The Ben Shapiro Show - The Big School Walkout | Ep. 496

00:00:00.000 Students walk out of their schools for gun control to the delight of the media, Stormy Daniels gets the red carpet treatment, and President Trump talks trade in the weirdest possible way.

00:00:08.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:09.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:15.000 So, we have a lot to get to today.

00:00:17.000 As I predicted yesterday, all of the walkouts turned out to be just a media propaganda campaign on behalf of gun control.

00:00:23.000 It was not about solidarity with the slain students.

00:00:25.000 It was not really about mourning over the slain students.

00:00:28.000 It was not about America coming together around the cause of stopping violence in schools.

00:00:33.000 It was a gun control program.

00:00:34.000 That's all that was happening yesterday all across the country.

00:00:36.000 It was not a unifying moment.

00:00:37.000 It was a divisive one.

00:00:38.000 It needn't have been.

00:00:39.000 We'll get to all of that in just a second.

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00:02:13.000 OK, so.

00:02:15.000 Yesterday, wall-to-wall coverage of all of the students walking out of their schools.

00:02:19.000 So first, we need to ask, how does such a thing get planned?

00:02:22.000 Is such a thing spontaneous?

00:02:24.000 Do you have a situation here where thousands, hundreds of thousands of students are just getting up and walking out of school at the same time because they heard online they were supposed to do so?

00:02:31.000 Or are they being told by their teachers and the teachers' unions and all of the leftist administrators at school that it's a good thing for them to get up and leave class?

00:02:38.000 Because I guarantee you that if I had gotten up and ditched class in high school, there would have been some sort of

00:02:43.000 Some sort of excuse note needed, right?

00:02:46.000 You don't just get to leave class in the middle of class when you're in junior high or high school.

00:02:50.000 You actually have to have an excuse for doing so, otherwise you are a truant, right?

00:02:53.000 So here, the schools themselves are writing the excuse notes.

00:02:56.000 Now let me just ask a question that's been asked by a lot of folks down the right.

00:02:59.000 Let's say there were a pro-life walkout tomorrow.

00:03:01.000 How many of these teachers do you think would be okay with the students leaving?

00:03:04.000 If all the students just got up and walked outside to protest for 10 minutes,

00:03:08.000 The one million abortions plus in the United States per year.

00:03:11.000 If every student in America did that, how many of those teachers do you think would excuse the students?

00:03:15.000 And how many of them do you think would actually punish the students?

00:03:19.000 How many do you think would dock the students in some way?

00:03:21.000 In other words, one of the problems here is that you have these leftist propaganda centers called our public schools that are taught by teachers who are members of teachers unions, who are Democratic Party cronies, and then

00:03:31.000 They use that position in order to promulgate a certain agenda.

00:03:34.000 So all these students get up and they walk out.

00:03:36.000 Of course, this thing really was organized in AstroTurf by the Women's March, and they used the same organizational structures in order to push it. 1.00

00:03:42.000 The Women's March, of course, run by some of the worst people on planet Earth, members of the Louis Farrakhan contingent. 0.99

00:03:48.000 And so they organized this whole thing as a gun control push.

00:03:50.000 Now, what was so annoying about this, and I discussed it yesterday, I read a bunch of letters from students

00:03:55.000 And I have a thousand more today.

00:03:56.000 I mean, really, I must have received at least 250 emails yesterday from students around the country who are upset about how they were treated yesterday during these walkouts.

00:04:07.000 I was hearing from tons of people yesterday that this was going to happen, and then it did.

00:04:11.000 That this turned into a propaganda effort that this was never about solidarity with the students. 0.98

00:04:15.000 That if you said, listen, I am in favor of gun rights, and I also feel terrible for what happened for the students, that you were treated like garbage. 0.60

00:04:23.000 And the most obvious example of this is clip 13.

00:04:26.000 So yesterday, there was a clip that was going around the internet, pretty amazing.

00:04:30.000 One of the students walked out of class and did what I suggested, right?

00:04:32.000 Brought a sign that was a pro-Second Amendment sign that

00:04:36.000 Also expressed sympathy for the children who were killed, and he was escorted from the protest, right?

00:04:40.000 He was told he couldn't be at the protest, and they actually tried to push him into a police car.

00:04:44.000 Here's what it looked like yesterday.

00:04:57.000 So he was told to leave.

00:04:58.000 He was told he couldn't stand with all of the students because, for some reason or other, that was just unacceptable.

00:05:03.000 Now, if he'd been holding a sign that said, Stop Guns Now, do you think that would have happened to him?

00:05:07.000 The answer, of course, is no.

00:05:09.000 The video was posted to Facebook by Kenny McDonald, who's a student at New Prague High School in New Prague, Minnesota.

00:05:14.000 The short video does not show what took place before or after the principal singled out the student.

00:05:18.000 Here's what McDonald said.

00:05:19.000 He says, Kids at our school today walked out in honor of the 17 students killed in Florida.

00:05:22.000 Students held signs that said, arm our teachers.

00:05:24.000 They had two signs.

00:05:25.000 A student walked out without saying a word, peacefully put up a sign which said, guns don't kill people, people kill people.

00:05:30.000 And he was escorted off the property by our principal and threatened to be put in a police car.

00:05:33.000 This violates the First Amendment and makes me sick that they can do whatever they want.

00:05:36.000 Please make this go viral.

00:05:38.000 It's not been verified that the student's story is the entire truth.

00:05:40.000 We'll have to hear from the school exactly what happened.

00:05:42.000 But is there a question that if the student had been holding a sign that said, gun control now, that everything would have been fine for him?

00:05:49.000 I have very little doubt that's the case.

00:05:50.000 It was obvious what the networks were trying to do here.

00:05:52.000 It's obvious what the media were trying to do here.

00:05:54.000 Again, these are the same media who every year ignore the March for Life, which draws hundreds of thousands of people to Washington, D.C., and the coverage is always scant and minimal, even though it's a huge number of young people who are going to that particular march.

00:06:06.000 I don't know.

00:06:31.000 We're good to go.

00:06:52.000 During the walkout, which is just glorious, and here they are rushing a cop car.

00:06:56.000 This is at Antioch High School, I guess, in Tennessee.

00:07:00.000 Kids making trouble.

00:07:01.000 Not a grave shock there.

00:07:02.000 You know, we saw this before.

00:07:04.000 I mean, last week there was a walkout as well, and it was in California, and there were a bunch of students who essentially went wild.

00:07:09.000 Now, that was not representative of these rallies. 1.00

00:07:12.000 The only reason I'm pointing this out is to point out that young people, who are supposed to be our leaders, sometimes are very stupid. 1.00

00:07:17.000 Okay, just like old people are sometimes very stupid. 1.00

00:07:19.000 And so granting them, conferring upon them some sort of grand intellectual legitimacy because they're young seems to me really, really foolish. 1.00

00:07:26.000 This was, in fact, as I say, a left propaganda effort, if you don't believe me. 0.61

00:07:30.000 Here's what it looked like when Bernie Sanders showed up at the walkout.

00:07:33.000 So no Republicans were invited to the walkout.

00:07:35.000 No Republicans were invited to speak at the walkout.

00:07:37.000 None of them were invited to the steps of the Capitol for the walkout.

00:07:40.000 But Bernie Sanders walked out to join the students in the gun protest, and he was treated like a hero.

00:07:45.000 This is clip 15, actually.

00:07:47.000 Here's what it looked like when he was walking through the crowd.

00:07:59.000 Right, all the kids are going nuts.

00:08:00.000 Oh my god, it's Bernie Sanders, yeah!

00:08:02.000 But this isn't a political rally.

00:08:03.000 Right, they're all smiling and laughing and taking pictures.

00:08:05.000 Oh my god, it's the old man, the old Ku Klux Pudding. 0.96

00:08:07.000 What are we gonna do?

00:08:10.000 But don't worry, this had nothing to do with politics, folks.

00:08:12.000 This was beyond politics.

00:08:13.000 This had nothing to do with the political agenda.

00:08:15.000 This was just about solidarity with the victims in Parkland.

00:08:18.000 It was not political in any way.

00:08:20.000 This is the way the media were playing it last night.

00:08:21.000 Of course, Bernie Sanders speaking and shouting for gun control is an amazing thing, considering that Bernie Sanders comes from Vermont, a state with very little gun control, even though it is a very left state.

00:08:29.000 Here's Bernie Sanders speaking yesterday.

00:08:31.000 You, you the young people of this country, are leading the nation and the country.

00:08:42.000 If you can't hear crazy, I'll bring it.

00:08:44.000 You, the young people of this country, are leading the nation.

00:08:46.000 Please give me money, please, for my next campaign.

00:08:53.000 The time is now for me to pretend to be relevant as though I had done anything except run for president in my entire career.

00:09:05.000 So Bernie Sanders stepping out, and of course, you're not seeing any actual discussion here.

00:09:10.000 Now, a guy who I've become friendly with, Kyle Kashuv, a student over at Parkland High School, he actually went around on Capitol Hill, did more than Bernie Sanders.

00:09:18.000 Bernie Sanders has refused to meet with him.

00:09:20.000 Apparently, there are a bunch of other legislators, right and left, who have met with him.

00:09:24.000 And Kashuv has done a lot of the work that the other kids at his high school won't.

00:09:29.000 He's actually going around trying to speak with various members of the legislature.

00:09:32.000 He spoke with Marco Rubio and Bill Nelson.

00:09:34.000 He spoke with Chuck Schumer.

00:09:35.000 And he spoke with Paul Ryan.

00:09:38.000 So he's met with a bunch of legislators he's met with President Trump.

00:09:41.000 The idea here, trying to come to some sort of consensus about things that can be done.

00:09:44.000 The kids at Marjory Stoneman High School, though, the ones who are being shown on the media, are not the ones who are meeting with legislators on Capitol Hill. 0.98

00:09:50.000 They are the ones instead appearing on Ellen and then shouting about how America's a terrible, horrible, very bad place, where the old people suck, right? 1.00

00:09:56.000 They're the ones who go on Bill Maher and say, F my parents. 0.98

00:09:58.000 Which is just a great way of getting things done, which, again, shows there's a lot about moral posturing and not very much about getting anything done.

00:10:05.000 You can see the media's bias here.

00:10:06.000 So Viacom Networks decided to go silent for 17 minutes in order to—this is Nickelodeon and MTV—they went silent for 17 minutes in order to pay tribute to the Parkland students.

00:10:18.000 They would say, oh, this isn't political at all, except that I don't remember them doing this after the Boston Marathon bombing.

00:10:22.000 I don't remember them doing this after the Orlando shooting.

00:10:25.000 I don't remember them doing this after any terror attack.

00:10:27.000 They only do this after a particular shooting that is driving a particular narrative on a particular day at a particular time when everyone else is walking out.

00:10:35.000 So here's what it looked like on Viacom networks yesterday morning.

00:10:40.000 They printed on their screen, Viacom stands with all students as they participate in the national school walkout against gun violence.

00:10:46.000 So that's VH1, it's TV Land, it's Paramount, it's Nick Jr.

00:10:51.000 So if you just want to put your kid down for a second and have him watch Nick Jr., you couldn't do that because Viacom was busy protesting with all the kids.

00:10:57.000 Listen, their cooperation with this corporate virtue signaling is really amazing.

00:11:01.000 And it's obvious that all the people in Hollywood who proclaim they have no political agenda have a pretty obvious political agenda.

00:11:06.000 Again, they would not do this.

00:11:07.000 If there were a school walkout against the violence of the murder of the unborn, and there are many, many, many more children who are killed in the womb every year than are killed in schools every year.

00:11:15.000 No question Viacom does nothing.

00:11:16.000 And not only does nothing, it probably puts on Linda Ellerbe to talk about why it is that abortion should be legal. 1.00

00:11:22.000 And so there is a political agenda on the part of the media.

00:11:24.000 And this is the part that really is galling.

00:11:26.000 It's the part that kind of makes you sick to your stomach a little bit, is the lie that this is apolitical.

00:11:31.000 I'm fine with you politicking.

00:11:32.000 You want to politic?

00:11:33.000 Go ahead.

00:11:33.000 You want to be pro-gun control?

00:11:34.000 Fine with me.

00:11:35.000 But don't pretend that it's news coverage.

00:11:37.000 When CNN puts on a town hall that is essentially a show trial on behalf of gun control, don't pretend that that's you being a neutral arbiter of the facts.

00:11:47.000 It is not.

00:11:48.000 If you're the media and you proclaim all you care about is ratings on the one hand and just pleasing people on the other, entertaining people on the other,

00:11:56.000 Then don't claim that this is apolitical, because this is not apolitical.

00:12:00.000 It obviously is incredibly political.

00:12:02.000 We're going to get to some of the stuff that students had to say yesterday, again, proving that 17-year-olds don't know everything, despite their own maybe beliefs to the contrary.

00:12:11.000 We'll get to all of that in just a second.

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00:13:46.000 Okay, so here are some of the things that the students had to say at this rally.

00:13:50.000 Again, the rally was happening all over the country, so there was a set of disparate rallies happening everywhere.

00:13:54.000 Here is USA Today covering this as though it is one of the great moments in human history, when in reality it's just an AstroTurf leftist thing.

00:14:03.000 Again, when teachers are telling students to walk out, this is teachers using students to push their political agenda.

00:14:08.000 End of story.

00:14:09.000 This is not a bunch of students who are voluntarily deciding that they want to get together and walk out.

00:14:12.000 It's not grassroots.

00:14:14.000 This is being done from top down.

00:14:16.000 When teachers tell students that it's time to walk out, when teachers inform students it's time to walk out,

00:14:21.000 As students walk out, that's really on the teachers, not on the students.

00:14:23.000 I'm not blaming the students, but I'm also not going to pretend that this was led by students.

00:14:26.000 It wasn't.

00:14:27.000 It was led by a bunch of adults who decided they were going to work with a couple of students and use those students as a prop in order to push a particular agenda.

00:14:34.000 Again, not ripping on the students.

00:14:36.000 Students can have their own beliefs.

00:14:38.000 That's fine.

00:14:38.000 I like that kids are politically active.

00:14:40.000 A lot of people who listen to my program are people who are under the age of 18.

00:14:43.000 That's wonderful.

00:14:43.000 Be politically active.

00:14:44.000 Enjoy.

00:14:45.000 But we're going to analyze your arguments with the same seriousness we would analyze anyone else's arguments, and we also cannot pretend that this entire thing was just some spontaneous uprising of the people, and that everybody just decided all of a sudden—like, they're trying to portray this as like it's the Arab Spring, like there's this horrible superstructure run by the NRA and Dana Lash, and now all those people have to be brought low.

00:15:05.000 That's not what's happening here. 0.96

00:15:07.000 What's happening here is a bunch of Teachers Union members are telling their students we're all going to walk out at a particular time, a bunch of principals are green lighting it, and then a bunch of students are saying, well what the hell, if everybody else is walking out I may as well, at least I don't look like a jerk that way. 0.84

00:15:18.000 So here are some of the students who are speaking at the walkouts. 0.95

00:15:20.000 This is from USA Today.

00:15:22.000 My generation has grown up in a world where this is every day.

00:15:26.000 No.

00:15:27.000 We have been taught for containment drills, shut off the lights, lock the door, go into the closet.

00:15:33.000 That's not okay.

00:15:34.000 If every time someone dies from a shooting, we brush it off as, oh, it's just another casualty, that's not okay.

00:15:40.000 Pause it for one second.

00:15:41.000 Okay, first of all, like, no one is brushing this stuff off.

00:15:45.000 No one is brushing this stuff off.

00:15:46.000 Second, this is not happening every day.

00:15:48.000 Clearly, it's not happening every day.

00:15:49.000 The number of school shootings in America is on the decline.

00:15:52.000 Third, would you not want to—I mean, we teach kids stop, drop, and roll from the time that they are five years old, right?

00:15:57.000 We teach them what's happening in case of a fire.

00:15:59.000 We teach them—for generations in this country, we taught people, in case of nuclear attack, get under your desk for all the help that would do you, right?

00:16:05.000 So, you don't want to be taught what to do in an emergency situation?

00:16:09.000 There's never going to be a point where we don't teach kids what to do in an emergency situation.

00:16:12.000 We should teach kids what to do in an emergency situation.

00:16:14.000 Does this mean that we shouldn't try to stop the shootings?

00:16:16.000 No, it means we should, but we have different ways of doing that, and it doesn't all involve seizing 300 million guns.

00:16:21.000 And continue.

00:16:22.000 The school being scared.

00:16:26.000 It's a national issue.

00:16:28.000 We cannot just allow our legislators to say that our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, because that's not going to bring them back, and that's not going to prevent us from joining them.

00:16:41.000 Okay, stop it there for a second.

00:16:42.000 I want to point out a couple of things.

00:16:43.000 One, I want to point out that this is USA Today, a journalistic outlet.

00:16:47.000 Right?

00:16:48.000 USA Today is an objective journalistic outlet.

00:16:50.000 This is a produced video for Everytown.

00:16:53.000 For Everytown USA, the gun control group, right?

00:16:54.000 I mean, obviously.

00:16:55.000 They even have the meaningful music underneath, right?

00:16:58.000 They piped in the pianist underneath.

00:17:01.000 Has there ever been a piece of news coverage that is not a piece of propaganda that has that music piped in?

00:17:06.000 Has that ever happened?

00:17:07.000 Unless you're at a concert?

00:17:08.000 When you watch the news on CNN or Fox, and they're just quoting the president, do they pipe in a bunch of dramatic music underneath?

00:17:14.000 Of course not.

00:17:14.000 The whole point of this video is to get at your emotions, which is why they are using the music the way that they are using the music.

00:17:20.000 The whole point here is to push an agenda.

00:17:22.000 And I'm just pointing this out because, again,

00:17:24.000 This is what a future

00:17:53.000 And for 17 kids who don't have graduation or can't go on with their lives or can't do what they wanted to do, it's really sad.

00:18:00.000 We are the beginning of something that is long overdue and I cannot begin to express how proud I am to be involved.

00:18:08.000 Everyone is somehow connected to someone of gun violence and someone who suffered from a mass shooting and there's so many that it's just rocking the world right now.

00:18:17.000 OK, again, this dramatic video, the voiceovers, if you're not seeing this, you're just listening to this later, then what it's actually showing in the video is not just the faces of the students who are talking and crying.

00:18:28.000 It's actually showing videos of all the people walking out.

00:18:31.000 It's showing this dramatic video with the rising music, the swelling music from the end of the Truman Show.

00:18:36.000 You're supposed to feel something when you watch this.

00:18:38.000 That's the goal.

00:18:39.000 It's why the media is covering this the way that it is.

00:18:42.000 And the sort of propaganda being put out by the students is obviously not well-informed.

00:18:46.000 I'm not going to say that the students, you know, are—know exactly what they're saying.

00:18:49.000 I think, in many cases, they're just adopting talking points that they're being cheered for.

00:18:53.000 People respond to applause, and the media are cheering folks.

00:18:55.000 They're putting them on Bill Maher, and they're putting them on Ellen, and they're doing all of this in the aftermath of a shooting because they want to push—Kyle Kashuv

00:19:03.000 There are a bunch of students like him, by the way.

00:19:04.000 He's not the only one at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

00:19:07.000 There are a bunch of students who are writing me.

00:19:09.000 None of these kids are being put on TV.

00:19:10.000 They're not being put on TV because the media agree with certain of these kids, but do not agree with others of these kids.

00:19:15.000 Here's another one of these students talking about how—this is one of the rallies, I think this is the one in Washington, D.C.—talking about how getting shot at any moment is an American thought.

00:19:24.000 Through all their struggles, they never had to worry about someone barging into their classroom with an assault rifle and slaughtering everyone in their class.

00:19:32.000 That is an American tragedy!

00:19:37.000 They never had to think about getting shot at any moment.

00:19:40.000 That's an American thought.

00:19:42.000 And they never had to worry that their child would be the victim of a mass shooting.

00:19:46.000 That's an American worry.

00:19:47.000 OK, first of all, that's not true.

00:19:49.000 All over the world, there are people who are worried about being victims of terror attacks.

00:19:52.000 In the West, there are people who are worried about being victims of violence.

00:19:56.000 People worry about lots of stuff.

00:19:57.000 But again, one of the reasons that if you ask kids all over the world, all over the United States, what are the chances that you're going to be shot in a mass shooting?

00:20:07.000 The numbers, I'm sure people would wildly exaggerate, right?

00:20:09.000 People always think that they are likely to be shot in a crime, they're likely to be killed, they're likely to be murdered.

00:20:14.000 And the chances of that happening in the United States are extraordinarily low.

00:20:17.000 The chances of you being shot in a mass shooting in the United States are

00:20:22.000 Extraordinarily low.

00:20:24.000 The lifetime risk of being killed in the United States by any firearm, according to the National Safety Council, is 1 in 358.

00:20:30.000 The lifetime risk of dying in a mass shooting is 1 in 110,000, which is the same chance of dying from a dog attack or a legal execution in the United States.

00:20:41.000 And a school shooting, it's even lower than that.

00:20:43.000 A school shooting, it's like one in millions, I believe.

00:20:46.000 So, the notion that all of these kids are sitting around worried about being shot, maybe that's because of the media coverage, but it is certainly not true that your chances are very high of being shot in a classroom or that you should waste a lot of time worrying about it as a general rule.

00:21:00.000 It's just not true. 0.98

00:21:02.000 So, again, it's really foolish. 0.79

00:21:06.000 The Safe Schools Initiative says that, this is according to Campus Safety, 0.95

00:21:10.000 The odds of a high school student getting into a fight at school are one in seven.

00:21:16.000 But that means that the chances that you will be killed in a school shooting are less than one in one million.

00:21:22.000 But we're being told that this is an American thought, this is something that kids are thinking, only because the media want you to think about these school shootings every day so that they can push the idea that we ought to remove guns from American society.

00:21:32.000 Here's another student who is saying that the kids should fight back and prevent

00:21:37.000 And I believe that as students, we need to make a few things clear.

00:21:39.000 To start, we will not sit in classrooms with armed teachers.

00:22:07.000 We refuse to learn in fear!

00:22:10.000 We reject turning our schools into prisons!

00:22:14.000 No one is turning schools into prisons.

00:22:16.000 I mean, when I was in public school, it felt like I was in prison, but that's not the same thing.

00:22:21.000 First of all, all kids think school is prison. 0.94

00:22:22.000 But second of all, the notion that — this is so silly. 0.99

00:22:25.000 It's so silly. 1.00

00:22:26.000 You're saying you don't want an armed guard at school to protect you from a piece of crap who barges in with a gun to murder you because it feels like a prison? 0.99

00:22:32.000 There are kids all over the world who are actually going to school in situations where it is basically like a prison, right? 0.98

00:22:38.000 If you're in Afghanistan and you're going to school, it's going to be protected like a prison because otherwise terrorists are going to barge in.

00:22:43.000 But this is—it's just nonsense. 0.68

00:22:44.000 It's just nonsense. 0.51

00:22:45.000 And because it's nonsense, it's being pushed by the media.

00:22:48.000 The media know that if they had a 35-year-old on TV saying the stuff that these kids are saying, they'd be laughed off TV.

00:22:53.000 So instead, they put up a bunch of 17-year-olds to say it and pretend that it has some sort of added intellectual weight.

00:22:57.000 OK, before I go any further—

00:22:59.000 And I want to talk about some Stormy Daniels news, because the media are fawning over Stormy Daniels in a pretty shocking way.

00:23:06.000 First, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at PolicyGenius.

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00:24:30.000 All right, so meanwhile...

00:24:31.000 A lot of hubbub breaking out about Stormy Daniels.

00:24:34.000 So Stormy Daniels' lawyer is out there speaking to the press.

00:24:37.000 Stormy Daniels is supposed to do a 60 Minutes exclusive. 0.99

00:24:42.000 So I guess Stormy Daniels' lawyer, I guess, is doing an exclusive on 60 Minutes on Sunday.

00:24:45.000 So the lawyer's name is Michael Avenetti.

00:24:48.000 And Trump, of course, has essentially sued Stormy Daniels, trying to get Stormy Daniels not to talk about the fact that they were knocking boots back in 2007, the year, or 2006, the year after Barron Trump was born, and while Trump was already married to Melania. 0.99

00:25:02.000 Now, number one, no one in the United States cares about this because Trump is garbage with women. 1.00

00:25:06.000 Okay? 1.00

00:25:06.000 Just putting it out there. 1.00

00:25:08.000 Not with all women. 1.00

00:25:09.000 Okay, Trump is nice to many women, I'm sure.

00:25:11.000 But his sex life? 1.00

00:25:12.000 Garbage. 1.00

00:25:13.000 This has been true since the 70s. 0.99

00:25:14.000 There's a guy who said over and over and over that avoiding STDs in the 1970s was like the Vietnam War for him.

00:25:21.000 He really said that. 1.00

00:25:22.000 And there's a guy who said things like, nothing in life matters unless you have a young and beautiful piece of ass. 1.00

00:25:28.000 So this is not somebody who is somebody you want babysitting your 17-year-old daughter. 1.00

00:25:32.000 But President Trump 0.66

00:25:34.000 Has a long and nefarious connection with various women of the, uh, tawdry women. 1.00

00:25:38.000 Women of the evening.

00:25:39.000 Uh, and, you know, he's been married three times, he's cheated on all three of his wives, he cheated on wife number one with wife number two, cheated on wife number two with wife number three, and cheated on wife number three with Stormy Daniels, among others.

00:25:49.000 So, this is not a guy who any of this stuff is going to cling to.

00:25:53.000 Nobody cares because we all know who he is.

00:25:56.000 There's no new information added to the system.

00:25:58.000 The new information the media are trying to add to the system is that Trump paid off Stormy Daniels to shut up right before the election.

00:26:03.000 Now, Trump has said, I didn't know anything about it.

00:26:06.000 It was just my lawyer.

00:26:06.000 My lawyer gave $130,000 to Stormy Daniels out of the goodness of his heart, which is one hell of a lawyer.

00:26:11.000 Like, let me find that lawyer. 0.99

00:26:13.000 The lawyer who just gives away money.

00:26:14.000 Sounds like an awesome lawyer to me.

00:26:16.000 Obviously Trump knew about it.

00:26:17.000 Let's not pretend. 0.86

00:26:18.000 Anyone who says differently is saying silly talk.

00:26:21.000 Anyway, so Avenetti debunked the notion that Trump's attorney, Michael Cohen, negotiated with Stormy Daniels on a nondisclosure agreement independently of the Trump Organization.

00:26:30.000 He says, That's what Anderson Cooper said in agreement with Avenetti.

00:26:32.000 Here's what it looked like last night on CNN.

00:26:42.000 The focus of this filing in February was to gag my client, put a muzzle on her, and prevent her from speaking. 0.99

00:26:51.000 And that's why they filed the arbitration, to obtain what's called a temporary restraining order.

00:26:56.000 So this idea that there is a separation between EC-LLC and Donald Trump and the Trump Organization is a complete and utter fiction.

00:27:08.000 OK, so this is probably true.

00:27:10.000 I mean, again, I don't think that Trump's lawyer was walking around signing $130,000 checks just for the hell of it.

00:27:17.000 But does this make a big difference?

00:27:19.000 Well, not necessarily, because number one, it may not be a campaign finance violation.

00:27:24.000 John Edwards directly paid $900,000 to his mistress, who was then pregnant with his child, during the 2004 presidential election cycle.

00:27:32.000 And nothing happened, right?

00:27:34.000 It was totally fine.

00:27:34.000 Actually, it was during the 2008 presidential election cycle.

00:27:37.000 I don't know.

00:27:54.000 Bringer of male morality to the to the world. 0.97

00:27:57.000 So if this is the great hope for bringing down Trump, I think that this is silly. 0.56

00:28:01.000 Now, I will point something else out.

00:28:03.000 There has been a lot of questions about Monica Lewinsky versus Stormy Daniels.

00:28:06.000 Why is the media went after Monica Lewinsky? 0.99

00:28:07.000 Why is the media ripped apart Linda Tripp? 0.99

00:28:09.000 Why is it the media went after Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones while they did nothing of the sort with Stormy Daniels?

00:28:14.000 Stormy Daniels

00:28:16.000 Who is not alleging sexual harassment or assault by the President of the United States, right?

00:28:19.000 Kathleen Willey alleged sexual assault by the President of the United States.

00:28:23.000 Paula Jones alleged sexual harassment and assault by the President before he was the President.

00:28:28.000 Juanita Broderick, alleged rape. 1.00

00:28:30.000 None of these women were treated with respect. 0.99

00:28:31.000 They were all treated like garbage by the media for legitimately decades. 0.99

00:28:34.000 Stormy Daniels, who's a porn star who had consensual sex with the president before he was the president, and then was paid off by the president in a contract that she signed, and she took the money, and now she wants to talk about it. 0.99

00:28:44.000 Now she's being treated as some sort of victim.

00:28:46.000 She's being treated as some sort of heroine for coming out and speaking, oh, the bravery of Stormy Daniels.

00:28:50.000 Now, I don't have to like Trump's sexual behavior in order to recognize that Stormy Daniels is not exactly the Virgin Mary. 0.60

00:28:57.000 I don't have to believe that Trump is great with women to recognize that Stormy Daniels is not exactly standing up out of a pure sense of righteous indignation and virtue. 0.99

00:29:08.000 That's not what's happening here.

00:29:09.000 But the media are treating her that way. 0.97

00:29:10.000 Why are the media treating her that way? 1.00

00:29:11.000 It's really funny.

00:29:12.000 If you look at lefty commentaries, what they're saying is, well, they're treating her this way because it's different.

00:29:16.000 We're now living in the Me Too moment, don't you see?

00:29:18.000 It's that that's changed.

00:29:20.000 If this had happened with a Democratic president and a porn star, we'd be treating this differently. 0.57

00:29:24.000 Um, mm-mm. 0.90

00:29:25.000 Wrong.

00:29:26.000 All that's changed is that there's a Republican in office, and the Republican in office should be slapped around as much as possible. 0.98

00:29:31.000 If this were a Democrat in office, and if this were Barack Obama, and he had sex with a porn star and paid her off to keep silent, people would have said, this is a sexual matter. 0.99

00:29:38.000 Everybody lies about sex. 0.98

00:29:39.000 We'd get exactly the same—they'd say it was consensual, because this was consensual. 0.99

00:29:43.000 We'd get exactly the same crap that we got when Bill Clinton was president, because the media are filled with Democrats. 0.99

00:29:48.000 If you didn't believe it from all the talk about gun control, the media are filled top to bottom with Democrats, and so they are treating Stormy Daniels as though she's anything but a porn star who wants to make a little extra money by telling lewd stories out of school about the president's junk, which is really what this is. 0.99

00:30:02.000 Okay, meanwhile, 0.98

00:30:03.000 In other news, the president is bringing on board Larry Kudlow.

00:30:07.000 Larry Kudlow is a free trader.

00:30:08.000 I mentioned this yesterday.

00:30:09.000 He's going to head up the National Economic Council.

00:30:11.000 What's really funny about this, of course, is that Gary Cohn and Larry Kudlow have very similar economic policies.

00:30:16.000 Kudlow is a free trader.

00:30:17.000 He's a laissez-faire economist.

00:30:18.000 Gary Cohn is a free trader.

00:30:20.000 He may be more interventionist in some ways than Larry Kudlow is, actually.

00:30:23.000 And so, Kudlow is being brought on board to fill a slot that probably never should have been emptied in the first place.

00:30:28.000 Here is Kudlow describing how Trump buttered him up.

00:30:30.000 I've been around a while.

00:30:32.000 My head has not turned easily.

00:30:33.000 I've served in the White House, etc., etc.

00:30:36.000 But just to talk to him for 30, 40 minutes at a clip...

00:30:43.000 Three, four days in a row is a wonderful thing.

00:30:47.000 I just want to say that.

00:30:47.000 It's a wonderful thing.

00:30:49.000 And he and I have known each other many years.

00:30:51.000 I've interviewed him on radio and TV.

00:30:53.000 I was in the campaign helping out.

00:30:55.000 I know him, you know, reasonably well.

00:30:58.000 And it was just a terrific experience.

00:31:00.000 I don't want to sound sophomoric, but it was just a really good thing.

00:31:03.000 So I will say, I think that it is very funny that the president basically hired Kudlow because he thinks that Kudlow is on TV a lot.

00:31:10.000 And he's about to do the same thing with Pete Hegseth over at Fox News.

00:31:13.000 The rumor is that the current secretary of the VA, who stinks, Eric Shulkin, he's awful, that he's about to be ousted, which he should be.

00:31:20.000 In favor of Pete Hegseth, who Trump likes because he's on TV.

00:31:23.000 In fact, there was a report last week that Trump, during a meeting with his VA secretary, actually called up Hegseth on the phone and said he'd just seen him on Fox & Friends and wanted to get him in on the conversation.

00:31:33.000 So the president is governing by TV, which, listen, if he's got the right people from TV, I'm happy about that.

00:31:38.000 That's fine.

00:31:38.000 I mean, Obama said that he governed by TV because he never saw anything bad that happened in his administration until I saw it on the news.

00:31:44.000 I saw it on TV.

00:31:45.000 Right, so at least if we're going to govern by TV, hopefully Trump will pick some of the best commentators from TV and bring those people into his administration.

00:31:53.000 But it is funny that he's replacing a free trader with a free trader.

00:31:55.000 Okay, so, meanwhile, Trump had, there's a story in the Washington Post about how Trump talks about trade with foreign leaders.

00:32:01.000 It's pretty astonishing, it's pretty amazing.

00:32:02.000 We'll talk about that in just a second.

00:32:04.000 First, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.

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00:32:55.000 Alrighty, so, President Trump, apparently, it's going to be good to have him talk to Larry Kudlow, because when the president is talking not to Larry Kudlow, he says silly things.

00:33:06.000 This is an amazing story from the Washington Post.

00:33:08.000 President Trump boasted in a fundraising speech on Wednesday that he made up information in a meeting with the leader of a top U.S.

00:33:13.000 ally, saying he insisted to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that the United States runs a trade deficit with its neighbor to the north without knowing whether this was true.

00:33:20.000 And here's what Trump said.

00:33:21.000 He said, Trudeau came to see me.

00:33:22.000 He's a good guy, Justin.

00:33:23.000 He said, no, no, we have no trade deficit with you.

00:33:26.000 We have none.

00:33:26.000 Donald, please.

00:33:28.000 Nice guy.

00:33:28.000 Good looking guy comes in.

00:33:29.000 Donald, we have no trade deficit.

00:33:31.000 He's very proud because everybody else, you know, we're getting killed.

00:33:35.000 So he's proud.

00:33:36.000 I said, wrong, Justin.

00:33:37.000 Wrong.

00:33:37.000 You do.

00:33:38.000 I didn't even know.

00:33:39.000 I had no idea.

00:33:40.000 I just said, you're wrong.

00:33:41.000 You know why? 1.00

00:33:42.000 Because we're so stupid. 1.00

00:33:43.000 And I thought they were smart. 1.00

00:33:43.000 I said, you're wrong, Justin. 1.00

00:33:45.000 He said, nope.

00:33:46.000 We have no trade deficit.

00:33:46.000 I said, well, in that case, I feel differently.

00:33:49.000 But I don't believe it.

00:33:50.000 I sent one of our four guys out, his guy, my guy, they went out.

00:33:52.000 I said, check, because I can't believe it.

00:33:54.000 Well, sir, you're actually right.

00:33:55.000 We have no deficit.

00:33:56.000 But that doesn't include energy and timber.

00:33:57.000 And when you do, we lose $17 billion a year.

00:34:00.000 OK, so Trump basically just made it up, right?

00:34:02.000 He goes into a meeting with Trudeau, and he wants to rip on him over the trade deficit because Trump is under the wildness impression that trade deficits inevitably mean American economic decline. 0.84

00:34:10.000 That's silly.

00:34:11.000 Sometimes trade deficits are bad. 0.54

00:34:13.000 Sometimes trade deficits are good.

00:34:14.000 What is more important is your trade policy.

00:34:16.000 A free trade policy makes your country richer.

00:34:18.000 A non-free trade policy makes your country poorer.

00:34:20.000 And there's a whole article in the Journal of American Greatness, which I'm writing a response to as soon as this show is over, about how I get free trade wrong, like me personally.

00:34:28.000 To which I would say, then you need to talk to every economist for the past 200 years, because

00:34:32.000 The notion that you're going to make an economy better with tariffs by protecting certain industries is just silly.

00:34:37.000 And there's a more complex argument that is made over at Journal of American Greatness, so you'll have to go over later at Daily Wire.

00:34:41.000 Maybe I'll talk about it tomorrow a little bit on the show.

00:34:44.000 But again, Trump is under this impression that if we just tariff everybody to death, then this makes America stronger.

00:34:49.000 He believes in a policy of autarky.

00:34:51.000 Autarky is something that the Germans under the Reich, the Third Reich, used to want.

00:34:58.000 Your country was going to be able to supply you all of your internal needs.

00:35:01.000 They wouldn't need to trade anymore.

00:35:02.000 You'd be able to produce everything in-house.

00:35:03.000 It was like Wakanda.

00:35:05.000 Now, obviously, this has nothing to do with the Nazis' racial policies.

00:35:08.000 I'm just talking about economic policies. 0.97

00:35:09.000 The policy of autarky was really stupid, and it ended up destroying Germany and their manufacturing capacity, actually, up until World War II. 0.96

00:35:17.000 It really was not good for them. 0.98

00:35:18.000 Their economy was not booming.

00:35:19.000 It boomed for the first couple of years of Hitler, because it had been so weak before that, and then it fell apart pretty quickly. 0.71

00:35:25.000 Autarky is never a good policy.

00:35:26.000 Tariffs are not a good policy.

00:35:28.000 Places that have high tariffs generally have weaker economies.

00:35:32.000 That's the statistic that matters.

00:35:33.000 Trade deficits don't matter.

00:35:34.000 Trade deficits, I'm not saying they're good, I'm not saying they're bad.

00:35:36.000 Trade deficits are irrelevant.

00:35:37.000 What matters is trade policy.

00:35:39.000 What matters is whether your economy is growing or not.

00:35:43.000 And the correlation between the two, between trade deficits and economic growth, is not clear in the slightest.

00:35:48.000 There's a lot of noise and not a whole lot of sound that comes out of that.

00:35:51.000 Okay, so here's the reality.

00:35:52.000 Do we have a trade deficit with Canada?

00:35:54.000 No.

00:35:54.000 We have a trade surplus with Canada.

00:35:55.000 According to the Office of the United States Trade Representative, it reports that in 2016, the United States exported $12.5 billion more in goods and services than it imported from Canada, leading to a trade surplus, not a deficit.

00:36:06.000 So then Trump tweeted out that we do have a trade deficit.

00:36:10.000 He said,

00:36:22.000 That's not evidence, dude.

00:36:24.000 That's you just saying the same thing that you just said.

00:36:25.000 So that's kind of weird.

00:36:27.000 And then it got weirder.

00:36:28.000 Trump made a blistering attack against major U.S.

00:36:30.000 allies and global economies, according to the Washington Post, accusing the EU, China, Japan, and South Korea of ripping off the U.S.

00:36:36.000 for decades and pillaging the U.S.

00:36:37.000 workforce, which is weird since he keeps saying that our economic growth is stunning and that everything is going great.

00:36:42.000 So which is it?

00:36:43.000 Is it great or is it sucky?

00:36:44.000 He also described the NAFTA agreement as a disaster, and he'd blame on the WTO for allowing other countries to box in the U.S.

00:36:49.000 on trade.

00:36:51.000 If NAFTA is such a disaster, why did he just exempt Canada and Mexico from our steel tariffs?

00:36:55.000 He's the one who likes the steel tariffs.

00:36:57.000 Trump seemed to threaten to pull troops stationed in South Korea if he didn't get what he wanted on trade with Seoul.

00:37:02.000 This is actually a serious problem.

00:37:03.000 If Trump is going to meet with Kim Jong-un, and he's simultaneously threatening South Korea that he's going to pull out troops, then what happens if Kim Jong-un says, listen, I'll get rid of my nuclear program, and you just get rid of the troops in South Korea?

00:37:13.000 The answer is disaster, because if Trump actually wants to move the troops out of South Korea, suddenly South Korea falls into the orbit of the Chinese, as opposed to being an American satellite state to a certain extent.

00:37:23.000 Trump said, our allies care about themselves.

00:37:25.000 They don't care about us.

00:37:26.000 This perspective is so wrong, and it's so bad, and it's such a mistake.

00:37:30.000 We care about our allies because we think that it's in our interest to do so, not out of the goodness of our heart.

00:37:34.000 But I'm really hoping Larry Kudlow can drill some sense into the president, because this is not smart.

00:37:39.000 So again, this was just on Wednesday that he was saying all of this.

00:37:43.000 The best part of the speech is when he started talking specifically about Japan.

00:37:48.000 He said, Japan uses gimmicks to deny U.S. 0.94

00:37:50.000 auto companies access to its consumers.

00:37:52.000 So here's what he said.

00:37:52.000 He said, It's horrible the way we're treated.

00:37:54.000 It's horrible.

00:38:10.000 No one knows what he's talking about.

00:38:11.000 There is no test where they take a bowling ball and drop it on top of a car in Japan to determine whether the car should be imported to Japan.

00:38:17.000 That doesn't exist.

00:38:18.000 That's, like, what?

00:38:19.000 Hmm?

00:38:21.000 There's not a car manufactured in existence that would not dent if you dropped a bowling ball on the hood.

00:38:25.000 from 20 feet up in the air.

00:38:27.000 Trump said he didn't even want Japan to pay tariffs, but to build more automobiles in the U.S., saying that he just wants Japan—well, if you want Japan to actually move more automobile manufacturing to the United States, they already build tons of autos in the United States.

00:38:38.000 Japan does.

00:38:39.000 So does South Korea.

00:38:41.000 If you want them to do that,

00:38:43.000 So do German companies, by the way.

00:38:44.000 All you have to do is lower the tax burden in the United States, which is one of the things that Trump has done by lowering the corporate tax rates.

00:38:50.000 He said, the free trade globalists are against his trade moves because they're worldly people.

00:38:53.000 They have stuff on the other side.

00:38:56.000 Here he's accusing anyone who believes in free trade of wanting to impoverish the United States. 0.99

00:38:59.000 Again, this is so dumb. 0.99

00:39:02.000 If you actually believe that the United States is stronger by taxing its citizens at inordinately high rates, you're out of your mind. 0.99

00:39:09.000 This is what people forget about tariffs.

00:39:11.000 A tariff is just a tax.

00:39:12.000 It is a tax on everyone to the benefit of a few.

00:39:14.000 So the only argument that's been made on behalf of tariffs is basically that these industries are so important, they are so vital, that everybody in the United States should be taxed in order to benefit that few people.

00:39:25.000 Remember, that's what a tariff does.

00:39:26.000 It's not punishing foreign companies nearly as much as it's punishing American consumers.

00:39:30.000 So even if China is quote-unquote cheating, right, like they're subsidizing their own programs, well, so are we.

00:39:34.000 So the idea is that they're taxing their citizens in order to subsidize a particular industry and generate a product for cheap.

00:39:39.000 Is that an argument that we should tax our own citizens to do the same?

00:39:43.000 Why is raising taxes on our citizens making anything better?

00:39:46.000 The question is, better for whom?

00:39:47.000 Better for the federal government?

00:39:49.000 Because now they get to pick and choose which industries they like?

00:39:52.000 Or better for the consumer?

00:39:53.000 The answer certainly is not better for the consumer.

00:39:54.000 It's not even better for job creation inside the United States.

00:39:57.000 So, again, Larry Kudlow, Godspeed, my friend.

00:40:01.000 Please, talk some sense into the president over all of this.

00:40:04.000 Okay, now meanwhile...

00:40:05.000 I don't know.

00:40:21.000 Like, Hunger Games refugee. 1.00

00:40:24.000 She used to be a pretty girl, with the long hair. 0.99

00:40:26.000 This haircut is not flattering to Katy Perry. 0.63

00:40:28.000 And I don't know who did her makeup.

00:40:30.000 It looks as though she walked into a door covered with makeup, basically.

00:40:35.000 But enough ripping on Katy Perry's appearance. 1.00

00:40:37.000 She's a naturally beautiful person, obviously.

00:40:39.000 But Katy Perry was on American Idol.

00:40:42.000 She's one of the judges.

00:40:44.000 And this 19-year-old guy on American Idol comes in to audition, and here's what happens.

00:40:49.000 Come here, buddy.

00:40:50.000 No, wait, hold on.

00:40:51.000 Come here!

00:40:52.000 Come here right now! 1.00

00:40:55.000 You can't be... Come here right now!

00:40:57.000 Come here!

00:40:58.000 What, on the cheek?

00:41:04.000 He didn't even make the smush sound!

00:41:06.000 Okay, let me start over, let me start over.

00:41:07.000 Okay, okay.

00:41:11.000 Oh! 0.60

00:41:14.000 Oh, it went down!

00:41:16.000 Did you get it?

00:41:21.000 Okay, so it turns out that this guy actually was not particularly happy about the situation. 0.97

00:41:24.000 He said that he was trying to save his first kiss with somebody he actually gave a crap about, which seems like a nice thing to me, right? 0.94

00:41:29.000 I have the same policy myself. 0.97

00:41:31.000 You know, I think that this is—and he was humiliated for this.

00:41:34.000 Of course, everybody's laughing about this now.

00:41:36.000 Imagine the double standard here for just a second.

00:41:38.000 Imagine for a second that it was not, in fact, this guy and Katy Perry.

00:41:43.000 It was one of her male co-hosts and a 19-year-old girl.

00:41:45.000 And the 19-year-old girl said, I've never been kissed.

00:41:47.000 And the co-host said, come on over here.

00:41:48.000 Come on over here.

00:41:49.000 Give me a kiss on the cheek.

00:41:51.000 First of all, even that would be considered sexual harassment.

00:41:53.000 Just that much would be considered sexual harassment.

00:41:56.000 Then imagine that she came over and said, OK, fine, I'll give you a kiss on the cheek.

00:41:58.000 And he immediately swiveled and gave her a peck on the lips.

00:42:01.000 That guy would be fired.

00:42:02.000 His career would be over.

00:42:03.000 He would be done.

00:42:04.000 Right?

00:42:04.000 There's two reasons why people are not taking this seriously.

00:42:08.000 One good and one bad.

00:42:09.000 The bad reason why people are not taking this seriously is because there is this view in American culture that sex is an ultimate good.

00:42:17.000 Not that it's good within certain confines, but that sex and sexual activity and the kissing and all this stuff, that it's good under any circumstances, right?

00:42:23.000 The Pleasantville view of sex. 0.87

00:42:24.000 Have you ever seen the movie Pleasantville, which is an awful film? 0.99

00:42:27.000 The first 30 minutes of the film is really good, and then the rest of the movie is garbage.

00:42:32.000 So the basic concept of the film is that there's a bunch of people who are living in modern times, and Tobey Maguire loves watching this show called Pleasantville from the 1950s, where everything is really clean-cut and really everybody's very nice to each other, and then he somehow gets sucked back into that with his sister. 0.86

00:42:46.000 And his sister is basically, in the movie, promiscuous and sexually active, and she goes back there and she brings color to the lives of all the people of Pleasantville with her sexual liberation

00:42:56.000 Because obviously modern morality is better than 1950s morality, despite the rates of STDs and single motherhood. 0.99

00:43:01.000 Everything is better now than it was then.

00:43:03.000 So the way that you liberate people is through sex, not through commitment, not through obligation.

00:43:07.000 The way that you make people free is through random sexual activity.

00:43:10.000 So this guy should just be happy because after all, Katy Perry just kissed him and Katy Perry's famous and Katy Perry is beautiful.

00:43:15.000 So therefore, he should be a happy camper.

00:43:17.000 His consent doesn't matter at all because any sort of sexual activity is fine.

00:43:20.000 But that obviously is not the whole story.

00:43:22.000 There's also the part of the story that he's a male and she's a female.

00:43:24.000 So when a woman 1.00

00:43:26.000 That's bad.

00:43:47.000 That is considered women's empowerment. 1.00

00:43:49.000 So Katy Perry's empowered so she can do whatever she wants, even if the guy doesn't want it. 1.00

00:43:53.000 Okay, so that is the bad reason why people are ignoring this.

00:43:57.000 The good reason why people are ignoring this to a certain extent is because there is, and it's not really a good reason, it's a mediocre reason, is because of course there's a double standard.

00:44:05.000 Of course there's a double standard.

00:44:06.000 No one sees the male sexual instinct in the way that they see the female sexual instinct.

00:44:10.000 No one sees Katy Perry as a sexual predator because she's a woman. 1.00

00:44:13.000 No one would see a man doing this as anything but a sexual predator because he's a man.

00:44:17.000 There's a good reason for that, because there are natural differences between men and women. 1.00

00:44:20.000 It may be a dramatic overrate of the situation, right, to extend it to what Katy Perry did here and say that's okay. 0.99

00:44:26.000 But, it is true that human beings see a natural difference between men and women, which is why we treat these situations differently, and yet we as a society deny that those differences exist, which is this really bizarre thing that we do, and really stupid. 0.93

00:44:38.000 Also, one of the things that bugs me about this particularly, is this guy was basically shamed, right? 0.90

00:44:43.000 Why would he be offended? 1.00

00:44:44.000 Because virginity until marriage is stupid, and kissing until love, waiting to kiss until love, that's stupid too. 1.00

00:44:49.000 As a proactive, as a real advocate for that position, that you should wait until marriage, that you should reserve physical intimacy for the person that you love and are committed to for life, I think that this is just another, just throw another branch on the fire in the conflagration that eats Western values from the inside. 0.99

00:45:08.000 Okay, that's a pretty deep read on a pretty minor incident, but let's get to some things that I like and then some things that I hate.

00:45:15.000 Today, things that I like.

00:45:16.000 So, we've been doing books about socialism.

00:45:19.000 So, of course, the classic on this topic is Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago.

00:45:25.000 This is about the prison system in the Soviet Union from 1918 to 1956.

00:45:30.000 This book was largely responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union, or at least the moral legitimacy of the Soviet Union in the West.

00:45:38.000 That for a lot of Western leftists, the Soviet Union was a place that was good. 0.91

00:45:41.000 It was a place that was to be worth emulating.

00:45:44.000 It provided a new vision of the future.

00:45:46.000 Lincoln Steffens, the journalist, went over to the Soviet Union and said, I've seen the future, and it works.

00:45:50.000 And Walter Durant, he went over there during the Ukrainian famine in 1932, and he said, everything's fine there.

00:45:56.000 All this talk about starvation, it's nonsense.

00:45:59.000 People thought the Soviet Union was the wave of the future until this book came out.

00:46:02.000 This book was banned in the Soviet Union, and it was smuggled to the West.

00:46:06.000 It is a masterwork.

00:46:07.000 I mean, it's very long, but it is worth the read.

00:46:10.000 Solzhenitsyn was a communist.

00:46:12.000 He started off as a communist.

00:46:13.000 Then he ended up in the Gulag, and he talks about what the dehumanization of socialism and communism do to people.

00:46:20.000 Well worth the read.

00:46:20.000 Obviously, one of the great books, really, in the history of the world.

00:46:23.000 The Gulag Archipelago.

00:46:25.000 Archipelago is a series of islands by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

00:46:30.000 Okay, time for some things that I hate.

00:46:36.000 So, Senator Rand Paul, obviously a civil libertarian, and he's been very much opposed to, for example, the Bush administration policy of treating prisoners of war as terrorists captured abroad, not as prisoners of war, but as detainees, as unlawful combatants, and the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on them.

00:46:55.000 Now, it is true that enhanced interrogation techniques allowed us to get information from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the organizers of 9-11, we wouldn't have otherwise been able to get, but Rand Paul has been adamantly and steadfastly opposed to that.

00:47:06.000 What's not fine is him slandering Gina Haspel.

00:47:07.000 So, Gina Haspel is Trump's pick to lead the CIA, and she oversaw a secret prison in Thailand, which was used for rendition, and she's been bashed for that, because the idea here is that we should never have used rendition.

00:47:21.000 The rendition program is that terrorists would be captured abroad.

00:47:24.000 Instead of bringing them back home, we would hand them over to a U.S. 1.00

00:47:25.000 ally, and those people would be able to use methods that we would not approve here in the United States, according to the New York Times.

00:47:32.000 She ran a prison code named Cat's Eye, and that began her deep involvement in the agency's counterterrorism operation, showed her willingness to take part in the agency's Rendition Detention and Interrogation program, which shaped her career.

00:47:43.000 This is when she was younger and she was rising in the organization.

00:47:47.000 She's the first woman who would become the head of the CIA if she were appointed.

00:47:51.000 There's no evidence that she enjoys torture.

00:47:53.000 But Rand Paul decides that this is where he's going to go.

00:47:55.000 Well, there was a book written about the torture treatment, the waterboarding, and some of her comments were basically gleeful.

00:48:02.000 The man can't breathe and he's choking on saliva and water.

00:48:05.000 And she's saying, oh, you're a good actor.

00:48:08.000 And it's, you know, I can't believe a grown man's crying because of this treatment.

00:48:12.000 And it almost seemed to be a little bit of glee in her voice that she actually enjoyed the torture.

00:48:17.000 And I think that's not who we need to lead the CIA.

00:48:19.000 There are many career officials of the CIA who would be perfectly competent to do this, but we should not reward somebody who actually participated in torture treatment.

00:48:27.000 Okay, there's a particular problem with this is that he's completely misquoting the book, okay?

00:48:31.000 The book does not even mention Haspel.

00:48:32.000 So here's a U.S.

00:48:33.000 intelligence official.

00:48:34.000 Quote, Senator Paul's claims today about Gina Haspel are not only inaccurate, but contradicted by the very source materials he relied on.

00:48:39.000 The senator quotes liberally from page 263 of James Mitchell's book, Enhanced Interrogation.

00:48:44.000 We're good to go.

00:49:02.000 Right.

00:49:03.000 And the author was on Fox Business saying this is just not true.

00:49:05.000 He said he's referring to a section from my book where the chief of base was confronting because he was faking confusion.

00:49:10.000 That chief of base was not Gina. 0.95

00:49:11.000 That's the way they're going to attack her and take things out of context and distort them.

00:49:14.000 I don't think he's deliberately distorting them.

00:49:16.000 I do think someone told him something that's not true.

00:49:18.000 I did not refer to her.

00:49:19.000 That does not refer to her.

00:49:20.000 So.

00:49:21.000 Clearly, Rand Paul owns Gina Haspel.

00:49:22.000 An apology on that score, even if you don't like Gina Haspel's background.

00:49:27.000 Ron Wyden, who is a complete nutjob from, I think he's from Washington.

00:49:30.000 He's from Oregon, I think. 0.84

00:49:31.000 A Democrat from Oregon.

00:49:33.000 He says that Republicans hid Haspel's background when they decided to nominate her.

00:49:37.000 The Trump administration is engaged in an out-and-out cover-up to keep the American people from knowing about her professional background.

00:49:46.000 As you know, there have been many public stories linking her to torture.

00:49:51.000 I'm a John McCain guy on these issues.

00:49:54.000 John McCain says it's not right morally, and he points out it's not effective.

00:49:59.000 Yeah.

00:50:19.000 Okay, nobody's trying to hide anything.

00:50:20.000 People know that Gina Haspel was involved in the waterboard program and in the rendition program.

00:50:25.000 The question is, was it legal at the time?

00:50:26.000 Number one.

00:50:26.000 Number two, was it immoral?

00:50:28.000 I think it's still questionable as to whether it was immoral.

00:50:30.000 I think that waterboarding terrorists for information that could prevent future terrorist attacks, I am not going to pretend that I think that that's a terrible thing.

00:50:36.000 I don't think that's a terrible thing.

00:50:38.000 At all.

00:50:38.000 OK, so we'll be here tomorrow.

00:50:40.000 We'll be back to discuss all the news, plus the mailbag.

00:50:41.000 So if you're going to subscribe, today's a good day to do it, because that makes sure that you can get your questions in.

00:50:45.000 You can email us, and you can also come watch the show live and ask me questions live, get your answers live on air.

00:50:50.000 So check that out, please.

00:50:52.000 $9.99 a month.

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00:50:54.000 That makes sure that we can pay our bills.

00:50:56.000 We appreciate it.

00:50:57.000 You're listening to The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:51:02.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Mathis Glover.

00:51:04.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:51:06.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:51:07.000 Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:51:09.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:51:11.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.

00:51:12.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:51:14.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

00:51:17.000 Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - March 15, 2018

The Big School Walkout | Ep. 496

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