The Ben Shapiro Show - The Iranian War | Ep. 536

00:00:00.000 President Trump brings home five Americans from North Korea.

00:00:03.000 Israel is attacked by Iran. 0.88

00:00:05.000 Israel fires back.

00:00:06.000 Will there be war in the Middle East?

00:00:07.000 We'll talk about all of it.

00:00:08.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:08.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:14.000 So, legitimately, a ton of news breaking today.

00:00:16.000 All of it very good for the President of the United States, by the way.

00:00:19.000 I mean, almost universally good news for the President of the United States, and good news for America, which is more important, obviously.

00:00:25.000 We'll get to all of that.

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00:01:40.000 Alright, so...

00:01:41.000 A lot of news breaking.

00:01:43.000 A lot of news breaking.

00:01:44.000 And a lot of it is very good for the President of the United States.

00:01:46.000 So, the best piece of news for the President of the United States is that he went to the tarmac to greet a bunch of North Korean prisoners who had been released.

00:01:55.000 It was three North Korean prisoners rather than five.

00:01:57.000 Three North Korean prisoners who had been released.

00:01:59.000 They were American citizens.

00:02:00.000 And here is what it looked like when the President of the United States greeted them on the tarmac at Joint Base, at the Joint Air Force Base in Andrews, the Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.

00:02:14.000 Okay, so you can just see him greeting these guys as they get off the plane.

00:02:17.000 And it is, in fact, a pretty amazing thing.

00:02:20.000 Now, Trump went on, he talked to the press, he did what Trump always does, right?

00:02:24.000 And it's just the best of Trump, right?

00:02:25.000 So Trump gets these guys out, right?

00:02:28.000 I mean, these guys are released, they come back.

00:02:30.000 Trump says now that he's going to meet directly with Kim Jong-un on June 12th, so that is coming up in the very near future, and we'll have to keep an eye on that, obviously.

00:02:37.000 We don't know how those negotiations are going to go, but all of these guys thanked President Trump for getting them out.

00:02:42.000 Trump then proceeded to go out there and brag about the ratings that he was getting at 2 a.m., and talk about how they'd been treated excellently by the North Koreans, which of course is not really true, but...

00:02:51.000 Here's the thing.

00:02:51.000 I think the American public have learned to separate out the Trumpy from the good stuff that he's doing.

00:02:56.000 I think that the longer Trump's presidency goes on, the less people are worried as much about the kind of crazed nature of the Trump presidency, and the more they're looking at the policy, because right now the economy is doing very well.

00:03:07.000 Instead of trading five terrorists for Bo Bergdahl,

00:03:09.000 A traitor?

00:03:10.000 Instead, the President of the United States traded no terrorists for three Americans in North Korea, and five top ISIS leaders were just captured in Iraq.

00:03:18.000 So President Trump tweeted on Thursday that five of the most wanted ISIS leaders had been captured.

00:03:23.000 Spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve Army Colonel Ryan Dillon tweeted on Thursday that Iraq captured five key ISIS leaders as part of Operation Roundup.

00:03:31.000 The tweet didn't specify when or where the five were captured.

00:03:34.000 It didn't give any names.

00:03:35.000 Dylan's tweet said the capture was a coordinated operation between Iraqi and U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.

00:03:40.000 So those would be the same people who are helping fight Assad.

00:03:44.000 Iraq captures five key Daesh leaders.

00:03:46.000 Daesh is the Arabic name for ISIS.

00:03:48.000 During Operation Roundup, the arrest is a significant blow to Daesh and demonstrates close coordination between ISF, SDF in their fight to defeat Daesh, and then they say that the

00:03:58.000 Okay, so all of this is very, very good news for President Trump.

00:04:06.000 All he has to do, apparently, is just ignore everything Obama would have done and everything goes swimmingly.

00:04:10.000 So all of that is excellent news for the President of the United States, who, again, instead of trading five terrorists for a traitor, just captured five terrorists, along with the Iraqis and the Syrians, and freed three Americans. 0.57

00:04:22.000 So, well done, President Trump.

00:04:24.000 Meanwhile, the president is doing the right thing in the Middle East as well.

00:04:27.000 Iran had attacked Israel with a bunch of missiles, a bunch of rockets, from Syria into the Golan Heights.

00:04:33.000 The Golan Heights is a portion of Israel that was captured originally from Syria during the 1973 war, I believe, was the Golan Heights.

00:04:42.000 The Golan Heights, sorry, yes, I think the 1973 war.

00:04:45.000 The Golan Heights is a very strong strategic point in Israel.

00:04:50.000 It's a section of Israel that is elevated by about 300 feet up almost a straight cliff that overlooks Israel.

00:04:56.000 When Syria owned it, Syria used to use it as a staging point for attacks.

00:04:59.000 Israel owns it now, and Syria has been very upset about that ever since.

00:05:02.000 Well, the Syrian government, which is working in cahoots with the Iranians, they fired a bunch of rockets at the Golan Heights.

00:05:07.000 Israel has this amazing defense system, this amazing rocket defense system.

00:05:11.000 They shot down all 20 of them.

00:05:12.000 And then Israel proceeded to pound the living crap out of a bunch of Syrian targets that had Iranians on them. 0.74

00:05:17.000 So Israel's intelligence is good enough that Israel knows where Iran is stationing its people in Syria.

00:05:22.000 And Israel went in and killed, I believe, 28 Iranians who were members of the Iranian military in Syria.

00:05:28.000 They're hitting, they're pounding Syria. 1.00

00:05:30.000 And what they said, and I love this line, they said, if it rains in Israel, it will pour in Iran. 0.82

00:05:35.000 Meaning, you try anything and we will make you bleed.

00:05:38.000 It's an amazing thing, because all of the people who have been victimized by the Assad regime in Syria, apparently there were reports that they were cheering as Israeli warplanes, as Jewish warplanes, were flying into Syria. 0.81

00:05:47.000 A bunch of Muslims were cheering that Israel was coming in.

00:05:50.000 Which is not a shock, because again, the enemy of my enemy is my friend in the Middle East, and right now it is very obvious who the friends are.

00:05:57.000 Right, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, Israel.

00:06:01.000 They're all on one side against the Iranians. 1.00

00:06:03.000 And as I've been saying for a long time here, the reality is that the only thing that Obama's Iran deal achieved was the creation of this alliance.

00:06:10.000 So in a weird way,

00:06:12.000 Obama actually facilitated the creation of an anti-Iranian alliance that is very powerful and I think is going to hold up for a long time.

00:06:19.000 I think that's really good.

00:06:20.000 That's actually a really good thing that happened unintentionally because Obama never did anything great intentionally.

00:06:24.000 He did something really great unintentionally by strengthening Iran.

00:06:27.000 He forced all these other countries to jump in the sack with Israel and now all of them are allied against the Iranian power. 0.81

00:06:33.000 That's a really good thing.

00:06:34.000 The UAE said that it was good that Israel had struck these Iranian targets last night.

00:06:38.000 They said Israel has a right to defend itself.

00:06:39.000 The United Arab Emirates said that the Jewish state, which I'm not even sure that they formally recognize, has a right to defend itself.

00:06:46.000 The Saudis said the same thing.

00:06:47.000 And it's an amazing, amazing thing.

00:06:49.000 And the Trump administration said all the right things as well.

00:06:51.000 Unlike the Obama administration, which always called for restraint whenever Israel was attacked, the Trump administration said, listen, you get hit, you do what you want.

00:06:58.000 Right?

00:06:58.000 Israel has every right to defend itself.

00:07:00.000 Thank you, Mr. President.

00:07:01.000 Thank you to the Trump administration for saying the right thing.

00:07:04.000 So here's the story from the UK sun.

00:07:07.000 Israel has blasted Iran's bases in Syria with 70 missiles, killing at least 23 fighters in revenge for rocket strikes on the Golan Heights.

00:07:13.000 Fighter jets bombarded military bases, munitions warehouse, and intelligence centers after Tel Aviv stoked fears of a war by warning if it rains in Israel, it will pour in Iran.

00:07:21.000 I'm sorry, I love the British media coverage there, that Israel stoked fears of a war.

00:07:26.000 Israel didn't initiate the conflict.

00:07:27.000 Israel was attacked by rockets. 1.00

00:07:29.000 And then Israel threatened in response that if you keep firing missiles at us, we're going to kick your ass. 1.00

00:07:33.000 That's fine. 1.00

00:07:34.000 That's good.

00:07:35.000 That's not Israel threatening a war.

00:07:36.000 That's Iran threatening a war, and Israel saying, if you start it, we will finish it.

00:07:40.000 Which, by the way, is exactly what you should teach your children when it comes to fights.

00:07:43.000 Never start a fight, but if you get in a fight, finish the fight.

00:07:45.000 The strikes hit nearly every target and were a response to 20 rockets fired by the Iranian Quds Force, Israeli military chiefs claimed.

00:07:51.000 Five Syrian soldiers, including two officers and 18 militia fighters, were killed in the attack, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

00:08:00.000 The death toll is likely to rise because some of the wounded are in critical condition.

00:08:03.000 As I said, I believe that the actual number is about 28 at this point.

00:08:08.000 The conflict came hours after President Trump pulled out of the nuke deal with Iran.

00:08:12.000 Now, one of the things that's amazing about all of this is that the entire left is now blaming Trump for Iran attacking Israel.

00:08:18.000 They're suggesting that it's Trump's pullout from the Iran deal that emboldens the Iranians to pursue nuclear weapons. 1.00

00:08:24.000 This is the essence of stupidity. 1.00

00:08:26.000 It is such a bad argument. 1.00

00:08:27.000 The argument, I guess, is that

00:08:29.000 Iran was moderating. 0.88

00:08:30.000 They were doing fine.

00:08:30.000 They were moderating.

00:08:31.000 And then Trump came along.

00:08:32.000 Then Trump came along and he did something super duper terrible.

00:08:35.000 He pulled out of this Iran deal.

00:08:36.000 And now, and now everything has gone to hell in a handbasket.

00:08:39.000 Now everything, now look at what he's done.

00:08:41.000 He's created a war in the Middle East because he pulled out of the Iran deal.

00:08:45.000 The reality is that the Iran deal was going to end with Iran having nuclear weapons.

00:08:48.000 It was never designed to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

00:08:50.000 It was designed to kick the can down the road. 0.85

00:08:53.000 To ensure that the next president would have to own anything that went wrong in Iran.

00:08:59.000 That's where all of this was going.

00:09:01.000 And here's the proof.

00:09:02.000 There is no nuclear deal that has ever been cut with an extremist group to remove them of nuclear weapons.

00:09:09.000 Never in history with bribery.

00:09:11.000 It doesn't work that way.

00:09:13.000 There are very few nations in the history of the world that have actually had nuclear weapons and then given up the nuclear weapons or been developing a nuclear program and then stopped developing the nuclear program.

00:09:21.000 You can actually list them on slightly more than one hand.

00:09:23.000 Ukraine had nuclear weapons, but those were left over from the USSR.

00:09:26.000 Kazakhstan had nuclear weapons, those were left over from the USSR.

00:09:28.000 Belarus had nuclear weapons, those were left over from the USSR.

00:09:32.000 The United States came in and said, listen, you guys don't have the capacity to take care of your nuclear weapons or secure your nuclear weapons, so you should give those up, and in return, we'll give you security guarantees.

00:09:41.000 That's worked out pretty well up until Obama, who allowed Russia to invade Ukraine and annex Crimea.

00:09:47.000 The only two nations that actually developed nuclear weapons or were in the process of developing nuclear weapons and gave them up were South Africa in 1993 and Libya in 2003.

00:09:57.000 Right?

00:09:57.000 Those are the only two nations that had active nuclear programs who gave up their nuclear weapons and just said no.

00:10:03.000 Okay, and the reasons they gave up those nuclear weapons were not because the United States came to them and said, we will bribe you to give up your nuclear weapons.

00:10:09.000 The reason they gave up their nuclear weapons is that those countries preemptively gave up their nuclear weapons, knowing that there would be consequences if they did not.

00:10:16.000 In other words, the countries themselves moderated.

00:10:19.000 So South Africa in 1993, under F.W.

00:10:21.000 de Klerk, he came forward and he said, listen, we have six nuclear weapons.

00:10:25.000 Those six nuclear weapons, we just gave those up.

00:10:27.000 And we had those that were created in the 1970s and the 1980s as a counterbalance to USSR influence in Africa.

00:10:33.000 We don't need those anymore.

00:10:34.000 And in order to demonstrate to the world that we are intent on being peaceful, I'm going to give up those nuclear weapons right now.

00:10:41.000 In expectation that the world would then treat them better.

00:10:44.000 It was an investment by South Africa in their own future.

00:10:47.000 The same thing happened with Muammar Qaddafi.

00:10:49.000 Now it turns out the Obama administration proceeded to take him out anyway, which was the wrong move, as I said at the time.

00:10:56.000 Qaddafi in 2003 apparently got a letter from George W. Bush, and the letter said, give up your nukes or we're coming after you.

00:11:02.000 And Qaddafi said, alright.

00:11:05.000 Sounds good.

00:11:05.000 He saw that the United States was about to go into Iraq.

00:11:09.000 And before the United States went into Iraq, he gave up his nuclear weapons because he figured, I don't want to go to war with these people.

00:11:14.000 I want to be seen as moderate.

00:11:16.000 And so I'm going to preemptively give up my nuclear weapons.

00:11:18.000 This is the reality.

00:11:19.000 If Iran wanted to give up its nukes, if Iran wanted an open economy, you know how they could do that?

00:11:25.000 You know how they could have a peaceful exchange with the rest of the world?

00:11:28.000 They could just stop their nuclear program now without any deal.

00:11:32.000 They could just say, listen, we've destroyed all of our nuclear facilities.

00:11:35.000 We're done.

00:11:36.000 Now open up.

00:11:37.000 Rest of the world, help us out.

00:11:38.000 And you know what would happen?

00:11:39.000 Everything would be hunky dory.

00:11:41.000 But they have no intention of doing that.

00:11:42.000 And I have the proof for you in just a second.

00:11:43.000 First...

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00:12:53.000 All right, so,

00:12:55.000 Here is the proof that Iran has no intention of giving up its nuclear program or its nuclear weapons. 0.66

00:13:00.000 Again, all they would have to do is just give it up.

00:13:02.000 There doesn't have to be a deal.

00:13:03.000 If they want to be part of the family of nations, all they have to do is stop funding terrorism all over the world.

00:13:07.000 But they're not going to do that.

00:13:09.000 They're not interested in doing that.

00:13:10.000 They forcibly oppose doing that.

00:13:12.000 Since the Iran deal kicked in in 2015, in the last three years, Iran has increased its military spending 40%. 0.96

00:13:20.000 Their economy has been garbage, by the way.

00:13:21.000 Every dollar they got from us, every dollar we released to them, was used to fund terrorism or used in the military, essentially. 0.98

00:13:28.000 And their economy has been terrible, which is why what you're actually seeing is a rolling set of protests across Iran that has been ongoing now for legitimately months.

00:13:38.000 These are protests not even about the Islamic nature of the republic, but about the inability of the government to allow a free market economy and integrate into the world economy enough so that people aren't struggling.

00:13:48.000 These are basic bread-and-butter riots that are happening in Iran.

00:13:52.000 Now, how does all of this get solved?

00:13:53.000 In the end, the truth is, the only thing that's going to solve the Iranian problem is going to be a regime change.

00:13:57.000 That regime change does not necessarily have to be pushed by the outside.

00:14:00.000 It doesn't have to be a situation where the United States comes in and topples the Iranian mullahs. 0.91

00:14:04.000 We don't have to go to war with Iran in order to effectuate this.

00:14:06.000 There are groups within Iran that we ought to be fostering.

00:14:09.000 And beyond that, I'm sure that we could probably find a general inside the Iranian Revolutionary Guard who would be willing to overthrow the Shahs.

00:14:16.000 Overthrow the mullahs, rather.

00:14:18.000 And that's probably what's going to have to happen here, because realistically speaking, the Iranian military was purged of all of its moderates years and years and years ago, and if there were to be some sort of uprising, the Iranian military would just, as the tool of the mullahs, start shooting people in the streets.

00:14:31.000 So what you really need is an interior military coup by someone who figures that the mullahs are going to get us all killed, and we need to get rid of those mullahs, and we need to install a puppet dictatorship, basically. 0.95

00:14:40.000 Right, the same way that it happened in Egypt.

00:14:42.000 In Egypt, there was the revolution in Egypt, and Mubarak was replaced with Mohammed Morsi, who was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and then that degraded back into essentially a benevolent dictatorship.

00:14:53.000 I'll discuss that in just a second.

00:14:55.000 I do not think there will be.

00:15:21.000 I don't think there's going to be a large-scale war between Israel and Iran. 0.86

00:15:24.000 The reason I don't think there's going to be a large-scale war between Israel and Iran is because I think Iran would be unbelievably foolish to pursue this.

00:15:29.000 If Iran does this, Israel will wipe them off the map. 0.97

00:15:32.000 Israel, using Saudi airspace in an alliance with the Egyptians and the Jordanians, will take out their facilities and topple the regime. 0.87

00:15:38.000 The Israelis do have the capacity to decapitate the regime. 0.90

00:15:43.000 The question is whether Israel wants to incur the casualties that will happen as a result of that, because Iran obviously does have ballistic weapons technology.

00:15:49.000 Iran does have terrorist groups all surrounding Israel.

00:15:52.000 Hezbollah to Israel's north, Hamas to Israel's south, and Syria to Israel's sort of northeast.

00:15:59.000 You know, the fact is,

00:16:01.000 That Israel, if it had to fight a war, would win a war, but it would be a bloody war. 0.66

00:16:05.000 It could draw in countries like Turkey to try and save the Iranians, which would be weird because Turkey really hates Iran.

00:16:11.000 But as a counterbalance to Israel, they might do it. 0.95

00:16:13.000 Bottom line here is I do not think that Iran wants to risk it.

00:16:16.000 I think what Iran wants to do is fire off a few missiles, demonstrate that they have not been shut down in any serious way, and then Israel responds by saying, listen, you do that and we will finish you. 0.92

00:16:25.000 We will finish you.

00:16:26.000 Because here's the truth of it.

00:16:27.000 Everybody knows that if things really get bad, if things really get bad, if Iran launches a full-scale war and it's Iran versus Saudi Arabia and Israel and Egypt, that the United States Air Force alone would do unbelievable damage to the Iranian military.

00:16:40.000 So I don't want Iran going to war.

00:16:43.000 I don't want Israel going to war.

00:16:44.000 I don't want the United States going to war.

00:16:46.000 But if there is going to be a war between Israel and Iran, I know that Israel knows that they've got to do it now. 0.90

00:16:50.000 They can't wait until Iran has a nuclear weapon because that changes the dynamics on the ground. 0.88

00:16:54.000 Beyond that, there are other measures that can be taken, including a reinstitution of sanctions that can do serious damage to the regime.

00:17:00.000 Trump has now warned Iran, he says, do not restart your nuclear weapons program.

00:17:04.000 He said, I would advise Iran not to start their nuclear program.

00:17:07.000 I would advise them very strongly.

00:17:08.000 If they do, there will be very severe consequences.

00:17:10.000 The president spoke the day after the American withdrawal from the Iran deal and the reimposition of U.S.

00:17:16.000 sanctions on Tehran.

00:17:18.000 And then Trump said, Iran will come back and say, we don't want to negotiate.

00:17:20.000 And of course they're going to say that.

00:17:22.000 And if I were in their position, I'd say that, too, for the first couple of months.

00:17:24.000 We're not going to negotiate.

00:17:25.000 But they'll negotiate, or something will happen.

00:17:27.000 And hopefully that won't be the case.

00:17:29.000 You know, I think that a lot of the success that Trump is seeing on the foreign policy front is pretty simple.

00:17:33.000 And pretty interesting.

00:17:34.000 So, Trump has a perspective on the world.

00:17:37.000 Trump's perspective on the world is that every interaction is a win-lose interaction.

00:17:41.000 That in every interaction there is a winner and there is a loser.

00:17:43.000 It is a zero-sum game.

00:17:44.000 There is never a win-win situation.

00:17:45.000 So, in economics and trade, there are people who win and there are people who lose.

00:17:48.000 Now, he's wrong about that on trade.

00:17:50.000 But on foreign policy, he is not wrong.

00:17:52.000 Okay, the reality is that there are very few win-win situations in foreign policy.

00:17:56.000 Usually there is a winner, and usually there is a loser.

00:17:59.000 Barack Obama didn't believe that.

00:18:00.000 He believed in the family of nations, and it's a cooperative thing, and if we all get together and we get in a room and we talk about it, we'll put all of our differences aside and we'll move forward.

00:18:09.000 That's really not the way that international relations work.

00:18:12.000 The way international relations work is that nations have interests.

00:18:15.000 Where they have commonality of interest, they ally.

00:18:17.000 Where they do not have commonality of interest, they conflict.

00:18:20.000 It's really that simple.

00:18:21.000 And Trump gets that.

00:18:23.000 Trump gets that better than Obama ever did.

00:18:24.000 Trump understands that when Iran gains power, that means that Saudi Arabia has lost power.

00:18:28.000 He understands that when Iran increases its regional influence, it means that Israel is in danger. 0.89

00:18:33.000 He understands that when North Korea increases its power, then that means that South Korea is losing its power, and by extension, the United States is losing power in an ally.

00:18:41.000 Trump gets that far better than Obama ever did.

00:18:44.000 Obama had this very complex realpolitik view of the world.

00:18:47.000 But his realpolitik was not realistic.

00:18:48.000 It was not real and it was not politics.

00:18:51.000 It was actually just a view of the world that was rosy in the extreme.

00:18:53.000 Well, perhaps our behavior can change Iran. 0.96

00:18:56.000 You know, like the abused girlfriend who keeps going back to the boyfriend thinking she's going to change him.

00:19:01.000 That's how Obama was with Iran.

00:19:02.000 Well, if we go back, maybe they will moderate.

00:19:04.000 And they can be a moderate influence on the region.

00:19:06.000 I mean, look at the history of Iran.

00:19:08.000 Look at how Iran was actually one of the great forebears of civilization.

00:19:12.000 All of that's true, but ain't true now.

00:19:14.000 It hasn't been true since 1979. 0.97

00:19:16.000 And the fact that Barack Obama was willing to forward the ambitions of the Mullahs in order to pursue his utopian vision of a counterbalance to Israel in the Middle East in the presence of Iran, not only was it idiotic, it actually ended up doing severe damage and killing a lot of people. 0.98

00:19:30.000 A lot of people. 0.97

00:19:31.000 So, you know, good for President Trump for driving against that.

00:19:35.000 And again, there's a reason that he's winning all of these victories.

00:19:37.000 I hope that he takes that same perspective to negotiations with North Korea.

00:19:40.000 I hope that he does not

00:19:42.000 I hope that he's not soothed by North Korean assurances.

00:19:44.000 I hope that he requires actual hard evidence that they are going to disarm.

00:19:48.000 If he does that, you gotta give the man unbelievable credit.

00:19:50.000 You gotta give him a lot of credit.

00:19:51.000 I'm giving him credit right now for freeing the North Korean prisoners, the prisoners of North Korea.

00:19:56.000 I'm giving him credit for pulling out of the Iran deal.

00:19:58.000 Again, I think the strongest part of Trump's presidency has been on policy, obviously.

00:20:02.000 The weakest part has been a lot of the personal scandal.

00:20:05.000 In just a second, I want to talk about the personal scandal and whether it influences President Trump in any serious way.

00:20:11.000 I have my doubts that it influences Trump in any real way.

00:20:15.000 But first, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at Blue Apron.

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00:20:53.000 People around the office have been bragging about the meals they're cooking, like they're gourmet chefs.

00:20:57.000 They aren't, but they're getting gourmet recipes.

00:20:59.000 And all the ingredients.

00:20:59.000 It's almost impossible to screw up.

00:21:01.000 I mean, we're talking things like chicken tinga tostadas with avocado and refried beans from Mexico City.

00:21:06.000 And roast pork and salsa verde with sautéed vegetables.

00:21:09.000 Okay, then I can't do the pork?

00:21:11.000 Sounds great.

00:21:11.000 Okay, beef empanadas with roasted sweet potatoes and creamy zucchini.

00:21:15.000 All of these recipes sound incredible?

00:21:17.000 Because I'm sure they are incredible.

00:21:18.000 People at the office have been bragging about what they've been cooking.

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00:21:30.000 Okay, so, meanwhile, the latest on Michael Cohen and the Trump team.

00:21:37.000 So, the policy of the Trump administration is seeing tremendous success.

00:21:40.000 They're seeing incredible success.

00:21:42.000 The tax cuts have helped spur the economy.

00:21:44.000 The economy continues to boom.

00:21:46.000 On foreign policy, North Korea looks like it is backing away from its militant stance.

00:21:50.000 You know, that's not all due to President Trump, and we haven't seen what the conclusion of that negotiation will look like, but Trump gets a lot of credit.

00:21:57.000 On Iran, Trump is doing the right thing, and an alliance is now being formed between countries that you thought would never ally.

00:22:03.000 Okay, again, if you told me that Saudi Arabia and Israel were allies in 2001, I would say that you were smoking something, because that would have been nearly impossible.

00:22:11.000 Because of Obama's horrifying policy and Trump's reaction to that horrifying policy, that relationship is really growing in a pretty significant way.

00:22:19.000 The real downfall, the real part that's difficult for the Trump administration is, of course, all of the ancillary issues.

00:22:25.000 The Stormy Daniels of the situation, the Michael Cohen of the situation, the fact that Trump tweets silly things.

00:22:30.000 On a regular basis or says terrible things on a relatively infrequent basis.

00:22:34.000 OK, here's the latest on the Michael Cohen saga.

00:22:37.000 OK, so according to I believe this report is from The Washington Post, President Trump has been sworn into office and his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, saw a golden opportunity

00:22:46.000 From his perch in a law office on the 23rd floor of New York's Rockefeller Center, Cohn pitched potential clients on his close association with Trump, noting that he was still the president's lawyer, according to associates.

00:22:54.000 He showed photos of himself with Trump.

00:22:56.000 He mentioned how frequently they spoke, even asking people to share news articles describing him as the president's fixer.

00:23:01.000 I'm crushing it," he said, according to an associate who spoke to him in the summer of 2017.

00:23:05.000 Details this week emerged how quickly Cohen leveraged his role as Trump's personal attorney, developing a lucrative sideline as a consultant to companies eager for insight into how to navigate the new administration.

00:23:16.000 The rapid flow of millions of dollars to Cohen shows the rush by corporations, unable to rely on the influence of Washington's traditional lobbying class in dealing with the new populist outsider president, to lock in relationships with Trump's inner circle.

00:23:27.000 Yeah, I'm sure.

00:23:28.000 I'm sure they were definitely hiring Michael Cohen to do their accounting.

00:23:30.000 And they had to give him the money even after Cohen said that he couldn't help them.

00:23:50.000 Does that sound like Michael Cohen was giving them really good advice on healthcare policy there?

00:23:53.000 That sound like what that is?

00:23:55.000 A telecommunication company said it turned to Cohen simply to better understand the Trump administration.

00:23:59.000 That would be AT&T.

00:24:00.000 And that apparently gave him hundreds of thousands of dollars.

00:24:03.000 Even the office in which he operated, which served as the fulcrum of the newly created Michael Cohen and Associates, was a side benefit of his Trump affiliation.

00:24:10.000 It was provided by the powerhouse legal and lobbying firm Squire Patent Boggs, which signed Cohen to a $500,000 deal in the wake of the 2016 election.

00:24:15.000 So,

00:24:18.000 He's being investigated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the U.S.

00:24:21.000 Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

00:24:23.000 It is unclear that any of this is illegal.

00:24:26.000 It's really not clear that any of this is illegal in any way.

00:24:31.000 Selling access is pretty common.

00:24:33.000 Apparently investigators could prove whether Cohen promised specific government actions in return for payments.

00:24:37.000 And that could cause him legal trouble.

00:24:39.000 If he spent large amounts of time speaking to government officials on behalf of clients, investigators could explore whether he should have registered as a lobbyist.

00:24:45.000 But let's be real about this.

00:24:46.000 This is actually nothing new, right?

00:24:48.000 So the media are going nuts over Michael Cohen doing this, but this is not only nothing new, it is done routinely on both sides of the aisle.

00:24:56.000 K Street in Washington, D.C.

00:24:57.000 is built explicitly on this promise, that I know somebody who knows somebody in the administration, and if you give me money, I will advise you how your policy can become law.

00:25:06.000 The lobbying industry is really bad now.

00:25:08.000 One of the answers to the lobbying industry that's been put forward by a lot of folks on the left is, what if we just restrict the amount of money in politics?

00:25:14.000 What if we just prevent people from being paid to be lobbyists, for example?

00:25:18.000 Which doesn't help at all, because presumably these companies then just hire people in-house to go talk to legislators.

00:25:23.000 The real problem is that government is too big.

00:25:26.000 Government is too big and it has too much power.

00:25:28.000 You wouldn't care, as a company, what the government was doing if the government wasn't bothering you.

00:25:32.000 But the government does bother you.

00:25:34.000 The government makes policy, the government can create monopolies for you, the government can create oligopolies for you, the government can ensure that you are protected from competition.

00:25:42.000 That's why it is imperative that if you want to cut corruption from government, it is not just a matter of switching the people in office and saying that you need more honest people in office.

00:25:50.000 It is a matter of switching the system.

00:25:52.000 The system of patronage has been corrupt since the days of Ulysses S. Grant.

00:25:56.000 Ulysses S. Grant experienced in his administration, right after the Civil War, serious accusations of misuse of patronage inside his administration.

00:26:04.000 In fact, James Garfield was probably assassinated over a patronage issue.

00:26:08.000 This sort of stuff happened a lot.

00:26:09.000 Corruption is endemic to big governments.

00:26:12.000 And the bigger the government grows, the more corruption there is.

00:26:14.000 Now, what does this say about Trump?

00:26:16.000 The answer is not much.

00:26:17.000 We don't know what Michael Cohen actually made Trump do or tried to get Trump to do.

00:26:21.000 We don't know that Trump approved any of this stuff.

00:26:22.000 Rudy Giuliani said this morning that Trump didn't know that Michael Cohen was being paid all of this money in the first place.

00:26:29.000 That's, I think, quite likely.

00:26:31.000 I think that it's probable that Cohen probably said to Trump something like, man, I'm just making bank off the fact that you and I are friends.

00:26:37.000 And Trump probably laughed and said, ah ha ha ha ha.

00:26:39.000 I'm sure that's true.

00:26:40.000 OK, that's not the same thing as Cohen actually doing something corrupt or Trump actually doing something corrupt in the legal sense.

00:26:46.000 In the typical sense, it's certainly Cohen doing something corrupt, giving hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I will attempt to influence someone, is not the best way of doing business.

00:26:54.000 But, it's not a law violation, and the attempt to kind of smear Trump with Cohen, I think that again, the evidence is not in.

00:26:59.000 There's a lot of speculation going on right now about Trump.

00:27:03.000 There are a lot of dots that have not yet been connected.

00:27:06.000 And I think it's a mistake for the, I think it's a mistake for the media to jump to conclusions on that.

00:27:09.000 Now, okay, so in other news, yesterday was a good day for Gina Haspel.

00:27:12.000 Gina Haspel is, of course, President Trump's nominee for CIA director.

00:27:17.000 She'd be the first female CIA director, and she's getting all sorts of crap from the Democrats because back when she was in the CIA as a low-ranking member, a lower-ranking member during the War on Terror, she was responsible for overseeing black sites and for participating in waterboarding of terrorists. 0.81

00:27:33.000 It was legal to waterboard terrorists. 0.93

00:27:35.000 People are saying it was torture.

00:27:37.000 This was a strong ongoing debate.

00:27:38.000 It is still an ongoing debate whether waterboarding is in fact torture or whether it is a quote-unquote enhanced interrogation technique.

00:27:44.000 Now, in the typical, in the sort of typical description, waterboarding is torture because you are using physical pressure in order to get somebody to do something.

00:27:51.000 Okay, so in the typical description it is, but it doesn't do permanent damage to you.

00:27:55.000 It is a temporary thing.

00:27:57.000 I watched my friend Steven Crowder get waterboarded.

00:28:00.000 Was it torture?

00:28:00.000 Well, I'll tell you, I didn't feel anything.

00:28:02.000 So it wasn't torture for me.

00:28:03.000 It was great for me.

00:28:04.000 I enjoyed it.

00:28:05.000 But Steven took it like a man. 0.58

00:28:07.000 I mean, Steven really went under like three, four times, maybe five times.

00:28:11.000 The last time he lasted for, I think, it was like 45 seconds or something.

00:28:16.000 So Steven's a rough and tough guy, but

00:28:19.000 The idea here is that Gina Haspel was doing something that was completely legal when she was in the CIA, and now they're saying she can't be the head of the CIA, the Democrats, because she did something completely legal when she was there.

00:28:28.000 So I ask a simple question, which is, is there anyone working at the CIA during the war on terror who is now allowed to be head of the CIA?

00:28:35.000 This is what the Democrats do.

00:28:37.000 This is what folks on the left are fond of doing.

00:28:39.000 They move the field goal posts.

00:28:42.000 They move the goal posts.

00:28:43.000 What they are doing is they are saying that it was legal when she acted in the first place,

00:28:47.000 But now, I don't like what she did, and so now I'm gonna bar her.

00:28:50.000 Okay, this would be the same thing as saying there's an attorney general, like say Kamala Harris in the state of California, who did not issue same-sex marriage licenses and did not order people to issue same-sex marriage licenses before same-sex marriage was forcibly legalized by the Supreme Court in 2013.

00:29:03.000 Well, now I don't think that she should be able to run for senator or president because, you know, back then she didn't violate the law. 0.67

00:29:10.000 Well, I'm confused.

00:29:11.000 Like, Gina Haspel was doing her job at the time, and we're not talking about a Nuremberg situation here, okay?

00:29:16.000 We're not talking about you're gassing people.

00:29:18.000 We're not talking about you're shooting innocent people, and therefore you have an obligation to stop.

00:29:22.000 We are talking about torturing, or waterboarding, not even torturing, waterboarding some of the worst people on planet Earth, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in situations in which you are attempting to gain all sorts of information that can be used to stop further terrorist attacks.

00:29:34.000 And we do know that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has waterboarded a ton of times,

00:29:38.000 He actually gave up actionable intelligence to the U.S.

00:29:41.000 intelligence community.

00:29:43.000 So, in just a second, I'm going to show you the exchanges between Gina Haspel and the Democrats, because I think that they do go to show what exactly the Democrats think of the reality of difficulties in foreign policy.

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00:31:48.000 Okay, in just a second, I'm going to continue with the Gina Haspel story.

00:31:53.000 Plus, I want to talk a little bit about how Republicans can win back young people, because I have a cover story in the Weekly Standard this week, and I want to talk a little bit about that.

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00:33:40.000 So as I was mentioning, Gina Haspel, who is up for CIA, she was grilled by Democrats, and she made Democrats look pretty foolish, because the truth is, Democrats supported waterboarding for most of the 2000s, and then they decided to turn against it, and now they're ripping on her for it.

00:33:54.000 So, Dianne Feinstein, who was against waterboarding from the very beginning, she was ripping into Gina Haspel, and Gina Haspel just debunks her over and over and over. 1.00

00:34:04.000 In November and December of 2002,

00:34:08.000 Did you oversee the enhanced interrogation of al-Nashiri, which included the use of the waterboard, as publicly reported?

00:34:18.000 Exposing operational information can be damaging to sources and methods, as you know, but there is also a physical risk to officers who go out to the far ends of the globe and conduct dangerous missions, and they believe that their participation in those dangerous missions will be protected.

00:34:38.000 Okay, so there she is making a good point there to Dianne Feinstein. 0.73

00:34:41.000 That's not the only good point she made.

00:34:43.000 There is a Democrat who actually compared CIA agents to terrorists in use of torture and Haspel just took him to school.

00:34:50.000 Your response seems to be that civilized nations don't do it, but uncivilized nations do it, or uncivilized groups do it.

00:34:58.000 The United States does it to its own soldiers.

00:35:01.000 A civilized nation was doing it until it was outlawed by this Congress.

00:35:06.000 Senator, I would never obviously support inhumane treatment of any CIA officers.

00:35:13.000 We've lost CIA officers over the years to terrorists.

00:35:16.000 I just gave an example.

00:35:18.000 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed personally killed a Wall Street Journal correspondent and filmed that.

00:35:24.000 I don't think there's any comparison between CIA officers serving their country, adhering to U.S.

00:35:30.000 law, and terrorists who by their very definition are not following anybody's law.

00:35:37.000 Gina Haspel really, really taking it to Senator Jack Reed from Rhode Island.

00:35:41.000 I mean, this hearing was so bad for the Democrats that even Phil Mudd, Phil Mudd is not friendly to the Trump administration, okay?

00:35:46.000 He's a commentator over on CNN, and he just launched into these senators who are attacking Haspel, and he's totally right about this.

00:35:53.000 Let's go dirty and let's go ugly. 1.00

00:35:55.000 I was among the CIA officers 15 years ago who spoke with the Congress in detail about the techniques we used.

00:36:03.000 I spoke about the techniques that were authorized by the Department of Justice.

00:36:07.000 I spoke to Republicans and Democrats.

00:36:09.000 They were either silent or supportive.

00:36:11.000 They told us this was not torture, that it complied with the Constitution and that it complied with U.S.

00:36:16.000 law.

00:36:16.000 You can vote against Gina Haspel, but don't give me the collective amnesia about how it's on CIA.

00:36:22.000 I want to talk to the senators who told us that they represented American values, and conveniently in 2002 and 2003, this represented American values.

00:36:31.000 Now that we don't face the same threat and that we have different senators, it's okay to attack one of my former colleagues.

00:36:36.000 I am pissed off.

00:36:38.000 This is collective amnesia.

00:36:39.000 We didn't do it.

00:36:41.000 America did it.

00:36:41.000 Get over it.

00:36:42.000 Okay, exactly right.

00:36:44.000 Phil Mudd on the rampage, and for once, actually right on the money.

00:36:47.000 Okay, so well done, Phil Mudd.

00:36:49.000 It is amazing how Democrats, again, rewrite history.

00:36:51.000 And it's just demonstrative of how they rewrite history in every element.

00:36:54.000 So instead of looking at the context of the waterboarding and saying, hey, we just got hit and 3,000 Americans just died, should we pour some water over Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's face to maybe stop that?

00:37:02.000 Instead of them saying, well, you know, that was probably a pretty justified decision, or at the very least you could make a strong argument.

00:37:07.000 Now it's, anyone who did that is evil.

00:37:09.000 So I tweeted out yesterday, you know, is there anyone from that period the Democrats would be okay with running the CIA?

00:37:15.000 And I got a bunch of answers from a bunch of Democrats saying no.

00:37:17.000 So the question is, then why were you fine with James Clapper being head of CIA?

00:37:21.000 He was there too, doing the same thing.

00:37:23.000 You were fine with that.

00:37:24.000 In fact, Gina Haspel has been recommended for the job by a bunch of Obama officials who were working for the CIA at the time.

00:37:32.000 But again, it's not just unique to Democrats.

00:37:34.000 I don't just want to say it's Democrats.

00:37:35.000 John McCain, who has been anti-torture all the way along, he was anti-waterboarding all the way along, he decides that Gina Haspel is not qualified for the job of CIA director for following the law at the time.

00:37:45.000 He says, I believe Gina Haspel is a patriot who loves our country and has devoted her professional life to its service and defense.

00:37:50.000 However, her role in overseeing the use of torture is disturbing, and her refusal to acknowledge torture's immorality is disqualifying.

00:37:56.000 Okay, so now we're at the point, it's the same point that we've come to with same-sex marriage, right?

00:37:59.000 Where anybody who ever once said traditional marriage ought to be the law and same-sex marriage ought not to be the law, is disqualified from public office, right? 0.68

00:38:07.000 It flipped like five years ago.

00:38:08.000 But now anyone who believed the opposite, which was the majority of the American public at the time, all those people are thrown out of the halls of good grace.

00:38:15.000 Okay, now John McCain is trying to do the same thing to Gina Haspel.

00:38:18.000 The reality is the American public wanted Khalid Sheikh Mohammed waterboarded, and for good reason. 1.00

00:38:22.000 We didn't want more Americans to die to spare his nasal cavity.

00:38:26.000 Okay, that wasn't what we were interested in doing.

00:38:29.000 But the rewriting of history continues apace.

00:38:31.000 Every era of history, I think it is incumbent on us to not be so intellectually and morally arrogant that we can't go back and think, what was it like for people at the time?

00:38:40.000 What was their frame of reference?

00:38:42.000 This is the same thing that says that we have to take down Jefferson's statues because he held slaves.

00:38:46.000 Again, slavery was evil.

00:38:47.000 It was evil at the time.

00:38:48.000 It was evil when Jefferson was holding slaves.

00:38:51.000 But to pretend that that didn't happen in a slightly different context than you today, that you today are so much better than Thomas Jefferson was, you're a much better person than Thomas Jefferson was, you didn't live then, you didn't live in the context of slavery, you didn't live in a culture of slavery.

00:39:04.000 Maybe you are a better person, but that's because people like Thomas Jefferson paved the way for the rejection of Thomas Jefferson's own behavior with the values espoused in the Declaration of Independence.

00:39:13.000 You are a product of the culture that Thomas Jefferson helped build.

00:39:16.000 Okay?

00:39:16.000 And you are a product of the CIA that did not allow you to die in a terrorist attack because they were pursuing enhanced interrogation techniques that you now find reprehensible.

00:39:24.000 Again, none of that means that torture is okay.

00:39:26.000 None of that means waterboarding is okay.

00:39:28.000 None of that means that slavery is okay.

00:39:29.000 None of those things are okay.

00:39:31.000 But you do have to understand what people were saying and doing at the time if you really want to understand human beings and not just be somebody who stands around virtue signaling about the past.

00:39:41.000 OK, now I want to discuss for just a few minutes here.

00:39:45.000 How conservatives can reach out to young people because I have an article that's cover story in the Weekly Standards, a long essay about the generational gap between young conservatives and older conservatives in America.

00:39:56.000 And I think we're sort of uniquely qualified to talk about this issue because we have a lot of young people who listen to this program.

00:40:02.000 We also have a lot of folks who are older Republicans who listen to this program, older Americans who listen to this program.

00:40:06.000 There is a major generation gap inside the Republican Party and it largely breaks down on a couple of issues.

00:40:12.000 One issue is social issues, and by that I mean largely same-sex marriage and drug legalization, and the other is character issues.

00:40:19.000 So these generation gaps, I think, can be bridged, but I think that we have to understand what they are.

00:40:24.000 So the first issue is this libertarian approach to same-sex marriage and drug legalization.

00:40:29.000 So younger Americans look at the government and they say, the government stinks at everything.

00:40:33.000 Not only does the government stink at everything, I think the government ought to leave me alone.

00:40:36.000 In fact, I think the government ought to leave everybody alone.

00:40:38.000 So when it comes to same-sex marriage, even if I personally believe in traditional marriage, that doesn't mean that the government has a role in any of this stuff.

00:40:45.000 I think older conservatives can get with that.

00:40:46.000 I think older conservatives can understand that.

00:40:48.000 I think they can sympathize.

00:40:49.000 The drug legalization issue, it seems to come from the same place.

00:40:52.000 It's not that young people are all drugged up and doped up.

00:40:55.000 It's that they don't want the government in their business.

00:40:57.000 And I think there are a lot of conservatives who believe that too.

00:40:59.000 I think the policy issues are actually rather easy to bridge for conservatives.

00:41:02.000 I think that the character issue is a different issue.

00:41:05.000 And here, there is a serious gap.

00:41:07.000 And the gap happens to be over President Trump.

00:41:09.000 So, young conservatives do not like President Trump.

00:41:12.000 Older conservatives love President Trump.

00:41:14.000 Okay, they love him.

00:41:15.000 So, here are the polls.

00:41:17.000 Okay, the polls show

00:41:18.000 The younger Americans are moving dramatically away from the Republican Party, but one of the reasons for that is because of President Trump.

00:41:25.000 An incredible 82% of Republican and Republican-leading voters between the ages of 18 and 24 say they want another Republican to challenge President Trump for the party's nomination in 2020. 1.00

00:41:35.000 Older Americans hear this, they say young Americans are idiots. 0.99

00:41:37.000 And younger Americans hear that and they say, older Americans are fine with all the terrible things that Trump is doing. 1.00

00:41:42.000 Here's the reality.

00:41:43.000 They just have two different frames.

00:41:46.000 Young conservatives look at Trump and they say that he has bad values.

00:41:49.000 They say that he is not a person who treats women well.

00:41:51.000 They don't like what he said about Charlottesville.

00:41:54.000 He's crude about a lot of things.

00:41:56.000 Young conservatives are more likely to see Trump as an obstacle to their ability to speak to people their own age.

00:42:02.000 Okay, older conservatives judge Trump on his politics and younger conservatives judge Trump on his values.

00:42:06.000 So older conservatives love Trump because they say, look at all the great stuff he's doing.

00:42:09.000 And they're right.

00:42:09.000 And younger conservatives judge Trump on who he is as a person.

00:42:12.000 They say, look at all the terrible things he's said and done.

00:42:14.000 And they're not completely wrong.

00:42:15.000 So why do these two groups view the issue from opposite sides?

00:42:19.000 Why do they use opposite lenses?

00:42:20.000 Well, older conservatives remember fighting the Bill Clinton wars.

00:42:23.000 And they carry the scars from that.

00:42:24.000 They remember arguing that Clinton was unfit for office based on his treatment of women and his perjury.

00:42:28.000 And they remember losing that argument to the left.

00:42:31.000 They remember arguing that character counts and watching as Democrats held aloft the banner of Teddy Kennedy, right, who was creating waitress sandwiches with Chris Dodd when he wasn't drowning women in rivers.

00:42:40.000 Older conservatives remember Mitt Romney and they remember how he got just slandered and destroyed while he was the cleanest guy in the room.

00:42:47.000 And so they were looking for a hammer.

00:42:48.000 Younger conservatives, they think that the character question is still up for debate.

00:42:52.000 Older conservatives say the character question is over, we lost, let's get a guy in there who does what we want.

00:42:56.000 Younger conservatives think that the character question is still unfolding.

00:43:00.000 And they're not wrong.

00:43:01.000 It is unfolding, but only for younger Americans.

00:43:03.000 If you're older, you already made up your mind on this.

00:43:05.000 If you're young, then you want to be able to say to your friends, I'm a good person and the person I voted for is a good person.

00:43:10.000 Because you're still making up your mind on what character means.

00:43:14.000 Trump presents a serious problem for a lot of young conservatives who are trying to make the character argument in favor of the Republican Party.

00:43:20.000 When you're young, you decide how you're going to vote based on character.

00:43:23.000 As you get older, I think you start to vote more based on policy than character.

00:43:27.000 Young conservatives didn't see the battle of 2016 as a battle in which character had already lost.

00:43:31.000 They saw it as presenting a question about their own character.

00:43:34.000 Were they willing to enthusiastically back a guy that they thought was a problem?

00:43:37.000 And the answer, by and large, was no for young conservatives.

00:43:40.000 Hey, so that's a serious gap.

00:43:42.000 But again, I think that that gap can be bridged.

00:43:45.000 The way that gap is bridged is by older conservatives telling younger conservatives, listen, it's not that we think that Trump is amazing in terms of his personal character.

00:43:52.000 We don't think that he's a god king or anything.

00:43:54.000 We just like what he's doing.

00:43:55.000 And you can have both.

00:43:56.000 You can have both.

00:43:57.000 A guy who is not a character that you particularly think is great,

00:44:01.000 And some really amazing policy.

00:44:03.000 That's what older conservatives can teach younger conservatives.

00:44:06.000 And what younger conservatives can teach older conservatives is you don't have to go along with everything bad that Trump does in order to say that his policies are quite good.

00:44:14.000 And if they can come to that sort of conciliation, I think that will at least solidify the party, solidify the conservative movement in a fairly significant way.

00:44:21.000 Alrighty, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.

00:44:24.000 So, things I like.

00:44:26.000 If you haven't seen it, John Mulaney is a very funny comic.

00:44:30.000 So he had a show on Fox that was really not good.

00:44:32.000 Like, it was a really, really bad show.

00:44:34.000 But then he has a comedy special on Netflix.

00:44:35.000 His stand-up, I think, is really good.

00:44:39.000 Pretty clean.

00:44:40.000 I'd say, like, if he got rid of the cursing, it would be virtually 100% clean.

00:44:45.000 There's, like, one joke in this whole thing that's really super dirty, but it's really not a particularly dirty performance.

00:44:51.000 He gets political a little bit near the end of this.

00:44:54.000 It's John Mulaney's Kid Gorgeous at Radio City.

00:44:56.000 He's very, very talented.

00:44:57.000 It's really funny.

00:44:58.000 The first 40 minutes of this are really great.

00:44:59.000 Once he gets to politics, it starts to go off the rails because he can't help himself.

00:45:03.000 He starts off, you know, with some jokes about President Trump that are fairly innocuous and kind of funny, and then he jumps into

00:45:09.000 You know, President Obama was just the greatest.

00:45:10.000 And you're like, come on, come on.

00:45:12.000 You didn't have to go here.

00:45:13.000 But overall, very, very funny guy.

00:45:16.000 So worth watching.

00:45:17.000 Do we have a little bit of the preview of him?

00:45:19.000 OK.

00:45:21.000 This guy being the president, it's like there's a horse loose in a hospital.

00:45:27.000 It's like there's a horse loose in a hospital.

00:45:31.000 I think eventually everything's going to be OK.

00:45:34.000 But I have no idea what's going to happen next.

00:45:38.000 And neither do any of you.

00:45:39.000 And neither do your parents.

00:45:40.000 Because there's a horse loose in the hospital.

00:45:44.000 It's never happened before.

00:45:46.000 No one knows what the horse is going to do next.

00:45:49.000 Least of all the horse.

00:45:50.000 He's never been in a hospital before.

00:45:54.000 Okay, so again, this is the innocuous part, and then he gets to the part where he sort of rips into Trump, but more by praising Obama, and, of course, suggests that anyone who allowed Trump into office is a rube and all this kind of stuff.

00:46:04.000 That's the part that's annoying.

00:46:05.000 So, if this annoys you, don't watch the last 20 minutes of the special.

00:46:08.000 The first 40 minutes of the special, though, is really, really funny.

00:46:10.000 Okay, other things that I like.

00:46:12.000 Jason Whitlock.

00:46:13.000 Who partners with Colin Calherd on a show on Fox Sports 1, talking about, obviously, the sporting events of the day.

00:46:20.000 Jason is, I think, a different thinker.

00:46:22.000 We're going to try and get him on our Sunday show, I think.

00:46:25.000 And Jason says that one of the big problems that's happening in our culture right now, particularly for black folks, is that if you say that Trump is a good idea, then you just get kicked out.

00:46:32.000 He's talking about Kanye West with Tucker Carlson.

00:46:35.000 But if you just say, you know what, I think Trump has a good idea here. 0.98

00:46:41.000 You get kicked out of the black race. 1.00

00:46:44.000 Kanye's saying, I don't agree with everything Trump believes in. 0.94

00:46:48.000 Kanye disagrees with Trump and the Republican Party and conservatives on a lot of issues, but he's not willing to cast someone out of the human race just because he disagrees with them.

00:47:01.000 Okay, so Whitlock has said a lot of this sort of stuff, and for that he has been excised from large segments of the black community.

00:47:07.000 Again, I think that what we're seeing right now, there's an amazing tweet, I have to get this tweet for you, it's so good.

00:47:12.000 So, Kanye West tweeted something else out about freedom of thought.

00:47:16.000 Great!

00:47:16.000 You know, I love when Kanye West tweets that kind of stuff, because I like freedom of thought whenever anybody talks about it.

00:47:20.000 And Perez Hilton tweeted back, Kanye is enslaved to freedom of thought.

00:47:26.000 Paris Hilton tweeted that back, not Paris, Perez.

00:47:30.000 That, I think, is the problem right there.

00:47:32.000 You may be missing the point.

00:47:33.000 If you think that freedom of thought is the new slavery, or as Ta-Nehisi Coates put it, that freedom of thought is just a form of white freedom, that you're free to be white, then we can't have a conversation. 0.67

00:47:48.000 There's no conversation to be had.

00:47:49.000 You're just a tribal enthusiast and there's nothing else to be said about it.

00:47:52.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.

00:47:58.000 Alrighty, so, there's a guy who is 104 years old, he's an Australian dude, and he plans to end his life in Switzerland today.

00:48:06.000 And he apparently sang a few bars of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as he told reporters that medically assisted suicide should be more widely available and not only viewed as a last resort for the terminally ill.

00:48:15.000 So he sounded sanguine.

00:48:17.000 The British-born biologist approaching death has led some people in the country, where he came to die, to question if they want to be known as the death country, right?

00:48:24.000 Is it just going to become, you go to Switzerland because you want to kill yourself?

00:48:29.000 I have to acknowledge the

00:48:31.000 Unspoken irony of the fact that this is now being considered a wonderful thing by the media.

00:48:36.000 There's a movie called Soylent Green.

00:48:38.000 Soylent Green is most famous for Charlton Heston screaming that Soylent Green is people.

00:48:42.000 Spoiler alert.

00:48:43.000 Okay, but there's a scene near the end of the movie, Edward G. Robinson.

00:48:46.000 It's actually quite a good movie.

00:48:47.000 Edward G. Robinson plays an older guy.

00:48:49.000 All the older people in this society are encouraged to have euthanasia. 0.99

00:48:52.000 They're not sick, but the society encourages them that if you're feeling a little bit of pain, or you're feeling old, you should just go kill yourself. 0.98

00:48:59.000 So, here's the irony. 0.98

00:49:01.000 Or at least the weirdness of it.

00:49:03.000 This 104-year-old guy who's singing Beethoven's 9th as he prepares to die, that is literally what happens in Soylent Green.

00:49:09.000 Edward G. Robinson literally lies there as they play Beethoven's 7th symphony, the pastoral.

00:49:14.000 Or his 6th symphony, rather, the pastoral.

00:49:17.000 And he literally dies listening to Beethoven.

00:49:19.000 And this is a horror movie from the 1970s, but now it's a wonderful thing.

00:49:34.000 Okay, this is played as a horror thing, because it is a horrible thing, okay?

00:49:38.000 I'm sorry, killing yourself to Beethoven is still not a great thing, because while everyone wants to believe that there is such a thing as a beautiful death, there really is no such thing as a beautiful death.

00:49:48.000 There is just death, okay?

00:49:49.000 Some deaths can be more peaceful and more comfortable, but death does not become beautiful just because you're playing Beethoven in the background, and assisted suicide doesn't become more moral just because you're listening to good music when you do it.

00:49:59.000 So it's pretty amazing.

00:50:00.000 The Swiss Federal Statistics Office says the number of assisted suicides has been growing fast.

00:50:04.000 Nine years ago, there were 297.

00:50:05.000 By 2015, the most recent year tabulated, the figure had more than tripled to 965.

00:50:07.000 Nearly 15% of the cases last year were people under 65 years of age.

00:50:17.000 Hey, the West is literally killing itself.

00:50:19.000 And the West is killing itself because they don't see the inherent value in human life anymore, and human life is something that can be disposed of as you see fit.

00:50:27.000 That's a serious, major moral issue, I think, that we're all going to have to deal with.

00:50:32.000 I think in the 70s, they used to have a concept that this was a bad thing.

00:50:35.000 Now, apparently, this will be played as like a peaceful ending to a movie, actually, now.

00:50:38.000 So that's pretty great.

00:50:39.000 OK, we'll be back here tomorrow with all the latest.

00:50:41.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:50:41.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:50:46.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Mathis Glover.

00:50:48.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:50:50.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:50:52.000 Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:50:54.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:50:55.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.

00:50:57.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.

00:50:58.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

00:51:01.000 Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - May 10, 2018

The Iranian War | Ep. 536

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