The Ben Shapiro Show - Why Our Country Is In Serious Trouble | The Ben Shapiro Show Ep. 401

00:00:00.000 Did you think that it was even possible to make Gold Star Widows a partisan issue?

00:00:04.000 Or did you think that it was possible to make sexual harassment and possible sexual assault a partisan issue?

00:00:09.000 Well, if you thought not, you're wrong.

00:00:11.000 Welcome to America 2017. 0.99

00:00:13.000 Everything sucks. 0.98

00:00:14.000 I'm Ben Shapiro. 0.99

00:00:14.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show. 0.99

00:00:21.000 Happy Monday, gang!

00:00:22.000 Yeah, that's right, welcome back from the weekend.

00:00:24.000 And as we come back from the weekend, it turns out the President of the United States is now in an open run and gun battle with a gold star widow, which is the, this is maybe the second time that he's decided to do this particular thing.

00:00:34.000 We had this last time at the Republican, at the Democratic National Convention, when the Khan family decided to go political. 0.93

00:00:41.000 In this case, there's a woman named Myesha Johnson. 1.00

00:00:44.000 Her husband, David Johnson, was killed in Niger, Niger?

00:00:50.000 Niger? 0.99

00:00:50.000 I don't know how to pronounce it. 0.99

00:00:51.000 Everyone's pronouncing it differently.

00:00:52.000 I'll call it Niger because I speak English.

00:00:55.000 And in any case, the widow went on Good Morning America and ripped into President Trump and President Trump responded.

00:01:02.000 So we will talk about all of those things.

00:01:03.000 Plus, we will talk about Bill O'Reilly.

00:01:05.000 A big story came out over the weekend suggesting that he had paid $32 million for a sexual harassment suit to settle it out of court.

00:01:13.000 That is a lot of money to pay someone if the allegations are not credible.

00:01:16.000 In any case, we will talk about all of those things.

00:01:18.000 But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at My Patriot Supply.

00:01:22.000 So, if it feels like the world is about to end, that's because it might be.

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00:01:31.000 It's possible there will be a terrorist attack.

00:01:33.000 It's possible that you just

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00:01:51.000 I think so.

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00:02:23.000 Again, preparewithben.com.

00:02:29.000 Okay, so, I have a lot to talk about today, and a lot of it is based around the idea that partisanship has completely eaten our politics to the point where basic facts are no longer worthy of consideration.

00:02:41.000 So, let's consider a scenario.

00:02:43.000 Let's start with President Trump and this widow, Myeshia Johnson.

00:02:48.000 Let's talk about the possibility that we have what I've called before a Rashomon situation.

00:02:53.000 I'm not the person who coined that term.

00:02:55.000 Okay, the Rashomon situation, it's a movie by Kurosawa, and in Rashomon basically there's a murder that takes place, and there are four people who see the murder, but they all have a different recollection, because they were in different places at the time, they all have a different recollection of how the murder went down, who's responsible, how the murder was caused.

00:03:10.000 And so this has become known as sort of a Rashomon situation.

00:03:13.000 In this particular case, there's high potential for a Rashomon situation where President Trump calls up a gold star widow.

00:03:18.000 The gold star widow, it sounds like, was probably politically oriented against Trump to begin with.

00:03:22.000 She and her family were very close with Frederica Wilson, this Democrat congressperson from Florida who's very much on the left and who's talked about impeaching Trump for months.

00:03:30.000 And the Congresswoman was present when Trump decided to call the widow of Sergeant La David Johnson.

00:03:36.000 Remember, La David Johnson was killed in Niger or Niger was killed in October 4th in a mission went wrong.

00:03:44.000 His body went missing for some 48 hours and we still don't know how he died publicly.

00:03:48.000 In any case, the Congresswoman said that Trump had been

00:03:52.000 really kind of cold during the call, that Trump hadn't remembered the name of the soldier who was killed, that Trump had said something to the effect of he knew what he was signing up for, the implication being, you know, he knew he might die, so big deal.

00:04:06.000 And then John Kelly came out last week and said, listen, I was present for the phone call, too.

00:04:10.000 That's not what he said.

00:04:10.000 What he said was he was a brave man knowing that this is what you sign up for, which is a completely different read.

00:04:16.000 Now, it is completely possible because this happens all the time.

00:04:19.000 It's happened in your own life.

00:04:20.000 Let's do it!

00:04:42.000 That the person you're talking to is opposed to you, the person doesn't like you, then it's possible to read their words in the worst possible way.

00:04:49.000 That's what I actually think happened here.

00:04:51.000 I don't think President Trump called up a widow of a soldier and decided to be cold and calculating and cruel.

00:04:57.000 I don't think he even intended to do that.

00:04:58.000 I don't think that he, in ignorance, would do that.

00:05:00.000 That doesn't sound like President Trump.

00:05:02.000 I mean, I've been very, very critical of President Trump, but even that one is a bridge too far for me.

00:05:07.000 That said, it's certainly possible for the widow to take that away from the conversation. 1.00

00:05:11.000 So, this morning, on Good Morning America, the widow finally appears.

00:05:16.000 At this point, we've only heard from the mother-in-law, or really the aunt, of the soldier who was killed.

00:05:23.000 We've heard from Frederica Wilson, we've heard from John Kelly, but we hadn't heard from the principals in the conversation, right?

00:05:28.000 Trump said that he hadn't said any of this, but now you have the widow coming out, and the widow says, here's exactly how it went down.

00:05:33.000 Here she is with George Stephanopoulos on ABC News.

00:05:38.000 The questions that I have that I need answered is I want to know why it took them 48 hours to find my husband.

00:05:51.000 Why couldn't I see my husband?

00:05:54.000 Every time I asked to see my husband, they wouldn't let me.

00:05:57.000 There are also a lot of questions about the phone call you received.

00:06:00.000 From President Trump.

00:06:01.000 I know you were in a car to the airport.

00:06:04.000 Tell us what happened next.

00:06:06.000 What he said was... The President?

00:06:07.000 Yes, the President said that he knew what he signed up for, but it hurts anyways.

00:06:15.000 And I was, it made me cry because I was very angry at the tone of his voice and how he said it.

00:06:23.000 He couldn't remember my husband's name.

00:06:26.000 The only way he remembered my husband's name because he told me he had my husband's report in front of him.

00:06:32.000 And that's when he actually said, La David.

00:06:36.000 So her suggestion is that her husband, LeDavid Johnson, that Trump didn't actually know the name of the person that he was talking about.

00:06:42.000 So Trump immediately jumps to Twitter and starts tweeting about it.

00:06:46.000 Again, is this useful in any way?

00:06:49.000 Is there any usefulness to this at all?

00:06:51.000 Of course not.

00:06:52.000 There's no usefulness to this.

00:06:53.000 So Trump tweets out, I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sergeant LeDavid Johnson and spoke his name from beginning without hesitation.

00:07:01.000 Why?

00:07:02.000 Why?

00:07:03.000 Let's say that Trump is completely right here.

00:07:05.000 Is this a fight he wants to get into?

00:07:07.000 A fight with the woman who just lost her husband?

00:07:09.000 In tragic situation?

00:07:11.000 While he was serving as an American hero?

00:07:12.000 Is this a fight he really wants to do?

00:07:14.000 Is this a political winning fight?

00:07:15.000 Now, I know that there are a lot of people on the right who do the, he fights routine.

00:07:19.000 He fights, he fights, he fights. 0.99

00:07:20.000 Okay, punching yourself in the balls isn't fighting. 0.99

00:07:22.000 Okay, this is not smart. 0.99

00:07:24.000 It's just not smart.

00:07:25.000 It's also not classy.

00:07:27.000 Okay, it's not classy to fight with war widows.

00:07:29.000 Just a general rule.

00:07:30.000 Okay, I have a general rule.

00:07:31.000 And this, herein lies the problem.

00:07:33.000 Everything can be made partisan.

00:07:34.000 Because, sure, it's true that Trump can feel that he is justified in fighting back if he feels like he is being fibbed about.

00:07:41.000 Sure, Trump has every right to speak how he wants to speak.

00:07:43.000 There's a First Amendment in the country.

00:07:45.000 But it is also true that we had a certain basic agreement in the country, and that was that the President of the United States ought to have a fair bit of respect for war widows, even ones who disagree with him.

00:07:55.000 So what Maisha Johnson is saying here is nothing even close to as bad as what Cindy Sheehan said about George W. Bush.

00:08:01.000 If you don't remember back to 2005, there was a woman named Cindy Sheehan.

00:08:05.000 Her son was killed in Iraq.

00:08:06.000 She was a far-left

00:08:08.000 Code Pink person.

00:08:09.000 I think she was one of the founders of Code Pink, actually.

00:08:11.000 And Cindy Sheehan was a vocal critic of the Iraq War.

00:08:15.000 And she condemned Bush as a war criminal.

00:08:18.000 She suggested it was his fault that her son had died.

00:08:21.000 Bush actually met with her, and then she complained he hadn't met with her.

00:08:23.000 But how did Bush respond?

00:08:25.000 So I want to show you a video of President George W. Bush, because it turns out that

00:08:28.000 Honest to goodness, if you want a country that holds together, you know we've talked a lot about character these past two years.

00:08:33.000 And some people have said, what's the use of character?

00:08:34.000 All we need is the policy.

00:08:36.000 Does the character really matter?

00:08:37.000 Does the character of the President of the United States really make a difference?

00:08:40.000 And this has been a serious conversation in the country really since the days of Bill Clinton, who had no character.

00:08:45.000 Right?

00:08:45.000 Does character matter in the Oval Office?

00:08:47.000 And the answer is yes.

00:08:48.000 The reason character matters in the Oval Office is for the same reason that character matters in your day-to-day life.

00:08:54.000 The people that make you feel like you can lead a cohesive life.

00:08:58.000 The people who make you feel like you live in a community.

00:09:00.000 What creates social capital is character.

00:09:03.000 Social capital, as Robert Putnam, the political scientist from Harvard, has said, social capital is the idea that as a society, we all have a certain given amount of trust in one another that allows us to act as though the other person is not going to screw us all the time.

00:09:17.000 So, the higher your social capital, actually, the less you need contracts, right?

00:09:20.000 The more lawyers you need, that's a good indication that you don't have a lot of social capital.

00:09:24.000 Because why do I sign a contract with somebody?

00:09:26.000 I sign a contract with somebody and I'm very meticulous about that contract because I'm afraid they're going to break it.

00:09:30.000 Do I have a contract with my children?

00:09:32.000 I have a marital contract with my wife, but it's a pretty short, sweet document.

00:09:35.000 Right?

00:09:36.000 Everyone has that in the Jewish community.

00:09:37.000 It's called ketubah.

00:09:38.000 But the idea is that in most of your major relationships in life, you don't have a contract.

00:09:42.000 Why?

00:09:43.000 Because your social capital is really high.

00:09:45.000 Right?

00:09:45.000 You have trust in that person.

00:09:46.000 It's just a longer way of saying trust.

00:09:49.000 And if we don't trust each other to have a generalized sense of what's appropriate and what's not, a generalized sense for what is sacred and what's not, then you're gonna end up in these running gun battles over stupidity every single day, and you're gonna be attributing to the other person bad motives all the time. 0.95

00:10:03.000 So Cindy Sheehan, as I said, was really quite horrible to President Bush. 0.80

00:10:06.000 I mean, she, again, accused him of being a war criminal, suggested that he had gotten America into the war in Iraq based on explicit lies, that he lied because he wanted to go to war in Iraq, that he was solely responsible for the death of her son.

00:10:17.000 Here's how George W. Bush responded to Cindy Sheehan making all of these allegations in Crawford, Texas. 0.55

00:10:23.000 You're referring to Mrs. Sheehan here, I think.

00:10:25.000 I'm referring to any grieving mother or father, no matter what their political views may be.

00:10:31.000 Part of my duty as the president is to meet with those who've lost a loved one.

00:10:37.000 And so, you know, listen, I sympathize with Mrs. Sheehan.

00:10:41.000 She feels strongly.

00:10:43.000 About her position.

00:10:46.000 And she has every right in the world to say what she believes.

00:10:50.000 This is America.

00:10:50.000 She has a right to her position.

00:10:53.000 And I've thought long and hard about her position.

00:10:55.000 I've heard her position from others, which is, get out of Iraq now.

00:11:00.000 And it would be a mistake for the security of this country and the ability to lay the foundations for peace in the long run if we were to do so.

00:11:13.000 Okay, and this is who George W. Bush was.

00:11:15.000 This is why I have a lot of respect for Bush the man.

00:11:17.000 As I said, I disagreed with him on a lot of policy, but this is a classy individual who is in the White House.

00:11:22.000 I mean, there's a story that Dana Perino told.

00:11:25.000 I don't remember if I actually told it.

00:11:27.000 I think I referred to it the other day.

00:11:28.000 But here's the actual story that Dana Perino told about George W. Bush visiting a grieving mother.

00:11:35.000 And it's pretty amazing.

00:11:37.000 So here it is.

00:11:39.000 He visited a patient at Walter Reed Medical Facility.

00:11:44.000 And right there, there was one situation in which one mom and dad of a dying soldier from the Caribbean were devastated.

00:11:52.000 The mom beside herself with grief.

00:11:53.000 This is from Dana Perino circa 2016.

00:11:54.000 It was in her book.

00:11:55.000 She yelled at the president, 0.94

00:11:56.000 Wanting to know why it was her child and not his who lay in that hospital bed.

00:11:59.000 Her husband tried to calm her, and I noticed the president wasn't in a hurry to leave.

00:12:03.000 He tried to offer him comfort, but just stood there and took it, like he expected and needed to hear the anguish to try to soak up some of her suffering if he could.

00:12:10.000 Later, as we rode back on Marine One to the White House, no one spoke.

00:12:13.000 But as the helicopter took off, the president looked at me and said, that mama sure was mad at me. 1.00

00:12:17.000 Then he turned to look out the window of the helicopter, and I don't blame her a bit.

00:12:21.000 A tear slipped out of the side of his eye and down his face.

00:12:22.000 He didn't wipe it away, and we flew back to the White House.

00:12:25.000 That's what creates trust in a country.

00:12:27.000 I may disagree with Bush on a particular war.

00:12:29.000 I may disagree with Obama on a particular war.

00:12:31.000 But if I don't believe that Obama believes that people who clearly have good motivations, you know, the families of people who have died in Iraq, or died in Afghanistan, or died in Niger, that those people have bad motivations, that those people have to be attacked, that those people... It doesn't matter what they say politically.

00:12:47.000 At least when it comes to their child, or their family member, their husband, their wife. 0.97

00:12:51.000 Those people have the right motivations.

00:12:53.000 We cannot have a country with social capital where we trust each other if we're not willing to take the hit once in a while.

00:12:58.000 If we're not willing to go out there and say, as Trump should have just said.

00:13:02.000 Here's what Trump should have said.

00:13:02.000 He said, listen.

00:13:04.000 As the person on the other end of the conversation, I did not think that that was what I was saying.

00:13:08.000 If that's how it was taken, then I fully apologize.

00:13:11.000 But I don't believe that's what I said.

00:13:13.000 I would never try to be callous.

00:13:14.000 I would never in a million years try to be callous to anyone whose husband had served the country with such honor and distinction as Sergeant Johnson did.

00:13:23.000 I would never do that.

00:13:24.000 If it was read that way, then I fully apologize and I'm more than happy to meet with the widow and talk with her and try and clear the air because I think that it's important that we all be on the same page here.

00:13:35.000 We all know what a hero her husband was.

00:13:37.000 Instead of doing that, he's busy tweeting about how this isn't how it happened.

00:13:40.000 How is that helpful?

00:13:41.000 How's that helpful?

00:13:42.000 And again, you can say that Trump is just telling the truth, but it's not helpful to him.

00:13:47.000 If you want him to succeed as president, he must have social capital with the American public.

00:13:53.000 If you want him to succeed, if you want him to be re-elected, understand not everything Trump does, not every fight he picks, is a winning fight.

00:14:00.000 If he would pick fewer of these fights, he would be better off.

00:14:03.000 You know, I think that there's this certain sense that's set in on the right, and it's set in on the left too, and it's very weird, okay?

00:14:09.000 There's this sense that's set in on the right that no matter what Trump does, he is utterly untouchable, because after all, he was hit with everything, including the kitchen sink in the 2016 election cycle, and he won anyway.

00:14:19.000 And so therefore, he can do and say whatever he wants, and he's never gonna lose his base, and he's not gonna lose another election, because after all, he beat Hillary Clinton, so why would he lose another election?

00:14:28.000 This neglects two really important facts.

00:14:31.000 One, George W. Bush in 2000 lost the popular vote by 500,000.

00:14:34.000 He barely won the election.

00:14:37.000 By 2004, when he beat John Kerry by about a million and a half, two million votes, he had picked up 10 million votes.

00:14:44.000 Between 2000 and 2004, he picked up 10 million votes.

00:14:48.000 And he picked up a lot of those votes because of 9-11 and the war in Iraq.

00:14:51.000 He picked up 10 million and he only won by two.

00:14:54.000 So, where is President Trump going to come up with the 13 million votes he's going to need to win?

00:14:59.000 Remember, he lost by almost 3 million popular votes in this election cycle.

00:15:02.000 So, that's problem number one for this perspective.

00:15:05.000 Problem number two is he's not going to be running against Hillary Clinton again. 1.00

00:15:08.000 Now, maybe the Democrats are stupid enough. 1.00

00:15:10.000 This is the other side of the coin. 1.00

00:15:11.000 Maybe the Democrats are stupid enough to run somebody who is as unpopular as Hillary Clinton. 1.00

00:15:15.000 Maybe they decide they need to run Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris. 1.00

00:15:18.000 Maybe they decide to be that dumb. 0.98

00:15:20.000 Maybe they decide that they want to recreate Obama's intersectional coalition. 1.00

00:15:24.000 And they fail again.

00:15:25.000 But Republicans shouldn't be counting on that.

00:15:28.000 Democrats seem to be counting on the fact that Trump has low approval ratings to mean that Trump is going to lose in 2020. 1.00

00:15:33.000 That's idiotic. 1.00

00:15:34.000 Trump had the same approval ratings now that he had before, and he won. 1.00

00:15:37.000 Approval ratings don't mean a thing because he's running against someone.

00:15:41.000 It's a binary election, as we learned.

00:15:43.000 We were told a thousand times it was binary.

00:15:45.000 So that means the Democrats are going to have to come up with somebody that can't just rail on Trump all day and hope to win.

00:15:50.000 By the same terms, Trump can't hope to do whatever he wants to do and increase his approval rating and win re-election just by default, because that's not how this is going to work.

00:15:58.000 Now, I want to talk a little bit more about things becoming partisan that absolutely should not be partisan in just a second, but first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Birch Gold.

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00:17:12.000 Okay, so

00:17:14.000 With all of this said, I want to talk about the self-assurance of President Trump and the assurance of the Democrats that all they have to do is attack Trump and then they can win.

00:17:23.000 And then I want to talk a little bit about sexual harassment and the polarization regarding that.

00:17:27.000 Okay, so here is the what I think is foolish self-assurance of President Trump that he can basically do whatever he wants and get away with it because so far he's been able to do whatever he wants and get away with it.

00:17:37.000 Here's President Trump talking about his use of Twitter.

00:17:42.000 I have friends that say, oh, don't use social media.

00:17:45.000 See, I don't call it tweets.

00:17:46.000 Tweeting is like a typewriter.

00:17:49.000 When I put it out, you put it immediately on your show.

00:17:52.000 I mean, the other day I put something out, two seconds later I'm watching your show.

00:17:55.000 It's up.

00:17:56.000 You're right.

00:17:57.000 We're watching your Twitter feed.

00:17:59.000 And, you know, they're well-crafted.

00:18:00.000 I was always a good student.

00:18:02.000 I'm like a person that does well with that kind of thing.

00:18:04.000 And I doubt I'd be here if it weren't for social media, to be honest.

00:18:07.000 I'm not going to mock the statement that he's a great student.

00:18:10.000 He was a good student.

00:18:10.000 He was always someone who did well with that sort of thing.

00:18:12.000 Like, he's a smart person.

00:18:14.000 I'm not going to spend too much time on that or the fact that he had three different spellings of the word council before he got it right.

00:18:21.000 But beyond that, you know, the self-assurance that his Twitter is what sets the agenda.

00:18:27.000 Listen, it's true.

00:18:28.000 His Twitter does set the agenda, which is why he should be careful about how he uses it.

00:18:31.000 Again, this is not coming from a place where I want to see Trump fail.

00:18:33.000 You think I want him to stop tweeting so that he'll fail?

00:18:36.000 I want him to stop tweeting so that he'll succeed as president.

00:18:39.000 I want him to stop tweeting so he's not getting in useless fights.

00:18:42.000 Okay, so this is the problem on the right.

00:18:43.000 The problem on the right is a bunch of people on the right think Trump can do whatever he wants, and he'll get away with it because, after all, he's been able to so far.

00:18:49.000 And then there's the problem on the left.

00:18:51.000 The left has two choices in 2020.

00:18:54.000 Again, I'm not in the business of giving advice to the left.

00:18:56.000 The left has two choices in 2020.

00:18:57.000 They can either recognize that they lost in 2016 and have been losing for the past several years, several election cycles, because they have remade their base, or they can continue to try and go back to the well.

00:19:09.000 So there is the Clinton base from 1992-1996, and then there is the base

00:19:14.000 And then there's the base from Barack Obama in 2012.

00:19:18.000 Completely different coalition.

00:19:20.000 Very, very different coalition.

00:19:22.000 Now, first of all, if Democrats think that Trump is weak going into 2020, they're neglecting the fact that one president since 1968 has not won re-election.

00:19:33.000 Right, without a significant third-party candidacy.

00:19:36.000 George H.W.

00:19:37.000 Bush only loses because Perot's there.

00:19:39.000 But every other president has won two terms in office except for Jimmy Carter because Jimmy Carter was so freaking awful.

00:19:45.000 And even Carter had to run against one of the great candidates in American history, Ronald Reagan, in order for him to lose in what was a close election up to the very end. 0.98

00:19:52.000 Okay, so for Democrats to suggest that Trump is weak here is foolish on their part. 0.97

00:19:57.000 They have two choices. 0.94

00:19:58.000 One, they can try to remake the Bill Clinton coalition.

00:20:01.000 They can go after those blue-collar voters, nominate somebody like Joe Biden, somebody like Bernie Sanders, go after the voters in Michigan that Hillary Clinton lost and couldn't drive out. 0.99

00:20:08.000 They will have to acknowledge that Hillary was a garbage candidate. 1.00

00:20:11.000 They'll have to acknowledge that Hillary was a terrible, terrible candidate and the real reason that Trump is president is not because Trump is good at this, it's because Hillary was quite awful at this. 0.99

00:20:19.000 A lot of Democrats don't want to accept this.

00:20:20.000 Okay, the proof is in the statistics.

00:20:23.000 Hillary Clinton, let's put it this way, Donald Trump won fewer votes in Wisconsin in 2016 than Mitt Romney did in 2012.

00:20:29.000 Romney lost the state in a walk.

00:20:31.000 Trump won the state.

00:20:32.000 No one showed up to vote for Hillary Clinton.

00:20:34.000 Donald Trump won fewer votes in Michigan than George W. Bush did in 2004.

00:20:39.000 Bush lost the state of Michigan.

00:20:41.000 Trump won it in a walk.

00:20:42.000 No one voted for Hillary Clinton. 1.00

00:20:44.000 She stunk. 0.98

00:20:45.000 They thought that they could just remake the Obama coalition, they could just go back to the well with this old white lady, and it didn't work that way. 0.98

00:20:52.000 They figured, okay, if we lose a few black voters, a few Hispanic voters, no big deal, we can just drive up the women's vote. 1.00

00:20:57.000 Didn't happen that way.

00:20:58.000 If they decide to go back to the well with Kamala Harris or Elizabeth Warren because they're going to ignore the white working class again, they're going to ignore males or white women who are married, if they do that, they're going to lose again.

00:21:09.000 So, they think that if they just attack Trump enough, then by default, they will win the election. 0.98

00:21:15.000 I don't think that that's true in any sense, and that's why they're making a very foolish mistake.

00:21:19.000 In the same way that Trump is making a foolish mistake by attacking Myeshia Johnson, the gold star widow, the media are making a very foolish mistake by attacking General John Kelly, a gold star father. 0.81

00:21:28.000 So General Kelly, as we discussed last week, went out there, ripped Frederica Wilson, ripped the media. 0.55

00:21:32.000 For turning this whole Gold Star family phone call thing into a fiasco. 0.99

00:21:37.000 Again, I said everyone here deserves blame except for I think Myeshia Johnson and John Kelly.

00:21:42.000 I think both of them are Gold Star family members and they have an added bit of credibility here.

00:21:47.000 But the media have decided to jump on General Kelly anyway because Kelly is associated with Trump.

00:21:54.000 So Thomas Friedman.

00:21:55.000 Who has no moral authority.

00:21:56.000 I mean, Thomas Friedman, the columnist from the New York Times, who's basically made a career out of flying around to various terrible countries, being put up in a hotel for a night, and then talking in glowing terms about how wonderful the country is.

00:22:07.000 Thomas Friedman says John Kelly lost moral authority last week.

00:22:10.000 How seriously should the public take this?

00:22:12.000 Well, I think what's going on, Chuck, is a real crisis of authority.

00:22:15.000 Something I talked about on the show once before, I quoted my friend Dov Seidman, who said, you know, there's a big difference between formal authority and moral authority.

00:22:23.000 So we have a president who has formal authority, but I would argue he has lost all of his moral authority.

00:22:28.000 That is why last week he had to bring out General Kelly, a four-star Marine general, because he still had

00:22:35.000 Formal authority and moral authority.

00:22:37.000 Unfortunately, General Kelly, by saying things that were provably false about that Congresswoman, really lost, I think, a lot of his moral authority.

00:22:47.000 And now, we have a situation where the White House spokeswoman had to invoke his formal authority, that he was a four-star Marine General, to basically shut up the press.

00:22:56.000 And I think that's the tragedy here.

00:22:58.000 Like, everyone has lost their moral authority, and I think that's a real crisis.

00:23:03.000 First of all, I don't think General Kelly lost his moral authority.

00:23:05.000 What they're talking about is General Kelly made an allegation during that press conference that Frederica Wilson had dedicated a building in 2013, I believe, 2012, in which, and at that dedication of an FBI building, he said she bragged about achieving funding for the building.

00:23:20.000 Now if you go back and you watch the speech, which I have, and I wrote a full transcript of it, she does spend about four minutes bragging, but she's not bragging about the building funding, she's bragging about the naming of the building, and she says that she was chiefly responsible for the naming of this building after these fallen FBI agents.

00:23:35.000 Kelly may have gotten the content wrong with regard to what she was bragging about, but he was right that she spent several minutes bragging about what a wonderful job she had done.

00:23:42.000 In any case, the idea that John Kelly lost his moral authority, let's put it this way.

00:23:46.000 Is there anyone on the left who would be making this contention if a Gold Star family on the left had said the same thing?

00:23:51.000 We were told that Cindy Sheehan had absolute moral authority. 0.98

00:23:55.000 We were told that the Jersey Girls, who were the widows of people killed on 9-11, had absolute moral authority.

00:23:59.000 I think that's a phrase used by Maureen Dowd.

00:24:01.000 These people had absolute moral authority.

00:24:02.000 It didn't matter if what they were saying wasn't true.

00:24:04.000 They had absolute moral authority. 0.94

00:24:05.000 The idea that John Kelly lost his moral authority because he attacked Frederica Wilson is just ridiculous.

00:24:12.000 And you want to see the partisanship in the media, let me show you Kaiser Khan.

00:24:14.000 So Kaiser Khan, as you recall, was the father of a Muslim soldier who was slain in Iraq.

00:24:20.000 I think it was Iraq, rather than Afghanistan.

00:24:22.000 And in any case, he was at the 2016 convention and he ripped on President Trump.

00:24:27.000 Trump got into it with Kaiser Kahn's wife because he said Kaiser Kahn's wife was just standing there and he has no idea why.

00:24:32.000 The implication being, of course, that Muslim women are silent and don't say anything. 0.99

00:24:36.000 And it was a big hubbub, if you don't recall.

00:24:38.000 So Kaiser Kahn now is back, right?

00:24:40.000 He's on Face the Nation.

00:24:42.000 And now he's going to talk about why he has moral authority to speak about politics, but Gold Star father John Kelly does not.

00:24:49.000 I was shocked.

00:24:50.000 I was shocked to see Citizen Kelly standing next to the President when he, when President could not have the proper word to condemn the attack on the blessed city of Charlottesville, Virginia by neo-Nazis.

00:25:09.000 He stood, you could look at his face and his gesture in disgust, but he stood in support of

00:25:18.000 That moment when Donald Trump could not condemn the attack that took place.

00:25:25.000 Then again, instead of advising the president that restraint and dignity is the call of the moment, former General Kelly indulged in defending behavior of the president and made the situation even worse.

00:25:44.000 So only he is allowed to speak politically.

00:25:45.000 Only he's allowed to go up there to Democratic National Convention and talk about politics.

00:25:49.000 So, again, everything becomes partisan.

00:25:52.000 This wasn't partisan.

00:25:53.000 Right?

00:25:53.000 This wasn't partisan.

00:25:54.000 Just like the NFL flag controversy was not partisan. 0.96

00:25:56.000 There was basic bipartisan agreement that kneeling for the anthem was dumb.

00:25:59.000 Now it's a partisan issue.

00:26:00.000 There's basic bipartisan agreement that Gold Star families deserve our sympathy and our respect, even if we disagree with them politically.

00:26:06.000 That was destroyed last year, and now it's been destroyed even more.

00:26:10.000 All of these things, where we had consensus, are now gone.

00:26:13.000 Frederica Wilson is openly attacking John Kelly, suggesting that Kelly was a puppet of the president.

00:26:17.000 Again, is there anything from her lips about the respect for Gold Star families that she supposedly signifies?

00:26:22.000 First of all, I have to say, I don't know how many hats this woman owns, but it is astonishing.

00:26:27.000 I mean, this is a real repertoire of hats.

00:26:29.000 As a hat aficionado, I enjoy a good hat.

00:26:32.000 I have to say, respect to Frederica Wilson on the hats.

00:26:36.000 Not a lot of respect for what she has done over the past week.

00:26:39.000 You know, John Kelly is almost, I guess you could say he was a puppet of the President, and what he was trying to do was divert the attention away from the President onto me, and he basically just lied on me.

00:26:58.000 And I don't like, I don't appreciate people lying on me.

00:27:02.000 And that's what he did.

00:27:04.000 I've been in politics a long time and most things don't bother me.

00:27:08.000 You know, it just rolls off my back.

00:27:10.000 I've been lied on before, but the character assassination that he went through to call me out of my name and empty barrel and all the work that I've done in this community.

00:27:23.000 Not only does he owe me an apology, but he owes an apology to the American people because when he lied on me,

00:27:31.000 He lied to me.

00:27:46.000 That's not the, again, now she can disagree with Kelly, but the way she should do it is she should say this.

00:27:50.000 She should say, listen, I know that General Kelly has great experience with Gold Star families.

00:27:54.000 I respect his experience with Gold Star families.

00:27:57.000 With respect, the wife of a soldier says that she was offended by the President of the United States.

00:28:03.000 I don't see why General Kelly would defend the President under those circumstances or give facts that are provably untrue about me.

00:28:10.000 That does not undermine his moral authority.

00:28:13.000 But it does say that just because you have moral authority doesn't mean what you're saying is correct on this score.

00:28:17.000 Moral authority on Gold Star Families does not necessarily translate over into other areas.

00:28:21.000 This is the way we could have a civil, decent conversation that builds unity in the public, but we're not going to do any of those things.

00:28:26.000 So before I get to sexual harassment and sexual assault, again, becoming a partisan issue, I first want to say thank you to our sponsors over at RealtyShares.com.

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00:30:13.000 Okay, so, again, I think that everyone is getting partisan because they think that if they attack the personalities on the other side, they'll win.

00:30:19.000 Trump thinks that if he attacks the personalities on the other side, that this will somehow boost him.

00:30:22.000 The left thinks if they attack Trump, then that will boost Trump.

00:30:26.000 And then that will boost them.

00:30:28.000 All of this is a problem.

00:30:30.000 All of it destroys the social fabric.

00:30:31.000 Now, listen.

00:30:32.000 I like aggressive politicking.

00:30:34.000 I think aggressive politicking is good.

00:30:38.000 But I like aggressive politicking on the issues.

00:30:40.000 I don't like aggressive politicking on the implication that your character is flawed because we disagree or because we interpreted the same event two different ways.

00:30:48.000 And I think that this has gone sideways in a pretty significant way.

00:30:52.000 Another way in which this has gone sideways, there are just certain aspects of American life that I feel like good people all agree on things.

00:31:02.000 I've said this in my speeches.

00:31:03.000 People say there's a rape culture, and I say, okay, who's pro-rape? 0.77

00:31:06.000 Who's pro-rape?

00:31:07.000 Like, name me the person who's pro-rape.

00:31:09.000 I say this in my college speeches all the time.

00:31:10.000 You know, who's pro-murder?

00:31:13.000 Who is pro-racism?

00:31:14.000 Like, name the people who are pro-racism, who think racism is a great thing, aside from, you know, some of the members of the alt-right.

00:31:21.000 Or some of the members of the intersectional left.

00:31:22.000 Like, name the people who think racism is an awesome thing.

00:31:25.000 And the answer is, there are not a lot of people who believe those things, but there's a secondary problem that we do have to talk about, and that is the feeling that

00:31:34.000 Even if you agree rape is a terrible thing, or even if you agree that sexual harassment and sexual assault are a bad thing, that when it's your own side doing it, you're willing to look the other way for the quote-unquote greater good.

00:31:45.000 This is a common phenomenon.

00:31:47.000 It's something that's fascinating to me.

00:31:48.000 I think that this is actually how evil movements get started. 0.88

00:31:51.000 I think that Nazi Germany got started not because the Nazis were clear and concise about what they were about to do to the Jews, but because there were a lot of people who felt like, well it's a lot of fringe rhetoric, that's a lot of garbage they're saying, but 0.91

00:32:02.000 At least they're better than the communists.

00:32:05.000 At least they're better than is a recipe for you approving bad things.

00:32:09.000 At least they're better than is you winking and nodding at bad behavior in order to justify bad behavior on your own side.

00:32:16.000 Because what it really should be is not at least we're better than, it should be 0.77

00:32:19.000 Yes, this is garbage on our side, and it's bad on the other side, too. 0.97

00:32:22.000 It's terrible on our side, and it's terrible on the other side. 1.00

00:32:24.000 So, on the left, there's been this rush to condemn Donald Trump.

00:32:28.000 And then, as soon as it was Harvey Weinstein, then everybody hid in the closet.

00:32:32.000 And now there's an avoidance of naming more names.

00:32:35.000 We know.

00:32:36.000 We know.

00:32:36.000 I mean, we've heard the stories from women.

00:32:37.000 Women are out there saying, I was sexually assaulted.

00:32:40.000 I was sexually harassed.

00:32:40.000 They will not name the names.

00:32:41.000 And I'm talking about major actresses who could afford to make this stand. 1.00

00:32:45.000 They're not doing it.

00:32:46.000 Why aren't they doing it?

00:32:47.000 Well, in some cases, there are power relationships at stake, but in some cases, there's a feeling by some people on the left like, well, I'll condemn it when it's the Catholic Church, but when it's Hollywood, really?

00:32:56.000 Like, do I have to go there?

00:32:57.000 Maybe if I just quiet down.

00:32:59.000 And on the right, there was this feeling about President Trump.

00:33:02.000 We were loud and proud about how much we thought that Bill Clinton had sexually exploited women, but when Trump bragged about it on tape, then we were like, ah, big deal.

00:33:10.000 Ah, big deal.

00:33:10.000 A lot of people on the right felt that way.

00:33:12.000 Or at least they felt like, it's bad, but is it that bad?

00:33:15.000 Now, I'm not talking about voting for Trump.

00:33:17.000 You can still vote for Trump, but you should at least have condemned that.

00:33:20.000 You should have at least said, this is disgusting behavior, what he's talking about here.

00:33:23.000 Like, this is not difficult.

00:33:25.000 Again, I want to distinguish between a couple of different types of response to bad behavior that I'm talking about.

00:33:31.000 One is situations in which you are at the lower end of the power imbalance.

00:33:35.000 So I'm not talking about victims who are still trying to make a career in Hollywood and know that no one is going to stand up with them and that their career will be ruined for speaking out.

00:33:44.000 I understand the moral conundrum that happens.

00:33:47.000 I'm sure that there are plenty of women who are going on shows like Bill O'Reilly's who may have felt not good about how they were treated, 1.00

00:33:55.000 But also understood that if they spoke out about it, they would never be appearing on Bill O'Reilly's show again, right?

00:34:00.000 I'm sure there are women who felt that way.

00:34:01.000 Just as I'm sure that there are women in Hollywood who feel like they've been sexually assaulted or harassed by producers and directors.

00:34:07.000 We know them.

00:34:07.000 They're talking about it.

00:34:08.000 And have said, well, I'm not going to give up my career.

00:34:11.000 Do I really want to give them the tool to destroy my career by going out and saying something that isn't going to be tried in a court and the guy will just continue to work?

00:34:19.000 You know, is that a fight I can win?

00:34:20.000 So there are people who say, is that a fight I can win?

00:34:22.000 And the answer sometimes is no.

00:34:24.000 I don't really feel a lot of blame for those people.

00:34:26.000 That's group number one.

00:34:27.000 Group number two are people who say, yes, what happened here is terrible.

00:34:30.000 That doesn't make everyone in Hollywood terrible.

00:34:32.000 Or, you know, President Trump talked about doing terrible things.

00:34:36.000 Or Bill Clinton talked about doing terrible things.

00:34:38.000 I'm still going to vote for him because he's better than the alternative.

00:34:40.000 But that was a terrible thing.

00:34:42.000 Not talking about that group of people either.

00:34:43.000 I'm talking about the people who say, was it really that bad?

00:34:47.000 Was it really that bad?

00:34:49.000 There was a story that broke over the weekend, and the story was that Bill O'Reilly had allegedly signed a $32 million settlement of sexual harassment against a woman named Liz Wheel, I think, who was a lawyer who used to appear on Fox News a fair bit.

00:35:03.000 $32 million is an enormous amount of money.

00:35:05.000 For anyone.

00:35:06.000 You know, to sign a settlement for $32 million, it does not tend to suggest that everything was evidence-less or easily disprovable, at the very least.

00:35:13.000 Now, Bill O'Reilly's fighting back against this, as you would imagine, but obviously there's a serious problem inside Fox News.

00:35:20.000 Roger Ailes had a problem, clearly.

00:35:23.000 O'Reilly, clearly, had a problem.

00:35:26.000 There were people who were beyond that, who apparently had problems, or at least they were looking the other way because these were powerful people.

00:35:33.000 Powerful people are the ones who need to stand up.

00:35:35.000 Powerful people are the ones who need to stand up and say something.

00:35:38.000 So today, Megyn Kelly came out, and again, I want to show you that the partisanship here is so incredible, with regard to Megyn Kelly in particular.

00:35:45.000 And I'll say, I'm friendly with Megyn.

00:35:47.000 But here's what Megyn had to say about Bill O'Reilly.

00:35:51.000 Bill had basically come out and said that all of this is trumped up by the left.

00:35:54.000 Here's Megyn Kelly suggesting precisely the opposite today.

00:35:59.000 However, O'Reilly's suggestion that no one ever complained about his behavior is false.

00:36:04.000 I know because I complained.

00:36:07.000 I wrote an email to the co-presidents of Fox News, Bill Shine and Jack Abernathy.

00:36:11.000 An email I have never made public but am sharing now because I think it speaks volumes about powerful men and the roadblocks one can face in taking them on.

00:36:21.000 I wrote, in part, perhaps he didn't realize the kind of message his criticism sends to young women across this country about how men continue to view the issue of speaking out about sexual harassment.

00:36:33.000 Perhaps he didn't realize that his exact attitude of shaming women into shutting the hell up about harassment on grounds that it will disgrace the company is in part how Fox News got into the decade-long Ailes mess to begin with.

00:36:46.000 Perhaps it's his own history of harassment of women, which has, as you both know, resulted in payouts to more than one woman, including recently, that blinded him to the folly of saying anything other than, I am just so sorry for the women of this company, who never should have had to go through that.

00:37:04.000 So, Megan said that the response to this was the Fox brass saying they would take care of it and then allowing O'Reilly to go on that night and basically defend his commentary.

00:37:11.000 Roger Ailes was still at the company at that point.

00:37:13.000 Now, were there people inside Fox who knew what Roger Ailes was doing?

00:37:16.000 Let's forget O'Reilly for a second.

00:37:17.000 Who knew what Roger Ailes was doing?

00:37:18.000 I'm sure there are people who knew exactly what Roger Ailes was doing.

00:37:22.000 I'm sure that there are people who knew what the conditions were like, you know, around Roger Ailes.

00:37:26.000 But, if they couldn't take down Roger Ailes, then you have a power imbalance situation.

00:37:30.000 But how about all the women who didn't say anything?

00:37:32.000 How about all the people who were around Ailes, who knew stuff was going on, who didn't say anything?

00:37:35.000 You know, this to me is the same as Harvey Weinstein's driver who was saying that there were women getting into his car, and, you know, he was afraid to lose his job, but he could have testified about it.

00:37:44.000 You know, this is...

00:37:45.000 Power is something that corrupts, and loyalty to institutions beyond loyalty to ideals and decency is a serious problem.

00:37:52.000 And it's something I see in politics across the board right now.

00:37:55.000 It means the end of the country.

00:37:56.000 You know, the title of this episode is, Are We Looking at the End of the Country?

00:37:59.000 It means the end of the country when we don't have a common vision that includes a common decency, that includes a common basic idea that bad behavior is bad behavior, whether it's somebody I like or somebody I don't like who's performing that bad behavior.

00:38:12.000 What I'm seeing too much of is bad behavior, but it's on my side, so eh.

00:38:18.000 We talked about this a lot last year during the election cycle.

00:38:20.000 And it's happened on both sides.

00:38:21.000 And just because the other side does it doesn't mean it's okay for you to do it.

00:38:24.000 I see this all the time.

00:38:25.000 You people on the right.

00:38:26.000 My principles.

00:38:28.000 My principles. 0.98

00:38:29.000 First of all, I hate this garbage, this my stuff online. 0.99

00:38:32.000 M-U-H. 1.00

00:38:32.000 My, as though you're a baby for saying my principles. 1.00

00:38:35.000 I thought that the founding fathers of this country were deeply imbued with a sense of principle.

00:38:40.000 I thought that being a religious person meant being principled.

00:38:43.000 I'm not sure when principles became an insult, as opposed to something that we're supposed to stand up for, defend, and protect.

00:38:49.000 I'm not sure when principles went by the wayside because, hey, we're in a fight and it's a blood match.

00:38:54.000 If you feel like you're in such a blood match with the other members of America, that principles go by the wayside, that you're in such an actual war, that principles are now by the wayside, or that you can't at least express publicly, I'm putting aside my principle now to make a tactical decision to club everyone back in line on principle.

00:39:10.000 If you can't even do that, you're just discarding them because, hey, principles, what do they matter in war?

00:39:14.000 All's fair.

00:39:15.000 Then we don't live in a country where we're brothers anymore or sisters anymore.

00:39:19.000 We don't live in a country where there's any social capital or trust anymore.

00:39:23.000 If you feel like your principles are now secondary to the fight, then we really are at war or you're misconstruing the situation.

00:39:29.000 One of those two things.

00:39:31.000 As we continue here on the Ben Shapiro Show, I want to talk about some Republican infighting that has been taking place.

00:39:37.000 I also want to talk about some Democratic infighting that's been taking place and why all of this, why this partisanship, this decision that principles no longer matter has some real ramifications for how the government is run.

00:39:47.000 But first, you have to go and subscribe.

00:39:48.000 So for $9.99 a month, you can subscribe to DailyWire.com.

00:39:51.000 Go over and check it out right now over at DailyWire.com.

00:39:54.000 You get the rest of today's show live on video.

00:39:56.000 You also will get Andrew Klavan's show live on video.

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00:40:23.000 Plus, the greatest of all beverage vessels, the leftist tears hot or cold vessel.

00:40:27.000 Now, there are some who have said that the fact it says leftist tears hot or cold means that I'm just being partisan.

00:40:32.000 I don't think partisanship is irrelevant. 1.00

00:40:34.000 I think principles are above partisanship, but we can still laugh at leftism because leftism is stupid. 0.99

00:40:39.000 So leftist tears, hot or cold mug, you can get that when you go over to dailywire.com and get our annual subscription. 0.99

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00:41:02.000 This sort of all-this-matters-is-the-fight mentality that I think is really corrupting the country.

00:41:06.000 I talked about it a little bit in reference to George W. Bush's speech last week.

00:41:09.000 I thought Bush's speech was a quite normal, good, decent defense of constitutional conservatism.

00:41:18.000 And I think that people felt insulted because they are so entranced with this partisan bickering.

00:41:25.000 Now, how does it matter beyond the social capital?

00:41:27.000 How does it matter beyond the fact we don't trust one another?

00:41:29.000 How does it matter that we don't have a common set of facts?

00:41:32.000 So one of the things that I think has contributed to the fact that we don't have a common set of facts are the media, because the media have conflated their own opinions with their perception of the facts.

00:41:42.000 I'm going to show you a new CNN ad.

00:41:43.000 There's an amazing ad from CNN that I want to show you that just came out on Twitter today.

00:41:49.000 This is an apple.

00:41:50.000 Some people might try to tell you that it's a banana.

00:42:18.000 They might scream BANANA, BANANA, BANANA over and over and over again.

00:42:22.000 They might put BANANA in all caps. 0.51

00:42:27.000 You might even start to believe that this is a banana.

00:42:31.000 But it's not.

00:42:33.000 This is an apple.

00:42:38.000 And then it says, facts first, CNN.

00:42:41.000 Okay, so I have a pretty obvious problem with this.

00:42:43.000 You know, when you're saying, not because I don't think facts first, I do think facts first.

00:42:47.000 My problem is when you conflate your opinion with the facts, you got a problem.

00:42:50.000 What I've been trying to do, and I've really been making an effort, is present the facts as I see them, and then present my opinion.

00:42:55.000 And you can see, okay, if my opinion is right or wrong, I'll give you my sourcing.

00:42:59.000 Everyone who emails me asking for sources, I always give them sources so that they know where I'm getting my facts.

00:43:04.000 Here's the problem with CNN.

00:43:05.000 CNN says an apple is an apple.

00:43:07.000 But then, CNN, on headline news, if I say, a man is a man and a woman is a woman, I will be physically assaulted on CNN headline news.

00:43:15.000 Like, when I say a banana, it turns out it's still a banana, then presumably, it's a problem.

00:43:22.000 Right, CNN has been doing this sort of stuff for a while.

00:43:23.000 I mean, CNN runs this ad, and they legitimately have on, you know, on their website right now, there is a headline that reads this, okay?

00:43:32.000 This is the headline on, there is a story from 2017, June 2017, about a trans man expecting first child.

00:43:39.000 Okay, trans man, you should read woman. 0.82

00:43:41.000 It's a woman who's been taking hormone treatment that gives this woman a beard, basically, and had breast surgery to reduce the breasts.

00:43:49.000 And it says, my body is awesome.

00:43:51.000 Trans man expecting first child.

00:43:53.000 And then they say an apple is an apple?

00:43:56.000 That is a woman. 1.00

00:43:56.000 I mean, for purposes of this, the only reason, it turns out that woman gives birth to child is not a story, so CNN pursues its narrative by skewing the facts. 1.00

00:44:04.000 If you're going to claim that there's a hard divide between objective fact and opinion, if you're going to claim that certain things are outright false and certain things are outright true, you cannot conflate opinion and fact.

00:44:15.000 You cannot say that your opinion is a fact.

00:44:18.000 There's another thing that's contributing to the rise in partisanship.

00:44:20.000 We can't even agree on the fact.

00:44:22.000 So we can't agree on principles, and we can't agree on facts anymore.

00:44:24.000 And if we do agree on principles, then we have to go partisan over it.

00:44:28.000 How does this have an impact beyond just the loss of social capital?

00:44:30.000 It has a pretty significant impact in terms of how the government is run.

00:44:33.000 So while we're all busy slapping each other silly over issues where we largely agree, like rape is bad, sexual assault is bad, sexual harassment is bad,

00:44:41.000 Because we're too eager to defend politicians on our side?

00:44:44.000 Because, you know, it's easy for us to look at Penn State and say, why did all those people look the other way?

00:44:48.000 How dare they look the other way at Penn State?

00:44:50.000 But then we look the other way?

00:44:52.000 When it's our institution that's under fire?

00:44:54.000 Or we say to the Catholic Church, how did you guys look the other way on child abuse?

00:44:57.000 But then if it's inside our institutions, we look the other way?

00:45:00.000 This is true in a lot of religious communities too.

00:45:03.000 Okay, then we have to recognize that that destroys the society, but it also means that we are going to ignore actual things happening on the ground.

00:45:12.000 So, to take an example, what happened in Niger, I still can't pronounce this properly, I'm going to look it up after the show.

00:45:19.000 What happened in Niger, the killing of four American soldiers in Niger, there were two separate senators who came out and announced they had no idea that we even had troops in Niger.

00:45:29.000 Chuck Schumer, who is the Senate Minority Leader, and Lindsey Graham, who is on the Foreign Policy Subcommittee.

00:45:34.000 Lindsey Graham, both of them said, I didn't even know the United States has troops in Niger.

00:45:39.000 Troops have been in Niger since 2013.

00:45:42.000 Barack Obama wrote a letter to the Congress saying, I'm putting troops in Niger in 2013.

00:45:47.000 Stephen Miller has a great piece on this over at FoxNews.com.

00:45:53.000 It says U.S.

00:45:53.000 Special Forces arrived in Niger in January 2013 on the orders of President Obama.

00:45:58.000 They were then followed by about 100 military personnel and advisors with the intention of conducting unmanned reconnaissance missions over Mali in conjunction with French military forces.

00:46:08.000 Reuters reported in February 2013 that France intervened in Mali, so we've had troops there for years.

00:46:13.000 But the Congress didn't even know, because they're not doing their jobs.

00:46:16.000 They're too busy engaging in the partisan hackery.

00:46:18.000 And the partisan hackery goes something like this.

00:46:19.000 If Obama approved the troops in Niger, the left goes yay.

00:46:22.000 And if Trump approved the troops in Niger, then the right goes yay. 0.68

00:46:25.000 But at no point does anyone say, should there be troops in Niger, and maybe Congress should have voted on this thing, rather than just using the broad authorization for use of military force from 2001 in order to give the go-ahead to these sorts of things.

00:46:37.000 All of this has some pretty significant consequences for our society, for how our government works, it's a problem.

00:46:42.000 Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.

00:46:44.000 So, things I like.

00:46:46.000 I was encouraged by my adoptive son and producer, Mathis Glover, to go see Blade Runner 2049 over the weekend.

00:46:53.000 Mathis and I have a good crossover in terms of the movies that we like generally, and we have some disagreements about Ridley Scott, but Mathis said this morning that the reason this movie is good is because it's not Ridley Scott.

00:47:03.000 He is absolutely correct.

00:47:04.000 Ridley Scott is wildly overrated.

00:47:06.000 In any case, Blade Runner 2049 is a significantly, significantly better film than the original Blade Runner.

00:47:13.000 A lot better.

00:47:13.000 Like, Blade Runner, the original, is basically Valium.

00:47:16.000 It's visual Valium.

00:47:17.000 So, it's got a cool look to it, although it looks really dated now.

00:47:20.000 If you watch it, it's very hard to watch with a straight face.

00:47:23.000 I know people are in love with the original Blade Runner.

00:47:25.000 I know that a lot of people are just, they think it's just the most glorious film.

00:47:28.000 They've watched the director's cut, and the second director's cut, and the third director's cut, and the grips cut.

00:47:33.000 They've watched all of these things, but...

00:47:35.000 I do not like the original Blade Runner.

00:47:37.000 I've watched it twice.

00:47:38.000 Each time I think, why do I not like this movie?

00:47:40.000 The new Blade Runner, which is not directed by Ridley Scott, is directed by Denis Villeneuve, who is a very talented director who made Arrival, which I also recommended on the show.

00:47:50.000 He made Blade Runner 2049.

00:47:52.000 Here's some of the preview.

00:47:53.000 It is a very, you know, scientific materialist view of the universe, basically, that what makes a human being is your sense of your own consciousness.

00:48:00.000 There's no such thing as a soul.

00:48:01.000 There's no such thing as unique human beings that androids can be people too, basically.

00:48:05.000 You know, all of this is supposedly based on the Philip K. Dick story, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

00:48:12.000 One of the things about Philip K. Dick, like Stephen King, a lot of his

00:48:15.000 A lot of his stories are used as source material for movies that have nothing to do with the actual material.

00:48:20.000 The original Blade Runner has almost nothing to do with that short story.

00:48:24.000 But in any case, the look of this movie is better than the original.

00:48:27.000 The plot of the movie is better than the original.

00:48:28.000 The acting in the movie is better than the original.

00:48:30.000 It is very long.

00:48:32.000 It is not a setting that you want to spend two hours and 45 minutes in, because it's very dark.

00:48:38.000 It's film noir-ish.

00:48:39.000 That was the mode of the original film.

00:48:41.000 But here is the preview.

00:48:50.000 Every civilization was built off the back of a disposable workforce.

00:49:00.000 But I can only make so many.

00:49:04.000 Happy birthday.

00:49:10.000 There is an order to things.

00:49:15.000 That's what we do here.

00:49:18.000 We keep order.

00:49:22.000 The world is built on a wall that separates kind. 0.94

00:49:26.000 Tell either side there's no wall, you bought a war. 0.69

00:49:31.000 Okay, so the entire premise of the film is basically, are these androids people, or are these androids just androids?

00:49:37.000 The film is incredibly cool-looking.

00:49:38.000 It's a really great-looking film.

00:49:40.000 And there's a bunch of kind of sub-areas of the film that are really interesting.

00:49:44.000 Like Ryan Gosling's character, who's an android in the film, or at least that's what you think at the very beginning.

00:49:48.000 I'm not going to give it away.

00:49:50.000 But his character basically is in love with his iPhone, essentially.

00:49:54.000 There's a female character who is created by a corporation to basically be what a man wants to be. 1.00

00:50:00.000 And over time,

00:50:02.000 It basically becomes its own personality.

00:50:03.000 It gains its own personality and almost gains sentience.

00:50:06.000 If you want to see a better version of that subplot, go see the movie Her, which is a really interesting film with Joaquin Phoenix that's quite fascinating about this exact storyline.

00:50:15.000 But the film is really cool to look at.

00:50:18.000 Harrison Ford turns in his only good performance in the last 15 years.

00:50:21.000 I mean, Harrison Ford in this movie is what Harrison Ford should have been in Force Awakens if Force Awakens had been a good film, which it is not.

00:50:27.000 There are a couple things that I think are cool about this film that people haven't noticed that are really neat.

00:50:32.000 So people are saying, well, why is it called Blade Runner 2049?

00:50:34.000 Obviously, the world isn't going to look like 2049 by this point.

00:50:38.000 It is obviously an alternative history.

00:50:40.000 You can see that right in the film.

00:50:42.000 Even in the preview, there's a graphic of a ballerina dancing, and it says, Soviet Happy CCCP. 0.65

00:50:47.000 So meaning that the Soviet Union is still around in this version of reality in Blade Runner 2049. 0.83

00:50:52.000 A critique that I saw from Kevin Williamson of National Review that I like a lot is he said that there's this weird notion on the left that corporations are gonna take over the world and run everything and it's gonna be really oppressive and terrible.

00:51:04.000 Name a corporation that's done that.

00:51:06.000 Corporations have made the world significantly better.

00:51:09.000 You're complaining about Google.

00:51:11.000 Google is what allows you to do all the cool things you're doing right now.

00:51:14.000 All of the corporations, we may not like how they run, and that's why we actually expect them to run more like public utilities when it comes to providing services to everyone.

00:51:22.000 Those, I think, are real fears about corporations, but the idea that the corporations are going to take over and buy human beings and use them as chattel and all this kind of stuff, I don't see a lot of evidence of that.

00:51:31.000 Corporations, people are suspicious of them.

00:51:33.000 It's governments that do these sorts of things, not corporations, unless those corporations are basically being run by governments.

00:51:40.000 Most of the evil corporations of the past have been government-run or government-owned.

00:51:44.000 Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.

00:51:51.000 Okay, so we begin with the UK government has now announced that it wants the United Nations to stop using the term pregnant women in a UN treaty.

00:51:59.000 Why?

00:52:00.000 Because it excludes trans people. 1.00

00:52:04.000 Okay, this is idiotic. 1.00

00:52:06.000 Women are the only ones who can be pregnant. 1.00

00:52:09.000 You know what defines a woman? 1.00

00:52:11.000 The lack of a Y chromosome.

00:52:12.000 End of story.

00:52:13.000 We are done.

00:52:14.000 That is all.

00:52:15.000 Okay, that's all.

00:52:17.000 We're done.

00:52:18.000 When people talk about gender being separate from sex, what they're suggesting is that sex doesn't necessarily determine your attributes in terms of feminine or masculine.

00:52:27.000 But that just means feminine or masculine. 1.00

00:52:29.000 The attempt to say that a feminine man is actually a woman or a masculine woman is actually a man is idiotic. 0.99

00:52:34.000 And if people are intersex, right, they have two sets of genitals, which happens on very rare cases, or they have Kleinfelter's syndrome, for example, then you would say this is a man with Kleinfelter's syndrome. 0.99

00:52:45.000 Speaking ascientifically is foolish. 0.99

00:52:47.000 Trans men are not women. 1.00

00:52:49.000 Okay? 1.00

00:52:49.000 And the idea that trans men are pregnant is ridiculous. 1.00

00:52:52.000 A woman is pregnant. 1.00

00:52:53.000 It is a man with a mental disorder known as gender dysphoria.

00:52:56.000 Now, there are a bunch of people who have been saying, well, the DSM says gender dysphoria isn't a mental disorder.

00:53:01.000 The DSM is heavily politicized.

00:53:02.000 DSM-IV called it gender identity disorder and said it was a mental illness.

00:53:06.000 DSM-V, based on no additional evidence, none, zero, zip, zilch, decided that instead of saying that it was in and of itself a mental disorder, instead we would say that it was not a mental disorder, it was only the depression associated with gender dysphoria that was a mental disorder, which has no logic to it.

00:53:21.000 That's like saying schizophrenia is not a mental disorder.

00:53:23.000 It is only a mental disorder if you are depressed because you are schizophrenic.

00:53:27.000 Or it's more like saying that you have a body dysmorphia issue, that you're anorexic, for example.

00:53:32.000 And that is not actually a mental disorder.

00:53:34.000 It's only a mental disorder if you're depressed because of it. 0.99

00:53:38.000 That's foolishness. 1.00

00:53:39.000 In any case, to redo all treaties because we're gonna pretend men aren't men and women aren't women is absolutely asinine. 0.99

00:53:47.000 In the mode of absolutely asinine, Katie Couric 0.96

00:53:50.000 Who, I don't know why she's still relevant or why she's around. 0.72

00:53:52.000 Katie Couric is going around, now she covers gender for National Geographic, I guess. 1.00

00:53:55.000 So she's doing, National Geographic has decided to basically do clickbait.

00:53:59.000 And that clickbait's gonna be how children are actually, not boys or girls, they're actually genderless, genderless balls of cells.

00:54:06.000 And Katie Couric is going to illuminate this for us.

00:54:08.000 And what determines it?

00:54:10.000 How can someone's sex at birth, their anatomy, be different than their gender identity?

00:54:17.000 I decided to get some straight talk about gender.

00:54:20.000 I first saw Sam Killerman giving a TEDx talk.

00:54:24.000 Sam has been studying gender for more than 10 years, and he even wrote a book about it.

00:54:29.000 Okay, so first of all, it's called The Social Justice Advocate's Guide to Gender.

00:54:33.000 That means it's not scientific.

00:54:34.000 Social justice advocate means, here is my perspective and now I'm going to try and cram the facts into this particular box.

00:54:38.000 Again, when I talk about partisanship, this is it.

00:54:42.000 Okay?

00:54:42.000 There are certain scientific facts.

00:54:43.000 Everything that I have said in the past five minutes is a scientific fact.

00:54:47.000 You can disagree on the interpretation of those facts, but those things are facts. 0.95

00:54:50.000 To pretend that they are not is to be scientifically ignorant.

00:54:54.000 But that is exactly what the media do on a regular basis.

00:54:56.000 This angers me to no end because, again, it prevents us from having actual conversations about things that are happening.

00:55:01.000 And that is, in turn, going to destroy our capacity to have political conversations. 0.91

00:55:06.000 It's just foolishness.

00:55:08.000 Okay, we'll be back here tomorrow.

00:55:10.000 I hope that we'll have moved beyond the Gold Star Widow story because I would like to see some dignity restored to American public life on every side.

00:55:17.000 That's not a critique specifically of Trump.

00:55:18.000 On every side.

00:55:19.000 That would be great.

00:55:20.000 But I have little faith that will happen.

00:55:22.000 So that's why we'll be here tomorrow covering it.

00:55:23.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:55:23.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

The Ben Shapiro Show - October 23, 2017

Why Our Country Is In Serious Trouble | The Ben Shapiro Show Ep. 401

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