The media fawn over an evil dictatorship. President Trump presents a budget that has no fiscal limits whatsoever. Plus, the worst portraits in human history are unveiled at the Smithsonian of Barack and Michelle Obama. Plus, Jeff Flake criticizes President Trump for making overtures to dictators like Vladimir Putin and calls them un-American . Ben Shapiro is a conservative commentator and writer who has been critical of the President of the United States for many years. He is a regular contributor to CNN and other media outlets. He is also a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard and has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, and the New York Post. He has been a frequent guest on Fox News, CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, CBS and other network news outlets, and is an avid collector of conspiracy theories and conspiracy theories. His latest book, Conspiracy Theories is out now and is available for pre-order on Amazon Prime and Vimeo worldwide. You can also get a copy of the book for only $99.99. by clicking here. If you like what you hear on The Ben Shapiro Show, you'll love it! Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe on iTunes and leave us a rating and review on iTunes. Thanks for listening and reviewing the show! I'll be looking out for your thoughts on the show in next week's next episode of the Ben Shapiro show on Tuesday, Ben Shapiro's "The Dark Side of the Street." and all future episodes on The FiveThirtyEight Podcasts. Subscribe and subscribe to Ben Shapiro Podcasts on Podchaser and other social media platforms! Thank you so you can be a supporter of the show. Ben's work is getting the highest quality and the most authentic, high-quality journalism in the world. I'm looking forward to hearing from Ben Shapiro on social media! Ben is a real Ben Shapiro. Thank you Ben Shapiro, too! and I'm listening to you, too Ben Shapiro and I hope you're listening to the best of Ben Shapiro s work, too much more than that, right here, right now! . . . Ben Shapiro Outtro: - The Dark Side Of This Is My Name is My Name? by , is a podcast by Ben Shapiro: The White House Podcast by . and in this episode is on this episode of
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00:02:03.000Okay, so the Olympics were happening over the weekend.
00:02:07.000And you would think, well, this would be a good time to point out that they're happening in South Korea, the Winter Olympics.
00:02:12.000It would be a good time to point out that South Korea is a wonderful place and North Korea is, to borrow some language from President Trump, a bleephole.
00:02:55.000His uncle he killed by tossing him to dogs, and his brother-in-law I believe he murdered in a VX attack.
00:03:00.000He actually used a weapon of mass destruction in a public place.
00:03:02.000He sent an assassin to basically put a handkerchief filled with a deadly spore over the guy's face and killed him outright.
00:03:10.000Well, that would be an example of a bad country.
00:03:14.000What is not an example of a bad country is the United States.
00:03:16.000And if we're going to talk about people who are forwarding the aspirations of bad countries, you don't actually start with President Trump.
00:03:21.000So Jeff Flake, who's the senator from Arizona, has been very critical of the president of the United States because he says that President Trump has said ridiculous things about the press.
00:03:29.000He said that President Trump has made overtures to regimes like Vladimir Putin's, which has been true more in theory than in practice.
00:03:35.000Here's Jeff Flake going after Trump for giving support to dictators.
00:03:38.000Then I'm going to show you who actually gives support to dictators.
00:03:40.000I think the president needs to stop calling Democrats or Republicans or others who don't stand or applaud at every line that he has, that they're un-American.
00:03:56.000And when he talks about fake news, for example, I gave another speech where I talked about how that gives aid and comfort to authoritarians around the world who are now labeling their opposition or dismissing real dissent as fake news.
00:04:16.000OK, the reason that I'm showing this is because the media—this has been the media line, right?
00:04:19.000Chris Cuomo yesterday tweeted out that the media have been under assault from President Trump.
00:04:24.000And the reason people don't trust the media is because the media have been ripped apart by the president of the United States.
00:04:28.000This, of course, is the typical line, is that dictators all over the world are taking their cues from President Trump because President Trump is so unfriendly to the press.
00:04:35.000OK, now let's talk about why people actually hate the press.
00:04:37.000The real reason people hate the press is because the press are a bunch of sycophants when it comes to some of the worst dictators on planet Earth.
00:04:44.000Jack Tapper at CNN, notably, has been ripping other members of the press for kissing up to the North Korean regime.
00:04:48.000But the sister of Kim Jong-un arrived in South Korea for the Olympics, and she was giving some pretty spectacular side-eye to Mike Pence.
00:04:56.000And because Mike Pence is evil, as we all know from how he hates gay people, apparently, Mike Pence has to be given side-eye.
00:05:01.000If you don't give Mike Pence side-eye, this means that you are a bad person.
00:05:04.000But if you do give Mike Pence side-eye, you can go back home to a regime that routinely murders thousands of people, that shoots deserters, that attempts to take everyone who tries to make trade with the outside world and kills them, and the media will just kiss her rear.
00:05:52.000We've just had two full years of the media explaining that Mike Pence and Donald Trump want to turn women in the United States into refugees from the Handmaid's Tale.
00:06:00.000In the Handmaid's Tale, women are forced to wear red uniforms, procreate at the whim of the dictatorship, and do everything the dictators tell them to do.
00:06:08.000Then, there's the North Korean cheer squad, which wears red uniforms, gets pregnant and has abortions whenever the regime tells them to.
00:07:10.000And when they did that Olympics, the opening ceremonies were thousands of people marching in unison and waving their arms in unison and it truly was an amazing spectacle.
00:07:19.000And the media was just excited about it because whenever people just become little widgets to be manipulated by the state, the media
00:07:26.000Oh my goodness, look at the coordination.
00:07:27.000Look at the magical coordination of all the people.
00:07:42.000I'd clap in time, too, if they were threatening to shoot my family back home if I didn't clap properly and smile properly for the cameras because of the Juche, which is what they call the regime in North Korea.
00:07:52.000They have this philosophy of Juche, which suggests that there's a cult of personality worship for the great leaders in North Korea.
00:07:58.000Here are some more headlines from the media celebrating all of this, of course.
00:08:02.000So, we can go back to, we have the Wall Street Journal.
00:08:05.000Amid Olympic detente, Pence snubs North Koreans and visits PyeongChang.
00:08:10.000Oh, how dare Mike Pence snub the North Koreans?
00:08:12.000Is he supposed to be nice to the lady?
00:08:14.000He didn't stand for the North Korean national anthem.
00:08:17.000So, according to the left media, it is good when Americans don't stand for the national anthem, but it is bad when Mike Pence doesn't stand for the North Korean national anthem.
00:08:26.000The American national anthem standing for the freest country in the history of the world?
00:08:29.000Good when American citizens kneel for it.
00:08:31.000Bad when Mike Pence doesn't stand for the anthem for a country that is oppressing millions of its own people, 20 million of its own people at current count.
00:08:53.000He was the college student who traveled over to North Korea, idiotically, and then tried to supposedly steal a poster from a hotel room, and they literally beat him to death.
00:09:01.000I mean, they beat him so badly that by the time he was returned to his parents at home, he died in the hospital just days later.
00:09:07.000But how dare Fred Warmbier criticize the North Korean Olympic spirit?
00:09:20.000The only decent one was from BuzzFeed, which shows you how crazy things are, saying, When BuzzFeed is the voice of reason, you know something has gone intensely wrong with the moral fabric inside the
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00:11:05.000Stamps.com, you use that promo code Shapiro as well.
00:11:07.000So that was not the extent of the media's fawning coverage of North Korea.
00:11:18.000If diplomatic dance were an event at the Winter Olympics, Kim Jong-un's younger sister would be favored to win gold.
00:11:23.000With a smile, a handshake, and a warm message in South Korea's presidential guestbook, Kim Yo-jong has strung a cord with the public just one day into the Pyeongchang Games.
00:11:32.000I hope Pyongyang and Seoul get closer in our people's hearts and move forward the future of prosperous unification, she said in her guestbook message referring to the capitals of North and South Korea.
00:11:40.000By the way, that's not a nice message.
00:11:42.000If you think that's a nice message, it's because you don't know anything about North Korea.
00:11:44.000It has been part of North Korea's regime.
00:11:47.000It's been part of their stated goal since literally the first day it was initiated.
00:11:52.000The stated goal of North Korea is reunification of South Korea and North Korea under the auspices of the Kim family.
00:11:57.000This has been their goal since the foundation of the North Korean regime in 1950.
00:12:02.000The idea that this was some sort of overture, oh yeah, let's get together and have a republic, a federated republic.
00:12:18.000Seen by some as her brother's answer to American first daughter Ivanka Trump, Kim at 30 is not only a powerful member of Kim Jong-un's kitchen cabinet, but also a foil to the perception of North Korea's antiquated militaristic.
00:12:31.000Have you ever seen those photos at nighttime from space of North Korea and South Korea?
00:12:35.000South Korea completely lit up, North Korea completely dark, except for Pyongyang, the capital.
00:12:40.000There's literally one light there, which is probably the presidential palace.
00:12:44.000I love that they say that she's the answer to Ivanka Trump.
00:12:46.000Last time I checked, Ivanka Trump isn't forwarding the deaths of tens of thousands of people one day at a time.
00:12:52.000Last I checked, for all of the things people say about Ivanka Trump, she isn't standing up for her evil brother who's sitting around trying to launch nuclear weapons at people around the world.
00:13:27.000In her first appearance on the global stage, Kim Yo-jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, had her every move closely scrutinized.
00:13:45.000Crowds applauded as she stood for the South Korean anthem during the opening ceremony for the start of the Winter Olympic Games, while her big smiles and relaxed manner left a largely positive impression on the South Korean public.
00:13:56.000I mean, this is Walter Duranty-quality stuff.
00:13:58.000For folks who don't know, Walter Duranty was a reporter for The New York Times, and he famously traveled in, I think it was 1930, 31, over to Russia, where he promptly said that everyone in Russia was doing great.
00:14:45.000But the North Korean first sister had none of the hallmarks of power and wealth that Koreans south of the divide have come to expect.
00:14:50.000In looks-obsessed South Korea, many 20-something women list plastic surgery and brand-name bags as life goals.
00:14:55.000Most of all, Kim Yo-jong was an enigma.
00:14:57.000Just like them, but nothing like them.
00:14:59.000A woman with a sphinx-like smile who gave nothing away during her three-day Olympic-related visit to South Korea as brother Kim Jong-un's special envoy.
00:15:29.000Again, the media have a certain love for Marxist dictatorships that they certainly do not have even for, I'd say, the American system of government in some ways.
00:15:38.000They would never cover an emissary from America that way if they were the foreign press.
00:15:45.000There is something else going on here, obviously, and that is that the Trump administration is at direct odds with the North Korean regime.
00:15:51.000And the Trump derangement syndrome that has arisen in the media is so crazy that Mike Pence being in South Korea, the Trump administration being the president, Trump being the president,
00:16:01.000And that means the enemy of my enemy is my friend, even if that means my enemy—the enemy of my enemy is actually an evil, repressive North Korean dictatorship that slaughters tens of thousands of its own people on a regular basis.
00:16:11.000By the way, if you actually want to help, if you actually want to help and do something about this, my friend Bethany Mandel is a big fundraiser for the Free North Korean Charity.
00:16:23.000This is one of the ways that you can actually help smuggle people
00:16:27.000If you're in the media and your life has led you to the point where you are propping up some of the worst people on planet Earth because you hate Donald Trump that much, let me suggest that you go back and repent your sins.
00:16:52.000It's one of the things I hate most about politics.
00:16:54.000This enemy of my enemy is my friend nonsense.
00:16:58.000I hated it when it was the Trump campaign doing it with the alt-right during the campaign.
00:17:01.000I hate it when it's the American media doing it with North Korea.
00:17:04.000It's worse when it's North Korea, because that's an actual foreign foe.
00:17:07.000Like, the alt-right is a relatively small force in American politics.
00:17:10.000They've been marginalized, I think, at this point, despite the original attempts by the Trump campaign to integrate them into the Trump campaign.
00:17:16.000I think they've been marginalized by this point, thank God.
00:17:18.000But I think North Korea, obviously, is a major foreign threat.
00:17:21.000And what they've been doing lately—firing nuclear-tipped missiles, or at least dropping nuclear bombs in nuclear tests, firing long-range missiles—this stuff is extraordinarily destabilizing.
00:17:31.000And when the media are cheering them on, it makes the North Korean regime feel that if they keep up the pressure on the United States, eventually the United States will grant them more concessions.
00:17:39.000Understand, the North Korean economy is almost entirely dependent on infusions of foreign capital.
00:17:44.000Those infusions of foreign capital happen because of blackmail.
00:17:47.000The reason the North Koreans keep firing off long-range ballistic missiles is because they want the West to come to the table and then give them money as a payoff.
00:17:53.000They did this in the 90s with Bill Clinton.
00:17:55.000They did it in the 2000s with George W. Bush.
00:18:04.000The sanctions we've placed on them are not nearly harsh enough.
00:18:06.000Nicholas Eberstadt has an excellent column over at Commentary magazine, very long piece, comprehensive piece, about the situation in North Korea.
00:18:13.000What he suggests is that we make the sanctions significantly harsher on North Korea.
00:18:19.000But the fact that the media are granting all sorts of credibility to a regime simply because that regime is anti-Trump is both morally dubious and ethically astonishing.
00:18:29.000I mean, the Washington Post slogan is, democracy dies in darkness.
00:18:33.000Perhaps the slogan for the entire media right now ought to be, North Koreans die in darkness, because while they are glowing about Kim Jong-un's little sister, they are
00:18:44.000They're ignoring the fate of the people who are being slaughtered en masse in North Korea.
00:21:01.000With Trump's angle, which I think has some serious moral holes in it.
00:21:04.000I'm going to discuss all of that in just a second.
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00:22:10.000Okay, so, President Trump makes these comments about Rob Porter.
00:22:17.000Now, I know that there are a lot of people who are Republicans, who are conservatives, who are unhappy with me that I disagree with the President on this.
00:22:23.000The reason that I disagree with the President on this is because I am not sitting in a court of law.
00:22:30.000If you think that it is your job to grant innocence until proven guilty, if that is your job just as a citizen, not as a juror, if your job as a citizen is innocence until proven guilty, I'd want to know why you were chanting, lock her up, along with Donald Trump.
00:22:42.000Hillary Clinton was not indicted or tried for any crime, nor was she convicted of any crime.
00:22:46.000Yet most Republicans feel that Hillary Clinton committed a crime.
00:22:57.000Not the same thing as being convicted of a crime.
00:22:59.000There are lots of people who have committed crimes and gotten away with it.
00:23:02.000There are lots of people who should have been indicted, who should have been tried, who should have gone to jail, and were not.
00:23:08.000There was a restraining order taken out against Rob Porter.
00:23:11.000Police didn't press charges because the ex-wives apparently didn't want to press charges.
00:23:14.000But the idea that simply by declaring you're innocent, suddenly you are innocent, that obviously is not true in any real sense.
00:23:21.000Even more than that, there's a real inconsistency to President Trump here.
00:23:24.000President Trump says, you know, we need innocence until proven guilty.
00:23:28.000This is the same guy who said that Barack Obama was born in Kenya without any evidence and maintained that for years.
00:23:33.000This is the same guy who said that Ted Cruz was ineligible for the presidency and that Ted Cruz's father was complicit in the murder of JFK with no evidence.
00:23:42.000This is the same guy who still says that the Central Park Five are guilty despite DNA evidence exonerating the Central Park Five.
00:23:48.000President Trump is not exactly famous for not jumping to conclusions.
00:23:52.000Every time there's a terror attack, President Trump, I think rightly, jumps to the conclusion, in many cases, that if it looks like an Islamic terror attack, it's probably an Islamic terror attack.
00:24:00.000He doesn't say innocent until proven guilty in those cases.
00:24:04.000President Trump is not famous for innocence until proven guilty.
00:25:15.000Mike Tyson, when he was alleged to have committed rape, Donald Trump has said that he doesn't think that that actually happened.
00:25:20.000Now, President Trump has a long history of standing by the sides of men who are accused of sexual assault and sexual harassment and sexual allegations and then saying, they say they're innocent, therefore they're innocent.
00:25:31.000But he's never held the same standard with regard to any other crime.
00:25:34.000Which I think betrays a hole in the man's moral character.
00:25:37.000I think that you ought to use the same standards of evidence for any of this stuff, whether you're talking murder, or whether you're talking financial irregularities, or whether you're talking sexual assault and sexual harassment.
00:25:47.000If someone provides a credible account with some supporting evidence, then that is enough to at least say that maybe the guy's guilty.
00:25:56.000There's not a criminal in prison who doesn't say he's innocent, right?
00:25:58.000This is a joke in the Shawshank Redemption.
00:26:00.000Right, that everybody says they're innocent?
00:26:02.000The reason is because if you are convicted of a crime, of course you're going to maintain that you're innocent.
00:26:05.000If you're brought up in front of a judge, of course you're going to say that you're innocent.
00:26:08.000Everybody who's ever been accused of anything says that they're innocent.
00:26:10.000Anthony Weiner says that he was hacked originally before he admits that he was sending pictures of his junk to random women on the internet.
00:26:20.000Donald Trump has been accused of sexual assault and sexual harassment by a multiplicity of women, and he says, I'm innocent, therefore all the women are lying.
00:26:27.000So he'd be in a hard spot if he said Rob Porter is probably guilty of something, because then people would say, well, you know, you have allegations just like Rob Porter does.
00:27:17.000I am making the case that President Trump, in defending Rob Porter here by saying he's innocent, or he says he's innocent, is making really a case for himself.
00:27:47.000You can say you love everything that he's doing.
00:27:49.000I like some of the things that he's doing.
00:27:50.000But it is still incumbent on you to make a moral decision about what behavior you're going to tolerate and what standard you hold people to.
00:27:56.000And I'm not even talking about Trump's behavior.
00:27:58.000I'm talking about Rob Porter's behavior.
00:27:59.000If you like Trump, does that mean you have to defend Trump's defense of Rob Porter?
00:28:05.000I think that you are allowed to say what is bad and what is good.
00:28:08.000Now, instead of doing that, because people can't stand cognitive dissonance, a bunch of members of the Trump administration, or former members of the Trump administration, are blaming everybody except for John Kelly, who apparently knew about this and let it go with Rob Porter, and Don McGahn, the White House counsel.
00:28:21.000Sebastian Gorka, the former member of the Trump administration, he came out and he blamed the CIA bureaucracy.
00:29:22.000He didn't commit a crime here, but it's up to President Trump to figure out whether Kelly has compromised his administration to such an extent that he should go.
00:29:41.000And that other problem is that Republicans feel compelled to say nice things in front of President Trump because they're afraid of alienating the president because he is so thin-skinned.
00:29:50.000So, for example, Rand Paul came out and he was struggling to avoid condemning President Trump.
00:32:53.000So there's Barack Obama just sitting there in the bush.
00:32:54.000It makes perfect sense, because the truth is that, aside from Obama's talk, the president of the United States was not a particularly useful guy, particularly on foreign policy.
00:33:03.000He did not forward the ball on foreign policy.
00:33:05.000He sort of sat there while people got slaughtered in Syria, sat there while Iran developed a nuclear program, sat there while Israel was under siege, sat there during the Arab Spring, sat there as riots happened in major American cities.
00:33:15.000So I think it's actually a pretty good likeness of President Obama.
00:33:19.000I think that's not a bad portrait of the president.
00:33:22.000Yeah, they're always saying we have to do something creative with the portraits.
00:33:24.000Very important we do something creative.
00:33:26.000So the artists said something about how we wanted to show that Obama's presidency was—was he the form figure or was he just being swallowed by history?
00:33:33.000Was he the driver of history or was he just a representative of it?
00:33:37.000And then apparently the various flowers here signify flowers from Kenya and flowers from Hawaii and flowers from Chicago.
00:33:43.000I don't know what the flower from Chicago is.
00:36:09.000One of the fun things about being a Republican, apparently, is you get to scream about fiscal responsibility until the point you get elected, at which point you just blow out the spending.
00:36:15.000So according to the Washington Post, President Trump on Monday was going to offer this budget plan.
00:36:19.000It falls far short of eliminating the government's deficit over 10 years, conceding that huge tax cuts and new spending increases make this goal unattainable.
00:36:26.000Three people familiar with the proposal said,
00:36:28.000Eliminating the budget deficit over 10 years has been a north star for the Republican Party for several decades, and GOP lawmakers took the government to the brink of default in 2011, demanding a vote on an amendment to the Constitution that would prohibit the federal government from spending more than it takes in.
00:36:41.000That was something the Democrats used to back, too.
00:36:44.000House Speaker Paul Ryan, who's a fiscal conservative, supposedly, when he used to chair the House Budget Committee, routinely proposed tax and spending outlines that would eliminate the deficit over 10 years, even though critics said that this would lead to a severe curtailment in government programs, because in order for you to actually fix the programs, that means that you have to restructure Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security.
00:37:01.000Instead, we're actually expending Medicaid, we're expanding Medicare, and we're expanding Social Security, apparently, in the new budget.
00:37:09.000In 2013, Paul Ryan proposed $4.6 trillion in cuts over 10 years, an amount he said was sufficient to eliminate the deficit.
00:37:15.000Those changes were not adopted by Congress or supported by the Obama administration.
00:37:18.000But now, it turns out Republicans don't care after all.
00:37:37.000Apparently, it includes a bunch of new spending on infrastructure.
00:37:40.000Particularly, they're now putting forth a $1.5 trillion infrastructure budget that would include $200 billion of American taxpayer money being spent on infrastructure.
00:37:52.000One of the things that's always puzzled me about this infrastructure argument is why not just devolve it to the state?
00:37:56.000Why not make it California's responsibility to do upkeep on its own roads?
00:38:00.000The idea that you needed a national highway structure, that you needed Eisenhower's national highway system, is not true, and hardcore libertarians will tell you this.
00:38:07.000The fact is that Route 66—I've said this before on the program—Route 66, which Nat King Cole used to sing about, right?
00:38:14.000That used to be a thing because it was a state highway connected with another state highway.
00:38:18.000Then we built the interstate highway system.
00:38:21.000And the interstate highway system supposedly made travel that much more convenient, but it made all of these towns ghost towns because they were no longer serving state interests.
00:38:29.000They were now serving supposedly federal interests.
00:38:33.000We spent an awful lot of money on the national highway system.
00:38:35.000Listen, I enjoy driving on the highways as much as the next guy, but the idea that it wouldn't have existed without states is just not true.
00:38:40.000There are state highway systems, and they just would have connected to one another.
00:38:43.000So where are these cuts supposed to take place?
00:38:45.000Well, the budget is expected to target spending cuts at social welfare programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program.
00:39:13.000$13 billion over the next two years to combat the opioid epidemic.
00:39:16.000If you want to combat the opioid epidemic, then you actually should curb Medicaid.
00:39:19.000One of the big problems that they've had is that everywhere that Medicaid has expanded, opioid addiction has expanded, because Medicaid actually covers the ability to get cheap opioid painkillers.
00:39:29.000There have been several studies that have been done on this particular point.
00:39:33.000Bottom line is that Trump is blowing out the budget now.
00:39:35.000The media's coverage of this is always really interesting, because they suggest that this is the end of the world, that he's blowing out the budget.
00:39:43.000First of all, this budget is not going to pass.
00:39:44.000Second of all, the Democrats used to routinely propose budgets like this, just as big, and the media never covered it this way.
00:39:50.000The media always covered these budget-busting budgets as something fine and decent.
00:40:02.000It's still not good for Republicans that we are proposing this kind of spending and demonstrative of the fact that Republicans have been lying about this stuff for years.
00:40:10.000The budget calls for $716 billion in defense spending in 2019 in order to rebuild the military.
00:40:17.000And again, it includes that trillion-dollar infrastructure program.
00:40:20.000The White House budget assumes economic growth will accelerate from 2.3% last year to 3% this year and 3.2% next year, spurred on by the tax cut.
00:40:31.000Even with that assumption of robust economic growth, the federal deficit is expected to hit 4.2% of GDP this year and 4.7% next year.
00:40:40.000It's usual, as they note, for the deficit to increase during recessions.
00:40:44.000It is not usual for the deficit to increase
00:40:47.000During peacetime, non-recessions, and that's exactly what is happening here.
00:40:50.000So once again, this demonstrates this bizarre notion in the American public mind that we like to cut spending when we don't actually like to cut spending, right?
00:40:58.000We don't actually like cutting spending.
00:41:00.000We like to pretend that we like cutting spending, and then as soon as someone says, well, I guess we're going to have to cut something, then everybody protests and goes totally crazy over it.
00:41:07.000OK, in other news, apparently the—sorry, quick note.
00:41:12.000There are Republicans who are butting back against this.
00:41:15.000Jim Jordan, one of our favorite Congress people from Ohio, he came out and he said that the spending increases that were included in the major spending bill that was passed last week by the House, this is unsustainable.
00:41:25.000You asked me if there's concerns with the Speaker.
00:41:27.000I think there are big concerns because he just presided over one of the biggest spending increases in the history of this country at a time when we were elected to do just the opposite.
00:41:37.000OK, in other news, it looks like Israel is drawing closer to possible war with Iran over the weekend in news that has gone largely ignored, except on Drudge Report.
00:42:56.000And so, the more that Iran exercises and flexes its muscle, the more those countries are going to be forced to take military action in response.
00:43:07.000Now, a picture of Obama receding into the bushes, even that is a little too generous for Obama's policy on Iran, which was not receding into the bushes.
00:43:13.000It was absolutely handing Iran the pathway to a nuclear bomb, as well as regional power.
00:43:18.000And that has serious consequences, including for our allies over in Israel, and not just in Israel, but also in Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
00:43:54.000So, we are now going to do some things I like and things I hate.
00:43:56.000But first, you're going to have to go over and subscribe over at dailywire.com.
00:44:00.000$9.99 a month gets you a subscription to dailywire.com.
00:44:02.000When you get that, you get the rest of my show live.
00:44:04.000You get the rest of Andrew Clavin's show live.
00:44:05.000You get the rest of Michael Moll's awful show live.
00:44:07.000Also, if you really love Michael Moll's that much, if you really love that guy, well Valentine's Day is coming up.
00:44:12.000So you and Michael Moll's sitting in a tree,
00:44:15.000K-I-S-S-I-N-G, or R-E-A-D-I-N-G, emails to one another, because this Wednesday, February 14th, 5 p.m.
00:44:22.000Eastern, the lonely, desperate, pathetic Michael Knowles will be literally waiting for your questions in our next episode of The Conversation.
00:44:27.000Yes, he's been thrown out of his home, and he'll have nothing to do for Valentine's Day, and that's why he will be here, streaming live on Facebook, YouTube, and The Daily Wire website.
00:44:36.000Only subscribers can join the website and ask the questions.
00:44:38.000To ask questions as a subscriber, log in to our website at dailywire.com, head over to The Conversation page, and watch the live stream after that.
00:44:45.000Start typing into the Daily Wire chat box.
00:44:46.000Michael will answer live questions as they come in for an entire hour and make inane references while smoking a cigar and hopefully wearing pants.
00:44:53.000Once again, subscribe to get your questions answered by Michael Molls this Valentine's Day on Wednesday, February 14th at 5pm Eastern, 2pm Pacific.
00:45:00.000If you hate Valentine's Day and you find it egregious and insufferable,
00:45:03.000Make it even worse by joining Michael Mowles with The Conversation at 5 p.m.
00:46:10.000But I do care about being a gentleman, because I think that gentlemen are people who understand that women and children are to be protected, innocence is to be protected.
00:46:18.000And good principles are worth fighting for.
00:46:20.000So go over and check them out at Enlightened Women.
00:46:23.000And I have an interview over there about what it means to be a man.
00:46:27.000And what I suggest is that we should stop criticizing manliness.
00:46:30.000We should start talking instead about what manliness actually is.
00:46:33.000So check out the network of Enlightened Women over at their Facebook page because they were nice enough to give me an award and therefore I will pump them because I'm just that kind of person.
00:46:42.000OK, time for a couple of things that—well, sorry, you know, one more thing that I like.
00:46:46.000There's a good book out by a guy named David Banson.
00:47:14.000Crisis of Responsibility by David Bamson.
00:47:17.000Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.
00:47:22.000So Robert De Niro was over in the United Arab Emirates, and there he was ripping the United States, because this is what we do.
00:47:28.000We praise North Korea, and we rip the United States.
00:47:30.000Hollywood star Robert De Niro, according to Page Six, took aim at the Trump administration's stance on climate change, telling a packed audience in the Middle East that he was visiting from a backward country suffering from temporary insanity.
00:47:41.000Which is something that I definitely want to hear from the star of Meet the Fockers.
00:47:44.000That's clearly something that I think is deeply important.
00:47:47.000He said in the country he's describing, and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency suggested last week, global warming may be a good thing for humanity.
00:47:54.000He said, I'm talking about my own country, the United States of America.
00:47:57.000We don't like to say we are a backward country, so let's just say we're suffering from a case of temporary insanity.
00:48:01.000And he received applause and laughs when he said the U.S.
00:48:03.000will eventually cure itself by voting our dangerous leader out of office.
00:48:07.000He spoke Sunday at Dubai's World Government Summit.
00:48:08.000There's a certain irony to him speaking in one of the world's leading producers of oil.
00:48:14.000United Arab Emirates, their entire wealth base is oil.
00:48:18.000It's why the GDP per capita in UAE is extraordinarily high, and there he is jabbering about global warming and the dangers of it, and one of the leading oil producers on planet Earth, and then ripping the United States for our supposed craziness over global warming in a country that regularly represses women, does not allow Israelis to visit, as far as I'm aware, and is a backward country in a ton of cultural respects.
00:48:43.000He goes there, and he kisses their butt, and he talks about how terrible Trump is.
00:48:46.000Again, for the left, the enemy of their enemy is their friend, and that means that their supposed enemy in the UAE is not their enemy at all.
00:48:52.000These people are friends because they don't like Donald Trump.
00:48:54.000So long as they don't like Donald Trump, that means they're wonderful, wonderful human beings, which is just the worst moral code I can imagine.
00:49:02.000So, a 42-year-old man has now married his daughter, and he was arrested for it.
00:49:07.000So, according to Frank Kemp over at Daily Wire, a Virginia man and his 20-year-old biological daughter face incest charges after having a child together.
00:49:15.000In 1998, Stephen Walter Plattel and his then-wife gave their daughter, Katie Plattel, up for adoption.
00:49:19.000Approximately 18 years later, Katie found her birth parents using social media.
00:49:23.000By August 2016, she was living with the couple and their other biological children in their Virginia home.
00:49:27.000And then, according to warrants, Stephen Plattel and his wife legally separated in November 2016, and the wife moved out.
00:49:32.000Plato's wife claimed her husband had begun sleeping on the floor in Katie's room prior to her vacating the home.
00:49:37.000In May 2017, the wife discovered that Stephen had impregnated Katie.
00:49:40.000According to WNCN-TV, she then confronted Stephen and admitted that he and Katie had been involved in a sexual relationship, resulting in the conception of a child.
00:49:47.000And on July 21st, there was an Instagram post showing a pregnant daughter with her biological father saying that they were married now, which is just horrifying.
00:49:58.000Now, I have a question for folks on the left and cultural libertarians.
00:50:08.000And don't give me all the stuff about two-headed babies.
00:50:10.000It's quite possible that the baby won't be two-headed.
00:50:11.000It's possible the baby will be healthy.
00:50:13.000And let's suggest, for just a second, that you were infertile.
00:50:16.000Would that make the situation any better?
00:50:18.000See, according to the left, the only thing that matters when it comes to sexual relationships is the value of consent.
00:50:22.000So if both parties are consenting, did something truly terrible happen here?
00:50:25.000One of the things that's very interesting about the way human morality works, Jonathan Haidt points this out in his book The Righteous Mind, is that there are several different variables that we use to determine our morality.
00:50:34.000One of those variables that is completely ignored by the left is the value of purity.
00:50:38.000The idea that there is something to the human soul that is schmutzed up, right?
00:50:41.000There's something to the human soul that is dirtied by activities like incest.
00:50:46.000That there's just something inherently wrong with incest.
00:50:57.000And forget about whether it should be illegal or not on a libertarian level, think about whether it is morally wrong.
00:51:01.000So Jonathan Haidt starts his book talking about various different kind of gross things that people could do that cultural libertarians would say was okay, like having sex with a dead body, for example.
00:51:55.000There's an inherent value to respecting your elders, for example, because they may know something that you don't.
00:51:58.000That's something the left doesn't agree with.
00:51:59.000And sanctity or purity abhors for disgusting things the idea that you are more than just a collection of your body parts.
00:52:06.000This is something the left doesn't agree with either.
00:52:07.000So before you start condemning the daughter and the father who got married and had a baby, and you on the left, you need to examine what are your moral principles and maybe you think that it's totally fine.
00:52:16.000If you do think it's fine, then maybe you should consider whether you are fine, whether that is actually a proper moral standard to hold.
00:53:20.000He says the problem here is lack of federal capacity, right?
00:53:22.000If you don't have any centralized power at all, and you don't have the power of enforcement, it's going to be extremely difficult for you to actually be able to enforce America's interests at the national level.
00:53:31.000He says that what the federal government needs is the power of coercion.
00:53:34.000He says government implies the power of making laws.
00:53:37.000It is essential to the idea of a law that it be attended with a sanction.
00:53:40.000Or in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience.
00:53:42.000If there be no penalty annexed to disobedience, the resolutions or commands which pretend to be laws will in fact amount to nothing more than advice or recommendation.
00:53:51.000If government is coercion, that means that government should be used very sparingly.
00:53:55.000And this is something the founders understood as well.
00:53:57.000So while they're calling for more centralization of power, there is a happy medium.
00:54:01.000The government needs the power to coerce in cases where the government is protecting life, liberty, and property.
00:54:05.000In other cases, the government is a big gun.
00:54:07.000It is a giant killing people machine, a giant imprisoning people machine, a giant enforcement machine.
00:54:12.000The government is a coercion machine, and therefore it has to be used sparingly, and we have to be very careful about where we give the government the power of the sword and where we do not.
00:54:20.000Okay, we will be back here tomorrow with all the latest news updates.