As confidence in the mainstream media drops to record lows, President Trump s approval rating hits a new high of 50%, 5 points higher than Barack Obama s at this point in his presidency. Then, why these midterms are the most honest elections we ve had in a long time, and why God isn t a socialist. Finally, the mailbag.
00:02:48.720He's covered countless of these and has become one of the president's favorite human punching bags.
00:02:54.760CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta.
00:02:57.500Jim, we've seen your videos and I've been to these events too.
00:03:00.940I've met with countless Trump supporters.
00:03:03.400Even I was shocked at the level of vitriol that was aimed your way last night.
00:03:08.100Give us an idea of what it felt like to be in the middle of it.
00:03:10.740Well, Essie, I mean, honestly, it felt like we weren't in America anymore.
00:03:18.220I don't know how to put it any more plainly than that.
00:03:21.740Americans should not be treating their fellow Americans in this way.
00:03:25.880But unfortunately, what we've seen, and this has been building for some time since the campaign,
00:03:29.840I've been talking about this as an issue since the campaign, when the president during the campaign referred to us as the dishonest media,
00:03:36.260the disgusting news media, liars, scum and thieves and so on.
00:03:38.840And then he rolled that right into the Oval Office and started calling us fake news and the enemy of the people.
00:03:44.260He is whipping these crowds up into a frenzy to the point where they really want to come after us.
00:03:51.240And, you know, we have these these bike rack like barriers around the press cage, as we call it, to protect us essentially from people who might take things too far.
00:04:00.900It's unfortunate because and I try to calmly talk to a lot of these folks at the rally last night to say, listen, hey, you know, tell me what you want to talk about here.
00:04:08.660Why are you guys so upset with us? And they would kind of go through a list of questions.
00:04:13.140Most of most of the questions were about why don't you guys report positive news about the president?
00:04:17.220And I said, hey, you know what? We do that. We were reporting on this positive job numbers in the economy last Friday.
00:04:23.020And my sense of it, S.E., is that the that these opinions that these folks have at these rallies,
00:04:29.060they're shaped by what they see in the primetime hours of Fox News and what they hear from some conservative news outlets that just sort of give them this daily diet of what they consider to be terrible things that we do over here at CNN.
00:04:43.320It's very unfortunate, but it's it's it's a pitting of American against American.
00:04:47.880And honestly, it needs to stop. Honestly, it needs to stop. And I'm Ron Burgundy.
00:04:53.880I'm Ron Burgundy. I'm Jim Acosta, Ron Burgundy. You never see him and Will Ferrell in the same room at the same time, do you?
00:05:00.620So he felt like he wasn't in America anymore. And this is I actually kind of like Jim Acosta.
00:05:06.060I'm very serious. Someone asked me if The Daily Wire could send a representative to the White House, who would it be?
00:05:11.380I'd say it would have to be Jim Acosta because there's a sort of guilelessness to him.
00:05:16.440You know, they report the most absurd fake news all the time.
00:05:21.280And by fake news, I mean certain dishonest lines, certain actually inaccurate stories.
00:05:27.520And then also they just harp on constant negative nonsense.
00:05:31.480President Trump has the most negative press coverage in modern presidential history, despite the fact that his approval rating in the country is 50 percent.
00:05:39.080And it's actually quite, quite high. And despite the fact that we have a booming economy, that we've got peace abroad, that we've got low unemployment, record low joblessness, crime down, hate crime down, all of these great statistics that we can tick off.
00:05:52.820But the mainstream media harp on issues that the American people don't care about.
00:05:56.840They harp on the Russia investigation.
00:05:59.560They harp on these issues that Americans rank in the bottom percentages of what they care about, what matters to them, what should be newsworthy, what should be politically newsworthy.
00:06:09.640But the other thing to point out here is you've got this video of Ron Burgundy, Jim Acosta, standing there in the press cage.
00:06:16.880And you've got all these Trump supporters just making fun of him, you know, because they don't like the mainstream media.
00:06:22.880The mainstream media are unpopular because they're liars.
00:06:25.600They carry water for Democrats. They're dirty, rotten liars.
00:06:28.780But they're not like punching him in the face.
00:06:31.620They're not climbing over the cage to stab him or something like that.
00:06:34.620There haven't been political attacks on journalists in America in recent history.
00:06:40.960There have been some where there are personal gripes between people and certain local journalists.
00:06:47.160But there haven't, you know, there isn't an epidemic of Trump supporters going out and physically attacking members of the mainstream media.
00:06:55.000What does exist, however, is members of the media and also lefties riling up and inciting violence against Trump supporters.
00:07:03.340Everybody from media types in the Democratic Party and on the left all the way to elected officials ginning up attacks on Trump supporters, on people who work for President Trump.
00:07:50.040This scene, referring to Jim Acosta's experience at the Trump rally,
00:07:54.260This scene looks like a modern day Ku Klux Klan rally.
00:07:58.140Amazing to see that Donald Trump, the man occupying the White House, is so comfortable in his atmosphere of hateful hostility, bigotry, and deplorable language.
00:14:50.180So, we've seen this concerted effort for some people to just attack their character, go back, find some joke they made 10 years ago and try to get them for it.
00:15:00.200This woman is being hired for her opinions.
00:15:03.200She's being hired for her writing, for the writing that she's put out publicly.
00:15:07.760And in the very recent past, these are the opinions that she writes down that she thinks are worthy of publication and of being put out for the public.
00:15:37.960But one thing the lefties on campus say is because they break everybody down into these racial categories and sex categories and all of this.
00:15:56.720They say, okay, Native Americans have this amount of privilege and Mexicans have this amount of privilege and black people have this amount of privilege, whatever.
00:16:02.860But the irony of this is that Sarah Jong, this woman who was just hired by the New York Times, checks every privilege box, right?
00:16:11.200If you're going to use the logic of the left, she's Asian in America.
00:16:16.360And statistically, that puts you at an advantage, right?
00:16:19.300Because Asians in America categorically do better on an academic standing in universities.
00:16:25.640That's actually why there's discrimination against Asians in universities is because they do so well.
00:16:30.740This is what this Harvard lawsuit is about now.
00:16:33.300Harvard was discriminating in part against white people, but even more so against Asian students because they didn't want to fill up the whole class with Asians, many of whom were qualified to go to Harvard.
00:16:42.260Harvard, how about, where else did she go?
00:17:26.360Whenever you find somebody, some leftist bully, and you call them out for being bullies, they play the victim.
00:17:31.320So they said, oh, Sarah Jong was being harassed by people for her gender and her race and her this and for that and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:17:40.000And so she responded, and it wasn't good.
00:32:25.020Should we tell the left to get their religion out of politics?
00:32:27.840No, of course you can't do that because it's all downstream of religion.
00:32:31.320And it's a really shallow understanding of religion and philosophical thought and the religiosity that built the West to say we need to separate church and state.
00:32:57.500I'm a libertarian conservative for the most part and none of the Republican candidates align as such.
00:33:01.920In fact, there is a large gap for the leading Republican candidate who is endorsed by Trump.
00:33:06.000So I feel like my vote wouldn't matter.
00:33:07.640I am, however, tempted to vote on the Democratic ticket because there's a woman running as a very centrist Democrat against Medicare for all.
00:33:14.260That's just socialism and wants to reduce taxes on those in retirement.
00:33:17.340The second place candidate on the Democratic ticket is a very progressive individual endorsed by Bernie and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who will both be in Michigan campaigning for him this Sunday.
00:33:28.580Okay, so you've got the Republican candidate and then you've got the moderate Democrat candidate and then you've got the socialist candidate.
00:33:36.100I'm tempted to vote for the centrist Dem in the primary solely to do my part to ensure the progressive does not win and redistribute pudding to all.
00:34:12.440It's a way for you to participate in your government and try to get the best government that you can.
00:34:17.520I don't know the details of this race.
00:34:19.520From what you've told me, though, if the real threat here is that the super left-wing progressive candidate is going to win, win the primary, win the general election, and the only way to stop her is by voting for that centrist Democrat, fine.
00:34:33.280If that's really the case, I don't know the particulars of this, but if that's really the case, do that.
00:34:38.060Your vote is not a statement of your own virtue.
00:34:42.060Your vote is a way to participate in governance and try to get the best governance that we can.
00:34:58.860But if this is really about somebody who's going to be a socialist and try to get rid of all of our freedom and somebody who's going to stem that tide a little bit until we can get a Republican in office, do that.
00:35:38.920I don't relatively care for the Novus Ordo or the new liturgy that you've had after 1965 with all of the acoustic guitars and eagle's wings.
00:35:49.000And, you know, it gets really frustrating.
00:36:13.300Being in communion with God or being entertained?
00:36:15.940And, obviously, it's about communing with God.
00:36:19.640That's why the priest will face at Orientum.
00:36:22.240So that he's leading you and you're all looking together toward God rather than him getting up there and doing a little soft shoe and telling jokes for people.
00:36:29.740And during the homily, he comes down and he says,
00:36:54.660Father Rutler, who was on the show the other day, he had a great line about this.
00:36:58.600I think I'm quoting it almost perfectly where he said that there are some priests who, like actors in a dying vaudeville show, tell jokes from the altar.
00:37:07.620And those priests should limit their repertoire to the jokes that St. John told the Blessed Mother while her son bled on the cross.
00:37:14.580That is my feeling on the traditional liturgy and the Novus Ordo.
00:37:19.600And I hope what's interesting is that with the newer, more modernizing, more acoustic guitar masses, the pews empty.
00:37:28.560But as beginning, I guess, really with Pope Benedict, beginning with the reintroduction of the popularity of Latin mass, those pews are filling.
00:37:38.060That's where people want to go, mostly because those guys have like 15 kids.
00:37:46.380And that doesn't seem like a coincidence to me.
00:37:49.200That seems like there's a real connection between that faith and an exuberance and a pro-life attitude and an embrace of God and a looking toward God.
00:38:26.540I know that a lot of translations of the Ten Commandments are wrong when it reads thou shalt not kill when it should be thou shalt not murder.
00:38:33.660But in war, the line between murdering and killing is blurred.
00:38:37.820Some of the times I shot someone, it was not clear if they were enemies or just civilians at the wrong place at the wrong time.
00:38:44.680I often wonder if I murdered one of these people.
00:38:47.520And if I did, do I truly deserve to live and seriously doubt I deserve to go to heaven even though I try to live my life according to the Bible?
00:38:56.180I've attempted suicide twice since I left the army and I'm often depressed.
00:38:59.440I do go see a counselor when I can get an appointment at the VA and take antidepressants, but I can't seem to shake the guilt that I may have murdered innocent people.
00:39:08.560I guess my question is, does God give leeway to soldiers for what we do in war?
00:41:24.280I bet this is going to be a lighter question than the last one.
00:41:26.600What's crack-a-lackin', my homie Michael 99?
00:41:29.140I haven't yet read but was given a copy of Howard Zinn's book, A People's History of the United States, by my more liberal parents.
00:41:35.680Obviously, you're not a fan, but I've heard relatively conservative history podcaster Dan Carlin describe it as having been intended to provide a counterbalance to a hyper-patriotic narrative that was found in other textbooks of the time.
00:41:47.460He also expressed a belief that it is a college-level textbook in terms of what it expects from its readers as well as that it should be read in conjunction with the works it was intended to counter
00:41:57.580and considered with a heavy dose of critical thinking to provide a complete picture of history.
00:42:01.680How do you feel about the validity of this position?
00:42:04.780If it were used strictly in this fashion, do you believe it should be a useful part of an education about American history?
00:42:29.240It, first of all, I believe it was voted by a number of historians to be the worst history book or the second worst history book of modern times.
00:42:43.220It presents a very perverse distortion of the truth of American history.
00:42:47.620But also, what it does is it instills in its readers a hatred of their country, and it also ideologically instills in its readers an idea that leaders don't matter, that great men don't matter, that men who make the individual decisions that guide history, they don't matter.
00:43:05.000All that matters is the great unwashed masses who have been oppressed and put upon.
00:43:10.520It is an ideological, polemical work of trash.
00:43:13.080If you want to read it, I read plenty of trash, and it's sort of interesting to read it as an intellectual exercise to realize just how viciously anti-American the left can be.
00:43:22.500But it should not be considered part of a history education.
00:43:27.500It's a left-wing ideological polemic, and it's trash, and it shouldn't be on a curriculum.
00:43:31.340Because when I've seen it assigned in classes, and I've seen that firsthand, or excerpts of it assigned from classes, it's not there to provide a counterbalance.
00:43:40.900They tell you, oh, yes, this was to provide a counterbalance, but you're not really exposed to those primary and more serious and classical texts.
00:43:49.760You just read this, and you say, this is the counterbalance.
00:44:11.160Without abortions, unwanted children will be born to women who hated the idea of having a child so much that they're willing to remove the fetus from their body.
00:44:19.520So my question is, who will take care of the unwanted?
00:44:22.460The children being born from young girls make that children themselves.
00:44:26.160You know, girls 14, 15, or 16 years old who thought that the young, handsome man was going to take her away but only left them pregnant.