.
00:26:24.000 The Department of Homeland Security issued that ruling, or that rule.
00:26:28.000 So how is that law?
00:26:29.000 One president is the law, and the next president can't remove that law?
00:26:32.000 You can see it in the immigration field.
00:26:34.000 You can see it in the environmental field, and so forth.
00:26:37.000 So for the left, it is pushing towards their ideology, their utopia, which is really hell.
00:26:44.000 If it's federalism one day, great.
00:26:46.000 If it's central government one day, great.
00:26:49.000 If it's elections one day, great.
00:26:50.000 If it's a fiat by the Supreme Court, great.
00:26:52.000 Whatever it is, it is.
00:26:54.000 Do you think that the country is going to hold together?
00:26:56.000 Because, I mean, I'm seeing... I talked recently with Baronelle Stutzman, who owns Arlene's Flowers up in Washington State.
00:27:02.000 She's basically being shut down because, as a religious person living in a liberal state, she's being forced to cater same-sex weddings or they're going to shut her down. 0.93
00:27:10.000 And I was talking with her lawyer, and one of the things that I said is, I don't even understand why this is a freedom of religion case.
00:27:14.000 This seems to me like this should be a basic freedom of association case.
00:27:17.000 Meaning, why do I have to serve anybody?
00:27:19.000 And of course, the answer is that we have broadened out the provisions of the Civil Rights Act to include pretty much everything now.
00:27:24.000 So, the government instituted segregation, and then the federal government came in and said, how about this?
00:27:28.000 How about we not only overrule the states on this stuff, we also inject ourselves into private businesses, and then control that top down. 0.99
00:27:36.000 How can the government, how can the country stick together under these circumstances?
00:27:40.000 I think we're all, aren't we all just going to end up in areas where we agree with each other?
00:27:43.000 It's going to be more difficult.
00:27:44.000 There's no question about it, because you're attacking one of the strengths of the country, which is, you know, the left likes to talk about diversity, but they don't support diversity.
00:27:53.000 It is their way or the highway, whether it's cases or whether it is what we've been talking about and so forth.
00:28:01.000 And this is a problem, and I'm not sure how to fix it.
00:28:05.000 And I'm not sure if it can be fixed, but we need to keep talking about it and keep exposing it because more and more people are going to feel like they're not part of society.
00:28:13.000 It's also destructive of the culture.
00:28:16.000 What is it exactly?
00:28:17.000 Where exactly do they want to take us?
00:28:19.000 I always say, you know, we have our constitution.
00:28:21.000 That's our blueprint.
00:28:22.000 What's their blueprint?
00:28:24.000 Where's their blueprint?
00:28:25.000 When does this end?
00:28:26.000 How do we know that we have utopia?
00:28:28.000 When will we know that we've achieved paradise?
00:28:31.000 And this is one of the things I wrote about in my book, Emeritopia, in the first chapter, which is they never are wrong.
00:28:38.000 We just haven't tried hard enough, or we haven't had enough resources, or people are just too intransigent, or the wrong person was running it.
00:28:47.000 It's like Obamacare.
00:28:48.000 I thought Obamacare was going to deliver everything we wanted.
00:28:50.000 Nobody even talks about Obamacare anymore.
00:28:52.000 It's now Medicare for all, you know, which is a single government, iron-fisted, Soviet-style health care from the top down.
00:29:01.000 You know, Milton Friedman once said, that's why I'm not a national populist, you know, he once said, most of the problems we have Is with big government.
00:29:10.000 So we have problems in our lives and problems, but the big problems we have mostly are with government, and I agree with that.
00:29:17.000 And so people who believe there ought to be more of it, I just reject it on a hand.
00:29:22.000 So, obviously, President Trump, controversial figure, not just now, but was in 2016.
00:29:26.000 You voted for him.
00:29:27.000 You supported him.
00:29:28.000 You didn't support him in the primaries, obviously.
00:29:30.000 I supported Cruz in the primaries.
00:29:31.000 Right.
00:29:31.000 And you and I had many discussions over the course of the election cycle, specifically on this issue.
00:29:36.000 I think that, you know, you said you'll vote for him in 2020.
00:29:39.000 I've said that I'm highly likely to vote for him in 2020 as well at this point.
00:29:43.000 What do you make of his overall performance?
00:29:44.000 What are you happy with and what are you disappointed with?
00:29:48.000 I'm happy with a lot.
00:29:50.000 And as a conservative, there's a lot he's done that I actually like.
00:29:54.000 I look at the courts.
00:29:56.000 I strongly support what he's trying to do with the courts.
00:30:01.000 I look at our ally Israel.
00:30:04.000 I mean, he's done things that I don't think any Republican would have done when it comes to the state of Israel.
00:30:10.000 They've talked about it, but he actually did it.
00:30:13.000 I like what he's doing with our military.
00:30:15.000 He's trying to strengthen our military.
00:30:17.000 I like his support for law enforcement.
00:30:19.000 Law enforcement isn't always right, but they've been brutalized over the last 10 years, and he's making it clear that he, as a rule, stands with law enforcement.
00:30:28.000 Spending is completely out of control.
00:30:32.000 But you know, the spending bills come to him.
00:30:34.000 And unfortunately, even when we had Paul Ryan in the House, I think Mitch McConnell, in my opinion, has been a disaster when it comes to the budget.
00:30:41.000 I'm not a great fan of his.
00:30:43.000 And the president has to make a decision.
00:30:45.000 Sign it, because he's worried about the military, or veto it.
00:30:48.000 I would have vetoed it, but I'm not president.
00:30:51.000 So I disagree with that.
00:30:52.000 I think there needs to be something done and done fast, because I think that that is a massive issue in this country.
00:30:58.000 When it comes to tariffs, I don't agree with them, except in two cases.
00:31:01.000 China is number one.
00:31:03.000 China's the enemy. 0.99
00:31:05.000 I don't think there's any question about this.
00:31:07.000 In the South China Sea, it's provocations in Africa, where it's building bases. 0.98
00:31:13.000 It's provocations even in our own hemisphere.
00:31:16.000 It now controls both ends of the Panama Canal.
00:31:18.000 That was one of the things that Ronald Reagan was very concerned about, the Panama Canal.
00:31:22.000 It's got killer satellites up there now.
00:31:24.000 We don't, because Obama wouldn't fund them.
00:31:27.000 China is a grave threat, every bit as dangerous as the Soviet Union, and they're getting worse and worse and worse. 0.99
00:31:33.000 So I support tariffs, not because I believe that somehow there's this imbalance of trade, because I don't think people understand what that means.
00:31:40.000 It doesn't count like money that flows into this country.
00:31:43.000 And a very, very successful country needs raw materials and other things from other countries.
00:31:48.000 So we import them.
00:31:49.000 Why?
00:31:50.000 To satisfy my needs, your needs, everybody's desires.
00:31:53.000 That's the way the cookie crumbles.
00:31:56.000 So the reason I support these tariffs is I want him to do to the Chinese economy what Reagan did to the Soviet economy.
00:32:04.000 Now it's going to cost us, too.
00:32:05.000 Because as you and I both know, tariffs are a tax on us.
00:32:09.000 But also, it limits their ability to ship things to us.
00:32:13.000 So I'm not doing it for economic purposes, because I think it's so smart.
00:32:18.000 And Mexico.
00:32:19.000 I may be in a minority on this, too.
00:32:22.000 A 5% tariff there.
00:32:23.000 Mexico has an obligation, I think, too.
00:32:26.000 Or the President has an obligation to secure that border.
00:32:28.000 He's done everything he can.
00:32:30.000 You know, when you have Democrats who are of a different mindset, who are not going to allow him to do anything, and Republicans, when they control both houses, they did nothing about it.
00:32:38.000 When you see that we're going to have 1.1 or 1.2 million illegal aliens in this country, the cost of these border states, and California's a border state, the cost of these school districts, law enforcement, these hospitals and so forth.
00:32:53.000 I remember when I was in the Reagan administration, all the way back then they were saying, we're being overwhelmed.
00:32:57.000 Now imagine today, I mean we are really overwhelmed.
00:33:01.000 I think it's important, and I look at history, as you look at history, and is Trump really doing anything truly outrageous?
00:33:09.000 You know, when Dwight Eisenhower was president, he's considered sort of a moderate Republican president and so forth.
00:33:15.000 He had Operation, I didn't name it, he named it, Wetback. 0.95
00:33:19.000 And they rounded up one million illegal aliens in a period of a year or so.
00:33:23.000 And it was school buses and trains and trucks and moved them into the interior of Mexico and so it rounded them up.
00:33:31.000 He didn't care about, oh, you're going to round them up?
00:33:33.000 He said, yeah, actually, we are.
00:33:35.000 And he put out this military directive, and that's what they did.
00:33:39.000 And I compare that to a 5% tariff, I think Eisenhower would be laughing right now.
00:33:43.000 So again, I don't view it as wise economically.
00:33:46.000 I view it as wise because we're trying to secure the border and he's run out of options.
00:33:51.000 So, one of the things that I've said about President Trump is that on policy, like you, I'm very happy with a lot of his policy.
00:33:57.000 His shortcomings, I think we agree on.
00:33:59.000 I have been incredibly disappointed with spending, but he never pledged he was going to do anything about entitlements.
00:34:04.000 In fact, he pledged the opposite, that he wasn't going to do anything about entitlements.
00:34:08.000 There are other areas of policy, like some of the other There's a lot of tariffs that he's put in place that I think are mistaken, but on regulations, on judges, I'm happy.
00:34:17.000 There's a second job the president does, and this is where I've been very critical of the president, for a couple reasons.
00:34:21.000 One, because I think the president, unfortunately in some ways, is sort of tasked with this job.
00:34:27.000 And two, because it actually makes a difference to the future of conservatism, and that is the job of conveying ideas.
00:34:32.000 Now, I think a lot of conservatives, people like you, people like me, Who see him as a vessel for policy.
00:34:37.000 We're very happy with him as a vessel for policy, generally speaking.
00:34:41.000 The idea that he is promoting conservative ideas, I will say, on the mild end, I have been disappointed with that.
00:34:49.000 Especially because the guy does have a unique capacity to draw cameras.
00:34:54.000 This is an interesting point you raise.
00:34:55.000 light for him is unbelievable.
00:34:56.000 And yet the sort of material that he puts out into the public view is rarely conservative.
00:35:02.000 Very often it's alienating for a lot of folks.
00:35:05.000 And my great fear is that we will get a lot of good policy and then he will have alienated so many people, particularly people who are of my generation and younger, that we're going to be in the wilderness for a while.
00:35:15.000 This is an interesting point you raise.
00:35:19.000 I don't think Donald Trump is a philosophical conservative.
00:35:24.000 I think he's come to his conservatism as a matter of practicality and in some ways principle.
00:35:30.000 And so So I don't think he's any more a principled or philosophical conservative than George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush.
00:35:41.000 I think there have really been two in the last little over a century.
00:35:45.000 That would be Coolidge and Reagan.
00:35:47.000 But other than that I can't think of any, just off the top of my head.
00:35:51.000 Not Nixon, not Ford, not Eisenhower, certainly not Theodore Roosevelt and Harding and so forth.
00:35:59.000 So I don't really hold that against him in terms of him promoting that kind of an agenda from a philosophical point of view, but I think it's kind of the Not our job, but our responsibility to try and explain that to a lot of people, what these policies are, our philosophy, and so forth.
00:36:21.000 I even think a lot of so-called conservative websites and magazines have lost their way.
00:36:27.000 They're fighting with each other over what conservatism means, or they've abandoned it in some ways because they hate Trump, or they love Trump, or whatever the situation is.
00:36:37.000 I feel right now the intellectual conservative movement is very weak.
00:36:43.000 I really do.
00:36:45.000 I think you and I and others try to present that case, but from a broad-based perspective, it's quite weak.
00:36:53.000 And I think that's a problem because some people are abandoning it.
00:37:00.000 I'm not sure why 100%.
00:37:03.000 I'm very troubled by some who've talked about conservatism all these years and then all of a sudden say, well, what has it ever done for us?
00:37:10.000 And I say, let me tell you what it's done for you.
00:37:13.000 Nine o'clock tonight, I want you to go into one of these supermarkets where I live.
00:37:17.000 They have a place called Wegmans.
00:37:19.000 I don't know if they have them in California.
00:37:21.000 It's as big as a football field.
00:37:24.000 And I want you to walk down every aisle.
00:37:27.000 10 different types of toothpaste.
00:37:29.000 You can get battery-operated toothbrushes or handheld, soft, medium, hard.
00:37:33.000 Then I want you to go to the meat section.
00:37:35.000 And I want to see how many types of meat.
00:37:39.000 The chicken section.
00:37:40.000 Go to the wine section.
00:37:42.000 Wine from all over the world.
00:37:43.000 Just look.
00:37:45.000 Stop telling me conservatism doesn't work and capitalism doesn't work.
00:37:49.000 We have more material things.
00:37:55.000 In this country than any king or queen had 200 years ago.
00:37:59.000 We get on an airplane, we fly across the country.
00:38:01.000 That's not socialism, that's not big government.
00:38:04.000 Those are airplanes.
00:38:05.000 That's technology.
00:38:06.000 That's creativity.
00:38:08.000 And we complain whether they have peanuts or pretzels on the plane or whether we're sitting on the tarmac for an extra half hour, right?
00:38:15.000 We need to put things in perspective.
00:38:17.000 The things we have in this country, almost no other country has.
00:38:21.000 Certainly two-thirds of the world doesn't have.
00:38:23.000 Why do you think millions of people are trying to claw their way into this country?
00:38:26.000 Because why?
00:38:28.000 Because the middle class is under attack, because we have systemic racism, because we're not socialist enough?
00:38:37.000 No.
00:38:38.000 It's because of all the other reasons.
00:38:40.000 And so, part of it is the responsibility of the individual citizen.
00:38:45.000 Honestly, I don't look to the President of the United States or a senator or a politician of any kind to tell me, this is what you need to think.
00:38:52.000 One of the things that we need to continue to teach people is think for yourselves.
00:38:56.000 That's a good thing.
00:38:57.000 Learn for yourself.
00:38:58.000 Most of the stuff I've learned about the Constitution, I sure as hell didn't learn it in public school.
00:39:02.000 I've learned it since I've been in school.
00:39:05.000 And that's a good thing.
00:39:06.000 The learning process goes on and on and on.
00:39:09.000 But not again.
00:39:09.000 The first chapter of Liberty and Tyranny, I say one of the reasons why we don't really appreciate liberty is because we're surrounded by it.
00:39:17.000 And one of the reasons we don't appreciate what we have is because we're surrounded by it. 0.99
00:39:21.000 And so we get caught up in really stupid arguments, stupid things. 1.00
00:39:24.000 I'll give you an example. 1.00
00:39:25.000 Last week in the whole debate on cable TV was over the word nasty.
00:39:30.000 When the president said nasty, referring to comments that the princess made.
00:39:35.000 I've got three days of this stuff?
00:39:38.000 Is this a joke?
00:39:39.000 Did he mean, did he mean she's nasty?
00:39:41.000 Did he mean the stuff that she said was nasty? 0.99
00:39:44.000 And I'm thinking, media is nuts. 1.00
00:39:47.000 Or they are nuts. 0.98
00:39:49.000 Our focus is so off. 0.74
00:39:52.000 And then we had D-Day, the anniversary, 75th anniversary of the other day.
00:39:56.000 And I play these old clips from World War II and you really Your patriotism is just through the roof and you see how tremendous this country is and the sacrifices people have made for this country.
00:40:10.000 So I think it's really on each one of us, more than a president, to really explain liberty and conservatism and constitutionalism.
00:40:20.000 And this president doesn't do that anyway.
00:40:22.000 Most presidents don't do that.
00:40:23.000 Like I said, I can think of two who basically did.
00:40:26.000 But I will say this.
00:40:28.000 Strongly, in support of the president.
00:40:29.000 He doesn't preach the other, too.
00:40:31.000 How rotten America is, you know, how racist America is, the wage gaps in America.
00:40:38.000 I mean, people can't get health care in America.
00:40:41.000 So he's not one of them.
00:40:42.000 And so at his core, I know he loves his country.
00:40:46.000 I do wonder still about the possibility that his personality alienates a lot of people.
00:40:53.000 It's interesting.
00:40:53.000 I speak to groups of older Republicans and groups of younger Republicans a lot, and when I critique the president in front of older Republicans, they start to get a little uptight.
00:41:01.000 They start to get a little upset because I'll say what I think of his character, and frankly, it's not complimentary generally.
00:41:08.000 And then I'll say, and I love a lot of his policy and I'll vote for him.
00:41:11.000 And a lot of older folks get a little upset with this.
00:41:12.000 And if I say it's younger people, it's the only reason they would even consider voting for Trump is because I'm saying to them what I think they believe too.
00:41:19.000 And what I've said is I think the reason for that is when you're older, you basically look at politicians and maybe you have the perspective, okay, well, you know, listen, he's a guy.
00:41:27.000 He does stuff I want.
00:41:28.000 Good.
00:41:28.000 What do I care what he says?
00:41:30.000 And when you're younger, you spend an awful lot of time considering what other people think of you.
00:41:35.000 And so how you view President Trump has now become a lens that other people view you with.
00:41:40.000 So if you're 21 and you say that you like President Trump or that you're voting for President Trump, people immediately go to, well, that's because you're a terrible person who supports everything about him.
00:41:48.000 And so the only way to talk to a lot of those folks is to say, OK, I like some of the stuff he's doing, but am I going to justify how he treats women?
00:41:55.000 That's not a thing I'm going to do.
00:41:56.000 Well, you know what's interesting about that?
00:41:58.000 And I've thought about that.
00:42:01.000 Some of the most foul-mouthed comics appeal to younger people and not to older people.
00:42:07.000 Some of the lousiest movies launch and appeal to younger people and not to older people.
00:42:14.000 One of the things I write in this book is I address this issue of character.
00:42:19.000 And in this context, how the press covered it, but let me address it in your context.
00:42:25.000 Since Donald Trump's been in the Oval Office, I don't know of a single hint of immoral conduct.
00:42:32.000 Not a hint of immoral conduct.
00:42:35.000 When John Kennedy was in office, it was constant.
00:42:39.000 When Lyndon Johnson was in office, it was constant plus.
00:42:44.000 And the media covered it up.
00:42:47.000 But it was all known.
00:42:49.000 So we can look at the life of somebody and all these very, very imperfect people.
00:42:54.000 But since he's been present in terms of his conduct in the Oval Office, we haven't had any interim problems.
00:43:00.000 There haven't been any whispering, none of that kind of stuff.
00:43:02.000 So I want to point that out too.
00:43:05.000 Maybe it's the way he speaks and tweets and people say, you know, I'm not used to that and so forth and so on.
00:43:13.000 And people cringe.
00:43:15.000 But here's another thing I'll point out.
00:43:18.000 He's been called Hitler by the media. 0.98
00:43:20.000 He's been called Stalin by the media, a white supremacist, a racist, an anti-Semite. 0.95
00:43:25.000 He's been called all these things by the media. 0.62
00:43:27.000 He's never called anybody any of these things. 0.97
00:43:29.000 Now he'll say, like with Nancy Pelosi, a horrible person, a nasty... I happen to agree with that, by the way. 0.95
00:43:35.000 A horrible person, a nasty person, or this, that, and that. 0.99
00:43:38.000 Oh, you're presidential. 0.99
00:43:39.000 You shouldn't act that way.
00:43:41.000 But, you know, he didn't have a honeymoon, a hundred-day honeymoon.
00:43:45.000 The transition between one administration and the other.
00:43:49.000 It seems like the Democrats didn't really want a transition from one administration to the other.
00:43:54.000 So, to me, I see this battle that's going on now as a constitutional battle.
00:43:58.000 As the Democrats wanting to remove a man who they never wanted in office in the first place.
00:44:02.000 And they're not very good at poker.
00:44:04.000 They showed, look at my hand, and this is what we're going to push the whole time.
00:44:08.000 Whether we can ride Mueller, whether we can ride impeachment, Whatever it is.
00:44:13.000 And so maybe it's me as a Philadelphia.
00:44:17.000 Maybe that's the instinct.
00:44:18.000 Maybe this way I was.
00:44:20.000 I don't like that kind of stuff.
00:44:21.000 So when you're trying to remove a duly elected president and disenfranchise 63 million people.
00:44:27.000 The tweets are very secondary to me.
00:44:29.000 I don't know how other people feel, young people feel.
00:44:32.000 It's like, it's okay, all hands on deck.
00:44:35.000 That doesn't mean everything that's done, I agree with that.
00:44:37.000 You know, I show too and I explain where I agree and don't agree.
00:44:40.000 But it means this is a top issue.
00:44:43.000 If you're going to remove a president, or try to remove a president, based on the arguments you're making, That is damaging to this country, and it's damaging to the Constitution.
00:44:52.000 So if he calls Nancy Pelosi horrible or talks about somebody's looks because they've talked about his looks, it almost at this point, it just bounces off me.
00:45:04.000 So let's turn to the other side of the aisle.
00:45:06.000 So we're approaching 2020.
00:45:07.000 A lot of speculation about who the Democratic nominee will be or whether President Trump wins re-election.
00:45:11.000 So first, let me get your odds on whether President Trump wins re-election at this point.
00:45:15.000 Obviously all the smart folks, including me, had Hillary Clinton winning in 2016. 1.00
00:45:19.000 That's what the data sort of suggested.
00:45:21.000 Not sort of, largely, almost entirely suggested.
00:45:24.000 And now I'm not betting on anything ever again.
00:45:27.000 I lost $10,000 in that election, so I'm out of the betting on politics business.
00:45:31.000 If you have to estimate the president's chances in 2020, where do you put those?
00:45:35.000 First of all, in fairness to you, even his campaign wasn't sure he was going to win.
00:45:42.000 I don't know, and I'm not trying to duck.
00:45:44.000 It's going to be very, very tough.
00:45:45.000 I saw polls, but it's really early for polls, but still, they're taking and people look at them.
00:45:50.000 In Michigan and Wisconsin.
00:45:52.000 He's double digits behind Biden and Bernie Sanders.
00:45:57.000 And I look at politics almost as military operations in terms of getting votes, sneaking up, hitting them where they're not ready, stuff like that.
00:46:06.000 They weren't ready for him.
00:46:08.000 In Michigan and Wisconsin.
00:46:09.000 They didn't campaign in Michigan.
00:46:11.000 Now they've got teams of people in these heavily blue-collar union states because they don't want to happen what happened before.
00:46:18.000 They're targeting the suburbs like they never targeted the suburbs before.
00:46:22.000 But the president has a pretty damn good record on the economy and on other things as well, national security, that he can run on.
00:46:30.000 And one of the things he is also going for would be his opponents. 0.99
00:46:34.000 I mean, let's be honest, 90% of them are nuts. 1.00
00:46:36.000 They're just absolute crackpots. 0.99
00:46:38.000 And Bernie Sanders, I mean, you can only hide, I'll say, from your Marxism for so long.
00:46:44.000 He's got the 50-year history.
00:46:45.000 He's an old red from Brooklyn. 1.00
00:46:47.000 You and I, we're well familiar with who he is.
00:46:50.000 Joe Biden?
00:46:52.000 I mean, Joe Biden is the bubble man. 0.98
00:46:53.000 They try and protect him as much as he can from himself because he says dumb things because he's not particularly bright.
00:47:01.000 And, in fact, Obama at some point may endorse him, but even Obama won't endorse him now.
00:47:05.000 When George H.W.
00:47:06.000 Bush was running and was challenged in the Republican primary, I think, by Pat Buchanan and so on, Ronald Reagan endorsed his vice president.
00:47:13.000 Obama won't endorse his vice president.
00:47:15.000 Well, you know, we've got to take notice of that.
00:47:17.000 And look what he just did.
00:47:18.000 He flip-flopped on abortion.
00:47:19.000 Now, abortion is a fundamental issue. 0.96
00:47:21.000 Okay, well, I don't want the government to fund it.
00:47:24.000 Then he takes heat for 48 hours.
00:47:25.000 Okay, I mean, I do want the government to fund it.
00:47:27.000 After 46 years.
00:47:28.000 Yeah, it's incredible.
00:47:30.000 So, I don't know what to make of this election.
00:47:34.000 I really don't.
00:47:36.000 I'm very, very hopeful Trump wins re-election because if he doesn't, it's going to give further motivation to our media to continue to do what they're doing, which I think is very destructive of this republic, let alone freedom of the press.
00:47:49.000 It's going to continue to motivate the kook left in this country and their crazy agenda, which would fundamentally change the country. 1.00
00:47:58.000 You know, as I think about this question, You know, early on in our, before our country, the colonies, the press, they wanted to fundamentally transform government.
00:48:10.000 That is, you know, the monarchy, they wanted representative government, limited government, and so forth.
00:48:15.000 The progressive movement likes government.
00:48:18.000 They want to fundamentally transform man, and fundamentally transform the civil society.
00:48:24.000 That's the great difference.
00:48:26.000 And whether the president is making that statement or not, He's the man we have to defend one kind of a society, and the Democrats are pushing another kind of society.
00:48:39.000 And they know what they're doing.
00:48:41.000 I don't mean they know the specifics of the plan.
00:48:44.000 They know where they're pushing us.
00:48:46.000 They don't have a plan for us to show us the plan.
00:48:48.000 They're never going to.
00:48:49.000 But that's the direction they're pushing us in.
00:48:54.000 I don't know who's going to win, but I'm going to be full-throated for this president against any of their nominees.
00:48:59.000 I don't even see a so-called centrist running.
00:49:01.000 I don't even know if there are any so-called centrists left in the leadership of the Democrats.
00:49:07.000 I mean, it's supposed to be Biden, but in all fairness to him, Melissa Milano did call him on the phone and that changes everything, apparently.
00:49:12.000 Apparently so.
00:49:13.000 One call from the star of Charmed and you just shift where you were for 50 years on an issue.
00:49:17.000 But don't worry, he's a solid rock.
00:49:19.000 He's the person you can trust in times of trouble.
00:49:21.000 And this is one of the things that's been troubling me so much about the Democratic Party.
00:49:25.000 I make a distinction.
00:49:27.000 In my language, routinely, between leftist and liberal.
00:49:29.000 Liberals are people I disagree with on politics.
00:49:31.000 Leftists are people who want to shut down the debate, who are interested in polarizing people specifically on the basis of race for political gain.
00:49:38.000 And it seems like the left has taken over completely the Democratic Party.
00:49:42.000 It's interesting, I was watching with my wife an old movie the other night, a movie called Born Yesterday with Judy Holliday and Broderick Crawford.
00:49:48.000 And the movie is, from 1950, it's an incredibly patriotic film.
00:49:52.000 I mean, the entire film is basically William Holden showing Judy Holliday around the city of Washington, D.C.
00:49:57.000 And he brings her to see the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
00:50:00.000 They go to the Jefferson Memorial.
00:50:01.000 And he's telling her all about the wonderful founding philosophy.
00:50:03.000 And I turn to my wife and I said, there's no way this movie gets made today because the entire narrative of the left has shifted, even in my lifetime.
00:50:10.000 I'm old enough to remember when the Democratic Party actually still at least paid lip service to the foundations of the country and talked about how wonderful founding philosophy was.
00:50:19.000 And now it seems that the narrative is dominant in the Democratic Party that the founding philosophy was effectively just racism, sexism, bigotry and homophobia dressed up in fancy clothes and then sold to people.
00:50:30.000 And that what we really have to do is cleanse the palate, get rid of all these documents and start afresh.
00:50:35.000 Obviously, it scares the hell out of me.
00:50:37.000 I'm seeing young people who don't know anything about history buying into it.
00:50:40.000 How do you combat all of that?
00:50:41.000 You know, the institution that really needs to be dealt with in one form or another is education.
00:50:50.000 Public education in universities and colleges.
00:50:53.000 And you and I fund them.
00:50:54.000 The American people are funding our own demise. 0.95
00:50:56.000 Somehow people get tenure.
00:50:59.000 Not all, but too many.
00:51:00.000 A vast majority.
00:51:01.000 In our public schools, the NEA, the AFT, in our colleges and universities, they get tenure.
00:51:08.000 And they are people who reject our founding principles.
00:51:12.000 I mean, I always wonder how many battles of the Civil War are actually taught in high school?
00:51:18.000 Each battle is so incredible, so unique.
00:51:20.000 How many battles in World War II?
00:51:22.000 How many battles in the Revolutionary War?
00:51:24.000 Do kids today know what Lexington and Concord's all about?
00:51:29.000 These are things that would inspire patriotism and support for the country.
00:51:33.000 Instead, you're right.
00:51:35.000 The founders had no positive characteristics.
00:51:40.000 They were slaves, so they must be dismissed.
00:51:42.000 And yet it was Abraham Lincoln who did the greatest job of explaining the founding and the founders and did more.
00:51:50.000 for African-American slaves in this country than any left-wing professor or any leftist on TV that you can imagine.
00:51:58.000 He led the Civil War.
00:52:00.000 And what Lincoln said in 1858 and beyond, and he loved the founders, he said, those men wrote the Declaration of Independence.
00:52:09.000 There's not a word about slavery in the Declaration of Independence.
00:52:13.000 Every individual is created by God.
00:52:16.000 Unalienable rights.
00:52:18.000 He said, so the men, those men knew that slavery was wrong.
00:52:22.000 But they also could not create a country because certain states like Georgia and South Carolina weren't going to go for it.
00:52:29.000 But they knew that their children and their grandchildren would have to address this.
00:52:33.000 That's why they wrote the Declaration of Independence the way that they did.
00:52:37.000 And he says it's their Writing their constitution that will enable us to smite this.
00:52:45.000 Because otherwise we wouldn't have had a country and you still would have had states or colonies with slavery and states and colonies without it.
00:52:55.000 But history is not taught.
00:52:57.000 It certainly wasn't, even when I was in high school, I still got the same pablum, the same left-wing agenda.
00:53:03.000 They have managed, the progressive movement, to really control ideologically Virtually every instrumentality of our culture right now.
00:53:12.000 That's why we have these culture wars. 0.96
00:53:14.000 Whether it's the courts, whether it's the bureaucracy, whether it's education, whether it's the media, we always start with the progressive foundation and we're always on defense trying to respond to these things.
00:53:27.000 We've got to do something about Colleges and universities.
00:53:31.000 And I think we the people need to start speaking with our wallets.
00:53:35.000 And states need to start withholding funds.
00:53:37.000 You're going to be subsidized?
00:53:38.000 Well, don't be subsidized so much.
00:53:41.000 Make sure when you send your kid to college, if you're involved in that decision, that you don't send them to an indoctrination mill.
00:53:47.000 You know, just because it's an Ivy League school doesn't mean they have to go there.
00:53:50.000 There's other schools out there where they'll get a more traditional education and so on.
00:53:54.000 But this is something I've been thinking a lot about.
00:53:56.000 Maybe one day I'll write about it and give it more focus thought, but it is a huge, huge problem.
00:54:01.000 I mean, so you spent an entire lifetime basically trying to educate people about all of this stuff.
00:54:05.000 You've written a bevy of philosophically linked books and going all the way back through American history.
00:54:12.000 So if you had to kind of give a beginner's reading list for people, you're the history professor now.
00:54:16.000 So what are the books that you would recommend, aside from your own, to young students who are maybe interested in this stuff?
00:54:23.000 Kids who are 10, 11, 12 years old who are first getting introduced to American history?
00:54:28.000 Well, I would do it the way I did it.
00:54:30.000 Which is, there wasn't one book or one author.
00:54:35.000 If I would read a book and they would refer to the Stamp Act or something like that, I'd go read the Stamp Act.
00:54:42.000 And it's right over our finger.
00:54:44.000 I'd go to the Avalon Project and look at original documents.
00:54:48.000 They're out there.
00:54:49.000 And I would do those sorts of things.
00:54:51.000 So there are certain professors I like, certain books I like, but what I would encourage people to do is go do it yourself.
00:54:57.000 It's actually entertaining.
00:54:58.000 It's actually interesting.
00:54:59.000 So if you want to learn about the press, you could take a book like mine.
00:55:03.000 I have over 400 endnotes in there.
00:55:05.000 The reason I do that is so you can look at the endnotes and go look yourself.
00:55:10.000 There were historians at the time.
00:55:12.000 Ramsey is an example.
00:55:14.000 Most people have never heard of him before.
00:55:16.000 He was a real-time historian about the Revolutionary War, which is why the later progressive historians attack him, because they want to change the history of America from a battle over government to a battle between classes, which is what they do.
00:55:31.000 So I would suggest that people go look at the original document.
00:55:34.000 You don't need people to explain the Declaration of Independence to you.
00:55:37.000 Read it.
00:55:38.000 You don't need people, well you might, to help you with the Constitution.
00:55:42.000 But first, read it.
00:55:45.000 In many ways, I don't even care what the Supreme Court says.
00:55:48.000 I read the cases like you do because we need to explain them.
00:55:50.000 But those are lawyers, justices, they have an effect.
00:55:55.000 But that's their opinion on what the Constitution says.
00:55:58.000 I want to read the Constitution and why it says what it says.
00:56:01.000 Look at the history, English common law, other things, Montesquieu, separation of powers, Locke when it comes to the Declaration of Independence.
00:56:11.000 Go back and read those people.
00:56:12.000 You'll be a lot smarter.
00:56:15.000 And I think a lot more fulfilled.
00:56:16.000 So I'm going to ask you a tough question that I often get when I'm speaking on college campuses.
00:56:20.000 So the question that I get pretty frequently is a follow up to the kind of what books do you recommend.
00:56:25.000 Is there anybody on the left that you read?
00:56:27.000 Are there any liberals that you think it's worth reading or that you enjoy or think are interesting out there?
00:56:32.000 Not really.
00:56:34.000 I mean, some of them are very smart, but I feel like I'm bombarded with this every day.
00:56:39.000 And if I'm going to read a leftist, I'll read an old leftist.
00:56:42.000 I'll read a John Dewey for a while, or these guys that push the progressive movement, or Wilson, these other guys.
00:56:50.000 They are the founding fathers of the modern-day Democrat Party.
00:56:53.000 They are the founding fathers of the progressive movement.
00:56:56.000 So if you really want to understand what Obama's saying, Or what their progeny are saying, read them.
00:57:03.000 And there's a lot to read.
00:57:04.000 And they're not the only ones.
00:57:06.000 But they're the ones that provided the so-called intellectual basis for modern day progressives.
00:57:12.000 Or even go back further, read Marx and Engels and Hegel and Rousseau and these guys.
00:57:17.000 Because that's who Bernie Sanders read.
00:57:20.000 I'm dying to have Bernie Sanders on one of my programs.
00:57:23.000 I'm sure you are too.
00:57:24.000 He will not come on any of my programs because I want to talk to him.
00:57:28.000 About Marx, and Engels, and Hegel, and Rousseau, and Dewey, and all these other guys, people who he embraces, rather than these shows he goes on to do.
00:57:37.000 Health care for, you do a great.
00:57:39.000 That's one of my things.
00:57:40.000 Health care for all.
00:57:44.000 And these superficial interviews where he's just saying, you have a right to this, and you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's talk about this.
00:57:49.000 What do you mean by that?
00:57:50.000 You go, I would love to do it.
00:57:52.000 But the only way I'm able to do it is because I read those things.
00:57:55.000 Not people who've read those things telling me what those people said.
00:57:58.000 Just read those people.
00:57:59.000 It's out there.
00:58:00.000 So, many people who listen to you may not know kind of how you got into the commentary business in the first place.
00:58:05.000 Like, I've been following you since I was old enough to listen to talk radio, but for a lot of people who have only heard of you that way, how did you even get into doing this sort of thing?
00:58:15.000 Well starting in a log cabin.
00:58:16.000 No, not really.
00:58:19.000 When I was a kid I would listen to talk radio.
00:58:21.000 I'd listen to guys like Bob Grant in New York and others and I was mesmerized by it.
00:58:27.000 And I'd listen to it until midnight, two in the morning.
00:58:29.000 I actually listened to hosts I didn't even agree with.
00:58:33.000 I just thought that whole format was fascinating.
00:58:36.000 And then when I was about 16 years old, I contacted our local radio station.
00:58:40.000 It was WCAU, now WPHT.
00:58:42.000 It's a big 50,000 watt station.
00:58:45.000 And I asked them if I could do a show.
00:58:47.000 And of course, they blew me off.
00:58:48.000 But then they did bring me in.
00:58:50.000 Said, just one Sunday.
00:58:51.000 And I did it.
00:58:52.000 That was that.
00:58:53.000 And I thought that was fine.
00:58:54.000 And went on with my legal career.
00:58:56.000 And then I heard Rush and I heard Sean.
00:59:02.000 I used to listen to other talk radio throughout even when I was writing briefs and doing other things and so forth.
00:59:09.000 And kind of hooked up with Rush or he hooked up with me.
00:59:12.000 I don't really exactly remember how that happened.
00:59:16.000 I would provide him with legal information, constitutional information.
00:59:19.000 Then he dubbed me F. Lee Levin, his legal director.
00:59:22.000 And then Sean, same thing.
00:59:26.000 And then they would have me sit in for them now and then.
00:59:29.000 And then WABC asked me if I would do a Sunday show for nothing.
00:59:34.000 I said, OK, I'll do it.
00:59:35.000 It's pretty cool to test out on WABC in New York.
00:59:38.000 And that's what I did.
00:59:39.000 And after about 14 months of that, They asked me to do a show, which is how I got here.
00:59:45.000 So what's your conservative origin story?
00:59:46.000 I mean, how did you get conservative in the first place?
00:59:48.000 Because you're into talk radio from when you were 16, but have you always held these politics?
00:59:52.000 I've always held these views, and I've wondered, because my parents always wondered.
00:59:56.000 And by the way, they were always conservatives.
00:59:59.000 But I don't mean in terms of philosophical conservatives.
01:00:02.000 And 1964.
01:00:06.000 They both voted for Goldwater.
01:00:08.000 And they're Jewish.
01:00:09.000 They were conservatives.
01:00:10.000 And I asked my dad, back then, you voted for Goldwater.
01:00:14.000 Why did you vote for Goldwater?
01:00:16.000 He said, I knew the BS they were saying about Goldwater was wrong.
01:00:20.000 And I started to think about that.
01:00:21.000 I said, I have that gene.
01:00:24.000 I don't like people pushing me around.
01:00:27.000 I don't like bullies.
01:00:29.000 And I don't like authoritarians.
01:00:31.000 And that's what the left is all about. 0.82
01:00:34.000 Bullies and authoritarians. 0.63
01:00:37.000 So I don't like being pushed around, whether it's a regulation, a tax, a government talking down to me, a government telling me I can't think for myself.
01:00:47.000 And by the way, I think this is how we appeal to younger and younger people, because I don't think they like it either.
01:00:52.000 So it's not so much anti-authority, it's anti-authoritarianism.
01:00:57.000 And so in other words, what I'm saying is, Autocracy is a bad thing, whether it's practiced one-on-one in the playground or whether it's practiced by government.
01:01:06.000 And that's what I think, that's what I reject.
01:01:10.000 That's why I started to say, wait a minute, I like liberty, I like individualism, I like to be left alone, I like to kind of do what I want to do.
01:01:17.000 And if that's the way you think, then big government and the left is not your answer.
01:01:21.000 Okay, so in a second, I want to ask you one final question.
01:01:24.000 I want to ask you for your top five presidents and your bottom five presidents, because it's kind of a fun thought experiment.
01:01:29.000 But if you want to hear Mark Levin's answer, you have to be a Daily Wire subscriber.
01:01:32.000 To subscribe, head on over to dailywire.com.
01:01:34.000 Click subscribe.
01:01:35.000 You can hear the end of our conversation over there.
01:01:37.000 Well, thank you so much for stopping by.
01:01:38.000 It's been a blast.
01:01:39.000 It's great to see you.
01:01:40.000 God bless you.
01:01:41.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday special is produced by Jonathan Hay.
01:01:50.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
01:01:52.000 Associate producer, Mathis Glover.
01:01:54.000 Edited by Donovan Fowler.
01:01:55.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Coromino.
01:01:57.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
01:01:59.000 Title graphics by Cynthia Angulo.
01:02:01.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire production.