The Ben Shapiro Show - July 21, 2017


The Campus Left’s Fascism | The Ben Shapiro Show Ep. 344


Episode Stats

Length

50 minutes

Words per Minute

191.58377

Word Count

9,758

Sentence Count

654

Misogynist Sentences

3

Hate Speech Sentences

3


Summary

Ben Shapiro talks about Bill Nye's climate change theories, the latest on UC Berkeley, and the latest in President Trump's interview with the New York Times. He also gives an update on his appearance at YAF, and explains why he's being denied a September 14th appearance at UC Berkeley by Dean Joseph Greenwell and the student organization representing him, the Greenwell Foundation. Finally, he talks about why he thinks the left doesn't care about the aging demographics of the country, and why it's a good thing there aren't many more babies coming out of the old, white, non-college generation. And he explains why you should be worried about the fact that there are still a lot of people who were born and bred into the old white culture, and that they just have to die off in order to achieve the leftist fantasy of "demographics." Ben Shapiro is the host of the conservative podcast "The Weekly Standard" and host of "The Ben Shapiro Show" on Fox News Radio. See linktr.ee/TheBenShapiroShow Subscribe and comment below to get immediate access to all of his newest videos and listen to his newest episodes. He's on all of the social medias, including Apple Podcasts, if you're looking for the latest viral videos, subscribe to his new podcast, The Weekly Standard, and watch his new show "The Dark Side Of" wherever you get your favorite shows. You can also become a supporter of his work: bit.ly/TheWeeklyScientist Subscribe to "TheBen Shapiro's newest podcast, "Shark Tank" wherever he posts his work is available. Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about him on socials, listen to him on the airwaves, and subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform, wherever he is listening to his latest podcast, subscribe on the latest podcast on the internet, and much more! Enjoys this episode? Thank you for listening to The Ben Shapiro's latest podcast? Subscribe to his work and review his work on his latest episode on his podcast "Sharkspires and his reviews on The Dark Side of the world's best vlogs on The Hilltop podcast "Mr. Hilltop Podcasts" on his new book "The View From The Hill" on the Hilltop? on Amazon Prime Video and on Podcharts? Subscribe and review it on iTunes or wherever else he listens to his podcast is available?


Transcript

00:00:00.000 One of the great fantasies of the left is that if the older generation simply dies off, all their policy goals will be achieved.
00:00:06.000 In 2013, Oprah Winfrey mused, after two elections of President Obama, that it might require older white Americans to die for America to achieve racial progress.
00:00:13.000 She said, there are still generations of people, older people, who were born and bred and marinated in it, in that prejudice and racism, and they just have to die.
00:00:23.000 Now Bill Nye, the purported science guy, is thinking along the same track.
00:00:27.000 He told the LA Times on Wednesday, quote,
00:00:40.000 That's true, death does happen.
00:00:41.000 So these musings are not only pathetically immoral, they are anti-democratic.
00:00:44.000 The notion behind a representative republic is that people can be convinced on the issues.
00:00:48.000 If Nye hasn't convinced people that global warming is a catastrophic threat requiring massively burdensome government interference, that would be his fault.
00:00:56.000 Perhaps he's too busy producing songs about my sex chunk.
00:00:59.000 Or cartoons with polysexual ice cream scoops.
00:01:01.000 But the fantasy of the left is that the demographics of the country will move in their direction if they can just get rid of undesirable populations.
00:01:07.000 And that has a pretty dark undertone.
00:01:09.000 Hoping your political opponents croak so that you can win legislative battles without having to win the argument.
00:01:14.000 And it's massive nastiness.
00:01:15.000 While conservatives sometimes joke about leftists having fewer babies and then losing the argument through demographics,
00:01:20.000 We're not actually rooting for that to happen, nor do we think that lack of kids from leftists would be a necessity for political victory.
00:01:26.000 But on the left, the hatred for those old white Americans is pretty real, and it's one of the driving factors behind that constituency's hard turn toward candidates like President Trump.
00:01:35.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:01:35.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:01:43.000 Alrighty, so we are going to get to everything that is happening over at UC Berkeley.
00:01:46.000 I'll give you the update on that.
00:01:48.000 I'm going to give you the update on everything that is happening.
00:01:50.000 President Trump gave an ill-advised, shall we say, interview with the New York Times.
00:01:54.000 We will talk about it.
00:01:56.000 We will also be talking about the latest on Obamacare.
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00:03:28.000 Okay, so...
00:03:30.000 The update on UC Berkeley.
00:03:31.000 So, yesterday, I am sitting around minding my own business, as I am apt to do, and I get a notice from Young America's foundation that UC Berkeley is now attempting to quash my appearance on September 14th.
00:03:45.000 So they have gotten back to YAF, and they are now saying that they are not going to allow me to speak there on September 14th.
00:03:52.000 They don't have the facilities.
00:03:54.000 This was their excuse.
00:03:54.000 They always have to come up with an excuse.
00:03:56.000 They can't just say, he's conservative, we're not going to have him.
00:03:59.000 Instead, what they do is they make an excuse.
00:04:00.000 So, according to YAF, in an email to the Berkeley College Republicans, Dean of Students Joseph Greenwell and Student Organization Coordinator Millicent Morris Cheney denied the student's request for a venue for September 14, 2017, despite what Morris Cheney called extensive effort.
00:04:15.000 Berkeley has explained earlier that I was welcome on their campus, and they were committed to supporting my right to free speech.
00:04:21.000 The administrator said that Berkeley can only host me, quote, when events are held at a time and location that allow for the provision of any required security measures.
00:04:30.000 That's pretty open-ended.
00:04:30.000 They did not provide alternative dates, nor did they provide alternative venues.
00:04:34.000 When YAF asked for excuses, meaning like, can you give us all of the people who are speaking in the venues that have over 500 seats that night,
00:04:42.000 Berkeley apparently didn't even provide that so right now what it looks like is Berkeley making an excuse for not hosting me on September 14th and offering no alternative dates.
00:04:49.000 Now Berkeley says they're going to accommodate.
00:04:51.000 They say that they are going to offer alternative dates or they're going to allow us maybe to rent a different room but they're gonna have to do that otherwise they're gonna be hit with another lawsuit because the fact is that the Bruin College Republicans, Yath, I, we all have a right to speak on the campus.
00:05:06.000 They are a duly
00:05:07.000 A duly appointed student group.
00:05:10.000 They went through all the usual measures.
00:05:11.000 There is nothing wrong with me speaking at UC Berkeley.
00:05:14.000 In fact, the proof is in the pudding.
00:05:15.000 I spoke there in April 2016, no problem.
00:05:17.000 We had a packed room, about 300 students, no protesters, nothing.
00:05:21.000 So, if Berkeley doesn't actually get out of the way here, or provide the security necessary to quash their Antifa insane people, then they would be in violation of the First Amendment.
00:05:30.000 This is one of the excuses the left is fond of using now.
00:05:33.000 Don't openly say that they won't have conservative speakers.
00:05:36.000 Instead, what they do is they use the heckler's veto.
00:05:38.000 So they say, okay, well, if there's going to be a bunch of violent people who show up and make trouble, then we have to ensure safety.
00:05:45.000 And so we have to cancel the event outright, which gives the veto to the worst people on earth.
00:05:49.000 It gives the veto to those Antifa thugs.
00:05:52.000 What it really incentivizes is a bunch of people on the right to do the same thing to left-wing speakers, right?
00:05:56.000 Go out there and threaten violence.
00:05:57.000 The left-wing speakers get canceled.
00:05:59.000 It's horrible precedent.
00:06:00.000 It's really bad.
00:06:01.000 Now, I thought something was really funny.
00:06:02.000 There was somebody who tweeted me yesterday and they said, well, now that Berkeley's trying to quash you, aren't you upset with yourself that you didn't support the people who stormed the stage at Shakespeare in the Park?
00:06:12.000 And I said, no, I'm happy I did not support those people since they have the exact same rights that I do.
00:06:17.000 I mean, this is a very, very easy one.
00:06:20.000 If I have the right to speak in a public place like Berkeley, then they have the right to perform at a stage that they have the due ability to perform at.
00:06:28.000 But I think these principles have to be held consistently.
00:06:30.000 Again, I'm hopeful that Berkeley will work it out.
00:06:33.000 I'm hopeful that Berkeley will hear the hue and cry that has arisen from the masses and that they will back down off of this and they will not allow themselves to be intimidated by the Antifa people.
00:06:43.000 But there are measures available in case Berkeley does not do what Berkeley is supposed to do.
00:06:47.000 And if they want to read that as a legal threat, they certainly should because there will be legal action.
00:06:52.000 If they do not do what they are necessitated to do under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
00:06:57.000 Also, Governor Brown, Governor Jerry Brown of this used to be great state of California, I would appreciate if you would get control of your own campuses.
00:07:05.000 University of California is under the auspices of the California state government.
00:07:08.000 When the when Berkeley was filled with riots in the 1960s Ronald Reagan sent in the National Guard if Jerry Brown allows Berkeley to continue being a place where free speech is shut down He's just demonstrating that he is wildly incompetent at his job and or helping out the worst form of Anti-speech fascism in America that is happening on today's college campuses
00:07:28.000 So I'll continue to bring you updates as all this develops.
00:07:31.000 I mean, honestly, Berkeley's so stupid for doing this.
00:07:33.000 I'm supposed to testify in front of Congress next week, next week, about government shutdowns of free speech on college campuses.
00:07:39.000 So, I guess thanks to Berkeley for providing me material.
00:07:42.000 So, well done there, guys.
00:07:44.000 But we will bring you updates as those arise.
00:07:46.000 Okay, in other news, President Trump yesterday had an interview with the New York Times.
00:07:53.000 President Trump should not do these interviews with the New York Times.
00:07:55.000 It's really funny because for all of the talk about how Trump destroys the media, no one gives the media more fodder than President Trump, right?
00:08:00.000 He goes and he does these interviews with Maggie Haberman of the New York Times.
00:08:03.000 I think Maggie Haberman is quite a good reporter, but Trump obviously desires the love of Maggie Haberman and the New York Times because he does interviews with her regularly, routinely.
00:08:12.000 He does interviews with the New York Times because he reads the New York Times because he grew up in New York and he subscribed, I'm sure, to the New York Times.
00:08:18.000 I don't know.
00:08:27.000 I don't know that he's a stupid man, but I will say that he is a guy who really does not listen to what he says.
00:08:35.000 If the Trump family is sort of the Bluth family in Arrested Development, then he's played all of the different Bluth parts at one point or another.
00:08:46.000 The Democrats think that he is George Sr.
00:08:49.000 I may have committed a little light treason, that's what the Democrats think of him.
00:08:52.000 Sometimes he plays the Trump Jr.
00:08:55.000 Kind of.
00:09:14.000 Gay, sexual connotations, and everyone around him hears it, but he doesn't hear it because he's incapable of hearing himself.
00:09:21.000 I feel like that's what Trump does sometimes.
00:09:22.000 Because if you were a Democrat and you said, you know what would be awesome?
00:09:25.000 Would be if Trump said X.
00:09:26.000 Within 48 hours, Trump will be out there saying that thing, and he won't even, like, understand that he's saying it.
00:09:31.000 It's really amazing.
00:09:32.000 You know, Trump says things that are honest and says some things that are true, and he says whatever comes to his mind first.
00:09:40.000 And so, you know, that's not a good thing.
00:09:43.000 Today, actually, is a perfect day for Good Trump, Bad Trump.
00:09:45.000 Do we have access to Good Trump, Bad Trump?
00:09:54.000 Alrighty, so, we'll get to good Trump in a little bit, but we'll start with bad Trump.
00:09:57.000 So, Trump does this interview with the New York Times, and he starts off by saying that he would never have picked Jeff Sessions for Attorney General if he had known that Sessions was going to recuse himself.
00:10:05.000 The reason that this is intensely stupid is because if you want to suggest to people that you are trying to cover up some sort of crime with Russia, what you don't do is say, I really wish I had an Attorney General who hadn't recused himself so he could protect me from the investigation into Russia.
00:10:19.000 This would be the thing that you wouldn't say.
00:10:21.000 So naturally, Trump, being Tobias Fuenke, just says it and doesn't even really understand what he's saying.
00:10:26.000 So here he is, Donald Trump, analyst, therapist.
00:10:30.000 Sessions gets the job.
00:10:33.000 Right after he gets the job, he recuses himself.
00:10:36.000 Is that a mistake?
00:10:38.000 Well, Sessions should have never recused himself.
00:10:42.000 And if he would, if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else.
00:10:48.000 He gave you no heads up at all?
00:10:51.000 Zero.
00:10:52.000 So Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself.
00:11:02.000 I then have, which frankly, I think is very unfair to the president.
00:11:09.000 How do you take a job and then recuse yourself?
00:11:11.000 If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, thanks, Jeff, but I can't, you know, I'm not going to take it.
00:11:17.000 It's extremely unfair.
00:11:20.000 And that's a mild word to the president.
00:11:23.000 So he recuses himself.
00:11:25.000 Okay, so clearly Trump is very upset about him recusing himself over the Russia thing.
00:11:28.000 So, to be fair to Trump, the fact is that Barack Obama used Eric Holder as his shield and sword the entirety of his administration.
00:11:34.000 Holder called Barack Obama his wingman.
00:11:37.000 They said they were best buddies, they used to hang out, and obviously anytime Holder needed to be protected when he was in contempt of Congress, Obama stepped in and asserted executive privilege to protect him.
00:11:47.000 It's not unwarranted that Trump thinks the AG is supposed to be sort of his protector, but it's not good, right?
00:11:53.000 You're now suggesting that there's something that is really terrible that's going to happen because AG Sessions recused himself on Russia.
00:12:00.000 And by the way, AG Sessions is a very active Attorney General.
00:12:03.000 He's really ratcheted up prosecutions on illegal immigration.
00:12:07.000 He's done some things that are not so good either, like yesterday he came out and he really ratcheted up the idea of asset forfeiture.
00:12:12.000 Asset forfeiture is this unconstitutional notion that if you arrest somebody and you don't even charge them, then you can just seize their property, which is really quite awful.
00:12:21.000 But Sessions is a very active AG.
00:12:23.000 His job is not entirely the Russia investigation.
00:12:26.000 If Trump is saying that the sole qualifier here was going to be that the AG
00:12:29.000 We're good to go.
00:12:51.000 He shouldn't look into my family's finances, okay?
00:12:54.000 This is just, again, remember, Robert Mueller was only appointed not because AG Sessions recused himself, but Sessions recused himself, and then Trump fired Comey.
00:13:02.000 In order to fire Comey, if you remember the former FBI director, in order to fire Comey, he requested a letter from Rod Rosenstein, who is the Deputy Attorney General,
00:13:10.000 Sessions couldn't write the letter supposedly because he was recused on the Russia stuff.
00:13:13.000 So you had Rod Rosenstein write the letter.
00:13:15.000 Now Rod Rosenstein is involved in the firing of Comey and so now when Comey comes back at Trump and he says, you fired me as basically part of a cover-up on the Russia stuff, now Rosenstein has to recuse himself and that's how you get the special prosecutor, Robert Mueller, who Rosenstein appointed.
00:13:30.000 Trump is now angry at Rosenstein because he says Rosenstein is a Democrat.
00:13:33.000 He's angry at Sessions.
00:13:34.000 And he's very angry at Mueller because he thinks the special prosecutor is going to exceed his mandate.
00:13:38.000 Which, by the way, he's not wrong about.
00:13:40.000 Mueller is going to exceed his mandate.
00:13:41.000 I'll discuss that in a second.
00:13:42.000 But what Trump says here is so not smart.
00:13:45.000 It's just not smart.
00:13:46.000 Again, it's Tobias Funke.
00:13:48.000 It's somebody saying something that he doesn't hear, and it's not good.
00:13:51.000 Mueller was looking at your finances, your family's finances, unrelated to Russia.
00:13:56.000 Is that a right one?
00:13:57.000 Would that be a breach of what his actual policy is?
00:14:00.000 I would say yes.
00:14:01.000 Yeah, I would say yes.
00:14:02.000 By the way, I would say, I don't, I don't, I mean, it's possible that it's condo or something, so, you know, I sell a lot of condo units and somebody, somebody from Russia buys a condo, who knows.
00:14:12.000 I don't make money from Russia.
00:14:14.000 In fact, I put out a letter saying that I don't make, from one of the most highly respected law firms and accounting firms.
00:14:22.000 I don't have buildings in Russia.
00:14:23.000 They said I own buildings in Russia.
00:14:25.000 I don't.
00:14:26.000 They said I made money from Russia.
00:14:28.000 It's not my thing.
00:14:30.000 I don't do that.
00:14:31.000 Over the years I've looked at maybe doing a deal in Russia, but I never did one.
00:14:37.000 Okay, so he continued by saying that it was a violation of a red line, and then he said, at the very end he said, they said, would you fire Mueller if he crosses that red line?
00:14:46.000 He said, I can't, I can't answer that question because I don't think that it's going to happen.
00:14:49.000 Okay, so first of all, here's the thing you shouldn't say.
00:14:52.000 You can investigate everything, but whatever you do, don't look in that safe.
00:14:57.000 Right, this is not the way that you're supposed to, if you want to avoid an investigation, unless you're Lex Luthor, and you actually hid the kryptonite inside the lead encased box, and you're actually trying to get Superman to open the box,
00:15:11.000 You don't actually want to say this, right?
00:15:13.000 This is like, you know, the police.
00:15:15.000 The police come into your apartment and they say, can we search your apartment?
00:15:17.000 You say, absolutely you can search my apartment.
00:15:19.000 Just don't search under the floorboards in my closet.
00:15:22.000 Like, what do you think is the first place they're going to search?
00:15:24.000 Obviously.
00:15:25.000 What do you think is the very first place they're going to search?
00:15:28.000 This is the place they're going to search, obviously.
00:15:30.000 So it's really not particularly smart for Trump to say, don't look at my finance.
00:15:34.000 Look everywhere, but whatever you do, don't look at the finances.
00:15:38.000 Just don't do it.
00:15:39.000 I'd be mad if you do it.
00:15:40.000 Again, where do you think Mueller's gonna look now?
00:15:42.000 And naturally this morning, there's a report out that Bob Mueller, where is he looking?
00:15:46.000 Oh yes, at Trump's finances.
00:15:47.000 Quote,
00:15:52.000 I think?
00:16:11.000 So I want to discuss what Trump is right about here and what he's wrong about, because he's not entirely wrong.
00:16:19.000 I think that this is going to end with Trump firing Mueller.
00:16:21.000 I think this is going to get to the point where Trump gets so annoyed that he just fires Mueller, and it will be really fascinating to see what happens next, but
00:16:30.000 I don't think he's entirely wrong to be suspicious of what Mueller is doing.
00:16:35.000 I'll explain that in just a second, but before I do that, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at MyPatriotSupply.
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00:18:00.000 We're good to go.
00:18:18.000 Here's where Trump is right about Robert Mueller, and the entire left is suggesting, how dare Trump?
00:18:24.000 How dare he even suggest all these things?
00:18:28.000 Okay, so, Andy McCarthy has a really good piece today over at the Journal of American Greatness, which is basically the Trump defense journal.
00:18:34.000 But Andy McCarthy is an honest thinker, so this is not just a knee-jerk Trump defense piece.
00:18:39.000 And he says that the problem with the special counsel, he's been saying this all along, is that the investigation that Mueller is now engaging in is too broad-ranging to actually pick up on the original mandate.
00:18:50.000 You remember, the original mandate was to investigate whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians in cyber-hacking the DNC and then releasing emails.
00:18:57.000 That was the original mandate.
00:18:59.000 It is now expanded to include Trump's finances, Trump's associates,
00:19:04.000 You could see a case, certainly, where Mueller investigates and he goes into Trump's finances and he finds something totally unrelated to Russia that's criminal or a problem, and that ends up being the scandal that takes down Trump.
00:19:14.000 Once you have a special counsel, these sorts of things happen.
00:19:16.000 This is exactly what happened with Kenneth Starr.
00:19:18.000 Remember, Monica Lewinsky never claimed sexual harassment.
00:19:21.000 Monica Lewinsky never claimed sexual assault.
00:19:23.000 Monica Lewinsky was a consensual affair, but that was uncovered by Kenneth Starr in the process of investigating the Paula Jones allegations, and that in turn necessitated that Bill Clinton, when he committed perjury,
00:19:33.000 was going to be impeached.
00:19:34.000 So this is the problem with special counsels and this is something that Andy McCarthy points out.
00:19:39.000 He suggests that in criminal law our sites are trained on conspiracy, which makes things easy.
00:19:43.000 A conspiracy is an agreement to commit a violation of law.
00:19:46.000 To speak in terms of collusion rather than conspiracy only confuses matters.
00:19:50.000 Contrary to what you may have heard from strategists and analysts, collusion is not a crime nor a term that has a legally consequential meaning.
00:19:57.000 So that's where we are with respect to the Trump-Taller meeting, but
00:20:00.000 If there's an ordinary federal criminal case, which is what Mueller would theoretically be investigating, if there's no felony, there's no cause to investigate.
00:20:07.000 But still, we're investigating.
00:20:09.000 Why?
00:20:09.000 Because once you get into a special counsel investigation, it broadens and broadens.
00:20:12.000 Now, I was in favor of appointing the special counsel originally simply because I felt that Trump had no choice at a certain point because
00:20:20.000 So many people in his administration have been dirtied by the Russia allegations.
00:20:22.000 Sessions, and then Rosenstein, and the firing of Comey, and it felt like his administration was losing enough faith that at a certain point a special counsel was going to be appointed whether he liked it or not.
00:20:33.000 That's what's happened.
00:20:34.000 But now Trump is legitimately scared that something will be dug up on any grounds.
00:20:39.000 And if I were him, I'd be scared too, even if I were completely open and honest about the Russia stuff, because once people start digging, they dig until they hit bedrock.
00:20:45.000 They're gonna dig until they find something, anything, at all.
00:20:49.000 And so that is probably why Trump is so upset about the special counsel stuff and probably why in the end he's gonna end up firing the special counsel which could precipitate, it's not a constitutional crisis, he has the authority to do it, but it could precipitate a major political scandal whereby Trump didn't even do anything and ends up in the crosshairs of the Democrats for impeachment
00:21:08.000 Well, I want to explain more about this.
00:21:10.000 Plus, Trump does something on Russia.
00:21:12.000 Again, I'm going to say that this is more Tobias Funke than malevolence, but we're going to talk about that in just a second.
00:21:19.000 For that, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com.
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00:21:49.000 And you're going to want to check that out.
00:21:51.000 So go over to dailywire.com and check that out.
00:21:54.000 It'll really be fun.
00:21:54.000 I think the Knowles show is going to be really funny.
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00:22:13.000 It says upon it, leftist tears, hot or cold.
00:22:15.000 It is etched in silver.
00:22:17.000 Purist silver.
00:22:18.000 It probably is not actually silver.
00:22:19.000 It's probably aluminum.
00:22:20.000 But in any case, it looks beautiful.
00:22:22.000 It is dishwasher safe.
00:22:23.000 You will enjoy it.
00:22:24.000 You will love it.
00:22:24.000 You'll treasure it forever.
00:22:25.000 You'll pass it down to your children.
00:22:27.000 One day, on Planet of the Apes, they will uncover it in a cave next to a crying baby doll because it is so great.
00:22:31.000 This leftist tears tumbler, hot or cold.
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00:22:35.000 We're good to go.
00:22:54.000 Okay, so, Trump, again, I think he says things without thinking about them that can be read in two ways.
00:23:00.000 One is that's completely innocent.
00:23:01.000 Tobias Fuenke is not, in fact, an anal rapist.
00:23:04.000 He's an analyst therapist, right?
00:23:05.000 And then, it could be read in, like, the most awful of possible ways.
00:23:09.000 So, Trump, last night, he's asked about this second Putin meeting.
00:23:13.000 So the media's been making a big deal out of the fact that at this big dinner, there was this big dinner with all of the G20 leaders and their spouses, and Trump, halfway through the dinner, his wife is sitting, apparently, next to, Melania is sitting next to Putin,
00:23:25.000 He is sitting next to the first lady of Japan and he gets bored and he walks over and he sits down next to Melania and Putin and proceeds to engage with them.
00:23:32.000 He said it was a brief meeting.
00:23:34.000 Everybody there says it was like an hour and nobody from the US government was there, so we don't know what was said.
00:23:39.000 We only know what Trump says was said.
00:23:42.000 I think, by the way, the funniest thing about this, this is legitimately funny, is that apparently the first lady of Japan
00:23:47.000 We're good to go.
00:24:05.000 That's funny.
00:24:06.000 Okay, I'm sorry.
00:24:06.000 That's really funny.
00:24:07.000 He goes and he sits down next to Melania and Putin.
00:24:10.000 And people are saying, what are you talking about for an hour?
00:24:13.000 And Trump uses legitimately the worst excuse available.
00:24:16.000 He says, I talked about Russian adoption with Vladimir Putin.
00:24:21.000 That's what we talked about for an hour.
00:24:22.000 Toward dessert, I went down just to say hello to Melania.
00:24:26.000 And while I was there, I said hello to Putin.
00:24:30.000 Really pleasantries, more than anything else.
00:24:34.000 It was not a long conversation, but it was, you know, it could be 15 minutes, just talked about things.
00:24:41.000 Actually, it was very interesting, we talked about adoption.
00:24:46.000 You did?
00:24:46.000 Russian adoption, yeah.
00:24:47.000 I've always found that interesting because, you know, he ended that years ago.
00:24:52.000 And I actually talked about Russian adoption with him, which is interesting because that was
00:24:57.000 No!
00:24:57.000 No!
00:24:57.000 No!
00:24:57.000 Don't do that!
00:24:58.000 Okay, so here's why you don't do that.
00:25:00.000 Donald Trump's original excuse about the meeting with the Russians was that it was about Russian adoption.
00:25:06.000 It turned out that was bull.
00:25:24.000 Now Trump is being asked, what was your meeting about?
00:25:26.000 He uses the exact same excuse his son used that turned out to be bull.
00:25:31.000 Can't you make up anything else?
00:25:33.000 Say the weather, our kids, jujitsu, riding horses bareback, fighting bears, bathing in antler blood, which apparently Putin does.
00:25:42.000 Do any of those things, right?
00:25:44.000 You can do any of those things, but instead you go directly to the excuse that your son used that turned out to be false within 48 hours?
00:25:52.000 Why?
00:25:53.000 Why, God?
00:25:53.000 Why?
00:25:54.000 President Trump, please, for the love of God, please just no.
00:26:00.000 There are things called teleprompters.
00:26:01.000 Okay, I understand you don't like using them, but you're so much better when you use the teleprompter.
00:26:05.000 He's given some great speeches on teleprompter.
00:26:07.000 He spoke in front of a joint session of Congress.
00:26:08.000 Terrific.
00:26:09.000 On a teleprompter.
00:26:10.000 He spoke in Saudi Arabia.
00:26:11.000 Not my favorite speech.
00:26:12.000 Not a bad speech.
00:26:13.000 On teleprompter?
00:26:14.000 Great.
00:26:14.000 Spoke in Poland.
00:26:15.000 Terrific speech.
00:26:16.000 On teleprompter.
00:26:17.000 He does not have a teleprompter for these interviews.
00:26:20.000 His lawyers must just be thinking, Oh God.
00:26:23.000 Oh God, he's going to talk to the New York Times again.
00:26:25.000 No, no, no, don't do it.
00:26:27.000 Please don't do it.
00:26:27.000 Okay.
00:26:28.000 And then Trump follows this up by saying, Jim Comey tried to blackmail me.
00:26:32.000 Okay.
00:26:32.000 So his suggestion is that Jim, that Comey basically was trying to, was trying to coerce him into doing something, but doesn't make clear what it is that Comey wanted.
00:26:41.000 So here's Trump.
00:26:43.000 He also had some really fascinating choice words for former F.D.I.
00:26:46.000 Director Comey.
00:26:48.000 He sure did.
00:26:49.000 And as we know, he has said any number of choice words about James Comey for some time.
00:26:54.000 But he was very specific that he believed that Comey was trying to essentially get leverage over him with that dossier, making all sorts of wild allegations about President Trump and his appearance in Russia in 2013.
00:27:12.000 You know, as we know, he was not happy with Comey for quite some time, long before he actually fired him.
00:27:19.000 There had been some belief that he might even fire him immediately upon taking office.
00:27:24.000 He believes Comey did that in order to get leverage over him to keep his job?
00:27:29.000 Essentially, that Comey wanted to keep his job, and that was the point in showing it to him.
00:27:33.000 You know, again, the president feels sort of vindicated, as I think you have seen him say publicly.
00:27:41.000 Uh, that, uh, Comey had to acknowledge under oath that he had told the president three times that he was under investigation.
00:27:48.000 He said he would not say that publicly because it might change.
00:27:51.000 Uh, the president just doesn't, uh, uh, accept that as an answer.
00:27:55.000 Now listen, Comey is a political actor, no question, but when he says that Comey was trying to blackmail him with the dossier, we have to go back in history.
00:28:00.000 Originally, what Comey said is, I presented this dossier, you remember BuzzFeed released the dossier, which was full of false information about Russian pee tapes and stuff, and about Trump being peed on by prostitutes and all that sort of nonsense.
00:28:11.000 And Comey said, I presented that to the president because it was going around Capitol Hill.
00:28:15.000 I wanted him to be aware of it.
00:28:17.000 I wanted him to be aware that it was being investigated and that we had no proof that any of it was true.
00:28:21.000 And now Trump is saying that that was supposed to be leverage, like that was going to be released by Comey.
00:28:25.000 He doesn't have any proof of that.
00:28:27.000 And what it more looks like is, again, that he's in some sort of poop fight with Comey than that he's actually rightly trying to defend himself.
00:28:33.000 There's two things that are happening here.
00:28:35.000 Trump can be completely innocent in all of this, but he has to stop saying things that make him sound guilty and make him sound like he is getting involved in things he shouldn't be involved in.
00:28:44.000 So, okay, this is all under the heading, Bad Trump.
00:28:48.000 It is not useful.
00:28:49.000 It is harmful.
00:28:50.000 He should not speak off the cuff like this.
00:28:51.000 It is really not worthwhile.
00:28:53.000 Okay, now, it's time for some good Trump.
00:28:55.000 At long last, it's time for some good Trump.
00:28:56.000 So, I criticized President Trump yesterday and the day before, and I have for weeks.
00:29:00.000 That he has been completely hands-off on this health care thing.
00:29:03.000 He's been very hands-off on health care policy.
00:29:05.000 And it makes sense that he's hands-off on the health care policy because the truth is he doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to health insurance policy.
00:29:10.000 If you ask him what's in the health insurance bill, there's no one in America who thinks that Donald Trump is an expert on what is in Trump Care Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, what's in Obamacare, what all these things do.
00:29:19.000 In fact, there's a poll out today that shows that nearly two-thirds of Americans, 62%, now think that the federal government's job is to ensure that all Americans have health care coverage.
00:29:28.000 Okay, so they all agree with Bernie Sanders.
00:29:30.000 62%.
00:29:32.000 That would include President Trump, who back in January said, quote, I mean, that's what Trump actually said.
00:29:35.000 So, he buys into that as well.
00:29:36.000 And that confusion, as I have said, has led to the inability of a lot of Republicans
00:29:51.000 to come to a conclusion on what exactly Trump even wants them to do.
00:29:55.000 And so, that's been a problem.
00:29:58.000 Trump is now attempting, you know, a little too late, he's trying to apply leverage to some of the senators to vote for something.
00:30:03.000 I am glad that he is attempting to apply leverage.
00:30:06.000 The big problem is that if you apply leverage without knowing what you're trying to leverage people into, it makes it sort of difficult.
00:30:11.000 So here is what Trump is doing that is right.
00:30:13.000 He is trying to apply leverage.
00:30:14.000 Yesterday, he had a bunch of senators to the White House, and he started getting rough with them on camera, and here's what it looked like.
00:30:20.000 We can repeal, but we should repeal and replace, and we shouldn't leave town until this is complete, until this bill is on my desk, and until we all go over to the Oval Office, I'll sign it and we can celebrate for the American people.
00:30:36.000 Thank you very much.
00:30:37.000 Thank you.
00:30:38.000 Thank you very much.
00:30:41.000 Okay, so he then continued along these lines by openly threatening Senator Heller.
00:30:45.000 Senator Dean Heller from the state of Nevada is a moderate.
00:30:48.000 He does not believe in full repeal, basically, or at least he's made noises along those lines.
00:30:53.000 And Trump actively warned Heller, if you don't do what I want, then you might not be a senator for very long.
00:30:58.000 I think I have to get him back.
00:31:00.000 That's right.
00:31:01.000 Heller's sitting next to him.
00:31:02.000 Watch his face.
00:31:03.000 You didn't go out there.
00:31:04.000 This was the one we were worried about.
00:31:06.000 You weren't there.
00:31:07.000 But you're gonna be.
00:31:08.000 You're gonna be.
00:31:10.000 Look, he wants to remain a senator, doesn't he?
00:31:12.000 Okay.
00:31:14.000 And I think the people of your state, which I know very well, I think they're going to appreciate what you hopefully will do.
00:31:21.000 I know what it looks like.
00:31:22.000 I just want to crawl in a hole and die.
00:31:25.000 But here's, okay, so it's good that Trump's applying pressure.
00:31:28.000 What would be better is if Trump were applying pressure toward a particular actual standard.
00:31:32.000 So, the problem is this.
00:31:33.000 Let's say that you're a congressperson, you're a senator.
00:31:36.000 And you're presented with a bill.
00:31:37.000 And the bill contains some good stuff, and it contains some bad stuff.
00:31:40.000 What do you do?
00:31:40.000 Do you vote for it, or do you vote against it?
00:31:42.000 Now, Trump might like the bill, but he also might not.
00:31:45.000 So you might say, okay, you vote for it because Trump is going to use his leverage, as I have been suggesting he should do.
00:31:50.000 He's going to use his leverage to harm me if I don't do what he wants, right?
00:31:53.000 That would be the idea.
00:31:55.000 Except that a bunch of Republicans voted in the House in favor of TrumpCare Part 1, and Trump had a big celebratory meeting at the White House.
00:32:04.000 And then three days later, he came out and said that the bill was mean, mean, mean.
00:32:09.000 Why would you put yourself on the line with your own constituents to vote for an unpopular bill that has a 20% approval rating?
00:32:15.000 Under the auspices, the president's gonna pressure you if you know that he's going to stab you in the back the minute everything goes south.
00:32:21.000 So the president, in order for threat to work, right, if I threaten, if I were to threaten Mathis, if I were to say, Mathis, if you do something, if you do X, I'm going to fire you.
00:32:29.000 I have to define what X is, right, so that Mathis knows not to do it.
00:32:33.000 If I were to say, Mathis, you have to make me look good on this show or I'm gonna fire you, then it's Mathis's job to make me look good on the show, and there's only so much he can do, but he does the best that he can.
00:32:41.000 If I were to say to, if I were to say to Mathis, however, Mathis,
00:32:45.000 Do some stuff, or I'm gonna fire you.
00:32:48.000 Some stuff, and it's gonna get done, or he may not have a job tomorrow.
00:32:52.000 Mathis may not sleep particularly well, but Mathis is not going to know what the hell to do, right?
00:32:58.000 Is he supposed to use the camera in a particular way?
00:33:00.000 Is he supposed to cut to a particular clip?
00:33:02.000 Is he supposed to make sure that all the clips are cut to their specified length?
00:33:05.000 What is he supposed to do?
00:33:06.000 He doesn't know.
00:33:07.000 In order for a threat to work, you have to have a natural action and then a consequence to that action, right?
00:33:13.000 If you do X, I will do Y. What's the X here?
00:33:16.000 Trump says repeal and replace, but that's super vague, because they're not going to pass a pure repeal, it appears.
00:33:21.000 It appears that they don't have the votes for this.
00:33:23.000 Lamar Alexander, the senator from Tennessee, he says we don't have 40 votes to just repeal Obamacare.
00:33:27.000 I'll explain why this is the case in a second, but here is Lamar Alexander from Tennessee saying exactly this.
00:33:32.000 Senator McConnell, but it's obvious to me, number one, that the president favors
00:33:40.000 We're good to go.
00:33:52.000 That's the main thing he favors.
00:33:55.000 He wants us to get to yes.
00:33:57.000 You favor that approach?
00:33:58.000 I favor that, too.
00:33:59.000 I don't think there are 40 votes to repeal and say to the American people, well, trust us to come up with something in the next couple of years.
00:34:06.000 I don't think that's a very good idea.
00:34:07.000 You don't think there are even 40?
00:34:08.000 What he's saying is that the Republicans are not going to just repeal.
00:34:11.000 So, the plan from McConnell was, we're going to repeal Obamacare and then we'll figure out something to do with it.
00:34:16.000 The problem is twofold.
00:34:18.000 One,
00:34:18.000 The actual repeal bill from 2015 doesn't repeal all of Obamacare.
00:34:22.000 Even plain repeal.
00:34:24.000 I think they should vote on it because I think that they need pressure put on them to actually come up with a full repeal.
00:34:29.000 But, what the actual repeal bill did in 2015, remember, they can only do what's called a reconciliation.
00:34:35.000 So let me backtrack.
00:34:36.000 Reconciliation process means that you need 51 votes in order to pass something.
00:34:39.000 Reconciliation means that you can only pass a law that has an impact on the budget.
00:34:44.000 That's just these arcane Senate rules, okay?
00:34:46.000 If you don't need 60 votes to invoke cloture, you only need 51 in order to pass a bill.
00:34:51.000 The bill has to impact the budget.
00:34:53.000 The problem is, the Obamacare regulations don't actually impact the budget directly.
00:34:57.000 So it's kind of hard to use reconciliation in order to get rid of all of Obamacare.
00:35:01.000 You end up keeping a lot of the regulations, but getting rid of the subsidies and the taxes.
00:35:06.000 That inevitably will kill the Obamacare exchanges, but these insurance companies are still required to cover pre-existing conditions, which is going to drive premiums up.
00:35:13.000 That's what Republicans are afraid of.
00:35:15.000 That's why a lot of them don't want to vote for pure repeal.
00:35:17.000 The case in favor of voting for pure repeal like this is that once you do that, then you're going to be forced into a position where either you pass a bunch of regulatory reform and do away with a lot of these regulations, or all the prices go up.
00:35:29.000 It applies a certain amount of pressure.
00:35:31.000 But it's a gamble.
00:35:32.000 It's a gamble.
00:35:33.000 And a lot of people don't want to take that gamble because if premiums go up and people are tossed off of Medicaid, then the number of uninsured go up and people who are still trying to get insurance might be in a fair bit of trouble.
00:35:42.000 So that's why there's a case against plain repeal in the 2015 sense.
00:35:45.000 Now what they could do is they could actually try to repeal Obamacare wholesale and then try to leverage the Senate Rules Committee.
00:35:53.000 There's actually a person who's like the rules expert who rules on this stuff.
00:35:56.000 Try to pressure her to actually allow that to go through.
00:35:59.000 That would be the best available move.
00:36:01.000 But the Republicans are now stuck between a bit of a rock and a hard place.
00:36:04.000 But when they say repeal and replace, that's not clear what they mean.
00:36:07.000 It's like when people say immigration reform.
00:36:09.000 It's a buzzword.
00:36:10.000 It doesn't mean anything.
00:36:11.000 Is immigration reform strengthening our immigration system or is it weakening our immigration system?
00:36:15.000 What does it mean to repeal and replace?
00:36:16.000 Does it mean that we're going to get rid of Obamacare or does it mean that we're going to replace Obamacare with Obamacare Part 2?
00:36:21.000 And so this is why Trump, even Trump is unclear on this.
00:36:24.000 The Republican caucus is unclear on this.
00:36:26.000 Nobody knows what they want to do.
00:36:28.000 So when Trump tries to apply pressure,
00:36:30.000 As I announced last evening, after consulting with both the White House and our members, we've decided to hold the vote to open debate on Obamacare repeal to early next week.
00:36:58.000 The Obamacare repeal legislation will ensure a stable two-year transition period, which will allow us to wipe the slate clean and start over with real patient-centered health care reform.
00:37:12.000 Okay, so we'll see if that actually happens, if that vote actually takes place.
00:37:15.000 If it does, then it's at least in part an attempt by Mitch McConnell to simply get the Republican caucus off his back, saying, okay, we tried to pass it, and then we weren't actually able to pass it, so that is what it is.
00:37:26.000 Again, this is because the Republican Party does not agree on what to do.
00:37:29.000 It doesn't agree on the means that it has available to do it, and it can't even make the argument.
00:37:32.000 Again, this entire thing could have been avoided in two ways.
00:37:35.000 One, if you were going to leave Obamacare in place, you should have called the Democrats in from day one,
00:37:39.000 We're good to go.
00:37:55.000 Right, but to do this sort of repeal and replace routine where it's all bollocksed up and you don't know what your goals are, you end up in a bad position.
00:38:01.000 And instead what you're going to end up with is Democrats claiming that you are the scourge of the world, which is what Democrats like Cory Booker are doing.
00:38:07.000 The senator from New Jersey says it's all sinister and evil.
00:38:10.000 It's just terrible, terrible, terrible.
00:38:12.000 I mean, that's not just cynical, it's actually sinister.
00:38:16.000 Here's a guy that promised consistently that he was, hey, only I can fix this, that I'm taking, I'm the guy, that I'm going to make healthcare for everybody, I'm going to make it affordable, oh, it's going to be, I think the word he used was terrific.
00:38:28.000 Well, he's completely abdicated that responsibility, completely broken that promise.
00:38:34.000 He outsourced this healthcare process to people like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, and didn't even try to reach out to one Democrat in the Senate.
00:38:45.000 Didn't call one Democrat.
00:38:46.000 Didn't call us up to the White House.
00:38:48.000 I don't know.
00:39:17.000 Okay, so this is the case that Democrats are going to make, and Republican incompetent, it's going to be a little bit of a hard case, but we will see how it works.
00:39:23.000 Daniel Horwitz has a piece today in which he talks about how to defang Obamacare even without full repeal, and it's pretty good.
00:39:32.000 You should check it out over at Conservative Review.
00:39:33.000 He talks about cost-sharing associations and
00:39:38.000 Forcing people to post their prices on particular costs so we can actually have some open competition.
00:39:44.000 All these are good ideas.
00:39:45.000 There are lots of good ideas that can be brought to bear, but Republicans have to decide what they want to do, and Trump has to decide what he wants to push.
00:39:50.000 Okay.
00:39:50.000 Time for some things I like, things I hate, and then we'll do the big ideas.
00:39:54.000 So...
00:39:55.000 So, before we do that, actually, I first want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Beachbody On Demand.
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00:40:05.000 I, of course, am pointing to my own magnificent physique.
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00:40:47.000 It's why I can't get on a treadmill and just run for eight miles.
00:40:50.000 I need a new workout all the time, and that's why Beachbody On Demand is so fantastic, because they have legitimately hundreds of different options for you to use, and it's just great.
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00:41:03.000 Again, I've used P90X before.
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00:41:36.000 Fantastic, all the way through.
00:41:38.000 Shapiro, 30-30-30.
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00:41:43.000 Whether you need to lose weight, or whether you just want to tone, whether you're a big fatso and you just want to make sure that you don't die in the next year, then texting Shapiro to 30-30-30 is the way to do it.
00:41:52.000 You get Beachbody on demand and check it out.
00:41:55.000 And that also lets them know that we sent you.
00:41:57.000 Okay, time for some things I like, some things I hate, and then the big idea.
00:42:00.000 So, things I like.
00:42:02.000 So John McCain was diagnosed really tragically with brain cancer and a lot of scummy, disgusting human beings are today tweeting out things like they're happy that he got brain cancer because they disagree with him politically.
00:42:13.000 Okay, first of all, let it be said, John McCain is not a terrorist supporter.
00:42:18.000 John McCain is not an evil person.
00:42:21.000 He's not somebody that you would shoot.
00:42:22.000 He's not somebody that it would be appropriate.
00:42:25.000 He's not an evil man and you're not at war with him.
00:42:27.000 So stop with the crap about how you want John McCain to die.
00:42:30.000 What you would really prefer is for John McCain not to be elected.
00:42:33.000 You'd prefer for John McCain not to be elected.
00:42:34.000 But that does not mean that you should be wishing death on a guy you disagree with.
00:42:38.000 Listen, I disagree with John McCain on a lot of things.
00:42:40.000 A lot of things.
00:42:41.000 I thought campaign finance reform was terrible.
00:42:43.000 I think that some of his foreign policy is not great.
00:42:46.000 The scummy people who are suggesting that John McCain ought to die, just scum of the earth.
00:42:51.000 So today, in honor of John McCain, things I like.
00:42:54.000 Faith of My Fathers is John McCain's autobiography, it's his memoir.
00:42:59.000 All right.
00:43:20.000 I don't know.
00:43:43.000 It's really more about his military career and his family's military career.
00:43:46.000 It's actually a really good book, Faith of My Fathers, John McCain, an honorable man, okay, for all of the talk about his politics, an honorable man who did amazing service for the United States.
00:43:58.000 He deserves our respect and our prayers.
00:44:01.000 Okay, speaking of POWs, there's a movie, if you don't want to watch, if you don't want to read the book, there's a, they did make a movie version on A&E, I think, but I've never actually seen it, so I can't recommend it.
00:44:11.000 If you want to watch a great movie about what it was like to be a Vietnam POW, like an actual Vietnam POW, Werner Herzog made a very good film called Rescue Dawn with Christian Bale.
00:44:20.000 One of Christian Bale's lesser-known parts.
00:44:22.000 Didn't do great business at the box office, but is a very hard-nosed good film about what exactly happened and about an escape from Vietnam POW camp.
00:44:32.000 Came out in 2006.
00:44:33.000 I remember seeing it in the theater and being pretty struck by it.
00:44:35.000 Here's a little bit of the trailer.
00:44:37.000 Tomorrow morning at 0500 hours, we have to cross over into Laos.
00:44:41.000 Now this is Flight Lieutenant Dangler's first mission.
00:44:44.000 This mission is classified.
00:45:16.000 Why are you in this war against us?
00:45:18.000 I never wanted to go to war.
00:45:19.000 I only wanted to fly.
00:45:20.000 You should sign this.
00:45:22.000 I love America.
00:45:23.000 America gave me wings.
00:45:24.000 I will not sign it.
00:45:25.000 Absolutely not.
00:45:32.000 Been here a lot longer than people know.
00:45:34.000 Two and a half year ago now.
00:45:35.000 Two and a half years ago?
00:45:37.000 Keep your head down, your mouth shut.
00:45:38.000 Get your best chance of surviving.
00:45:42.000 You can run in here if you like, but I'm gonna scram.
00:45:45.000 You cannot escape.
00:45:47.000 Let's say you make it out of camp.
00:45:54.000 It's quite a good film.
00:45:57.000 It's a little overlong, but it's really well shot, and it's really well acted, and it's based on a true story.
00:46:03.000 I mean, this is not a false story.
00:46:04.000 This is a true story, and the other people in the, and you can see from the trailer, I mean, people were there for years on end.
00:46:10.000 There was a lot of talk about whether POWs were still there after the end of the Vietnam War, and whether they were left there to die.
00:46:17.000 I mean, it's really a tragic story.
00:46:18.000 Okay, so, time for some things that I hate.
00:46:26.000 Okay, so, as you know, I'm a big Game of Thrones fan.
00:46:31.000 I think Game of Thrones is the best show on TV.
00:46:33.000 I don't think that it's particularly close.
00:46:35.000 The only other competitor is probably Man in the High Castle, which is really terrific from Amazon.
00:46:40.000 David Benioff and D.B.
00:46:41.000 Weiss, who are the showrunners, they have a new plan for a new series.
00:46:43.000 They want to helm for HBO.
00:46:45.000 It's an alternative history series titled Confederacy, which takes place in modern-day America.
00:46:51.000 The South is separate from the North.
00:46:53.000 So it's basically Man in the High Castle alternative history, where America is divided, not by the Germans and the Japanese.
00:46:59.000 By the North and the South, which is an interesting premise, except for it's going to be really, really annoying.
00:47:05.000 I'll bet it's a pretty good show, but it's going to be very, very annoying to read all the hot takes from the left about how the South in this show is really like the South of today, how all of the white Southerners of today are really neo-Confederates who want to enslave black folks.
00:47:18.000 Okay, polls show, I've talked about this on the show before, polls show that white folks across the country have basically about the same level of racism regardless of party, regardless of location.
00:47:27.000 There's no evidence to suggest that Southerners are more hostile to black folks than Northerners are at this point in time.
00:47:33.000 History has moved beyond this.
00:47:35.000 And so I'm already preemptively hitting the hot takes.
00:47:37.000 Less than the show itself, I'm more preemptively hitting the hot takes themselves because that's going to be really irritating.
00:47:42.000 They're going to do exactly what they did with The Handmaid's Tale.
00:47:44.000 They're going to suggest that this is really about modern-day America.
00:47:47.000 It's not really about what would have happened.
00:47:50.000 It's about us.
00:47:51.000 We are secretly just like these people.
00:47:53.000 I mean, it's a compelling question.
00:47:54.000 What would have happened if the South had won the Civil War?
00:47:56.000 And it is my belief that within 20 to 25 years, the South would have moved beyond slavery anyway, because that's the direction the entire Western world was moving.
00:48:05.000 And by the 1880s, slavery was outlawed in the vast majority of the Western world.
00:48:09.000 It would have moved to probably a South African type apartheid system, more than likely, which is basically what they had anyway under Jim Crow.
00:48:15.000 But
00:48:16.000 You know, thank God for the Civil War and the freeing of the slaves.
00:48:19.000 The great tragedy in the aftermath of the Civil War was not the Civil War itself.
00:48:22.000 It was that in 1876, the Federals pulled out and allowed the South to reimpose all these Jim Crow sanctions on black folks.
00:48:29.000 That's a real tragedy that has yet to be told historically.
00:48:31.000 Well, that would be a fascinating thing.
00:48:33.000 It's about the loss of the Civil War after the winning of the Civil War in a particular way.
00:48:37.000 But I'm already just warning you about the hot takes that are sure to come and that will be super annoying when you have a bunch of leftists who live in Beverly Hills and see a black person only if they cast a black person, talking about how everybody down south is racist.
00:48:51.000 By the way, the South is actually significantly more integrated than cities like Boston in the North.
00:48:55.000 Okay, one more thing I hate.
00:48:57.000 We'll skip Big Idea today because we just ran out of time, but one more thing that I hate.
00:49:02.000 As you know, I'm not a big fan of kiss-assery.
00:49:04.000 I do not like sycophancy.
00:49:06.000 I'm not a fan of it.
00:49:07.000 Chris Kobach is the secretary of, he's the Kansas Secretary of State, and he works closely with the White House, and he was asked about, he's leading up Trump's voter fraud panel, and here is what he had to say.
00:49:23.000 He was asked, did Trump actually lose the popular vote?
00:49:26.000 And here was his ridiculous answer.
00:49:29.000 Do you believe Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 3 to 5 million votes?
00:49:33.000 You know, we may never know the answer to that.
00:49:35.000 Because of voter fraud?
00:49:35.000 We will probably never know the answer to that question because even if you could prove that a certain number of votes were cast by ineligible voters, for example, you wouldn't know how they voted.
00:49:44.000 Is that why this commission exists?
00:49:45.000 Because the president believes that he would have won the popular vote?
00:49:48.000 I'm glad you asked that question, because actually that is not the reason the commission exists.
00:49:52.000 It's not to justify, to validate or invalidate what the president said in December or January of 2016.
00:49:57.000 Okay, stop it.
00:49:58.000 So if the commission doesn't exist to validate or invalidate what the president says, why don't you just say what everybody knows is true.
00:50:03.000 Trump lost the popular vote.
00:50:05.000 Who cares?
00:50:06.000 He's the president.
00:50:07.000 Stop it.
00:50:07.000 Okay, if you're going to do this routine where you don't know who voted for what, then maybe Trump lost.
00:50:12.000 If you're going to say that there was voter fraud and you don't know who voted for what, Trump's margin of victory in the three states that he won, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, his margin of victory there was like 100,000 votes.
00:50:21.000 It's a lot easier to make the claim that voter fraud swung 100,000 votes than that it swung 3 million votes.
00:50:26.000 But again, I'm all in favor of a voter fraud commission that looks into registration of people who are dead and people who are registered in more than one state.
00:50:35.000 I think that is a worthwhile thing to do.
00:50:36.000 What I do not think is a worthwhile thing to do
00:50:38.000 Is to place that on the tentative grounds, and when I say tentative, I mean baseless grounds, that Trump actually won the popular vote.
00:50:44.000 That's just silly, and there's no reason to do it.
00:50:46.000 Okay, we'll be back here tomorrow.
00:50:47.000 Tomorrow we will have the mailbag, and we will do that.
00:50:50.000 It should be awesome.
00:50:51.000 We will fulfill all of your life longings at that time.
00:50:55.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:50:55.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.