The Ben Shapiro Show - The Clown Show | Ep. 691

00:00:00.000 President Trump gives his big primetime address on the border.

00:00:03.000 Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer look like members of the undead.

00:00:06.000 And Jim Acosta, journalism's all over everyone.

00:00:09.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

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

00:00:12.000 A lot to get to today.

00:00:16.000 So the presidents of the United States gave a very, very big address last night.

00:00:19.000 We'll go through all of it.

00:00:20.000 We'll go through all of the responses from the Democrats.

00:00:22.000 We'll go through the media's responses as well.

00:00:25.000 So many things to go through today.

00:00:26.000 We'll get to all of those in just a second.

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00:01:33.000 All right.

00:01:34.000 So the president of the United States had all of the dominoes set up in a row.

00:01:38.000 It was time for him to make his big address to the American people explaining why the government was shut down, why it was important to build a border wall.

00:01:46.000 The president's address has to be kind of examined in two contexts.

00:01:50.000 One is for the content.

00:01:52.000 And the other is for the presentation.

00:01:53.000 The content was fine.

00:01:55.000 The content basically covered the things that the president needed to cover, although I would say that he focused a little too heavy-handedly on the blood and gore aspects of illegal immigration, as opposed to what I would have focused on, which is the utter incompetence and foolishness of Democrats who say that no border wall is necessary.

00:02:11.000 And that's where I would have put all my focus.

00:02:13.000 The president talked about it some, but he didn't talk about it enough.

00:02:16.000 And the other place that I would have put a lot of focus is on the minimal cost of the wall.

00:02:21.000 I think that the President should have opened up his speech last night.

00:02:23.000 I said this yesterday on the show.

00:02:24.000 I think he should have opened up his speech last night by listing off all of the spending priorities for Democrats.

00:02:28.000 They've spent $5 billion on this, and they've spent $5 billion on that, and they've spent $5 billion on the National Endowment for the Arts, where people are paid to smear themselves with chocolate in front of cameras for Art Nouveau.

00:02:38.000 But they won't spend $5 billion on a border fence that would permanently Make easier the lives of the Border Patrol agents who are simply trying to enforce the law.

00:02:46.000 That's where I would have put the focus.

00:02:48.000 Instead, the president went pretty heavy.

00:02:51.000 I think that's a reflection of Stephen Miller, his speechwriter, who writes a lot on these particular issues.

00:02:56.000 In terms of the content, though, overall, it was fine.

00:02:58.000 Whenever the president sticks to teleprompter, he's actually more convincing than when he does Rally Trump.

00:03:03.000 Rally Trump is really good for the base, but teleprompter Trump is actually better for the vast swath of Americans who just need to hear the message, and they need to hear the message unfiltered without the media acting as an intermediary.

00:03:15.000 The fact that the president went directly to the people was something deeply necessary last night because the media coverage up till now has been that Trump is intransigent and terrible for not simply signing on to the new budget that the Democrats want to put forward and that would not include proper funding for the border barrier that Trump is talking about building.

00:03:30.000 So Trump had to go around the media, over their heads, directly to the American people.

00:03:35.000 I think he did that successfully in terms of content last night.

00:03:37.000 In terms of presentation, it was a little lackluster.

00:03:40.000 The big problem with Teleprompter Trump is that it is so obviously different from Authentic Trump.

00:03:45.000 When you watch Trump authentically, he's freewheeling, he's basically a stand-up comedian, the guy responds to audiences, he's inherently funny.

00:03:52.000 When you get Teleprompter Trump, it's as though he's been drained of all of his life force and he sort of just reads into camera.

00:03:58.000 That juxtaposition was not great for him last night, specifically because Stephen Miller's speeches tend to be filled with all sorts of, as I say, kind of blood and gore and appeals to the heart and emotional appeals.

00:04:12.000 Well, if you get a speech that is filled with appeals to the heart and emotional appeals and you seem really unemotional while reading it, it's not a great performance.

00:04:22.000 So, let's go through President Trump's speech, then we'll get to the responses, because whatever President Trump did last night was blown off the front pages by how horrible the opposition was.

00:04:30.000 And this is where President Trump is just an insanely lucky man.

00:04:34.000 No matter how bad he is at his job, the good news is that his opponents so far have been even worse at their jobs.

00:04:40.000 I mean, you will not believe, once we get to Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, what that sounded and looked like, because my god!

00:04:48.000 It was a horror show.

00:04:49.000 We'll begin with President Trump last night from the Oval Office, the President's first Oval Office address watched by presumably tens of millions of people.

00:04:56.000 Here is the President leading off.

00:04:58.000 My fellow Americans, tonight I am speaking to you because there is a growing humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border.

00:05:08.000 Okay, and he started off with the talk of the crisis.

00:05:12.000 Again, I think that he should have started off with the government shutdown.

00:05:15.000 And then you'll see that this is the difference between how Democrats approach this and how Trump approached it.

00:05:19.000 So Trump talked about the crisis at the border that was necessitating his action.

00:05:23.000 The truth is, there is no crisis at the border in the sense of something has happened suddenly and now we don't have the means to deal with it.

00:05:30.000 There's been no Pearl Harbor.

00:05:31.000 There's been no 9-11.

00:05:32.000 That's not what happened here.

00:05:33.000 That's why what he really should have said is, my fellow Americans, we are now in the midst of a government shutdown.

00:05:38.000 That government shutdown is not going to end until Democrats give me the funding necessary in order for us to secure our border, an intractable problem that's been plaguing the nation since 40, 50 years ago.

00:05:48.000 Now's the time to solve it.

00:05:49.000 All Democrats have to do is sign a check.

00:05:51.000 Right?

00:05:51.000 That's how I think he should have let off.

00:05:53.000 Instead, he let off with talk of crisis.

00:05:55.000 The problem with that approach is that it sort of begs a particular question.

00:05:58.000 The question that it begs is, okay, well, if this is a crisis, then why didn't you do it two years ago when Republicans were in charge of Congress?

00:06:04.000 Hell, why didn't you do it three months ago when Republicans were in charge of Congress?

00:06:09.000 If this has been a crisis, and you've known about it for several years, why didn't you treat it like a crisis until Nancy Pelosi took over the House?

00:06:16.000 Trump continues on, and he talks about the problems with illegal immigration.

00:06:20.000 It strains public resources and drives down jobs and wages.

00:06:25.000 Among those hardest hit are African Americans and Hispanic Americans.

00:06:30.000 Our southern border is a pipeline for vast quantities of illegal drugs, including meth, heroin, cocaine, and fentanyl.

00:06:39.000 Every week, 300 of our citizens are killed by heroin alone, 90% of which floods across from our southern border.

00:06:49.000 More Americans will die from drugs this year than were killed in the entire Vietnam War.

00:06:56.000 Okay, now, when he talks about the cost of illegal immigration, I think that that is totally proper, although I do think that the vast majority of costs from illegal immigration have less to do with crime, per se, than the economic costs of illegal immigrants constituting a new economic underclass in the United States and straining cultural tensions in the United States. 0.73

00:07:14.000 He makes a particular argument about illegal immigration with which I generally disagree.

00:07:17.000 He talks about how Free flow of labor is undercutting the wage base for particular groups of Americans.

00:07:25.000 Well, that is true.

00:07:27.000 A labor supply, a free-moving labor supply in the United States is actually quite good for the economy.

00:07:31.000 It lowers prices, it makes American business more competitive abroad, and all the rest.

00:07:35.000 But when he talks about the problem of illegal drugs flowing over the border, he's correct.

00:07:38.000 Now, what the fact-checkers have said is that the vast majority of the drugs that are flowing across the border are flowing across ports of entry.

00:07:45.000 In other words, somebody is driving up to the port of entry from Tijuana into San Diego area, and when they drive across the border, the flatbed of their truck is loaded underneath with meth, for example.

00:07:57.000 Well, that has nothing to do with building a border wall, and so the implication, which is that if we build more border fencing, that this is going to interdict all of the drugs that are coming across the border, That's not true.

00:08:07.000 And Trump seems to be implying that it is true.

00:08:09.000 However, it is true that the flow of drugs will be made more difficult if you actually do have more resources on the border.

00:08:15.000 Bottom line is that the president is now putting the ball in the court of the Democrats to explain why all of this is OK with them, why they won't just spend the money necessary in order for us to shore up that southern border.

00:08:26.000 However, they seek to do it because the Democrats really don't have a plan for shoring up the southern border, as we'll discuss in a moment.

00:08:31.000 So when Trump talks about the number of Americans dying, from drug overdoses, for example.

00:08:38.000 All that stuff is necessary and useful because appeals to the heart do beat appeals to the head.

00:08:43.000 This is one of those areas where I almost wish the president had done something like what Ronald Reagan used to do, or even Ross Perot, and taken out some charts, taken out some pie charts, and just explained them in sort of a friendly way.

00:08:53.000 It's amazing how few presidents really know how to do the Oval Office address in which they speak directly to Americans.

00:09:00.000 In any case, the president continues and he talks about the problem of crime springing from illegal immigration.

00:09:05.000 And he's not wrong that illegal immigration does have a crime problem attached to it, not just the immigration itself. 0.66

00:09:10.000 Now, his critics will say that illegal immigrants have a lower crime rate than the general population of the United States, but that's not really the question.

00:09:17.000 The question is why we should allow anyone in the country who is going to then commit a crime.

00:09:22.000 I assume that my kids in my own house may act worse than random kids who come to my house.

00:09:28.000 But if a random kid comes to my house and then tears up the furniture, that's really my fault for letting that random kid in my house.

00:09:32.000 My own kids are my responsibility.

00:09:34.000 The random kid, not my responsibility.

00:09:36.000 And that's sort of the issue with illegal immigrant crime.

00:09:38.000 Here's the president talking about a murder problem that has cropped up thanks to illegal immigration.

00:09:43.000 Over the years, thousands of Americans have been brutally killed by those who illegally entered our country, and thousands more lives will be lost if we don't act right now. 0.87

00:09:56.000 Okay, and again, this is not wrong.

00:09:58.000 He's correct about all of this, and then he continues by talking about how this is a humanitarian crisis as well.

00:10:02.000 Now, the problem is that the president is not, again, great at reading off the teleprompter.

00:10:07.000 When he talks about a problem of the heart and the soul, which you're going to hear him say in a second, what you'd really want him to do is look as though he is pained by the humanitarian crisis at the border.

00:10:15.000 Instead, it sort of looks like he's pained by having to read from the teleprompter.

00:10:19.000 But the content of what he says is, of course, correct.

00:10:21.000 This is a humanitarian crisis, a crisis of the heart and a crisis of the soul.

00:10:29.000 Last month, 20,000 migrant children were illegally brought into the United States, a dramatic increase.

00:10:37.000 These children are used as human pawns by vicious coyotes and ruthless gangs.

00:10:43.000 Now, it's amazing how many Democrats are upset with this line.

00:10:46.000 Saying, well, how could he talk about vicious coyotes and ruthless gangs?

00:10:50.000 This is ugly language.

00:10:51.000 Right. 0.99

00:10:51.000 Because these are ugly people, the vicious coyotes and the ruthless gangs. 0.99

00:10:54.000 They do exist.

00:10:56.000 And the fact that the president is calling them out does put a moral onus on Democrats to explain why they are okay with all of this human smuggling toward a border that is specifically happening because the United States acts as a giant magnet for people who are looking for a better way of life, thanks to jobs, but also thanks to soft immigration policy.

00:11:12.000 And that's been Trump's point.

00:11:13.000 Well, in a second, we're going to discuss President Trump's overt appeal for the funding for the border wall.

00:11:18.000 Why it succeeds or why it fails, we'll talk about that in just one second.

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00:12:27.000 Okay, so the president finally gets to his overt pitch for the funding for the border wall.

00:12:32.000 And here's what he has to say.

00:12:33.000 Finally, as part of an overall approach to border security, law enforcement professionals have requested $5.7 billion for a physical barrier.

00:12:44.000 At the request of Democrats, it will be a steel barrier rather than a concrete wall.

00:12:50.000 This barrier is absolutely critical to border security.

00:12:55.000 It's also what our professionals at the border want and need.

00:13:00.000 This is just common sense.

00:13:02.000 And obviously, that's true.

00:13:05.000 My favorite troll there is when he says at the request of Democrats, it'll be a steel barrier rather than a concrete wall.

00:13:09.000 So he's blaming the shift in the nature of the wall on Democrats.

00:13:13.000 Yeah, you know, I was happy to do a concrete wall, but then these Democrats came around and they like steel.

00:13:18.000 And I was like, OK, steel's shiny.

00:13:20.000 Boom.

00:13:21.000 So, OK, sure.

00:13:23.000 But his pitch is correct.

00:13:24.000 Of course, the wall is common sense, or at least the steel slats, whatever he wants to call them, are common sense.

00:13:29.000 Then he talks about the cost.

00:13:30.000 And again, this is a blown opportunity for the president.

00:13:33.000 He should have said here, here are all the things Democrats are willing to spend on. 1.00

00:13:36.000 This is how you pressure Democrats, is by proving that they are incompetent and that they are willing to spend money on the stupidest random garbage. 1.00

00:13:42.000 But they won't spend money where it actually counts. 1.00

00:13:44.000 He didn't do any of that last night.

00:13:45.000 Instead, he made some pretty dubious claims about how the wall is going to be economically beneficial to the United States.

00:13:51.000 I'm not sure.

00:13:52.000 Honest to God.

00:13:52.000 I don't know why Stephen Miller thinks this is a convincing argument, because it really is not a very good argument.

00:13:56.000 But here is President Trump making that argument.

00:13:58.000 The border wall would very quickly pay for itself.

00:14:03.000 The cost of illegal drugs exceeds $500 billion a year.

00:14:06.000 billion dollars a year vastly more than the 5.7 billion dollars we have requested from congress the wall will also be paid for indirectly by the great new trade deal we have made with mexico Okay, this is the line that is just not true.

00:14:23.000 When he says that the trade deal is gonna pay for the wall, I don't even know what he's talking about.

00:14:27.000 No economist knows what he's talking about.

00:14:28.000 It's just nonsense.

00:14:29.000 When he talks about how the cost of illegal drugs is really high...

00:14:33.000 And the border wall is going to cut down on those costs.

00:14:35.000 That may be true.

00:14:36.000 But this is not a convincing argument simply because the question is not whether we are going to save money in the long run.

00:14:42.000 The question is whether this is good policy and whether Democrats are wasting money on other random nonsense.

00:14:47.000 Well, then the president actually decided it was necessary to take it directly to Democrats.

00:14:50.000 And this, I think, was the best part of his speech.

00:14:53.000 This is when he tried to point out that the Democrats really have no leg to stand on.

00:14:57.000 Senator Chuck Schumer, who you will be hearing from later tonight, has repeatedly supported a physical barrier in the past, along with many other Democrats.

00:15:01.000 of border security.

00:15:02.000 Here is the president of the United States going directly after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. - Senator Chuck Schumer, who you will be hearing from later tonight, has repeatedly supported a physical barrier in the past, along with many other Democrats.

00:15:19.000 They changed their mind only after I was elected president.

00:15:24.000 Democrats in Congress have refused to acknowledge the crisis.

00:15:29.000 And they have refused to provide our brave border agents with the tools they desperately need to protect our families and our nation.

00:15:40.000 Okay, and then he continues along these lines slamming Chuck Schumer.

00:15:43.000 And of course, he's exactly right.

00:15:45.000 Chuck Schumer was in favor of a wall before he was against a wall.

00:15:49.000 And he did switch because of Trump.

00:15:50.000 I mean, there's no question that he switched his position when it came to border security, not because of changing circumstances or evidence, but simply because he doesn't want to hand President Trump a win.

00:15:59.000 And Trump continues along these lines.

00:16:00.000 Again, he buried the lead, right?

00:16:02.000 The lead here should have been this.

00:16:03.000 The lead should have been, we are in the middle of a government shutdown.

00:16:05.000 That's the only reason this is in the news.

00:16:06.000 We're in the middle of a government shutdown.

00:16:08.000 The reason we're in the middle of a government shutdown is because Democrats won't give me what I need to secure the border.

00:16:13.000 That's what the speech should have been about from the very beginning, but at least he gets to it here.

00:16:17.000 He goes after the Democrats for failing to reopen the government.

00:16:21.000 The federal government remains shut down for one reason, and one reason only, because Democrats will not fund border security.

00:16:32.000 My administration is doing everything in our power to help those impacted by the situation.

00:16:40.000 But the only solution is for Democrats to pass a spending bill that defends our borders and reopens the government.

00:16:49.000 Okay, and this of course is exactly right from the Republican perspective.

00:16:53.000 Every shutdown has two sides to it.

00:16:54.000 Democrats say Trump could just reopen the government without the money.

00:16:57.000 And Trump says, well, we could reopen the government with the money.

00:17:00.000 And who you decide to choose in that fight is exactly what last night was all about.

00:17:05.000 President Trump then got to, this is the very best section of his speech.

00:17:08.000 This was the section of his speech.

00:17:10.000 That made the most sense.

00:17:11.000 It was the section of his speech that personalized and brought the kind of highfalutin rhetoric down to earth.

00:17:17.000 The president was talking a lot last night about various kind of monetary costs, $500 billion of cost in terms of drug damage, the cost in terms of illegal immigration in the economy.

00:17:27.000 But once you personalize the question of barriers, of border barriers, then it becomes pretty easy to understand why the Democrats don't really have a leg to stand on here.

00:17:36.000 Here was the best section of what Trump had to say, and I think it was the most effective section of his speech last night.

00:17:42.000 Some have suggested a barrier is immoral.

00:17:46.000 Then why do wealthy politicians build walls, fences, and gates around their homes?

00:17:52.000 They don't build walls because they hate the people on the outside, but because they love the people on the inside.

00:18:01.000 The only thing that is immoral is the politicians to do nothing and continue to allow more innocent people to be so horribly victimized.

00:18:13.000 Right, this is a populist appeal and it's an effective populist appeal because it happens to be true.

00:18:16.000 A lot of these politicians are very wealthy.

00:18:18.000 They live in gated communities.

00:18:20.000 A lot of these politicians have protection.

00:18:22.000 None of these politicians really have to worry about the problem of illegal immigration affecting where they live in any significant way.

00:18:28.000 And when he says, you know, they can talk as much as they want about how walls are immoral, but these are all people who live behind walls, he is exactly right.

00:18:36.000 That hypocrisy is telling to most Americans, and I think most Americans are going to resonate to that message.

00:18:42.000 Then he gets back into sort of his final emotional appeal, And again, the big problem here is not necessarily the text of what he's reading, but the fact that President Trump is not a good actor, right?

00:18:49.000 I know this.

00:18:50.000 As a person, listen, that's not a rip on Trump, right?

00:18:52.000 I'm not a good actor either.

00:18:53.000 I can only speak in ways that I think are genuine.

00:18:55.000 Trump has a bit of the same thing.

00:18:58.000 That means that when he is fed a bunch of lines about weeping mothers and dead children and all this stuff, and he's not feeling it emotionally, it doesn't come off quite the way that you would want it to come off.

00:19:10.000 Over the last several years, I've met with dozens of families whose loved ones were stolen by illegal immigration.

00:19:17.000 I've held the hands of the weeping mothers and embraced the grief stricken fathers.

00:19:26.000 So sad.

00:19:27.000 So terrible.

00:19:29.000 Amen.

00:19:30.000 I will never forget the pain in their eyes, the tremble in their voices, and the sadness gripping their souls.

00:19:38.000 How much more American blood must we shed before Congress does its job? 0.79

00:19:45.000 Okay, and again, I don't think that the point he's making here is a bad one, but I do think that the sort of Over the top, everyone's gonna die, illegal immigration's killing tons of people.

00:19:57.000 That's not really the pitch on illegal immigration.

00:19:59.000 And this was the problem with declaring illegal immigration a crisis, okay?

00:20:02.000 It is a slow-rolling, serious issue in American life and has been for 30 years.

00:20:07.000 And you should have just made that case.

00:20:09.000 Overstatement is not necessarily the most effective way of doing all of this.

00:20:13.000 I understand that it inflames the base, but the base is already inflamed.

00:20:16.000 Trump used exactly this sort of language right before the 2018 election.

00:20:19.000 It did not redound to Republicans' benefit.

00:20:22.000 In other words, I think that subtlety might have been a better approach here in some ways.

00:20:26.000 And I certainly think that putting the onus on Democrats to explain their spending habits, these are people who binge on spending, but suddenly become penny pinchers when it comes to the border security we need, as recommended by Border Patrol.

00:20:37.000 Seems like...

00:20:38.000 Plenty for Trump to have said.

00:20:40.000 Trump concluded with a basic moral call saying it's time for you to call your Congress people because this is basically a question of right and wrong.

00:20:46.000 And in the end, this is the only message that matters.

00:20:48.000 And that's why, despite my criticisms of Trump's speech, despite my qualms with it, despite my feeling that it was kind of lackluster, I think that overall, it was not an ineffective move by the president.

00:20:59.000 This is a choice between right and wrong, justice and injustice.

00:21:06.000 This is about whether we fulfill our sacred duty to the American citizens we serve.

00:21:13.000 When I took the oath of office, I swore to protect our country.

00:21:19.000 And that is what I will always do.

00:21:23.000 So help me God.

00:21:24.000 OK, so that's his pitch.

00:21:25.000 OK, and his pitch is fine.

00:21:27.000 I mean, it's a fine pitch.

00:21:28.000 I don't think that it was massively overwhelming.

00:21:31.000 I don't think that it changed tons of hearts and minds, but it did what was necessary to push the ball forward and to put the ball in the court of the Democrats.

00:21:37.000 And the Democrats then just fell completely on their faces.

00:21:41.000 Honestly, God, I've never seen anything quite like this.

00:21:43.000 So I'm critical of the president's presentation last night in the sense that it was the president just in the Oval Office talking direct into camera for eight minutes.

00:21:51.000 It was not riveting TV or anything, but at least it wasn't this horror show.

00:21:56.000 So...

00:21:56.000 What's hilarious about what the Democrats did in response is that they should've just picked a random member of their caucus, just a rando, a random member of their caucus to give the response.

00:22:06.000 Or they should've just ignored it.

00:22:07.000 They should've just said, here's the president fulminating, he got himself into a problem with the government shutdown, now he can't get out of the problem with the government shutdown.

00:22:14.000 They should've just let him rant and then be done.

00:22:16.000 Instead, because senators and congresspeople, because they love the cameras, I mean, they are camera hogs like nobody's business.

00:22:23.000 And these are the people who go to church with a selfie stick.

00:22:25.000 I mean, these are folks who just love being on camera.

00:22:28.000 It is their favorite thing in the world.

00:22:31.000 The sad part, though, is that as much as they love the camera, it is an unrequited love.

00:22:35.000 The camera does not love them.

00:22:37.000 And that is obviously true for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi.

00:22:40.000 They couldn't even decide which one of them would give the response.

00:22:43.000 So they decided to give it jointly.

00:22:46.000 And, wow.

00:22:48.000 So, Schumer and Pelosi are standing next to each other, for folks who are listening and not watching.

00:22:54.000 Schumer and Pelosi are standing directly next to each other, flanked by a bunch of flags in the background.

00:23:00.000 And, it is just a horrifying look.

00:23:02.000 It's just a horrifying look.

00:23:03.000 People on Twitter were going nuts over this look yesterday because, number one, Their makeup is just terrible.

00:23:09.000 So, we have a makeup artist who works here at Daily Wire named Jess, and Jess is very good at makeup. 0.85

00:23:15.000 It makes me look more natural.

00:23:16.000 That's what makeup is supposed to do. 1.00

00:23:17.000 It's supposed to make you look more natural on camera.

00:23:20.000 They look like, Pelosi and Schumer look like members of the undead.

00:23:23.000 I mean, they, honest to God, look like when you go to a funeral, and it's an open casket funeral, and then people say, you know, how does the person in the coffin look?

00:23:30.000 You say, oh, they look so, they look like they're sleeping.

00:23:33.000 They look like they're alive.

00:23:34.000 That's what this makeup looks like.

00:23:36.000 This makeup looks like they look like they're alive but you actually know they're dead.

00:23:40.000 Right?

00:23:41.000 It looks like Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum come to life and Chuck Schumer standing there glaring like Sam the Eagle from the Muppets into the camera while Nancy Pelosi looking like that bizarre creature in Return of the Jedi who like sits there and laughs next to Jabba the Hutt.

00:23:59.000 I mean, that is the juxtaposition.

00:24:01.000 It's wild.

00:24:02.000 So people were going crazy on Twitter last night with the memes of this particular image, because it wasn't like both of them needed to be there.

00:24:09.000 Like, one spoke for two and a half minutes, then the other spoke for two and a half minutes.

00:24:11.000 We'll get to the content of what they said in just a second, but the memes were things like, what your parents look like when you come home at three o'clock in the morning.

00:24:20.000 They look like American Gothic Nouveau.

00:24:23.000 You know, the painting of the farmer and his wife glaring at the painter?

00:24:28.000 That is what they look like.

00:24:30.000 They look like... I mean, Chuck Schumer, throughout this whole thing, Nancy Pelosi was like the annoying person who's saying that at a restaurant she wants to speak to the manager, and the husband's kind of sitting there glaring because he doesn't want to be there.

00:24:40.000 That's basically what this was.

00:24:43.000 They look like Red and Kitty Foreman from that 70s show.

00:24:46.000 The memes were just spectacular.

00:24:49.000 They are very- this is when you- There are some folks tweeting out things like, this is what your parents look like when you come home and you got a C in math.

00:24:58.000 That really is, this is what it is.

00:25:00.000 They're standing there glaring at the camera and it's just hysterically funny.

00:25:03.000 And the fact that nobody in politics, because they're all 9,000 years old, they don't understand anything like what camera optics are supposed to look like.

00:25:10.000 You wonder why Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is popular? 1.00

00:25:13.000 Because she knows what a camera is and what it does.

00:25:15.000 Really, that's all it is.

00:25:17.000 I don't know what it is about old politicians, but older politicians for some odd reason think that camera work should be done the way that it was for Sarah Bernhardt in early film from Thomas Edison in like 1916.

00:25:28.000 Like in a film with stage play or something.

00:25:31.000 Which is why when you get camera of Elizabeth Warren doing an Instagram, it's her kind of glaring into the camera while she awkwardly drinks a beer. 0.97

00:25:40.000 Well, between that and Kamala Harris trying to awkwardly dance to offset AOC, and now Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi glaring into camera, look at- Honestly, my first reaction when I saw the picture of Pelosi and Schumer standing next to each other was- There were a couple of pop culture references that jumped to mind.

00:25:58.000 The first one was, and we'd have gotten away with it too if it weren't for you meddling kids!

00:26:03.000 And the second one, the Scooby-Doo reference, for those who missed it.

00:26:05.000 And then, the other one that popped into mind was, no, Mr. Bond, we expect you to die. 0.65

00:26:10.000 Because they look like Bond villains. 0.94

00:26:12.000 She looks like Cleb from Russia with Love. 0.94

00:26:16.000 And he's like Robert Shaw.

00:26:18.000 It's just fantastic.

00:26:19.000 So, they're standing next to each other, and it's just great, because they're supposed to look super serious.

00:26:25.000 And everyone is just laughing at them.

00:26:27.000 Everyone is just laughing at them. 0.83

00:26:28.000 So President Trump has been blessed with the most incompetent opponents on planet Earth.

00:26:33.000 And it's just fantastic.

00:26:35.000 So Nancy Pelosi, dentures a-moving. 1.00

00:26:37.000 She leads off by talking about the government shutdown.

00:26:40.000 Now, here's where the Democrats were good.

00:26:42.000 What the Democrats did last night was they talked a lot about the government shutdown.

00:26:46.000 The reason that this was smart is because that's the only reason we're talking about this topic right now, right?

00:26:50.000 We all know that the government shutdown is the reason that we're talking about this.

00:26:52.000 Not because there was a crisis on the border that necessitated a government shutdown, but because we are in the middle of a government shutdown.

00:26:58.000 That is what created the urgency.

00:27:00.000 It wasn't the situation on the border that created the urgency.

00:27:02.000 It was the shutdown itself that has created this false sense of urgency where nobody actually feels all that urgent about it, is the truth.

00:27:09.000 So the Democrats focused heavily on the shutdown.

00:27:11.000 Trump focused heavily on immigration.

00:27:12.000 This is why I think that Trump should have let off with the shutdown and taken that baton directly out of the Democrats' hands.

00:27:18.000 Instead, Nancy Pelosi says, listen, We're in the middle of a shutdown.

00:27:21.000 All you have to do is sign the check, and then we're done.

00:27:24.000 And we can have this illegal immigration conversation in five minutes.

00:27:27.000 There's nothing urgent that necessitates us having this conversation right now.

00:27:30.000 That was Nancy Pelosi's case as she spoke from the grave. 0.83

00:27:31.000 I mean, honestly, this whole video should have led off with the door opening like Tales from the Crypt.

00:27:33.000 And you just hear, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa On the very first day of this Congress, House Democrats passed Senate Republican legislation to reopen government and fund smart, effective border security solutions.

00:27:56.000 But the President is rejecting these bipartisan bills, which would reopen government, over his obsession with forcing American taxpayers to waste billions of dollars on an expensive and ineffective wall.

00:28:08.000 A wall he always promised Mexico would pay for.

00:28:12.000 Riveting stuff there from Nancy Pelosi.

00:28:14.000 And as much as I was critical of President Trump's delivery, Nancy Pelosi, my goodness, it's like we found the compendium of the most boring people on earth and then put them in front of cameras.

00:28:25.000 But what she's saying there, again, from the Democratic perspective, is not untrue, which is that Trump said Mexico was going to pay for the wall.

00:28:31.000 He could just have this debate in five seconds.

00:28:33.000 He doesn't want to.

00:28:34.000 He's forcing a crisis.

00:28:36.000 That's the problem here.

00:28:37.000 Pelosi continued along these lines, and again, she was hammering away at the idea that the government shutdown is Trump's fault.

00:28:42.000 All he has to do is sign off on our budget, and then we can have this conversation ten minutes from now while people are still getting paid.

00:28:47.000 Why is he using government workers as leverage, right?

00:28:49.000 This is Pelosi's case.

00:28:51.000 We promised to keep government shut down for months or years, no matter whom it hurts.

00:28:55.000 That's just plain wrong.

00:28:57.000 The fact is, we all agree we need to secure our borders while honoring our values.

00:29:03.000 We can build the infrastructure and roads at our ports of entry.

00:29:06.000 We can install new technology to scan cars and trucks for drugs coming into our nation.

00:29:12.000 So why don't you do all of those things in a counter move for Trump?

00:29:23.000 Honestly, why don't you come back at President Trump with that, Speaker Pelosi?

00:29:26.000 Like, that's not all that tough.

00:29:28.000 It's hard not to laugh while watching Chuck Schumer standing behind her glaring at the camera as she says all of these things.

00:29:36.000 Honestly, it reminds me of one of those old Warner Brothers cartoons where Bugs Bunny is talking and then the camera slowly pans back and there's that giant red fuzzy monster standing directly behind him.

00:29:47.000 Somebody needs to cut a video of Pelosi speaking and then you pull back and it's just Chuck Schumer looming over her shoulder glaring.

00:29:53.000 At the camera.

00:29:54.000 Just spectacular stuff.

00:29:55.000 In a second, we're going to get to Chuck Schumer's response, and then we will get to all of the rest of the Democratic responses, which demonstrate two things.

00:30:01.000 The rest of the Democratic responses.

00:30:03.000 One, the Democrats are unbelievably radical on illegal immigration, and this is where Trump wins.

00:30:07.000 And two, younger Democrats know how a camera works.

00:30:10.000 I will show you in just one second.

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00:33:09.000 Okay, so it wasn't just Nancy Pelosi speaking. 0.73

00:33:16.000 My favorite part of the Nancy Pelosi-Chuck Schumer speech is the part where Nancy Pelosi says, Senate Minority Leader Schumer, and he goes, thank you, Speaker Pelosi.

00:33:25.000 And then she sort of hands the podium to him and then stands there awkwardly.

00:33:28.000 It's like a bad Oscars handoff.

00:33:30.000 Like, they played her off with the music, and you're waiting for the giant hook to come out and just kind of yank her off screen, like the vaudeville hook.

00:33:36.000 Instead, you get, now she's gonna stand there and glare at you while he talks to you. 1.00

00:33:40.000 She's like, now listen to your father.

00:33:42.000 I've said a lot of things.

00:33:43.000 Now I want you to listen to your father.

00:33:45.000 Chuck, tell our child why you should not... We found pot in your sock drawer.

00:33:53.000 You listen to your father now.

00:33:54.000 He has some strong words to say to you.

00:33:56.000 Go.

00:33:58.000 My fellow Americans, we address you tonight for one reason only.

00:34:02.000 The President of the United States, having failed to get Mexico to pay for his ineffective, unnecessary border wall, and unable to convince the Congress or the American people to foot the bill, has shut down the government.

00:34:16.000 Okay, so again, the Democrats focusing heavily on the shutdown the government point.

00:34:19.000 At no point in their speeches did they ever explain why the border wall is ineffective and unnecessary.

00:34:24.000 Not one point.

00:34:25.000 Nothing.

00:34:25.000 And that's why Trump's focus on the wall is actually quite good.

00:34:29.000 But the Democrats aren't going to focus on that.

00:34:31.000 They're going to say, we ought to have this debate apart from holding the government hostage.

00:34:35.000 This is, again, why Trump should have let off with the government shutdown stuff.

00:34:38.000 Schumer continues to whine about this.

00:34:40.000 Now, there's some great irony to this.

00:34:42.000 He says that Trump is basically having a temper tantrum in the Oval Office.

00:34:45.000 Here's Schumer's take.

00:34:47.000 Again, what was amazing about this joint speech is that whichever one is talking is not the one that you're watching.

00:34:53.000 Like, your eyes are magnetically drawn to Nancy Pelosi frowning at you as she attempts to keep her dentures in her face.

00:34:59.000 Here is Chuck Schumer talking while Nancy Pelosi struggles with her dental work.

00:35:02.000 American democracy doesn't work that way. 0.74

00:35:05.000 We don't govern by temper tantrum.

00:35:08.000 No president should pound the table and demand he gets his way or else the government shuts down, hurting millions of Americans who are treated as leverage.

00:35:18.000 Okay, I love when Democrats suddenly declare that it's very bad for the president to govern by temper tantrum.

00:35:22.000 Barack Obama literally said, I have a pen and a phone.

00:35:25.000 Barack Obama governed by temper tantrum all the time.

00:35:29.000 It's all he did.

00:35:30.000 It was just that he wasn't as loud about his temper tantrums.

00:35:32.000 Like, I have two kids, and they throw temper tantrums in very different ways.

00:35:35.000 My son throws classic temper tantrums.

00:35:37.000 Like, he gets down on the floor.

00:35:39.000 It's actually really funny.

00:35:40.000 He lies down on the floor, and he pounds his little fists, and he kicks his little feet, and then he just yells.

00:35:45.000 And he arches his back when he's having a temper tantrum.

00:35:47.000 Like, he screams to the sky.

00:35:49.000 It's really cute.

00:35:50.000 My daughter, she glares at you. 1.00

00:35:52.000 My daughter takes after me.

00:35:53.000 She glares at you. 1.00

00:35:55.000 And then she says, "I don't wanna be your friend." And then she walks away.

00:35:58.000 So my daughter, a lot more like Obama, right?

00:36:00.000 She kinda glares at you and says, "I don't wanna be your friend." Trump, a lot more like my son.

00:36:04.000 But that doesn't mean that they aren't both temper tantrums.

00:36:08.000 They are.

00:36:09.000 Barack Obama used to throw governing temper tantrums on a regular basis.

00:36:14.000 Schumer finishes off by talking about how walls are bad.

00:36:16.000 Walls are really bad.

00:36:17.000 They're really, really super bad walls.

00:36:19.000 You know how we know walls are bad?

00:36:20.000 Because they're bad.

00:36:22.000 The symbol of America should be the Statue of Liberty, not a 30-foot wall.

00:36:29.000 So our suggestion is a simple one.

00:36:32.000 Mr. President, Reopen the government and we can work to resolve our differences over border security.

00:36:39.000 But end this shutdown now.

00:36:43.000 And then I like the slow pan out by the camera.

00:36:48.000 Just spectacular.

00:36:49.000 Flashback, by the way.

00:36:50.000 Chuck Schumer, who really hates walls.

00:36:51.000 Yeah, this is Chuck Schumer back in 2009.

00:36:53.000 Because of our efforts in Congress, our border is far more secure today than it was when we began debating comprehensive reform in 2005.

00:37:03.000 Between 2005 and 2009, a vast amount of progress has been made on our borders and ports of entry.

00:37:09.000 The progress includes 9,000 new Border Patrol field agents in the last four years, construction of a 630-mile border fence, or 630 miles of border fence, That create a significant barrier to illegal immigration on our southern land border.

00:37:27.000 Okay, so, you know, things have changed.

00:37:30.000 What changed?

00:37:31.000 As Trump said, what changed is that Trump became president.

00:37:33.000 And then the Democrats changed their minds.

00:37:35.000 Now, the best responses to Trump's address were not given by Schumer and Pelosi.

00:37:40.000 The best responses were given by the newfangled Democrats.

00:37:43.000 And what I'm going to show you now is how radical the newfangled Democrats are, number one.

00:37:46.000 And number two, how much better they are on camera, which is a bad combo.

00:37:49.000 It's a bad combo because what you would prefer is that the radicals are terrible on camera and the moderates are good on camera.

00:37:54.000 It tends that that's not the case.

00:37:56.000 So the most radical response came courtesy of the brand new freshman congresswoman, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, featured on Rachel Maddow's show last night saying insipid things, but doing so with a lot of charisma, which is her brand. 0.99

00:38:09.000 Her brand is that she's very charismatic and that she says dumb things on a regular basis and so we have to talk about them because she says them and it's terrible. 1.00

00:38:17.000 So here's Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez saying that illegal immigrants are more American than the law enforcement officials sent to stop them.

00:38:25.000 The women and children on that border that are trying to seek refuge and seek opportunity in the United States of America, with nothing but the shirt on their backs, are acting more American than any person who seeks to keep them out ever will be.

00:38:39.000 Okay, so Border Patrol agents, not American.

00:38:41.000 Illegal immigrants trying to get into the country, American. 1.00

00:38:44.000 That is an open borders call that she's making right there.

00:38:48.000 And even if you say that that's a misinterpretation of what she's saying, what she's really talking about is people who don't want more illegal immigration.

00:38:55.000 Being un-American, you're gonna have to explain that one. 1.00

00:38:58.000 Why it is that if I say that I want the border police, and I want to make sure that we know who's coming into the country, and that people should legally enter the country, and I tend to be pretty libertarian on immigration.

00:39:06.000 I want to let more people in, not fewer people.

00:39:09.000 I failed to see how people who are more border restrictionist are less American than people who are illegally attempting to sneak over the border.

00:39:16.000 I mean, if that's going to be the new Democratic pitch, that is a radical pitch.

00:39:19.000 Trump wins that pitch.

00:39:20.000 That said, Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, much better on camera, much liver, much more charismatic than any of the old guard.

00:39:26.000 But again, she's extraordinarily radical. 0.96

00:39:28.000 And this is where Trump can win.

00:39:29.000 All he has to do is keep pushing on the democratic radicalism on all of this.

00:39:33.000 So AOC then continues.

00:39:34.000 She says that Trump should actually defund ICE.

00:39:36.000 That's what we need to do.

00:39:37.000 And when all is said and done, we need to have Trump defund Border Patrol completely.

00:39:41.000 On the day of Christmas, a child died in ICE custody.

00:39:46.000 The president should not be asking for more money to an agency that has systematically violated human rights.

00:39:53.000 The president should be really defending why we are funding such an agency at all.

00:39:57.000 Wow, if this is, like, Trump should never stop cutting commercials of her because this is just a gift to President Trump.

00:40:02.000 It's a gift to Republicans.

00:40:03.000 Her saying that Border Patrol are committing systematic human rights violations on the border.

00:40:07.000 It was Border Patrol that tried to save that little girl who died.

00:40:10.000 It was her father who brought her, like, for a thousand miles without giving her any food or water.

00:40:15.000 This is insanity.

00:40:16.000 It's craziness.

00:40:17.000 What Trump is asking is more funding for Border Patrol so they can take better care of the people who are coming to the border.

00:40:22.000 The Democrats are radical.

00:40:24.000 Many of them are open borders fanatics.

00:40:26.000 And AOC is apparently one of those people.

00:40:28.000 So that was one of the responses from the Democrats.

00:40:30.000 Another response from the Democrats came courtesy of Beto O'Rourke.

00:40:33.000 Who is now called Beardo O'Rourke.

00:40:35.000 He has decided that he is going to grow a beard under the bizarre misimpression that everyone looks better with a beard.

00:40:40.000 Now he just looks even more hipster than he did before.

00:40:43.000 So the kind of charming, young, fresh face of Beardo O'Rourke, now he just looks like he lost an election, had to go work in a coffee shop that sells vinyl records behind the counter.

00:40:51.000 So here's Beardo O'Rourke on Instagram talking about how we don't have fences or walls in El Paso.

00:40:56.000 Worth noting, one of the reasons they don't have fences or walls in El Paso, and El Paso is pretty safe, where do you think Border Patrol is headquartered?

00:41:02.000 Really, where do you think the El Paso sector of border control is headquartered?

00:41:05.000 Maybe it's headquartered in, I don't know, El Paso.

00:41:08.000 So maybe they have pretty good border patrol over in El Paso.

00:41:12.000 Here's Beta O'Rourke sort of ignoring that. 1.00

00:41:14.000 So we're literally on the border.

00:41:16.000 You know, you don't have a wall or a fence around your house.

00:41:21.000 The president mentioned that in his remarks today.

00:41:23.000 He said, you know, a lot of highfalutin politicians have walls and fences around their house.

00:41:28.000 You don't have a wall or a fence around your house.

00:41:30.000 Most of the homes in this neighborhood, literally right on the border, don't have walls or fences around.

00:41:36.000 Okay, his point being what?

00:41:38.000 His point being that we don't need a wall or fence on the unguarded parts of the border?

00:41:42.000 Because that's what Trump is really talking about here.

00:41:44.000 Again, this is pretty radical stuff.

00:41:45.000 The most radical response came, of course, from Bernie Sanders. 0.86

00:41:49.000 Who is just an old school nutbag.

00:41:51.000 So here's Bernie Sanders trying to explain that the real issue here is climate change.

00:41:55.000 Why?

00:41:56.000 Who the hell knows? 0.99

00:41:57.000 Because Bernie Sanders got a lot of crazy stuff roaming around in that brain of his. 0.97

00:42:00.000 And Bernie Sanders is like, well, we could talk about the border, but instead, let us talk about how it was very warm outside.

00:42:06.000 And I will admit, I had a significant amount of flap sweat.

00:42:10.000 And this seems to me much more pressing than the issue of illegal immigration itself.

00:42:16.000 Climate change could spoil my pudding early before the expiration date.

00:42:21.000 Go Bernie Sanders, go!

00:42:23.000 Here's the biggest crisis of all.

00:42:26.000 The scientific community has made it very clear in telling us that climate change is real and is causing devastating harm to our country and the entire planet.

00:42:38.000 And they have told us, in no uncertain terms, that if we do not transform our energy system away from fossil fuel, our nation and our planet, and the planet we will be leaving... I mean, just insane, just insane.

00:42:51.000 So we're not going to talk about the border issue.

00:42:53.000 We're going to instead talk about climate change.

00:42:54.000 If Democrats really think that's a big winner for them, then Trump is going to win this thing.

00:42:58.000 Now, where is this going to go from here?

00:43:00.000 In all likelihood, the president is going to, I think now, if he doesn't get any movement from the Democrats, he declares a national emergency, which I think is a Wrong move.

00:43:08.000 I think it's an immoral move.

00:43:09.000 I think it's a not legal move.

00:43:10.000 I think he will do that.

00:43:11.000 I think he'll wait for a court to strike down the move and then he will complain about the courts and the Democrats.

00:43:15.000 The government gets funded and we all move on with our lives, but he has signaled to his base that he cares about the issue.

00:43:19.000 I think that's the most likely cynical outcome.

00:43:21.000 What should he do?

00:43:22.000 He should stick to his guns and force Democrats to explain, really, why they don't want any sort of border-secure wall.

00:43:29.000 Why they don't want any sort of barrier on the border.

00:43:31.000 Right?

00:43:32.000 Force their feet to the... Now, a lot of people are saying, well, it's cynical.

00:43:34.000 Why didn't Trump do this two years ago?

00:43:35.000 You're right.

00:43:36.000 It is cynical.

00:43:37.000 Doesn't mean he's wrong.

00:43:37.000 Two things can be true at once.

00:43:39.000 It is a cynical move.

00:43:40.000 It can also be a politically valuable move and also a policy valuable move.

00:43:44.000 A policy winner for the President of the United States.

00:43:47.000 Okay, in just a second, I want to get to the media response to all of this because the media response to all of this is almost as insane as the Democratic response to all of this.

00:43:56.000 First, we take a look at the folks in the media who are not actual members of the media.

00:44:01.000 Stormy Daniels, who we were assured just wanted to go back to her well-earned obscurity. 0.99

00:44:07.000 She decided that she was going to distract from the president's speech by doing her laundry in her underwear.

00:44:13.000 And this was pressed forward by the media, because this is the world we now live in.

00:44:16.000 So here is some video of her doing laundry in her underwear. 1.00

00:44:19.000 Don't worry, it is safe for work.

00:44:21.000 Although, it's surprisingly not fantastic.

00:44:25.000 In any case, here she is folding her laundry.

00:44:27.000 I don't know how many people actually watched that at the time.

00:44:29.000 That was one response from the media.

00:44:31.000 Another response from the media came courtesy of Seth Meyers, who's less funny than he used to be.

00:44:37.000 At one point, Seth Meyers was probably a funny person.

00:44:38.000 I don't know what happened to him.

00:44:39.000 He tweeted out last night, during Trump's speech, is this Oval Office SVU?

00:44:44.000 Because Trump was talking about the victims of illegal immigration.

00:44:47.000 Yeah, that's great.

00:44:48.000 Let's just mock all the people who were killed by illegal immigrants. 1.00

00:44:50.000 So funny. 0.99

00:44:51.000 So much funnies.

00:44:53.000 And the media were already prepared to rip into President Trump, no matter what he did here, because this is all he truly, that they care about, right?

00:45:00.000 I mean, is ripping into President Trump.

00:45:01.000 It's their favorite thing to do.

00:45:03.000 Anderson Cooper was actually, he gave, I mean, it's amazing.

00:45:07.000 Anderson Cooper is supposed to be, I thought, an objective news host on CNN, right?

00:45:11.000 I don't think he's supposed to be one of their opinion hosts, but Anderson Cooper gave the pre-buttle The pre-buttle.

00:45:16.000 Did he ever do this with Obama once?

00:45:18.000 Of course not.

00:45:19.000 The pre-buttle? 0.93

00:45:20.000 So before Trump even gave his speech, he was giving the pre-buttle talking about how President Trump is a liar and you shouldn't pay any attention to anything he has to say.

00:45:28.000 The mere act of asking networks to make time for it telegraphs the gravity of it.

00:45:33.000 At least it has until now.

00:45:35.000 In the past, with only rare exceptions, you might disagree with what a president said from the Oval Office without wondering if you were straight up being misled or lied to.

00:45:44.000 Keepin' them honest?

00:45:44.000 Sadly, that's not the case tonight.

00:45:46.000 Now, it's not our job to advocate for or against a given policy.

00:45:50.000 It's our job to call out the dishonest pursuit of it.

00:45:53.000 So as we wait for the President to speak about what he calls the crisis on the border, we're starting with the crisis of credibility he's created for himself.

00:46:01.000 And yet, weirdly enough, you are in fact commenting on the underlying crisis, because when you guys decide that you're not going to focus on the government shutdown, or the border wall, or the policy itself, and instead you decide that you're going to focus on all of the fibs the president holds right before the president gives a speech, obviously you are weighing in on whether you agree with the president or not.

00:46:22.000 I mean, obviously you are.

00:46:23.000 I mean, if somebody were to give a policy speech and instead of me talking about their policy, I were to sit there and say, well, this person has lied this many times about their policy before they even give the speech.

00:46:33.000 What do you think?

00:46:34.000 I'm for their policy?

00:46:35.000 I'm just against dishonesty?

00:46:36.000 Who thinks that about CNN?

00:46:37.000 Does anyone think that CNN is undecided on Trump's policy?

00:46:41.000 It's just that they are that deeply concerned about dishonesty?

00:46:44.000 Anyone?

00:46:44.000 Nobody thinks that.

00:46:45.000 Okay, so immediately after the speech, they decide to have on Jim Acosta.

00:46:48.000 Now, Jim Acosta is the worst reporter in America. 0.95

00:46:51.000 He's an awful, awful reporter. 0.97

00:46:53.000 Jim Acosta loves Jim Acosta.

00:46:55.000 Jim Acosta, as I said yesterday on my radio show, has mirrors of Jim Acosta.

00:47:00.000 He walked into his apartment, and I assume that all the walls are mirrors, so there can just be an infinite plenitude of Jim Acostas everywhere.

00:47:06.000 That dude loves him.

00:47:07.000 I mean, he literally took a picture in his Twitter profile pic of him In a mirror.

00:47:12.000 So it's a picture of him, him in a mirror, but it's a picture of them.

00:47:16.000 And that was his profile pic for a long time because that dude loves him from Jim Acosta.

00:47:19.000 So here he is talking to Block of Wood, Chris Cuomo.

00:47:22.000 He obviously planned out his line before he said it.

00:47:24.000 I mean, this is so much, he just journalism's all over Chris Cuomo on CNN.

00:47:30.000 It's just amazing.

00:47:31.000 Here's Jim Acosta journalisming everywhere.

00:47:33.000 I think that address probably should have come with a Surgeon General's warning.

00:47:37.000 It was hazardous to the truth.

00:47:39.000 There were a number of claims that the president made in that speech that just are not going to stand up to the facts.

00:47:45.000 Chris Cuomo awkwardly trying to laugh.

00:47:47.000 It's like when your parents tell a joke that is really bad and kind of embarrassing.

00:47:51.000 Can you promise that the president will tell the truth tonight?

00:47:54.000 to do with it.

00:47:54.000 So Jim Acosta says that.

00:47:56.000 And then and then obviously Chris Cuomo doesn't know what to do with it.

00:47:59.000 But it just shows you where the media are on all of this.

00:48:01.000 It is it is well worth noting here, by the way, that Jim Acosta got his destroyed yesterday by Kellyanne Conway.

00:48:07.000 I mean, she just destroyed him.

00:48:09.000 He was previewing the speech and he asked her about Trump's lies. 0.68

00:48:12.000 And Kellyanne Conway basically ripped his head off and fed it to the lions on national TV. 1.00

00:48:16.000 Can you promise that the president will tell the truth tonight?

00:48:19.000 Will he tell the truth?

00:48:20.000 Yes, Jim.

00:48:21.000 And can you promise that you will?

00:48:22.000 I will.

00:48:23.000 The whole truth and nothing but the truth to help you, God?

00:48:26.000 Let me get back in your face, because you're such a smart-ass most of the time, and I know you want this to go viral.

00:48:30.000 A lot of these people don't like you.

00:48:33.000 Don't you put it back in my face for all the corrections that your network needs to issue.

00:48:36.000 I was on your network 25 or 26 times in 2018.

00:48:39.000 I'm one of the last people here who even bothered to go on.

00:48:42.000 And the disrespect that you show to me personally, I'll just let pass.

00:48:46.000 Ma'am, I... No, no, don't call me ma'am to make it up. 1.00

00:48:52.000 Jim Acosta, getting what he so richly deserves, notoriety and his own stupidity. 0.93

00:48:56.000 Okay, well, we had to run a little bit long because there was so much news today, so we are going to skip directly over the things I like, and we'll do one quick thing I hate on our way up. 0.99

00:49:08.000 It seems that we now live in a media environment in which people basically try to poison each other and end up poisoning themselves.

00:49:15.000 Jim Acosta just being the latest example of this.

00:49:18.000 Well, I think that if we could have an avatar of that media environment, that avatar would be this guy.

00:49:23.000 There's a prowling suspect who was caught going around licking doorbells.

00:49:28.000 So according to the Huffington Post, a family in Salinas, California might be ready to deliver a tongue lashing to the prowler for their security camera caught licking their doorbell for three hours.

00:49:39.000 Sylvia Dungan told local station KION-TV over the weekend, the security system alerted the family to strange movement in the early morning.

00:49:46.000 I thought, boy, there's a lot of traffic.

00:49:47.000 I go five in the morning.

00:49:48.000 My son doesn't get home till six. 0.78

00:49:49.000 Who the heck is that?

00:49:51.000 She was even more shocked when she watched the video. 0.98

00:49:52.000 Hours of a male trespasser licking the doorbell.

00:49:55.000 I thought, oh boy.

00:49:57.000 That is just weird.

00:49:58.000 He didn't stop.

00:49:58.000 Apparently, he then went and urinated on the front lawn, so he had himself a good old time.

00:50:02.000 The suspect, Robert Daniel Arroyo, 33, could face misdemeanor charges for petty theft and prowling.

00:50:07.000 He's still at large.

00:50:09.000 Apparently, the family spent the rest of the weekend sanitizing their doorbells.

00:50:12.000 As Jonah Goldberg said, you know, think about that guy.

00:50:15.000 Like, he's 90 minutes into licking that doorbell, and he's thinking, man, this shift doesn't end for another 90 minutes.

00:50:21.000 Just have to keep licking this doorbell? 1.00

00:50:23.000 So this is basically, if you could sum up our media moment in one human, it's this guy, right?

00:50:29.000 The media just stand around licking doorbells and then telling you they're heroes for it.

00:50:32.000 So Jim Acosta is the media equivalent, the journalistic equivalence of the doorbell licker of California.

00:50:40.000 Good times.

00:50:40.000 All right.

00:50:40.000 Well, we will be back here a little bit later today and we will have much more to break down.

00:50:43.000 Go check it out over at dailyware.com.

00:50:45.000 Subscribe for $9.99 a month or $99 a year.

00:50:48.000 We will see you then.

00:50:48.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:50:49.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:50:54.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.

00:51:00.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:51:04.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:51:06.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.

00:51:07.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:51:09.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.

The Ben Shapiro Show - January 09, 2019

The Clown Show | Ep. 691

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