The Ben Shapiro Show - Roseanne Is Back! | Ep. 505

00:00:00.000 Roseanne is back with vengeance. 0.99

00:00:01.000 Journalism collapses on all sides.

00:00:03.000 And Senator Ted Cruz stops by, so we've got a big show for you.

00:00:06.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

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

00:00:12.000 I do have many, many, many thoughts on the Roseanne premiere.

00:00:15.000 It had huge ratings, and we'll get into all of that.

00:00:17.000 I do think it's an important cultural moment, but not quite in the way that I think a lot of Republicans want it to be a huge cultural moment.

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00:01:50.000 OK, so the big news of the night was cultural news.

00:01:53.000 So Roseanne Barr is back. 0.91

00:01:55.000 She'd been absent from the public scene for about 20 years.

00:01:57.000 Roseanne actually went off the air

00:02:00.000 The show Roseanne went off the air in 1997.

00:02:01.000 So it's been 21 years since Roseanne Barr was on the air with a regular sitcom.

00:02:06.000 She did some reality TV stuff, but she wasn't world famous anymore.

00:02:10.000 And now she's back and she is back with a vengeance because the ratings on her show were just unbelievable.

00:02:15.000 I think so.

00:02:35.000 I don't know.

00:02:54.000 And the audience grew slightly from the first quarter to its second, which is a pretty good sign.

00:02:59.000 This was Tuesday's highest rated entertainment telecast in six years among young adults and ABC's best results in the time slot since 2006.

00:03:06.000 Okay, that is a massive, massive hit for ABC if those ratings hold up for Roseanne.

00:03:13.000 What's fascinating about this is a lot of people on the right are very excited about this.

00:03:15.000 This is the cultural moment, right?

00:03:17.000 Because Roseanne Barr is a Trump supporter. 0.99

00:03:19.000 And Roseanne's character in the show is a Trump supporter.

00:03:21.000 She talks about how she voted for Trump in the very first episode.

00:03:24.000 But a note of caution, okay?

00:03:26.000 Roseanne is not a conservative show.

00:03:27.000 It's not even close to a conservative show.

00:03:29.000 In fact, I think it's pretty clever and nefarious in how non-conservative it is.

00:03:34.000 And it's worth going back to the history of Roseanne and talking a little bit about this.

00:03:38.000 I happen to be an expert on this, because I wrote an entire 400-page book about television called Primetime Propaganda, in which I talked with the producers of the original Roseanne, including Marcy Carsey, who was the woman behind it originally.

00:03:50.000 And the way you can tell that this show has some pretty skewed politics, even though it has a Trump supporter who's not being portrayed as a complete nincompoop, the reason you can tell that the politics of the show are skewed is because the New York Times is treating it well.

00:04:03.000 Vox.com, treating it well.

00:04:05.000 All of the leftist publications are saying Roseanne is great.

00:04:07.000 Why?

00:04:08.000 Because the actual theme of the show is that the only reason you would vote for Trump is for non-cultural reasons.

00:04:14.000 The show is one big lie about Trump.

00:04:16.000 The show is one big lie about conservatives.

00:04:18.000 The lie that the show tells is that the reason people voted for Trump is because they were dissatisfied with the economy and because they were looking to give Donald Trump a chance to fix it.

00:04:27.000 That it wasn't about cultural issues.

00:04:29.000 That's not true.

00:04:30.000 Okay, in 2016 Donald Trump did not win because there was a bunch of dispossessed white people who decided they need a better way of doing economics and so they turned to Trump.

00:04:37.000 That's not what happened.

00:04:38.000 What happened is that culture war was at the front of everyone's mind.

00:04:41.000 2016 was a cultural war.

00:04:43.000 Everyone knew it.

00:04:44.000 There was a culture war over race and over feminism and the left knows this too. 0.88

00:04:48.000 And what they're trying to suggest is that the only conciliation that can take place in the country can take place on economic issues.

00:04:55.000 Now, this is how Hollywood views politics.

00:04:56.000 It's very important to know.

00:04:57.000 This show is produced in Hollywood, right?

00:04:59.000 OK, this is supposed to be a show about the Midwest and a downtrodden family in Ohio or some such.

00:05:03.000 But the reality is that the politics of this are pure Hollywood.

00:05:06.000 In Hollywood, you are allowed to be libertarian.

00:05:09.000 You are not allowed to be socially conservative.

00:05:11.000 In Hollywood, if you say, listen, I vote Republican because I want lower taxes, people sort of nod.

00:05:15.000 They go, OK, fair enough.

00:05:17.000 Or if you say, listen, Hillary was a bad candidate. 1.00

00:05:19.000 I just wanted to give Trump a shot because I thought maybe he could do something on the economy.

00:05:22.000 Everybody says, all right, kind of get it.

00:05:25.000 That's OK.

00:05:25.000 I can handle it.

00:05:26.000 There are a couple of things you are not allowed to say in Hollywood.

00:05:28.000 Those things that you are not allowed to say are a boy is a boy and a girl is a girl.

00:05:32.000 You're not allowed to say this in Hollywood.

00:05:33.000 You will lose your job. 0.99

00:05:34.000 If you say that transgenderism is a mental disorder, you will lose your job in Hollywood. 0.98

00:05:37.000 You're not allowed to say that, for example, same-sex marriage 0.98

00:05:41.000 Is it?

00:06:02.000 Patty, do you think that you've lost jobs because of your conservatism?

00:06:05.000 And I remember she first said to me, no, I don't think so.

00:06:07.000 And then she called me back 24 hours later.

00:06:08.000 She said, I called around.

00:06:09.000 I found out I lost six specific jobs because of my pro-life positions.

00:06:14.000 So the way Hollywood works this is, sure, we can be conciliatory.

00:06:17.000 Sure, we can reach across the aisle.

00:06:18.000 Sure, we can have American unity again, but only if you accept our social agenda.

00:06:22.000 And that's what Roseanne was really about.

00:06:24.000 And this is why The New York Times is propping up Roseanne the show. 1.00

00:06:27.000 OK, again.

00:06:28.000 The show is funny, okay?

00:06:30.000 You can watch it.

00:06:30.000 It's well written.

00:06:31.000 Just like a lot of shows on TV, it's well written. 0.96

00:06:33.000 And I think that folks in the middle of the country who are finally feeling like, wow, now I'm finally getting my respect because there's a pro-Trump character who's not perceived as a complete jerk is on TV. 0.95

00:06:43.000 Fair enough. 0.95

00:06:44.000 But if you think that this show is not a left show, you're wrong.

00:06:47.000 It is a left show.

00:06:47.000 Okay, so here's what the New York Times had to say about this.

00:07:01.000 Okay, here's what the New York Times has to say about the original Roseanne.

00:07:20.000 Roseanne was a bonafide trailblazer the first time around, with its focus on blue-collar Americans, its diversity of LGBT characters, and its star, a woman who did not look or sound like a typical television female lead.

00:07:30.000 The new Roseanne is topical in its own ways, starting with Roseanne Connors' full-throated support for President Trump.

00:07:35.000 Ms.

00:07:36.000 Barr is a Trump backer as well, to the dismay of many fans.

00:07:38.000 She argued on Jimmy Kimmel recently that supporting Mr. Trump was critical to keeping Mike Pence from the presidency.

00:07:43.000 So Roseanne Barr is not a typical Trump supporter, okay?

00:07:45.000 The vast majority of people who voted for Trump

00:07:47.000 Many of them are more fond of Pence than they are of Trump in terms of his policies, even if they like Trump's pugnacious persona.

00:07:54.000 So, it is worth noting that the real reason that the media are supporting this is because the original character of Roseanne Barr was not a conservative character.

00:08:01.000 I know this because I talked to the people who created it.

00:08:03.000 So, Marcy Carsey is the person who helped create the show.

00:08:06.000 Here's what she told me back when I wrote Primetime Propaganda in 2011, quote, you know, I'm of a liberal bent.

00:08:11.000 So obviously that's going to come out of the shows I was involved with.

00:08:14.000 I was raised in a moderate Republican, Eisenhower Republican family.

00:08:16.000 I'm very much a Democrat, but I understand people that have that kind of bent.

00:08:21.000 She says when we did Roseanne, the intent was to do a show about the millions, the 85% of households out there, where the woman had to work. 0.53

00:08:27.000 Not an upper class or upper middle class choice to work, but where the woman has to work. 1.00

00:08:31.000 The woman should be undereducated, should be not wealthy, should be natively smart, a working class heroine to represent the difficult lives that so many millions of people were leading. 0.99

00:08:39.000 So NBC rejected the initial concept.

00:08:40.000 They said that Roseanne was a fat woman nobody's going to watch. 1.00

00:08:43.000 This is according to Marcy Carsey, and so they brought it over to ABC.

00:08:45.000 Brandon Stoddard at ABC was the guy who helped push it.

00:08:48.000 He said,

00:08:58.000 I was standing in the back of the room where there were a thousand people, and the women are invited to watch it, and the thing is playing, they're laughing, laughing, laughing, and she makes a speech somewhere about, I'm a mom, I'm supposed to be a lover, I'm supposed to be a friend, I'm supposed to be taking care of the teacher, I'm handing out the food tonight, she does the confused who am I role, which Roseanne did brilliantly, and there was audible reaction by the women in the audience, audible, they were like, yeah, and I went, we've got a hitman, they completely got it because we were real.

00:09:19.000 Here is the point.

00:09:20.000 I mean, Roseanne's character.

00:09:22.000 It could have been a Bernie Sanders supporter just as easily as a Trump supporter in this show.

00:09:26.000 Because this is a class-based show.

00:09:27.000 It is not a moral-based show.

00:09:29.000 It is not a traditionally moral-based show.

00:09:31.000 It's not a traditional morality show.

00:09:32.000 The idea here is that Roseanne is blue-collar, and her family is blue-collar, and she doesn't like elites. 1.00

00:09:37.000 That's the appeal of the show.

00:09:38.000 So it's a very populist show, in a sort of classical populist sense.

00:09:41.000 And there's no reason why she wouldn't have voted for Bernie Sanders in the last election cycle in the primaries, as opposed to Trump, per se, which is a dramatic misread on who the Trump voters are, which, again, I'm going to explain in just a second.

00:09:52.000 Roseanne's original show, as The New York Times says, it was very pro-LGBT.

00:09:56.000 It imbibed all of the values of Hollywood.

00:10:01.000 It was basically an Archie Bunker character who happened to be on the left, a grumpy

00:10:05.000 Quote unquote, blue collar conservative who wasn't actually very conservative at all.

00:10:10.000 In one episode of the original series, Roseanne told her daughter Darlene to use birth control even though the daughter wasn't yet having sex. 0.99

00:10:16.000 There's another episode in which Darlene admitted to using pot, speed and acid. 1.00

00:10:20.000 An episode in which Roseanne's son achieves a certain physical status for his genitals.

00:10:27.000 And she says, what about pitching the trouser tent, booting up the hard drive, charming the anaconda?

00:10:31.000 I mean, this was a very, very vulgar show.

00:10:33.000 And the show was designed to be vulgar.

00:10:35.000 It was vulgar for liberalism's sake.

00:10:36.000 Their most famous episode was one called Don't Ask, Don't Tell, in which Roseanne visits a lesbian bar with her friend Nancy and is kissed by Nancy's girlfriend.

00:10:43.000 And Frank Richard of The New York Times, of course, praised it.

00:10:44.000 So remember, this thing was a critical hit because the idea was that people in the middle America

00:10:49.000 actually have the same values as people in Hollywood, they just have different economic priorities.

00:10:53.000 That is the lie that Roseanne tells. 0.99

00:10:55.000 John Goodman's character is constantly portrayed in the original series, and in this series as well, the first couple of episodes, as basically an idiot. 0.99

00:11:02.000 He's an adult who's kind-hearted, but Roseanne's really the boss of the place, and they used to show his butt crack all the time on national TV just to demonstrate how dumb John Goodman actually was. 0.98

00:11:12.000 He was kind of the bell-boy. 0.97

00:11:13.000 He's sort of the proto-Homer Simpson.

00:11:15.000 I read around the time Homer Simpson was coming around.

00:11:17.000 It was all about class warfare, but it was posed as a sort of political show.

00:11:22.000 But it's a politics of the left.

00:11:24.000 It's a politics of the left.

00:11:25.000 And I'm going to explain how that plays into the couple of episodes of Roseanne that premiered last night, because it really is quite fascinating.

00:11:32.000 And again, demonstrates that this show is a cultural reach out to conservatives.

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00:13:40.000 Okay, so, back to Roseanne and this cultural moment.

00:13:42.000 Because a lot of people are saying this is the big cultural moment in the United States.

00:13:46.000 So here is what the first two episodes are about.

00:13:48.000 First episode is about Roseanne arguing with her sister about Trump versus Hillary.

00:13:52.000 And it turns out that her sister voted for Jill Stein.

00:13:54.000 That's the big punchline, is that the sister was, in fact, convinced by Roseanne that Hillary was so bad that she had to vote for Jill Stein, and she feels like she threw her vote away.

00:14:02.000 And it turns out that can they get along, Roseanne and her sister?

00:14:05.000 Sure they can get along, because they're not arguing over deep issues.

00:14:07.000 They're just arguing over

00:14:09.000 You know, things like economics.

00:14:11.000 The real reason that Roseanne voted for Trump is because the economy was bad and because she felt like maybe give Trump a chance.

00:14:17.000 And the real reason that this sister voted instead for Jill Stein or Hillary Clinton is because she cares so much about health care. 1.00

00:14:23.000 There are not really any deep differences between us, you understand.

00:14:26.000 The deep differences on cultural issues and morality and values, those don't exist.

00:14:30.000 The only issues between us is how Hollywood thinks.

00:14:33.000 The only issues between us are interpretations of economic data.

00:14:35.000 This is how we're going to come together again.

00:14:37.000 There's only one problem.

00:14:38.000 We're not coming together around that, because the second episode of the show—I mean, it's mentioned in the first episode of the show—is that Darlene's son—Darlene is, of course, Roseanne's daughter in the show—her son is named Mark, and he likes to dress up in girls' clothing, right?

00:14:51.000 But here's what the producers said.

00:14:53.000 It would be wrong to assume that the nine-year-old character is transitioning or gay, so they asked executive producer Sarah Gilbert to explain why she created the role of Mark.

00:15:01.000 So they asked, does Mark see himself as a girl?

00:15:03.000 Sarah Gilbert said he doesn't.

00:15:04.000 That's something that got out of the press that's not true.

00:15:06.000 He's not a transgender character. 0.83

00:15:07.000 He's a little boy.

00:15:08.000 He's based on a few kids in my life that are boys who dress in more traditionally feminine clothing.

00:15:11.000 He's too young to be gay, and he doesn't identify as transgender.

00:15:14.000 But he just likes wearing that kind of clothing, and that's where he is at this point in his life.

00:15:18.000 These are the kinds of values that people actually voted for Trump regarding.

00:15:22.000 They felt like there was a cram down in Hollywood saying that you are not allowed to raise your kids with traditional gender roles.

00:15:28.000 And that if you do, it's mean and nasty and cruel.

00:15:32.000 One of the reasons that people voted for Trump is the cultural blowback.

00:15:35.000 It's because Trump is a culture warrior.

00:15:37.000 Donald Trump doesn't give a damn about economics outside of tariffs.

00:15:39.000 Donald Trump doesn't know anything about economics outside of tariffs.

00:15:42.000 But what Donald Trump does know is that there is a large feeling in the rest of the United States that the social values of New York and Los Angeles are actually not popular, and we feel like they're being crammed down our throats.

00:15:52.000 So what does Roseanne do? 1.00

00:15:53.000 Roseanne features a seven-year-old kid who is dressing in female clothing, and everybody around the house is going, that's OK, honey. 0.93

00:15:59.000 That's fine, honey.

00:16:00.000 And when John Goodman interjects and he says, well, maybe that's not so fine, they don't give him a good argument.

00:16:05.000 Instead, what they say is, well, I'm just afraid he's going to go to school and get beat up.

00:16:09.000 Here's a good argument, OK?

00:16:10.000 It is not healthy to avoid reinforcing certain gender roles.

00:16:15.000 It is not a healthy thing for children to be confused about gender.

00:16:19.000 The left wants to make a couple of arguments with regard to cross-dressing for children.

00:16:23.000 One of the arguments they want to make is, what difference does it make?

00:16:25.000 All clothes are equal.

00:16:25.000 Who does it really bother?

00:16:27.000 Well, if that's the case, then why do you care if I put my kids in corduroy slacks versus putting them in a dress?

00:16:31.000 What you're saying is my kids should be able to wear the dress, and it shouldn't be up to me whether I want my kid to wear corduroy slacks.

00:16:35.000 So clearly, you think the clothes make a difference.

00:16:38.000 I don't

00:16:56.000 Because that is one of the ways that you inculcate boys into being men, is by saying that you are in fact a little man, right?

00:17:03.000 You are one day going to dress like a man. 0.99

00:17:05.000 You are one day going to be a man.

00:17:07.000 And that means that you should be trained in being a man.

00:17:10.000 You shouldn't train to be a girl. 1.00

00:17:11.000 You shouldn't train to be like your mom when it comes to dressing.

00:17:14.000 It's one of the reasons that the Bible is very strict about cross-dressing actually.

00:17:17.000 But the notion here is that traditional conservatives don't really exist, that really they're all fine with their seven-year-olds dressing up in dresses.

00:17:23.000 And if they're really tolerant, they would be.

00:17:24.000 What makes Roseanne and John Goodman good people is that they are allowing the seven-year-old to run around in a dress.

00:17:29.000 And if they didn't allow the seven-year-old to run around in a dress, then that would mean that they were mean, right?

00:17:33.000 By the end of the episode, John Goodman has fully accepted this.

00:17:35.000 And this is not actually the only socially left point that's made in Roseanne.

00:17:40.000 Roseanne also makes another socially left point. 1.00

00:17:42.000 So, back in the day when they originally premiered Roseanne, Roseanne was a very pro-abortion character.

00:17:46.000 In fact, she even considers aborting her child, one of her kids, in the later episodes of Roseanne. 0.92

00:17:52.000 And one of the things that happens in this series is that Roseanne, Roseanne's other daughter, not Darlene, comes back, she comes home, and she has decided that she wants to be a surrogate.

00:18:03.000 And she wants to carry somebody else's child. 1.00

00:18:05.000 Fine.

00:18:05.000 But now Roseanne finds out that her daughter actually wants to use her own eggs to be a surrogate.

00:18:10.000 So this would actually be Roseanne's grandchild, right?

00:18:13.000 And Roseanne says, well, wait a second, that's my grandkid.

00:18:16.000 And then her daughter makes an argument, the argument, my body, my choice. 0.86

00:18:19.000 And Roseanne says, you know what?

00:18:21.000 You're right.

00:18:21.000 Your body, your choice.

00:18:23.000 OK, that really isn't an argument about surrogacy.

00:18:24.000 That's an argument about abortion.

00:18:26.000 They just don't want to make an abortion argument because it turns out that abortion is not nearly as popular a political stance in 2018 as it was in 1997.

00:18:33.000 So, all of this is designed, again, to shovel a bunch of social left messaging into a supposedly conservative-friendly show.

00:18:41.000 So in many ways, it's actually more disturbing from a conservative point of view than openly left shows like Will & Grace.

00:18:47.000 Because Will & Grace just says what they think. 0.99

00:18:49.000 They just say conservatives are a bunch of nasty rubes who hate gay people, and we'll make fun of them all the time. 0.99

00:18:54.000 This show says, listen, Trump supporters are really all like us. 0.99

00:18:57.000 They're all social leftists, right?

00:18:58.000 Deep down inside, they're all social leftists, right?

00:19:00.000 They're people who like abortion, they like cross-dressing, and they're fine with early-stage transgenderism. 0.91

00:19:05.000 They're fine with all of these things, right?

00:19:07.000 It's just that they disagree on economics, and that's how we're going to come together.

00:19:10.000 Now, that actually achieves the same purpose as Will and Grace. 0.98

00:19:14.000 Because Will and Grace says, conservatives who believe all this stuff about same-sex marriage and transgenderism and abortion, those people are rubes and hicks and evil people. 0.92

00:19:21.000 Roseanne is almost saying the same thing. 0.97

00:19:23.000 She's just saying it backwards.

00:19:25.000 She's just saying, real conservatives don't care about those issues.

00:19:27.000 I mean, if they were to care about those issues, wow, those people would be awful.

00:19:31.000 Or if they were to say to the 7-year-old boy,

00:19:33.000 You know, son, go put on a pair of slacks.

00:19:35.000 You know, son, take off the sequins.

00:19:37.000 If they were to say that to their kid, if the father were to step in and say, listen, I think it's important that you dress like a man because one day you will be a man.

00:19:44.000 And being a man is important.

00:19:46.000 And there are certain cultural totems that show that you want to be a man and that you're growing up to be a man, a responsible man.

00:19:52.000 Cross-dressing is not part of that.

00:19:54.000 Right?

00:19:54.000 If you were to say that to a child on national television, this would make you cruel, inhumane, nasty, barbaric, right?

00:19:59.000 Because these are the values the left wants to push.

00:20:02.000 So you end up in the same place with this wink and nod, with this wink and nod to the notion that they're actually pro-Trump or Trump-friendly.

00:20:10.000 And that just isn't really the case, okay?

00:20:12.000 They're Trump-friendly in name only, but again,

00:20:14.000 They're Trump-friendly because they think that poor people will vote for Trump or Bernie because they're poor and downtrodden, not because those poor, downtrodden people actually may have values and go to—certain biblical values and go to church and think that Hollywood cramming down Laverne Cox on the rest of the country and suggesting that if you don't think that a man is a girl and a girl is a man, that you're a bad person is a bad thing.

00:20:34.000 So, it's a pretty amazing thing that Roseanne is attempting to do.

00:20:39.000 And this is, unfortunately, how so much of the left is working these days.

00:20:43.000 Another indicator of how the left is working these days.

00:20:44.000 So Kevin Williamson is a columnist over at National Review.

00:20:47.000 One of my favorite columnists, actually.

00:20:48.000 Terrific writer.

00:20:50.000 Real sort of iconoclast.

00:20:52.000 Writes things that are brilliant and also kooky.

00:20:56.000 But he's just been hired by the Atlantic.

00:20:59.000 It's really interesting.

00:20:59.000 Go back to Sunday.

00:21:00.000 And last Sunday I was on with Brian Stelter.

00:21:02.000 And Brian Stelter asked me about if I was criticizing the media all the time, why didn't I attempt to join a mainstream media outlet?

00:21:11.000 And I said, would you hire me?

00:21:12.000 And he sort of laughed, because the answer is, of course, CNN is not going to be in the business of hiring me.

00:21:17.000 They have my phone number.

00:21:18.000 I've met with people over at CNN.

00:21:19.000 These are not folks who are probably going to call me up and ask me to do a show, even though this show right here gets better ratings than pretty much anything else they have in daytime.

00:21:27.000 They're not going to do that.

00:21:28.000 Kevin Williamson is just another indicator of why.

00:21:30.000 So Kevin Williamson is very, very anti-Trump.

00:21:34.000 I mean, Kevin Williamson calls Trump's sons oudé and coussé. 0.94

00:21:38.000 Kevin Williamson has talked about—he called Donald Trump an ape on an escalator.

00:21:43.000 When Donald Trump announced for the presidency that Williamson could not be more anti-Trump.

00:21:47.000 It is not possible for him to be more anti-Trump.

00:21:50.000 And now the Atlantic wants to hire him.

00:21:52.000 And now the Atlantic is getting tremendous blowback.

00:21:54.000 They're getting tremendous blowback because Kevin Williamson has a couple of really kind of odd positions.

00:21:59.000 He has a position saying that he is in favor of the death penalty for women who actually obtain abortions, for example.

00:22:07.000 And this is unacceptable to the Atlantic.

00:22:08.000 It's OK to have people like Peter Beinart who are openly pro-Hamas. 0.98

00:22:11.000 But it's another thing for Kevin Williamson to make an argument that I think is wrong, but at least is sort of interesting, even if you don't think it's morally wrong, right?

00:22:19.000 I disagree with him.

00:22:19.000 But the idea is you can't have people who disagree with you over at the Atlantic.

00:22:23.000 So the entire leftist society, Kevin Williamson is not allowed to work at the Atlantic, and they're trying to force the Atlantic not to hire him.

00:22:29.000 There's a big piece by Sarah Jones over at the New Republic in which she links

00:22:32.000 We're good to go. 0.99

00:22:48.000 Amputate his genitals. 0.99

00:22:49.000 I mean, there's no question that that's what happened. 0.99

00:22:51.000 I mean, vaginoplasty is an amputation of the penis. 0.97

00:22:54.000 I mean, that's just what it is. 0.94

00:22:55.000 There's no other way to put it.

00:22:56.000 But, you know, again, the idea here is that any conservative cannot be hired by a left outlet or a mainstream media outlet.

00:23:02.000 Just won't happen.

00:23:03.000 There's a really interesting thought experiment by a guy named Yair Rosenberg on Twitter.

00:23:07.000 He asked people on the left, OK, fine, you don't want Williamson?

00:23:10.000 Name a conservative.

00:23:11.000 That you would be okay with the Atlantic hiring, and people could come up with no names.

00:23:15.000 Because those names do not exist.

00:23:16.000 The way that the left defines the right is people who agree with us.

00:23:19.000 Right?

00:23:20.000 That's how Roseanne defines people who voted for Trump. 0.98

00:23:22.000 They're people who agree with us, they just disagree about Hillary stinking. 0.99

00:23:25.000 That's not what happened in this last election cycle.

00:23:27.000 There are serious, real differences between right and left, and you're not actually going to get to any serious sense of American unity without coming face-to-face with those differences instead of just eliding them and pretending we all agree that seven-year-old boys should be wearing girls' clothing. 0.54

00:23:40.000 Okay, before we go any further, ZipRecruiter.com.

00:23:43.000 So, ZipRecruiter.com, if you want to get the best employees, this is the place to go.

00:23:47.000 So, ZipRecruiter.com knows there's a smart way to recruit people, and they built a platform that finds the right job candidates for you.

00:23:53.000 They learn what you're looking for, they identify people with the right experience, and they invite them to apply

00:23:57.000 I think so.

00:24:21.000 Let's do it!

00:24:43.000 All right, well, so joining me is Senator Ted Cruz.

00:24:45.000 Senator Cruz, thanks so much for taking the time.

00:24:47.000 It's very cool that you're out in Los Angeles.

00:24:49.000 And welcome to the show.

00:25:09.000 Well, thanks, Ben.

00:25:11.000 Great to be with you.

00:25:11.000 So let me start by asking you about the Omnibus package, because obviously that just passed.

00:25:14.000 A lot of conservatives are very unhappy about it.

00:25:16.000 You voted against the Omnibus package.

00:25:19.000 Why did it pass?

00:25:20.000 Whose fault is it?

00:25:21.000 Where should we aim our pitchforks?

00:25:24.000 Look, the Omnibus is a total mess.

00:25:25.000 It's $1.3 trillion in spending.

00:25:28.000 It grows the debt.

00:25:29.000 It grows the deficit.

00:25:31.000 It grows just about every part of the federal government.

00:25:34.000 And it really is a product of the swamp.

00:25:37.000 The thing is, 2,200 pages.

00:25:39.000 And it was written in the dark of night.

00:25:40.000 It was written by really four people, by Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, Paul Ryan, and Nancy Pelosi.

00:25:47.000 The other members of Congress, we didn't even get to see it until hours before we vote.

00:25:52.000 So I can promise you there is not a senator alive who's read all 2,200 pages of it.

00:25:57.000 I don't think any of the four supposed authors of it have read all 2,200 pages of it.

00:26:04.000 The Democrats' price for agreeing to anything is grow government massively and not accomplish conservative principles.

00:26:14.000 And unfortunately, an awful lot of Republicans in Washington rolled over and agreed.

00:26:19.000 So we were told that there was going to be regular order when Republicans got back into power.

00:26:22.000 Who's the big obstacle here?

00:26:23.000 Because it looks like the House is able to pass some of these bills through regular order, but it seems like everything stops dead in the Senate.

00:26:27.000 Well, look, in the Senate, we had no amendments on the bill.

00:26:31.000 There were a number of us.

00:26:32.000 Mike Lee and I were both pressing with, how about have it open for amendments?

00:26:35.000 And our leadership says, no, no, no, no, that's not practical.

00:26:37.000 It's not feasible.

00:26:38.000 Because we've cut a deal with Chuck Schumer, and if you have an amendment, an amendment might take out one of Chuck Schumer's priorities.

00:26:44.000 And then our deal's gone.

00:26:45.000 The system is a corrupt practice.

00:26:48.000 Now I will say, I think there were some meaningful victories in things we were able to keep out of the omnibus.

00:26:54.000 There was a big hard push from a number of more moderate and liberal Republicans to have tens of billions of dollars of bailouts for insurance companies under Obamacare.

00:27:06.000 I think that would have been a disaster.

00:27:07.000 The idea that we're bailing out the insurance companies, who are making record profits,

00:27:11.000 While not honoring our promise to repeal Obamacare, while not lowering premiums, reducing regulations, expanding choice, expanding freedom.

00:27:20.000 I think that's nuts.

00:27:22.000 And we had a big battle in the conference.

00:27:24.000 I pressed very hard to keep the insurance company bailouts out of the bill and we succeeded.

00:27:29.000 We kept them out.

00:27:30.000 So, I mean, as a conservative, I've spent virtually my entire life being frustrated with the Republican Party because the Republican Party makes a bunch of promises about things they're going to do.

00:27:37.000 We give them the House.

00:27:38.000 We give them the Senate.

00:27:39.000 We give them the presidency.

00:27:40.000 And then very little of it gets done. 0.98

00:27:42.000 And when it does get done, it tends to be done in these vast bills that are a thousand pages long and always are a crap sandwich.

00:27:48.000 Is the problem here that Republicans are promising more than they can deliver or is the problem here that the crowd of conservatives were just not realistic about what is possible in a Senate with 51 votes and with, you know, a couple of Republicans who are at best very dicey on serious conservative priorities?

00:28:02.000 So is it an expectation problem or is it a promise problem?

00:28:04.000 So I actually think it's neither.

00:28:07.000 I think the problem is our leadership is not focused on delivering on our promises and having a systematic plan to accomplish that.

00:28:16.000 Look back at 2017.

00:28:18.000 2017, despite all of the political craziness, you and I are both aware of all the craziness in Washington.

00:28:24.000 Despite that, we accomplished a remarkable amount.

00:28:27.000 I think the four big priorities for 2017 were tax reform, regulatory reform, Obamacare, and judges.

00:28:35.000 And as the year came to a close, we had big wins on all four.

00:28:38.000 The tax bill was a huge win.

00:28:41.000 Reg reform, we're seeing every agency, job-killing regulations pulled back and reduced.

00:28:47.000 Obamacare is our biggest unfinished promise.

00:28:49.000 But even that, we did repeal the individual mandate.

00:28:52.000 I led the fight to include the individual mandate repeal and tax reform.

00:28:56.000 We got that done.

00:28:57.000 That's a big deal.

00:28:58.000 And judges have been an unmitigated home run, both on the Supreme Court, the federal courts of appeals.

00:29:05.000 You know, in 2017, we confirmed 12 federal appellate judges.

00:29:09.000 That's the most in the first year of a president's term in history.

00:29:12.000 Right.

00:29:13.000 All of those are big, big victories.

00:29:14.000 Now, if you look at those,

00:29:16.000 Every one of those victories was done through legislative vehicles that only require 50 votes, that can't be filibustered.

00:29:23.000 What I'm urging my colleagues to do is in 2018, let's demonstrate that same seriousness of purpose and let's bring up and vote on major priorities.

00:29:32.000 Let's bring up and vote on making the individual tax cuts permanent.

00:29:36.000 Let's make the small business tax cuts permanent.

00:29:39.000 Let's vote on a full repeal, or if not, major reform of Dodd-Frank to free up capital for small banks that go and turn to small businesses.

00:29:49.000 Let's tackle Obamacare and rescind regulations that are driving up premiums and expand consumer freedom.

00:29:56.000 All of those we can do if, and here's the critical if, we tee up vehicles that only require 50 votes.

00:30:03.000 If we stay in the world of the omnibus where you need 60 votes,

00:30:07.000 We're not getting nine Democrats.

00:30:08.000 Right.

00:30:08.000 So there are procedural vehicles that take 50 votes.

00:30:12.000 The two are reconciliation, which is how we passed the tax cut.

00:30:16.000 It's how we passed the Obamacare individual mandate repeal.

00:30:19.000 It's how we passed my amendment expanding College 529.

00:30:22.000 It's the biggest federal school choice legislation in history we passed last year.

00:30:27.000 The other avenue I've suggested is using NAFTA renegotiation as a vehicle for regulatory reform, but both of those you can do with 50 votes and they can't be filibustered.

00:30:37.000 If our leadership is willing to focus on, let's deliver on our promise.

00:30:42.000 Yeah.

00:31:13.000 What's the deal?

00:31:14.000 Look, I'm not going to get into right now sort of leadership politics and battles.

00:31:18.000 What I do think is we need a Republican leader.

00:31:22.000 Who is responsive to the will of the Republican conference, the will of the majority, and ultimately the will of the people who elected us.

00:31:29.000 And I will say, among Senate Republicans, there's a generational divide.

00:31:33.000 A divide between what I call the young Turks and the old bulls. 1.00

00:31:38.000 The young Turks I define as anyone really elected 2010 or later.

00:31:43.000 And that's a little more than half our conference.

00:31:45.000 It's a big chunk of the Republicans in the Senate.

00:31:49.000 The Young Turks, many of them are pushing for let's do more.

00:31:53.000 There's a real frustration.

00:31:55.000 Why are we not delivering on our promises?

00:31:58.000 And I'll confess, I'm doing everything I can to encourage the Young Turks.

00:32:01.000 Come on, guys.

00:32:02.000 We can actually stand up and deliver.

00:32:05.000 We can have a real plan to win.

00:32:08.000 Not just a plan not to lose.

00:32:09.000 Right.

00:32:10.000 But a plan to get the kind of victories we got in 2017.

00:32:12.000 You know, I was

00:32:15.000 Deeply enmeshed, up to my eyeballs in all of those battles in 2017, especially the tax reform battle.

00:32:20.000 That was a huge victory.

00:32:22.000 Let's learn from our victories and let's do it again.

00:32:25.000 So I want to drill down on this for just one more second.

00:32:27.000 And that is, you know, when it comes to Senator McConnell, you keep saying leadership.

00:32:30.000 I assume his argument here would be that he's got a fractious caucus, that there are five or six Republicans who are not willing to go along with the rest.

00:32:36.000 You say 80 percent of the caucus wants to go along with you.

00:32:38.000 That leaves 20 percent that isn't when you have a 51 vote majority.

00:32:41.000 All you need is two who don't like what you're doing in order to say something.

00:32:44.000 Do you think that's a real concern or do you think that that's being exaggerated a little bit by leadership as an excuse for doing nothing?

00:32:50.000 Look, I think that's a very real concern.

00:32:51.000 I mean, we have 51 Republicans.

00:32:55.000 There is massive.

00:32:58.000 A massive ideological gulf.

00:33:01.000 It is hard to find an issue that Susan Collins and Rand Paul agree on.

00:33:06.000 The Democratic Party, they're unified.

00:33:08.000 They are all the party of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

00:33:11.000 They've all gone so far left.

00:33:13.000 They can unify.

00:33:14.000 Our party, there are big, big, big differences.

00:33:17.000 That being said, there are a lot of propositions you can get 50 Republicans for.

00:33:22.000 You know, that's a lot of what, you know, it's interesting.

00:33:24.000 Some of the media commentators have been puzzled at Cruz as consensus maker.

00:33:30.000 I mean, they sort of view that as a joke.

00:33:32.000 How could Cruz be a consensus maker?

00:33:34.000 It's real simple.

00:33:35.000 I believe in this stuff.

00:33:36.000 I didn't run for office just because I wanted an office in Washington, D.C.

00:33:41.000 It's not that great, I'll be honest with you.

00:33:43.000 It is lousy.

00:33:44.000 And you and I were talking about right before the show, look, I'm away from my kids every week.

00:33:48.000 I mean, this hurts to be away from my daughters.

00:33:51.000 There's only one reason to do it, and it's to make a difference in our country, to get conservative victories, to defend the principles we believe in, and so that focus

00:34:02.000 We've got to get focused on doing that job.

00:34:04.000 And there are lots of things.

00:34:06.000 You know, before I was in the Senate, I was a Supreme Court litigator.

00:34:09.000 I've settled a lot of lawsuits.

00:34:12.000 The way you set a lawsuit, you sit down with the opposing party, you sit down with the clients, the principals, and you say, all right, what do you want?

00:34:19.000 What do you want?

00:34:20.000 Okay, no one's going to get everything.

00:34:23.000 Where's common ground?

00:34:24.000 What do we all agree with?

00:34:25.000 There are a lot of propositions.

00:34:27.000 You can get 50 Republicans on board.

00:34:31.000 Make the individual tax cuts permanent.

00:34:33.000 There's a very simple, real victory.

00:34:35.000 You know, the week after the tax cut plan passed, Bernie Sanders went on on one of the Sunday shows with Jake Tapper and Tapper said, said, well, look, this tax cut cuts the taxes for virtually every middle class taxpayer in America.

00:34:49.000 Isn't that a good thing?

00:34:51.000 And Bernie says, of course!

00:34:53.000 The problem is it's not permanent.

00:34:55.000 I remember this.

00:34:56.000 Yep.

00:34:56.000 And so I took that clip.

00:34:58.000 I retweeted it to the world.

00:34:59.000 I said, Bernie, I agree.

00:35:01.000 And I've drafted legislation to make it permanent.

00:35:03.000 Join me.

00:35:04.000 We can get this done right now.

00:35:06.000 Now, oddly enough, Bernie has been silent.

00:35:07.000 He didn't offer him enough pudding.

00:35:09.000 But, you know, look, that's a proposition.

00:35:13.000 We can get 50 Republicans.

00:35:15.000 On making the tax cuts permit.

00:35:31.000 Reduces your effective premium rate 20 to 30 percent like that.

00:35:35.000 We can get 50 Republicans on that.

00:35:38.000 And what I'm going to be teeing up in the coming weeks, I've been having this conversation with a lot of senators who agree with me.

00:35:44.000 In the next couple of weeks when we get back in D.C., I'm planning to tee up to the whole conference and have a conversation.

00:35:50.000 Listen, is it really the case

00:35:53.000 That as a conference, we're done.

00:35:54.000 We don't have any ideas anymore.

00:35:56.000 We don't want to accomplish anything.

00:35:57.000 I don't believe that.

00:35:59.000 If there are things we want to get done and we've got potentially a narrow window of time, nine months to get it done, then let's develop a systematic plan to accomplish those victories.

00:36:10.000 That's what what our leadership is doing right now is going to Chuck Schumer and saying, Chuck, what do you want to get done?

00:36:16.000 And let's have a plan to get that accomplished. 1.00

00:36:18.000 That, I think, is idiotic. 1.00

00:36:20.000 And it's why our base is so unhappy. 1.00

00:36:21.000 Okay, so final question for you.

00:36:23.000 2018, obviously, the polls don't look fantastic.

00:36:25.000 It's going to be very, very important for conservatives to get out and do something about it.

00:36:29.000 The question that I get a lot when I have folks like you, when I have senators on, is what are we supposed to do?

00:36:34.000 The grassroots conservatives, what can they do?

00:36:36.000 Because they sit around and they're really frustrated, and then that frustration bubbles to the top through tea parties or through Trump or through whatever it is, but then they feel constantly let down.

00:36:43.000 So what can they do right now to help foster what you're talking about?

00:36:47.000 What can they do other than sit around and grouse about it?

00:36:49.000 If you look at 2018, 2018 I think is going to be a turnout election.

00:36:54.000 It's not a persuasion election.

00:36:56.000 The Democrats agree with this, by the way.

00:36:57.000 If you look at how the Democrats are behaving, they have decided that the set of swing voters, of voters who are going to show up and vote in November but haven't decided if they're Democrat or Republican, that that's essentially a null set.

00:37:10.000 That doesn't exist.

00:37:13.000 For the last 15 months, what we've seen is the demise of the moderate Democrat, where even the so-called moderate Democrats, the Joe Manchins, the Heidi Heitkamps, their voting records are identical or virtually identical to Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

00:37:27.000 They're all tacking hard left.

00:37:30.000 Their objective is simple.

00:37:31.000 Turn out the far left.

00:37:33.000 And the far left, they're energized, they're angry, and they hate the president.

00:37:38.000 It is their motivating force and rage.

00:37:42.000 We're going to see in November record Democratic turnout.

00:37:45.000 In all 50 states, it's going to shatter records.

00:37:48.000 The question that will determine whether 2018 is a good election, where we win three, four, five Senate seats, we come back with a real functioning majority in the Senate, or whether we get blown out and have Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer as the leaders in Congress, is going to come entirely down to conservative turnout.

00:38:08.000 The states that are up in 2018, there are more conservatives than liberals.

00:38:11.000 If conservatives show up, we'll do well.

00:38:14.000 My state in Texas, I'm up for re-election in Texas.

00:38:18.000 We're facing Democrats who are energized.

00:38:20.000 We just had earlier this month, a Democratic primary where Democratic turnout was up 100%.

00:38:27.000 Four years ago, it was 500,000.

00:38:29.000 This year it was a million.

00:38:31.000 Now, fortunately we had 1.5 million Republicans come out.

00:38:34.000 So we, we turned out conservatives, but we got to do that in November.

00:38:39.000 Um, I'm facing an opponent, Congressman Beto O'Rourke.

00:38:42.000 Right.

00:38:43.000 Who's running hard left.

00:38:44.000 He's running on open borders.

00:38:45.000 He's running on aggressive gun control.

00:38:48.000 He's running on socialized medicine.

00:38:49.000 He's running on raising taxes.

00:38:51.000 And on the far left, they're raising money like crazy.

00:38:55.000 My Democratic opponent is out raising me right now.

00:38:57.000 Wow.

00:38:58.000 And what happens every time the president says something, tweets something.

00:39:05.000 Thousands of Bernie Sanders leftists, their heads explode and they go online and they give 50 or 100 bucks to every Democrat they can find.

00:39:12.000 So one of the things the folks listening to you, look, the other side is energized and engaged.

00:39:18.000 For my campaign, I'd encourage you to come to our website.

00:39:21.000 It's TedCruz.org, sign up, volunteer, speak out, contribute.

00:39:26.000 We need the resources to mobilize conservatives.

00:39:30.000 And then I'd encourage one of the beauties of the modern age, of the social media age,

00:39:35.000 Is you don't have to be, you know, Ben, you've got a show, you've got, you've got a media platform, you know, every one of your listeners has a platform also.

00:39:42.000 Every one of your listeners can engage their friends, mobilize their friends, make them laugh, make them care.

00:39:48.000 Every person listening to this show, I hope, number one, will contribute at TedCruz.org.

00:39:53.000 But number two, we'll focus on energizing and turning out conservatives for November and simultaneously holding Republicans accountable in Washington.

00:40:03.000 Guys, deliver on your promises.

00:40:05.000 Get more conservative victories to give everyone a reason to come vote.

00:40:09.000 Well, Senator Cruz, thanks so much for stopping by.

00:40:10.000 I really appreciate it.

00:40:11.000 It's always great to see you.

00:40:12.000 And of course, we go all the way back to the David Dewhurst days.

00:40:15.000 It's good to see, you know, obviously how prominent you've become.

00:40:17.000 And we can only hope that you continue to be in a leadership position.

00:40:21.000 Hopefully that grows over time.

00:40:22.000 Thanks so much, Senator, for stopping by.

00:40:23.000 Thank you, Ben.

00:40:24.000 Well, it's great to have Senator Cruz on.

00:40:26.000 So, meanwhile, again, there's been a lot of talk about the prominence of Roseanne's show.

00:40:30.000 Roseanne's show did incredibly well last night, and the culture wars are still raging. 0.99

00:40:34.000 People are wondering why it is that the two sides are at each other's throats.

00:40:37.000 One of the reasons the two sides are at each other's throats is because the journalistic community has really failed in its basic duty.

00:40:42.000 To provide us with a common set of facts.

00:40:44.000 I want to talk about that in just a second.

00:40:45.000 But first, you're going to have to go over to Daily Wire and subscribe.

00:40:47.000 For $9.99 a month, you can get the rest of this show live.

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00:41:25.000 One of the reasons the country is so divided right now, obviously, is because the way journalists have done their business is quite obviously terrible.

00:41:32.000 And it is true across the spectrum, okay?

00:41:35.000 It's true from right to left.

00:41:36.000 The media has just done a garbage job at providing facts and then logic.

00:41:39.000 Now, listen, I am an opinion host, right? 0.55

00:41:41.000 I make this very clear every single day.

00:41:43.000 I am a guy with an opinion and particular positions.

00:41:45.000 What I try to do, however, is present you with a certain number of facts,

00:41:49.000 And then I try to connect all those facts and lead to my conclusion.

00:41:51.000 So you can try to figure out where in my argument I'm going wrong if you disagree with me.

00:41:54.000 What is the fact that I'm misstating?

00:41:56.000 Where exactly am I making a leap between fact A and fact B in order to get to conclusion C?

00:42:02.000 That's what I try to do on the show so that we can take this journey together and think along with one another.

00:42:06.000 But that's not something that's happening in the media, and the media seem okay with this.

00:42:09.000 The reason I'm talking about this is because Michael Wolff, who is the author of Fire and Fury, and has been widely discredited at this point, he made a series of comments to a student newspaper at Vassar College, which was his alma mater, and here's what he had to say.

00:42:21.000 It's an amazing statement.

00:42:22.000 Quote.

00:42:23.000 I am an observer.

00:42:24.000 I investigate nothing.

00:42:25.000 All I do is look and write what I see and what I hear.

00:42:28.000 And my job, which has nothing to do with truth, is to take what I see and what I hear and write in a way that readers can come as close as possible, as close as I came to the experience of doing this.

00:42:36.000 I want to be able to turn what I see into something that a reader says, oh, I see that too.

00:42:40.000 That line there, which has nothing to do with truth, is the key line.

00:42:43.000 And right now in media, media coverage has nothing to do with truth, which is one of the reasons why I think people are so polarized.

00:42:49.000 Because you can view one website and view a second website and come up with two completely different visions of the world.

00:42:54.000 But not only that, two completely different versions of the facts.

00:42:57.000 And it's happening on all sides.

00:42:58.000 So on the one side, for example, you have CNN.

00:43:00.000 CNN had a teen panel where teens were debating guns.

00:43:03.000 And again, this was CNN's way of propping up particular teens in order to generate support for gun control.

00:43:10.000 What would you consider success because of the movement?

00:43:15.000 An assault weapons ban.

00:43:16.000 Handguns are perfectly okay.

00:43:17.000 That fits into the Second Amendment.

00:43:19.000 We don't need people walking around with AR-15s.

00:43:22.000 Why are you telling everyone out there in America that you can't own a gun for your protection?

00:43:28.000 You know, I'm in fear walking around— I never said you couldn't.

00:43:30.000 It doesn't need to be for protection.

00:43:32.000 It's not a good gun for hunting, either.

00:43:33.000 Why are you telling— For hunting?

00:43:35.000 For sport?

00:43:35.000 It's not an efficient AR-15 gun.

00:43:37.000 It's not necessary.

00:43:38.000 My life is more important than a gun.

00:43:41.000 So solid TV there from CNN.

00:43:42.000 You can't understand what anyone is saying, but the point here is to have on a bunch of young students like a Linda Ellerbe show on Nick Jr.

00:43:49.000 in order to in order to discuss these issues.

00:43:50.000 The whole point here is, of course, to produce a particular agenda.

00:43:53.000 This is what CNN has been doing for weeks on the gun issues.

00:43:56.000 So the media coverage of this has been just egregious.

00:43:58.000 And then on the right, you have people like Alex Jones who are out there promoting the most radical version of critique.

00:44:04.000 First of all, you've seen people who are putting out false

00:44:06.000 Falsehoods, open falsehoods about the Parkland students who they disagree with.

00:44:10.000 We don't do that on this program.

00:44:11.000 We just play their quotes and then we talk about why they're wrong, which I think is a different thing.

00:44:14.000 But Alex Jones is Alex Jones and he does an Alex Jones thing.

00:44:17.000 And a lot of his followers think this kind of stuff.

00:44:19.000 So he actually dubbed a Hitler speech over footage of David Hogg.

00:44:21.000 And I think David Hogg is a pretty terrible advocate for his position.

00:44:24.000 I think that he's wrong about pretty much everything.

00:44:26.000 But this is just demonstrative of the gap that's happening in journalism right now.

00:44:29.000 Authoritarianism is always about youth marches.

00:44:33.000 Here we go.

00:44:36.000 Okay, and if you can't see this, he's actually putting video of David Hogg over that audio of Adolf Hitler and putting it in black and white.

00:44:47.000 Now, is any of this designed to actually get to the truth?

00:44:50.000 Is any of this designed to actually

00:44:55.000 Is any of this designed to enrich the country or get us to a point where we can have discussions?

00:44:59.000 Now, this is my problem with everything that's happening in the media right now, from Hollywood, from shows like Roseanne, to what's happening on Alex Jones, to CNN.

00:45:06.000 There's no attempt to even get to a common basis of facts so that we can have a discussion.

00:45:10.000 If there is no common basis of facts, there is no discussion to be had.

00:45:13.000 There cannot be a discussion if this is the case.

00:45:16.000 It's just, it's absurd.

00:45:18.000 Yeah, and again, this is happening not just— Listen, you wouldn't expect better from Alex Jones because Alex Jones is Alex Jones, right?

00:45:23.000 I mean, the guy— I sell supplements and I unbutton my shirt!

00:45:26.000 Oh my God, look at— Oh my God, I'm not wearing a shirt now!

00:45:30.000 That's Alex Jones' shtick, but you do expect better from CNN, you would assume, right?

00:45:34.000 I mean, I think we have a right to expect better from CNN.

00:45:36.000 That's how they pitch themselves, but—

00:45:39.000 They were the same people who were putting on Michael Wolff every night.

00:45:40.000 I mean, Jake Tapper, admirably, was going after Michael Wolff.

00:45:43.000 He was one of the few.

00:45:44.000 Virtually everybody else in the media, MSNBC, CNN, all the networks, they were giving Michael Wolff enormous credibility, and he says he has nothing to do with the truth.

00:45:50.000 And then you wonder why it is that there seem to be alternative realities in the world of politics.

00:45:55.000 That's why there are alternative realities.

00:45:57.000 In the world of politics.

00:45:59.000 Now, meanwhile, there's some updates on the Stormy Daniels front.

00:46:04.000 It's just getting tawdry at this point.

00:46:08.000 I love S.E.

00:46:08.000 Cupp over on CNN Headline News, but she is making the case that Melania should leave Trump.

00:46:13.000 Here's what she had to say about it.

00:46:15.000 Melania may not have a political career to consider, but as First Lady, she is an inherently important figure in American politics. 0.99

00:46:23.000 And women are watching. 1.00

00:46:25.000 Particularly young women.

00:46:27.000 Melania should do for this generation of girls what Hillary Clinton did not do for mine. 1.00

00:46:33.000 And leave her jerk of a husband. 1.00

00:46:35.000 OK, so I have a couple of critiques. 0.99

00:46:38.000 I disagree with S.E.

00:46:39.000 that Melania should leave Trump for a couple of reasons. 1.00

00:46:42.000 She can if she wants, but there are a couple of reasons I don't think that Melania should leave Trump.

00:46:45.000 But the reason that I'm bringing this up is because it's pretty obvious that the Stormy Daniels stuff has just become gossip TV at this point.

00:46:50.000 Here's why I disagree with S.E.

00:46:52.000 for a couple of reasons.

00:46:53.000 One, Melania knew what she was getting into in the first place.

00:46:55.000 She was wife number three, and she was having an affair with Trump while he was married to wife number two.

00:46:59.000 So it's not like Melania didn't know it was coming, and she's been very obvious about this.

00:47:02.000 She was asked at one point whether Trump would have married her if she wasn't beautiful, and she said, would I have married Trump if you weren't rich?

00:47:08.000 I mean, this is a very transactional relationship.

00:47:10.000 Everybody knows this who's been watching it.

00:47:11.000 Second, they have a kid together.

00:47:13.000 OK, divorce is never good for the kid. 1.00

00:47:15.000 And Melania, again, knew what she was getting into when she had a kid with Donald Trump. 0.99

00:47:19.000 So, yeah, I disagree with Essie, but the point here is, again, this conversation has basically degraded.

00:47:25.000 You can see it on a CNN panel, again, CNN doing yeoman's journalist work.

00:47:28.000 This would be clip nine, a panel going off the rails about Stormy Daniels.

00:47:33.000 When Barack Obama was president, you were on CNN, on this very air, on this very network, and you know what you said?

00:47:38.000 Barack Obama doesn't love America.

00:47:39.000 What's the difference between Barack Obama and Roy Moore?

00:47:44.000 What's the difference between Barack Obama, Roy Moore, and Donald Trump?

00:47:47.000 I'll tell you what the difference is. 0.58

00:47:48.000 Barack Obama's a black man, and those two are white men. 1.00

00:47:53.000 It's all Jerry Springer garbage. 1.00

00:47:54.000 It's all Jerry Springer garbage. 1.00

00:47:55.000 We can stop it there. 0.98

00:47:56.000 I don't have to listen to this.

00:47:57.000 It's all Jerry Springer nonsense, and the Jerry Springer nonsense devolves into basically people tribally siding up, right?

00:48:03.000 So, CNN did an interview with a bunch of female Trump supporters, and they asked, you know, what do you think now that all these allegations have come out about Stormy Daniels? 0.76

00:48:10.000 And the female Trump supporters basically said, listen, you guys are going to tell me what you want me to hear, and I don't believe anything you have to say.

00:48:16.000 Here's what that panel looked like.

00:48:18.000 In order for somebody to come forward, you can be pushed by somebody else, right?

00:48:24.000 And so I think the thing is, is you're looking for a way to impeach my president that I worked very hard for.

00:48:33.000 Okay, and I think there are a lot of Trump supporters who feel that way, again, because the media have failed to do a good job in policing themselves and simply telling the facts.

00:48:41.000 They can give us their conclusion, but they have to tell us the facts first.

00:48:43.000 Okay, a quick thing I like, and then a quick thing I hate, and then I want to talk Passover for about 30 seconds here.

00:48:49.000 Things I like, number one, the thing I like today is that Bernie Sanders inspired an actual circus clown to run for office.

00:48:56.000 This is not actually a joke.

00:48:58.000 So according to Emily Zanotti over at Daily Wire, Stephen Loft is a former clown with the Ringling Brothers Circus and a former volunteer with both Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders' campaigns.

00:49:06.000 He also happens to have snagged the Democratic nomination in South Carolina's 5th congressional district, and he's going to take on Ralph Norman in November. 0.91

00:49:13.000 He promises that he will be a better clown in office than the current clowns in office. 0.97

00:49:16.000 He says they joke that the president and Congress are all clowns. 0.99

00:49:19.000 Well, in my professional opinion, they are the worst clowns I have ever seen. 0.99

00:49:22.000 So pretty spectacular stuff. 0.99

00:49:24.000 Of course, a Bernie Sanders inspired clown is running for office because he is right. 0.95

00:49:28.000 I mean, he is right. 0.99

00:49:29.000 OK, our politics is filled with clowns. 0.99

00:49:30.000 OK, time for a quick thing that I hate. 0.97

00:49:37.000 So Heineken has now released an ad and then they pulled the ad.

00:49:40.000 I'm going to show you the ad and then we'll try to figure out exactly what's wrong with the ad.

00:49:47.000 It's a bartender who's looking down at a beautiful woman at the end of the bar, and he's sliding her a beer, and it soars past a bunch of different people.

00:49:58.000 It soars past, it's obviously in a tropical place, it soars past a couple of black folks, and then finally it arrives at the end, and it's a light beer. 1.00

00:50:07.000 Right, and it says, sometimes lighter is better at 99 calories.

00:50:11.000 Okay, and the woman at the end of the bar, can we pause it on her? 1.00

00:50:13.000 Because, go back for a second, is there a way that we can pause it on her?

00:50:16.000 Because I want to see what she actually looks like.

00:50:18.000 Okay, stop it.

00:50:19.000 So this is not a white woman, right? 0.87

00:50:21.000 This looks like an ethnic woman, right? 1.00

00:50:22.000 She looks maybe Asian? 1.00

00:50:24.000 Is that right?

00:50:25.000 I mean, if you can see, Mathis, what's your take?

00:50:26.000 This obviously is not just a Russian lady, right? 0.98

00:50:29.000 I mean, this lady looks like, 1.00

00:50:32.000 Maybe Latina? 0.92

00:50:33.000 It's kind of hard to tell what ethnicity she is, but she's obviously of non-WASP extraction.

00:50:39.000 So what was the criticism of this?

00:50:41.000 The criticism of this, it's an ad for Heineken Light.

00:50:44.000 Mathis, did you see anything wrong with this ad?

00:50:46.000 Was there a problem with this ad when it said, is light better?

00:50:49.000 Did you see it?

00:50:50.000 Okay, so the problem with this ad is that the ad shows the beer sliding past three black people and then arriving at a non-black woman at the end.

00:50:57.000 And so the idea is that this is a racist ad.

00:50:59.000 That the ad is saying that lighter skin is better.

00:51:01.000 And that's why he's sliding the beer to her. 0.99

00:51:03.000 Okay, if we've become this stupid and this sensitive, do you really think the people who made this ad were saying that light skin is better? 0.99

00:51:09.000 Really, that was the implication of the ad? 0.99

00:51:11.000 When you have a couple of people who look like maybe they're of Spanish extraction sliding beers to each other? 0.51

00:51:15.000 That's what you got from that ad?

00:51:17.000 You may be a little bit crazy if this is how far you are willing to go in the name of political correctness.

00:51:21.000 Okay, so, today is a Wednesday, and that means that normally we do a little bit of Bible talk.

00:51:25.000 Well, the Bible talk for today comes courtesy of the fact that this weekend begins the holiday of Passover, which is, I believe, my favorite holiday.

00:51:33.000 It's either that or Sukkot, which is the one where we sit in the booths. 0.67

00:51:36.000 And one of the things that people need to know about the holiday of Passover, which is, of course, all about the Exodus, is the Exodus is not just a universal vague thing.

00:51:42.000 So people in politics have used the Exodus story to justify virtually anything.

00:51:45.000 We've heard it used to justify the civil rights movement, I think appropriately.

00:51:48.000 Used to justify the gay rights movement, I think wildly inappropriately. 0.93

00:51:52.000 To use the transgender movement.

00:51:54.000 Again, the let my people go line is the one that's usually used.

00:51:57.000 Moses goes to Pharaoh, and he says, let my people go.

00:52:00.000 And this is supposed to be the end of the story.

00:52:01.000 But this is not the end of the story, folks.

00:52:03.000 That ignores a couple of things about the Exodus story.

00:52:06.000 One, the rest of let my people go, the phrase does not end at let my people go. 0.98

00:52:11.000 OK, what God actually says to Moses is he says, go to Pharaoh and say to him, quote, Thus says the Lord, let my people go that they may serve me.

00:52:19.000 Every time it says, let my people go in the Bible, it is followed with that they may serve me in the wilderness or that they may serve me.

00:52:24.000 The whole point is that God is saying people have to be freed of earthly tyranny so they can submit themselves to the yoke of heaven.

00:52:32.000 Right.

00:52:32.000 That is the point of the Bible.

00:52:33.000 The point of the Bible is that God is the boss and you are not the boss.

00:52:36.000 And liberty is necessary so that you can pursue virtue, not so that you can pursue vice.

00:52:40.000 And Western civilization seems to have forgotten that.

00:52:42.000 We seem to think that let my people go is the end of the invocation.

00:52:45.000 That once you say let my people go, there is no further moral duty, right?

00:52:49.000 No duty attaches to the right.

00:52:51.000 And once you sever, so that they may serve me, then let my people go basically just means leave me alone. 0.91

00:52:56.000 But it turns out that people then impose other sorts of earthly tyranny, because what they suggest is that now, in order for me to let your people go, that means that you have to invade my church and tell me what to do.

00:53:05.000 It means that you have to invade my home and tell me how to raise my child.

00:53:08.000 Let My People Go So They May Serve Me is the root and branch, I believe, of the Western civilized thought, which is, there are rights and there are duties, and these two things are inherently connected.

00:53:18.000 There are rights from government, there are rights that you have that pre-exists the state, those come from God, and those exist so that we can seek Him.

00:53:25.000 That is, without a religious, fundamental, moral basis to the United States, rights tend to disappear into a miasma of libertinism.

00:53:31.000 And that's what all the founders believed.

00:53:32.000 Adams thought that, Washington thought that.

00:53:34.000 That's the message of the Exodus.

00:53:35.000 The Exodus is very specific to a specific people who are supposed to be a light unto the nations.

00:53:40.000 It wasn't just God decided, I'm going to take one nation out of another nation and then I'm just going to leave them alone and tell them to do whatever the hell they want. 0.98

00:53:45.000 That was not the purpose.

00:53:46.000 The culmination of the Exodus story is at Sinai with the acceptance of the Torah by the Jewish people.

00:53:52.000 That's the purpose of the story.

00:53:53.000 It's to fulfill an earthly promise in terms of the land that the Jews are supposed to inherit, that God is a fulfiller of promises, that he keeps his promises, that he is true to you.

00:54:02.000 That is the message, message number one of the Bible.

00:54:04.000 And message number two is that you must be true to him as well, because your freedom is contingent upon you doing your virtuous duty.

00:54:10.000 So that is the real message of Passover.

00:54:12.000 Don't believe all the all the cheap hype about it's just about let my people go, because again, there are some missions that attach once you have freedom.

00:54:18.000 OK, we'll be back here tomorrow with much, much more.

00:54:20.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:54:21.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:54:26.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Mathis Glover.

00:54:28.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:54:30.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:54:31.000 Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:54:33.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:54:35.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.

00:54:36.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:54:38.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

00:54:41.000 Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - March 28, 2018

Roseanne Is Back! | Ep. 505

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