The Ben Shapiro Show

00:00:00.000 Politico runs the most anti-Hurricane Harvey victim ever, until Charlie Hebdo runs another one that's even worse.

00:00:06.000 We'll talk about the all-female Lord of the Flies.

00:00:08.000 Yes, Hollywood is doing this stupid thing.

00:00:10.000 Plus, Trump talks taxes.

00:00:12.000 Are we actually going to get tax breaks?

00:00:13.000 We'll find out.

00:00:14.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:15.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:22.000 Alright, another day, another dollar.

00:00:23.000 We're here with you, and we're going to go through all of the news of the day.

00:00:27.000 I want to talk at length about all-female Lord of the Flies, because I think this is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard that does not work in any sense.

00:00:35.000 First of all, there already is an all-female Lord of the Flies.

00:00:37.000 It's called The View, and it blows.

00:00:39.000 It's awful.

00:00:40.000 But we'll talk about all of the things Lord of the Flies related, plus we'll talk about Trump talking taxes, and the left's bizarre reaction to Hurricane Harvey, or at least a few people on the left.

00:00:49.000 But before we get to that, I first want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Birchgold.

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00:01:50.000 Okay, so I'm really eager to talk about this all-female Lord of the Flies thing and why it's so stupid, so I really want to get to that.

00:01:56.000 But before I get to that, I first want to talk about this cartoon that came out in Politico.

00:02:00.000 If you want to know why there's a cultural divide in this country, it's because even the things that ought to bring us together can still be used to tear us apart.

00:02:07.000 Here is a cartoon that came out yesterday from Politico.

00:02:12.000 The author, the creator of this atrocity, his name is Matt Worker, I believe, and if you can't see it,

00:02:20.000 What it shows is a helicopter with the U.S.

00:02:23.000 logo on it trying to rescue a guy.

00:02:25.000 The guy is obviously supposed to be a Texan, right?

00:02:28.000 And he is sitting there in a shirt that is a Confederate flag and a cowboy hat and boots.

00:02:32.000 For some reason, his jeans are tucked into his boots.

00:02:34.000 I've never met a Texan who actually tucks his jeans into his boots.

00:02:36.000 But in any case, he's there in a basket and next to him is a flag that says, don't tread on me as he's being picked up from the waters.

00:02:44.000 And then the guy is shouting, angels sent by God.

00:02:47.000 And then there's a house next to him and the water is up to the roof of the house and on top there is a sign that says secede, like Texas secede.

00:02:55.000 And then a little girl on top of the roof and a rescuer who is trying to put a life jacket on the little girl and it says, actually coast guard sent by the government.

00:03:03.000 So not angel sent by God, coast guard sent by the government.

00:03:06.000 There are so many things wrong with this idiotic comic that it's almost impossible to hit them all.

00:03:12.000 Number one, let's begin with the caricature of religious people.

00:03:16.000 This angel sent by God routine.

00:03:18.000 This is so intensely stupid I can't even tell you.

00:03:21.000 The reason this is so intensely stupid is because religious people don't actually believe that angels are going to save them from the water.

00:03:28.000 They believe that human beings can sometimes act as instruments of God's will in saving them.

00:03:34.000 Okay, there's a very famous religious joke.

00:03:35.000 Every religious person knows this joke, but for those who are not religious in the audience, this is something religious people tell.

00:03:39.000 This is a religious person joke, okay?

00:03:41.000 Here's the joke.

00:03:42.000 Isn't that good?

00:03:42.000 But here's the joke.

00:03:43.000 Okay, the joke is there's a flood, and there's a guy who's trapped in the flood.

00:03:46.000 And so he prays to God, and he says, God, please send me help.

00:03:49.000 And next thing he knows, a car drives up and says, hop in, dude.

00:03:53.000 It's time to get out of here.

00:03:54.000 And he says, listen, I've talked to God.

00:03:56.000 God is going to send me help.

00:03:57.000 So the car drives away.

00:03:58.000 Next thing that happens, a boat comes up.

00:04:00.000 And the guy in the boat says, jump in.

00:04:02.000 And the religious guy says, no, no, no.

00:04:03.000 I've prayed to God.

00:04:04.000 God will help me.

00:04:05.000 So the boat motors away.

00:04:07.000 And here comes a helicopter.

00:04:08.000 And the helicopter comes and says to the religious guy, dude, jump in.

00:04:11.000 Lowers the rope to him.

00:04:12.000 He says, no, no, no.

00:04:13.000 God is going to save me.

00:04:14.000 So naturally, he drowns.

00:04:15.000 And then he goes up to heaven.

00:04:17.000 And he says to God, hey, I prayed.

00:04:18.000 Where were you?

00:04:19.000 And God says, I sent you a boat.

00:04:20.000 I sent you a car, a boat, and a helicopter.

00:04:22.000 What do you mean, where was I?

00:04:24.000 That's how religious people actually think of this sort of thing.

00:04:27.000 So this idea that it's angels sent by God, like they don't understand that it's actually the Coast Guard.

00:04:31.000 It can be both the Coast Guard and also human beings can act as angels in times of need.

00:04:35.000 In fact, little known fact about Hebrew that our non-Jewish friends probably don't know, the word for angel is malach in Hebrew.

00:04:43.000 The word for messenger in Hebrew is malach.

00:04:45.000 So human messenger and angel are the same exact word in Hebrew.

00:04:49.000 Okay, so it just demonstrates there's an identity here.

00:04:51.000 Human beings can act as messengers of the Lord even when they are acting in pursuit of their everyday duties.

00:04:56.000 So this idea that we're all just a bunch of religious morons is ridiculous.

00:05:00.000 Second of all, the idea that this guy's wearing a confederate shirt and that means obviously that he must be a racist redneck.

00:05:06.000 It's worth noting that the precincts that have been flooded in this hurricane

00:05:11.000 voted for Hillary Clinton overwhelmingly.

00:05:13.000 Overwhelmingly, they voted for Hillary Clinton.

00:05:15.000 In fact, the state of New Jersey voted in fewer numbers for Hillary Clinton than these districts did by percentage.

00:05:21.000 So it was a bunch of Democrats getting hit by this hurricane.

00:05:23.000 So they're ripping on the people of Texas as though they are uniformly Trump voters.

00:05:27.000 Not even true.

00:05:28.000 Okay, finally, when it says

00:05:31.000 It's the Coast Guard sent by the government.

00:05:32.000 How dare people in Texas think that they want to secede?

00:05:37.000 Let's be clear about this.

00:05:38.000 The vast majority of resources that are being brought to bear in Houston are local and state.

00:05:42.000 They are not federal resources.

00:05:43.000 Federal resources provide the vast minority of support.

00:05:46.000 That means that even if Texas were to secede, do you think they really wouldn't have any sort of Coast Guard facilities?

00:05:51.000 Texas is a very wealthy state.

00:05:52.000 Texas has its own nuclear weapons and the Air National Guard.

00:05:55.000 The idea that Texas is going to, I mean they're under federal auspices, but still, the idea that Texas is going to go completely broke if it were to secede, they wouldn't be able to rescue their own citizens, is absolute nonsense considering the people who are actually rescuing their citizens are folks who are working for the state of Texas.

00:06:11.000 And just because you believe in state sovereignty, just because you believe in state power under the Constitution, does not mean that you're against the government helping you out with your own taxpayer dollars.

00:06:21.000 I mean, that's why we pay for fire services.

00:06:22.000 This is why we pay for the police.

00:06:24.000 So this cartoon is so stupid in every way, but what it's really designed to do is suggest that Texans are just a bunch of loon bags who don't understand the beauty of government.

00:06:31.000 If they just understood the power of government and the beauty of government, then they would get behind a bigger, stronger government and spend more money and they wouldn't be these crazy Trump voters that they are.

00:06:39.000 That's what this cartoon is supposed to mean.

00:06:41.000 It's cruel, it's nasty, and it's stupid all at once.

00:06:44.000 It's especially stupid because the fact is that how are Texans acting during this?

00:06:48.000 They're not sitting around waiting to be rescued.

00:06:50.000 This is a picture tweeted out by a radio host named Michael Berry.

00:06:53.000 This is the 12.

00:06:54.000 This is a picture of a bunch of people in Texas in line.

00:07:00.000 Can we grab that?

00:07:02.000 Okay, there it is.

00:07:05.000 Okay, so you can see this giant line of people.

00:07:09.000 Is that giant line of people people waiting to get services?

00:07:11.000 Is that a giant line of people at a food bank?

00:07:14.000 No, it turns out that these are a bunch of people in the center of Houston who are waiting in line to volunteer.

00:07:19.000 Look at the size of that line.

00:07:20.000 Hundreds of people waiting in line to volunteer.

00:07:23.000 Those are the people that this idiot asshat, Matt Worker, is ripping on in Texas.

00:07:30.000 Those are the people of Texas.

00:07:31.000 Those are the people who are helping each other out.

00:07:33.000 Charlie Hebdo did exactly the same routine except more blatant.

00:07:36.000 Charlie Hebdo, which is, at least they're equal opportunity offenders.

00:07:39.000 They went after Muslim, Mohammedan, and Islam in such a way that they ended up as the target for a terrorist attack a few years back, as you recall.

00:07:48.000 Charlie Hebdo ran a cartoon

00:07:50.000 that showed a bunch, it says, do you existe?

00:07:56.000 I don't speak French, so I assume that means God exists.

00:08:00.000 And they are celebrating the flood, because it's a bunch of people, you can't see it, but I'll describe it to you.

00:08:05.000 It's a bunch of hands going up in the Heil Hitler salute, and a bunch of Nazi flags that are halfway underwater.

00:08:11.000 So it's a bunch of Nazis who are drowned.

00:08:13.000 It says, the cover of the magazine is totally captioned, God exists, he drowned all the neo-Nazis of Texas.

00:08:19.000 Again, the districts were a bunch of Democrats.

00:08:21.000 Second, the people of Texas are not neo-Nazis.

00:08:25.000 This is insane.

00:08:26.000 The racial makeup of the city is not... Let me give you the racial makeup of the city of Texas according to the census of 2000.

00:08:32.000 Okay, it's 49.3% white, which includes Hispanic.

00:08:33.000 Okay, 25% black or African-American.

00:08:39.000 So that means that this is one of the most diverse cities in America, and they're saying that it's a bunch of white supremacists, but again, the left's stereotypes have no end here, and they're really quite horrifying and disgusting.

00:08:50.000 And you wonder why people react by saying that they'll vote for Trump?

00:08:52.000 It's because they're reacting to stupidity like this.

00:08:54.000 It's because they're reacting to grossness like this.

00:08:57.000 Okay, so...

00:08:59.000 The truth is that the vast majority of people are not reacting well to these sorts of cartoons.

00:09:03.000 Even the left was a little upset with Politico revealing the hard left's biases.

00:09:07.000 Charlie Hebdo's cartoon is not going over like gangbusters.

00:09:10.000 But it does demonstrate the cultural stereotyping that goes on of people in Texas.

00:09:14.000 That everybody thinks that people in Texas are a bunch of rednecks outside of Texas.

00:09:17.000 And that cultural divide is getting worse, not better.

00:09:20.000 I mean, to the point where when Chris Pratt, the actor, said at one point that Hollywood doesn't do a good job of appealing to blue-collar Americans outside the major cities, and he was ripped up and down by the left and then forced to backtrack, it's true.

00:09:31.000 Hollywood does a horrible job of demonstrating what it is for people who live outside the major cities, because the vast majority of people who populate our pop culture are folks who are from major cities.

00:09:41.000 They're people from LA, I've lived here my entire life, people from New York, people from Chicago,

00:09:46.000 They mostly come from big cities.

00:09:47.000 The myth of the person who comes from Kansas and hits it big in Hollywood?

00:09:50.000 It happens.

00:09:51.000 It's true.

00:09:51.000 But the vast majority of people who work in Hollywood are from Hollywood.

00:09:54.000 The vast majority of people who write are from New York or Hollywood.

00:09:58.000 The vast majority of people making our entertainment are like that.

00:10:00.000 And that's why they have such scorn for people that they've never met halfway across the country who are suffering at this time.

00:10:06.000 Okay, so...

00:10:08.000 I think.

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00:11:19.000 Okay, so...

00:11:38.000 Here is what we know about, when I say that Hollywood is out of touch, I mean that Hollywood is seriously out of touch.

00:11:44.000 They're planning a movie that makes no sense, the all-female Lord of the Flies.

00:11:48.000 Why do I think this is important?

00:11:50.000 Because I think that it is important to understand that the left's

00:11:53.000 We're good to go!

00:12:16.000 And one of the things that feminists are constantly ripping about men is that men are violent, right?

00:12:19.000 This is the routine we got from Hillary Clinton.

00:12:21.000 That if Hillary had been elected president, there would never be another violent thing that happened ever, because all wars in history have been men!

00:12:30.000 You get that routine from the feminists all the time, but now they want to do Lord of the Flies, which is based on physical violence being done between groups.

00:12:37.000 I guess that now that they've done the all-female Ghostbusters, and that was such a smashing success, and such a horrible movie, and now Scott McGehee and David Siegel have made a deal at Warner's to direct a new version of Lord of the Flies, they plan to be faithful to the novel with one major twist.

00:12:51.000 The young students stranded on a remote island who descend into a savage social order will be girls.

00:12:56.000 And so here's what they say, according to Paul Bois over at Daily Wire.

00:13:00.000 David Siegel says, First of all, why would you have to do a contemporized adaptation of the book?

00:13:07.000 It's literally a bunch of boys stuck on an island.

00:13:09.000 Does that need a lot of updating?

00:13:11.000 It's not like you're updating Shakespeare or something and you have to update the language.

00:13:14.000 It's not like there are a bunch of cultural totems in Lord of the Flies.

00:13:18.000 Literally, there is a conch shell.

00:13:19.000 That is the entirety of the props in Lord of the Flies.

00:13:22.000 Okay, there's like a pig head.

00:13:24.000 That's pretty much it.

00:13:25.000 I guess they can have Lena- they're the glasses, that's true.

00:13:28.000 Thank you, Taylor.

00:13:30.000 I guess that you could theoretically cast Lena Dunham as Piggy, which might make some sense, but

00:13:35.000 David Siegel says, we want to do a faithful but contemporized adaptation of the book.

00:13:39.000 It says, it is a timeless story that is especially relevant today with the interpersonal conflicts and bullying and the idea of children forming a society and replicating the behavior they saw in grown-ups before they were marooned.

00:13:48.000 That really is not what the book is about.

00:13:51.000 The book is really not about that.

00:13:52.000 If you've read the book, the book is really not about them imitating the adults.

00:13:55.000 The point of the book is they get to the island and they realize there are no adults here.

00:13:59.000 We can do whatever we want.

00:14:01.000 That is the first three chapters of the book.

00:14:02.000 Have they even read it?

00:14:04.000 The entire point of the book is that man without civilization descends into anarchy and violence.

00:14:08.000 That's the entire point of the stupid book.

00:14:11.000 And the book isn't stupid, but this is ridiculous.

00:14:14.000 McGee, he says, the subject matter is aggressively suspenseful and taking the opportunity to tell it in a way that hasn't been told before with girls rather than boys is that it shifts things in a way that might help people see the story anew.

00:14:24.000 It breaks away from some of the conventions, the way we think of boys and aggression.

00:14:28.000 We don't think of boys in aggression.

00:14:29.000 Boys are aggressive.

00:14:31.000 Okay?

00:14:31.000 I have a girl and I have a boy.

00:14:33.000 The girl is three and a half years old.

00:14:35.000 She is calm.

00:14:35.000 She is delightful.

00:14:36.000 She is not aggressive.

00:14:38.000 I have a boy who is a year and a half old.

00:14:39.000 I love him very much.

00:14:41.000 He is awesome.

00:14:42.000 He also will beat the living crap out of you if you cross him.

00:14:44.000 Okay?

00:14:44.000 He's a boy.

00:14:45.000 That's what they do.

00:14:47.000 That's just what they are.

00:14:48.000 People still talk about the movie and the book from the standpoint of pure storytelling.

00:14:52.000 It is a great adventure story, real entertainment, but it has a lot of meaning embedded in it as well.

00:14:56.000 We've gotten to think about this a while as the rights were worked out, and we're super eager to put pen to paper.

00:15:01.000 So, they say, uh, this is just ridiculous.

00:15:06.000 Okay, a few things about this that are particularly ridiculous.

00:15:08.000 First of all,

00:15:10.000 Boys and girls are not the same.

00:15:28.000 Where there's no difference in the main characters, like an action movie that actually implicates the differences between men and women.

00:15:34.000 Any movie that focuses on men and women being exactly substitutable, being exactly the same, it just does not work that way.

00:15:42.000 It doesn't work for the viewer because the viewer knows there are differences between boys and girls.

00:15:46.000 Here's the fact, okay?

00:15:48.000 The movie would not work in any real sense because girls do not act the same as boys.

00:15:53.000 Quick question for you.

00:15:54.000 How many physical fights, not like yelling at each other and then crying on the phone fights, like physical fights have most girls been in?

00:16:02.000 Most girls have been in very, very few physical fights, if any.

00:16:05.000 The vast majority of girls that I know haven't been in any physical fights.

00:16:08.000 How many fights have the vast majority of boys been in?

00:16:10.000 The answer is probably greater than five.

00:16:12.000 Boys, particularly young boys, fight with each other all the time.

00:16:15.000 They have physical fights with each other.

00:16:17.000 Their arguments escalate to physical aggression in short order in a way that girls don't.

00:16:23.000 Girls don't sit around smacking each other in the face, okay?

00:16:25.000 That's not what girls do.

00:16:27.000 When I was in law school, there was a group of guys who would legitimately go to bars, get drunk, and sock each other in the balls.

00:16:31.000 This was like their way of having fun.

00:16:33.000 Okay, the idea that girls, like, I've never heard of girls doing this.

00:16:37.000 Okay, guys are much more aggressive than girls, which is why guys join the army and murder each other.

00:16:43.000 This is why the vast majority of murderers in every culture in history have been men.

00:16:47.000 The idea that women and men are exactly the same is stupid.

00:16:49.000 They don't even group the same way.

00:16:50.000 You know what would happen if a bunch of girls got stuck on an island together?

00:16:53.000 First of all, they would actually share and talk about their feelings, because they like that stuff.

00:16:57.000 Guys don't like that stuff.

00:16:58.000 Half of the beginning of Lord of the Flies is the guys don't want to share feelings, and Piggy wants to share feelings, so they murder him.

00:17:04.000 Okay, so that's legitimately what happens in the book.

00:17:07.000 If a girl tries to share her feelings in an island with a bunch of other girls who are just shipwrecked, they will sit around and bond over this.

00:17:13.000 That's what they will do.

00:17:15.000 Beyond that, girls don't tend to break into giant groups.

00:17:18.000 They don't break into giant tribes.

00:17:20.000 There have been studies that have shown this.

00:17:22.000 There was one from the National Institute of Health that came out.

00:17:25.000 Just recently.

00:17:26.000 And what they found is that girls actually like to get together in sort of best friend forever circumstances.

00:17:32.000 They have a very close-knit circle of friends, right?

00:17:34.000 They have, girls will have their best friend and that's it, right?

00:17:37.000 Guys will get together in packs and they roam around in packs.

00:17:40.000 That's what they do.

00:17:41.000 Because guys are basically just chimpanzees, like male chimpanzees.

00:17:44.000 They walk around in packs.

00:17:45.000 That's what happens in Lord of the Flies.

00:17:47.000 They break down into packs, and then they fight each other.

00:17:49.000 Because men are looking for physical safety from other men, and so they band together to provide that physical safety for one another.

00:17:55.000 Girls in the absence of guys are not deeply worried about other girls physically attacking them, and so they only need somebody with whom they can spiritually and mentally bond.

00:18:04.000 That's what they are looking for.

00:18:05.000 This is why guys don't understand girls and girls don't understand guys.

00:18:08.000 When guys get angry and when guys get upset, guys get silent.

00:18:11.000 When girls get angry and upset, they get very talkative.

00:18:14.000 Girls actually want to talk about their feelings.

00:18:16.000 They want to talk about what's upsetting them.

00:18:17.000 Guys tend to go quiet, and then girls are like, why won't you talk to me?

00:18:20.000 It's like, because this is what guys do.

00:18:22.000 Guys and girls are largely... This doesn't mean every guy and every girl.

00:18:25.000 These are generalizations.

00:18:26.000 But these generalizations exist for a reason and are scientifically backed.

00:18:32.000 There's a study conducted by researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health and Georgia State University, and what they found is that girls, again, like to get together in one-on-one relationships with BFFs, and boys are more attuned to group dynamics and competition.

00:18:46.000 That's not something that girls are that interested in engaging in.

00:18:50.000 Beyond that, boys don't like sharing.

00:18:52.000 Girls like sharing.

00:18:54.000 This is according to the APA, the American Psychological Association.

00:19:17.000 Yes, this is correct.

00:19:18.000 This is what men think.

00:19:19.000 When people want to share feelings, we're like, shut up!

00:19:22.000 No one cares!

00:19:23.000 Okay, when girls want to share feelings, they think sharing feelings makes social bonds stronger.

00:19:28.000 Girls are right on this, and guys are wrong, but guys are right that if you spend all your time sharing your feelings, nothing gets done.

00:19:32.000 Okay, but this is why you have societal breakdown in Lord of the Flies, because it's not a bunch of guys sitting around and talking about how sad it is that some of their friends just drowned, and how they wish they could get back to civilization, and how much they miss their parents.

00:19:44.000 It's a bunch of guys going, I don't want to talk about that crap, let's go kill a pig!

00:19:47.000 Right?

00:19:47.000 That's what Lord of the Flies is.

00:19:48.000 So, the reason I'm upset about this is, once again, Hollywood is trying to promote this idea that boys and girls are the same.

00:19:55.000 Boys and girls are not the same, and people who say that boys and girls are the same are super, super stupid in every possible way.

00:20:01.000 Boys and girls are not the same.

00:20:03.000 Boys can't become girls.

00:20:04.000 Girls can't become boys.

00:20:06.000 There are some boys who tend toward more feminine behavior, and some girls who tend toward more masculine behavior, but on the whole, there are massive differences, and just plopping girls into boys' roles doesn't do the trick.

00:20:16.000 It's, it's so annoying.

00:20:17.000 I mean, can you imagine, like, how about in all-male beaches?

00:20:21.000 Right, I mean, as long as we're gonna be just substituting sexes, how about we just do all-male beaches, you know, with, like, Bette Midler?

00:20:27.000 How bad would that movie be?

00:20:28.000 Right, about as bad as an all-female Lord of the Flies.

00:20:31.000 Do you really want a movie that has in it Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey and Mayim Bialik and then instead you have like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sly Stallone?

00:20:40.000 They're just sitting around talking about their feelings and there's a picture on the piano of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sly Stallone in the poster for the film?

00:20:47.000 Yeah, I didn't think so either.

00:20:49.000 God, people.

00:20:49.000 Can we understand that human beings like watching human beings act like the actual human beings that they see in real life?

00:20:55.000 They don't want women who act like men.

00:20:57.000 It's one thing—this is not to say women can't be action stars, right?

00:20:59.000 If you watch Aliens, then you see Ripley, right?

00:21:01.000 You see Sigourney Weaver picking up the mantle of what could be a male action part, but the whole point is because everyone else is dead and there's no one there to save her, right?

00:21:10.000 She has to fulfill that role.

00:21:12.000 This happens in real life too, and that's why it rings true.

00:21:15.000 Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2, she's also forced into the circumstance.

00:21:18.000 Like the transition between Linda Hamilton in Terminator 1 and Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2 is really fascinating.

00:21:23.000 In Terminator 1, she's a very feminine character who's being protected by this guy who has come to protect her unborn child, right?

00:21:31.000 We're good to go.

00:21:50.000 Meanwhile, on a less light note, President Trump traveled to Missouri yesterday to talk about taxes.

00:21:55.000 I want to talk about that.

00:21:56.000 But first, you have to go over and subscribe.

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00:23:11.000 Okay, so President Trump was on the campaign trail yesterday.

00:23:14.000 I mean, that's basically what it was.

00:23:15.000 He went over to Missouri and he gave a speech about taxes.

00:23:18.000 Now, a lot of people on the left were very upset about this notion that Trump was talking taxes in the middle of the hurricane.

00:23:27.000 I know people on the right did some of the same stuff with Obama.

00:23:31.000 Do I think it's a huge deal that he made a speech on taxes in the middle of the hurricane?

00:23:34.000 I don't.

00:23:34.000 Do I think he should have delayed it?

00:23:35.000 Probably.

00:23:36.000 It just, it seems like a little, not untoward so much, but just, it doesn't seem like great timing.

00:23:41.000 If you want to make headlines about taxes, don't do it in the middle of the worst natural disaster in, one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the country.

00:23:48.000 But, do I think it's a huge deal?

00:23:50.000 I really don't.

00:23:51.000 Trump demonstrated some of that fabled empathy that the media says he has none of in his speech in Missouri.

00:23:56.000 Here's what he had to say.

00:23:59.000 I was on the ground in Texas yesterday to meet with Governor Abbott, who is doing, by the way, an incredible job, and local officials so that we could coordinate the very big and unprecedented federal response.

00:24:17.000 In difficult times such as these, we see the true character of the American people, their strength, their love, and their resolve.

00:24:26.000 We see friend helping friend, neighbor helping neighbor, and stranger helping stranger.

00:24:33.000 And together, we will endure and we will overcome.

00:24:38.000 Okay, all of that's fine.

00:24:39.000 I don't see a huge problem with any of that, and of course everything that he is saying there is fine and good.

00:24:43.000 There are people saying he seems insincere.

00:24:45.000 I hate this kind of analysis.

00:24:47.000 I think it's really dumb.

00:24:49.000 This kind of stuff where it's like, oh, we're gonna read his brain, okay?

00:24:51.000 There's not, like, a huge amount of stuff to read there in any case.

00:24:55.000 The idea that we're gonna sit around reading, you know, his emotions on Hurricane Harvey I just find absolutely asinine.

00:25:02.000 Okay, and then he gets into the real tax reform talk, and I'm going to explain what I think is right and what is wrong here.

00:25:08.000 He says that this is the opportunity to deliver real tax reform, and he's committed to working on it.

00:25:13.000 So this is our once-in-a-generation opportunity to deliver real tax reform for everyday hardworking Americans, and I am fully committed to working with Congress to get this job done, and I don't want to be disappointed by Congress, do you understand?

00:25:31.000 Okay, so he's ripping on Congress, which is fully his prerogative.

00:25:35.000 You know, I think that it's actually not a bad thing for him to be ripping on Congress.

00:25:38.000 McConnell and Ryan didn't get the job done on healthcare.

00:25:40.000 But, once again, what you're going to see is that Trump is running into some serious problems here because he doesn't know specifics and he doesn't care about specifics.

00:25:46.000 Just as with healthcare, he seems to be laying out these broad guidelines and then suggesting that Ryan and McConnell have to hash them out themselves.

00:25:53.000 They've proved themselves incompetent at that.

00:25:55.000 That means that Trump actually has to get his hands dirty.

00:25:58.000 This is the problem with having someone who legitimately is not only not a policy wonk, he doesn't even have a bunch of people who surround him who are real policy wonks on taxes.

00:26:05.000 Like, who's gonna pitch this thing?

00:26:06.000 Jared Nivanka?

00:26:07.000 Who's gonna pitch this thing?

00:26:08.000 Steve Mnuchin, who was a Democrat until five minutes ago?

00:26:11.000 Gary Cohn, who's still a Democrat as far as I know?

00:26:13.000 So some of the stuff that he says about taxes I think is correct.

00:26:16.000 I mean he talks about getting rid of loopholes and complexity.

00:26:20.000 He talks about lowering the competitive tax code.

00:26:23.000 This is clip four where he talks about getting rid of some of the upper tax brackets on corporate tax rates.

00:26:30.000 Second, we need a competitive tax code that creates more jobs and higher wages for Americans.

00:26:37.000 It's time to give American workers the pay raise that they've been looking for for many, many years.

00:26:46.000 Okay, so again, that's about right.

00:26:48.000 I mean, everything he's saying there is correct.

00:26:50.000 We do have some of the highest business rates among developed nations.

00:26:53.000 You know, the average business tax rate has fallen, as Trump says, from 45% to 24% in developed nations, and we are at 35%.

00:27:01.000 Corporations pay a lot less than that in their effective tax rate, but that's because they're doing what everyone does.

00:27:06.000 They're taking every deduction.

00:27:08.000 They're moving jobs offshore.

00:27:09.000 They are moving their money offshore.

00:27:11.000 They are reverse merging with companies outside the United States.

00:27:13.000 They don't have to pay American tax rates.

00:27:15.000 So yes, we have to do all those things.

00:27:18.000 He talks about his sort of theory of how we are going to bring about economic growth with tax cuts.

00:27:24.000 Here's clip five.

00:27:25.000 We will lower taxes for middle-income Americans so they can keep more of their hard-earned paychecks.

00:27:32.000 And they can do lots of things with those paychecks.

00:27:36.000 And that really means buying product ideally made in this country.

00:27:41.000 This is a theory that's often put out about tax cuts in general to the middle class.

00:27:46.000 First of all, the middle class is not the hardest hit bracket by any stretch of the imagination by taxes in the United States.

00:27:52.000 It is the upper class that is hit by the top tax brackets.

00:27:54.000 They are destroyed by the top tax brackets.

00:27:57.000 The top 5% of income earners, let me look up the exact statistics,

00:28:02.000 They pay, I believe, something like 30% of all taxes.

00:28:05.000 The top 1% is according to CNBC, not exactly a right-wing source.

00:28:11.000 The top earning 1% of Americans pay half of federal income taxes for 2014.

00:28:16.000 That's a pretty astonishing statistic.

00:28:17.000 They will pay 45.7% of all individual income taxes in 2014.

00:28:19.000 That is up from 43% in 2013 and 40% in 2012.

00:28:20.000 The bottom 80% of Americans are expected to pay

00:28:29.000 Only 15% of all federal income tax.

00:28:31.000 So the idea that it's the middle class tax cut that boosts the economy is not true.

00:28:34.000 What boosts the economy is people who have money to invest in the creation of new products and services actually doing that and creating jobs.

00:28:42.000 Right?

00:28:42.000 We here at The Daily Wire have created an enormous number of jobs.

00:28:44.000 Why?

00:28:45.000 Because we have funders who are billionaires who decided to invest that capital in building a new company and trying to generate more profit.

00:28:51.000 And in generating that new profit,

00:28:53.000 That has made people who work for the company more wealthy.

00:28:55.000 It's made people who work for the company more employed.

00:28:57.000 You know, all of this is how economics actually works.

00:28:59.000 No one has ever worked for a poor person.

00:29:01.000 It doesn't work that way.

00:29:02.000 You don't get hired by a poor person.

00:29:03.000 Even middle class people, it's good that they should have more money in their pocket that they earned, just as a moral principle.

00:29:08.000 But the way that economics really moves forward, the reason you have better products and services for the same dollars you used to spend on an iPhone 3, you're now spending on an iPhone 7, is because there are people at the top who are actually directing those funds toward investment.

00:29:20.000 So we must, we have no choice, we must lower our taxes.

00:29:22.000 And your senator, Claire McCaskill,

00:29:44.000 She must do this for you, and if she doesn't do it for you, you have to vote her out of office.

00:29:54.000 The problem here is that Trump is not really going to take a leadership role with Congress, which is what he needs to do.

00:29:58.000 He was elected on the back of the idea that Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are untrustworthy.

00:30:02.000 They need to be led around like dogs with a leash, okay?

00:30:05.000 They cannot be allowed to run the show.

00:30:08.000 And yet Trump has basically abdicated and said to them, you guys handle it and I'll just go out and stump for it.

00:30:12.000 I don't think that's going to work here.

00:30:13.000 I don't think that that's going to be an effective tactic.

00:30:16.000 You know, there are a bunch of people who are Trump supporters who are upset with him that if he's going to use his political capital, why is he using it on tax cuts in the first place?

00:30:23.000 Ann Coulter has been going after Trump very hard.

00:30:26.000 She says this is a tone-deaf speech.

00:30:27.000 Why is he paying attention to Wall Street?

00:30:29.000 Why is he paying attention to all of this?

00:30:31.000 We'll explain why corporate tax rates need to come down in a second.

00:30:34.000 But a lot of his base is not particularly concerned with this.

00:30:37.000 And Republicans in Congress, it's a question as to why they're going to get this together.

00:30:41.000 Senator Mike Lee from Utah, he said, listen, if we don't get tax reform, we're dead.

00:30:44.000 Of course, Republicans had been saying the same thing about Obamacare repeal, and they didn't get that either.

00:30:49.000 The American people elected us expecting us to repeal Obamacare and bring about tax reform.

00:30:54.000 We haven't repealed Obamacare.

00:30:56.000 If we don't get tax reform done, we're dead.

00:30:58.000 We might as well fold up our tent and go home.

00:31:00.000 Okay, well, they keep saying that, except for the Democrats continue to suck at their jobs, so it almost doesn't matter what Republicans do in any of this.

00:31:07.000 They can continue to stink at their jobs and nothing major will happen.

00:31:10.000 Now, what's interesting is that the Democrats, in stinking at their jobs, have come down along two lines.

00:31:15.000 One version of the Democrats, they say, let's hold our fire.

00:31:17.000 Let's keep our powder dry.

00:31:20.000 Let's wait till Trump makes a big boo-boo, and then we can jump on him with both feet.

00:31:23.000 And the other group of Democrats are the people who are still rabid over the last election, and they are interested in tearing down Trump every day.

00:31:28.000 Dianne Feinstein, who's a much more clever Democrat than most of them.

00:31:32.000 She's my senator out here in California.

00:31:34.000 I think she's a garbage senator, but she's a clever woman.

00:31:36.000 And here's what she had to say about President Trump that kind of shocked her own constituents when she was doing an event out here in California.

00:31:44.000 Look, this man is going to be president most likely for the rest of this term.

00:31:50.000 I just hope he has the ability to learn and to change.

00:31:55.000 And if he does, he can be a good president.

00:31:58.000 And that's my hope.

00:32:00.000 Okay, so she said she hopes he's a good president.

00:32:02.000 This is anathema for a lot of people on the left, but she's smart.

00:32:05.000 By saying this, it allows her to draw distance from him when he actually does something wrong.

00:32:09.000 It sounds like she's propping him up, but she's just gonna kick that, that crutch away as soon as it becomes convenient to do so.

00:32:14.000 This is the smart version of what Democrats are doing.

00:32:16.000 Here's the dumb version of what Democrats are doing.

00:32:17.000 Richard Trumka, the head of the AFL-CIO, says that he would support Trump, except that Trump's a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad racist.

00:32:25.000 He had two factions in the White House.

00:32:28.000 You had one faction that actually had some of the policies that we would have supported on trade and infrastructure, but they turned out to be racist.

00:32:42.000 And on the other hand, you had people that weren't racist, but they were Wall Streeters.

00:32:48.000 Okay, so the idea that all the people he was trying to do business with, they were all a bunch of terrible, horrible racists.

00:32:54.000 Again, it's kind of funny hearing this from a lot of these unions like the AFL-CIO.

00:32:58.000 There are major union issues in the first part of the 20th century, and most of the 20th century actually, in which the unions would not allow black people to join because it was considered a union against a lot of the freed slaves.

00:33:09.000 who were going to swamp the labor market.

00:33:11.000 That's what the union was designed to do, actually.

00:33:13.000 For example, the Pullman car strike in the late 19th century was designed to keep black people out of jobs, so it's funny to hear the unions talk about their lack of racism.

00:33:23.000 Okay, so, I want to get to some things I like and then some things I hate, and then I want to get to the big idea today, because today is a Thursday, which means we talk about a big idea.

00:33:30.000 Okay, so, let's do some things that I like.

00:33:35.000 So, the thing that I like today, I've been talking philosophy all week.

00:33:39.000 I stumbled on this new podcast that's been featured over at iTunes, and I really, really enjoy it.

00:33:44.000 It's called Philosophize This, and the guy who hosts it is not a university professor.

00:33:48.000 His name is Stephen West.

00:33:50.000 He is a guy who really knows how to bring the philosophers sort of down to

00:33:56.000 We're good.

00:34:19.000 I listen to your show, too.

00:34:20.000 I'm a big fan.

00:34:21.000 So thanks, Stephen.

00:34:22.000 I appreciate it.

00:34:22.000 Go give it a listen.

00:34:23.000 It's a really good education.

00:34:24.000 And if you look at the episodes, then you will see that he goes through everything from Marx.

00:34:29.000 Right now he's doing the Frankfurt School, actually.

00:34:32.000 So that's pretty fascinating.

00:34:34.000 He's talked about Ayn Rand.

00:34:36.000 He's talked about Sartre.

00:34:37.000 He's talked about Aristotle.

00:34:38.000 He goes all the way back to the beginnings of Western history.

00:34:41.000 I don't know.

00:35:02.000 Sometimes you're better off hearing a good summary from somebody who's read them and understands them, and that's what this this podcast is.

00:35:08.000 Highly recommended.

00:35:08.000 Philosophize this.

00:35:09.000 Okay, other things that I like.

00:35:11.000 So, as you recall, there was a white supremacist neo-nazi guy named Christopher Cantwell.

00:35:18.000 You remember him.

00:35:19.000 We talked about him after the Charlottesville attacks.

00:35:22.000 There was tape of him talking to this reporter from Vice with enormous glasses, in which Christopher Cantwell described his point of view on life.

00:35:31.000 I'm here to spread ideas, talk, in the hopes that somebody more capable will come along and do that.

00:35:37.000 Somebody like Donald Trump, who does not give his daughter to a Jew.

00:35:42.000 So Donald Trump, but, like, more racist.

00:35:44.000 A lot more racist than Donald Trump.

00:35:46.000 I don't think that you could feel about race the way I do and watch that Kushner bitch walk around with that beautiful girl.

00:35:53.000 We're here obeying the law.

00:35:54.000 We're doing everything that we're supposed to do, trying to express opinions.

00:35:59.000 And the criminals are over there getting their way.

00:36:02.000 And that is a foundational problem in our society.

00:36:05.000 And whatever you think of my opinions, that's going to be something that puts you in danger.

00:36:09.000 Yeah, and that is because this city is run by Jewish communists and criminal... That's exactly what it is.

00:36:15.000 You're the true non-violent protester.

00:36:18.000 Nice guy.

00:36:19.000 You know, really, really just a charming fellow.

00:36:22.000 So yesterday, he did an interview with the Daily Beast, and here's what he said.

00:36:26.000 When I come down here for a permitted demonstration, championed by the ACLU, where the police are supposed to be clearing our enemies for our path, and then I find myself involved in a riot facing 20 years in prison, I got emotional, shockingly enough.

00:36:36.000 One minute I'm an effing white supremacist terrorist, and the next minute I'm an effing crybaby.

00:36:41.000 I'm a GD human being.

00:36:43.000 So the reason that I put this in things I like rather than things I hate is because I think there is something to this.

00:36:49.000 When I say there's something to this, I don't mean that he's a victim.

00:36:51.000 I mean that bad people are human beings.

00:36:54.000 We have a tendency as human beings to take people who we think are absolute crap human beings and say, that's a monster, that person's a monster.

00:37:00.000 You notice on the show I never call people monsters.

00:37:02.000 The reason I don't call people monsters is because monsters don't exist.

00:37:05.000 Okay, there are evil people, but there's still people.

00:37:08.000 And the reason that that's an important distinction is because we should all recognize that deep down in the cockles of our little hearts, we all have the capacity for evil, which is why we have to constantly be examining ourselves.

00:37:18.000 Are we doing things because we think that they are actually forwarding good purposes?

00:37:22.000 Are we treating people as means rather than ends?

00:37:24.000 Are we looking at the world in the most rational possible way?

00:37:28.000 Or are we attempting to just justify our own nasty biases about other people in order to justify the actions that we take?

00:37:37.000 We all have the capacity.

00:37:38.000 I mean, it's sad to say this, but we all have the capacity to become somebody like Christopher Cantwell.

00:37:42.000 One of the things that drives me absolutely up a wall is whenever people discuss the Nazi period, they treat it as though it was like a collective psychosis just came over Germans.

00:37:51.000 Like they were just sitting there one day and then boom, a miasma of insanity hit the German people and they were all Nazis murdering Jews.

00:37:57.000 That's not how evil works, okay?

00:37:59.000 It didn't work that way in the Soviet Union.

00:38:00.000 It didn't work that way in Germany.

00:38:02.000 There are a lot of people who you would consider very good who went along with Hitler because they thought they were doing the right thing for their country.

00:38:07.000 There are a lot of very good people who went along with the Confederacy because they thought that they were doing the right thing and it turned out they were believing something really evil in order to justify their own behavior.

00:38:16.000 Everyone has the capacity to be evil, okay?

00:38:17.000 This is the difference between the religious, and by the way, scientific worldview, and the sort of post-enlightenment, rationalistic, secular humanist worldview.

00:38:26.000 The post-enlightenment worldview of the secular humanist is that human beings were created to do good.

00:38:31.000 It's only our circumstances, our social environment that has made us bad.

00:38:34.000 If it weren't for that social environment, we would have the capacity to rise to the stars.

00:38:39.000 The religious worldview says we are born essentially sinful creatures.

00:38:43.000 There are limitations to our good.

00:38:46.000 We can try to overcome them.

00:38:47.000 The Jewish view is that your good side and your bad side are basically fighting it out.

00:38:51.000 There's something called the Yetzer Hara, which is your desire to do evil.

00:38:54.000 And then there's your Yetzer Hatov, which is your desire to do good.

00:38:58.000 And those are in constant conflict with one another.

00:39:02.000 That notion is a lot closer to the scientific notion of what human beings are.

00:39:05.000 We are not blank slates, as John Locke actually thought.

00:39:07.000 We are much more akin to

00:39:10.000 The sort of pre-written vehicles that David Hume or Immanuel Kant talked about.

00:39:17.000 These folks who thought that we were stamped with the imprimatur of nature and God, and that means that we are capable of both good and evil.

00:39:25.000 We can all become this piece of garbage, okay?

00:39:28.000 He is a human being.

00:39:29.000 He is a human being.

00:39:30.000 That's not a recommendation for him.

00:39:31.000 It's a warning to us.

00:39:33.000 Okay, the label human being isn't a recommendation of evil human beings.

00:39:36.000 It's a warning to us that we can become evil human beings.

00:39:38.000 So that's why I put this in things I like.

00:39:39.000 Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.

00:39:47.000 So Michael Eric Dyson, who I believe is a professor over at Georgetown, he was giving a speech yesterday, and once again, he's trotting out this same nonsense that he used to say about Mitt Romney, that if Donald Trump doesn't like you, it's just because you're black.

00:40:00.000 So he suggests that Donald Trump doesn't like Barack Obama, not because he disagreed with Barack Obama or thought he was a bad president, but because he hated the fact that a black man was in charge.

00:40:09.000 The reason we are here is to remind this nation that God is still on the throne.

00:40:17.000 That no matter how much power you think you got, you ain't God.

00:40:23.000 Now let's be real, we ain't said much about it today, but we know part of the problem going on now is cause one guy in office hated the guy who came before him.

00:40:35.000 You just mad a negro was in charge.

00:40:39.000 The anti-blackness that we see manifest with lethal ferocity and troubling reality is mirrored in the fact that he just hate the fact that a black man was in charge.

00:40:52.000 Smarter than you.

00:40:54.000 Don't go tired of this nonsense.

00:40:56.000 Maybe Trump just didn't like Obama because he didn't like Obama and he doesn't like lots of people.

00:41:00.000 This attempt by the left to paint everything as racist, including the things that Republicans hate, everything Republicans hate is because of racism.

00:41:06.000 It has its natural outcome in cartoons like that idiotic cartoon that you saw at Politico or the one from Charlie Hebdo.

00:41:12.000 If you disagree with Michael Eric Dyson, it's because you must not like having a black guy in charge, not because you thought Obama was a crappy president.

00:41:18.000 Okay, I want to get right to the big ideas before we run out of time here.

00:41:21.000 So, I want to talk about taxes and why it is imperative to lower taxes.

00:41:26.000 Okay, so, this is something called the Laffer Curve.

00:41:28.000 This is a very famous thing.

00:41:29.000 I'm going to explain to you what this means.

00:41:30.000 Okay, basically the Laffer Curve, which is something that an economist named Art Laffer basically drew up on the back of a napkin to show to the Reagan administration, and this became sort of their guiding policy.

00:41:39.000 What he said is, if you are, there's tax rates, zero to a hundred percent, and then there's tax revenue, how much the government takes in.

00:41:47.000 If you go to 0%, the government takes in $0, right?

00:41:51.000 Because if you take 0% of anybody's income, the government has no money.

00:41:54.000 If you take 100% of everybody's income, the government also has $0 because people just stop producing.

00:42:00.000 Why would you produce for a government that's just going to take your money anyway, without compulsion?

00:42:04.000 That's what the Laffer Curve shows.

00:42:06.000 So he says, is there some point in the middle of that curve where you reach maximum possible tax revenue brought into the government?

00:42:12.000 And what you see is that, historically speaking, every time taxes are dramatically decreased, income to the government, revenue to the government goes up.

00:42:19.000 So, when tax rates were slashed dramatically during the 1920s, dropping from over 70% to less than 25%, personal income tax revenues increased substantially.

00:42:28.000 Revenues rose from $719 million in 1921 to $1.164 billion in 1928, an increase of 61%.

00:42:31.000 In the 60s, same thing.

00:42:31.000 John F. Kennedy lowered tax rate reductions, moved the top tax rate down from 90% to 70%.

00:42:34.000 Tax revenues climbed from $94 billion in 1961 to $153 billion in 1968, an increase of 62%.

00:42:38.000 Still a 33% increase after adjusting for inflation.

00:42:54.000 Under the Reagan tax cut, the tax revenues received by the government rose from $517 billion to $909 billion in 1988.

00:43:02.000 That's because of the Laffer curve, right?

00:43:04.000 The idea is that we're too far over toward the right side of this chart.

00:43:08.000 Well, if this is behind me, the left side of this chart.

00:43:10.000 We're too far over toward the left side of this chart, and therefore, we have to move back toward the place labeled T. And that's almost always true, because the government is always going to be on the side of taking too much revenue, not too little.

00:43:21.000 The problem with the Laffer Curve is that people have begun using the Laffer Curve as an excuse for what tax rates ought to be.

00:43:27.000 Well, you see, a lower tax rate would be better because the government can then take in more money.

00:43:31.000 The Laffer Curve is a defensive argument for conservatives, not an offensive argument.

00:43:35.000 The argument in favor of lowering taxes is not, we want the government to have more money.

00:43:39.000 The argument in favor of lowering taxes is that you deserve to keep your own money because you're going to use your money better than the government will.

00:43:45.000 And then if somebody says, well, that's going to lower the amount of money the government has to spend, then you say, well, no, not necessarily.

00:43:50.000 If you move the tax rate down, the government can still take in more money because the economy grows as a whole.

00:43:56.000 But people have started using this on the right as an offensive argument.

00:43:58.000 You see, we should lower taxes because then the government can take in more money.

00:44:01.000 The problem with this is the Democrats always have the easier argument, which is they say, well, what if we just, what if we're actually below that point T?

00:44:08.000 What if we just move the point T up?

00:44:10.000 What if we just move the tax rate up?

00:44:12.000 Because maybe we're actually on the wrong side of this curve.

00:44:14.000 Maybe if we move the tax rate up, then we'll hit the point where we've reached maximum government revenue.

00:44:19.000 So, this is a defensive argument, not an offensive argument to be used.

00:44:22.000 But the idea that lowering taxes inherently leads to deficits is not true long run.

00:44:27.000 In the short term, it's true, because anytime you lower the amount of money that you're taxing from people, in the next year, you're gonna get less money.

00:44:32.000 But, over the next five years, you'll get more money, because the pie itself will expand.

00:44:36.000 This is what they call dynamic scoring.

00:44:38.000 When you hear people talking about Congressional Budget Office views,

00:44:42.000 Okay, we'll be back here tomorrow with all the latest updates, and we'll do the mailbag.

00:44:45.000 I'm Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.

The Scorn For The Heartland | Ep. 374

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