The Ben Shapiro Show - Thunder Strzok | Ep. 580

00:00:00.000 FBI agent Peter Strzok gets clocked by a bevy of Republicans, President Trump takes on Theresa May for no apparent reason, and we check the mailbag.

00:00:07.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:07.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

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00:00:17.000 And we have lots to get to today. 0.99

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00:02:00.000 Alright, so!

00:02:02.000 Yesterday, Peter Strzok, you remember this guy, this is the guy who is an FBI agent having an affair with another FBI agent and he was texting with her the whole time about how much he hated Donald Trump.

00:02:12.000 And this only matters because Peter Strzok was in charge of both the Hillary Clinton email investigation as well as the Trump-Russia collusion investigation.

00:02:18.000 And as you will also recall, the Inspector General of the DOJ, Michael Horowitz, found that Peter Strzok's bias against President Trump could not be counted out when it came to analyzing his activities with regard to these investigations.

00:02:30.000 So, for example, there was a point in late September when it became clear to the FBI that there were Hillary Clinton emails on Huma Abedin's computer.

00:02:38.000 Instead of prioritizing that and checking it out, Peter Strzok decided it was imperative to put all of his resources on the supposed Trump-Russia collusion that was happening.

00:02:47.000 And instead of checking out the Hillary thing, he checked out the Trump thing.

00:02:50.000 That delayed the Hillary thing until late in the election cycle. 1.00

00:02:52.000 Ironically, that ended up boosting Hillary Clinton out of the presidency. 1.00

00:02:55.000 It ended up creating a Donald Trump presidency, possibly, by allowing the FBI and James Comey to re-announce an opening of Hillary's email investigation like five, six days before the election actually happened. 1.00

00:03:06.000 So, Peter Strzok is, uh,

00:03:09.000 He's the guy who wrote that he would stop Trump from becoming president. 0.99

00:03:12.000 He was the guy who wrote that all of these ignorant hillbillies were going to vote for Trump. 0.99

00:03:16.000 He's a real joy to behold. 0.95

00:03:17.000 So he shows up on the Hill yesterday and he's testifying in front of the House Government Oversight Committee.

00:03:23.000 Let me say at the outset, I don't think that this was a useful hearing.

00:03:26.000 The reason I don't think this was a useful hearing is because no new information was available.

00:03:30.000 We already knew what Peter Strzok was going to say about all of this because it said all of it in the Inspector General report.

00:03:35.000 The only thing that would have been useful is if the members of the House Committee on Oversight, if the Government Oversight Committee, if they'd actually asked Strzok about specific instances of decision making and whether those decisions were biased by his anti-Trump hatred.

00:03:50.000 Right, so if they'd actually had in front of them, like, a complete timeline of Peter Strzok's decision-making, from the initiation of the Hillary Clinton email investigation and the Russia collusion investigation, all the way through today, and said, okay, here's all your decisions, here's why this one seems biased, explain yourself.

00:04:03.000 That would have been useful.

00:04:04.000 Instead, what it turned into was a lot of grandstanding and browbeating. 1.00

00:04:07.000 It did, however, make Peter Strzok look pretty terrible, because Peter Strzok is, it turns out, a garbage human. 1.00

00:04:12.000 When I say he's a garbage human, I say this advisedly. 0.99

00:04:15.000 There was a moment yesterday when Louie Gohmert got a lot of flack because Louie Gohmert went after Strzok. 0.99

00:04:21.000 And he went after Strzok for cheating on his wife.

00:04:23.000 And then texting with this lover about Donald Trump all the way through.

00:04:29.000 Here was Representative Gohmert from Texas going after Strzok yesterday.

00:04:33.000 There is the disgrace, and it won't be recaptured anytime soon because of the damage you've done to the justice system.

00:04:42.000 And I've talked to FBI agents around the country.

00:04:44.000 You've embarrassed them.

00:04:46.000 You've embarrassed yourself.

00:04:48.000 And I can't help but wonder, when I see you looking there with a little smirk, how many times did you look so innocent into your wife's eye and lie to her about Lisa?

00:05:00.000 Mr. Chairman, this is outrageous!

00:05:02.000 And Democrats go crazy over all of this, of course.

00:05:05.000 Now, is it ironic that Republican members are chastising Peter Strzok over having an affair when Louie Gohmert... I like Louie.

00:05:13.000 I'm friendly with Louie.

00:05:14.000 When Louie campaigned for Roy Moore in Alabama, when Louie was a big Trump supporter, is it a little ironic?

00:05:21.000 Yes, of course it's a little ironic, but I will point out that I would like for there to be a standard that adultery is bad in the country, so it doesn't really bother me that Peter Strzok is getting smacked around over the fact that he was cheating on his wife with another FBI agent and texting little nothings, sweet nothings about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to her.

00:05:37.000 That doesn't bother me in the slightest.

00:05:38.000 OK, so Strzok made himself look really bad yesterday.

00:05:41.000 He started off the hearing by saying that even this questioning is a win for Vladimir Putin.

00:05:46.000 And he's becoming a hero to the left because of all of this.

00:05:48.000 It's sort of an Oliver North moment from the 1980s during Iran-Contra.

00:05:51.000 Oliver North was the colonel who had been involved in smuggling weapons to the Contras in Nicaragua.

00:05:57.000 And he was questioned by Democrats.

00:05:58.000 A lot of Republicans came to his aid.

00:06:00.000 Peter Strzok is having the same thing happen to him, even though he's kind of a

00:06:04.000 Yucky human.

00:06:05.000 He has a bunch of Democrats who are now rushing to defend him and talk about how wonderful he is because he suggests that even this line of questioning helps Vladimir Putin.

00:06:14.000 I have the utmost respect for Congress's oversight role, but I strongly believe today's hearing is just another victory notch in Putin's belt and another milestone in our enemy's campaign to tear America apart. 0.66

00:06:26.000 OK, well, there are serious questions to be asked about Peter Strzok.

00:06:29.000 Yeah, I don't think that having a hearing about whether the FBI was biased in its investigation is irrelevant.

00:06:34.000 This is the job of the Government Oversight Committee.

00:06:36.000 I don't think that this is a huge problem.

00:06:38.000 Daryl Issa, again, this is all grandstanding, it was all very entertaining, but I don't think anybody came out of this looking great.

00:06:44.000 Daryl Issa made Peter Strzok read his texts, and it was kind of hilarious.

00:06:50.000 And I'm gonna just go to a date and then ask you to read your own words.

00:06:55.000 March 4th, 2016.

00:06:58.000 You want me to read this?

00:06:59.000 Yes, please.

00:07:00.000 Yes, sir. 1.00

00:07:00.000 OMG, he's an idiot. 1.00

00:07:02.000 Now the pressure really starts to finish MYE. 1.00

00:07:04.000 Hi, how is Trump other than a douche? 0.66

00:07:07.000 Melania? 0.93

00:07:08.000 Ms.

00:07:08.000 Page said, not ever going to become president, right?

00:07:12.000 Right?

00:07:14.000 No, no, he's not.

00:07:15.000 We'll stop it.

00:07:16.000 Repeat that again.

00:07:17.000 No, no, he's not.

00:07:19.000 We'll stop it.

00:07:20.000 So they're struck reading back his own, his own texts.

00:07:22.000 And obviously this is the guy who's now proclaiming that he has no bias.

00:07:26.000 Everything was fine.

00:07:27.000 He explained his text messages, his anti-Trump text messages, by basically suggesting he did nothing wrong.

00:07:32.000 That when he said, we'll stop it, you know, as a high ranking member of the FBI, meaning Trump's campaign, we'll stop Trump from becoming president.

00:07:37.000 He didn't mean me.

00:07:38.000 He didn't mean the FBI.

00:07:40.000 He meant the American people in general.

00:07:42.000 We'll stop it.

00:07:43.000 You know, we'll stop all of this.

00:07:45.000 Is that really what Peter Strzok meant?

00:07:48.000 No, that's not really what Peter Strzok meant, but here he is lying about it.

00:07:51.000 It would be his candidacy for the presidency in my sense that the American population would not vote him into office.

00:07:59.000 Right, right.

00:08:00.000 I don't recall writing that text.

00:08:02.000 Are you denying writing the text?

00:08:04.000 What I can tell you is that text in no way suggested that I or the FBI would take any action to influence the candidacy of Agent Strauch.

00:08:15.000 That is a fantastic answer to a question nobody asked.

00:08:19.000 OK, so they're saying, I didn't, I didn't buy it.

00:08:22.000 But that's the point.

00:08:23.000 OK, so here is that actual little exchange where Gowdy says to him, that's a great answer to the question nobody asked.

00:08:28.000 But that's the only question that matters, honestly.

00:08:30.000 The only question that matters is not whether Peter Strzok hated Donald Trump.

00:08:32.000 We know Peter Strzok hated Donald Trump.

00:08:34.000 I'll bet there are a bunch of people in the FBI who weren't real fond of Hillary Clinton either. 0.98

00:08:37.000 The real question is, was the investigation biased?

00:08:39.000 And this is why I say that I think this hearing was kind of a waste of time, because it didn't get to the question of whether his actual actions impacted the actions of the FBI in the Russia investigation.

00:08:49.000 And for that, we're gonna have to wait for more information to come out.

00:08:51.000 Now, does it demonstrate that Peter Strzok is the worst?

00:08:53.000 Yeah, the guy's pretty much the worst.

00:08:55.000 I mean, there's a gif going around, a jif going around, of Peter Strzok making these weird faces, and it's like Kevin Spacey from Seven. 0.92

00:09:02.000 I mean, the guy's a weirdo.

00:09:03.000 But does that actually answer the question as to whether the Russia investigation was, from the very outset, poisoned by the FBI, directed at making sure that Trump was not president, corruptly investigated?

00:09:13.000 Now, I have my suspicions, but those suspicions were not actually provided with any evidentiary support during this hearing.

00:09:21.000 Now, we gotta be objective in how we view this.

00:09:23.000 Yes, Peter Strzok is terrible. 0.99

00:09:25.000 Yes, the Democrats who defend him for all of this are ridiculous. 0.93

00:09:29.000 But if you're going to imply that Peter Strzok was responsible for an investigation that was utterly corrupt beginning to end, you actually need to show some evidence that he's responsible for corrupt portions of the investigation.

00:09:39.000 I'm waiting to hear that because there's an actual Inspector General report that's going to come out about the Russia investigation.

00:09:43.000 And as I've suggested,

00:09:45.000 I don't think it's anywhere out of the realm of possibility that the Russia investigation, the collusion investigation, was tainted from the outset by Strzok and his anti-Trump bias.

00:09:54.000 I don't think that's impossible at all.

00:09:56.000 What I do think is that if the Republicans were going to have this hearing, they should have hit him with all that stuff.

00:10:01.000 They should have had that information.

00:10:02.000 They should have made that information public.

00:10:04.000 Again, none of this is to suggest that Strzok is innocent.

00:10:07.000 I don't think Strzok is innocent.

00:10:09.000 For example, Strzok was asked how long did it take him to start talking about impeachment after James Comey was fired.

00:10:17.000 Trey Gowdy was asking him this question in clip 7.

00:10:20.000 Do you remember how long it took for you to start talking about impeachment after Bob Mueller was appointed?

00:10:27.000 I don't, sir.

00:10:28.000 One day.

00:10:30.000 One day.

00:10:31.000 And you were talking about impeachment.

00:10:35.000 OK, that's true.

00:10:36.000 And it shows again that Strzok was wildly biased against Trump, disliked President Trump.

00:10:39.000 We knew all of that already.

00:10:41.000 So the real question was, OK, so what impact did that have on the investigation?

00:10:45.000 The answer probably is some impact.

00:10:47.000 But we need to see the evidence of that impact before we can say the entire investigation needs to be thrown out top to bottom.

00:10:51.000 Now, I don't think the investigation is going to come up with anything anyway.

00:10:54.000 I think the investigation is likely to come up short on a variety of issues.

00:10:58.000 I don't think it's going to reach all the way to President Trump.

00:11:00.000 I don't think it's going to show that President Trump and the Trump campaign actively colluded with the Russian government.

00:11:04.000 I don't think any of the evidence is there for any of that.

00:11:07.000 But what I do think is that Peter Strzok and the FBI need to do a much better job of cleaning up exactly how it is that they are pursuing these issues.

00:11:18.000 Because obviously it's dirty in the way they are pursuing it.

00:11:21.000 The question is how dirty and how impactful.

00:11:23.000 That's not stopping Democrats from defending Peter Strzok.

00:11:26.000 Democrats are out full force defending Strzok, saying that Strzok is just a wonderful, wonderful dude.

00:11:30.000 We'll talk about that in just a second.

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00:12:37.000 Alrighty, so...

00:12:39.000 With all of this said, with Peter Strzok being as corrupt as Peter Strzok is, with him being as smug as he is, and the smugness matters here.

00:12:47.000 Hey, listen, I have a certain amount of sympathy for people who are smug, considering that I am a charter member of the Smug Club, but if, in fact, Peter Strzok is really smug about what he believes, what that tends toward is a certain level of certainty in his activity with regards to his professionalism.

00:13:02.000 And he tends to believe that his opinion is fact, which is why he's so smug about it.

00:13:05.000 When you start to believe that your opinion is fact, well, that tends to creep into a mission.

00:13:12.000 If I could give you a purple heart, I would.

00:13:14.000 You deserve one.

00:13:39.000 This has been an attack on you in a way to attack Mr. Mueller and the investigation that is to get at Russia collusion involved in our election.

00:13:49.000 Okay, so that's great.

00:13:51.000 The Democrats say that he deserves a Purple Heart.

00:13:54.000 Purple Heart is for wounded veterans, people who served in the military and been wounded in the line of duty.

00:13:58.000 Peter Strzok doesn't deserve a Purple Heart.

00:14:00.000 Peter Strzok deserves a pink slip.

00:14:02.000 Not a purple heart, a pink slip.

00:14:03.000 I mean, the guy should be fired.

00:14:05.000 And this is a guy who has disgraced the FBI, no matter how you slice it.

00:14:08.000 But according to the Democrats, because he sent a bunch of anti-Trump text messages, he deserves a purple heart.

00:14:14.000 Now, what's hilarious about this is that it's probably Peter Strzok's fault that Hillary Clinton is not president right now.

00:14:19.000 If Peter Strzok had simply investigated the Hillary Clinton email stuff on Huma Abedin's computer and released that in early October, as opposed to the very tail end of October, then Hillary Clinton wouldn't face that round of bad headlines at the end of October.

00:14:31.000 She may very well have won.

00:14:33.000 So they want to give a Purple Heart now to the same people who may be responsible for Donald Trump being president in the first place.

00:14:37.000 It's really hilarious.

00:14:38.000 They do the same thing with James Comey.

00:14:40.000 James Comey was the guy who released a letter right before the election saying Hillary Clinton was under investigation again by the FBI.

00:14:46.000 And now they love James Comey.

00:14:48.000 The left can really be bought for a song.

00:14:50.000 All you have to do is scream about how much you dislike Trump, and the left suddenly loves you.

00:14:54.000 The left suddenly is just your... It's become an entry key to the leftist kind of lounge, if you dislike President Trump.

00:15:05.000 It's funny, the other night, I went with my wife over to a place in Los Angeles called the Magic Castle.

00:15:09.000 The Magic Castle is just spectacular, it's a lot of fun, and we went there for our 10th anniversary, and one of the magicians there, who's this very famous magician, he's got a show on Netflix, I believe, he started off his little routine with a joke about Trump.

00:15:22.000 He said, I was in New York, and everybody cheers, and then he goes, and I walk past Trump Tower, and everybody starts booing.

00:15:28.000 And I thought to myself, really?

00:15:30.000 Like, this is how you're going to signal to your audience that you are one of them?

00:15:34.000 All these rich people sitting at the Magic Castle in Los Angeles on a Tuesday night, and you're talking about how you walked by Trump Tower?

00:15:41.000 Boo! 0.83

00:15:42.000 I mean, honestly, I'm not...

00:15:45.000 I've called balls and strikes with President Trump and made me want to cheer for President Trump when he said he walked past Trump Tower.

00:15:49.000 Just the amount of smug that the left has exuded here.

00:15:51.000 That's why they like Strzok.

00:15:52.000 The smug for them is not a bug.

00:15:55.000 It's a feature.

00:15:56.000 It's something that they really enjoy.

00:15:58.000 Now, meanwhile, President Trump has headed over to Britain.

00:16:02.000 And there he's gotten himself in a little bit of hot water.

00:16:04.000 So he did an interview with the UK Sun, which is just a huge mistake.

00:16:08.000 And in this interview with the UK Sun, he ripped into current Prime Minister Theresa May.

00:16:11.000 So for folks who haven't been following this, Theresa May is the Prime Minister of Britain.

00:16:15.000 And she is also in serious trouble electorally, because if there should be a no confidence vote and they call a new election, Theresa May probably loses her prime ministership.

00:16:26.000 I mean, Jeremy Corbyn is an actual former Soviet asset inside the UK.

00:16:37.000 Jeremy Corbyn is an actual terrorist sympathizer. 0.96

00:16:39.000 He's one of the worst people on planet Earth, Jeremy Corbyn. 0.98

00:16:41.000 He could be the next Prime Minister of Britain if the Conservatives blow it.

00:16:45.000 Well, the Conservatives have been fighting amongst themselves over how to handle Brexit.

00:16:48.000 So as you recall, a couple of years ago,

00:16:50.000 Brexit was voted on by the British public and they voted that they wanted to exit the EU.

00:16:53.000 And it was unclear what exactly that meant.

00:16:55.000 How exactly were you going to carry out this exit from the EU?

00:16:59.000 So there have been two plans that have been forward.

00:17:00.000 One is sort of called for shorthand soft Brexit and the other is hard Brexit.

00:17:04.000 Hard Brexit is we are going to cut off all of the current treaties that we have with the EU and renegotiate all of them.

00:17:09.000 Soft Brexit is, we're going to exit in certain areas, but we're going to leave a lot of the rules in place in other areas.

00:17:15.000 So as The Sun describes it, the Tory manifesto vowed to withdraw Britain from the single market and the customs union so that we can end free immigration and quit the EU court.

00:17:22.000 But Labour has not signed up to that approach.

00:17:24.000 A soft Brexit would see the UK have a similar membership of the European Economic Area to that of Norway.

00:17:29.000 That would mean that the country would still have access to the single market while being able to make deals without the rest of the EU, so they could make outside deals.

00:17:36.000 It would also see the UK stay within the EU Customs Union, meaning exports would not be subject to border checks or tariffs.

00:17:43.000 And a softer Brexit could see the UK making payments into EU budgets and accepting the four freedoms, movement of goods, services, capital and people.

00:17:49.000 So it wouldn't be a complete Brexit.

00:17:50.000 So soft Brexit is unpopular with the hard base of support that supported Brexit.

00:17:55.000 Hard Brexit is not popular with the vast majority of the British public.

00:17:59.000 So Theresa May has been having to walk this very fine line. 1.00

00:18:02.000 Well, thankfully, she has the subtlety of Donald Trump to help her guide her through this. 0.99

00:18:08.000 Donald Trump is about as subtle as a brick through a window.

00:18:10.000 And so Donald Trump comes in and he starts preaching to Theresa May exactly how she should handle Brexit, obviously based on his vast experience with the British public. 0.99

00:18:17.000 The reason this is stupid is because you don't want to undermine your ally there. 0.97

00:18:21.000 If he undermines Theresa May, then Jeremy Corbyn could easily become prime minister. 0.99

00:18:25.000 And then he has to deal with an open socialist who hates Trump, hates the United States, hates all of America's other allies.

00:18:31.000 Does Trump really have that much of an interest in how Brexit is negotiated, that he wants to undermine Theresa May?

00:18:36.000 And yet there he was, praising Boris Johnson, another member of Theresa May's cabinet who just resigned over her soft Brexit stance.

00:18:42.000 Here is Trump praising Boris Johnson, saying he'd make a great prime minister, boosting an actual competitor to Theresa May within her own party, in an interview with the UK Sun.

00:18:51.000 I think he's a great representative for

00:18:54.000 For your country.

00:18:55.000 I'm not pitting one against the other.

00:18:56.000 I'm just saying I think he'd be a great prime minister.

00:18:59.000 I think he's got what it takes and I think he's got the right attitude to be a great prime minister.

00:19:05.000 Okay, so he starts off by basically boosting her actual antagonist inside her own party.

00:19:11.000 Then he rips into soft Brexit saying that's not what the Brits voted for.

00:19:14.000 Now, again, maybe you agree with him.

00:19:16.000 That's not the point.

00:19:17.000 Is this politic at all?

00:19:19.000 Is this in any way smart or diplomatic?

00:19:22.000 If you don't like how Brexit is being handled, first of all, it's an internal issue for the British public.

00:19:25.000 Second of all...

00:19:26.000 Like, I presume that Donald Trump wouldn't want Theresa May traveling over to the United States and dictating to him how we ought to do our tax policy or our tariff policy. 1.00

00:19:33.000 I assume that he'd get mad about that.

00:19:35.000 But he's going over there and telling Theresa May that she ought to basically renegotiate all her trade deals with the EU.

00:19:41.000 Which makes no sense, by the way, because the amount of trade that Britain receives from the EU surpasses, I think, by a bundle, the amount of trade that they receive from the United States.

00:19:49.000 Here he is, in any case, ripping soft Brexit, saying that is not what the Brits voted for.

00:19:53.000 Well, I think the deal that she's striking is not what the people voted on.

00:19:57.000 It's a much different deal than the people voted on.

00:20:01.000 It was not the deal that was in the referendum.

00:20:04.000 Playing expert on stuff that you really don't know much about is really not smart.

00:20:07.000 I'm not an expert on Brexit.

00:20:08.000 I certainly know Donald Trump is not an expert on Brexit either.

00:20:11.000 And creating a binary choice between the US and the EU for the UK is just not smart policy.

00:20:16.000 It's not smart policy.

00:20:17.000 UK exports to the US were worth about £100 billion in 2016 compared to £234 billion to the EU in 2016.

00:20:26.000 In other words, if they have to choose between the EU and the United States with regard to their trade policy, I don't think it's going to be any question that they're going to pick the EU, because it would be foolish otherwise.

00:20:35.000 Okay, so that wasn't all that Trump had to say.

00:20:37.000 Trump then continued, he was talking with the UK Sun some more, and he ripped into Sadiq Khan.

00:20:42.000 Sadiq Khan is the mayor of London, and here's the president ripping into Sadiq Khan.

00:20:45.000 Now this is the part where Trump actually says some stuff that's true.

00:20:48.000 You have a mayor who's done a terrible job in London.

00:20:51.000 He's done a terrible job.

00:20:54.000 Why?

00:20:54.000 If you don't want me asking.

00:21:01.000 I agree with Trump here, but at least if you're going to attack your opponents, attack your opponents when you are abroad.

00:21:06.000 Okay, with all that said, the President of the United States is making a lot of waves over there. 0.90

00:21:10.000 It's not stopping the, hilariously enough, it is not stopping the left from making even greater fools of themselves than they otherwise would. 0.82

00:21:18.000 We'll talk about that in just a second.

00:21:19.000 First, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at Wink.

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00:22:33.000 Okay, so. 0.96

00:22:34.000 None of this is stopping the leftists in the UK from making the same sort of fools of themselves that leftists in the United States have as well. 0.95

00:22:41.000 So they started off by flying a baby Trump balloon over the Westminster. 0.89

00:22:49.000 Okay, so there was a lot of talk about how big this thing was going to be.

00:22:51.000 And there were a bunch of pictures of it.

00:22:53.000 They basically suggested it was going to be a blimp-sized baby Trump balloon that was flying over Westminster Abbey, which is really close to Parliament.

00:23:02.000 And here is the actual size of the balloon that they flew.

00:23:06.000 That thing is not even the size of like a small bounce house.

00:23:09.000 That's what you order from Amazon versus what comes in the mail right there.

00:23:13.000 Right?

00:23:14.000 That's your profile on Tinder versus what you look like in real life.

00:23:17.000 That is not

00:23:18.000 What they were going for.

00:23:20.000 And yet, and yet, there it is.

00:23:22.000 So the leftists, you know, doing wonderful work over all of this.

00:23:25.000 And then Jeremy Corbyn, he says that Trump is best friends with Theresa May and it's just terrible.

00:23:29.000 Why would Theresa May be friends with Trump?

00:23:31.000 This is why Trump should not have undermined Theresa May.

00:23:34.000 But Jeremy Corbyn, this old loon bag, I mean, he makes Bernie Sanders look like a model of propriety and sanity, Jeremy Corbyn.

00:23:40.000 Here's Jeremy Corbyn going off on Theresa May.

00:23:42.000 Theresa May has invited President Trump to this country at a time when his dangerous and inhumane policies are putting the lives and the well-being of millions of people at risk.

00:23:54.000 The Labour Party is committed to dialogue, including of course with those we strongly disagree with.

00:24:02.000 Okay, so Jeremy Corbyn using this as an opportunity to rip into Theresa May.

00:24:06.000 This is why, you know, I know that the Trump policy is basically going to, he's a bull in a China shop with everything. 0.51

00:24:12.000 And sometimes that's great.

00:24:14.000 Sometimes that's great.

00:24:14.000 Sometimes the China needs to be broken.

00:24:16.000 I'm not sure our relationship with Theresa May needs to be broken at this time with Jeremy Corbyn sitting there waiting to pick up all of the pieces.

00:24:22.000 Now, that doesn't mean that everything that Trump has said in Britain is wrong.

00:24:24.000 Some of the stuff he said in Britain is right. 1.00

00:24:26.000 Here's Trump, for example, talking about immigration into Europe.

00:24:29.000 And people are taking this as Trump's a racist.

00:24:31.000 No, what Trump is saying here is that lack of assimilation into Western civilization creates all sorts of cultural problems.

00:24:37.000 He's not the first person to say stuff like this.

00:24:38.000 David Cameron, former conservative Prime Minister of UK, has said the same thing.

00:24:42.000 Angela Merkel has said the same thing.

00:24:43.000 Here is Trump talking about mass immigration into the EU.

00:24:46.000 I just think it's changing the culture.

00:24:49.000 I think it's a very negative thing for Europe.

00:24:52.000 I think it's very negative.

00:24:53.000 I think having Germany, and I have a great relationship with Angela Merkel, great relationship with Germany, but I think that's very much hurt Germany.

00:25:05.000 I think it's very much hurt other parts of Europe.

00:25:09.000 And he's exactly right about this.

00:25:10.000 I mean, I was in France a few years ago, and there's no question that there are certain districts in France that are just not safe for Jews to travel in.

00:25:16.000 Everybody knows about them.

00:25:17.000 And that has been an effect of unvetted mass migration into the EU.

00:25:21.000 It's one of the reasons Brexit happened in the first place was people in Britain said, we don't want free travel of people all around the EU.

00:25:26.000 They come and they settle in Britain and then they just stay here and they create enclaves. 0.99

00:25:30.000 They're not assimilated in any way.

00:25:32.000 Trump was also asked about Vladimir Putin.

00:25:33.000 He's supposed to meet with Vladimir Putin next week.

00:25:35.000 And he was asked about whether he would talk about election meddling with Vladimir Putin.

00:25:39.000 I don't think Trump is wrong about this one either.

00:25:40.000 I know you'll ask, will we be talking about meddling?

00:25:44.000 And I will absolutely bring that up.

00:25:47.000 I don't think you'll have any, uh, gee, I did it, I did it, you got me.

00:25:51.000 There won't be a Perry Mason here, I don't think, but you never know what happens, right?

00:25:55.000 But I will absolutely, firmly ask the question.

00:25:58.000 Okay, and he's exactly right about this as well.

00:26:00.000 He should ask the question.

00:26:01.000 Nobody should expect that Vladimir Putin is going to come out and admit guilt in any of this.

00:26:05.000 But the president of the United States is going to have to at least be a bull in a China shop with Putin as well. 0.51

00:26:10.000 You can't just be a bull in a China shop with regard to your own allies.

00:26:12.000 That's a safe space to be a bull in a China shop. 0.99

00:26:14.000 You know that the UK and France are not going to spend their days attacking you because it would just be foolish. 0.88

00:26:19.000 But what you can do is attack in the same way Putin that you would your own allies.

00:26:23.000 I think that's the very least Trump should do.

00:26:25.000 Also, I just got to say, you know, President Trump can say all these things.

00:26:28.000 Some of them are true.

00:26:29.000 Some of them are not true.

00:26:30.000 What he shouldn't do is fib outright.

00:26:32.000 So President Trump was asked about the Sun interview and then he called it fake news.

00:26:38.000 And unfortunately, there was a story that was done, which was generally fine, but it didn't put in what I said about the Prime Minister, and I said tremendous things.

00:26:49.000 And fortunately, we tend to record stories now, so we have it for your enjoyment if you'd like it.

00:26:55.000 But we record when we deal with reporters.

00:26:57.000 It's called fake news, and we solve a lot of problems.

00:27:03.000 It's not fake news.

00:27:04.000 It was I just played you the tape.

00:27:05.000 It's not actually it's it's not fake news.

00:27:07.000 So this is this is something where I wish the president would stop doing it.

00:27:10.000 OK, so I want to get to the mailbag.

00:27:13.000 I have a lot of mailbag to get to today.

00:27:15.000 So let's you know, let's let's just jump right in.

00:27:17.000 Also, we are, in fact,

00:27:19.000 As of right now, awaiting some breaking news with regard to the DOJ.

00:27:24.000 Rod Rosenstein is supposed to be having a press conference momentarily at which he announces some new indictments in the Mueller case.

00:27:31.000 So we'll report on that as it comes down in just one second.

00:27:35.000 But we'll start with the mailbag until then.

00:27:36.000 So we begin with Brandon.

00:27:37.000 Brandon says, Mr. Shapiro,

00:27:39.000 Well, I do think that as people shift how they are going about their business of consuming news, there will be a decline in the ratings for a lot of cable news networks, just because younger people have cut the cord in a way that older people have not.

00:28:03.000 That said, I think that the cable news industry is obviously thriving and robust right now,

00:28:07.000 If you had to invest your money in a 20-year plan for the future, everybody is moving online, and this is true for a lot of the cable news networks as well.

00:28:12.000 They're starting to expend more resources to move into that space. 0.76

00:28:16.000 I think at a certain point, everyone will own the tear-filled Tumblr or the equivalent on the left.

00:28:20.000 I think that the cable news model in 20 years is probably not going to be a thing.

00:28:25.000 Oh, have I been pulled over, Daniel?

00:28:37.000 Oh, have I been pulled over.

00:28:38.000 So, I used to own a Baby Blue GT Mustang Convertible.

00:28:43.000 And it was awesome.

00:28:44.000 Except for the fact that if you drive five miles over the speed limit in a GT Baby Blue Mustang Convertible, you will be pulled over.

00:28:50.000 Whereas if you drive precisely the same speed in a Honda Pilot, you will never be pulled over.

00:28:53.000 I know this because since I started driving a Honda Pilot, I have never been pulled over.

00:28:57.000 When I drove my Baby Blue Mustang Convertible, I was pulled over once every five seconds.

00:29:01.000 I had many, many parking tickets.

00:29:03.000 My worst speeding ticket came in a Honda Civic.

00:29:06.000 Was it a Honda Accord?

00:29:06.000 A Honda Accord.

00:29:15.000 I was driving, I was caught going 100, I was ticketed at 114 miles an hour on the I-5 coming south from Sacramento.

00:29:24.000 And it was, I mean honestly, to say I was distracted would be an understatement.

00:29:29.000 There was a close family friend who just died, I was trying to get back for the funeral, but that said,

00:29:33.000 I don't know.

00:29:53.000 They could have charged a misdemeanor or they could have charged me with like an unsafe driving, kind of not quite a misdemeanor thing.

00:29:59.000 And so my license was suspended for 30 days.

00:30:01.000 I had to go up to, I think it was Victorville?

00:30:04.000 And go in front of a judge in the middle of nowhere and basically acknowledge my crime.

00:30:09.000 And it was a good thing that I had my dad drive me up there because if I had not, I would not have been able to drive back.

00:30:13.000 So that would have been really not great.

00:30:15.000 So yes, I have experience with speeding tickets.

00:30:17.000 That said,

00:30:18.000 Here is my general opinion of speeding tickets.

00:30:20.000 Did I deserve it at 114?

00:30:21.000 You bet I deserved it at 114.

00:30:23.000 Did I deserve it at 70 in a 65 zone? 1.00

00:30:26.000 No, I didn't, because I think that speed limits are generally stupid. 1.00

00:30:29.000 Really, I think they're generally stupid. 1.00

00:30:30.000 I think we have reckless driving laws. 1.00

00:30:32.000 I think that if you get yourself into an accident, that's your own fault, but... 1.00

00:30:35.000 Speed limits are generally an idiotic thing. 0.94

00:30:37.000 There are certain countries, like Germany, I believe there are certain areas of Germany, like on the Autobahn, where the speed limit is basically non-existent. 0.98

00:30:44.000 And I have not seen a huge increase in the number of accidents because of that. 0.98

00:30:49.000 So, I think a lot of this is dumb. 0.74

00:30:51.000 I think most speeding tickets, frankly, and traffic tickets are a way for the government to raise money. 0.94

00:30:55.000 The government likes raising money by ticketing people.

00:30:57.000 And this is just one element of that.

00:30:59.000 Okay, so.

00:31:00.000 We'll do some more Mailbag in just a second.

00:31:01.000 First, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com.

00:31:04.000 So go check it out right now.

00:31:06.000 dailywire.com.

00:31:07.000 $9.99 a month.

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00:31:30.000 Who's on our Sunday special?

00:31:30.000 The Sunday Prager, right?

00:31:32.000 So Dennis Prager is on our Sunday special this Sunday.

00:31:34.000 It was a really interesting conversation.

00:31:36.000 Check us out at YouTube and iTunes.

00:31:37.000 Make sure that you ding the bell when you actually subscribe at YouTube.

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00:31:52.000 Okay, so let's get back to the mailbag.

00:31:55.000 Quick update on the Rosenstein thing before we get back to the mailbag.

00:32:00.000 So I'm now hearing that Rosenstein is set to announce indictments for 12 Russian intelligence officials for hacking.

00:32:06.000 I'm not sure why exactly

00:32:09.000 That is deeply, deeply newsworthy.

00:32:11.000 It's not an American who's actually involved in the hacking, and there's no charge that these people are involved specifically with the Trump administration.

00:32:18.000 These are the first charges by the Mueller office directly accusing the Russian government of meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

00:32:25.000 I think we all acknowledge already that the Russian government was meddling in the election, so watch as everybody goes nuts today, but I don't think that it's going to be that big a deal.

00:32:31.000 Okay, back to the mailbag.

00:32:32.000 Brandon says, Mr. Shapiro, with the rapid growth of social media and other internet news outlets, do you think mainstream media

00:32:38.000 We got that one already, sorry.

00:32:39.000 Back to, let's see, Troy.

00:32:42.000 Okay, so Troy says, Chief Justice Shapiro, I hope we'll hear that by 2030.

00:32:46.000 No chance.

00:32:47.000 How is the chief justice chosen?

00:32:48.000 Are they appointed the position by the president or do the justices pick the chief justice based on who has control on the court?

00:32:54.000 So, it's an appointed position, the chief justice.

00:32:57.000 It is not like they elected among their friends and they hold the re-election among their friends.

00:33:02.000 Like when Roberts was elected, was selected to the court by Trump,

00:33:05.000 Everybody knew that he was going to become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court because he was replacing William Rehnquist.

00:33:09.000 He actually had to replace the Chief Justice, I believe.

00:33:11.000 I don't think that it's like the friends get together and decide to change it.

00:33:14.000 Bernie Sanders, hands down, anytime, anywhere, half my brain excised.

00:33:25.000 Not a problem.

00:33:31.000 Well, I don't know Veronica, Philip.

00:33:34.000 All I can say is that ladies love the tumblers. 1.00

00:33:37.000 So if you pledge that your tumbler will be hers forever, no matter what happens in the divorce,

00:33:42.000 I will suggest that your shot with Veronica will be much better, because when you pool your assets, including tumblers, you're both richer for it.

00:33:49.000 Okay, Edward says, Ben, I recently read Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience.

00:33:53.000 While I agree with him regarding his philosophy of nonviolent protest, he also criticizes the notion that citizens should obey laws we feel are wrong until the law is changed, even going so far as to say we shouldn't pay taxes if we felt they were going to be used for immoral purposes.

00:34:04.000 My question is, where does this end?

00:34:06.000 There are plenty of laws currently on the books that I believe to be wrong, and a plethora of programs I don't want my tax dollars funding.

00:34:11.000 So should we disobey all the laws we don't like and not pay taxes?

00:34:14.000 Or are there just some laws like slavery that are so egregious that we have to take a stand against them?

00:34:17.000 If so, what determines those kinds of laws?

00:34:19.000 Thanks, love the show.

00:34:20.000 This is a serious question in the history of American law and jurisprudence, and it's one that requires a lot of thinking because

00:34:26.000 The general answer is you should obey the laws that are the products of a system that you can change from within.

00:34:31.000 If, however, the laws are the products of a system you cannot change from within, and they are so evil as to require you not to obey them, then armed rebellion might be necessary.

00:34:40.000 So, for example, the American Revolution was founded on the idea that the founders were being taxed without representation.

00:34:45.000 They had no capacity to affect the change within the system, and therefore they had to rebel.

00:34:52.000 There's a good case to be made that disobedience to slave laws, like disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850... 0.86

00:34:59.000 That was morally justified because there was no real chance of changing that at the federal level.

00:35:04.000 That was something that should have been disobeyed in practice and that basically is what happened in large swaths of the North.

00:35:10.000 The idea that you can disobey tax law, I think that's a little bit different simply because tax law changes all the time and you actually can't have a pre-market impact on how the tax law is both created and interpreted.

00:35:19.000 John says, Ben, do you have any advice for aspiring authors, especially with regard to publishing and marketing your book?

00:35:23.000 Well, my advice for aspiring authors is do some reportage.

00:35:26.000 Go out and write something that people... Once you have a certain level of notoriety, you can write whatever you want, obviously.

00:35:32.000 It can be Bill Clinton and write a mystery novel with James Patterson.

00:35:35.000 But if you are somebody who's up and coming and you want to get into, say, the thought space, not necessarily the fiction space, but the non-fiction thought space, then I would recommend you go out and do some reporting.

00:35:45.000 My first book was a reported book, brainwashed all about

00:35:49.000 I don't think there's any real rule with regards to what kind of fiction works and what kind of fiction doesn't, and what gets published and what doesn't.

00:36:02.000 It seems to me that you can be as marketable as you want to be, and it's completely subjective as to how these books are selected, which is why so many bad books get published.

00:36:10.000 Kurt says, Ben, I'm in a conservative echo chamber.

00:36:13.000 I ignore left sources because of their condescending, misleading, or unfactual, hateful, and poisonous speech.

00:36:18.000 However, Jordan Peterson is slowly convincing me I should listen to both conservative and liberal voices.

00:36:22.000 He states the West's success depends on both sides and we should be talking to each other.

00:36:25.000 Could you name a few podcasters and or journalists who present the news and information based on facts and their values and not their party ideology or some far-left nonsense?

00:36:32.000 I'm looking for the Ben Shapiro on the left.

00:36:34.000 Well, there are certain people on the left who I actually enjoy talking to, who I'm friendly with, and whose stuff I enjoy reading.

00:36:41.000 So, my favorite right now is there's a gal named Jane Koston who writes over at Vox.com. 1.00

00:36:46.000 Now, I'm not a Vox.com fan, but I think Jane actually tries to be thoughtful about how she approaches these issues.

00:36:50.000 What's hilarious about that is that I originally met Jane after she wrote a piece ripping the crap out of me in the New York Times, saying that I was an emissary of hollow bravery.

00:36:58.000 I don't know.

00:37:19.000 Some journalists who do a better job than others and at different times, right?

00:37:23.000 I think Jake when it came to for example that gun debate in Parkland It was not doing the job, but I think Jake when it comes to covering for example the When it came to covering the Hillary Clinton email stuff I think Jake was significantly better and asked some real tough questions of people so you sort of have to determine on a case-by-case basis unfortunately trying to think who else is is a good reporter and

00:37:44.000 On the left, Maggie Haberman from Time to Time.

00:37:48.000 There are some reporters at the Washington Post who do a fairly decent job, some at the New York Times.

00:37:54.000 I'll try to compile a list and put it out there, because I think there are some people who are at least doing their best, trying, on the left.

00:37:59.000 AJ says,

00:38:01.000 Last year, a week before my 28th birthday, I purchased my first house.

00:38:04.000 I'd always lived with my parents, and once I graduated from college, started paying some of the monthly bills to help out as we agreed.

00:38:09.000 My parents were great, and let me stay until I was financially stable enough to live on my own.

00:38:12.000 I know some people think parents should make kids leave the nest upon reaching 18 or 21, and let them get by on their own.

00:38:17.000 I was just wondering your thoughts about what age one should move out, and if you think my parents were too easy on me.

00:38:21.000 Love the show, and thanks for the thought-provoking rhetoric you speak.

00:38:24.000 Okay, so, here is my perspective.

00:38:25.000 You have to tailor this to the kid.

00:38:27.000 So after law school, I came back and I lived at home.

00:38:30.000 That was really not a huge problem because I could afford to live outside the home.

00:38:34.000 My parents knew I was responsible.

00:38:36.000 It was not a question of me sponging off my parents.

00:38:37.000 I had a job.

00:38:38.000 It was just a question of I was more comfortable living at home because I like my parents.

00:38:42.000 They like me.

00:38:43.000 And there was no real rush for me to go out and get an apartment.

00:38:46.000 So, you know, that's one thing.

00:38:48.000 It's another thing if you're enabling.

00:38:50.000 And if a parent is enabling, or if you are becoming a sponge off your parents, if the idea is you don't want to pay the bills, so that's why you're staying home, or you're too lazy to get an apartment, or you don't want to do your own laundry, or that kind of stuff, then you really should move out and your parents are not doing you any sort of great benefit by not kicking you out of the house.

00:39:05.000 They're actually making your life worse in a lot of ways.

00:39:08.000 I do think that you reach a certain age, and no matter what your priority, you really should get out of the house.

00:39:13.000 I mean, if you're 25, 26 years old living at home, I think that you should really start thinking about getting an apartment, move out, live on your own.

00:39:19.000 Living on your own is something that's worthwhile as a general rule.

00:39:22.000 Thanks.

00:39:22.000 Well, I mean,

00:39:36.000 I'm reading a book on time right now that I'm going to recommend next week.

00:39:39.000 There's a good case to be made that time is actually an illusion, that it's something that human brains use to organize the stuff that happens in their lives, but that essentially all time exists kind of simultaneously and that you are, as a creature traveling through this

00:39:55.000 This mixture of material and time that you are just observing things in a weird way.

00:40:04.000 All these weird questions are raised by quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory of relativity.

00:40:08.000 There are all sorts of weird questions about how time actually works, but if you were to think in a timeline way, no, I don't think that there is like a fixed timeline.

00:40:14.000 No matter what you do, it can't change.

00:40:16.000 I think that, I'm not a determinist, I'm a free will believer, so I think that there are such things as alternative timelines if you could time travel.

00:40:22.000 Also,

00:40:23.000 I just find movies and TV shows based on a fixed timeline utterly boring, because you know what's going to happen at the end anyway, so what the hell's the point?

00:40:30.000 Chris says, Hey Ben, I have a question about the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Declaration of Independence.

00:40:35.000 In the Declaration of Independence, the word God and Creator are used in the document.

00:40:38.000 In the Declaration of the Rights of Man, God or Creator is not mentioned at all.

00:40:41.000 I know for the Declaration of the Rights of Man, Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson were two of the main writers.

00:40:45.000 With Thomas Jefferson being the main writer of the Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, why is God excluded from the Declaration of the Rights of Man?

00:40:52.000 That is a thousand questions.

00:40:53.000 All of them are good.

00:40:54.000 Fortunately, I have a book coming out next year that is on exactly this topic and goes through all of these questions one by one.

00:40:57.000 I will say in brief,

00:41:16.000 That the difference between the American Revolution and the French Revolution is that the American Revolution still paid fealty to Judeo-Christian values, whereas the French Revolution, in the memorable phrase used at the time, was all about strangling the last king with the guts of the last priest.

00:41:28.000 So the idea was that religion was an eminent bad, and overthrowing religion in favor of a sort of deist worldview was the best way to achieve a reasonable society.

00:41:37.000 Obviously, that failed.

00:41:37.000 You have to more your values to something.

00:41:39.000 And in America, you more those values to the Judeo-Christian God.

00:41:43.000 Jefferson himself, people say that he was a deist, but

00:41:46.000 His deism was not just the sort of clockwork God, God made stuff and then left it on its own.

00:41:52.000 There's a good case to be made that he believed in a slightly more involved God than that, although not a God who was constantly involved in human affairs on a constant level.

00:42:00.000 He believed that human beings, through reason, were more likely to shape the world around them.

00:42:04.000 He did believe in the natural law and the idea that the universe had been constructed according to certain laws that required certain human behaviors, right?

00:42:10.000 This was common to virtually all the founders.

00:42:12.000 Washington believed this, Adams believed this, Jefferson believed this.

00:42:15.000 I mean, listen, there's something called the Jefferson Bible, where Jefferson tried to go back and reorganize the Bible and tried to make it sound more reasonable, basically.

00:42:23.000 So this is not somebody who's trying to disconnect the people from the Bible as a general rule.

00:42:27.000 Aslan says, Hey Ben, I watch your show every day.

00:42:29.000 I'm a huge fan.

00:42:30.000 I'm a conservative-leaning libertarian in a relationship with a wonderful woman who shares my values.

00:42:33.000 We've been together almost a year.

00:42:34.000 My question is how long, in your opinion, should you be in the courting phase before you propose?

00:42:38.000 Follow up would be how long until you get married? 1.00

00:42:40.000 Many of my leftist friends view things as an immediate satisfaction rather than a long-lasting happiness, so I get conflicting info.

00:42:44.000 Thank you.

00:42:45.000 Love the show.

00:42:45.000 Okay, well if you know you love her and she loves you and you share values, the answer is propose to her today and get married tomorrow.

00:42:50.000 Like seriously, there's no reason to delay things.

00:42:53.000 I'm speaking as somebody who got engaged to my wife after three months of dating and got married to her after eight months of dating.

00:42:58.000 Okay, and that's just because it took that long to get the wedding together.

00:43:01.000 OK, so it's and we've been married for 10 years and we're quite happy when you share values.

00:43:05.000 This idea that the longer you live together with somebody, the more you are likely to live together well with somebody is belied by every statistic.

00:43:11.000 People who live together before marriage actually are less likely to stay married over the course of time because you already know each other's flaws.

00:43:18.000 So what exactly?

00:43:19.000 The whole purpose of marriage is that you're taking a leap of faith into a relationship with a person who's going to develop over time.

00:43:25.000 But if you share values, then you have something to hew to.

00:43:27.000 But if you are in a situation where you are attempting to

00:43:31.000 You know, bust through all of the flaws you know about each other already because you've been dating for seven years.

00:43:37.000 It's a lot harder to get the enthusiasm up before I'm going to sign up for another 30.

00:43:40.000 It's a lot easier to do this at the very beginning.

00:43:43.000 This is why marriage is built around the idea of passionate love and marriage is built around the idea of companionate love.

00:43:48.000 So marriage at the outset, dating is built around passionate love, marriage is built around companionate love.

00:43:52.000 Companionate love over time, there are charts that show this basically.

00:43:55.000 Jonathan Haidt talks about this in

00:43:57.000 In the Pursuit of Happiness, the Happiness Hypothesis, his book on happiness, basically he says the relationships start off like this.

00:44:03.000 Here is your passionate level of love, it is up here.

00:44:06.000 And then down here is your companionate level of love, meaning the amount of trust you have in the person, how well you know the person, how predictable that person is.

00:44:14.000 And over time, in the first year basically, the first couple of years, passionate love goes like this, and companionate love goes like this.

00:44:20.000 And the marriage that you have 10 years from now is not going to be the marriage that you have when you are first married.

00:44:25.000 And that's not a terrible thing.

00:44:27.000 But it does mean that if you are thinking that... Here's the mistake people make.

00:44:32.000 They start off dating.

00:44:32.000 There's a lot of passionate love, no companionate love.

00:44:34.000 Companionate love increases, passionate love decreases.

00:44:36.000 But then they look around, they go, this isn't as exciting as it was when we first were dating.

00:44:40.000 Which is true.

00:44:42.000 Being married 10 years is not as exciting because there's not as much uncertainty.

00:44:45.000 You know the person.

00:44:46.000 They're predictable.

00:44:47.000 You know all their habits.

00:44:48.000 All of this is true.

00:44:49.000 Living with someone is not as exciting because excitement generally comes from uncertainty.

00:44:53.000 There's a lot more certainty when you've lived with someone for a very long time.

00:44:56.000 Well, when that's the case,

00:44:58.000 The question is, how do you get from passionate love to companionate love and stay in companionate love and be satisfied with companionate love?

00:45:06.000 And the answer is that marriage was designed, marriage was designed to hem in passionate love into companionate love.

00:45:13.000 It was not designed, there was supposed to be this gap, okay?

00:45:15.000 Passionate love was supposed to immediately move into marriage.

00:45:18.000 The beginning of your marriage was passionate, and then that would gradually move into companionate love.

00:45:22.000 If you do that while you are dating, then you're basically at low ebb with passionate love.

00:45:26.000 And then you think, well, what happened to the passion?

00:45:28.000 When you're married, you know what happened to the passion is you built a life together.

00:45:31.000 When you're not married, what happened to the passion is you just hung out together for too long a time and you're bored with the person.

00:45:35.000 Why don't I go search for the next passionate experience?

00:45:38.000 And this is the problem that people have, really.

00:45:39.000 They're looking for that next high.

00:45:41.000 They're looking for that next high.

00:45:41.000 And that's not what marriage is about.

00:45:43.000 Marriage is not about the highs.

00:45:44.000 Marriage is about the lows.

00:45:46.000 Hey, marriage is not about the best times you experience with each other.

00:45:49.000 It's about what do you do when the bleep hits the fan.

00:45:51.000 Okay, and that's the stuff where companionate love matters a lot and passionate love matters almost not at all.

00:45:56.000 Okay, so let's do a couple of things I like and then a thing that I hate.

00:46:00.000 So, thing I like today, so we were doing a lot of Civil War stuff this week, so I decided I would recommend a book on the Civil War.

00:46:05.000 This book is The Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson.

00:46:08.000 It's probably the best, the single best

00:46:10.000 We're good to go.

00:46:22.000 It's really well written and very comprehensive.

00:46:26.000 It's got all the maps.

00:46:28.000 Ken Burns' Civil War series draws heavily on Battle Cry of Freedom.

00:46:31.000 Go check that out if there's a period of time you're interested in.

00:46:33.000 I have heavy interest in the Civil War.

00:46:35.000 I think it's fascinating.

00:46:36.000 I think all of the philosophical issues leading up to the Civil War are fascinating.

00:46:40.000 I think the characters, the people who fought in the Civil War are fascinating.

00:46:43.000 And if you don't know the Civil War, you don't know America.

00:46:44.000 So go check it out.

00:46:45.000 Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson.

00:46:47.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.

00:46:53.000 Alrighty, so Sasha Baron Cohen, you know, we now know that he tried to prank Sarah Palin into doing a bit on a series with him.

00:47:02.000 And apparently what he did is he said that he was a wounded veteran who wanted to talk with her for a series on Showtime.

00:47:09.000 And according to Breitbart News, which has deep connections with Palin, so I'm sure this is true, Cohen pretended to be a disabled veteran from Kentucky who was a big fan of Governor Palin.

00:47:18.000 He was wearing a necklace made of bullets and had a laptop covered in InfoWars stickers.

00:47:21.000 The bullet necklace and stickers for Alex Jones' InfoWars website were part of the persona Cohen was playing, according to the source. 0.99

00:47:27.000 His disguise was basically a caricature of a conservative middle-class Trump voter who was asking her absurd, racist, homophobic, sexist questions that were all meant to mock Trump voters as a bunch of ignorant and offensive kooks. 0.97

00:47:36.000 Some of the questions focused on Palin's support of the Second Amendment. 0.99

00:47:39.000 He was asking her things like, why can't the mentally ill be armed with assault weapons?

00:47:42.000 We'd love to discuss his background, why she got into politics, her personal story, her experience and career in Alaska, and on a national level as well.

00:48:08.000 We'd love her insight on the past, present, and future of America.

00:48:10.000 It's a free forum to talk about issues that matter without being attacked.

00:48:14.000 Show her perspective without bias directly to our audience.

00:48:16.000 This is a great way to connect with a younger generation of voters.

00:48:21.000 So this was Showtime basically lying to Sarah Palin.

00:48:23.000 Now, as somebody who has done a book that was based on people thinking I was someone that I was not, you cannot lie when you do this.

00:48:31.000 So the reason that people thought I was someone I was not when I wrote, for example, Primetime Propaganda,

00:48:36.000 Is because they assumed something that was not in evidence.

00:48:38.000 I said that I was writing a book about the history of Hollywood, and that I wanted to interview the most important people in Hollywood, and that I was a Harvard Law School graduate.

00:48:45.000 A simple Google search would have shown exactly who I was.

00:48:48.000 But all of these people in Hollywood were too lazy to do that.

00:48:50.000 They saw the last name Shapiro, they saw Harvard Law, they figured I was a leftist.

00:48:53.000 And so I asked them questions.

00:48:54.000 I asked them if I could tape.

00:48:56.000 They said yes.

00:48:57.000 I taped.

00:48:57.000 And then I released the tape.

00:48:59.000 That's not the same thing as what Barron Cohen did to Palin, because that's not his routine, right?

00:49:03.000 It's a comedy routine.

00:49:04.000 But the level of scorn that the left has for Trump voters, that they're all rednecks who wear bullet necklaces and watch Infowars, 0.97

00:49:11.000 It's it's quite insane. 0.98

00:49:12.000 It's quite insane.

00:49:13.000 Keep doing this left.

00:49:14.000 Keep doing it.

00:49:15.000 You want Trump to be reelected?

00:49:16.000 You are well on the path.

00:49:17.000 I mean, you are you're going to make that happen in pretty short order.

00:49:20.000 OK, well, we will be back here next week with all of the latest.

00:49:23.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:49:23.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:49:28.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.

00:49:34.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:49:38.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:49:40.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.

00:49:42.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:49:43.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.

00:49:46.000 Copyright Ford Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - July 13, 2018

Thunder Strzok | Ep. 580

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