As Judge Brett Kavanaugh has his day before the Senate Judiciary Committee, anti-Trump commentators use John McCain's funeral to slam the President. Nike rewards Colin Kaepernick for kneeling, and as President Trump's tweets gain volume, the opposition to his Supreme Court nominee continues to grow. Today's After Show Was Hosted By: Ben Shapiro Ben Shapiro is the host of the Ben Shapiro Show on the FiveThirtyEight Radio Network and is a regular contributor to the Financial Times, The Huffington Post, and the New York Times. He is also the author of the book, "The Devil Next Door: How to Succeed in the 21st Century, and How To Survive It." His latest book is out now and is available for pre-order on Amazon Prime and Vimeo worldwide. If you like what you hear here, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and become a supporter of the show by becoming a patron. You'll get access to all of Ben Shapiro's newest books, videos, and more! including "The Dark Side Of" and "The Best Podcast Episodes" wherever you get your eardrums are listening to the show. To find a list of our most listened to episodes, go to gimlet.fm/TheBenShapiro and use coupon code: "CROWNER" at checkout to receive $5 off your first purchase of $5 or more than $10,000 at checkout. To find out how much you'll get when you buy a piece of gold or silver or other precious metals? at the Birchgold website? Subscribe to our new Gold and Silver & Copper Membership? Get 20% off the deal of your first month, and get 10% off of $50 or more at $100 or more, and receive $25 or more when you become a VIP membership when you enter the offer starts in January 1st, starting at $99 or $99, you get 5 VIP access to Birchgold? Learn more about Birchgold, $25,000 gets you get 4 months of a maximum of 4 months for 4 months and get an ad discount, and I'll get $5,000 in total access to the offer, and they'll get 7 months of VIP membership and a 2-day discount when they receive $24, they get my discount, they can choose 4 months VIP access, they'll also get a discount on my offer starts after they receive my offer begins in March 2019.
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00:01:49.000Let's start with the judicial hearing.
00:01:51.000So this morning, Brett Kavanaugh, who is the judge who is now being appointed by President Trump to the Supreme Court of the United States, was scheduled to have his opening hearing at the Senate Judiciary Committee.
00:02:02.000Now, all of this is a giant waste of time.
00:02:04.000It's a giant waste of time, and has been for 40 years, because, number one, nobody actually wants the answers to their questions.
00:02:10.000Instead, we just go through this rigmarole to pretend that these judges don't already know what they are going to decide on certain cases, and then we ask them, and then they lie, and then they go on the court, and they do exactly what we all thought they were going to do before, unless they're a Republican appointee, in which half the cases they do exactly the opposite of what we thought they were going to do before.
00:02:28.000In any case, Brett Kavanaugh is a textualist.
00:02:30.000He's somebody who takes the text of the Constitution seriously, and that means that the Democrats oppose him.
00:02:37.000Senator Cory Booker has already come out and opposed him.
00:02:39.000Senator Kamala Harris from California, she's already come forward and opposed him.
00:02:43.000But that's not going to stop the Democrats from pretending that the real reason they don't want to give Brett Kavanaugh a vote is because they just don't have enough information on Brett Kavanaugh.
00:02:52.000So they say, we need millions of pages of everything that Brett Kavanaugh has ever written in order for us to determine whether he should sit on the Supreme Court of the United States.
00:03:00.000Again, this is a stupid line considering they have already come out preemptively and said that they don't support Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court of the United States.
00:03:08.000Well, once you've said that, what's the point of these hearings?
00:03:12.000Number one, even if we were going to pretend that they were useful,
00:03:15.000You're not really seeking answers from these prospective justices.
00:03:18.000And number two, when you've already said you're voting against the guy, are we supposed to take your protestations seriously?
00:03:24.000That if you don't get the materials, you're not going to vote in favor of Brett Kavanaugh?
00:03:29.000So naturally, the whole thing devolved into farce.
00:03:31.000Remember, the only reason Republicans can ram through the justice they want right now is because Harry Reid, the former Senate Majority Leader, when he was in power from 2008 till 2010, Harry Reid rammed through.
00:03:43.000Actually, it was all the way until 2014.
00:03:46.000Harry Reid rammed through a process by which you could, through the workings of 51 votes in the Senate, get your judicial nominee.
00:03:54.000In 2013, he invoked the so-called nuclear option, which allowed a ruling from the Senate Rules Committee, or the Senate parliamentarian, that allowed 51 votes to elevate someone to the Supreme Court or to any federal court.
00:04:07.000And now Republicans have just reversed that process, and now they're doing the same thing that Harry Reid sought to do.
00:05:42.000What Grassley should have done is he should have said, listen, since you're making a mockery of this, we're just going to skip the hearing and vote him out of committee.
00:05:50.000We'll save everybody a month of time and stupid effort, and instead we'll just vote the guy directly out of committee and down to the floor, and then we can have a vote, and this guy can be sitting on the Supreme Court by the end of the week.
00:06:00.000Instead, we're gonna waste a month with all of this bureaucratic nonsense where Democrats oppose because they have to oppose, and Republicans vote for him, and that's the end of the story.
00:06:11.000I do enjoy the theatrics, the kind of kabuki theater of all this.
00:06:14.000The real reason that all of these Democrats who are running for president want the hearings is so they can have their sort of Ronald Reagan 1980 moment.
00:06:22.000In the 1980 primaries, I think it was the New Hampshire primary debate, there was a point where Ronald Reagan was debating George H.W.
00:06:29.000And he had paid for part of the sponsorship of the debate and they tried to cut off his mic and he said, I paid for this microphone, Mr. Breen.
00:06:39.000All these Democrats are looking for that, except in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
00:06:41.000They're all looking for that moment where they get to say to Brett Kavanaugh, you, sir, are representative of the regime from the handmaid's tale.
00:06:50.000Okay, so people were actually being dragged out, I am not kidding, kicking and screaming from the hearing room, a bunch of the folks on the left who dress up in pussy hats and Handmaid's Tale costumes.
00:06:59.000They were actually brought out by their hands and feet, like, carried out by their hands and feet, because they were screaming about Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
00:07:06.000Wait until President Trump gets to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court if you want to see people burn stuff down, because they're almost doing it for Brett Kavanaugh, who, it should be remembered, is replacing Antonin Scalia, another conservative on the court.
00:07:20.000It is a replacement of an originalist by an originalist who's probably a little bit softer than Antonin Scalia.
00:07:26.000And yet we're getting all of this hootenanny, this hot and bother from the left.
00:07:32.000I know that they think under Article 47 of the Constitution of the United States there's a whining clause that allows them to whine their way into obstructing this, but there's no way for them to actually obstruct this, so it's all a waste of time.
00:07:44.000And again, all of these judicial hearings annoy me in the first place because if somebody were to give an honest answer, they would immediately be ruled out of order by the Senate.
00:07:52.000We know this because when Robert Bork gave honest answers back in the 1980s, he was not put on the Supreme Court for answering honestly questions about, for example, Roe vs. Wade.
00:08:00.000And this led Democrats to quote-unquote Bork him.
00:08:22.000That constitutional law is a thing I am into.
00:08:25.000As somebody who has studied it for a very long time, to pretend that judges who sit before these committees don't have extraordinarily set views on the nature of precedent and on the nature of particular cases is just silly.
00:08:36.000But we all sit there and we pretend anyway, because supposedly this makes our country better in some way.
00:08:40.000They should just vote them out of committee.
00:08:41.000They should just vote them out of the Supreme Court.
00:08:43.000We should all recognize this for what it is, a partisan exercise.
00:08:45.000And it would be a partisan exercise if the Democrats were to do it also.
00:08:48.000The Supreme Court has become a partisan tool because the left made it a partisan tool decades ago, and now the right is responding by simply trying to appoint originalists to the bench over the hoots and howls of insane Democrats.
00:09:02.000The culture war continues to polarize.
00:09:05.000The big story over the weekend is that Nike, in a viral piece of marketing, decided that it was deeply necessary to reward Colin Kaepernick.
00:10:13.000But Colin Kaepernick was made into a national hero by the left, which thinks that it is a Muhammad Ali-like stance to kneel for the national anthem.
00:10:27.000Most Americans opposed kneeling for the anthem, but there's a heavy segment, particularly in the black community, that supported Colin Kaepernick kneeling for the national anthem.
00:10:35.000There's a very big racial gap in the polling numbers on kneeling for the national anthem.
00:10:39.000So Colin Kaepernick was offered in 2017, or in 2016, he was offered the chance to join the Denver Broncos.
00:10:49.000In 2018, he was asked about picking up Colin Kaepernick, and he said,
00:11:06.000And then the Broncos selected a couple of backup quarterbacks, and he lost his opportunity.
00:11:10.000And it turned out nobody really wanted the headache of Colin Kaepernick, not just because of the publicity, although publicity is something you have to take into account when you are a National Football League team, but also because he's just not a very good quarterback.
00:11:21.000Because Colin Kaepernick, after basically one spectacular season, fell off the map.
00:11:42.000Again, once people figure out your sort of tricks as a quarterback, it's difficult to recover, and that's sort of what happened to Kaepernick overall.
00:11:49.000But Kaepernick played his way out of a starting job, and then once he was on the bench, he started kneeling for the national anthem.
00:11:53.000It is now two years later, and this conversation has not ceased since.
00:11:57.000It has continued to be a thorn in the side of the NFL ever since because the NFL didn't take strict action against it.
00:12:02.000And we'll talk about the latest iteration of this controversy in just one second.
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00:13:31.000He does win this culture war, but at the cost of polarizing the debate a little bit more.
00:13:35.000When President Trump took office, some 75% of Americans thought kneeling for the national anthem was bad.
00:13:41.000Now that number is in the low 60s, last time I checked.
00:13:43.000A lot of that has to do with President Trump's polarizing personality.
00:13:47.000With all of that said, the media have latched on to the national anthem controversy, and they have not let go since.
00:13:52.000The NFL has done a horrible job of killing the controversy, instead of just killing it at the outset by saying, listen, you don't get to kneel for the anthem, you're fine.
00:13:59.000You want to protest in your off hours?
00:14:33.000It's a picture of Colin Kaepernick, a close-up of his face in black and white.
00:14:35.000It says, believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.
00:14:40.000And then there's the Nike swoosh and it says, just do it.
00:14:43.000So there's so many elements of this that are just fabulously ironic.
00:14:47.000First of all, this social justice warrior campaign to sell sneakers
00:14:52.000Produced by small children in Vietnam, presumably.
00:14:55.000It's kind of hilarious watching the entire left resonate around a huge billion-dollar company, a huge corporation that allegedly exploits child labor in third-world countries because, hey, Colin Kaepernick.
00:15:08.000It is also kind of hilarious that the slogan itself, Believe in Something, even if it means sacrificing everything, it's a really dumb slogan.
00:15:15.000It's basically Thanos' slogan from Avengers Infinity Wars.
00:15:18.000Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing half of humanity.
00:15:21.000What you believe is actually the key issue.
00:15:22.000I mean, if we're actually going to take that slogan seriously, believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything, it's not about believing in something.
00:15:34.000He's never provided a shred of data to support his assertions that black people in the United States are being disproportionately shot by police because, in fact, they are not.
00:15:42.000And then we get to the actual issue of Colin Kaepernick being the face of this particular culture war.
00:15:50.000And there's a great irony to it, which I'll discuss in just a second.
00:15:53.000So Colin Kaepernick, again, says, believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything over his face for the Nike Just Do It campaign.
00:15:59.000I do love the fact that when you hashtag Just Do It with all the capitals properly utilized, it looks like just dolt.
00:16:37.000They know we'll be talking about it today.
00:16:38.000They hope that by right-wingers talking about it, they will drive more people on the left to go out and buy sneakers on the basis of, we don't like President Trump.
00:17:00.000Colin Kaepernick has not sacrificed anything.
00:17:02.000Not only did he not sacrifice nothing, he only started doing this when he became a useless backup quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers.
00:17:08.000And then, after that, he has kept his name in the headlines.
00:17:10.000He's been on the cover of Sports Illustrated despite not playing for two years.
00:17:15.000Tim Tebow isn't on the cover of Sports Illustrated every two weeks because Tim Tebow isn't in with the Social Justice Warrior crowd, but Tim Tebow was, in many ways, sort of the equivalent of Colin Kaepernick in that he had one kind of terrific season where he unexpectedly led the Denver Broncos to wins in the playoffs, and then he fell off the map.
00:17:33.000But Colin Kaepernick, you know, he took over for Alex Smith halfway through a season with the San Francisco 49ers, they went to the Super Bowl, he lost, and then he was nothing.
00:18:19.000They're hoping that the President of the United States sounds off about it.
00:18:22.000Trump undoubtedly will sign off on it.
00:18:24.000I mean, he will undoubtedly sound off about it on Twitter because he thinks, again, that this is a culture war worth fighting.
00:18:30.000But there's no question that this is all designed to sell more sneakers.
00:18:33.000And one of the reasons that Nike thinks that they can get away with this, obviously, is because disproportionate amounts of money are spent on clothing and apparel by members of the black community, many of whom are supporters of Colin Kaepernick in this particular controversy.
00:18:49.000Economist Kerwin Charles, Eric Hurst, Nikolai Rusinov,
00:18:52.000From University of Chicago did a study called conspicuous consumption and race.
00:18:55.000What they found is that blacks and Hispanics spend a lot more than whites with comparable incomes on visible goods, meaning clothes, cars and jewelry up to an additional 30%.
00:19:24.000But just for capitalistic purposes, it's pretty obvious that Nike is attempting to appeal to this particular consumer base, along with a left that will resonate to the support of Colin Kaepernick.
00:19:34.000And it's also important to note that according to Nielsen, African-Americans are more likely to interact with brands on social media or to use social networks to support companies and brands 44% more likely.
00:19:45.000So they're hoping that this campaign goes viral, particularly among black audiences, and that people on the left will resonate to this as well.
00:20:01.000Is it designed to slap President Trump?
00:20:03.000Of course it's designed to slap President Trump.
00:20:05.000And honestly, I'm not sure that President Trump could ask for much more.
00:20:08.000Nike made an in-kind contribution to the Trump campaign.
00:20:11.000Because if this battle in 2018 and 2020 is going to be about kneeling for the flag, most Americans are not on board with that.
00:20:17.000Most Americans don't look at Colin Kaepernick and see an American hero.
00:20:20.000They don't even see a guy who's made a lot of sacrifices.
00:20:22.000Muhammad Ali was the champion of the world.
00:20:24.000He was the heavyweight boxing champion of the world when he was suspended from boxing for not volunteering for the Vietnam draft, for not being drafted, and for saying things about the Viet Cong and all this kind of stuff under the influence of Elijah Muhammad and the evil nation of Islam.
00:20:43.000Colin Kaepernick has sacrificed zero things, but apparently sacrificing everything means signing contracts worth millions of dollars in order to promote a quote-unquote globalist brand that is selling sneakers made at half price off by child labor.
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00:23:00.000It seems to me that his peak and his anger at President Trump led him to make a terrible decision when it came to Obamacare and prevent the overthrowing of large portions of Obamacare simply out of a level of personal peak.
00:23:12.000Was I a huge John McCain fan as a politician?
00:23:15.000No, I was not a huge John McCain fan as a politician, but with that said, was it petty for the president to not lower the flag to half-staff for a week as a sort of normal procedure?
00:24:06.000Let's not be intellectually dishonest.
00:24:08.000It was very obvious that there were a bunch of overt slaps at President Trump.
00:24:11.000And more than that, I think it was counterproductive.
00:24:14.000Even if you don't like the way that President Trump goes about politics, even if you think that President Trump is uncivil, which I do, even if you think that President Trump
00:24:21.000It does not serve his own purpose as well when he lashes out at people, which I do.
00:24:26.000Even if you think that President Trump says things that are cruel and vile on a fairly frequent basis, which I do, is it worthwhile?
00:24:33.000Is it useful for a bunch of people to get up at John McCain's funeral and say all of this stuff?
00:24:38.000And more importantly, is it useful to do that from quote unquote both sides of the aisle?
00:24:41.000Because I think that what that's doing is promulgating a myth that Trump is actually the response to.
00:24:45.000The myth is that there was a civil politics before Trump.
00:25:15.000We saw riots in other places in the United States.
00:25:18.000We saw at President Trump's rallies during the 2016 campaign, Trump supporters being physically beaten.
00:25:24.000We saw President Trump have to cancel an actual rally in Chicago due to intimidation outside the events.
00:25:29.000We've seen over the past several years before Trump was in office.
00:25:32.000When I went to Berkeley, I required 600 police officers to protect me.
00:25:36.000I remember there was a near-riot when I spoke at Cal State Los Angeles, and that was before Trump was president.
00:25:41.000The idea that politics was some sort of civil game where everybody got along before President Trump is nonsense.
00:25:46.000And more than that, to paper over these serious political divisions in this country with this veneer of civility, it makes it look like there's a professional political class invested in civility because they actually like each other, and Trump is the great outsider, and so we don't like Trump because he's the great outsider.
00:26:02.000Again, there are legitimate reasons to criticize the President of the United States for his approach to politics.
00:26:07.000But, when you promulgate this absolute myth, this absolute myth, that there was a civil politics between, say, Barack Obama and John McCain, or Barack Obama and George W. Bush.
00:26:16.000I mean, Barack Obama basically called George W. Bush a war criminal.
00:26:44.000Okay, Barack Obama accusing George W. Bush of presiding effectively over war crimes, but we are supposed to believe that it was Donald Trump who broke our politics?
00:26:57.000This is why I say all of this leads to a backlash in favor of President Trump.
00:27:02.000Having all of these mainstream political figures from both sides of the aisle kind of unite in opposition to Trump, but not on the basis of actual sins committed by President Trump, on the basis of, he's just not nice enough and look how we get along.
00:27:15.000Look how George W. Bush and Bill Clinton get along.
00:27:16.000Look how George W. Bush and Barack Obama get along.
00:27:20.000I don't like that part of politics, okay?
00:27:26.000So as a sports fan, there used to be something called non-fraternization rules in sports, where it was like the New York Yankees were playing the Boston Red Sox and you weren't allowed to go out to dinner with members of the opposing team after the game because you felt that that sort of sacrificed the competitive edge.
00:27:39.000That if you were too close with your competitors, then they sacrificed the competitive edge.
00:27:43.000And so there were all these owners who basically said you're not allowed to fraternize with members of the opposition team.
00:28:08.000I want them to recognize that they shouldn't be demagoguing issues.
00:28:13.000That's where you can criticize President Trump.
00:28:14.000But when you act like you're best friends and you're buddy-buddy and we're all part of this big group who loves each other, and then there's that ugh, that Trump guy, all that ends up doing is driving people into President Trump.
00:28:24.000I mean, ironically, it helps President Trump.
00:28:26.000Because even people like me look at this and they go, I'm sorry, but if politics is how nice George W. Bush is to Michelle Obama by handing her candy, I'm not all that interested.
00:28:35.000Because the things they do have real stakes.
00:28:38.000The politics that they embrace have actual stakes.
00:28:41.000And again, I'm somebody who is warm toward the argument that President Trump has not been good for American politics in a wide variety of ways.
00:28:48.000But when you push this lie that politics is really about George W. Bush and Michelle Obama being besties, and that there are no consequences to any of this,
00:28:57.000I don't care whether George W. Bush likes Michelle Obama.
00:29:02.000I don't want them to be friends because I don't think that that is reflective of deep underlying political differences that exist in this country.
00:29:10.000I want them to be battling tooth and nail.
00:29:12.000If they can be friends and battle tooth and nail, that's one thing.
00:29:14.000But I don't think that they were battling tooth and nail.
00:29:15.000I think that there's a feeling in this country that the elites in both parties are actually backpatting each other and are too friendly for the good of the country.
00:29:24.000That what we actually need, in some ways, is more political conflict.
00:29:36.000I'm not going to pretend that I think he should reject the candy.
00:29:38.000I don't mean that he shouldn't hand Michelle Obama candy.
00:29:42.000But, by the same token, people celebrating this say, oh, well, isn't this what American politics is really about?
00:29:47.000George W. Bush hunting Michelle Obama candy?
00:29:49.000No, it seems to me what American politics is really about is Barack Obama slandering George W. Bush as a war criminal for eight years, and then running on the back of that to become President of the United States and push policies, actively create policies that are targeted at people like me.
00:30:05.000And when I say people like me, I mean particularly religious conservatives.
00:31:27.000Alrighty, so, in just one second I want to get into the actual material from the funeral, but first you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.
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00:34:43.000Again, this idea that Barack Obama and George W. Bush are on the same political side and Donald Trump is on the other political side, I think it's a big mistake because the reality is that Barack Obama was pushing things.
00:34:54.000Barack Obama was pushing a race-based politics, particularly in 2012 and beyond, in which he was saying things like Trayvon Martin could have been my son, suggesting police departments across the country were racist.
00:35:05.000Here's why people aren't taking this seriously.
00:35:07.000Here's why people look at this and they get a little on the right and they feel uncomfortable.
00:35:11.000And again, this is coming from somebody who blasted President Trump last week over his mistreatment of John McCain.
00:35:17.000I mean, I blasted him last week, if you recall back that far.
00:35:20.000I still think this was not only inappropriate, I think it was politically dishonest because
00:35:24.000When you move over to how the left side of the aisle treats people, the left side does not treat people with civility.
00:35:29.000The left side treated John McCain like trash while he was alive until he turned toward their side, at which point he became a hero.
00:35:34.000That's how the left always treats people.
00:35:37.000Because while they're calling for civility, and while people like George W. Bush are calling for civility and saying we ought to treat with the other side, and not just calling for civility, but calling for compromise and moderation,
00:35:48.000Here's what is actually happening in sort of leftist halls.
00:35:50.000All we have to do is skip over to the Aretha Franklin funeral, which also happened over the weekend, where Al Sharpton, an actual open anti-Semite, was speaking and ripping into President Trump with Bill Clinton sitting right there in the audience.
00:36:00.000You know, the other Sunday on my show, I misspelled respect.
00:36:05.000And a lot of y'all, a lot of y'all corrected me.
00:36:11.000Now I want y'all to help me correct President Trump to teach him what it means.
00:36:20.000Okay, and there's everybody cheering, and President Clinton is sitting right there.
00:36:23.000Here's a picture of President Clinton on stage with three great racists.
00:36:28.000Here's President Clinton standing next to Jesse Jackson, who called New York Hymietown, Al Sharpton, who talked about diamond merchants in Crown Heights and led to the, and his language helped incite a riot, and Louis Farrakhan, who has called the Jews devils and white people devils.
00:36:41.000And there's Bill Clinton standing there grinning alongside them.
00:36:43.000So you're telling me that our politics is about Bill Clinton being friends with George H.W.
00:36:46.000Bush, but in his off hours, Bill Clinton gets to hang out with people who are essentially the equivalent of David Duke.
00:36:51.000Louis Farrakhan is the equivalent of David Duke.
00:36:53.000And there's Bill Clinton, standing on stage with him, hanging out with him.
00:36:59.000And then we're going to get lectures about civility?
00:37:02.000This is how you got Trump because there's a hypocritical sense that all of these elites are happy to backslap each other and go to the same clubs and smoke cigars with one another.
00:37:10.000And then they pretend for the cameras.
00:37:59.000There's a difference between being civil and pretending that the other guy's political point of view is in some way the same as mine.
00:38:05.000And that's what was happening there, right?
00:38:07.000George W. Bush and Barack Obama were speaking of a common American vision that they do not share.
00:38:12.000Barack Obama's vision of the United States and George W. Bush's vision of the United States are not the same.
00:38:17.000And there are a lot of folks who are going to perceive that if George W. Bush's vision of the United States and Barack Obama's vision of the United States are more closely tied together than Donald Trump's and George W. Bush's, and yet for some odd reason Donald Trump is implementing conservative policies in the same way Bush would have done,
00:38:33.000And the real gap here is a cultural gap, not really a political gap at all.
00:38:37.000Okay, meanwhile, I do have to show you this.
00:38:39.000This is from Aretha Franklin's funeral.
00:38:41.000The same group of people who are ripping into Donald Trump for being, you know, uncivil and awful and terrible and garbagey with regard to women.
00:38:49.000Again, some of which I think is justified.
00:38:51.000These are the same people who are hanging out with Bill frickin' Clinton.
00:38:56.000Bush, who plays buddy-buddy with Bill Clinton.
00:38:58.000Here's Bill Clinton at Aretha Franklin's funeral, checking out Ariana Grande's butt.
00:39:04.000Ariana Grande, first of all, looks like she's 16 years old, and there's Bill Clinton, who looks like the old child molester from Family Guy, just sitting behind Ariana Grande, and legitimately can see him stare her up and down.
00:39:16.000And that's the kind of class that our politics is supposed to stand for.
00:39:19.000Now, Bill Clinton, he understands the American vision, but Donald Trump doesn't understand the American vision.
00:39:46.000And when President Trump does things that are terrible, we ought to comment on it.
00:39:50.000But to pretend that there are not serious differences between left and right in the country, that the real differences are between the civil and the uncivil, is, I think, ignorant of the reality of the situation.
00:40:00.000Now, speaking of areas where the president deserves criticism, the president over the weekend decided to take to Twitter, as he is fond of doing, and he tweeted out a bunch of cryptic and bizarre things.
00:40:43.000So the part of this that's troubling is not all the stuff about James Comey, which is just dumb.
00:40:47.000The part that's really troubling is in the first tweet here, when he says that Jeff Sessions and the DOJ should not prosecute actual corruption in government because it might endanger congressional seats.
00:40:58.000You're not supposed to say that part out loud, Mr. President.
00:41:02.000When you suggest that the rule of law comes secondary to the political victory of your own party, it's not a good thing.
00:41:10.000And it was a bad thing when Obama was doing it, and it's a bad thing when President Trump is doing it.
00:41:13.000It's a bad thing when the Attorney General is the President's wingman and ignoring crime, and the President is using executive privilege to shield particular figures, which is what Barack Obama did.
00:41:21.000And it's a bad thing when the President of the United States is bizarrely going on Twitter to rip the Attorney General who works for him for prosecuting actual crime in Congress.
00:41:57.000I mean, to be charitable, I guess maybe the point that he's making is maybe that this investigation preceded anything having to do with Donald Trump, and that he's been kind of swept up in an investigation that has nothing to do with him, but he's not making that particularly clear.
00:42:10.000There are plenty of grounds on which to criticize the President of the United States.
00:42:14.000Claiming that the left and the right are on the same page and Trump is not, and that Trump is something foreign to politics, when we all know that Trump was the seething underbelly of politics for at least two decades in this country, is just historically ignorant and also incredibly stupid.
00:42:28.000Again, also that the tolerant left is so tolerant that they are now disinviting people.
00:42:35.000Steve Bannon is the former White House chief strategist.
00:42:38.000I am a longtime critic of Steve Bannon, who I think is a flaming garbage heap of a human being.
00:42:43.000The New Yorker shouldn't have invited him.
00:42:44.000He's been irrelevant to politics since President Trump fired him and labeled him Sloppy Steve.
00:42:48.000But they invited him, and then a bunch of lefties dropped out, and then they decided, OK, well, we'll disinvite him.
00:42:54.000You shouldn't invite people and disinvite them.
00:42:55.000If you don't want to invite Steve Bannon, don't invite him.
00:42:57.000If you disinvite him because of pressure from your mail room, then I would suggest that you guys lack a little bit of courage in regard to your devotion to open conversation, obviously.
00:43:08.000Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
00:43:22.000One of the best living actors, Ben Kingsley, is just tremendous in everything.
00:43:26.000And he is predictably excellent in this.
00:43:28.000He plays Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi mastermind of logistics during the Holocaust.
00:43:35.000And Oscar Isaac plays an Israeli agent who is tasked with tracking him down, not only tracking him down, but also getting him to sign a document that gives permission for his trial to be held in Israel.
00:43:45.000And the face-off between the two of them is the best part of the movie.
00:43:51.000Not only is it effective, I'm always pleased when there's no sucker punches.
00:43:54.000So whenever I see a movie that's set up like this, I always think, okay, here comes the sucker punch.
00:43:58.000Here comes the Steven Spielberg, Munich-like sucker punch, where we learn that the Israelis are really the Nazis, or the Israelis are really the great oppressors.
00:44:07.000There were Palestinian terrorists who murdered Israeli athletes at the Olympics, and somehow Steven Spielberg drew a moral equivalence between those people and Israeli agents tracking them down, which is an amazing, amazing feat of
00:44:19.000Sort of intellectual gymnastics and moral gymnastics.
00:44:22.000In this particular movie, however, there are no sucker punches.
00:44:24.000Israel is perceived as good because it is a good country filled with people who are trying to survive in the face of radical anti-Semitism across the world, and the Nazis are bad.
00:44:33.000Also, the movie takes on some serious issues with regard to the banality of evil.
00:44:37.000So Hannah Arendt, a very, very famous writer with, I would have to say, far left leanings on politics.
00:44:43.000She wrote an entire book called Eichmann in Jerusalem about Eichmann's trial because Eichmann was in fact brought back to Israel for trial.
00:44:49.000He was put inside a glass booth actually to prevent him from being assassinated and he was then hanged.
00:44:56.000Hannah Arendt did an entire book on him and basically she made the claim that Eichmann was
00:45:01.000Just in effect of the banality of evil to phrase use the banality of evil.
00:45:04.000Now I have some fondness toward the idea that human beings are programmed to look the other way when their in-group is threatened.
00:45:09.000When your in-group is threatened that you tend to go along with evil.
00:45:12.000But for you to be an architect of evil I think requires a little bit more.
00:45:16.000It seems that later research has sort of shown Hannah Arendt's banality of evil point as applied to Adolf Eichmann to be kind of ridiculous.
00:45:22.000That Adolf Eichmann was in fact a rabid anti-Semite.
00:45:25.000You have no interest in what I have to say.
00:45:27.000Unless it confirms what you think you already know.
00:46:06.000Again, I think it doesn't sucker punch anybody.
00:46:08.000It does demonstrate the... One thing that is shocking is the virulence of antisemitism under the Peron regime in Argentina.
00:46:16.000You have a bunch of people on the left who somehow still have fondness for the Peronists in Argentina, which is kind of shocking.
00:46:21.000The Peron regime was indeed an evil regime, and they shielded a crapload of Nazis who were attempting to escape justice after World War II.
00:46:43.000Speaking of American flag controversies, last week we talked at length about this new movie, First Man, from Damien Chazelle.
00:46:49.000Honestly, I'm very sad that Damien Chazelle is being hit with controversy, because I think he's one of the best directors working today.
00:46:54.000I think La La Land, for its flaws, is a very good movie, and I think The Whiplash is a terrific movie, one of the best movies of the last ten years.
00:47:00.000Well, his new movie, First Man, about Neil Armstrong doesn't contain Americans planting the flag on the moon.
00:47:06.000It's because he's afraid that it's going to kill the box office in China.
00:47:09.000But Ryan Gosling went out there and suggested that it was because it was an international achievement, a world achievement to put a man on the moon, not an American achievement, which, of course, is a bunch of nonsense.
00:47:18.000Buzz Aldrin, who was part of the Apollo 11 mission, he also tweeted out a picture of them putting up the flag on the moon.
00:47:25.000And then he tweeted out, hashtag proud to be an American, hashtag freedom, hashtag honor, hashtag one nation.
00:47:38.000The fact that the Americans put the flag on the moon is an amazing achievement, especially given the fact they were essentially using slide rules.
00:47:46.000It's an amazing thing and it is an American achievement because America has been the world power and the single dominant hegemony over the globe for ever since World War II and probably before World War II, although we really only began to take more of an active role in world affairs during and after World War II.
00:48:00.000Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.
00:48:06.000So you've heard all this stuff about how the Swedish healthcare system is just the best healthcare system, how nationalized healthcare systems, they have no cost.
00:48:12.000Everything is fantastic in nationalized healthcare systems.
00:48:14.000Well, Sweden is not a hugely populous country.
00:48:18.000It is a country where people are taxed at more than half their income.
00:48:20.000The total population of Sweden is about 9.9 million, which is about the size of Los Angeles County.
00:48:26.000But we are told that if we just applied Swedish solutions to our healthcare, everything would be all better.
00:48:30.000There's an article in Agence France-Presse today, all about the Swedish healthcare system, and here is what they find.
00:48:36.000Swedes are frustrated over their universal healthcare, one of the main pillars of their cherished welfare state, with long queues due to a shortage of nurses and available doctors in some areas.
00:49:06.000So Swedes, who on average pay more than half of their income in tax, see access to healthcare as the most important issue in the September 9th general election poll.
00:49:13.000Prime Minister Stefan Löfven's Social Democrats, the largest party, are on course for a record low score.
00:49:19.000They're instead losing to the far-right Sweden Democrats, who I believe started off with actual neo-Nazi roots, if I'm not mistaken.
00:49:25.000So the far right is gaining because Sweden has not taken immigration seriously and because all of the social welfare promises of the Swedish state are experiencing some difficulty.
00:49:39.000But 271 days in the northern county of Västerbotten, official figures show.
00:49:45.000Swedes complain about not being able to see their own regular general practitioner, as a growing number of doctors and nurses are temporary hires employed by staffing companies.
00:49:52.000Some 80% of the healthcare sector is in need of nurses, according to official data, which means that's underestimating.
00:49:58.000Online services where patients see a doctor via webcam have mushroomed as well.
00:50:17.000Eventually, the bill comes due for all of this.
00:50:19.000So it is worth noting this whenever you hear about the wonders and glories of nationalized health care systems.
00:50:24.000Again, this is not a defense of the American health care system, which is almost the worst of both worlds.
00:50:28.000Heavily regulated and then free market with massive subsidies.
00:50:32.000The American healthcare system's a mess, but the solution is not a nationalized healthcare system, at least not in the way the Swedes do it.
00:50:41.000Pope Francis on Monday said silence and prayer were the answer to those seeking scandal and division amid a barrage of attacks from ultra-conservative Catholics.
00:50:48.000First of all, I love how Yahoo News and the AFP call it attacks from ultra-conservative Catholics, as opposed to, you know, Catholics who don't like seeing little boys molested by priests.
00:51:06.000I can't believe the press is taking this line, but this is how much they love their leftist Pope Francis.
00:51:11.000The Pope has so far refused to respond to allegations made last month that he for years covered up sexual abuse allegations against a prominent U.S.
00:51:19.000Francis said at a prayer service at St.
00:51:21.000Martha's, with people who lack goodwill, with people who seek only scandal, who seek only division, who seek only destruction, even within the family, there is nothing but silence and prayer.
00:51:29.000Or, theoretically, you could fire everybody who was abusing a child, turn them over to civil authorities and have them prosecuted.
00:51:35.000Or, theoretically, you could reveal all of your records to the general public so we know who exactly was covering up what.
00:51:41.000Or I guess you could stay silent and pretend it's not a big deal when little boys get raped.
00:51:46.000And honest to God, it's just, it's astonishing.
00:51:48.000It's astonishing to watch the press cover for Pope Francis.
00:51:50.000If Benedict had done the same thing, if John Paul II had done the same thing, and this sort of scandal had broken,
00:51:56.000The press would be ripping them up and down endlessly, ceaselessly, with no break.
00:52:00.000It is Pope Francis who is a leftist on a bunch of issues from economics to the environment, and therefore he will be defended with the hardest core defense possible by the left-wing media.
00:52:10.000Whenever they say that they actually care about children, you should remember this particular thing because it's pretty, pretty astonishing.
00:52:17.000Okay, so we'll be back here tomorrow with all of the latest.