Trump plays chicken with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, President Trump heads to the border, and he considers declaring a National Emergency. We ll talk about all of it on today's show with Ben Shapiro. Links From This Episode: All Previous Podcast Episodes Free Training From The Daily Beast Leave Us a Review On Apple Podcasts Subscribe To Our New Podcasts And Stay Up To Date With The News And Discussion On The Next Episode Of The Ben Shapiro Show Learn More About Your ad choices. We make no claim of ownership to the source material. If you decide to purchase a product or service from one of the listed suppliers, we reserve the right to review it and give our independent third-party reviewers a fair and fair chance to review the product before it is sold to the public. The opinions stated here are our own and do not necessarily those of our respective companies, institutions, or clients. "We are not responsible for the opinions expressed in the press releases, websites, or social media platforms." "We do not own the rights to any of the music used in this podcast." "This podcast is not intended to be used without permission from any other source other than that which is stated in the original press materials." "We have no representation or service provided by any third party" "The opinions expressed here is not that of any of our clients." "The content being represented here is that of our client." "This is not the product being represented by our employer." "Our clients have not received any such compensation." "It is not being compensated for any such value." "I am not required to provide any such representation." "That which is represented in this publication or such representation or such compensation ... " " ? " " , " . , etc.) ... & "This message was provided by the author or such other representation or said so by the client has been provided by such compensation or such such value or such value being represented in any such quotation or such reference or such expression or such said so such value, etc., etc. , etc., ) - Thank you for your support or support or review or support in this piece or review, etc. ? This is not required at any such work, etc.. " etc., or such work being requested or such information being provided by you have been requested or said such value?
00:00:00.000President Trump plays chicken with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, President Trump heads to the border, and he considers declaring a national emergency.
00:00:20.000Yesterday, on this very show, we talked a little bit about the fact that back in the day, I had gone a few days without shaving before my show.
00:00:59.000They quote an economist out of Capital Economics in London, quote, safe havens should continue to outperform this year as a slowdown in the U.S.
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00:02:08.000The President of the United States traveling down to the southern border to discuss, I guess, the issue of necessity for a border wall.
00:02:15.000It's more of a photo op than anything else, as he continues to consider the possibility of doing some sort of national emergency declaration yesterday.
00:02:28.000Yesterday, the President of the United States met with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, both of whom were less than pleased with how the meeting went.
00:02:36.000Here were their reactions to the meeting.
00:02:38.000Federal workers will not be receiving their paychecks, and what that means in their lives is tragic in terms of their credit rating, paying their mortgage, paying their rent, paying their car payment, paying their children's tuition, and the rest.
00:02:51.000The president seems to be insensitive to that.
00:02:54.000He thinks maybe they could just ask their father for more money, but they can't.
00:02:58.000The president just got up and walked out.
00:03:02.000He asked Speaker Pelosi, will you agree to my wall?
00:04:13.000I don't recall him ever raising his voice or slamming his hand.
00:04:19.000But this is a president who feels very strongly about his commitment to see to the security of the American people.
00:04:29.000Okay, so, you know, this whole thing is bound for ruin.
00:04:33.000There's no deal that is on the table and the only deals that are being considered, as we'll discuss in a little while, are not going to be great for the sort of border hawk side of the Republican caucus.
00:04:44.000I will say that the idea of President Trump offering Nancy Pelosi a snicker, it's him just going up to her and saying, you're not you and you're hungry.
00:04:49.000And then just handing her a Snickers bar, then she takes a bite, and she turns into Ben Roethlisberger or something.
00:04:55.000Or, he could have gone with the Donald Jr.
00:04:57.000routine, and he could have actually handed Nancy Pelosi a bowl of Skittles, and then told her that one of them was poisoned, and said, well, one of these is poisoned.
00:05:05.000And she would say, well, I don't want to eat any of these.
00:05:07.000Like, that's just like illegal immigration.
00:05:52.000And the president of the United States should not be saying things like that.
00:05:54.000If Obama had said it about Republicans, I would have said that's insane.
00:05:57.000Okay, China is a communist repressive tyranny.
00:06:00.000The idea that we're negotiating with China...
00:06:02.000Better than Trump can negotiate with Americans, who may not share his political priorities, but at least are not attempting to impose, you know, a restrictive communist regime that kills dissidents.
00:06:12.000That seems like an overstep by the President of the United States, but President Trump not one who is known for understatement.
00:06:18.000Deeply immoral statement there by President Trump.
00:06:20.000He's on more solid ground when he says the Democrats don't obviously give a damn about illegal immigration.
00:06:26.000Here he is not wrong, and this is the point he actually should be hammering.
00:06:29.000No reason why we can't come to a deal.
00:06:33.000But you have another side that doesn't care about border security.
00:06:37.000The Democrats, which I've been saying all along, they don't give a damn about crime.
00:06:51.000And if they're not going to care about crime, then I agree.
00:06:54.000They shouldn't do anything at the border, but I care about crime.
00:06:57.000It is, you know, not a horrible argument that Democrats don't care about crime, especially when they make some of the worst arguments in the world.
00:07:02.000Nancy Pelosi, apparently in this meeting with President Trump, Trump was talking about a wall and Nancy Pelosi kept saying to him, but people will just build tunnels underneath the wall.
00:07:14.000It's much easier to just build tunnels underneath the wall than to walk across where there is no wall.
00:07:18.000The long history of people walking across things where there's no wall demonstrates it's a little easier to walk across things than to build a tunnel underneath them, as Dan Crenshaw points out.
00:07:27.000I can't imagine how this conversation went.
00:07:29.000Trump goes, This is how these conversations must have gone.
00:07:32.000We are now living in the stupidest timeline, in which people make the most inane arguments.
00:07:35.000he's like why don't i bring rafts and trump be like well we'll sink the rafts well they have scuba gear like that what this is how these conversations must have gone we are now living in the stupidest timeline in which people make the most inane arguments and when democrats say that a wall doesn't make things more difficult of course a wall makes things more difficult just by definition honestly i i only wish that the conversation had been about using trebuchets to throw drugs over the wall right they'd They could have said that the wall was a medieval implement, and Trump would have said, right, that's because it works.
00:08:05.000And then Pelosi would have said, well, people will bring catapults.
00:08:10.000And Trump would be like, and that's why I brought this dragon.
00:08:19.000We should be done, but we're not going to be done, because Democrats think that they can exact some sort of bargain out of Trump, and they figure the American people, at the behest of the media, are going to fall exactly where they want them to fall, which is blaming Trump for the shutdown.
00:08:30.000However, it's not going completely according to plan.
00:08:32.000Some Democrats are urging people like Pelosi and Schumer to just cave and sign over the money because we are now about to enter an actual non-pay period for members of the federal government starting January 11th.
00:08:45.000That great political mind Cher was tweeting out today, you know, she was wondering if there is life after love and also why Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer would not actually just sign over the money.
00:09:00.000She has the weirdest capitalization habits on Twitter, like much weirder than President Trump's.
00:09:04.000She says Trump said Mexico will pay for it.
00:09:31.000People will starve, lose their homes, be unable to see doors, doctors, unable to see doctors, so share, I think may actually represent a certain contingent of the democratic base that is annoyed that the Democrats continue to play politics with a lot of democratic constituents, Because the media, every time they focus in on the impact of the shutdown, it's not just hitting Trump, it's hitting Democrats as well.
00:09:54.000USA Today has a long piece today about how the shutdown is impacting Americans.
00:09:58.000They talk about the fact that It's kind of businesses that are ancillary to government areas are suffering.
00:10:06.000You talk about the guy, Mike Yohannes has run a food stand in downtown Washington for the past 20 years, surviving economic downturns while selling hot dogs, candy bars, and an assortment of other edible items.
00:10:15.000But the latest government shutdown could be the death knell for his business.
00:10:18.000Foot traffic is markedly down at the corner of Penn Ave and 11th Street, where he operates.
00:10:22.000And Johanneson sales have fallen about 60% during the closure, which has affected nearby federal offices, museums, and other tourist spots.
00:10:28.000And you're getting all these sorts of stories from the media day after day.
00:10:32.000This idea, the idea being, of course, that there's actual suffering that happens during a government shutdown.
00:10:37.000Apparently, the federal government loses about a billion dollars a week during a government shutdown, thanks to back pay.
00:10:42.000They're going to have to pay people and other failures to take in revenue and all the rest.
00:10:48.000So, Democrats are going to feel that pressure too.
00:10:51.000And this is why Trump should stand tall.
00:10:53.000Unfortunately, it looks like President Trump is looking more and more at declaring a national emergency.
00:10:59.000And that's something that he really should not do at this point.
00:11:02.000Declaring a national emergency, as I said yesterday, would be both fruitless It would also be just bad constitutional politics.
00:11:11.000The executive branch does not have the capacity to randomly declare a national emergency and then seize land along the border in violation of eminent domain and then just start building walls because there's been an intractable long-term problem that Democrats refuse to solve.
00:11:25.000Trump needs to keep the pressure on Democrats.
00:11:27.000And again, The folks on the left don't have a good excuse as to why they don't seem to care very much about this issue.
00:11:34.000And I hate Trump is not an actual solution.
00:11:37.000I hate Trump doesn't help you at all in this debate, which is why Trump should keep pushing it and pushing and pushing it.
00:11:42.000I'm going to get to just how bad Democrats and folks on the left are when it comes to this issue in just one second, because if Trump wanted, he could have a series of commercials like today that would be devastating to Democrats on this particular issue.
00:12:03.000It was not a figment of your imagination.
00:12:05.000During one of the clips, all I had to do to get rid of that beard was grab my Dollar Shave Club products and go to town and boom, clean shaven.
00:12:26.000Well, Dollar Shave Club will provide that to me on a regularly scheduled basis.
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00:12:34.000You determine what you want, when you want it.
00:12:36.000It shows up right at your door from once a month to once every six months.
00:12:39.000That's what I do, whether it is for shaving or whether it is for using the Amber and Lavender Body Cleanser, which is soothing and calming, which I desperately need.
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00:13:11.000Okay, so, President Trump, when he says that the Democrats don't care about crime, that they don't care about illegal immigration, He has a leg to stand on, and it's amazing how blind many folks on the left, or at least in the anti-Trump contingents, are to this kind of hole in their resume.
00:13:31.000She's voted Republican in a bunch of other elections, although she said she was going to vote for Andrew Gillum in the last Florida gubernatorial race because she disliked Trump so much.
00:13:41.000Well, last night on CNN, Chris Cuomo, actual physical block of wood, Chris Cuomo, had on a couple of guests.
00:13:47.000One was Ana Navarro and one was a Republican who was talking about the cost of illegal immigration and the problem of crime that is linked to illegal immigrants who are not vetted.
00:13:56.000And Ana Navarro, in the middle of this clip, actually takes out a nail file and begins filing her nails because she doesn't care about what happens to people who are victims of illegal immigrant crime.
00:14:17.000Are people who've been killed, Anna, by dangerous, known illegal aliens who've been allowed to stay in this country because of the leftist policies that people like you promote in so-called sanctuary cities.
00:14:28.000I'm so tired of you calling me leftists already.
00:14:31.000Okay, so there she is filing her nails as he talks about illegal immigrant crime.
00:14:34.000Now, I'm old enough to remember when Corey Lewandowski, who is indeed a bag of tools, Corey Lewandowski was also on CNN.
00:14:41.000And I believe it was Democrats talking about victims of a particular type of crime or government shutdown.
00:14:49.000I'm trying to remember what the context was.
00:14:50.000And Corey Lewandowski just said, womp, womp.
00:14:53.000And everybody mocked him and suggested that he never be allowed on CNN again.
00:14:56.000And of ours, they're filing her nails while they talk about victims of illegal immigrant crime.
00:15:02.000And this just demonstrates that there is a blind spot when it comes to the emotional nature of this issue for a lot of Democrats who believe that there's no reason to worry about illegal immigration in any context.
00:15:11.000In a second, I'm going to show you more of the reaction to President Trump's negotiation strategy.
00:15:15.000So President Trump It was negotiating with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, and the media are very angry that Trump didn't stay in the room, that he walked out of the room with Pelosi and Schumer.
00:15:31.000According to Jonathan Allen and Jake Sherman, July 13, 2011 in Politico, President Barack Obama abruptly walked out of a stormy debt limit meeting with congressional leaders on Wednesday, a dramatic setback to the already shaky negotiations.
00:15:43.000He shoved back and said, I'll see you tomorrow, and walked out.
00:15:46.000House Majority Leader Eric Cantor told reporters in the Capitol after the meeting, the White House talks blew up amid a new round of sniping between Obama and Cantor, who are fast becoming bitter enemies.
00:15:56.000Apparently, the president told Cantor, don't call my bluff.
00:15:59.000And then he said that no other president would sit through such negotiations.
00:16:29.000Well, no, actually, he can say bye-bye.
00:16:31.000That's one of the tactics of negotiation.
00:16:32.000In any negotiation, there comes a point where you have to say to the other side, listen, I'm getting up and I'm walking out because there's nothing more for us to discuss here.
00:16:39.000Now, the problem is that Trump's fallback position is a bad position.
00:16:42.000Trump's fallback position is that he is going to declare a national emergency and that the national emergency is going to allow him to build a wall on the border.
00:17:18.000Either the president is committed to this or he's not committed to this.
00:17:21.000Either he's committed to go all the way on this issue, or he's not committed to go all the way on this issue.
00:17:24.000I don't think there's a lot of in-between here.
00:17:27.000With that said, they're trying to find an in-between now.
00:17:30.000So according to CNN, there's deal-making in the works.
00:17:34.000Some of these deals are not very good.
00:17:35.000Now recall, just a few months back, the White House had actually offered the Democrats that they would essentially give amnesty to over a million illegal immigrants.
00:17:48.000People who were brought here when they were young.
00:17:51.000They would offer all that amnesty to illegal immigrants in response to a border wall, and the Democrats walked away from that deal.
00:17:57.000But now, the White House is coming back and they're saying, well, maybe we can make another sort of deal that'll be along those same lines.
00:18:03.000Here's Mercedes Schlapp from the White House comms office on CNN last night.
00:18:06.000Part of the exchange that Democrats and many Republicans appeared open to would be money for the wall, more money for the wall, in exchange perhaps for a deal on DACA.
00:18:16.000Let me ask you on DACA, because Republicans have raised this too, Newt Gingrich among them, would the president be willing to exchange protection for DREAMers for more money for the wall?
00:18:24.000We have been open for discussion, open for negotiations for the Democrats.
00:18:29.000Okay, and the fact is that Trump was open to those negotiations a while ago.
00:18:35.000President Trump, back in October of 2017, had suggested that he would push DACA even without a wall.
00:18:42.000And then he said, OK, well, you know, we'll do DACA for the wall, and then Democrats balked at it.
00:18:46.000So it's not really a shock that they are now bringing this up again.
00:18:48.000This has ticked off some of the real immigration hardliners, like Ann Coulter, who say that the DREAMers should never be given amnesty.
00:18:54.000It would, in my opinion, be a mistake to give the DREAMers amnesty without actually having the physical barrier in place, because now you're creating a new magnet.
00:19:01.000Are you saying to folks that if you get in, if you cross that border, if you lie about when you got here, or if you just cross the border and then hope for the next round of these sorts of negotiations, then you will be able to get citizenship as well?
00:19:14.000The way this really should go is that if Trump wants to make a dreamers for wall deal, what he really should do is he should say, here's the deal.
00:19:21.000I build the wall, and then when the Department of Homeland Security declares that the border is secure, then all these folks get in the back of the line for citizenship.
00:19:28.000It's always been my perspective, by the way, that treating illegal immigrants as a full class is a mistake.
00:19:33.000What we actually should be doing is treating illegal immigrants on a one-to-one basis, meaning the same way that we would legal immigrants.
00:19:38.000If you seek to immigrate to the United States as an individual, then we are going to run you through the rigors of having to pass an immigration test.
00:19:45.000We're going to have to look at your background.
00:19:47.000We are going to have to decide whether you are of net benefit or of net detriment to the United States.
00:19:52.000And then we decide whether you can come or whether your family can come and all the rest.
00:19:56.000Why that wouldn't apply to people who are already here is beyond me.
00:19:58.000Just because you crossed the border illegally 10 years ago, I don't see why we shouldn't be able to make the same assessment as to whether you are of cost or benefit.
00:20:04.000In fact, that assessment should be a lot easier.
00:20:07.000We've had 10 years to learn whether you're going to be on welfare, or whether you're going to have a kid who's in a gang, or whether you are going to assimilate into American culture in a fulsome way.
00:20:17.000We should be analyzing people on an individual one-to-one level.
00:20:20.000That's really how we should handle all of this, but the truth is that immigration is actually susceptible to some pretty common-sense solutions.
00:20:26.000It's just that Democrats don't want the common-sense border solutions, and Republicans are hesitant to cave on any of the other solutions until they have a border solution, a position that I think is ultimately rational.
00:20:37.000With that said, it's pretty obvious that Lindsey Graham and some of the border doves in the Republican caucus are now trying to get Trump's commitment to a wall to push him into a more liberal position on immigration.
00:20:48.000And this is where the danger comes in for the Trump administration.
00:20:51.000They basically have three options at this point.
00:20:54.000Option number one, stick to their guns, say we're not going to fund the government unless you give us the border security funding we need.
00:21:00.000Option number two, declare a national emergency, sign the funding, wait for a court to strike it down, whine about it, and hope that Republicans aren't too pissed.
00:21:08.000Option number three, go back to Democrats and give away the store in exchange for the wall.
00:21:12.000And option number three, unfortunately, seems to be gaining a fair amount of steam.
00:21:16.000According to CNN today, After President Trump stormed out of a White House meeting with congressional leaders, GOP senators privately gathered in Senator Lindsey Graham's office on Wednesday to discuss a way out of the logjam, the long-shot idea proposed immigration deal that would include $5.7 billion for Trump's border wall, along with several provisions that could entice Democrats.
00:21:36.000Those items include changes to help those who are a part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, as well as immigrants from El Salvador and other countries impacted by the Temporary Protected Status program, along with modifications to H-2B visas.
00:21:47.000H-1B visas are high-skilled immigrants.
00:21:57.000GOP senators pitched the idea to senior White House advisor Jared Kushner, who said if they came up with a proposal that got Trump his border wall money and could pass the Senate, the White House would be open to more discussions on the matter.
00:22:07.000He did not say that Trump would actually endorse such a plan.
00:22:09.000I think it's unlikely that President Trump would endorse such a plan, given the fact that he'd get a lot of pressure, rightly so, from his right on the issue.
00:22:16.000Well, I want to talk about this a little bit more.
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00:23:29.000So, the negotiations seem to be ongoing.
00:23:31.000President Trump heads down to the border today.
00:23:34.000He does so amidst new media reports that the steel wall won't even work.
00:23:38.000So again, Democrats, media, they're struggling to explain why there shouldn't be any sort of barrier, particularly because even people who are members of the Obama administration say that walls work.
00:24:12.000I'm here today breaking my silence to tell American people that the president is correct.
00:24:18.000And what he's doing, the wall works 100%.
00:24:23.000And I'm here today to support his efforts and what he's doing to get what he needs to improve border security for this great nation.
00:24:31.000You know, I think that you would be I think you would be hard pressed, like really hard pressed to find a Border Patrol agent who thinks that the wall would not be effective in any way.
00:24:40.000And when Democrats keep claiming that it wouldn't be effective in any way, they have no evidence to back all this.
00:24:45.000In fact, whenever they try to suggest that a wall is unnecessary, they end up shooting themselves in the foot.
00:24:48.000For example, Democratic Representative Juan Vargas.
00:25:26.000It turns out that having a border wall is actually quite useful, and we saw that when there was video of people from the last march on the border, from that last caravan, who actually tried to cross the border illegally, but it turns out there were fences to stop them, and so they started throwing rocks at border police officials.
00:25:44.000And so, of course, it's going to be a very difficult argument to make.
00:25:46.000Now, the best argument that can be made against the wall is that it's not necessary to build, like, a 2,000-mile wall, which is true, right?
00:25:52.000You actually need sections of wall in certain areas.
00:25:54.000But the wall itself is not going to stop all illegal immigration.
00:25:57.000The real problem of illegal immigration on a more deep-seated level is the problem of employers being able to hire illegal immigrants.
00:26:03.000And not only that, the fact that the vast majority of people who are illegal immigrants in the country right now are people who got in legally and then overstayed their visas.
00:26:10.000That said, the system is absolutely and obviously broken.
00:26:13.000And Democrats are claiming that President Trump is trying to curb the ability to claim asylum.
00:26:18.000But the problem is that the vast majority of people claiming asylum are doing so fraudulently.
00:26:21.000They're not actually political refugees from their country.
00:26:24.000They're just looking for a better job.
00:26:25.000Now, I don't blame people who are coming here for a better life.
00:26:31.000I don't blame people who are trying to cross the border because they live in a country that's really rough and economically feeble and they decide that they want to move here for a better life.
00:26:41.000However, I'm not going to pretend that they're not abusing the laws or that our laws have to allow everybody in.
00:26:45.000This is one of the consequences of having a welfare state, a vast welfare state, by the way.
00:26:50.000It's really fascinating to watch all the people on the left in the United States who simultaneously want a vast welfare state and also open borders.
00:26:57.000The same people who say that they really admire the Nordic states fail to recognize that the reason that the Nordic states are capable of maintaining their giant welfare state is because they're extraordinarily restrictive in terms of their immigration policies.
00:27:08.000In fact, the open immigration policies in Sweden led to the election of a center-right government.
00:27:15.000The Nordic states look at their vast bevy of welfare state policies and it turns out a bunch of people coming into their country who then create cultural enclaves and take advantage of the welfare systems are not good for those countries.
00:27:26.000And so these democratic socialists, these social democracies of the Nordic part of the globe, Those social democracies are very restrictive in terms of immigration.
00:27:37.000Which is why, until five minutes ago, that was even Bernie Sanders' position.
00:27:41.000But now the Democrats have decided that they want two things that are not at all comprehensible.
00:28:01.000If you owned a store and it was free samples, no limit, what do you think would happen?
00:28:06.000Everybody would rush in and bankrupt you in a day.
00:28:08.000Well, that's what happens in the United States.
00:28:10.000Now, it used to be, and this is why I'm libertarian on immigration as a general rule, it used to be that anybody who wanted to come to the United States and work hard without any guarantee of getting ahead was free to do so because there was no welfare state to make sure that they were going to be paid a minimum amount.
00:28:24.000What that actually meant is that the type of immigrant coming to the United States was a little bit different.
00:28:29.000Now, there's still plenty of great immigrants coming to the United States who just want to get ahead.
00:28:33.000They don't actually want to be on our welfare programs.
00:28:35.000But by polling data, the number of immigrants today who are coming to the United States and believe that the government should do more for them is probably a lot higher than it was a hundred years ago.
00:28:45.000When people came to the United States having left all their property back in the old country and saying, I've come here for the adventure.
00:28:52.000America used to be the land of opportunity, but that opportunity was an opportunity you made yourself.
00:28:57.000This is one of my chief areas of angst and disagreement with folks like Tucker Carlson.
00:29:03.000The entire promise of America is the promise of adventure.
00:29:07.000The entire promise of America always was the idea for immigrants and non-immigrants alike that you were born into a system where the opportunity was available to you, but it was up to you to grab it with both hands.
00:29:16.000And you can find a community to support you.
00:29:18.000You can find a society of people who were willing to stretch out their hands and give you opportunity.
00:29:23.000But you were not coming here with the guarantee that there was going to be some safety net catching you.
00:29:27.000That makes walking the tightrope dangerous.
00:29:29.000And that means that you end up with a group of people coming here who are risk-seeking, a group of people who are forced to assimilate into the dominant cultural mores, mores, in order for them to succeed in society.
00:29:41.000Assimilation is forced by free markets.
00:29:46.000The hard work, risk-seeking, that is pushed by capitalism.
00:29:52.000If you come to the United States and nothing is handed to you, you learn English.
00:29:55.000That's what happened to my great-grandparents.
00:29:58.000Yeah, my great-grandparents came here in like 1907, and they came here speaking Yiddish with no money.
00:30:07.000And then they learned English, and their kids learned English.
00:30:09.000My grandmother doesn't really speak Yiddish because they didn't speak Yiddish in the home, specifically because America, as a land of opportunity, still required you to do certain things in order to take advantage of those opportunities.
00:30:20.000That doesn't mean America has always been perfect.
00:30:22.000It doesn't mean everybody has been given equal access to those opportunities.
00:30:25.000The grand and great moral story of America is those opportunities becoming more and more open to more and more people on a moral level.
00:30:32.000At the same time that America was freely welcoming immigrants in the early 20th century, Jim Crow was prevalent in the South.
00:30:38.000There have been too many times in American history where people were not welcomed to the opportunities of America.
00:30:42.000But that was a problem with the laws preventing access to the opportunity.
00:30:46.000It was not a problem with the opportunity itself.
00:30:48.000And I think that right now, and this is my general problem with the Nordic states as well as both right populism and left populism in the United States, The only difference between right and left populism in the United States and in Europe, by the way, is basically not the question of whether there should be a massive state, but whether there should be restrictions on immigration.
00:31:08.000And the left says, well, you're cruel and nasty because you want restrictions on immigration.
00:31:12.000And the right says, well, you can't practically have no restrictions on immigration and welcome tons of people to the United States with a giant welfare state.
00:31:19.000The actual solution to all of this is to have a government that guarantees far less and that welcomes far more.
00:31:31.000The most generous society is the society that says, come here.
00:31:34.000We welcome you with open arms if you're willing to work, if you're willing to risk, if you're willing to join our common journey toward a better future, if you're willing to adventure.
00:31:42.000If you're willing to take that call, if you're willing to pick up that call and go become American, that's what the American dream was all about.
00:31:48.000It wasn't that the American dream was you come here and we hand you a welfare check.
00:31:52.000And the American dream wasn't you're born in America and we hand you a welfare check and then we protect you from foreign labor.
00:31:56.000That was not the American dream either.
00:31:57.000The American dream was you come here and you will be left to your own devices to succeed or fall on your own merits.
00:33:12.000We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
00:33:15.000So just to continue with the theme of where we ought to be on Immigration In an ideal world, what we would have is a country that was built on virtue.
00:33:30.000Because virtue is the predicate for freedom.
00:33:32.000You need virtue before you can have freedom.
00:33:34.000I think that people on all sides of the aisle have forgotten that virtue is necessary before freedom.
00:33:41.000Freedom does not make you more virtuous.
00:33:43.000Freedom offers you the opportunity to either act with virtue or to act as a libertine.
00:33:47.000Freedom gives you the opportunity to make a choice for good or for ill.
00:33:50.000But in order for freedom to be maintained, you actually need a virtuous society.
00:33:54.000So to take an example, all the folks who are big advocates of the welfare state, they say, well, what happens if there were no welfare state?
00:33:59.000People just wouldn't care for each other.
00:34:01.000And that's why we need the government to step in.
00:34:02.000That's why we need the government to use force to take money from John and give it to Jim.
00:34:38.000And Americans are happy to do it, because common virtue, based in a Judeo-Christian value system, was the basis for the freedom that the Enlightenment eventually brought about, politically speaking.
00:34:50.000It seems, though, that we've cast all of that aside, and so now we have these kind of surface-level debates about not the necessity of the welfare state, but about whether we ought to make that welfare state accessible to everybody outside.
00:35:01.000The left says it's unkind not to open up that welfare state to everybody on the outside, and the right says it's unkind to American citizens to open up that welfare state to everybody outside.
00:35:09.000The real answer should be that the welfare state itself is a problem.
00:35:12.000And I've said for years, I've said for years, that immigrants who want to come here and work hard and not rely on welfare And integrate into the greatness of American philosophy?
00:35:22.000I'd rather have millions of those people than domestically born Americans who don't believe in any of those values and believe they're owed something by dint of being born inside a certain set of borders.
00:35:37.000And America used to be relegated to the original 13 colonies and then it was relegated east of the Mississippi and now it's the entire continent.
00:35:45.000But people who are coming to the United States knew that they were in for something.
00:35:49.000And what they were getting was something grand, something magical, something they wouldn't get anywhere else.
00:35:54.000The opportunity to do what they wanted to do on the basis of having a community that would also take care of them, but not through governmental means.
00:36:02.000The identification of society with government is one of the biggest mistakes that we make.
00:36:05.000And it's one of the reasons why we are so at each other's throats over politics all the time.
00:36:09.000The reason that we want to strangle each other.
00:36:11.000over matters political on a routine basis is specifically because of this, is because when the social fabric decays, when we no longer worry about virtue, when we no longer think about our informal duties to one another outside the role of government, we tend to think that government is, in the words of Barack Obama, the only thing we all share.
00:36:29.000What we have to do if we wish to fix the country, and it would solve so many of our problems on so many political issues, from single motherhood to illegal immigration, if all we did for the next forever was focused on building up that social fabric once again, if all we did was focus on our communities and our own virtues and stop worrying so much about what government policy should look like, and instead of trying to place all of our hopes in the dunder-headed politicians who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground,
00:36:56.000if instead we focused on building up communities of virtue if instead we focused on building up communities of virtue and valor, of decency and strength, so many of these problems would just disappear like magic and And we could go back to a bargain where you woke up in the morning feeling like it was an adventure, and the adventure was not how to twist the system to your own benefit.
00:37:14.000If the only argument we're having about government is how to twist the governmental system to our own benefit, then we're no longer arguing about the role of government.
00:37:21.000We're arguing about whether virtue ought to exist at all or not.
00:37:24.000And I think that that larger question has gone entirely by the wayside.
00:37:28.000I'm not doubting the motives of people who are sympathetic to illegal immigrants.
00:37:31.000I'm sympathetic to illegal immigrants too.
00:37:33.000And I'm not doubting the motives of people who say that we ought to have more protections against illegal immigration because I agree with them.
00:37:39.000I am suggesting that the real solution in the end is not going to be had even with a border wall or with stricter immigration enforcement.
00:37:48.000The real solution is going to be had when we decide as a society it's time to return to that original founding bargain.
00:37:54.000Freedom of movement, freedom to alienate that labor, and freedom within the context of a virtuous society where we all feel that we are brothers in arms and not enemies seeking to steal things from one another.
00:38:04.000Okay, speaking of this, controversy has now broken out today again over Steve King of Iowa.
00:38:10.000Now, I know Representative King a little bit.
00:38:13.000He asked me to speak at an economic opportunity forum in Congress like a year ago.
00:38:19.000I'd met him a couple of other times at David Horwitz Freedom Center events.
00:38:24.000He'd been caught in all sorts of sort of controversies surrounding his comments about race.
00:38:29.000And I'll be honest with you, I thought that Steve King was a dunderhead, right?
00:38:33.000I mean, I thought that Steve King said dumb things, but they weren't necessarily racist things, but then people would attribute racist motives to the dumb things that he said.
00:38:40.000So, for example, back in 2017, he had tweeted something out about Geert Wilders, who is a popular right-wing Dutch politician.
00:38:48.000He had tweeted out, Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny.
00:38:51.000We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies.
00:38:55.000And I said at the time, there are two ways to read that tweet.
00:38:59.000As a racist tweet, the idea is that babies from abroad cannot be civilized to Western values.
00:39:03.000That we can't actually bring in babies from other civilizations and then civilize them and then they can't be part of the American bargain.
00:39:10.000That would be actual racism and it would be incredibly stupid.
00:39:14.000It would be those two things because America is indeed built on other people's babies, whether those babies are born abroad or born here in the United States, it's built on other people's babies, right?
00:39:22.000I mean, all of civilization, all of humanity is built on other people's babies as well as your own babies.
00:39:27.000So that was one way of reading the tweet.
00:39:29.000The other way of reading the tweet is that King was basically saying that multiculturalism combined with high levels of immigration from non-Western cultures shapes destiny.
00:39:37.000That basically, if you bring in a bunch of people who are not willing to assimilate and not interested in assimilating, that undercuts Western civilization.
00:39:43.000So if those babies are not actually babies, They're being brought up in a culture different from that of the United States and being told that that is decent and fine and they don't have to assimilate at all, that that undermines your culture.
00:40:07.000And a lot of King's statements were sort of like this, where you could interpret them one of two ways.
00:40:11.000Well, the problem is that now he's making statements that are not interpretable one of two ways.
00:40:15.000They are only interpretable as racism.
00:40:17.000So, he made a comment, apparently, just within the last day or so, where he said this, quote, If you identify white nationalist and white supremacist with Western civilization, that's actually racist.
00:40:26.000did that language become offensive why did i sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization if you identify white nationalist and white supremacist with western civilization that's actually racist that's doing it wrong that that is that is the entire problem - Again, if the question of Western civilization is a question of us and them, not based on ideology, but based on race, this does make you a racist.
00:40:51.000The greatness of Western civilization, the greatness of the Judeo-Christian construct, is that it does offer an open door to anybody who wants to join.
00:40:59.000In America, what makes America fantastic is the fact that that idea is applicable to broad swaths of people from a wide variety of countries, regardless of place of origin.
00:41:09.000And every single immigrant group that has ever come to the United States has been hit with the hammer of, they're not willing to assimilate enough, and then after 20 years, they assimilate.
00:41:16.000This happened to the Germans, it happened to the Irish, it happened to the Italians, it happened to the Jews.
00:41:21.000It's happened to legitimately everyone who's come to the United States.
00:41:24.000And America's idea was always capable of integrating people.
00:41:28.000Well, when Steve King identifies Western civilization, With white nationalism, the idea you have to be a certain color in order to be inculcated in Western civilization, that's actual racism.
00:41:39.000At this point, Congress should censure Congressman King.
00:41:47.000There is a primary candidate against Congressman King right now.
00:41:55.000Challenger's name is a guy named Randy Feenstra in Iowa, and I plan on donating to him today because the Republican Party cannot stand for this sort of commentary that identifies color with civilization.
00:42:05.000The left does it, by the way, also, right?
00:42:07.000When they do this whole routine, this intersectional routine where you don't get to speak unless you're of a particular color or order, or we're going to grant you certain points in the debate based on your place of origin or ethnicity or sexual orientation.
00:42:20.000It is even more dangerous garbage when you're talking about white nationalism and white supremacism, which have a long, horrifying, disgusting history in the United States.
00:42:28.000So, I'd recommend everybody go over to Randy Feenstra for Congress.
00:42:31.000It's FeenstraForCongress.com and give some money to Randy Feenstra if you're a good conservative and Republican.
00:42:49.000We have some really deep-seated problems here in the United States, and it seems like everybody is solving them the wrong way.
00:42:55.000I'm not here to push my book a little bit early, but I think that if you want to look at the problems of Western civilization, how Western civilization grew, and how those problems can be cured, my book, The Right Side of History, which comes out in March, is all about these specific problems.
00:43:09.000We have so little in common that people are rushing to tribalism, people are rushing to political partisanship, people are rushing to woke rage in order to solve a problem of the soul.
00:43:21.000A problem that we no longer see each other as friends and compatriots in a common cause.
00:43:26.000We now see each other as enemies seeking to tear apart the nation.
00:43:29.000And that means that a lot of our political debates, too, should be boiled down to something beyond what is politically expedient.
00:43:35.000One of the big problems we have right now for both Democratic politicians and Republican politicians is that the most effective mode of politics is to question your opponent's motives.
00:43:45.000when president trump goes after pelosi and schumer and says they don't care about crime that's a very effective mode of politicking and pelosi and schumer lend credence to it when they look like they don't care about crime pelosi and schumer consequently go the other way they say trump doesn't care about people who are being hurt in a government shutdown and trump lends credence to that when he sort of shrugs at it the reality is do i think that pelosi and schumer actually don't care about crime from illegal immigrants probably not but i think that it's convenient for them to pander to their base instead
00:44:13.000what we really our politicians are are a bunch of losers in the sense that what a good politician does is has the capacity to tell their own constituents - Right.
00:44:49.000I'm not going to say that I love this show overall because I don't, but I think that it is that the first season particularly is kind of well written.
00:44:56.000Now, what's funny about the show Mr. Robot, which is on USA Network, is that the show started off as this kind of critique of capitalism and capitalism is really terrible.
00:45:06.000And then within a couple of seasons, it morphed into, well, really, really, capitalism is kind of OK, but what we need to do is curb it.
00:46:34.000I will say that the least interesting character is the main character, which is always a problem for shows like this.
00:46:38.000But it is fascinating to watch as the writers of the show went from really almost being communists to saying, well, what we really need to do is blame.
00:46:47.000In season three of the show, not to spoil anything, but in season three of the show, it turns out that the people who have been backing this play to tear down capitalism are backed by the Chinese government.
00:46:57.000and the Chinese government for some odd reason wants Trump to be president.
00:47:02.000But what's hilarious about it is the fact that there are all these people who really more agree with the Chinese government than they do with the American government, and yet they want to pretend that the Chinese government is backing the Republicans.
00:47:12.000It's kind of a thing I like, it's also kind of a thing that I hate, but it's a good window into the mind of a lot of people on the left who write for Hollywood.
00:47:18.000Okay, time for some things that I hate.
00:47:27.000The woke scolds are here for a Green Book director, or writer.
00:47:32.000So this movie, Green Book, just won a Golden Globe.
00:47:36.000I haven't seen it yet, so I'm not really going to critique it, but the screenwriter, whose name is Nick Vallelonga, has now deleted his Twitter account.
00:47:42.000Because there was a tweet from November 2015 talking about President Trump.
00:47:47.000President Trump had talked about people cheering during 9-11.
00:47:50.000The tweet said, Donald Trump is 100% correct.
00:47:52.000Muslims in New Jersey cheering when towers went down.
00:47:54.000I saw it as you did possibly on local CBS News.
00:47:57.000And he was ripped up and down for all of this.
00:48:01.000So now all of these left-wing journalists have decided it's necessary to go through all of his old tweets and make sure, make sure that he agrees with all of their points on everything.
00:48:11.000He then had to delete his Twitter account because we're not allowed to say things anymore.
00:48:15.000Now, maybe he, maybe it's, So let's say that he's wrong.
00:48:19.000Let's say that what he said is incorrect because there's not a lot of evidence that tons of Muslims, as Trump had said, were celebrating on 9-11.
00:48:25.000The footage that you saw was from the Palestinian Authority where Palestinians were cheering in the streets and handing out candy.
00:48:31.000Whatever it is, this new practice where we wait till someone has a moment of success and then we go back in their history, dig something up and try to destroy them with it, is really quite disgusting.
00:48:40.000You say something new, Well then, you're fair game.
00:48:43.000But this notion that we're going to go back 15 years, find something that you said like Kevin Hart, and then try and wreck you over it?
00:48:48.000It's going to make an unlivable world, because there's no such thing as forgiveness.
00:48:51.000There's, like, if Val Longa came out and said, I was wrong to say that and I never should have said it, that wouldn't make his critics more quiet, it would make them more loud.
00:48:59.000Then they would suggest, well, what sort of penance does he have to do?
00:49:02.000Like, this would be the routine that they push.
00:49:05.000Now, it is amazing that bigotry in certain circumstances, according to the left, is okay.
00:49:10.000So they'll call Val Longa a bigot for that tweet, but there will be actual sitting Democratic senators who will be religious bigots altogether.
00:49:19.000Tulsi Gabbard, representative from Hawaii, who is pretty far left, particularly on foreign policy.
00:49:25.000I mean, like, she is Bashar Assad's favorite representative.
00:49:29.000She went and visited Syria a while back.
00:49:33.000Senator Mazie Hirono, who is the senator from Hawaii, because Hirono questioned a judicial nominee and asked specifically about this judicial nominee's membership in the Knights of Columbus.
00:49:43.000And Knights of Columbus is just a Catholic group that has lunches, basically.
00:49:46.000But if you're a member of a Catholic group, this means that you must be destroyed now, according to a lot of Democrats.
00:49:51.000We saw Bernie Sanders do this with another Christian pretty recently with regard to a nomination for the Office of Management and Budget.
00:50:00.000So, Hirono questioned Brian Busher, and apparently, during that line of questioning, Senator Hirono asked specifically whether the guy could be fair because he was Catholic, because he was taking part in the Knights of Columbus.
00:50:14.000Dr. Keone Dudley, a member of the Knights of Columbus, said that although they participate in things like the March for Life, there are knights with all different kinds of personal views, and there are knights in elected office.
00:50:23.000By the way, JFK was a member of the Knights of Columbus.
00:50:30.000There are a lot of different members of the Knights of Columbus who are not on the right.
00:50:34.000But this new sort of religious test that's being trotted out by Democrats is pretty astonishing and demonstrates once again that bigotry is not restricted to any one political side.