Ben Shapiro reacts to the first day of Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation hearing, and explains why these hearings are a complete waste of time. He also explains why the Democratic Judiciary Committee hearings are nothing more than a grandstand, and why we should be worried about the future of the Supreme Court. Ben Shapiro is a Fox News contributor and host of the podcast "The Ben Shapiro Show" and is a frequent contributor on Fox News Channel's "The Five". He is also a regular contributor on CNN and the New York Times, and is the author of the book "Inside the Swamp: Inside the Swamp" and the host of "The Rachel Maddow Show" on the network's new podcast, "Rachel Maddow's New York Magazine" and "The Daily Show." He's also on the Tonight Show with Trevor Noah and hosts Alex Blumberg and Jemele Hill, and he's a frequent guest on CNN's "Hollywood Reporter" and CNN's Hard Knocks. He also writes for The Weekly Standard and The Daily Wire, and hosts the podcast The View from the Ground Zero podcast. His new book, "Roe v. Roe v. Wade: The Case Against Roe V. Wade," is out now and is available for pre-order on Amazon Prime Video, wherever you get your hard copy copy of Roe v Wade. The Supreme Court Nominee is available. Subscribe to his new novel, Roe V Wade: How to Think Like Roe V Roe v Roe, by clicking here. Learn more about him on his new Netflix show, Roe Vs. Wade, Roe v V Wade, and Roe Vree v Wade: Who's the Real Deal? on Amazon's Roe V V Wade? and much more! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: Rate, review, review and subscribe on iTunes and review on Podcharts: Rate/subscribe to his podcast on Podcoin, Podcoin's newest podcast, Rate/Reviews, and subscribe to his other podcast, The FiveThirtyEight's FiveThirtyThirtyEight is a new podcast on all of the best vices on the highest-rated shows on the internet, including The Sixteenth episode of Roe Vreeses and The Sixets on the Fourteenth episode on the road? Subscribe and more! Subscribe on Podrates on the podrates is a must-listens everywhere else on the web? and so on and so much more. Thanks for listening to his work on this episode of The Ben Shapiro Podcasts!
00:00:00.000Democrats lose their mind about Brett Kavanaugh's nomination, Bob Woodward's book launches, and Paul Krugman says Republicans are here to steal your health care.
00:00:15.000Today, this very Tumblr will be filled endlessly with the tears of all of the people at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
00:00:22.000It is fully insane over there where all the women have been reduced to the status of menial slaves under President Pence, and Justice Kavanaugh has forced them all into the back alleys for their abortions.
00:00:33.000We'll talk about all of those things, but first,
00:00:35.000Let's talk about what you're going to do during this incipient disaster as Brett Kavanaugh, about to join the Supreme Court and reduce us all to penury, to living in our homes, having to eat from food storage.
00:00:46.000Well, what are you going to do when that happens?
00:00:48.000The answer is, you're going to need my Patriot Supply.
00:00:50.000Because the reality is that regardless of what the disaster is, whether it's Brett Kavanaugh being appointed to the Supreme Court,
00:00:55.000Or whether it's net neutrality, or whether it's actually just like an actual natural disaster where you can't leave your house or go to the grocery store.
00:01:00.000You're going to need something in your house to get you through those times.
00:01:04.000The answer cannot be to run to the grocery store in a lot of emergency situations because the shelves are already empty or the place is closed.
00:01:10.000This is why you need MyPatriotSupply for food storage so you'll be ready for earthquakes, hurricanes, long-term power outages, and more.
00:01:16.000Here's a great special that makes it simple.
00:01:18.000Each person in your household should have a two-week emergency food supply from MyPatriotSupply.
00:02:12.000And there's nothing they can do to stop it because Harry Reid, back in 2013, like an idiot, utilized the nuclear option in order to get through a bunch of judicial nominees by President Obama over the filibuster.
00:02:23.000So now it only requires 51 votes to put somebody on a federal court.
00:02:26.000Well, the Republicans have those 51 votes.
00:02:28.000They will be using them for Brett Kavanaugh.
00:02:30.000He will indeed sit on the nation's highest court.
00:02:32.000Now what's hilarious about all of this is the levels of panic to which the left
00:02:52.000This does not sound like a dude who is going to overturn Roe v. Wade.
00:02:55.000This was always my criticism of Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
00:02:58.000I didn't think that he was the most right-leaning person that the Republicans could have picked, the most originalist person Republicans could have picked.
00:03:05.000I think he'll be a pretty good justice.
00:03:06.000I don't think that he's going to be Thomas or Scalia.
00:03:09.000I'm not sure that he's a solid vote to overrule Roe v. Wade.
00:03:12.000But it doesn't matter what he says at this point, because the Democrats have basically already made up their mind, and judicial hearings are useless.
00:03:18.000Because we now have something called the Ginsburg Rule, which has been in place for some 30 years.
00:03:24.000Basically, you can't expect a judge to answer questions about how they will decide an upcoming case, or even what they really think of past precedent.
00:03:32.000Instead, they just say it's precedent, which is a legal description of the state of the law.
00:04:20.000And what Chairman Leahy did during Justice Kagan's, this is another example.
00:04:50.000So here's the rule I think they should apply.
00:04:56.000I think the rule they should apply here is that if you invited anybody in who disrupts the hearing, you don't get to invite anybody in anymore.
00:05:02.000If you are one of the Democratic senators and you allowed Code Pink to come in, you allowed Linda Sarsour to come in, then she got herself arrested because she's adult,
00:05:09.000Then you don't get to invite anybody anymore because that's not what these hearings are for.
00:05:12.000If you want to protest, there's plenty of space outside for you to protest.
00:05:16.000Your protest will be useless because this is a democratic process, not a protesting and shouting process.
00:05:20.000But screaming and whining are the way that the Democrats are dealing with the fact that they are not going to be able to get Merrick Garland on the court to replace a Republican appointee like Justice Kennedy.
00:05:29.000Here is video of Linda Sarsour getting arrested yesterday.
00:06:34.000All of this should also remind you, it should also remind you that when we get all of this nonsense from the left and from some members of the right about civility in our politics, Trump being the beginning and end of civility in our politics, he's the one who ruined civility.
00:06:51.000This is what bugged me about the McCain funeral, where he had George W. Bush and Barack Obama standing up there, kind of creating this mythologized past where everybody sort of got along.
00:07:01.000And I was talking with a friend this morning about what bothered me about that idea so much.
00:07:05.000And what bothered me about the idea is that there are those of us who actually believe that politics matter.
00:07:09.000And all these politicians prey on us because what they do is they say, you're right, politics do matter.
00:07:14.000And so you got Joe Biden on the left saying, we'll put you all back in chains and folks on the right saying, this will be the end of the country unless we do something.
00:07:20.000It's apocalyptic rhetoric from people on both sides of the aisle because they're saying, yes, you are right.
00:07:37.000So they've been basically doing this WWE routine for a very long time, where you have every major politician from both parties speaking like WWE wrestlers, but then telling people that they ought to take it seriously, that it's not fake, that in reality these issues actually matter.
00:07:51.000And then when the people take those issues seriously, and then when they elect a guy who is not a politician who takes the thing seriously, like Trump actually takes the personal conflict seriously, regardless of what you think of the guy,
00:08:19.000And Robert De Niro is a fan of the baseball team and he is so enamored with his team's chances of making the World Series that he goes and he kidnaps the opposing star on the other baseball team.
00:08:29.000And everybody in the world is like, why would you possibly do that?
00:08:32.000And he's like, well, because I want my team to win.
00:08:34.000Because he took the conflict too seriously.
00:08:37.000I feel like that's sort of what we've done with our politics a little bit, which is we now root for the opposing teams, the difference being their actual consequences to which team wins or loses.
00:08:46.000And so you got the left claiming that the end of the world is nigh, and the right claiming the end of the world is nigh, and then the minute that somebody like Trump comes along and says, okay, fine, if the end of the world is nigh, let's treat this like the brawl that it is, then all of a sudden people on both sides of the aisle, they go, whoa, wait a, wait up a second, wait up a second, we didn't really mean that stuff.
00:09:01.000And it's like, well, if you didn't mean it, then why did you say it?
00:09:04.000I agree the end of the world is not nigh.
00:09:06.000I agree that we're not at the end of the country.
00:09:08.000I agree we're not on the verge of civil war.
00:09:09.000I think there are serious divisions about the future of the country.
00:09:13.000But I think that most Americans are not engaged in those serious divisions.
00:09:16.000I think that's an intellectual superstructure that really cares deeply about those divisions.
00:09:20.000I think most Americans are just going about their daily business, making basic assumptions about American life that reflect the essential founding values of the country.
00:09:30.000But I think there is this intellectual upper class where they have these battles and they know that it's Kabuki theater, and then in the back room they get a drink together, but they don't let anyone else in on the secret that it's Kabuki theater.
00:09:41.000In reality, the actual Kabuki theater should be them getting along and they should be bashing each other.
00:09:45.000Again, I find all of this really tiresome.
00:09:48.000So what politics really does look like in the country, the way people feel right now is like Linda Sarsour.
00:09:53.000The way people feel in the country is like Donald Trump.
00:10:00.000When it comes to the consequences, the wrestling actually is real.
00:10:03.000And the fact that our politicians didn't take it as real for so long, and preyed upon that impression to create enthusiasm for their mission, while all the time knowing that they were just exaggerating the case, that's what's created.
00:10:16.000Everybody bought into the wrestling is real meme, and now the wrestling is real.
00:10:20.000Once everybody believes the wrestling is real, then they're gonna start brawling, and that's basically where we are right now.
00:10:26.000Down to the point where everyone has now become delusional.
00:10:29.000The left is fully delusional about these Kavanaugh hearings.
00:10:31.000And when I say delusional, there were two stories that started making the rounds yesterday, both of which are completely, completely insane.
00:10:37.000So story number one is there is a woman named Zina Bash.
00:10:41.000Zina Bash is a half Mexican, half Jewish,
00:10:48.000And Zina Bash was sitting behind Brett Kavanaugh during these hearings.
00:10:52.000And the left began claiming that she was making a white power symbol behind Brett Kavanaugh.
00:10:57.000I kid you not, this thing within a couple of hours, this video of Zina Bash, who is legitimately just putting her hand on her arm.
00:11:05.000They're saying she's making a covert white power symbol for no reason!
00:11:08.000Just because that's her sitting racism or something.
00:11:10.000They've still not explained why exactly, even if she were a white supremacist, which she is not, she's again a half-Mexican, half-Jewish person.
00:11:17.000Her paternal grandparents survived the Holocaust.
00:11:21.000Why exactly she would be making a white power symbol behind Brett Kavanaugh is beyond me.
00:11:26.000But they claim that she was legitimately making a white power symbol behind Brett Kavanaugh.
00:11:30.000And there were a thousand tweets about this.
00:11:32.000The left began tweeting about this incessantly.
00:11:34.000Major blue checkmark figures on the left began tweeting about all of this.
00:12:16.000Has the simple thumb and forefinger okay hand gesture become a common white supremacist hand signal?
00:12:20.000Not quite, but it has become a popular gesture used by people across several segments of the right and far right, including some actual white supremacists who generally use it to trigger reactions or what they would describe as trolling the libs.
00:12:31.000This is thanks to a 2017 hoax campaign started by members of the notorious website 4chan that has since taken on a life of its own.
00:12:38.000I'm going to explain a little bit more about this in just one second.
00:12:41.000But first, let's talk about your use of stamps.
00:12:46.000That you love the post office, but you probably don't want to go down to the post office, spend the time in the car, the whole deal.
00:12:51.000Instead, why don't you just do all of your postage from your desk?
00:12:54.000It's a lot easier, and stamps.com brings all the great services of the post office directly to your desk, 24-7, when it's convenient for you.
00:13:31.000Stamps.com is a great way to ensure that you are
00:13:33.000Saving all the money you need to save and you don't actually have to go out to the post office, just do it from your desk.
00:13:37.000Stamps.com, use promo code Shapiro for the special deal.
00:13:40.000So the ADL continues by saying, this is all thanks to a 27 hoax campaign started by members of the notorious website 4chan that has since taken on a life of its own.
00:13:50.000The 4chan site is an anonymous discussion board with an outsized cultural impact on the internet.
00:13:55.000It has been responsible for everything from the I can has cheeseburger cat meme to the concept of Rickrolling.
00:14:00.000There's little that 4channers like as much as a hoax, and in recent months, they've served up a number of fakeries with white supremacist themes to largely credulous online audiences.
00:14:10.000The OK hand gesture originated as one of these hoaxes in February 2017, when an anonymous 4channer announced Operation OKKK, telling other members, we must flood Twitter and other social media websites, claiming the OK hand sign is a symbol of white supremacy.
00:14:23.000The user even provided a helpful graphic showing how the letter's white power could be traced within an OK gesture.
00:14:29.000I believe the way that it works is you can see it here in the ACLU meme.
00:14:33.000Supposedly, it's like if you go like this, then this is a W for like white, and then I guess the power is like that thing.
00:14:50.000The Jews are so clever that they activated a half-Mexican, half-Jewish person to unleash a white power symbol to hit the media and get Brett Kavanaugh nominated?
00:18:01.000What you're going to see here is Judge Kavanaugh gets up, Gutenberg approaches him from behind, extends his hand, Kavanaugh turns to look at him and see what's going on, and then security grabs him.
00:18:10.000Okay, security is already on him, and Kavanaugh walks away.
00:18:15.000It's not that he stands there and then refuses to shake his hand.
00:18:18.000You can see, here comes security from behind to grab Kavanaugh.
00:18:20.000Now, I have been in positions, many positions, in crowded areas where people are ushering me out of a room and people want to shake my hand.
00:18:27.000This happens to me at university campuses all the time.
00:18:30.000And if somebody extends their hand and security walks up to them, I'm not going to walk over there.
00:18:33.000I assume that security is doing that for a reason.
00:18:35.000Do you really think that Brett Kavanaugh is really like
00:18:45.000Do you really think that that's credible in any way?
00:18:47.000Again, you can see the video from behind as security runs up to grab Gutenberg because he's running up at a break to try and shake Kavanaugh's hand.
00:18:57.000Gutenberg said in advance that he was attempting to sink Kavanaugh's nomination and then suddenly he got exactly what he wants when Kavanaugh supposedly stiffs him.
00:19:23.000So, Ben Sasse apparently now has to explain to Democrats how these judicial hearings are supposed to work.
00:19:29.000And here is Ben Sasse, Senator from Nebraska, giving a bit of an education to folks on how these hearings are supposed to work and how dumb these hearings have become.
00:19:36.000I want to make just four brief points.
00:19:38.000Number one, in our system, the legislative branch is supposed to be the center of our politics.
00:19:46.000Third consequence is that this transfer of power means the people yearn for a place where politics can actually be done.
00:19:53.000And when we don't do a lot of big actual political debating here, we transfer it to the Supreme Court.
00:19:58.000And fourth and finally, we badly need to restore the proper duties and the balance of power from our constitutional system.
00:20:06.000Okay, and he's right about all these things, but we're not going to do any of that stuff.
00:20:09.000Instead, what we're going to do is shout at each other and pretend that Fred Guttenberg got stiffed by Brett Kavanaugh, and scream until we're arrested, and all the rest of this nonsense, because the apocalyptic rhetoric is the name of the game.
00:20:20.000It's what we are all supposed to focus in on.
00:20:22.000And then, as soon as anyone takes the apocalyptic rhetoric seriously, and says, you know what, I don't like you anymore, because we're not going to be friends, we're not going to pretend to be friends, because, hey, the country is at stake, then it's, well, don't you get the game?
00:20:36.000Either you can use the apocalyptic rhetoric and take this thing seriously, or you could actually use true rhetoric, and then maybe we could be a little bit civil to one another.
00:21:12.000What you're going to see is a dirty air filter because you haven't replaced it forever, which is why you need to head over to my friends over at Filterbuy.
00:21:59.000It's FilterBuy.com, FilterBuy.com and get on that auto schedule to save 5% and then you never have to think about your filters ever again.
00:22:06.000Meanwhile, while all of this is going on, the media are in a tizzy about President Trump, as always, because we now suffer from wild Trump derangement syndrome in the media.
00:22:13.000Bob Woodward has a new book, and his new book basically says that Trump is a senile, old, crazy person who doesn't know what he's doing.
00:22:19.000Which is not much of a claim, since I think being hired a left thinks that, and I think large swaths of the right have basically priced in all of the typical Trump craziness into whatever it is that President Trump does.
00:22:32.000Nonetheless, we're going to hear all these stories about the chaos that is President Trump.
00:22:36.000I think the funniest part of this is that Bob Woodward said Trump is denying any of this is true.
00:22:40.000Members of his administration are denying any of this is true.
00:22:43.000General James Mad Dog Mattis says that Woodward's reporting on him is fiction and quote, a product of someone's rich imagination because Woodward wrote that Mattis once described Trump as having the understanding of a fifth or sixth grader.
00:22:55.000When it comes to the Korean Peninsula, Mattis responded by saying the contemptuous words about the president attributed to me in Woodward's book were never uttered by me or in my presence.
00:23:04.000While I generally enjoy reading fiction, this is uniquely Washington brand of literature and his anonymous sources do not lend credibility.
00:23:20.000According to the book, Mattis said after a meeting at which Trump questioned the U.S.
00:23:24.000government spending money on the Korean Peninsula, Mattis supposedly said that he was exasperated and alarmed, and he told close associates the president acted like he had the understanding of a fifth or sixth grader.
00:23:34.000Apparently, the defense chief said in his statement, responsible policymaking in the real world is inherently messing, messy.
00:23:39.000Though it is also essential that we challenge every assumption to find the best option.
00:23:43.000He says, So Mattis already throwing shade at Bob Woodward's book.
00:23:45.000But that's not stopping the press from having a field day with all of this.
00:24:00.000President Trump had a conversation with Bob Woodward.
00:24:02.000Woodward apparently called up Trump and wanted to know why Trump wouldn't be interviewed for the book.
00:24:07.000He basically says, you know, you didn't go through the proper channels.
00:24:10.000Here's Trump trying to pretend that he hadn't heard about Woodward's book and then saying that he did hear about Woodward's book, but he didn't want to talk to him.
00:24:17.000The reality is Trump doesn't have to talk to Bob Woodward.
00:24:20.000There's nothing there that suggests that Trump has to, for any reason, talk to Bob Woodward.
00:24:24.000It's just another book that smacks the president.
00:24:57.000So basically, there's Trump basically saying, I was mentioned to a lot of people that I should talk to you, I've decided not to, or it's somebody else's fault.
00:25:03.000Woodward released the tapes basically to show that his research is true and that he has tapes of a lot of these people.
00:25:08.000Regardless, I'm not seeing anything in the book that is anything different from what people already believe about President Trump.
00:25:13.000So for example, the Washington Post reports, a central theme of the book is the stealthy machinations used by those in Trump's inner sanctum to try to control his impulses and prevent disasters, both for the president personally and for the nation who's elected to lead.
00:25:25.000Woodward describes an administrative coup d'etat and a nervous breakdown of the executive branch, with senior aides conspiring to pluck official papers from the president's desk so he couldn't see or sign them.
00:25:34.000Again and again, Woodward recounts at length how Trump's national security team was shaken by his lack of curiosity and knowledge about world affairs and his contempt for the mainstream perspectives of military and intelligence leaders.
00:25:46.000In one particular situation, supposedly Gary Cohn actually took a document off of Trump's desk to prevent him from signing it, which is actually somewhat hilarious.
00:25:55.000So there's all these stories about how his advisers are basically attempting to rein President Trump in.
00:26:04.000I'm not going to sit here and pretend it's not believable that his advisors are all trying to rein him in and prevent him from doing dumb things.
00:26:11.000And Woodward reports on some of these overdramatic moments of escalation when Steve Bannon, for example, started screaming at Ivanka Trump, calling her a GD staffer, and saying, you walk around this place, act like you're in charge.
00:26:26.000And Reince Priebus saying, when you put a snake and a rat and a falcon and a rabbit and a shark and a seal in a zoo without walls, things start getting nasty and bloody.
00:26:33.000I mean, all this stuff, like, frankly, who cares?
00:26:36.000I gotta be honest with you, who cares?
00:26:38.000Like, did you not know this was going on?
00:26:41.000Did you not really believe this was going on?
00:26:42.000Do you really believe that this place functions like a well-oiled machine?
00:26:46.000Of course it doesn't function like a well-oiled machine.
00:26:48.000It functions like the set of The Apprentice, except without all of the good editorial cuts.
00:26:52.000It functions like what got left on the cutting room at The Apprentice.
00:27:14.000So here is some of the stuff that Woodward reports.
00:27:16.000Trump to James Clapper, then Director of National Intelligence, who briefed him at Trump Tower during the transition on the intelligence community's findings that Putin had interfered in the election, quote,
00:27:57.000Trump said to Tom Bossert, the president's advisor for Homeland Security, Cybersecurity, and Counterterrorism, who asked Trump if he had a minute, quote, I want to watch The Masters.
00:28:05.000You and your cyber are going to get me into war with all your cyber bleep.
00:28:11.000All right, I mean, like, again, baked into the cake, man.
00:28:17.000Trump was given a Reader's Digest version of the Hezbollah briefing.
00:28:19.000And we knew, this has been reported for years, that Trump basically takes his security briefings in bite-sized chunks.
00:28:25.000And apparently, Trump was editing an upcoming speech with Rob Porter, scribbling his thoughts in neat, clean penmanship the president wrote, trade is bad.
00:28:39.000Apparently the book's last paragraph is, in the man in his presidency, Trump lawyer John Dowd had seen the tragic flaw in the political back and forth, the evasions, the denials, the tweeting, the obscuring, crying fake news, the indignation.
00:28:49.000Trump had one overriding problem that Dowd knew but could not bring himself to say to the president, you're an effing liar.
00:29:03.000If you didn't know all this stuff about President Trump before, it's because you haven't been watching or because you're willfully ignorant.
00:29:53.000There's only one way in which any of this is a big deal and that's the feeling of constant chaos emanating from the White House.
00:29:59.000And it leads me to believe that Trump should basically fire half of the people who are in the executive branch right now
00:30:04.000Just to prevent them from leaking, so that there is some sort of semblance of normalcy, at least emanating from the halls of the White House.
00:30:11.000So, we'll talk a little bit more about that, plus a bad poll for Republicans, a few bad polls for congressional Republicans, and a bad poll for Republicans about young Americans.
00:30:18.000But first, let's talk about your Second Amendment rights.
00:30:21.000What if I told you that when you walk to your mailbox today, you're going to find $1,500 you've been needing to finally buy the gun of your dreams to protect your family and your freedom?
00:30:28.000You could pick your favorite 1911, a new AR-15, or a new hunting rifle.
00:30:31.000Well, that dream is going to come true for 10 of my listeners, thanks to my good friends over at the USCCA.
00:30:38.000To responsible gun owners like you and me, simply go to DefendYourFamilyNow.com right now to instantly lock in your 10 free chances to win.
00:31:07.000The USCCA does great work educating people on gun use.
00:31:11.000They are there to provide legal defense services for you if, God forbid, you actually have to fire your gun at somebody because they're in your house trying to rob you or something.
00:31:29.000We'll talk about that in just one second.
00:31:31.000First, go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.
00:31:33.000For $19.99 a month, $9.99 a month, you get the rest of this show live, the rest of Andrew Klavan's show live, the rest of Michael Knoll's show live.
00:31:40.000And for $99 a year, you also get this, the very greatest in beverage vessels.
00:33:11.000Why there are three big polls that have recently come out that are bad for the president, in which he's in the 30s in approval rating for the first time in a long time.
00:33:17.000And the reason is because all of the good news about the economy, all of the good news about the country have been obscured by the feeling of total chaos.
00:33:23.000And this is where the media really do play a role and where the president playing into the teeth of the media is really not useful.
00:33:29.000It's where if the president went silent and deprived them of oxygen, he'd be much better off.
00:33:32.000So today, for example, the president decides that it'd be wise to tweet out about all of the media members who are targeting him.
00:33:40.000to supposed libel on the part of the media.
00:33:43.000He tweeted out, let's see, here it is.
00:33:47.000Isn't it a shame, isn't it a shame, he's refining Bob Woodward, that someone can write an article or book, totally make up stories, and form a picture of a person that is literally the exact opposite of the fact, and get away with it without retribution or cost.
00:33:59.000Don't know why Washington politicians don't change libel laws.
00:34:23.000It gives a feeling that things are in uproar, when really, they are not.
00:34:27.000And Trump says, almost everyone agrees that my administration has done more and less than two years than any other administration in the history of our country.
00:34:35.000I'm tough as hell on people, and if I weren't, nothing would get done.
00:34:38.000Also, I question everybody and everything, which is why I got elected.
00:38:19.000The reason is because we talk about, we try to talk about these eternal values, the things that actually matter.
00:38:25.000And when you fill all the space with chatter all the time, all you're doing is allowing the left to subsume those greater eternal values under a narrative of chaos.
00:38:34.000That's where the president should really, really cut it out.
00:38:37.000Now, speaking of stupid stories of the day, I gotta tell you this story from the UK Sun.
00:38:59.000Sophia Reese, 47, said she was humiliated and embarrassed after telephone banking staff said she failed security checks because she didn't, quote, speak like a lady.
00:39:07.000Things went from bad to worse the next day when she went to pay for items in Tesco and discovered that Santander had frozen her account.
00:39:12.000Now she is fighting to ensure that other transgender people are not treated in the same way.
00:39:17.000Sophia, a customer service advisor living in Nottingham, went into her local Santander branch to confront staff after the humiliating telephone ordeal.
00:39:25.000She said the embarrassment and humiliation I felt was unbelievable.
00:39:29.000They said my voice did not match my profile because it sounded like a man on the phone and not a woman.
00:39:39.000I am outgoing, but to feel that way when all I asked for was my money to be transferred, I feel mistreated.
00:39:44.000Sophia informed Santander last November she would no longer be named Sergio on the account, but despite changing her registered name and telling phone banking staff she was a transgender woman, they still treated her with suspicion.
00:39:54.000Well, right, because this is what customer service is trained to do.
00:39:59.000There's literally an entire identity theft ad campaign by Citibank that is on television, on national television, in which you see two old ladies sitting there speaking with the voice of Southern men because the idea is that Southern men have stolen their credit card.
00:40:12.000If I were a customer service representative and somebody called in and said, Hey, this is Sophia.
00:41:05.000Why so serious to quote a famous clown is a question being asked about comedy more and more frequently by its consumers and by comedians themselves to the point where some are questioning if it can even be called comedy.
00:41:15.000Nanette is more a TED Talk than a stand-up special, was a common refrain this summer.
00:41:18.000Is Drew Michael even a stand-up special?
00:41:20.000Was a question I was asked about the audience-free HBO tour.
00:41:23.000To take it to scripted TV, I am frequently reminded of a joke from Difficult People.
00:41:27.000When did comedies become 30-minute dramas?
00:41:29.000Comedians and comedy writers are increasingly pushing the bounds of what it means for something to be a comedy in the most basic sense.
00:41:36.000Rewiring the relationship between comedies and jokes.
00:43:46.000If you like Seabiscuit, the book, which is much better than the movie, by the way, by Laura Hillebrand, this isn't quite as good as that book, but it is definitely an entertaining read and a moving read.
00:44:02.000The Boys in the Boat, Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold.
00:44:04.000It's a nice kind of reminder that America used to be kind of an awesome place.
00:44:07.000America is still an awesome place, but America at least used to be united by certain basic ideas of hard work and motivation and getting ahead.
00:44:16.000And now it seems like America's motivated mostly by us kicking each other in the ass, which is really irritating.
00:44:20.000Okay, time for a bunch of things that I hate.
00:45:21.000I feel like she was mistreated, particularly by the press, that claimed that she was something terrible and awful, when in fact she was just a young intern who was being put in a bad position by a man in power.
00:45:30.000But if we're going to pretend that Monica Lewinsky gets to act offended by people asking questions about the only thing that has ever been politically relevant about her career,
00:46:25.000If you really believe that, if you really believe that democracy itself is at stake, that if Democrats don't win back Congress in 2018, democracy is over, you're out of your damn mind.
00:47:42.000If Trump fires Jeff Sessions and Republicans don't do anything, and then the next Attorney General fires Robert Mueller, do you think Trump's going to win re-election in 2020?
00:47:50.000You think there won't be any reaction to that?
00:47:51.000How do you think Democrats are gonna do in 2020 if Trump goes forward with that stuff?
00:48:01.000He says that, again, the Republican program on healthcare is get sick, go bankrupt, and die.
00:48:05.000So if you disagree with him and his ridiculous plans on healthcare, if you think that the ACA needs to be wildly dismembered because it is a bad bill, if you think that there are better ways to solve for market-oriented solutions in healthcare, then perhaps what you really ought to do
00:48:22.000What you really mean, according to Paul Krugman, is that you want everybody to die.
00:48:29.000The reason why people say things like why you got Trump is because people want to see Trump as a cause.
00:48:33.000This is why this phrase really crops up, like on a deep level.
00:48:36.000Everybody on the left doesn't like the phrase why you got Trump because it implies that Trump is a symptom rather than a cause of our civic collapse.
00:48:45.000Trump is just the capstone on a couple of decades worth of really bad politics, probably at least four decades worth, going back to the excesses of the 1970s and 1960s in terms of the growth of government.
00:48:56.000A lot of good things happened in the 1960s on civil rights and women's rights.
00:48:59.000Not a lot of good things happened in any other area of American life in the 1960s.
00:49:03.000The 1960s radicalized our politics in tremendously damaging ways for a variety of reasons.
00:49:09.000The idea that Trump is the be-all end-all, though, is what the left is banked on, and this is why they can't stand why you got Trump.
00:49:31.000And in it, he discusses why states should not be able to, for example, print their own currencies.
00:49:35.000He suggests that this is going to lead to an inflation race, states racking up debt and then being able to inflate their way out of it, as opposed to states racking up debts and then having to tax their way out of it.
00:49:44.000This is basically correct, although I think there is a case to be made that separate currencies among the states might not be the world's worst thing, because then we would actually get to see the fiscal effect of being fiscally irresponsible, like we see in California, as opposed to simply kicking the can down the road and assuming that the federal government is going to pick up the slack
00:50:01.000dollar is going to support all of that spending.
00:50:04.000Madison also writes about the Necessary and Proper Clause.
00:50:06.000This is the clause of the Constitution that says that the federal government has all powers necessary and proper to the fulfillment of its specific duties under the Constitution of the United States.
00:50:16.000The case Madison makes is that the Necessary and Proper Clause is enough of a restriction on the federal government that really we shouldn't worry about the growth of the federal government.
00:50:25.000And Madison would have been right if all of our constitutional officers had done their job.
00:50:29.000Instead, the Necessary and Proper Clause was expanded to include all sorts of means that were not, in fact, necessary and proper.
00:50:55.000In the first instance, the success of the usurpation, meaning if the government takes power, will depend on the executive and judiciary departments, which are to expound and give effect to the legislative act.
00:51:05.000And in the last resort, a remedy must be obtained from the people who can, by the election of more faithful representatives, annul the act of the usurpers.
00:51:11.000In the end, it's going to be up to the people to protect the Constitution.
00:51:44.000Well, it's time for the American people to wake up and maybe take some blame for the fact that our politics is failing.
00:51:48.000Finally, Madison in Federalist 44 discusses the Supremacy Clause.
00:51:52.000He says that we have to have a federal government that is supreme to the state government, otherwise the state governments are going to be supreme over the federal government and the whole thing won't work.
00:52:01.000This obviously is fundamentally correct.
00:52:03.000Okay, so we'll be back here tomorrow with all the latest updates from the Brett Kavanaugh hearings and everything else.