The Ben Shapiro Show


Trumpcare Goes Down. Who's To Blame? | The Ben Shapiro Show Ep. 342


Summary

On Monday, the supposedly bipartisan Women's March tweeted out a happy birthday message to an actual, honest-to-goodness terrorist, Assata Shakur. The tweet came complete with a picture of Shakur with the slogan, IS IN THE STRUGGLE, pasted at the top, and above her head were the words, Today s sign of resistance in Assata s honor by Melonius Funk. Ben Shapiro explains why this is awful, and why the far-left should be ashamed of themselves. Plus, Ben explains why Linda Sarsour should be welcomed with open arms by the Women s March. And why we should all be thankful for the fact that the Black Liberation Army splintered off from the Black Panther Party into a splinter group called the "Black Liberation Army" and became a legitimate terrorist organization. Ben also explains why the assassination of Osama Bin Laden is a good thing, and what we should do about it. Ben Shapiro's full show is on all of that and more on this episode of The Ben Shapiro Show, wherever you get your news. Subscribe to Ben Shapiro on iTunes and leave us a rating and review the show on Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening and reviewing! Subscribe, review, and share the show with your fellow podcasting friends! If you like what you've listened to, share it with a friend, and spread the word to your friends about Ben Shapiro and/or share it on whatever you're listening to this podcast on your social media platforms. Thank you for listening to The Ben and Branchor Podcasts! - Ben Shapiro and Good Morning America is a podcast dedicated to all things podcasting, real, honest and unfiltered, non-profit journalism, real and unillegible, unapologetically leftist, and unapologetic, and full of love, no matter what that means . - the truth is what you're gonna get from Ben Shapiro, not just what you hear from me, not only about it, but also what you need to know about it! , no matter how much you're going to like it, right? , right? Thank you, thank you, Ben Shapiro is a friend of the truth, right, and you'll get a good night's rest, and that's enough rest, right there, no more than that? - thank you? -- Thank you Ben Shapiro.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 On Monday, the supposedly bipartisan Women's March tweeted out a happy birthday message to an actual honest-to-goodness terrorist, Assata Shakur.
00:00:07.000 There's an image of her, and it's a drawing of Assata Shakur against a pink and purple background, and above her head are the words, It says, Today's sign of resistance in Assata's honor is by Melonius Funk.
00:00:22.000 The tweet came complete with a picture of Shakur with the slogan, IS IN THE STRUGGLE, pasted at the top.
00:00:27.000 In May 1973, Shakur was wounded in a shootout with state troopers on the New Jersey Turnpike.
00:00:31.000 One trooper was killed execution style.
00:00:33.000 She was convicted of the murder and then sentenced to life in prison.
00:00:36.000 She'd also participated in a bunch of bank robberies, apparently.
00:00:39.000 In 1979, she escaped from prison and then finally fled to Cuba, where she's been living.
00:00:43.000 She's still on the FBI Most Wanted Terrorist list.
00:00:45.000 There's a $2 million reward on her head.
00:00:47.000 As David French points out at National Review,
00:00:49.000 All told, from 1970 to 1984, the BLA, the Black Liberation Army, was responsible for four bombings, four hijackings, 32 violent armed confrontations in the U.S., 16 of those involved confrontations with law enforcement officers who were killed.
00:01:02.000 In other words, by every reasonable contemporary definition of terrorism, Shakur was a violent terrorist who belonged to a violent terrorist organization.
00:01:09.000 Now, Shakur has become a hero to leftists because she rejects the morality of Western civilization.
00:01:13.000 She was a member of that Black Liberation Army, a more violent splinter from the Black Panther Party.
00:01:18.000 In Cuba, she wrote a trite autobiography in which she made claims like this, quote, They call us bandits.
00:01:23.000 Yet every time most black people pick up our paychecks, we are being robbed.
00:01:26.000 Every time we walk into a store in our neighborhood, we are being held up.
00:01:29.000 And every time we pay our rent, the landlord sticks a gun into our ribs.
00:01:33.000 The rulers of this country and their flunkies have committed some of the most brutal, vicious crimes in history.
00:01:37.000 They are the bandits, they are the murderers, and they should be treated as such.
00:01:41.000 This is pretty vile stuff, but it's true by the far left, brought up on Howard Zinn and trained to see America as the enemy.
00:01:46.000 No wonder Linda Sarsour is welcomed with open arms by the Women's March.
00:01:49.000 By the way, the Women's March has now written a full explanation of their happy birthday message.
00:01:53.000 It is not helpful.
00:01:54.000 They tweeted, Women's March is a non-violent movement.
00:01:56.000 We have never and will never use violence to achieve our goals.
00:01:59.000 The far right is threatened by our movement and by our solidarity with other movements.
00:02:02.000 Our power, your success, scares the far right.
00:02:05.000 They continue to try to divide us.
00:02:06.000 Today's attacks on Assata Shakur are the latest example.
00:02:09.000 Here's a brief refresher on who Assata Shakur is and why we consider her a feminist figure.
00:02:13.000 Assata Shakur is a civil rights leader who used her leadership position to challenge sexism within the Black Liberation Movement.
00:02:19.000 Her resistance tactics were different from ours.
00:02:21.000 That does not mean that we do not respect her anti-sexism work.
00:02:24.000 I look forward to the Women's March defending Osama Bin Laden on anti-Islamophobia grounds.
00:02:29.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:02:29.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:02:37.000 Alrighty, so, everything is awful.
00:02:40.000 Yeah!
00:02:41.000 Everything's pretty terrible.
00:02:42.000 So we'll talk about why everything is so terrible in just a second, but it's also, in every horror is a little bit of sick, sad hilarity, as there is today.
00:02:52.000 So we'll get into all of that, but first,
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00:04:00.000 Okay, so the big news of the day is of course
00:04:03.000 That's a good question.
00:04:23.000 It cut the rate of growth in Medicaid funding.
00:04:25.000 So if Obamacare had Medicaid funding going like this, then Trumpcare had Obamacare funding for Medicaid going like that, right?
00:04:33.000 Leveling off.
00:04:34.000 After 2020, that was one of the good aspects of it.
00:04:36.000 The other good aspect of it was it cut a few of the taxes.
00:04:39.000 It didn't really do much to relieve the Obamacare regulations, and this was the problem.
00:04:43.000 Obamacare is the regulations.
00:04:44.000 Obamacare is forcing the insurance companies to offer a bunch of things on their plan.
00:04:48.000 Now, Mike Lee and Ted Cruz had come up with an amendment that would have allowed insurance companies to actually provide plans outside of the Obamacare regulations, but when Mitch McConnell put it back in the bill, the provision did not include that.
00:05:01.000 It said that you could get out of some of the regulations, but then you were still subject to the Obamacare marketplace exchanges, which means that it artificially jacks up the prices for young, healthy people who want to buy skimpier versions of health insurance.
00:05:12.000 Yesterday, Mike Lee and Jerry Moran, who is the senator from Kansas, they both came out and they said that they are not going to back the bill.
00:05:19.000 So, Moran explained, we should not put our stamp of approval on bad policy.
00:05:23.000 Furthermore, if we leave the federal government in control of everyday healthcare decisions, it is more likely that our healthcare system will devolve into single-payer,
00:05:29.000 So that meant that there were four senators now who are not going to vote to advance the House bill with the Senate changes.
00:05:33.000 That would be Rand Paul,
00:05:50.000 Who's all along said this is not a free market version of a bill.
00:05:52.000 I'm not voting for it.
00:05:53.000 Susan Collins from Maine who says it's not Obamacare, so I'm not voting for it.
00:05:56.000 She's basically a Democrat.
00:05:57.000 And then you have Jerry Moran and Mike Lee who said they're not gonna vote for it.
00:06:00.000 But lest anyone think that these four are really the only obstacle, the fact is that there were supposedly eight to ten other senators who were really tentative on it.
00:06:06.000 And that's because the thing had a 20% approval rating.
00:06:09.000 It was basically keeping a lot of the worst aspects of Obamacare and getting rid of the funding mechanism, which was all the taxes under Obamacare, and
00:06:17.000 Increasing subsidies in certain areas.
00:06:19.000 So, that was... It wasn't a great plan.
00:06:21.000 It had a lot of holes in it.
00:06:22.000 Avik Roy, who loved the plan, he liked it because of the Medicaid reform.
00:06:26.000 But you can do Medicaid reform through other means.
00:06:28.000 You don't have to do Medicaid reform as part of the healthcare reform bill.
00:06:31.000 They're not quite the same thing.
00:06:33.000 So this bill is dead.
00:06:35.000 So yesterday started on a bizarre note, okay?
00:06:38.000 This was supposed to be Made in America week for the Trump White House.
00:06:41.000 And President Trump leads off yesterday by sitting in a firetruck, which of course led to 1,000 terrible headlines for him.
00:06:54.000 Listen, I understand what photo ops are for most, but having the Vice President and the Presidents of the United States standing around and then getting in a fire truck.
00:07:03.000 We've already had Trump in a different kind of truck.
00:07:07.000 Now we have Trump driving a fire truck.
00:07:09.000 Because this is what Presidents do.
00:07:11.000 Also my three and a half year old daughter.
00:07:13.000 I literally took a fire truck to my daughter's preschool and she got in the driver's seat.
00:07:18.000 The President of the United States is doing the same thing.
00:07:21.000 Doing the things the President must do.
00:07:23.000 Now, listen, he's not the only person on Earth.
00:07:25.000 And then there's Mike Pence just standing there like a doofus.
00:07:27.000 Like, again...
00:07:29.000 He's not the only president to do stupid photo ops, but this is a really dumb photo op.
00:07:32.000 It's a particularly dumb photo op when he's in a fire truck, at the wheel of the fire truck, and literally a mile away, his Trumpcare bill is on fire.
00:07:39.000 That actually is not a good look.
00:07:41.000 He then came out yesterday, and John McCain, one of the things that helped kill this was John McCain was probably going to vote in favor of the Trumpcare bill, or at least that was the rumor, and then he got sick and had to have a surgery, and so Trump yesterday, he was touting John McCain and saying that he needed his vote.
00:07:54.000 We hope John McCain gets better very soon, because we miss him.
00:07:58.000 He's a crusty voice in Washington.
00:08:02.000 Plus, we need his vote.
00:08:03.000 Okay, that was true, but it wasn't enough.
00:08:06.000 Okay, so Mike Lee comes out and he explains why exactly he didn't vote for this thing, and he said, this is not a full repeal of Obamacare.
00:08:12.000 We promised we were going to fully repeal Obamacare, and this isn't it.
00:08:15.000 I have made very clear from the outset of this discussion that what the American people asked for
00:08:22.000 What they expected when they elected Republicans to the House, to the Senate, and to the White House was a full repeal of Obamacare.
00:08:29.000 That's what we ought to be doing.
00:08:31.000 Now, I'm not saying it's either perfection or nothing, but I am saying you've got to show me what this really does.
00:08:38.000 To undo Obamacare's deadly consequences for the forgotten man and the forgotten woman of America.
00:08:45.000 I don't see that in this bill.
00:08:46.000 What I do see is that we've walked away steadily from all kinds of promises.
00:08:50.000 This bill no longer repeals all of Obamacare's taxes.
00:08:54.000 I think that's troubling.
00:08:55.000 This bill no longer relieves people of some of the most significant burdens, regulatorily speaking, from Obamacare that have made the cost of healthcare go sky high.
00:09:06.000 And we can do better, but the American people have to demand it.
00:09:10.000 Okay, so I agree with everything that you heard Mike Lee just say.
00:09:14.000 So the question is, who is to blame for all of this?
00:09:17.000 Because now Trumpcare has gone down.
00:09:19.000 We're going to explain what's coming next after Trumpcare has gone down, because now Senator McConnell says that he wants to bring a full repeal bill.
00:09:26.000 To the floor of the Senate.
00:09:27.000 We'll explain whether that happens or not.
00:09:28.000 But who is to blame for all of this?
00:09:30.000 So, you're seeing people like President Trump blame Senate conservatives.
00:09:34.000 He'll say, a few senators really stopped this thing.
00:09:36.000 He said that.
00:09:36.000 Laura Ingraham came out today and she says, well, I guess that Trump is going to have to work with the Democrats now.
00:09:42.000 No.
00:09:43.000 No.
00:09:44.000 No!
00:09:45.000 No!
00:09:46.000 Everyone's stupid.
00:09:46.000 Okay, so.
00:09:48.000 Here's who's to blame for this.
00:09:49.000 Number one, Senate moderates who lied when they said they were going to support Obamacare repeal.
00:09:53.000 And they demonstrated that they lied when they said this, okay?
00:09:56.000 As I say, Mitch McConnell says that now he's going to bring to the floor some sort of repeal bill.
00:10:01.000 He's going to use the House bill that was passed as basically the vehicle for a full repeal, and the repeal would go into effect in two years.
00:10:09.000 So it would basically be a ticking time bomb, and then Republicans would have two years to get their act together and come up with some correctives for when the time bomb goes off after the elections, right?
00:10:17.000 So it's actually a relatively smart play by McConnell, but it also holds a bunch of Republicans' feet to the fire
00:10:23.000 Trying to demonstrate who exactly was willing to vote for repeal and who is not.
00:10:26.000 Already, within 15 minutes of him announcing this, already this morning, there were three Republicans who said they would not vote for simple repeal.
00:10:33.000 Remember, for seven years, we have heard nothing from the Republican Party, but we need to repeal Obamacare.
00:10:38.000 Not repeal and replace.
00:10:39.000 Repeal and replace was a formulation pursued by Trump, okay?
00:10:42.000 It was a formulation pursued by moderate Republicans, but they all said they were going to repeal.
00:10:47.000 And the proof is in the pudding, okay?
00:10:48.000 Rob Portman today, the senator from Ohio, he voted for a simple repeal bill in 2015 when Barack Obama was president.
00:10:55.000 Today, Mitch McConnell said, we want to pass a simple repeal bill, the exact same repeal bill we voted for in 2015, and Senator Rob Portman, who is just a weak-T senator from Ohio, here's what he had to say about it.
00:11:08.000 So I'll have to look and see what the so-called repeal bill entails.
00:11:11.000 But if it is a bill that simply repeals, I believe that will add to more uncertainty and the potential for, you know, Ohioans to pay even higher premiums, higher deductibles.
00:11:21.000 So we'll have to see.
00:11:23.000 Obviously we would look for a CBO analysis of that to see.
00:11:27.000 What it involves in terms of not just premiums and deductibles but coverage.
00:11:31.000 So, you know, I'll take a look at it.
00:11:34.000 I'm concerned about something that would simply repeal and its impact on costs and choices in healthcare.
00:11:42.000 Okay, so there you have it.
00:11:43.000 He says that he is not going to vote for a simple repeal, even though he did so in 2015, showing that Republicans are damn liars, okay?
00:11:49.000 They are liars.
00:11:50.000 They say this kind of stuff and they don't mean it one iota, or at least many of them don't.
00:11:54.000 And when they do mean it, like Mike Lee, they get ripped up and down by a bunch of establishment lackeys and hacks who say that it's Mike Lee's fault that Obamacare's still on the books.
00:12:02.000 Basically, here was the deal the GOP made.
00:12:04.000 They said, hey, let's repeal Obamacare.
00:12:06.000 And everybody went, yeah, that sounds awesome.
00:12:07.000 Then they said, how about if we don't repeal Obamacare, but we say we did?
00:12:11.000 And then conservatives went, no, let's not do that.
00:12:14.000 And then the GOP turned around, they said, it's conservatives' fault that Obamacare is staying.
00:12:17.000 See?
00:12:18.000 We told you, it's all their fault.
00:12:19.000 They're unrealistic.
00:12:20.000 Okay, Rob Portman voted in 2015
00:12:23.000 that he would vote for repeal.
00:12:24.000 He said today that he probably will not.
00:12:27.000 Shelley Moore Capito, who voted for exactly the same bill in 2015, said today, In other words, repeal and replace was just an excuse for keep Obamacare.
00:12:32.000 That's what we had suspected all along.
00:12:49.000 Mitch McConnell is complicit in this.
00:12:51.000 He said, while he was doing this bill, that even the Medicaid reforms that everybody really loved, he said that those Medicaid reforms would never materialize.
00:12:59.000 That's what he told the moderates.
00:13:00.000 It was not enough to get Susan Collins on board anyway.
00:13:02.000 Okay, so all of these people are totally full of it, which means that the new Republican program is basically, let's just complain about Democrats, but when we have power, we won't do anything.
00:13:11.000 Here's Mitch McConnell lamenting the Democrats who are saying that they're happy that this thing went down in flames.
00:13:18.000 I imagine many Democrats were celebrating last night.
00:13:22.000 I hope they consider what they are celebrating.
00:13:25.000 The American people are hurting.
00:13:27.000 They need relief.
00:13:29.000 And it's regretful that our Democratic colleagues decided early on that they did not want to engage with us seriously in the process to deliver that relief.
00:13:39.000 Okay, so again, you know, he can say all he wants here, but he's the guy in charge.
00:13:43.000 He's the guy in charge.
00:13:43.000 And this is on Senator McConnell for not getting it together.
00:13:46.000 So, does he have a fractious Republican caucus?
00:13:48.000 Of course he has a fractious Republican caucus.
00:13:50.000 Does he have a bunch of people on the left who don't want to vote for Obamacare repeal?
00:13:54.000 Yes.
00:13:54.000 Does he have a bunch of people on the right who don't want to vote for anything soft?
00:13:56.000 Yes.
00:13:57.000 But it is his job to get those things together.
00:13:59.000 If he can't, then he shouldn't be in charge of the Senate.
00:14:02.000 End of story.
00:14:03.000 Okay, there is someone else to blame in all of this too.
00:14:06.000 And I know that we're never allowed to blame President Trump for anything.
00:14:08.000 I know that we have to play footsie around President Trump.
00:14:10.000 We have to treat him like he's a small child and he has to be guarded from the vicissitudes of life.
00:14:14.000 The fact is, President Trump botched this.
00:14:16.000 Okay, he botched this in three separate ways.
00:14:19.000 He botched it repeatedly.
00:14:20.000 Now, I want to note that you'll just notice all over the- I'm gonna be honest with you today, okay?
00:14:25.000 It's difficult to be honest to people who- Listen, we all want Trump to succeed.
00:14:29.000 I want Trump to succeed as a conservative.
00:14:30.000 I want him to do conservative things.
00:14:31.000 Today, if Trump were to push for repeal and get repeal, I would be in the front row cheering.
00:14:36.000 I put on a damn MAGA hat when he picked Judge Gorsuch.
00:14:39.000 So this is not about ire at President Trump for anything except for he's not doing his job.
00:14:44.000 Okay, and I know everybody has to go out of their way to praise Trump,
00:14:46.000 Because Trump's ego requires the praise all the time.
00:14:49.000 But the fact is that praising Trump isn't getting the job done.
00:14:52.000 Okay, Mike Pence said Trump is really engaged in the process.
00:14:55.000 No, he's not.
00:14:56.000 He was in a fire truck while this thing was going down in flames.
00:14:58.000 Okay, there are three different ways that Trump screwed this thing up.
00:15:02.000 Okay, way number one.
00:15:04.000 During the election cycle, he said over and over one bajillion times that he wanted to repeal Obamacare.
00:15:09.000 He then added no one would go uncovered.
00:15:13.000 You cannot say those two things simultaneously.
00:15:15.000 That meant that when he was elected, he did not have a clear mandate to repeal Obamacare.
00:15:19.000 So that was mistake number one.
00:15:21.000 He spent his entire election cycle saying Obamacare has to go, but I'd like to replace it with something that gives more coverage.
00:15:27.000 In other words, Obamacare is not single-payer enough.
00:15:30.000 That's actually what he was saying during the election cycle.
00:15:32.000 Then, after he gets in office, he has an opportunity.
00:15:35.000 He has a 100% approval rating among Republicans, right?
00:15:38.000 Everybody in the Senate is afraid of him.
00:15:41.000 What if he had come out day one and said, Obamacare repeal, that's it.
00:15:44.000 Okay, we'll figure out the replacement later.
00:15:46.000 We got to get this done fast before time runs out.
00:15:48.000 Obamacare repeal now.
00:15:50.000 Okay, President Ted Cruz, President Rubio, I think, but President Cruz certainly would have done that, right?
00:15:55.000 He would have exerted pressure, right?
00:15:56.000 That's what Trump would have done.
00:15:57.000 He didn't do that.
00:15:58.000 Instead, he sat back, he let Mitch McConnell take the reins, he let Paul Ryan take the reins, because Trump was not engaged, because Trump doesn't care about this, and because Trump doesn't even know his own policy, and because Trump doesn't even know what's in the bill.
00:16:10.000 If you ask Trump what's in this bill, he would not be able to tell you, which is why today, President Trump offered, in 12 hours, three different strategies for what should happen after the death of this bill.
00:16:20.000 He tweeted, Republicans should just repeal failing Obamacare now and work on a new health care plan that will start from a clean slate.
00:16:26.000 Dems will join in.
00:16:28.000 No, they won't.
00:16:28.000 This is delusional.
00:16:30.000 Democrats are not going to work with President Trump.
00:16:32.000 His second proposal was, blame Republicans.
00:16:34.000 He said, we were let down by all of the Democrats and a few Republicans.
00:16:37.000 Most Republicans were loyal, terrific, and worked really hard.
00:16:39.000 We will return.
00:16:41.000 As I have always said, let Obamacare fail and then come together and do a great health care plan.
00:16:44.000 Stay tuned.
00:16:45.000 Literally within hours of him saying, repeal, and then figure it out with Democrats, he's now saying, don't repeal, let it fail, and then figure it out with Democrats.
00:16:53.000 Okay, all of this confusion does not allow you to exert pressure on your own members of Congress.
00:16:58.000 The president has a job here.
00:17:00.000 The president's job here is actually pretty clear.
00:17:02.000 If you're in Congress, let me start from the congressional perspective.
00:17:05.000 If you're in Congress, you're running for Senate.
00:17:07.000 You have two things you have to do to win a Senate seat.
00:17:09.000 First, you have to win a primary, and then you have to win a general.
00:17:12.000 Winning a general generally requires you not to do anything controversial.
00:17:15.000 If you do something controversial, you give material to your opponent.
00:17:17.000 So if you're a senator, you have an actual stake in not doing things.
00:17:21.000 Because then your opponent can't claim that you're doing anything really terrible, right?
00:17:25.000 If you vote for a bill with 20% approval, as this bill had, and then Democrats crap all over you, then you could lose a general election.
00:17:32.000 Right, so your interest is in doing nothing.
00:17:33.000 So, what keeps you voting for unpopular bills and sticking in line with the party?
00:17:38.000 Pressure from the party, right?
00:17:39.000 The threat of defunding.
00:17:41.000 The threat of primaries.
00:17:42.000 President Trump has only threatened a primary one Republican senator since the election.
00:17:46.000 Jeff Flake of Arizona.
00:17:47.000 Okay, that has nothing to do with Obamacare.
00:17:49.000 It has to do with he doesn't like... Senator Flake.
00:17:52.000 Right?
00:17:53.000 He's not exerting pressure.
00:17:54.000 He's not doing what the White House has to do.
00:17:56.000 What if Trump were on the phone with all of these wavering senators, day in and day out, saying, listen, I will primary you.
00:18:01.000 I will come to your state, and I will undercut support for you.
00:18:04.000 I will remove funding.
00:18:06.000 I will let you flail out there.
00:18:07.000 I will rip you by name, publicly, if you do this.
00:18:10.000 But that's not what Trump was doing.
00:18:11.000 Trump was busy playing firetruck, and he was busy tweeting things.
00:18:15.000 Okay, so that is screw-up number three, right?
00:18:18.000 So screw-up number one was his pitch.
00:18:20.000 Screw-up number two was he didn't actually embrace Obamacare repeal in the first place when he became president.
00:18:25.000 And screw-up number three is that he has completely abdicated responsibility for this, even while people are praising him for his engagement.
00:18:31.000 He has not been engaged.
00:18:32.000 If he were engaged,
00:18:34.000 Then maybe it changes the math.
00:18:35.000 So again, it's not all on Trump.
00:18:36.000 But to pretend that Trump is not involved at all in this is really silly, okay?
00:18:40.000 It's Trumpcare.
00:18:40.000 It's his signature piece of legislation.
00:18:42.000 Obama was heavily involved in pushing his signature piece of legislation.
00:18:45.000 I don't think that we should expect anything less from President Trump.
00:18:49.000 It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me in any case.
00:18:53.000 But the media, of course, are in full Trump defense mode, at least on the right, because it's more important to please Trump than it is to actually push good policy, which is one of my key criticisms here, okay?
00:19:03.000 For fellow conservatives, Trump can be all the things you want him to be.
00:19:07.000 You can love him dearly.
00:19:08.000 You can hope that he does really well.
00:19:10.000 He needs to fulfill what you said he was going to fulfill and what he said to you he was going to fulfill.
00:19:16.000 But watch Fox & Friends, right?
00:19:17.000 Fox & Friends is basically the Trump show.
00:19:19.000 And here is them going after the senators who wouldn't vote for this original bill.
00:19:23.000 You have Rand Paul, extreme conservative slash libertarian, Ted Cruz.
00:19:28.000 I'm going to get my hands dirty and make this work somehow.
00:19:30.000 And you've got moderates like Senator Portman, listen to his governor.
00:19:33.000 And you have Senator Collins, who said, I got some huge blowback when I went back.
00:19:36.000 So these people are being true to their school, just not true to their party.
00:19:40.000 And maybe not true to their country.
00:19:41.000 The president said, before he knew that these two, he had these two defectors, reported according to Politico, he goes, if the Senate Republicans don't get this thing done, they'll look like dopes.
00:19:53.000 Do they look like dopes?
00:19:54.000 He's right.
00:19:55.000 It's not a question of being true to your party or true to your country.
00:19:58.000 It's a question of being true to your word.
00:20:00.000 They should not have elevated the issue for eight years among Republicans saying, first thing we'll do is repeal and replace if they weren't capable of doing it.
00:20:08.000 Okay, again, all of this, they're going to toss all of this at the feet of McConnell and Ryan.
00:20:11.000 They deserve a heavy dose of blame, both of them.
00:20:13.000 The Congress deserves a heavy dose of blame.
00:20:15.000 Trump does not get off scot-free.
00:20:16.000 He is the president of the United States.
00:20:17.000 He's the one with the bully pulpit.
00:20:19.000 He's the one with 82% approval rating among Republicans today.
00:20:22.000 Despite his low approval ratings generally, Republicans still love the guy.
00:20:25.000 He has leverage.
00:20:27.000 He didn't use that leverage.
00:20:28.000 It is that simple.
00:20:29.000 Okay, before I go any further and talk about what comes next, I first want to say thank you to our sponsors over at MVMT.
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00:21:07.000 We're good to go!
00:21:36.000 Let's get back to what exactly happens from here.
00:21:39.000 So, as I say, the first proposal was, let's just repeal Obamacare wholesale.
00:21:43.000 And a bunch of moderate senators said, no, we're not going to do that.
00:21:47.000 And then the proposal is, okay, we'll let Obamacare fail and then we'll come back to the table.
00:21:51.000 The problem with this is that they need the tax increase, they need the revenue that was saved through Obamacare cuts in order to pass tax reform.
00:21:58.000 So it's not just that Obamacare repeal went down, it's that tax reform is now in danger.
00:22:03.000 Remember, everything has to be passed with a 51 vote reconciliation rule.
00:22:06.000 That means the CBO has to score everything as revenue neutral, meaning that you can't lose money on it.
00:22:11.000 You can't create more debt, more deficit, in order to pass a bill.
00:22:15.000 What that means is that all of the savings they were going to have from the Obamacare repeal, they were originally going to apply to tax reform.
00:22:20.000 If they don't get the repeal, they don't get the tax reform, and the entire legislative agenda is sunk.
00:22:24.000 Plus, the issue isn't going away.
00:22:25.000 Obamacare continues to devolve into disaster, and now that Republicans have put their grubby mitts on it, it's going to be very difficult for them to remove their stink from it.
00:22:34.000 Right?
00:22:34.000 It looks like they tried to fix it and they failed.
00:22:36.000 And so now Democrats are going to say, listen, they tried to fix it and failed.
00:22:39.000 They stink.
00:22:40.000 Put us in charge.
00:22:41.000 And they're going to have a point.
00:22:43.000 Especially after Republicans tried to push a Democrat-like program.
00:22:47.000 All of this is a bollocks, and it demonstrates.
00:22:49.000 In politics, if you do not campaign on a program, and if you're not clever enough to campaign on other things and then implement a program with the full weight of your authority, you are going to be in serious political trouble, plus you're not going to get anything done.
00:23:02.000 And so the question's going to become here.
00:23:04.000 Can you pressure your Republican representatives and the President to do the right thing?
00:23:07.000 And so I'm going to do something I never do on this program, okay?
00:23:09.000 Here are the phone numbers for Senators Portman, Capito, and Collins.
00:23:12.000 These are their Senate office phone numbers.
00:23:15.000 I want people to call and flood their offices, okay?
00:23:17.000 Senator Rob Portman today, the Senator from Ohio, who says he will not vote for peer repeal, his number is 202-224-3353.
00:23:22.000 That is his Senate office phone number.
00:23:23.000 I never do this.
00:23:24.000 202-224-3353.
00:23:30.000 Senator Shelley Moore Capito from West Virginia.
00:23:32.000 Her number is 202-224-6472.
00:23:37.000 202-224-6472.
00:23:38.000 And Senator Susan Collins, for whatever good it will do you, is 202-224-2523.
00:23:44.000 They all deserve to have their secretaries have a miserable day on the phones because they spent seven years lying to you.
00:23:50.000 Seven full years lying to you.
00:23:54.000 And Trump better figure something out quick here, because he's the president, okay?
00:23:57.000 It's his agenda that's on the line.
00:23:59.000 And maybe it doesn't matter.
00:24:00.000 Maybe we've all become satisfied with tweeting CNN memes and all that, and it's fun.
00:24:04.000 But, you know, if you actually want to get something done, it's going to actually have to get done at a certain point here.
00:24:09.000 Okay.
00:24:10.000 As we continue, we're going to move over to Daily Wire right now, but I still want to talk about a bunch of things, including whether the polls actually matter to President Trump.
00:24:18.000 Is he immune to polling?
00:24:21.000 A little bit more Russia fallout, plus things I like, things I hate, and we'll deconstruct the culture.
00:24:25.000 But for that, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com.
00:24:27.000 So for those who don't know, this is a video show as well.
00:24:29.000 You can watch it
00:24:30.000 The first 15 minutes on Facebook.
00:24:31.000 But if you want to watch the entire thing, then you need to go over to Daily Wire right now and subscribe.
00:24:35.000 For $9.99 a month, then you can get the full subscription over at Daily Wire that gets you access to the show live.
00:24:40.000 It gets you access to the mailbag, which we do on Fridays.
00:24:42.000 It gets you access to Andrew Klavan's show, which is great, and you should listen to it.
00:24:44.000 I'm sure he'll disagree with me today.
00:24:46.000 So if you want a lighter take, then go over to Klavan's show today, and you can get the subscription for his show and for Michael Knowles' new show, God Help Us, that's coming out pretty soon.
00:24:54.000 So you can check that out.
00:24:56.000 For $99 a year, you can get the annual subscription, which is even better than that, because not only do you get all of the aforementioned things, you also get this.
00:25:03.000 Unbelievable.
00:25:04.000 Magnificent.
00:25:06.000 Incomparable mug.
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00:25:41.000 Alrighty, so, the question, there are two questions here.
00:25:44.000 One is, what do we care about?
00:25:45.000 And the two, and question number two is, is there going to be electoral fallout?
00:25:48.000 So, the what do we care about question is something that I've now been asking for months, okay?
00:25:52.000 Do we care more about the we piss off the left routine, or do we care more about pushing policy?
00:25:56.000 Now there are certain people who say that the pissing off the left routine
00:25:59.000 Is there going to be electoral fallout?
00:26:20.000 Right now, the polls are not good for President Trump, but there is an open question about the polls, which is, do they even matter?
00:26:25.000 Do the polls even matter with regard to President Trump?
00:26:28.000 Now, I'm at the point where there are certain polls that I generally trust, and there are certain polls that I do not.
00:26:34.000 Do I think that Trump is more popular than he is unpopular?
00:26:36.000 No.
00:26:37.000 Do I think that some of the polls that are more ridiculous are true?
00:26:40.000 No.
00:26:40.000 So, for example, there was a poll from Public Policy Polling yesterday that said only 45% of Republicans think that Donald Trump Jr.
00:26:45.000 met with the Russians.
00:26:47.000 Okay, Donald Trump Jr.
00:26:48.000 admitted to meeting with the Russians.
00:26:49.000 So he met with the Russians.
00:26:50.000 Okay, this is not under dispute.
00:26:52.000 But everybody on the left said, well this just demonstrates how all of the Republicans believe stupid things.
00:26:56.000 No.
00:26:57.000 What that question was questioning, and what people were answering was not, did Donald Trump Jr.
00:27:01.000 meet with the Russians, is do you care if Donald Trump Jr.
00:27:03.000 met with the Russians?
00:27:04.000 And only 45% of Republicans said yes.
00:27:07.000 Okay, Republicans are smart enough to read the signals from the polls.
00:27:10.000 So, when someone from ABC News calls up and says, we have a poll question for you, Republicans aren't just hearing the poll question, they are hearing the subtext of the poll question, and they are answering the subtext.
00:27:19.000 So if they're asked, do you think that Donald Trump Jr.
00:27:22.000 did something wrong on the Russia stuff?
00:27:23.000 What they are hearing is, do you think that Donald Trump colluded with the Russian government?
00:27:27.000 And so Republicans will say no.
00:27:28.000 Republicans are answering the questions they think are being asked,
00:27:32.000 And in reality are actually being asked by the media.
00:27:34.000 So I think that a lot of the people who are being polled on the right side of the aisle have gotten too smart for the pollsters.
00:27:39.000 In other words, when polls, when pollsters call them up, they are giving them answers that are designed to go right to the subtext.
00:27:45.000 So instead of them saying, yes, Donald Trump Jr.
00:27:47.000 met with the Russians, but I don't think it matters.
00:27:49.000 Instead, they say he didn't meet with the Russians at all because screw you, you know, go to hell.
00:27:53.000 I think that there's a lot of that in the polling now.
00:27:55.000 That is not true with approval ratings.
00:27:57.000 I don't think there are a lot of Republicans today who are saying, you know, I love President Trump, but I'm gonna lie to the pollsters and say that I hate President Trump.
00:28:03.000 I don't think there's a lot of that.
00:28:04.000 I think there's more defiance than there is, you know, an attempt to purposefully screw up the polls.
00:28:09.000 But I'm not sure how much it matters because we haven't seen a lot of head-to-head polls between Trump and anybody else.
00:28:14.000 So today I saw a head-to-head poll between Trump and Mark Zuckerberg that showed him at like 40% and Zuckerberg at 40%.
00:28:20.000 That means Trump wins re-election, right?
00:28:22.000 The fact is that he was running head-to-neck with Hillary and then he won.
00:28:26.000 Any Democrat who wins is going to have to be blowing him out in polls at this time.
00:28:29.000 I'd be curious to see like a Joe Biden-Trump matchup at this point and see how that would go for him.
00:28:35.000 But some of the polling data for him is not great, right?
00:28:39.000 38% of Republicans say his conduct has been unpresidential rather than fitting and proper, but they don't really care.
00:28:47.000 Word associations with Trump tweets.
00:28:49.000 68% of people say that Trump's tweets are inappropriate.
00:28:52.000 65% say they're insulting.
00:28:53.000 52% say dangerous.
00:28:57.000 41% say interesting, 36% say effective.
00:28:59.000 I think that Trump's floor is about 35%.
00:29:02.000 It's a pretty good floor.
00:29:03.000 The floor is a lot stronger than George W. Bush's floor was in 2004, 2005, 2006.
00:29:09.000 His floor in 2006 was like 20%, 15%.
00:29:13.000 And that is specifically due to the reaction against the left and the feeling the left is out to get Trump.
00:29:19.000 Sheryl Atkinson says Trump is basically kryptonite to smear.
00:29:22.000 It's very difficult to get him.
00:29:23.000 I think that this is essentially correct.
00:29:25.000 Explain in your book why you say Trump may be kryptonite to the smear.
00:29:30.000 I call him the anti-smear candidate because every traditional smear tactic used against him, very effective tactics against other people, kind of bounced off of him.
00:29:42.000 You know, the smear was just no good to him.
00:29:44.000 In fact, he was able to grab it and co-opt it and turn it around in most every case.
00:29:49.000 And I argue that if he had apologized in summer of 2015 when the first attack that I noticed was after John McCain called some of his followers crazies and Trump counterattacked by saying McCain wasn't a war hero in Vietnam.
00:30:05.000 And they were called the media wanted him to get out of the race and apologize I started airing more of him thinking the public would hate him if they saw more of him, but the public liked him I think if he had apologized then he would never have made it But he did the opposite of what is intuitive to politicians But turned out to be the right thing for him to do for his followers
00:30:25.000 So I don't think that his base is going to drop out anytime soon.
00:30:27.000 The question is, how much of his base is going to turn out to vote, and is it enough for him to win re-election?
00:30:32.000 It's a little early to talk about re-election.
00:30:33.000 Not every day is a battle for re-election for President Trump.
00:30:36.000 But if he, let's say he passes, not much.
00:30:39.000 Can he still win?
00:30:40.000 The answer pretty clearly is yes.
00:30:41.000 He can still win.
00:30:42.000 And so, you know, as long as his base sticks with him, I don't think his base is going to drop away when they don't get policy wins.
00:30:47.000 I think that people who think that a bunch of people are going to drop away because he's not doing anything, I don't think that's right.
00:30:52.000 Because what Trump was actually elected to do is exactly what he's doing, yell at people.
00:30:56.000 Trump was elected to be the avatar of our anger.
00:31:00.000 And he is doing that, successfully.
00:31:01.000 And if there are policy failures, we're going to place them where we think the policy experts are.
00:31:04.000 Trump never purported to be a policy expert.
00:31:06.000 It's going to fall on McConnell and Ryan.
00:31:07.000 So I think that's totally deserved.
00:31:09.000 No, I think the president has a role, and this is the problem with electing someone who you expect their job is only going to be to be angry at things and yell at things.
00:31:17.000 Do I think that Trump's bottom is going to fall out here?
00:31:19.000 Is he going to go down into the 20s?
00:31:20.000 No, he's not.
00:31:21.000 He's already at rock bottom.
00:31:22.000 And 35-36% is not a bad place to be.
00:31:26.000 Now, it'll be interesting to see if he swivels to the left in the aftermath of the Trumpcare failure and tries to get some infrastructure stuff done with Democrats, tries to pass more big government stuff, and tries to bring in a different crowd.
00:31:38.000 That is one strategy for getting to 50.
00:31:40.000 He's going to need to get closer to 50% if he wants to win re-election.
00:31:45.000 Ironically, one of the best things that might have happened to him in this entire cycle is Mike Lee killing this Trumpcare bill.
00:31:50.000 Because imagine if the Trumpcare bill actually passed, and now Trump owns what comes next in the healthcare system.
00:31:55.000 Well, Trump, I think Trump knows this by the way, which is why he's not fully fulminating over the failure of Trumpcare.
00:32:00.000 I think Trump knows it would have been politically poisonous for him to pass something this unpopular and then sign it, and he'd have that hanging around his neck for 2020.
00:32:07.000 Mike Lee might have just saved Trump's presidency by killing this bill.
00:32:10.000 Unfortunately,
00:32:11.000 It also, you know, the Republican failure to kill Obamacare also demonstrates what lackeys they are.
00:32:17.000 So you could easily see a situation in which Trump wins re-election after Democrats win the House in 2018, try to impeach him, and the reaction is so strong that he wins re-election, but you could see Republicans not being able to get anything done.
00:32:28.000 You know, and maybe all we got out of this was Gorsuch, and we'll find out if that's enough.
00:32:32.000 Okay, so with all of that said, the Russia fallout
00:32:35.000 It is amazing that the Democrats are really grasping at straws here, because they don't need to.
00:32:42.000 The overreach is so great from the Trump administration that the Democrats don't need to overreach, but everyone is incompetent at everything.
00:32:47.000 So, for example, there's a Democratic representative, Mike Quigley.
00:32:50.000 He makes one of the most bizarre statements I have ever heard about this Russia, Trump-Russia stuff.
00:32:55.000 Listen to this statement.
00:32:58.000 I think that there was coordination.
00:33:00.000 I think you're starting to see public evidence of that coordination.
00:33:04.000 Not just the meeting with Trump Jr., but others as well.
00:33:08.000 You know, Roger Stone suggesting that he had a relationship with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.
00:33:15.000 And that he knew that Mr. Podesta was next in the barrel.
00:33:18.000 But actually the Trump campaign's digital operation?
00:33:22.000 Look, I don't want to get into specifics in terms of a digital operation or any specifics that are not in the public domain at this point in time.
00:33:31.000 I think you're seeing a clear pattern of people in the Trump campaign coordinating with Russians.
00:33:39.000 And I think what we're learning with the Trump Jr.
00:33:42.000 meeting is when you meet with any Russians, you're meeting with Russian intelligence and therefore President Putin.
00:33:49.000 Okay, so the idea that if you meet with any Russian ever, you're suddenly meeting with Vladimir Putin is totally insane, and this is why people are responding with ire to all of this.
00:33:58.000 Meanwhile, the Trump administration's actual defense on Trump-Russia is not very good, right?
00:34:01.000 I mean, here's Sean Spicer yesterday talking about—this is literally yesterday, okay?
00:34:05.000 Talking about the Trump Jr.
00:34:06.000 meeting with the Russians.
00:34:08.000 Here's what he had to say.
00:34:09.000 That is quite often for people who are given information during the heat of a campaign to ask what that is.
00:34:15.000 That's what simply he did.
00:34:17.000 The President's made it clear through his tweet.
00:34:20.000 And there was nothing, as far as we know, that would lead anyone to believe that there was anything except for a discussion about adoption of the Majinsky Act.
00:34:28.000 Okay, there was, first of all, it's called the Magnitsky Act, but there was anything except for adoptions.
00:34:35.000 How about, like, the entire email exchange that says it's not about adoptions?
00:34:38.000 How about that?
00:34:39.000 Like, that might lead you to believe that.
00:34:40.000 But again, the Democrats are so crazy that they're willing to grasp at any straw here.
00:34:44.000 And this is what is driving support for Trump.
00:34:46.000 Again, it's a lot of reaction and not a lot of policy, and so we're going to have to ask ourselves, do we demand from President Trump that he give us policy, or is reactionary stuff enough?
00:34:54.000 Maybe it is enough, maybe it is enough, but I'm not sure that it's enough for me.
00:34:57.000 I don't think it should be enough for conservatives because, you know, there's a whole group of people who spend their days reacting against the left.
00:35:03.000 I am one of those people.
00:35:05.000 The president's job should be partly to do that, but it should also be to push policy that's actually good.
00:35:09.000 Okay, time for some things I like, things I hate, and then we'll deconstruct a little bit of culture.
00:35:13.000 Things that I like.
00:35:14.000 I just began... Oh, so before I do that, you know, I want to first say thank you to our sponsors over at the U.S.
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00:35:33.000 What happens next?
00:35:35.000 Nobody ever thinks about what happens after you shoot the guy, right?
00:35:37.000 You're the hero of the movie.
00:35:38.000 Except for when the police come and arrest you, and then they ask a bunch of questions, and they hold you up in the legal system for three years, and it costs you tens of thousands of dollars to defend yourself.
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00:36:04.000 They tell you when to pull the trigger and they also help you after you've pulled the trigger.
00:36:07.000 They are also working on getting more guns into the hands of law-abiding Americans.
00:36:10.000 So they still have their July 4th promotion running.
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00:36:23.000 Again, it's DefendMyFamilyNow.com.
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00:36:31.000 You actually have five shots at winning it when you go over and register at DefendMyFamilyNow.com.
00:36:35.000 You should anyway, just to get the USCCA services.
00:36:39.000 I mean, for the shot at nearly $2,000 worth of guns and ammo, that seems like a pretty good deal.
00:36:43.000 Go over there and register right now.
00:36:45.000 DefendMyFamilyNow.com for your free shot at that guns and ammo giveaway, because that is super cool.
00:36:52.000 Okay, time for some things I like.
00:36:54.000 So...
00:36:55.000 There's a book called Dreamland by Sam Quinones.
00:36:58.000 I heard about this on the commentary podcast.
00:37:01.000 I've just started.
00:37:01.000 It is really good.
00:37:03.000 I think it won the Pulitzer.
00:37:05.000 It's all about the heroin epidemic, the opioid epidemic that you've heard so much about.
00:37:09.000 It traces the epidemic, where it came from, why it's affecting small towns in a different way than it's affecting big cities.
00:37:18.000 Addiction is a very different thing in many cases than, you know, typical like cocaine addiction or other hard drug addiction.
00:37:25.000 The reason for this is because most opioids are originally prescribed by a doctor, right?
00:37:30.000 You go into the doctor, you want a painkiller, they give you a hydrocodone, and next thing you know you're looking for an oxycontin, and the next thing you know you can't get that so you're looking at black tar heroin.
00:37:38.000 This happens a lot.
00:37:39.000 It happens a lot.
00:37:40.000 We are a country that feels that pain is something that we should be able to do away with,
00:37:44.000 And so we overprescribe when it comes to opioids.
00:37:47.000 Pharmaceutical companies have an interest in us overprescribing when it comes to opioids.
00:37:51.000 And then it is very difficult to get off of them.
00:37:53.000 I know this because my grandmother back in the 1970s actually experienced opioid addiction.
00:37:58.000 They put her on a painkiller.
00:37:59.000 She became addicted to it.
00:38:01.000 She, thank God, she went through cold turkey withdrawal, which was absolutely brutal.
00:38:04.000 My dad had to help guide her through it when he was like 13 years old, which is crazy.
00:38:07.000 But she was able to get off of it.
00:38:10.000 But opioid
00:38:11.000 The opioid epidemic is one that actually can be dealt with in ways that some of the other epidemics cannot be because sometimes you might be able to stop it at the source in terms of prescriptions.
00:38:22.000 Forget about heroin dealing and legalization of drugs.
00:38:26.000 The prescription of drugs is over-prescribed and doctors have to be very careful and you as a patient should be very careful before you start accepting prescription dosages of opioids because they are highly, highly addictive.
00:38:35.000 Okay, other things that I like.
00:38:37.000 So, for those who missed it, over at Evergreen State College
00:38:41.000 There was this insane story where a professor named Brett Weinstein refused to not go to work on the, quote, Week Without Whites, or Day Without Whites, and he was forced to flee the college after he refused to participate, right?
00:38:54.000 Okay, Weinstein is a real leftist, and he spoke in front of the Board of Trustees about what exactly happened to him.
00:39:02.000 Pretty incredible.
00:39:04.000 Do you know that the college descended into literal anarchy and that for days the campus was not under the control of the state.
00:39:11.000 It was under the control of protesters.
00:39:14.000 That there were assaults, there were batteries, there was pressure not to report crimes to the police.
00:39:21.000 People were, by the legal definition, I believe, kidnapped and imprisoned.
00:39:24.000 That included faculty members and administrators.
00:39:27.000 Others were hunted on the campus.
00:39:30.000 That lawless bands roamed the campus unimpeded.
00:39:33.000 Police were physically and intentionally blocked by protesters.
00:39:37.000 Police were cruelly, systematically, and personally taunted.
00:39:41.000 They were humiliated and forced to stand down by the president.
00:39:45.000 Students that held different opinions were, by the protesters' own analysis, stalked, harassed, and doxed, meaning that their names, pictures, and addresses and phone numbers were distributed online.
00:39:55.000 Do you know that concessions made under intimidation and threat during the protest are now being enacted by the college?
00:40:02.000 That includes mandatory bias training for all faculty.
00:40:05.000 This has come about by an agreement between the faculty... I mean, good for this guy, but Weinstein, remember, is a leftist.
00:40:11.000 Okay, Weinstein is a hardcore leftist, and here he is testifying like a right-winger because the left is so insane.
00:40:16.000 This is why the hard left is eventually going to drive everybody into Trump's arms.
00:40:19.000 Okay, time for some things that I hate.
00:40:26.000 Okay, thing I hate, number one, when people who are not cool try to be cool.
00:40:30.000 So, one of the things that I appreciate about myself, because I'm awesome, is that I don't try to be cool.
00:40:34.000 Okay, I don't try to be cool because I am not cool.
00:40:36.000 I am super nerdy.
00:40:37.000 I am a giant dork.
00:40:38.000 Okay, the fact is, I know I am not cool, and therefore I do not try to be hip and with it and with the kids because that's stupid, because I think a lot of the things the kids do are stupid.
00:40:47.000 So, this apparently does not hold true for our congresspeople.
00:40:50.000 The Speaker of the House yesterday came out and said he loves emojis.
00:40:54.000 Is he a teenage girl?
00:40:56.000 No.
00:40:57.000 Just no.
00:40:59.000 Have you ever seen the shirt where it shows the evolution of man?
00:41:02.000 It's got the amoebas and it's got the monkeys and then it goes all the way up to man.
00:41:07.000 Well, I have a whole thing about the evolution of language that basically we went from grunting at each other to hieroglyphics to short phrases to full language
00:41:17.000 Now we are going back to short phrases through text messages and then back to hieroglyphics through emojis.
00:41:22.000 I have a deep and abiding hatred for overuse of emojis.
00:41:25.000 And yet here's Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House, talking about why he loves emojis.
00:41:33.000 We text and we talk.
00:41:35.000 Every night I call home and we talk.
00:41:38.000 Because they don't think of me as an emoji guy, I go crazy on emojis.
00:41:41.000 I mean, I do like seven or eight of these things.
00:41:43.000 I'll throw those out there.
00:41:45.000 And my kids and my wife, I am just not the emoji type person, so they think, so that's why I just, I overkill on the emojis.
00:41:54.000 And the happy stock guitar music is the part that really gets me.
00:41:57.000 And then it says, happy world emoji day.
00:41:59.000 No!
00:42:01.000 No!
00:42:02.000 Go do your stupid job, you stupid people, and stop it with the stupid emojis.
00:42:07.000 My goodness.
00:42:08.000 Okay, and other things that I hate.
00:42:09.000 Caitlyn Jenner, whose sole qualification for running for the Senate is apparently that Caitlyn Jenner is a dude who thinks that he is a lady and the rest of the world is going to humor him in this sad delusion, says that he should run for Senate in California.
00:42:21.000 Now listen, if he runs for Senate in California as a Republican, I will vote for him.
00:42:26.000 You know, he's still a dude, but I'll vote for him because he's not a Democrat.
00:42:30.000 Fine.
00:42:30.000 I mean, this state is crazy enough.
00:42:32.000 I mean, Arnold Schwarzenegger was our freaking governor, and now we have a corpse walking around as our governor.
00:42:36.000 Jerry Brown, an actual living corpse, is walking around as the governor.
00:42:41.000 Oh, I don't know where I am.
00:42:43.000 I've been governor since, like, 1972.
00:42:44.000 But... Oh, my Arnold!
00:42:50.000 Governor of California.
00:42:50.000 So if Caitlyn Jenner runs for Senate, I don't know, I'll vote for him in a primary, but in a general election, if forced to do so, I will do so.
00:42:58.000 Here's Caitlyn Jenner saying that he will run for the Senate because why the hell not?
00:43:02.000 Everyone should.
00:43:03.000 We got Kid Rock in Michigan and Caitlyn Jenner in California.
00:43:08.000 Arkham Asylum is now the United States Senate.
00:43:10.000 Al Franken is an actual senator from Minnesota.
00:43:13.000 And President Trump is the president.
00:43:15.000 I don't know what's going on.
00:43:16.000 Again, we entered the alternative timeline where Biff was able to actually bet on 1955 World Series baseball games.
00:43:24.000 And now he married Marty's mother.
00:43:26.000 Okay, here is Caitlyn Jenner.
00:43:29.000 Caitlin, there's a rumor.
00:43:31.000 There's a rumor that you want to run for the United States Senate in California.
00:43:37.000 Did you hear that rumor, John?
00:43:39.000 I heard it.
00:43:40.000 No way.
00:43:41.000 How did it get all the way back to you?
00:43:43.000 All the way from California to New York.
00:43:45.000 All the way from California.
00:43:49.000 I have considered it.
00:43:51.000 I like the political side of it.
00:43:53.000 If there's one thing, I work very closely with a group called the American Unity Fund, that their sole purpose, their mission statement is to get the Republican Party to do a better job when it comes to all LGBT issues.
00:44:06.000 That's kind of my issue.
00:44:07.000 Obviously, I'm more on the T's portion of the LGBT, and I want people to understand that.
00:44:13.000 But the political side of it has always been very intriguing to me.
00:44:17.000 Over the next six months or so, I gotta find out where I can do a better job.
00:44:24.000 Can I do a better job from the outside, kind of working the perimeter of the political scene, being open to, you know, talk to anybody?
00:44:32.000 Or are you better off from the inside?
00:44:36.000 And we are in the process of determining that.
00:44:38.000 And yeah, but I would look for a senatorial run.
00:44:44.000 Um, no.
00:44:45.000 Okay, so just no.
00:44:46.000 Again, I understand that nobody has to have any qualifications these days, like being able to read a piece of legislation or, you know, have positions, and that fame is a sole qualifier, but this is not a door that I think is great that it's been opened.
00:44:58.000 All right, whatever.
00:45:00.000 All right, so.
00:45:01.000 Let's deconstruct a culture for one second.
00:45:03.000 Okay, so.
00:45:04.000 The news of the day is that, according to BuzzFeed reporter Jim DeRogatis, three sets of parents are claiming their daughters have been brainwashed and they're being held against their will in a cult by R&B star Robert R. Kelly.
00:45:17.000 Three former members of the singer's inner circle back up such accounts, reveal even more disturbing details of actions allegedly perpetrated by the singer, with a litany of sex-related criminal accusations launched against him, including child porn charges.
00:45:28.000 This is according to Amanda Prestigiacomo over
00:45:31.000 At Daily Wire.
00:45:43.000 The singer reportedly videotapes their sexual encounters, forces the girls to call him daddy, and wears only baggy attire to hide their figures, permits them to communicate via cell phone with only him, and routinely verbally and physically abuses the females, punishing them for ridiculous infractions such as laughing at male cab drivers' jokes.
00:45:58.000 So this story made the rounds, but it didn't turn into a front-page story.
00:46:02.000 Can you imagine if this had been a country star who had done this?
00:46:06.000 I have a feeling that there would be a lot more ire if it were, like, Toby Keith who had done this.
00:46:11.000 Because it would actually confirm a lot of the left media bias with regard to right-wing people, right?
00:46:16.000 That everybody who's actually sexist and brutal to women and keeping them in the back room and using them as sex— The Handmaid's Tale, which is what this sounds like, right?
00:46:22.000 The Handmaid's Tale wouldn't be—it has to be coming from the right.
00:46:26.000 But R. Kelly is a rapper.
00:46:27.000 Now what's hilarious about this is that if you actually listen to a lot of rap songs, which we've done in our Deconstructing the Culture segments before, the idea of treating women as garbage is not particularly rare in rap culture.
00:46:39.000 It's not a particularly respectful medium toward women and their autonomy.
00:46:44.000 So I'm not sure that we should be super shocked by anything R. Kelly is doing.
00:46:47.000 It's also not unique to rap culture, right?
00:46:50.000 In Hollywood, the casting couch has been a thing forever.
00:46:52.000 The idea that directors use their sexual leverage over willing starlets in order to get in bed with them and then sometimes abuse them, right?
00:47:00.000 I mean, that sort of thing has been going on in Hollywood for years.
00:47:03.000 Two things worth noting here.
00:47:04.000 One is that left cultures, which is Hollywood and the rap culture, left cultures that
00:47:10.000 Supposedly are all for equality when it comes to their actual activity very often or not and number two
00:47:16.000 The quest for fame in our culture has become so egregious and so negative that people are putting themselves into dangerous situations that they wouldn't otherwise because they want fame.
00:47:26.000 Okay, fame is not all that it is cracked up to be because the fact is that even once you are famous, what you actually need is a place to be safe and away from the fame.
00:47:36.000 So, I think that it is sad that we as a culture have decided to value fame over genuine value as a human being.
00:47:45.000 That is happening everywhere from politics to pop culture, and I don't think it's going to change anytime soon.
00:47:50.000 Okay, so we will be back tomorrow, and when we do come back, we will have updates on Trumpcare.
00:47:55.000 Hopefully President Trump will have an alternative plan he wants to pursue, so that I can say nice things about him tomorrow.
00:48:00.000 That would be great.
00:48:01.000 I am Ben Shapiro.
00:48:02.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.