The Ben Shapiro Show - The Fake News Awards | Ep. 456

00:00:00.000 The economy is doing really well, but is it the end of the world?

00:00:03.000 Are we all going to die?

00:00:03.000 According to the media, sort of.

00:00:05.000 President Trump announces his fake newsies and everyone is agog.

00:00:09.000 Plus, the worst form of art slash not art that you have ever seen.

00:00:14.000 It's really horrifying.

00:00:15.000 We'll talk about it.

00:00:16.000 Ben Shapiro show.

00:00:21.000 Indeed, many things to talk about.

00:00:23.000 From the president speaking at the March for Life, which is a good thing, to the president tweeting out absolute nonsense about his own policies that makes no sense, which is a bad thing.

00:00:31.000 Lots of good Trump, bad Trump today.

00:00:32.000 We may have to break out the old theme a little bit later on in the show.

00:00:35.000 But first, we want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Birch Gold.

00:00:38.000 So, even though the economy is doing really well right now, even though the stock market is doing really well right now,

00:00:43.000 There are a lot of people who are looking to hedge their bets, which is why, of course, there are currencies like Bitcoin that are doing so well.

00:00:48.000 Well, the original Bitcoin is gold, right?

00:00:50.000 That was the hedge against inflation.

00:00:52.000 It was the hedge against market uncertainty.

00:00:54.000 And it remains the real hedge against market uncertainty and market inflation and the government jacking around with the currency.

00:00:59.000 That's why you should have at least part of your portfolio in precious metals.

00:01:02.000 Not the whole thing.

00:01:03.000 You should certainly have some of your money in stocks and some of your money in, well, I don't really believe in bonds, but you should believe in stocks.

00:01:08.000 But you should also have some of your money in actual precious metals, because it's just a safe haven.

00:01:14.000 That's where my friends over at Birch Gold Group come in.

00:01:16.000 They have a long-standing track record of continued success, thousands of satisfied clients, countless five-star reviews, an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau.

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00:01:23.000 Okay, so.

00:01:49.000 We were told that all human life would be ended.

00:01:52.000 It would be like deep impact, except if crisis had not been averted by the tax cut, right?

00:01:56.000 The tax cut was going to end all human life on Earth.

00:01:59.000 And that obviously has been happening.

00:02:01.000 The latest evidence that millions will die because of the Trump tax cuts comes courtesy of Apple.

00:02:07.000 Run by Tim Cook, a lefty, who said that they would now pay a one-time tax of $38 billion on their overseas cash holdings and ramp up spending in the United States as they seek to emphasize their contributions to the American economy after years of taking criticism for outsourcing manufacturing to China.

00:02:22.000 Why?

00:02:22.000 Because we changed our tax policy.

00:02:24.000 Right now we've changed our tax policy.

00:02:25.000 The corporate tax rates were dropped dramatically, which means that now Apple doesn't have to outsource, right?

00:02:29.000 All of its costs just went down for doing business in the United States.

00:02:33.000 They say they will invest $30 billion in capital spending in the U.S.

00:02:36.000 over five years.

00:02:37.000 That would create more than 20,000 jobs.

00:02:39.000 The total includes a new campus, which initially is going to house technical support for customers.

00:02:43.000 They're calling this Apple HQ2.

00:02:44.000 And right now there's an open competition among cities around the United States to get the new Apple headquarters.

00:02:49.000 It'll probably be in Austin, Texas.

00:02:50.000 If anybody thinks it's going to come to L.A., that's on their final list is L.A. 0.95

00:02:53.000 They'd be fools to put this headquarters in L.A. 0.96

00:02:55.000 L.A. 0.99

00:02:56.000 is, for lack of a better term, a bleephole country.

00:02:59.000 I live here.

00:03:00.000 I get to say that.

00:03:01.000 Okay, the total includes a new campus and $10 billion toward data centers across the country.

00:03:05.000 It also will expand from $1 billion to $5 billion, a fund it established last year for investing in advanced manufacturing in the United States.

00:03:12.000 Now, one of the reasons that I think that this is good that Apple is announcing this is, as I've been saying for months, there's a difference between the government giving a company-specific giveaway

00:03:20.000 To places like Apple and making broad-scale policy changes that have a good impact on Apple.

00:03:25.000 It's useful for companies to sound off publicly and say, here are the policies that benefit my business, so long as those policies are not specifically geared toward paying you off.

00:03:34.000 That's not what this policy was designed to do.

00:03:36.000 Apple's $38 billion tax commitment, according to the Wall Street Journal, is the largest such sum announced in response to the major overhaul of the U.S.

00:03:42.000 tax code President Trump signed into law late last year.

00:03:46.000 That law included an incentive for U.S. 0.98

00:03:48.000 companies to bring home offshore holdings, with companies required to pay a one-time tax of 15.5% on overseas profits held in cash and other liquid assets.

00:03:56.000 Instead of them having to keep all of that money overseas, instead, they get to now bring that money home and invest it here in the United States.

00:04:03.000 These tax changes are very good.

00:04:05.000 Obviously, not the end of all life on Earth.

00:04:07.000 So Tim Cook, who is the post-Steve Jobs head of Apple, was asked about all this.

00:04:12.000 He said some of this was planned already, but some of it wasn't, and the Trump tax cuts had something to do with it.

00:04:16.000 No, there are clearly, let me be clear, there are large parts of this that are a result of the tax reform, and there's large parts of this that we would have done in any situation.

00:04:26.000 So it sounds like President Trump's tax bill has been a huge windfall for Apple.

00:04:31.000 Well, there are two parts of tax bill, right?

00:04:34.000 There's a corporate piece and an individual piece.

00:04:36.000 I do believe the corporate tax side will result in job creation and a faster-growing economy.

00:04:45.000 Okay, so again, all of the talk about how this is the end of the economy, everything is going to go terribly, it's nonsense.

00:04:49.000 The stock market has gained 1,000 points in the last eight days.

00:04:52.000 Consumer confidence is high, as well it should be.

00:04:55.000 Again, confidence in the economy is less based on the actual policy that the economy is currently sustaining.

00:05:02.000 It is more based on predictability.

00:05:05.000 In the economy, if you own a business, right?

00:05:06.000 We run a business here at Daily Wire.

00:05:08.000 One of the things that makes it very difficult to do business in the state of California is you don't know from day to day what exactly the state legislature in California is going to do.

00:05:15.000 That means that we have to think twice before we hire someone.

00:05:17.000 Do we want to hire somebody simply to fire them?

00:05:19.000 Or do we want to hire somebody simply to have our profit margins cut arbitrarily by the state through tax regulation?

00:05:25.000 The same thing holds true in all areas of the marketplace.

00:05:27.000 The marketplace is always in flux.

00:05:29.000 That is why, I think it's George Gilder who talks about the idea that the economy

00:05:33.000 A well-run economy should basically be like the static on a phone line.

00:05:37.000 The job of the government is to make sure that that static is as low as possible.

00:05:41.000 If there's a certain predictability to whatever hum is in the background, the worst thing that can happen on a phone is not that there's static, but there's intermittent static.

00:05:48.000 You actually would prefer a low level of consistent static on a phone call to every so often you just lose the call for five to ten seconds.

00:05:55.000 Because then you can't understand what anybody is saying.

00:05:57.000 It's the predictability of the economy that matters even more

00:06:00.000 Then the level of static in the economy, so long as the level of static in the economy isn't at some enormous rate where nothing can get done and it totally stagnates the economy.

00:06:07.000 Now, what's amazing about all of this is, again, the economy is doing really well.

00:06:10.000 The jobless claims are at their lowest level now since something like 1973.

00:06:15.000 So there's still problems in the economy in terms of people reintegrating into the economy after years of spending time out of the economy.

00:06:21.000 We're still paying too much in terms of people who are on unemployment insurance, but the economy continues to do really well.

00:06:28.000 And the Democrats are very upset about this.

00:06:30.000 People on the left are very upset about this, which goes to show, you know, when people like me said we wanted Obama to fail, I said, I think that Rush Limbaugh was right.

00:06:37.000 I wanted Obama to fail.

00:06:38.000 The reason I wanted Obama to fail was not because I wanted something bad for the country, but because I thought I wanted his policies to fail.

00:06:44.000 I didn't want him, as president, to fail.

00:06:46.000 I would prefer that he embrace all of the policies that I like, do all those things, and the country succeeds.

00:06:50.000 The reason I wanted Obama to fail is because he disagreed with all of my policies, and he helped stagnate the economy.

00:06:55.000 The difference is that people on the left are actually not happy when the economy does well.

00:06:59.000 When the economy did well under President Obama, or did mediocre under President Obama, I urged caution because I thought that his regulatory policy was really bad.

00:07:08.000 But I was quite happy that the economy was doing well.

00:07:10.000 You can see the difference.

00:07:11.000 Chris Matthews is very upset about this.

00:07:12.000 So he's back from vacation.

00:07:14.000 You remember there were a lot of accusations that Chris Matthews, our MSNBC, has been playing hardball with the female employees. 0.66

00:07:19.000 He's been yelling at them, saying mean things to them.

00:07:22.000 Wake up in the morning, comes out of his shoe, and says stuff.

00:07:25.000 And now he's back.

00:07:26.000 He's on MSNBC with Beardy McBeard a lot.

00:07:28.000 Don't know who this guy is.

00:07:30.000 And Chris Matthews starts talking about how maybe it is a bad thing if the economy grows.

00:07:34.000 Maybe it's bad for America if the economy grows because Trump or something.

00:07:38.000 I get the sense that one of the reasons that Dow Jones is going up

00:07:44.000 It's generally good news, but in this case, I wonder if it is, because what it means is all the stuff that we rooted for for the last 40 or 50 years, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, all the things that good legislators like Ed Muskie got through are being termited to death, are being killed by administrators who want the government to fail in its mission.

00:08:02.000 Don't you understand?

00:08:03.000 We need the regulations that kill the economy because it makes life better for so many Americans.

00:08:07.000 That's why.

00:08:07.000 The regulations are great.

00:08:09.000 And if it screws a bunch of Americans and your stocks go down, you lose your 401k, well, ha!

00:08:13.000 I laugh at you!

00:08:14.000 And then I go buy another shoe to comb my hair with.

00:08:16.000 First of all, I love that MSNBC actually has chyrons like this.

00:08:20.000 Look at the chyron on this MSNBC clip.

00:08:22.000 Just put up the freeze frame here.

00:08:24.000 It's even worse than you think.

00:08:26.000 And then it just shows America on fire.

00:08:28.000 Yeah, they're not rooting for disaster or anything.

00:08:30.000 It's even worse than you think with the Maricon Fire.

00:08:33.000 Well, I didn't think it was that bad, honestly.

00:08:35.000 I think that it's a lot better than you think. 0.98

00:08:36.000 I mean, these people are crazy. 0.97

00:08:39.000 People talk about Trump Derangement Syndrome. 0.99

00:08:41.000 I mean, this is full-on Trump Derangement Syndrome. 0.96

00:08:43.000 I hope that the economy goes to hell so we can blame Trump for regulatory policy.

00:08:49.000 This comes from the same school of thought, where people are very angry that in places like Seattle, there are companies that now will say, here is what your bottle of soda would cost, here is what it costs with the soda tax, and it doubles the price.

00:08:58.000 And they're very angry that people would make this clear.

00:09:01.000 Or businesses that say, here's what I'd be charging you if I didn't have to pay my employees minimum wage.

00:09:05.000 People say, oh, how dare they?

00:09:06.000 People did this with Obamacare, too.

00:09:08.000 Reality suggests that when you get rid of regulations on businesses, businesses do better.

00:09:12.000 Sorry that reality does, but that's just the reality.

00:09:15.000 But over on MSNBC, they refuse to recognize reality because reality is oftentimes discriminatory, sexist, racist, bigoted, etc.

00:09:23.000 Okay, so before we go any further, we're going to get to Trump's fake news awards in just a second.

00:09:27.000 The fake newsies.

00:09:29.000 They were, shall we say, a disappointment.

00:09:32.000 He should have just Rickrolled everybody.

00:09:33.000 It would have been better.

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00:11:10.000 Okay, so, last night was the much awaited, much ballyhooed fake newsies.

00:11:15.000 Now, I was hoping, look, if there's one thing that we could expect from this president, one thing I think would be fair to expect from this president, it is that if you're gonna do a reality TV show, at least be good at it.

00:11:25.000 I mean, my goodness, The Apprentice is actually an entertaining show from like the one episode, or half an episode I ever saw of it before turning out.

00:11:32.000 But, the, but,

00:11:33.000 You would expect it.

00:11:34.000 I mean, Trump has actually appeared at the Tony Awards or the Emmy Awards.

00:11:38.000 He actually did an entire number of Green Acres with Megan Mullally, I believe it was, at the Emmy Awards.

00:11:43.000 And you can find this tape online of Trump singing Green Acres.

00:11:46.000 So I was hoping for some musical interludes from the president.

00:11:49.000 I wanted to hear him sing Moon River.

00:11:50.000 I thought that'd be great.

00:11:51.000 And he could actually do it by mooning the press during the fake newsies.

00:11:54.000 The Moon River, wider than a mile.

00:11:57.000 And then just moon the press?

00:11:58.000 It could have been fantastic.

00:11:59.000 It could have been great all the way through.

00:12:00.000 None of that happened.

00:12:01.000 Instead, it turned out that he sort of said that he was going to give fake news awards, and then he just half-assed it.

00:12:06.000 Another Moon River reference.

00:12:08.000 Then he just didn't really do it properly.

00:12:10.000 He tweeted out a link to the GOP.com website.

00:12:13.000 And the GOP.com website was basically like an article that you'd find at Daily Wire or Washington Examiner or The Federalist that listed like 10 of the worst

00:12:23.000 Fake news stories of the year, of 2017.

00:12:26.000 He got some of them wrong.

00:12:28.000 He suggested, for example, that CNN had edited.

00:12:31.000 Remember, we talked about it on the air.

00:12:32.000 CNN made a big deal out of Trump dumping a bunch of fish food in the koi pond.

00:12:37.000 And it turned out that the prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, had actually done exactly the same thing a minute before.

00:12:43.000 But you didn't see that because the CNN cameraman had zoomed in on Trump. 0.96

00:12:46.000 And then people suggested that Trump was just a rude buffoon because he did it himself. 0.97

00:12:49.000 So that was on the list. 0.95

00:12:50.000 They said that CNN had edited the tape falsely.

00:12:52.000 That wasn't really true.

00:12:54.000 There's plenty of fake news on the list, though.

00:12:56.000 I mean, again, Chris Matthews suggesting that it's even worse than you think is fake news.

00:13:00.000 That, of course, is not true at all.

00:13:02.000 But he releases the fake newsies.

00:13:05.000 And here are some of the winners.

00:13:06.000 We'll go through some of the winners.

00:13:07.000 What he said was, first of all, CNN came in in first place.

00:13:10.000 They are the Sally Fields.

00:13:12.000 You like me.

00:13:12.000 You really like me.

00:13:14.000 of the fake newsies.

00:13:15.000 The New York Times' Paul Krugman claims on the day of President Trump's historic landslide victory that the economy would never recover.

00:13:21.000 First of all, I love that the Trump administration keeps trotting out the lie that this was a historic landslide victory.

00:13:27.000 It was not, in fact, a historic landslide victory.

00:13:29.000 He lost the popular vote by 3 million.

00:13:31.000 Just to be accurate, it is fake news that it was a historic landslide victory.

00:13:34.000 It was not a historic landslide victory.

00:13:36.000 It was a very, very close election in which he lost the popular vote.

00:13:39.000 In the Electoral College, he outpaced everyone but I think George W. Bush in 2000.

00:13:42.000 I mean, he was outpaced by every other election for the past...

00:13:46.000 We're good.

00:14:06.000 It wasn't really Time.

00:14:06.000 It was a Time reporter who tweeted it out and then retracted it within a couple of hours, just to be a little accurate here.

00:14:10.000 The Washington Post reporting that the president's sold-out rally in Pensacola was empty.

00:14:14.000 OK, that should not make the top 10.

00:14:16.000 That's just, it's weak tea.

00:14:18.000 It's like when Crash won the Oscar for Best Picture.

00:14:20.000 That one really is not on the list.

00:14:22.000 But beyond that, it wasn't the Washington Post that reported it.

00:14:24.000 Again, it was a Washington Post reporter who then walked that back within, I think, an hour of tweeting it out.

00:14:29.000 And then I mentioned the CNN video about the feeding of the fish.

00:14:33.000 CNN falsely reporting about Anthony Scaramucci's meeting with the Russian and then retracting it due to a significant breakdown in process.

00:14:38.000 That was indeed a bad one.

00:14:40.000 Newsweek reporting that the Polish first lady, Agata Kornhauser-Duda, did not shake President Trump's hand.

00:14:44.000 I remember when the media did this.

00:14:46.000 I believe it was, again, a reporter for Newsweek, not necessarily the publication itself. 0.99

00:14:49.000 Although Newsweek is a garbage publication. 0.94

00:14:51.000 I mean, today, Newsweek has an article about how Hillary Clinton could still be president. 0.99

00:14:54.000 I am not kidding you.

00:14:55.000 And not that she's gonna win in 2020.

00:14:57.000 Like, how she can still be president now. 1.00

00:14:59.000 How if they find collusion, Hillary can still end up president. 1.00

00:15:01.000 What's their weird theory over at Newsweek?

00:15:03.000 I'm not joking about this.

00:15:04.000 This is an actual thing.

00:15:05.000 Their theory is that Trump would be forced to resign, and then Pence would be forced to resign, and then Paul Ryan would assume the presidency, and name as his vice president Hillary Clinton, and then Paul Ryan would resign.

00:15:15.000 That's the actual argument Newsweek is making.

00:15:18.000 OK, by that standard, I could be president, except that I'm not 35.

00:15:21.000 Right?

00:15:22.000 Your dog could be president by that standard.

00:15:23.000 Paul Ryan could grab Gene Simmons, the front man from Kiss, and make him president by that standard.

00:15:30.000 But when we talk about the media being insane, and then Trump saying fake news a lot, this is why Trump says fake news a lot, is because there is indeed a lot of fake news, and also because

00:15:39.000 Let's be real about the narrative here.

00:15:40.000 The fake news narrative arose originally because the media needed an explanation for why Hillary Clinton had lost and because they felt that they had not been successful in elevating her to the presidency.

00:15:51.000 So if the media felt they'd been overcome, what could have overcome them?

00:15:54.000 Well, it couldn't have been that people just didn't believe them.

00:15:56.000 It couldn't have been that people didn't believe their narrative.

00:15:59.000 It had to be that there was some nefarious fake news out there that people were paying attention to.

00:16:04.000 Now, there's a difference between narratives that are false or legit fake news, like Pizzagate, and then stuff that the media believe is fake news, like people talking about Uranium One.

00:16:12.000 Okay, Uranium One is actually questionable.

00:16:15.000 It's actually questionable.

00:16:15.000 Like, there was a guy who was indicted the other day for stuff that had to do with Uranium One.

00:16:20.000 So the idea that everything that the media disagree with on a narrative level is fake news, it is mirrored now by the Trump administration saying everything they disagree with on a narrative level is fake news.

00:16:30.000 Then, let's see what else is on the list.

00:16:32.000 CNN reporting that former FBI Director Comey would dispute Trump's claim he was told he is not under investigation.

00:16:38.000 The New York Times falsely claiming on the front page that the Trump administration had a climate report.

00:16:42.000 That was indeed a bad moment for the New York Times.

00:16:46.000 So, the New York Times got two of these ten.

00:16:49.000 CNN got four, so CNN definitely, I mean, it's like going with the wind.

00:16:53.000 They swept the Oscars.

00:16:54.000 They swept the fake newsies.

00:16:55.000 And then finally, everyone, Russia collusion.

00:16:57.000 You knew they were going to have to put this on the list.

00:16:59.000 Last but not least, Russia collusion.

00:17:01.000 Russian collusion is perhaps the greatest hoax perpetrated on the American people.

00:17:04.000 There is no collusion, all caps.

00:17:07.000 Okay?

00:17:08.000 I tend to agree that there's not a lot of evidence of collusion at this point.

00:17:11.000 To say it's perhaps the greatest hoax perpetrated on the American people in history, 0.74

00:17:16.000 You'd probably have to put the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution up there, maybe.

00:17:19.000 If you're on the left, you'd have to say the argument on weapons of mass destruction and the Iraq War. 0.74

00:17:25.000 Russian collusion.

00:17:26.000 How about the lie that blacks weren't people for 150 years?

00:17:31.000 I think that would probably be a pretty big hoax.

00:17:34.000 How about the hoax that's currently existing since the 1960s?

00:17:37.000 The babies in the womb aren't babies.

00:17:38.000 They're instead magical kill creatures that you can just get rid of with no moral consequence.

00:17:43.000 But that is what it is.

00:17:44.000 So what's hilarious about this is that this comes out and everybody is really celebratory for just a second.

00:17:49.000 Like we're all really excited.

00:17:50.000 Maybe it's actually gonna be a tape of Trump in a tuxedo with a glass of champagne announcing the fake newsies.

00:17:55.000 It would have been amazing

00:17:56.000 It would have been amazing.

00:17:57.000 I mean, the troll possibilities would have been incredible.

00:17:59.000 And if you're not going to troll well, then, as I say, you might have gone with the pure Rick role.

00:18:02.000 Right?

00:18:03.000 You should have actually just sent people to an actual video of Rick Astley singing Never Gonna Give You Up, which would have been also amazing.

00:18:09.000 But instead, we sort of got the second-rate Oscars.

00:18:11.000 I mean, it's like those years when they weren't using Billy Crystal, and they also weren't using Johnny Carson, and so they just had, like, this bunch of randos in the middle.

00:18:19.000 There's just a bunch of people who you never heard of hosting the Oscars, and it was really like, why am I watching this?

00:18:24.000 That was kind of what the fake newsies turned out to be.

00:18:27.000 But what's hilarious about this is that there's this image that's being promulgated by the left.

00:18:31.000 And this one is, I would say, if not fake news, fake narrative.

00:18:35.000 That Trump is the most dangerous president ever.

00:18:36.000 That he's super duper dangerous.

00:18:38.000 He's dangerous to press freedoms.

00:18:39.000 And this is being helped along by people like Jeff Flake, the senator from Arizona.

00:18:42.000 I agree with a lot of Flake's critiques of Trump's language on the press.

00:18:45.000 But the idea that Trump is a legitimate danger to the press?

00:18:48.000 The guy's not a legitimate danger to a—I mean, the only thing he's a legitimate danger to is a Big Mac.

00:18:52.000 I mean, the President of the United States is not capable of taking down the press.

00:18:56.000 If the last—look at MSNBC's ratings.

00:18:58.000 The idea that President Trump is doing severe damage to the institution of the press—he's prosecuted fewer people in the press by a long shot than the Obama administration did.

00:19:06.000 He's been far more transparent, actually, with the press than the Obama administration was.

00:19:10.000 This is not to compliment his handling of the press. 0.98

00:19:12.000 I think it's really dumb three-quarters of the time. 0.95

00:19:15.000 There's this idea that he's some crazy authoritarian who's about to shut down the press. 0.94

00:19:19.000 Now listen, his language with regard to the press, it does give impetus to people who feel like he's not going to call out anti-press activity in foreign countries.

00:19:26.000 That's an actual danger to foreign press.

00:19:28.000 But in the United States, the idea that the New York Times is on the verge of shutting down, that they're the failing New York Times because he says failing New York Times, is just a figment of their imagination.

00:19:36.000 So Jeff Flake, who wants to run for president in 2020 and primary Trump, and then force everybody into this awkward primary situation.

00:19:43.000 Flake gave a speech yesterday on the floor of the Senate.

00:19:45.000 Now, I'll be honest, I kind of like speeches on the floor of the Senate that have to do with broad topics, because this is what the Senate is for.

00:19:51.000 Nobody showed up for it, though.

00:19:52.000 I mean, you can see all the empty seats behind him.

00:19:55.000 Like, no one cared.

00:19:56.000 Except for the press, which made a huge deal out of it.

00:19:58.000 Here is Flake talking about the authoritarian impulse.

00:20:00.000 Mr. President, it is a testament to the condition of our democracy that our own president uses words infamously spoken by Joseph Stalin to describe his enemies.

00:20:11.000 It bears noting that so fraught with malice was the phrase, enemy of the people, that even Nikita Khrushchev forbade its use, telling the Soviet Communist Party that the phrase had been introduced by Stalin for the purpose of, quote, annihilating such individuals, unquote, who disagreed with the Supreme Leader.

00:20:31.000 This alone should be the source of great shame for us in this body, especially for those of us in the President's party, for they are shameful, repulsive statements.

00:20:41.000 This feedback loop is disgraceful, Mr. President. 0.98

00:20:44.000 OK, so I agree with the idea that a lot of what Trump says on these topics is really ridiculous. 0.85

00:20:48.000 But the idea that the authoritarian impulse is what's animating America, that we've reached the end of America, that fascism is upon us. 0.78

00:20:55.000 Listen, I'm very much afraid of tribalism.

00:20:56.000 I'm afraid that we are getting close, or to that point, under President Trump.

00:21:02.000 But the idea that we are really threatened by the fake newsies,

00:21:06.000 The president is not—you've got to make a choice, Democrats.

00:21:08.000 Is the president ineffectual, or is the president a true danger to Western civilization?

00:21:12.000 You can't have it both ways.

00:21:14.000 And I think that, as I've said since the beginning, there's a strong case to be made that the president of the United States—you ought to attribute to incompetence rather than malice most of the stuff that he does that you don't like, because that just seems more honest to me.

00:21:26.000 Okay, so in just one second, we are going to talk about, let's talk about this immigration fallout for just a second.

00:21:32.000 So, the latest from the Hill is that the President, speaking of ineffectual, the President of the United States just undermined everything that his own party is doing.

00:21:39.000 So right now, there's a big debate happening over government funding.

00:21:42.000 So, the government has to get funded, I believe, by Friday, or we enter government shutdown territory.

00:21:46.000 Now, I'm a person who doesn't care about government shutdowns.

00:21:48.000 You're probably a person who doesn't care about government shutdowns.

00:21:50.000 If you think you care about government shutdowns, it's because you don't know what a government shutdown is.

00:21:53.000 Mandatory government services continue.

00:21:55.000 You're still going to get your social security checks.

00:21:57.000 You're still going to be—you're still going to be—the military will continue to be funded.

00:22:03.000 The military ops will continue.

00:22:05.000 The government will stay open.

00:22:07.000 This is why, when there was a big government shutdown in 2013, the Obama administration had a manufacture crisis.

00:22:14.000 They had to shut down open-air monuments.

00:22:17.000 Things where there wasn't any guard there.

00:22:18.000 They just shut them down to show you that if the government isn't operating, you can't visit this rock in this park here. 0.85

00:22:23.000 So the idea that government shutdowns end the world is silly.

00:22:25.000 But everyone wants to avoid it because it's a press-manufactured crisis, and politicians believe it because they think they're the most important people on planet Earth.

00:22:33.000 So the way this is operating is that Republicans are saying, here's what we want.

00:22:35.000 We want a short-term continuing resolution.

00:22:37.000 It'll continue to fund the government for 30 days.

00:22:39.000 It won't be a brand new budget or anything.

00:22:41.000 And in order to get this passed, we are not going to include anything with regard to DACA.

00:22:46.000 So we are not going to solve the issue of the Dreamers. 1.00

00:22:48.000 We're not going to say that they can stay.

00:22:50.000 We're not going to renew their quasi-green cards.

00:22:53.000 We're not going to do any of that.

00:22:54.000 That's a separate negotiation.

00:22:56.000 We just want to fund the government.

00:22:57.000 And in order to sweeten the deal and get Democrats on board, we are going to sign into law a six-year extension of the Children's Health Insurance Program.

00:23:04.000 Now, the Children's Health Insurance Program is a federal program by which the federal government basically subsidizes states to take care of underage minors who don't have sufficient health insurance.

00:23:12.000 It's basically an expansion of Medicaid on the federal level.

00:23:16.000 I actually have some problems with CHIP, not because I think the government doesn't necessarily have a role here, but because I think the federal government doesn't necessarily have a role here.

00:23:23.000 If states are going to shoulder the burden, or local communities are going to shoulder the burden of what to do with children who are underinsured, that makes a lot more sense.

00:23:31.000 I'm a localist at heart.

00:23:32.000 I don't know where the federal government finds the authority in the Constitution to spend billions upon billions of dollars on any of these social programs, and that includes even ones that I think are doing good things, like CHIP, for example.

00:23:43.000 It's a very popular program.

00:23:44.000 It's obviously going to be remandated.

00:23:46.000 All of that.

00:23:47.000 Republicans have been trying to remandate it since October.

00:23:49.000 Democrats refused to go along with it because they want some strings attached.

00:23:52.000 So, right now, the Republicans are proposing that we go forward with this temporary funding, this continuing resolution.

00:24:00.000 No cuts, as always, because, as I've said many times on the show, no one has an interest in cuts.

00:24:05.000 Everyone has an interest in spending.

00:24:07.000 The Democrats are saying, though, that they are not going to vote for the continuing resolution.

00:24:11.000 Now, there's some budget hawks on the Republican side saying, listen, we want some cuts.

00:24:14.000 You want to do this continuing resolution stuff?

00:24:16.000 We want cuts.

00:24:16.000 This would be the House Freedom Caucus.

00:24:18.000 We need something in return for continued funding of the government.

00:24:22.000 And so that is leaving Republicans a little bit short of a majority, and no Democrats are jumping on board because they want the government to shut down because they think that Trump will be blamed for a government shutdown.

00:24:31.000 The reality is that it's a little more complex than that.

00:24:33.000 Democrats could sign up for this continuing resolution and fund CHIP, but they're not going to do that.

00:24:38.000 So the Democrats are very frustrated by this tactic, even though this is the same tactic they've been using for years.

00:24:42.000 It's one of the reasons, by the way, I oppose omnibus budgets and omnibus packages, because it basically allows you to take a 0.98

00:24:49.000 A sweet meat, you know, put something good in a sandwich that's a crap sandwich and then say, if you don't vote for this crap sandwich, you're voting against the children. 0.87

00:24:56.000 And if you don't like this continuing resolution, you're voting against the children. 0.98

00:24:59.000 This is why I don't like these omnibus packages.

00:25:01.000 I do think that everything should be voted on individually and funded individually.

00:25:04.000 You shouldn't be able to pass a bill that isn't funded and everything that you fund should be passed on an individual level so we can determine whether it's something that is good or something that is bad.

00:25:12.000 That's on an ideological level.

00:25:13.000 But what the Republicans are trying to do at this point is

00:25:16.000 Get past the government shutdown.

00:25:18.000 And in order to do that, they're using CHIP as a certain amount of leverage against Democrats.

00:25:22.000 They're saying, listen, you don't vote for the continuing resolution.

00:25:25.000 You're voting down your opportunity to continue the longest extension of CHIP funding in American history.

00:25:30.000 So naturally, the Democrats are really peeved about all of this, and they say, well, you know, you guys should just fund CHIP separately.

00:25:36.000 Why are you connecting all of the funding in the continuing resolution to all of this CHIP funding?

00:25:43.000 Why aren't you putting DACA in there?

00:25:45.000 The Republicans, on the contrary, are saying, listen, you want the CHIP funding?

00:25:48.000 Let's just pass a continuing resolution.

00:25:49.000 We're good to go.

00:25:50.000 Only one problem.

00:25:52.000 President Trump has a Twitter account.

00:25:53.000 So, President Trump tweets out today, quote, CHIP should be part of a long-term solution, not a 30-day or short-term extension.

00:26:01.000 Maybe he doesn't understand how this works.

00:26:02.000 That's the Democrat talking point.

00:26:04.000 The Democrats are saying that they want Chip to be part of a long-term budget deal, not part of the continuing resolution, because they're trying to extract concessions from Trump and team.

00:26:13.000 So Senator John Cornyn actually had to tweet out at the president exactly what they were doing, trying to explain to him via Twitter how this works.

00:26:19.000 And by the way, it is 100% true that the president is coached more by Twitter and by Fox News than he is by people who are inside the White House.

00:26:27.000 OK, it is 100% true that the most powerful Steve in America was never Steve Bannon.

00:26:30.000 It was always Steve Doocy.

00:26:32.000 Fox & Friends, which is, you know, I think a good informative show, there's no question that the President of the United States watches Fox & Friends and then makes decisions.

00:26:41.000 I mean, you can see how he live tweets Fox & Friends.

00:26:43.000 I mean, he really does it a lot.

00:26:45.000 Now, all of that said, is this going to make a huge difference?

00:26:48.000 Not really.

00:26:48.000 But it is demonstrative of the fact that if you're going to pose Trump as some sort of nefarious, evil, Dr. Evil figure, he doesn't know what the hell's going on, guys.

00:26:56.000 I mean, let's be real about this in policy terms.

00:26:58.000 In the last three weeks, he has done this three times.

00:27:01.000 Three.

00:27:02.000 He did it on immigration. 0.60

00:27:03.000 Remember, he did this in the meeting with Democrats.

00:27:05.000 He started saying that Dianne Feinstein's idea of taking DACA off the table, of solving DACA, and then doing comprehensive immigration reform, he said, yeah, let's do that.

00:27:13.000 Let's sign a clean DACA bill. 0.71

00:27:14.000 And then Kevin McCarthy had to step in and go, uh, Mr. President, no.

00:27:17.000 And then Trump went, oh yeah, that's what I meant.

00:27:19.000 When I said yes, it meant no.

00:27:22.000 Right?

00:27:22.000 So there was that.

00:27:23.000 And then, last week, there was a FISA Act renewal that was up.

00:27:27.000 And the administration position is that FISA should not be weakened, at least with regard to surveillance of foreign subjects.

00:27:33.000 And then Trump tweeted out, because he was watching Judge Napolitano on Fox & Friends, that we should weaken FISA.

00:27:38.000 I'm looking for something that President Trump supports, and he's not yet indicated.

00:28:03.000 What measure he's willing to sign.

00:28:05.000 As soon as we figure out what he is for, then I would be convinced that we were not just spinning our wheels going to this issue on the floor, but actually dealing with a bill that has a chance to become law and therefore solve the problem.

00:28:20.000 So there's McConnell saying, I don't know.

00:28:23.000 That's not great.

00:28:24.000 I mean, it's not great for the policy of the United States when the president's own party is scratching their head going, with a majority in Congress, going,

00:28:32.000 Your guess is as good as mine, guys.

00:28:34.000 Now, is this a little bit of a push from McConnell?

00:28:37.000 Yeah.

00:28:37.000 I mean, McConnell knows deep down that he could pass anything and Trump will sign it.

00:28:40.000 Trump hasn't exercised his veto, I think, one time in his entire presidency. 0.89

00:28:44.000 So the idea that McConnell will pass anything and then Trump will sign it is silly.

00:28:48.000 I think what McConnell's trying to do politically here is avoid blame.

00:28:51.000 If he gets a bad deal and Trump signs it, then Trump will just blame him.

00:28:54.000 He'll say, listen,

00:28:55.000 I just signed the deal they brought to me.

00:28:56.000 I wasn't a part of the negotiation, and McConnell's trying to throw it back on Trump, saying, dude, give me something to work with here.

00:29:01.000 And Trump is like, I don't, no, no, you're on your own.

00:29:05.000 So it's been a lot of fun to watch the president fighting with his own party.

00:29:08.000 Again, this does give the lie to the idea that Trump is some sort of MAGA, MAGA, MAGA evil genius who's going to destroy the world.

00:29:15.000 No, that's just not accurate.

00:29:17.000 Okay.

00:29:17.000 So, in a second, I want to talk about my hypothesis with regard to President Trump and porn stars.

00:29:23.000 Oh yes, if that's not a sexy tease, nothing is.

00:29:25.000 So, you'll have to check that out by going over to Daily Wire and subscribing.

00:29:28.000 For $9.99 a month, you can buy a subscription to Daily Wire.

00:29:31.000 And when you do, you get not only the rest of my show live, you get the rest of Andrew Klavan's show live, the rest of Michael Knowles' show live, you get to be part of my mailbag tomorrow and have all of your life's questions answered in the most mellifluous fashion.

00:29:42.000 I mean, it'll be beautiful to listen to.

00:29:43.000 You'll just enjoy it.

00:29:44.000 From top to—it'll be fantastic.

00:29:46.000 So you get all of that, plus, if you can get the annual subscription for $99 a year, you get all of those wonderful things, all of those wonders and glories.

00:29:53.000 And this, the Leftist Tears Hot or Cold mug, it is currently filled with Cory Booker's tears.

00:29:58.000 It has been filled with those for the last couple of days, at least.

00:30:02.000 And there'll be plenty more where that came from because—not because

00:30:05.000 You know, even bad thing is happening to Democrats just because they can't stop crying.

00:30:08.000 It's really weird.

00:30:08.000 But we will talk about all of that.

00:30:10.000 Also, if you just want to listen later, iTunes, SoundCloud, YouTube, all of the places where you can listen to the podcast.

00:30:16.000 Please subscribe at all of these places and leave us a review, which always helps us.

00:30:19.000 We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast in the nation.

00:30:27.000 All right, so I'll get back to immigration a little bit, but first, I wanna talk about the Me Too movement and Trump and porn stars and all sorts of good stuff.

00:30:37.000 So, let's start with Trump and porn stars.

00:30:40.000 So, as I mentioned yesterday, there's a 5,500 word interview that's about to break from a woman named, what is her name now, Daniels?

00:30:48.000 Her name is Stormy Daniels, which is always a great way to come up with a porn name, right? 1.00

00:30:53.000 Just come up with a weather condition followed by a first name.

00:30:58.000 Right?

00:30:58.000 So, Cloudy Ryan, right?

00:31:02.000 Over here would be Overcast Bob. 0.73

00:31:04.000 Not the greatest porn name.

00:31:05.000 That one you're probably not going to get hired with.

00:31:08.000 But in any case, this porn star is supposed to give an interview in which he fully describes the president in the boudoir, which, I mean, frankly, this is the first time Trump has ever not wanted that to happen.

00:31:18.000 Back in the 1980s, Trump used to pose as a guy named John Miller.

00:31:20.000 He'd get on the phone with reporters and be like, hey guys, this is John Miller.

00:31:23.000 And they'd be like, is this Donald Trump?

00:31:25.000 No.

00:31:26.000 No, it's not. 0.99

00:31:27.000 I just had sex with a supermodel. 0.98

00:31:29.000 Like, really? 0.99

00:31:29.000 Which supermodel? 0.99

00:31:30.000 Like, Carla Bruni.

00:31:32.000 She was amazing.

00:31:32.000 They'd go to Carla Bruni and she'd be like, I have no idea who this guy is or what the hell he's talking about.

00:31:36.000 And they'd be like, well, Trump says that he's the best sex anyone ever had. 0.97

00:31:40.000 Right? 0.94

00:31:40.000 John Miller says it. 0.94

00:31:41.000 I know this John Miller guy sounds exactly like Trump, but...

00:31:44.000 You know, he says that he's unbelievable in bed.

00:31:46.000 Carla Bruni, what do you say?

00:31:47.000 She's like, I don't know.

00:31:49.000 It's been great.

00:31:50.000 Trump literally used to call up tabloids and brag about the people he was dating.

00:31:53.000 And he wasn't dating like three quarters of them. 0.93

00:31:55.000 Now he's paying women to shut up. 1.00

00:31:56.000 So apparently in 2016, he paid Stormy Daniels.

00:32:01.000 He was obviously into her because of her higher intellect and conversational ability.

00:32:05.000 She is a porn star. 1.00

00:32:07.000 She has sex for money on camera, so obviously of high quality. 1.00

00:32:12.000 And the president has a particular taste in women overall. 0.97

00:32:16.000 And so she is supposed to give a 5,500-word interview in which she also describes, I guess the 2011 interview they're now releasing, in which she describes the president's genitals, which is just

00:32:24.000 The only person in America excited about this is Marco Rubio to find out whether his theories about hand size were in fact correct.

00:32:30.000 But all of this is happening and no one cares.

00:32:33.000 Okay, this is the funny thing.

00:32:34.000 No one cares.

00:32:35.000 So I'm old enough, like this week was the 20th anniversary of the Lewinsky scandal, in which the President of the United States had a consensual affair with a 21-year-old intern.

00:32:44.000 And everyone went nuts.

00:32:45.000 I was there.

00:32:46.000 I remember it. 1.00

00:32:47.000 Everyone thought, what an immoral piece of garbage this Bill Clinton is. 1.00

00:32:50.000 Now we have a president of the United States who is supported by 80% of evangelical Christians and has sex with porn stars while he is married to another woman who he was having sex with while he was married to another woman who he was having sex with while he was married to another woman. 1.00

00:33:03.000 He can follow this inception-like sex life. 0.99

00:33:06.000 By the time you get to the original level of the dream, all that is, you're an old man waiting in pain and despair.

00:33:13.000 In any case, no one cares, right?

00:33:16.000 No one cares.

00:33:16.000 Like, you don't care, I don't care, no one cares.

00:33:19.000 So here's why no one cares.

00:33:21.000 Here's my theory of President Trump.

00:33:23.000 In economics, there's something called the Efficient Market Hypothesis.

00:33:25.000 The Efficient Market Hypothesis is a hypothesis that suggests you cannot beat the stock market.

00:33:31.000 So all of these people who tell you that if you day trade and you find the inefficiencies in the market, you can make millions, right?

00:33:36.000 All these people who are selling programs to you online about this is how you beat the market.

00:33:40.000 You cannot beat the market.

00:33:41.000 This is the Efficient Market Hypothesis.

00:33:42.000 The reason being, there are literally millions of people who spend their day analyzing every bit of information that is coming out from every single company, and then that is priced in, right?

00:33:50.000 It's baked into the cake.

00:33:52.000 It's baked into the cake.

00:33:53.000 And so stock market shocks usually happen when there's a change in government policy or when there's a downturn in government policy and new information is added to the system.

00:34:00.000 That's why the market goes up and down.

00:34:02.000 But the idea that you can beat the market because you know the market better than anybody else is just not true.

00:34:07.000 The evidence for the efficient market hypothesis is that if you take the people who are the top hedge fund managers at any given point, if you take the people who are the top stock pickers at any given firm in one year, by the next year the chances are that they are actually the lowest on the totem pole.

00:34:22.000 The chances that somebody remains the best stock picker 10 years in a row is almost nil.

00:34:25.000 People tend to bounce around a lot, so they'll have one great year, and if they're lucky, that great year is where they spent the most money and bought the most stock or sold the most stock.

00:34:32.000 And then they'll have five really crappy years, because there'll be regression to the mean.

00:34:36.000 And this is true.

00:34:37.000 If you actually look at the performance, the suggestion is you're better off investing in stock indices than you are in stock picking.

00:34:44.000 And that is traditional kind of common knowledge in the stock community and in the investment community.

00:34:49.000 If you ask somebody for investment advice, this is typically what they will say at one of the big firms like Goldman Sachs.

00:34:54.000 They'll tell you, take your money, stick it in the stock market, leave it there.

00:34:57.000 That's why Warren Buffett didn't lose a lot of money in the stock market in 2007-2008, because he continued buying stock.

00:35:03.000 My stock plan, just so folks know, is that I buy a certain set amount of stock every month, rain or shine.

00:35:09.000 It does not matter.

00:35:10.000 I tend to buy higher risk stocks.

00:35:12.000 There's like a basket of higher risk stocks I tend to pick because I can afford to lose some money.

00:35:16.000 If I lose some money, I'm 33 or now I'm 34.

00:35:19.000 My birthday was this week.

00:35:20.000 So I can afford to lose a little bit of money and then make that money back.

00:35:24.000 But what I do is I'm constantly buying stock and I never sell stock.

00:35:28.000 I just never sell it.

00:35:29.000 Because if you hold on to it, the good news is if the market goes down, I just bought really cheap.

00:35:32.000 And if the market goes down, I didn't sell really cheap.

00:35:35.000 So my stock portfolio is always going up so long as overall the market is going up.

00:35:38.000 That's the basic idea of the stock market and the efficient market hypothesis.

00:35:42.000 There are a few different versions.

00:35:43.000 There's the strong efficient market hypothesis, which suggests legitimately you cannot beat the market.

00:35:47.000 And then there is the semi-strong version of the efficient market hypothesis, which suggests that publicly available information, you can't beat the market.

00:35:53.000 But insider information, you could beat the market.

00:35:56.000 The strong efficient market hypothesis says even insider information is priced in because there are people who

00:36:01.000 That's actually the case against having insider trading laws.

00:36:08.000 There are a bunch of libertarians who believe insider trading laws are actually negative because they prevent, like, if I know Daily Wire is going down the tubes, I'm going to sell my stock.

00:36:16.000 That's a hint to everybody else that they should sell their stock, too.

00:36:19.000 Whereas if I were prevented from using my knowledge about Daily Wire, then that would prevent the market from knowing the knowledge.

00:36:24.000 That's the case for insider trading.

00:36:25.000 So there's the strong, the semi-strong, and the weak.

00:36:27.000 The weak basically says that you might be able to defeat the market on an occasional basis, but you're not going to be able to do it very often, essentially.

00:36:35.000 Here's my theory about Trump.

00:36:36.000 Here's why I'm talking about this.

00:36:38.000 My theory about Trump is a strong, efficient market hypothesis.

00:36:41.000 There is no information, none, that changes your view of Trump.

00:36:47.000 No, zero.

00:36:48.000 Literally anything.

00:36:49.000 Anything in the world could happen that President Trump could do, or it could be said about him, or there could be a report about him, and nothing could change people's views of the President of the United States.

00:36:58.000 Because it's all baked into the cake now.

00:36:59.000 And this is actually his strength, and it's also his weakness, right?

00:37:02.000 His weakness is that it's very hard to convince people that you're somebody that you're not when everybody has a strong opinion on you.

00:37:07.000 The strength is that when you're hit by Pornstar was paid off to the tune of $130,000 in 2016, everybody goes,

00:37:15.000 Because it's already baked in.

00:37:16.000 That was already information that we already knew.

00:37:17.000 We already knew who this guy was.

00:37:19.000 Character is the efficient market hypothesis.

00:37:21.000 We already know Trump's character.

00:37:23.000 Everybody already has a judgment. 1.00

00:37:24.000 And evangelical Christians are going to say, listen, I know the guy's a scumbag when it comes to his personal sexual morality. 1.00

00:37:29.000 Didn't I ever pretend otherwise? 1.00

00:37:30.000 Like, we already knew that.

00:37:31.000 But, King David.

00:37:33.000 I mean, come on.

00:37:34.000 King David was just like that.

00:37:36.000 Or they will say, that's the worst version, right?

00:37:38.000 That's the Jerry Falwell Jr.

00:37:39.000 version. 0.80

00:37:39.000 Then there's the secondary version, which is, yeah, I know the guy's a bit of a douchebag, but at least he's trying to stop abortion, right? 0.80

00:37:44.000 I mean, he's going to speak this week in Good Trump News. 0.52

00:37:47.000 He's going to speak this week at the March for Life, or he's going to go to the Rose Garden and give an address and then appear on the big screens at the March for Life.

00:37:53.000 The guy's defending my priorities, so even if he's sticking his wing-wing in places I wouldn't, then so what, right?

00:37:59.000 It's baked into the cake.

00:38:01.000 So there was a whole, after I issued this efficient market hypothesis theory yesterday online, there were a whole group of people trying to debunk it.

00:38:07.000 Jonathan Lastover at the Weekly Standard was saying, is there anything Trump can do?

00:38:10.000 Like, for example, what if he selected some bad liberal judges?

00:38:13.000 And what I said is, no, that's already priced into the market.

00:38:16.000 All that will happen is his supporters will say, listen, he wanted to appoint a conservative, but the Republicans just are too weak-kneed in their support for him.

00:38:24.000 He had to find a way to compromise and move to the middle so he can win re-election.

00:38:27.000 They'll make an excuse, in other words.

00:38:29.000 What if Trump committed murder?

00:38:30.000 Let's take his theory.

00:38:31.000 He shot someone on Fifth Avenue.

00:38:33.000 Most people in his base would say, guy probably deserved it.

00:38:36.000 Most people who don't like him would say, Trump spent 71 years on this earth not shooting people.

00:38:41.000 You think he just shoots somebody for no legitimate reason at all?

00:38:43.000 I mean, he's violent.

00:38:44.000 We all know who he is.

00:38:46.000 We all know who he is, is the efficient market hypothesis.

00:38:48.000 The problem is that if this is true in politics, if my theory is correct, that there is a strong efficient market hypothesis that applies to characters like Trump, but doesn't apply to cleaner characters, it's a serious problem for our politics.

00:39:01.000 If you cannot change your view of a man based on new evidence, if your judgment of his character is so set in stone that nothing can change it,

00:39:11.000 People like me who think that he's deficient in character.

00:39:14.000 If Trump made an open confession of all of his sins and decided to turn over a new leaf and started talking like a statesman, could I change my position on his character?

00:39:24.000 If the answer is no, then I'm so set in my ways it's a problem.

00:39:27.000 The problem is this.

00:39:28.000 Let's say somebody good, Mitt Romney, runs for president.

00:39:32.000 The strong efficient market hypothesis no longer holds.

00:39:35.000 Any piece of information about him will change people's minds because he's seen as clean.

00:39:39.000 The cleaner you are, the less is baked into the cake.

00:39:42.000 People do not give good people the benefit of the doubt.

00:39:45.000 They give bad people the benefit of the doubt because they already knew they were bad.

00:39:48.000 If you are good, everyone wants to see you come down a peg.

00:39:50.000 So if you're Mitt Romney and you're basically

00:39:53.000 You know, I'm personally a saint.

00:39:54.000 I mean, Mitt Romney is about as good a person as run for President of the United States.

00:39:57.000 And then anything comes out about you, anything, right?

00:40:00.000 You strap the dog to the top of your car.

00:40:02.000 It's the end of the world.

00:40:04.000 Suddenly, it's a new piece of information in the market, and you start ping-ponging around in the polls.

00:40:08.000 And so there's something to be said for the idea that Trump is stable, not because he's a stable genius, but because everybody has essentially made up their mind about him and nothing is going to change.

00:40:18.000 OK, which brings us to the Me Too, the latest on Me Too.

00:40:22.000 So there's a tweet that went out in the continuing collapse of Me Too.

00:40:26.000 This is just another episode.

00:40:27.000 Amber Tamblyn, who's an actress,

00:40:30.000 And apparently a nice person from people who know her.

00:40:33.000 She was talking about this case that was reported by Babe.

00:40:36.000 We've been talking about it for three days now. 0.97

00:40:38.000 This insane piece reported by Babe in which a woman had sex with Aziz Ansari or oral sex a couple of times with Aziz Ansari and then suggested that she had a bad time and that this was somehow sexual abuse or sexual assault. 0.98

00:40:50.000 She was ripped by Ashley Banfield on CNN, on HLN. 1.00

00:40:54.000 Here's Ashley Banfield going after Ansari's accuser saying, like, listen, you gotta have some standard for what counts for sexual abuse here, or we're just talking about nothing.

00:41:04.000 And now here is where I am going to claim victim.

00:41:07.000 You have chiseled away at a movement that I, along with all of my sisters in the workplace, have been dreaming of for decades.

00:41:17.000 A movement that has finally changed an oversexed professional environment that I too have struggled through at times over the last 30 years in broadcasting.

00:41:26.000 If you're lucky, there's a really good chance that you're not going to experience the toxic work environment that the rest of us have endured, and that is because of the remarkable progress being made against the Harvey Weinsteins and the Kevin Spaceys of the world.

00:41:38.000 The Me Too movement has righted a lot of wrongs, and it has made your career path much smoother.

00:41:46.000 And here's where I'm guessing it's going to be a long career path.

00:41:49.000 You're 23.

00:41:51.000 What a gift.

00:41:52.000 Okay, so she's talking about the reporter who reported all of this, and she's saying, listen, you're basically destroying the MeToo movement.

00:41:58.000 And there's truth to this.

00:41:59.000 So Amber Tamlin tweeted out, she actually tweeted out,

00:42:15.000 What?

00:42:16.000 Why didn't she just come out and talk about it? 0.97

00:42:18.000 Like, the problem here is not that people are siding with rapists like Harvey Weinstein or sexual abusers like Kevin Spacey or any of these people.

00:42:25.000 The problem is that this lady's story about as he's unsorry did not wash, right?

00:42:27.000 That was the story.

00:42:28.000 That was the problem. 1.00

00:42:29.000 She got naked in his apartment, voluntarily performed oral sex on him twice, and then suggested that she had given him no signals. 0.99

00:42:35.000 There's another signal being given there. 0.98

00:42:38.000 But again, this idea that all stories have to be believed on the most subjective level, it's the end of me, too.

00:42:44.000 And then here's the funniest thing.

00:42:45.000 So Katie Way is the name of this reporter.

00:42:46.000 So Katie Way. 0.99

00:42:48.000 decided that she was going to respond to Ashley Banfield.

00:42:52.000 And she was asked to go on Ashley Banfield's show.

00:42:55.000 Here's the letter she wrote, which is just insipid.

00:43:10.000 Ashley could have talked to me. 0.85

00:43:12.000 She could have talked to my editor or my publication.

00:43:14.000 But instead, she targeted a 23-year-old woman in one of the most vulnerable moments of her life.

00:43:18.000 Someone she's never effing met before, for little attention.

00:43:21.000 I hope the ratings are worth it.

00:43:22.000 I hope the 500 retweets on the single news write-up made that burgundy lipstick bad highlight second-wave feminist have-been feel really relevant for a while. 0.99

00:43:29.000 She disgusts me. 0.95

00:43:30.000 And I hope when she has more distance from the moment she has enough of a conscience left to feel remotely ashamed, doubted, but still. 0.98

00:43:36.000 Must be nice to piggyback off of the fact that another woman was brave enough to speak up and add another dimension to this societal conversation about sexual assault. 1.00

00:43:42.000 Grace wouldn't know how that feels because she never struck out into this alone because she's the bravest person I've ever met.

00:43:48.000 Really?

00:43:48.000 Then you should meet a soldier.

00:43:49.000 I would never go on your network.

00:43:51.000 I would never even watch your network.

00:43:52.000 No woman my age would ever watch your network.

00:43:53.000 I will remember this for the rest of my career.

00:43:55.000 I'm 22 and so far not too shabby.

00:43:57.000 Well, actually a little shabby.

00:43:59.000 And I will laugh the day you fold.

00:44:00.000 If you could let Ashley know I said this, that she has no holds barred the reason, it'd be a real treat for me.

00:44:04.000 Thanks, Katie.

00:44:06.000 The feminist movement doing itself all sorts of favors by ripping other women who are in favor of Me Too as burgundy, lipstick, bad, highlighted, second-wave feminist has-beens. 0.99

00:44:15.000 Well done, Katie Way.

00:44:17.000 Just geniuses over there at the Me Too movement.

00:44:19.000 And then they wonder why people are failing to take it particularly seriously.

00:44:23.000 Maybe it's because of all this nonsense from the third-wave feminists. 1.00

00:44:27.000 Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate. 0.63

00:44:31.000 We're good to go.

00:44:47.000 Why should your right to freedom of speech trump a trans person's right not to be offended? 1.00

00:44:51.000 Because in order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive.

00:44:55.000 I mean, look at the conversation we're having right now.

00:45:18.000 You know, like, you're certainly willing to risk offending me in the pursuit of truth.

00:45:21.000 Why should you have the right to do that?

00:45:23.000 It's been rather uncomfortable.

00:45:26.000 Well, I'm very glad I put you on the spot.

00:45:29.000 Well, you get my point.

00:45:30.000 You get my point.

00:45:31.000 It's like, you're doing what you should do, which is digging a bit to see what the hell's going on.

00:45:36.000 And that is what you should do.

00:45:37.000 But you're exercising your freedom of speech to certainly risk offending me.

00:45:42.000 And that's fine.

00:45:43.000 I think more power to you, as far as I'm concerned.

00:45:46.000 So you haven't sat there and... I'm just trying to work that out.

00:45:51.000 I mean... Ha!

00:45:58.000 Gotcha.

00:45:59.000 OK, so yes, that is a bad moment for her, because this is obviously true.

00:46:02.000 Every political conversation I've ever had about these subjects is always, why should what you want to say trump my right to not hear you say it?

00:46:08.000 It's like, because that's the definition of freedom of speech.

00:46:10.000 And we can't have a conversation unless I'm actually telling you what I think. 0.84

00:46:14.000 But this is how dumb the left is, that they actually think that I'm supposed to manufacture what I believe and think in order to please particular people, which is the opposite of an honest political conversation. 0.84

00:46:22.000 OK, time. 0.97

00:46:23.000 You know what?

00:46:24.000 We can skip the thing that our production crew spent so much time cutting and go directly to things that I

00:46:29.000 So here, let's do a couple of things that I hate here.

00:46:36.000 So we begin with human nature.

00:46:38.000 I hate it.

00:46:38.000 Okay, so here's the thing about human nature.

00:46:40.000 There is a story that is out today from Daily Mail, and it's sort of hilarious.

00:46:44.000 So basically, at the time that in Hawaii, people thought they were going to be nuked into the earth, right?

00:46:51.000 And they thought they were all going to die because of a North Korean nuclear missile.

00:46:54.000 The traffic on porn sites dropped dramatically.

00:46:57.000 Makes sense.

00:46:57.000 You only have half an hour to live.

00:46:59.000 You probably have better things to do than spend it with one hand occupied, right?

00:47:02.000 You actually are going to hopefully make peace with your God, talk with your family, watch that season finale of Cheers.

00:47:12.000 Whatever it was that you were going to do, it's probably not going to be spent on a porn site.

00:47:15.000 Here is the problem.

00:47:16.000 Immediately after the alert ends,

00:47:20.000 Porn sites saw a 50% increase in traffic from Hawaii after the ballistic missile threat was revealed to be false.

00:47:27.000 So in other words, in the shadow of death, people are like, well, this is probably a bad idea to be on this porn site right now.

00:47:32.000 My wife walks in right now, my life is just going to end in a variety of terrible ways. 0.61

00:47:36.000 And then, as soon as it ends, they're like, you know what?

00:47:38.000 Maybe I'll make peace with my God.

00:47:39.000 It's time to repent.

00:47:40.000 It ends like, OK, I'm back on wackadoodle.com.

00:47:44.000 Right?

00:47:44.000 I mean, this is just, it's an astonishing statement about what people feel when they're under pressure.

00:47:48.000 And it's one of the reasons why religion is necessary, is to remind you on a daily basis, you're going to die. 0.98

00:47:53.000 Okay, like, not to be too dark about this, but there will be a time for you.

00:47:57.000 And at that time, you might think back on your life and think, you know, if I spent hours a day in front of a computer looking at images of women who are acting for my benefit, rather than, you know, doing meaningful things, then that would be good. 0.64

00:48:09.000 But we have a unique capacity as human beings to put that out of our minds that we can waste hours a day online looking at naked people doing things to each other.

00:48:16.000 Human nature, not the best place.

00:48:19.000 One of the reasons why civilization is required.

00:48:21.000 Okay, final thing that I hate.

00:48:24.000 So, everything is art now.

00:48:26.000 Legitimately, everything is art now.

00:48:28.000 I've hated the definition of art this way, because if art is everything, then art is nothing.

00:48:32.000 One of my favorite stories about this is there was a modern art museum, I believe it was in San Francisco, where some guy went into the modern art museum, took off his glasses, put them on the floor, and then stood there and started taking pictures of it.

00:48:41.000 And within minutes, a crowd of people had gathered around to take pictures of this guy's glasses on the floor, because they thought that it was an exhibit.

00:48:48.000 Because this is where art has gone.

00:48:50.000 Well, the latest indicator of art might be over.

00:48:53.000 We may be past the days of Michelangelo, and art may be dead, like Rembrandt may be beyond us.

00:49:00.000 They've now created vibrator art.

00:49:02.000 Yes, that's right.

00:49:03.000 Now they have digitally charted female orgasm, and they have made art projects out of this, which is a really weird thing to hang around your house.

00:49:13.000 I mean, like, your kids are walking around, and you're like, Mommy, what's that?

00:49:16.000 Oh, that was September 11, 2013.

00:49:17.000 It was the greatest night of my life.

00:49:20.000 Like, it was just kind of weird. 1.00

00:49:22.000 And so here is this idiot video. 1.00

00:49:25.000 Like, oh my God. 1.00

00:49:26.000 I hope to God that we don't get hit by a nuclear missile, and this is what I die talking about, because really, that would just be terrible. 0.90

00:49:33.000 This vibrator turns your orgasm into art, is what this video says.

00:49:36.000 The women-led team at Lioness created a new vibrator with special sensors. 1.00

00:49:42.000 I grew up in a conservative family from the Midwest, and we never talked about sex.

00:49:53.000 I wanted to create a vibrator that could empower women to learn more about their own bodies. 1.00

00:50:01.000 I like that people think they invented orgasm like now, like it hasn't existed for the last several hundreds of thousands of years.

00:50:07.000 Is there a taboo about female orgasm in the West?

00:50:17.000 Did I miss that?

00:50:18.000 Okay, the feature is available to app users in the spring.

00:50:20.000 Just wonderful stuff.

00:50:24.000 I suppose that for men, the next invention will be fart art. 0.98

00:50:30.000 They'll actually be able to chart your physical responses in real time to passing gas, and that will now be considered a high form of art.

00:50:38.000 Again, I'm not sure this is any worse than Karen Finley getting naked and smearing chocolate on her body, or people who have done enema art, which has been a thing in art schools for literally years.

00:50:45.000 But it does demonstrate that we may be in the decadent phase of capitalism.

00:50:48.000 We may be in the decline and fall of the Roman Empire here, when we are literally starting companies to sell vibrators so that you can be solipsistic enough to look at a digital imaging of your orgasm. 0.56

00:50:59.000 My goodness.

00:51:00.000 I wonder why society is on the ropes.

00:51:02.000 I just can't understand it.

00:51:03.000 Okay.

00:51:03.000 We'll be back here tomorrow with much, much more, hopefully much, much less of that.

00:51:07.000 We'll be back here with more tomorrow.

00:51:09.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:51:10.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:51:14.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Mathis Glover.

00:51:17.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:51:18.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:51:20.000 Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:51:22.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:51:23.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.

00:51:25.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:51:27.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

00:51:29.000 Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - January 18, 2018

The Fake News Awards | Ep. 456

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