The Ben Shapiro Show - The Tide Rolls Over Roy Moore | Ep. 436

00:00:00.000 Alright, well we have the full Alabama Senate race breakdown.

00:00:03.000 Roy Moore loses in a shocking upset.

00:00:05.000 Ruby Red Alabama turns blue for Doug Jones.

00:00:08.000 We'll explain just why and whom ought to be blamed.

00:00:12.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:13.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:19.000 Another shocking, shocking election result, this time out of Alabama, where Roy Moore, the frontrunner, the Republican in a state that went 97% for Jeff Sessions in the last Senate election, has now gone blue.

00:00:31.000 Doug Jones is your new senator from Alabama.

00:00:33.000 He is a hardcore Democrat who will caucus with Chuck Schumer.

00:00:35.000 He's a pro-abortion Democrat.

00:00:37.000 And that is not because Doug Jones is a good candidate that he won.

00:00:40.000 There are a lot of lessons to be learned from what happened last night in Alabama. 0.96

00:00:43.000 Republicans are going to need to learn them or they're going to get their asses handed to them in 2018. 0.95

00:00:47.000 It really will be that simple. 0.79

00:00:49.000 But before I get to any of that, first...

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00:01:37.000 Okay, so.

00:02:02.000 I want to give you the full drama of yesterday, because it was a dramatic day in politics.

00:02:07.000 It began with a bunch of botchery on the part of the Roy Moore campaign.

00:02:11.000 So first, Roy Moore arrives to vote, and he decides that it is necessary to underscore that he is a true Alabaman.

00:02:18.000 How do we know this?

00:02:19.000 Because he arrived on horseback to vote.

00:02:21.000 I mean, not like he wants to be stereotypical or anything.

00:02:23.000 He shows up on horseback to vote.

00:02:25.000 Even Laura Ingraham, who's been backing Moore in this race so far as I can tell, even Laura Ingraham said this was not exactly the smartest political move.

00:02:31.000 The funniest thing I saw was this video of Roy Moore arriving to vote on horseback and somebody cut under it the music to Blazing Saddles.

00:02:37.000 So it does work, I will say that.

00:02:40.000 He rode a blazing saddle.

00:02:43.000 He wore a shining star.

00:02:47.000 His job to offer battle to bad men near and far.

00:02:54.000 He conquered fear and he conquered hate.

00:02:58.000 He turned dark night into bright day.

00:03:01.000 He made his blazing saddle a torch to light the way.

00:03:09.000 Okay, so there was Roy Moore arriving for the vote.

00:03:11.000 Okay, and then it got worse for Roy Moore.

00:03:14.000 Here's the first lesson to be learned from what happened in Alabama last night, where Roy Moore narrowly, narrowly lost to Doug Jones.

00:03:20.000 I mean, like lost by 20,000 votes out of 100, out of 1.2 million votes cast, something like that.

00:03:27.000 The first lesson to be learned is there is a line for voters.

00:03:30.000 There's a point where voters just will not show up for you.

00:03:32.000 Now, the line for what you'll vote for gets raised by the impact of the election.

00:03:37.000 So, let's put it this way.

00:03:38.000 If this has been a dog catcher election, no one shows up to vote for Roy Moore.

00:03:41.000 It's a Senate election, so 600,000 people show up to vote for Roy Moore.

00:03:45.000 If it's a presidential election, then you can be Donald Trump and you can win, because the stakes are so high at that point that people are going to show up regardless, because they feel like they must show up out of necessity.

00:03:54.000 But,

00:03:54.000 For a Senate election, even for a presidential election, there's a line beyond which Americans are not willing to go.

00:03:59.000 Roy Moore crossed that line.

00:04:00.000 It really is that simple.

00:04:01.000 He was an unpalatable candidate from the beginning, before there were any of these allegations about the sexual molestation of underage women, before there were any of those allegations that had even broken.

00:04:13.000 It was known that Roy Moore was not a popular candidate in the state of Alabama.

00:04:16.000 He'd already lost, I believe, a Senate primary to somebody.

00:04:19.000 He'd been tossed out of the Supreme Court twice.

00:04:21.000 He had been running a narrow race with Doug Jones before all of those revelations broke.

00:04:28.000 And every two days, he would say something utterly insipid, or there would be a clip of him coming out from four or five years ago in which he said something utterly insipid.

00:04:34.000 Yesterday, his spokespeople did not do him any favors.

00:04:36.000 In their final pitch, they were making comments like this.

00:04:38.000 Here is one of Roy Moore's spokespeople, asked whether he thinks homosexuality should be illegal.

00:04:43.000 Does he think that homosexual conduct should be illegal?

00:04:47.000 It's a yes or no question.

00:04:49.000 Probably. 0.69

00:04:50.000 He probably thinks homosexual conduct should be illegal. 0.99

00:04:52.000 And what would the punishment be for a man having sexual relations with another man or a woman having sexual relations with another woman? 0.98

00:05:00.000 What should the punishment be?

00:05:05.000 It's just a sin, okay? 0.93

00:05:07.000 Okay, so again, I agree, by the way, as a biblical Jew, I believe that homosexual conduct is a sin. 1.00

00:05:12.000 I also believe breaking Sabbath is a sin.

00:05:14.000 I don't think the government should be involved in enforcing either of those things.

00:05:17.000 That was not the moment that everybody was going nuts about yesterday in the lead up to this election.

00:05:21.000 Here was Roy Moore's spokesperson who was talking about Roy Moore's position that Muslims should not sit in Congress or be able to hold elected office.

00:05:29.000 This was a stunning piece of video.

00:05:31.000 I mean, just, like, if this was the best that Alabama had to offer on the Republican side, it's no wonder that Roy Moore is not sitting in the Senate.

00:05:38.000 Judge Moore has also said that he doesn't think a Muslim member of Congress should be allowed to be in Congress.

00:05:46.000 Why?

00:05:47.000 Under what provision of the Constitution?

00:05:48.000 Because you have to swear on the Bible.

00:05:50.000 When you are before... I had to do it.

00:05:54.000 I'm an elected official.

00:05:56.000 Three terms.

00:05:56.000 I had to swear on the Bible.

00:05:59.000 You have to swear on a Bible to be an elected official in the United States of America.

00:06:04.000 He alleges that a Muslim cannot do that ethically, swearing on the Bible.

00:06:09.000 You don't actually have to swear on a Christian Bible.

00:06:11.000 You can swear on anything, really.

00:06:13.000 I don't know if you knew that.

00:06:14.000 You can swear on a Jewish Bible. 0.93

00:06:16.000 Oh, no.

00:06:16.000 I swear on the Bible.

00:06:17.000 I've done it three times.

00:06:18.000 I'm sure you have.

00:06:19.000 I'm sure you've picked a Bible, but the law is not that you have to swear on a Christian Bible.

00:06:23.000 That is not the law.

00:06:28.000 Yeah, not a good look for your closing argument.

00:06:32.000 I don't know why you'd have Slim Pickens as your actual campaign spokesperson.

00:06:35.000 It just seems like a mistake to me.

00:06:52.000 The first lesson is you can't just run anyone and hope to win. 0.99

00:06:55.000 Roy Moore was a crappy candidate. 0.63

00:06:56.000 The reason Roy Moore lost last night was not because of write-in votes. 0.99

00:06:59.000 It's because no one showed up to vote for him.

00:07:01.000 The turnout on behalf of Doug Jones in Alabama, Doug Jones won 94% of all the votes that Hillary Clinton won in a presidential election.

00:07:10.000 Doug Jones won last night in Alabama.

00:07:13.000 49% of the votes Donald Trump won in Alabama went to Roy Moore, meaning that a lot of Republicans stayed home because they just didn't like Roy Moore, they didn't like what he represented, they didn't like all the allegations about him, and they were not wrong to do so, okay? 0.98

00:07:25.000 You present crappy candidates and they're gonna lose.

00:07:27.000 It turns out that the quality of your candidates still matters, and railing against the wind, suggesting that 0.99

00:07:32.000 It's the fault of people who stayed home, rather than the fault of the candidate, or the people who supported that candidate, is just ridiculous. 0.64

00:07:37.000 And it's tiring to me, this backstabbing legend that you're getting, the dochstochlegen, the nonsense that you get from Steve Bannon and company, that, oh, it was just that Roy Moore was stabbed in the back and that's why he lost. 0.93

00:07:49.000 Maybe Roy Moore lost because there were credible allegations that he was molesting underage women and trying to date people at the food court.

00:07:54.000 Maybe he lost because he was really bad at this.

00:07:56.000 Maybe he lost because he couldn't win an election to save his life on a statewide level before this, basically.

00:08:02.000 The idea that this was all because there were a bunch of people who were just out to get Roy Moore is insane.

00:08:07.000 You think I wanted to lose a seat in Alabama?

00:08:09.000 You think anyone who's a Republican in Alabama wanted to lose that seat to Doug Jones?

00:08:13.000 Are you kidding me?

00:08:14.000 It's not about that.

00:08:15.000 It's about you gotta present a candidate that earns people's votes.

00:08:18.000 Roy Moore didn't earn people's votes.

00:08:19.000 The laws of political gravity still apply.

00:08:21.000 That's lesson number one.

00:08:22.000 Lesson number two.

00:08:23.000 Don't follow Steve Bannon down the primrose path like Steve Bannon knows what the hell he's talking about. 0.98

00:08:27.000 I've never seen someone botch an election as badly as Steve Bannon over at Breitbart News just botched this sucker. 0.98

00:08:32.000 And not just botched this, he's basically waving a frying pan around and all of us were saying, dude, don't wave that frying pan around, you're gonna smack Trump in the face. 0.92

00:08:38.000 Then he smacked Trump in the face with a frying pan and then he goes, well if you were just more pro-Trump, this never would have happened. 0.99

00:08:43.000 I was like, well, maybe you shouldn't wave a frying pan around in the form of Roy Moore, you dunderhead. 0.99

00:08:48.000 Roy Moore was being very heavily pushed by Bannon in the last days. 0.98

00:08:51.000 Bannon was going to Alabama and saying things like, Mitt Romney's family has less honor in all of its DNA than Roy Moore has in his little finger.

00:08:59.000 He was going to Alabama and suggesting that elitists from the outside, Steve Bannon's from New York and Goldman Sachs and Harvard Business School in LA, and he's showing up in Alabama wearing his homeless man coat, suggesting that he was the great avatar of the people, who's going to speak now on behalf of the Republicans against the establishment.

00:09:15.000 And Roy Moore was on Steve Bannon yesterday, his show on Breitbart News that no one listens to.

00:09:19.000 He'll have more listenership to his Breitbart News.

00:09:22.000 Radio show being played on mine than he will actually having his own show.

00:09:27.000 Here is Roy Moore on Bannon's show yesterday.

00:09:30.000 Before I let you go, what was this campaign about?

00:09:32.000 Well, this campaign was about truth, about right, about what this nation was founded upon, what we must return to to have the nation again be whole.

00:09:43.000 And I think it's it's we've got to get away from this politics by party and go put principle over party. 0.57

00:09:50.000 Yeah, if there's somebody who puts principle above everything, I'm sure that it's Roy Moore, and I'm sure that if someone puts principle above everything, it's certainly Steve Bannon, who's the greatest charlatan, political charlatan and conman and leech I've ever seen in my life.

00:10:01.000 The media have turned Steve Bannon into some sort of great avatar of the people, some face of Trumpism without Trump.

00:10:07.000 It doesn't exist.

00:10:08.000 President Trump, take Steve Bannon off your cell phone.

00:10:11.000 It's a waste of your time to call Steve Bannon.

00:10:12.000 The man does not have a channel to the people.

00:10:15.000 He's not representative of your base.

00:10:17.000 Your base did not show up to vote for Roy Moore.

00:10:19.000 Roy Moore didn't earn half of what you earned in Alabama.

00:10:22.000 You, Mr. President. 0.98

00:10:23.000 The idea that you're calling Steve Bannon for advice on how to act about Alabama, it's ridiculous. 0.82

00:10:27.000 You have better instincts than Steve Bannon did.

00:10:28.000 You picked Luther Strange in the primary, who would have won this election by 80,000 points.

00:10:33.000 In the second primary runoff, you backed Luther Strange as well there.

00:10:39.000 Luther Strange would have won this race walking away.

00:10:41.000 In the general election, once these allegations came out, your first move was to basically go hands-off.

00:10:47.000 That was the right move.

00:10:47.000 Steve Bannon somehow must have convinced you to jump back in with both feet and then get the RNC to jump back in, meaning that you smear yourself with mud.

00:10:53.000 You get it all over yourself and all over the RNC, and then you lose the Senate seat anyway.

00:10:57.000 And this has real ramifications.

00:10:59.000 Stop pretending that Steve Bannon knows what the hell he's talking about.

00:11:02.000 Steve Bannon leeched onto Sarah Palin, then he leeched onto Andrew Breitbart until Andrew died, then he took over Andrew Breitbart's power position at Breitbart, used that to leech onto Donald Trump, and has now ridden that to this perception of power that he does not hold, all the while writing checks with his mouth that are paid for by the Mercer family.

00:11:20.000 Steve Bannon does not have the ear of the American people.

00:11:22.000 He does not have the ear of the base.

00:11:24.000 And Trump needs to get away from this.

00:11:26.000 Take him off your cell phone.

00:11:28.000 All Bannon's out there for is Steve Bannon.

00:11:30.000 He does not care about the Trump agenda.

00:11:31.000 If Steve Bannon cared as much about the Trump agenda as I care about the Trump agenda, then he wouldn't have been backing Roy Moore.

00:11:36.000 He would have been urging Roy Moore to get out of the race as soon as these allegations hit.

00:11:39.000 He would have been urging Trump to urge Roy Moore to get out of the race when these allegations hit.

00:11:42.000 He would have been urging Trump to tell Jeff Sessions to go back to Alabama and run for office there.

00:11:48.000 He had been moving to get Roy Moore out of a race where Roy Moore was going to lose to a Democrat.

00:11:52.000 Instead, Steve Bannon wanted to glorify himself at the expense of the quote-unquote establishment.

00:11:56.000 An establishment, by the way, in the form of Mitch McConnell, who has been moving along with Trump's policy agenda this entire time.

00:12:04.000 I don't like Mitch McConnell either.

00:12:05.000 I think Mitch McConnell is a squish in many ways.

00:12:07.000 But I'll tell you what, it's not Mitch McConnell's fault that Trump's agenda isn't passing through Congress.

00:12:11.000 Mitch McConnell is trying to pass Trump's agenda through Congress.

00:12:13.000 He's doing a lot more for Trump's agenda than Steve freaking Bannon has.

00:12:17.000 Leave Steve Bannon at the door.

00:12:19.000 This idea that Steve Bannon is leading a new Trumpist movement is nonsense.

00:12:21.000 He never was the leader of a movement.

00:12:23.000 The Tea Party pre-existed Bannon and pre-existed Trump.

00:12:25.000 Trump pre-existed Bannon, and Trump will outlive Bannon as well.

00:12:28.000 This should be the death knell of the idea that Steve Bannon is some sort of political genius, because he clearly is not.

00:12:33.000 I mean, every move that it is possible to make wrong, he made wrong here.

00:12:37.000 At first, he endorsed Mo Brooks in the primary.

00:12:39.000 That was all right.

00:12:40.000 You know, I was okay with that.

00:12:42.000 I also thought Mo Brooks was the proper guy in the primaries. 0.93

00:12:45.000 But then he said back Roy Moore over Luther Strange in the runoff.

00:12:49.000 And then, after Roy Moore was hit with allegations, he encouraged Moore to stay in the race.

00:12:52.000 And then he convinced the president to put his own credibility on the line on behalf of a guy who was running a neck-and-neck race in 66% Republican Alabama.

00:13:00.000 Just what a genius he is.

00:13:03.000 What a genius.

00:13:03.000 And by the way, helping to drive up Democratic numbers up the wazoo.

00:13:08.000 I mean, the numbers last night are really scary for Republicans, and I'm going to discuss that in just a second, what the fallout means for all of this and a couple of other lessons.

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00:14:02.000 I don't know.

00:14:17.000 So, a few other lessons that I want to give you about Alabama.

00:14:21.000 First of all, Democrats today are celebrating.

00:14:23.000 They're over the moon.

00:14:24.000 They think now, they have sort of the reverse position that Republicans had before this election.

00:14:28.000 Republicans thought, before Roy Moore, that they could literally run anyone and it would work out just fine.

00:14:34.000 Right?

00:14:34.000 Democrats now think that.

00:14:35.000 They think they can run a pro-abortion advocate in Alabama and win. 1.00

00:14:39.000 If they think this, they are stupid. 1.00

00:14:41.000 Let's put it this way. 1.00

00:14:42.000 A credibly accused child molester almost became senator in Alabama.

00:14:45.000 If the Democrats had any brains at all, they'd be running pro-lifers in places like Alabama.

00:14:49.000 You know if Doug Jones had been pro-life, that he would have won this election by 10 points? 0.99

00:14:53.000 But the Democrats are so foolish that they're becoming more and more homogenous in their viewpoint. 0.87

00:14:59.000 And when they do that, they prevent the capacity for their candidates to win in purple and red states. 0.98

00:15:03.000 They're hoping that turnout wins all, but I'm not sure that's going to be the case.

00:15:07.000 So that's a lesson for Democrats out of all of this.

00:15:09.000 It is worth noting, by the way, that Democrats are going to be extraordinarily hungry in 2018.

00:15:12.000 The statistics from Virginia, Alabama, these are grim for Republicans heading into 2018.

00:15:18.000 I'm looking right now

00:15:20.000 And how special elections have shifted so far this year.

00:15:22.000 Okay, the California 34th District has moved 18 points in favor of Democrats.

00:15:27.000 Kansas 4, 23 points in favor of Democrats.

00:15:30.000 Montana, a special election, 15 points in favor of Democrats.

00:15:34.000 Georgia, 6th District, 6 points in favor of Democrats.

00:15:36.000 South Carolina, 5th District, 16 points in favor of Democrats.

00:15:39.000 And then the Alabama Senate race, of course, moved 31 points in favor of Democrats.

00:15:44.000 On average, the special elections are moving 16 points in favor of Democrats.

00:15:48.000 The generic congressional ballot for 2018 currently has Democrats up 10 points.

00:15:53.000 10 points.

00:15:53.000 And it's going to get worse from there if Republicans don't stanch the bleeding.

00:15:57.000 The idea that Republicans can just rally behind Trump and that's going to be enough?

00:16:01.000 I don't see the evidence for that.

00:16:03.000 Here's the reality about President Trump.

00:16:05.000 It makes a difference whether you are pro-Trump or not in a primary election.

00:16:08.000 You can't win a primary in the Republican Party unless you are, at the very least, not openly anti-Trump.

00:16:13.000 Jeff Flake is learning that the hard way.

00:16:15.000 But when it gets to a general election, allegiance to Trump doesn't carry a whole lot of weight.

00:16:19.000 Roy Moore tried to tie himself to Trump's hip.

00:16:21.000 It didn't help him one iota.

00:16:23.000 Ed Gillespie in Virginia tried to tie himself to Trump.

00:16:25.000 Did not help.

00:16:26.000 One iota.

00:16:26.000 Trump does not have coattails.

00:16:27.000 Now, that's not about Trump, okay?

00:16:29.000 That's not unique to Trump.

00:16:30.000 Trump is not a popular president, but that's not unique to Trump.

00:16:32.000 Obama didn't have coattails, and he was a popular president.

00:16:35.000 While Obama was riding in the 50s, his party was losing 1,000 seats across the country.

00:16:39.000 Trump is riding in the 30s with a good economy and a soaring stock market, and he's made very good political moves over the last couple of weeks in terms of policy.

00:16:47.000 I don't really see how tying yourself to Trump is necessarily a winning strategy if you're a Republican in a general election.

00:16:52.000 I just don't see that it's going to matter a whole hell of a lot.

00:16:55.000 So Republicans should take that to heart, and Trump should understand that this is not about ego at this point.

00:16:59.000 If he wants to retain Congress, if he wants to retain the Senate, he's going to have to actually work hard to ensure

00:17:06.000 That other Republicans win, whether they endorse him or not.

00:17:08.000 Republicans now are on the verge of losing the Senate.

00:17:11.000 It's hard to lose the Senate.

00:17:12.000 But losing Alabama is a good way to start. 0.92

00:17:14.000 They now have 51 votes in the Senate.

00:17:16.000 That means that if they lose Dean Heller in Nevada, which is a significant possibility, all they have to do is lose one more seat and they lose control of the Senate.

00:17:21.000 And you don't know where that seat's going to occur.

00:17:23.000 You don't know where a candidate's going to blow up.

00:17:25.000 Democrats have 10 seats that are up in red states this year.

00:17:29.000 It's going to be interesting to see if they're able to hold any of those, or if they hold all of them.

00:17:33.000 But the momentum is clearly with the Democrats going into 2018, and Republicans should know that.

00:17:39.000 Republicans should know that.

00:17:40.000 So, in just a second, I want to talk a little bit about more of the fallout here.

00:17:45.000 President Trump tweeted his congratulations.

00:17:48.000 This clearly was sort of a ghost-written tweet on behalf of President Trump, you can tell by the punctuation.

00:18:03.000 That's very true.

00:18:04.000 Doug Jones is not going to be Senator in Alabama longer than four years.

00:18:06.000 He will be gone.

00:18:07.000 As well, he should be.

00:18:08.000 He's a Democrat.

00:18:09.000 It's Alabama.

00:18:10.000 He shouldn't be the Senator from Alabama.

00:18:12.000 The only reason he is is because of this fluke where Roy Moore, one of the worst candidates in the history of modern politics, was running for a Senate seat in a deep red state.

00:18:20.000 That was not the only thing that Trump tweeted.

00:18:21.000 He came out this morning, he tweeted again, and he suggested that it was all about the write-in votes.

00:18:26.000 It was really not all about the write-in votes.

00:18:28.000 It was about Republicans.

00:18:29.000 Staying home.

00:18:30.000 Roy Moore, by the way, says that he's not going to concede yet.

00:18:32.000 So he's just going to stick around bothering people.

00:18:34.000 But this race is over.

00:18:35.000 Nobody is going to stick around for the recount.

00:18:38.000 He's toast.

00:18:38.000 Here's Roy Moore saying that he's not going to make a concession.

00:18:42.000 I really want to thank you for coming tonight and realize when the vote is this close that it's not over.

00:18:49.000 And we still got to go by the rules about this recount provision.

00:18:53.000 And that's what we've got to do is wait on God.

00:18:56.000 And let this process play out.

00:18:58.000 I know it's late.

00:19:00.000 We can't wait and have everybody wait until after 11 o'clock.

00:19:04.000 But the votes are still coming in, and we're looking at that.

00:19:07.000 May God bless you as you go on.

00:19:10.000 May He give you a safe journey.

00:19:11.000 And thank you for coming tonight.

00:19:13.000 It's not over, and it's going to take some time.

00:19:16.000 Thank you.

00:19:16.000 Okay, so that means nothing.

00:19:18.000 He's toast.

00:19:18.000 We're not going to see any more of Roy Moore.

00:19:20.000 He is done in national politics, as well he should be.

00:19:22.000 One of the other takeaways in terms of the blowout among Democrats, I mean Democrats really showed up to vote in major numbers here, is that the black vote in Alabama was extraordinarily high.

00:19:31.000 So one of the reasons that Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 is because black folks did not show up to vote for Hillary Clinton.

00:19:36.000 If they'd showed up to vote for Hillary at the same rates they voted for Obama, she would have won in a walk. 1.00

00:19:41.000 They did not.

00:19:41.000 They did show up in Alabama last night.

00:19:44.000 30% of the electorate in Alabama last night was black.

00:19:45.000 That is an extraordinarily high percentage.

00:19:48.000 A lot of that is driven by the politics of race.

00:19:51.000 It's driven by the alienation a lot of black voters feel with the current Republican Party.

00:19:56.000 Young people, if you look at the votes in Alabama among young people, they won heavily for Doug Jones.

00:20:00.000 This is a serious problem for Republicans.

00:20:01.000 They're going to have to win over new people.

00:20:03.000 This was one of the questions in 2016.

00:20:04.000 In 2016, can you get enough of the base out to defeat Hillary Clinton?

00:20:08.000 And the answer was, yes, but barely, and you lost the popular vote.

00:20:11.000 If you are going to win in 2020, you're going to have to pick up somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 million additional votes just to be competitive in the next presidential election.

00:20:18.000 In 2018, you're going to have to pick up new audiences.

00:20:20.000 You're going to pick up young people?

00:20:22.000 The polls aren't showing it.

00:20:22.000 You're going to pick up black people?

00:20:24.000 The polls aren't showing it.

00:20:24.000 We were told that President Trump was going to pick up a lot of these crowds.

00:20:28.000 He hasn't spent a lot of time cultivating those crowds.

00:20:30.000 It's time for Republicans to get on their horse.

00:20:32.000 They can't sit on their laurels.

00:20:33.000 They can't assume every election is going to be won just because President Trump pulled a rabbit out of the hat and somehow defeated Hillary Clinton.

00:20:39.000 That's an accomplishment.

00:20:40.000 It's not a strategy.

00:20:41.000 There is a difference.

00:20:42.000 A President Trump beating Hillary Clinton was a massive accomplishment.

00:20:45.000 All credit to President Trump.

00:20:47.000 But it is not a strategy.

00:20:48.000 Hillary was wildly unpopular.

00:20:50.000 Presidential elections are not midterm or congressional elections.

00:20:52.000 All of this makes a difference.

00:20:54.000 Now, what you're going to see today is a bunch of people trying to spin away from blaming Steve Bannon, trying to spin away from blaming the people in the primaries who voted for Roy Moore.

00:21:03.000 No, which would be a mistake.

00:21:04.000 Sean Hannity is trying to blame Mitch McConnell, of course.

00:21:06.000 This is going to be the convenient answer. 0.87

00:21:08.000 This is also Bannon's play to try and blame Mitch McConnell, as though if McConnell had come out more strongly in favor of Moore, Moore would have won, as opposed to Moore as a crappy candidate. 0.82

00:21:16.000 Here's the reality.

00:21:18.000 I don't want to get on Sean's case here, but I've been on Sean's case about this for a few weeks, or at least I mentioned it a few weeks ago.

00:21:24.000 Sean said that if Roy Moore did not show him that he was innocent, or any evidence that he was innocent, that he would tell Roy Moore to step out of the race within 24 hours.

00:21:32.000 Roy Moore provided no such evidence, and Sean instead backed off of that and did not pressure Moore to step out of the race at all.

00:21:37.000 Moore stayed in.

00:21:38.000 Moore lost.

00:21:39.000 Sean blames Mitch McConnell.

00:21:40.000 I don't think this is correct.

00:21:41.000 But meanwhile, what this last election was about in 2016 is the forgotten men and forgotten women that need jobs, that are on food stamps, in poverty, and they want a shot at the American dream also.

00:21:54.000 So if that is the Republican strategy,

00:21:57.000 I mean, it almost takes my breath away.

00:22:00.000 And it also goes, I think Mitch McConnell has a lot of culpability in all of this.

00:22:05.000 I was a Mo Brooks supporter from day one.

00:22:08.000 I've known Mo Brooks nearly 30 years.

00:22:10.000 He used to fill in in my radio show when I had a show in Huntsville, Alabama.

00:22:14.000 And I thought he would have been a great candidate.

00:22:16.000 The person that came out strongest against Mo Brooks, Matt,

00:22:20.000 Okay, so Mitch McConnell, let me be clear.

00:22:22.000 Mitch McConnell does bear some responsibility for supporting Luther Strange in the primary and killing Mo Brooks in order because he thought that in the runoff, Luther Strange would do better against Roy Moore.

00:22:30.000 Obviously a bad miscalculation on the part of Mitch McConnell.

00:22:32.000 He doesn't have clean hands here.

00:22:33.000 But the idea that Mitch McConnell bears the clearest culpability here is just not true.

00:22:38.000 It's just not true.

00:22:40.000 Republicans are going to have to understand that just because we want something to be true does not make it true.

00:22:44.000 Just because we want it to be true, that Trumpism is a strategy and not just an accomplishment, it doesn't mean that it's true.

00:22:52.000 And just because we want it to be true that we are going to be able to pull a rabbit out of every hat, that's not true either.

00:22:56.000 There's going to have to be an actual change in how we look at things.

00:23:00.000 New voters are going to have to be brought into the fold.

00:23:02.000 I think President Trump is capable of that if he can keep himself under control, if he stops calling Steve Bannon, if the Republicans actually pass some legislation, for God's sake.

00:23:10.000 If any of that happens, then I think that the blowout can be averted.

00:23:14.000 I still think Republicans will lose seats in 2018, but it doesn't have to be a blowout.

00:23:17.000 I'll talk a little bit about the stats in just a second.

00:23:19.000 First, I want to say thank you to our friends over at Stamps.com.

00:23:22.000 So, the holidays are always the busiest time of year.

00:23:24.000 You probably just don't have time to go to the post office to mail your presents to everybody.

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00:23:29.000 Go to Stamps.com and when you go there and you use Shapiro at the top of the homepage, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage, you get a four-week trial plus postage and a digital scale.

00:23:39.000 What Stamps.com does, it basically allows you to be a post office from home.

00:23:42.000 Now you can weigh your mail, you can determine how much postage to send, and you can print out the proper postage on a piece of paper, cut it out, stick it on your mail, print it on a sticker, print it directly onto the envelope, you can do any of those things, and then you can mail stuff directly from your home.

00:23:54.000 You don't have to go to the post office, you're running short on time, you really don't have time to stand in line at the post office, even if you love the post office.

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00:24:18.000 You will get a four-week trial, plus postage, and a digital scale, with no long-term commitment.

00:24:22.000 Again, stamps.com, promo code Shapiro.

00:24:24.000 It's a perfect time to try this out, because you're gonna be mailing stuff.

00:24:26.000 I know you are, right?

00:24:27.000 I mean, we're running up to the deadline.

00:24:29.000 Hanukkah started last night, and we are running up to the deadline on Christmas.

00:24:32.000 So, if you're sending presents, now is the time for you to try out stamps.com, and use that promo code Shapiro.

00:24:37.000 Let's them know that we sent you as well.

00:24:39.000 So, here are a little bit of the stats about 2018.

00:24:41.000 People are trying to use the single data point of Alabama in order to demonstrate what exactly

00:24:47.000 What exactly Republicans should expect in 2018.

00:24:50.000 I think that's a little bit of an overreach, but...

00:24:53.000 This is an off-year election.

00:24:54.000 In off-year elections since World War II, the party in power loses, on average, 25 seats.

00:24:58.000 Republicans currently have a 23-seat majority.

00:25:01.000 In 2006, 2010, 2014, the last three midterm elections, the swings have been incredibly large.

00:25:06.000 At this moment, the generic ballot shows Democrats with a 10.3% lead in the RealClearPolitics average.

00:25:11.000 At this time in 2009, Republicans led the generic ballot by 3% to 4%, and they ended up blowing that out to a 7% advantage in the 2010 elections, and they ended up picking up 60 seats.

00:25:20.000 In the 2006 cycle,

00:25:24.000 Now there are a couple factors that are militating against Democrats having a blowout year.

00:25:33.000 One is, as I say, the bad cycle for Senate elections.

00:25:35.000 The chances that the Democrats win the Senate, even in this environment, are relatively low.

00:25:40.000 I would say probably 20 to 30 percent.

00:25:42.000 I would have said before about 2 percent.

00:25:43.000 Now I think it's about 20 to 30 percent.

00:25:45.000 If you look at, but I'm ballparking it, if you look at the House elections,

00:25:48.000 There are 23 seats right now that are Republican seats in Clinton districts.

00:25:52.000 The chances are that a lot of those swing away from the Republicans, but Democrats also have 12 seats in Republican districts, so it's very possible that those swing away from Democrats.

00:26:00.000 It's not clear-cut that Democrats have as easy a road to winning the House as Republicans did in 2010 or as they had an increase in 2014.

00:26:09.000 The reason being a lot of these districts have gotten both redder and bluer, meaning that the districts are more polarized.

00:26:14.000 But Republicans are going to need to make some moves here.

00:26:16.000 That means passing this tax reform plan now.

00:26:18.000 That is on Mitch McConnell.

00:26:19.000 You want to blame McConnell for something?

00:26:20.000 That one's on Mitch McConnell.

00:26:21.000 Pass some legislation.

00:26:22.000 It's on President Trump to go out and stump for that tax reform package.

00:26:26.000 It's time for President Trump to deliver on his guarantee with regard to the wall.

00:26:30.000 It's time for Republicans to stand tall in the face of Democratic threats to shut down the government.

00:26:33.000 Let the Democrats...

00:26:35.000 Shut down funding for seniors because they want to make sure that there's no border security. 0.70

00:26:39.000 Let's have that political battle.

00:26:40.000 These are all political battles that can be fought and won.

00:26:43.000 But they cannot be fought and won if there's a distraction every time.

00:26:46.000 Now, President Trump can get away with being a distracting guy.

00:26:49.000 He can get away with tweeting stuff about the NFL. 0.96

00:26:51.000 But when it comes to other elections, people don't take crap the way they do in a presidential. 0.78

00:26:56.000 In a presidential, the stakes are so high that people's threshold for taking crap from their own side is incredibly high, too.

00:27:02.000 The same does not hold true of Senate elections or congressional elections.

00:27:05.000 We need to recognize this reality if Republicans hope to retain any semblance of control in Washington, D.C.

00:27:12.000 So, Alabama should be a wake-up call to a lot of people.

00:27:15.000 By the way, it should also be a wake-up call for Democrats that they need a particular set of voters, particularly Obama voters, if they want to win.

00:27:20.000 Charles Barkley made this point.

00:27:21.000 Barkley was stumping for Doug Jones in Alabama.

00:27:23.000 He's from Alabama.

00:27:24.000 He's a Republican.

00:27:25.000 But he was stumping against Roy Moore.

00:27:28.000 Here is Charles Barkley talking about the terrible night for Roy Moore.

00:27:33.000 What's your message for President Trump tonight?

00:27:36.000 As an Alabamian, as somebody who helped deliver the state to Doug Jones, what do you want President Trump to take away from this evening?

00:27:47.000 Well, this is a wake-up call for Democrats.

00:27:50.000 You're Democrats, and I told Mr. Jones this, and I love Doug, they've taken the black vote and the poor vote for granted for a long time. 0.99

00:27:59.000 It's time for them to get off their ass and start making life better for black folks and people who are poor. 0.99

00:28:06.000 They've always had our votes, and they have abused our votes, and this is a wake-up call. 1.00

00:28:12.000 We got it in a great position now.

00:28:14.000 But this is a wake-up call for Democrats to do better for black people and poor white people.

00:28:19.000 Okay, so Charles Barkley letting the Democrats know that black votes are not always on the table for Democrats just because they want them to be.

00:28:27.000 So there are some realities that are setting in for both sides.

00:28:29.000 If the sides are willing to look at them, I doubt that either side will.

00:28:32.000 I think Democrats are going to continue to run radicals in races where they should be running moderates.

00:28:36.000 And I think that Republicans are going to continue to run bad candidates just because anti-establishment and all the rest of this, because if people actually learned their lessons, maybe our politics would get better.

00:28:46.000 But I highly doubt that that's actually going to happen.

00:28:49.000 OK, in other news, there's a massive piece of breaking news that I don't know how Robert Mueller spins this away with regard to his investigation.

00:28:56.000 I mean, this is truly an incredible piece of news. 0.99

00:28:58.000 So there's a series of text messages that were exchanged between top FBI employees referring to presidential candidate Donald Trump as an idiot and a douche, while fearing his potential victory is terrifying. 0.99

00:29:08.000 This was from Peter Strzok, the guy who was removed in, I believe it was August of this year, from the Russian counterintelligence investigation by the FBI because of his bias. 0.99

00:29:19.000 He was also involved in initiating the Russian counterintelligence investigation. 0.99

00:29:23.000 And him calling Trump an idiot or a douche, I don't think any of that makes a difference as far as whether he can do his job or not. 0.99

00:29:28.000 I think a lot of people have called the president those names, including his own Secretary of State. 0.99

00:29:31.000 But I don't think that one of these messages is capable of explanation.

00:29:36.000 And I think that it's going to be very difficult to explain away why Straszak was involved in this

00:29:42.000 In this investigation, to begin with, why he was allowed to initiate this investigation, to begin with, if this stuff was true.

00:29:47.000 So, on March 16th, 2016, he texted his paramour, Linda Page, and she texted him, And he wrote back, And then, this is the big one, August 15th, 2016, Strzok tells his girlfriend, Page, quote,

00:30:06.000 I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office, that'd be Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who has significant connections to Democrats, that there's no way he gets elected, but I'm afraid we can't take that risk.

00:30:17.000 It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40.

00:30:22.000 What that sounds very much like is that Strzok and his girlfriend, his mistress, that basically they were initiating investigations into Trump as an insurance policy in case Trump would win.

00:30:32.000 That is shocking stuff.

00:30:33.000 Okay, that's much more of a smoking gun than anything I've seen in the Trump investigation to target President Trump.

00:30:39.000 According to CNN, as the former number two official in counterintelligence, Strzok helped lead the FBI's investigation of Hillary Clinton's private email server and was involved in opening the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S.

00:30:49.000 presidential election.

00:30:50.000 Page was also briefly on Mueller's team before returning to the FBI, but she completed her detail before the special counsel's office was made aware of the texts.

00:30:58.000 So, in other words, two of the people who were involved in key ways in both the Hillary investigation and the Trump investigation were not only biased against Trump, they were openly talking about setting up an insurance policy with the FBI deputy director in case Trump were to be elected.

00:31:11.000 I mean, that is shocking, shocking stuff.

00:31:14.000 That's the sort of stuff that kills an investigation.

00:31:17.000 Yesterday, I was sort of mocking the idea of a special investigation of the special investigation, not mocking it anymore.

00:31:22.000 OK, based on that text, it seems to me that there should be some sort of real investigation that goes on into exactly how the special investigation is conducting its business.

00:31:31.000 All of this could be setting up Trump to fire the members of Mueller's team or to fire Mueller himself.

00:31:36.000 On the basis of this, I can't say that would be completely illegitimate.

00:31:39.000 I think it would be a bad political move.

00:31:41.000 I think it would be unwise for the president to do that, but it would not be completely illegitimate.

00:31:45.000 This does not look like a team that was designed to get to the bottom of things.

00:31:49.000 It looks like a team that was designed to dig and dig and dig until they find something that they can use politically against the president of the United States, or at least that's what some people on the team were looking for.

00:31:57.000 Now, Mueller got rid of Strzok when he found out about these texts, but the damage is already done.

00:32:00.000 In evidence, there's something called, in legal evidence, there's something called Fruit of the Poisonous Tree doctrine.

00:32:05.000 The idea is that if I don't have a warrant to search inside your house, and I just break into your house, I'm a cop, I break into your house and I find a murder weapon, that murder weapon is not admissible in court because it's quote-unquote Fruit of the Poisonous Tree.

00:32:16.000 I broke the law in order to go into your house, and now I can't admit that evidence in court, even though it would help convict you.

00:32:22.000 This is very similar.

00:32:25.000 Even if this investigation were to come up with something, it's difficult to tell whether we came up with it through bias or whether it was come up with through actual investigation.

00:32:33.000 And right now, I haven't seen any evidence at all that's been presented that Trump was involved in Russia collusion.

00:32:38.000 Apparently, the period that's being focused on now in the investigation is the period after Trump was elected.

00:32:43.000 Which doesn't sound like election collusion with the Russians to me.

00:32:46.000 This investigation is spiraling out of control.

00:32:48.000 I think President Trump knows it, and it's frustrating him, and I think rightly so.

00:32:52.000 Also, the media's continual focus on President Trump and trying to nitpick him, it is galling.

00:32:58.000 90% of all of the coverage on TV of President Trump has been negative so far.

00:33:01.000 That probably contrasts with 90% that was positive so far in Obama's presidency.

00:33:06.000 And as evidence of just how bad the media are, I need to talk a little bit about this blow-up that happened with Kirsten Gillibrand yesterday.

00:33:11.000 I mentioned it yesterday that President Trump knocked Kirsten Gillibrand, the senator from New York, after Gillibrand suggested that President Trump should step down from his position because of sexual harassment or abuse allegations.

00:33:21.000 And Trump tweeted back at her, and he said something like, you know, she would come into your office on her knees to beg for things, right?

00:33:27.000 This is a woman who'd do anything to beg. 1.00

00:33:30.000 Were you offended by the apparent insinuations in the president's tweets this morning?

00:33:51.000 It was a sexist smear attempting to silence my voice, and I will not be silenced on this issue.

00:33:57.000 Neither will the women who stood up to the President yesterday, and neither will the millions of women who have been marching since the Women's March to stand up against policies they do not agree with.

00:34:06.000 And if you'll permit me a follow-up, do you see this as sexual harassment by tweet?

00:34:11.000 I see it as a sexist smear.

00:34:15.000 I mean, that's what it is.

00:34:17.000 Okay, so again, this is one of the ways that Democrats are going to overplay their own hand.

00:34:21.000 I talked about Democrats losing.

00:34:22.000 They may not lose congressional elections, but Kirsten Gillibrand is not going to win against Donald Trump on the basis that this is a sexist smear, because it was not a sexist smear. 1.00

00:34:29.000 I think that the White House was exactly right when Sarah Huckabee Sanders got mocked yesterday for saying this.

00:34:34.000 I think she was 100% correct.

00:34:35.000 She was asked by the press about the so-called sexist smear against Kirsten Gillibrand.

00:34:39.000 And here's what she had to say.

00:34:41.000 She said, get your minds out of the gutter. 0.96

00:34:42.000 Gillibrand owed an apology for the misunderstanding of the president's tweet this morning, because many, including the senator, think that it's about sexual innuendos.

00:34:56.000 I think only if your mind is in the gutter would you have read it that way.

00:34:59.000 And so, no.

00:35:02.000 Hunter?

00:35:02.000 No, it's not.

00:35:07.000 He's obviously talking about political partisan games that people often play and the broken system that he's talked about repeatedly.

00:35:16.000 This isn't new.

00:35:17.000 This isn't a new sentiment.

00:35:18.000 This isn't new terminology.

00:35:21.000 He's used it several times before.

00:35:23.000 As I said a few minutes ago, he's used it several times before, referencing men of both parties, in fact.

00:35:31.000 Okay, so she is exactly correct.

00:35:34.000 The media went nuts over nothing, and this is why Trump continues to befuddle his opponents.

00:35:38.000 He can befuddle his opponents, but it doesn't drip down to the lower levels, and this is one of the problems.

00:35:42.000 Only Trump can be Trump.

00:35:43.000 Only Trump is capable of being Trump.

00:35:46.000 If Trump wants to govern, he's going to need more than Trump in order to do that.

00:35:48.000 There's more than one branch of the federal government.

00:35:50.000 Okay, so now, if you want to watch the rest of the show, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com.

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00:37:00.000 Okay, so, meanwhile, the Republicans are trying to rush this tax bill through.

00:37:05.000 The details on the tax bill are not particularly clear at this point.

00:37:09.000 They say that they have a deal, so I guess this thing is going to get passed.

00:37:12.000 According to the New York Times, the deal is already on the table.

00:37:16.000 The Republicans are going to be making the corporate tax rate 21%, I guess, is the final deal here.

00:37:22.000 This is the New York Times reporting.

00:37:23.000 They say that the details on the deal were not immediately available on Tuesday.

00:37:28.000 The Republicans said they were close to agreement on a package that included a cut in the corporate tax rate to 21% from a high of 35% and reducing the top income tax rate for individuals to 37% from 39.6%.

00:37:39.000 All of this would be good.

00:37:41.000 It's not clear if Republican senators would get behind the deal.

00:37:43.000 One of the big problems with not having Luther Strange in the Senate is that Republicans are going to be down to 51 votes.

00:37:48.000 That means that basically John McCain and one friend can tank any tax deal that is done here.

00:37:54.000 Or Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski.

00:37:56.000 Or Susan Collins and John McCain.

00:37:59.000 52 votes, a lot better than 51 votes. 1.00

00:38:01.000 But that's why you shouldn't run, piece of garbage candidates. 0.99

00:38:05.000 So they're saying that both Susan Collins of Maine and Marco Rubio of Florida are raising concerns. 0.99

00:38:10.000 Collins says she's not in favor of the lower individual tax rate, and Rubio wants a more generous child tax credit.

00:38:16.000 I'm sort of split on the child tax credit myself, I gotta be honest with you.

00:38:19.000 Number one, I think that the idea that it incentivizes people to have kids is just not true.

00:38:23.000 I don't think anybody sits around and they go, you know what?

00:38:25.000 I really need a child tax credit.

00:38:26.000 I'm gonna have this baby now.

00:38:28.000 It may alleviate some financial need for people with kids, which I guess is good, but I don't think the government should be picking and choosing which behaviors to push with tax policy.

00:38:38.000 I think there should be basically a flat tax rate without the government trying to make these sorts of considerations.

00:38:43.000 The Senate bill narrowly passed 51-49 with Bob Corker voting against the legislation.

00:38:48.000 The agreement was finalized Wednesday morning, hours before the first and only scheduled public meeting of the Congressional Conference Committee formed to work out the differences between the House and Senate-passed versions of the bill.

00:38:58.000 So, we will see what the final bill looks like.

00:39:01.000 It is a bill that moves the ball in the right direction.

00:39:05.000 I believe that they are set to keep the removal of the individual mandate in Obamacare, which is good policy because nobody should be forced to buy health insurance.

00:39:14.000 It will increase the price of health insurance for sick people in the individual market across the country.

00:39:19.000 That's why the Republicans are seeking to backfill that by basically funding all of those health insurance programs directly, which may or may not be good policy.

00:39:28.000 Bottom line is it will be a major victory for President Trump.

00:39:30.000 President Trump will deserve kudos for it.

00:39:32.000 Republicans will deserve kudos for it.

00:39:34.000 They need to get another couple of victories under their belt if they really want to succeed in 2018 and not get blown out.

00:39:40.000 Okay, time for some things I like, things I hate, and then a quick Bible talk.

00:39:44.000 First, I've been doing Beethoven all week.

00:39:46.000 So people have heard this music, but they don't know what it is from.

00:39:49.000 It is from the Pathetique Sonata, the piano sonata by Beethoven.

00:39:52.000 This is the second movement of the Pathetique Sonata by Beethoven.

00:39:55.000 His piano sonatas are all great.

00:39:57.000 I actually prefer the Appassionata to the Pathetique, but if we are doing sort of well-known Beethoven that you don't know what it's from, this is what it is from.

00:40:42.000 It's just amazing music.

00:40:44.000 One of the things about Beethoven that's really fascinating is that he's underrated as a melodic composer because his development sections are so good.

00:40:51.000 In classical music, very often classical music is structured like you play a melody and then there's a development section and then there's a recapitulation.

00:40:58.000 Meaning that you go back to the melody at the end.

00:41:01.000 His development sections are always very complex and very interesting, and very tight, usually, even though he writes much longer music than a lot of other classical composers.

00:41:09.000 If you look at a typical Beethoven symphony beyond the third, the Eroica, which really revolutionized symphonies, the first movement of the Eroica is longer than entire Mozart symphonies.

00:41:16.000 But his melodic gift is still very much in evidence.

00:41:21.000 I won't say that Beethoven's melodies are as memorable as Mozart's, as a general rule.

00:41:26.000 Mozart is gifted with melody.

00:41:27.000 Tchaikovsky, uniquely gifted with melody.

00:41:29.000 But Beethoven's melodies are moving, and there's a certain subtlety to them that doesn't necessarily exist in Mozart or Tchaikovsky.

00:41:37.000 They're less showy, but they're a little bit more spiritual.

00:41:39.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.

00:41:46.000 So now it is important, I guess, to the left that even Barbie dolls have a political agenda.

00:41:52.000 So first we heard for years that Barbie dolls made little girls feel inferior about their bodies. 0.99

00:41:56.000 Again, I have not met these little girls.

00:41:58.000 My sisters like playing with Barbies, particularly my second sister. 1.00

00:42:01.000 I have three.

00:42:01.000 She was a big Barbie doll acolyte.

00:42:04.000 She had entire boxes of Barbie dolls.

00:42:07.000 Never at any point did she say, well, I wish I looked like Barbie.

00:42:10.000 I don't know the idea that little girls were sitting around getting anorexic because they saw Barbie doll. 1.00

00:42:15.000 I always thought that kind of stuff was stupid. 0.98

00:42:17.000 I really don't think that's the case. 0.97

00:42:18.000 I think that if you're going to look to the reasons for people having body dysmorphia and body image issues, it has very little to do with Barbie and a lot more to do with popular advertising and or parental failures.

00:42:30.000 Now they've decided to turn Barbie into a social justice warrior. 1.00

00:42:33.000 So, writer Elizabeth Segrin wrote an article for Fast Company in which she said, Barbie is a doll.

00:42:38.000 It's an inanimate object.

00:42:38.000 Barbie didn't do anything.

00:42:40.000 The people who work at Mattel did something.

00:42:42.000 And the people who work at Mattel did that because they felt like catering to a particular political audience.

00:42:58.000 Politicizing children's toys is really unpleasant, people.

00:43:02.000 It's unpleasant.

00:43:03.000 Okay, making my three-and-a-half-year-old daughter think about lesbianism at three-and-a-half seems to me a bad move. 1.00

00:43:12.000 Maybe this is heteronormative.

00:43:13.000 I don't care.

00:43:14.000 You know why?

00:43:14.000 Because I think that it is better for young girls to be thinking along the lines of eventual marriage to men than it is for them to think that they can marry anyone.

00:43:22.000 I think it is better for society.

00:43:23.000 I think it is better for civilization. 0.99

00:43:25.000 Now, they may turn out to be lesbians, right? 1.00

00:43:26.000 A little girl may turn out to be a lesbian. 1.00

00:43:28.000 That's okay.

00:43:29.000 I don't really have a problem with that.

00:43:31.000 What I do have a problem with is the idea that society is going to suggest that all sexual orientations have equal impact on children, or that all children should be taught about a variety of sexual orientations before they even have sexual feelings or are confused about sexual feelings.

00:43:44.000 Confusing children is a form of sin in my mind, and adults are fond of doing it, and now they're using children's toys to do it.

00:43:51.000 In one pair, in one of these pictures, the pair is sitting cozily in Barbie's walk-in closet, stroking a dog and staring into each other's eyes.

00:43:57.000 In another, they're eating avocado toast at their favorite Silver Lake Cafe.

00:44:00.000 So, good news, Barbie's now a lesbian, which I'm sure makes more men than women happy, actually. 0.91

00:44:05.000 But that's not enough.

00:44:06.000 In September, a Barbie-style Instagram account featured Barbie wearing a People Are People t-shirt designed by Christian Serrano to protest President Trump's immigration ban.

00:44:14.000 So now Barbie's an immigration activist. 0.81

00:44:16.000 Which, again, it's an inanimate object.

00:44:19.000 Why should my three-and-a-half-year-old be taught about immigration policy? 1.00

00:44:23.000 This is just stupid. 0.99

00:44:24.000 Protecting children and the innocence of children means protecting them from having to think about issues where they've not been informed about any of the background and they have no capacity to make decent decisions on these things. 1.00

00:44:36.000 Why we don't allow five-year-olds to vote?

00:44:38.000 Let's put it this way.

00:44:39.000 If the target audience for your product is not capable of making a rational decision about a topic, don't present them the information on the topic.

00:44:47.000 Don't present them the illusion that they're capable of making a rational decision about this.

00:44:51.000 You're setting a bias in the background.

00:44:53.000 I just think that's wrong.

00:44:56.000 Now for a quick Bible study.

00:44:57.000 So in the aftermath of Alabama, a lot of Republicans are understandably very upset.

00:45:01.000 I'm upset too.

00:45:03.000 There are some people who are chortling this morning on the conservative side of the aisle.

00:45:06.000 I am certainly not one of them.

00:45:08.000 I am very deeply unhappy that the senator from Alabama is now a Democrat.

00:45:12.000 I think that's terrible for the country.

00:45:15.000 Terrible in very different ways.

00:45:17.000 Roy Moore had an elected senator from Alabama.

00:45:19.000 Sometimes the choice between hepatitis and cancer means that everyone is basically going to be disease-ridden.

00:45:24.000 But I think that we should take some solace in the Bible.

00:45:26.000 There's a lot of talk about Bible surrounding this election.

00:45:28.000 And it seems like there's very little reference to the actual text of the Bible.

00:45:31.000 So this is from Isaiah 30.

00:45:33.000 And I think this should be of some comfort.

00:45:35.000 This is a situation which I've talked about a couple times on the program, in which Isaiah was urging the king of Israel, Hezekiah, not to side with the Egyptians against the Assyrians, to basically allow events to take their course.

00:45:49.000 And here's what Isaiah said, he said,

00:45:52.000 Because you have rejected this message, relied on oppression, depended on deceit, this sin will become for you like a high wall, cracked and bulging, that collapses suddenly in an instant.

00:45:59.000 It will break in pieces like pottery, shattered so mercilessly that among its pieces not a fragment will be found for taking coals from a hearth or scooping water out of a cistern.

00:46:08.000 This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says, In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.

00:46:17.000 You said no, we will flee on horses.

00:46:19.000 Therefore, you will flee.

00:46:20.000 You said we will ride off on swift horses.

00:46:21.000 Therefore, your pursuers will be swift.

00:46:23.000 A thousand will flee at the threat of one.

00:46:24.000 At the threat of five, you will all flee away till you are left like a flagstaff on a mountaintop, like a banner on a hill.

00:46:29.000 Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you.

00:46:31.000 Therefore, He will rise up to show you compassion.

00:46:33.000 For the Lord is a God of justice.

00:46:34.000 Blessed are all who wait for Him.

00:46:36.000 This doesn't mean that God's going to make all your decisions for you.

00:46:39.000 What it does mean is that when you hold true to godly values, and what I mean by this is not lying to yourself, not pretending away moral conflicts.

00:46:49.000 When you hold true to godly values, no matter what decision you make, when you have that foremost in your mind,

00:46:53.000 You're not abandoning God.

00:46:54.000 You are abandoning God when you suggest that you're going to put your faith in men, that you're going to put your faith in bad men, that you think that the only thing that you can do now is a choice between a bad man and another bad man, as opposed to waiting it out.

00:47:06.000 I just don't think that's the case.

00:47:08.000 We're only going to have a better day in this country when we all realize that there are better people on the horizon so long as we can wait for them.

00:47:13.000 And more than that, more importantly than that, that if we abide by the values that God instills in us, if we abide by biblical values in terms of how we treat our fellow man and how we vote for our fellow man, then perhaps God will bring about a better day when the candidates that we vote for are actually worthy of our votes.

00:47:30.000 OK, we'll be back here tomorrow with more fallout, I'm sure.

00:47:33.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:47:33.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:47:38.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Mathis Glover.

00:47:41.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:47:42.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:47:44.000 Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:47:46.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:47:47.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Cormina.

00:47:49.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.

00:47:51.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

00:47:54.000 Copyright Forward Publishing 2017.

The Ben Shapiro Show - December 13, 2017

The Tide Rolls Over Roy Moore | Ep. 436

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