The Ben Shapiro Show - Wait, Trump Just Said WHAT? | Ep. 486

00:00:00.000 Lots of stuff coming out of President Trump's face.

00:00:02.000 Yeah, lots of stuff.

00:00:04.000 And most of it isn't very good.

00:00:05.000 Plus, some staffing chaos over at the White House.

00:00:07.000 We'll talk about all of these things and more.

00:00:10.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:10.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:16.000 So if you sense some ennui in me, if you sense a little bit of tiredness, that's because I was up at 2 o'clock in the morning Pacific Time so I could fly back and do the show.

00:00:24.000 But never fear!

00:00:25.000 We shall soldier through!

00:00:27.000 Because, I mean, that's just the kind of people we are.

00:00:29.000 Through rain, through sleet, through snow, through hail, we must not let The Shapiro Show fail.

00:00:33.000 So we will do all of the coverage of the news in just a second, and many a piece of news there be.

00:00:39.000 So we'll get to all of those things first.

00:00:41.000 I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Skillshare.

00:00:45.000 Yeah, you are trying to make a living for yourself.

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00:01:03.000 I don't think so.

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00:01:40.000 We're good to go!

00:02:07.000 Yesterday, the president of the United States decided that he was going to hold another one of these open meetings with Democrats and Republicans in front of the cameras.

00:02:14.000 Now, usually in front of the cameras, the president tries to please members of both parties.

00:02:18.000 The president, above all, is a performer, right?

00:02:20.000 He's a guy who's on reality TV.

00:02:21.000 He's been on the cover of every magazine.

00:02:23.000 He's been performing.

00:02:24.000 He's been performing every single, you know, all the time for years on end.

00:02:29.000 And that performance does not stop just because he's the president of the United States.

00:02:33.000 When a camera is on, when the red light is on, he's performing.

00:02:35.000 And what that usually means is that he's trying to cater to the people in the room.

00:02:38.000 So when he's performing at CPAC and the red lights are on there, he's saying what CPAC wants to hear.

00:02:42.000 And when he's in front of the NRA, then he is saying what the NRA wants to hear.

00:02:46.000 And when he is in front of a bunch of Democrats and Republicans, he's saying what he thinks a lot of the Democrats want to hear.

00:02:51.000 And that's basically how it went yesterday.

00:02:53.000 Now, we're going to analyze this on two levels.

00:02:54.000 One is, did he mean any of this?

00:02:57.000 Is it real?

00:02:57.000 And two is, what did he just say?

00:03:00.000 Because we sort of always have to separate out these two things.

00:03:02.000 What he said and is it important?

00:03:04.000 These are two separate questions because the president says a lot of stuff. 0.99

00:03:07.000 A lot of crap comes out of that face. 0.99

00:03:08.000 So, the question is, 0.99

00:03:10.000 Was the stuff that he said good, or was it bad?

00:03:12.000 And two, was it important?

00:03:13.000 We'll answer the second question first.

00:03:15.000 I don't think the stuff that he said was important.

00:03:16.000 He's going to have to get legislation through Congress.

00:03:19.000 Republicans run Congress.

00:03:20.000 They're not going to do any of the things that he wants them to do here because they don't have the votes for it.

00:03:24.000 The reason I say this is because the president did exactly the same thing with DACA.

00:03:27.000 You recall that he had a meeting with a bunch of Democrats, and at that meeting on DACA, he specifically said that he would be fine with passing a clean DACA bill.

00:03:34.000 We mocked him up and down for it. 0.94

00:03:36.000 It was ridiculous. 0.67

00:03:36.000 He said that he was fine with a clean amnesty bill and no border security measures. 0.67

00:03:40.000 And Kevin McCarthy, the House Majority Leader, had jumped in and said, Mr. President, you mean that you want border security?

00:03:47.000 And Trump said, yeah, that's what I mean.

00:03:47.000 I mean, I want a clean bill with border security.

00:03:50.000 Which is not originally what he said.

00:03:52.000 Now, of course, all of his overtures to Democrats in that meeting meant nothing.

00:03:55.000 The same thing is probably happening here on guns, but it is important to note, the president only became an advocate of gun rights relatively recently.

00:04:01.000 Up till 2012, the president was a gun control advocate.

00:04:04.000 The president was not a big fan of guns.

00:04:05.000 And so, when it goes back to the gut level for President Trump, when he goes back to his gut on this issue, there's certain issues where the president's gut is very much in line with sort of conservative policy.

00:04:15.000 Guns are not one of those issues.

00:04:16.000 On guns, this is a guy whose gut is from New York, and New Yorkers, people from New York City, they're not particularly big into the Second Amendment rights of all of it.

00:04:24.000 So, the president has this meeting yesterday and he says a bunch of things that are just laughably awful.

00:04:30.000 So, he starts off in a conversation with Pat Toomey.

00:04:33.000 So, Pat Toomey.

00:04:35.000 We're good to go.

00:04:53.000 And that piece of legislation would have forced federal background checks for any sale of any weapon in the United States except between family members or close friends.

00:05:01.000 So if I wanted to sell a gun to somebody in the office with whom I was not friendly, then I would have to go to a federally licensed firearms dealer.

00:05:08.000 Now the only way to enforce that, the problem with this policy, is the only way to enforce that law is that you actually have to have a full gun registry.

00:05:14.000 Because in order for the government to keep track of how I sold my gun to somebody, they have to know that I owned the gun in the first place.

00:05:19.000 A federally licensed firearms dealer keeps records with the federal government.

00:05:22.000 They know how many guns are in that gun shop, and so when that firearms dealer is requested for records by the NRA—rather, by the ATF, then the ATF knows where the guns were, how they were transferred, and all the rest of it.

00:05:35.000 That would have set up a gun registry in the United States.

00:05:37.000 Gun registries are a really troubling concept.

00:05:39.000 You really don't want the government knowing who has a gun and where, because it's none of the government's business.

00:05:44.000 There are two purposes to the Second Amendment.

00:05:45.000 One is self-defense, in which case you don't really care about the government knowing you have a gun.

00:05:49.000 And the second is being free of government tyranny.

00:05:52.000 And in that case, you really don't want the government to know who has how many guns and where.

00:05:57.000 And obviously, there's a certain amount of knowledge the government has with regard to federally licensed firearms dealers, but having a full gun registry is not quite the same thing as all that.

00:06:06.000 The government would have to come into your house and check every so often.

00:06:09.000 The government would have to figure out whether you were telling the truth.

00:06:11.000 The government could theoretically charge you with perjury for lying on federal forms if you did not fill out the forms properly in these hand-to-hand transfers.

00:06:19.000 In any case, the Manchin-Toomey bill went down to defeat.

00:06:21.000 It got 54 votes in the Senate.

00:06:22.000 It could not hit 60.

00:06:24.000 But Toomey, who proposed it, was bucking the NRA when he proposed that.

00:06:28.000 So Toomey, actually his NRA rating was demoted from an A to a C. And it was demoted from an A to a C. Not only was it demoted from an A to a C, in 2014 the NRA declined to endorse Toomey.

00:06:37.000 So they had endorsed Toomey in his last senatorial race, and then they un-endorsed Toomey in 2008.

00:06:43.000 So that's how seriously the NRA took all of this, and that's how much at odds Toomey was with the NRA. 0.99

00:06:48.000 Well, Trump, because he always wants to be the guy saying the brashest thing in the room, he starts ripping into Toomey for some reason and suggesting that Toomey is a tool of the NRA, which is just idiotic. 0.97

00:06:57.000 It doesn't make sense that I have to wait till I'm 21 to get a handgun, but I can get this weapon at 18. 0.97

00:07:02.000 I don't know.

00:07:03.000 So I was just curious as to what you did in your bill.

00:07:06.000 Look at all the staffers.

00:07:08.000 Even Manchin is going, he's not afraid of the NRA.

00:07:10.000 He and I partnered on the legislation.

00:07:12.000 What the hell are you talking about?

00:07:22.000 But Trump is accusing Toomey of being afraid of the NRA, which is just great press for the NRA, considering the entire Democratic Party and the media have been claiming that the real reason Republicans are pro-gun is because they're afraid of the NRA. 1.00

00:07:32.000 So well done, Mr. President, for doubling down on that idiotic message. 0.97

00:07:35.000 Then the president went even further, and that's the clip we're about to show you where Dianne Feinstein jumps for joy. 0.99

00:07:41.000 Amy Klobuchar, who's the senator from Minnesota, she suggests that they add an assault weapons ban to Manchin-Toomey.

00:07:46.000 So not only would there be a full gun registry, now you would not be able to buy an assault weapon, meaning any rifle in the United States that has a couple of features added to it, like a pistol grip and a certain type of barrel, for example, or a sight.

00:08:00.000 If you added those things, if the gun looks scary, it's an assault weapon.

00:08:03.000 Republicans have opposed this forever.

00:08:05.000 Amy Klobuchar says, why don't we do it?

00:08:07.000 And Trump immediately says, yeah, let's wrap that up into an even bigger gun control package and watch Dianne Feinstein's reaction. 0.96

00:08:13.000 Dianne Feinstein is 84 years old, but suddenly she's a little girl again.

00:08:16.000 Dianne Feinstein, she's been my senator virtually my entire life. 0.59

00:08:19.000 She's been senator here since I was 10 years old, Dianne Feinstein, or nine years old.

00:08:23.000 I have never seen Dianne Feinstein smile.

00:08:26.000 Ever.

00:08:26.000 Not once.

00:08:27.000 On tape.

00:08:28.000 There's this myth that once Dianne Feinstein smiled and a rainbow came out.

00:08:32.000 She's not a big laugher and a big smiler.

00:08:35.000 Watch as she turns into a small child clapping for Glee.

00:08:38.000 Like my kids when I give them chocolate.

00:08:40.000 When Trump says this about assault weapons.

00:08:42.000 It's really amazing.

00:08:43.000 Just doing something on this background check issue and using that as a base, and then I would like to add some of these other things we've talked about, I think would make a major difference.

00:08:52.000 So if you can add that to this bill, that would be great.

00:08:55.000 Diane, if you could add what you have also, and I think you can, into the bill.

00:09:00.000 Joe, are you ready?

00:09:01.000 Can you do that?

00:09:02.000 Joe, can you do that?

00:09:03.000 Pat, can you add some of the things?

00:09:06.000 You're not going to agree with me, right?

00:09:07.000 Yep, you help.

00:09:08.000 Well, no, I'll help, but can you add what Amy and what Diane have?

00:09:12.000 Can we add them in?

00:09:13.000 And I know you can add what John has.

00:09:15.000 Okay, and look at the Republicans.

00:09:16.000 They're all like, what is going on now?

00:09:18.000 Like, Cornyn, who's sitting right next to Trump, you can see he's putting his hand to his mouth like, this can't be happening.

00:09:22.000 This isn't real.

00:09:22.000 Like, Trump really doesn't know what he's saying here.

00:09:24.000 And Dianne Feinstein knows exactly what Trump's saying.

00:09:26.000 Again, she's 84 years old, and suddenly she's my four-year-old daughter.

00:09:29.000 She's so gleeful.

00:09:30.000 If you're saying things about guns that are making Dianne Feinstein gleeful, let me suggest that you have undermined the Second Amendment and that you are not standing with conservative ideas on the Second Amendment.

00:09:39.000 Okay, then it gets even worse.

00:09:41.000 So he turns to Cornyn, who's sitting right next to him, and he says, you know what we should do?

00:09:44.000 We should actually do a comprehensive gun reform.

00:09:46.000 Like a big, big bill.

00:09:48.000 Like a big historic bill.

00:09:49.000 And you can see Cornyn going, what the hell is going on?

00:09:52.000 Like, was he dropped on his head this morning?

00:09:54.000 Did he wake up on the wrong side of the bed?

00:09:56.000 Was it an invasion of the body snatchers?

00:09:57.000 Like, what in the world?

00:09:59.000 Look at John Cornyn's face here.

00:10:01.000 And John Fixnick's has some really good things in it.

00:10:04.000 But it would be nice if we could add everything onto it.

00:10:08.000 And maybe you change the title, all right?

00:10:10.000 The U.S.

00:10:11.000 Background Check Bill or whatever.

00:10:14.000 But your bill is really good and really important, having to do with a certain aspect.

00:10:17.000 But maybe we could make it much more comprehensive and have one bill instead of 15 different bills that nobody knows what's happening.

00:10:24.000 If we can get 60 votes for it, Mr. President, I'm all for it.

00:10:26.000 I think you can.

00:10:27.000 Honestly, I think...

00:10:28.000 So that's when Cornyn steps in and he goes, Mr. President, you're acting like a child.

00:10:33.000 We need 60 votes.

00:10:34.000 And we're not going to get it.

00:10:35.000 So the president, of course, just completely overlooks this. 0.97

00:10:38.000 It was just ridiculous. 0.99

00:10:39.000 Ridiculous on every possible level. 1.00

00:10:42.000 And it gets even more ridiculous. 0.96

00:11:03.000 To have your gun rights temporarily suspended if they show, past a certain burden of proof, that there is evidence that you are a danger to yourself or others.

00:11:10.000 And then there is a hearing.

00:11:11.000 So there's due process.

00:11:12.000 So the due process can go in a couple ways.

00:11:14.000 You can have the hearing before the guns are removed, or you could have a preliminary hearing in which all of the evidence is shown, and then the guns are temporarily removed because we don't want people sitting around there with guns, and then the guy realizes that the cops are going to come take away his guns, he goes and shoots up the school.

00:11:29.000 OK, so you can have due process in the sense that you have the right to confront the accuser, but it's done on a really spontaneous, quick basis.

00:11:36.000 Or you could have a full, drawn-out hearing.

00:11:38.000 But both of those are due process.

00:11:39.000 So Mike Pence explains the proposal, and Trump proceeds to pile-drive the proposal.

00:11:44.000 Trump proceeds to take Pence's proposal, the gun violence restraining order proposal, the David French proposal, and he proceeds to say something so wildly unconstitutional and so wildly unconservative that it boggles the mind.

00:11:54.000 I mean, if Barack Obama had uttered these words, we would all be up in arms.

00:11:58.000 The reason that it's different if Obama had said them than Trump saying them, honestly, is that Obama knew what he was talking about on these issues, and Trump clearly doesn't. 0.99

00:12:05.000 Anyway, here's Mike Pence saying something smart, and then Donald Trump following up with something so egregiously stupid that minds of small children were blown all over the country. 0.92

00:12:13.000 Because a lot of times, by the time you go to court, it takes so long to go to court to get the due process procedures. 0.98

00:12:20.000 I like taking the guns early, like in this crazy man's case that just took place in Florida.

00:12:27.000 He had a lot of firearms.

00:12:28.000 They saw everything.

00:12:30.000 To go to court would have taken a long time.

00:12:31.000 So you could do exactly what you're saying, but take the guns first, go through due process second.

00:12:36.000 Okay, that's not what due process is.

00:12:38.000 The reason this is a problem is not because anybody wants mentally ill violent people to have guns.

00:12:42.000 Nobody wants that.

00:12:43.000 But it is astonishing to me that the same people on the left who are afraid of Trump becoming an authoritarian are sitting there laughing with glee when the President of the United States says somebody applies to have somebody else's gun rights taken away and we should all just shrug.

00:12:56.000 I mean, honestly, that's what the President of the United States says right there.

00:12:58.000 The President of the United States just said that you should be able to go into the police.

00:13:03.000 You should be able to go into your house. 0.54

00:13:05.000 I should be able to go to the cops and say to them, my next door neighbor's crazy.

00:13:08.000 And not show any evidence, right?

00:13:09.000 There's no due process. 0.96

00:13:10.000 I just call up and I say, Tip, next door neighbor's crazy.

00:13:12.000 And the cops go and take that guy's guns and maybe arrest him.

00:13:17.000 And then later comes the due process.

00:13:20.000 We fought an entire revolution to prohibit this sort of thing.

00:13:23.000 We fought an entire revolution so there would be a right to habeas corpus, so you know why you're being arrested and your rights are being violated.

00:13:28.000 We fought an entire revolution so there are no ex post facto laws, laws that were specifically designed after the fact in order to get certain people.

00:13:36.000 None of this is part of the constitutional order.

00:13:39.000 But the president, who is a Republican, was sitting there saying this stuff with a straight face.

00:13:43.000 Now, this brings us to our—I'll get to the last question as to whether any of this is important in a second.

00:13:49.000 He didn't even stop there.

00:13:51.000 I mean, everybody on the right is just looking at this going, what happened?

00:13:54.000 I mean, what?

00:13:56.000 It was every WTF gif that you can find online. 0.55

00:14:00.000 I mean, every face that you can make.

00:14:03.000 Right, that was just—was being made by Republicans yesterday, watching this thing unfold in real time.

00:14:08.000 It's astonishing.

00:14:09.000 It's astonishing.

00:14:10.000 OK, then he goes—he says—he goes after Steve Scalise.

00:14:13.000 Steve Scalise, shooting victim in the congressional baseball shooting.

00:14:17.000 And Scalise has proposed, and the NRA has proposed, and Trump has endorsed in his 2016 election cycle,

00:14:22.000 We're good.

00:14:39.000 It's usually transferable over to another state.

00:14:42.000 If you have a liquor license in one state and it fulfills the obligations of the other state, then it should be able to be fulfilled in that state, I believe.

00:14:49.000 But when it comes to concealed carry, there's questions as to whether you should be able to take your concealed carry license from Oklahoma and bring it over to California.

00:14:57.000 And so Trump is told by Steve Scalise that they want this concealed carry reciprocity.

00:15:03.000 And President Trump's response is,

00:15:05.000 As always, amazing.

00:15:06.000 Here's the President of the United States responding to Steve Scalise by saying, it's utterly, we can never do this.

00:15:11.000 It can't be a thing.

00:15:12.000 And there were a lot of our members that said, look, we want to close these problems and fix these problems with the background check system.

00:15:19.000 And we came together and actually passed a bill.

00:15:22.000 But we also felt that, if you look at the concealed carry population, these are people, by and large, who are helping us stop crimes.

00:15:29.000 These are people who are well-trained, who actually go out there and help prevent crimes.

00:15:33.000 So I would hope that that's not immediately dismissed, because there is a lot of talk of just putting that on the side and just waiting for it to happen.

00:15:43.000 I think that maybe that bill will someday pass, but it should pass as a separate.

00:15:48.000 If you're going to put concealed carry between states into this bill, we're talking about a whole new ballgame.

00:15:54.000 Look at Klavichar.

00:15:55.000 Look at her.

00:15:56.000 OK, the senator from Minnesota, look at the Democrats.

00:15:58.000 She's sitting there nodding along.

00:15:59.000 And the Republicans are all sitting there with their arms crossed.

00:16:01.000 Look at the body language here.

00:16:02.000 All the Republicans are going, where is this coming from?

00:16:05.000 This is the guy who, days ago, was talking about how great the NRA was.

00:16:08.000 This is the guy who was, a few days ago, talking about the value of gun rights.

00:16:11.000 This is the guy who, a couple of days ago, was talking about how we needed to protect our right to keep and bear arms.

00:16:16.000 And it does shed some light on something that the president said during his CPAC speech.

00:16:20.000 During that CPAC speech, he had this very weird line where he said, if you could choose between tax cuts and gun rights, which would you choose?

00:16:26.000 And he was expecting everybody in the room to say tax cuts.

00:16:28.000 And everybody in the room said gun rights.

00:16:29.000 And he was kind of shocked by it.

00:16:30.000 Because again, the president is not a stalwart on gun rights.

00:16:34.000 On a gut level, he's not.

00:16:35.000 Now, one of the nice things is that the President of the United States can be turned to whoever talks to him last.

00:16:41.000 This is one of the nice things about the President.

00:16:43.000 He is willing to hear opposing points of view is the nice way of putting it.

00:16:46.000 Also, the President of the United States can't do all these things because he just doesn't have the votes.

00:16:50.000 But here's where it does become important.

00:16:51.000 So this stuff is not important right now.

00:16:53.000 Because when Trump says stuff right now, who cares?

00:16:55.000 Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, they're the ones who are putting the legislation together. 0.87

00:16:57.000 When he said dumb stuff about Obamacare, it didn't really matter very much. 0.93

00:17:00.000 When he said dumb things about the tax bill, it didn't matter very much. 0.99

00:17:03.000 When he said dumb things about immigration, it didn't matter very much. 1.00

00:17:05.000 The president saying dumb things is baked into the cake. 0.99

00:17:07.000 We all know that the president is going to say stuff, and we're all going to go... 0.99

00:17:11.000 And we've all gotten used to that.

00:17:13.000 But what happens if, in November, Democrats take back the House of Representatives?

00:17:17.000 And let's say they get really lucky and they take back the Senate.

00:17:20.000 Let's say the Democrats suddenly have control of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

00:17:23.000 Then, all of a sudden, the President of the United States saying these things may actually make a difference.

00:17:28.000 Because you could see a situation in which Democrats are the ones writing the bill. 0.93

00:17:32.000 Right now, the check on the President saying dumb things is a Congress that's not going to write dumb things. 0.97

00:17:37.000 But what happens when the Congress can write dumb things?

00:17:39.000 What happens when Nancy Pelosi is Speaker of the House, and she's sitting in a meeting like this with the President of the United States, and he says, I want you to put X, Y, and Z into a bill, and it's a comprehensive gun reform bill that's going to require full background checks for every sale in the United States, which will require registry, and everything that the President says about assault weapons will be wrapped into a bill.

00:17:57.000 And no concealed carry reciprocity, and raising the age to buy a rifle.

00:18:00.000 And the president says all this in front of Nancy Pelosi, and she says, sure, Mr. President, we're with you.

00:18:05.000 And what happens when Chuck Schumer is the Senate Majority Leader, and he says to Trump, sounds great, Mr. President.

00:18:11.000 I'll tell you what happens.

00:18:12.000 The president gets all of the bad things we don't want him to be saying and having right now.

00:18:16.000 That's what happens.

00:18:17.000 How do I know that's what happens?

00:18:18.000 Because that's exactly what happened on the budget last year.

00:18:21.000 You recall that Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan were using the debt ceiling debate as a way to cut some spending.

00:18:27.000 And the President of the United States had in Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, and he said to them directly, listen guys, I don't care about cutting anything, let's just blow out the spending.

00:18:34.000 And they said fine, and they walked out.

00:18:36.000 And Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell were just stunned, because the President did have the capacity to do that.

00:18:40.000 He had the votes to do that.

00:18:42.000 Well, right now it doesn't matter again, because the Republicans are running the show.

00:18:46.000 But when the Republicans are not running the show, things are going to get pretty dicey pretty quickly.

00:18:50.000 Which is why it's important that Republicans maintain control of the House as a check on President Trump.

00:18:55.000 Because the President's instincts are not always good on these sorts of things.

00:18:59.000 And he's not surrounded by a bunch of Second Amendment advocates.

00:19:02.000 The people who are closest to the President, aside from Mike Pence, these are not all super pro-Second Amendment people.

00:19:08.000 It's a serious issue.

00:19:09.000 And nobody is checking him on the areas where he does have control. 0.67

00:19:12.000 So another area where he has control and where he's saying dumb things is the area of trade.

00:19:17.000 So today, the president tweeted this out.

00:19:19.000 This is 17.

00:19:20.000 The president tweeted this out about trade.

00:19:22.000 He tweeted, quote,

00:19:36.000 So Charlie Cook over at National Review had a great point about this last sentence, where it says we want free, fair, and smart trade.

00:19:42.000 And he says, if you use the words free, fair, and smart about, for example, speech, if you say we want free, fair, and smart speech, you'd realize that this is a violation of free speech principles, right?

00:19:51.000 Fair speech and smart speech are not requisites.

00:19:54.000 You just need free speech.

00:19:55.000 When it comes to trade, the same thing is true.

00:19:57.000 The notion of fair trade is something comerical. 0.97

00:20:01.000 It's silly. 0.98

00:20:02.000 The reason I say it's silly is because comparative advantages since the days of Ricardo has suggested that you are an idiot if you heighten tariffs on your own just because the other guy has heightened tariffs on you. 0.98

00:20:14.000 As I'm constantly saying, let's say that you are in the business of building shelves at the local grocery store and they stop using you. 0.96

00:20:21.000 They've essentially set up a tariff on you.

00:20:22.000 They don't use you anymore.

00:20:23.000 Do you stop shopping at that grocery store if they have the lowest prices?

00:20:26.000 Only if you want to get poorer do you do that.

00:20:28.000 But the president doesn't understand how trade works.

00:20:30.000 The president thinks that trade is not reciprocal.

00:20:33.000 The president thinks that all of these industries have been quote-unquote decimated.

00:20:36.000 So today, the president had a meeting with all of these steel and aluminum industry leaders, and he said that he was going to raise tariffs dramatically on steel and aluminum.

00:20:44.000 He apparently said that he wants to raise the steel tariffs by 25%.

00:20:46.000 He wants to slap an overall steel tariff of 25% on foreign steel and a 10% aluminum tariff on aluminum.

00:20:56.000 Disaster area.

00:20:58.000 Full-scale disaster area.

00:21:00.000 The reason this is a full-scale disaster area is because these are inputs for other industries in the United States.

00:21:05.000 For every job in the steel industry, there are 40 jobs in other industries that use steel, which means that if you're in the car industry and you use steel and suddenly the price of steel goes up,

00:21:15.000 Because of these tariffs.

00:21:16.000 And now you have to sell your car more expensively.

00:21:18.000 And it is less competitive in the global market.

00:21:21.000 Unless you tariff cars.

00:21:22.000 And then if you tariff cars, then you're going to have to increase the price on cars.

00:21:26.000 And people have to spend money there.

00:21:27.000 Tariffs are a terrible economic policy.

00:21:29.000 They've always been a terrible economic policy.

00:21:31.000 For every job that is saved by steel, by these tariffs, other jobs are lost.

00:21:37.000 When the Bush tariffs on steel went into effect from 2001 to 2004, about 21 months, when those tariffs were in effect, the United States lost approximately 200,000 jobs by studies.

00:21:49.000 And not only that, the economy suffered overall because of that.

00:21:54.000 According to estimates, every single steel job created by a tariff, American consumers paid an additional $200,000 to $2.3 million.

00:22:01.000 That's how much it costs to preserve a steel job.

00:22:06.000 And that's what's happening here.

00:22:08.000 Remember, there are industries in the United States, like the beer industry, uses aluminum to make its cans.

00:22:13.000 Anheuser-Busch came out today. 0.99

00:22:14.000 They said, this is idiotic. 0.99

00:22:15.000 You just raised the price of beer on everybody who wants to buy Anheuser-Busch beer. 1.00

00:22:19.000 You want to buy a Miller Lite?

00:22:20.000 Well, now you're going to be paying a higher price for that watered-down beer.

00:22:24.000 And this is not good policy. 0.98

00:22:27.000 It's also, it's just ignorant.

00:22:28.000 I mean, when he says that the steel and aluminum industries in the United States have been decimated by decades of unfair trade, it's not true. 0.57

00:22:34.000 It's just not factually true.

00:22:36.000 In 2016, the steel industry actually did really well, thanks to dramatically increased car sales.

00:22:40.000 Nucor is the nation's leading steel manufacturer.

00:22:43.000 It hit $16 billion in sales that year.

00:22:46.000 Last year, its net earnings increased 65% over 2016.

00:22:50.000 The average salary at that company, by the way, is $80,000.

00:22:53.000 Most job loss at Nucor has happened thanks to technological advances, not thanks to foreign trade.

00:22:58.000 Right now, 70% of all steel sold in the United States is American steel.

00:23:03.000 As for the argument that we need steel tariffs in order to protect the capacity of our military to have steel to use for its weaponry, that's like 3% of all the steel production in the United States would have to be used for a full-scale military mobilization in the United States.

00:23:15.000 It's just not true either.

00:23:17.000 By the way, it's not just Nucor, which their stock price in 2000 was $12 today at $65, so obviously they're not doing that badly.

00:23:22.000 U.S.

00:23:22.000 steel boomed in 2017.

00:23:22.000 In Q4 of 2016, net earnings were $47 million, but by Q4 of 2017, net earnings were $136 million.

00:23:25.000 They had a massive boom last year.

00:23:26.000 Steel Dynamics showed an operating income of $1.1 billion last year.

00:23:39.000 As for America's production of raw steel, we're producing about the same amount of raw steel that we were producing in 1980.

00:23:44.000 It's been pretty consistent for the last three and a half decades.

00:23:47.000 Almost four decades.

00:23:49.000 Cato Institute trailer Scott Lincecum points out, again, that U.S.

00:23:52.000 steel production rose 5% last year.

00:23:55.000 There are already 160 duties on steel imports, and if you think this is just a way to screw China because China is dumping its cheap steel on us, nonsense.

00:24:02.000 China ranks 11th in steel importation into the United States.

00:24:07.000 OK, how about, and again, the most important thing here is the number of jobs this is going to cost in another industry.

00:24:12.000 The CFO of Anheuser-Busch said this, quote,

00:24:23.000 I don't 0.99

00:24:39.000 He wrote a book on trade that makes no sense and is supremely foolish. 0.99

00:24:44.000 And he is Trump's guru on trade, because Trump has always felt that America is getting screwed. 0.87

00:24:48.000 Because Trump's vision of what American industry is, is guys who are working a blue-collar job in downtown Manhattan building a building with steel.

00:24:56.000 He's got a very 1955 version of what American industry looks like.

00:24:59.000 That's not what American industry looks like right now.

00:25:02.000 The job loss in the steel industry has been brought about by technological change.

00:25:05.000 And, of course, the vast majority of jobs in this country are no longer in manufacturing.

00:25:09.000 They're in the service industry.

00:25:10.000 Now, when the president says that I'm supposed to pay more for a car to preserve that steel job, what he's really doing is penalizing me for being in an industry that's more efficient than the steel industry has been on a global level.

00:25:21.000 We, by the way, are still the number two producers of all steel on planet Earth.

00:25:24.000 But again, this is bad economics from the president.

00:25:27.000 The president is just saying things, except this time he's actually going to do it.

00:25:29.000 So next week he's supposed to impose these tariffs.

00:25:32.000 And the market is reacting just exactly how you would think it is reacting, right?

00:25:37.000 This is going to be a big trade war because not only is it going to have a—not only is it going to have

00:25:44.000 A significant impact on the steel industry and industries that are fed by steel in the United States.

00:25:50.000 It's going to have impact on other industries because other countries are going to raise their tariffs on us in retaliation.

00:25:54.000 They shouldn't, but they will in an attempt to back us down.

00:25:58.000 They're going to now raise their own tariffs.

00:26:00.000 So today, as of this point, the stock market has been dropping pretty precipitously.

00:26:04.000 It has tumbled 600 points.

00:26:07.000 Over the tariff talks.

00:26:09.000 So it finally stabilized after a really bad month.

00:26:10.000 February was a crappy month for the stock market.

00:26:13.000 Today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 490 points to this point.

00:26:19.000 It's taken a big dip.

00:26:20.000 It took a bunch of huge dips last month.

00:26:23.000 So, well done, President Trump.

00:26:25.000 Just by you announcing these tariffs, you sunk the stock market 500 points.

00:26:28.000 It won't end there, by the way.

00:26:29.000 There's still a lot of doubt as to whether this actually gets imposed, because again, Trump says so many things.

00:26:35.000 It is not true that the president of the United States saying these things does have an impact if he ends up imposing them.

00:26:41.000 So this is why I say on gun policy, I think people are cutting him a lot of slack because they don't think it's actually going to happen.

00:26:45.000 But when it comes to trade policy, the president does have the unilateral authority to raise tariffs this way.

00:26:50.000 And this could be a full-scale disaster for the economy.

00:26:53.000 It could be a real disaster for a number of industries, especially if he decides that he is going to go to trade war with every country that slaps tariffs on us.

00:27:01.000 Because you can see this escalating.

00:27:02.000 You can see Trump saying, we're going to put the steel tariff, the aluminum tariff.

00:27:05.000 And then you can see France saying to us, well, if you're going to do that to us, we're going to put tariffs on not just steel and aluminum.

00:27:11.000 We're going to put tariffs on all your other goods, too. 0.98

00:27:13.000 And then Trump says, well, screw you. 0.75

00:27:14.000 I'll put tariffs on our goods. 0.99

00:27:15.000 We're stronger than you.

00:27:16.000 This zero-sum version of economics is just ignorance.

00:27:19.000 It doesn't make any sense at all.

00:27:21.000 And it's very frustrating to watch a Republican president do it. 1.00

00:27:24.000 Because it's very dumb. 0.99

00:27:25.000 Now again, one of the reasons I think this is happening is because the president obviously feels isolated. 0.99

00:27:29.000 The president feels like a lot of his favorite people have been marginalized in the last couple of weeks.

00:27:36.000 So, over the last week, Josh Urfel, who is the comms director for Jared Kushner, has been marginalized.

00:27:42.000 Kushner himself has been marginalized a little bit, as I said, by the revocation of his interim top-secret security status.

00:27:49.000 There's a story today in The New York Times that's very damaging to Kushner about his family business receiving loans after he held meetings with business people.

00:27:56.000 So, according to The New York Times, early last year, a private equity billionaire started paying regular visits to the White House, Joshua Harris.

00:28:02.000 A founder of Apollo Global Management was advising Trump administration officials on infrastructure policy.

00:28:07.000 During that period, he met on multiple occasions with Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law and senior advisors.

00:28:12.000 Among other things, the two men discussed a possible White House job for Harris.

00:28:15.000 The job never materialized, but in November, Apollo lent $184 million to Kushner's family real estate firm, Kushner Companies.

00:28:23.000 The loan was to refinance the mortgage on a Chicago skyscraper.

00:28:26.000 This is one of their bigger deals.

00:28:27.000 It's triple the average size of their property loan.

00:28:29.000 It's one of the largest loans Kushner Company received last year.

00:28:32.000 An even larger loan came from Citigroup, which lent the firm and one of its partners $325 million.

00:28:38.000 to help finance a group of office buildings in Brooklyn.

00:28:41.000 That loan was made in spring of 2017, right after Kushner met in the White House with Citigroup's chief executive, Michael Corbett.

00:28:48.000 According to people briefed on the meeting, the two men talked about financial and trade policy and did not discuss Kushner's family business.

00:28:54.000 This is one of the problems with having people in the White House who are deeply connected to their businesses still.

00:28:59.000 And it's one of the reasons why his interim security clearance has not been granted at this point, is because of these business connections.

00:29:05.000 I mean, this is not good.

00:29:07.000 If this were happening under Hillary, it would not be good.

00:29:09.000 It's happening under Trump, and it's not good.

00:29:11.000 It doesn't matter whether you like the people who we're talking about personally.

00:29:13.000 It doesn't matter if you like the policies they're espousing.

00:29:16.000 The media obviously have an agenda, which is to knock Kushner off the hill.

00:29:20.000 Right now, they want to see chaos inside the Trump administration, but they're holding this.

00:29:23.000 But that's not something that Kushner should have been doing.

00:29:25.000 If Trump wanted him to have meetings with Citigroup and financial leaders, then Kushner should have basically become disassociated in entirety from all of the Kushner companies.

00:29:36.000 That apparently has not happened.

00:29:37.000 So, Kushner has been marginalized, and now Hope Hicks is gone.

00:29:40.000 So, Hope Hicks was his comfort blanket.

00:29:42.000 We're good to go.

00:29:52.000 And one of the best-liked people in the White House, everybody I know in the White House, who knows?

00:29:56.000 Hope Hicks says that she's a wonderful person.

00:29:58.000 Well, she was, according to CNN, excoriated by the president, because a couple of days ago, she went in front of Congress and she was asked whether she'd ever had to lie on behalf of the president.

00:30:06.000 She said, well, she told some white lies, like about audience size, like crowd size. 0.99

00:30:09.000 And that apparently ticked off Trump, according to CNN, and supposedly Trump yelled at her, and then Hope Hicks quit. 1.00

00:30:15.000 That's the CNN story.

00:30:16.000 Now, the New York Times says that she's been preparing for weeks to leave.

00:30:18.000 That's not a giant shock.

00:30:21.000 People in the White House are routinely talking about leaving because it's a very chaotic place, a very high-stress job.

00:30:26.000 There's a lot of turnover at any White House, but particularly in a White House that's run from the top this way.

00:30:31.000 So, Hope Hicks leaving has some impact on the administration.

00:30:34.000 I'll explain what impact it has and what it means for Trump in just a second, but you're going to have to go over to Daily Wired and subscribe for the rest of it.

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00:31:29.000 So, as I say, Hope Hicks has sort of been pushed to the side. 0.99

00:31:32.000 Jared, right now, is being pushed to the side, apparently, according to reports by General John Kelly, the chief of staff, which means that Kelly is the guy who's sort of bringing people into the center of the room.

00:31:42.000 And that means that Trump is more likely to reach out to other people that he wants to talk to.

00:31:46.000 If he feels like Kelly is shutting him off from Jared Kushner and that Hope Hicks is going to leave, then he's going to start reaching out to other people he's comfortable with.

00:31:53.000 Well, one of the people he likes a lot, apparently, is Peter Navarro.

00:31:56.000 Peter Navarro, this trade guy.

00:31:57.000 And it's not a coincidence that while all this chaos is taking place, Peter Navarro is suddenly making appearances in the Oval Office, and Trump is hanging out with him.

00:32:04.000 The people that Trump feels personally comfortable with are the people he's going to want to talk to, and unfortunately, a lot of those people have pretty bad ideas, because personal comfort should not be the gauge of whether somebody's policy is good, but the president doesn't know a lot about policy, and he's very susceptible to being told things by people that he likes.

00:32:20.000 So, Hicks being out has more of a personal impact on Trump than it does a policy impact.

00:32:26.000 But she is known as sort of the person—she's sort of the Trump whisperer.

00:32:29.000 She's the person who can handle Trump and has been able to hem him in a little bit, make him feel better about his presidency, make him feel better about things.

00:32:37.000 Her being gone is not going to be a good thing.

00:32:39.000 Again, Josh Raffel—I think it's pronounced Erfel—is a press aide whose initial portfolio is primarily focused on Kushner and Ivanka, and he apparently is leaving also.

00:32:50.000 And apparently, Dina Powell left a few weeks ago.

00:32:53.000 So, high turnover at the White House.

00:32:54.000 That means a lot of faces Trump doesn't recognize.

00:32:57.000 As he gets more uncomfortable, he's going to look for friends.

00:33:00.000 And the friends around him are going to define what he does.

00:33:03.000 Which is sort of an uncomfortable place.

00:33:04.000 He's meanwhile busily attacking his own Attorney General.

00:33:07.000 So yesterday the President went on Twitter and he attacked Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

00:33:11.000 This I've always found really frustrating.

00:33:15.000 Attorney General Sessions, I've met him a few times when he was Senator Sessions.

00:33:19.000 I think that Senator Sessions is a rock solid

00:33:22.000 Red state Republican.

00:33:24.000 I disagree with him on trade.

00:33:25.000 I disagree with him in certain areas of immigration.

00:33:27.000 But he was the very first guy to endorse Trump.

00:33:29.000 I mean, the first major voice to endorse Trump.

00:33:31.000 Very, very early in the campaign.

00:33:32.000 A real Trump loyalist. 0.88

00:33:34.000 And as AG, Trump has just beaten the crap out of him publicly.

00:33:36.000 So, this is really in bad taste.

00:33:39.000 One of the things I like about Sessions is that Sessions does have a strong sense of what he is supposed to do as the Attorney General.

00:33:46.000 That his job is not to just be the wingman for the President.

00:33:49.000 Now Trump doesn't like that because he looks at the Obama administration and he says Eric Holder was Obama's wingman.

00:33:54.000 Why can't you be my wingman?

00:33:56.000 And the answer is because the AG is not supposed to be the president's wingman.

00:33:58.000 The AG is supposed to administer the law.

00:34:00.000 Jeff Sessions actually takes that rather seriously.

00:34:02.000 So one of the areas where this has happened is that Jeff Sessions asked the inspector general to investigate potential FISA abuse.

00:34:09.000 There's been a lot of talk about FISA abuse, their supposed abuse by the FBI and the DOJ of the FISA warrant process in the attempt to get a warrant on Carter Page, that former Trump campaign aide, that former Trump foreign policy aide.

00:34:23.000 And Sessions said, listen, I don't want the DOJ investigating itself.

00:34:26.000 I don't want the DOJ investigating the FBI.

00:34:28.000 Let's set somebody else who's independent, because here's the thing.

00:34:30.000 If I, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, come down with the conclusion that the Obama DOJ and the Obama FBI went ahead and invaded the campaign, people are going to note a couple of things.

00:34:40.000 One, I was a member of the campaign.

00:34:42.000 Two, I was appointed by President Trump, and so they're not going to take it seriously.

00:34:45.000 So we'll set up an IG.

00:34:46.000 I have a conflict of interest.

00:34:47.000 Trump doesn't appreciate that, and he wants Jeff Sessions to just do what he wants him to do, which I think is wrong.

00:34:52.000 So Trump tweets out,

00:35:09.000 No, what's disgraceful is the President of the United States berating his own Attorney General publicly.

00:35:14.000 I assume he has Jeff Sessions' phone number.

00:35:16.000 What does he think is going to happen here?

00:35:17.000 Does he think Sessions is going to quit if he just humiliates him enough?

00:35:19.000 I mean, Sessions knows Trump isn't going to fire him because Trump's been threatening to fire him for over a year.

00:35:24.000 He's not going anywhere.

00:35:26.000 So he'll just sit it out.

00:35:26.000 He'll sit tight.

00:35:27.000 He'll protect the law.

00:35:29.000 Good for Sessions for doing that.

00:35:30.000 So there's no purpose here other than Trump venting and then mobilizing his allies to vent at Sessions.

00:35:36.000 But maybe that makes his base feel good.

00:35:38.000 Maybe it makes them feel like it's the DOJ's fault that we haven't seen any prosecutions.

00:35:43.000 But again, this is just not being—not only not presidential, it's not effective.

00:35:47.000 Attacking your own attorney general is just bad policy.

00:35:49.000 So, in a rarity, Sessions actually fired back.

00:35:51.000 So, he actually issued a statement ripping Trump.

00:35:54.000 Good for him.

00:35:54.000 He said,

00:36:11.000 I'm good for Jeff Sessions.

00:36:12.000 That's his job.

00:36:13.000 That's exactly what he should be doing.

00:36:14.000 So, it's an absurdity that the President is attacking his own Attorney General.

00:36:18.000 So, very bad 48 hours for the President.

00:36:20.000 He's attacking his own Attorney General, dumping all over gun rights, and then talking about raising tariffs dramatically that would have a serious impact on the economic growth that he's attempting to reach.

00:36:29.000 So, very bad 48 hours for the President.

00:36:31.000 And, again, I think this is what the President looks like when he's unmoored, which is why you have to have checks in the White House.

00:36:35.000 It's why you have to have good people surrounding him.

00:36:37.000 It's why you need a Republican Congress.

00:36:39.000 If you had a Democratic Congress and a bunch of advisors around the president telling him to do the popular thing with Democrats, this presidency could go sideways very quickly.

00:36:47.000 So while there was talk last week about the president being an ideological leader of the conservative movement, that is not true.

00:36:51.000 The president has governed like a conservative so far.

00:36:54.000 But he's not an ideological leader, he's a vehicle for the conservative movement.

00:36:57.000 That means that if the conservative movement doesn't call him out, if the conservative movement doesn't provide a check when he commits anti-conservative heresies, then there's a possibility that Trump moves significantly to the left.

00:37:08.000 And again, if the Democrats were smart, they would know this.

00:37:10.000 If the Democrats had any brains at all, they would spend all day just praising Trump. 0.77

00:37:13.000 It's what they would do. 0.96

00:37:14.000 They'd spend every day, all day, talking about how Trump is generous, Trump is kind, Trump is wonderful.

00:37:19.000 They'd be like all of the characters in Manchurian Candidate talking about Raymond Burr and what a wonderful, generous human being he is.

00:37:26.000 And Trump would buy that.

00:37:28.000 Because the man doesn't—I mean, this is the danger of having someone in the Oval Office who doesn't have an ideology.

00:37:32.000 So far, it hasn't hurt.

00:37:34.000 Those checks and balances have worked.

00:37:35.000 I only hope they continue to work.

00:37:37.000 I'll praise the president when they do work and when he does the right thing.

00:37:40.000 The last 48 hours has not been that time to do the right thing.

00:37:42.000 Now, speaking of the radicalism of the Democrats,

00:37:46.000 When you look at the Democrats themselves, they have radicalized.

00:37:49.000 So if they were smart, as I say, they'd be triangulating with Trump.

00:37:52.000 They would be attempting to make overtures to Trump.

00:37:53.000 They could probably get half their agenda done with Trump if they did that.

00:37:57.000 But they're radicalizing pretty quickly.

00:37:59.000 So there are a bunch of top Democrats who attended a Louis Farrakhan speech.

00:38:03.000 Jake Tapper,

00:38:03.000 Over at CNN, who I criticized pretty heavily last week for what I thought was an egregiously awful town hall, and then I praised this week for doing an interview with Sheriff Scott Israel in Parkland, Florida.

00:38:14.000 He did a tweetstorm yesterday that I think is quite good, where he attacked Democrats who attended Louis Farrakhan's speech.

00:38:20.000 It is an amazing thing that the mainstream media think it utterly not worthy of note that Louis Farrakhan, an open anti-Semite, an open racist,

00:38:29.000 I don't care what they put on me.

00:38:30.000 The government is my enemy. 0.99

00:38:31.000 The powerful Jews 1.00

00:38:58.000 You are my enemy! 0.97

00:39:02.000 Okay, top-level Democrats have praised Louis Farrakhan.

00:39:04.000 They've taken pictures of Louis Farrakhan.

00:39:06.000 Barack Obama took pictures of Louis Farrakhan.

00:39:08.000 There were two co-sponsors of the Women's March who were present at this speech.

00:39:11.000 At this one, right here.

00:39:13.000 Okay, and Democrats apparently had nothing to say about that.

00:39:15.000 They will be at the Women's March again.

00:39:17.000 The radicalism of the Democrats — there was a lot of talk about the alt-right in the last election cycle.

00:39:20.000 I think it was fully merited.

00:39:21.000 I was one of the people doing the talking.

00:39:23.000 The Democrats are equally radical when it comes to Louis Farrakhan.

00:39:26.000 They have a blind spot for anti-Semitism, so long as that anti-Semitism is coming from parts of the community that are not white. 0.94

00:39:33.000 So here is Louis Farrakhan doing more of this, just really disgusting stuff. 0.99

00:39:36.000 White folks are going down! 1.00

00:39:41.000 And Satan is going down! 1.00

00:39:46.000 And Farrakhan, by God's grace, has pulled the cover off of that Satanic Jew! 1.00

00:39:59.000 And I'm here to say, 0.98

00:40:02.000 Your time is up.

00:40:06.000 Your world is through. 1.00

00:40:09.000 I mean, the man's a pig. 1.00

00:40:10.000 I mean, he's one of the worst people on planet Earth. 0.99

00:40:12.000 This is the guy, Keith Ellison, who could have been the head of the DNC.

00:40:16.000 He was endorsed by Chuck Schumer to be the head of the DNC.

00:40:19.000 He was a member of the Nation of Islam.

00:40:20.000 He defended Louis Farrakhan for years.

00:40:22.000 The Congressional Black Caucus has defended Louis Farrakhan. 0.57

00:40:25.000 The Democrats are so radical that it's unlikely they would have the brains to actually triangulate with Trump, but their radicalism is also—they're allowed to get away with it. 0.76

00:40:32.000 There was a poll yesterday that showed 57% of Americans supposedly think Trump is a racist.

00:40:36.000 It's like 20% of Republicans and 80-plus percent of Democrats.

00:40:39.000 OK, how many people think that Louis Farrakhan is a racist and therefore the people who associate with him are racist?

00:40:45.000 The reason that people think that Trump is a racist is because of the associations with the alt-right during the last campaign and some of the comments that he's made.

00:40:52.000 Well, if you're going to hold a standard, that standard has to be held on both sides.

00:40:55.000 I don't see a lot of people in the media doing it.

00:40:57.000 Good on Jake Tapper for doing it.

00:40:58.000 OK, time for a quick thing I like and then a couple of things that I hate.

00:41:01.000 So, thing I like today, I'm in the middle of a book by Mikhail Bulgakov.

00:41:06.000 Mikhail Bulgakov was a guy who lived in the Soviet Union.

00:41:09.000 He died, I believe, in 1941.

00:41:10.000 But he'd written a book in secret that was essentially a parody of Stalin's Russia.

00:41:16.000 It was recommended to me, actually, by Jordan Peterson, and it's quite an interesting book.

00:41:19.000 I'm only about halfway through it, but it is a funny book.

00:41:23.000 Basically, the concept is that you are in Stalin's Russia, and suddenly Satan shows up and starts having conversations with all the people there.

00:41:29.000 And simultaneously, there's a retelling of the story of Jesus, not along biblical lines, but with parallels to what's going on in the Soviet Union.

00:41:38.000 It's an interesting book.

00:41:39.000 It's a well-written book.

00:41:40.000 It's a funny book.

00:41:40.000 As I say, I'm about halfway through it.

00:41:42.000 I look forward to giving you my full analysis of it when I finish the book, but Jordan has good taste in literature.

00:41:47.000 So, whatever Jordan recommends on literature, I'm always apt to read.

00:41:50.000 Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.

00:41:56.000 All right, so let's begin with a flashback.

00:41:58.000 So in the 2012 election cycle, you will remember that the president of the United States at that point said that the 1980s had called him one of their foreign policy back because Mitt Romney said Russia was a geopolitical threat.

00:42:12.000 And the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.

00:42:16.000 OK, and then Vladimir Putin today announced that he had developed invincible nuclear weapons that can hit anywhere in the world and cannot be stopped by missile defense systems.

00:42:26.000 So while the president of the United States, Obama, was sleeping on Russia, Russia not only interfered in our election, they also were building these weapons.

00:42:33.000 Now, President Trump has been a lot harsher on Russia.

00:42:35.000 He should be even harsher than that.

00:42:37.000 But, again, Democrats don't have a lot of ground to stand on when they talk about the Russian threat and then talk about how terrible Trump is on Russia.

00:42:43.000 OK, other things that I hate.

00:42:44.000 So Chuck Schumer—I talked about the radicalism of the Democrats on race.

00:42:47.000 Chuck Schumer demonstrated it full-scale yesterday.

00:42:50.000 So he was talking on the floor of the Senate about a judicial nominee that President Trump had put forward, and he issues just a blatantly racist statement, and everybody overlooks it because it's racism against white people.

00:43:02.000 The nomination of Marvin Quattlebaum speaks to the overall lack of diversity in President Trump's selections for the federal judiciary.

00:43:10.000 Mr. Quattlebaum replaces not one, but two scuttled Obama nominees who were African American.

00:43:17.000 It's long past time.

00:43:20.000 Okay, this

00:43:35.000 I don't know.

00:43:56.000 You're not supposed to use your personal experience to decide cases.

00:43:58.000 You're not supposed to use your race to decide cases.

00:44:01.000 You're supposed to use the words of the law to decide cases.

00:44:03.000 Unfortunately, Democrats don't care about that any longer. 0.71

00:44:05.000 They've moved into this intersectional quagmire from which they're having difficulty escaping.

00:44:09.000 If they want Trump to win re-election, they should keep going with exactly this kind of stuff.

00:44:12.000 But if they also want the country to be ruined, they should continue to polarize this race from race and suggest that skin color should be the chief qualifier for being a federal judge.

00:44:20.000 Just insane.

00:44:21.000 OK, we'll be back here tomorrow, and we'll have mailbag for you.

00:44:24.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:44:24.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:44:29.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Mathis Glover.

00:44:31.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:44:33.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:44:35.000 Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:44:37.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:44:38.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.

00:44:39.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:44:41.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

00:44:44.000 Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - March 01, 2018

Wait, Trump Just Said WHAT? | Ep. 486

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