Arya Stark is the flag for the resistance, but is she really? Ben Shapiro explains why. Plus, a defense of Trump on Russia, and the single greatest thing The Daily Wire has ever released in the history of its existence. Plus we'll get to the latest in Things I Like and Things I Don't like, and we'll also get to Trump's defense of Russia, which is not that wonderful. Thanks to our sponsor, Texture, for sponsoring this episode of The Ben Shapiro Show. You can get a 14-day free trial to Texture by using the promo code TRIPLETOKE14 for 14 days of unlimited access to all of our premium member-only courses, including the Daily Wire's "Things I Like" newsletter. Use the discount code: CRIMINALS at checkout to get 15% off your first month, and get 20% off the entire year when you sign up for $99.99 plus shipping, handling, and handling fees when you become a patron! If you like the show and want to become a supporter, you can do so here: bit.ly/support-the-ben-show and get 10% off for a year, plus free shipping on all future orders, plus we'll throw in an additional 14 days free shipping when you join our VIP membership starting next month! Thanks, Ben Shapiro is a supporter of the show, and he'll be giving you an ad-free version of his new book, Things I like! starting in 2020. Subscribe to the show! Subscribe here! Learn more about Ben Shapiro: Subscribe, rate, and review the show on Apple Podcasts, and subscribe on Audible Subscribe on iTunes and leave us a review on iTunes? Rate and review on Podcoin? Subscribe in iTunes! Rate/subscribe to The FiveThirtyEight: Ben Shapiro's newest podcast, Rate, rate and review us on Podchaser? Rate, review us in iTunes and review our podcast, and become a fellow convert? Leave us a friend on Apple Music is a review, and leave a review and subscribe to our podcast! Thank you for the show review? and subscribe in your thoughts on the show is great! and a review is appreciated by Ben's review on The Five Star Review? - Ben's new book is out! Ben s next episode is out in the podcast is out now!
00:00:28.000In fact, spoiler alert, she says midway through season seven she's gonna kill somebody who is in a position of power.
00:00:34.000So, if the Democrats are attempting to tamp down the violent rhetoric, they're not doing a very good job of it.
00:00:39.000Second, Democrats keep searching for fictional counterparts for their current situation.
00:00:43.000First, they cited The Handmaid's Tale as a sort of apocalyptic vision of the Trump era.
00:00:47.000Now they're moving on to Game of Thrones.
00:00:49.000The only common theme seems to be that if a show is prominent, it must be a metaphor for Trump's America.
00:00:54.000But Democrats' entire problem is their failure to live in reality.
00:00:57.000They seem to believe the more they retreat to fantasy, the better off they'll be.
00:01:00.000But it was their lack of on-the-ground realism that cost them the 2016 election, and their embrace of the enormous fiction of intersectionality that continues to cost them credibility.
00:01:08.000Still, Democrats search for a message, and the only message they seem to be able to unify around is that of resistance, even though they can't even explain what they would do if they achieved power.
00:01:26.000Alrighty, so we have a lot to get to today.
00:01:27.000I'm talking about the media's attempt to assault Trump on a bunch of different issues.
00:01:33.000They're moving beyond Russia now because they seem kind of annoyed that they have to keep talking Russia, and so now they're trying to hit Trump with all of the old platitudes.
00:01:45.000We'll get to the single greatest thing that the Daily Wire has ever released in the history of its existence, which we'll do in Things I Like, so you'll have to stick around for that.
00:01:53.000But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at texture.com.
00:01:56.000So texture.com is where you go to get all of the material for magazines that you would ever want to get.
00:02:03.000We need more than just opinions from our friends or following social media to stay informed.
00:03:07.000The media are still focused on this Trump Jr.
00:03:10.000Russia meeting, which we'll get to in a little while, but they are trying to broaden their attack on Trump now, because as we approach the midterm elections, some Democrats are starting to realize that just shouting Russia at the top of your lungs ain't gonna do it.
00:03:23.000Most people just want the election to be considered over.
00:03:26.000Even Democrats are not that interested.
00:03:28.000A lot of Democrats are not that interested in re-litigating 2016 forever.
00:03:31.000We're just going to keep re-litigating it until the end of time?
00:03:34.000I remember back in 2001, there was an attempt by Democrats to re-litigate the election every five minutes, but by the time we hit September of 2001, and it was clear that we needed a president, all that sort of receded into the past.
00:03:45.000There will be crises under President Trump's watch, because there are crises under everyone's watch, and I think that even Democrats are starting to recognize that it is a mistake
00:03:53.000to continue to hype the Russia stuff, unless there is new stuff that is coming out.
00:03:57.000So we'll get to what new stuff may or may not be coming out.
00:04:00.000But in the meantime, they're coming up with new, more typical democratic attacks on Trump.
00:04:05.000So I think that a couple of them pop out today.
00:04:10.000One of the things that I think people need to understand about the resistance to Trump, the anger at Trump, is that there is scorn for Trump as a human being.
00:04:17.000It largely springs from Trump's persona.
00:04:20.000Trump on policy is a lot closer to Democrats than, say, Mitt Romney was in 2012, or even George W. Bush in 2001.
00:04:28.000The fact is that Donald Trump is a believer in big government.
00:04:31.000He is somebody who is mirroring a lot of Hillary Clinton's policies with regard to, for example, Syria.
00:04:38.000His actual detente with Russia looks a lot like Obama's detente with Russia, so it's very weird to see Democrats out there going nuts over him being nice to Russia when Obama was really nice to Russia for eight years and handed them control of Syria, and now they're all upset that Trump seems to be handing control of Syria to Russia.
00:04:52.000So, you know, Trump on policy is not that far apart from a lot of the things Democrats want, but he angers them in terms of who he is, right?
00:05:01.000There's a lot of intellectual scorn for Trump, and people on the left and people on the right see that as scorn for the common man.
00:05:27.000That is getting at people, and that is that Trump is such a vulgarian that it bothers a lot of people who see him as an interloper in their circles.
00:05:37.000Trump, in other words, is going through what he has gone through his entire life and his entire career, which is not really great for Trump, because Trump's entire shtick, and this has been true since he was a young man, is that he's been treated as an interloper in the halls of wealth in New York City.
00:05:50.000His dad was treated as a guy who was new money, not old money.
00:05:53.000He was sort of the brash American who ran into the British circles, almost.
00:05:57.000And Trump still sees himself that way, and the media still treat him that way.
00:06:01.000And so you get an article from Charles Blow at the New York Times, where he talks about how Donald Trump's language is just appalling.
00:06:10.000He says, I know there are things of graver consequences in Donald Trump's regime than his diction, but as a person whose vocation concerns him with language,
00:06:17.000I am simply appalled by Trump's savage mauling of that language.
00:06:20.000Listen, I am not super pleased with Trump's syntax.
00:06:23.000I think it's ridiculous that Trump doesn't know how to spell on Twitter.
00:06:25.000But is that among the top ten problems that I have with President Trump?
00:06:28.000No, because at the end of the day, who really cares?
00:06:31.000I mean, it might be a mild irritation, but for the left it's more than a mild irritation.
00:06:34.000They have cultural differences with Trump.
00:06:36.000And those cultural differences are not the cultural differences they have with conservatives.
00:08:23.000into he personally hates women, even more than Bush.
00:08:26.000You know, Bush was driven by the issues, but Trump, he's just driven by scorn for women.
00:08:30.000And so Michelle Goldberg writes at the end of her article, again, it's this contempt for his character, this cumulative attack on women's ability to control their reproductive lives would be infuriating no matter who presided over it.
00:08:40.000But there's an extra shudder of degradation in losing reproductive rights at the hands of a lubricious playboy like Mr. Trump.
00:08:47.000Unlike longtime anti-abortion activists, Mr. Trump doesn't bother pretending he's acting in women's best interest.
00:09:16.000So this idea is that Trump is a uniquely bad person.
00:09:19.000So it's not just that Trump is a Republican and we hate Republicans, it's that he's a uniquely bad person.
00:09:25.000Jumping on the train about all of this is Joe Scarborough.
00:09:28.000So Scarborough, who spent an enormous amount of time in the primaries promoting President Trump, has now written an op-ed in which he talks about why he's leaving the Republican Party.
00:09:37.000And in this op-ed he says, It's a pretty remarkable statement.
00:09:39.000First of all, Trump himself is against military adventurism.
00:09:41.000He's much more of an isolationist than he is a neoconservative.
00:09:58.000As far as bloated government, you know, Trump may like bloated government, but he hasn't been able to actually implement any of it.
00:10:03.000In fact, the only major accomplishment of his administration, except for Judge Gorsuch, is the paring back of regulations under his secretaries, under the Health and Human Service Secretary and under the EPA Secretary.
00:10:15.000It's this idea that Trump is some sort of vast break from Republican precedent in terms of policy is silly.
00:10:23.000People on the left do not like Donald Trump because of character.
00:10:26.000There are a lot of people on the right who don't like Donald Trump because of character.
00:10:29.000I don't like Donald Trump's character, but the attempt to suggest that he is of a different kind in policy because of his character is silly.
00:10:37.000I think you can make good arguments about Trump's character, whether he is
00:10:40.000going to be a good president because of his character, whether he is capable of fulfilling the expectations of the American people because of his character, whether he is too knee-jerk, whether he doesn't study the issues, right?
00:10:49.000These are all criticisms that I've made of President Trump, but what the left is trying to do is they're trying to say that his character is his policy, and that is not true.
00:10:56.000They're trying to suggest that his policy is way out.
00:11:02.000I mean, Scarborough, of all people, should be talking, considering that he spent an enormous amount of time during the primaries pushing Trump in spite of and because of his various heresies on Republican policy.
00:11:13.000Remember, Trump did not run as a traditional Republican.
00:11:15.000So now, the left is sort of at a loss of what to do with Trump, and so they're trying to go back to the same playbook.
00:11:20.000They're trying to pretend that Donald Trump is a traditional Republican, except for worse.
00:11:24.000He's not a traditional Republican, and the flaws that Trump has are really character flaws, less than policy flaws.
00:11:31.000Like, I don't like a lot of his policy, but to pretend that it's a huge difference from Dwight Eisenhower or George W. Bush, even, is really, really dumb.
00:12:08.000shy off his bad behavior, but I don't think that his politics are a threat to the nature of the Republic.
00:12:13.000You know, for all the talk about him being a fascist, that has not materialized.
00:12:16.000In fact, the Democrats are stuck between a rock and a hard place because on the one hand they want to claim that he's a unique threat, and on the other hand they have to recognize that nothing is actually getting done.
00:12:24.000So if he's that unique a threat, then why aren't things getting done?
00:12:27.000You know, Al Gore is out there openly saying Trump isn't getting anything done.
00:12:30.000So okay, if that's the case, then why are you all so upset, gang?
00:12:33.000You've spent half your life in politics, some of it at the highest levels.
00:13:28.000The United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord
00:13:38.000Okay, so Al Gore is saying that, you know, he's a unique threat, but at the same time he's not getting anything done.
00:13:43.000And that's, that's sort of, it's sort of a weird situation that Democrats are now in.
00:13:46.000So, because nothing is happening, they don't have a point of attack on Trump, and so they're forced to go to the well with these old attacks on, oh, he's trying to take your birth control, or, oh, he hates women, or, oh, he's attempting to destroy healthcare, right?
00:13:59.000These are all old attacks, and they're not going to work on President Trump.
00:14:02.000Now, what is a problem for President Trump
00:14:29.000While the Democrats are focused on President Trump because President Trump gives them a unified message, the Republicans in Congress would be a much richer target for them because the fact is that even Trump supporters don't like Congress.
00:14:38.000Even Trump's most ardent supporters look at Congress and say these people don't know what they're doing.
00:14:42.000Now the irony of the situation is that one of the reasons they don't know what they're doing is because the Trump administration has not given them any guidance.
00:14:54.000I mean, not to give Democrats advice, but if you're going to run in 2018 on a winning platform, the winning platform shouldn't be the Democrats that Republicans are malevolent, per se, because I don't know how well it's going to work.
00:15:06.000The winning platform should be these people are wildly incompetent and you should never trust them with power.
00:15:10.000And they should be using the Obamacare debacle as an example of that.
00:15:13.000The Republicans keep running directly into the teeth of the Democratic attacks on this and the Democrats don't even notice.
00:15:18.000Tom Price, who's the Health and Human Services Secretary, he was on the TV shows on Sunday, I believe this is on CNN, or ABC rather, and here is Tom Price trying to explain
00:15:33.000What did they have to say about this new idea, this latest installment in the bill to give more power to the states?
00:15:53.000Well, what their concerns are, obviously, and what our concerns are, is to make certain that every single American has access to the kind of coverage that they want for themselves and for their families.
00:16:02.000And the bill has changed significantly so that we believe that there is significant opportunity for that goal to be accomplished.
00:16:11.000They want to make certain that they're able to design their Medicaid program as they see fit for their population.
00:16:16.000But they also want to make certain that the resources are there to be able to cover that vulnerable population.
00:16:22.000And one of the interesting things that's in this bill that wasn't in previous iterations
00:16:26.000Is the opportunity to make certain that those folks that actually fell into a gap below 100 percent of the poverty level, but above where a state might allow individuals on the Medicaid system, that hole was not covered before.
00:16:39.000This bill provides for coverage for those individuals through the tax credit process.
00:16:43.000Okay, it's that last line that is the problem for Republicans, and this is where Democrats should run, okay?
00:17:05.000Republicans keep saying that Trumpcare is going to cover more people.
00:17:10.000The metric for healthcare success should not be the number of people covered.
00:17:13.000You could cover everyone right now if you just made everyone eligible for Medicaid, but Medicaid doesn't actually increase medical outcomes.
00:17:20.000The fact is the number of people covered is not nearly as important as the outcome of medical care.
00:17:25.000What you need is more medical care and more access to medical care, not health insurance that doesn't actually cover the people that you want.
00:17:32.000Right, but Republicans are now using Democratic metrics for all of this, and this is the problem.
00:17:36.000Because on the one hand, what that means is that you're splitting the Republican base.
00:17:38.000On the one hand, you have people like me, who say free markets are the best, and you don't need everyone covered.
00:17:45.000People get to make their own decisions about whether they want coverage or not.
00:17:47.000That's people like Rand Paul, and I think Rand Paul is exactly correct on this.
00:17:53.000Whenever it comes up, whenever Senator McCain is in good health and comes back, does Senate Majority Leader McConnell have the votes to pass this revised bill?
00:18:04.000You know, I don't think right now he does, and the real problem we have is, you know, we won four elections on repealing Obamacare, but this bill keeps most of the Obamacare taxes, keeps most of the regulations, keeps most of the subsidies, and creates something that Republicans have never been for, and that's a giant insurance bailout super fund.
00:18:23.000That's not a Republican idea to give taxpayer money to a private industry that already makes $15 billion in profit.
00:18:30.000Okay, so Rand Paul is exactly correct, and on the right we're saying, okay, we need less regulation, less subsidy, but if you make your goal covering everyone through health insurance, no matter the quality of the health insurance, no matter whether they can keep their doctor, no matter whether it makes the life outcomes better, notice, life expectancy in the United States dropped for the first time in decades last year under Obamacare.
00:18:49.000So this idea that Obamacare is the cure-all is just ridiculous, but if you use Obamacare's metric as a metric of success,
00:18:56.000Do you think that the bill will pass or do you think there are enough other wavering Republicans that it will not?
00:19:15.000There are about eight to ten Republican senators who have serious concerns about this bill.
00:19:22.000And so at the end of the day, I don't know whether it will pass.
00:19:26.000Okay, so this is the big problem for Republicans.
00:19:29.000They have a caucus that is split on their own.
00:19:31.000It is easier in American politics today to engage in the politics of opposition than it is to engage in the politics of governance.
00:19:37.000If you lied for years and years and years, then it's going to come around to haunt you, and that's what Democrats found out after 2010.
00:19:42.000It's what Republicans are finding out now.
00:19:44.000Now, before we get into the Democrats going head over heels on the Russia stuff and Trump's defense, first I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Zeal.
00:19:51.000So Zeal is one of my favorite services.
00:19:56.000Okay, so what they do is you go to Zeal, their app, you can schedule a massage at your house, they bring the table, they're all licensed masseuses, they bring the oils, they bring the music, the whole deal.
00:20:06.000It is a fantastic gift for a wife or a husband, for a parent.
00:20:37.000A zeal massage therapist qualified can be at your door in as little as an hour and it is significantly less expensive than you go going to the spa, which means you don't have to schlep.
00:21:19.000Everything and the free massage table so pretty pretty slick deal.
00:21:22.000Okay, so Meanwhile the Democrats as I say they could be focusing in on the fact that Republicans can't unify around this stuff But if Republicans can't unify around this stuff, it's hard to portray them as dangerous.
00:21:35.000right if you're the Democrats and you can't portray the Republicans as super competent and highly dangerous and You also can't portray them as so incompetent.
00:21:43.000They're gonna break the system What do you do?
00:21:44.000And the answer is you go to ancillary issues you look for
00:21:47.000Some sort of conspiracy theory with which to hammer them.
00:21:50.000You look for some sort of evil action that you can latch on to.
00:21:56.000Something deeply evil has happened here.
00:21:58.000And this is why the Democrats are so obsessed with Russia.
00:21:59.000Not only because they want to overturn the election, not only because they have cultural scorn for President Trump, but also because they do not have a point of unity because the Republicans are not offering them a point of unity.
00:22:12.000Are not fulfilling their campaign promises.
00:22:14.000They're not getting anything done, but they're also not offering them a point to run on.
00:22:17.000So inaction is actually the enemy of the Democrats here.
00:22:19.000If you're a Democrat, what you want is for Republicans to pass this Trumpcare bill so that you can run against the Trumpcare bill and say that Republicans just ruined your health care.
00:24:28.000Two, they can't get the Republicans on being evil because the Republicans aren't doing anything.
00:24:32.000And three, it's hard to get the Republicans on incompetence because, while it's true, it is also not something that spurs people to the polls in any real serious way.
00:24:40.000Democrats are instead looking to ancillary issues.
00:24:43.000They're trying to find another way to label Republicans evil, even while the Republicans don't really do anything.
00:24:46.000So Mark Warner, the Democratic senator from West Virginia, he comes out and he says, you know, we're going to start looking into ancillary issues about Russia, like digital bots.
00:25:10.000Facebook, which basically denied any responsibility around our elections by the time the French elections took place this spring, they actually took down 30,000 fake sites.
00:25:21.000We also know that it's been estimated that 8% of all Twitter accounts are fake.
00:25:27.000So the whole thing here is to create a miasma of scandal around Trump.
00:25:30.000Now Trump isn't helping with that because the miasma of scandal has attached to him
00:25:49.000meeting last week, the revelation of it and the fact that Donald Trump Jr.
00:25:52.000himself released emails, obviously doesn't help along those lines.
00:25:56.000But just to prove the hypocrisy of the Democrats on this stuff, and they are hypocrites, I mean, Teddy Kennedy in 1984 actively attempted to collude with the Russian government, saying that he wanted to work with them in order to take down President Ronald Reagan.
00:26:06.000And the Russians basically pledged their support to him.
00:26:09.000Teddy Kennedy was a hero until he died in the Democratic Party.
00:26:12.000Adam Schiff, who's the Democratic congressperson from out here in California, he says that when Hillary Clinton's people were meeting with Ukraine to get OPPO research on Trump, that it really wasn't that big a deal.
00:26:23.000They've also pointed to this issue with the Democratic Party and the Ukrainian embassy.
00:26:30.000This comes from a story in Politico that ran in January.
00:26:33.000The headline, Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire.
00:26:38.000A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the DNC met with top officials in the Ukrainian embassy in an effort to expose ties between Trump
00:26:46.000Top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia.
00:26:49.000The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in this race, helping force Manafort's resignation and advancing the narrative that the Trump campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine's foe to the east, Russia.
00:27:01.000So, let me ask you, I understand Hillary Clinton lost, I understand this effort was not as elaborate as the Russian effort, but was it acceptable or would it have been acceptable for the Democrats to accept help
00:27:13.000No, it would be appropriate for the Democrats to accept help from the Ukrainian government.
00:27:20.000But I think if you look at the Politico article, and we're talking about just a single article here, if you accept all the facts in the article, the scale of what the Russians did is not comparable to anything in that article.
00:27:32.000If it were, the comparable analogy would be that the Ukrainian president directed the Ukrainian intelligence agencies to steal, to hack Donald Trump's campaign, steal emails, publish them, direct them to social media.
00:27:44.000Okay, again, this is ignoring the issue, right?
00:27:45.000I mean, the fact is you're either colluding with a foreign government in affecting the election, or you're not.
00:27:49.000Now, I think the clearer line of demarcation is that the Ukrainian government is allied with the United States government, whereas the Russian government is at odds with the American government.
00:27:56.000It's hard for Democrats to make that case, considering that they were considering Vladimir Putin an ally until seven minutes ago.
00:28:01.000I mean, until the election cycle, Vladimir Putin was their bestest friend.
00:28:05.000So Democrats continue to reach with this.
00:28:07.000Now, the Trump campaign, well, the Trump administration has a series of defenses they could use for all of this.
00:28:12.000They could say, number one, Bob Mueller is already investigating this stuff.
00:28:49.000That if he defends himself, despite the fact there's an entire infrastructure of people out there willing to defend him, from talk radio to Fox News, I will defend him if I think that he is right.
00:28:57.000Despite all of that, he feels the need to defend himself.
00:29:01.000And so he goes on the Rampage on Twitter and he starts tweeting about his approval ratings and about fake news distorting democracy.
00:29:07.000Here's what he tweeted about his approval ratings.
00:29:09.000His approval ratings over the weekend were at 36%.
00:29:11.000He said the ABC Washington Post poll, even though almost 40% is not bad at this time, was just about the most inaccurate poll around election time.
00:29:19.000The reason there's no need for him to do this is because, number one, it is the worst poll for a president at this point in his presidency in the history of polling.
00:29:26.000Really, 36% is lower than any president in the history of modern American polling.
00:29:30.000And number two, it is not true the ABC Washington Post poll was the worst around election time.
00:29:34.000They were actually one of the closest around election time.
00:29:37.000She ended up winning 48-46 in the popular vote.
00:29:41.000But the reason this is bad is because it undermines what is a legit claim.
00:29:44.000Which is that the media have done a very poor job covering the Russia stuff, and they have blown up every single issue into an end-of-the-world issue, right?
00:29:51.000Every molehill is a mountain, in the media's view.
00:29:55.000But because Trump feels the need to punch back on every single report, true or not true, he ends up undermining his own credibility in a battle that he should be able to easily win against the media.
00:30:03.000So, when he says stuff like this, right, when he says about fake news,
00:30:07.000He tweets regarding fake news that it is distorting democracy.
00:30:11.000He says, with all of its phony unnamed sources and highly slanted and even fraudulent reporting, fake news is distorting democracy in our country.
00:30:19.000But after just tweeting that a poll that was pretty accurate was not accurate and that his approval ratings are not that bad, it's not, he's not making a strong case for himself.
00:30:29.000Now I do think that the inaccuracies of the media are really bad.
00:30:32.000I think what's worse is the media pretending to be objective.
00:30:34.000So this is a little bit of a subtle difference from some of the things you're hearing.
00:30:38.000My friend Dennis Prager tweeted out over the weekend that the media are more of a threat to Western civilization than the Russian government.
00:30:45.000And obviously he doesn't mean that they're more of a threat to American citizens.
00:30:47.000He means they're more of a threat to the lasting conservatism of the American people.
00:30:53.000But, what he said on Fox News was, we need an objective media again.
00:30:57.000I don't think there is such a thing as an objective media.
00:30:59.000I think what we need is an openly partisan media.
00:31:01.000So, what Trump is saying here, which is that they use phony, unnamed sources in highly slanted, even fraudulent reporting, again, you know, Trump doesn't get to complain about this considering how many unnamed sources that are phony he has actually used, including himself.
00:31:14.000I mean, he used to use himself as his own press agent and call himself Jim Miller, John Miller.
00:32:00.000Okay, again, this is a bad line of defense because then the Secret Service comes out and they say, well, he wasn't even under protection at the time, right?
00:32:06.000He hadn't even won the primaries yet, so he didn't even have Secret Service at the time.
00:32:09.000Second of all, Secret Service doesn't vet meetings with the President.
00:32:12.000They vet it for security reasons, but they don't vet it for national security reasons, right?
00:32:17.000If you decide that you're going to collude, like, they want to make sure that Trump doesn't get shot or his campaign members don't get shot, but Secret Service's job is not to vet people who meet with the President of the United States.
00:32:25.000That's a silly, silly line of defense, and a weak line of defense.
00:32:30.000The weaker the line of defense for the Trump administration, the more people are going to want to dig.
00:32:34.000And then you finally get to defense number three, and I think this is the one that the Republicans ought to avoid, but are going to embrace.
00:32:39.000I think that we are moments away from the Republicans embracing this defense full-scale.
00:32:42.000Jeanine Pirro, Judge Jeanine on Fox News, she represents the same sort of id that Donald Trump represents in the conservative movement in the Republican Party.
00:32:50.000She's sort of the headline version of conservatism.
00:32:54.000Again, she'll say things that are inflammatory and outrageous sometimes, but I think that her head is where a large segment of the Republican base is, and here's what she had to say about this Trump Jr.
00:33:05.000As someone who's run for office five times.
00:33:09.000If the devil called me and said he wanted to set up a meeting to give me opposition research on my opponent, I'd be on the first trolley to hell to get it.
00:33:21.000And any politician who tells you otherwise is a bald-faced liar.
00:33:26.000Okay, so this is the new politics, right?
00:33:28.000Donald Trump tweeted the exact same thing this morning.
00:33:38.000That is, I think, how many people perceive American politics, but this is one of the problems with pop culture and media generally.
00:33:45.000It is true that politicians are corrupt.
00:33:47.000It is true that politicians are dirty and play dirty.
00:33:50.000It is not true that everybody in the United States who's running for politics would meet with a foreign government to get opposition research on their opponent.
00:33:56.000Not when there was a basic expectation of a quid pro quo.
00:33:59.000If you're meeting with the Russian government, the idea there's no quid pro quo expected
00:34:12.000So it's not as though Trump has spent his entire life dealing with people in government.
00:34:15.000You know, whenever Trump talks about his fellows in government, I had the same problem with John McCain about campaign finance reform.
00:34:20.000He'd constantly say, we need campaign finance reform because everybody in politics is corrupt.
00:34:25.000And I just wanted to ask him one question.
00:34:27.000Okay, John, have you ever been bribed by a corporation?
00:34:30.000What makes you think you're so much more honest than everybody else in your profession?
00:34:33.000And the same thing I would ask of Jeanine Pirro or of Trump, which is, okay, you know, you think you're honest, but why are you more honest than anybody else?
00:34:42.000I guess the argument here is that they shouldn't be honest, that nobody should be honest in politics, that we should live down to our worst expectation of politics.
00:34:47.000If that's the case, then we are on a fast road here.
00:34:50.000We are on a fast road to something quite terrible.
00:34:53.000I do think that people revel in the dirty of it.
00:34:57.000I think people on our side, both sides, I don't want to say just our side, I think people on both sides revel in the breaking the rules of it, in the hard-nosed of it, as I talked about last week, but I don't think that that's a good thing.
00:35:09.000I think that good people try to tailor the means they use to the ends they seek to achieve.
00:35:14.000They don't revel in the means just because it's fun to use the means, and I think that's sort of where we're going.
00:35:54.000And it may in fact come out that Trump was knowledgeable about this meeting, in which case they shouldn't have been denying things, right?
00:35:59.000The cover-up is always worse than the crime.
00:36:01.000But I'm skeptical that any of this takes Trump down, and I'm skeptical the American people care all that much other than the general miasma that Trump is corrupt in some bizarre way.
00:36:18.000We all got very enthusiastic about the Game of Thrones season premiere that happened last night, which I thought was slow but had a couple of great things in it.
00:36:27.000There were like three great moments, right?
00:36:28.000There's one having to do with the Hound, there's the opener, and then there's a good moment with an unexpected character in an unexpected place.
00:36:35.000I think those are the three good moments of the premiere.
00:36:38.000We got very excited around here, and I got out my violin, and we put this together last week.
00:36:43.000The entire staff put all of their work aside to make this ridiculous thing that I'm about to show you.
00:41:52.000I don't know what the hell happened on Delta Airlines, but I think this is totally inappropriate.
00:41:56.000So I've been in situations, I was in a situation with American Airlines a couple of years ago, where I was supposed to fly in for a speech, and they canceled my flight.
00:42:04.000It was set for like two hours before the speech.
00:42:07.000Then I could have gotten on the follow-up and maybe made it to the speech on time.
00:42:11.000And they put me on the standby list, and then I was the last person about to get on the plane, and they cancelled the standby list, and they put on a bunch of their own employees.
00:42:19.000And then they had the employees fill the seats.
00:42:21.000I was ticked, and I tweeted about how ticked I was at American Airlines.
00:42:24.000At no point did I ever attack the actual employees who were standing in front of me.
00:42:28.000At no point did I take their pictures, or suggest, or put out their names, or suggest that they were the bad guys.
00:42:33.000I attacked the airline because it's the stupid airline policy that sucks, right?
00:43:42.000I mean, if you're tweeting out photos of other passengers who haven't done anything wrong, or if you're directly attacking the employees, I have a problem with this.
00:43:49.000I think that not only is it not nice, it makes for a worse country.
00:43:53.000I think it just makes for a worse environment in which we live.
00:43:54.000We have to understand and give each other the benefit of the doubt that we're all trying to do a job.
00:44:00.000And I don't think that it's the Delta employee.
00:44:02.000Like, she's suggesting that it was some sort of anti-conservative bias.
00:44:05.000Maybe she just showed up late for a flight and they gave away her $30.
00:44:08.000She said that it cost her $10,000 because of all the time it took for her to book stuff.
00:44:25.000You know, I think that it's easy for those of us who have some level of fame and prominence to start treating people badly who are in positions that are less well-paid, less famous.
00:44:37.000And I just don't, as a conservative and, you know, as a religious person, I'm just not a fan.
00:44:43.000I think you can rip the airline up and down.
00:44:44.000I don't care if it, like she says, Delta model, how can we make your flight more uncomfortable?
00:45:18.000I'd like to see, it's supposed to be Make America Work Again week, so hopefully President Trump will stay on message this week and it won't just be more Russia talk.
00:45:26.000But all of that depends on what happens today, so we will see.
00:45:29.000I'm Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.