The Ben Shapiro Show - Who’s Endangering The Republic? | Ep. 470

00:00:00.000 A bunch more bombshells breaking in the FBI texting scandal.

00:00:03.000 Plus, President Trump wants a military parade and Democrats are filibustering for a government shutdown again.

00:00:10.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:11.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:16.000 Yes, many things are happening.

00:00:18.000 The Democrats are claiming that the end of the Republic is upon us.

00:00:20.000 Why?

00:00:20.000 Because President Trump wants a parade, you know, with shiny things and toys and tanks and such.

00:00:24.000 It's going to be awesome.

00:00:26.000 Democrats are very upset about it.

00:00:27.000 However, they say it's the end of the Republic.

00:00:28.000 However, if we're going to talk about the end of the Republic and the destruction of governmental norms, I have a few notes on that.

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00:01:54.000 The Democrats are very, very upset.

00:01:56.000 Chuck Schumer, sounding off, Senate Minority Leader, he says that our government is becoming degraded.

00:02:02.000 Republicans are silent about Trump.

00:02:04.000 They won't speak up about Trump.

00:02:05.000 And it's degrading our republic.

00:02:06.000 Our republic is just falling apart at the seams.

00:02:10.000 Here is Chuck Schumer.

00:02:11.000 For partisan reasons, the president and his allies in Congress are systematically trying to weaken America's faith in the rule of law.

00:02:21.000 And to a large extent, sadly,

00:02:24.000 The leaders of the Republican Party have been silent.

00:02:28.000 We desperately need more of our Republican friends to stand up and speak out, particularly the Republican leadership, because their silence is rapidly becoming complicity

00:02:39.000 So, as you know from this show, one of the things I hate most in politics is the sincere voice, where everybody goes down real low, like they mean it.

00:02:47.000 And that's what you get from Chuck Schumer.

00:02:48.000 It's a pretty good indicator the person's lying to you when they go to sincere voice.

00:02:52.000 If your spouse ever was talking to you, and they said,

00:02:56.000 You can be guaranteed that the garbage never was taken out.

00:02:58.000 It never happened.

00:02:59.000 So, these politicians are lying to you, but the Democrats are saying that the Republicans are destroying governmental norms.

00:03:06.000 What was the big norm that was destroyed yesterday by President Trump?

00:03:09.000 The big norm that was destroyed yesterday by President Trump is that Trump says he wants a military parade.

00:03:13.000 So, according to CNN.com,

00:03:15.000 He has asked the military for a parade, and the Pentagon is reviewing potential dates.

00:03:19.000 So, the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, she said in a statement, Trump had asked the Defense Department to explore the idea.

00:03:25.000 She says President Trump is incredibly supportive of America's great service members who risk their lives every day to keep our country safe.

00:03:30.000 He has asked the Department of Defense to explore a celebration at which all Americans can show their appreciation.

00:03:36.000 And the Washington Post reported last month that Trump wanted a military parade.

00:03:40.000 Apparently, he visited France, and he really liked the Bastille Day military parade.

00:03:45.000 He said last September in a conversation with the president of France, Macron, that when he came back from France, he wanted a military parade on the 4th of July in Washington.

00:03:54.000 There are a lot of people who are looking at this and saying, well, why do we need a military parade?

00:03:58.000 I mean, number one, it costs a lot of money.

00:04:00.000 Number two, the idea of tanks rolling down American civilian streets

00:04:04.000 When we haven't just won a war, we're not actually celebrating anything, or not on Memorial Day, or not on Veterans Day.

00:04:10.000 It's kind of weird.

00:04:10.000 Like, to just randomly do a military parade in the middle of Washington, D.C.

00:04:13.000 so that Trump can stand there and look over the troops that he commands seems kind of not an American thing.

00:04:18.000 Like, the last military parade we had in the United States was 1991.

00:04:21.000 That was after the Gulf War, after we won the Gulf War and George H.W.

00:04:24.000 Bush had a military parade so he could celebrate the returning service members.

00:04:27.000 We had a couple back in the 1960s.

00:04:29.000 We had one under JFK.

00:04:30.000 There's one under FDR, which is really creepy because there's actually like a giant head of FDR, like a giant bust of FDR that was in the parade.

00:04:36.000 It's all real weird.

00:04:38.000 Look, is it something that I love the idea?

00:04:39.000 I don't love the idea of this.

00:04:41.000 I love the idea of honoring the military.

00:04:42.000 That's why we have two days honoring both the fallen members of the military and the members who have served, right?

00:04:48.000 We have Veterans Day, we have Memorial Day.

00:04:50.000 We should all take time out, and we should pay homage to the military.

00:04:53.000 That's something that we should do on a regular basis.

00:04:55.000 But the idea that Trump wants his military parade so he can stand there and look over it, I find kind of weird.

00:05:00.000 Again, appreciation for the military is one thing.

00:05:02.000 Trump wanting to imitate France because, look at all the pretty jets, seems to me a little bit weird as well.

00:05:07.000 Is it, however, the end of the world?

00:05:09.000 Is it something where you look at it and you go, this is destroying the fabric of the republic?

00:05:13.000 No.

00:05:15.000 No.

00:05:15.000 Is it a waste of time and money?

00:05:16.000 I kind of think so.

00:05:18.000 Is it something where, you know, we actually need to do it?

00:05:21.000 Is it something that Trump is doing for his own personal gratification?

00:05:23.000 Kinda.

00:05:24.000 But is it the end of the republic as we know it?

00:05:26.000 No.

00:05:26.000 But it doesn't matter.

00:05:27.000 The Democrats naturally are going crazy because they'll go crazy over anything.

00:05:31.000 Representative Jackie Speier from California, she says that Donald Trump is clearly like Napoleon.

00:05:35.000 What's your reaction to that idea?

00:05:37.000 I was stunned by it to be quite honest.

00:05:39.000 I mean we have a Napoleon in the making here and I believe that we have so many issues around the world in terms of preparing for wars that are ongoing

00:05:53.000 And wars that may be, you know, often because of what's happening in North Korea, that I would say that it's really a waste of money.

00:06:05.000 And I think everyone should be offended by his need to always be showing.

00:06:10.000 He's truly Napoleon-like.

00:06:12.000 OK, come on.

00:06:14.000 Come on. 0.94

00:06:14.000 Just silly talk. 0.94

00:06:16.000 OK, and then Jeff Flake gets up yesterday on the floor of the Senate. 0.97

00:06:18.000 We discussed that President Trump had said the Democrats were—he joked—the Democrats were participating in treason when they didn't clap for him in the middle of the State of the Union, which, as I said, was a dumb remark.

00:06:27.000 He was obviously joking.

00:06:28.000 Jeff Flake, who is not running for re-election in the Senate in Arizona because he would probably lose, he has now made it his mission to go on the floor of the Senate every chance he gets and say things about Trump so that he can presumably primary him in 2020.

00:06:39.000 Here is the senator from Arizona.

00:06:41.000 I wish I could stand here today and say that my words of last October have been proven wrong.

00:06:46.000 That I had been unfair to invade against the daily sundering of our country.

00:06:52.000 That I had been mistaken about the personal attacks.

00:06:55.000 That I had exaggerated the threats against principles, freedoms, and institutions.

00:07:01.000 The flagrant disregard for truth and decency.

00:07:05.000 I have seen the President's most ardent defenders use the now-weary argument that the President's comments were meant as a joke.

00:07:12.000 Just sarcasm.

00:07:14.000 Only tongue-in-cheek.

00:07:16.000 But treason is not a punchline, Mr. President.

00:07:19.000 Okay, so, again, is this over the top?

00:07:22.000 Yes.

00:07:23.000 Is it?

00:07:24.000 Listen, should Trump have said any of that stuff?

00:07:26.000 No.

00:07:26.000 But the idea that Trump is degrading the Republic beyond belief.

00:07:29.000 Okay, the election of Donald Trump versus Hillary Clinton was the worst choice ever.

00:07:34.000 Remember, all the way back—forget about what Trump has done since that I like, all his policies.

00:07:38.000 The election between Donald Trump, a guy who is manifestly character-free in many ways, and Hillary Clinton, the most corrupt politician in modern American history, that was not a good election.

00:07:48.000 If we're going to talk about stuff that degrades the republic, however, stuff that has real impact on the republic, we can't start with Trump saying stuff about military parades or suggesting that Democrats are treasonous for not clapping for him.

00:07:59.000 As I mentioned yesterday, Democrats said for years that you were treasonous if you did not sufficiently support Barack Obama's agenda.

00:08:05.000 They said it over and over and over.

00:08:06.000 They suggested the Tea Party were actual terrorists for not supporting Barack Obama's big spending agenda. 1.00

00:08:10.000 All of that was stupid. 1.00

00:08:12.000 None of it made any sense. 1.00

00:08:13.000 But nobody said at the time, this is the death of the republic.

00:08:16.000 They say it because it's Trump.

00:08:17.000 And of course Democrats are going over the top about all this stuff because this is where they think they're going to win.

00:08:22.000 They think they're going to win by just crying not normal over and over and over.

00:08:26.000 Joe Biden did this as well.

00:08:27.000 Joe Biden comes out and he says that Trump is a joke doing everything that Vladimir Putin ever wanted.

00:08:32.000 This is the first president to make a full-throated, unvarnished attack on the entirety of the FBI.

00:08:39.000 What do you think they're thinking in Moscow?

00:08:42.000 This is doing everything that Putin ever wanted.

00:08:44.000 I just marvel at some of the things he says and does.

00:08:48.000 Like, what, two days ago, anybody who didn't stand up and clap for him was un-American and then maybe even treasonous?

00:08:57.000 They say it was tongue-in-cheek.

00:08:58.000 Democrats can't take a joke.

00:09:01.000 Well, I mean, he's a joke.

00:09:02.000 No, he's a joke.

00:09:02.000 So Biden obviously wants to run in 2020 as well.

00:09:04.000 Remember, Joe Biden is the guy who got up in the middle of the 2012 election cycle and said Mitt Romney wanted to put y'all back in chains.

00:09:10.000 Or if that's not the definition of treason, you know, if that wouldn't be him calling Romney a traitor, I'm not sure what would be.

00:09:15.000 That he wants to enslave his fellow American citizens.

00:09:18.000 It's an astonishing claim.

00:09:19.000 So Democrats are claiming that Trump is destroying the Republic, but who is really destroying the Republic?

00:09:25.000 Who is really making the institutions of the Republic less than credible?

00:09:31.000 Well, it really is not Trump so much.

00:09:33.000 It really was the Obama administration.

00:09:35.000 I have a lot to say on this particular subject.

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00:10:29.000 Okay, so.

00:10:57.000 There is a bunch of breaking news that shows who is really endangering the institutions of the republic.

00:11:02.000 And the answer is, it was the Obama administration.

00:11:05.000 I mean, there are a lot of problems that I've had with the Trump administration, but when we talk about destroying the institutions of the American republic, there was so much going on in the last election cycle that was troublesome.

00:11:15.000 And before that, for the last eight years before that, I mean, I wrote a full book on all of the corruption inside the Obama administration called The People vs. Barack Obama.

00:11:22.000 It's worth reading.

00:11:23.000 But in the last couple of weeks, there has been a letter from Lindsey Graham and Charles Grassley, a referral to the Department of Justice.

00:11:32.000 And the referral basically says a few things.

00:11:35.000 It says, according to Gabriel Mailer, his lawyer, he says, first, that the October 2016 FISA and warrants application seeking surveillance of Carter Page disclosed, did disclose,

00:11:43.000 That the Steele dossier was compiled in the direction of a political client.

00:11:47.000 It did not disclose that it was compiled in the direction of the DNC.

00:11:50.000 At the time of that warrant application, the FBI thought Steele had not previously disclosed dossier information to anyone but the FBI and his client.

00:11:57.000 It turns out that he instead disclosed it to the media.

00:11:59.000 And so in the original application,

00:12:02.000 They used both the Steele dossier and a media report based on a leak from Christopher Steele to the media.

00:12:07.000 The FBI believed that that was Steele's first media disclosure, but it turns out that it was not.

00:12:11.000 And so, they fired him, and they did not include that in the warrant.

00:12:15.000 Subsequent to April 2017, they did not include in warrant renewal applications

00:12:19.000 The new information that Steele had previously lied to the FBI about media disclosures prior to October 2016, the referral states, quote, instead, the post-April 2017 application still relied primarily on Steele's credibility prior to the October media incident.

00:12:33.000 So, we're still figuring out exactly what was going on with the Carter Page FISA application.

00:12:39.000 We're still figuring out exactly what happened with the Carter Page FISA application, but there's some new information that is pretty damning as far as how the FISA application process works.

00:12:47.000 The most honest take here, I think, is that the FISA application process is deeply flawed.

00:12:52.000 Since the initiation of the FISA courts, which is back in, I think, 2002, 2003?

00:12:59.000 Since the initiation of the FISA courts, there have been a grand total of something like 21 FISA applications that have been turned down by the FISA courts.

00:13:05.000 So basically, the FBI brings information to the FISA court, and they rubber-stamp wiretaps.

00:13:09.000 That's right.

00:13:25.000 Being paid by the DNC.

00:13:27.000 That Steele dossier was used as the basis for the FISA warrant, or as the primary basis for the FISA warrant against Carter Page.

00:13:32.000 We already know the DNC was paying for it.

00:13:34.000 But we are now finding out that that wasn't the only way that Hillary Clinton was funneling bad information to the FBI, or may have been doing so.

00:13:41.000 According to a report from Mark Hemingway over at the Weekly Standard, the FBI is now investigating a second Trump dossier.

00:13:47.000 This one is complete with information allegedly compiled by a Clinton crony named Cody Shearer.

00:13:51.000 Natasha Bertrand of The Atlantic says she's seen the memo, and that it covers, quote, a range of allegations concerning the president's personal behavior and financial transactions.

00:13:59.000 According to Bertrand, Obama's State Department Special Envoy to Libya, a guy named Jonathan Weiner, passed information from Shurer, who is a Hillary buddy, on to British spy Christopher Steele, who is busily compiling opposition research on Trump on behalf of the DNC and Hillary Clinton via Fusion GPS.

00:14:13.000 So here's how the chain of information went.

00:14:15.000 There's a Hillary crony named Cody Shearer.

00:14:17.000 He was working with Sidney Blumenthal. 0.69

00:14:18.000 Sidney Blumenthal is Hillary's hatchet man and one of the sleaziest liars in the history of American politics.

00:14:23.000 Sidney Blumenthal and Cody Shearer were working to compile information that may or may not have been false to hand over to Christopher Steele.

00:14:30.000 They didn't just hand it over directly to Christopher Steele, however.

00:14:32.000 Instead, they sent it to Jonathan Weiner.

00:14:34.000 Jonathan Weiner was working at the State Department.

00:14:37.000 He was working for John Kerry at the State Department.

00:14:39.000 He was a Hillary staffer who moved over to John Kerry.

00:14:44.000 And so, the State Department then funneled that information, not to the FBI, but to Christopher Steele, who included it in the Fusion GPS dossier, which eventually was forwarded to the FBI.

00:14:53.000 So, it looks like the State Department being militarized on behalf of Hillary Clinton to funnel information to Christopher Steele, who would then send it to the FBI, which would then look to target the Trump campaign, right?

00:15:03.000 That's what this chain of information looks like.

00:15:06.000 That's really, really dirty stuff.

00:15:08.000 Hemingway rightly sums up,

00:15:24.000 Which all makes the Page-FISA request look shoddier and shoddier.

00:15:27.000 If the FBI knew that Seals' information came from Hillary's buddy and was funneled through the State Department, that's damning stuff.

00:15:32.000 It looks like the militarization of the State Department and then perhaps of the FBI on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign.

00:15:39.000 Now, that would not be a supreme shock if the FBI was biased on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign.

00:15:43.000 Late on Tuesday evening, Fox News released a new shocking report on texts.

00:15:47.000 Between FBI agents and lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.

00:15:51.000 Both of them, you recall, were fired from the Mueller investigation for bias against President Trump.

00:15:54.000 So, according to Fox News, Page, this is Lisa Page in relation to Carter, texted her lover Peter Strzok on September 2, 2016, with the news that FBI Director James Comey wanted them to prepare an update on ongoing investigations because, quote, POTUS wants to know everything we're doing.

00:16:10.000 Which sounds like Obama wanted to be updated on a routine basis on the Hillary Clinton investigation.

00:16:15.000 Fox News says that this is about the Hillary investigation, not about Trump-Russia collusion.

00:16:19.000 Now, what makes this weird is that Obama had said back in April of 2016 that he did not interfere in FBI investigations, that he didn't want to know what was going on in FBI investigations.

00:16:28.000 This is clip 16.

00:16:29.000 Here is Obama saying that he would never get involved in investigations directly.

00:16:32.000 Just to button this up.

00:16:34.000 I guarantee it.

00:16:36.000 I guarantee that there is no political influence in any investigation conducted by the Justice Department or the FBI, not just in this case, but in any case.

00:16:46.000 Full stop.

00:16:46.000 Period.

00:16:47.000 Guaranteed.

00:16:47.000 Full stop.

00:16:47.000 Period.

00:16:52.000 Nobody gets treated differently when it comes to the Justice Department, because nobody is above the law.

00:16:57.000 Even if she ends up as the Democratic nominee?

00:16:59.000 How many times do I have to say it, Chris?

00:17:00.000 Guaranteed.

00:17:01.000 Guaranteed.

00:17:02.000 Guaranteed.

00:17:02.000 But here he is saying, I want updates.

00:17:04.000 Now, listen, he's the President of the United States.

00:17:05.000 He can have updates on any case that he wants.

00:17:07.000 Obviously, Trump has the same power.

00:17:10.000 But the idea that Obama said that he was not going to get involved in any of these investigations, and then suddenly

00:17:15.000 Obama was going on national TV and saying that he didn't know Hillary had a secret email server and he found out about it on the news, even though he was obviously emailing with her at her private email address.

00:17:23.000 The fact that the FBI and the DOJ deliberately overlooked that, the fact that the FBI and the DOJ were coordinating on the Hillary email campaign, the fact that they were texting—I mean, those texts show that they wanted to go easy on Hillary because they thought that she might be the next president of the United States.

00:17:36.000 All of this makes the FBI and the DOJ look incredibly dirty.

00:17:40.000 Makes it all look really dirty.

00:17:41.000 Molly Hemingway has a piece over at The Federalist talking about that grassly Lindsey Graham memo that has now been sent over to the DOJ.

00:17:50.000 And again, according to that letter, it says,

00:18:01.000 It did so based on Mr. Steele's personal credibility and presumably having faith in his process of obtaining the information, but there is substantial evidence suggesting that Mr. Steele materially misled the FBI about a key aspect of his dossier efforts, one which bears on his credibility.

00:18:15.000 So, all of this is pretty damning.

00:18:17.000 All of it suggests that there is some dirtiness happening here.

00:18:22.000 All of it needs to be reviewed.

00:18:24.000 I mean, here's what we really need at this point.

00:18:26.000 If we want to actually figure out what's happening here, first we need the FISA application, OK?

00:18:29.000 Trump needs to declassify the FISA warrants application on Carter Page.

00:18:32.000 Because all we've been hearing from the Democrats is that Republicans are leaving out key components.

00:18:36.000 All we've heard from Republicans is that the FISA application shows that there was some sort of collusion going on between the FBI and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

00:18:45.000 We're not going to know the answer to any of that until that actual FISA application is released.

00:18:50.000 Now, what this seems to me is that there's two possible theories.

00:18:52.000 One is that the Trump campaign was being targeted by the FBI on behalf of Hillary Clinton.

00:18:56.000 The other is that the FISA applications that are sought by the FBI are really shoddy on a regular basis.

00:19:03.000 If it's the latter, then we have a very deep systemic problem with the process.

00:19:07.000 If it's the former, then we have a very deep systemic problem with the quote-unquote deep state and the FBI. 0.99

00:19:13.000 I always tend to attribute this sort of stuff to stupidity and incompetence rather than malice. 0.98

00:19:19.000 But I can't take malice off the table because I just don't know at this point. 0.99

00:19:23.000 Trey Gowdy was already on TV last night, essentially hinting that it was the Hillary Clinton campaign sending information to the State Department forwarded on to Steele, which was forwarded on to the FBI, in a pipeline of information.

00:19:34.000 Here is the representative from South Carolina.

00:19:36.000 So weeks before the election, somebody in the Obama State Department was feeding information from a foreign source to Christopher Steele.

00:19:44.000 When you hear who the source, one of the sources of that information is, you're going to think, oh my gosh, I've heard that name somewhere before.

00:19:51.000 Where could it possibly have been?

00:19:53.000 The foreign source? 0.79

00:19:56.000 The domestic source.

00:19:57.000 And I'm trying to think how Secretary Clinton defined him.

00:20:00.000 I think she said he was an old friend who emailed her from time to time.

00:20:04.000 Sidney Blumenthal?

00:20:05.000 That'd be really warm, if you're warm.

00:20:07.000 Yeah.

00:20:10.000 So it is Sidney Blumenthal, apparently, according to Trey Gowdy, all of which should be deeply troubling to anyone of decent mind.

00:20:16.000 Meanwhile, I mean, if you want to know, again, who's destroying institutions in the United States, it doesn't help when Trump attacks institutions wrongly.

00:20:22.000 I've attacked him when I thought that he was doing so.

00:20:25.000 But it was the Obama administration that was compromising the integrity of these institutions, and it was these institutions who are apparently compromising their own integrity with either bad intel they were funneling to the FISA courts or FISA courts who aren't willing to do the work necessary to suss out whether an American citizen ought to have a warrant put on him, despite lack of evidence, all of which is deeply troubling.

00:20:44.000 Again, the Democrats are willing to believe pretty much anything.

00:20:48.000 Adam Schiff, the Democrat, he essentially said yesterday that he was caught on tape being pranked by radio hosts who claimed they had naked pictures of Trump.

00:20:54.000 That just shows how willing the Democrats are to believe anything about President Trump.

00:21:05.000 Yes, absolutely.

00:21:09.000 And she got compromising materials on Trump after their short relations.

00:21:18.000 Well, there were pictures of naked Trump.

00:21:22.000 And so Putin was made aware of the availability of the compromising material?

00:21:27.000 Yes, of course.

00:21:28.000 Buzova shares those materials with Sobchak, and Sobchak shares those materials with Putin.

00:21:35.000 Okay, so good stuff there.

00:21:36.000 Obviously, Adam Schiff getting pranked by a couple of Russians who are calling him up and saying that he is apparently going to be given pictures of naked Trump. 0.77

00:21:46.000 Whatever gets your rocks off, apparently.

00:21:48.000 So, in a second, we're going to discuss

00:21:51.000 The latest episode in government shutdown, because I guess we're going to have to do this every couple of weeks here.

00:21:55.000 But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Blue Apron.

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00:22:05.000 OK, we're talking about seared steaks and thyme pan sauce with mashed potatoes, green beans, and crispy shallots in under 45 minutes.

00:22:11.000 Short rib burgers with a hoppy cheddar sauce on a pretzel bun, right?

00:22:14.000 This is gourmet stuff.

00:22:15.000 You're making it in your own kitchen.

00:22:16.000 It's the number one fresh ingredient and recipe delivery service in the country.

00:22:21.000 Again, they're making incredible home cooking accessible to everyone.

00:22:23.000 A lot of people in the office use Blue Apron.

00:22:25.000 They have a two-person meal plan.

00:22:26.000 These are meals that serve a couple of people.

00:22:27.000 You choose from eight new recipes per week with the choice to receive either two or three recipes in any given week.

00:22:33.000 A family meal plan.

00:22:34.000 Meals that serve four people.

00:22:35.000 Again, you choose from four new recipes per week with the choice to receive either two, three, or four recipes any week.

00:22:39.000 They even have a wine plan.

00:22:40.000 Six bottles of wine from renowned winemakers delivered on a monthly basis.

00:22:44.000 It's convenient.

00:22:46.000 There's a lot of variety.

00:22:47.000 There's a lot of flexibility.

00:22:48.000 They offer 12 new recipes each week depending on which program you have chosen and they are high quality.

00:22:52.000 They send only the best ingredients.

00:22:54.000 And the Blue Apron is treating my listeners right now to $30 off our first order.

00:22:58.000 If you visit blueapron.com slash Shapiro.

00:23:00.000 Again, that's blueapron.com slash Shapiro.

00:23:02.000 You get $30 off your first order.

00:23:04.000 And I mean, these things sound amazing.

00:23:06.000 They sound amazing.

00:23:07.000 Shrimp steaks with potatoes and spicy maple collard greens.

00:23:09.000 I mean, come on.

00:23:11.000 This is good stuff.

00:23:12.000 And you're going to be making it in the convenience and privacy of your own home with your family.

00:23:16.000 I love cooking with my daughter at home.

00:23:17.000 You'll love cooking with your own children as well.

00:23:19.000 Blueapron.com slash Shapiro.

00:23:21.000 You get $30 off your first order when you visit.

00:23:23.000 Blueapron.com slash Shapiro.

00:23:26.000 OK, so with all of that said about the compromising information regarding the Carter Page FISA warrant, we need to see the actual FISA application.

00:23:33.000 And if we don't see the actual FISA application, it's just going to turn into everybody accusing everybody else of treason all the time.

00:23:39.000 And that is not going to be beneficial for the Republic in any way, shape, or form.

00:23:44.000 Meanwhile, in another development that is certainly not going to help the tenor of political conversation in the country, we are now on the verge of another government shutdown.

00:23:52.000 This is exactly the same as the last government shutdown, as I predicted, right here on this program.

00:23:56.000 No deal has been made on DACA, nor will any deal be made on DACA.

00:24:00.000 Remember, we have until, I believe, next week for them to reach some sort of continuing resolution.

00:24:06.000 Or I guess tomorrow.

00:24:07.000 I think so.

00:24:30.000 You have each provision being debated openly and freely on the floor of the Senate.

00:24:34.000 That has not happened.

00:24:35.000 Instead, there's a continuing resolution to continue funding the government at current levels.

00:24:39.000 Essentially, as the senator put it to me, this is a pilotless plane.

00:24:43.000 It's a ghost plane.

00:24:45.000 It's essentially, the American budget is now a ghost plane.

00:24:48.000 Nobody has control over it.

00:24:49.000 It just keeps flying because nobody is willing to actually sit down and hammer out a budget.

00:24:53.000 If they do hammer out a budget, it only grows in size and scope.

00:24:56.000 Right now, the debate over the continuing resolution is whether or not the Democrats will allow the government to continue to be funded if no DACA deal is cut or no promise of a DACA deal is made.

00:25:06.000 Now, the Trump administration has already offered a deal.

00:25:09.000 That deal is extraordinarily generous.

00:25:10.000 That deal includes the legalization of 1.8 million illegal immigrants and a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million illegal immigrants.

00:25:17.000 It also includes the possibility of the importation of another 4 million legal immigrants into the United States.

00:25:24.000 Through chain migration, which would come to an end, but only gradually over the course of the next 20 years.

00:25:29.000 All of that, the Democrats have decided, is of no merit.

00:25:31.000 Instead, they just want a full-on DACA right now.

00:25:33.000 They want a full amnesty.

00:25:34.000 They don't want to spend any money on the border wall.

00:25:36.000 They don't want to spend any money on border security.

00:25:38.000 It's really absurd.

00:25:40.000 And so, Trump is responding how you would expect Trump to respond, by saying, listen, you want to shut this down over immigration again?

00:25:45.000 Fine.

00:25:45.000 Shut it down over immigration again.

00:25:46.000 You did it like two weeks ago, and it was a complete fail on your part.

00:25:49.000 If we don't change it, let's have a shutdown.

00:25:51.000 We'll do a shutdown.

00:25:52.000 And it's worth it for our country.

00:25:55.000 I'd love to see a shutdown if we don't get this stuff taken care of.

00:25:59.000 So we have to strengthen our borders, not by a little bit, but by a lot.

00:26:02.000 We are so far behind the time.

00:26:04.000 And by the way, the world is laughing at us because they can't believe these policies.

00:26:10.000 They don't have it.

00:26:11.000 I could name 15 of them right now.

00:26:13.000 No other country in the world has what we have.

00:26:16.000 And we're going to get it stopped.

00:26:18.000 And if we have to shut it down because the Democrats don't want safety, and unrelated but still related, they don't want to take care of our military, then shut it down.

00:26:28.000 OK.

00:26:29.000 We'll go with another shutdown.

00:26:30.000 Right.

00:26:31.000 Now, Trump continuing to say shut it down, shut it down, shut it down is not good politics.

00:26:34.000 He should be blaming Democrats for the shutdown, saying, listen,

00:26:37.000 I want the budget.

00:26:37.000 You want the budget.

00:26:38.000 Everybody wants the budget.

00:26:39.000 They won't give it to us because of DACA.

00:26:41.000 That would be the smarter way to do this.

00:26:42.000 But what he's saying is essentially correct, that if the Democrats decide to shut this thing down over immigration, again, I don't understand how this is any different than it's been since we did this like two weeks ago.

00:26:51.000 Remember, we did this two and a half weeks ago.

00:26:52.000 And at the time, Chuck Schumer argued that we should shut down the government over DACA.

00:26:56.000 It failed.

00:26:57.000 The shutdown started Friday.

00:26:58.000 It ended Monday.

00:26:59.000 And he got essentially nothing for his trouble, other than some bad poll numbers.

00:27:03.000 So Trump is exactly right here to hold the Democrats' feet to the fire.

00:27:06.000 And John Kelly, who is very, very hawkish on immigration, Trump's chief of staff, he spoke to the media yesterday.

00:27:11.000 He said, listen, we've offered a lot more than other people have offered.

00:27:15.000 He makes a comment in here that Democrats are seizing on and trying to claim is racist.

00:27:18.000 Of course, because that's the way this works.

00:27:20.000 The president sent over what amounts to be two and a half times that number to $1.8 million. 0.98

00:27:28.000 The difference between 690 and 1.8 million were the people that some would say were too afraid to sign up, others would say were too lazy to get off their asses, but they didn't sign up. 0.87

00:27:38.000 So the President shockingly said, okay, 1.8 million, and then probably the biggest shock was in a path to citizenship. 0.93

00:27:47.000 That's beyond what anyone could have imagined, whether you're on the right or the left.

00:27:53.000 So people on the left have gone crazy over this.

00:27:57.000 OK, maybe some of them were lazy, maybe some of them were not.

00:28:01.000 That's not the main point here.

00:28:03.000 The fact is that a lot of people didn't sign up for DACA specifically because they were concerned that if they signed up and then Trump revoked DACA, they would now be on the government's radar.

00:28:11.000 So I don't think that's quite fair of the White House Chief of Staff.

00:28:14.000 That said, this is not a winning issue for Democrats.

00:28:16.000 It doesn't matter.

00:28:17.000 They are beholden to their radical Democratic base.

00:28:19.000 And that's the one thing that Trump always can count on here, is that no matter what crazy stuff Trump does, the Democrats will do something even crazier.

00:28:25.000 So, Nancy Pelosi has decided to get up and filibuster. 1.00

00:28:28.000 She may still be filibustering this DACA—they're calling it a DACAbuster, because it's not technically a filibuster in the House. 1.00

00:28:33.000 She says she's going to get up there.

00:28:35.000 And she's going to talk and talk and talk and talk.

00:28:36.000 As of this speaking, she's still talking.

00:28:38.000 I believe she's nine hours in at this point.

00:28:41.000 And she's still jabbering on about why it is that we can't pass a budget, why we can't fund the government, because we need to instead cut a deal legalizing all illegal immigrants, not just in exchange for border security, but just plainly.

00:28:53.000 So here's Nancy Pelosi starting to jabber about this today. 0.96

00:28:56.000 The Republican moral cowardice must end.

00:28:59.000 Members of Congress are trustees of the people and of our nation.

00:29:03.000 Why are we here if not to protect the patriotic young people who are determined to contribute and to strengthen America?

00:29:10.000 So I'm going to go on as long as my leadership minute allows.

00:29:16.000 I want to speak to the Bible in Luke 10, 25-37, the parable of the Good Samaritan.

00:29:23.000 There's nothing I like better than when Nancy Pelosi, an abortion fanatic, quotes the Bible.

00:29:26.000 It's one of my favorite things.

00:29:27.000 She should definitely quote the parts of the Bible talking about God knowing you before you were born.

00:29:31.000 She should definitely quote the parts of the Bible talking about the value of life.

00:29:34.000 She should definitely talk about the parts of the Bible talking about same-sex marriage.

00:29:38.000 She should talk about all the parts of the Bible that are a little less convenient for her than these broad-based

00:29:42.000 Notions that we have to take in every immigrant on earth, which of course is not true and is not necessarily mandated by the Bible.

00:29:48.000 The Bible is full of walls, right?

00:29:50.000 The Bible is full of injunctions about who can marry whom and which people are allowed to intermingle with which other people.

00:29:57.000 You know, the idea that the Bible is an open borders document is relatively belied by the text of the Bible itself.

00:30:05.000 No.

00:30:06.000 No.

00:30:06.000 And by the way, that's not a suggestion that the Bible itself is against intermarriage with regard to race, for example.

00:30:12.000 That's a suggestion that the Bible is very much in favor of boundaries that establish the sanctity of certain practices and the sanctity of certain

00:30:21.000 I mean, obviously the Bible is all about the sanctity of the Jewish people, at least in the Old Testament, and it says that they are people to be kept separate in certain ways, so the Bible is not all about the idea of full-on everybody gets to come in and every person is of the same mindset.

00:30:35.000 That's just silliness.

00:30:37.000 All of this is to say that Nancy Pelosi is now willing to shut down the government again over DACA. 0.63

00:30:41.000 The Democrats are willing to shut down the government again over DACA.

00:30:44.000 This is a big mistake by them.

00:30:46.000 It is a huge mistake by them.

00:30:47.000 And in one second, I'm going to explain why it's a big mistake by them.

00:31:18.000 Of conservative feeling and thought flowing through your veins, down your gullet, into your stomach.

00:31:23.000 It's incredible.

00:31:24.000 So get that annual subscription now or go later, listen to the podcast over at SoundCloud, iTunes.

00:31:29.000 Please subscribe over at YouTube and leave us a review.

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00:31:33.000 We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast in the nation. 0.96

00:31:40.000 So, one of the reasons that it's so stupid for Democrats to claim that they want to basically shut down the government over DACA is because the Democrats are constantly wanting to cut the military budget. 0.51

00:31:49.000 And Trump sort of made reference to that a little bit earlier when he said that the Democrats are willing to let the military go unfunded in order to protect illegal immigrants. 0.97

00:31:56.000 Democrats are constantly looking to cut the military.

00:31:59.000 At the same time, they're looking to expand the budget for social services and various other spending initiatives.

00:32:04.000 And General James Mattis, former General James Mattis, Secretary of Defense, he came out and he says, listen, the worst thing that can happen right now is for us not to end sequestration.

00:32:12.000 Sequestration was a budget cap that was put in place.

00:32:15.000 The Democrats insisted that half of the budget cap come from cuts to military spending because Democrats are anti-military.

00:32:20.000 And here is what Mattis had to say about that in his testimony yesterday.

00:32:23.000 We need you to pass a budget now.

00:32:25.000 If we are to sustain our military's primacy, we need budget predictability.

00:32:31.000 Congress must take action now to ensure our military's lethality is sufficient to defend our way of life, to preserve the promise of prosperity, and to pass on the freedoms we enjoy to the next generation.

00:32:44.000 And I ask that you not let disagreements on domestic policy continue to hold our nation's defense hostage.

00:32:51.000 Now, this is always the one place where Democrats are willing to cut the budget.

00:32:54.000 They're never willing to cut the budget anywhere else.

00:32:56.000 As an example, Democrats are now calling for a new child and family leave plan, one that is more generous, supposedly, than the one that's being pushed by Ivanka Trump and Marco Rubio.

00:33:04.000 So, Senator Rubio and Ivanka Trump are trying to come up with a paid family and medical leave program that would essentially allow you to take money out of your Social Security to cover your paid family and medical leave.

00:33:14.000 And the Democrats, people on the left, very upset about this.

00:33:17.000 They say instead that we should just have the government borrow from the Chinese, essentially, to pay for it.

00:33:21.000 Elizabeth Bruning writes a piece over at Washington Post suggesting that it is our obligation, all of our obligation, to pay for other people to take paid family and medical leave.

00:33:29.000 She writes,

00:33:36.000 After the city or political community comes the world, following the convention that treats the household, city, and world as three successive levels of human society.

00:33:43.000 For the ancients, families were the first and smallest of societies, units of cooperation and order within which people learned to get along with others.

00:33:49.000 Together, families formed political communities, cities, as Augustine put it, and together, these political communities made up the world, which was a society of communities.

00:33:57.000 Peace and order in each

00:33:58.000 Okay, all of that is true.

00:33:59.000 But what she's about to suggest next is that it is the job of the government to ensure that we pay you to stay home with your baby for the first six weeks.

00:34:04.000 She says,

00:34:18.000 And how strange it is to have completely dismissed the idea in modern thought.

00:34:21.000 Our world is one of individuals making a series of contracts and agreements with one another in hopes of getting the most one can out of the world.

00:34:27.000 The lives of the others are none of our business, and ours are none of theirs.

00:34:30.000 Nowhere is this clearer than in conservative policymaking, where family policy is absurdly individualized.

00:34:36.000 And she makes the contention, essentially, that we should turn the family into a government concern again.

00:34:42.000 Now, this is one of the dangers.

00:34:43.000 I'm writing a book on ancient thought and modern political thought as well.

00:34:47.000 And one of the dangers of a lot of ancient thought is there's the suggestion implicit in a lot of ancient thought that if the idea of the human being is that you are virtuous by exercise of the faculty of reason, if the idea is that

00:34:59.000 Your virtue is tied up in being a good citizen of a community, as Plato and Aristotle both suggest.

00:35:04.000 Then why isn't it the job of the community to function in making you a good citizen?

00:35:09.000 Why isn't the job of the community to basically make you a cog in the wheel?

00:35:12.000 In Plato's Republic, he talks at length about the idea of fostering this sort of utopian vision for a society in which families are governed by the state, in which children are removed from parents and educated in a certain way, in which the wisest of the children are put in particular sorts of schools.

00:35:27.000 Right.

00:35:27.000 All of this is dangerous stuff.

00:35:29.000 Once you say that the community is responsible for the family, as opposed to the family being responsible for itself and then building a community, then you end up in some real trouble.

00:35:36.000 The basis of the liberal public order is the idea that the family, as an atomized group of people who have care for one another,

00:35:43.000 Take care of one another and then they, together with other families, form a community.

00:35:47.000 Not that the community is designed to form families.

00:35:49.000 And that if you try top down to have the community form families, all you end up with is the community dictating to families what should and should not be true.

00:35:56.000 Because the same government that can provide you paid family leave is the same government that can tell you that you need to educate your child in a particular viewpoint about the world.

00:36:03.000 This is a serious danger.

00:36:05.000 It's a serious danger and it's the difference between some Enlightenment thought and some of the pre-modern thought, right?

00:36:09.000 Some of the ancient thought and even some of the high medieval thought with regard to the value of community and family and the balance between the two.

00:36:16.000 Essentially, after the high Middle Ages and after the Renaissance, there's a feeling that's beginning to

00:36:22.000 grow because of the high levels of warfare, that centralized state power was a problem.

00:36:26.000 And that the best thing that you could do was devolve authority back down to the lowest level, which meant, in essence, the individual and the family.

00:36:33.000 And that authority sprang from the individual and the family.

00:36:35.000 This is the idea of John Locke, right?

00:36:37.000 That there's a social contract that is made by people who originally existed in a state of nature.

00:36:41.000 That state of nature, by the way, does not mean that there was no government and no state.

00:36:45.000 It just means a state of nature in which there were very few rules, right?

00:36:48.000 There were self-organized communities

00:36:51.000 But there was no monopoly of the use of state force is the idea of the state of nature.

00:36:54.000 And the idea in Locke as as well as in other philosophers like Machiavelli actually even talks a little bit about this.

00:37:02.000 The idea in some of these ancient is some of these sort of first modern philosophers and the ones that most led to the American founding.

00:37:10.000 Right.

00:37:10.000 The idea there is that family predates society.

00:37:13.000 And so the authority that society has comes from the family.

00:37:17.000 Not that the society's job is to create the family out of whole cloth.

00:37:21.000 Because otherwise, what you're going to do is you're going to have some families using the tools of society on behalf of themselves and at the expense of other families.

00:37:27.000 But this is a little too complex for Elizabeth Brutigas' take.

00:37:31.000 She goes all the way back to Augustine and to some of the ancients who suggest that the state's job is to uphold the family.

00:37:36.000 By the way, that is unclear from Augustine anyway, right?

00:37:39.000 Augustine's correct when he says that when you look at the three levels of society, you're looking at family and then community and then society at large.

00:37:46.000 That is true.

00:37:47.000 Right, of course that's true.

00:37:48.000 But Augustine was also the same guy who proposed the complete separation of the city of God and the city of man.

00:37:53.000 The idea being there's a spiritual world and there's also a physical world.

00:37:56.000 Augustine's words were used to justify virtually every regime, ranging from republics to dictatorships.

00:38:02.000 But in any case, Elizabeth Brooding over at the Washington Post, she writes,

00:38:26.000 I don't see the problem with this proposal.

00:38:27.000 By the way, we should increase the age of Social Security benefits anyway.

00:38:31.000 It's ridiculous that it is currently where it is.

00:38:33.000 The fact is, we cannot pay for Social Security.

00:38:35.000 It's been in the red since 2010, paying out more money than it has been taking in.

00:38:39.000 Anyway, this author continues,

00:38:46.000 Sorry, the facts of family life are not, by nature, communal issues.

00:38:49.000 They're not, by nature, communal issues.

00:38:51.000 The facts of family life are, by nature, private issues, and communities are formed by those families.

00:38:56.000 Again, we have to figure out how the communities are formed.

00:38:59.000 Suggesting that community predates family is historically inane.

00:39:02.000 It's not true.

00:39:03.000 Families create communities.

00:39:06.000 Just look at the Western settlers in the United States.

00:39:09.000 There's a series of families who came out west, and they would settle down with other families, and then they would create a community.

00:39:13.000 It wasn't a community that pre-existed the family.

00:39:15.000 It wasn't a bunch of individuals who went out, created a society, and then families moved in.

00:39:18.000 That's not the way that this typically works.

00:39:21.000 But she says, babies and children need caregivers.

00:39:23.000 Mothers and fathers need full-time and money to give care. 0.98

00:39:26.000 Elderly grandparents and great-grandparents need companionship and assistance.

00:39:29.000 And typically speaking, historically speaking, that was not a duty of society.

00:39:32.000 That was a duty of the family.

00:39:34.000 Babies and children were given care by members of the family.

00:39:38.000 A husband and a wife decided how they were going to care for children is how it works in my family.

00:39:42.000 My wife and I decided exactly how the kids were going to get taken care of, the grandparents chip in a lot, and we help pay for a nanny, and I am home a lot, and my wife is home.

00:39:49.000 Mothers and fathers need time and money to give care.

00:39:52.000 Then they should go out and they should make money before having children.

00:39:56.000 Ideally.

00:39:56.000 It's their responsibility to do so.

00:39:58.000 Elderly grandparents and great-grandparents need companionship and assistance.

00:40:01.000 This one is particularly interesting.

00:40:03.000 Historically speaking, it was the children who took care of the parents.

00:40:05.000 One of the reasons that parents had lots of kids is the idea that when I get old, then my kids are going to take care of me.

00:40:12.000 That was always the idea.

00:40:13.000 That you hit 80, and now you need to move in with your kids.

00:40:16.000 So you move in with your kids.

00:40:17.000 That's what your kids are there for.

00:40:19.000 And then society decided the government was going to take care of the elderly folks, and the elderly folks stopped having as many kids, and so the social security pyramid scheme turned upside down, and now it's bankrupt.

00:40:29.000 But Brutig writes at the Washington Post, Babies and children learn and grow, adults work and produce, and the elderly help and rest.

00:40:35.000 There's a place for every stage of the life cycle in the grand order of things, and a just state would ideally defer to that natural rhythm.

00:40:43.000 Right, by removing itself from the rhythm.

00:40:46.000 I mean, when the state interferes in the rhythm by offering incentives or by perverting those incentives, the state ends up doing a great disservice.

00:40:52.000 But she says, instead, conservatives plan would penalize the elderly for their decision to have raised families all in the interest of making parental leave a self-contained option, no burden to anyone but the parents themselves.

00:41:01.000 It shouldn't be a burden to anyone but the parent themselves.

00:41:03.000 I know this is actually an argument inside conservative circles.

00:41:05.000 There are some people like Ross Douthat, Raihan Salaam over at National Review.

00:41:10.000 They argue that it is the government's job to help foster families.

00:41:13.000 That it's the government's job to help ensure that parents can stay home more or that parents can have more money.

00:41:18.000 That is why they believe in the child tax credit.

00:41:20.000 As I've said, I'm not a believer in the child tax credit.

00:41:22.000 I don't believe that parents are essentially having children in order to get tax credits.

00:41:26.000 I think that's a misread of why most people have kids.

00:41:29.000 And beyond that,

00:41:31.000 Society obviously has an interest in the bearing and rearing of the next generation.

00:41:34.000 The easiest way to incentivize that is to incentivize communities to come together and form their own societies.

00:41:40.000 As I've said many times, I've said it in virtually every speech I've made for the past several years, the order of preference, if you need help, should go family, and then community, and then the state.

00:41:50.000 It should not be the reverse.

00:41:51.000 It should not be state, and then community, and then family, if you need help.

00:41:55.000 But the idea here is that Republicans are doing something deeply wrong in suggesting the primacy of family not only as the element of political conversation, but also as the source of help for members of the family.

00:42:09.000 Instead, it says the proposal would penalize bigger families more than smaller ones, couples with more children to face working further into old age before receiving retirement benefits.

00:42:17.000 Well, yes, because it would be their choice to have those children.

00:42:20.000 Moreover, it would mean, likely, that lower-wage workers would end up putting off retirement longer than wealthier workers with ample company benefits.

00:42:26.000 Well, yes, it's better to be rich than poor in the United States, as everywhere else in human history.

00:42:30.000 If you're not particularly well-to-do and you want a family, in other words, you'll need to be prepared to pay for it in your old age.

00:42:34.000 Your family, your choice, your problem.

00:42:37.000 Yes, except that if you're in my religious community, then we help you out informally, because that's something else that we need to build up.

00:42:42.000 The idea that government is there to fill all gaps, and that you are not there to actually help out members of your own community is another falsehood promulgated by the left.

00:42:49.000 The idea that the only source of help in times of trouble is the government is absolutely untrue.

00:42:57.000 But the piece concludes, quote, One of the things that's so fascinating about this argument, by the way, is that the same people arguing for paid parental leave are the same people who argue that same-sex marriage is a grand and great idea.

00:43:14.000 Same-sex marriage has no bearing on childbearing and rearing.

00:43:17.000 The whole reason the government used to prefer traditional marriage to same-sex marriage was because of benefits in terms of childbearing and rearing.

00:43:25.000 So it's kind of ironic to watch the left completely abandon that position, even as it embraces the position that we should have the government pay for paid family and parental leave.

00:43:33.000 Kind of fascinating.

00:43:34.000 But again, if you want liberty, you're going to have to accept that there's some responsibility that goes along with it.

00:43:38.000 And if you want a family that is free of government interference, you're going to have to understand that the government that gives with one hand also takes with the other.

00:43:45.000 Okay, in just a second, let's do some things I like and then some things that I hate.

00:43:48.000 So let's jump in.

00:43:49.000 Let's do some things that I like.

00:43:50.000 So, over on Amazon Prime, it is now available 13 hours, the Michael Bay film about Benghazi.

00:43:55.000 This thing has 50% on Rotten Tomatoes. 0.99

00:43:57.000 That's because critics are garbage. 0.98

00:43:59.000 Okay, this film is 0.99

00:44:00.000 Very, very, very good.

00:44:01.000 It is a very good film.

00:44:02.000 Okay, I walked in expecting it not to be such a great film because, number one, it's obviously a very depressing subject.

00:44:10.000 You have four Americans killed at the hands of terrorists in Benghazi.

00:44:12.000 The film is not political.

00:44:14.000 It does not cover the cover-up by the Obama administration.

00:44:16.000 It does not cover the fact that the Hillary State Department refused additional security requests.

00:44:22.000 It goes very light on the behavior of the Obama administration in the middle of this crisis.

00:44:26.000 It really treads lightly on that.

00:44:28.000 It's almost a political film.

00:44:30.000 But the critics hated it anyway, because anybody who mentions Benghazi must be cast into the outer darkness.

00:44:35.000 You're not allowed to mention the fact that Hillary and the Obama administration blew it.

00:44:38.000 Like, if I had made the 13 Hours movie, it would have opened with Hillary cackling over the demise of Muammar Gaddafi, saying, we saw he died.

00:44:45.000 And then it would be Hillary talking about how grand and great Libya was, and then fast forward to what's happening in Benghazi.

00:44:50.000 That's not what this movie does.

00:44:51.000 This movie is really apolitical.

00:44:52.000 It doesn't matter.

00:44:53.000 The critics slammed it anyway, because anyone who questions the greatness of Hillary Clinton must obviously be operating in bad faith.

00:45:00.000 The movie is, I think, nearly as good as Black Hawk Down.

00:45:03.000 It's a very, very good military thriller, and it's very effective, and it's very moving.

00:45:09.000 Here's a little bit of the preview for 13 hours.

00:45:12.000 Everybody, this is Jack Silva.

00:45:14.000 Jack!

00:45:15.000 We trained seals in Coronado, so he knows the drill.

00:45:18.000 Welcome to club, man.

00:45:40.000 State's under attack.

00:45:41.000 Let's go, man.

00:45:41.000 State's under attack.

00:45:43.000 Let's go!

00:45:43.000 We gotta move!

00:45:45.000 If you do not get here soon, we are all gonna die.

00:45:49.000 We have a U.S.

00:45:49.000 ambassador at risk.

00:45:50.000 The ambassador is in his safe haven.

00:45:52.000 You're not the first responders.

00:45:54.000 You're the last resort.

00:45:56.000 You will wait.

00:46:00.000 None of you have to go.

00:46:01.000 But we are the only help they have.

00:46:09.000 Okay, so the movie itself is quite good.

00:46:11.000 I think it's Michael Bay's best film, actually.

00:46:13.000 It's subtle.

00:46:14.000 It really works.

00:46:15.000 It's got a lot of momentum. 0.61

00:46:17.000 And it is pathetic that the critics decided this was only worthy of a 50% review because it was mean to Hillary Clinton, supposedly. 0.95

00:46:23.000 Just absurd. 0.98

00:46:24.000 Just an absurd

00:46:25.000 Again, I've been railing against the critics all this week because I don't know whether Black Panther is good or bad. 0.99

00:46:30.000 It might be good.

00:46:30.000 It might be great.

00:46:31.000 It might be bad.

00:46:31.000 I have no clue because it has 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and half of the reviews are all about how important the film is.

00:46:37.000 There's an idiotic, idiotic tweet out from Salon.com talking about how Black Panther is important because it's the first blockbuster release format featuring a black hero front and center. 0.99

00:46:47.000 Yes, except for all of the other ones. 1.00

00:46:49.000 Right?

00:46:49.000 Except for Independence Day.

00:46:51.000 Except for Blade.

00:46:51.000 Except for Hancock.

00:46:53.000 Except for every Jamie Foxx movie.

00:46:55.000 Except for Django Unchained.

00:46:57.000 Except for—except for Shaft.

00:46:59.000 Except for all of those, it's the first one.

00:47:01.000 You can't trust the critics, I think, is the bottom line here.

00:47:03.000 There are certain movies where you can trust them, maybe on some of the big-budget, some of the big-budget kind of superhero flicks that are not politically charged, you can trust them.

00:47:12.000 But you can't trust them on drama that has any sort of political orientation.

00:47:16.000 The difference between The Reception of 13 Hours and Black Panther, I think, is a good example of that.

00:47:20.000 Although, again, maybe Black Panther is the greatest movie ever made.

00:47:22.000 If you look at its reviews, apparently this suckers up with Citizen Kane.

00:47:25.000 I'm planning on seeing it this weekend so that I can actually give you an honest appraisal of the film itself.

00:47:29.000 Suffice it to say, I have my doubts that the movie is as good as the critics have said it is, simply because I don't think any movie ever has been as good as the critics say that Black Panther is.

00:47:37.000 Okay, other things that I like.

00:47:39.000 Yesterday, this is really cool.

00:47:41.000 There is a SpaceX launch.

00:47:42.000 Elon Musk launched the Falcon Heavy, which is the most powerful rocket ever sent into space by government or private individual.

00:47:52.000 And then he landed some of the portions of the launch back down on the tarmac, which is super cool.

00:47:58.000 Here's what it looked like.

00:47:59.000 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

00:48:09.000 It's a good mission.

00:48:09.000 It's gonna get heavy!

00:48:10.000 Stage 1 compression is now on.

00:48:36.000 Okay, so pretty cool.

00:48:38.000 And then you can see that two of the pods ended up landing back down on the tarmac.

00:48:45.000 Right exactly where they were supposed to go.

00:48:46.000 It looks like a ballet.

00:48:47.000 It's really cool.

00:48:49.000 Look how neat that is.

00:48:51.000 Thank you.

00:49:08.000 So there is a shot of the Tesla sports car in space, and then there's a space-suited mannequin strapped in the driver's seat, and the radio is set to play David Bowie's soundtrack on a loop.

00:49:17.000 Apparently, the rocket was so powerful that it actually blasted them outside the elliptical orbit they were originally going for, and there's a chance that the car actually lands on Mars, which is pretty amazing.

00:49:26.000 So, it is essentially three of SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 vehicles strapped together, and as the usual practice for SpaceX, all three boost stages returned to Earth to attempt controlled landings.

00:49:36.000 Two of the three came down.

00:49:38.000 The third booster was due to settle on a drone ship stationed several hundred kilometers out at sea, but it was unable to slow its descent by reigniting sufficient engines.

00:49:45.000 It missed the target and was destroyed as it hit the water at some 500 kilometers an hour.

00:49:50.000 But by then, the upper stage of the Falcon Heavy

00:49:52.000 According to the BBC, was heading on a trajectory that would hopefully take it toward Mars orbit.

00:49:56.000 So pretty amazing stuff.

00:49:57.000 A lot of people are upset about this because they say that the government has sponsored Elon Musk with something like $500 million of subsidies.

00:50:03.000 I promise you that they've spent a lot more on that than that on NASA.

00:50:07.000 And now again, I'm not in favor of government subsidies.

00:50:09.000 I think that Elon Musk is a very wealthy man, and I'm not sure that the government subsidies are necessary.

00:50:14.000 But you can still recognize when a cool thing happens with government subsidies, even if you oppose the government subsidies.

00:50:19.000 Okay, time for some things that I hate.

00:50:26.000 Okay, so there's a gay Olympian who's now saying that Mike Pence, Vice President of the United States, who is set to lead the Olympic delegation, should not do so. 0.76

00:50:32.000 Why? 0.76

00:50:33.000 Because he says that Mike Pence backed gay conversion therapy.

00:50:35.000 We're going into the Olympics and myself and Adam Rippon are the two first openly gay males competing in the Olympics and it's just incredible to see how times have changed because of people like you and athletes in the past and so many people that have paved the way.

00:50:49.000 But then to have someone leading the delegation that's

00:50:54.000 Okay, that is a lie. 0.59

00:51:03.000 Mike Pence never supported gay conversion therapy, which is the therapy where people are given electroshock and essentially tortured in an attempt to create an association between the pain and homosexual thoughts. 0.53

00:51:18.000 Right.

00:51:18.000 Pence has never supported that.

00:51:19.000 There's no evidence that Pence has ever supported that.

00:51:22.000 They've been hit with this accusation over and over and over.

00:51:25.000 It is simply not true.

00:51:27.000 It doesn't matter.

00:51:28.000 Pence tried to reach out to this guy.

00:51:29.000 This guy refused to talk to him.

00:51:30.000 And so the media covered it as Pence tried to reach out to gay Olympian after gay Olympian accuses him of homophobia.

00:51:36.000 That's not what happened here.

00:51:37.000 What happened here is that this guy lied about Mike Pence on national television, and the left has been lying about Mike Pence on national television about this stuff for quite a while.

00:51:44.000 What Pence did say is that any sort of bill that includes funding for individuals who are seeking to

00:51:52.000 Have psychological therapy should include coverage for people who are seeking to change their own, their own sexual orientation, right?

00:51:57.000 Which could be talk therapy, right?

00:51:59.000 Could be anything.

00:52:00.000 The bottom line is what he's saying is that if we're going to give money to you for some sort of therapy, you get to choose the therapy that you want to choose.

00:52:05.000 That is not the same thing at all as saying that Mike Pence is in favor of trying to shock gay people into not being gay anymore. 0.96

00:52:10.000 That's absurd. 0.91

00:52:11.000 But again, lies can travel around the world faster than the truth can put its boots on.

00:52:23.000 Justin Timberlake's entire career and art is based on his ability to be smooth, to create music that seduces us with references to the past, with appropriations, with artful mixes, and never quite shows any struggle.

00:52:43.000 We are living in a moment of struggle and we want our pop music to also reflect that struggle.

00:52:48.000 And frankly, Timberlake now embodies that phrase so often spoken today, white male privilege.

00:52:57.000 I'm so bored with her.

00:52:58.000 It's white male privilege for him to use pop icons of the past for his music?

00:53:03.000 That's white male privilege?

00:53:04.000 OK, then I think that we're going to—for the use of tonal music, we're going to have to credit every black star with using the rise of tonal music in the West, right? 0.80

00:53:12.000 It's not true that tonal music exists everywhere equally on Earth.

00:53:15.000 It's not true, right?

00:53:15.000 I mean, there are different cultures that have different types of music.

00:53:18.000 Pop music goes a lot more to the classical heritage in terms of the tones that it uses than it does, for example, Indian music, right?

00:53:27.000 I mean, like the country of India, or Chinese music.

00:53:29.000 It owes a lot to Western music, right?

00:53:31.000 The idea that cultural appropriation is not part and parcel of culture itself is absurd.

00:53:36.000 The idea that Justin Timberlake embodied white privilege by singing songs that weren't protest chants and that in order for the NFL to really have a pop star that mattered, the NFL had to have Beyonce do a Black Panthers routine again is just absurd.

00:53:49.000 Again, poisoning our culture is something the left is intent on doing and polarizing us along every possible line.

00:53:54.000 OK, we'll be back here tomorrow with much, much more.

00:53:57.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:53:57.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:54:02.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Mathis Glover.

00:54:04.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:54:06.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:54:08.000 Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:54:10.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:54:11.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.

00:54:13.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:54:14.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

00:54:17.000 Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - February 07, 2018

Who’s Endangering The Republic? | Ep. 470

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