Why are the media still madmen, apparently? Well, the rest of corporate America has moved on. We ll talk about that, plus the breaking news on the Hillary-Russia dossier, and the JFK files are released, and we check the mailbag. So, lots coming up. On today's show, Ben Shapiro talks about the Mark Halperin allegation, and why the media should be paying attention to what's going on in Hollywood, and in the media in general, when it comes to sexual harassment and assault in the workplace. He also talks about why it's a problem, and how it's gotten worse in recent years, and what we can do to fix it. And, of course, he answers your burning questions! Thanks to our sponsor, Quip. Quip is a company that makes toothbrushes, toothpaste, and toothpaste. They start at just $25 and includes shipping, refills, and a lifetime supply of toothbrushing sets. They're great for keeping your teeth looking fresher, and your mouth feeling better than ever? Quip's website is clean and free to use, and you don't even have to pay for it? Quip doesn't have to be 21 years old to get a carton of toothpaste? You can go to Quip, they make it free, they'll send you an ad-free, it's $25, and it's just $5, you'll get five bucks, and they'll get it in the carton is free, it'll tell you that you're gonna like it, too, and she'll get that, too she'll be 20% faster than that, she's gonna get it, she'll say it, that's gonna say that, right, that'll say that she'll have it, and that's just like that, so she's got it, right she'll tell her that she's going to be that, you can say it's gonna have that, that will she'll she'll hear it, will she's not gonna say it'll get a bunch of that, will you'll have that's not that, can she'll receive that, etc., that's so much of it, etc. That's a girl, right? That's right, she gets it, so you'll be more than that? That's not a problem? You'll get the whole thing, right that's it, you're not gonna be it, I'm not gonna have it?
00:00:19.000So the big news as of yesterday was that NBC correspondent and fabled investigative journalist Mark Halperin, the guy who wrote Game Change, and he was about to write a new book about the Trump campaign that was going to be turned into a series by HBO, that he had been apparently responsible for an innumerable number
00:00:37.000Allegedly, of incidents of sexual harassment or assault, where he would press himself up against women with his genitals, where he would grope them, where he would say things that were wildly inappropriate.
00:00:49.000I want to talk about that, and I want to talk about the widespread nature of this thing in the media.
00:00:53.000And it does seem to be worse in the media than it is in, for example, corporate America, at least by the numbers and by the evidence, and at least by anecdotal evidence.
00:01:00.000Talk about all of that in just a second.
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00:02:23.000I'm gonna start today by talking about the Halperin allegation.
00:02:26.000So there are a bunch of people who have now come forward, a bunch of women who have now come forward and accused Mark Halperin of sexual harassment and or assault.
00:02:34.000Now one of the problems is people conflating these two things because, you know, I think as a society we just need to be careful about what we call things for legal reasons.
00:02:41.000So sexual assault is where someone is legitimately threatening to commit battery on you, right?
00:02:47.000It's actually battery if someone grabs you against your will, but it is assault, they call it sexual assault, if you are threatening to do that.
00:02:53.000Sexual harassment is where I guess you're telling dirty jokes at the office.
00:02:56.000And sexual harassment, there are some fuzzy lines with regard to sexual harassment because you can tell the same joke to two women and one of them may take it offensively and another may not.
00:03:04.000Or a woman may hear the same joke from two men and one may tell it offensively and one may not.
00:03:08.000Sexual harassment is a little bit more fuzzy.
00:03:10.000There are certain things that are clearly sexual harassment, right?
00:03:12.000A guy coming up to a girl and telling her she has a nice ass.
00:03:24.000You know, I just want to keep these distinctions in mind.
00:03:26.000What is not in question is that Mark Halperin is allegedly responsible, the NBC news reporter, that he is allegedly responsible for some serious sexual harassment slash sexual assault.
00:03:37.000So in a new report from the Washington Post, a woman named Diana May alleges that she was sexually harassed by Halperin back in 1994 when she was a young researcher at ABC News.
00:03:46.000According to May, she had asked Halperin for help with a story, and he had her come into his office.
00:03:53.000Come over here, she recalled him saying, sit down and I'll give you the information.
00:03:56.000He then motioned to his lap, and she was shocked and wanted to refuse, but she considered how Halpern was a rising star as the political director at ABC News at the time, and was a favorite of then World News Tonight anchor Peter Jennings.
00:04:08.000So not to injure her career, she reluctantly sat down on his lap, where she alleged that
00:04:12.000He was in full, we shall say that he was in full flight mode.
00:04:19.000She said that this routine occurred three or four times, leaving her confused, shaken, and ashamed.
00:05:05.000There's a woman at CNN who's a former producer and she says that she was trying to interview with Halperin and Halperin offered her a business card.
00:05:15.000And she says, I don't quite remember what we talked about.
00:05:17.000I do remember him asking me to sit down next to him on the couch, as during an interview.
00:05:21.000I thought it was awkward to sit on the couch when I was perfectly comfortable sitting in the chair across from his desk, but I complied, and I also remember him sitting a little too close to me.
00:05:27.000At one point, I felt a bit uncomfortable, and I stood up to thank him for the meeting.
00:05:30.000That's when he leaned in, tried to kiss me, and attempted to do a bit more.
00:05:33.000I didn't want to offend the man in charge of political programming at ABC News, and I tried to be courteous and apologetic and practically ran out of the office.
00:05:57.000So I've already talked about the Hollywood values, you know, the casting couch mentality, this idea that women are expected to sleep with directors and producers in order to get jobs, and the reality that many women do do that in order to get jobs, or do that in convincing themselves that it's a fine thing to do when they're really doing it in order to get jobs.
00:06:12.000That's not putting the blame on the woman, that's putting the blame on the man and saying this is a system in which women have had to work and many women have gone along with it rather than speaking up about it, which is clearly true on any objective level.
00:06:22.000One of the questions you have to ask is why this is happening so much in the media.
00:06:25.000And it appears to have happened to pretty much every woman in the media, right?
00:06:52.000I'm miked, you're miked, you're saying this on an earpiece.
00:06:57.000And I thought, okay, we're not even in the same location.
00:06:59.000And I'm pretty sure that was just sexual harassment.
00:07:02.000To sexualize a body part of mine, joke about it, where other people could hear it, on my first day.
00:07:08.000Okay, and all of these women told very similar stories, and these kind of things do happen a lot at media companies.
00:07:14.000I've worked with a lot of women at media companies who are in the talent side of the business, and because beauty is a commodity in TV, it just is, okay, that's the way this works in the media, that means that there are a lot of men who think they can get away with saying nasty things to women about their body parts or about how they look.
00:07:28.000You know, again, there are certain people who, like, Elisha Krauss is like a sister to me, so we make jokes with each other all the time, but I would never make jokes to anyone else because we're close friends, but
00:07:50.000So many times I can't even count, and I don't come out and publicly talk about them, in large part because it's still true, I think that most women feel, and I feel, that you will pay a price for it.
00:08:00.000And that when you look at the women who have come out, certainly in the media, the people who have made the accusations against Roger Ailes, for example, really I think with one exception, which we've been making Kelly, the rest of them haven't been able to be employed again.
00:08:23.000Because there is a problem for women, okay?
00:08:25.000If you're sexually harassed in the workplace, and you go to HR, and it's a he-said-she-said situation, unless it's legally actionable, it makes it very difficult for anybody to do anything about it.
00:08:34.000Not all sexual harassment situations are legally actionable, even against the company.
00:08:38.000Because remember, the standard legally for sexual harassment against a company are discriminatory work environment.
00:09:03.000You could report it to HR, and then HR would have a responsibility to look into it.
00:09:07.000But in order to meet the legal standard for suing the company itself, you would actually have to show a legally harassing environment that had been promulgated by the office.
00:09:15.000Now, in the media, there's something else that's happening.
00:09:17.000And it happens in religious institutions, too.
00:09:20.000Very powerful institutions where people feel like they have something to lose are places where they are less likely to speak out.
00:09:26.000So I was talking with my business partner, Jeremy Boring, yesterday.
00:09:29.000Jeremy used to work in Hollywood a lot, and he took a lot of meetings in Hollywood.
00:09:32.000He was telling me about one meeting he had with the studio head.
00:09:36.000Where this particular studio head was talking about a particular actress with his female assistant in the room.
00:09:41.000And this studio head apparently said about the actress, you know, I'd bleep her.
00:09:49.000You know, if you had a bleep, wouldn't you bleep her?
00:09:51.000And they said, well, even if you didn't have a bleep, you would do this to her and describe the very graphic sexual act.
00:09:55.000And Jeremy said to me, you know, one of the things in Hollywood is that this is so common
00:10:01.000That it took him by surprise because he felt like if I were in a Walmart boardroom, you know, the girl's name was Juliet or something, then this wouldn't be called Walmart anymore, this would be called Juliet Mart, right?
00:10:13.000If the head of Walmart had said that to Juliet, some assistant,
00:10:17.000This would now be called Juliet March.
00:10:18.000She'd sue him for sexual harassment, and she'd win.
00:10:20.000And she'd take the entire company away.
00:10:23.000But in Hollywood, it's super duper common.
00:10:25.000And that's because a lot of people are making this trade-off decision that it is not worth speaking up because they're afraid of the career ramifications.
00:10:32.000So that means that two things have to change.
00:10:34.000One is that we actually have to fight against a culture that suggests that women can't get jobs anymore if they accuse someone of sexual harassment or sexual assault.
00:10:44.000And the point that is being made here by Kirsten Powers, that a lot of women who complain about this stuff are then blackballed, that people think they're a litigation risk.
00:10:54.000And that's why we have to have hard lines, harder lines.
00:10:56.000We as a society have to sit down and decide what constitutes legitimate sexual harassment that is worthy of review so that we can tell when a woman is actually complaining for the right reasons or when she's complaining because she's being oversensitive.
00:11:08.000You know, in 90% of cases, it'll be the right reasons.
00:11:10.000In 10% of cases, it may be because she's oversensitive.
00:11:12.000But the problem is that without any hard lines, it's very easy for people to shy away from it and just say, oh, she's oversensitive.
00:11:19.000So the first thing that has to be done is we have to draw some hard lines as a society, and the second thing that has to be done is we have to determine as a society, you know, we have to re-evaluate what is worth subjecting yourself to in order to get ahead in a particular business or in a particular institution.
00:11:37.000I'll talk about that in just a second, but first,
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00:12:51.000One of the reasons this is happening in the media a lot is because there's a draw to the camera, and men know this, and men are exploitative.
00:12:57.000If given power, men will be exploitative because anyone in a position of power will be exploitative.
00:13:02.000Women in positions of power tend not to be sexually exploitative in the same way that men are because men's sex drives are not the same as women's sex drives.
00:13:08.000Men with power will debase themselves and debase other people for sex more commonly than women will.
00:13:17.000So the reason you see sexual assault covered up so often in religious institutions is the idea that the people who are committing the sexual assault have a direct pipeline to God, and so they have a unique capacity to pass on that power to others.
00:13:29.000And so people feel like, well, if this person is saying it, they must be more moral, they must have a special, you know, direct line to God, and therefore there's nothing that I can say about it.
00:13:37.000And this happens a lot in religious communities.
00:13:39.000It happens in public schools because, you know, there are a lot of small children, but
00:13:43.000In Hollywood, it happens a lot more than anywhere else, I think.
00:13:46.000And it happens a lot more in the media than anywhere else, I think, also because of the power of the camera.
00:13:51.000So, it's not just, you know, a lot of these women who want to appear on TV, you know, they want to appear on TV not because the money is so great, but because there is something magical about a camera.
00:14:02.000In a mass cultural phenomenon, it's something we have to get over as a society, the camera has a certain power.
00:14:08.000You know, there are these girls going wild, kind of softcore pornography videos that have become very, very popular.
00:14:13.000And basically all they are, is this company goes to places like Cancun, and they show up with a camera.
00:14:19.000And they say to girls, take off your, take off your, show us your bleep.
00:14:34.000The reason that if an exec at Walmart said that, he'd immediately be sued for sexual harassment is because there's nothing magical happening in that boardroom.
00:14:42.000You're selling like, you know, baby clothes.
00:14:45.000But the presence of the camera, the possibility of the glittering fame, the possibility of Tinseltown, this has been true for a hundred years,
00:14:53.000It is a draw for everyone, including women, and men use that draw in order to get someplace.
00:14:59.000That's something that has to end, and as the media fractures, I hope that we're going to see less of this, not more.
00:15:04.000You know, when there are a limited number of cameras available, then people would do anything to get in front of those cameras.
00:15:09.000As the media fractures, I hope that this will become less and less common, specifically because you can have a camera on your own, put it up on YouTube, and never have to worry about moving through an executive office with Mark Halpern gesturing for you to sit on his lap.
00:15:21.000We need to get over the romance with the camera.
00:15:24.000And that's true for everyone, viewers and participants alike, because again, the camera does not offer some sort of magical power.
00:15:31.000Okay, I want to talk about the Clinton-Trump dossier and what exactly it means.
00:15:36.000So, this has been a big story this week, and my opinion on it has sort of been evolving over the course of the week.
00:15:40.000So at the beginning of the week I thought maybe this is a little bit overblown.
00:15:42.000Then more evidence came out and I thought this is really not particularly overblown.
00:15:47.000But some people are taking it a step too far in their analysis.
00:15:50.000So I'm trying to be as intellectually honest as I possibly can about the information that we have about this this Steele dossier and the information that came out earlier this week that Hillary Clinton, her campaign, had basically funded it.
00:16:04.000The backdrop is that for nine months we have been hearing that Donald Trump is the President of the United States because he colluded with Russia.
00:16:13.000And no one has been able to define what exactly collusion means, right?
00:16:16.000The pieces of evidence that have been presented are essentially seven.
00:16:18.000I mean, name the pieces of evidence here in favor of the quote-unquote Trump-Russia collusion theory.
00:16:23.000So, piece of evidence number one is that Trump said bizarrely warm things about Russia.
00:16:27.000Piece of evidence number two was that Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, had very close ties with the Russian government.
00:16:33.000Piece of evidence number three was that his former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, had some close ties with Russia today and apparently with the Russian government.
00:16:41.000Fourth piece of evidence is that former Trump foreign policy advisor Carter Page apparently had close ties with the Russian government.
00:16:46.000Fifth piece of evidence was that Donald Trump Jr.
00:16:48.000apparently approved of a meeting with a Russian-connected lawyer under the auspices of being from the Russian government and wanting Trump to win.
00:16:55.000Piece of evidence number six was that Trump fired FBI Director James Comey and then went on national television and basically said that he did it because Comey was pressuring him on Russia.
00:17:03.000And the final piece of evidence, it was this week, that Trump's data firm, which was owned by the Mercer family, called the Cambridge Analytica,
00:17:10.000had apparently reached out to Julian Assange, who is apparently, according to most accounts, a Russian cutout, in an attempt to gain access to Hillary's missing emails.
00:17:53.000Members of the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton campaign lied, apparently lied, about whether they had funded the creation of an anti-Trump oppo file called the Steele dossier.
00:18:02.000The Steele dossier we all found out publicly about in January.
00:18:05.000That was the dossier that BuzzFeed released.
00:18:09.000That included all sorts of wild allegations, some of which have been confirmed about meetings between Trump officials and Russian officials, and some of which have yet to be confirmed and are frivolous at best, the stuff about Trump being peed on by Russian prostitutes and such.
00:18:23.000All of that was released by BuzzFeed in early January.
00:18:25.000The only reason that we found out about it was because we now know that it was being passed around Washington and that James Comey had presented a two-page summary of some of the charges in there to President Trump himself.
00:18:39.000Okay, so, the Democrats said they had not been behind that dossier.
00:18:42.000We now found out this week that they lied, and that, in fact, Mark Elias, who is a lawyer for the Hillary Clinton campaign, had basically funneled the money to Fusion GPS to go compile the dossier.
00:18:50.000The person who compiled the dossier, under Democratic auspices, was Christopher Steele.
00:18:55.000Christopher Steele is the wife of the Steele dossier.
00:18:58.000He went over to Russia, and then he had talks with a bunch of people in the Kremlin.
00:19:01.000Apparently, the allegation is that he passed them money, that possibly American money was passed to the Russian government in order to secure information about Donald Trump.
00:19:09.000The file itself, according to Byron York of the Washington Examiner, includes several sources from the Kremlin, including a senior Russian foreign ministry figure, a former top-level Russian intelligence officer still active inside the Kremlin, and a senior Russian financial official.
00:19:22.000Now, let's say that all those people had met with Donald Trump Jr.
00:19:32.000If you cut out the middleman, what you're seeing here is the Hillary Clinton campaign paid the Russian government, or worked with the Russian government, to find oppo against Donald Trump.
00:19:40.000That's the exact allegation that is being made against the Trump campaign.
00:19:44.000So, ironic at best, and criminal at worst, and I'm not the only one saying this, Jonathan Turley, professor over at Georgetown of Law, he says the allegations against Hillary Clinton thus far are more criminal than those against President Trump.
00:19:55.000It's good to have something that's more recognizable as a criminal allegation.
00:20:01.000As you know, I've been very skeptical about the past Russian collusion claims as being a criminal matter, even though I supported the appointment of the special counsel after Comey was fired.
00:20:12.000I've been cautioning, and many others have, that it really isn't a crime to collude.
00:20:17.000And in the same sense, it wouldn't be a crime to receive information on the Trump side from a foreign national.
00:20:24.000But the allegations against the Clintons could potentially be criminal.
00:20:28.000It doesn't mean that they are criminal.
00:20:30.000The $500,000 given to Bill Clinton might have been innocent.
00:20:34.000The timing just might have been horrible.
00:20:36.000But that would be a cognizable crime if a linkage was found.
00:20:41.000In the same way, the allegation over the dossier
00:21:20.000And this is where I think that this whole conversation seems to go off the rails a little bit.
00:21:24.000So let's say that Hillary Clinton had been elected president, and we had found out that she was colluding with the Russian government to gain oppo on Trump, and she was president, and then she released all that oppo, and that's why she won.
00:21:47.000So just because Hillary did something that is apparently criminal here, or at least allegedly criminal, that does not necessarily mean that nothing criminal happened on the Trump side.
00:21:54.000With that said, the allegations and the evidence against Hillary Clinton's campaign, much, much, much stronger than anything that has been proven by the, against the Trump campaign at this point.
00:22:05.000I want to talk more about this and I want to talk about
00:22:07.000The Mueller investigation, the impact on the Mueller investigation in just a second.
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00:24:16.000And again, I think that that's fair on a political level.
00:24:18.000I don't know that it exonerates Trump from bad behavior if Hillary was also behaving badly.
00:24:22.000There were allegations that the headquarters for Barry Goldwater were bugged in 1964 by LBJ.
00:24:28.000That didn't necessarily get Richard Nixon off the hook for doing the same thing at the Watergate Hotel.
00:24:33.000Let's talk a little bit about the actual impact on the FBI investigation.
00:24:48.000The allegation from people on the right is that the FBI was therefore colluding with Hillary in Russia.
00:24:52.000Basically, Hillary was colluding with Russia to come up with this dossier, and then the FBI took the unverified allegations in the dossier, threw them by a FISA judge, and then got that FISA judge to sign off on warrants to bug Carter Page and Paul Manafort, basically.
00:25:05.000This seems to me evidenceless, until the evidence actually arises.
00:25:08.000Meaning that it is quite possible that the FBI knew about the allegations in the dossier, and went and independently verified them.
00:25:14.000Not everything in the dossier is false.
00:25:16.000So people are saying the dossier is complete crap.
00:25:17.000Some things in the dossier are clearly complete crap.
00:25:20.000Some things in the dossier are not, right?
00:25:22.000There have been actual verified meetings between some members of the Trump team and some members of the, you know, people who are associated with the Russian government.
00:25:29.000In any case, not everything in the dossier is not true.
00:25:32.000So it is quite possible that Comey, you know, again, I'm talking as a lawyer, so from a legal perspective, you can suspect whatever you want, but it's only what you can prove that matters.
00:25:40.000From a legal perspective, there is no evidence that James Comey took unverified allegations from the dossier in cahoots with Hillary and then proceeded to throw them to a FISA judge so that we could get warrants on these guys.
00:25:51.000His second allegation is that Comey, for political reasons basically,
00:26:19.000So, both of those don't see the evidence for that yet, and I am someone who is deeply skeptical of James Comey and thought he was absolutely wrong last July when he exonerated Hillary Clinton.
00:26:27.000I also thought he was wrong when he reopened in October.
00:26:29.000I think he was a garbage FBI director, but that still does not prove the allegations that are being made here.
00:26:34.000Final allegation that's being made is, or at least a claim that's being made, is by the editors over at the Wall Street Journal.
00:26:39.000So they write today, So, again, I'm not sure that anything beyond suspicion, unverified suspicion, suggests that the FBI was not doing its job in the Russian probe.
00:27:07.000So if you're saying that Mueller should accuse himself on that basis, that was true from the very start.
00:27:10.000And I'm not sure why that is now coming to the fore now.
00:27:20.000Again, I'm not sure that that, you know, I'm not sure that that proves the point.
00:27:24.000I mean, you could just as easily say that as a former FBI director, he knows where all the bodies are buried and says he could best serve the country by resigning to prevent further political turmoil over that conflict of interest.
00:27:34.000So my opinion on this is that this seems to be jumping the gun, right?
00:27:37.000Suggesting that Mueller has to go because he knows Comey.
00:27:40.000If he felt that way, that was true months ago.
00:27:43.000Suggesting he has to go because now the FBI is being accused of things for which there's no evidence yet.
00:27:49.000You know, that also seems to me to be jumping the gun at best.
00:27:52.000To say that the entire investigation should just be shut down on the basis that both parties did it, that's at least a more honest opinion on what's happening here.
00:28:01.000This investigation is gonna go forward.
00:28:03.000My strong hunch is that Mueller's not gonna find anything, that what we know is what we know, and that Mueller is gonna come forward with a couple of things.
00:28:09.000The media will blow out a proportion, but there will be no hard evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, and then this will all be over.
00:28:15.000That is my strong hunch on all of this, but I wanted to give you, as objective a perspective on this as I can, which is that there appears to be criminal activity, or at least alleged criminal, very, very strong evidence of criminal activity from the Hillary camp.
00:28:28.000There is not nearly as strong evidence in the Trump camp
00:28:30.000I don't know this is an excuse to shut down the special counsel investigation or to fire Mueller.
00:28:36.000Okay, I want to talk about the, I do want to talk about the mailbag, well we're going to do the mailbag, also I want to talk about some policy implications of this continuing and ongoing Republican infighting in just a second, but first
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00:30:59.000Okay, so with all the Republican infighting that is still taking place, it's interesting.
00:31:03.000I'm listening to a lot of people who I really respect, people with whom I agree largely on their assessment of President Trump in terms of character, and it seems to me that they are missing a key point, a lot of them, with regard to the Jeff Flake fallout.
00:31:16.000There's still a lot of fallout from Jeff Flake and his speech on the Senate floor in which he ripped into Trump and suggested the Republican Party had now become prisoner to Trump and Bannon.
00:31:23.000And that is, I don't think that's, again, I think that's an over-read of the situation.
00:31:27.000Their suggestion seems to be that if you're critical of Trump in any way, that they will, that everyone in the Republican Party will come after you and primary you and finish you.
00:31:38.000I think that you can be critical of Trump when he does things, and I think you can be critical of him as president,
00:31:42.000I think you can say he's doing great damage to the country as president for some of the things that he is saying and doing in terms of undermining American unity.
00:31:50.000I think you can say all of those things as long as you say also that Trump and you are on the same page when it comes to some of these agenda items.
00:31:58.000I mean, Jeff Flake voted 95% of the time with President Trump in the Senate, but he didn't focus on that at all.
00:32:03.000He spent all of his time talking about all of the downsides of Trump and none of his time talking about, you know, the things that Trump is doing right.
00:32:09.000And I think you do have to give a more objective view of Trump rather than the overall.
00:32:43.000We're not going to vote again on Trump.
00:32:44.000We're not going to have a referendum on Trump again for another three years.
00:32:47.000So what does it mean to support Trump?
00:32:49.000This is why I say you can support some of the stuff he does and really not support some of the stuff that he does, and that seems to me, as a senator, your job.
00:32:55.000It doesn't seem to me that you need to do an overall assessment of Trump as president every single day.
00:33:00.000It seems to me that you can say, when Trump does stuff like this, it's really gross, or I think President Trump has character flaws that are leading him down a really dark path here, and I wish he would do better.
00:33:08.000But this idea that you have to go out every day and you have to talk about Trump being a boob, you know, and that's the entirety of your comment, that's what's taking off the base, because the implication is that it is so eminently obvious that you'd have no support that everyone who supports him is adult.
00:33:24.000And that I think is why people are offended by Jeff Flake.
00:33:26.000And that is why also I think that, you know, this notion that the party has now been taken over by Trump to such an extent that good conservatives can't be elected ignores the fact that you can be a good conservative and still elide the Trump issue, or you don't even have to elide the Trump issue so long as you're willing to speak
00:33:41.000To speak objectively about what Trump is doing, right?
00:33:43.000When he cuts regulations, that's a good thing.
00:33:45.000When you say the Trump administration is cutting regulations, that's great.
00:33:48.000His response to Charlottesville was abominable.
00:33:50.000I think most people on the right go, okay, I can live with that assessment.
00:33:53.000What they can't live with is you going out there and saying that Trump is completely unfit for the office in the sense that you will never support him under any circumstances, whatever the policy ramifications, because that's where you go a bridge too far.
00:37:01.000Really, since the 80s and 90s, the prince is basically just a guy who stands there, and every heroine, every Disney princess is the heroine who saves herself.
00:38:07.000At no point does a human male ever have the capacity to save anything in these films.
00:38:12.000And this is something that annoys me generally because, again, the history of Western civilization is replete with sexism.
00:38:18.000It is also replete with men saving women.
00:38:20.000Okay, Western civilization and the building of Western civilization is largely predicated on the idea that men have to protect women.
00:38:25.000So if you like chivalry, if you like the idea that a man has to protect a woman, then it seems to me that you should like a movie like Sleeping Beauty where a man is protecting a woman.
00:38:33.000Okay, it's ridiculous to me that we can't make movies like this anymore.
00:39:59.000They sent Trump to do his act like JFK act on the rope line at the Love Field tarmac yesterday and everything.
00:40:05.000But when the clock struck midnight last night and no documents were released, and then this morning rolled around and nothing was released, and then today rolled on and nothing was released.
00:40:16.000Finally, NBC News this afternoon got U.S.
00:40:18.000intelligence officials to admit to them that
00:40:36.000Okay, this is a stupid criticism to me.
00:40:38.000Again, I think that Trump should always be more careful when he says things like, I'm gonna release all the documents, and then he doesn't, but this is a dumb criticism.
00:40:43.000Here's what we do know from these JFK documents.
00:40:46.000So the JFK documents don't show anything new, except for the fact that we now know that Lee Harvey Oswald apparently was having conversations in broken Russian with the head of the KGB's assassination unit in the months leading up to the assassination.
00:41:02.000It's also not clear that they were plotting JFK's murder.
00:41:05.000It looks like Lee Harvey Oswald was kind of a crazy person, and if you know anything about Lee Harvey Oswald, you know he tried to claim asylum in Russia.
00:41:24.000And he had attempted to assassinate an American general, actually, in Dallas beforehand, and that had failed.
00:41:31.000One of the things that I hate about all of the JFK conspiratorial theories is the willingness to ignore the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald was a communist who was motivated by communism to kill JFK.
00:41:43.000famously stated, after she found out who Oswald was, that she was sad that JFK had to be killed by a silly little communist.
00:41:49.000Why couldn't he die for something like civil rights?
00:41:51.000So the left immediately attempted to swerve this into a critique of America.
00:41:55.000JFK's assassination led into this leftist critique of America as a terrible place that couldn't stand the Camelot, the shining city on the hill that JFK stood for, and it was all of our collective American guilt that had killed JFK.
00:42:06.000I hate this crap, it wasn't, it was a commie, a piece of crap commie who was attempting to reach out to the Russian government.
00:42:13.000It is also amazing, one of the pieces of documentation here suggests that the Russian government suspected, the KGB suspected that LBJ was behind the JFK assassination, which shows a couple of things.
00:42:23.000One, that they probably were not interested in assassinating JFK, and that Lee Harvey Oswald acted on his own.
00:42:30.000That when you are a member of a fascist, your perception of how the government works is largely based on your own governmental system and your own perception of how governments work.
00:42:41.000So, because in Russia, future leaders were often assassinated by prior leaders, and vice versa,
00:42:48.000They thought, okay, well, if JFK died, it was probably because there was some sort of coup attempt.
00:42:51.000That's not how it works in the United States, and it just goes to show you when your mind is corrupted by bad government, that's where you end up.
00:43:04.000Honestly, my friends and family would probably assume that I had pissed off the wrong authorities and that I was being arrested for political reasons.
00:43:11.000That would probably be the most likely scenario.
00:43:13.000It seems the only way to combat this is to flip the state.
00:43:23.000How do we turn California into a red state?
00:43:24.000Electing Senator Shapiro would be a good start.
00:43:28.000And as far as turning California into a red state, one of two things is going to happen.
00:43:32.000Either people are going to get wise to how terribly things are being run, and there will be a movement toward the right, which I could see.
00:43:39.000Or alternatively, things are going to get worse and worse and worse and worse, and the state will empty out, and then Republicans will come back in and retake the state.
00:43:45.000That's also a significant possibility, because that'll just take a little bit longer.
00:43:49.000This is my theory of political population movements, is that Republicans, conservatives, they move into an area, they immediately make it awesome.
00:43:58.000They establish laws that protect property rights and don't tax everybody too much.
00:44:02.000And then Democrats come in, and they decide to redistribute everything, and they ruin it.
00:44:14.000So, if that's the case, then eventually all the Republicans will leave California, which is sort of happening, and then the Democrats will make it super crappy, but there won't be any economy here, so they'll all leave.
00:44:23.000And then Republicans will reoccupy the ruins of California in 50 years and turn it red again.
00:44:27.000Well, I mean, passing legislation would be good.
00:44:29.000How about fulfilling some of his promises?
00:44:30.000Reforming the immigration system would be a good start.
00:44:32.000Building the wall, as he said he would.
00:44:46.000Repealing Obamacare, which he has not done.
00:44:49.000Passing tax reform, which he has not done.
00:44:52.000Passing some religious protections, which he has not done.
00:44:57.000I'm not going to say he had a successful presidency just because the economy was good under him, because the economy wasn't bad in the second term of Obama, and he was not a successful president in my view.
00:45:10.000You know, I think that Free to Choose is a terrific book.
00:45:14.000I disagree with some of his opinions, like universal basic income.
00:45:17.000I think they lead to inflation and freeze the economy in place in some ways.
00:45:21.000But I enjoy Milton Friedman's work a lot, and his explanations of economics on YouTube are fun to watch as well.
00:45:27.000David says, So I've recommended a lot of these books on the show, and some of them are not Jewish.
00:45:50.000I've recommended things like Guide to the Perplexed by Maimonides this week, but in more secular terms, I think that if you read a history of Western civilization that takes into account religious thought, it makes you more of a believer in the Judeo-Christian tradition at the very least.
00:46:04.000As far as believing these specific claims of Judaism, such as Revelation on Sinai, there are a couple of good little tomes that I'll have to look up the titles of because
00:46:16.000I will say that, you know, again, anytime you say that God spoke to humans, you have to take a certain leap of faith because that's just the way things work.
00:46:23.000And one of the reasons that God created us was to take that leap of faith.
00:46:28.000So I don't think it's out of bounds to say that God hides himself so we can take the leap of faith.
00:46:31.000Mandy says, Hello Ben, I saw a YouTube video of you at 12 years old playing the violin.
00:46:35.000Larry King said your dream was to be the first Orthodox rabbi in the Supreme Court.
00:47:16.000And actually, there's somebody at the Jelly Belly Factory who's a fan who sent me a bunch of jelly bellies, and so I thank him for that, because we have been enjoying that in the Shapiro household.
00:47:24.000Those are my least favorite Halloween candies.
00:47:25.000So first of all, everyone knows that candy corn is garbage.
00:48:47.000Things to study, you need to read constantly.
00:48:49.000You need to constantly be updating yourself on topics.
00:48:51.000So when Russia is in the news, you need to go and you need to look up some books on Russia and read books on Russia.
00:48:56.000As I've said before, one of the weird things about politics is that if you've read a book on a subject, this puts you in the top 2% of Americans on this subject.
00:49:03.000Because most people don't know anything about Russia.
00:49:05.000And this is true, certainly, about places...
00:49:13.000If you read an article on Niger, you've suddenly become an expert on Niger.
00:49:16.000So reading constantly is the solution.
00:49:18.000And then, obviously, you have to cultivate your ability with human beings.
00:49:21.000It's something that I've been working on for years, but have not yet conquered, as my employees can tell you.
00:49:26.000Emmanuel says, Hey Ben, in the 2012 RNC autopsy, one of the main points was the need for Republicans to do more outreach to minority communities, particularly Latinos, to ensure the party's long-term survival.
00:49:37.000As a Latino conservative, it seems like the Republican brand is being poisoned among Latino community members thanks to the president, even among family members who are staunch Republicans.
00:49:44.000So, here's the thing that I think is true.
00:49:47.000It is imperative that Republicans reach out to members of the Latino community, that reach out to Latinos.
00:49:52.000I recommended years ago that Republicans start trying to learn Spanish.
00:49:55.000I have infamously been attempting to learn Spanish for years and have failed dramatically in that task.
00:50:01.000I do not think that the conservative message is limited to white folks.
00:50:04.000Now, that said, I think the attempt to buy off Latinos with immigration reform is stupid.
00:50:09.000The Latino community is very split on the idea that all illegal immigrants have to be legalized immediately, that all illegal immigrants should be given citizenship.
00:50:17.000I think that you can take a reasonable position on immigration and Latinos will mostly agree with you, or at least many of them will agree with you.
00:50:23.000And I think that Latinos, you know, like any other human being,
00:50:27.000And maybe an outsized proportion, because there's an outsized proportion of religious Latinos, believe in things like personal responsibility and have the capacity to believe in those things.
00:50:38.000The stuff that I think really alienates Latinos from President Trump is the way he talks about Latinos, not even the policy prescriptions.
00:50:45.000Like when he says things, like his initial speech, when he said Mexico's not sending us our best, they're sending us rapists and murderers.
00:50:53.000I mean, that's a very small percentage of the people who are crossing.
00:50:55.000There are certain people who are, but the vast majority of illegal immigrants, I know, I live in L.A., half the people here are illegal immigrants.
00:51:00.000Most of them are good, hardworking people who are trying to make a living.
00:51:03.000Yeah, that doesn't justify jumping the border, but it is to, that is not what President Trump said.
00:51:08.000And, you know, when he says things like a Mexican judge can't be trusted with his case because he's Mexican, you know, this sort of thing is not good outreach.
00:51:16.000Alexander says, I'm 21, currently going back to school as an engineer.
00:52:17.000Next week, I'm going to recommend a bunch of good parenting books.
00:52:19.000So instead of trying to name them off the top of my head, math has reminded me, next week when I do things I like, I will do a bunch of parenting books, things that are useful for parents to read, and you can listen to the show next week for all of that.
00:52:29.000Okay, we will be back here on Monday for lots more fun and hijinks.