The Ben Shapiro Show - The Best Women's Rights Argument EVER, Debunked | Ep. 397

00:00:00.000 Well, hello there. 1.00

00:00:01.000 We're gonna talk about abortion and sex in Hollywood and lots of things having to do with Trump and dead soldiers and all sorts of stupid things also. 0.99

00:00:10.000 I'm Ben Shapiro. 1.00

00:00:10.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show. 1.00

00:00:17.000 Little behind the scenes there.

00:00:19.000 Every time we open this show, I have to look to a different camera, and I am very awkward at it.

00:00:22.000 So if you can't see the show, that's what you're missing out on, folks.

00:00:25.000 Okay, so before we get to any of these things, so somebody on the left this morning on Twitter presented the greatest pro-abortion argument of all time.

00:00:34.000 And then I refuted it, and then he blocked me.

00:00:36.000 So I will explain to you why this was not, in fact, the greatest pro-abortion argument of all time, and why it is that people think it was.

00:00:42.000 We'll also talk a little bit more about the Me Too hashtag that is going around, all these women posting on social media about how they've been sexually harassed in the past, which is fine and dandy, but I do have a couple of questions that I think need to be answered if we're going to actually do something practical with all that information.

00:00:58.000 Plus, President Trump goes after President Obama for not caring about dead troops or something, which is just awesome.

00:01:04.000 We'll get to all of that, but first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Legacy Box.

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00:02:19.000 Let's do it!

00:02:44.000 We begin today with an argument that was going around Twitter this morning.

00:02:47.000 I woke up and there was a tweet storm that was going around.

00:02:50.000 It has now been liked almost 19,000 times and retweeted 9,000 times.

00:02:55.000 It's a big tweet, right?

00:02:55.000 Especially from a guy who no one's ever heard of.

00:02:58.000 This guy's name is Patrick Tomlinson.

00:03:00.000 I would tell you how many followers he has except that he blocked me.

00:03:02.000 So, Patrick Tomlinson is apparently the author of something called the Ark Trilogy.

00:03:06.000 He's a sci-fi author, calls himself a comic.

00:03:09.000 I'm going to read you his nasty little tweetstorm, and then I'm going to explain why it is so appealing on the surface to pro-choicers, and then I'm going to explain why it makes no sense. 0.91

00:03:18.000 So, here is his argument in favor of abortion.

00:03:21.000 And it just drips with condescension and disdain. 1.00

00:03:24.000 Anyone who disagrees with him is a fool and a liar. 1.00

00:03:27.000 I'm so sick of that attitude. 1.00

00:03:28.000 I really am.

00:03:29.000 If I haven't made that clear with regard to Jimmy Kimmel, I'm gonna make it clear now with regard to Patrick Tomlinson.

00:03:33.000 Here's what he tweeted, quote,

00:03:35.000 Whenever abortion comes up, I have a question I've been asking for 10 years now of the Life Begins at Conception crowd. 0.88

00:03:40.000 In 10 years, no one has ever answered it honestly.

00:03:43.000 Ooh.

00:03:44.000 Then he says, it's a simple scenario with two outcomes.

00:03:47.000 Wow, I mean, just the brilliance this guy must carry in his head.

00:03:51.000 It's just mind boggling.

00:03:52.000 He says, no one ever wants to pick one because the correct answer destroys their argument.

00:03:57.000 There is a correct answer, which is why the pro-life crowd hates the question.

00:04:00.000 Here it is.

00:04:01.000 Are you ready?

00:04:02.000 So good.

00:04:03.000 You're in a fertility clinic. 0.87

00:04:05.000 Why isn't important?

00:04:06.000 The fire alarm goes off.

00:04:07.000 You run for the exit.

00:04:08.000 As you run down the hallway, you hear a child screaming from behind a door.

00:04:11.000 You throw open the door and find a five-year-old child crying for help.

00:04:13.000 Exciting, no?

00:04:14.000 They're in one corner of the room.

00:04:16.000 In the other corner—there, by the way, spelled T-H-E-Y apostrophe R-E.

00:04:22.000 Genius writer knows.

00:04:36.000 In a decade of arguing with anti-abortion people about the definition of human life, I have never gotten a single straight A or B answer to this question.

00:04:47.000 And I never will.

00:04:58.000 They will never answer honestly, because we all instinctively understand the right answer is A. A human life is worth more than a thousand embryos, or ten thousand, or a million, because they are not the same.

00:05:07.000 Not morally.

00:05:07.000 Not ethically.

00:05:08.000 Not biologically.

00:05:09.000 This question absolutely eviscerates their argument, and their refusal to answer confirms that they know it to be true.

00:05:15.000 No one, anywhere, actually believes an embryo is equivalent to a child.

00:05:18.000 That person does not exist.

00:05:20.000 They are lying to you.

00:05:21.000 They are lying to you to try and evoke an emotional response, a paternal response using false equivalency.

00:05:27.000 No one believes life begins at conception.

00:05:29.000 No one believes embryos are babies or children.

00:05:31.000 Those who claim to are trying to manipulate you so they can control women.

00:05:36.000 Don't let them.

00:05:37.000 Use this question to call them out.

00:05:38.000 Reveal them for what they are.

00:05:39.000 Demand they answer your question.

00:05:40.000 And when they don't, slap that big ol' scarlet P of the patriarchy on them.

00:05:44.000 The end.

00:05:46.000 Wow.

00:05:47.000 Mind.

00:05:50.000 Just amazing.

00:05:52.000 I mean, just the utter genius of this guy. 0.99

00:05:53.000 If I had thought of this example, if I had thought of this hypothetical, stupid question, like, I don't know, 10 years ago, totally would have changed my worldview. 0.99

00:06:00.000 I would have voted for Hillary Clinton, and I'd be wearing a sticker with a pussy hat on it. 1.00

00:06:05.000 Okay, so, let's put aside the fact that this guy's obviously a douchebag. 0.99

00:06:09.000 The commenters on the Twitter thread are properly puzzled. 0.64

00:06:12.000 The reason they're properly puzzled is because he is correct that your moral intuition suggests that you save the five-year-old child and not the box marked 1,000 viable embryos.

00:06:20.000 Here is why this does not prove the point he thinks that it proves.

00:06:22.000 There are many reasons why this does not even come close to proving the point he thinks it proves.

00:06:26.000 He thinks this proves that human embryos aren't life.

00:06:28.000 He thinks that this proves that we are all liars when we say that human embryos are human life.

00:06:32.000 He says that this proves that human embryos are not babies.

00:06:36.000 He says that this proves that we are all liars.

00:06:37.000 Okay, so here is why this is not true in any sense.

00:06:40.000 So, here are four reasons.

00:06:42.000 First, moral instinct does not always mean you thought things through.

00:06:45.000 So, we have lots of moral instincts.

00:06:47.000 Those moral instincts may be good, they may be right, they may be wrong.

00:06:50.000 That does not provide a moral logic.

00:06:53.000 Okay, just because you have a moral feeling does not mean that the logic is well thought out.

00:06:57.000 So, for example, here's another famous thought experiment.

00:07:00.000 I love thought experiments.

00:07:01.000 I think they're fun, so that's why I'm focusing on this because I think that it's good for you to get better at thought experiments, and it's fun for me to go through them.

00:07:07.000 So, here's another famous thought experiment.

00:07:08.000 This, of course, is the trolley problem.

00:07:10.000 Everyone knows of the trolley car problem.

00:07:12.000 This is where

00:07:14.000 You are standing on a railroad track, a trolley car track, and the track is right at the fork, okay?

00:07:19.000 You're standing right at the fork.

00:07:21.000 It goes to the right, and it goes to the left.

00:07:22.000 On the left, there is Nell, who is tied to the track, and on the right, there are five people who are tied to the track, okay?

00:07:29.000 Do you pull the switch and switch the trolley car from the one that is going to kill the five people to the one that is just going to kill Nell?

00:07:35.000 Most people say yes.

00:07:37.000 Right?

00:07:37.000 Okay, pretty easy answer, right?

00:07:38.000 This is a utilitarian answer.

00:07:40.000 We will save the five instead of saving the one.

00:07:41.000 Okay, now here is the more famous trolley car question.

00:07:44.000 You are now standing on a bridge over the trolley car track, and on the track is tied Nell and five other people.

00:07:51.000 So there's six people tied to the trolley car track.

00:07:53.000 You're standing above on a bridge, and up next to you is standing Michael Moore.

00:07:56.000 Okay, some big fatso.

00:07:58.000 Now, if you take Michael Moore and you push him over the side of the bridge,

00:08:02.000 And the trolley car is stopped by the weight of his grease against the skids.

00:08:08.000 Do you throw Michael Moore over the top of the bridge?

00:08:11.000 Most people say no.

00:08:12.000 Most people say there's a moral difference between me throwing a switch and me pushing somebody physically off a bridge to their doom.

00:08:18.000 That's a moral intuition, but can you justify it?

00:08:20.000 The answer is probably not.

00:08:22.000 And what this demonstrates is that most people's moral intuition is not necessarily a thought through logic.

00:08:28.000 And let's give another example, okay?

00:08:30.000 We can give all sorts of these thought experiments, proving that the moral intuition goes the other way.

00:08:34.000 So, for example, let's say that instead of a five-year-old and a box of 1,000 random viable embryos, it was a box of two embryos, and they were your children.

00:08:43.000 Right?

00:08:43.000 You are infertile, and your wife is infertile, but somehow, through a miracle, they've created two embryos that are your children, your only possibility of having children, and they are viable, so we know that they will implant and be fine, right?

00:08:53.000 That's the premise of his question.

00:08:55.000 So, do you save the embryos, or do you save the five-year-old, the random five-year-old?

00:08:58.000 A lot of people would say save the embryos now, because they're your children.

00:09:01.000 That's a moral intuition.

00:09:02.000 Does it make it right?

00:09:04.000 I assume Tomlinson would say no.

00:09:05.000 That just because you had a moral feeling one way or another doesn't mean that the feeling is justified.

00:09:10.000 And let's make it even easier.

00:09:11.000 Okay, let's say that you have your five-year-old, right?

00:09:13.000 It's your child, and it's a five-year-old now, right?

00:09:15.000 It's my daughter, and she's three and a half years old.

00:09:17.000 And in the next room, there are a hundred screaming adults.

00:09:20.000 And I can only save one.

00:09:22.000 Right?

00:09:22.000 Who do I save?

00:09:23.000 My three-and-a-half-year-old or the hundred screaming adults?

00:09:25.000 Most parents would say they would save their three-and-a-half-year-old.

00:09:27.000 Does that make that a moral choice?

00:09:29.000 Okay, this is the premise of every 24 episode ever.

00:09:32.000 Right? 1.00

00:09:32.000 It's always Kim Bauer, that idiot, getting captured, and then Jack has to decide whether to save the entire city of Los Angeles or his dumbass daughter. 1.00

00:09:40.000 It's the premise to every ticking bomb thriller. 1.00

00:09:43.000 It's Spider-Man, right?

00:09:46.000 Mary Jane is falling off, and Spider-Man has to save Mary Jane, or he can save the bus full of screaming children.

00:09:51.000 Which does he choose?

00:09:52.000 And naturally, the producers allow him to get away with saving both, but his tendency is to save Mary Jane, right?

00:09:57.000 Does that make it immoral?

00:09:59.000 Is that a moral decision, or is it just a moral impetus?

00:10:01.000 So just because you feel like you want to save the five-year-old, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're correct. 0.99

00:10:05.000 Okay, second point on this stupid hypothetical. 0.98

00:10:08.000 It doesn't actually reveal the value of embryonic life. 0.98

00:10:11.000 So, we can agree with Tomlinson that you should save the five-year-olds rather than the box of embryos on a moral level, and still, that would not admit that embryonic life is meaningless.

00:10:20.000 It would just mean that you care more about the five-year-old life than you care about the embryonic life.

00:10:24.000 Whether they're viable or not.

00:10:25.000 In fact, we can imagine a counter scenario where you care more about the embryonic life than the five-year-old.

00:10:29.000 So let's take a sci-fi scenario, since Tomlinson is a sci-fi writer.

00:10:33.000 Let's take the sort of Battlestar Galactica scenario, okay?

00:10:36.000 The fate of humanity rests on this one box full of 1,000 embryos that have males and females in them.

00:10:43.000 And now there's a fire on your spaceship, and you can save a screaming five-year-old, the only child, or, right, it's just you and the five-year-old.

00:10:49.000 There are no other people alive, right?

00:10:51.000 That's the end of the human story.

00:10:53.000 You can save those 1,000 embryos, and you can ensure that they are born from artificial wombs, and they will live and create a new human species, or you can save this one five-year-old, and you can both die alone in the middle of space.

00:11:04.000 Which do you do?

00:11:06.000 Right, so again, every sci-fi movie ever says you save the box of embryos.

00:11:09.000 Does that mean that the five-year-old is no longer a human life?

00:11:12.000 Right, because what he's doing is he's creating a false binary and then saying whichever one you choose, the other one's not a human life.

00:11:17.000 I've just given you a bunch of false binaries and then said, whichever one you choose is still a human life.

00:11:21.000 So clearly that isn't true.

00:11:23.000 I want to give you the rest of the argument in just a second, but first...

00:11:26.000 I don't know.

00:11:44.000 We're good to go.

00:12:07.000 We're good to go.

00:12:26.000 Then they will make it right.

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00:12:46.000 Check that out.

00:12:46.000 Promo code SHAPIRO so they know we sent you.

00:12:49.000 Next point on this idiotic argument that the left thinks destroys all of the various arguments in favor of the pro-life movement.

00:12:58.000 Most pro-lifers already acknowledge that an already born human life takes priority over a not yet born human life. 0.99

00:13:05.000 How do we know this?

00:13:06.000 Because the vast majority, the vast majority of religions, in fact all that I know of including Catholic doctrine, say that if you have to choose between the life of the mother and the life of the unborn child, you choose the life of the mother.

00:13:17.000 This is, in Catholic doctrine, to give a perfect example from Catholic doctrine, because Catholics are the most strict on this, the doctrine is, let's say that you're a woman and you have uterine cancer, and chemo and surgery are the only way to prevent you from dying from this uterine cancer, and the side effect of the chemo is that it's going to kill the embryo.

00:13:33.000 Are you allowed to get the chemo?

00:13:34.000 Catholic doctrine says absolutely, and the doctor didn't do anything wrong.

00:13:38.000 Why?

00:13:38.000 Because we value the life of the mother, and you are not actively killing the child, you are passively killing the child.

00:13:43.000 It's a secondary effect of the chemo that you're trying to do to save a life.

00:13:48.000 The same exact premise applies in this particular hypothetical that Tomlinson puts forward.

00:13:52.000 And finally, the hypothetical isn't reality. 1.00

00:13:55.000 Okay, this is the part that's the stupidest. 0.98

00:13:57.000 I'm not even arguing with the hypothetical now. 0.99

00:13:58.000 The hypothetical is saying, five-year-old child versus embryos, choose.

00:14:03.000 When women get abortions, they don't have a choice between five-year-old child and the embryo. 1.00

00:14:07.000 They are just choosing to kill the embryo.

00:14:09.000 An abortion doctor doesn't have a five-year-old child with a gun to their head in the next room and says, well, I saved that five-year-old. 1.00

00:14:14.000 I'm going to kill this baby now. 0.99

00:14:16.000 Instead, the doctor just says, would you like to kill the baby? 1.00

00:14:18.000 And the woman says yes, and they're done. 0.97

00:14:21.000 So it doesn't hold in any way.

00:14:23.000 But this is what the left likes to do.

00:14:24.000 They pose false hypotheticals that don't actually prove their point.

00:14:27.000 And then they say, if you answer me, you've proved my point.

00:14:30.000 Well, I answered him.

00:14:31.000 I'd save the five-year-old.

00:14:32.000 It still didn't prove his point, for all the reasons that I just said.

00:14:35.000 So I said all this on Twitter.

00:14:37.000 Then he basically accused me of being gay and blocked me.

00:14:39.000 So, well done, Patrick Tomlinson.

00:14:42.000 You've demonstrated fully how genius you are.

00:14:45.000 No one could give you a straight answer.

00:14:47.000 You are just an epic intellect.

00:14:50.000 I'm stunned by the fact that no one has

00:14:53.000 Taken taking your genius at face value.

00:14:56.000 Okay, so in other news There's this this hashtag that's going around on social media me too And there are people that I know members my family have posted on this hashtag me too about being sexually harassed at work Sexual harassment is awful sexual harassment is evil.

00:15:10.000 It's why I am supremely careful around women I do not 1.00

00:15:15.000 I think that, you know, touching at the office is inappropriate.

00:15:19.000 I think that, you know, the only person of the opposite sex that you should be touching other than a handshake is your spouse. 1.00

00:15:26.000 This is my view of the matter as a general matter.

00:15:29.000 And it's funny, because the same people who will claim sexual harassment and yell sexual harassment say that I'm a prude for saying stuff like this.

00:15:34.000 I'm a prude for saying that you shouldn't touch other people at the office. 0.91

00:15:36.000 Ooh, prude! 0.60

00:15:37.000 But then if you touch somebody else at the office, then they say, well, that could be sexual harassment.

00:15:41.000 Okay, you can't have it both ways.

00:15:43.000 You can't rip on Mike Pence for being super careful at the office and then suggest that Mike Pence is sexually harassing a woman if he touches her on the shoulder.

00:15:51.000 You can't say that Joe Biden is doing just fine every time he gives some random lady a shoulder rub, but Mike Pence is totally wrong every time he says he's not going to touch anybody but his wife.

00:16:00.000 One of the problems that I have with the Me Too thing is this.

00:16:03.000 There are a lot of people who are hashtagging Me Too and telling their stories of sexual harassment and sexual assault.

00:16:09.000 We need to have some standards.

00:16:11.000 The reason I say this is not because I don't think it's valuable when women talk about their experiences. 1.00

00:16:15.000 It's fine for women to talk about their experiences. 0.91

00:16:17.000 It's good.

00:16:17.000 And I think men should be very aware of the fact that women are not going to like it always when they go in for a hug, or when they give them a kiss on a cheek, or when they give them a shoulder rub, or any of this kind of stuff, right?

00:16:27.000 Men should be aware of all of these things and be supremely careful, as I suggest.

00:16:31.000 However, one of the things that I have a problem with

00:16:34.000 is

00:16:54.000 This has been a really hard week for women in Hollywood, for women all over the world, and a lot of situations and a lot of industries are forced to remember and relive a lot of ugly truths.

00:17:01.000 I've had my own experiences that come back to me very vividly, and I find it hard to sleep, hard to think, hard to communicate a lot of the feelings I've been having about anxiety, honest...

00:17:09.000 Honestly, the guilt for not speaking up earlier says I feel true disgust at the director who assaulted me when I was 16 years old and anger at the agents and producers who made me feel that silence was a condition of my employment.

00:17:20.000 And I wish I could tell you that was an isolated incident in my career, but sadly it wasn't.

00:17:23.000 I've had multiple experiences of harassment and sexual assault and I don't speak about them very often.

00:17:28.000 Here's the problem.

00:17:30.000 We have to have some lines here.

00:17:32.000 We have to know what it is that it is worth people losing their jobs and their careers over, and what it is that is inappropriate.

00:17:41.000 And if people are not told where the line is, how do you expect them to abide by the line?

00:17:46.000 So you can use my line.

00:17:47.000 My line is you don't get to touch a woman at the office without her permission ever. 0.63

00:17:52.000 And if you do that, then you are in serious trouble, right?

00:17:54.000 That is sexual harassment.

00:17:56.000 You're doing it without consent.

00:17:58.000 However, that is not what modern leftist society has said on sex, right?

00:18:02.000 Modern leftist society has said for decades on sex that sexual looseness at the office is actually a good thing. 0.97

00:18:08.000 Maybe the woman would like... I mean, let's not pretend that romances have not started at the office because a huge number of people are currently living together who met at the office and started going out and

00:18:19.000 The way that human touch works is not always a guy with a checklist coming up and saying, I need you to check every one of these boxes, right?

00:18:25.000 When somebody makes a move, it's very easy to do this in the abstract, but when somebody makes a move, very often it is not a move where somebody says, is it okay right now if I kiss you?

00:18:33.000 Is it okay if I touch your shoulder?

00:18:34.000 Okay, that's generally not how it happens as far as I'm aware.

00:18:38.000 And I'll appeal to the female in the room and make her quite awkward now. 1.00

00:18:40.000 Jess, do you believe that this is the way that it works in human relationships?

00:18:44.000 That guys typically ask girls before they kiss them, can I kiss you or hold your hand?

00:18:49.000 Or, have you had experiences where a guy has just made a move on you and it hasn't been the end of the world?

00:18:57.000 Right, it's 50-50, and this is sort of the problem, right?

00:18:59.000 Is that there's no hard lines with regard to this stuff, and there are times when a guy will make a move on a girl and the girl is totally fine with it, and there are times when a guy will make a move on a girl and she's totally not fine with it.

00:19:08.000 And because there's no hard line on this stuff, it's hard to know for a lot of guys where exactly to draw the line.

00:19:13.000 Now we can say, as I would say, that the guy should ask consent always before kissing, right?

00:19:18.000 When I first kissed my wife, that's actually what I did.

00:19:19.000 I said, do you mind if I kiss you now?

00:19:21.000 Which is not the most romantic thing to do, but that's how I operate.

00:19:25.000 But that is not always how human relationships work.

00:19:28.000 And so I'm seeing a lot of stories online, in these Me Too circles, that don't actually draw the hard line.

00:19:33.000 Like, would you report a guy for he's drunk at a party and he tries to kiss you?

00:19:38.000 Would you report a guy to HR for that?

00:19:40.000 Is that worth a guy losing his job?

00:19:41.000 Some women would say yes, some women would say no. 1.00

00:19:45.000 We need to have some hard lines in society and figure out where the line is actually drawn.

00:19:50.000 Apparently the line isn't even drawn at actual sexual assault in Hollywood.

00:19:53.000 These women, America Ferreira says that she was sexually assaulted at the age of nine. 1.00

00:19:57.000 She says, first time I can remember being sexually assaulted, I was nine years old.

00:20:00.000 I told no one and lived with the shame and guilt, thinking all along that I, a nine year old child, was somehow responsible for the actions of a grown man.

00:20:06.000 I had to see this man on a daily basis for years to come.

00:20:09.000 He would smile at me, wave, and I would hurry past him, my blood running cold, my guts carrying the burden of what only he and I knew, that he expected me to shut my mouth and smile back.

00:20:16.000 Right now, Alyssa Milano is saying some of the same stuff.

00:20:19.000 America Ferrer is a big girl now, okay?

00:20:21.000 Like, I understand when you're nine years old not speaking out about that.

00:20:23.000 I get it.

00:20:24.000 I understand the pressure.

00:20:25.000 I understand the horror.

00:20:26.000 I can never fully understand because I wasn't in that position, but I get where she's coming from.

00:20:30.000 Now she's an adult.

00:20:31.000 That guy is still preying on young children, presumably.

00:20:34.000 Why doesn't she say his name?

00:20:36.000 So in Hollywood, they won't even say the names.

00:20:38.000 Okay, this is the same problem I have with the institutional racism argument.

00:20:42.000 Is there racism in American society?

00:20:43.000 Yes.

00:20:44.000 I need a specific name and a specific example so I can fight it with you.

00:20:48.000 I need a specific instance with a specific name so I can fight it with you or decide whether you are just being oversensitive with regards to the Me Too stuff.

00:20:56.000 I want to be on your side.

00:20:58.000 I want to say, let's put this rapist in jail. 0.99

00:21:02.000 I want to say, let's put this sexual harasser in jail or allow you to sue him. 1.00

00:21:05.000 But I don't think that we have any hard standards with regards to this stuff.

00:21:08.000 Like, I was talking to my wife about this last night.

00:21:10.000 My wife is a very beautiful woman, and she's been hit on a lot in her life.

00:21:14.000 As a doctor, she gets hit on a lot.

00:21:16.000 She experiences stuff I'm sure male doctors don't, where patients will hit on her on a pretty regular basis.

00:21:21.000 The example that she gave is she was working at the Veterans Administration, and one guy said to her, this is like an older guy, probably 60 years old, said to her something like, your eyes are so blue and so deep, they're like the ocean.

00:21:32.000 And she was like, should I have been insulted by that, or should I have been sort of complimented by that?

00:21:36.000 I chose to be sort of complimented by it, but I could see being insulted by it, and that's sort of right, right?

00:21:42.000 The problem with a lot of this sort of stuff is, it's I know it when I see it.

00:21:44.000 Now I think there are some obvious hard lines that are pretty clear, and this is why I'm very frustrated with these actresses who are now big stars and who are leaving predators in positions of power by not naming names. 1.00

00:21:53.000 There is no statute of limitations to child molestation.

00:21:56.000 But the fact that that is not what's happening is a problem.

00:22:00.000 And again, I think that we're all on the same side.

00:22:02.000 I think that when we are vague about these things, it actually creates false divisions that don't exist.

00:22:06.000 I think all good-hearted people want to see men who sexually harassed called out.

00:22:10.000 I think that we need hard standards of what sexual harassment constitutes, what sexual assault constitutes.

00:22:15.000 And it can't just be that something bothered me 10 years ago, I said nothing about it, I come out today, I give a vague reference to being sexually harassed at work, and then we're all supposed to just say, well, that's society.

00:22:25.000 Yes, men should be careful.

00:22:27.000 Yes, men should know, as I say, hold by my standard.

00:22:30.000 I like my standard the best.

00:22:32.000 But since as a society we have not decided to abide by my standard, apparently, since we've decided that it's prudish to abide by Mike Pence's standard.

00:22:39.000 Then I don't know what standard we are supposed to abide by.

00:22:42.000 And I would like for all... This is not a critique.

00:22:45.000 This is all of us coming together and creating a formal societal standard where we know what's good and what's bad so that we can target the bad guys.

00:22:50.000 I don't see why that's too much to ask.

00:22:52.000 That's not anti the Me Too campaign.

00:22:54.000 That is saying when you say Me Too, how about you say who did it and what it was so that we can determine whether it was something bad enough that the person should lose their job, lose their career, lose their livelihood and go to jail.

00:23:03.000 Is that unreasonable?

00:23:04.000 If we're going to accuse people of crimes, maybe we should accuse people of crimes.

00:23:07.000 Okay, so before I go any further along these lines, I also want to talk about some stuff that President Trump said.

00:23:12.000 First, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Blinkist.

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00:25:13.000 Okay, so,

00:25:14.000 Again, final word on the Me Too thing, just to reiterate.

00:25:17.000 I think it's good that women are calling out sexual harassment in the workplace. 0.60

00:25:20.000 I think in order for us to fight sexual harassment in the workplace, two things have to happen.

00:25:24.000 I think Me Too does one thing, but it doesn't do the other.

00:25:26.000 Me Too makes men aware that they need to be careful around women, as well they should, but what it does not do is it allows us, it does not allow us to actually target the guys who have already done bad stuff and should have known better.

00:25:36.000 In order for that to happen, you have to name names, and you have to name scenarios, and we need to know what constitutes the line that was crossed.

00:25:44.000 I can't help feeling that some of this is politicized.

00:25:45.000 Again, I mentioned Joe Biden.

00:25:47.000 Look at those pictures of Joe Biden being really awkward around women, okay?

00:25:51.000 And let me ask, how many Democrats are willing to say that Joe Biden should not run for president or should not have been a senator or should not have been VP?

00:25:58.000 I mean, for goodness sake.

00:25:59.000 The right decided it was fine for Trump to be president, and the left decided it was fine for Clinton to be president, and both of them have some pretty nasty histories with regard to this sort of stuff.

00:26:07.000 Okay, so, I also want to talk today about the Trump versus Bannon war, supposedly, over establishment versus non-establishment.

00:26:17.000 I don't think that really exists.

00:26:19.000 Before I get to that, I want to talk a little bit about

00:26:21.000 We're good.

00:26:36.000 Now, President Trump is the kind of fellow who likes to say that everything that he does is unprecedented, right?

00:26:42.000 If he went to the bathroom, he didn't just have a bowel movement, he had the greatest bowel movement in history.

00:26:46.000 No one has ever had a better bowel movement, people.

00:26:49.000 It is the greatest, no one, no one.

00:26:51.000 Genghis Khan had never, no one, okay?

00:26:56.000 Andre the Giant has never had a bowel movement of this magnitude.

00:26:59.000 It was huge, huge, right?

00:27:00.000 So this is just how everything is phrased for President Trump.

00:27:03.000 He's the only one who has ever done anything.

00:27:05.000 Every hurricane is unprecedented.

00:27:07.000 Every attack is unprecedented.

00:27:11.000 Everything he does is the greatest, the best, the brightest, the most incredible, the most beautiful, the most wonderful, the worst, the most horrible.

00:27:17.000 He only speaks in superlatives.

00:27:19.000 It's something I've critiqued before.

00:27:20.000 Well, because of that, he gets himself into some hot water.

00:27:22.000 So yesterday he was talking about how he calls the families of fallen troops

00:27:27.000 And just by the wayside, he says, and I'm basically the only guy who's ever done that sort of thing.

00:27:32.000 Here's President Trump saying exactly that.

00:27:34.000 This is him saying that President Obama did not call the troops.

00:27:37.000 Clip eight.

00:27:38.000 The traditional way, if you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn't make calls.

00:27:46.000 A lot of them didn't make calls.

00:27:47.000 I like to call when it's appropriate, when I think I'm able to do it.

00:27:52.000 Okay, so a lot of them didn't make calls.

00:27:54.000 I'm the only one who makes calls.

00:27:56.000 That's the implication.

00:27:57.000 And then the White House defended by saying, well, it's true that not all parents of troops were called.

00:28:02.000 That's really not what Trump is saying.

00:28:03.000 Can we all see what the implication is, what Trump is saying there?

00:28:06.000 And now the White House, because everything that Trump says has to be doubled down upon, it's really, it's kind of gross.

00:28:12.000 So now the White House is saying,

00:28:15.000 Again, the easiest thing to say here is President Trump misspoke.

00:28:27.000 Of course, other presidents called the families of fallen troops.

00:28:30.000 I think people who are on Obama's team are right to be angry about this because that is something that Obama apparently did do.

00:28:36.000 But it's also the sort of thing where because the media is going to jump on it, a lot of people on the right are going to claim that it's unfair.

00:28:42.000 The media always has to overstep.

00:28:44.000 Instead of making the critique that I just made, that Trump always speaks like this, he speaks in superlatives, that puts him in a position of saying things that are not true, and frankly, disingenuous.

00:28:54.000 Instead of just saying that, instead they have to go completely overboard. 1.00

00:28:57.000 Trump's a scum, Trump's a cockroach, Trump's the worst guy in the world. 1.00

00:28:59.000 CNN's Faux Mud did exactly that last night. 1.00

00:29:04.000 Boy, it's a tough day for the President.

00:29:05.000 How about for the families who accepted a child or a father or spouse home in a casket?

00:29:10.000 It's not a tough day for them?

00:29:12.000 This guy has the empathy of a cockroach.

00:29:15.000 From the day after his inauguration, when he showed up at my agency, my former agency, the CIA, in front of the Wall of Fallen Heroes, and spoke about the size of his inauguration, fast-forwarding now, what is it, nine months, and he can't figure out his responsibility, not only as the Commander-in-Chief,

00:29:32.000 But as the Consular-in-Chief is to tell those families, it's not about me.

00:29:36.000 It's not about Donald Trump.

00:29:37.000 It's about 330 million Americans saying thank you for having someone in your family.

00:29:42.000 This sort of talk is not helpful to the other side.

00:29:44.000 So I mean, I don't give advice to people who are on the Democratic left.

00:29:48.000 But let me give you a little piece of advice here.

00:29:50.000 It is not helpful to the American experiment for you to suggest that Trump has no sympathy for the fallen soldiers.

00:29:58.000 What you can say is that Trump is overstepping.

00:30:00.000 What you can say is that Trump lied about President Obama.

00:30:03.000 What you can say is that Trump is mean, and when he says that about President Obama, it is wrong for him to impute that sort of motivation to President Obama.

00:30:09.000 But to go to, he has no empathy at all for the fallen troops, is you now overstepping in the other direction.

00:30:14.000 And this is, every controversy is now this.

00:30:18.000 Trump says something wrong, the left oversteps way too far in the other direction, the right oversteps way too far in the opposite direction, and nobody actually ends up in the place where the truth is, right?

00:30:27.000 The truth is Trump said something that is wrong and false and nasty, and instead of just saying this is wrong and false and nasty, people immediately go to, well, he hates the troops.

00:30:36.000 Like, really?

00:30:37.000 That's where you want to go?

00:30:38.000 That's the place that you want to go?

00:30:40.000 I don't see why people would do that at all.

00:30:42.000 And it's because of that reactionary tendency in politics that President Trump won, really.

00:30:46.000 Like, people say, how could he win in spite of saying things like this?

00:30:48.000 It's not in spite of saying things like this.

00:30:50.000 It's because he said things like this.

00:30:52.000 And the right inherently believes that there are a lot of people on the left who don't care enough about fallen troops because it's always easy to impute bad motivations to the other side. 0.99

00:30:59.000 And then the left immediately claims that Trump doesn't care about the fallen troops, and the right says, well, screw you! 0.89

00:31:05.000 This is how the game was played.

00:31:07.000 And I'll show you the proof.

00:31:08.000 So here is President Trump yesterday.

00:31:09.000 This is the part about why Trump won.

00:31:11.000 So President Trump won because he was running against Hillary Clinton.

00:31:14.000 End of story.

00:31:15.000 Hillary Clinton won the presidency for Donald Trump.

00:31:18.000 There's a hilarious piece by Gover Newsweek saying, here's how we could still make Hillary Clinton president.

00:31:23.000 Or I think the actual title was, here's how Hillary Clinton can still enter the Oval Office. 1.00

00:31:27.000 And I tweeted,

00:31:28.000 She can wrap herself in a box and mail herself there.

00:31:32.000 I mean, that's the only way that she's gonna get in. 0.93

00:31:35.000 But in any case, Trump says, and he's correct, that Hillary, who's been very supportive of these people kneeling for the national anthem in the NFL, that's why she lost.

00:31:44.000 When you take a knee, well, that's why she lost the election. 1.00

00:31:48.000 I mean, honestly, it's that thinking that is the reason she lost the election.

00:31:53.000 When you go down

00:31:55.000 and take a knee or any other way.

00:31:58.000 You're sitting, essentially, for our great national anthem.

00:32:02.000 You're disrespecting our flag, and you're disrespecting our country. 0.77

00:32:07.000 Okay, so he's right about this, and this is why Hillary Clinton is not the president today. 0.61

00:32:12.000 It's this reactionary stuff, right?

00:32:14.000 Hillary Clinton feels like she has to react to Trump, so she sides with the NFL players, and then Trump smacks her. 0.99

00:32:18.000 This is why Trump is president and Hillary Clinton is not, and this is why he begged her, basically, yesterday.

00:32:23.000 This is actually kind of funny.

00:32:24.000 He begged her to run again yesterday.

00:32:26.000 Oh, I hope Hillary runs. 1.00

00:32:28.000 Is she going to run?

00:32:28.000 I hope.

00:32:29.000 Hillary, please run again. 0.88

00:32:30.000 Go ahead.

00:32:33.000 Okay, that is certainly what he desperately hopes.

00:32:36.000 Okay, so, let's talk a little bit about the other sort of controversy that broke out around President Trump yesterday.

00:32:44.000 This is the one that's making all the headlines.

00:32:45.000 The reason I didn't start the show with this is because I think it's really overblown.

00:32:49.000 And I will explain in just a second, but first I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Zeal.

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00:34:51.000 Okay, so, yesterday, the war broke out between Steve Bannon and Donald Trump.

00:34:56.000 Now, the reason I make light of this is because I don't actually think Steve Bannon is a particularly important figure.

00:35:01.000 Steve Bannon is a proxy for the money of Robert and Rebecca Mercer.

00:35:05.000 Right?

00:35:05.000 That's all.

00:35:06.000 Okay?

00:35:06.000 Steve Bannon is their political guru.

00:35:08.000 The Mercers spend a lot of money on politics.

00:35:11.000 They spent a lot of money on Ted Cruz and Donald Trump in the last election cycle, and so they are funding some of the people that Bannon says that they should fund.

00:35:18.000 Now, what Bannon is smart about is he's not going to pick—I don't think he's going to make the mistake anymore of picking primary challengers who are bad candidates or who don't already have momentum or who wouldn't win anyway, in other words.

00:35:30.000 I think that Trump is going to pick winners.

00:35:32.000 Uh, and I think, I mean, Bannon is going to pick winners and then he's going to claim that he is responsible for their victory.

00:35:36.000 That's basically what happened in Alabama.

00:35:38.000 So Bannon went down to Alabama, he campaigned for Roy Moore over Luther Strange in the Republican primary down there.

00:35:44.000 Roy Moore is going to win anyway.

00:35:45.000 Roy Moore is one of the most famous people in Alabama politics.

00:35:48.000 I knew his name long before he was running for Senate.

00:35:52.000 In fact, if we want to be specific about this, Breitbart, I believe, backed the guy who finished third in the original primary.

00:35:59.000 They backed a congressperson who finished behind both Luther Strange and Roy Moore in that primary down in Alabama in the first round.

00:36:08.000 And then they backed Roy Moore and supposedly it was Breitbart that drove him to victory or Bannon that drove him to victory.

00:36:12.000 I don't think that's right.

00:36:13.000 I think Bannon is smart enough to jump on a bandwagon that's already moving forward.

00:36:16.000 So, Bannon is trying to claim that he is now leading the populist movement.

00:36:19.000 He's leading the Trumpist movement.

00:36:21.000 And Trump is not leading the Trumpist movement.

00:36:23.000 Only Steve Bannon can.

00:36:24.000 Now, again, do I like Steve Bannon?

00:36:27.000 No. 1.00

00:36:27.000 I think he's a jerk. 1.00

00:36:29.000 Do I think that Steve Bannon is capable of doing something like leading a movement? 1.00

00:36:33.000 I don't.

00:36:34.000 Steve Bannon, from what I know of him, and I've said this openly, is a guy who basically has glommed on to power for as long as I've known of him.

00:36:43.000 He glommed on to Sarah Palin, he glommed on to Sean Hannity, he glommed on to Dick Morris, he glommed on to Michelle Bachman, he glommed on to Andrew Breitbart, and then he glommed on to Trump.

00:36:51.000 The idea that Bannon is the engine of a movement

00:36:55.000 This populist, nationalist, conservative revolt

00:37:21.000 That's going on.

00:37:22.000 That drove Donald Trump to victory.

00:37:24.000 That drove Judge Moore to victory.

00:37:27.000 That will drive 15 candidates to victory in 2018.

00:37:32.000 Okay, so this idea, he said a lot of words in a row there, and the words have no relationship to one another.

00:37:38.000 Populist, nationalist, conservative, what does that even mean?

00:37:41.000 What does that even mean?

00:37:42.000 Like, I assume he said he would back Ted Cruz, Andre Moore, and Mike Lee.

00:37:48.000 They have very different views of politics, those three.

00:37:51.000 The idea that these are all part of a populist revolt is not true.

00:37:54.000 Basically, here's what's happened in American politics since 2010.

00:37:57.000 There's been a vast backlash

00:38:00.000 against Obama and the Obama movement, not based on race, not even based on excess spending, but based on a generalized anger at the way that politics has been done.

00:38:10.000 People feel like they're cut out of the loop.

00:38:11.000 The Tea Party movement started long before Steve Bannon was even involved at Breitbart.

00:38:15.000 Breitbart wasn't even around in 2010 when the Tea Party movement really started.

00:38:20.000 Big government was.

00:38:21.000 Big Hollywood was.

00:38:22.000 But Breitbart.com only got started as one cohesive website in 2012.

00:38:26.000 I know, I was there.

00:38:27.000 The idea that Breitbart is the moving force behind the populist nationalist movement.

00:38:32.000 There is no populist nationalist movement.

00:38:33.000 There's a bunch of people who are Tea Partiers and who are now voting for a set of disparate candidates.

00:38:38.000 The way that this has morphed, thanks to Trump, is that Trump was just the latest masthead on the ship that has had many mastheads, right?

00:38:45.000 Ted Cruz was on the masthead originally.

00:38:48.000 Then he was at the prowl of the ship in 2012, I remember, because, over Breitbart.

00:38:53.000 I was backing Ted Cruz over David Dewhurst in the Texas state primary for the Senate seat.

00:38:59.000 You know, it's had other faces too.

00:39:02.000 This Tea Party sort of insurgency.

00:39:05.000 The idea that Bannon is the head of that or that Trump is the driving force in the ship is not true.

00:39:11.000 Trump was just the temporary prow of the ship.

00:39:13.000 Bannon is not a temporary prow of the ship.

00:39:15.000 Whoever is the prow is the prow.

00:39:16.000 Bannon's just a guy who's picking some people and directing mercenary money toward them.

00:39:20.000 Which is fine, but I think it's easy to overestimate the lengths to which people are going to exaggerate this conflict, the so-called establishment versus anti-establishment conflict.

00:39:29.000 These terms have no meaning that I can spot.

00:39:32.000 Except for a feeling, and I'll explain that feeling in just a second.

00:39:34.000 But for that, you're gonna have to go over to dailywire.com.

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00:41:05.000 So the Bannon-Trump thing broke out into the open yesterday because the idea is that Bannon is on one side, primarying people, and Trump is on the other side, opposing the primaries.

00:41:14.000 Nonsense.

00:41:15.000 Nonsense.

00:41:16.000 Bannon has a particular idea of, and just like a lot of us do, by the way, I'm sort of on Bannon's side of this argument, Bannon has a particular idea of who are candidates who are worth backing in primaries, and Mitch McConnell has a separate idea of which candidates are worth backing in primaries.

00:41:33.000 And Mitch McConnell would have backed David Dewhurst in Texas instead of Ted Cruz.

00:41:37.000 Presumably he would have backed whoever was not Rand Paul in that primary.

00:41:42.000 But, you know, there are differing opinions on basically who should be the senator, but that's more an attitudinal thing rather than a positional thing.

00:41:49.000 It's more of an attitude rather than a position.

00:41:51.000 The idea that Mitch McConnell is the quote-unquote establishment and Steve Bannon is not the establishment, you have to show me where they differ on policy.

00:41:58.000 And where do they actually differ on policy?

00:41:59.000 I know it's kind of a hard question and a surprising one.

00:42:03.000 Because when you think of Steve Bannon, you think, oh, he must really disagree with Mitch McConnell on policy.

00:42:08.000 Does he?

00:42:09.000 He encouraged President Trump not to get rid of DACA in the first place.

00:42:12.000 Did he differ from Mitch McConnell on that?

00:42:15.000 He and Mitch McConnell were on the same page on health care.

00:42:17.000 So did they differ on that?

00:42:19.000 They're on the same page on taxes, basically.

00:42:22.000 Do they differ on that?

00:42:23.000 Except that Bannon is more left.

00:42:24.000 Bannon wants to increase taxes on high earners.

00:42:27.000 Do they disagree on foreign policy?

00:42:29.000 They may, but that really isn't the purview of Congress.

00:42:31.000 They don't disagree on funding the military.

00:42:33.000 So where exactly do they disagree?

00:42:35.000 This is why I say it's more attitude than it is anything else, which is why Trump is president and Ted Cruz isn't, right?

00:42:40.000 It's more about the attitude that best channels the conservative anger, best channels the anger on the right, than it is about a set of populist nationalist ideas or any of this kind of nonsense.

00:42:49.000 And what this now comes down to is the varying personalities.

00:42:52.000 Now you may have noticed

00:42:54.000 That I really dislike the politics of personalities.

00:42:58.000 I think the personality matters, I do.

00:43:00.000 I think character matters.

00:43:01.000 But I dislike this idea that you back Trump because Trump has an attitude, but you don't back Mitch McConnell because Mitch McConnell doesn't have the right attitude.

00:43:08.000 Here's the question.

00:43:08.000 Who's best at pushing the conservative agenda?

00:43:11.000 Some people will say Trump.

00:43:12.000 I would say, what's the evidence?

00:43:14.000 Some people would say McConnell.

00:43:15.000 I would say, what's the evidence?

00:43:17.000 Some people would say Ted Cruz.

00:43:18.000 I'd say there's more evidence for that than either, but that's the real question.

00:43:23.000 Who's best at pushing the ideas that you want pushed rather than who is the guy who most apes the style that you think is fun to watch?

00:43:32.000 Who's the guy who punches and yells versus who's the guy who's quiet and talks like a turtle?

00:43:36.000 Who cares?

00:43:37.000 I don't think that matters all that much unless it has an impact as to the efficacy of pushing a particular point of view.

00:43:43.000 The way this is broken down, therefore, is you have Steve Bannon, who's very loud and says a lot of stuff and pretends he's Darth Vader, and Mitch McConnell, who is a turtle.

00:43:53.000 And then in the middle, you have Donald Trump, who has sort of attitudinal affinity to Steve Bannon, but who knows that Mitch McConnell is the guy who actually has to get his agenda done.

00:44:03.000 And that's really how this is breaking down.

00:44:04.000 So here is Donald Trump saying, listen, we're not getting anything done, but I'm not going to blame me.

00:44:08.000 And it's because Trump feels like nothing's getting done that he's tempted to blame McConnell.

00:44:13.000 But we're not getting the job done.

00:44:15.000 And I'm not going to blame myself, I'll be honest.

00:44:17.000 They are not getting the job done.

00:44:19.000 We've had healthcare approved and then you had a surprise vote by John McCain.

00:44:25.000 We've had other things happen and they're not getting the job done.

00:44:30.000 Right, so he's not going to blame himself.

00:44:32.000 So who is he blaming?

00:44:33.000 Blames McConnell.

00:44:33.000 And then he would go on to say that he knows how Steve Bannon feels about primarying people.

00:44:38.000 Again, it really isn't about Bannon.

00:44:39.000 It's really about Mercer money.

00:44:41.000 But there is a danger, right?

00:44:42.000 So this is the game.

00:44:43.000 I'm analyzing the game here.

00:44:44.000 So here is Trump saying that he knows how Bannon feels about primarying people.

00:44:53.000 I know how he feels.

00:44:55.000 It depends on who you're talking about.

00:44:56.000 There are some Republicans, frankly, that should be ashamed of themselves.

00:45:01.000 But most of them, I'll tell you what, I know the Republican senators.

00:45:04.000 Most of them are really, really great people that want to work hard and they want to do a great thing for the American public.

00:45:11.000 But you had a few people that really disappointed us.

00:45:14.000 Okay, so there is Trump basically saying he sympathizes with Bannon, but then Mitch McConnell is whispering in Trump's ear going, um, President Trump, if you lose the majority because we primary a bunch of people who are going to win general elections, then you're not going to be able to do anything.

00:45:27.000 If you lose the House in 2018, they'll impeach you.

00:45:29.000 So that is, so that's what McConnell did.

00:45:31.000 They did a, they did a lovey-dovey sort of press conference yesterday between McConnell and Trump.

00:45:37.000 Attitudinally, the two guys couldn't be more different.

00:45:39.000 But Trump needs McConnell, and McConnell needs Trump.

00:45:41.000 And so that's how this shakes out.

00:45:43.000 And that's why you have Trump saying that he likes McConnell, right?

00:45:45.000 So this is Trump's new shtick, is that he likes McConnell, even though he clearly hates him.

00:45:49.000 My relationship with this gentleman is outstanding, has been outstanding.

00:45:55.000 We are working very hard to get the tax cuts.

00:45:58.000 We will continue to work hard to get the health care completed.

00:46:03.000 Okay, so again, the reason that I'm bringing this up is because I think that the media narrative is not true.

00:46:08.000 The media narrative is it's establishment versus anti-establishment, O'Connell versus Bannon.

00:46:12.000 That's not really what's happening here.

00:46:13.000 What's happening here is that Steve Bannon wants to be perceived as the head of a movement that he is not the head of.

00:46:18.000 He's going to pick some candidates like Chris McDaniel in Mississippi, who came very close to knocking off Thad Cochran in Mississippi, and then he will back him,

00:46:27.000 McDaniels would probably win anyway.

00:46:28.000 And then he will proclaim himself leader of the movement.

00:46:31.000 And then after that, you will see there's a lot of repercussions.

00:46:34.000 Is this a slap against McConnell?

00:46:36.000 It's not really a slap against McConnell.

00:46:37.000 This has been part of something that's been going on for a very long time.

00:46:40.000 It's been about a base feeling that McConnell does not fight hard enough.

00:46:44.000 So we must have more senators who fight harder. 0.99

00:46:46.000 But it's not about populist nationalism or any ideological conflict or any of that.

00:46:50.000 It's a little more messy than that.

00:46:51.000 It's about attitude rather than policy.

00:46:53.000 Okay.

00:46:53.000 Quick time for things I like and then things I hate.

00:46:55.000 So, a quick thing that I like.

00:46:58.000 There's a book that I'm in the middle of right now that I'm really enjoying by Thomas West.

00:47:01.000 It's called The Political Theory of the American Founding.

00:47:03.000 It is heavy reading, okay?

00:47:04.000 It's not easy reading.

00:47:05.000 But it is about the idea that Aristotelian ancient thought informed the founder's view of America.

00:47:11.000 This is a pretty abstruse debate in conservative circles, which is did founding philosophy break with ancient thought from Aristotle about what man was created for, or does it jibe with that?

00:47:24.000 Is the natural rights theories of the founders

00:47:26.000 Are they disconnected from the idea of Aristotle that human beings have a purpose that we can discern?

00:47:32.000 Or is it connected deeply to that?

00:47:34.000 In other words, are rights connected to duties?

00:47:36.000 That's really what it's about.

00:47:37.000 So Thomas West is pointing out that the founders truly believed in duties, they just didn't believe that it was the government's job to impose those duties on other people.

00:47:45.000 I agree with Thomas West's general premise here.

00:47:48.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate because we're running short on time.

00:47:51.000 The quick thing that I hate is that Jane Fonda is back and better than ever. 0.99

00:47:55.000 Or worse than ever is the case, maybe.

00:47:57.000 Jane Fonda, if you recall all the way back to the 1960s and 70s, she went over to Vietnam and she posed on a North Vietnamese gun that was actually aiming at American planes.

00:48:08.000 And then she proclaimed herself a patriot.

00:48:10.000 She says she has no regrets about any of that.

00:48:12.000 And then she says that she is not proud of how America is today.

00:48:16.000 Infamous photograph of you with the anti-aircraft weapon.

00:48:23.000 I wonder if

00:48:25.000 Still, inside you, there's a sense of regret about that.

00:48:29.000 I don't regret going to Vietnam.

00:48:32.000 The United States was bombing the dikes of North Vietnam, earthen dikes, in the Red River Delta.

00:48:38.000 If the dikes had given way, according to Henry Kissinger, somewhere around two million people could have died of famine and drowning.

00:48:45.000 And we were bombing, and it wasn't being talked about.

00:48:47.000 And I thought, well, I'm a celebrity.

00:48:49.000 Maybe if I go, and I bring back evidence,

00:48:54.000 And it did stop two months after I got back, so I'm proud that I went.

00:48:58.000 It changed my life.

00:48:59.000 All for the good.

00:49:00.000 Let me ask you a simple question.

00:49:02.000 Are you proud of America today?

00:49:04.000 No!

00:49:06.000 Okay, so I think that you want to know why, again, we don't have to continuously do why is Trump president, but this is why Trump is president, okay?

00:49:12.000 The reason that President Trump is president is because you have a woman who posed alongside people who are attempting to murder American soldiers, and she's saying that she's not proud of America today. 0.60

00:49:21.000 If you have to choose between Jane Fonda and Donald Trump, people are going to choose Donald Trump.

00:49:25.000 It's that simple.

00:49:25.000 Okay.

00:49:27.000 We'll be back here tomorrow with more breakdown of the day's news and politics.

00:49:30.000 We'll be in Tennessee.

00:49:31.000 I'm giving a speech at University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

00:49:34.000 I believe it's sold out already.

00:49:35.000 If it's not, you can go over and check it out over at the YAF website and they can give you some ticket information.

00:49:40.000 You may be able to buy a scalp ticket.

00:49:42.000 I've seen a few of those on sale.

00:49:43.000 In any case, I look forward to seeing all of you there and seeing you then.

00:49:45.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:49:46.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

The Ben Shapiro Show - October 18, 2017

The Best Women's Rights Argument EVER, Debunked | Ep. 397

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