The Ben Shapiro Show - McMaster’s Boltin’, Bolton’s Master | Ep. 502

00:00:00.000 Republicans sending mixed signals on the budget, John Bolton joins the Trump administration, and we do a tour of the mailbag.

00:00:06.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:06.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:12.000 So much to get to today.

00:00:13.000 A lot of news is breaking.

00:00:15.000 The National Security Advisor, General McMaster, H.R.

00:00:18.000 McMaster, is out.

00:00:19.000 John Bolton, the former ambassador to the U.N.

00:00:22.000 under the Bush administration, is in.

00:00:24.000 The budget is in complete flux.

00:00:25.000 We'll talk a little about guns.

00:00:26.000 And we have the Mailbag Plus, a special interview with a special guest a little bit later in the program in the Things I Like segment.

00:00:32.000 But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Dollar Shave Club.

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00:01:45.000 Okay, so we begin today with the latest on the budget.

00:01:46.000 So the budget has

00:02:08.000 The budget passed in the Senate.

00:02:09.000 The budget passed in the Senate by a vote of 65 to 32.

00:02:11.000 It passed overwhelmingly in the House by 252 to 174, something like that.

00:02:16.000 There are a lot of Republicans who are very unhappy with this budget.

00:02:19.000 I am among those Republicans unhappy with this budget. 0.99

00:02:21.000 I called it yesterday on the program a crap sandwich. 0.99

00:02:23.000 That's because every omnibus is by definition a crap sandwich. 0.99

00:02:26.000 It's why it's an omnibus.

00:02:27.000 The whole purpose of an omnibus is to put a bunch of stuff you like in there with a bunch of stuff you don't, and then say to folks, if you don't vote for this bill, you're voting against all the good things, right?

00:02:36.000 You're voting down all the goodies.

00:02:37.000 Yesterday we went through how the bill doesn't cover anything for the border wall essentially.

00:02:41.000 How it doesn't do anything about DACA.

00:02:43.000 How the bill continues to ensure that Planned Parenthood gets funded.

00:02:47.000 It doesn't remove any of the Obamacare regulations.

00:02:50.000 There's a bunch to really dislike about the bill.

00:02:52.000 What's there to like about the bill is that there is a push

00:02:56.000 In the bill for greater military funding, which, of course, is necessary after the Obama years in which we slashed our military pretty dramatically.

00:03:03.000 So that is good.

00:03:04.000 But now confusion is broken out.

00:03:06.000 So there are a bunch of Republicans who, of course, are very upset about this.

00:03:08.000 Ted Cruz is very upset about this.

00:03:09.000 Mike Lee was very upset about it.

00:03:12.000 Rand Paul was quite upset about it.

00:03:14.000 The usual suspects in the Senate who you'd rely upon to be upset about a budget-busting $1.3 trillion bill.

00:03:21.000 Those people were very upset about it, predictably enough.

00:03:23.000 But they weren't able to stop it in the Senate, and it rolls through with 65 votes, a almost veto-proof majority.

00:03:30.000 So Trump immediately comes out and says maybe he will veto it.

00:03:34.000 What's weird about this, of course, is that that's not what he'd been saying a day before.

00:03:37.000 So here's what he tweeted today.

00:03:39.000 I am considering a veto of the omnibus spending bill based on the fact that the 800,000 plus DACA recipients have not been totally abandoned by the Democrats, not even mentioned in bill.

00:03:49.000 And the border wall, which is desperately needed for our national defense, is not fully funded.

00:03:54.000 So a few things about this tweet.

00:03:55.000 Number one, it's fascinating that he's saying that he wants to veto the omnibus spending bill based on the fact that DACA isn't taken care of.

00:04:02.000 That DACA wasn't solved. 0.78

00:04:04.000 So, several times—three separate times—there was an attempt to make a deal during this bill negotiation with regard to DACA.

00:04:09.000 And what the Trump administration offered was—and what Paul Ryan offered—was three years of continuation of DACA.

00:04:16.000 People could still sign up as DREAMers for DACA. 0.53

00:04:19.000 Three years of continuation of DACA, but not final status negotiations on the people who are actually here.

00:04:23.000 You know, it's not a pathway to citizenship for them.

00:04:25.000 They just get to stay here for three more years for three years of wall funding.

00:04:29.000 And the Democrats turned that one down flat.

00:04:30.000 They instead suggested that they wanted full legalization of 1.8 million illegal immigrants.

00:04:35.000 Well, Trump had already basically offered that, right?

00:04:38.000 Like, a few weeks ago, he offered $25 billion in wall funding, plus end-to-chain migration and a few other goodies in exchange for legalizing 1.8 million DREAMers. 0.64

00:04:49.000 They weren't able to come to an agreement, and now Trump is saying the Democrats walked away from the table.

00:04:52.000 There is some truth to that.

00:04:54.000 But he has a Republican majority, so why isn't the border wall just being funded?

00:04:57.000 Why isn't the border wall just being funded?

00:04:59.000 If the border wall funding were in there, there's no question it passes the House.

00:05:03.000 Trump's able to stump up enough support that he gets that through.

00:05:06.000 And it's weird to me that Republicans aren't passing it.

00:05:08.000 It's also weird to me that Trump is now threatening to veto, considering that 24 hours ago he was saying the reverse.

00:05:14.000 Here's what Trump tweeted yesterday.

00:05:16.000 Quote, got $1.6 billion to start wall on southern border.

00:05:19.000 Rest will be forthcoming.

00:05:20.000 Most importantly, got $700 billion to rebuild our military.

00:05:25.000 $716 billion next year.

00:05:26.000 Most ever.

00:05:27.000 Had to waste money on dumb giveaways in order to take care of military pay increase and new equipment. 0.69

00:05:32.000 Couple things.

00:05:33.000 One, military pay increase already went into effect, I think, a couple months ago.

00:05:35.000 But beyond that, this is a very pro-omnibus package tweet.

00:05:39.000 This is Trump saying, I like the omnibus package.

00:05:41.000 We even got a little bit of wall funding.

00:05:44.000 Well, number one, Mexico ain't paying for the wall, gang.

00:05:46.000 And this is going to be up to Trump and the Republicans to do it.

00:05:48.000 But it's fascinating to see how Trump flipped on this on his own bill, right, within 24 hours.

00:05:54.000 Literally yesterday, Mick Mulvaney, his head of Office of Management and Budget, he came out and he said, listen, Trump isn't going to veto this.

00:05:59.000 We may not like the bill very much, but Trump isn't going to veto it.

00:06:01.000 So here's what Mulvaney had to say.

00:06:03.000 Let's cut right to the chase.

00:06:04.000 Is the President going to sign the bill?

00:06:06.000 The answer is yes.

00:06:08.000 Why?

00:06:09.000 Because it funds his priorities.

00:06:11.000 We've talked for the last, I don't know, three, four, five, six months about trying to get the President's priorities funded, and this omnibus bill does that.

00:06:21.000 So all things considered, when we look at the bill, we have to weigh what we asked for and what we had to give away to give it.

00:06:27.000 Is it perfect?

00:06:28.000 No.

00:06:28.000 Is it exactly what we asked for in the budget?

00:06:30.000 No.

00:06:30.000 Were we ever going to get that?

00:06:32.000 No, that's not how the process works.

00:06:35.000 It's a weird strategy, which suggests it's not strategic.

00:06:38.000 Why is it a weird strategy?

00:06:39.000 Because if you were going to threaten to veto something, wouldn't you do it before the Republicans vote for it?

00:06:42.000 So you get your entire party on record voting for a bill you then threatened to veto.

00:06:47.000 What?

00:06:48.000 Like, how is that even logical?

00:06:49.000 How does that make any sort of political sense?

00:06:51.000 Now, if Trump actually did veto it, it would be a sign that maybe Trump actually wants to get involved in the policymaking process, but it also means that it's very difficult for anybody to know what he's going to do.

00:07:02.000 Trump always says that he wants to be unpredictable with regard to his enemies.

00:07:05.000 Well, you can't be unpredictable with regard to your allies.

00:07:08.000 Put aside the fact that he's right that the bill's bad.

00:07:11.000 The question is, why didn't he say this a week ago?

00:07:13.000 Why didn't three days ago he go to Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan and say, listen, I don't like this bill.

00:07:16.000 I'm going to veto it if you pass it.

00:07:18.000 So to make some changes.

00:07:19.000 Why didn't he throw his weight on the side of the House Freedom Caucus?

00:07:22.000 And how is it helpful for him to jump in late when opinion turns against the bill and then take the legs out from underneath his own party?

00:07:29.000 If you're Paul Ryan, you're Mitch McConnell, and you're sitting around going, listen, we went to the White House, we updated them every step on this negotiation, and they said fine, and now they're killing us?

00:07:38.000 How do you trust the president to have your back if the president doesn't have your back?

00:07:42.000 It is a serious problem for Republicans in Congress.

00:07:44.000 Now, again, that's a separate issue from whether Trump is right about the bill. 0.99

00:07:47.000 The bill sucks. 0.98

00:07:48.000 He's right today. 1.00

00:07:48.000 He was wrong yesterday. 1.00

00:07:50.000 The bill is not good.

00:07:51.000 The bill should not have passed.

00:07:52.000 The bill should have been pared down.

00:07:54.000 Republicans need to do better.

00:07:56.000 And this is what the Freedom Caucus is there for in the House.

00:07:58.000 They do a great job trying to push back against some of these spending priorities and then hopefully get a few concessions on the way.

00:08:04.000 One other note about the budget before we move on.

00:08:06.000 Everybody's always worried about the amount of spending in the budget.

00:08:08.000 Oh, $1.3 trillion and $150 billion increase in non-defense discretionary spending and all the rest.

00:08:15.000 That is not what's bankrupting the country.

00:08:17.000 Hey, the non-defense discretionary spending is bad.

00:08:19.000 I hate it.

00:08:19.000 It's my tax dollars, and I am paying an awful lot of money to the federal government in taxes.

00:08:24.000 But that is not actually what is creating our deficits.

00:08:27.000 What is creating our deficits are Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

00:08:30.000 Those are the things that are driving our deficits.

00:08:32.000 These structural entitlement programs we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year on, trillions of dollars.

00:08:38.000 It's literally two-thirds of the federal budget.

00:08:40.000 That stuff is not even discretionary, right?

00:08:42.000 That's written into law.

00:08:43.000 It's mandatory spending.

00:08:44.000 When there's a government shutdown, people still get their social security checks.

00:08:47.000 So, that's what needs to be restructured.

00:08:50.000 So, if it were the case that we're trading this omnibus package in favor of an entitlement reform, like Paul Ryan says, listen, I just want entitlement reform.

00:08:59.000 We'll pass this budget so we don't have to spend our political capital here, but entitlement reform's next on the docket, I'd make that trade in a heartbeat.

00:09:05.000 That is not the trade that's being made.

00:09:07.000 The reason people are upset is because they feel like Republicans promised for years and years and years that they care about the spending, and it's pretty obvious that Republicans do not, in fact, care deeply about the spending.

00:09:15.000 Okay, so in other big administration news, the National Security Advisor, H.R.

00:09:18.000 McMaster, is out.

00:09:19.000 This has been rumored for legitimately half a year.

00:09:22.000 One of the things that was really funny is that last week, Trump tweeted out that H.R.

00:09:25.000 McMaster was completely secure in his job.

00:09:26.000 He also tweeted out that one of his lawyers, a guy named John Dowd, was completely secure in his job, and then that guy left.

00:09:31.000 The media had reported both of them were on the outs.

00:09:34.000 Trump, of course, says, fake news.

00:09:36.000 It turns out that was not fake news, because when Trump says fake news, it's only fake news like 40% of the time.

00:09:41.000 Well, the guy who's replacing H.R.

00:09:42.000 McMaster, McMaster was sort of a foreign policy establishment guy.

00:09:46.000 He's somebody who believes in sort of realpolitik, balance of power.

00:09:50.000 He tended to be relatively, kind of weirdly interventionist in certain areas and non-interventionist in others.

00:09:56.000 He had kind of a squishy view of the Iran deal.

00:09:59.000 John Bolton's views are extraordinarily clear.

00:10:01.000 John Bolton is the person who I'd wanted for Secretary of State.

00:10:04.000 I think he'd be better in that role than his NSA, but I'm happy to have him inside the administration.

00:10:07.000 Bolton, of course, was ambassador to the UN under George W. Bush.

00:10:10.000 He is not a neocon.

00:10:11.000 People have said that he's a neocon.

00:10:13.000 He is not.

00:10:14.000 To define neocon, there are really two definitions of neocon.

00:10:16.000 Definition number one is the historical definition, which is somebody who was a lefty during the 1960s and then realized the errors of their ways.

00:10:23.000 They were, in the popular phrase, mugged by reality and became more conservative.

00:10:28.000 It was a specific movement of very heavily Jewish people in the 1960s, like Irving Kristol and Daniel Bell, who's not Jewish, but was a member.

00:10:38.000 These were the neocons in the 1970s, the people who had shifted over to the other side.

00:10:43.000 Bolton was always a conservative.

00:10:44.000 So, by that definition, he's not a neocon.

00:10:47.000 The other definition that's used is about people like Paul Wolfowitz, who are very into nation-building, the idea that we're supposed to go into Iraq, knock over Saddam, and then stay there and build up the nation.

00:10:55.000 That was actually not something that Bolton suggested doing.

00:10:57.000 He said we had to get rid of Saddam because Saddam was funding terrorism and pursuing weapons of mass destruction, according to every intelligence agency on Earth.

00:11:04.000 But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't have turned the country back over to the Iraqis as soon as humanly possible, instead of sticking around and pouring hundreds of thousands of more troops 0.99

00:11:13.000 So, he's been called a nation-building neocon for a while, and that's not true.

00:11:17.000 He wasn't in favor of the Arab Spring, for example.

00:11:19.000 He's not averse to leaving American allies, who happen to be dictators, in power.

00:11:24.000 He was in favor of leaving Hosni Mubarak in power in Egypt.

00:11:27.000 So, he is not a democracy-first neocon in that sense.

00:11:30.000 So, people are mischaracterizing the situation.

00:11:33.000 Democrats, of course, are going nuts over this.

00:11:34.000 Chris Matthews, I don't know what to say!

00:11:36.000 That John Bolton!

00:11:37.000 Look at that mustache!

00:11:39.000 Look at that John Bolton!

00:11:41.000 Rump up my hair, suit's all wrinkled.

00:11:44.000 I just roll in here and I do a show.

00:11:45.000 John Bolton, that guy even has a mustache, though.

00:11:48.000 I said to my wife, Kathleen, do you even like mustaches?

00:11:50.000 She said, no.

00:11:51.000 MSNBC Hardball, go!

00:11:53.000 John Bolton, Mr. Hawke, because he promised the working men and women of those states that voted for him, the gritty factory workers and other people who didn't like these wars because their kids do all the fighting and getting killed and losing their legs and everything else. 0.99

00:12:05.000 He said to them, no more stupid wars. 1.00

00:12:06.000 Now he brings in the godfather of stupid wars, John Bolton. 1.00

00:12:09.000 Anyway, the Congressman has been with us. 0.99

00:12:11.000 Thank you so much, Eric Swalwell of California. 1.00

00:12:13.000 He's a godfather of stupid wars, John Bolton. 0.99

00:12:14.000 It was John Bolton's fault. 1.00

00:12:15.000 John Bolton was like undersecretary of state for nearest affairs or something like at the time.

00:12:19.000 So again, the idea that John Bolton was the architect of the Iraq war is just not true.

00:12:24.000 It is not true.

00:12:25.000 He was in favor of a broader Syrian intervention.

00:12:26.000 I want to go through John Bolton's record a little bit.

00:12:28.000 And in a minute, I'm going to go through his record in rather fulsome fashion.

00:12:32.000 We'll discuss what his actual views are and how they will impact the administration, whether we should be worried about him.

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00:14:15.000 Okay, so what exactly is John Bolton's actual record?

00:14:18.000 So, here's an editorial that he wrote in 2012 about the situation in Syria.

00:14:23.000 What he said was, as hostilities in Syria roll on unabated, the civilian casualties rise because of combat operations in urban areas and execution-style killings.

00:14:31.000 In response, calls for U.S.

00:14:32.000 military intervention of one sort or another continue to aid the opposition increase, while the Obama administration dithers over whether to continue relying on the U.N.

00:14:39.000 Security Council and former U.N.

00:14:41.000 Secretary General Kofi Annan.

00:14:43.000 But what are America's interests at stake, and what is the best way to protect them?

00:14:47.000 Although it is easy to concentrate on the stomach-churning television images, we should operate on the basis of strategy, not emotion.

00:14:53.000 That doesn't mean doing nothing, but neither does it mean knee-jerk reactions instead of careful analysis.

00:14:58.000 He says that regime change in Syria is prima facie in America's best interest, as well as the interests of Israel and our Arab friends in the region, who see nothing but danger for themselves if Iran's hegemonic ambitions unfold successfully. 0.88

00:15:09.000 He says there's no reason to coddle Assad.

00:15:12.000 He says that we should have supported the Syrian opposition.

00:15:15.000 He says the possibility of getting rid of Assad is now more remote, given the widespread infiltration of the anti-Assad forces by al-Qaeda and other terrorists.

00:15:23.000 In truth, we don't know enough about the opposition's political or military leadership to predict who would prevail in the immediate aftermath of Assad's overthrow.

00:15:29.000 This is John Bolton writing about Syria in 2012.

00:15:32.000 In such circumstances, the risk of a radical Islamist replacing Assad is considerably higher than it would have been if we had moved to Al-Sham years ago.

00:15:39.000 A relatively orderly exit by Assad is one thing.

00:15:42.000 A disorderly, indeed chaotic exit is quite another, especially given the risk that Syria's chemical and biological weapons assets, and maybe even nuclear assets, might fall into the hands of people even worse than Assad. 0.61

00:15:52.000 And then he talks about the humanitarian considerations, and he says without substantial on-the-ground troop presence, we cannot prevent all of that brutality and evil.

00:16:00.000 So, he sort of evaluates the whole situation.

00:16:04.000 And he says, his bottom line is, Obama's not up to the job in Syria.

00:16:07.000 The greatest risk of American involvement is that his administration and Iran might find common ground in the Middle East chess game.

00:16:12.000 Iran would allow Assad to fall, losing its pawn, and in exchange Obama would agree to do even less than he's doing now to stop Iran's nuclear weapons program. 0.81

00:16:19.000 So he says we should cut Syria off from its major supporters.

00:16:21.000 Here's his actual program.

00:16:22.000 Cut Syria off from its major supporters.

00:16:24.000 Russia should be told in no uncertain terms it can forget about sustained good relations with the United States as long as it continues to back Assad.

00:16:30.000 We should resume full-scale, indeed accelerated, efforts to construct limited missile defense systems designed by George W. Bush to protect America's territory against Russia and other rogue states.

00:16:40.000 He says we should announce our withdrawal from the New START arms control treaty.

00:16:43.000 And then we should tell Iran that our patience with their decade-long ploy of using diplomacy to gain time to advance their nuclear weapons program has ended. 0.93

00:16:49.000 Tehran should face a stark choice, and we can leave to their imagination what will happen if they fail immediately to dismantle all aspects of their existing nuclear effort.

00:16:57.000 And we should also reverse the fantasy that despite its repeated violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, that Iran is entitled to a peaceful nuclear program.

00:17:04.000 And then he says, finally, in Syria itself, we should do now what we have begun to do 10 years ago.

00:17:07.000 Find Syrian rebel leaders who are truly secular and who oppose radical Islam.

00:17:11.000 We'll disavow al-Qaeda.

00:17:12.000 I think?

00:17:30.000 Perspective, right?

00:17:31.000 For all the people on the left who are claiming that Trump is enthralled to the Russians, John Bolton certainly is not enthralled to the Russians.

00:17:37.000 In fact, I have the evidence that John Bolton is not enthralled to the Russians.

00:17:40.000 Here's what John Bolton had to say about Russian sanctions just a few months ago.

00:17:44.000 This is in December 2016.

00:17:46.000 Russians have walked all over the Obama administration for eight years. 0.98

00:17:50.000 It's really been a pathetic performance. 0.86

00:17:52.000 So what this last burst of activity has to do is hard to say. 0.80

00:17:56.000 I do think it's intended to try and box the Trump administration in.

00:18:00.000 I think it will fail.

00:18:02.000 This is simply an executive order.

00:18:04.000 If President Trump decides to reverse it, it's easy enough to do.

00:18:08.000 If you make them feel pain and others feel pain, then the possibility of deterring future conduct like this increases.

00:18:15.000 That's what we need to do.

00:18:16.000 Okay, so obviously John Bolton is not a pansy for Russia, right?

00:18:19.000 And this is a guy who's very, very harsh on Russia.

00:18:22.000 He's also very harsh on Iran.

00:18:23.000 He's very harsh on Syria.

00:18:24.000 Now, people have said that he's a warmonger.

00:18:26.000 What's hilarious about this is that he's been in favor of a lot of the same wars Democrats were in favor of, right?

00:18:30.000 Libya was actually Hillary Clinton's war.

00:18:32.000 Now, what he said, what Bolton said about Libya, is that we should oust Gaddafi.

00:18:36.000 I think that he was wrong about that. 0.93

00:18:38.000 He had said this back in 2011, I believe, that we should kill Muammar Gaddafi.

00:18:41.000 It was in March 2011.

00:18:43.000 He said that there was a risk of terrorist takeover.

00:18:46.000 He says, one of the things the administration should be doing is identifying pro-American, pro-Western leaders in the opposition and assisting them.

00:18:52.000 I don't see any evidence they're doing that now.

00:18:53.000 But this is a rare case of a Gaddafi on the one hand and the unknown on the other. 0.70

00:18:56.000 I'd pick the unknown.

00:18:57.000 Obviously, that was wrong.

00:18:58.000 You shouldn't pick the unknown.

00:18:58.000 You should pick what you know, unfortunately.

00:19:02.000 You know, again, the idea that Bolton is some sort of wild cowboy who's out there stumping for war in all cases is not correct.

00:19:08.000 Here's what Bolton had to say about the Iran deal.

00:19:10.000 So Trump's entire national security team now, right?

00:19:13.000 He's got Mike Pompeo over at SAIT.

00:19:15.000 You know, he's got Bolton as NSA.

00:19:17.000 All of them are anti-Iran deal, which is a good thing because the Iran deal is a debacle and a disaster. 0.99

00:19:21.000 Here's Bolton just a few years ago talking about the stupidity and evils of the Iran deal. 0.98

00:19:25.000 But let's be clear what America's interest is. 1.00

00:19:28.000 This deal was a strategic debacle.

00:19:31.000 Not only is it bad for the United States in the big picture, the terms of the deal are bad.

00:19:36.000 You can't hold them to the terms of a deal that are as amorphous and unclear and subject to multiple interpretations as this deal is.

00:19:46.000 I don't know.

00:20:03.000 Okay, so there's no question that he's a hawk, but he's also not a neocon in the sense of nation building.

00:20:11.000 Bolton has defended the war in Iraq.

00:20:12.000 Here's what he said years ago, I believe it was 2009, talking about the war in Iraq and why it was justified.

00:20:18.000 Were we right to go to war?

00:20:33.000 And was what happened subsequently the way we wanted it to be?

00:20:37.000 The answer to the first question, to me, despite the events of the six years after the invasion, is still unquestionably yes.

00:20:45.000 The regime itself, Saddam Hussein, his Ba'ath party, were threats to peace and security in the region and the larger world. 0.98

00:20:53.000 Okay, so a lot of people on the left are very upset about that because it's become conventional wisdom to say that the Iraq War was wrong.

00:20:59.000 Based on the evidence that we had at the time, the Iraq War was not wrong. 1.00

00:21:02.000 The pursuit of how we did the Iraq War was wrong.

00:21:06.000 Wrong, and members of the Bush administration have acknowledged as much.

00:21:10.000 Again, you can only go to war based on the evidence that you have in front of you.

00:21:13.000 Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, every Democrat, Nancy Pelosi, all of them supported the Iraq war because the evidence that was put in front of them was very different from the evidence that was later gathered.

00:21:24.000 Now, the real reason that people are upset about Bolton in the NSA position is because they're afraid that he's such a hawk, he'll go to Trump, he'll talk a bunch of hawkery into Trump's ear, and suddenly we'll be at war.

00:21:33.000 And the reason they're saying this is because Bolton has been particularly harsh on North Korea.

00:21:37.000 So he just wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on February 28, 2018, so not even a month ago, in which he talked about the legal case for striking North Korea first.

00:21:48.000 He talked about preemption, and what he said is this, He's not actually making the case for a preemptive strike.

00:21:51.000 He is saying that it is legal.

00:22:15.000 He's saying, this is how we should think about the threat of nuclear warheads delivered by ballistic missiles.

00:22:19.000 In 1837, Britain unleashed preemptive fire and fury against a wooden steamboat.

00:22:22.000 It is perfectly legitimate for the United States to respond to the current necessity posed by North Korea's nuclear weapons by striking first. 0.94

00:22:28.000 Now, do I think Bolton's gonna walk into that office and say to Trump, let's attack North Korea?

00:22:32.000 I do not.

00:22:32.000 I don't think that's who Bolton is.

00:22:34.000 I've met John Bolton several times.

00:22:35.000 I do not think that Ambassador Bolton will now, NSA Bolton, is a guy who is going to pander to Trump's worst instincts in terms of hitting buttons that fire missiles.

00:22:44.000 I think that he knows he's now part of an administration where the guy at the top is not

00:22:48.000 Supremely stable with regard to the use of force, for example.

00:22:51.000 And I think that knowing that he is going to be pretty careful about what he says to the president.

00:22:55.000 The good news is the president trusts Bolton.

00:22:56.000 The president trusts Pompeo.

00:22:59.000 The president trusts Mattis.

00:23:00.000 And three of them, I think, make a much better team than H.R.

00:23:02.000 McMaster, Rex Tillerson, and Mattis.

00:23:04.000 I mean, there's no question that's a better team overall in terms of a conservative foreign policy, a Bushian but non-neoconservative foreign policy, which I think is more realistic, but not paleoconservative.

00:23:16.000 Trump campaign is a paleocon. 0.55

00:23:18.000 He is not a paleocon, and his team proves it. 1.00

00:23:21.000 Okay, so, I want to get to guns, I want to get to a little bit on foreign policy, and then I want to get to the mailbag.

00:23:26.000 First, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Genucel.

00:23:29.000 So, Genucel is actually one of my oldest advertisers.

00:23:32.000 Okay, Genucel, these are folks who were advertising with me long ago when I was doing a radio show in Seattle.

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00:23:39.000 My wife particularly loves that they are an advertiser on the show now because she's getting their products again, and their products are just fantastic.

00:23:45.000 Okay, what they do is they get rid of all the bags under your eyes.

00:23:48.000 They get rid of the bags and the puffiness.

00:23:49.000 They're a problem for millions of men in America, American men and women. 0.79

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00:25:03.000 I mean, if you're not getting enough sleep like I am, then this is a really useful, useful product.

00:25:07.000 OK, so I just want to do a quick note here on guns, and then I want to get to the mailbags.

00:25:11.000 I would like to have some real time to explore the mailbag with you today.

00:25:14.000 So first, on guns, Time magazine has put up a new cover.

00:25:18.000 Its new cover is all the kids who are anti-gun from Parkland.

00:25:24.000 Um, and that is not what the cover looks like.

00:25:26.000 Um, it, oh, that is what the cover looks like.

00:25:28.000 There we go.

00:25:29.000 So, uh, the, it's, the only kids who get to make the time cover are the kids who hate guns, right?

00:25:35.000 It's David Hogg, and Emma Gonzalez, and Cameron Kasky, and all of them posing in very dramatic fashion, and then it says, enough, across the front.

00:25:43.000 Now, I don't know why one of them's not wearing shoes.

00:25:44.000 That's weird.

00:25:45.000 But besides that, I'm just wondering why it is that only a certain number of these kids get on the cover.

00:25:50.000 Kyle Cashew, who we've talked about on the show before, and who I've mentored a little bit, there's no reason why he shouldn't be on the cover there.

00:25:56.000 He's a student there, he's been extraordinarily vocal, and he's been much more useful in the gun debate than any of these kids.

00:26:01.000 Kyle's actually been going around meeting with legislators to talk about the Stop Gun Violence Act.

00:26:06.000 He's been working on that with legislators.

00:26:09.000 These kids are just going on TV and jabbering to Ellen.

00:26:12.000 I understand they experienced tragedy.

00:26:14.000 They're entitled to their perspective.

00:26:16.000 But the only perspective the media wants you to hear is their perspective.

00:26:19.000 And the perspective of people like David Hogg, I'm sorry, his perspective on guns is just not that valuable.

00:26:24.000 He doesn't have anything to say that has any merit to it.

00:26:26.000 Here's an interview that was done with him yesterday.

00:26:28.000 It is not good, okay?

00:26:29.000 This is David Hogg jabbering on about the NRA. 1.00

00:26:32.000 They're pathetic f***ers that want to keep killing our children. 1.00

00:26:35.000 They could have blood from children spattered all over their faces and they wouldn't take action. 1.00

00:26:40.000 Because they'll still see those dollar signs. 1.00

00:26:41.000 It just makes me think what sick f***ers are out there that want to continue to sell more guns, murder more children, and honestly just get re-elected. 1.00

00:26:48.000 What type of person are you when you want to see more f***ing money than children's lives? 1.00

00:26:52.000 I mean, it's just disgusting. 1.00

00:26:54.000 He's been repeating this crap over and over and over. 1.00

00:26:55.000 It's disgusting what he's saying. 1.00

00:26:57.000 It's ridiculous. 0.98

00:26:59.000 But these are the people that the media choose to focus on, which is, of course, that makes perfect sense because these are the people pushing the media's agenda.

00:27:05.000 OK, so now I want to do something special today.

00:27:08.000 And I think we may change the format of the show in order to do this.

00:27:10.000 I want to do the mailbag earlier today so that all of our friends who watch over at Facebook Live and watch YouTube Live, that they can check this out right now by watching the mailbag.

00:27:18.000 If you want to subscribe, by the way, you can be part of the mailbag.

00:27:20.000 So if you want to subscribe right now, then you get your questions answered.

00:27:22.000 We will answer your questions live early on the show today.

00:27:24.000 So let's just jump right in.

00:27:26.000 John says, What's up, Benjamin Madud?

00:27:28.000 I'm a high school student competing in a homeschool Christian debate league.

00:27:31.000 Our Lincoln-Douglas resolution is nationalism ought to be valued above globalism.

00:27:35.000 Well, sure.

00:27:37.000 I think there are two arguments in favor of nationalism.

00:27:48.000 And then there's a bad argument that people use for nationalism.

00:27:50.000 So here are the two good arguments in favor of nationalism.

00:27:53.000 The first one is that nationalism isn't nationalism, it's patriotism.

00:27:55.000 What you are defending about the United States, why America is a great place, is because America has a special creed, and that creed ought to be defended.

00:28:04.000 So I'll defend American nationalism, but I'm not as interested in the nationalism of nations that have crappy founding principles.

00:28:10.000 I don't really care about their nationalism, because why would I find that particularly convincing?

00:28:14.000 Our founding principles are good. 0.99

00:28:15.000 Their founding principles suck.

00:28:17.000 Therefore, America's nationalism is a good thing, because a stronger America and the world is a better thing for the world and for the citizens of the United States. 0.51

00:28:23.000 Okay, that's argument number one, is that the principles upon which a country is founded should be the basis for nationalism, which means patriotism over nationalism.

00:28:30.000 Right?

00:28:31.000 Not globalism, not nationalism, patriotism.

00:28:33.000 Okay, the second argument is one that was made in the Federalist Papers that we talked about a few weeks back, and that is that there is a natural drive for people to feel a kinship with the people that they occupy a country with.

00:28:44.000 That people do feel, you know, for better or worse, they do feel ethnic kinship, they do feel familial kinship, they do feel cultural kinship, they do feel that if you share a religion with somebody, these are all things that you share, and nationalism helps congeal all of that into a fighting force on behalf of tribe.

00:29:03.000 This can devolve really quickly into a romantic nationalism that's really nasty and terrible.

00:29:07.000 I'm not in favor of that romantic nationalism.

00:29:09.000 That's why I don't buy into the sort of ethno-nationalism you hear from the alt-right.

00:29:13.000 It's why I have a hard time with some of the far-right movements in Europe that say, we're nationalists, but we can't explain to you why we're nationalists.

00:29:20.000 We just know that France has to be defended, but we have no central principles upon which France is based that we're trying to defend.

00:29:24.000 But I think the way to defend nationalism is to say,

00:29:27.000 That the nation-state is a useful tool in the promulgation of good ideas.

00:29:32.000 It's also a useful tool in the promulgation of really bad ideas.

00:29:34.000 So, the case for nationalism is good nationalism, nationalism on behalf of countries that have good ideas, as, like, I don't care about Saudi Arabian nationalism, per se.

00:29:41.000 I care a lot about American nationalism.

00:29:44.000 I care much more about British nationalism, for example, because it connects to an Anglo-American heritage.

00:29:49.000 And the same, I care about French nationalism a lot more than I care about Libyan nationalism, for example.

00:29:54.000 And that's not me being

00:29:57.000 Racist or ethnocentric.

00:29:58.000 It's the opposite.

00:29:58.000 It's me saying that you and your friends look alike and you want a nation.

00:30:02.000 That's not a good enough reason for you to have a nation.

00:30:04.000 It's more important that you actually have some centralizing principles.

00:30:06.000 Globalism, by contrast, basically says that we should treat all of these perspectives as equal and we should never privilege our own perspective over that of anyone else.

00:30:14.000 If I had to rank these things in order of usefulness, importance, and worth, I would say patriotism, nationalism, globalism.

00:30:22.000 OK, Anne says, most of my reading these days is done via audiobooks.

00:30:25.000 Is there any chance you will read your upcoming books?

00:30:26.000 Thanks, Anne.

00:30:27.000 So I was asked to do my last novel, but because it was a novel, I felt like it would be weird for me to do it because I can't act at all.

00:30:34.000 Maybe my next nonfiction book.

00:30:35.000 So maybe the book that I'm writing right now on the history of Western philosophy, I'll read that one, I think.

00:30:41.000 Avi Nash says, hey, Ben.

00:30:42.000 Is there one classical composer that you absolutely hate?

00:30:46.000 Well, there are some that I think just are tedious as all get out.

00:30:50.000 There are some people like Bruckner.

00:30:51.000 I think that Bruckner is just bleh.

00:30:55.000 I'm not a fan.

00:30:57.000 There are some modern classical composers who I am not a fan of.

00:31:00.000 You know, obviously Cage, Philip Glass.

00:31:02.000 These are people who I don't really like very much.

00:31:03.000 But as far as older classical composers,

00:31:07.000 There are a lot of people who are very fond of Mahler.

00:31:08.000 I just find that it's sections of beauty enmeshed in long swaths of boring.

00:31:15.000 Wagner needed an editor with an axe because he has these incredible moments of uplift, but every opera is 18 hours long and filled with fat people singing at each other.

00:31:24.000 So I'm not a huge Wagner fan.

00:31:28.000 Yeah, I do rank them differently.

00:31:30.000 Obviously, I like the list is fun to listen to, but I don't find him particularly deep.

00:31:35.000 But I'm very much with like if I have to name the top four, it's the same as everybody else's, presumably.

00:31:41.000 And it's not in this order necessarily.

00:31:43.000 It's Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, Mozart.

00:31:44.000 Right.

00:31:45.000 Beyond that, Mendelssohn is great.

00:31:47.000 There's some Sansons that's great.

00:31:48.000 Bartok is great. 0.98

00:31:50.000 The ones who suck, you really haven't heard of. 0.99

00:31:52.000 Right. 0.99

00:31:52.000 The ones who get replayed on radio over and over are usually the ones who are who are pretty good. 0.99

00:31:57.000 Nathaniel says,

00:31:58.000 Well, I spent my entire career enmeshed in stats and statistics and reading.

00:32:00.000 Earlier this week, for example, I did a 15-minute segment, maybe a 20-minute segment, on one specific study that was cited in high profile by the New York Times.

00:32:24.000 I spent a lot of time reading those studies because I want to know them, right?

00:32:26.000 If I don't have the data right, I'm happy to be reappraised for this.

00:32:30.000 Like, for example, in some of the speeches in the last couple of years, I mistakenly said the transgender suicide rate was 45%.

00:32:36.000 What I meant to say, and this is just a slip of the tongue, I actually knew this, was that the transgender suicide attempt rate was 45%.

00:32:42.000 Obviously, the suicide rate's not 45%, or in five years, everybody would be dead, right?

00:32:46.000 That's not how it works.

00:32:48.000 When people correct me on stats, I'm happy to be corrected on them.

00:32:51.000 The UCLA, the conversation I had with the guy at Susquehanna, he was quoting from the same study that I had already cited because I'd read that study.

00:32:57.000 I knew the study.

00:32:58.000 He cited some other studies.

00:32:59.000 I've studied a lot on this particular issue because it's so controversial.

00:33:03.000 And again, I'm always happy to look at new studies in order to make my arguments better or stronger or change them.

00:33:10.000 Right, or maybe shift my perspective on things.

00:33:12.000 I try to follow the data as much as possible when it comes to political arguments.

00:33:16.000 One more, and then we'll have to do a Facebook sign-off.

00:33:18.000 So, Lori says, hi Ben, what are your thoughts on the personal usefulness of social media, especially among children and teenagers?

00:33:23.000 Do you think there's any aspect truly worthwhile, even if people are permitted to do what they like legally online?

00:33:28.000 When will you let your children use social media sites like Facebook or Instagram?

00:33:31.000 Many thanks for your good fight, Lori.

00:33:34.000 I'm not sure I'm ever going to let my kids use Facebook, honestly.

00:33:36.000 I think that Instagram, same thing.

00:33:39.000 Twitter I use as a news following thing.

00:33:42.000 Kids will want to use social media, but I have real doubts whether it's good for kids to use social media.

00:33:47.000 I think that the best case scenario is that they feel some sort of vague kinship with people they go to school with.

00:33:53.000 And the worst case scenario is that they get bullied mercilessly and receive a bunch of bad messages on social media.

00:33:58.000 So I don't plan on letting my daughter get a Facebook account.

00:34:02.000 I just don't.

00:34:03.000 Speaking of which, time for a Facebook sign-off.

00:34:05.000 So, if you want to listen to the rest of the show, if you want to watch the rest of the show live, if you want to ask a question right now, because we'll take live questions right now, go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.

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00:35:05.000 So Robert asks, what is my least favorite historical myth?

00:35:08.000 We're continuing with the mailbag here.

00:35:09.000 Robert asks, what is my least favorite historical myth?

00:35:12.000 Well, I think that leftist revisionist history about America's founding is probably my least favorite historical myth. 0.92

00:35:17.000 They've created an entire mythical history of America in which America is a garbage place filled with racism and inherently unchangeable, right? 0.93

00:35:24.000 It's built into our DNA, as Barack Obama liked to say. 0.99

00:35:28.000 Some of the other

00:35:29.000 We're good.

00:35:49.000 We're good.

00:36:10.000 My biggest qualms with anarcho-capitalism really are just lack of understanding about how law enforcement needs to work, for example.

00:36:25.000 So, the argument for anarcho-capitalism is that you'll just have roving bands of people who hire each other for protection, and everything will go fine.

00:36:32.000 I think you do need a basic gridlock of—a basic framework, rather, of laws that guarantee, for example, possession of private property and be protected by a police force that is applicable to everybody, because otherwise private property is not a central concept.

00:36:47.000 You know, all the bases of capitalism require somebody to protect those bases.

00:36:50.000 Blake says, hey, Ben, do you think a conservative can become governor here in California?

00:36:54.000 Maybe.

00:36:55.000 I'm actually not completely... I don't think it's completely impossible.

00:36:59.000 I think it's difficult, obviously.

00:37:01.000 But I think that you have to have a conservative who actually runs on crime.

00:37:04.000 You can't have a conservative running on education like Schwarzenegger or like my friend Tom Del Beccaro.

00:37:10.000 You can't have people... Tom hasn't actually run for governor.

00:37:14.000 Who was it who ran for governor?

00:37:16.000 The other, goodness gracious, I told him over and over, Anil Kashkari, when Anil Kashkari ran for governor here in California, I kept telling him, why are you not running on crime?

00:37:23.000 He said, no, I want to run on education.

00:37:24.000 I said, then you will lose and lose really badly, which indeed he did.

00:37:28.000 I think that it is, maybe that would have happened anyway, but the only time Republicans win in blue areas is when they talk about crime.

00:37:35.000 Rudy Giuliani, Richard Reardon here in Los Angeles.

00:37:38.000 That's when you get a Republican winning, is when they talk about crime and quality of life issues.

00:37:44.000 Let's see.

00:37:46.000 Lori, well, let's see.

00:37:47.000 Did Lori's question—OK, Neil.

00:37:49.000 He says,

00:37:50.000 Here in Ireland, the student visa to USA and a wee overstay is seen as a rite of passage.

00:37:54.000 Many Irish go on to become undocumented, illegal workers in the U.S.

00:37:57.000 who maintain a strong passion and love for life out there.

00:37:59.000 Ovary Paddy's Week, our Keogh Siach Prime Minister was visiting and proposing solutions to this, with one scheme being put forward as the new scheme would see new visa benefits and protections for Americans in Ireland, in return for them doing something similar for the undocumented Irish in the United States.

00:38:16.000 Having lived and worked in both countries, there's a lot of Yanks who are eager to come across the Atlantic. 1.00

00:38:19.000 How would you feel about a nation-by-nation solution to illegal immigration, as well as the above in particular?

00:38:24.000 I mean, I'm in favor of a person-by-person solution to illegal immigration, not even a nation-by-nation one.

00:38:28.000 I'm not sure that we should be doing foreign exchange programs with Ireland, but I do think that if there's somebody who wants to come over here and they're an asset to the United States, I'm not sure that Ireland should have to give up anything for that.

00:38:38.000 I think that, you know, if people want to go work in Ireland, they should be able to go work in Ireland, they should get a work visa, and if they want to work here, they should come here and get a work visa.

00:38:45.000 I really don't think immigration is all that difficult an issue.

00:38:47.000 I think people make it more complicated than necessary because they're afraid of objective standards that they think are going to end up with some sort of racial or ethnic disparity.

00:38:54.000 Isaac says hi Ben!

00:38:56.000 Well, Isaac, I'll say this.

00:38:57.000 When I was 17 and I was writing a syndicated column, one of the things that was happening, one of the reasons that my column was picked up, is because it wasn't just my opinions, it was also me doing reportage from college campuses.

00:39:23.000 So, if you actually want people to take your opinion seriously, first you have to offer something that no one else can offer.

00:39:28.000 Not your opinion, but something new.

00:39:30.000 So, either you've uncovered a fact, or you have reported on something that people haven't known before.

00:39:36.000 And when you do that, then people actually start to take your opinion a lot more seriously because you're bringing information they haven't heard.

00:39:41.000 This creates a bond of trust between you and the reader, and now they actually want to hear what you think about the issues that you've brought to the forefront.

00:39:46.000 So, you have a phone, as my mentor Andrew Breitbart said, your phone is a camera, that means you're a reporter now.

00:39:50.000 Logan says, Hey, Ben, I was wondering what your stance on military intervention is.

00:39:53.000 Do you take the more libertarian isolationist stance or do you believe that as leader of the free world, we have a moral obligation to involve ourselves in conflicts we have otherwise no business in?

00:40:01.000 Thanks for the awesome content, Logan.

00:40:02.000 So I think that number one.

00:40:05.000 We generally should not get involved in conflicts in which America has no interest.

00:40:09.000 That said, if we can stop a humanitarian crisis from occurring with very little sacrifice of American blood and treasure, then that may be worth considering, simply because we may end up winning allies in that place.

00:40:19.000 We may end up making that country into a better country.

00:40:22.000 I'm not in favor of us being there for long periods of time and nation building, but I think that

00:40:27.000 Muddling through is the basic principle of American foreign policy.

00:40:30.000 It really is.

00:40:31.000 And what that means is that you have to take every situation as it comes and calculate it based on a risk-reward assessment.

00:40:36.000 I don't think that it's one size fits all.

00:40:38.000 I don't think it's like, it meets minimum standards, now we're going to get involved.

00:40:41.000 I think you have to look instead at what it costs, you have to look at how much money, how much blood we're going to have to spend, how many soldiers we're going to have to send over there.

00:40:49.000 What the outcomes are going to be?

00:40:51.000 Case-by-case basis is necessary, which is why I was in favor of the Iraq invasion, but not in favor of the intervention in Libya to overthrow Qaddafi, for example.

00:41:00.000 OK, final question.

00:41:01.000 Daniel says, hey, Ben, love the show.

00:41:02.000 I'm trying to find tickets for the Trump-Biden brawl.

00:41:04.000 I was listening to you and your bestie, Nolzi, talk about all those shootings and bombings. 0.97

00:41:07.000 There's a lot of talk about how it's mostly white young males shooting schools, churches, or bombing. 0.57

00:41:11.000 I do not think it's terrorism. 0.92

00:41:12.000 It obviously must be ideologically motivated to be terrorism.

00:41:14.000 But why do you think all these young white males are doing this?

00:41:16.000 Shout out from Alaska.

00:41:17.000 We're freezing for no reason.

00:41:19.000 P.S., we own a lot of guns up here.

00:41:20.000 No school shootings.

00:41:21.000 Well, I think that a lot of young males are involved in violence, period.

00:41:26.000 Right?

00:41:26.000 It's just different kinds of violence.

00:41:28.000 Young males are the most violent cohort in the United States. 0.99

00:41:31.000 It's true across the world.

00:41:32.000 This has always been true for all of world history.

00:41:34.000 I think that a lot of young white males are doing this right now because there's a tremendous lack of meaning that's said in American society.

00:41:41.000 And also, there are not enough parents in the home to provide that meaning.

00:41:43.000 I think that's the really simplistic solution.

00:41:47.000 OK, so a couple more questions.

00:41:49.000 A couple more questions.

00:41:50.000 So Elise says, why is it that almost all people of the same occupation, example teachers, all seem to have the same politics?

00:41:55.000 Well, the answer there is that there actually is a teacher's guild.

00:42:00.000 And in order for you to be a member of the teacher's guild in many states, you actually have to be a member of the union.

00:42:04.000 The union is a leftist union, because you are a state employee.

00:42:08.000 I think one of the reasons teachers tend to swing to the left is because state employees tend to swing to the left, because when you work for the state, you happen to think the state is your friend.

00:42:15.000 This is something Ludwig von Mises argued in his pamphlet slash book, Bureaucracy, which is worth a read.

00:42:21.000 Wow, great question.

00:42:30.000 Well, Reagan's not on a dollar bill, so I think that you'd have to talk about putting Reagan on a dollar bill, obviously.

00:42:35.000 Other choices would include Calvin Coolidge.

00:42:38.000 I actually was not averse to putting Harriet Tubman on a dollar bill.

00:42:42.000 I think that's actually a cool idea.

00:42:43.000 I'm not sure that she shouldn't replace anybody who's currently on a dollar bill.

00:42:46.000 I'm not a big fan of wiping away history in order to add new history.

00:42:49.000 But I do think that if we're going to create a new dollar bill,

00:42:52.000 Harriet Tubman was a serious badass. 1.00

00:42:54.000 I mean, Harriet Tubman was just awesome. 0.92

00:42:56.000 And better we should put Harriet Tubman on a dollar bill than we should, you know, find a, you know, do kind of affirmative action for women and find somebody who wasn't as badass as Harriet Tubman. 1.00

00:43:05.000 She's pretty awesome.

00:43:05.000 Okay.

00:43:06.000 Time for some things I like and some things I hate.

00:43:08.000 So...

00:43:10.000 First, the actual thing I like today is a book called The End of Europe by Jamie Kerchick.

00:43:15.000 Jamie is a columnist, I believe, for Daily Beast.

00:43:17.000 And this book, The End of Europe, is about—he traveled around Europe and he looked at sort of the rise of right-wing nationalism in contrast to the collapse of the multicultural ethos in Europe.

00:43:27.000 The book is really worth reading.

00:43:28.000 It's a really fascinating look at dictators, demagogues, and the coming dark age.

00:43:32.000 It's very pessimistic about the state of Europe.

00:43:33.000 I tend to agree with the book.

00:43:34.000 You should definitely go pick up a copy.

00:43:36.000 James, a really, really good writer and a very solid thinker.

00:43:39.000 Go check it out.

00:43:39.000 James Kirchick's The End of Europe.

00:43:41.000 OK, so other things that I like.

00:43:42.000 So yesterday, Glenn Beck came over to the studio, which was a blast.

00:43:45.000 And we just decided to sit down to an impromptu interview and just talk about stuff that was on Glenn's mind.

00:43:49.000 So just for like 10 minutes, we just sat and talked about artificial intelligence and just fun stuff.

00:43:54.000 So here is me talking with Glenn yesterday.

00:43:56.000 So this is a thing I like.

00:43:57.000 All right, so here we are and I have the pleasure of sitting next to Glenn Beck, one of the iconic figures in the conservative thought movement and a mentor of mine and somebody who I've been listening to since I was literally a child.

00:44:08.000 I have to tell you, thank you for that.

00:44:11.000 I was flying in and we were talking about coming in to see you and I thought,

00:44:15.000 Every time Ben says he's a fan of mine, it feels so weird, because I'm such a fan of yours.

00:44:20.000 Oh, that's sweet of you.

00:44:21.000 They informed me that I was going to be doing the show with you, and I'm like, no!

00:44:25.000 No, no, no.

00:44:26.000 It's like AI talking to an ant.

00:44:29.000 No, no thank you.

00:44:30.000 Well, you know, let's talk about AI, because I know that you've been very into it.

00:44:32.000 I mean, we were talking a little bit before we started about sort of the big problems facing humanity, because I think one of the things that we have in common when we've talked and we're friends is that we actually enjoy talking about the big ideas more than we enjoy talking about the people fighting it,

00:44:45.000 Yeah.

00:45:08.000 People think you're talking about robots and the Terminator and everything else.

00:45:11.000 You shouldn't fear that.

00:45:13.000 You should fear the goals of the programmers and the goals of the program itself.

00:45:18.000 AI is what we have now.

00:45:20.000 In maybe 10 years, we'll have AGI, which is Artificial General Intelligence, which right now, you know, Watson can play chess or he can do Jeopardy, but it can't do everything.

00:45:33.000 We're good.

00:45:51.000 It goes from AGI to ASI, and that's more of Skynet.

00:45:56.000 That's described as intelligence that's so far beyond human abilities that the human will be a fly on a plate in a kitchen.

00:46:08.000 It may know that's food, but it has no concept of the kitchen or anything else.

00:46:13.000 So so we're the fly.

00:46:15.000 A.S.I.

00:46:16.000 is us in the kitchen.

00:46:17.000 So, I mean, what what what exactly should we be fearing about about that beyond, obviously, the global war?

00:46:24.000 But but aside from that, we're in now a period where China has begun a an A.G.I. 0.74

00:46:32.000 Manhattan Project, if you will.

00:46:34.000 And Russia is starting to do it.

00:46:37.000 We're not.

00:46:39.000 And I don't know.

00:46:40.000 I've talked to a lot of people in Silicon Valley.

00:46:42.000 I don't know if the government should be involved, the government shouldn't be involved.

00:46:48.000 I don't know exactly what we should be doing, but we don't want to be second.

00:46:55.000 As Putin says, whoever gets it will rule the world.

00:46:57.000 And that's true.

00:46:58.000 Whoever gets to AGI first,

00:47:01.000 So do you think that when it comes to the development of AGI that we're going to be talking about more sort of a human-machine merger?

00:47:07.000 We're going to be talking about memory implants and brain, intellectual implants and all this sort of thing?

00:47:12.000 By 2030 you'll start to have implants, the singularity of merging.

00:47:17.000 Man and machine.

00:47:19.000 You know, you're already seeing bionics that, you know, they say in about three years, the bionics will be able to just think and it will be attached to your thinking.

00:47:29.000 It's amazing.

00:47:30.000 It's amazing.

00:47:31.000 Ray Kurzweil says that by 2030, all disease, all disease will be wiped out through nanobot technology, etc, etc.

00:47:40.000 So we're experiencing this great explosion of

00:47:44.000 Freedom of Life that we can't even imagine but we're not having the conversations that I think are really important Because they're too uncomfortable.

00:47:56.000 They're uncomfortable for Because the labels all have to be dropped for instance Right now we're looking at unemployment rate.

00:48:07.000 We're saying it's great.

00:48:08.000 It's 4% But the people who are working on on AI and AGI are saying wait

00:48:15.000 We should be going for 100% unemployment.

00:48:17.000 Right.

00:48:18.000 It's all leisure time.

00:48:19.000 Right, all leisure time.

00:48:20.000 Which then says, well, where do people find meaning?

00:48:24.000 How are we going to be giving people money?

00:48:28.000 It leads to the min-cum kind of conversation, which I'm not a supporter of the min-cum, but we have to start having the conversation because those who are shaping the world of tomorrow are having those conversations.

00:48:40.000 And this raises a second question, which really is the primary question, which is, what are human beings and what are we here to do?

00:48:47.000 And that's a crisis of meaning that's been taking place in the West for a really long time.

00:48:50.000 What is life?

00:48:52.000 If you read Ray Kurzweil and many others, he believes by 2030 to 2050,

00:49:01.000 We can't agree on the life inside of a woman. 1.00

00:49:19.000 That's why you have to fear the goals of this because it's now being taught what life is by us.

00:49:27.000 It's being taught what life is.

00:49:28.000 It's being taught what hate speech is.

00:49:30.000 It's fascinating.

00:49:33.000 The ADL just started an algorithm that they just announced and they said, we've started an algorithm that 76% of the time will find and identify hate speech.

00:49:45.000 Well, wait, hold it.

00:49:47.000 What is hate speech?

00:49:48.000 How are you defining it?

00:49:49.000 What do you mean?

00:49:50.000 And they said, in a very short period of time, we believe this algorithm will be able to identify hate speech 100% of the time.

00:49:58.000 When you teach AI, especially AGI, it's focused on one goal and it doesn't ever stop.

00:50:07.000 And if it's defining hate speech and you're Prager University, you'll be screwed. 0.98

00:50:14.000 You'll be screwed. 0.98

00:50:15.000 And again, I think that what that returns to is something that's deeper that's going on. 0.92

00:50:19.000 These are questions about how we're going to apply our own morality and our own virtue.

00:50:24.000 But that raises the main question, which is what is morality and what is virtue and what exactly should we be pursuing?

00:50:27.000 And you're seeing that

00:50:28.000 Jordan Peterson is great.

00:50:29.000 I mean, you're a leader in this.

00:50:30.000 I mean, I am thrilled at the conversations we're having.

00:50:32.000 I disagree with with Pinker a lot.

00:50:33.000 Yeah.

00:50:34.000 Yeah.

00:50:34.000 You know, I think he's I think he's so

00:50:51.000 He's beyond an atheist.

00:50:52.000 Right.

00:50:52.000 He is really… He's militant about it.

00:50:54.000 Yeah.

00:50:54.000 Militant anti-religion.

00:50:56.000 And so some of his books are a little hard to read because you're like, I got it.

00:50:59.000 I got it.

00:51:00.000 Exactly.

00:51:01.000 But we have to have the conversations and you are a prime example of this.

00:51:10.000 Colleges are now teaching about safe zones.

00:51:13.000 We have to understand there's a difference between feeling uncomfortable and unsafe.

00:51:19.000 Right.

00:51:20.000 You know what I mean?

00:51:20.000 Right, exactly.

00:51:22.000 That's why Pinker is getting labeled alt-right, and the guy taught at Harvard.

00:51:24.000 I mean, I took a class with him and Dershowitz when I was at Harvard Law, and both of those guys are now being labeled right-wing.

00:51:29.000 They were wild leftists when I was there, and they're still wild leftists.

00:51:31.000 I mean, Steven Pinker is not a right-winger.

00:51:33.000 He's just somebody who actually cares about actual neuroscientific fact, and he's being labeled this way.

00:51:39.000 Postmodernism.

00:51:40.000 But the nice thing is that the left's move to the radical left, their radicalization, has meant that there is this sort of new consensus that is arising that we have to get back to some of these central values.

00:51:51.000 The big question is going to be, how far back do we go?

00:51:53.000 Meaning that Steven Pinker sort of wants to turn back the clock to 1785 in terms of Enlightenment thought and says that this sort of thought is the future, right?

00:52:02.000 to the general principles of the American Enlightenment, for example.

00:52:06.000 He sort of ignores Rousseau.

00:52:08.000 But if you go back to that strain of the Enlightenment, then we're great.

00:52:11.000 And you see the same thing in Jordan Goldberg's new book.

00:52:12.000 He sort of uses those same people as the examples of the people who we should be looking back to.

00:52:17.000 And I think there's actually an interesting debate.

00:52:19.000 Jordan and I both say, well, if you're looking for meaning, you can't start with the Enlightenment.

00:52:24.000 No.

00:52:24.000 You have to actually go back further than the Enlightenment and look back to the roots of what caused the Enlightenment to arise in the first place.

00:52:29.000 Yes.

00:52:30.000 And that debate I think is going to be, it's a second order debate but I think in some ways it's a deeper debate that's going to be had.

00:52:34.000 If you don't do that you end up with a French Revolution. 0.50

00:52:37.000 Right.

00:52:37.000 This is essentially my argument.

00:52:38.000 I mean this is my big problem with Pinker's book is it's 500 pages on the Enlightenment and there's not, I mean I checked the index, there's not one mention of the French Revolution in a 500 page book about the Enlightenment.

00:52:46.000 And what's amazing is...

00:52:48.000 Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine were fooled by that.

00:52:52.000 Right.

00:52:52.000 They were fooled by it because it's what we're going through right now at the very beginning.

00:52:57.000 It looks the same.

00:53:00.000 And all the way to, I have people telling me, what's wrong with nationalism?

00:53:04.000 I'm proud of my country.

00:53:05.000 Right.

00:53:05.000 No, no, no.

00:53:06.000 That's not nationalism.

00:53:08.000 Right, that's patriotism.

00:53:09.000 Right.

00:53:10.000 But there's that subtle, at the very beginning, there's that subtle shift.

00:53:14.000 And then before you know it, you're at the guillotine or you're in Philadelphia.

00:53:18.000 Right, exactly.

00:53:19.000 This is exactly right.

00:53:19.000 I mean, there is a butterfly effect to philosophy, and if there are these minor differences end up having major variations, they cause tsunamis in world history based on the difference between American-style exceptionalism and Fick-style German romantic nationalism.

00:53:32.000 And one leads to the Nazis, and one leads to the people fighting the Nazis.

00:53:35.000 And so it's a fascinating debate.

00:53:37.000 It's one that's going to have to be

00:53:39.000 I remember 20 years ago reading Marx and just thinking,

00:54:05.000 I mean, this is crazy.

00:54:08.000 And thinking, this is only cool because everybody says it's not cool, it's not good, you shouldn't read it.

00:54:17.000 And I thought, someday, maybe Jefferson, who's a real thinker, you know, Jefferson and Adams and Madison, someday they'll become cool again.

00:54:29.000 I think we're at the beginning of that.

00:54:30.000 I think that's right.

00:54:30.000 I think the American founding is becoming cool again, and I think that the battle is going to be rejoined because we're going to keep repeating the mistakes of the Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment until we get it right.

00:54:40.000 So maybe this time we actually get it right.

00:54:42.000 In a post-God world, that's the only battle that could be had. 0.92

00:54:44.000 We're just going to keep repeating it until things either go ultimately wrong or ultimately right.

00:54:50.000 Shocked and happy to see.

00:54:53.000 I think a lot of it is happening in the one place I wouldn't expect and that's California.

00:54:59.000 Yeah.

00:55:00.000 You know, Texas not having this debate.

00:55:03.000 You know, they're solid on, you know, pretty much what they will have it.

00:55:07.000 That's right.

00:55:08.000 After California moves to Texas and all the property values collapse here and there's nobody left.

00:55:13.000 But they'll have it once they destroy Texas.

00:55:16.000 But they're not having that deep debate.

00:55:18.000 Here, there's a crisis, and people are starting to have that conversation.

00:55:24.000 Yeah, well, crisis definitely generates some interesting ideas and debates that need to be had.

00:55:27.000 Well, Glenn, thanks so much for stopping by.

00:55:29.000 And it's always great to see you.

00:55:31.000 Thank you.

00:55:31.000 So it's a blast to have Glenn in studio.

00:55:33.000 So obviously we've had some pretty big guests recently.

00:55:35.000 We had Speaker Ryan this week.

00:55:36.000 We have Glenn this week.

00:55:38.000 Next week I believe Senator Cruz is going to be coming on and Thomas Sowell is coming on.

00:55:43.000 So it's been fun to do some of these interviews.

00:55:44.000 I like putting them in things I like segments so we can do all the news analysis first and then folks can get a little bit of different perspective and conversation a little bit later in the show.

00:55:52.000 So I like your feedback on that by the way.

00:55:54.000 Email me at bshapiro at Daily Wire and tell me if you've been enjoying the interviews or if you think they suck, but I'm really enjoying them.

00:56:00.000 I think they're fun.

00:56:01.000 Okay, so time for a very quick thing I hate and then we'll break for the weekend because it's Friday.

00:56:06.000 No, I will not sing that.

00:56:07.000 Okay, so, time for some things I hate.

00:56:10.000 Alrighty, so, thing that I hate number one, a guy is now facing jail time for making an offensive joke in Britain.

00:56:16.000 What was his offensive joke?

00:56:17.000 His pug does a Nazi salute, like his dog does a Nazi salute. 0.98

00:56:21.000 He's now facing jail time for it, this weirdo. 0.82

00:56:24.000 Most of the fact is, I know why I made the joke.

00:56:27.000 You know why I made the joke.

00:56:28.000 Everybody knows why I made the joke, what my intent was and also the context that was provided.

00:56:32.000 And what we've learned today is that doesn't matter.

00:56:36.000 It's really scary for comedians.

00:56:38.000 All comedians out there need to beware now.

00:56:41.000 If they make a joke,

00:56:42.000 Their context and intent apparently don't matter and it's a case of no, you don't get to decide what you mean, we decide what you mean.

00:56:50.000 Because that's literally what happened today. 0.94

00:56:52.000 See if it takes me going to jail for a year to show everyone how ridiculous and overreaching hate speech laws are where a YouTube comedian, just an internet shitposter like myself can go to prison 0.96

00:57:03.000 Okay, so here's what he actually did, right? 0.89

00:57:04.000 What he's saying here is actually right. 1.00

00:57:06.000 The guy's an idiot. 1.00

00:57:18.000 So what he actually did was he taught his dog to do the Nazi salute every time he said stuff like Sieg Heil and gas the Jews. 1.00

00:57:27.000 Okay, so he may be like a P.O.S., right?

00:57:29.000 He may be like a bad guy, but welcome to the Western world where you're allowed to say nasty things so long as you don't actually do anything nasty.

00:57:35.000 I'm defending this as an Orthodox Jew.

00:57:37.000 Not the activity, but the right to participate in this sort of activity.

00:57:41.000 If we can't agree on that, then freedom disappears pretty quickly.

00:57:44.000 Okay, one final thing that I hate, and then we will break for the weekend.

00:57:47.000 What advice do you have for young patriots and conservatives on campus that support your agenda that are being ridiculed and silenced because of administrators that are clamping down on free speech?

00:58:13.000 It's a great question.

00:58:13.000 I think the numbers are actually much different than people think.

00:58:16.000 I think we have a lot of support.

00:58:18.000 If they have one campus or two campuses and we know what they are, it gets all the publicity.

00:58:23.000 We have campuses where you have a vast majority of people that are perhaps like many of the people in this room.

00:58:31.000 You could call it conservative, you call it whatever you want.

00:58:34.000 Okay, so Trump basically saying it's not a big deal what's happening on the campuses, which is not the answer that Charlie was looking for, nor is it correct.

00:58:40.000 Now, no one is claiming that campuses everywhere are shutting down conservative speakers.

00:58:45.000 I speak on a lot of campuses all the time.

00:58:47.000 Do they put restrictions they wouldn't put on a lefty speaker?

00:58:49.000 Sure.

00:58:50.000 But I've never claimed that every campus I go to is a hotbed of disaster waiting to happen.

00:58:55.000 In fact, I always think it's ridiculous I even have to bring security to go speak on campuses.

00:58:59.000 I will say that there is a well an overwhelming bias in the administrations of universities across the country and in the faculty against Republican positions and polls show this.

00:59:07.000 So Trump is just wrong about this.

00:59:08.000 I think Trump read the question wrong when Charlie asked him what students should do when they're under assault on campus.

00:59:14.000 I think Trump read that as

00:59:15.000 Everybody on campus loves me, because everybody loves me.

00:59:17.000 Which is, of course, silly, because if you take polls of college students, that is not the case, and conservatives on campus, who I talk to every single day, are having a tough time dealing with the political bias on campus.

00:59:27.000 Okay, we'll be back here on Monday, and I'm sure there'll be more news breaking, because there always is.

00:59:32.000 Don't ruin things over the weekend, just have a nice, relaxed weekend.

00:59:34.000 We'll be back here on Monday to ruin your life again, at that point.

00:59:37.000 I'm Ben Shapiro, this is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:59:43.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Mathis Glover.

00:59:45.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:59:46.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:59:48.000 Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:59:50.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:59:51.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.

00:59:53.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:59:55.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

00:59:58.000 Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - March 23, 2018

McMaster’s Boltin’, Bolton’s Master | Ep. 502

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