The Ben Shapiro Show - Payoff Politics | Ep. 679

00:00:00.000 The National Enquirer turns on President Trump, Vox wants Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to run for president even though she's not eligible, and the Boy Scouts verge on bankruptcy.

00:00:09.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:09.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:15.000 So many things to talk about today.

00:00:17.000 We'll get to all of them.

00:00:17.000 We'll analyze all of the things happening in this beautiful world before the advent of Christmas.

00:00:23.000 But we begin before that by talking about the fact you're losing your hair.

00:00:26.000 I know, it's depressing.

00:00:27.000 I know you don't want to think that you look like your father, but here's the reality.

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00:01:04.000 Keeps is only $10 to $35 a month.

00:01:05.000 I know what these medicines cost, and it is not generally $10 to $35 a month.

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00:01:10.000 Some of you probably tried them before.

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00:01:13.000 Keeps is only $10 to $35 a month.

00:01:15.000 I know what these medicines cost, and it is not generally $10 to $35 a month.

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00:01:35.000 Keeps, hair today, hair tomorrow.

00:01:37.000 All righty.

00:01:38.000 So we begin today with all of the hubbub that has now broken out amidst the Michael Cohen sentencing.

00:01:44.000 So as you recall from yesterday's show in the ongoing legal saga that is the Trump administration, Michael Cohen, the president's personal attorney, was sentenced to three years in jail, which was not good for President Trump.

00:01:57.000 It was particularly not good for President Trump because of the ancillary details of the actual plea agreement.

00:02:02.000 Judge William Pauly III said that Michael Cohen had committed a bevy of crimes with an eye toward deception.

00:02:07.000 Cohen, for his part, threw himself on the mercy of the court.

00:02:10.000 He said, quote, I blame myself for the conduct which has brought me here today, and it was my own weakness and blind loyalty to President Trump that led me to choose a path of darkness over light.

00:02:19.000 So dude has watched a few too many mafia movies.

00:02:22.000 He added, time and again, I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds rather than to listen to my own inner voice and my moral compass.

00:02:28.000 And then there was this weird shot of him in an abandoned home in like Arizona suburbia looking wistfully into the camera back at the days when he was a good fella.

00:02:36.000 More damaging than Cohen's open court mea culpa was that the prosecution made an announcement.

00:02:43.000 They announced they'd reached a non-prosecution agreement with America Media Inc., which is the parent company of the National Enquirer.

00:02:48.000 Now, you'll recall that President Trump had an arrangement with the National Enquirer in which, essentially, He was going to provide the National Enquirer for cash, the National Enquirer was going to take that cash and then pay off women to stay silent.

00:03:00.000 What the National Enquirer would do is they would go to Trump paramours, they would buy their life rights, and then they would sell those life rights to President Trump for a certain amount of money.

00:03:10.000 That was basically the way that this chain of custody worked when it came to these sorts of stories.

00:03:15.000 Trump would use the National Enquirer basically to funnel hush money.

00:03:18.000 Well, now, AMI has decided that they are going to work with the Southern District of New York and turn on President Trump.

00:03:26.000 So, AMI, as I say, would purchase the stories of Trump's lovers and then bury them at Trump's behest.

00:03:30.000 Cohen would then attempt to reimburse AMI, so the allegations go.

00:03:33.000 So, according to prosecutors, AMI, American Media Inc., which, again, is the parent company of the National Enquirer, admitted it made a $150,000 payment in concert with a candidate's presidential campaign.

00:03:45.000 And in order to ensure that former Trump paramour Karen McDougal did not publicize damaging allegations about the candidate before the 2016 presidential election.

00:03:53.000 AMI further admitted that its principal purpose in making the payment was to suppress the woman's story so as to prevent it from influencing the election.

00:04:00.000 Now, the reason that this is very damaging is because the way that campaign finance law works is that if you violate campaign finance law, it must be on the basis of you having made an unreported expenditure intended to influence the campaign.

00:04:13.000 On President Trump's defense, as I've been saying for a long time on this particular score, would be, yes, I paid off women, but I didn't do it to influence the campaign.

00:04:20.000 I've been paying off women for years, right? 1.00

00:04:22.000 Which is absolutely credible in the case of President Trump.

00:04:26.000 So it wouldn't be a campaign-related expense any more than you buying a suit to wear on a campaign is a campaign-related expense.

00:04:31.000 You would have bought the suit anyway.

00:04:33.000 It's just that now you're doing it in the middle of a campaign.

00:04:35.000 It's the reason that you can't just blame everything on campaign expenditures.

00:04:38.000 You actually have to Kind of.

00:04:42.000 You have to filter out all of the stuff that is campaign expenditure from non-campaign expenditure.

00:04:46.000 So there basically been two lines of defense that President Trump has been urged to use by his defenders on this particular score.

00:04:54.000 Number one, this wasn't a campaign expenditure by Michael Cohen or by America Media Inc.

00:04:59.000 if he was involved in that particular path.

00:05:00.000 And number two, that even if it was a payoff, he relied on the advice of his attorney, Michael Cohen, and Michael Cohen's the attorney.

00:05:07.000 So it's his job to determine whether or not the law was being complied with.

00:05:10.000 Well, the first prong of that attack is sort of falling apart.

00:05:13.000 The idea that this was not campaign related.

00:05:15.000 If AMI is going to now testify, if executives at AMI, including people like David Pecker, who is a good friend of President Trump's, are now going to testify that Trump explicitly said to them, hey guys, I've got an election coming up and I really need you to buy up all the stories of the women I screwed years ago.

00:05:29.000 Like, if he said that, then it's going to be hard for him to claim That it was not campaign related, that it wasn't intended to influence the campaign.

00:05:38.000 While Cohen didn't actually use AMI to silence Stormy Daniels, representatives of AMI were the first to notify Michael Cohen of Stormy Daniels' intent to go public, according to prosecutors.

00:05:48.000 Again, all of this undercuts the case that President Trump could make that he paid hush money on a regular basis outside of election circumstances.

00:05:54.000 So Trump is now going to have to claim, in defense, that both AMI and Cohen are lying about such expenditures, representing illegal campaign allocations, that he would have done it anyway, and that they have caved to the pressure of rogue prosecutors.

00:06:05.000 Alternatively, he's going to have to blame Cohen for the violations, as I say.

00:06:08.000 Now, none of this bodes particularly well for President Trump.

00:06:11.000 President Trump cannot be prosecuted as president according to Justice Department guidelines, but that doesn't mean that a looming indictment wouldn't change the math for 2020.

00:06:18.000 I think one of the great misnomers in presidential politics is that if you are impeached, it redounds sort of to your benefit.

00:06:25.000 That if you're impeached, that it doesn't hurt you politically.

00:06:28.000 And the case that people tend to make here is with regard to Bill Clinton.

00:06:31.000 Because when Bill Clinton was impeached by the House, but he wasn't convicted by the Senate, his approval rating rose, people saw it as a witch hunt, and Bill Clinton was sort of exonerated by his own party and by the American people. 0.87

00:06:42.000 The problem is, Bill Clinton was a lame duck.

00:06:44.000 And the same thing is true of Richard Nixon. 0.98

00:06:46.000 When Richard Nixon resigned in the middle of Watergate, he was, in fact, a lame duck.

00:06:49.000 If Richard Nixon had been in his first term during Watergate, does anyone think he would have won a second term after that?

00:06:54.000 How about Bill Clinton?

00:06:55.000 If Bill Clinton had been hit with a perjury and obstruction charge and been impeached in, say, 1994, as opposed to 1999, does anybody actually think that he would have won re-election in 1996?

00:07:05.000 The evidence that it hurts people That it hurts the party that is impeached more than it doesn't is that in 2000, if you recall, Al Gore should have won that election running away.

00:07:17.000 He had a very solid economy, he had a record of Clinton's deficit reduction, he had a solid campaign apparatus behind him, and because of Bill Clinton's Turmoil.

00:07:28.000 He forcibly disassociated himself from Clinton.

00:07:31.000 He would not campaign with Clinton.

00:07:32.000 And George W. Bush ran a campaign based on, I'm going to bring honor and decency back to the Oval Office.

00:07:36.000 That was actually the main thrust of his campaign in 2000.

00:07:39.000 And it cost Al Gore the White House.

00:07:41.000 So the idea that it doesn't have negative ramifications for you as a candidate or your party as a candidate If you are impeached, I am not sure that that is the case.

00:07:52.000 Certainly, it's riskier than not impeaching Trump, but I'm not sure that if the Democrats were to impeach Trump in the House on the basis of, for example, obstruction of justice or perjury, that it would necessarily redound to President Trump's benefit.

00:08:03.000 And again, those would be the actual crimes that we're talking about with regard to President Trump.

00:08:07.000 So, there are three crimes that are on the table with regard to President Trump, to do the quick legal analysis here.

00:08:11.000 Crime number one would be active promotion of a campaign finance violation.

00:08:15.000 That would be, he went to Michael Cohen, he said, listen dude, I know this violates campaign law, but take this money and go pay off the ladies. 1.00

00:08:22.000 And don't report it.

00:08:23.000 Do it.

00:08:24.000 And Cohen was like, well, sir, that could violate campaign finance.

00:08:27.000 And Trump, I don't care, do it anyway.

00:08:29.000 Like that would be campaign finance violation.

00:08:31.000 That's case number one.

00:08:32.000 Case number two is that Trump didn't necessarily say that, but when Michael Cohen went back to Trump and he said, listen, the FBI is looking into me and they want me to testify that you had nothing to do, that you had everything to do with the payment and that you knew all about the payments and that you were deeply involved in the payments and that they were campaign related.

00:08:49.000 And then Trump said, I want you to go and I want you to lie.

00:08:51.000 I want you to just tell the FBI nothing.

00:08:53.000 I want you to lie.

00:08:54.000 If Trump did that, that would be obstruction of justice.

00:08:57.000 That's what Bill Clinton did in 1998 with regard to the Paula Jones case.

00:09:01.000 The reason that Bill Clinton ended up being impeached was for obstruction of justice and perjury.

00:09:06.000 The perjury charges came when he was asked specifically about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

00:09:10.000 And he said that he did not have a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

00:09:13.000 He used the present tense.

00:09:14.000 And that's where you got that famous quote.

00:09:16.000 It depends on the meaning of what is is meaning that present tense.

00:09:19.000 He didn't have a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky, but he had in the past.

00:09:23.000 He was charged.

00:09:24.000 So remember, the perjury and obstruction of justice charges with regard to Bill Clinton had nothing to do with an underlying crime.

00:09:32.000 He wanted her to lie about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

00:09:35.000 That was considered obstruction of justice.

00:09:37.000 So remember, the perjury and obstruction of justice charges with regard to Bill Clinton had nothing to do with an underlying crime.

00:09:43.000 It wasn't an actual crime for Bill Clinton to sleep with Monica Lewinsky.

00:09:46.000 It was a crime for him to lie to the congressional investigators about it.

00:09:50.000 And it was a crime for him to tell other people to lie to congressional investigators or the FBI about it.

00:09:55.000 You can have a very similar circumstance here, where Michael Cohen didn't actually even commit a campaign finance violation, and Trump didn't commit a campaign finance violation, but Trump told Michael Cohen to lie to people.

00:10:05.000 In positions of legal authority about this, and then you get obstruction of justice and perhaps perjury depending on what Trump actually said in his deposition by the FBI.

00:10:16.000 Remember, he has turned in written answers to Robert Mueller.

00:10:20.000 Presumably, the perjury charge from there would arise in the context of Trump saying, for example, that he didn't know about the Trump Tower meeting.

00:10:27.000 And then you have a bunch of people who say, no, he absolutely knew about the Trump Tower meeting.

00:10:31.000 And so you have a case of perjury.

00:10:32.000 So again, Trump Tower meeting, not illegal.

00:10:36.000 The affairs with Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal and the payoffs to them.

00:10:40.000 Not illegal.

00:10:41.000 But crimes can arise from non-illegal activity if you end up telling people to fib to legal authorities like the FBI or the DOJ.

00:10:50.000 And that is where the peril lies for President Trump.

00:10:52.000 Now, a competent lawyer will say at this point that President Trump should shut his face, right?

00:10:56.000 I mean, this is, as I've said many times on the program, the first thing to know about when the FBI comes calling is get a lawyer and shut up.

00:11:03.000 And this is true for anyone.

00:11:04.000 Okay, this is true for anyone.

00:11:06.000 Now, there are people who are saying that, you know, you want to urge people to talk to the FBI and the DOJ.

00:11:12.000 That's true.

00:11:12.000 As a general matter, I would like for people to talk with the FBI and the DOJ and the police and law enforcement authorities so that we can track down crime and solve those crimes.

00:11:19.000 I'm saying that if I were the defense counsel for somebody, if it were my job to defend you, any lawyer worth his salt will tell you, first rule of order, get a lawyer in the room and then don't answer questions unless your lawyer says that it's okay to answer the questions.

00:11:33.000 Certainly don't go on Twitter and start tweeting about your legal strategy.

00:11:36.000 And yet, as we shall see, being President Trump's lawyer is a barrel of laughs.

00:11:41.000 So here, we'll talk about what President Trump had to tweet about.

00:11:44.000 He started tweeting out his legal strategy this morning, which is always... Honestly, if you're his lawyer, you just want to stick your head in an oven.

00:11:51.000 I mean, it's just... It's...

00:11:55.000 There are three really bad jobs in Washington- There are many bad jobs in Washington, D.C.

00:11:59.000 Among these bad jobs, being the president's personal attorney, being the press secretary for the White House, and being the chief of staff, which is why they're now going to- I think maybe they should just conflate all of these into one.

00:12:08.000 The president's personal attorney should become the press secretary and the chief of staff.

00:12:10.000 We can kill three birds with one stone, or as PETA would have it, we can feed three birds with one scone.

00:12:16.000 We'll get to all of that in just a second, but first, let's talk about your ancestry.

00:12:22.000 Are you more Native American than Elizabeth Warren?

00:12:24.000 This is the real question of the day.

00:12:26.000 So Elizabeth Warren may have blown up her presidential campaign because she decided to release a genetic ancestry test showing that she may have been one 1,024th Native American. 0.99

00:12:36.000 I decided that I would take a genetic test from 23andMe because I wanted to find out more about my ancestry.

00:12:41.000 As it turns out, truth in advertising, I was 100% Ashkenazi Jewish.

00:12:46.000 I mean, that is some pure blood right there.

00:12:49.000 People worry about whether they are of mixed heritage.

00:12:52.000 I mean, this is like Lithuanian Jews marrying each other for a thousand years, and this results in this. 0.97

00:12:57.000 Check that out right there.

00:12:59.000 Well, 23andMe confirmed all of that, and they gave me information about my muscle composition.

00:13:03.000 Turns out I am just deeply athletic.

00:13:06.000 My sleep movement, do I move a lot when I sleep?

00:13:09.000 The answer, of course, is yes.

00:13:10.000 It gives you information about whether you have a taste aversion to cilantro, an ability to match musical pitch, misophonia, which is everyday noises like sounds of chewing can cause a reaction of rage or panic.

00:13:24.000 Do you have a predilection to that?

00:13:26.000 They can actually test this.

00:13:27.000 Mosquito bite frequency, like my wife is constantly getting bit by mosquitoes. 1.00

00:13:30.000 It turns out there's a genetic component to that.

00:13:32.000 23andMe can give you all this cool information.

00:13:35.000 The Health and Ancestry Service includes 90-plus personalized genetic reports that offer DNA insights on what makes you unique.

00:13:41.000 Now through December 25th, you get 30% off any 23andMe kit.

00:13:44.000 It really is a lot of fun.

00:13:46.000 It's enjoyable to go through these results, and you know more about yourself than you did before.

00:13:49.000 Order your DNA kit at 23andme.com slash Shapiro.

00:13:52.000 That's the number 23andme.com slash Shapiro.

00:13:54.000 Again, that's 23andme.com slash Shapiro.

00:13:57.000 Other folks in the office have taken the genetic ancestry test.

00:14:00.000 It turns out that I am related to our makeup artist, Jess.

00:14:02.000 She's 0.4% Jewish.

00:14:04.000 So congratulations to Jess on her upgrade to the nation.

00:14:07.000 But it's really, it's really fun stuff.

00:14:10.000 And again, find out whether you're more Native American than Elizabeth Warren, which is really the only thing anybody cares about at this point.

00:14:17.000 Because everyone, except for me, is more Native American than Elizabeth Warren.

00:14:21.000 Go check it out right now.

00:14:22.000 23andme.com slash Shapiro.

00:14:24.000 Get 30% off any 23andme kit when you use that promo code Shapiro.

00:14:27.000 23andme.com slash Shapiro.

00:14:29.000 Okay, so. 0.99

00:14:31.000 President Trump, the first rule of lawyering is shut your head.

00:14:36.000 President Trump does not abide by that rule.

00:14:37.000 So President Trump decided this morning to tweet out his entire legal strategy because when you have 50 million Twitter followers, why not lay out your entire legal strategy in the middle of an FBI investigation?

00:14:47.000 How could this go wrong?

00:14:48.000 So President Trump decides to tweet out and he tweets, I never directed Michael Cohen to break the law.

00:14:53.000 He was a lawyer.

00:14:54.000 He's supposed to know the law.

00:14:56.000 It is called advice of counsel, and a lawyer has great liability if a mistake is made.

00:15:01.000 That is why they get paid.

00:15:02.000 Despite that, many campaign finance lawyers have strongly stated, I did nothing wrong with respect to campaign finance laws.

00:15:09.000 If they even apply, because this was not campaign finance.

00:15:13.000 Cohen was guilty on many charges unrelated to me.

00:15:16.000 But he pled to two criminal charges, campaign charges, which were not criminal and of which he probably was not guilty, even on a civil basis.

00:15:25.000 Those charges were just agreed to by him in order to embarrass the president and get a much reduced prison sentence, which he did, including the fact that his family was temporarily let off the hook.

00:15:35.000 As a lawyer, Michael has great liability to me.

00:15:38.000 So, I will admit that the best tweet Trump has ever sent was specifically about Michael Cohen.

00:15:43.000 He sent a tweet several months ago in which he said, Well, you know, he should have thought of that before he did it, but what he is saying here is exactly the legal strategy that I've drawn up for him.

00:15:54.000 Now, the problem with him saying this sort of thing out loud is it shows sort of a motive for him to say it, meaning that he's now contradicted himself on Twitter itself.

00:16:02.000 Remember, he says he didn't pay off Stormy Daniels, that he never had an affair with Stormy Daniels on Twitter.

00:16:06.000 It turns out that all of that is false.

00:16:07.000 We all knew it was false at the time.

00:16:10.000 But he's basically making the case that Michael Cohen was supposed to protect him.

00:16:15.000 That's what a lawyer is supposed to do. 0.99

00:16:16.000 And that is the defense that he's going to have to rely on in the end, is that Michael Cohen should have known all this stuff, and Michael Cohen blew it anyway.

00:16:23.000 Whether that holds or not is...

00:16:26.000 Questionable, but it does set up a really difficult 2020 run for the president for a couple of reasons, which I'll explain in just a second.

00:16:34.000 So the president looking forward to 2021, a couple of things can happen.

00:16:38.000 Either the Democrats can impeach the president on the basis of obstruction of justice and perjury, Or the president is not impeached and we just jabber about this and investigate it for the next two years and we run into 2020 under the looming threat of indictment for President Trump.

00:16:52.000 And so it becomes President Trump trying to escape jail by running for president because when you're president you have immunity from being imprisoned by law enforcement authorities unless you're impeached and you're out of office.

00:17:04.000 If the if the president is able to survive impeachment, which I think he will up till 2020, but the indictment is still on the table, then basically he's going to be running under the threat of indictments that if you let him not be president anymore, he will immediately be sent to prison by the Southern District of New York.

00:17:20.000 That obviously is a different color for an election that we have ever seen in American politics before.

00:17:26.000 Now, it does set up a conundrum for the Democrats, which is, is it better to impeach him now, and move toward impeachment now, or is it better to run under those circumstances?

00:17:33.000 I think everyone sort of agrees it's better that if you can, you run under those circumstances in 2020. 0.96

00:17:38.000 You just keep jabbering and yelling about how Trump is an obstructor of justice, and a liar, and a perjurer, and then you run against him. 0.68

00:17:45.000 It's better to do that than to impeach him, and then the Senate acquits him, and then the story's basically over. 0.97

00:17:50.000 Alan Dershowitz, who's been a big defender of the President in a lot of this, and of course is a defense lawyer, was a defense lawyer for a living, He says that it's ridiculous to talk about impeaching Trump over this sort of stuff anyway.

00:18:00.000 I don't think he's going to come up with an impeachable offense.

00:18:03.000 Remember, the Constitution requires treason, bribery, other high crimes and misdemeanors.

00:18:07.000 The most they've come up with is a very, very questionable campaign contribution issue, which failed when they tried it against Edward some years ago.

00:18:16.000 So I don't think we're in impeachment land.

00:18:19.000 Okay, so I think that he is probably right, but only because of Bill Clinton.

00:18:22.000 So what's really amazing is watching all the people who thought that Bill Clinton should not be impeached turn around and now say that Donald Trump should be impeached on the same basis.

00:18:29.000 Now, here is my general take on whether Trump should be impeached if all of this stuff happens to be true.

00:18:38.000 If we were talking about we're now living in 1994, 1993, 1996, and we're trying to uphold a certain standard of what the presidency is, then any president who is credibly accused of obstruction of justice or perjury or be indicted on that basis should be impeached, which is why I was in favor of the Bill Clinton impeachment.

00:18:55.000 But Let's be real about this.

00:18:57.000 The math changed and it was changed by Bill Clinton.

00:18:59.000 It's not just that the Democrats held Bill Clinton to no standard.

00:19:02.000 It's that the realities on the ground changed themselves.

00:19:05.000 It's that the realities on the ground changed.

00:19:08.000 Donald Trump is not president if Bill Clinton Is not impeached, right?

00:19:13.000 If Bill Clinton is impeached, rather Bill Clinton had been impeached in 1999, Donald Trump is not president today.

00:19:17.000 Bill Clinton lowered the standard for what a president could be so much that by the time we got to Donald Trump in 2016, everybody just went, listen, we know that a president doesn't have to have high moral fiber.

00:19:28.000 We had Bill Clinton.

00:19:29.000 We know that a president can have corruption issues.

00:19:31.000 We had Bill Clinton.

00:19:32.000 You guys are running Hillary Clinton in this election and then lecturing us about higher character in the election?

00:19:37.000 You can't do this.

00:19:38.000 This is not a real thing.

00:19:39.000 And that's basically correct.

00:19:42.000 I'm not going to go back to the old standard.

00:19:43.000 I don't think it's it's even credible to go back to the old standard of what the presidency was before Bill Clinton, because let's be let's be frank about this.

00:19:51.000 There hasn't been no moral change of mind on the part of Democrats.

00:19:54.000 Now, what you're going to see over the next two years, here's the prediction now.

00:19:57.000 Over the next two years, what you're going to begin to see is a bunch of Democrats coming out and saying, you know what?

00:20:02.000 Thinking about it now, we should have gotten rid of Bill Clinton.

00:20:05.000 We should have impeached him.

00:20:06.000 They started to do this last year in the middle of the Me Too movement.

00:20:09.000 Well, you know, we really should have taken Juanita Broderick more seriously.

00:20:12.000 Right, but you didn't.

00:20:13.000 And I don't trust that you would if it happened again today.

00:20:16.000 If we were talking about a Democrat in office having committed the same sort of quasi-crimes or accused crimes as President Trump, Democrats would not be talking about impeaching, they would be talking about defending.

00:20:25.000 That is the world in which we live.

00:20:26.000 The standard that was used in 1999 for Bill Clinton retaining office.

00:20:29.000 By the way, he retained office under a Republican Senate.

00:20:32.000 A Republican Senate voted not to convict him in the impeachment case.

00:20:36.000 The standard that was used was, could Bill Clinton credibly continue to carry out his job, or had he lost the faith of the American people because of the charges upon him?

00:20:43.000 And the answer that the Senate gave was, no, he can still credibly perform his job, so we can't throw him out of office for high crimes and misdemeanors even though he was impeached in the House.

00:20:51.000 That standard still applies to President Trump.

00:20:53.000 Republicans would, I think, there's a case that people are making that Republicans would be smart to convict President Trump in the Senate. 0.92

00:20:59.000 I think that's ridiculous, politically speaking.

00:21:01.000 Too much of the base is invested in President Trump personally.

00:21:04.000 The idea of throwing him out of office on what look like ticky-tack fouls that are certainly no worse than what Bill Clinton did in 1999.

00:21:10.000 I think you want to split the base.

00:21:12.000 That's a good way to do it.

00:21:14.000 But does all this bode well for 2020?

00:21:16.000 I can't say that it does, and I would prefer that it had not been a thing.

00:21:20.000 But unfortunately, it is a thing, and so we'll have to move forward with it.

00:21:22.000 Now, in other news, I want to talk about, in just a second, presidents from facing down Democrats over border funding.

00:21:29.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

00:21:30.000 First, let's talk about how you invest.

00:21:32.000 My secretary, my assistant, has now been using the Robinhood app for her investments, and she loves it.

00:21:38.000 I mean, she told me this morning that the Robinhood app is specifically tailored to you.

00:21:42.000 It asks you questions like, what are your investment goals?

00:21:44.000 Are you doing it to save?

00:21:46.000 Are you doing it to risk?

00:21:47.000 Are you looking for certain types of stocks?

00:21:49.000 It asks you your income so that it can tailor a strategy specifically for you.

00:21:53.000 And that's what Robinhood does.

00:21:55.000 Robinhood is an investing app that lets you buy and sell stocks, ETFs, options, and cryptos all commission-free.

00:21:59.000 They strive to make financial services work for everyone, not just wealthy folks.

00:22:02.000 It's a non-intimidating way for stock market newcomers to invest for the first time with true confidence.

00:22:07.000 It's simple and intuitive.

00:22:08.000 It's got a clear design with data presented in an easy-to-digest way.

00:22:12.000 Other brokerages charge up to $10 for every trade.

00:22:15.000 Robinhood doesn't charge commission fees.

00:22:17.000 You can trade the stocks and keep all of your profits.

00:22:19.000 They've got ease of use.

00:22:21.000 Their design is really clear and obvious.

00:22:23.000 The web platform lets you view stock collections that are curated just for you.

00:22:27.000 Analyst ratings are buy, hold, and sell.

00:22:28.000 It asks you up front how much you know the market or whether you know the market at all so that it can teach you how the market works.

00:22:33.000 Robinhood right now is giving my listeners a free stock like Apple Fort or Sprint to help build your portfolio.

00:22:38.000 Sign up at Shapiro.Robinhood.com.

00:22:41.000 That's Shapiro.Robinhood.com.

00:22:44.000 And again, when you use that promo code Shapiro, Shapiro.Robinhood.com, you get a free stock like Apple, Ford, or Sprint to help build that portfolio.

00:22:49.000 It's a great way to learn to invest.

00:22:52.000 Folks around the office have been using it.

00:22:53.000 They say that it's really fantastic.

00:22:54.000 Go check it out right now.

00:22:55.000 It's Shapiro.Robinhood.com.

00:22:57.000 Okay, meanwhile, the President of the United States has been caught up in this talk of a government shutdown with the Democrats.

00:23:04.000 And the Democrats are saying, we are not going to fund this border wall no matter what.

00:23:07.000 This is a winning campaign issue for the President.

00:23:10.000 If Democrats refuse to give the President his funding for a border wall, And the president says, listen, I'm not signing anything without that funding in it because they will not provide you the necessary security, the necessary prevention against dangerous people getting into the country.

00:23:24.000 That's a winning issue for the president.

00:23:26.000 And the Democrats are proving themselves intransigent.

00:23:28.000 It's amazing to me that the Democrats don't just give him the funding.

00:23:32.000 I understand that they want the political win of being able to say that they prevented Trump from getting the funding, but it doesn't seem worth it to me.

00:23:39.000 So what?

00:23:40.000 Wouldn't they look stronger on security if they just said, you know what?

00:23:42.000 The president is right.

00:23:43.000 We need to be stronger on border security.

00:23:45.000 So we're giving him the funding for border security and we're doing so in order to make the country safer.

00:23:50.000 Is that a huge win for Trump that's going to win him vast swaths of voters across the country?

00:23:55.000 I don't think so, especially if Democrats tried to show themselves as partners in all of this, as opposed to obstructors in all of this.

00:24:01.000 Instead, they've decided that this is a hill they are willing to die on.

00:24:04.000 President Trump should make them stand on that hill over and over and over again.

00:24:09.000 So Bernie Sanders is one of the folks who's pushing this.

00:24:11.000 Bernie Sanders is so wild, and the Democrats are so wild, that Bernie Sanders says he would not even trade citizenship for the Dreamers, meaning people who arrived here below the age of majority as children or young teenagers.

00:24:25.000 He wouldn't trade citizenship for them for a wall.

00:24:28.000 So he would leave, he'd rather leave legitimately hundreds of thousands or millions of illegal immigrants who could get citizenship in a deal Off the table, just so that President Trump can't build a border wall.

00:24:38.000 It's an insane position, but it is the mainstream democratic position.

00:24:41.000 Here's Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who's fading in the polls, but not fading in our hearts.

00:24:46.000 Bernie Sanders, go!

00:24:48.000 What's wrong with the move of saying what the Democrats say quietly, which is, we're in favor of border security, we're funding the stuff that they're doing on the border right now.

00:24:56.000 Give them the wall and get back what you want for the Dreamers. 1.00

00:24:59.000 My understanding is he does not have the votes in the House.

00:25:02.000 And I think there are a lot of folks here in the Senate, Republicans, who are also not supportive of building the wall.

00:25:09.000 All right, so wall for dreamers, not on the table for Bernie Sanders.

00:25:12.000 And then Chuck Schumer comes out and he says, President Trump is going to hold the government hostage for a campaign pledge?

00:25:18.000 Well, first of all, that is what every president has done.

00:25:20.000 Barack Obama did it also.

00:25:22.000 When the Republican Congress refused to pass a budget that included funding for Obamacare, Obama shut down the government, right?

00:25:27.000 Obama said, OK, well, I won't sign it.

00:25:29.000 I'm not going to sign it then.

00:25:30.000 Well, Chuck Schumer says, how dare President Trump do the same thing President Obama did on his priorities?

00:25:35.000 That's crazy talk.

00:25:36.000 President Trump made clear he'll hold parts of the government hostage for a petty campaign pledge to fire up his base.

00:25:46.000 That's all it is.

00:25:47.000 OK, that is absurd and it is not true.

00:25:50.000 You know, the president's pledge is a matter of border security and he is not wrong to push it.

00:25:56.000 But the Democrats are very radical on this issue and that's a winning issue for the president of the United States.

00:26:00.000 How radical are Democrats on this issue?

00:26:02.000 Here's an editorial from the Boston Globe about this.

00:26:04.000 They're very, very upset because the president over the last week has expanded his plan to dramatically expand the so-called public charge rule.

00:26:13.000 The public charge rule says that the administration is not going to allow people to come into the country who might become a public charge.

00:26:19.000 In other words, you don't get to come in the country if you're going to come here and be on public benefits.

00:26:22.000 So according to the Boston Globe, the rule is meant to prevent people who might become a public charge from entering or establishing legal residency in the United States.

00:26:29.000 Historically, the test was narrow, designed to identify those who would rely on the government as their main source of support.

00:26:35.000 The test considered only cash-based aid, which only 3% of non-citizens use.

00:26:38.000 Trump wants to expand factors considered to include food stamps and housing assistance programs like Section 8 and Medicaid, among others.

00:26:44.000 Additionally, establishes new factors that would count against non-citizens.

00:26:47.000 Earning an income of less than 125% of the federal poverty level, lacking English proficiency, having a poor credit score, or being older than 61 or younger than 18.

00:26:56.000 These new rules would apply to foreign-born individuals seeking a green card and to some abroad requesting visas.

00:27:02.000 Why is any of that unreasonable?

00:27:04.000 I think if you ask the American people, do you want people immigrating to the country who depress wages because they earn low wages abroad, who have low levels of education, who are more likely to depend on food stamps and Section 8 housing, most Americans would say, no, we don't want those people coming into the country Just as a general rule, because if they're going to take advantage of our public benefits programs, then how are they of net benefit to American society? 0.99

00:27:27.000 Now, I'm libertarian on immigration in a non-social welfare-based system.

00:27:31.000 When my great-grandparents came to the United States, great-great-grandparents came to the United States in 1907, 1908, there were none of these social welfare programs in place.

00:27:39.000 If there are no social welfare programs in place and you just want to come here and work, You just want to come here and be free?

00:27:44.000 Then more power to you.

00:27:45.000 Come on in.

00:27:45.000 But if you're coming here and you are likely to rely on public benefits, how exactly do you hope that we are going to be able to support those public benefits on the back of such immigration policies?

00:27:56.000 But Democrats on the left are so radical on this that they say that if you don't agree that we should bring in people to be on our welfare systems, then this means that you're some sort of racist or xenophobe.

00:28:07.000 So, it really is an amazing, amazing statement by folks on the left.

00:28:11.000 The Boston Globe concludes, in the past, the government has encouraged low-income people to enroll in public assistance programs like food stamps and Medicaid, so it'd be especially unfair to make those choices count against immigrants now.

00:28:22.000 Why?

00:28:24.000 Why?

00:28:25.000 I mean, just because the government had bad policy in the past, we have to maintain that bad policy now?

00:28:29.000 With so much harm, what could possibly be the intent of this policy change?

00:28:33.000 Homeland Security said in a statement that the policy would, quote, "...promote immigrant self-sufficiency and protect finite resources by ensuring that they are not likely to become burdens on American taxpayers." This is called rationality.

00:28:43.000 But the rule says the Boston Globe would do exactly the opposite.

00:28:46.000 It would cripple low-income immigrant families who are doing everything by the book and trigger aftershocks that would hurt all Americans. 0.90

00:28:52.000 No, no, it would remove people from the public roles is what it would do. 0.99

00:28:59.000 But this is how extreme the Democrats are.

00:29:00.000 They say not only should we not build a wall, we should encourage people to come here and then we should tell them to get on public benefits.

00:29:05.000 That's a radical position.

00:29:06.000 Most Americans don't agree with this.

00:29:08.000 And so when folks on the left say that Trump's border policy is all about xenophobia and racism, it just doesn't ring true in any real sense.

00:29:15.000 That's not going to stop them from saying it though.

00:29:17.000 CNN's Angela Rye says that Trump's wall is all about xenophobia and racism because for the left, everything Republicans do is about xenophobia and racism.

00:29:24.000 Donald Trump is fixated on the southern border as he was the day that he announced his campaign.

00:29:29.000 It is not about securing the borders.

00:29:31.000 It is about xenophobic, racist, bigoted beliefs that he holds.

00:29:36.000 Okay, it is not about that.

00:29:38.000 It is about the fact that most Americans agree that we ought to secure our borders. 0.90

00:29:41.000 Now, President Trump is doing something very silly this morning.

00:29:44.000 He made a promise during his campaign that he was going to build a wall and make the Mexicans pay for it. 0.99

00:29:48.000 He was going to make the Mexican government pay for it, right?

00:29:50.000 That was his idea. 0.98

00:29:51.000 And it was always silly. 0.85

00:29:52.000 I said it during the campaign.

00:29:53.000 The Mexican government was not going to pay for the building of a border wall. 0.94

00:29:57.000 That was a ridiculous contention.

00:29:58.000 But Trump is now trying to claim that he has somehow successfully done this. 0.61

00:30:01.000 How?

00:30:02.000 Because he cut a new trade deal with Mexico.

00:30:04.000 So he tweeted out this morning about NAFTA.

00:30:07.000 He tweeted, "I often stated one way or the other, "Mexico is going to pay for the wall.

00:30:11.000 "This has never changed.

00:30:13.000 "Our new deal with Mexico and Canada, "the US MCA is so much better than the old, "very costly and anti-USA NAFTA deal "that just by the money we save, "Mexico is paying for the wall." No, that is not true.

00:30:30.000 That is not true.

00:30:30.000 OK, so first of all, it is incumbent upon us to say that the USMCA, the new trade deal, is 95 percent the same as NAFTA.

00:30:37.000 The idea that Mexico is going to be paying for the wall through a better trade deal is just silliness.

00:30:43.000 OK, that's that that is not accurate.

00:30:44.000 If the trade deal is better, that means both sides benefit.

00:30:47.000 So, I don't understand how that pays for the border wall. 0.93

00:30:50.000 If this is Trump's idea of fulfilling a promise, that's silly. 0.79

00:30:53.000 But again, it was a silly promise to begin with, and no one was going to hold him to it anyway.

00:30:56.000 The only question is whether he actually builds the wall and pleases all of his fans who wanted him to build the wall.

00:31:01.000 It seems like, unfortunately, President Trump is making noises in which he's going to claim that he's already built the wall, even though he has not.

00:31:07.000 The Department of Homeland Security put out a memo today saying that the wall has never been built higher than it is now.

00:31:12.000 In other words, we didn't build a new wall, but we extended upward the wall that we already had, the fencing that we already had.

00:31:20.000 If you want to buy that, you can buy it, but that is not a fulfillment of his campaign promise.

00:31:24.000 Okay, in just a second, I want to get to media bias, because we have a couple of amazing stories of media bias over the last couple of days.

00:31:32.000 And then we also have to talk about the increased radicalism inside the Democratic Party and the Boy Scouts on the verge of bankruptcy.

00:31:38.000 But first, let's talk a little bit about another podcast that you ought to give a listen to.

00:31:42.000 This podcast is called Kingpins.

00:31:44.000 If you like podcasts about greed and corruption, there's a new podcast from Podcast Network.

00:31:47.000 It's called Kingpins.

00:31:48.000 Kingpins takes a deep dive into the minds and stories of the men and women who call the shots of the criminal underworld.

00:31:54.000 I love stuff like this.

00:31:55.000 And there's a great show on Netflix called Narcos about Pablo Escobar and the drug cartels.

00:32:00.000 Well, there are episodes coming up on Kingpins all about Pablo Escobar and Thelma Wright and Al Capone, about people who control the landscape around them and use force and cruelty to control, use extortion and violence and even murder to protect their empires.

00:32:14.000 The misuses of human power are one of my chief sources of fascination in life, and Kingpins really takes it on on a narrative level.

00:32:21.000 It's really fascinating stuff.

00:32:22.000 Listen today by searching and subscribing to Kingpins wherever you listen to podcasts.

00:32:25.000 That is K-I-N-G, P-I-N-S, Kingpins, or visit parcast.com slash kingpins to start listening now. 1.00

00:32:33.000 That's P-A-R-C-A-S-T dot com slash kingpins to start listening now.

00:32:38.000 If you're into crime podcasts, if you are into exciting narrative podcasts, You don't want to miss Parkast's Kingpins.

00:32:44.000 Go find it at any place you listen to podcasts.

00:32:46.000 Again, the podcast is called Kingpins.

00:32:48.000 Go check it out right now.

00:32:50.000 OK, for more on media bias and all the rest, we have pretty good things I like and things I hate coming up today.

00:32:57.000 You're going to want to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.

00:32:59.000 We have so many great things coming for you in the new year when you become a subscriber.

00:33:03.000 You get not only the rest of all the shows live and all the rest of it and ability to join the mailbag and ability to ask questions during the during the conversations.

00:33:11.000 You also are going to be able to ask me questions live on air like every day when you're a subscriber because we're doing two more hours of the show every day.

00:33:20.000 That's how hard I'm slaving my fingers to the bone for you people.

00:33:24.000 So all you have to do is go become a subscriber and then you get access to that stuff.

00:33:28.000 And we're doing a live radio show and we'll be simulcasting that and I'll be answering your questions during the commercial breaks and everything.

00:33:34.000 It's going to be a blast.

00:33:35.000 Go check it out over at dailywire.com for $9.99 a month and for $99 a year.

00:33:38.000 You get this?

00:33:40.000 The very greatest in beverage vessels.

00:33:41.000 Aha! 0.94

00:33:42.000 You see it, cast your eyes upon it and despair.

00:33:45.000 The left is tears, hot or cold tumbler.

00:33:47.000 You will enjoy it.

00:33:48.000 You will live it.

00:33:48.000 You will love it.

00:33:49.000 You'll get all of those great things.

00:33:50.000 Also, go check us out at YouTube or iTunes.

00:33:52.000 That means that when you subscribe, you also get our Sunday specials.

00:33:55.000 We have a bunch of awesome Sunday specials coming up in the very near future.

00:33:57.000 This Sunday is Bishop Robert Barron.

00:33:59.000 So we'll be discussing theology and philosophy and all sorts of the deep topics that you want to hear about.

00:34:04.000 Go check that out right now.

00:34:06.000 Please leave us a review when you do subscribe over at iTunes.

00:34:08.000 It always helps us with the rankings.

00:34:09.000 We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast in the nation.

00:34:11.000 So the media obviously are wildly biased against Republicans.

00:34:21.000 And you can see it in terms not only of the immigration debate, where you have everybody ripping on President Trump's eminently practical policies with regard to illegal immigration, but in virtually every aspect of the media.

00:34:33.000 It is amazing how much the left will go out of its way in the media to cover for its own.

00:34:40.000 To cover for members of the media who are on the left and to cover for politicians on the left.

00:34:44.000 And this is how you end up with stories like this one from the LA Times.

00:34:48.000 So it turns out that the CEO of the LA Times was talking openly about a Jewish cabal that ran Los Angeles.

00:34:59.000 Here's the article from NPR.

00:35:00.000 Several months after taking control of the troubled Tribune Publishing Company in 2016, Chicago investor Michael Farrow convened a session of corporate leaders from within his own news empire, including chief news executives from such storied papers as the L.A.

00:35:11.000 Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Baltimore Sun.

00:35:13.000 The group of about 20 people trooped from Chicago's iconic Tribune Tower on Michigan Avenue to an upscale restaurant nearby.

00:35:19.000 In a private room, participants dined on seafood and steak while Farrow, then the company's chairman, held forth on his plans.

00:35:25.000 His own net worth was newly in the nine figures.

00:35:28.000 Associates and peers say Farrell held ambitions that were wide-ranging, even audacious, given the newspaper industry's stiff headwinds.

00:35:34.000 At the dinner, as at other moments, Farrell railed against those he felt were impeding him, including perceived rivals and competitors.

00:35:40.000 Among them, Eli Broad, who's a Southern California billionaire and civic leader.

00:35:43.000 Farrell called him part of a Jewish cabal that ran Los Angeles.

00:35:48.000 A spokesman for Faro denied the incident occurred and called the claim reckless allegations.

00:35:51.000 Nothing really spells out how much you should trust the media than that a bunch of members of the media were in a room with a high-powered guy who owns a bunch of newspapers and failed to report for several years that the man was talking about a Jewish cabal running Los Angeles.

00:36:05.000 It's amazing how the left is willing to accept antisemitism when it comes from its own ranks.

00:36:08.000 Tribune Publishing made the first in a series of secret payments to total more than $2.5 million to avert a threatened lawsuit by a fired newspaper executive, according to three people with knowledge of the deal.

00:36:19.000 That had the effect of keeping Farrow's antisemitic slur out of the public spotlight.

00:36:22.000 So in other words, intrepid journalists sitting at the Stinner hearing the CEO of the LA Times rail against the Jewish cabal in Los Angeles.

00:36:30.000 They had several choices.

00:36:32.000 Choice number one, Tell him to pipe down, maybe get fired, and then go public.

00:36:36.000 Choice number two.

00:36:38.000 Assign an investigative reporter.

00:36:40.000 Go and cover this stuff.

00:36:41.000 Be a fireman the way you say you're a fireman.

00:36:43.000 Choice number three.

00:36:45.000 Try to sue the guy for 2.5 million dollars and then keep the thing silent.

00:36:48.000 And our intrepid fireman chose number three.

00:36:51.000 Solid stuff, intrepid fireman.

00:36:53.000 Also, not a shock from the folks at the LA Times who have legitimately, for years on end, hidden a tape Now it's been hidden for a full decade.

00:37:01.000 A tape of then-Senator Barack Obama attending a party at which Rashid Khalidi, an actual terrorist spokesperson, spoke up in his favor and then Obama spoke about him.

00:37:10.000 That tape should have come out during 2008.

00:37:12.000 The LA Times hid it and they refused the offer of payment of I think it was $100,000 from Andrew Breitbart to release the tape.

00:37:19.000 How long do you think it would have taken for that tape to release, to leak, if it had been a Republican making such comments?

00:37:26.000 Media bias is pretty extraordinary, and media bias is so extraordinary that you can get away with pretty much anything so long as you are still in the leftist wheelhouse.

00:37:34.000 Case in point, Mika Brzezinski.

00:37:35.000 So yesterday on MSNBC, Mika Brzezinski was talking about Mike Pompeo, who is the Secretary of State, and she's very angry that Secretary Pompeo, what she believes is being weak, With dictators around the world.

00:37:47.000 And she proceeded to use a phrase that if any Republican used it, that Republican would immediately lose his job. 1.00

00:37:52.000 She still maintains her job because that's how this works. 1.00

00:37:54.000 Joy Reid can say whatever homophobic thing she wants and maintain on MSNBC. 1.00

00:37:58.000 And Mika Brzezinski can say whatever homophobic thing she wants and maintain her job on MSNBC. 1.00

00:38:02.000 Here's what she said yesterday.

00:38:03.000 So, Joe, I just, I have to ask, because I don't think there, I can't think of anyone here who could put it more clearly than you.

00:38:11.000 I understand that Donald Trump doesn't care.

00:38:14.000 Heilman makes a good point, he doesn't care.

00:38:16.000 But why doesn't Mike Pompeo care right now? 0.84

00:38:20.000 Are the pathetic deflections that we just heard, when he appeared on Fox & Friends, is that a patriot speaking? 0.99

00:38:28.000 Or a wannabe dictator's butt boy. 0.99

00:38:30.000 I'm dead serious. 0.96

00:38:31.000 I'm asking, are these the words of a patriot?

00:38:34.000 He's debased himself.

00:38:35.000 He once again is undercut.

00:38:37.000 I love how that just like flies right over the radar, under the radar for these folks like that. 0.97

00:38:41.000 Everybody who's sitting there listening to this, nobody thought, oh it's bad to say butt boy, which is a homophobic. 0.93

00:38:46.000 A homophobic term.

00:38:47.000 Mika Brzezinski came out later and apologized.

00:38:50.000 I totally agree with you.

00:38:51.000 Super bad choice of words.

00:38:52.000 I should have said water boy, like for football teams or something like that.

00:38:54.000 Apologize to Dick Durbin, too.

00:38:56.000 So sorry.

00:38:57.000 Well, I guess that it just goes away now.

00:38:59.000 It's a good thing that she didn't want... I guess she can't host the Oscars anymore, though. 1.00

00:39:01.000 So that's exciting news.

00:39:04.000 Because I'm not sure anybody would watch the Oscars hosted by Mika Brzezinski.

00:39:08.000 So, again, she gets away with it.

00:39:09.000 Anybody does that on Fox News, they're immediately suspended, maybe fired, because that's the way that the media protect their own.

00:39:15.000 Well, because the media are so far to the left, that is increasing the radicalism inside the Democratic Party, and this does have consequences.

00:39:21.000 So, how radical is the Democratic Party becoming?

00:39:26.000 What has happened inside the Democratic Party is that Bernie Sanders has become the mainstream.

00:39:29.000 It's one of the reasons why Bernie Sanders is not going to run successfully in 2020.

00:39:32.000 He made the mistake of being too successful in 2016.

00:39:35.000 The Democratic Party decided to basically cannibalize Bernie Sanders' campaign and then ingest it and then poop out a bunch of candidates who mirror Bernie Sanders' priorities.

00:39:46.000 So here is Bernie Sanders yesterday talking about greedy billionaires controlling the USA.

00:39:49.000 The only real question about this is, is there any Democrat who's going to run in 2020 who disagrees with this?

00:39:55.000 I really doubt it.

00:39:58.000 Okay, this is the exact sort of language that everyone in the Democratic Party now uses, particularly folks like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who I bring up because, again, I know every time we talk about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, we're accused of being obsessed with her.

00:40:22.000 Except that there are articles in mainstream media today calling for her to run for president.

00:40:27.000 She's not even eligible for the presidency. 1.00

00:40:29.000 You have to be 35 to be president of the United States.

00:40:32.000 Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who does not know things, is 29 years old and she's being touted as the new hot thing in Congress because she's good at social media, which she eminently is. 1.00

00:40:42.000 Matthew Iglesias, who is a dummy.

00:40:44.000 Matthew Iglesias, the Ralph Wiggum of political commentary over at Vox.com. 0.79

00:40:49.000 He has an article today called, It's Ridiculous That It's Unconstitutional For Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez To Run For President. 1.00

00:40:56.000 He says, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the biggest star in the Democratic Party and she has been ever since she unseated Representative Joe Crowley in a surprise primary upset in May.

00:41:04.000 That her win didn't, in the final analysis, launch a wave of leftist primary victories only goes to show what a phenomenon she personally is.

00:41:12.000 I mean, I don't wish to review the history here for all that long, but Representative Joe Crowley was a representative from a majority-minority district, and she won 17,000 votes in the primary.

00:41:22.000 So, like, five people showed up, and of those five people, three voted for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

00:41:27.000 This makes her the rising star.

00:41:29.000 In any case, Matthew Iglesias says it is very bad that we prevent people who are not 35 from running for president.

00:41:38.000 He makes the case that she should run for president and then she should dare the Supreme Court to make her ineligible.

00:41:43.000 He says one good sign that AOC should run for president is that she has a nickname, AOC. 1.00

00:41:50.000 So does Dwayne The Rock Johnson.

00:41:52.000 So does Cher.

00:41:54.000 Like, what?

00:41:55.000 You have a nickname and now you should run for president?

00:41:58.000 El Chapo has a nickname.

00:42:00.000 Should he run for president?

00:42:02.000 I mean, maybe we should change the Constitution so you don't need American citizens to run for president and they can be in jail.

00:42:07.000 Maybe...

00:42:09.000 Matthew Iglesias, man, that guy was dropped on his head as a baby many times. 1.00

00:42:13.000 He fell off the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down. 1.00

00:42:15.000 A House Democratic staffer told me the other day that ACO was a good example of something. 0.99

00:42:20.000 I knew exactly who she meant, despite the error, because there aren't any other members of Congress who have widely recognized nicknames you would just drop into casual conversation.

00:42:27.000 Is having a nickname a sign you would exercise good judgment in the Oval Office?

00:42:30.000 Absolutely not.

00:42:31.000 But it's proof positive.

00:42:32.000 She's an honest-to-goodness political superstar. 0.97

00:42:34.000 And it's clear that's what many Democrats are looking for in 2020.

00:42:38.000 Let's make something very clear.

00:42:39.000 Arnold Schwarzenegger, kind of vaguely Trumpish figure in California politics.

00:42:43.000 Had he run for president in 2012, he probably would have lost badly in the primaries on the grounds of not being right-wing enough.

00:42:48.000 But it's at least conceivable he would have won, and he'd have been a tough opponent for Barack Obama to beat for the best possible reasons.

00:42:53.000 His politics are considerably saner and more humane than the average Republican, but he didn't run.

00:42:58.000 We never got a glimpse of what a run would look like, because immigrants, like 20-somethings, are constitutionally barred from serving. 0.92

00:43:04.000 Let's make something very clear.

00:43:06.000 The 35-year-old age limit on people running for president of the United States is considerably too low.

00:43:12.000 I I say this as somebody who's about to turn 35 in January.

00:43:15.000 It's considerably too low.

00:43:17.000 People were running for president at 35 and were allowed to do so because you were working when you were like 13 and you were dying when you were 50.

00:43:25.000 were 50. 35 in 1789. 35 in 1789 is basically the equivalent of like 55 now.

00:43:32.000 So I don't know by what logic you have.

00:43:36.000 So you live in your mother's basement.

00:43:37.000 You should run for president.

00:43:38.000 Like, by what logic are people more mature at 35 now than they were 200 years ago?

00:43:43.000 Is there any logic by which this is true?

00:43:45.000 There is no logic by which this is true. 0.99

00:43:47.000 This is just a bunch of crap, but this is how biased folks in the media are, and this is how insane they are. 0.99

00:43:51.000 It's... 1.00

00:43:52.000 Really, really crazy.

00:43:53.000 But that's not the only article about AOC.

00:43:55.000 There's another one from the Washington Post talking about how she's so great at trolling her conservative critics.

00:44:01.000 It's so weird. 0.99

00:44:01.000 When Trump trolls leftists, then it's because he's evil and bad and mean. 0.99

00:44:05.000 When AOC, the beloved AOC, trolls conservatives, then this means she's brilliant and wonderful.

00:44:09.000 And then you wonder how you got Trump?

00:44:11.000 You trolled us into trolling you, and so we'll troll you into trolling us. 0.91

00:44:14.000 And so it'll be trolls all around.

00:44:15.000 It'll be great.

00:44:17.000 Congratulations on ruining American politics, everyone.

00:44:19.000 You've done an excellent job.

00:44:21.000 OK, in just a second, I want to talk about the Boy Scouts and other things.

00:44:25.000 Let's talk about some things I like and then some things that I hate.

00:44:28.000 So things that I like.

00:44:30.000 I was in the car the other day and I recalled that when I was growing up, my dad was a big Dave Grusin fan.

00:44:36.000 Dave Grusin is a jazz musician.

00:44:38.000 He's written a bunch of really good movie scores.

00:44:41.000 His best movie score is the score for On Golden Pond.

00:44:44.000 That year he was nominated for Best Score Oscar.

00:44:46.000 He lost to the score for Chariots of Fire, which is a joke.

00:44:50.000 Chariots of Fire is a wildly overrated score.

00:44:52.000 It's a good movie with a mediocre score.

00:44:54.000 On Golden Pond is a good movie with a great score.

00:44:57.000 The movie itself is good as well.

00:44:59.000 Henry Fonda and Jane Fonda and Catherine Hepburn.

00:45:02.000 And it's all about aging and family.

00:45:05.000 It's a really good movie.

00:45:05.000 It's kind of a forgotten movie.

00:45:07.000 But it is certainly worth watching.

00:45:09.000 So here's a little bit of the preview of On Golden Pond.

00:45:11.000 Universal Pictures proudly presents a very special motion picture.

00:45:17.000 Catherine Hepburn.

00:45:18.000 Henry Fonda.

00:45:20.000 Jane Fonda on Golden Pond.

00:45:23.000 Listen, is Norman Fair Jr.

00:45:25.000 over in Golden Pond?

00:45:26.000 Oh, Norman!

00:45:28.000 It's so beautiful!

00:45:30.000 Everything's just waking up.

00:45:31.000 Ethel Fair.

00:45:33.000 Sounds like I'm listening, doesn't it?

00:45:34.000 My, oh my, you have on a tie!

00:45:37.000 Yes, I know.

00:45:38.000 I put it there.

00:45:40.000 You look sexy.

00:45:41.000 I hear you turned 80 today.

00:45:43.000 Is that what you heard?

00:45:44.000 Man, that's really old.

00:45:46.000 You should meet my father.

00:45:48.000 The movie is really good.

00:45:52.000 It should have won Best Picture this year.

00:45:53.000 Chariots of Fire is what won Best Picture that year.

00:45:56.000 It was a pretty weak year for movies, is the truth.

00:45:58.000 This is in 1981.

00:46:00.000 The movies that were nominated for Best Picture that year were Chariots of Fire, Atlantic City, On Golden Pond, Raiders of the Lost Ark, which is the most memorable of all these movies, and Reds, which is the most overrated of all of these movies.

00:46:10.000 But On Golden Pond is really worth watching.

00:46:12.000 It's a very sweet, Movie, it's got a lot of great acting, so much great acting that it won Best Actor for Henry Fonda and Best Actress in a Leading Role for Katherine Hepburn and was nominated for Best Actress for Jane Fonda, who's really good in the movie.

00:46:26.000 She's not a good person but a very good actress. 0.99

00:46:29.000 So go check out On Golden Pond if you have the time.

00:46:32.000 Okay, other things that I like.

00:46:33.000 So Nikki Haley gave a great interview yesterday.

00:46:36.000 And in this interview, she talked with NBC News.

00:46:38.000 She talked as sort of her exit interview.

00:46:39.000 She left being UN ambassador.

00:46:41.000 She talked about President Trump's predictable unpredictability when it came to foreign policy and how she was able to utilize that for good purpose.

00:46:48.000 I needed to pick up the phone and say, this is what I'm going to do.

00:46:51.000 You know, are you good with this or this?

00:46:53.000 We we kind of partnered in that.

00:46:55.000 And so he would like ratchet up the rhetoric.

00:46:57.000 And then I'd go back to the ambassadors and say, you know, he's pretty upset.

00:47:02.000 I can't promise you what he's going to do or not.

00:47:04.000 But I can tell you if we do these sanctions, it will keep him from going too far.

00:47:09.000 So you were playing good cop, bad cop.

00:47:11.000 I was trying to get the job done, and I got the job done by being truthful, but also by letting him be unpredictable.

00:47:22.000 And not showing our cards.

00:47:23.000 OK, the fact is that when it comes to foreign policy, President Trump's unpredictability can in fact be an asset.

00:47:28.000 And as Haley says, it has been an asset in many cases.

00:47:30.000 She has a bright political future ahead of her.

00:47:33.000 And as I say, it is sad to me that she's leaving her post as U.N.

00:47:36.000 ambassador, but there's a future for Nikki Haley in politics for sure. 1.00

00:47:39.000 OK, final thing that I like.

00:47:40.000 So there's a great organization that is run by Gary Sinise, who is a wonderful human being.

00:47:47.000 And this organization is entirely dedicated to The families of soldiers and remembering the past, Gary Sinise basically took a hundred kids who are children of people who are KIA or killed in action and took them to the war memorials in Washington, D.C.

00:48:07.000 And this is really great.

00:48:08.000 A bunch of people on the ground at the airport where they were received stood there and cheered these kids as they got off the plane and then sang them the national anthem.

00:48:15.000 anthem.

00:48:16.000 It was really quite moving.

00:48:16.000 It was really good.

00:48:36.000 I mean, this stuff is really moving, and he actually sent more than 650 families, who are Gold Star families, to Disney World via the Gary Sinise Foundation.

00:48:45.000 Certainly a charity worthy of your support, a charity worthy of my support as well.

00:48:49.000 Worth checking out.

00:48:50.000 This was at the Nashville International Airport, where there was a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, where the families were waiting to board the plane as service members stood at attention.

00:48:58.000 It's just beautiful stuff, and Sinise is known for being extraordinarily pro-military.

00:49:03.000 And his service in that respect is really extraordinary.

00:49:07.000 Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.

00:49:13.000 So the Boy Scouts are now on the verge of bankruptcy.

00:49:16.000 Shocker.

00:49:17.000 It turns out that when you abandon the chief values for which you once stood, people do not want to sign up for your organization.

00:49:22.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, the Boy Scouts of America is considering filing for bankruptcy protection as it faces dwindling membership and escalating legal costs related to lawsuits over how it handled allegations of sexual abuse.

00:49:33.000 It's not really that that's bankrupting the Boy Scouts of America, it's that their membership is wildly down ever since they decided that they would admit girls, and that they would allow gay scoutmasters, and that they would no longer focus on the Judeo-Christian heritage of the organization.

00:49:47.000 Founded in 1910, the Boy Scouts say that more than 110 million people have participated in its educational programs, which promote outdoor skills, character building, and leadership.

00:49:55.000 The Boy Scouts have been at the center of sexual abuse scandals in the past.

00:49:59.000 The organization is facing a number of lawsuits alleging inappropriate conduct, By employees or volunteers, an incident stating back as far as the 1960s.

00:50:07.000 But that's not really what is going on here.

00:50:09.000 What's really going on here is that the Boy Scouts are being bled dry by people who do not want to be part of the Boy Scouts now that they have forcibly caved to the radical left.

00:50:18.000 There's a famous video of me online talking to a girl about the Boy Scout, about pronouns, gendered pronouns, like boy and girl, meaning things, meaning biological boy and girl.

00:50:29.000 And why the Boy Scouts should not allow biological girls into the Boy Scouts.

00:50:34.000 And a woman at one of my speeches saying, well, how do you know that?

00:50:37.000 I said, because it's in the name Boy Scouts.

00:50:39.000 Well, then the Boy Scouts flipped and agreed with her and decided boy can also mean girl.

00:50:42.000 With that kind of intestinal fortitude, a lot of people are not going to join the Boy Scouts.

00:50:47.000 The Boy Scouts currently have more than 2.3 million youth members.

00:50:50.000 And why exactly are they losing members?

00:50:52.000 Well, the Mormons, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, formerly one of the group's largest sponsors, said that it's going to withdraw from the Boy Scout programs.

00:50:59.000 Instead, they're going to develop its own program for young men.

00:51:02.000 The Boy Scouts group drew scrutiny over its slow pace to become more inclusive, but it wasn't that that created problems in the Boy Scouts.

00:51:08.000 It was that they caved to social justice warriors who insisted that they change their mainline mission.

00:51:13.000 Under pressure from legislators in California who said they would withdraw 501c3 status from the group and sponsorship from the group if the group did not cave to the social justice warrior demands.

00:51:24.000 This is what happens when groups that are based on historic values decide to destroy those historic values in the name of convenience.

00:51:31.000 Nobody wants to stick around.

00:51:32.000 This is true for churches, it's true for synagogues, and it's true for the Boy Scouts as well.

00:51:36.000 Okay, other things that I hate.

00:51:37.000 So, in all of the hubbub over Jamal Khashoggi, who is the Saudi Arabian citizen who was murdered by the Saudi government at the Saudi embassy in Turkey, Creating worldwide chaos.

00:51:51.000 People have forgotten a couple of quick things.

00:51:53.000 Not about Khashoggi, right?

00:51:54.000 Khashoggi himself, controversial figure.

00:51:56.000 He had lots of sympathy toward the Muslim Brotherhood over the course of his career.

00:51:59.000 He was very much in favor of radical Islamists taking part in politics and all of that.

00:52:04.000 But there's a reason that this information saw the light of day in the first place.

00:52:08.000 I mean, I'm glad that information sees the light of day, but let's not pretend there wasn't an agenda behind it.

00:52:12.000 The agenda was Turkish president and dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan Erdogan has made himself dictator of Turkey.

00:52:20.000 He's arrested all of his political opponents.

00:52:21.000 He shut down the press.

00:52:22.000 He has prevented political rivals from being able to gain power.

00:52:26.000 He has jailed political rivals.

00:52:28.000 He's tried to assassinate political rivals himself.

00:52:30.000 He wanted a dissident named Gulen shipped from the United States back to Turkey so he could basically do the same thing to him that the Saudis did to Khashoggi.

00:52:38.000 And now, Erdogan is saying that he is going to wipe out the Kurds in eastern Syria.

00:52:43.000 He says that Turkey will launch a military operation against the Kurds in northern Syria within days, a decision that could signal a shift in Turkish-U.S.

00:52:50.000 relations and have far-reaching consequences for Syria's future, is according to The Guardian.

00:52:54.000 Long frustrated by U.S.

00:52:55.000 He says,

00:53:22.000 They're still not removing terrorists from this particular area, meaning Kurds from this particular area.

00:53:26.000 Therefore, we will do it.

00:53:29.000 It is always important to recall that whenever there's a Middle Eastern conflict, the answer usually is there are no good guys. 0.70

00:53:35.000 And when it comes to Erdogan, he is an absolute bad human being. 0.98

00:53:38.000 He's a bad, radical, terror-supporting human being. 0.98

00:53:41.000 And the fact that so many people have fallen for the idea that because Erdogan says something, we have to take it seriously or that it has no geopolitical ramifications. 0.97

00:53:50.000 To take positions that help Erdogan is absurd.

00:53:54.000 Turkey is an extraordinarily powerful military player in the region.

00:53:56.000 They have a much more powerful military than any other military in the region with the possible exception of Israel.

00:54:01.000 And the fact that the Turkish government has been able to go about its business without any serious blowback from the West is an incredible, incredible thing.

00:54:07.000 And that we're focused more on the Saudis who are much more helpful to us in geopolitical terms than the Turks right now.

00:54:12.000 We're more focused on the Saudis killing a Saudi citizen on Turkish, on Saudi territory in Turkey.

00:54:18.000 We're more focused on that than the Turks going in and wiping out the Kurds in Eastern and Northern Syria.

00:54:23.000 It demonstrates that we have very little geopolitical vision and that we are apt to fall for whatever is the convenient narrative that the media wish to tell us about ongoing geopolitical conversations.

00:54:32.000 Another example of that, Ben Rhodes came out recently.

00:54:35.000 Ben Rhodes, a national security advisor for President Obama, he came out recently and he said that the United States should not be involved in the war on Yemen.

00:54:43.000 Where do you think that started?

00:54:44.000 It started under the Obama administration.

00:54:46.000 He was there the entire time.

00:54:47.000 It just turns out that the Obama administration had an agenda to push forward the ambitions of the Iranian government, and Trump doesn't have those ambitions.

00:54:55.000 And because the press loves Obama and hates Trump, they've decided to side with the ambitions of the Obama administration, even if that means emboldening enemies of the United States and radical Islamists across the world.

00:55:04.000 OK, well, we'll be back here tomorrow to discuss more on all of this.

00:55:07.000 Plus, tomorrow's a Friday, isn't it?

00:55:08.000 So that means mailbag time.

00:55:10.000 So we'll be doing that, too.

00:55:11.000 We'll see you then.

00:55:11.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:55:12.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:55:17.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.

00:55:23.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:55:27.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:55:28.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.

00:55:30.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:55:32.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.

The Ben Shapiro Show - December 13, 2018

Payoff Politics | Ep. 679

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