The Ben Shapiro Show - Storm Warrening For Biden | Ep. 856

00:00:00.000 Elizabeth Warren gains in the polls, Democrats struggle with their own radicalism, and President Trump's Afghanistan policy collapses into chaos.

00:00:06.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:07.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:09.000 There's nothing like re-emerging from a beautiful weekend to come back into a studio where it smells like something died.

00:00:19.000 But the thing that died, it turns out in the studio, at least, was not Joe Biden's poll numbers.

00:00:23.000 It was actually something.

00:00:24.000 Like, it actually smells like something died.

00:00:25.000 We'll get into Joe Biden's poll numbers, not the dead thing that is in the studio in just one second.

00:00:31.000 But first, you may have been noticing that the price of gold is rising.

00:00:34.000 Why is the price of gold rising?

00:00:35.000 Well, because as geopolitical uncertainty takes a toll on the markets, people are rushing for safe havens in bonds and in gold.

00:00:42.000 The fact is that geopolitical tensions are rising.

00:00:44.000 You can just read the news or listen to this show.

00:00:46.000 One consequence has been a five year high in gold prices.

00:00:49.000 Recently, Iran announced it will break the uranium stockpile limit they agreed to under the nuclear deal.

00:00:53.000 That is not a coincidence that gold prices have been rising.

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00:01:56.000 OK, so we begin this week, which is a big debate week, right?

00:02:00.000 Because later this week is the first debate in which Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden will share a stage.

00:02:05.000 Bernie Sanders will be there, too.

00:02:07.000 In all likelihood, this turns into a gang attack on Joe Biden by Bernie Sanders and by Elizabeth Warren and by Kamala Harris and by Cory Booker.

00:02:15.000 And that's because the dynamics of the race have shifted somewhat.

00:02:18.000 Right now, if you are Kamala Harris or Cory Booker, what you're figuring is that Elizabeth Warren looks like she is taking a huge chunk of Joe Biden's white support. 1.00

00:02:26.000 And if Joe Biden should collapse, is the black support that Joe Biden currently has, is that support going to shift over to Elizabeth Warren?

00:02:34.000 Or is it more likely that it shifts over to somebody like a Kamala Harris or to somebody like a Cory Booker, which is why they're still in the race.

00:02:40.000 Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders is still clinging to the hope that he is the great progressive alternative to Joe Biden, not Elizabeth Warren.

00:02:46.000 And that hope is not completely unsupportable.

00:02:48.000 The fact is that there are several polls that show that Bernie Sanders on a national level out polls Elizabeth Warren.

00:02:54.000 Elizabeth Warren is doing really well in a lot of these early states, and it's still extremely early.

00:02:59.000 And Joe Biden continues to gaffe and gaffe and gaffe and gaffe.

00:03:02.000 He's an extraordinarily weak front runner.

00:03:04.000 As I've been saying for months, Joe Biden's best day would be his first day.

00:03:07.000 And that has been obviously true.

00:03:09.000 Over the weekend, Joe Biden stumbled some more.

00:03:11.000 He was in Manchester, New Hampshire, and he continued to gaffe.

00:03:15.000 Limited to four years, I believe history will look back in this presidency as an aberrant moment in time.

00:03:23.000 But if Donald Trump is re-elected, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation.

00:03:38.000 Donald Trump does pose an existential threat to this nation.

00:03:44.000 It's not hypothetical, his threat to this nation.

00:03:48.000 Man, Joe Biden, a lot of scrambled eggs up there.

00:03:51.000 My goodness.

00:03:53.000 He poses an extra threat.

00:03:55.000 He's going to be bad.

00:03:56.000 He's going to be bad, guys.

00:03:58.000 Tim Ryan is a fellow presidential candidate.

00:04:00.000 He's going nowhere.

00:04:01.000 But his statements about Joe Biden's mental state.

00:04:04.000 Yeah, this is this is obviously true.

00:04:06.000 Here's Tim Ryan explaining that Joe Biden's mental state is a bit of an issue here, guys.

00:04:11.000 I mean, he went on Colbert to address this very issue.

00:04:15.000 It's not like I said something that a lot of people aren't thinking or he wouldn't have went on Colbert to talk about it.

00:04:21.000 So this is an issue.

00:04:23.000 We have to be honest with each other.

00:04:24.000 There's so much at stake in this election.

00:04:27.000 We can't just put somebody up there who can't beat Donald Trump, whether it's on the issues or on the issues of energy or lack of clarity.

00:04:35.000 Like, we've got to be very clear.

00:04:36.000 And I believe that I'm that person or I wouldn't be running.

00:04:39.000 And so people can support my campaign and go to Tim Ryan for America.

00:04:42.000 Yeah, nobody's doing that.

00:04:43.000 But everybody is acknowledging that Joe Biden is stumbling and bumbling and bumbling and stumbling, Chris Berman style.

00:04:49.000 But he's not going to make the end zone.

00:04:50.000 He's going to be knocked out of play probably by the time we hit the 30 yard line here, because the fact is that Joe Biden has no momentum, none.

00:04:57.000 All it takes right now is a solid love tap from Elizabeth Warren.

00:05:01.000 And Joe Biden has a serious, serious problem on his hands.

00:05:04.000 And Elizabeth Warren may not deliver it.

00:05:06.000 What her smart strategy here made it be completely inoffensive. 0.97

00:05:10.000 Let somebody else slap at Biden.

00:05:12.000 Let him continue to recede back to the field.

00:05:14.000 She's just quietly gaining.

00:05:15.000 She doesn't have to land a knockout blow on him. 1.00

00:05:17.000 In fact, I think that will be her strategy a little bit later this week.

00:05:20.000 I think that Elizabeth Warren is banking on the fact that the media love Elizabeth Warren. 0.99

00:05:24.000 For months, we've heard nothing but that Elizabeth Warren has a plan for everything.

00:05:27.000 Now, her plans are bad.

00:05:29.000 Her plans don't make any sense.

00:05:30.000 But they keep saying it.

00:05:31.000 Why?

00:05:31.000 Because you have to understand that when you're a member of the coastal media, when you are writing for the New York Times or the Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times, you are a member of a particular elite.

00:05:42.000 And this elite usually means you went to a good university.

00:05:45.000 It means that you've been hanging out with people who think like you for a long time.

00:05:48.000 And the biggest thing is that you don't want to be seen by all the people who surround you as unintelligent.

00:05:53.000 The coin of the realm in coastal elite circles is not that you are the most moral person in the room, not that you're the best person, not that you give the most charity, not that you attend church the most.

00:06:03.000 The coin of the realm is that you're the smartest.

00:06:04.000 That's the thing that matters more than anything else.

00:06:06.000 My friend Dennis Prager is constantly saying that, you know, when it comes to parenting, what parents should focus on is producing good children, not kids who went to an Ivy League school.

00:06:14.000 But very often that sense of values is reversed when it comes to assessment of merit.

00:06:21.000 In the media.

00:06:21.000 So in the media, anything that makes people feel intelligent makes them really excited.

00:06:26.000 Elizabeth Warren makes them feel intelligent.

00:06:29.000 She's a Harvard Law professor.

00:06:30.000 She's obviously articulate.

00:06:31.000 She's written books.

00:06:33.000 She's read books.

00:06:34.000 And this makes them feel super good about themselves.

00:06:36.000 They love Elizabeth Warren and that says something about you.

00:06:38.000 You have to understand that when you're voting on the left, I mean, it's true on the right also, but I think it's more true on the left at this point.

00:06:45.000 The way you vote is seen as a moral imprimatur on you, not on the candidate.

00:06:50.000 It's not that you're granting your moral imprimatur to the candidate.

00:06:53.000 It's that your support of the candidate says something about you.

00:06:55.000 So, if you're a Bernie Sanders supporter, what that says about you to everyone else is why people put bumper stickers on their car.

00:07:01.000 What it says to everyone else is that you're passionate about the issues.

00:07:05.000 You're passionate about inequality.

00:07:06.000 It doesn't say anything about your intelligence.

00:07:08.000 It says that you are passionate.

00:07:09.000 And if you're a supporter of Kamala Harris, it means that you're someone who believes in criminal justice reform and racial equity.

00:07:16.000 And if you're somebody who supports Joe Biden, it says that you're sort of a reasonable elder statesman in the party, which is why you're not seeing a lot of bumper stickers, because who wants a bumper sticker that says I'm a reasonable elder statesman person, right?

00:07:27.000 That's that's not something.

00:07:28.000 Elizabeth Warren, you stick that on your on your bumper sticker and you feel progressive.

00:07:31.000 But not only do you feel progressive, you get sort of the quality of Bernie Sanders, but you also get to say, and I'm so smart too, because she has so many plans for the media.

00:07:40.000 That describes them to a T. So they've been praising Elizabeth Warren nonstop for months.

00:07:45.000 For months. 0.90

00:07:46.000 First, they tried to run interference for her after her whole ridiculous, I'm not a Native American, but I am a Native American gaffe. 0.79

00:07:52.000 They tried to pretend that her DNA test actually exonerated her on that particular claim.

00:07:57.000 And then when that failed, they shifted gears and suddenly it was, doesn't she have plans, guys?

00:08:01.000 I mean, she has so many plans.

00:08:03.000 Well, one of Elizabeth Warren's big plans that the media have paid very little attention to, I mean, they've run a couple of fact checks, but then they've ignored it. 0.99

00:08:10.000 And so she keeps continuing to claim it, is that all of her giant plans will be paid for by an enormous wealth tax. 1.00

00:08:17.000 This is Elizabeth Warren over the weekend at the New Hampshire Democratic Party Convention explaining that all she's going to do is tax people who have assets more than $50 million, 2 or 3 percent.

00:08:26.000 She's going to take all their money from them at that rate, because again, remember, that's every single year. 1.00

00:08:30.000 She's going to take 2 or 3 percent of their net wealth. 1.00

00:08:32.000 And then she's going to use that for a variety of government programs. 1.00

00:08:36.000 And oh, what a plan.

00:08:37.000 Oh, what a plan, Elizabeth Warren.

00:08:39.000 Your first $50 million, free and clear.

00:08:42.000 But your 50 millionth and first dollar, you've got to pitch in two cents.

00:08:47.000 And two cents for every dollar after that.

00:08:50.000 And what can we do with two cents?

00:08:53.000 We can do universal child care for every baby in this country aged zero to five.

00:08:59.000 Two cents!

00:09:00.000 We can make technical school, community college, and four-year college free for everyone who wants an education.

00:09:07.000 We can do all of that and cancel student loan debt for 95% of the folks who've got it.

00:09:15.000 Okay, what she's saying here is, so a few things.

00:09:17.000 One, the media keep portraying her as charismatic.

00:09:20.000 I'm not seeing it.

00:09:21.000 She's more charismatic than Hillary Clinton, but so is whatever died in the studio around here.

00:09:21.000 I'm not.

00:09:25.000 Okay, lots of things are more charismatic than Hillary Clinton. 1.00

00:09:28.000 That is not a standard for charisma.

00:09:29.000 But beyond that, her plan actually makes no sense.

00:09:32.000 Because the fact is, if she thinks she's raising $2.75 trillion over the next 10 years with this wealth tax, number one, it's unconstitutional. 0.99

00:09:39.000 There's nothing in the Constitution that allows you to tax wealth.

00:09:42.000 Not income, which was legalized idiotically by the 16th Amendment, but wealth.

00:09:46.000 There's nothing there that allows you to tax wealth itself.

00:09:49.000 Especially stuff that people have already paid tax on.

00:09:51.000 You're talking about, I already paid property tax, I already paid tax on all of the income that I make, and now you're going to come in and tax me again?

00:09:58.000 Based on what moral principle are you going to tax me?

00:10:00.000 Again, beyond that, just speaking realistically, it is not going to raise this amount of money.

00:10:06.000 That is not me speaking, that's factcheck.org speaking.

00:10:09.000 Quote, some economists think that assumption is too rosy.

00:10:12.000 While neither the Tax Policy Center nor the Tax Foundation have yet released a full analysis of Warren's plan, economists at both said there is reason to believe that Warren's revenue estimate is too high.

00:10:22.000 Kyle Pomerlew, a Chief Economist and Vice President of Economic Analysis at the nonprofit ProBusiness Tax Foundation, said the assumption of 15% tax evasion, her plan says there'll be 15% tax evasion or avoidance.

00:10:33.000 He says that's actually the average avoidance for the entire U.S.

00:10:36.000 tax system, which is primarily the income tax and payroll tax.

00:10:39.000 These taxes are much harder to avoid than a wealth tax because an income transaction is hard to game or hide from the tax authorities.

00:10:46.000 A wealth tax, on the other hand, is much harder to enforce.

00:10:48.000 For one, much of the wealth tax base doesn't have a market price.

00:10:51.000 So, for example, I own an ownership stake in Daily Wire.

00:10:54.000 How does that value out?

00:10:56.000 The answer is you have no actual answer because there is no way to evaluate the fair market value.

00:11:00.000 It is not a publicly held company.

00:11:02.000 It's not like a piece of stock that is publicly held.

00:11:05.000 And it's not just people on the right who are suggesting all of this.

00:11:08.000 Lawrence Summers, who was formerly a Harvard University Dean, and he was Treasury Secretary from 1999 to 2001, and Economic Advisor for Barack Obama, and Natasha Sarin, an Assistant Professor of Law at University of Pennsylvania Law School, they published an op-ed in the Washington Post just earlier this year saying, common sense revenue estimates by economists, who are not very deeply steeped in revenue estimation, tend to be overly optimistic.

00:11:31.000 The two looked at U.S.

00:11:32.000 experience with estate tax data and concluded that Warren's wealth tax would only raise about 40% of the amount that Warren is estimating.

00:11:39.000 So not $2.75 trillion, like $1 trillion, like $1.2 trillion over 10 years, which doesn't pay for any of her stuff.

00:11:44.000 Also, it causes people not to save, it causes people not to buy assets in the United States, and it causes people to flee.

00:11:50.000 There have been a vast number of European countries that have tried a wealth tax.

00:11:54.000 Millionaires and billionaires fled.

00:11:55.000 They just took their money and they went elsewhere.

00:11:57.000 See, this is the nice thing about being super wealthy.

00:11:59.000 You don't have to stick around to watch Elizabeth Warren take your money.

00:12:02.000 You can just move your money.

00:12:03.000 You can just take your money and go to the Cayman Islands and buy a nice home there and stay there.

00:12:06.000 You don't have to worry about Elizabeth Warren.

00:12:09.000 Summers and Saron wrote, we suspect that to a great extent, it reflects the myriad ways wealthy people avoid paying estate taxes that in some form will be applicable in any actually legislated wealth tax.

00:12:19.000 So for example, the estate tax is a form of wealth tax, right?

00:12:21.000 You die, and then the government opens, like they walk right by your corpse, they open up your safe and they take a chunk of your money.

00:12:27.000 What people do is instead they create living trusts, and they put their money in a living trust for their children.

00:12:32.000 So when they die, the money didn't belong to them, it belonged to their children already.

00:12:35.000 This avoids the estate tax.

00:12:38.000 They say all of the methods that are used to avoid the estate tax will also be used to avoid the wealth tax.

00:12:44.000 They say these include questionable appraisals, valuation discounts for illiquidity and lack of control, establishment of trusts that enable division of assets among family members with substantial founder control, planning devices that give some income to charity while keeping the remainder for the donor and beneficiaries, tax advantage lending schemes, and other complex devices known only to sophisticated investors.

00:13:04.000 Except for reducing a naive calculation by 15%.

00:13:06.000 Warren's economic advisors do not seem to take account of these devices.

00:13:10.000 If our suspicion is correct, a wealth tax will not yield the revenue its proponents hope for.

00:13:14.000 And when actual scorekeepers score actual proposals, their estimates will disappoint advocates.

00:13:19.000 This is obviously true, but Elizabeth Warren's gonna keep trotting that out there. 1.00

00:13:23.000 It doesn't matter because, again, she gives a feeling of flattery to a media that is desperate to be flattered.

00:13:30.000 It's the reason the media hate Trump so much, by the way.

00:13:31.000 It's not just because Trump is a Republican.

00:13:33.000 It's because Trump makes them feel like they don't get Americans.

00:13:38.000 They look at Trump and they have scorn for him. 1.00

00:13:39.000 They think, oh, what a dummy, what a fool, what a stupid guy. 1.00

00:13:42.000 How could he be outsmarting us? 1.00

00:13:44.000 How could he have power?

00:13:45.000 How is this possible?

00:13:46.000 Elizabeth Warren makes members of the media feel good about themselves, even if her proposals don't actually make any sense at all.

00:13:53.000 By the way, her own proposals make so little sense, honestly, that she was rejecting a lot of her own proposals as late as 2003, 2004.

00:13:53.000 And they actually don't make it.

00:14:04.000 She talks about universal childcare for every child age zero to five.

00:14:07.000 She wrote an entire book about how this would disadvantage married mothers who stay at home and how you need now subsidies for married moms who stay at home. 1.00

00:14:17.000 In her book, she talks about why it would be a mistake to relieve student loans.

00:14:25.000 She said that it would be a mistake not to just cap tuition, not to just cap the amount that colleges can charge for tuition on a public level, as opposed to subsidizing the student loan industry, as opposed to paying off people's loans and quote-unquote paying for free college and all of the rest of this.

00:14:41.000 And now she backs all of those things.

00:14:43.000 Because here's the dirty little secret.

00:14:43.000 Why?

00:14:45.000 Elizabeth Warren has become a deeply dishonest politician. 1.00

00:14:48.000 I'll provide proof of this in one second, plus I will tell you where she actually stands in the polls and why she really is the shadow frontrunner at this point for the Democrats.

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00:16:07.000 Okay, so, where do we stand in the polls?

00:16:09.000 And then we'll get to why Elizabeth Warren proved that she is deeply dishonest. 0.99

00:16:14.000 Okay, so here are the polls.

00:16:15.000 According to CBS News, brand new poll.

00:16:17.000 CBS News, YouGov tracker.

00:16:19.000 They have now polled all of the Super Tuesday states.

00:16:22.000 All of the states up through Super Tuesday.

00:16:24.000 So it goes in the Democratic Party, it goes to Iowa, and then New Hampshire, and then South Carolina, Nevada, California, and a bunch of other states on Super Tuesday.

00:16:31.000 Right now, Bernie doesn't win very many delegates.

00:16:35.000 Biden has 600 delegates available through Super Tuesday.

00:16:38.000 Warren is at 545.

00:16:41.000 That's a disaster for Biden.

00:16:42.000 Biden's entire narrative is that he's the inevitable nominee and the inevitable president.

00:16:46.000 If Warren emerges from Iowa and New Hampshire victorious, I don't think that his lead simply holds up in a lot of these Super Tuesday states.

00:16:56.000 Bernie Sanders is rounding out the top tier of candidates with 286 delegates in those races.

00:17:01.000 But I don't think that Bernie retains all those delegates.

00:17:04.000 Because remember, all the polls are being done now about all of those states, but those states are time-delayed.

00:17:09.000 It goes Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, and then on Wednesday you have California, Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, Virginia, Minnesota, and Maine.

00:17:19.000 And Vermont.

00:17:21.000 And Massachusetts, which presumably Warren will win since she's a senator from there. 0.98

00:17:24.000 If Elizabeth Warren emerges as the serious challenger from Iowa and New Hampshire and Bernie doesn't win either of those states, I think Bernie's toast.

00:17:32.000 I think at that point Bernie is done and you can take a lot of those delegates, those 286 delegates, and you can toss them to Elizabeth Warren.

00:17:39.000 According to that CBS News YouGov poll, state by state in vote preference, New Hampshire now sees Warren just slightly up over Biden and Sanders in first choice preference there, which is a change for her.

00:17:48.000 Remember, she was underperforming in New Hampshire as of a couple of weeks ago.

00:17:52.000 They say that that's a three-way contest, but that's not a three-way contest.

00:17:55.000 If Elizabeth Warren wins Iowa, and she already is running even with Biden and Sanders in that state, then she wins that state too. 0.67

00:18:04.000 Biden holds a small edge over Sanders in first-choice preference in Iowa.

00:18:07.000 Sanders has a narrow edge over Biden in Nevada.

00:18:09.000 But where is Elizabeth Warren in these states? 1.00

00:18:12.000 Well, she has the best on-the-ground organization in Iowa.

00:18:15.000 She trails substantially by 9 to 12 points in Iowa.

00:18:18.000 She trails Bernie by 9.

00:18:20.000 She trails Biden by 12 in Iowa.

00:18:22.000 But the smart money says that that is under-polling her supporters. 1.00

00:18:26.000 Remember, Iowa is a caucus state.

00:18:28.000 You recall back in 2008, Hillary Clinton was expected to win Iowa over Barack Obama and Barack Obama won instead.

00:18:34.000 There were suspicions that that may have not been entirely on the up and up.

00:18:37.000 South Carolina, Joe Biden has a wide lead.

00:18:40.000 He's at 43% compared to Bernie at 18 and Elizabeth Warren at 14.

00:18:43.000 But again, that relies somewhat on momentum.

00:18:47.000 Remember that Ted Cruz won South Carolina, I believe, last time around, and it was widely perceived that Ted Cruz was going to have some sort of firewall.

00:18:55.000 Whenever a candidate talks about a firewall, I have yet to see a candidate with a quote-unquote firewall where the firewall holds.

00:19:01.000 Right now, Bernie Sanders is up slightly in Nevada, 29 to 27 over Joe Biden, but Elizabeth Warren's at 18, which means she is in striking distance.

00:19:09.000 Overall, in the early contest, it is now Elizabeth Warren 26, Joe Biden 25, Bernie Sanders 19.

00:19:15.000 And it is likely that Bernie Sanders is going to continue to recede and Elizabeth Warren is going to increase.

00:19:21.000 According to CBS News, Biden support has largely held and even risen in some places like in Iowa.

00:19:27.000 So the movement toward Warren is not attrition from Biden, but of lower tier candidates losing supporter who have gone to Warren or in lesser numbers to Sanders.

00:19:34.000 For instance, Warren has benefited most from former Kamala Harris' supporter switching their allegiance.

00:19:40.000 29% were backing Harris in July, whom we re-interviewed for the study of switch to Warren.

00:19:44.000 Biden only picked up 15%.

00:19:46.000 Warren is also under consideration by more Democrats, 60% than Biden is, 50%.

00:19:51.000 Biden does better than Warren in being named the first choice, but she is best among second choice candidates. 0.57

00:19:57.000 And again, it's really about electability.

00:19:58.000 And as the polls change for Elizabeth Warren on that front, that is very bad news for Joe Biden, meaning he has to continue making the case that Warren can't be Trump.

00:20:06.000 That's really what this is about.

00:20:07.000 And that case, by the way, is extremely strong that Warren cannot beat Trump.

00:20:11.000 It's a very strong case.

00:20:12.000 But among Democratic voters, the perception has been growing that Elizabeth Warren would probably win against Trump. 0.80

00:20:17.000 As of June, only 39% of Democratic voters, considering Warren, said that they thought that she could probably win against Trump.

00:20:23.000 Now it is 55%.

00:20:27.000 58% of Sanders supporters think he would probably beat Trump.

00:20:31.000 Overall, most Democrats are pretty optimistic that somebody, anybody they nominate will beat Trump.

00:20:37.000 So again, I think that, and here's, I mean, as I say, the self-flattering assumption by the media is reflected in their media coverage, and that of course shapes public opinion.

00:20:47.000 One of the numbers in this poll that really says a lot is that when asked which candidate is the most knowledgeable, it says Warren at 42%, Biden and Sanders tied at 24. 0.98

00:20:56.000 And that is because when you just keep repeating over and over and over again that Warren has a plan, it doesn't matter if the plan is crap.

00:21:04.000 And then there's a third question, which is whether age is a concern. 0.93

00:21:10.000 66% of Democrats say that Joe Biden That age is not a concern, but 31% say that he's too old.

00:21:17.000 37% say that Sanders is too old.

00:21:19.000 Only 5% of Democrats say that Warren is too old.

00:21:21.000 So more evidence of Joe Biden stumbling and bumbling about the campaign trail is not going to be good for him either.

00:21:26.000 And 46% of Democrats say that they would be enthusiastic about Elizabeth Warren as the candidate compared to 38% for Sanders and only 29% for Joe Biden.

00:21:37.000 So again, these are bad numbers for Joe Biden.

00:21:39.000 He looks very weak.

00:21:41.000 Right now, among Democrats, they ask which message is more attractive to you.

00:21:46.000 You want a candidate who is more progressive than Obama?

00:21:48.000 Or a return to the country before Trump?

00:21:50.000 Only 40% said they want a return to normalcy.

00:21:53.000 60% said they want a more progressive candidate than Barack Obama was.

00:22:00.000 So these are bad numbers.

00:22:01.000 Bad numbers for Joe Biden.

00:22:03.000 Joe Biden is weak.

00:22:05.000 And again, I don't think that Warren is really going to go after Biden in a serious way.

00:22:10.000 I think she's just going to assume that Biden is going to fade into the Brigadoon-like fog.

00:22:14.000 And I think that she's probably correct about that.

00:22:17.000 Now, there's a problem, which is that all of you talk about Elizabeth Warren being supremely honest and non-Clintonian is a lie.

00:22:25.000 That's a real problem for her because she has yet to meet serious public scrutiny. 0.98

00:22:30.000 Remember, the Elizabeth Warren who built up a public profile from 2003 to 2008 is not the same as the Elizabeth Warren now running for president.

00:22:37.000 We talked about this last week.

00:22:39.000 The Elizabeth Warren from 2003 to 2008 was actually a fairly interesting progressive figure who thought differently on school vouchers and student loans.

00:22:46.000 Who thought seriously about issues like bankruptcy.

00:22:49.000 Now she's just a rubber stamp progressive who sounds a lot like Bernie Sanders.

00:22:54.000 And here's the proof.

00:22:55.000 Today, there's a piece from Jonathan Allen and NBC News talking about how Warren and Clinton are talking behind the scenes.

00:23:02.000 Which is Warren's worst nightmare, right?

00:23:03.000 Is that she's perceived as the second coming of Hillary Clinton. 1.00

00:23:06.000 That is not what you want to be.

00:23:08.000 According to Jonathan Allen, Elizabeth Warren's team doesn't want to talk about Hillary Clinton, but that doesn't mean the 2020 presidential candidate isn't talking with her party's 2016 nominee.

00:23:17.000 The two women have kept a line of communication open since the Massachusetts senator decided to run for president, though only a conversation around the time of Warren's launch has been previously reported, according to several people familiar with their discussions, who spoke to NBC on the condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of private interactions.

00:23:34.000 It's hard to know exactly how many times they've reached out to each other, or precisely what they've discussed, in part because neither camp wants to reveal much of anything about their interaction.

00:23:42.000 And in part because they have each other's phone numbers, and there are many ways for two high-powered politicians to communicate that don't involve their staffs.

00:23:49.000 One source was aware of just one additional call between Warren and Clinton since then, but a person close to Clinton said the contact has been substantial enough to merit attention, describing a conversation between the two as seemingly recent because it was front of mind for her.

00:24:01.000 That has clearly not gone unnoticed.

00:24:02.000 I think she really appreciates that, the person close to Clinton said.

00:24:06.000 Well, Warren making overtures to Clinton is definitely different than Warren just a few years ago.

00:24:12.000 I'll explain momentarily.

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00:25:23.000 So again, Elizabeth Warren is now reaching out to Hillary Clinton.

00:25:27.000 This is very different from Elizabeth Warren talking about Hillary Clinton as of her book, The Two Income Trap, in 2003.

00:25:36.000 Glenn Kessler wrote about this for the Washington Post just a couple of years ago.

00:25:43.000 He said Warren noted that Hillary Clinton had received $140,000 in campaign contributions from banking industry executives as she sought a Senate seat.

00:25:50.000 Why was that relevant?

00:25:51.000 Because she talks about how she had met with Hillary Clinton about a bankruptcy bill in the early 90s.

00:25:57.000 And she praised Hillary Clinton as extremely bright.

00:26:00.000 She called her, quote, impatient, lightning quick, interested in all the nuances.

00:26:06.000 And then, it turns out that Hillary voted against the bill, or in favor of the bill that Elizabeth Warren opposed, and she tore into her in the two-income trap. 0.98

00:26:15.000 She said the bill was essentially the same, but Hillary Rodham Clinton was not.

00:26:18.000 Hillary could not afford such a principled position. 0.99

00:26:20.000 Campaigns cost money, and that money wasn't coming from families in financial trouble.

00:26:23.000 Here's Elizabeth Warren, circa 2004, talking about how Hillary Clinton is basically a corrupt figure. 0.99

00:26:28.000 She was then first lady.

00:26:30.000 This is in the 1990s, late 1990s.

00:26:33.000 Mrs. Clinton saw the piece, and I got a call from the White House.

00:26:38.000 I go over the law.

00:26:39.000 It's a complex law.

00:26:41.000 Went over the economics, showed her the graphs, showed her the charts, and she got it.

00:26:46.000 She turned around a whole administration on the subject of bankruptcy.

00:26:50.000 She got it.

00:26:51.000 And then?

00:26:52.000 One of the first bills that came up after she was Senator Clinton was the bankruptcy bill.

00:26:59.000 Her husband had vetoed it very much at her urging.

00:27:03.000 And?

00:27:04.000 She voted in favor of it.

00:27:06.000 As Senator Clinton, the pressures are very different.

00:27:10.000 Okay, so this is Warren back when she was honest.

00:27:13.000 Right now, you got Elizabeth Warren making phone calls to Hillary Clinton, now they're best friends. 1.00

00:27:17.000 And Elizabeth Warren has shifted her own positions on a variety of issues ranging from the subsidization of college education to school choice because the pressures of being a senator or a presidential candidate are very different. 0.99

00:27:28.000 Now, this does pose a problem for the Democrats because the fact is that most people in the country are not on board with all of the progressive views on all of the issues.

00:27:36.000 David Leonhardt, Has a piece in the New York Times today talking about this.

00:27:39.000 He is on the left and he says it's not that progressivism can't win.

00:27:43.000 He's saying that there are certain progressive issues that are deeply unpopular and they should be.

00:27:48.000 He points out a couple of issues as an example.

00:27:50.000 He says the first is the idea of decriminalizing border crossings so that the illegal entry into this country would only be a civil violation.

00:27:57.000 Supporters of the idea, says Leonhardt, make intricate, technocratic arguments about how decriminalization won't make the border less secure.

00:28:04.000 But most voters tune out.

00:28:05.000 They don't buy the long explanations for why the policy doesn't mean what it certainly seems to mean, less border enforcement.

00:28:11.000 In an NPR-PBS NewsHour Marist poll, 67% of registered voters called decriminalization a bad idea.

00:28:19.000 When it comes to slavery reparations, 63% of Americans call it a bad idea.

00:28:23.000 When it comes to replacing private insurance, 55% say it's a bad idea.

00:28:28.000 When it comes to free public college, 51% say it's a good idea, but 45% say it's a bad idea.

00:28:35.000 In other words, there are a lot of issues where people are generally in favor of progressive principles until they get the details in which place they switch.

00:28:43.000 But Democrats' advantage on general election-directed questions has been fading.

00:28:50.000 David Leonhardt points out that slightly more voters say that the ideas being offered by the Democratic candidates would now hurt the country more than would help the country, according to that NPR poll.

00:29:01.000 As of September 2018, 53% of Americans had a favorable view of the Democratic Party versus 42% unfavorable.

00:29:11.000 43% had a favorable view of the Republican Party compared to 52% unfavorable.

00:29:17.000 As of September 2019, fast forward a year, the two parties are now identical.

00:29:21.000 45% of Americans say that they are favorable toward one of the parties.

00:29:26.000 52% of Americans say they're unfavorable toward one of the two parties.

00:29:30.000 Meaning that basically the parties are now on even footing.

00:29:34.000 So all of the talk about Elizabeth Warren this and Elizabeth Warren that, as she skews radical, it's going to be unpopular.

00:29:41.000 And this is the problem inside the Democratic primaries.

00:29:43.000 What is going to create victory in a Democratic primary may be mutually exclusive with what creates victory for Democrats in a general election.

00:29:51.000 Take, for example, Beto O'Rourke.

00:29:52.000 So Beto O'Rourke is basically John Cusack in Say Anything, standing outside the Democratic process holding a boombox.

00:30:00.000 And what that means is that he is the most enthusiastically crude of all the candidates.

00:30:05.000 He has no nuance to his ideas.

00:30:07.000 He doesn't have any sort of attempt to round off the hard edges.

00:30:12.000 Instead, he just spits out.

00:30:13.000 He's sort of like younger Bernie Sanders.

00:30:15.000 I mean, down to the hands.

00:30:17.000 And here is Beto O'Rourke talking about what he thinks the Democratic primary voters want to hear. 0.52

00:30:22.000 America is a violent, racist country.

00:30:24.000 That's a hell of a campaign slogan there, Beto. 0.94

00:30:27.000 This is a violent country that loses more than 40,000 of our fellow Americans every year to gun violence.

00:30:33.000 And this is a country that has been defined by foundational, systemic, endemic racism since the very founding of this country, August 20th of 1619.

00:30:44.000 The first time that a kidnapped African was brought here against his will and made to serve as a slave to build the greatness and the success and the wealth of this country, which his descendants would never be able to fully participate in. 0.52

00:30:58.000 This is the reality of the United States of America.

00:31:01.000 And sooner or later, it was going to find us.

00:31:04.000 Okay, I mean, that's a hell of a campaign slogan. 1.00

00:31:06.000 America was founded in crap, and now it's still crap, and it was gonna come back to haunt us. 0.99

00:31:11.000 That sounds great, Beto. 1.00

00:31:13.000 I mean, dude needs to go back to his Ivy League education, where his rich parents paid for, and smoke a bong and chill. 1.00

00:31:21.000 Because he is just He's ridiculous. 0.99

00:31:24.000 And then Beto went further. 0.99

00:31:25.000 He said we should legalize 10 million illegal immigrants.

00:31:27.000 This is a hell of a campaign slogan right here from Beto O'Rourke.

00:31:30.000 But again, Beto thinks that he is representing the id of the Democratic Party. 0.97

00:31:33.000 He's hoping that if he says the F word a lot, if he just says, bruh, F it, if he says that a lot, and then he also says America sucks, that he'll somehow win the nomination.

00:31:42.000 We're going to legalize the presence of more than 10 million in the United States, beginning with DREAMers who will never again fear deportation back to a country they do not know, because we will make them U.S.

00:31:53.000 citizens in this, their true home country.

00:31:57.000 OK, so again, if this is where the Democratic Party wants to go and Elizabeth Warren is closer to this than she is to Joe Biden, that's a real problem for Rahm Emanuel, who is the chief of staff to Barack Obama and is certainly no right winger.

00:32:10.000 He says, listen, these positions are untenable.

00:32:11.000 You are not going to be able to win a general election on these bases.

00:32:15.000 We've taken a position so far, and the candidates have, through the process, a few have not, about basically Medicare for All, which is we're going to eliminate 150 million people's health care, and we're going to provide health care for people that just come over the border. 0.99

00:32:27.000 That is an untenable position for the general election.

00:32:31.000 Okay, and of course Rahm Emanuel is exactly right.

00:32:33.000 That's coming from a guy who is so passionate about his left-wing agenda, he used to drop dead—he was literally called Dead Fish Emanuel.

00:32:38.000 He would drop dead fish In the in like the lockers of Congress people that he didn't like in order to try to get them to vote with him, like to threaten them when he was in Congress.

00:32:48.000 I mean, that that guy is not a softie on politics by any measure.

00:32:53.000 And he's looking at the Democratic Party going, you guys are skewing way too far to the left.

00:32:56.000 And that right there is the problem for Elizabeth Warren.

00:32:58.000 Now, in a second, we're going to talk about the Republican case for 2020.

00:33:01.000 And again, This is all about, can the president control himself?

00:33:06.000 Can he control himself?

00:33:07.000 Because if he could, then he would be in pretty good shape going forward.

00:33:10.000 But we'll get to that in just one second.

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00:34:42.000 Well, we'll get to more of all of this in just one second.

00:34:45.000 First, Go subscribe over at dailywire.com.

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00:35:19.000 Well, before we leave the Democrats entirely, I would be remiss if I did not point out that the most incompetent candidate on the Democratic side of the aisle is not, in fact, Joe Biden.

00:35:36.000 It is Kamala Harris.

00:35:38.000 Remember that time when Kamala Harris seemed like she was skyrocketing toward the nomination? 0.99

00:35:41.000 Remember there was that first debate where she talked about busing and she attacked Joe Biden.

00:35:45.000 Everyone's like, wow, that was incredible.

00:35:47.000 And then it turns out she's terrible at this.

00:35:50.000 Well, she's truly terrible at this.

00:35:51.000 And over the weekend, she proved again that she is terrible at this.

00:35:54.000 She was campaigning and a person got up So I don't buy that argument that impeachment does not make sense, Senate will acquit.

00:36:01.000 I don't buy that argument.

00:36:02.000 There needs to be accountability.

00:36:04.000 Harris heard this and laughed.

00:36:06.000 Again, it's not a question as to whether she heard this.

00:36:07.000 She obviously heard this.

00:36:08.000 She responded directly to the comment.

00:36:11.000 Here is the original clip. - So I don't buy that argument that impeachment does not make sense, Senate will acquit.

00:36:17.000 I don't buy that argument.

00:36:19.000 There needs to be accountability.

00:36:20.000 I mean, what are you gonna do in the next one year to diminish the mentally retarded action of this guy? - Well said. 1.00

00:36:32.000 Well said.

00:36:35.000 Well, I plan to win this election, I'll tell you that.

00:36:38.000 Well said, guys.

00:36:39.000 Well said.

00:36:40.000 What do you do to plan to diminish the mentally retarded faction of this country, the guy says, and she says, well said. 1.00

00:36:45.000 I mean, she is in favor of eugenic abortion. 0.98

00:36:47.000 So that would be one thing, presumably, that should be in favor of because she's a terrible person who believes terrible things.

00:36:52.000 But I mean, the term mentally retarded, I'm old enough to remember when that was considered a really, really bad thing because it is a bad thing. 0.99

00:37:00.000 Mocking people who have a mental disability is a ridiculous, ridiculous thing. 0.99

00:37:06.000 Now, here's the funny part, right? 1.00

00:37:08.000 Kamala Harris is asked about this and then she's like, well, I never heard it.

00:37:11.000 You literally responded to the guy.

00:37:13.000 You literally responded to that human being.

00:37:15.000 Because that like, come on, come on. 0.91

00:37:18.000 Who are you going to believe?

00:37:19.000 Kamala Harris or your own eyes and ears? 0.86

00:37:22.000 Here's Kamala Harris now apologizing for this. 1.00

00:37:24.000 It's offensive and you would think that in the year 2019, people would have a much better understanding of how hurtful a term like that can be, but also the history behind it, for this.

00:37:24.000 It's offensive and you would think that in the year 2019 people would have a much better understanding of how hurtful a term like that can be but also the history behind it which is a history of really ignoring the needs and the realities and the capacity of our disability community.

00:37:45.000 You didn't correct him though.

00:37:48.000 Did you hear him?

00:37:50.000 I heard him talk about the other stuff and then that came later and it was not something that I really heard or processed or in any way condoned.

00:38:04.000 Oh really?

00:38:05.000 Right.

00:38:05.000 Really?

00:38:06.000 Is that what happened right there?

00:38:07.000 Look, in my family, we actually take this issue fairly seriously.

00:38:10.000 My grandfather used to work with Easter Seals, which is a group that worked with people who had mental disabilities.

00:38:14.000 My mom, when she first started out, did special education for kids. 1.00

00:38:17.000 Like, it's a pretty serious issue.

00:38:20.000 Kamala Harris, pretending that she didn't hear the end of that.

00:38:23.000 Remember when Donald Trump does that sort of stuff?

00:38:24.000 It's the end of the world, right?

00:38:25.000 When you have somebody who says something bad about illegal immigrants, and then he says, well, I guess you can do that when he says, Yeah, I guess you can do that in Florida. 0.84

00:38:32.000 Get away with that in the panhandle.

00:38:34.000 And everybody's like, oh, that was really bad.

00:38:35.000 Because it was bad. 0.87

00:38:36.000 And then Kamala Harris responds directly to a person who calls a vast swath of the voting public mentally retarded.

00:38:42.000 And then she's like, well, I didn't hear that part.

00:38:44.000 You know the part he said directly to me.

00:38:46.000 So how do the media cover this?

00:38:48.000 If this doesn't tell you everything you need to know about the way the media covered this, NBC News' headline.

00:38:54.000 You ready? 0.95

00:38:55.000 Senator Harris apologizes for appearing to laugh in response to men who describe President Trump's actions as mentally retarded. 0.98

00:39:01.000 Appearing to laugh. 0.66

00:39:03.000 Appearing.

00:39:04.000 Like, appeared.

00:39:06.000 She laughed.

00:39:07.000 We saw it.

00:39:08.000 We heard it.

00:39:10.000 Appeared.

00:39:11.000 It's all good.

00:39:12.000 It's all good, guys.

00:39:14.000 Well done, media.

00:39:15.000 Okay, now, to the Republican side of the aisle.

00:39:17.000 Now, the fact is that democratic radicalism should be an opportunity for President Trump.

00:39:21.000 As I have been saying for years on end, all President Trump has to do is be quiet.

00:39:26.000 That's all he has to do.

00:39:27.000 Because it turns out that reality has a fairly conservative bent on issues like illegal immigration, You know, saying that we should keep track of the people who are in the country, that we should make sure that we know who is entering the country, this seems like it makes a certain amount of root sense, especially when you get stories like this one out of Montgomery County.

00:39:45.000 According to Dan Morse, Montgomery County's top elected official Mark Elrich stood before a bank of TV cameras this summer to praise the county's diversity and promise the most limited of cooperation with federal immigration agents.

00:39:57.000 I'd say we've learned how to manage immigration pretty well, he said, without a lot of drama and nonsense.

00:40:01.000 Since then, there's been plenty of both, at least according to the opposing sides of a roiling political debate centered on the left-leaning Maryland jurisdiction.

00:40:09.000 National attention has fallen on Montgomery in large part because over the five-week stretch since the county executive's pronouncement, seven undocumented immigrants living in the county were arrested on sex assault charges.

00:40:19.000 Two were accused of raping the same 11-year-old girl, according to the Washington Post.

00:40:23.000 Another reportedly tried to kill his victim by choking her in a hallway of her apartment building.

00:40:27.000 By Friday afternoon, Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of ICE, tweeted, a debate challenge to Elrich over the merits of what Cuccinelli described as the county's sanctuary protection policies for undocumented immigrants.

00:40:38.000 Cuccinelli wrote, quote, I'll defend children and crime victims.

00:40:41.000 Elrich can defend rapists and murderers who shouldn't even be in this country.

00:40:44.000 Elrich then shot back, it's a stunt.

00:40:46.000 I might debate him if he'd agree with the statement that Montgomery County is not a sanctuary city and that Montgomery County is not protecting criminals.

00:40:52.000 The guys in jail would probably not feel very protected.

00:40:55.000 Yeah, except that when you don't cooperate with the federal government on immigration, sometimes you're not keeping track of illegal immigrants who go on to commit crimes.

00:41:02.000 These are all issues where Republicans should have an advantage.

00:41:04.000 Instead, we got a week of controversy over whether President Trump used a sharpie on a map.

00:41:10.000 Now, on the issues, again, even the left, David Leonhardt is saying on illegal immigration, on racial reparations, on getting rid of private healthcare insurance, the Democrats are way out of tune.

00:41:20.000 Shouldn't Trump just be hammering that over and over?

00:41:22.000 Instead, we got a week of controversy over whether the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration was actually right or wrong in their assessment of a threat level of a hurricane hitting Alabama.

00:41:36.000 A week of this.

00:41:38.000 A week of this.

00:41:39.000 And the news continues to break that the NOAA basically acted in order to avoid damaging President Trump's fragile ego.

00:41:46.000 This is a waste of time.

00:41:47.000 It's a waste of energy.

00:41:49.000 And the fact that people on Twitter keep defending it demonstrates that they don't understand that Twitter is not real life.

00:41:54.000 And winning the Twitter battle does not mean winning an election.

00:41:57.000 Andrew Friedman, Colby Itkowitz, and Jason Samenow.

00:42:00.000 I love that the Washington Post put three reporters on this.

00:42:03.000 NOAA staff warned in September 1st directive against contradicting Trump, nearly a week before the NOAA publicly backed President Trump over its own scientists.

00:42:11.000 A top NOAA official warned its staff against contradicting the president.

00:42:14.000 In an agency-wide directive sent September 1st to National Weather Service personnel hours after Trump asserted, with no evidence, that Alabama would most likely be hit much harder than anticipated, staff was told to only stick with official National Hurricane Center forecasts if questions arise on some national-level social media posts, which hit the news this afternoon.

00:42:32.000 They were also told not to provide any opinion, according to a copy of the email obtained by the Washington Post.

00:42:39.000 An NOAA meteorologist who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution said the note was understood initially to be referring to Trump and came after the National Weather Service office in Birmingham contradicted Trump by tweeting that Alabama would not see any impact from the hurricane.

00:42:54.000 So the NOAA sent a note saying, let's just stick with the National Hurricane Center forecast and we won't, and we won't, you know, contradict Trump.

00:43:02.000 Any attempt to shield Trump's ego, honestly, I don't see the purpose of it.

00:43:06.000 I really don't. 0.98

00:43:06.000 The fact is that President Trump, for all the talk about him being thin-skinned, dude takes more crap than any other politician I've ever seen in my life. 0.98

00:43:13.000 And guess what? 0.99

00:43:13.000 He's still there. 0.99

00:43:14.000 He hasn't gone anywhere, has he?

00:43:16.000 And yet, this attempt to sort of shield him, it ends up creating worse headlines than if you just let Trump own it.

00:43:22.000 If Trump just went, OK, screw that one up, you know, I guess I was out of the loop.

00:43:28.000 The Democrats would still attack him, but they wouldn't have any place to go because most people would be like, what are they attacking him over?

00:43:32.000 It's just a screw up.

00:43:33.000 Who cares?

00:43:34.000 Who cares?

00:43:35.000 Meanwhile, it is amusing to watch as other Republicans seem to believe that they can jump in against President Trump in this race.

00:43:42.000 So Mark Sanford, the former Republican governor of South Carolina, Remember that time when he was governor of South Carolina and then he went traveling the Appalachian Trail.

00:43:53.000 That was his euphemism for sleeping with his mistress in South America.

00:43:56.000 And then he had to resign.

00:43:57.000 And then he ran for Congress again.

00:43:59.000 Well, now he's back and he wants to run for president.

00:44:01.000 And he was expecting the strange new respect of the media.

00:44:05.000 It is incredible to watch Republicans expect strange new respect.

00:44:09.000 They really believe that the media are going to treat them with kid gloves because, after all, many in the media hate President Trump.

00:44:14.000 That means that if someone runs against Trump, they should like them.

00:44:16.000 But that's not how this works.

00:44:17.000 That's not how this works.

00:44:19.000 You're not going to receive the strange new respect of the media for running against Trump.

00:44:22.000 The fact is, many in the media would like to link every Republican with President Trump, as Democrats are attempting to do in Texas, where Trump is less popular than the Republican Party overall.

00:44:31.000 Also, Mark Sanford, like, why is he running?

00:44:33.000 Chris Wallace basically asked him this question, and Sanford didn't have a great answer.

00:44:37.000 The mistakes in life, the mistakes that we make are the great tuitions of life.

00:44:42.000 They cost us, but you can learn from them.

00:44:44.000 And for me, I learned a level of humility, a level of empathy that I didn't have before, a level of judgment.

00:44:50.000 It is something of great regret.

00:44:52.000 It's something I've apologized extensively for.

00:44:55.000 And in contrast to the President, where he says there's not a single thing that he sort of regrets or apologizes for, I profoundly apologize for that.

00:45:03.000 OK, that's always a great campaign slogan.

00:45:05.000 I profoundly apologize for that.

00:45:07.000 Sanford 2020.

00:45:08.000 Good luck with all of that.

00:45:10.000 Now, again, I don't think that Trump is going to be substantially challenged from inside the party.

00:45:13.000 I know that Matt Drudge is headlining with Sanford.

00:45:15.000 Having another challenger like Joe Walsh and Mark Sanford are going to do any damage to Trump.

00:45:19.000 That obviously is not going to be a thing.

00:45:22.000 The real damage to Trump in the end is not going to come from somebody outside Trump.

00:45:26.000 It's going to come from Trump himself.

00:45:27.000 And a good example of this happened over the weekend.

00:45:29.000 So President Trump was apparently planning to negotiate with the Taliban.

00:45:33.000 This has been going on for a while.

00:45:35.000 And a lot of people I know in the military and in the foreign policy Sort of hallways of power.

00:45:41.000 We're very skeptical of this, as well they should be. 0.93

00:45:43.000 The Taliban is a terrorist group. 0.95

00:45:45.000 The Taliban is a terror-supporting group. 0.86

00:45:46.000 That is why we went into Afghanistan in the first place.

00:45:49.000 After 9-11, the United States, under George W. Bush, offered the Taliban an opportunity to turn over Osama bin Laden.

00:45:55.000 They refused.

00:45:56.000 Afghanistan then was put on our bleep list and then we invaded. 0.98

00:45:59.000 Well now, Donald Trump is trying to negotiate directly with the Taliban.

00:46:02.000 Now, Barack Obama tried to do the same thing, and I criticized him for it because you're literally negotiating with some of the worst people on Earth to accomplish what?

00:46:09.000 The return to power of the Taliban?

00:46:12.000 You think that's a great idea?

00:46:13.000 Well, Donald Trump was apparently secretly negotiating with the Taliban, and they were even going to get together at Camp David the week of 9-11, which is just... I mean, what?

00:46:20.000 Those optics are just awful, right?

00:46:22.000 Chris Wallace pointed this out.

00:46:23.000 He said, why are we inviting the Taliban to the United States on 9-11?

00:46:27.000 How is this a good idea?

00:46:28.000 We don't think that back home in the region they would take advantage of the fact that they were at Camp David on the 18th anniversary of 9-11.

00:46:35.000 We're kidding ourselves.

00:46:36.000 Enormous psychological... But that was going to be true whether or not they had, you know, killed this one U.S.

00:46:42.000 soldier or not.

00:46:43.000 That's why I questioned the whole idea of holding a meeting.

00:46:45.000 He talks about, well, this deal would bring peace, but it wasn't going to bring peace.

00:46:49.000 I mean, as we know the outlines of it, there was no national ceasefire.

00:46:53.000 There was no assurance that there was going to be a deal between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

00:47:00.000 There was no guarantee that they were going to protect women.

00:47:04.000 I mean, the deal as we saw, the tentative deal in principle, did that make sense?

00:47:09.000 And the answer is the tentative deal in principle did not make any sense.

00:47:12.000 President Trump blew it up over the weekend.

00:47:14.000 Now again, blowing up a bad deal is not a bad thing.

00:47:17.000 Announcing secret negotiations and blowing them up at the same time is not particularly smart foreign policy.

00:47:22.000 Trump tweeted out, unbeknownst to almost everyone, the major Taliban leaders and separately the president of Afghanistan were going to secretly meet with me at Camp David on Sunday.

00:47:29.000 Nothing says secret meeting quite like blowing it up on Twitter.

00:47:32.000 Said they were coming to the United States tonight.

00:47:34.000 Unfortunately, in order to build false leverage, they admitted to an attack in Kabul that killed one of our great, great soldiers and 11 other people.

00:47:41.000 I immediately canceled the meeting and called off peace negotiations.

00:47:43.000 What kind of people would kill so many in order to seemingly strengthen their bargaining position?

00:47:47.000 They didn't.

00:47:48.000 They only made it worse.

00:47:49.000 If they cannot agree to a ceasefire during these very important peace talks and would even kill 12 innocent people, then they probably don't have the power to negotiate a meaningful agreement anyway.

00:47:57.000 How many more decades are they willing to fight?

00:47:59.000 Well, I mean, the answer is you're negotiating with them, right?

00:48:03.000 So a lot.

00:48:04.000 Also, what kind of people would kill an American soldier?

00:48:07.000 What kind of people would shield al Qaeda?

00:48:08.000 What are you what are you talking about?

00:48:10.000 What are you talking about?

00:48:12.000 You're literally talking... Why are the Taliban such bad people?

00:48:15.000 I have an idea, like right here, in the back.

00:48:17.000 I have an idea of the Taliban being bad people.

00:48:19.000 Is this like a great shot?

00:48:20.000 I can't believe that the Taliban betrayed the principles of our... Really?

00:48:25.000 Really?

00:48:27.000 According to the New York Times, on the Friday before Labor Day, President Trump gathered top advisors in the Situation Room to consider what could be among the profound decisions of his presidency, a peace plan with the Taliban after 18 years of grinding bloody war in Afghanistan.

00:48:39.000 The meeting brought to a head a bristling conflict dividing his foreign policy team for months, pitting Secretary of State Mike Pompeo against John Bolton, the National Security Advisor.

00:48:48.000 As they discussed the terms of the agreement, Pompeo and his negotiator made the case that it would enable Trump to begin withdrawing troops while securing a commitment from the Taliban not to shelter terrorists.

00:48:57.000 Bolton argued that Trump should keep his campaign pledge to draw down forces without getting in bed with killers swathed in American blood.

00:49:05.000 Trump made no decision on the spot.

00:49:07.000 At some point during the meeting, the idea was floated to finalize the negotiations in Washington, a prospect that appealed to the president's penchant for dramatic spectacle.

00:49:14.000 Trump suggested he would even invite President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan, whose government had not been part of the talks, and get him to sign on.

00:49:22.000 And then he wanted to bring the Taliban to Camp David, the crown jewel of the American presidency. 0.94

00:49:26.000 All of this was bad ideas.

00:49:28.000 Bad ideas.

00:49:29.000 Because it was all about spectacle and not about content.

00:49:32.000 As I say, The president's worst enemy in 2020 is, as always, the president.

00:49:39.000 Because he's done well on a lot of fronts.

00:49:42.000 He's done well when it comes to judges.

00:49:43.000 He's done well when it comes to the economy.

00:49:45.000 He's done well when it comes to regulations.

00:49:47.000 But his instinct for the dramatic is a real negative for him and it could hurt him badly come 2020.

00:49:55.000 Okay, time for some things I like and then things I hate.

00:49:57.000 So, things that I like.

00:49:58.000 So, if you're interested in a lot of the stories that have been coming out about AI and it's about the nature of the human brain and the possibility of networking in with other brains.

00:50:08.000 There was a story this week about this, about how it could change human existence as we know it.

00:50:11.000 You could read each other's thoughts and it could create network thinking and all of this.

00:50:15.000 It may raise some serious questions about free will, And the soul.

00:50:18.000 And this brings to mind a book that I recently read by J.P.

00:50:22.000 Moreland, who's a philosophy professor over at Biola University, and it's called The Soul, How We Know It's Real and Why It Matters.

00:50:27.000 Now, this is kind of a fascinating conversation, because obviously if you're a materialist, you believe that the brain is all there is, there is no such thing as a soul.

00:50:35.000 Mental phenomena are basically just what they have termed to be outgrowths of just mental activity.

00:50:45.000 They are kind of false positives that effectively your mental activity, your feeling of consciousness is not real.

00:50:52.000 It's just your brain firing.

00:50:53.000 It's just neurons firing.

00:50:54.000 There's nothing separate.

00:50:55.000 You don't have free will.

00:50:55.000 You can't make your own decisions.

00:50:56.000 I think this is a really interesting and important debate.

00:50:59.000 And as part of the debate, you should check out J.P. Moreland's book, The Soul, because the fact is if we don't have free will, that has some pretty significant ramifications for our politics and for our decision making.

00:51:08.000 If we don't have the capacity to think freely, if biology is all there is and there's no afterlife, that changes the math a bit.

00:51:14.000 All of these are interesting and fascinating debates that lie at the root of Western civilization, as I talk about in my own book, The Right Side of History.

00:51:20.000 This book is well worth reading, J.P.

00:51:22.000 Moreland.

00:51:22.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.

00:51:28.000 So now we're in the game of playing according to the media.

00:51:31.000 We are going to play who took a picture with whom.

00:51:33.000 Now, it's funny.

00:51:33.000 We didn't play this for years when there were pictures of Barack Obama with Louis Farrakhan.

00:51:36.000 And it was like, oh, you know, he's an event, man.

00:51:38.000 Like, why are you making a big deal out of Barack Obama with Louis Farrakhan?

00:51:41.000 He's just Bill Ayers, just some guy from the neighborhood.

00:51:44.000 You know, Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright, you know, he went to his church, but did he really mean it?

00:51:48.000 Sure, he titled the second book after a speech from Jeremiah Wright, but did that really mean anything?

00:51:54.000 Well, now we're in the business of you took a picture with a guy once.

00:51:56.000 That means that you and he are in absolute cahoots.

00:51:59.000 I've experienced this myself, right?

00:52:01.000 I was in a picture with Steve King because I went and I spoke at a congressional breakfast in Washington, D.C.

00:52:06.000 This would have been two, three years ago before Steve King's big blow about white nationalism.

00:52:11.000 And so every time Steve King is in the news, people throw that picture out there as though there aren't pictures of me with literally dozens of Congress people, including with some Democrats.

00:52:18.000 Right?

00:52:18.000 You know, but apparently that's the way this now works, is that if they can catch you in a picture with somebody, very bad.

00:52:23.000 They did this to Jordan Peterson also.

00:52:25.000 Jordan Peterson was in a picture with a guy who's wearing a shirt about Islamophobia. 0.95

00:52:28.000 That was a silly shirt.

00:52:29.000 And Jordan got in trouble because the guy wore a shirt. 0.89

00:52:32.000 Okay, now this is the way that this is going to be played.

00:52:34.000 So now they're doing this with Lindsey Graham.

00:52:36.000 So Lindsey Graham, according to the Washington Post, appeared in a photo with Gert Wilders, a controversial Dutch parliamentary leader with anti-Islam and anti-immigrant views, while both attended a European security conference in Italy.

00:52:47.000 Wow, they were in a picture together?

00:52:49.000 That's unbelievable.

00:52:50.000 I mean, that must mean, you know, there are pictures of me with people on the left.

00:52:54.000 That must mean that I'm on the left, obviously.

00:52:56.000 There's a picture of me standing next to Larry Wilmore.

00:52:59.000 We must agree on everything.

00:53:00.000 And that's the way this works now.

00:53:03.000 There are pictures of me with all sorts of people.

00:53:05.000 Tens of thousands of people, in fact.

00:53:06.000 Presumably, I agree with all of them on everything.

00:53:09.000 And it's very bad that we were in a picture together.

00:53:11.000 Now, there are certain people who are so obviously evil, you don't want to be in a picture with them, right?

00:53:16.000 Somebody is wearing a Nazi uniform.

00:53:18.000 You're not going to be in a picture with them.

00:53:19.000 But do I know that Lindsey Graham knows everything about Gert Wilders, or was he just some guy who he had sort of a baseline level of knowledge about, but not enough to say, I'm never taking a picture with that guy? 1.00

00:53:28.000 It is a really, really stupid game. 0.99

00:53:31.000 And when play stupid games, win stupid prizes, that is the way that the modern media currently work. 1.00

00:53:37.000 OK, we'll be back here a little bit later today with two additional hours of content. 0.99

00:53:40.000 Welcome to the week.

00:53:41.000 There's going to be a big Democratic debate later this week.

00:53:43.000 We're going to be building up in prep for it.

00:53:45.000 So exciting.

00:53:46.000 We'll see you here a little bit later or we'll see you here tomorrow.

00:53:48.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:53:49.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:53:54.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Robert Sterling.

00:53:57.000 Directed by Mike Joyner.

00:53:58.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:54:00.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:54:02.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.

00:54:05.000 And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:54:07.000 Assistant director, Pavel Wydowski.

00:54:09.000 Edited by Adam Siovitz.

00:54:11.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.

00:54:12.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.

00:54:14.000 Production assistant, Nick Sheehan.

00:54:16.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

00:54:18.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2019.

00:54:21.000 On The Matt Walsh Show, we're not just discussing politics.

00:54:24.000 We're talking culture, faith, family, all of the things that are really important to you.

The Ben Shapiro Show - September 09, 2019

Storm Warrening For Biden | Ep. 856

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