The Ben Shapiro Show - The Saddest Story Ever Told | Ep. 550

00:00:00.000 Dinesh D'Souza gets a pardon, Samantha Bee uses the c-word, and Team Obama.

00:00:04.000 We now have a retrospective into what election night was like for them.

00:00:07.000 It's kinda great.

00:00:08.000 I'm Ben Shapiro, this is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:16.000 So we have a lot to get to today here on The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:18.000 A lot of breaking news.

00:00:19.000 The president of the United States has been tweeting up a storm, which means that there is a lot of stuff happening.

00:00:24.000 But first, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at OMAX 3 Ultra Pure.

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00:01:42.000 A lot to get to here in the news today.

00:01:45.000 We begin, I suppose, with the pardon of Dinesh D'Souza.

00:01:49.000 So the President of the United States announces today that he is going to pardon Dinesh D'Souza.

00:01:52.000 Dinesh, of course, has been a guest on the program.

00:01:54.000 I'm friendly with Dinesh, so full disclosure on that.

00:01:57.000 Dinesh was

00:01:59.000 Basically, railroaded back during the Obama administration.

00:02:03.000 He was in the middle of making an anti-Obama documentary, and it was revealed that Dinesh D'Souza had engaged in the process of straw donations.

00:02:12.000 So basically, there's a woman named Wendy Long who was running for Senate, and Dinesh wanted to give $20,000 to her.

00:02:17.000 He couldn't.

00:02:17.000 He could only give $5,000 to her.

00:02:19.000 So a bunch of people gave $5,000 to Wendy Long, and then Dinesh D'Souza reimbursed them.

00:02:23.000 He acknowledged this in court.

00:02:24.000 He pled guilty in court.

00:02:26.000 And he was sentenced to a certain amount of prison time.

00:02:28.000 Now, the reason that this isn't just a case of somebody doing something wrong and going to jail is because the vast majority of cases like this end with a fine.

00:02:35.000 The vast majority of cases like this do not end with actual prosecution to the point where somebody goes to jail.

00:02:40.000 And it seems a little coincidental that Dinesh D'Souza

00:02:43.000 We're good to go.

00:03:00.000 I do not believe the president should have pardon power.

00:03:01.000 Just not Trump, any president.

00:03:03.000 I think it's very silly that the Constitution has pardon power for the president, that governors have pardon power. 0.97

00:03:08.000 I think it's really dumb, specifically because either you believe the criminal justice system works, or you believe it doesn't. 0.92

00:03:13.000 And having one guy who is sort of like a cottie sitting under a tree, ruling as to whether people ought to be spared the penalties of their crimes, that seems to me rather dictatorial and monarchic. 1.00

00:03:23.000 It doesn't have a lot to do with the balance of powers, checks and balances of a functioning republic.

00:03:28.000 I don't like the power generally, but if you're going to use the power, you have to use it very sparingly and you ought to use the power.

00:03:34.000 In this particular case, I would have thought that it would be more of a commutation situation.

00:03:39.000 So there's a difference in pardon power between pardoning someone and commuting their sentence.

00:03:43.000 If you pardon somebody, then their crime goes away.

00:03:45.000 It's off the books.

00:03:46.000 It's as though they never committed the crime in the first place.

00:03:48.000 If you commute somebody's sentence,

00:03:49.000 Then, if they were about to serve time, they no longer have to serve time.

00:03:52.000 So right now, there's a serious call to give commutation to this guy who spent 21 years in prison, and then was allowed out of prison, and then it turns out that the system got it wrong, and he's already rebuilt his life, and they're going to send him back to prison.

00:04:04.000 There's a strong call by some people, like friends of mine, like Dana Perino, that this guy should have his sentence commuted.

00:04:08.000 I agree with that.

00:04:09.000 He shouldn't be pardoned because he did commit the crime.

00:04:11.000 Well, in this particular case, Dinesh committed the crime.

00:04:14.000 Is a pardon appropriate?

00:04:15.000 I'm not sure that a pardon is appropriate.

00:04:17.000 I think a commutation would have been appropriate, but he already served his time.

00:04:20.000 Here's where a pardon is appropriate, however.

00:04:21.000 Dinesh is no longer allowed to vote.

00:04:23.000 Dinesh obviously cannot get loans very easily.

00:04:27.000 It's hard for him to get credit cards.

00:04:28.000 There are certain penalties that attach to being a felon, and Dinesh is a convicted felon, which means that he couldn't have done any of those things.

00:04:35.000 Well, Trump is wiping all of that off the books.

00:04:37.000 Again, do I think the pardon would have been the best

00:04:39.000 Solution here, I think commutation would have if the timing had been right.

00:04:42.000 But do I find this to be a wild miscarriage of justice?

00:04:45.000 I do not.

00:04:46.000 Now, is it political?

00:04:47.000 Of course it's political, right?

00:04:48.000 Dinesh is on President Trump's side.

00:04:50.000 He's been a very strong advocate for President Trump.

00:04:52.000 If Dinesh D'Souza were on the left, I don't think they'd be talking pardon today.

00:04:56.000 But this is unfortunately how pardon power works.

00:04:59.000 Okay, this has been true for Clinton.

00:05:00.000 It was true of Obama.

00:05:01.000 There are a lot of people who receive pardons and clemency specifically because of their politics.

00:05:05.000 Chelsea Manning would still be in prison if it were not for the fact that Chelsea Manning is a wild leftist who is transgender. 1.00

00:05:11.000 Barack Obama let Chelsea Manning out of prison specifically because of those factors. 0.72

00:05:14.000 So to pretend that the pardon power has not already been used for innately political purposes would be to ignore the truth of the situation.

00:05:20.000 So while you hear the left complaining a lot about the Dinesh pardon today, I just, I don't buy the outrage.

00:05:27.000 I don't know that it's,

00:05:28.000 You know, the greatest move in the world, but I also don't think that it's unjustified.

00:05:32.000 And I think that the idea that Dinesh ever went to jail for this is insane.

00:05:35.000 OK, so meanwhile, there's some other news from the Trump administration.

00:05:39.000 We are now in the middle, apparently, of a trade war.

00:05:41.000 So that's excellent.

00:05:42.000 There's a lot of talk about Trump was not going to enter into a trade war.

00:05:45.000 And he decided that, I guess, it was worthwhile doing so.

00:05:48.000 So he has decided to extend tariffs to the EU on a number of products.

00:05:53.000 And those products include steel and aluminum.

00:05:57.000 According to The Guardian, a full-scale trade war between Washington and Brussels is looming after the U.S.

00:06:01.000 announced it was imposing tariffs on imported steel and aluminum from the European Union.

00:06:05.000 The president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, promised swift retaliation after the U.S.

00:06:10.000 Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said EU companies would face a 25 percent duty on steel and a 10 percent duty on aluminum from midnight on Thursday.

00:06:17.000 So, right now we are talking about a serious trade war that could impact the economy.

00:06:20.000 It's a bad move by President Trump.

00:06:22.000 The reality is that tariffs are not good for the economy.

00:06:23.000 All they are is a tax on American citizens. 0.70

00:06:39.000 Remember, when you artificially boost the price of products that Americans have to buy, that is a de facto tax on American citizens.

00:06:45.000 They can no longer spend their money where they choose to spend their money.

00:06:48.000 Plus, a lot of these companies that are going to end up being tariffed actually hire a lot of people in the United States.

00:06:53.000 Like, half of a Mercedes-Benz is produced in the United States.

00:06:56.000 At plants based in the United States, some of those cars, luxury items, will be hit with some of these tariffs.

00:07:01.000 Also, the President of the United States has started a trade war with Mexico, so now Mexico is threatening its own tariffs against some of America's products, so a lot of American exporters are very unhappy.

00:07:12.000 So, today, I guess Mexico has announced that it will put its own tariffs on products including pork bellies, grapes, apples, and flat steel, which sounds like some sort of weird dish, but in any case, Mexico is going to be announcing its own trade barriers.

00:07:25.000 None of this is good policy.

00:07:26.000 The President has benefited from a booming economy, and a lot of that is his own doing.

00:07:30.000 A lot of that is Trump's willingness to get rid of regulations.

00:07:34.000 A lot of that is Trump's willingness to lower taxes.

00:07:36.000 A lot of that is Trump's willingness to allow the market to operate freely.

00:07:39.000 Engaging in trade wars with some of America's biggest trade partners is not a way to increase the effectiveness of American business.

00:07:46.000 It's just, it's a counterproductive move.

00:07:48.000 I know that the president has this bizarre understanding of tariffs.

00:07:51.000 He believes that trade is a zero-sum game and there's always a winner and a loser.

00:07:55.000 That is not correct and business is going to suffer because of all of that.

00:07:58.000 It's bad policy.

00:07:59.000 However, on the other side of the ledger,

00:08:00.000 I mean, if we're going to do some good Trump, bad Trump, there's some bad Trump, here's some good Trump.

00:08:03.000 So the president signed what he called right to try legislation.

00:08:06.000 So right to try legislation has been considered by conservatives for many, many years.

00:08:11.000 Basically, the FDA, it takes enormous quantities of time and money to get FDA approval for a drug.

00:08:17.000 One of the reasons drugs are so expensive in the United States is you have to run through years of FDA approval processes before you can bring a drug to market.

00:08:24.000 Literally millions and millions of dollars it takes to actually get to market.

00:08:27.000 Well, what happens if you're a terminally ill person and you want to try an experimental drug?

00:08:31.000 Well, so far, the Democrats have, up till now, opposed the idea that you should be allowed to try those drugs.

00:08:35.000 They say the FDA has to license every product that is used in the United States.

00:08:40.000 But what about people who are going to die anyway?

00:08:42.000 Why exactly can't they try what they want?

00:08:43.000 I mean, if they want to try some snake oil and it happens to work for them, why shouldn't they be given the option of doing that?

00:08:48.000 That's what the right-to-try legislation was.

00:08:50.000 So President Trump signed that right-to-try legislation yesterday.

00:08:53.000 This is a very good move.

00:08:54.000 Giving terminally ill patients the right to try experimental, life-saving treatments.

00:09:00.000 And some of these treatments are so promising.

00:09:03.000 But for many years, patients, advocates, and lawmakers have fought for this fundamental freedom.

00:09:10.000 And as I said, incredibly, they couldn't get it.

00:09:14.000 And there were reasons.

00:09:15.000 A lot of it was business.

00:09:17.000 A lot of it was pharmaceuticals.

00:09:19.000 A lot of it was insurance.

00:09:21.000 A lot of it was liability.

00:09:22.000 I said, so you take care of that stuff.

00:09:25.000 And that's what we did.

00:09:26.000 Today, I'm proud to keep another promise to the American people as I sign the right to try legislation into law.

00:09:36.000 So this got no press yesterday, but it is a very, very good move by the Trump administration

00:09:40.000 Again, there's good and there's bad to the Trump administration, but it's foolish to ignore the good or to ignore the bad, right?

00:09:45.000 We have to point out whenever any of this stuff is happening.

00:09:48.000 Also, it is worthwhile noting that while the press continue to suggest that President Trump and his administration are replete with people who do not care about human beings, this particular piece of legislation is obviously an attempt to alleviate the suffering of an enormous number of people who are

00:10:03.000 Stuck, right?

00:10:03.000 Who have no choice when it comes to what sort of treatment they wish to see.

00:10:07.000 It's also a good argument for libertarianism, even in areas that the FDA covers, that if somebody wants to try a drug, why shouldn't they be able to try that drug?

00:10:15.000 Speaking of people with heart inside the Trump administration, Trump actually had a pretty good day yesterday insofar as demonstrating a certain amount of heart and compassion inside the Trump administration.

00:10:25.000 This was pretty great.

00:10:27.000 As he was signing this right to try legislation, there's a little kid

00:10:30.000 Who apparently, I believe, has cystic fibrosis?

00:10:33.000 Is that the case with this kid?

00:10:34.000 I can't remember what his condition is.

00:10:36.000 But this really cute little kid, and he comes to the signing ceremony, and he wants to get a hug from Trump, and it's really cute.

00:10:44.000 And you can see the kid going in for a hug, and Trump is busy, he doesn't really notice the kid.

00:10:49.000 And he keeps going in, trying to get a hug.

00:10:52.000 And finally you'll see Trump notices it.

00:10:57.000 And then Trump leans over and gives her a hug.

00:10:59.000 It's very cute.

00:10:59.000 Very, very cute.

00:11:00.000 Okay.

00:11:00.000 And then that wasn't the only sign of compassion from the Trump administration yesterday.

00:11:04.000 Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked at a White House press conference about school shootings.

00:11:08.000 And you can see, this is not the response of somebody who doesn't care about dead kids, as so many people who are anti-Trump have suggested.

00:11:14.000 One thing that affects mine and other students' mental health is the worry about the fact that we or our friends could get shot at school.

00:11:22.000 Specifically, can you tell me what the administration has done and will do to prevent these senseless tragedies?

00:11:28.000 I think that as a kid and certainly as a parent there is nothing that could be more terrifying

00:11:35.000 For a kid to go to school and not feel safe.

00:11:37.000 So I'm sorry that you feel that way.

00:11:40.000 This administration takes it seriously and the School Safety Commission that the President convened is meeting this week again, an official meeting, to discuss the best ways forward and how we can do every single thing within our power to protect kids in our schools and to make them feel safe and make their parents feel good about dropping them off. 0.91

00:12:00.000 So clearly it's an administration filled with heartless cretins, you know, evil, evil people. 1.00

00:12:04.000 So this is not to say that the Trump administration doesn't do things that I find terrible at times, right? 0.98

00:12:09.000 Or says things that I find gross at times.

00:12:12.000 I mean, obviously I've been outspoken about all of that.

00:12:15.000 And we'll talk in a little bit about the president's response to the Roseanne situation. 1.00

00:12:18.000 But this this image that is put out by so many folks on the left that the Trump administration is just filled with awful, terrible people who don't care about kids is just stupid. 0.99

00:12:26.000 In a second, I'm going to show you the media's response to all of this yesterday, because it truly is astonishing. 0.97

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00:13:49.000 Okay, so how does the left respond to everything happening inside the Trump administration?

00:13:55.000 The only way to express this would be to say, in the most vile and despicable possible way.

00:14:00.000 So instead of dealing with the

00:14:02.000 Issues with the Trump administration.

00:14:03.000 Instead of talking about trade policy, for example.

00:14:05.000 Or instead of talking about the right-to-try legislation.

00:14:08.000 Or instead of even talking about the stuff that President Trump says.

00:14:11.000 Instead, the left has decided they have to out-Trump Trump.

00:14:14.000 They have to go lower than low.

00:14:16.000 So remember, Hillary Clinton said, when they go low, we go high.

00:14:19.000 And it didn't work for her.

00:14:20.000 So it seems like the left community has decided that when Republicans go medium, they will go as low as humanly possible.

00:14:28.000 Case in point,

00:14:29.000 The case in point over the last 24 hours is Samantha Bee.

00:14:31.000 So Samantha Bee, as I've said, has been in a running gun battle with Trevor Noah and Amy Schumer and a bunch of other leftist comedians for most unfunny human in the world. 0.94

00:14:41.000 But I think that she clearly takes the cake here. 0.93

00:14:43.000 I've always been leaning towards Samantha Bee, I'll be honest with you.

00:14:45.000 In these sweepstakes, I've always thought that Samantha Bee was the front runner. 0.84

00:14:48.000 I always thought that she led by at least a head.

00:14:51.000 And it seems that she has drawn full, like, she's drawing lengths away.

00:14:54.000 This is now like Secretariat in the unfunny horse race.

00:14:59.000 Here she is yesterday going after Ivanka Trump. 1.00

00:15:01.000 Ivanka Trump, you'll recall, had the temerity, the audacity to tweet out a picture of herself and one of her children over the weekend because it was Memorial Day weekend.

00:15:10.000 And the left said, how dare she take a picture with her kid? 1.00

00:15:12.000 Because there are people being separated from their kids on the border right now.

00:15:15.000 Now, as we discussed earlier this week, this critique makes no sense whatsoever, like no sense.

00:15:20.000 But that didn't stop Samantha Bee. 0.99

00:15:22.000 So Samantha Bee says that not only is Ivanka wrong to take that picture, she is a bleep. 1.00

00:15:27.000 Ivanka Trump, who works at the White House, chose to post the second most oblivious tweet we've seen this week. 0.99

00:15:34.000 You know, Ivanka, that's a beautiful photo of you and your child, but let me just say, one mother to another, do something about your dad's immigration practices, you feckless c**t! 1.00

00:15:45.000 He listens to you! 0.99

00:15:49.000 Put on something tight and low-cut and tell your father to f**king stop it! 0.86

00:15:54.000 So much bravery, so much class, so much decency. 0.97

00:15:59.000 This is how you got Trump.

00:16:00.000 This is how you got Trump.

00:16:01.000 So in a second, I'm gonna discuss more on how the left got Trump.

00:16:04.000 Okay, so Samantha Bee obviously is, I mean, I won't use the language that she uses here, but she's a very bad person. 1.00

00:16:11.000 Let's just say that. 0.80

00:16:11.000 She's a very bad person. 0.80

00:16:12.000 What Ivanka Trump taking a picture with her baby has to do with being called a feckless C-word is beyond me. 0.92

00:16:19.000 And how Samantha Bee keeps her job after that is beyond me as well.

00:16:22.000 It seems to me that there's certain language that is so outside the bounds of normal discourse that you can get fired for it.

00:16:28.000 Like Roseanne calling Valerie Jarrett an ape. 0.99

00:16:30.000 It seems to me like that was a fireable offense. 0.98

00:16:32.000 And it seems to me like Samantha Bee calling Ivanka Trump a feckless c-word for no reason other than she is in Trump's orbit and has a child is insane. 0.98

00:16:40.000 It is insane. 0.99

00:16:41.000 And then she goes on from there obviously to suggest that Trump wants to have sex with his own daughter and therefore if Ivanka wears something tight fit that she can change immigration policy. 1.00

00:16:50.000 The rage of the left, the utter insane response of the left to everything that Trump does, is driving more people into President Trump's arms. 0.98

00:16:59.000 Like, Trump may not have to actually do anything to win re-election if the left continues to pursue this sort of nonsense, this sort of vile nonsense. 0.97

00:17:07.000 As another example, Michaela Angela Davis is a race commentator on MSNBC, and she says that, in response to the whole Roseanne thing, she says, all Trump voters are racist. 0.97

00:17:17.000 Like, all of them.

00:17:18.000 It's actually on CNN.

00:17:19.000 Tens of millions of people voted for him after he showed his cards for years.

00:17:25.000 Are you suggesting that they're racist?

00:17:29.000 Yes.

00:17:30.000 The people who vote, all the people who voted for Donald Trump are racist?

00:17:33.000 Yes.

00:17:33.000 They may not be violently racist.

00:17:36.000 They may not be... He's targeted.

00:17:40.000 He's very clear and strategic.

00:17:42.000 Look, anti-blackness is a strategy that has been the foundation of part of the American project. 0.97

00:17:50.000 So it's not just that Trump is racist. 0.99

00:17:51.000 It's that every single person who supports him is racist. 0.93

00:17:53.000 So here's what we've learned from the left media in the last 24 hours. 0.98

00:17:57.000 Ivanka Trump is a feckless c-word. 1.00

00:17:59.000 And we have learned that if you voted for President Trump, even if you decried some of the things that he was saying, this makes you a racist. 0.97

00:18:05.000 And then they wonder why so many people are rushing to the arms of President Trump.

00:18:08.000 They're wondering why that's happening.

00:18:10.000 They're wondering why people don't respect the media.

00:18:12.000 And here's another example of media malfeasance yesterday.

00:18:14.000 And they're wondering why people don't take the media seriously.

00:18:16.000 Here's one of the CNN reporters

00:18:18.000 Going off on President Trump for hosting a White House Sports and Fitness Day.

00:18:22.000 Okay, this is a thing that virtually every president has held.

00:18:25.000 This White House Sports and Fitness Day.

00:18:26.000 Like, I remember Obama holding them. 0.95

00:18:28.000 But now you're going to hear a commentator suggest that Trump shouldn't hold it because he's fat.

00:18:31.000 The President is having this event here at the White House today, highlighting health and fitness, while questions are being raised about the President's own health and fitness.

00:18:39.000 As you'll recall, back in January, the President's doctor came out to the briefing room, and while he told reporters he believed the President was in good health, he did say that he was 6'3 and 239 pounds, and had set a weight loss goal of 10 to 15 pounds over the coming year.

00:18:54.000 So questions are of how he was going to do that through diet and exercise.

00:18:57.000 A great deal of irony here today, John, as the president is holding this event, these questions about his own weight loss battle that are still going on in the White House.

00:19:06.000 So much journalisming.

00:19:07.000 Wow.

00:19:08.000 I mean, that is some serious journalisming right here. 0.84

00:19:11.000 But she was surpassed by Jim Acosta, the White House reporter over at CNN, who legitimately is an awful, awful reporter.

00:19:16.000 I mean, Jim Acosta is a guy who believes he is Sam Donaldson and is more like Sam the Eagle from the Muppets.

00:19:23.000 He's just not good at this.

00:19:25.000 Here's Jim Acosta at the White House complaining about Sarah Huckabee Sanders, because Sarah Huckabee Sanders made a point over the last couple of days.

00:19:32.000 Her point about Roseanne was, you guys were very, very upset about Roseanne, and you were happy for her to be fired, and maybe she should have been fired, but you don't seem quite as happy to talk about Joy Reid, for example.

00:19:40.000 Which is obviously true.

00:19:42.000 CNN's Jim Acosta, he got very angry at this, because he has to stand up for the reputation of the media.

00:19:46.000 When the media starts standing for the media, and they're no longer standing for the truth, it turns out that most Americans tune them out.

00:19:51.000 Jim Acosta is the reason most Americans are starting to tune out the media.

00:19:54.000 Here's Acosta going after Huckabee Sanders for saying something that is obviously true.

00:19:59.000 It's a bit much, I think, for the White House press secretary from the podium to come out here and try to shame the media and say it's somehow our fault that Roseanne Barr put out this tweet. 0.99

00:20:10.000 Oh, that's not exactly what Huckabee Sanders said.

00:20:12.000 That's bad news coverage by Jim Acosta.

00:20:14.000 Shouldn't say it's the media's fault that Roseanne Barr put out the tweet.

00:20:17.000 She said it's the media's fault that there's this double standard where Joy Reid gets to keep her job, but Roseanne Barr loses her job. 1.00

00:20:22.000 And Joy Reid gets to keep her job because she is on the left. 1.00

00:20:24.000 And Roseanne loses her job because she was pro-Trump. 0.99

00:20:26.000 Which is perfectly obvious.

00:20:28.000 Media malfeasance.

00:20:29.000 Media nastiness.

00:20:30.000 This is how you got Trump, and this is how you're gonna get more Trump.

00:20:33.000 So by all means, continue to do this. 0.74

00:20:34.000 By all means, continue to think you can out-nasty President Trump.

00:20:37.000 There's no one on Earth who can out-nasty the President of the United States.

00:20:40.000 It ain't gonna work.

00:20:41.000 It just is not going to work.

00:20:43.000 And it's also one of the reasons why there's such scheudenfreude when it comes to

00:20:47.000 The Obama administration being ousted because they were quietly nasty.

00:20:50.000 They were quietly sliding in the knife into so many Americans. 0.84

00:20:53.000 And Trump is just a hammer. 0.94

00:20:55.000 So he's just obviously out there with Thor's hammer hitting people.

00:20:57.000 In a second, I want to talk a little bit about the scheudenfreude that obviously comes from President Obama having lost, because there's an amazing story in the New York Times and a piece of audio I just have to play for you that's incredible.

00:21:07.000 But first, I want to say thanks to our sponsors.

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00:22:50.000 Okay, so.

00:22:52.000 One of the things that's been, I think, really delicious to watch is the left had this perception of itself as beyond, sort of beyond decent.

00:23:02.000 The right was indecent, and the left was so decent, and the left was so good, and the left was so kind, and they just cannot understand how President Trump won.

00:23:09.000 And it's their lack of understanding as to why President Trump won that basically guarantees that he'll have a serious shot at re-election in 2020, despite his extraordinarily low approval ratings.

00:23:18.000 The left doesn't understand how he won.

00:23:19.000 And they don't understand how he won because they don't understand themselves.

00:23:22.000 One of the ways that you change your own life, just speaking personally, one of the ways that you change your own life is looking at your own flaws and then determining how to fix those flaws.

00:23:31.000 So, you know, for me, I've had to try to get beyond my own confirmation bias.

00:23:35.000 It's a difficult thing to do, to try and look at the stuff that you want to believe and determine whether you are right in believing those things.

00:23:42.000 For people like me, you know, sometimes I get condescending.

00:23:44.000 I gotta work on that, right?

00:23:45.000 There are certain things about me as a human being that I have to try to work on.

00:23:48.000 Well, the same thing is true of parties.

00:23:49.000 Parties have to look internally and say, what is it that we have to work on?

00:23:52.000 The Democrats never felt they had to work on anything because they had made, basically Trump's case against the Democrats, they'd made against Republicans for years. 1.00

00:24:00.000 The case that Trump makes against the Democrats, that they're all bad and they like MS-13 and they're mean and they're cruel and they're nasty and they're stupid and all this kind of stuff. 1.00

00:24:07.000 That's just turnabout as fair play. 1.00

00:24:09.000 The Democrats have been claiming this for years.

00:24:11.000 In 2013, I wrote a book called Bullies, a New York Times bestseller, talking specifically about this character tactic that has been used by Democrats for years.

00:24:17.000 Well, when Trump won, suddenly it dawned on the Democrats, or it should have dawned on the Democrats, that maybe they shouldn't have been so quick about dismissing half the American public.

00:24:25.000 Maybe they shouldn't have been so quick about assuming that they were the bringers of light and truth and that everyone who disagreed with them was ill-motivated.

00:24:34.000 And so there's something delicious about watching members of the Obama administration trying to cope with the fact that Hillary Clinton lost an election to Donald Trump, which is, again, that was a nearly impossible, miraculous occurrence.

00:24:44.000 This video, this audio of Ben Rhodes,

00:24:47.000 I just came outside to try to process all this.

00:24:48.000 It's a lot to process.

00:24:49.000 I mean,

00:25:16.000 I can't even... I can't... I mean, I... I can't... I can't put it into words.

00:25:37.000 I don't know what the words are.

00:25:42.000 Oh, it would take a heart of stone not to laugh at that.

00:25:45.000 It's so amazing. 0.99

00:25:46.000 So Ben Rhodes is just a garbage heap. 0.90

00:25:49.000 Ben Rhodes is the architect of the Iran deal. 0.99

00:25:50.000 He openly bragged about lying to the American people.

00:25:53.000 And there he is.

00:25:54.000 I can't understand why the American public rejected the Obama legacy.

00:25:57.000 Why, God, why?

00:25:59.000 And then just the incapacity to speak by a former novelist from his Brooklyn apartment elevated to a position of unprecedented power for a guy who knows nothing about anything.

00:26:08.000 It's just wonderful.

00:26:09.000 That's not the only wonderful thing.

00:26:11.000 The fact that the Democrats don't understand this is why they have a serious shot at continuing to lose.

00:26:14.000 It's one of the reasons why the generic ballot gap between Republicans and Democrats has now shrunk to near nothingness.

00:26:19.000 There's a piece in the New York Times that is from a report by Peter Baker about the emotional stages of adjusting to President Trump's victory.

00:26:29.000 And it is just wonderful.

00:26:31.000 Here's what it says.

00:26:38.000 What if we were wrong?

00:26:39.000 He asked aides riding with him in the armored presidential limousine.

00:26:43.000 He had read a column asserting that liberals had forgotten how important identity was to people and had promoted an empty cosmopolitan globalism that made many people feel left behind.

00:26:51.000 Maybe we pushed too far, Mr. Obama said.

00:26:53.000 Maybe people just want to fall back into their tribe.

00:26:55.000 His aides reassured him that he still would have wanted he'd been able to run for another term and that the next generation had more in common with him than with Mr. Trump.

00:27:01.000 Mr. Obama, the first black man elected president, did not seem convinced.

00:27:05.000 Sometimes I wonder whether I was 10 or 20 years too early, he said.

00:27:10.000 This is why you fail.

00:27:12.000 This is why you fail.

00:27:13.000 I love that the level of introspection is not about him, not about his administration.

00:27:18.000 It's about the evils of the American public.

00:27:20.000 So the same American public that elected him overwhelmingly twice suddenly was evil, but had nothing with him.

00:27:25.000 It was them.

00:27:26.000 They were the bad people.

00:27:27.000 He was just too early.

00:27:28.000 Don't you understand?

00:27:29.000 We were given a gift by President Obama.

00:27:31.000 President Obama, he was the gift, right?

00:27:33.000 It was just like bleep in a box, right?

00:27:34.000 He just unwrapped himself and there he was.

00:27:36.000 It was fantastic.

00:27:38.000 President Obama came along and we should have all just been grateful for his very presence in front of us.

00:27:43.000 He was his own gift.

00:27:44.000 He was God's gift, which means President Obama's own gift to the people.

00:27:47.000 He was his own son presenting himself to us to die on the cross for our sins.

00:27:52.000 This was Barack Obama.

00:27:53.000 This was the man.

00:27:55.000 And then what I love about this so much is that that line where he says, maybe we push too far.

00:27:59.000 Maybe people just want to fall back into their tribe.

00:28:02.000 Obama was a tribalist president.

00:28:04.000 President Obama had the opportunity after his election in 2008 to bring Americans together, particularly on issues of race.

00:28:09.000 He failed to do it.

00:28:10.000 Not only did he fail to do it, he deliberately decided not to do it and instead to focus on tribalizing people by polar patterns, right, by trying to move people back into their tribes so he could then

00:28:21.000 Agglomerate them all together, wrap them into a ball, and in this Democratic ball that was going to roll downhill and crush Republicans.

00:28:27.000 That was his entire electoral strategy, and he still doesn't get it.

00:28:30.000 But it's really delicious to watch him not getting it.

00:28:33.000 He was out of touch, President Obama, and so were the Democrats, which is why they lost.

00:28:36.000 In the weeks after Mr. Trump's election, the New York Times continues, Mr. Obama went through multiple emotional stages, according to a new book by his longtime advisor, Benjamin Rhodes, right?

00:28:44.000 That was the same guy you watched there trying to struggle with the idea that Trump had won, and it was wonderful, just delicious.

00:28:50.000 At times, the departing president took the long view.

00:28:52.000 At other points, he flashed anger.

00:28:54.000 He called Mr. Trump a cartoon figure who cared more about his crowd sizes than any particular policy.

00:28:58.000 Okay, that is true.

00:29:00.000 It is also true that Barack Obama cared a lot more about his crowd sizes than any particular policy, which is why he went around Europe immediately after his election, speaking to throngs of people and saying nearly nothing of substance.

00:29:10.000 He expressed rare self-doubt, wondering whether he had misjudged his own influence on American history.

00:29:15.000 Set to be published next week by Random House, Mr. Rhodes' memoir, The World As It Is, by the way, the fact that Ben Rhodes called his memoir, The World As It Is, is just unbelievable.

00:29:25.000 Ben Rhodes is a guy who legitimately believed that Iran was going to moderate if we gave them hundreds of billions of dollars.

00:29:32.000 And then he's writing a book called The World As It Is.

00:29:34.000 But don't worry, they're not out of touch.

00:29:36.000 Not out of touch at all.

00:29:37.000 But apparently his book offers a peek into Mr. Obama's tightly sealed inner sanctum from the perspective of one of the few people who saw him up close through all eight years of his presidency.

00:29:46.000 Few moments shook Mr. Obama more than the decision by voters to replace him with a candidate who has questioned his very birth.

00:29:52.000 I love, even the wording is just so good.

00:29:54.000 It's just so good.

00:29:55.000 Mr. Rhodes served as Mr. Obama's deputy national security advisor through some of the most consequential points of his presidency, including decisions to authorize the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

00:30:03.000 I love, by the way, the Democrats are still hanging their hat on that one.

00:30:06.000 Every president would have said, go do it.

00:30:08.000 Jimmy Carter would have said, go do it.

00:30:09.000 Send more troops to Afghanistan, pull most troops out of Iraq, restore diplomatic relations with Cuba, seal a nuclear agreement with Iran, intervene militarily in Libya, and refuse to intervene militarily in Syria.

00:30:18.000 But his book offers a new window.

00:30:20.000 Yes, in his own mind.

00:30:21.000 Obama is such a tragic figure in his own mind.

00:30:22.000 In his own mind, he was just, he was the man.

00:30:23.000 He was the Christ-like figure coming to save America, and then we crucified him on the cross of Trump.

00:30:49.000 Ooh, it feels good, I gotta say.

00:30:51.000 I didn't vote for Trump, but just for that schreudenfreud, sorta wish I had.

00:30:58.000 And I understand the temptation.

00:31:00.000 We sell a leftist hero's mug, right?

00:31:02.000 I get it.

00:31:03.000 I get the temptation.

00:31:04.000 It doesn't mean that President Trump does everything right, but the fact that Barack Obama was so deeply out of touch, and that he didn't understand the American people, and that he really believed that by polarizing the American people, he could bring us all together again,

00:31:15.000 And then he felt the impact of President Trump following him is just great, and well-deserved, and certainly well-deserved for Ben Rhodes as well.

00:31:22.000 There's more to this story, and I just have to savor every moment of it.

00:31:24.000 But first, go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.

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00:31:57.000 Hey, I'm Joe Rogan, and tune in this Sunday to the Ben Shapiro—is it the Sunday Special?

00:32:03.000 The Ben Shapiro Sunday Special.

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00:32:08.000 I love this guy.

00:32:09.000 I love communicating with him.

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00:32:15.000 Or not.

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00:32:42.000 Okay, so this New York Times piece, it just continues.

00:32:44.000 It is so long and so glorious.

00:32:46.000 On election night, Mr. Obama spoke by telephone with Cody Keenan, his chief speechwriter.

00:32:51.000 And Mr. Rhodes to figure out what he should say.

00:32:52.000 Mr. Rhodes asked if he should offer reassurance to allies.

00:32:55.000 Nope.

00:32:56.000 I don't think I'm the one to tell them that, the president said.

00:32:58.000 Because, of course, Obama wouldn't actually say that our allies would be okay.

00:33:02.000 Obama, by the way, wasn't even friendly with our allies.

00:33:04.000 When it comes to Israel and Britain, he was certainly not friendly.

00:33:06.000 The next day, Mr. Obama focused on cheering up his despondent staff.

00:33:09.000 At one point, he sent a message to Mr. Rhodes saying,

00:33:15.000 Really, that's something that he said to Ben Rhodes, Barack Obama.

00:33:19.000 There are more stars in the sky than grains of sand on the earth.

00:33:23.000 You have got to be kidding me.

00:33:26.000 You've got to be kidding me.

00:33:27.000 He did an interview with Glozell.

00:33:29.000 He did another interview with Pimp with a Limp. 1.00

00:33:31.000 There are pictures of him with a selfie stick in the Oval Office.

00:33:34.000 There are more stars in the sky than grains of sand on the earth. 0.99

00:33:37.000 What a pretentious douchebag. 0.91

00:33:39.000 Days later, Obama seemed less sanguine. 0.98

00:33:41.000 He said, I don't know.

00:33:42.000 Maybe this is what people want.

00:33:43.000 I've got the economy set up well for them.

00:33:45.000 No facts, no consequences.

00:33:47.000 They can just have a cartoon.

00:33:49.000 Obama was his own sort of cartoon.

00:33:50.000 The fact that people couldn't find humor in Obama is just beyond me.

00:33:53.000 You know, yesterday we talked about Trevor Noah saying that Obama was not inherently humorous.

00:33:57.000 Are you kidding me?

00:33:58.000 This is a dude who sends text messages to people that say things like, there are more stars in the sky than grains of sand on the earth.

00:34:04.000 Thanks, Confucius!

00:34:05.000 Like, what in the?

00:34:06.000 There is no humor in him?

00:34:08.000 He added, we're about to find out just how resilient our institutions are at home and around the world.

00:34:13.000 The day Mr. Obama hosted Mr. Trump at the White House after the election seemed surreal.

00:34:17.000 Mr. Trump kept steering the conversation back to the sides of his rallies.

00:34:22.000 Noting that he and Mr. Obama could draw big crowds, but Mrs. Clinton could not, Mr. Rhodes writes.

00:34:28.000 Yes!

00:34:29.000 Yes!

00:34:30.000 It's so great!

00:34:32.000 I said right after the election, there's one picture that really got me right after the election.

00:34:35.000 It was a picture of Donald Trump visiting the White House, sitting next to Barack Obama.

00:34:40.000 And you recall that Barack Obama had said on national television that Trump would never be president in a series of mean tweets with Jimmy Kimmel.

00:34:46.000 And there's Obama, looking like he wants to die.

00:34:49.000 And Trump's sitting next to him, giving the Trump finger to the camera, and behind them is a bust of Abraham Lincoln, looking down.

00:34:57.000 It is just amazing.

00:34:58.000 I love that Trump, because here's the thing, as I've said many times, Trump is Obama unmasked.

00:35:03.000 Deep down, Obama's ego is Trump's ego.

00:35:05.000 All the talk about crowd size, Barack Obama did his original DNC acceptance speech in 2008 on a stage with Greek columns and mist coming off the floor in a stadium filled with 40,000 people.

00:35:19.000 You think Obama didn't care about his crowd size?

00:35:20.000 Dude could not stay off TV.

00:35:22.000 He wouldn't miss an All-Star game.

00:35:24.000 He wouldn't miss an NCAA bracket challenge.

00:35:28.000 The guy was on TV all the time.

00:35:30.000 Trump is just the vulgar version of Obama in terms of personality.

00:35:33.000 I'm not even talking in terms of policy here.

00:35:35.000 The fact that Obama couldn't see that in himself is, again, one of the reasons he was so out of touch.

00:35:39.000 He was so out of touch.

00:35:41.000 This guy who's quoting fake psalms that he makes up himself.

00:35:44.000 Afterward, Mr. Obama called a few aides to the Oval Office to ruminate on the encounter.

00:35:49.000 I'm trying to place him in American history, he said.

00:35:51.000 He pedals bull, Mr. Rhodes answered.

00:35:53.000 That character has always been part of the American story.

00:35:55.000 You can see right back to some of the characters in Huckleberry Finn.

00:35:57.000 Maybe, Mr. Obama answered, that's the best we can hope for.

00:36:01.000 Oh, so sad, so sad.

00:36:02.000 By the way, talking of people who pedal bull, Barack Obama was in the Senate for five minutes before he ran for president, and he gave the most BS speech at the DNC in 2004 I had heard at that time, right?

00:36:13.000 The whole, we're not red states and blue states, we're the United States, right?

00:36:17.000 I just, I love that Trump is the bizarro, he's like Bizarro Superman.

00:36:20.000 Like, Obama sees himself as Superman, and Trump is just Bizarro Superman, where everything he says is kind of backwards, and he's just the weird version of Obama.

00:36:28.000 Like, when Obama looks in a funhouse mirror, he's gotta see Trump, and it must haunt his nightmares, and he deserves every second of that.

00:36:34.000 It is so grand, and it is so great.

00:36:36.000 Now, speaking of so grand and so great, I have to tell you this story, because it is so good.

00:36:40.000 Jill Stein, you remember Jill Stein?

00:36:42.000 She was the left's great hope.

00:36:43.000 She was the great hope.

00:36:44.000 She was going to provide that counter to Hillary Clinton. 1.00

00:36:47.000 Shortly after the 2016 election, according to the Daily Beast, Jill Stein raised more than $7 million from shell-shocked liberals eager to pursue a swing state recount. 0.95

00:36:55.000 Nearly two years later, the U.S.

00:36:56.000 Green Party's last candidate for president is still spending that money.

00:37:00.000 Ongoing litigation, travel costs, and staff salaries are also likely to eat up whatever is left.

00:37:05.000 So did they ever actually do any of the recounting?

00:37:06.000 Nope, they spent it all on staff salaries and vacations.

00:37:31.000 Yep, you guys didn't get scammed at all.

00:37:33.000 The only scamster in that race was clearly Donald Trump, not Jill Stein, not Hillary Clinton.

00:37:38.000 Man, sometimes politics is great.

00:37:39.000 Now, speaking of when politics is not great, we have to talk about Spygate.

00:37:43.000 So, the President of the United States decided to tweet today, because today is a day ending in Y. So, he decided that he was going to tweet about Spygate.

00:37:50.000 Spygate, as you recall, is this allegation that the FBI was, at the behest of the Obama administration, looking into

00:37:59.000 The only people that they targeted inside the campaign were people

00:38:20.000 Who basically have been charged at this point.

00:38:21.000 They never targeted Trump Jr.

00:38:22.000 They never targeted President Trump himself.

00:38:24.000 They never targeted Steve Bannon.

00:38:26.000 They never targeted a bunch of people who are top members of the Trump campaign.

00:38:29.000 It was only Manafort and Gates and Papadopoulos and Carter Page, right?

00:38:33.000 All people with serious, suspicious histories.

00:38:36.000 And then the third question is always the biggest, which is, if all this really happened, why doesn't Trump just declassify it?

00:38:40.000 And if the FBI really was going after Trump at the behest of the Obama administration, Trump's the president.

00:38:45.000 He can declassify this stuff at any time.

00:38:47.000 Part of the reason that I don't buy this story is because the president tweets things that are sometimes just not true.

00:38:52.000 So here's the thing that he tweeted that was just not true today.

00:38:54.000 He said, The corrupt mainstream media is working overtime, not to mention the infiltration of people, spies, into my campaign.

00:39:00.000 Surveillance much?

00:39:02.000 Okay, that's somewhat fair.

00:39:04.000 Here's the part that's not fair.

00:39:05.000 Not that it matters, but I never fired James Comey because of Russia.

00:39:09.000 The corrupt mainstream media loves to keep pushing that narrative, but they know it is not true.

00:39:13.000 He literally went on Lester Holt's show on national television on NBC and said he fired James Comey because of Russia.

00:39:20.000 He then went into a room with the ambassador to Russia, from Russia, Sergey Kislyak, and told him that he fired James Comey because of Russia.

00:39:28.000 Now, I don't think that he fired James Comey because Comey was about to uncover Russian collusion.

00:39:32.000 I think he fired James Comey because he was frustrated that Comey was not announcing publicly that he didn't have the goods on Trump about Russia.

00:39:39.000 When Trump says he didn't fire James Comey because of Russia, he literally said on national television.

00:39:45.000 He literally said that on national television that he'd fire James Comey because of Russia.

00:39:48.000 So, um, no.

00:39:50.000 I just, I don't buy that.

00:39:51.000 By the way, speaking of people who don't buy it, Trey Gowdy, who, it's really funny to me, you know, tribalism is a hell of a drug, and Trey Gowdy, you will recall, was considered

00:40:01.000 One of the staunchest, most aggressive Republicans in Congress.

00:40:04.000 He's retiring now.

00:40:05.000 He was on the, I believe, the House Oversight Committee.

00:40:09.000 And you remember during the Benghazi hearings, he was shellacking the Obama administration over and over and over.

00:40:13.000 He was the best prosecutor they had on the Oversight Committee.

00:40:15.000 He's a very strong Republican.

00:40:17.000 And he said on Fox News that the FBI was not out to get the quote-unquote Trump campaign in the middle of the election cycle.

00:40:23.000 Here's what he had to say, and the backlash was fierce.

00:40:26.000 It was President Trump himself who said, number one, I didn't collude with Russia, but if anyone connected with my campaign did, I want the FBI to find that out.

00:40:36.000 It looks to me like the FBI was doing what President Trump said I want you to do, find it out.

00:40:41.000 He's not the target.

00:40:43.000 So when Schiff and others don't make that clear, they're doing a disservice to our fellow citizens.

00:40:48.000 I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got, and that it has nothing to do with Donald Trump.

00:40:58.000 Okay, so what he says here is two things.

00:41:01.000 One of them is that the FBI was not investigating Donald Trump, and the other is that the FBI was not investigating the Trump campaign.

00:41:08.000 Now, there's a case to be made, Andrew McCarthy makes it today, that the Trump campaign was basically under investigation.

00:41:13.000 I don't agree with Andrew McCarthy's case, I tend to agree with Trey Gowdy.

00:41:16.000 But what's happened, because Trey Gowdy said something you are not allowed to say now, which is that President Trump is overblowing this case,

00:41:23.000 A lot of folks have been all over Trey Gowdy.

00:41:24.000 Sean Hannity, for example, attacked Trey Gowdy on Fox News and suggested that Trey Gowdy had now been co-opted for some reason.

00:41:31.000 There's the suggestion being made that Trey Gowdy has been co-opted by the deep state or that Trey Gowdy is now running interference for Democrats and for the FBI.

00:41:39.000 Again, Trey Gowdy, I believe, he might be wrong, but to question his motivations here I think is really beyond the pale.

00:41:44.000 Again,

00:41:45.000 When the evidence shows that the FBI was directed by President Obama or even hinted at by President Obama to target the Trump campaign, not just people within the Trump campaign, the Trump campaign itself, when we understand why Trump hasn't declassified the material, when we understand why the FBI didn't release the material, then I'm happy to go with the Spygate stuff.

00:42:01.000 Until then, I'm gonna have to withhold judgment.

00:42:03.000 Just as a lawyer, I'm gonna have to withhold judgment.

00:42:06.000 And I don't know what's wrong with that.

00:42:06.000 I think withholding judgment might be the best thing you can do when the evidence is not yet out.

00:42:11.000 Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.

00:42:13.000 So,

00:42:14.000 Things I like.

00:42:16.000 I do enjoy reading about human psychology and the natural limitations that human beings have.

00:42:23.000 As I said earlier in the show, I think it's a very important thing that

00:42:30.000 The human beings that they want to change actually spend some time looking into their own limitations.

00:42:35.000 There's a great book by Paul Bloom, a psychologist, I believe, at Yale University.

00:42:40.000 It's called Just Babies, The Origins of Good and Evil.

00:42:43.000 And it basically explains that human beings are not blank slates, right?

00:42:46.000 We are born with a bunch of inherent limitations that we have to work to overcome.

00:42:49.000 These limitations do include discrimination and violence.

00:42:53.000 They do include cognitive biases.

00:42:55.000 And it's important for everybody to know about these things so that you and your own life can overcome them and so you can educate your children better to overcome them.

00:43:01.000 Again, the book is called Just Babies, The Origin of Good and Evil.

00:43:04.000 It's a short book and a very easy read.

00:43:06.000 It's really fun to read as well.

00:43:07.000 It'll give you some information that puts to death the lie that the left has told for literally generations, that human beings are infinitely malleable if only we change our social constructs.

00:43:17.000 The idea that boys can become girls and girls can become boys is an outgrowth of the idea that the human brain is intensely plastic, so plastic that it has no actual features.

00:43:25.000 That's not true.

00:43:26.000 It never was true.

00:43:27.000 In human history, it has not been true.

00:43:29.000 And Paul Bloom sort of puts that to bed in Just Babies, The Origins of Good and Evil.

00:43:33.000 Okay, time for some things that I hate.

00:43:39.000 So yesterday, as I mentioned, President Trump met Kim Kardashian in the Oval Office.

00:43:43.000 And I question whether this was a worthwhile thing to do, because I think that linking yourself with celebrities is generally a waste of time and counterproductive.

00:43:50.000 I don't think celebrities generally have important things to say on topics outside of their purview.

00:43:54.000 That's not to say they can't raise money for charity.

00:43:56.000 It's not to say that they can't have their causes.

00:43:58.000 But I don't know why politicians should take the word of celebrities

00:44:01.000 I don't know.

00:44:25.000 Now, of course, what's ironic about all of this is that speaking of philosophical consistency, a bunch of people on the right will say, no, no, no, it's good.

00:44:33.000 Kim Kardashian coming in, it's great because she's trying to do the right thing. 0.82

00:44:36.000 Again, I'm not questioning Kim Kardashian's motives.

00:44:38.000 I'm questioning the usefulness and whether it is good for the country to have politicians doing these photo ops with celebrities as though the celebrities know what the hell they are talking about in many of these cases.

00:44:48.000 And I remember that there was a guy named Donald Trump who used to be sort of upset about this kind of stuff.

00:44:53.000 Trump used to rip Hillary Clinton 1.00

00:44:56.000 The only way she filled up the arena was to get Jay-Z. 0.91

00:45:08.000 And his language was so filthy that it made me like the most clean-cut human being on Earth.

00:45:18.000 Okay, that's a fair criticism, but then you can't go around talking about why Kanye should come to the White House. 0.74

00:45:23.000 The hypocrisy is a little bit much for me.

00:45:26.000 I have a consistent stand on this.

00:45:27.000 I do not think celebrities know things as a general rule.

00:45:30.000 If they do know things, one thing, if Trump wants to be friends with people, that's fine.

00:45:32.000 But the photo ops, the attempt to use celebrity as a method of power maintenance in American politics, I hated it when Obama did it.

00:45:39.000 I hated it when Hillary Clinton did it. 1.00

00:45:40.000 I don't like it when President Trump does it.

00:45:42.000 I'm as consistent as can be on this.

00:45:44.000 And I can't say the same about a lot of other people on the right who have just said, well, you know, as long as it's Trump doing it, it's totally fine.

00:45:49.000 But getting kind of used to that after all these years.

00:45:51.000 OK, time for a quick, quick Bible verse.

00:45:54.000 So we've been going chapter by chapter through the books following the five books of Moses.

00:46:00.000 And this is from the chapter three of the book of Joshua.

00:46:03.000 So Joshua is about to invade the land.

00:46:06.000 And it says, early in the morning, Joshua and all the Israelites set out from Shittim and went to the Jordan, where they camped before crossing over.

00:46:11.000 It's that verse that I want to talk about a little bit.

00:46:33.000 The idea that you have to consecrate yourselves because tomorrow the Lord will do amazing things among you.

00:46:36.000 If you were told today that God was going to do something amazing for you, would you go out and consecrate yourself?

00:46:42.000 Or would you think, well, listen, it's already guaranteed, right?

00:46:44.000 The reward's already guaranteed.

00:46:45.000 So would I go out and consecrate myself?

00:46:48.000 Would I go out, clean myself, make sure that I'm as clean as can be?

00:46:51.000 Or would I just rely on the mercy of the Lord?

00:46:55.000 It's my feeling that this verse has some serious importance because the idea is not that you're trying to buy off God to do things for you.

00:47:01.000 Religion is not about buying off God to do things for you.

00:47:03.000 God is not a gumball machine.

00:47:04.000 What God is, is a being that is infinitely kind and merciful.

00:47:09.000 And in gratitude for that, we have to constantly be in the process of consecrating ourselves.

00:47:13.000 God's going to do what he's going to do.

00:47:15.000 And I don't believe that you earn points with God in this life simply by doing good things.

00:47:19.000 I don't think it's you do good things and then God is nice to you.

00:47:22.000 Again, God is not your candy machine.

00:47:25.000 It is your job to be grateful for the things that God does give you, including a predictable universe in which, if you apply the rules, then good things happen to you.

00:47:32.000 It is our job to consecrate ourselves and not to worry about what God is going to do for us, because what God is going to do for us has almost no... Like, if people had not consecrated themselves, according to Joshua, God still would have done the great thing.

00:47:43.000 It is our job to be grateful for those great things, and therefore to spend our time making ourselves more virtuous human beings.

00:47:48.000 Okay, we'll be back here tomorrow with The Mailbag.

00:47:50.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:47:51.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:47:56.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.

00:48:02.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:48:06.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:48:07.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.

00:48:09.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:48:11.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.

00:48:14.000 Copyright Ford Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - May 31, 2018

The Saddest Story Ever Told | Ep. 550

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