In the wake of President Trump's Oval Office speech on immigration and border security, some conservatives are criticizing him for being too "gory" and others are praising him for not being "grievous." What's the difference between the two?
00:03:04.900I would call that group the fiscal first conservatives.
00:03:08.140They're judging their political views and the conservative movement from the perspective of dollars and cents, basically.
00:03:16.240This is contrasted with another group, which is the cultural conservatives.
00:03:20.320And I would count myself in the latter group.
00:03:22.320The cultural conservatives are the ones who are saying this isn't about dollars and cents.
00:03:26.360This isn't about being a reasonable guy.
00:03:28.060You know, and I'm sorry, it is about being the reasonable guy, but it's not about always appearing to be the most pleasant, the least offensive.
00:03:39.520The reason that we need to deal with the border is not just because of some bland statistics or because of the cost of the wall or whatever.
00:03:47.120It's because we're a country and we have the right to be a country and we have the right to defend our country.
00:03:53.000Every other country in history has done it.
00:04:27.400I like Mitch Daniels, too, but he's just not that guy who's going to be a wonk about all these different lines of the budget or something like that.
00:05:57.620St. Andrew Breitbart, the patron saint of Hollywood conservatives.
00:06:01.240First conservatives, again, with that group of fiscal first conservatives, you see it a lot of times they'll say, enough with the culture war.
00:06:08.960If we would only stop the culture war, get out of cultural issues, then we would win every single election.
00:06:17.020Outside of cultural issues, everything else is bean counting.
00:06:21.400This is not to say that we shouldn't lower taxes.
00:06:23.800This is not to say that we shouldn't reform entitlements.
00:06:25.500We have to do all of those things, but that is bean counting if you don't couch it in a cultural and moral argument, and that's what President Trump was doing last night.
00:06:35.180It would have been a huge mistake if he went out there and just talked about how the wall wasn't that expensive, and come on, it's not that big a deal, everybody, and let's just do it and move on.
00:06:44.920The this-isn't-that-big-a-deal argument falls flat when you have Democrats constantly telling you this is the biggest deal in the world.
00:06:53.000You know, in politics, just like in war, your opponent gets a say, your adversary gets a say about it, and they're saying it's a huge deal.
00:07:10.260It's a big deal to them because it cuts to the heart of their agenda, which is open borders, which is tearing down traditional culture and American traditions, which is essentially anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism.
00:07:32.200It's about what direction that's going in.
00:07:33.940It's about what message that's sending, which is, is America going to protect itself, stand up, love itself, keep being America, or are we going to give up on that?
00:07:51.740Who cares if the border wall is expensive?
00:07:53.900If the border wall, if the section of the wall they wanted to build in this budget, if it cost $20 billion, would that change anyone's position on it?
00:08:10.760We don't want all these drugs pouring in.
00:08:13.060For the first time now in, well, I guess the second year in a row, but the first time in 50 years, the average life expectancy of Americans is decreasing because of all these drug overdoses and because of a malaise, a spiritual malaise that's hit the country and led to an epidemic of suicide.
00:08:51.180It's about something so much deeper and you're not going to convince anybody on dollars and cents.
00:08:56.040This is why Mitt Romney couldn't become president and never will become president is because you can't campaign for the presidency and say, I should win the presidency at a time of great cultural gravity because I'm a better manager.
00:09:23.120Here is part of the where the real disagreement comes up, where the fiscal first conservatives are saying he went way too far, was focusing in on crime and rape.
00:09:33.800Last month, 20,000 migrant children were illegally brought into the United States, a dramatic increase.
00:09:42.900These children are used as human pawns by vicious coyotes and ruthless gangs.
00:09:49.800One in three women are sexually assaulted on the dangerous trek up through Mexico.
00:09:55.940Women or children are the biggest victims by far of our broken system.
00:10:01.580This is the tragic reality of illegal immigration on our southern border.
00:10:22.880You knew he was reading from a prompter, but presidents are always reading from teleprompters in these speeches.
00:10:27.580So I didn't think that was a big deal.
00:10:28.800Well, as for the statistic, he said one in three women are raped crossing the border from Mexico into the U.S.
00:10:36.480He actually could have used a bigger statistic than that.
00:10:40.720There are studies out from Fusion and Amnesty International which show that 60 to 80 percent of women and girls are raped crossing that border illegally.
00:10:49.920This wasn't reported in some right-wing outlet.
00:10:52.140This was reported in the Huffington Post.
00:10:53.860So I felt he should have used that statistic.
00:10:56.780But again, it's very hard to have reliable statistics on a degree of crime that is so hidden from public view.
00:11:06.200Still, I felt he should have gone whole hog and used even the more powerful statistics which are backed up by left-wing sources.
00:11:13.260So you couldn't even have left-wingers arguing with them.
00:11:15.880Then he goes on and talks about those who have been victimized by illegal aliens.
00:11:20.840The only thing that is immoral is the politicians to do nothing and continue to allow more innocent people to be so horribly victimized.
00:11:32.580America's heart broke the day after Christmas when a young police officer in California was savagely murdered in cold blood by an illegal alien who just came across the border.
00:11:46.460The life of an American hero was stolen by someone who had no right to be in our country.
00:11:53.740Day after day, precious lives are cut short by those who have violated our borders.
00:12:53.220In my ideal politics, we would not have these sort of things said in speeches to the nation from the Oval Office.
00:13:00.320In my ideal politics, when you're giving a speech to an audience that includes children, old women, whatever, you're not going to use this kind of imagery.
00:13:09.520However, we're not living in my ideal politics.
00:13:13.800In my ideal politics, the very fact of these beheadings, the very fact of these rapes, the very fact of these drugs pouring in across the border would be enough to compel Democrats, half of the country, to enhance border security, to build a wall, to stop people from doing this, to deport gang members.
00:13:32.320In my ideal politics, in any reasonable politics, that would happen.
00:13:57.620And so you've got to react in real time.
00:13:59.180It's where I really lose patience with those Trump critics on the right who say, well, in my imaginary world, things would be so much better.
00:14:06.820And I would never say these mean things.
00:14:08.340And I would never get down in the mud.
00:14:13.620And the reality is that if Democrats are going to degrade the country in such a way and degrade our politics in such a way that this kind of graphic imagery, this kind of vulgarity that they're always spewing is commonplace, we must meet them where they are.
00:14:46.860And so you've got half of the country wearing simulacra of genitalia on their heads, shrieking mother effer this and mother effer that.
00:14:53.820An incoming new member of Congress, Rashida Tlaib, saying we're going to impeach the mother effer in public, referring to the president of the United States.
00:15:01.980Unfortunately, when you're in that disgusting culture, you've got to deal with it in reality.
00:15:06.800And if the difference is, if the two options are President Trump sitting there and talking about how $5 billion won't impact the federal budget at all because the entire debt and deficit is driven by entitlements and Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
00:15:21.420If that's one option and then the other option is they're using disgusting graphic imagery to talk about why the wall is wrong.
00:15:28.100I'm going to use it to explain true imagery, to explain why it's right because people are being beheaded, people are being killed by drugs, people are being raped.
00:15:38.340Reality can be pretty gory sometimes, but you should speak the truth, even if the truth is unpleasant.
00:15:44.860If the way to persuade people is to tell them the truth, and you can do it in a more diplomatic way sometimes, you can do it in a more civilized way sometimes, or you have to be blunt sometimes.
00:15:58.320We're in a very blunt culture, a very authentic, raw culture.
00:16:05.140This is just the fact of our media landscape.
00:16:07.340We're constantly on social media where it's raw and it's live and people make mistakes and you no longer elect a movie actor like Ronald Reagan.
00:16:18.400You elect a reality TV actor like Donald Trump.
00:16:21.000That is reflective of the culture, and I think he handled it very, very well.
00:16:25.280So let's take a look at the reality of this, by the way.
00:16:27.540If we're going to delve into how gruesome this is, now you're hearing the left saying,
00:16:32.320Oh, these stories of illegal alien crime, they're lies, they're not true.
00:16:37.280I think Nancy Pelosi called it malice and misinformation.
00:17:47.000We're worried about the drugs that are coming over in such large quantity that the average American life expectancy is decreasing.
00:17:53.720We're worried about the threats to our own sovereignty as a country because illegal aliens are counted as population for the distribution of congressmen in the House of Representatives because they're counted by the census.
00:18:07.780We're worried about illegal alien voting, which does happen.
00:18:10.320We're worried about illegal aliens, not just committing crimes but also stressing our resources.
00:18:15.140Illegal aliens are much more likely to access welfare programs, obviously, than citizens.
00:18:20.420And, of course, just accessing regular old government entitlements like public education is a huge stress to the system for people who have not been allowed in here.
00:18:30.040They are taking a free ride, and the people who are very generous people, the most generous country in all of human history, the people who are being demanded to pay for that don't even get a say in it.
00:18:40.960It's outrageous, and that's the language you've got to use.
00:18:46.600There was a question before the speech as to whether or not President Trump would declare a national emergency.
00:18:52.420And what this would do by declaring a national emergency was it would give him the ability, without Congress giving him the $5 billion, to build portions of the wall.
00:19:02.280And he could order this to be done through the Pentagon or through other mechanisms, but he could have gotten that done.
00:19:49.180However, border security is very popular.
00:19:53.760And you'll even see this within the same poll.
00:19:55.620There was a poll out from Harvard-Harris, obviously a very reputable poll.
00:19:59.480It showed that Americans don't want the wall.
00:20:03.800They want to give amnesty to DACA, to the illegal aliens brought here when they were under 18.
00:20:10.500Also, they want to end chain migration.
00:20:14.980Also, they don't just want to stop illegal immigration.
00:20:18.400They want to dramatically reduce levels of legal immigration.
00:20:21.840So right now, our rate of legal immigration is about 1.2, 1.3 million people per year pouring into this country.
00:20:28.180The Harvard-Harris poll shows the majority of Americans want to reduce that by more than 50%, bring it down to about half a million immigrants coming into the country per year.
00:24:44.440And the other thing is you can't just freeze one year in time because when Republicans were talking about illegal immigration during 1980, George Bush running for the presidency against Ronald Reagan, they were both debating illegal immigration.
00:24:59.960And they were both debating who was more compassionate.
00:25:03.040They were all saying who's going to give more amnesty, who's more whatever, right?
00:25:05.980But at that time, how many illegal aliens were there in the country?
00:25:33.440Also, such a treat to listen to a Democrat senator talking about the degradation of the Oval Office.
00:25:39.660Bill Clinton, not the last Democrat president, but the one before him, Bill Clinton, who all the Democrats were campaigning to make the first gentleman of the United States just a little over two years ago.
00:25:51.360Bill Clinton turned his intern into a human humidor in the Oval Office in that act.
00:25:56.580It wasn't broadcast to national television, Mirabile Dicto, but he did it there.
00:26:01.980Are we really going to say that Donald Trump spouting accurate information about illegal immigration, that's the degradation of the Oval Office?
00:26:10.880More than trotting in your little 20-year-old secretary?
00:26:15.500We've got to get to Chuck and Nancy's response.
00:26:17.120We've got to get to all the great memes, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the roast of Jim Acosta, and why masculinity is so harmful, according to all those wimps at the American Psychological Association.
00:26:30.860But first, we've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
00:26:33.940And by the way, before we go, it's time for you to get on the right side of history, which is, in fact, the title of Ben Shapiro's new book.
00:26:42.300I can assure you this book will be the second best book out of the last few years.
00:27:21.540It's a good response to this very shallow political and intellectual culture that we're in right now.
00:27:28.000And it's a good primer if you've been deprived of an education, which if you are a millennial or a Gen Zer in America, you certainly have been.
00:27:36.920So definitely go out and pre-order it.
00:28:01.700Because what you're going to do, you'll see the clips of the response video right after this.
00:28:08.060And you're going to put that tumbler right up to the screen.
00:28:12.180And you're going to watch as those frowny, pouty, desiccated faces just pour.
00:28:17.080They're not a lot of tears because it's a little desiccated, but just little sort of almost powdered drops of leftist tears into your tumbler.
00:30:39.060The reason this response didn't work in particular is because Chuck Schumer is caught between his radical base, which favors open borders, and the American people, which is quite anti-immigration.
00:30:53.120It's actually anti-current levels of legal immigration.
00:31:37.560Chuck Schumer actually talked about it.
00:31:40.600Not that long ago, Chuck Schumer was talking about how important it is for us to secure the border.
00:31:45.220But we also need to set the record straight.
00:31:48.100The American people need to know that because of our efforts in Congress, our border is far more secure today than it was when we began debating comprehensive reform in 2005.
00:31:59.160Between 2005 and 2009, a vast amount of progress has been made on our borders and ports of entry.
00:32:06.080The progress includes 9,000 new Border Patrol field agents in the last four years, construction of a 630-mile border fence or 630 miles of border fence that create a significant barrier to illegal immigration on our southern land border.
00:32:23.860So there he is bragging about building a wall, bragging about how great that is, isn't it?
00:32:29.140So we've got him here basically contradicting himself, and that's why he had to look a little more stoic and try to focus on other issues, and it just fell flat.
00:32:41.800There wasn't a clear message that came out of this.
00:32:44.220The real problem for them, though, is not even the logical progression of their response.
00:32:50.920The real problem, as always, being the optics, is they just got memed.
00:35:13.560If it's not, you know, if it's ineffective, who cares, right?
00:35:16.260Because they didn't want to actually deal in the issue.
00:35:19.780We'll do an episode someday on why it's a very, very, very good thing to torture terrorists.
00:35:24.820Unfortunately, we don't have time to do that now.
00:35:26.400But they've just got this confused messaging.
00:35:29.800They would be much smarter to pick a lane and then just try to advance that lane.
00:35:34.500But again, they can't because they're torn between their base, which is for open borders, and the American people, which is anti-illegal immigration.
00:35:41.540So if they pick the ineffective line, then their base is going to say, what are you?
00:35:58.760Don't take my word for how bad this response was.
00:36:01.440Obviously, you see the memes going around Twitter.
00:36:03.060Here is no less a Democrat than James Carville, Democrat strategist, on no less a Democrat than Brian Williams' show on MSNBC, giving his response.
00:37:01.860I don't think they should have done it.
00:37:03.180And I guarantee you, at the staff meeting tomorrow morning, somebody is going to get, you know, chewed out pretty good about this whole thing.
00:37:10.340The only good thing about it, it didn't matter.
00:37:12.300They could have given a Gettysburg address and it wouldn't have mattered.
00:37:14.780It didn't, it was, he didn't want to be, I've been more excited about colonoscopies than he wasn't giving a speech tonight.
00:37:20.980He didn't, he didn't want to be there.
00:37:23.240Yeah, classic James Carville subtlety, but absolutely right.
00:37:31.780It was, it was a mistake too, because, because they have conflicting messages about this.
00:37:37.060It would have been much better to let Trump go out there, be aggressive, be gruesome, be graphic in his language,
00:37:44.560and then just let, let the Democrat anger at him boil over.
00:37:49.240I don't think the response accomplished anything for them.
00:37:52.380I hope, I hope the speech accomplished something for Trump and the Republicans.
00:37:55.720It seems that it did in so much as it made the case once and for all, and now we can have basically an honest debate.
00:38:03.080But, you know, it didn't, didn't get us the wall right away.
00:38:06.320It didn't declare us a national emergency, and it was probably unwise for the Democrats to respond in that way.
00:38:12.120They're not the only ones who responded.
00:38:13.340Our favorite socialist from that ritzy town in northern Westchester, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, gave a response as well on my program on MSNBC.
00:38:24.320Not only that, but in, in the actual address, there was falsehood after falsehood, and we have to make sure that we get our facts straight.
00:38:32.600Every day, immigrants commit crimes at a far lower rate than native-born Americans.
00:38:39.180And not only that, but the women and children on that border that are trying to seek refuge and seek opportunity in the United States of America,
00:38:47.160with nothing but the shirt on their backs, are acting more American than any person who seeks to keep them out ever will be.
00:38:54.460So that was obviously on my MSNBC program, The Rachel Maddow Show, last night.
00:43:55.720Alternative facts was a phrase uttered by Kellyanne Conway in a very specific context, which is perfectly reasonable and actually tells you something very truthful.
00:44:06.880Just in case you don't remember it, here's the clip.
00:44:08.920You did not answer the question of why the president asked the White House press secretary to come out in front of the podium for the first time and utter a falsehood.
00:44:44.460The left, because they're not very good at language, they're very good at perverting language, but they're not very good at understanding language.
00:45:21.500The alternative fact is that millions and millions of more people watched on social media, on Instagram, on Snapchat, on media that did not exist for Barack Obama's first inauguration.
00:45:31.060Or many that didn't exist for his second inauguration.
00:45:54.760And if you look at the alternative side, then you'll get the whole picture and you can hopefully form a serious opinion and a serious conclusion.
00:46:03.600But the left-wing has abandoned that for now in place of slogans and ridiculous memes that at least give us some enjoyment during the day.