The Ben Shapiro Show - The Berkeley Hurricane | Ep. 380

00:00:00.000 It's September 11th, so we commemorate 9-11.

00:00:03.000 We also talk about Hillary Clinton, who just can't let go.

00:00:06.000 Plus, I'm headed to Berkeley, and apparently it's just like a hurricane or something.

00:00:10.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:11.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:19.000 Alrighty, so I'm ready to give you the update on Berkeley because it is hilarious.

00:00:23.000 Hilarious, let me tell you.

00:00:24.000 And I will tell you all of the things about that.

00:00:26.000 I'll also give you some notes on 9-11.

00:00:28.000 Plus, I want to talk about Hillary Clinton's in an interview, Steve Bannon's in an interview, so a lot to get to today.

00:00:32.000 But before we do any of that, first I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at MyPatriotSupply.

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00:01:51.000 Okay, so, here is the update on Berkeley.

00:01:54.000 So, at Berkeley, okay, Berkeley has decided that I am a real threat.

00:01:59.000 Okay, this is a headline from the LA Times.

00:02:01.000 Quote, Berkeley braces for right-wing talk show host Ben Shapiro's visit.

00:02:05.000 Braces for it.

00:02:07.000 Like it's a hurricane.

00:02:08.000 Like, oh my god, I'm coming and I'm talking on Thursday.

00:02:11.000 What are they ever going to do?

00:02:12.000 Now, the reason they're really upset is because Antifa has threatened violence.

00:02:15.000 Over the weekend we saw Antifa rioting in Portland again, this time attacking police officers.

00:02:20.000 I can safely say it's all my fault.

00:02:22.000 I guess.

00:02:23.000 Or something.

00:02:23.000 Okay, the fact is that Berkeley is, I would say, going above and beyond in terms of its security.

00:02:29.000 They already said we couldn't bring a thousand people.

00:02:32.000 Because they're afraid people are going to go on the upper deck of the stadium and start throwing chairs down on people, which is just totally insane.

00:02:39.000 Then they've apparently created a security perimeter.

00:02:42.000 They're creating a hard security perimeter.

00:02:44.000 When I go on Thursday, that means that they're going to have police cordons basically around six buildings.

00:02:49.000 They've shut down the buildings completely, so people have to have classes in other buildings.

00:02:52.000 Listen, this is not my fault, folks.

00:02:53.000 This is not something I wanted.

00:02:55.000 I just would like to be able to go there and talk about the things that I talk about.

00:02:58.000 And I was unaware that I was such a controversial figure.

00:03:01.000 I mean, I sort of knew, but I didn't realize it was to this extent.

00:03:03.000 But it's really because of Berkeley.

00:03:04.000 But don't worry, it's really because of me.

00:03:06.000 According to the LA Times, it's because Berkeley is bracing for me.

00:03:09.000 They're not bracing for Antifa's reaction to a conservative visiting.

00:03:12.000 No, they're bracing for me.

00:03:13.000 If only I didn't descend with my 130 mile per hour winds on Berkeley, then they wouldn't have to worry about this so much.

00:03:20.000 Berkeley is also freaking out because they've also suggested that they want to provide counseling for students who are hurt by my words.

00:03:28.000 Seriously, this is what they're actually saying.

00:03:30.000 They want counseling.

00:03:31.000 So, according to Newsweek, okay, ahead of a talk from conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro at UC Berkeley, a letter has been sent by the university to students, faculty, and staff stating that counseling services will be made available to those who, quote, feel threatened or harassed

00:03:45.000 Hey, I'll agree with this much.

00:03:46.000 If you feel so insulted by my speech that you feel that your safety has been assaulted, you definitely need mental help.

00:04:00.000 If you really feel that way, then you can certainly use some counseling. 1.00

00:04:04.000 Because you're a sad sack, pathetic piece of crap. 1.00

00:04:06.000 Like, seriously, if this is what you worry about all day, is that I'm gonna come to your university, and I'm gonna say, ooh, conservative things? 1.00

00:04:12.000 No, God forbid!

00:04:14.000 No!

00:04:14.000 And you need counseling?

00:04:16.000 Then, let me suggest that you actually do need counseling.

00:04:19.000 I do love what the left does here.

00:04:20.000 They so overstep their boundaries, it's insane.

00:04:22.000 Antifa is suggesting that I am a white supremacist now.

00:04:26.000 Which is hysterically funny. 0.99

00:04:27.000 Refused fascism says I'm a fascist thug and a white supremacist. 0.94

00:04:31.000 Which is really amusing considering I was literally the number one recipient of hatred from the alt-right on Twitter last year according to the Anti-Defamation League. 0.92

00:04:39.000 So, that's pretty awesome.

00:04:40.000 Refused fascism issued a statement declaring campuses must become fascist-free zones.

00:04:45.000 How?

00:04:46.000 Through fascism, of course!

00:04:47.000 We have to make sure that no one can get on campus.

00:04:49.000 That's how you make sure it's a fascist-free zone, by establishing your own fascist zone.

00:04:53.000 That's obviously the way that you have to do this.

00:04:55.000 You know, we're all prepped.

00:04:56.000 We're ready to go.

00:04:57.000 We are coming.

00:04:57.000 It should be interesting.

00:04:59.000 The ticket's sold out in 45 minutes.

00:05:01.000 We're still trying to figure out how to deal with the situation, the eventuality, where a bunch of Antifa members come in the stadium, into the venue, and then get up and leave, and leave a bunch of empty seats.

00:05:10.000 Can people come in after that?

00:05:11.000 We're working that out with Young America's Foundation, so you can contact them at youngamericasfoundation at yaf.org.

00:05:17.000 But we are coming, and I will say that I think this whole thing is wildly overblown, and I'm not sure whether to be flattered or insulted.

00:05:24.000 It's pretty incredible, actually.

00:05:25.000 Okay.

00:05:26.000 In other news, obviously, it's a pretty somber anniversary.

00:05:29.000 Today's the 16th anniversary of 9-11.

00:05:31.000 Amazing how fast time moves.

00:05:32.000 I remember that, you know, everybody has their where-were-you-when-9-11-happened story.

00:05:36.000 For me, I was, let's see, 17 years old, and my dad and I were actually supposed to go golfing that morning, and we dropped off my sisters at school, and as we pulled into the parking lot,

00:05:46.000 One of the security guards came running out and said that planes had hit the World Trade Centers and they had collapsed.

00:05:52.000 And we rushed inside the school.

00:05:53.000 And I remember that the school, which is an Orthodox Jewish day school, had told all the students there was going to be extra security.

00:05:58.000 They did not, in fact, have extra security.

00:06:00.000 My father and I standing there with golf clubs were actually the extra security.

00:06:03.000 So that was not probably planned.

00:06:05.000 But

00:06:06.000 I have a horrific, horrific day and everybody remembers the images.

00:06:09.000 It still gives you a pit in your stomach.

00:06:11.000 If you're not old enough to remember, if you're one of my younger listeners, then you should go back and watch the tape because it's important to know what happened in our country on September 11th, 2001.

00:06:19.000 And it's important to remember because there are certain lessons that we learned after 9-11 that I think we've sort of been in the process of unlearning.

00:06:25.000 All of history tends to be a process of learning lessons and then forgetting them as fast as possible so that you can repeat the history again.

00:06:32.000 So I want to go through a couple of lessons I think that it is worth remembering from 9-11 so that we don't repeat 9-11 again, even though I think that, you know, that's... the chances that there will be another major terrorist attack sometime in the next 10 years I think are pretty high.

00:06:44.000 And I don't just mean truck-style attacks from ISIS.

00:06:47.000 I mean like an actual spectacular attack that takes out thousands of people.

00:06:50.000 And I'm not saying that, obviously, I'm saying that with tremendous hope that I'm wrong.

00:06:56.000 But it seems to me that the more we go down this road of forgetting what we learned on 9-11, the more we're getting closer to that.

00:07:01.000 Number one, global retreat is not a strategy.

00:07:03.000 If you remember the Clinton era, you remember that Clinton's basic foreign policy strategy was retreat from the world, except when you did sort of these pinprick strikes in particular areas.

00:07:12.000 Sometimes we'd intervene on humanitarian grounds, but we never intervened with regard to preserving our own security.

00:07:18.000 We never took preemptive strikes to preserve our own security.

00:07:22.000 And Bin Laden noticed.

00:07:23.000 In 1998, he bombed the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, that sovereign American territory, and the United States basically did nothing.

00:07:31.000 When Bin Laden bombed the USS Cole, the United States did basically nothing.

00:07:35.000 And Bin Laden, I mean this is in his writings, said he thought that we were a paper tiger at that point.

00:07:39.000 It was only because of George W. Bush, really.

00:07:42.000 George W. Bush gets a very bad historical rap, but if you talk to the people at Al-Qaeda, from Al-Qaeda, they openly acknowledge that they were not expecting the kind of response they received from George W. Bush.

00:07:52.000 They prepared a second wave of attacks, and because Bush was so aggressive, it finished that.

00:07:56.000 So, James Mitchell, who is the man who questioned al-Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is the planner of 9-11, KSM said, quote, According to Mitchell, KSM explained that if the U.S.

00:08:04.000 had treated 9-11 like a law enforcement matter, he would have had time to launch a second wave of attacks.

00:08:16.000 But now it seems like we are very reticent about preemptive attacks.

00:08:20.000 It seems like we are reticent about looking at the threats that face us.

00:08:25.000 We're fighting ISIS now, which is great, but what about the next threat?

00:08:27.000 What about Iran?

00:08:28.000 What about Hezbollah?

00:08:29.000 That doesn't mean that we have to take out the regime and Iran doesn't mean we have to go to war with them, but the fact is that unless we are willing to consider measures to stamp out terrorist groups across the planet, we are setting ourselves up for a fall. 0.81

00:08:39.000 Okay, second lesson that we should have learned on 9-11.

00:08:42.000 Money and friendliness do not buy off Islamists. 0.84

00:08:44.000 There's this weird idea from both the Ron Paul right and from the Barack Obama left that if we just give enough money, if we just show the Muslim world that we are caring and wonderful, that we will be left alone by terrorists. 0.90

00:08:56.000 This is absolute nonsense. 0.60

00:08:57.000 This is not an argument, by the way, for being mean to Muslims worldwide.

00:09:00.000 It's not an argument for not having relationships with countries like Saudi Arabia, where we have an actual intelligence relationship. 0.99

00:09:06.000 It is an argument suggesting that if we think that's enough, if we think that being friendly, that being a human right to proactive, that this is going to be enough to prevent terrorism, we are wildly mistaken and stupid. 0.93

00:09:16.000 The fact is, for a decade, the Clinton administration reached out to the Palestinian government, for example, with cash, with concessions from the Israelis. 0.90

00:09:22.000 And you remember the tape, you do.

00:09:24.000 You remember the tape on 9-11 of Palestinians handing out candy in the streets to their children as the towers fell.

00:09:30.000 We were pretty humanitarian toward the Muslim world in the 1990s.

00:09:34.000 We saved a bunch of Bosnian and Croatian Muslims in former Yugoslavia.

00:09:40.000 We prevented the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein.

00:09:44.000 We gave tons of money and foreign aid to various Muslim countries around the world in an attempt to prevent humanitarian catastrophes.

00:09:52.000 We sacrificed American soldiers in far-off places like Somalia just because we didn't want to see the disaster of Muslims dying for no reason. 1.00

00:10:00.000 We did all of these things and that obviously was not enough to turn off the terrorists.

00:10:03.000 This is not to say we shouldn't have done any of those things.

00:10:05.000 What it is to say is that if you think that that in and of itself is going to buy off terrorists, you are sadly mistaken.

00:10:10.000 The Obama administration took to heart this idea.

00:10:13.000 That's why they backed the so-called Arab Spring.

00:10:14.000 Oh, if we back democracy in Muslim places, then certainly these people will turn out to be pro-America, not the way that it works. 1.00

00:10:21.000 Okay, third lesson we should have learned on 9-11.

00:10:23.000 This is one I think President Trump did take to heart.

00:10:25.000 That is immigration matters.

00:10:26.000 Okay, immigration matters.

00:10:28.000 Fifteen out of the nineteen hijackers were Saudi.

00:10:30.000 All of them were here on visas.

00:10:32.000 All of them were here on visas.

00:10:33.000 One was on a student visa, the other were here on travel visas or business visas, and virtually all of them, I believe, overstayed their visas.

00:10:41.000 Not student visas, but other visas.

00:10:43.000 President Trump has focused laser-like on a couple of different areas of immigration.

00:10:46.000 He's focused on deportation of people who cross the border illegally, on the southern border illegally.

00:10:52.000 He's focused on building a border wall.

00:10:54.000 He's focused on travel bans from seven specific Muslim countries.

00:10:58.000 But what he has not focused on so much is how we deport people who are overstaying their visas illegally.

00:11:03.000 Half of all illegal immigration in the country, 40 to 50 percent, is people who are overstaying their visas illegally.

00:11:09.000 We let them in the country and then we let them wander around and we don't check up on them.

00:11:13.000 The fact is that the government ought to be deeply concerned about people who are entering the country from Islamist rich areas of the world. 1.00

00:11:19.000 No question.

00:11:20.000 But we also should be careful about the people who are already here.

00:11:22.000 We should be checking up on them.

00:11:24.000 That's something that I hope the Sessions DOJ does.

00:11:27.000 And the fourth point that we recognized on 9-11 that we need to recap here is that major terrorist attacks do require sponsor states.

00:11:34.000 If you look at terror in Western Europe and the United States, what you will see is that there's a giant spike, obviously, in terror deaths in 2001.

00:11:40.000 There were a few more terror deaths in 2002.

00:11:43.000 And then you see a pretty big gap in terms of terror against Americans and Western Europeans from about 2003, 2002, 2003, all the way until about 2010, 2011.

00:11:49.000 What happened during that period?

00:11:50.000 Well, the invasion of Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq,

00:11:57.000 Everybody hates the invasion of Iraq.

00:11:58.000 The fact is, major terrorist attacks were forestalled because we were fighting terrorists over there and we weren't fighting them over here.

00:12:05.000 The minute that ISIS began to regain territory, that gave them the capacity to sponsor terror attacks all over the world in a way they had not been able to before.

00:12:12.000 Al Qaeda required a terror safe haven in Afghanistan. 0.92

00:12:15.000 It's one of the reasons why I think President Trump is correct not to give up on the war in Afghanistan.

00:12:19.000 I think that simply surrendering it back to the Taliban is a recipe for another state-sponsored terrorist attack. 0.60

00:12:25.000 This is why the Iran deal is so devastating.

00:12:27.000 You have a major wealthy power in Iran that is willing to sponsor terror groups all over the planet. 0.96

00:12:32.000 State sponsors of terror can do things that simple terrorist groups cannot.

00:12:35.000 You're always going to have what they call lone wolf terrorism or small cell terrorism.

00:12:39.000 That's not quite the same thing as these major spectacular terrorist attacks killing hundreds of people.

00:12:43.000 That requires a base like ISIS to train people, provide them services, provide them guns, provide them ammo, provide them bombs, provide them all the things that they need.

00:12:51.000 Finally,

00:12:52.000 Final point on 9-11, and then I'll move on to Hillary Clinton here. 0.99

00:12:55.000 America has real enemies.

00:12:57.000 We're so busy in the United States tearing each other apart.

00:12:59.000 We're the freest, most wealthy power in the history of the world.

00:13:01.000 And that means that we tend to look at each other and say, well, look, Al Qaeda isn't really a threat to us.

00:13:06.000 ISIS isn't a threat to us.

00:13:07.000 It's not an existential threat anyway.

00:13:09.000 Obama used to say this all the time.

00:13:10.000 He used to say that this isn't an existential threat.

00:13:13.000 It's not just the government's job to protect you from existential threats.

00:13:16.000 It is also the government's job to protect you from being murdered in your bed.

00:13:20.000 It doesn't have to be an existential threat for it to be an existential threat for you.

00:13:23.000 9-11 was not an existential threat to the United States.

00:13:27.000 It was an existential threat to the 3,000 Americans who were murdered on 9-11.

00:13:31.000 It is the government's job to protect us from those things.

00:13:33.000 You know, when people say things like, well, how many soldiers died in order to protect us from the next one, number one, we don't know how many people were saved by that.

00:13:40.000 We don't know the counterfactual.

00:13:42.000 And number two, it is very different to use our military, people who have volunteered for our military, go to fight the bad guys.

00:13:48.000 That's why they join up.

00:13:50.000 And it is sort of a slander on their patriotism to suggest they join the military just for the benefits, but they don't join up in order to fight the bad guys.

00:13:57.000 The vast majority of people I've talked to in the military, they joined up to fight the bad guys.

00:14:01.000 And so long as the government is deploying them properly, then they are more than happy to go and kill the bad guys. 0.61

00:14:06.000 It's their job. 0.97

00:14:06.000 It's what they're here to do. 0.97

00:14:08.000 Okay, so before I go any further, I'm going to talk about Hillary and Steve Bannon's interview on 60 Minutes that's getting a lot of play.

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00:15:43.000 Okay, so...

00:16:06.000 In more, in less solemn political news, Hillary Clinton did one of her first big interviews on her new book, What Happened?

00:16:13.000 And the answer is you did, Hillary.

00:16:14.000 A lot of people saying Trump happened.

00:16:16.000 Hillary happened to Hillary. 0.99

00:16:17.000 Hey, this is one thing I did get right during the election cycle.

00:16:20.000 I asked myself during the election cycle, is this thing a referendum on Trump or is this thing a referendum on Hillary Clinton?

00:16:26.000 And I said over and over and over again, this is a referendum on Hillary Clinton.

00:16:29.000 It is not a referendum on Trump.

00:16:31.000 Hillary Clinton is the third term for Obama. 0.94

00:16:33.000 You looked at her poll numbers, she was bouncing around between 39 and 50 percent. 0.93

00:16:36.000 Trump was very stable at between 41 and 44 percent.

00:16:39.000 That meant Hillary could lose to him, but she could lose to him, right?

00:16:42.000 It wouldn't be him winning, it would be her losing, and that's actually what happened.

00:16:45.000 Well now, Hillary is doing the rounds, and it is amazing. 0.53

00:16:48.000 I mean, the reason that she lost is the reason why she's doing the rounds. 0.99

00:16:51.000 John McCain didn't write a book after he lost.

00:16:53.000 Mitt Romney didn't write a book after he lost.

00:16:56.000 John Kerry didn't really write a book after he lost.

00:16:58.000 All these people sort of disappeared.

00:16:59.000 They sort of went away.

00:17:00.000 They went away because they knew that they were doing more damage to their party by sticking around than they would by just disappearing.

00:17:09.000 Hillary is sticking around because she cannot get over the fact that she lost. 0.82

00:17:11.000 She has to wake up in the morning and look at the mirror and say to herself, what in the hell just happened here?

00:17:17.000 And that's, of course, the name of her book.

00:17:18.000 So she does this interview and she starts off by saying she's not going to run for office again.

00:17:22.000 Like, yeah, we know you lost.

00:17:24.000 Is your political career over?

00:17:27.000 Yes.

00:17:28.000 As an active politician, it's over.

00:17:31.000 You will never be a candidate for office?

00:17:33.000 No.

00:17:34.000 I am done with being a candidate, but I am not done with politics because I literally believe that our country's future is at stake.

00:17:42.000 You represent.

00:17:43.000 Okay, so she says that she's not going to run for office again in any case.

00:17:46.000 That is not a giant shock that she's not going to run for office because, again, she lost. 0.64

00:17:50.000 Then she admits that she hadn't drafted a concession speech.

00:17:52.000 This shows you why Donald Trump won and it shows why Republicans can continue to win no matter how incompetent they are.

00:17:58.000 Democrats are so confident that the world is just going to fall into their laps that they don't even seem to be making an effort.

00:18:04.000 Hillary was a good example of this. 1.00

00:18:05.000 Here she is explaining that she hadn't even drafted a concession speech.

00:18:08.000 You know, I just kind of went in the bedroom, laid down on the bed, just thought, okay, I just have to wait this out.

00:18:15.000 But then, midnight, I decided, well, you know, looks like it's not going to work.

00:18:21.000 I had not drafted a concession speech.

00:18:23.000 I've been working on a victory speech.

00:18:27.000 Our best days are still ahead of us.

00:18:30.000 And her concession speech sounded like a victory speech, right?

00:18:32.000 I mean, if you remember it.

00:18:34.000 But she never thought that she was going to lose.

00:18:35.000 And then what becomes clear is that she has never given up on her line. 1.00

00:18:40.000 Her line is that everyone who voted against her was a white nationalist supremacist piece of garbage. 1.00

00:18:43.000 This is her line, and this is what Democrats still believe. 1.00

00:18:46.000 So long as Democrats believe this, they're going to lose.

00:18:48.000 The fact is, a lot of people who did not vote for her, people like me, right, a lot of us,

00:18:53.000 We're just appalled by the alt-right.

00:18:55.000 A lot of us were appalled by white supremacism.

00:18:57.000 A lot of people who voted for Donald Trump are appalled by white supremacism.

00:19:00.000 They just didn't like her.

00:19:01.000 But Hillary continues to double down on this line. 1.00

00:19:04.000 And it's one of the reasons why there is this backlash that has been soft toward the alt-right.

00:19:08.000 Because the more that Hillary Clinton says that everybody's a white supremacist, the more that people say, well, I'm not a white supremacist.

00:19:13.000 Maybe those actual white supremacists over there aren't white supremacists either.

00:19:16.000 Here's Hillary Clinton doubling down on the deplorables line. 1.00

00:19:19.000 You remember, she had a speech in the middle of the campaign in which she suggested 0.96

00:19:22.000 that everyone who is supporting Donald Trump was a deplorable white supremacist.

00:19:26.000 She read a bunch of headlines from Breitbart, she talked about the alt-right, and then she linked everybody on the right with the alt-right, and everybody on the right picked up on that, and they said, well, I'm not a deplorable, and if she's gonna call me a deplorable, then I'll call myself a deplorable.

00:19:38.000 And she still doesn't understand that was a galvanizing moment for the opposition to her.

00:19:43.000 Why do you think that word deplorable had been circulating in your mind?

00:19:47.000 Well, I thought Trump was behaving in a deplorable manner.

00:19:51.000 I thought a lot of his appeals to voters were deplorable.

00:19:56.000 I thought his behavior, as we saw on the Access Hollywood tape, was deplorable.

00:20:03.000 And there were a large number of people who didn't care.

00:20:06.000 It did not matter to them.

00:20:09.000 Okay, maybe it mattered to them, then they looked at you and they said, well, I'm not voting for that lady. 0.77

00:20:13.000 That seems to me more likely.

00:20:14.000 But again, she can't get over herself.

00:20:16.000 She still thinks she was wildly popular, except for the sneaking Nazis, right? 0.99

00:20:19.000 Those thieving, sneaking Nazis and Russians. 1.00

00:20:21.000 It was the new Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. 0.95

00:20:24.000 And they decided, the Ribbentrop Pact, and they put together this alliance against Hillary Clinton personally.

00:20:29.000 And then she continues along these lines, right?

00:20:31.000 She still can't get over it.

00:20:32.000 She says that Trump's inauguration speech was a cry from the white nationalist gut.

00:20:37.000 So there I was, on the platform, you know, feeling like an out-of-body experience, and then his speech, which was a cry from the white nationalist gut.

00:20:56.000 Okay, it was not a speech that was a cry from the white nationalist gut.

00:20:59.000 His speech, his inauguration speech, was, I thought, quite well written.

00:21:02.000 I thought it was very dark, but I thought that it was effective.

00:21:05.000 I don't think it was about white nationalism so much as it was about the idea that America had fallen on hard times and now Trump was going to raise us up again, right?

00:21:12.000 Trump was going to be the guy who dragged us out of that crevasse.

00:21:15.000 The reason all of this matters, the reason Hillary Clinton still matters is because her spirit still infuses the Democratic Party. 1.00

00:21:20.000 Her cackling spirit still infuses the Democratic Party. 0.70

00:21:23.000 They don't understand why they lost.

00:21:24.000 They think that they are just going to kind of sweep into victory again on the basis of confusion.

00:21:32.000 And I don't think that that's right.

00:21:36.000 And you can see that what's happened here is we now have reactionaries on both sides.

00:21:42.000 So Hillary Clinton is a reactionary of the left.

00:21:44.000 She thinks that everybody on the right is a white nationalist.

00:21:46.000 Then you have reactionaries on the right who, people like Steve Bannon I think,

00:21:50.000 Who have turned to Hillary Clinton and said, OK, well, if you're going to react that way, then I'm going to look at the alt-right and I'm not going to consider these people the worst things in the world.

00:21:57.000 I'm going to make room for them.

00:21:58.000 You know, maybe they'll come out in the wash eventually.

00:22:00.000 I'm going to talk about Steve Bannon's 60 Minutes interview in a minute.

00:22:03.000 I don't think Steve is a white nationalist by any means.

00:22:05.000 I mean, I know Steve pretty well.

00:22:06.000 I was on a phone call with him for basically two hours a day for two years of my life.

00:22:09.000 So I know Steve pretty well.

00:22:12.000 But I do think that Steve fell into a trap that a lot of the right is falling into.

00:22:15.000 But again, the left is pushing the right into this trap, and the right should be careful not to fall into it.

00:22:20.000 Another example of this.

00:22:22.000 It's not just Hillary Clinton who believes this.

00:22:23.000 Stephen Colbert.

00:22:25.000 He was on his show the other night, and he actually gave a Nazi salute, because his suggestion was that Donald Trump and Steve Bannon were actual Nazis, and then he throws up a Nazi salute.

00:22:33.000 After the Charlottesville situation, that's what I told General Kelly.

00:22:35.000 I was the only guy that came out and tried to defend him.

00:22:37.000 I was the only guy that said, he's talking about something, taking it up to a higher level.

00:22:42.000 Yeah, he's definitely taking it to a higher level.

00:22:44.000 I'd say his support is about, uh, about up there.

00:22:47.000 Right around here.

00:22:47.000 And, or over here.

00:22:52.000 Somewhere up there. 0.68

00:22:54.000 Okay, so there he is giving the Nazi salute as though Bannon and Trump are Nazis, and then the right goes, well, if you're gonna call them Nazis, I mean, then everybody's a Nazi.

00:23:01.000 Nazism must not exist. 1.00

00:23:02.000 This is the mistake the left makes, and it's really stupid. 1.00

00:23:05.000 It's really stupid, but the right has to be careful not to fall into the same mistake. 0.99

00:23:08.000 Now, I want to talk about Bannon because I think that Bannon's interview on 60 Minutes was less important for who Bannon is, and it was more important for what Bannon hopes to represent, and why the Trump movement is, I think, irrevocably split, and I don't think it's likely to cohere. 0.96

00:23:23.000 I'm gonna explain why in just a second.

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00:24:52.000 Okay, so last night, former White House chief strategist and former campaign chief strategist Steve Bannon was on 60 Minutes.

00:24:58.000 Now, as I say, I know Steve pretty well.

00:25:00.000 I'm not a fan of Steve Bannon's.

00:25:01.000 I think, personally, he is not a nice guy or a good person, but Steve's an interesting figure.

00:25:05.000 He's for sure an interesting figure.

00:25:07.000 And Steve's appearance on 60 Minutes is less interesting for who he is and for what he was in the Trump administration than for what he represents, which is a sort of attempt to meld the id of the Trump

00:25:19.000 With the superego of the Trump.

00:25:20.000 It's an attempt to create a Trump movement.

00:25:23.000 The biggest problem with Trump so far and the biggest problem with Trump overall is that Trump actually is just an empty vessel.

00:25:28.000 Trump does not have an ideology.

00:25:30.000 Trump does not have a philosophy.

00:25:31.000 It's why he's happy to make deals with Democrats.

00:25:33.000 He's a quote-unquote pragmatic dealmaker.

00:25:35.000 Just a guy who will go out and make deals with anyone.

00:25:38.000 And you see people like Steve trying to give him

00:25:40.000 A patina of intellectual coherence.

00:25:43.000 As though there's an actual philosophy behind what Trump does rather than a series of impulses.

00:25:47.000 This doesn't mean all his impulses are bad, President Trump.

00:25:50.000 It just means that trying to create a philosophy around Trump is sort of like trying to tack water to the wall.

00:25:55.000 It's just not going to work.

00:25:56.000 You know, Trump does not have any substance to him that you can actually tack to the wall.

00:26:00.000 And you can see Bannon's difficulty in doing this.

00:26:03.000 So, first, I want to say that, you know, all of the media's attention on Bannon is wildly overblown in an attempt by the media to pretend that Trump isn't president.

00:26:10.000 That's really what's going on here with Steve, okay?

00:26:12.000 Steve joined the campaign.

00:26:14.000 He was not, by any stretch of the imagination, the key figure in the Trump campaign.

00:26:17.000 Trump was always the key figure in the Trump campaign.

00:26:20.000 I think he was able to impose a little bit of discipline on Trump during the campaign and did a good job with that in a way that some other people couldn't.

00:26:26.000 He was kind of the Trump whisperer for a little while.

00:26:28.000 But the fact is that Bannon himself was never particularly important either to the Trump campaign or to the Trump administration.

00:26:35.000 By the end of the administration, by the end of his time in the administration, he'd basically been marginalized to a small office where he had a whiteboard full of Trump's promises that hadn't been kept.

00:26:43.000 Where he would obsessively read the newspapers and the internet and then call, presumably, Matthew Boyle over at Breitbart to talk about it.

00:26:49.000 The fact is, Steve was not a major figure by the end of the Trump administration, his time in the Trump administration.

00:26:54.000 He'd been marginalized.

00:26:55.000 Every report says this.

00:26:56.000 He did not leave because he was so vital.

00:26:59.000 In fact, he was so non-vital that his slot still has not been filled.

00:27:03.000 They literally made up a position for him, gave him the position.

00:27:06.000 And then didn't fill the position when he was gone.

00:27:08.000 He also happens to be the money connection for Trump.

00:27:10.000 He's very much connected to the Mercers, who are a very wealthy family down in Florida, who funded Trump and are funding a Trump super PAC.

00:27:16.000 The reason that Bannon is sort of important as a general mood is because now Bannon is saying that he's going to attempt to lead a bunch of primaries against sitting Republican senators who don't back Trump.

00:27:27.000 Now, the only reason that he can get away with this is because of this split inside the mentality with regard to Trump.

00:27:33.000 One, people really like Trump and they want to back Trump.

00:27:36.000 Two, Trump doesn't really have an agenda.

00:27:38.000 So even people who voted with Trump on key issues like Jeff Flake in Arizona, right?

00:27:42.000 Jeff Flake could be primaried.

00:27:43.000 Why?

00:27:43.000 Because he said nasty things about Trump.

00:27:45.000 And then you see people on the Democrat side who didn't vote with Trump, like Heidi Heitkamp.

00:27:49.000 And you're not seeing a lot of talk from the Republicans about how they're going to take down Heitkamp.

00:27:53.000 Trump just went out and praised her.

00:27:54.000 So it's very incoherent.

00:27:55.000 It's very discombobulated.

00:27:57.000 The reason I say that Bannon is not such an important figure and that the media are making him an important figure is because the media do not want to... It's another way for the media not to accept that Trump is president.

00:28:06.000 Right?

00:28:06.000 Trump isn't president.

00:28:07.000 Bannon's president.

00:28:08.000 Right?

00:28:09.000 Trump isn't president.

00:28:09.000 John Kelly's president.

00:28:11.000 Trump isn't president.

00:28:12.000 Reince Priebus is president.

00:28:13.000 Some people on the right used to do this with Obama.

00:28:16.000 Some of us on the right used to do this, oh it's really Valerie Jarrett whispering into his ear.

00:28:19.000 It's really Rahm Emanuel whispering into his ear.

00:28:21.000 The left did it with Karl Rove.

00:28:23.000 Karl Rove is whispering into Bush's ear.

00:28:25.000 The fact is, the president is the president.

00:28:27.000 He's the one who makes the calls.

00:28:29.000 It was Trump who decided that he did not trust Bannon enough.

00:28:31.000 It was Trump who marginalized Bannon.

00:28:33.000 This is why Bannon giving this excuse, you're about to hear Bannon give an excuse for why he's no longer at the White House and it just doesn't fly.

00:28:38.000 Here he says, he was not cut out to be a staffer.

00:28:42.000 To be this strong a defender, why aren't you there?

00:28:48.000 Why, and would the President of the United States, who you applaud so loudly, have allowed you to leave if he didn't want you out?

00:28:59.000 No, it's the exact opposite.

00:29:02.000 I was a staffer.

00:29:04.000 Look, I'm not cut out to be a staffer.

00:29:06.000 No, your title was not staffer.

00:29:07.000 Your title was chief strategist.

00:29:09.000 You are a staffer.

00:29:10.000 I was a federal government employee.

00:29:12.000 There's certain things you can't do.

00:29:14.000 I cannot take the fight to who we have to take the fight to when I'm an advisor to the president as a federal government employee.

00:29:20.000 You can't do it.

00:29:21.000 Okay, that's not really why he left, okay?

00:29:23.000 He's already achieved the height of his power.

00:29:25.000 You have to understand something about Steve personally to understand why he's not super an important figure, and that is that Steve basically lucked into every job that he's held for the last 10 years.

00:29:32.000 He sort of latched on to various figures.

00:29:34.000 He latched on to Michelle Bachmann, and then he latched on to Dick Morris, and then he latched on to Sarah Palin, and then he latched on to Andrew Breitbart.

00:29:40.000 He was there when Andrew died.

00:29:41.000 That allowed him to get his foot in the door in terms of using editorial at Breitbart to push for Trump, and then he latched on to Trump, and Trump won.

00:29:49.000 Bannon is not a force in his own right.

00:29:50.000 He's not a mover and shaker.

00:29:52.000 Bannon is more of a barnacle on whatever powerful figure he happens to follow.

00:29:56.000 But here's the part that I want to talk about Bannon.

00:29:59.000 Why am I wasting the time?

00:30:00.000 If I really think he's not that important, why am I wasting the time on him?

00:30:03.000 I do think that he is important as a window into the mentality of what some members of the media are trying to do with Trump or Trump supporters.

00:30:10.000 And that is they're trying to fuse the id with the superego.

00:30:14.000 In the Freudian analysis, your personality is made up of three parts, okay?

00:30:18.000 This is basic Freud.

00:30:20.000 Your id, which is your series of instincts, right? 0.99

00:30:22.000 You want to have sex. 0.98

00:30:23.000 You want to eat steak, right? 0.98

00:30:25.000 Your id is driving you to do these emotional things.

00:30:28.000 Then there's your superego.

00:30:29.000 Your superego is the Apollonian part of you in the sort of Nietzschean construct.

00:30:33.000 It's the part of your brain that says, I will use rationality and logic to check the id and make deals with the id.

00:30:38.000 That's the superego.

00:30:40.000 And then there's the ego that militates between them.

00:30:42.000 Then there's the ego that decides, okay, that's you.

00:30:45.000 The ego is you, and the ego is what decides, am I going to follow the id, or am I going to follow the superego?

00:30:50.000 A little too basic, but that's sort of the breakdown.

00:30:52.000 So, what's happened with Trumpville is that Trump is largely driven by his id.

00:30:57.000 There's been an attempt to intellectualize Trump.

00:30:59.000 There was something called the Journal of American Greatness, which attempts to intellectualize Trump.

00:31:02.000 There are some intellectuals, like Victor Davis Hanson, who have tried to create a philosophy around Trump.

00:31:06.000 Bannon sort of tried to create a philosophy around Trump.

00:31:09.000 But Bannon is posing himself as the ego of Trumpism.

00:31:12.000 That he is going to do the hard work of trying to bring together the philosophical strain of Trumpism and the id of Trump.

00:31:19.000 And so, in order to do that, sometimes he has to be the id and sometimes he has to be the superego.

00:31:23.000 He thinks this is what Breitbart's going to be.

00:31:24.000 He thinks this is what all of these candidates that he's going to use to primary all of these other Republican figures are going to be.

00:31:31.000 The new movement is going to be a merger.

00:31:33.000 It's going to be a philosophy of Trumpism that Trump may not at all times believe, but the soul of Trump, the fighting soul of Trump, this is sort of what he wants to create.

00:31:41.000 Beautiful vision!

00:31:42.000 Except that Trump will not be bound by a philosophy.

00:31:45.000 Trump is militantly anti-philosophy.

00:31:47.000 Trump is militantly anti-ideology.

00:31:49.000 He doesn't like any of these things.

00:31:51.000 Any boundaries on him make him angry.

00:31:54.000 Trump is unbridled id in politics.

00:31:57.000 So, you'll see Bannon trying to do this, right?

00:31:59.000 It was almost a dichotomous interview of 60 Minutes, and you see this from a lot of Trump supporters, that half the time it's, Trump's the id, fight, fight, fight!

00:32:06.000 And then half the time it's, well, he's playing 4D chess.

00:32:09.000 It's not really that he's not fighting, it's not knee-jerk, it's not angry, he's just, he's playing super sophisticated chess.

00:32:15.000 And I've suggested all along that most of what he does cannot be explained by strategy.

00:32:19.000 It's more explained by the id.

00:32:21.000 You're going to see Bannon do this routine here, and I think that it's telling.

00:32:24.000 So here is Bannon going after Charlie Rose with regard to Ryan and McConnell.

00:32:29.000 So he says, we're going to go after Paul Ryan.

00:32:31.000 We're going to go after Mitch McConnell.

00:32:32.000 This is the id part of the Trump world.

00:32:35.000 The Republican establishment is trying to nullify the 2016 election.

00:32:40.000 That's a brutal fact we have to face.

00:32:42.000 The Republican establishment wants to nullify the 2016 election.

00:32:46.000 It's trying to nullify the 2016 election.

00:32:48.000 Absolutely.

00:32:49.000 Okay, so it's Ryan and McConnell trying to nullify the 2016 election.

00:32:54.000 We have to fight them at every turn.

00:32:55.000 Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, right?

00:32:56.000 This is the id part of it.

00:32:58.000 First of all, from what I've seen, Paul Ryan is not trying to nullify the effects of the 2016 election. 0.99

00:33:02.000 He's been basically walking around with his lips puckered to Trump's ass since the election started. 0.99

00:33:07.000 Or at least since the election was completed. 0.99

00:33:09.000 So the idea that Ryan and McConnell are desperately trying to undermine Trump, I don't think that's right.

00:33:15.000 I think that Bannon is mad because their agenda is not his agenda, and sometimes Trump seemed to follow their agenda.

00:33:19.000 But the idea here is that Trump is the id and Bannon is the id too.

00:33:22.000 He's the fighter in the trenches, don't you understand?

00:33:25.000 And then, at the same time, you'll see Bannon say things like,

00:33:28.000 You know, I wish that Trump had used more strategy when it came to, for example, DACA.

00:33:33.000 Bannon openly said that he opposed Trump getting rid of DACA, actually, which is an amazing thing.

00:33:38.000 Breitbart, I was there, okay?

00:33:39.000 Breitbart was the most anti-DACA outlet that was present in American politics.

00:33:45.000 I'm worried about losing the House now because of DACA.

00:33:48.000 And my fear is that with this six months

00:33:51.000 Downrange.

00:33:52.000 If we have another huge... If this goes all the way down to its logical conclusion in February and March, it will be a civil war inside the Republican Party that will be every bit as vitriolic as 2013.

00:34:04.000 Okay, that's his fear?

00:34:06.000 His fear is the civil war, but he just said he wanted a civil war, right?

00:34:09.000 He just said one second ago, I want a civil war with Ryan and with McConnell, but my great fear is a civil war that will bleed down into 2018 over DACA.

00:34:17.000 So which is it?

00:34:18.000 Is he the id or is he the super ego?

00:34:37.000 Between id and superego, and the id pays no attention to the superego, and the superego pays no attention to the id, unless the central figure is Trump.

00:34:45.000 Right?

00:34:45.000 Unless Trump is the ego.

00:34:46.000 Bannon cannot be Trump's ego.

00:34:48.000 Bannon cannot be the guy who stands there and militates between the id and the superego.

00:34:52.000 If Trump is the id, and Paul Ryan is the superego, Bannon cannot be the ego, because Bannon's not that important.

00:34:58.000 And herein lies the problem for Bannon and for the movement generally, for Trumpism.

00:35:03.000 Trump is not a guy who is pulling from the id sometimes and from the superego sometimes.

00:35:07.000 He is pulling only from the id.

00:35:09.000 The id is this administration.

00:35:12.000 The superego doesn't even exist.

00:35:14.000 Again, you as a person have all three of these qualities.

00:35:17.000 A movement can only have all three of these qualities, its superego and ego, if the ego is the guy at the center of it.

00:35:23.000 Ronald Reagan could be the ego.

00:35:24.000 He could militate between the rabid part of his base and the superego, highly intellectualized portion of his base.

00:35:30.000 George W. Bush could do that because he was more of a judgment guy.

00:35:33.000 Trump is not a judgment guy.

00:35:35.000 And Bannon can't be that for him.

00:35:37.000 And Bannon trying to be the ego inevitably is going to put him at odds with Trump.

00:35:40.000 He's going to try his best not to do that.

00:35:43.000 But that's what it's going to be.

00:35:44.000 Or he's just going to have to give in to Trump's id, right?

00:35:46.000 Or he's just going to have to give in to Trump's id and surrender the superego part of this entire argument.

00:35:51.000 And that'll be fascinating.

00:35:52.000 And remember, for all this talk about how much power Bannon and Breitbart wield in these election cycles, I mean, I was there when they tried to basically primary Paul Ryan with Paul Nalin and Nalin got killed by 70 points.

00:36:02.000 So, you know, the only race I'm aware Breitbart had any impact in at all, which, again, I think Breitbart, when I was working there, was a very powerful site and did some good things, but, and I think they still do some good things, but I think that the idea that Breitbart had a market impact on election cycles outside of, you know, Trump, which is a huge one, obviously, and the primaries, which were enormous, and Dave Brat, I think, is a mistake.

00:36:25.000 The idea that they're going to go around primarying all these candidates and be successful in that, I think that's probably a little bit much.

00:36:31.000 Okay, so again, you can sort of see this split between the id and the superego when you look at people like, for example, Jeanine Pirro and Jim Jordan.

00:36:41.000 So Jeanine Pirro is definitely a representative of the Trumpian id, and she is obviously on Fox News, Chelsea has a radio show, and here she was talking about how Trump making a deal with Democrats last week was a great, great, great thing, right?

00:36:53.000 This is the id portion of the movement.

00:36:55.000 The establishment

00:36:57.000 is out to get Donald Trump.

00:36:58.000 They say nice things because they don't want to really be outed.

00:37:02.000 But when I saw Donald Trump this week decide that he was going to cut a deal with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, certainly, you know, not people that I admire for sure, but I can't blame him.

00:37:18.000 And I said, good for him.

00:37:21.000 Not only is he going to shake up the establishment, he's going to change the paradigm.

00:37:25.000 You know, good for him, good for him.

00:37:26.000 Why?

00:37:27.000 Why good for him?

00:37:27.000 Because I can't blame him.

00:37:29.000 These are the words that you hear out of people's mouths when they're defending the Trumpian id.

00:37:31.000 I can't blame him.

00:37:33.000 He doesn't deserve blame.

00:37:34.000 Sort of like you're dealing with a small child or a dog.

00:37:36.000 I can't blame him.

00:37:37.000 Sure, he bit me, but I mean, I did smell like bacon.

00:37:41.000 This notion is not really... it doesn't indicate the strength of a movement.

00:37:46.000 Again, it indicates that this split... Trump, because he's such an id-driven candidate, he has opened up this gap between id and superego in the movement that I'm not sure can be rectified again unless there's a new leader of the movement, which may come along sometime in the future, but until then we're just gonna have to suffer through the split.

00:38:02.000 Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.

00:38:05.000 So, things that I like.

00:38:06.000 I'm in the middle of this book that is really fantastically written.

00:38:09.000 I really am enjoying it.

00:38:10.000 Edward Fieser, the book is The Last Superstition, A Refutation of the New Atheism.

00:38:14.000 So he takes on Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, and he talks about how a lot of the arguments in favor of atheism are basically

00:38:22.000 Taking arguments made by Aristotle and Plato and Thomas Aquinas and dumbing them down and then refuting the dumbed down.

00:38:29.000 Creating a straw man and then burning it.

00:38:31.000 And this is a much more sophisticated defense of the Aristotelian defense of God.

00:38:36.000 The first cause, the unmoved mover.

00:38:39.000 It's

00:38:40.000 It's really quite fascinating.

00:38:41.000 It makes a very rational case for the notion of an unmoved mover in the universe and explains why that is not easily refuted simply by saying, well, why can't there be a mover of the unmoved mover?

00:38:51.000 The whole book is about why that's not true.

00:38:53.000 And it's quite good.

00:38:54.000 It's colorfully written.

00:38:55.000 And rare for a philosophy book, it's really readable and lucid.

00:38:59.000 I mentioned this the last couple weeks when I've been talking a lot of philosophy.

00:39:02.000 There's a lot of philosophy that is really poorly written.

00:39:05.000 I mean, try to read a page of Kant.

00:39:08.000 It's written in gobbledygook.

00:39:10.000 It's almost impossible to understand.

00:39:12.000 Aristotle and Plato are actually pretty readable.

00:39:15.000 John Locke is pretty readable.

00:39:17.000 But a lot of philosophers are really not readable, and they read like garbage, and that is not the case with Edward Fieser.

00:39:22.000 The book is The Last Superstition, A Refutation of the New Atheism, and I think it has a lot of important insights and interesting things to say.

00:39:29.000 Okay, other things that I like.

00:39:30.000 So, Betsy DeVos, as I mentioned, the Secretary of Education last week, she came out and she got rid of the, what they call, Dear Colleague letter, put out by the Obama administration in 2011, and this was a letter that basically said that colleges were no longer allowed to kick over

00:39:45.000 Sexual harassment, sexual abuse allegations to the police.

00:39:48.000 Instead, they had to create up these kangaroo courts.

00:39:50.000 She says this is nonsense, and she's exactly right.

00:39:54.000 Any perceived offense can become a full-blown Title IX investigation.

00:40:00.000 But if everything is harassment, then nothing is.

00:40:06.000 Punishing speech protected by the First Amendment trivializes actual harassment.

00:40:12.000 It teaches students the wrong lesson about the importance of free speech in our democracy.

00:40:17.000 Harassment codes which trample speech rights derail the primary mission of a school to pursue truth.

00:40:25.000 Good for her.

00:40:26.000 Okay, what she is saying here is exactly right, and I understand that there are a lot of people who are wary that schools are going to quash allegations of sexual harassment.

00:40:33.000 Well, that's why we have a police force.

00:40:35.000 I'm sorry to say that we can't do any better than that.

00:40:38.000 We can't.

00:40:39.000 We can't do any better than, if something bad happens, you have to go report it to the authorities, and the authorities have to have some sort of evidentiary showing in order to prosecute people.

00:40:46.000 Otherwise, this turns very quickly into Stalinist show trials.

00:40:49.000 And that's not just accusations of... Even if something bad happened, if you don't have evidence to prove that it happened, we're a country where innocence is still required before we call somebody guilty.

00:40:59.000 Okay, time for one more.

00:41:01.000 You know, let's do one more thing that I like.

00:41:03.000 This is really funny.

00:41:04.000 So Michael Moore demanded that Mar-a-Lago be used as a hurricane shelter.

00:41:08.000 He said, has he opened up Mar-a-Lago as a shelter yet?

00:41:10.000 56,000 likes.

00:41:12.000 Okay, and then Donald Trump Jr.

00:41:13.000 shellacked him because Donald Trump Jr.

00:41:15.000 pointed out, um, dude, we're actually in the hurricane zone.

00:41:18.000 We had to evacuate it.

00:41:20.000 So it's amazing how the left will jump on any talking point that's anti-Trump in order to push against him without looking at, you know, actual logic or fact.

00:41:27.000 Okay, time for some things I hate.

00:41:29.000 Let's do it.

00:41:34.000 Alrighty, so, uh, a couple of things that I hate. 0.96

00:41:36.000 First of all, uh, the media have been making complete fools of themselves.

00:41:39.000 They go out in the middle of the hurricane, and they stand out there, like, getting blown over by wind. 0.61

00:41:44.000 And I understand that this is, like, amusing to all of us.

00:41:47.000 I understand that we are all sort of hoping that, that eventually Chris Cuomo will be standing out there, and then he'll just go flying a hundred feet.

00:41:53.000 Not that he'll get hurt, but that he'll, like, go flying a hundred feet and go,

00:41:56.000 Disappear into the waves for just a second before a helicopter picks him up.

00:42:00.000 For the same reason we watch the Wallendas try to walk across the Grand Canyon, i.e. 0.98

00:42:05.000 you want to be there in case they fall, you sort of want to watch the coverage of these hurricanes. 0.97

00:42:09.000 Here is some moron getting out of his car and then trying to demonstrate how strong the winds are in Hurricane Irma. 1.00

00:42:27.000 And there this idiot goes. 1.00

00:42:28.000 He's just standing there, trying to stand up to the tidal force of this hurricane. 1.00

00:42:32.000 And he's full-on pushing against the hurricane.

00:42:34.000 And you gotta admit, when you watch this, you're sort of hoping that he just sort of goes sailing off the screen. 0.99

00:42:38.000 Because when people do stupid things, then you sort of hope that they pay a particular penalty. 0.99

00:42:43.000 Not a harsh physical penalty. 0.96

00:42:44.000 You wouldn't want anything terrible to happen to the guy. 0.99

00:42:46.000 But I would like to see him get knocked on his butt a little bit, because it is ridiculous. 1.00

00:42:49.000 Like, don't be a moron, people. 1.00

00:42:50.000 Please, please. 1.00

00:42:51.000 Okay, other things that I hate.

00:42:52.000 So President Trump was praising the Coast Guard.

00:42:55.000 And he was talking about what a great job they did.

00:42:56.000 Wonderful.

00:42:57.000 I wish that President Trump, his first instincts were not always to deal with things in terms of fame and fortune, but that's just how he deals with stuff.

00:43:07.000 Here's President Trump praising the Coast Guard.

00:43:10.000 If you talk about branding, no brand has improved more than the United States Coast Guard.

00:43:16.000 No.

00:43:16.000 Improved its brand?

00:43:18.000 Was the Coast Guard having serious branding problems?

00:43:21.000 Were they being boycotted?

00:43:22.000 I'm just wondering how that worked.

00:43:23.000 Was it like Philip Morris?

00:43:24.000 They were putting out commercials for children and then they were banned by the federal government?

00:43:28.000 Mr. President, please get the marketing side of yourself under control.

00:43:31.000 It's not a big thing.

00:43:32.000 Like really, this is a small ask.

00:43:33.000 But can you please stop seeing things in terms of how you see them?

00:43:35.000 I understand that Trump thinks of himself as a brander, because he is. 1.00

00:43:37.000 He's one of the world's greatest—he is, I think, probably the greatest brander in history. 0.99

00:43:42.000 I mean, the guy branded himself to the presidency of the United States, but the Coast Guard really did not need to improve its brand.

00:43:49.000 Like, let's just cut that out, if we can.

00:43:51.000 Okay, so we'll be back here tomorrow.

00:43:53.000 I'll give you the update on Berkeley.

00:43:55.000 We'll talk about Antifa.

00:43:56.000 Antifa went nuts in Portland yesterday.

00:43:58.000 They attacked a bunch of cops.

00:43:59.000 Obviously my fault.

00:44:00.000 And we'll bring you the latest on the political situation, as we always do.

00:44:03.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:44:04.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

The Ben Shapiro Show - September 11, 2017

The Berkeley Hurricane | Ep. 380

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