TRIGGERnometry - An Honest Conversation with Ben Shapiro

00:00:00.000 I was working in law and I decided that I was not enjoying the practice of real estate law.

00:00:06.840 I went and I quit and I had no job. I was about to get married.

00:00:11.280 We had just taken a mortgage on a house and I took a job for one third the pay to work at Talk Radio Network.

00:00:18.280 And the deal was that I would do some in-house legal work half the time and half the time I would learn the radio business.

00:00:23.400 They had basically won on the same-sex marriage issue and everybody thought, okay, battle over.

00:00:27.380 Like everybody weapons down, go back to your normal business.

00:00:29.640 They're like, no, no, we have another step here.

00:00:31.520 And the next step is that we're going to teach our version of sexual orientation and gender identity to your kids.

00:00:36.100 And that is going to include the idea that gender is fully malleable and on a spectrum and completely socially constructed.

00:00:41.520 He's 76 years old. He has no ability to control his mouth or his typing fingers.

00:00:45.020 He has no sort of actual plan to win.

00:00:47.680 I mean, he literally complained in 2020 that he was robbed of the election through voter fraud.

00:00:51.820 But no one will ask him a simple question. How do you plan to unrob the election in 2024?

00:00:55.880 Do you want to vote for the guy you love but who's likely to lose?

00:00:58.100 Or do you like to vote for somebody who you like but is significantly more likely to win?

00:01:01.560 Hey, Constantine. Do you like romantic novels?

00:01:14.980 No. In my country, men who read romantic novels are executed, which is correct. 1.00

00:01:20.360 This is why we don't have men with pink hair or women with unshaved armpits. 1.00

00:01:24.620 All right, mate. Chill out.

00:01:25.840 How about if the character was wonk?

00:01:27.460 Even worse. Lenin would have been spinning in his glass case.

00:01:30.920 But what if it's satirical?

00:01:32.420 In my country, we do not have satire.

00:01:34.640 Laughing is not allowed.

00:01:36.160 If you want humor, read Dostoyevsky.

00:01:38.300 Well, if you are blessed with a sense of humor and enjoy a bitingly funny takedown of romance novels and woke culture,

00:01:47.000 then you have to read Danielle's Passion, a new satire that follows a young Ivy League grad

00:01:53.740 as she battles white supremacy, the patriarchy and late-stage capitalism in the hellscape that is Irvine, California.

00:02:02.140 This is not natural.

00:02:03.260 Live, laugh and love through the eyes of one of your moral superiors.

00:02:08.140 Suffer every microaggression.

00:02:09.960 Judge every co-worker.

00:02:11.600 Betray every family member as if you were doing it yourself and come out feeling just as smug.

00:02:18.000 This sounds like communist Russia.

00:02:19.860 Now I'm interested in this book.

00:02:21.720 Is comedy done the right way?

00:02:23.640 No lectures, no messages, no characters banging on about the same tired talking points.

00:02:29.620 Satire as it's meant to be.

00:02:31.520 So, if you want a great book, go to Amazon and click on the link below.

00:02:36.360 We also recommend you buy Tired Moderates, other books, Woke Fragility and a little book of Woke Jokes.

00:02:43.580 Click on the link and laugh like you're reading War and Peace.

00:02:47.500 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry on the Road from the USA.

00:02:52.340 I'm Francis Foster.

00:02:53.440 I'm Constantine Kishin.

00:02:54.440 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:02:59.780 Our brilliant guest today is the co-founder of The Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro.

00:03:02.940 Welcome to Trigonometry.

00:03:03.940 Hey, thanks for having me.

00:03:04.500 I appreciate it.

00:03:04.860 Oh, it's an absolute pleasure.

00:03:06.100 We've been looking forward to this for a while now.

00:03:08.480 Thanks for coming on the show.

00:03:09.600 Thanks for lending us your studio here.

00:03:12.580 Listen, the question we always ask of all of our guests, and you're very well known.

00:03:16.240 Most of the people watching this will know you.

00:03:18.100 But what is your journey through life?

00:03:19.900 How did you get here?

00:03:20.660 Because a lot of people won't know actually many of the things you did when you were starting out.

00:03:24.180 So, give us an overview.

00:03:24.840 So, I mean, the kind of short version is that I went to college when I was 16.

00:03:29.100 I'd skipped a couple of grades.

00:03:29.980 I went to UCLA when I was 16.

00:03:31.180 And I thought I was going to double major in music and genetic science because I was a violinist, a pretty good violinist at the time.

00:03:37.060 And I stepped on campus, and I opened the student newspaper, and there was an editorial comparing Ariel Sharon and the Prime Minister of Israel to Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi.

00:03:46.000 And so I walked into the newspaper, and I said, I'd like to write a counter to this because this is nonsense.

00:03:50.620 And they said, OK, sure.

00:03:51.640 So I wrote a counter to that.

00:03:52.540 That sort of became a point-counterpoint column that I'd do every couple of weeks, and then it turned into just a regular column.

00:03:57.560 After a couple of years of that or a year and a half of that, I actually went to my dad, and I was like, do you think my stuff is good enough to be in a real paper?

00:04:03.180 And he said, yeah, let me do some research.

00:04:04.620 And he came up with a place called Creator Syndicate, which is a syndicator of columns to hundreds of newspapers.

00:04:11.040 At the time, it was people like Molly Ivins on the left and David Limbaugh on the right.

00:04:14.800 And so I just submitted my stuff cold, and they called me three weeks later, and they said, we want you to have a syndicated column.

00:04:19.540 So at 17, I was the youngest syndicated columnist in the country.

00:04:22.640 My parents had to sign the contract because I was a minor.

00:04:25.480 And so I started writing columns. 0.89

00:04:26.940 And I'd say like solidly 75% to 80% of the dumb crap I've ever said or written was like in that period between when you're 17 and when you're 22 because you're trying to get attention and because you think that you're a lot smarter than you are when you're 17 or 18 years old, which you now only recognize in retrospect. 0.98

00:04:40.880 And your brain isn't fully developed. 0.98

00:04:42.640 Exactly. 1.00

00:04:43.240 So again, in a place where you're trying to gain attention, the thing you do is say the thing no one else will say, which sometimes is good and a lot of times is really stupid. 0.99

00:04:51.160 In any case, I finished UCLA. 0.98

00:04:53.700 I go to Harvard Law School.

00:04:55.220 I wrote a couple books while I was there.

00:04:57.340 So by the time I finished Harvard Law, I had three published books and a syndicated column.

00:05:01.520 I was working in law.

00:05:03.240 I came back to LA.

00:05:04.340 I got married.

00:05:04.820 I was working in law, and I decided that I had always continued to do the column.

00:05:10.280 I was always doing political stuff, but I was not enjoying the practice of real estate law, particularly because I came out of law school in 2007, which was like the worst time in human history to go into the real estate market.

00:05:20.980 So I would sit in this really nice, glossy office overlooking Century City and do nothing like all day.

00:05:26.580 And after 10 months of this and being berated by my superiors for not billing hours because, number one, there's no work, and number two, my whole thing is I work fast, and the legal industry is about do not work fast.

00:05:36.000 Work slower so we can bill more hours to the client.

00:05:38.340 I went and I quit, and I had no job.

00:05:41.820 I was about to get married.

00:05:43.020 We had just taken a mortgage on a house, and I took a job for one-third the pay to work at Talk Radio Network, and the deal was that I would do some in-house legal work half the time, and half the time I would learn the radio business.

00:05:54.700 So I would actually get up at 4.30 in the morning.

00:05:56.740 I'd help write monologues for hosts.

00:05:58.300 I would cut all the audio for people, like actually do the audio cutting on the show, cut all the clips, all that kind of stuff.

00:06:04.820 I worked there for a few years.

00:06:07.040 I think it was three years.

00:06:08.000 And then ended up as editor-at-large of Breitbart, which was because I had known Andrew Breitbart for a long time, going back to when I was actually at UCLA.

00:06:15.460 Andrew lived in Brentwood, or Westwood, and so we used to get together.

00:06:19.840 We'd become friends.

00:06:20.780 I became editor-at-large of Breitbart.

00:06:21.940 During this time, I'm still writing books and everything.

00:06:23.340 The first sort of big hit, the thing where I became relatively famous, because you're laboring in B-level obscurity in politics.

00:06:30.000 Like us.

00:06:32.240 You didn't even challenge it, just laughed at it.

00:06:34.400 You're absolutely right.

00:06:35.940 Assessment is correct.

00:06:37.020 Exactly.

00:06:37.740 And then there will be these kind of moments, and that's the moment where everyone goes, oh, my gosh, he's like an overnight success.

00:06:43.060 Now we know who he is.

00:06:43.760 And for me, that was that famous Piers Morgan interview that I did in 2013 on CNN.

00:06:47.300 Now Piers and I are actually pretty good friends, but back then he had me in.

00:06:51.400 It was like the day after he'd interviewed Alex Jones on gun control, and he expected that I was going to be like Alex Jones, and I'm fundamentally not like Alex Jones.

00:06:58.980 And so that interview didn't go great for him, and there are all sorts of articles, a lot of attention all of a sudden on that.

00:07:03.620 And at this point, I'd already met my business partner, Jeremy Boring, a couple of years beforehand.

00:07:07.800 We'd talked about trying to get sort of an entertainment company up and running.

00:07:11.660 But the idea that we had at that point was that Jeremy was going to be kind of the talent guy, and I was going to be the legal and business guy.

00:07:16.960 Because I had a degree from Harvard Law.

00:07:18.260 I'd actually been executive vice president of this radio company.

00:07:21.060 I went from being like in-house counsel to that.

00:07:23.200 And so after that Piers hit, he called me up on the phone, and he's like, we've got this completely backwards.

00:07:27.400 You're the talent, and I need to do the business.

00:07:29.560 And that's when that fundamental shift sort of took place.

00:07:31.820 And we started working with David Horowitz Freedom Center.

00:07:35.340 We launched a website called Truth Revolt, which was sort of the predecessor to Daily Wire, and that was a reverse Media Matters.

00:07:42.140 The idea was we didn't like what Media Matters was doing, and we explicitly said this in our sort of opening statement.

00:07:47.140 And we said that the only way to get Media Matters to stop forcing boycotts is to just do it to the other side until they realize this is a bad idea, weapons down.

00:07:54.640 And mutually assured destruction was the basic idea of it.

00:07:56.840 We did that for a couple of years.

00:07:58.580 And then we had a pretty funny sort of board meeting that ended our careers over there, which was Jeremy had discovered that social media was actually a place that you needed to be.

00:08:09.640 This is 2015.

00:08:11.300 And he said, you know, there's some kind of holes in the market here.

00:08:14.060 Like you can actually start to build a brand on social media, but we need a million dollars.

00:08:17.920 If you give us a million dollars, then we will build you a money machine for all time.

00:08:20.580 And we were at a board meeting, and it was a bunch of people between the ages of about 75 and death, and none of them understood what a computer was, let alone what the internet was, let alone what Facebook was.

00:08:30.120 And so they said, what's your business plan?

00:08:32.180 And Jeremy explained it.

00:08:33.340 Now, I'm like a fast-talking Jew.

00:08:34.800 Jeremy is a slow-talking southerner from Texas. 0.99

00:08:37.600 So between us, I've called him before the stupid whisperer because I'll say a thing. 1.00

00:08:42.320 It'll go right over people's head. 0.99

00:08:43.460 Jeremy will say it slower, but with a Texas accent.

00:08:45.660 And everyone will go, oh, that's amazing. 1.00

00:08:47.180 He earned that nickname in a conversation with a congressperson, actually, the stupid whisperer. 1.00

00:08:50.880 Anyway, he tried to explain the plan, and it went right over their heads. 0.99

00:08:55.560 And they turned to me, and they said, what's the plan?

00:08:57.180 And I took out – I was very agitated by this point because it had been going for like an hour.

00:09:00.440 And I took out a napkin.

00:09:01.360 I said, here's the plan.

00:09:02.480 Dollar sign, arrow.

00:09:04.000 Facebook, arrow.

00:09:05.960 Website, arrow back to dollar sign.

00:09:07.720 We're going to spend money on Facebook.

00:09:09.020 It's going to direct traffic to the website.

00:09:10.300 That's going to lead to advertising and subscriptions.

00:09:12.140 Arrow back to dollar sign.

00:09:12.980 And then we're just going to reinvest, and that's going to be how we do our business.

00:09:15.080 They fired Jeremy the next day, and I quit in solidarity.

00:09:19.020 And then we took that business plan out to the market.

00:09:21.260 We got a little bit under $5 million in seed investing, and we were profitable at month 18.

00:09:27.600 This is for Daily Wire.

00:09:28.500 We were profitable at month 18.

00:09:30.480 We've been profitable ever since.

00:09:31.460 We've operated purely off of cash flow with no outside investment until this point,

00:09:37.260 and we are generating about $200 million a year in annual revenue.

00:09:40.880 Amazing.

00:09:41.380 It's an amazing story.

00:09:42.240 I want to ask you more about the Daily Wire.

00:09:43.760 But you mentioned Andrew Breitbart, and I was wondering, because, you know,

00:09:48.080 you get that thing with, like, the Bill Hickses of the world, the people who die young.

00:09:51.820 They always get a lot of credit, and that's what happened with Breitbart.

00:09:54.360 What do you make of his impact on politics, on your own?

00:09:58.740 Was he a big influence for you, and what do you make of his impact on the culture?

00:10:01.600 We were good friends.

00:10:02.120 I mean, the thing with Andrew was, and I said this to a lot of people, I spent a fair bit

00:10:05.340 of time with Andrew and, you know, helped him with a bunch of big projects, but if you

00:10:09.940 met Andrew for five minutes, you knew him about 95% as well as I did.

00:10:13.340 He kind of reserved himself for, like, one close friend who's his business partner, Larry

00:10:17.120 Solov, and his family.

00:10:18.800 But, you know, everybody else, he was kind of the same, too.

00:10:21.120 If he met you for five minutes, you got his entire life story.

00:10:23.680 You knew everything about him.

00:10:24.480 He was very enthusiastic.

00:10:26.080 The impact that Andrew had on a lot of people was he really helped connect a lot of people.

00:10:30.920 There were a lot of people in different places where he helped make the connections, which

00:10:33.160 is why he actually was one of the founding forces, not just behind Breitbart, but obviously

00:10:36.780 he was involved at Drudge Report, and also he helped found Huffington Post, right?

00:10:39.580 So, like, half the internet was founded, at least in some large part, by Andrew.

00:10:44.280 It wasn't as though he was sort of guru you go to, you know, for, like, life advice.

00:10:48.260 It wasn't really like that.

00:10:49.700 He was somebody who you went to if you wanted to be connected with another person, and then

00:10:53.440 he had sort of an interestingly eclectic view of the world.

00:10:56.980 Every – he was really a lot of fun.

00:10:58.600 He was really a sweet guy.

00:11:00.180 By the end, his image had changed so much because of the dynamics of politics that you

00:11:04.220 see him doing the war kind of – war, hashtag war, you know, the angry pictures of Andrew

00:11:08.440 and all that sort of stuff near the end.

00:11:10.020 That fundamentally is not who Andrew was, and if you talk to anybody who knew Andrew

00:11:12.960 for a long time, the image that comes to mind of Andrew for most of us is that there's

00:11:17.260 a YouTube video where he was literally just rollerblading around Santa Monica just talking

00:11:20.660 to people.

00:11:21.500 And he'd, like, take – he'd be like, let's go to Applebee's.

00:11:23.080 I mean, just sit down with people and talk with them.

00:11:24.640 That was Andrew's unique gift is being able to connect with people that way.

00:11:27.820 And he never thought that he was better than anybody else, which is why I think he was

00:11:31.820 able to connect really well with people.

00:11:33.000 But as far as sort of the kind of general contributions connecting people and then the argument that

00:11:37.920 he made, which wasn't unique to him, but he sort of popularized, the culture was upstream

00:11:40.960 of politics, and that you need to get involved in the culture fight, which obviously

00:11:44.300 has had some pretty significant ramifications.

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00:12:13.800 Indeed.

00:12:18.060 So, Ben, you set up The Daily Wire.

00:12:21.360 What's the modus operandi of The Daily Wire?

00:12:23.520 Why did you set it up, and what are you trying to do to the culture?

00:12:26.880 So, we set it up with the idea that we were going to provide not only a media alternative,

00:12:32.480 but that we were going to actually wage the culture war.

00:12:35.360 We were going to get into the culture.

00:12:36.480 Like, the long-term goal was to do what we've actually been able to achieve.

00:12:41.060 We have created a distribution network for products that goes beyond just politics.

00:12:46.600 So, we always thought of ourselves not as a political company with a marketing wing.

00:12:49.280 We thought of ourselves as a marketing company that does politics.

00:12:51.900 And that was sort of a different way of doing it.

00:12:53.660 And that's because when Jeremy and I first met,

00:12:55.600 he was running a charitable organization called Declaration Entertainment.

00:12:59.080 His theory was basically crowdfund movies.

00:13:01.360 And the problem was, he did.

00:13:03.520 He made a movie for like, I don't know, $80,000 or something.

00:13:06.040 And then he had no distribution network.

00:13:07.240 So, it just kind of languished there and it died.

00:13:08.940 And he and I both realized, well, actually, you have to build the distribution network

00:13:12.040 before you can provide the content for that.

00:13:14.500 And so, the basis of Daily Wire was you go in with a really strong marketing strategy.

00:13:18.440 You provide the market with what it wants, which is an alternative to kind of legacy media narrative.

00:13:24.340 And you'll find success there.

00:13:25.960 There were some successes that we obviously didn't see coming.

00:13:27.980 If you look at our original business plan, we've been trying to dig this up for years.

00:13:30.880 The original business plan had slotted for my podcast, for example.

00:13:34.980 I think we had slotted that like three years in, we'd have 100,000 listeners.

00:13:37.660 Like, it was really, like, we were way off.

00:13:39.920 Our estimates for the growth of my content in particular were off by orders of magnitude.

00:13:45.520 But that happens with talents, right?

00:13:47.000 I mean, you think that somebody's going to be a B level, they end up an A level.

00:13:49.760 Sometimes you pick somebody, you think they're an A level, they're a D.

00:13:51.800 Like, that just happens.

00:13:52.980 So, we had some, we got lucky with some of the sort of breakout material.

00:13:56.080 But, again, the main philosophy was be hard-hitting, be openly conservative.

00:14:02.480 We don't try to pretend that we're objective, we're not objective.

00:14:04.560 We have a specific and clear point of view.

00:14:07.480 I, for the first three years of the website, wrote literally every headline that was on the website.

00:14:10.980 I would get up in the morning.

00:14:11.780 I would assign 30 pieces.

00:14:13.160 I would write every single headline because this is one of the things that I was good at.

00:14:16.300 And then we'd put up those pieces on the website.

00:14:18.420 I would do the podcast.

00:14:19.060 I was, at the beginning of Daily Wire, I was working several jobs at one time.

00:14:24.700 I was doing, like, six hours of radio at one time, plus the Daily Wire, plus I was still doing some stuff for Breitbart at the very beginning.

00:14:29.660 But, yeah, I mean, the kind of mission of Daily Wire was be very clear about your principles and then aim toward, eventually, being able to effectuate cultural change across a series of different milieus.

00:14:42.000 And what is a cultural change that you want to influence?

00:14:44.840 I mean, I think that we have, I would say we work along kind of two lines.

00:14:48.420 One is the anti-left line of broaden the discourse.

00:14:53.860 I've tried to make a point of talking to people across the political aisle, which is why, if you watch my Sunday special, I'll have on people like Anna Kasparian.

00:15:00.360 We'll just chat for an hour and a half or Larry Wilmore or Jason Blomack.

00:15:04.540 I'll have on pretty much anybody to have those conversations.

00:15:07.760 We wanted to make sure that everybody's been sort of siloed off.

00:15:12.340 We wanted to say that those conversations are totally doable and haveable and they can be totally fine.

00:15:16.480 And that's why in 2015, 2016, I was kind of considered part of the short-lived intellectual dark web, right?

00:15:22.020 It was this idea that there were a bunch of us who disagreed with each other.

00:15:24.560 I think I was the only registered Republican in the group, contrary to sort of New York Times and public opinion.

00:15:28.200 And we, you know, we were all talking with one another and it was like me and Sam Harris and Joe Rogan and Dave Rubin and a couple of Eric Weinstein and a couple of others.

00:15:38.220 And so it's broadened the political debate was one, open the Overton window because the Overton window had closed really tight.

00:15:43.800 In 2016, 2017, 2018, there was a real move toward you can't say things and not only can you not say things, you can't have conversations.

00:15:50.280 And if you do have those conversations, you will be expelled from the movement.

00:15:54.280 It was more from – significantly more from the left than from the right.

00:15:57.120 I think you've seen some similar movements from the right actually recently but I think that you've seen it a lot more from the left overall.

00:16:01.180 So that was mission number one.

00:16:02.560 And mission number two is I am conservative.

00:16:04.260 We are a conservative company and so we have principles on actual political issues ranging from things like abortion to traditional marriage to the value of religion in life to free market economics.

00:16:14.160 And we're not going to be shy about our agenda and we're not going to try to hide our agenda.

00:16:18.040 Now when it comes to our entertainment content, we've been trying to produce movies that are chiefly non-political in orientation because our main contention is that all we have to do to have market space is make stuff that's not political.

00:16:29.120 Because Hollywood has gotten so political that if we just make something that's like down-the-line cop show in 2023, that's now considered political because the cops are not evil.

00:16:38.600 And so that's opened some space for us to operate.

00:16:41.620 This is kind of what's happened with us in terms of like Jeremy's Chocolates or Jeremy's Razors, right?

00:16:45.860 Those companies which were launched like basically – Jeremy's Razors had some thought to it but Jeremy's Chocolates was not only on the spur of the moment.

00:16:52.080 It was like we put together the ad campaign for that that day.

00:16:55.400 We did not have a chocolate supplier.

00:16:56.660 We sold – we've sold 600,000, 700,000 chocolate bars just because all we said is we're a chocolate bar that doesn't want to preach to you, right?

00:17:04.600 So like we don't want to preach to you is actually part of the cultural space.

00:17:08.240 So I think that that lives halfway between message one, which is open the Overton window, and message two, which is we are conservative, is that sort of third halfway message, which is there does need to be a place for not politics, right?

00:17:20.400 Which is like you go into your store.

00:17:22.080 You don't want to be preached to.

00:17:23.080 You just want to get a product.

00:17:24.020 You want to be on Amazon Web Services.

00:17:26.920 You shouldn't have to pass some sort of political litmus test to have a neutral service provider provide you a service.

00:17:31.540 So that's something we've been pushing as well.

00:17:32.740 Yeah, well, that's something we agree on and try to do ourselves.

00:17:35.300 And with that success that you've had and with the attention that you've generated and with the clear positioning of the brand that you have, you know, we interviewed Dan Crenshaw.

00:17:45.920 This interview will go out before Dan's, but there is way more security at the Daily Wire than there is in Congress, right?

00:17:54.240 And this ties into what's happened very recently with Matt Walsh's emails and Twitter and everything being hacked, where you guys painted or someone has painted a target on your back, and they're really coming after you now.

00:18:09.460 Why is that, Ben?

00:18:10.240 Because all the things you've articulated as an outside observer I'd agree with, I'm not a conservative down the line, but I respect those views.

00:18:18.580 They're allowed to be aired without people being threatened, doxxed, et cetera.

00:18:22.320 So why is that happening?

00:18:23.040 I think that, you know, the situation has gotten so polarized in the United States that as more and more radical issues come up and as you are strong against radicalism, there's always going to be kind of a small group of people.

00:18:34.820 I don't want to make it out to be like it's everybody, but there are small groups of people who actually will get violent.

00:18:38.860 And that's, you know, for me, it went back to like 2015.

00:18:40.840 I was the number one target of anti-Semitism online across 2016.

00:18:43.820 I had to have full-time security.

00:18:45.580 I still have basically full-time security at this point, as you've noticed.

00:18:48.900 Matt has full-time security now.

00:18:50.280 He's been, you know, threatened many, many death threats, very specific death threats.

00:18:55.080 Obviously, he had not just his phone hacked, but like everything hacked, including his email.

00:18:58.920 You know, the sort of targeting effort is – I think it's rooted in a belief that because identity politics has decided – everyone puts their focus in the phrase identity politics on the sort of – the idea that your politics is – that your identity is your politics.

00:19:15.740 But in many ways, it's the reverse.

00:19:17.080 Your politics has become your identity.

00:19:18.320 And so if you have a political point of view and someone offends you, they have attacked you.

00:19:24.040 They're seeking to destroy you, right?

00:19:25.180 This is the sort of language – Matt's obviously touching upon this with the trans issue.

00:19:28.600 When Matt says something like, well, you say that you're a woman, but you're clearly a biological man.

00:19:33.040 You're not a woman. 1.00

00:19:33.980 Somebody will say, well, you're erasing me.

00:19:35.600 This is an attack on me.

00:19:37.020 And he'll say, well, it's not an attack on you.

00:19:38.560 You're a person.

00:19:39.040 You're standing there.

00:19:39.540 I'm not attacking you.

00:19:40.160 He'll say, no, no, no.

00:19:40.760 You're attacking who I am at my core, and that's a threat to me.

00:19:43.480 And so when people decide that they're going to perceive argument as threat in that way, then they tend to get more violent.

00:19:50.980 And that's not just me.

00:19:52.600 Jonathan Haidt says this when he talks about microaggression culture, the idea that I have been attacked by your words.

00:19:57.820 Your words are a form of violence.

00:19:58.920 I now get to respond with actual violence.

00:20:01.020 And that sort of temptation, I think, has grown dramatically in the society.

00:20:05.780 And then I think the internet's made pretty much everything worse.

00:20:08.060 As somebody who makes our living on it, I mean, I make my living on the internet.

00:20:10.860 My kids will not have access to the internet, I hope, until they're about 18.

00:20:14.580 I'm the same.

00:20:15.220 I just had a son.

00:20:15.960 He's 11 months old, and I'm already, like, we're doing interviews with people just to, like, find out exactly when would be the right time and all of that.

00:20:22.820 I totally get it.

00:20:23.600 And how are you going to handle the Matt Walsh situation?

00:20:26.960 Because we've met Matt.

00:20:28.480 I don't know him personally.

00:20:29.860 But I don't know a single person that I can think of who can survive 20 years' worth of emails being leaked because, you know, the stuff that we all thought and said and joked about 20 years ago is just in this current environment.

00:20:44.400 Yeah.

00:20:44.640 I mean, he can survive because we've got his back because we understand that, and we're not firing him.

00:20:49.620 I mean, end of story.

00:20:50.660 Like, the reality is that you can only be canceled by the people who have the ability to cancel you.

00:20:54.840 The left yelling at Matt isn't going to cancel him.

00:20:56.720 The only people who can actually cancel Matt are the people who pay him, right, and his fans.

00:21:01.380 And none of those people are going anywhere because they all understand what this is, which is an attempt to discredit and destroy somebody for the great sin of saying true things about biological sex and the differences between men and women.

00:21:11.360 And, you know, so I don't – I told Matt this directly.

00:21:14.320 There's nothing in those emails that would ever give you concern.

00:21:17.000 It's short of him being like a pedophile or something or committing some sort of egregious crime.

00:21:21.260 No.

00:21:22.200 I mean, no.

00:21:23.000 Because guess what?

00:21:24.340 I'm not of the opinion that stuff that you say in confidentiality to your spouse or to your friend or that you emailed to somebody in confidentiality, that this is the sole representation of you.

00:21:33.780 And I'm really sick of a culture that says that sort of stuff because it's not true.

00:21:37.460 It really isn't.

00:21:38.300 The version of yourself that you present to the public is actually the most considered version of yourself because you actually have to consider those things. 0.99

00:21:44.080 What you say, you know, to a buddy, you make a stupid racial joke or something, and that comes out. 0.97

00:21:49.580 The reason that you didn't say it out loud is because you know it's socially unacceptable. 0.99

00:21:52.580 Okay, so what rule did you actually violate?

00:21:55.060 Does this make you like a terrible person or does it make you somebody who like says rude jokes to your buddies?

00:21:59.340 Is it like the – is the end of the world?

00:22:01.060 Does it belie some deeper truth about you?

00:22:03.160 I just don't buy into the idea that what you say in private is significantly more important than what you say in public.

00:22:08.220 I think usually it's the reverse.

00:22:10.400 That's such a good point because we don't live in that culture.

00:22:13.620 Why do you think the whole trans conversation is so toxic?

00:22:18.140 I mean it shouldn't be.

00:22:19.180 I think because it is – there really is no gray area is the answer.

00:22:23.040 I mean you either believe this thing that is fundamentally untrue in my opinion or you – and just factually – or you don't believe the thing.

00:22:29.780 And this is a – people want fealty on this issue.

00:22:33.680 They don't want to have a discussion about the issue, right?

00:22:36.160 Because there are actual conversations to be had about like for example, how do you treat trans – people who identify as trans in public?

00:22:42.140 That's a real issue.

00:22:43.160 Like, okay, should they be able to be fired if they're in this position versus if they're in that position?

00:22:48.640 Should there be laws on the books about what kind of bathroom to use, right? 0.69

00:22:51.700 Those are all sort of pragmatic discussions that you can have about the risks and rewards of various policies and there are edge cases in which a trans man was transitioning when he was a teenager and looks a lot more like a woman versus like a big hulking dude who just says he's a woman who's going into a – right? 0.59

00:23:04.620 Like there are edge cases there that can theoretically be discussed.

00:23:07.500 But that's not what the conversation is about.

00:23:09.680 The claim that the trans community is now making is that any man at any time for any reason can say that he is a woman and we must respect that and treat him as though he is a woman because he is in fact a woman.

00:23:20.900 A woman, as they have now defined it, is a person who identifies as a woman. 0.93

00:23:24.720 That's, as Matt has pointed out quite properly, completely circular.

00:23:28.040 I mean there is no content to that statement.

00:23:29.880 A woman is a person who believes they are a woman is a bleh is anybody who believes they are a bleh.

00:23:34.860 Well, that doesn't mean anything.

00:23:36.060 It's a blank – it's a self-referential statement.

00:23:38.980 And so if you refuse to kowtow to that ideology, then the idea, again, is that you're doing violence to a group of people who say they are this thing because you have not accepted their version of the world.

00:23:49.360 And either you will change or they will change, but there is really no in between.

00:23:52.680 And so that's why all these conversations don't end up being about public policy questions.

00:23:56.720 They end up really being about that fundamental idea.

00:23:59.020 Are you of the belief that a man can become a woman or a woman can become a man?

00:24:02.480 And even deeper than that is the belief are men and women different from one another?

00:24:07.800 And that's really the bigger question that people can have really interesting conversations about because the answers are in some ways very, very, very different.

00:24:15.340 In some ways not so different, right?

00:24:16.260 But as soon as you say in some ways very, very, very different, a lot of people get very offended very quickly because they want to believe in the complete malleability of every individual human being.

00:24:25.500 And they want to believe in some sort of bizarre world in this sort of Cartesian dualism in which we are all disembodied souls that are walking around in meat suits.

00:24:35.440 And those souls can be male or female.

00:24:36.900 And it's like trading places.

00:24:38.840 It's like a 1980s movie where you're just going to be walking around and suddenly you're in mom's body or something.

00:24:43.080 That's not how any of that works.

00:24:44.340 And if you don't believe that, that is a religious point of view.

00:24:47.720 I mean it's a Gnostic point of view actually.

00:24:48.980 And so if you refuse to believe that, I assume that you've attacked somebody's religion.

00:24:52.920 Do you know, I sometimes just step back and I think, imagine you like, I don't know, had a car crash in 2010 and you were in a coma.

00:25:00.940 And then you woke up in 2023 and the number one question that everyone is talking about is that they're arguing about what a woman is.

00:25:08.520 Right.

00:25:08.700 Do you know someone who sometimes pinch yourself and go like, what?

00:25:11.800 It's insane.

00:25:12.300 I mean there's a clip of Dennis Prager on Bill Maher.

00:25:15.040 I saw that.

00:25:16.180 They all laughed at him.

00:25:17.180 This is like seven years ago, eight years ago.

00:25:19.180 And Dennis is like, yeah, there's a bunch of people and they won't even be able to define the word woman.

00:25:22.700 And Maher is laughing at him. 0.99

00:25:23.580 Everybody on the panel is like, what are you, crazy? 0.99

00:25:24.900 What are you talking about? 0.98

00:25:25.840 And now that it's being preached by the White House.

00:25:27.800 I mean the White House has taken that position.

00:25:29.460 That's wild.

00:25:30.180 I mean the fact that this has been elevated to a position of national prominence is not because of the right.

00:25:34.100 It's because the left decided that this was going to be the core next civil rights front.

00:25:38.460 Is that they had basically won on the same-sex marriage issue.

00:25:41.660 And everybody thought, okay, battle over.

00:25:43.180 Like everybody weapons down.

00:25:44.340 Go back to your normal business.

00:25:45.740 Like no, no, we have another step here.

00:25:47.380 And the next step is that we're going to teach our version of sexual orientation and gender identity to your kids.

00:25:51.700 And that is going to include the idea that gender is fully malleable and on a spectrum and completely socially constructed.

00:25:57.420 And everybody, I think, moderate, even center left and right was like, hold up a second.

00:26:03.800 And then it was, well, we're going to use the exact same model we use for the civil rights movement or for the gay rights movement.

00:26:07.500 And we're going to say that you're a bigot if you don't believe this.

00:26:10.000 And people finally sort of drew the line like, I'm not a bigot if I think that women exist.

00:26:14.060 That doesn't make me a bigot.

00:26:15.520 That was a line that nobody was – it so fundamentally runs up against the proof of your eyes, ears, mind that to simply surrender before it is to become part of the Borg basically.

00:26:27.260 You mentioned something about partisan politics in there, sort of right versus left.

00:26:30.940 And that's something that – I don't know whether we are in disagreement or not.

00:26:33.540 But certainly in the UK, I feel we're making more progress than you guys are over here on the trans issue.

00:26:38.260 And I think part of the reason is that in the UK, we have lots of people who are not explicitly on the right and who are frankly on the left.

00:26:45.760 People like J.K. Rowling, Rosie Duffield, the Labour MP, who's been very outspoken about this.

00:26:51.120 Not that it's outspoken to say it, right?

00:26:53.160 Whereas here, I sort of – I do cringe when I hear people sort of say the libs are trans in the kids type of thing because I don't think it's the libs that are trans in the kids.

00:27:02.420 It's a small minority of people who've captured institutions, who've shoved this gender ideology down people's throats, have used scare tactics to bully them into not challenging it.

00:27:10.860 But a lot of the people who are challenging, certainly in our country, it's not a partisan issue.

00:27:15.720 And I feel that's why we're making progress.

00:27:17.180 Whereas here, as you say, on the one hand, there are a lot of people on the right who sort of say the libs are trans in the kids. 0.99

00:27:22.140 On the other hand, the White House is pushing this crap. 1.00

00:27:24.440 Right. 0.99

00:27:24.640 I mean that's sort of where it's – you can see why people will say – I'll say that people are trans in the kids.

00:27:31.480 Typically, I try to make it clear who those people are.

00:27:33.440 I think that when the White House is actually promoting it, I'll say the White House is attempting to trans the kids, which they are.

00:27:38.060 But the kind of general point that you're making, which is that there are people in public positions in foreign countries who will say true things even if it doesn't necessarily fall into the right-left dichotomy.

00:27:49.600 Yeah, that doesn't apply in the United States.

00:27:50.980 That is definitely true.

00:27:51.840 I mean really since the era of – I wouldn't say Trump, but I don't think it actually is Trump.

00:27:57.280 I think it's really since the era of Obama.

00:27:59.180 There's a real shift that happened, particularly in the media space, when Barack Obama was elected president.

00:28:03.860 The media went from, yeah, we're left-wing, but we understand that there is a right-wing in this country too.

00:28:07.840 Barack Obama is the light-bringer, and we are his actual PR agents.

00:28:11.680 And it is our job to basically back what the president says.

00:28:14.860 And if you don't back the president, it must be because you're a bigot.

00:28:17.380 It must be because there's something wrong with you.

00:28:18.820 And that only got exacerbated by Trump where suddenly the Washington Post is emblazoning democracy dies in darkness on their chyron or whatever it is.

00:28:27.460 And the media are a real problem in all of this.

00:28:30.400 I mean you see how members of the media just get absolutely shellacked if they step across the line.

00:28:34.580 The New York Times ran one piece that was fairly balanced about the trans issue, and the reporter got destroyed online, just destroyed.

00:28:40.760 He said a science reporter got fired for the great crime of using the N-word while they were in South America on a trip with some people,

00:28:46.540 not because he was using the N-word but because he was explaining when it is right and when it is wrong to use the N-word.

00:28:50.920 You know, the level of outrage that American society is capable of achieving seems to be a lot higher than it is in a lot of European countries.

00:28:59.220 Maybe that's because there are such wide differentials in sort of living in the United States.

00:29:03.660 And the reality is that if the United States was a creedal country and if there is sort of a central creed to the United States,

00:29:09.560 then the further that disintegrates, the more people sort of go back to their corners.

00:29:14.340 The United States is not really an organic outgrowth.

00:29:16.280 I mean it really is – the blessing and curse of the United States is because it's not an organically grown country, right?

00:29:21.900 I mean you literally had a European population that is imported into the United States or imports itself into the United States,

00:29:27.700 and then you have various other populations that come in in waves rooted in this one idea.

00:29:33.540 If the idea dies, what do all those people exactly have in common?

00:29:37.280 That's not really sort of the case with Great Britain or France.

00:29:40.220 When you think of Great Britain, you think, well, yeah, because they're British.

00:29:43.300 When you think of an American, what do you think of?

00:29:46.000 I mean really – like if you think of a British person, you think of a person who has a British accent and probably likes tea and maybe doesn't have amazing teeth.

00:29:52.100 There are a bunch of things about the Brits.

00:29:53.980 And you think of Winston Churchill.

00:29:55.580 You think of Margaret Thatcher on the right.

00:29:56.880 And if you're not, then you think of Tony Blair.

00:29:58.420 You think of Gordon Brown.

00:30:00.280 There are people that you think of.

00:30:01.840 And then if you go back to British history, you think of the royals.

00:30:03.420 I mean like there's an actual sort of British culture that exists that just doesn't exist in sort of the history of the United States,

00:30:08.340 which is so deeply rooted in the idea of the Constitution, the idea of the Declaration,

00:30:14.540 and certain key personalities of Washington and Lincoln that when you destroy your history,

00:30:19.320 what you end up with is everybody being like, well, you know who I'm actually a member of?

00:30:21.780 I'm a member of my tribal group.

00:30:22.800 They kind of came here together.

00:30:23.660 And I have in common with those people, but I'm not sure I have that much in common with those people over there.

00:30:29.040 The fundamental assimilative mechanism of the United States has broken down.

00:30:33.600 And what that's done is it's led to this sort of political fragmentation that I think you don't really see in a lot of other countries.

00:30:39.580 The United States is – people in the United States don't get this, but we are way more radical on a wide variety of social policies than pretty much anywhere.

00:30:46.120 I mean we're not just radical with regards to the transing issue.

00:30:49.260 I mean we're very radical with regards to the abortion issue.

00:30:51.040 I mean it comes as an absolute shock to people from Europe when they realize that like the state of New York allows abortion all the way up to birth,

00:30:57.640 that in most of Europe, the average is like 12, 15 weeks with pretty significant restrictions.

00:31:03.020 It's kind of a settled issue.

00:31:03.820 We don't really argue about abortion in the UK or much of Europe.

00:31:07.300 Yeah, I mean occasionally you'll have something like in Ireland where the Catholic Church sort of gets overruled by the population or whatever.

00:31:13.760 But in the United States because, again, it's a very polarized population, the vast majority of Americans –

00:31:21.020 I'm fully pro-life, right?

00:31:22.040 I want an abortion ban. 0.99

00:31:22.920 But I also understand where public opinion is in the United States.

00:31:25.660 It does differ by area.

00:31:27.300 And these sort of – if you look at the polls, the mainstream opinion in the United States just by polling data is very similar to the European position.

00:31:32.620 It's like 10, 12, 15 weeks.

00:31:34.120 Like that's – beyond that, people are like very uncomfortable with abortion.

00:31:36.900 Before that, people are like – depends on the circumstance.

00:31:39.520 The reality is in the United States because everything is incredibly partisan and because it's a huge country.

00:31:44.840 I mean it's an enormous country.

00:31:46.960 People are – they want to live how they want to live in their area, but the federal government is where all the big debates are happening.

00:31:52.260 It used to be that you could actually have very wide differences in ideas and standards of living in Alabama and California.

00:31:58.380 But now everything has been nationalized and the federal government is incredibly powerful.

00:32:01.560 And so what you have is a giant overarching government and everybody is fighting for control of that thing so they can turn California into Alabama or Alabama into California when the real solution was actually the one the founders presented, which is the states have most of the authorities and the federal government really has very little.

00:32:14.860 Francis, before you jump in, on that very point, Ben, that's such an interesting point.

00:32:18.840 Isn't the right – the small government right fundamentally at a disadvantage in this situation then?

00:32:24.300 Because if the state, the federal state is becoming more and more powerful and you guys believe in a smaller one, your opponents, when they're in government, are inevitably A, going to use it and B, make it bigger.

00:32:34.640 Yeah, I mean this is the argument that national conservatives are making and they're making some headway with this argument.

00:32:39.100 They're saying, look, listen, you can have all the principles you want about shrinking the national government.

00:32:42.720 But the minute the other guy is getting power, they don't care about those principles.

00:32:45.080 They're happy to just blow up the size of government and use those tools against you.

00:32:48.520 And the answer to that is that when it comes to the state level, you should have states that – the state government of Florida has become very active in protecting kind of the values and rights of the citizens of Florida, how they wish to vote.

00:33:00.900 And I think that that's very good.

00:33:02.360 I do not think that the use of the federal government at a very heavy level in order to implement a conservative set of values is likely to be successful.

00:33:12.820 I don't have a general problem with it in sort of theory.

00:33:16.220 But in practice, I don't think that it's likely to work.

00:33:18.340 I think that very often what you end up with is the American public, I think for the most part, like any Western public, just wants to – they want normalcy and predictability and to be left alone.

00:33:28.400 That's mostly what most people want.

00:33:30.320 And I think that the battle over government is swinging wildly from this direction to that direction.

00:33:35.560 The American people keep saying we want it right here.

00:33:37.440 Just predictability.

00:33:39.000 Leave us – I mean we elected a dead person specifically for this purpose, right?

00:33:43.540 We're like – we went from Barack Obama lightbringer.

00:33:45.640 We're like, we don't need a lightbringer.

00:33:46.600 Bring in the guy who's like the business guy who's an outsider. 0.99

00:33:48.500 We don't want Hillary because she's just corrupt and terrible. 1.00

00:33:50.180 We'll bring in this outsider. 0.99

00:33:51.240 We'll give that a try.

00:33:52.280 And maybe that will be normal.

00:33:53.160 And like, oh, boy, this wasn't normal at all.

00:33:54.640 Let's go. 0.98

00:33:55.060 Let's get the dead guy. 0.99

00:33:55.760 Maybe the dead guy will be normal.

00:33:56.620 And they bring in the animated corpse of Joe Biden and it's not normal at all.

00:33:59.600 And people are like, well, maybe we'll get back to normal. 0.98

00:34:01.180 And the right is like, well, screw those people.

00:34:02.460 We're going to bring back in the guy who was ousted by that guy.

00:34:05.080 And so it's kind of wildly vacillating.

00:34:07.000 And it's wildly vacillating mainly because the people who are most politically engaged are the people who are most politically engaged.

00:34:11.960 And the vast majority of people in the middle who show up maybe only for presidential elections are then presented with the binary choice between the people of either party who may not be the most normal people.

00:34:23.240 And I think that this keeps being – I actually think that this is not just a theme in the United States.

00:34:28.280 I think this seems to be like a theme across Western civilization right now is people are just looking for a politician who's like, can we just be normal for a second?

00:34:34.600 Or just something relatively like I know what's happening tomorrow and I don't have to pay attention to you.

00:34:39.460 But, you know, so long as we have a national media that thrives on this sort of conflict, it's going to be very difficult to achieve that, I think.

00:34:45.680 Absolutely.

00:34:46.380 And if you look at the sort of Matt Walsh situation, we demand that our politicians never say anything controversial, never do anything controversial.

00:34:54.200 And then we're surprised when we get these weird people for election.

00:34:58.060 It's because everybody else does normal things and says things that are controversial and makes mistakes and whatever else.

00:35:03.860 But the question that I really want to ask to you, Ben, is do you think the right concentrate too much on the trans issue?

00:35:10.180 And I'm not saying the trans issue is not highly important.

00:35:12.240 It is highly important and I understand the aspects of it.

00:35:14.840 But you look at, you know, we've got a fentanyl crisis in this country.

00:35:17.540 Shouldn't the right also be talking about that and everything else?

00:35:21.840 I think a lot of these problems are overlaid onto far deeper systemic problems.

00:35:26.060 So I think that very often in politics we argue about the things that are at the top of the iceberg, but we very rarely get to the bottom of the iceberg.

00:35:31.400 So the thing that I would say that the fentanyl crisis and maybe the trans issue have in common is that the thing that has been dissolving in American life for a very long time is the fundamental family structure. 0.98

00:35:42.100 When the fundamental family structure dissolves, what you end up with is atomistic individuals.

00:35:45.280 Atomistic individuals make bad decisions.

00:35:47.480 They tend to be depressed.

00:35:48.300 They tend to be upset.

00:35:49.180 They tend to be volatile.

00:35:50.700 And so a huge variety of issues in America are just aspects of this, ranging from school shootings to the fentanyl crisis to broken families and higher crime rates to the trans issue. 0.81

00:36:01.800 All of these things are – as social fabric falls away, then sort of the nakedness of the raw humanity is left unleashed.

00:36:10.980 And you're seeing a lot of aspects of that.

00:36:12.600 So I don't think that they're utterly unrelated.

00:36:13.840 I think that people like to talk about the trans issue on both sides because it's an issue with like very, very clear demarcated lines.

00:36:20.560 And so that's a fun issue to talk about because if you're on the right, you look at this, you're like, this is just crazy.

00:36:24.460 I could talk about this all day, how crazy this is because it's so crazy. 0.93

00:36:26.540 And if you're on the left, you're like, oh, those intolerant bigots. 0.94

00:36:28.140 I love calling them bigots. 0.69

00:36:28.960 This is my favorite thing is to call them bigots.

00:36:30.480 And so it's a fun issue for people to talk about.

00:36:32.560 Fentanyl is a less fun issue to talk about for people not just because it involves mass death but also because it actually implicates some deeper issues that make people very uncomfortable.

00:36:40.900 You're actually going to have to talk about things like is this happening because of, you know, as the right will maintain sometimes trade and the outsourcing manufacturing jobs or is this actually happening because of the thing that very few people want to touch maybe across the aisle, which is no one goes to church anymore.

00:36:56.560 Fewer and fewer kids are growing up with two parents in the household.

00:36:59.140 There's no social fabric.

00:37:00.340 There's no social structure.

00:37:01.240 There's no one to keep an eye on these kids.

00:37:02.660 You know, when that happens, that perhaps men losing their role in society as protectors and providers for their family actually unmoors them and makes them depressed and more likely to get into drug use.

00:37:14.620 These are really deep kind of fundamental philosophic issues.

00:37:18.620 And I think most people tend to shy away from those because it's not as fun.

00:37:22.840 It's not as memeable.

00:37:23.940 It's not as kind of tick-tockable.

00:37:25.640 And, again, it gets to some really uncomfortable things about individualism in the age of the post-enlightenment, right?

00:37:31.520 I mean, like, what I'm talking about is actual things that create obligations and duties for people, right?

00:37:37.260 I'm talking about now, like, what you should do with your life. 0.98

00:37:39.120 I'm not just talking about what you shouldn't do or what's stupid. 0.90

00:37:40.740 I'm talking about, like, the things that you should do in life to make a thriving society. 0.93

00:37:44.600 And that comes with actual rules.

00:37:46.380 It comes with things you have to do.

00:37:47.540 And the minute you say to somebody, this comes with obligation, people go, I – right?

00:37:51.220 Because if you say, you know, the way to prevent the fentanyl crisis, it's not just an easy thing about, like, bombing cartels.

00:37:55.700 The way you have to prevent the fentanyl crisis is that you actually have to provide thriving family structures

00:38:00.900 in religious communities in which people feel comfortable looking for help

00:38:03.900 but also can find a wife, can have children, are expected to do these things.

00:38:08.180 And that means leaving behind the things of childhood and actually taking on an obligation to live a more fulfilled and better life,

00:38:13.480 not just for yourself but for your community because without that social fabric and you taking part in building that social fabric,

00:38:17.840 it doesn't just fall apart for you.

00:38:18.760 It falls apart for everybody.

00:38:20.120 People immediately go, wait, you want me to do a thing?

00:38:22.620 I didn't sign up for this.

00:38:23.860 I signed up to listen to a political show, right?

00:38:25.320 I signed up to watch CNN.

00:38:26.440 I signed up to watch Fox News.

00:38:27.760 I signed up to watch, like, you know, somebody yell at how if I just change this politician, then that will fix the thing.

00:38:32.420 This is why I think there's so much faith in politicians, which is also why everything is polarized.

00:38:36.660 No one should have faith in politicians.

00:38:38.060 Politicians are representatives of the people, which means inherently that if you worship a politician, you're an idol worshiper.

00:38:44.740 You're actually worshipping yourself.

00:38:46.300 You elect a politician.

00:38:47.320 Then you mold the golden calf to your specifications.

00:38:49.160 And then you worship it.

00:38:49.900 And you say, why isn't it doing the thing I want it to do?

00:38:51.820 And if only I just replaced this golden calf with that golden calf, then that would be better. 0.82

00:38:54.840 But perhaps the real work that we all have to do is not just solved by going into the voting booth and pulling the lever on a particular politician.

00:39:02.600 Maybe the actual work that we have to do is the hard work of getting up at 3 o'clock in the morning with your kids and doing your homework with your kids and battling through whatever hardships you have in your marriage to maintain your marriage.

00:39:13.040 And then taking care of your parents as they get older and making sure that the people in your community, if they're coming on hard times, actually have something to fall back on.

00:39:19.540 But also making sure that they're incentivized to go out and working it.

00:39:21.980 Like, these are actually the hard everyday things.

00:39:23.640 And, you know, my belief is obviously I'm an Orthodox Jew.

00:39:26.720 I think in the absence of religious structure, it's very difficult to promote these things.

00:39:29.800 But, you know, those are, again, conversations.

00:39:32.340 But you also believe in facts, Ben.

00:39:33.600 And the fact of it is that most people are increasingly less religious in Western society, right?

00:39:39.320 So I was going to ask you this because, of course, I understand.

00:39:42.320 And by the way, we spend time with religious conservatives, you know.

00:39:44.900 And it's wonderful to see the positive sides of that, you know, all of the things you've just talked about.

00:39:50.860 And I agree with you 100%.

00:39:53.000 Those things are incredibly important for society to thrive.

00:39:56.040 But the fact is, you know, we've had different guests on the show, Louise Perry and Mary Harrington, talking about the sexual revolution and how that unleashes all of this process, 60s onwards.

00:40:04.260 But all I'm saying is I put it to you that your solution, which is right for you and right for many religious people in this country, is increasingly less taken up, whether you and I like it or not.

00:40:15.440 I agree with you that it's increasingly less taken up.

00:40:16.240 So what do we do about that?

00:40:17.580 How do we encourage people who are not religious?

00:40:19.720 You know, when Peterson had me on his podcast, we talked about a lot of this.

00:40:23.140 How do you instill some of the values in a society that doesn't believe in God as much?

00:40:28.420 Right. So, I mean, I think Jordan is really great about this, which is the idea that you take on obligations to do something higher and then you'll find yourself doing something.

00:40:35.540 So do the thing right in front of you.

00:40:36.660 I think Jordan is really great at this.

00:40:38.160 You know, as an Orthodox Jew and a proponent of my own religion, obviously, I think that my religion is very Aristotelian in its approach to life, which is you get up in the morning and there's a bunch of things you have to do.

00:40:46.780 And if you do those things, then you'll grow increasingly virtuous and you'll grow increasingly close to God.

00:40:51.520 Now, you can be Aristotelian, not really bring God into it very much.

00:40:54.940 You can say you can grow increasingly close to virtue.

00:40:56.580 I think that's stepping one short logically because then the question is how do you define virtue?

00:41:00.580 Where does virtue come from?

00:41:01.620 Is there an objective standard of virtue or is it all just moral relativism?

00:41:04.320 That's why I'm religious.

00:41:05.360 But if you don't wish to go there, if you just wish to stop at that step without going to God or without going to church or any of that stuff, first of all, you're going to have to find a community of people who agree with you, people who actually want to build that community with you.

00:41:16.360 Maybe they're not so religious, but they have the same set of values as you do.

00:41:19.280 And then you're going to have to actually undertake those obligations in a really methodical and thought-out way.

00:41:27.020 Now, the reason I say that religion provides a structure is because traditionally that has been the structure.

00:41:30.420 Now, what's fascinating is that you can be a non-religious person living in a society that values religion and a lot of that stuff sort of bleeds over to you through the water, through osmosis.

00:41:38.860 So here I'll take the example of Israel.

00:41:40.420 What's fascinating about Israel is that Israel has a reproduction rate of currently something like three.

00:41:46.000 It is the only Western country that is reproducing at above replacement rates, literally the only one.

00:41:50.660 And it's not just reproducing at the rate of three.

00:41:53.720 There's a huge disparity between the people who are religious and the people who are secular.

00:41:57.700 But – so the people who are the most religious, like the Haredim, the ultra-Orthodox, they're having – I think they're averaging seven kids.

00:42:03.600 The people who are Dati Lumi, which is, you know, religious Zionist, which is probably where I would fall if I were living in Israel, they're having like four to five kids, right?

00:42:11.020 I have three.

00:42:11.720 I'm having a fourth.

00:42:12.340 That's fairly typical.

00:42:13.520 And then the seculars.

00:42:15.120 The seculars are having three kids. 0.53

00:42:16.920 Why are the seculars having three kids? 1.00

00:42:18.240 They're the only secular people anywhere in the Western world who are having three kids.

00:42:21.360 Why?

00:42:21.740 And the answer is because the entire culture values having children.

00:42:24.480 When you see people having kids around you, you're like, that's cool.

00:42:26.880 I would also like to have kids.

00:42:28.340 It seems like that would be amazing.

00:42:29.620 Maybe two kids isn't enough.

00:42:30.680 The guy across the street has eight.

00:42:32.000 They seem amazing.

00:42:32.700 Like they're really happy.

00:42:34.800 And so you see that sort of bleed down.

00:42:36.460 So even if you're not – I think that you can have a society in which you have Voltaire, so long as Voltaire's recognize what Voltaire did, which is, I don't believe in God, but I sure hope my maid does, right?

00:42:46.560 Otherwise, she'll steal the silverware is his famous line, right?

00:42:48.620 I mean so – but I think that as Western civilization becomes increasingly individualistic and anti-religious, it's not just like sort of apathetic about religion.

00:42:57.300 It's become antagonistic toward religion.

00:42:59.380 I think that that bleeds over into a secular world that was living off sort of the fumes of a religious society.

00:43:04.400 But as those fumes dissipate, what you end up with is, what do I do this morning?

00:43:08.000 How do I get up?

00:43:08.820 What is the moral obligation?

00:43:10.660 What's in it for me?

00:43:11.960 OK, so the religious ideal was always – and this is why, again, you can do the stoic thing, right?

00:43:16.360 There are stoic philosophers who say you get up in the morning, you do virtue.

00:43:18.900 That's great.

00:43:19.300 That may work for some people.

00:43:20.500 I hope it works for a lot of people, right?

00:43:21.920 I think it's a valuable belief system.

00:43:23.080 That's the rule I think I take in Francis too.

00:43:24.880 Yeah, I mean I think that there are people who want to do that.

00:43:27.040 I think that's great.

00:43:27.920 That's wonderful.

00:43:28.820 I think for the vast majority of people throughout human history, again, the thing that orients you is the idea that when you get up and you have a duty, it's not a duty just because you think it's good to have the duty.

00:43:37.840 It's a duty because you are enjoined to do the thing, right?

00:43:40.880 What makes you – so I'll ask you guys.

00:43:42.180 I mean like what makes you do the thing you don't want to do, right?

00:43:45.480 You have an 11-month-old baby. 0.99

00:43:46.460 So having a lot of kids, it's a pain in the ass, right? 0.99

00:43:51.920 I mean like having it – they're wonderful. 0.98

00:43:53.660 As I always say to people in life, when you're a single dude, basically your sort of spectrum of happiness to sadness is like a 10 to a zero.

00:44:02.040 And then you get married and it goes from like a 20 to a negative 20 because if something bad happens with your spouse, it's really terrible.

00:44:06.580 And then you have kids and all limits are removed.

00:44:08.200 The best things in your life will be your kids and the worst things by far in your life will be your kids.

00:44:12.500 It's really tough.

00:44:13.340 I mean parenting is not an easy thing.

00:44:14.580 So what motivates you that it's 3 o'clock in the morning, your kid took a dump, and now you have to change the diaper?

00:44:19.560 What makes you get up as opposed to just turning over and saying, if you deal with it, I'm going back to sleep?

00:44:23.480 Well, for me, the duty is that is an obligation I took up on myself when we decided to have a child.

00:44:28.680 That's what I signed up to do.

00:44:30.020 So why did you do that?

00:44:31.760 What drove you to make that decision?

00:44:33.380 Because that's the question because people increasingly are not making the decision to get married and then even if they do get married to have kids.

00:44:38.440 We're at an all-time low in terms of people getting married and having kids.

00:44:40.600 Look, my view is there's a biological explanation for why we all want to have kids, right?

00:44:45.240 So – and actually my wife and I put it off quite late, probably later than we ought to have done.

00:44:50.320 I'd love to bang out five as well at this point.

00:44:52.780 But anyway, for me, I think it's the biological drive to procreate.

00:44:56.760 So the only problem with that is that that was true and it was maintainable before the birth control pill, right?

00:45:02.440 Because the biological drive to procreate – so two things happen, the birth control pill and the feminist movement. 1.00

00:45:06.780 So there are two real drives.

00:45:08.380 Men had babies because they couldn't stop having babies. 0.95

00:45:10.780 And women had babies because not only could they not stop having babies, they actually wanted to have babies and they were in touch with the idea that it is good for a woman to have a baby.

00:45:18.120 Now I have entire movements that teach women that the highest form of life is don't get married until you're close to 30 if you do get married. 1.00

00:45:24.480 If it's going to inhibit your career, then you should probably freeze your eggs and wait until you're maybe 40.

00:45:28.360 Then you have a risky pregnancy at 40 in which we fertilize the egg and may be implanted in you. 0.79

00:45:32.940 And that's like the apotheosis of civilization.

00:45:35.140 And women, by all available polling data, are significantly less happy than they were in the age of 70.

00:45:38.440 Oh, you're preaching to the choir.

00:45:39.440 I said something completely innocuous about this on Twitter. 1.00

00:45:41.900 I've been dealing with feminists giving me shit for a week now. 1.00

00:45:44.540 So I'm familiar with the argument. 0.99

00:45:45.640 But the bottom line is that how do you reverse that?

00:45:48.820 So there are only two ways, especially because you can see, I mean, as countries get richer and as birth control becomes more plentiful, the original pitch for having kids was twofold.

00:45:57.200 One, you had a religious obligation to have kids.

00:45:58.960 And two was they were labor on your farm, right?

00:46:01.040 Those were the original.

00:46:01.880 Now kids are a net cost.

00:46:03.180 It costs you a lot of money to have a child.

00:46:04.860 It is not an economic – not only that.

00:46:07.100 You had kids because when you got old, they were going to take care of you.

00:46:09.440 Now you have social welfare nets that take care of you.

00:46:11.620 So what's the economic case for having – there's no economic case for having kids.

00:46:13.880 No, there is no.

00:46:14.440 It disappeared.

00:46:14.880 It's now a reverse economic case.

00:46:16.300 If you want to live high on the hog, you don't have kids.

00:46:18.000 You go to vacation in Rome, but you don't have kids.

00:46:20.540 And so that's a real problem.

00:46:22.380 But how do you overcome that?

00:46:23.820 And so then it has to be something like a woman desperately wants to have kids. 1.00

00:46:28.140 And the only way that she is going to have kids is if she makes the rules that a man has to marry her in order to have the kids. 1.00

00:46:35.240 So you have to overcome two things societally.

00:46:37.240 One, you have to teach women it's good to have kids. 0.99

00:46:39.720 And two, you have to teach women that actually men's standards for sex are the wrong standards for sex.

00:46:45.040 That if you wish to have long-lasting, fulfilling relationships, then hopping in and out of the sack with people isn't actually a form of liberation.

00:46:50.720 It's a form of bondage to a certain extent.

00:46:52.880 You're chaining yourself to how males tend to think about sex rather than what is fulfilling for females, a biological function that has existed for literally all of humankind's existence.

00:47:02.400 These are heavy lifts.

00:47:03.900 It seems to me that the shortcut on these lifts, which is proved out by literally every demographic study done in the West, is that if you say God told you to have kids, you have a duty to have kids, it is good to have kids.

00:47:12.400 And you're trained in that from the time you're little.

00:47:14.540 Like my kids again right now, they're nine by the time this airs, seven and three and in the womb.

00:47:19.780 And I asked my three-year-old daughter how many kids she wants to have.

00:47:22.520 Like it's ingrained in her.

00:47:23.860 It's ingrained in her.

00:47:24.300 Like my son, I'll ask him how many kids he wants to have.

00:47:25.980 He'll say, I want to have four kids, right?

00:47:27.140 Because we're going to have four kids.

00:47:28.200 Like that's the way it works.

00:47:28.960 I asked him, you know, like you actually have to bring your kids up in this way, which is why across Western society, there are exceptions who will do the thing.

00:47:36.520 You'll do the thing.

00:47:37.680 You'll do – like people will do the thing.

00:47:39.260 But that's a lot rarer.

00:47:41.200 If you look at the demographic profiles, the only people, the only populations in the West reproducing at above replacement rates are in the United States, for example, Mormons, religious Catholics, religious Jews, religious Muslims, religious Protestants.

00:47:51.760 That's it.

00:47:52.600 No one else is reproducing at above replacement rates.

00:47:54.340 So unless those are like the bulk of your population and then it's sort of – those values sort of bleed over into the rest of the population, which is not the case in the United States, then, you know, you're going to have a declining birth rate.

00:48:05.760 And then you're going to have to do it through immigration.

00:48:07.060 Then that's going to come with whatever attendant problems mass immigration comes with, right? 1.00

00:48:09.820 Demographic problems are a real thing. 0.67

00:48:12.980 But why is it so taboo to talk about these things, about things like immigration?

00:48:17.500 Why is it that it's so charged instead of just having a reasonable debate and saying, look, like every decision you make in life, there are tradeoffs?

00:48:23.800 Right.

00:48:24.020 Well, that's the thing.

00:48:25.020 No one in politics actually wants to talk about tradeoffs.

00:48:27.060 Every solution is going to be the solution that fixes all the things.

00:48:30.480 And it's an immature way of thinking about politics.

00:48:33.320 The truth is that like everything that we do is going to have costs and benefits.

00:48:38.460 But politicians are in the business of lying to you.

00:48:40.320 And again, this goes back to if you get your values from politicians, you're likely to have a very skewed set of values.

00:48:44.600 Politicians have no incentive to tell you about tradeoffs.

00:48:46.980 They have incentives to tell you that if you vote for them, they will solve – I mean Trump literally said this.

00:48:51.360 He said only I can fix, right?

00:48:54.220 And Joe Biden says the same thing from his angle.

00:48:56.000 If you elect me, all your problems will go away.

00:48:57.720 It will be sunny days from here on in.

00:48:59.240 They're all lying.

00:49:00.080 I mean that's not true.

00:49:00.620 But apparently we want to be lied to because the actual thing that fixes your life is you.

00:49:05.640 This is true for 95 percent of our problems.

00:49:08.140 There are problems that are unsolvable, health problems, terrible things, tragedies that occur in life.

00:49:12.700 All that's true.

00:49:13.240 But 95 percent of the problems that people have are problems that are generally within their purview.

00:49:17.440 And by the way, you should treat even the problems that you have that are not within your purview as though you could possibly solve them because it's a better way of approaching life.

00:49:23.200 But politics allows you to outsource all of that.

00:49:25.260 It allows you to just say, listen, the problem is not me.

00:49:27.200 The problem is the system.

00:49:28.480 And if I just elect this guy to fix the system and that – what does that create the incentive for him to do?

00:49:33.320 To say that he's going to fix the system, right?

00:49:34.800 And then he fails.

00:49:35.540 And then we get disappointed.

00:49:36.420 And then we radically shift over to the – maybe that guy will fix the system.

00:49:39.220 Oh, no, he's not working.

00:49:40.020 Well, maybe that guy will fix the system.

00:49:42.020 None of them are going to fix the system because fundamentally in terms of like human freedoms and prosperity right now, the system ain't broken.

00:49:49.120 There are real problems with the system, but we are the most prosperous free people in the history of the world.

00:49:53.540 Like bar none.

00:49:54.240 It is not close.

00:49:55.340 I mean when you talked about dropping someone from 2010 and 2023 and they're looking at the debates going, well, what is this?

00:49:59.860 But think of it a different way.

00:50:00.840 You drop somebody from 1810 into 2023, they're living in magic land, man.

00:50:05.640 I mean this is a place where you pick up a piece of phone that – you pick up a thing that – it's a magic thing in your hand that connects you to every piece of information ever devised.

00:50:13.760 You hit a button and a thing arrives at your door usually within 24 hours that has been outsourced to 27 different countries and arrives for a fraction of the money that you make in a month.

00:50:22.680 I mean that's magic.

00:50:23.580 That's magic.

00:50:24.320 You're expecting – like if somebody dies at 80, we're like, oh, man, they probably had another 10.

00:50:28.820 I mean that's crazy.

00:50:30.060 That's crazy.

00:50:30.840 For the vast majority of human civilization, people died at the age – if you were lucky, you made it to 60.

00:50:35.640 But people were dying at 50 or make it out of childhood, right?

00:50:38.380 The amount of childhood death has declined so radically that it used to be that childhood death was a tragedy but it wasn't treated nearly the way that it's treated today because, again, we expect children to live now, right?

00:50:49.500 Like all of these standards are magical.

00:50:50.940 So the question is how can the magical material living standards be so high?

00:50:54.720 And we're able to do kind of what we want like on a daily basis.

00:50:56.800 You walk out your front door.

00:50:57.440 Nobody is telling you what to do.

00:50:58.300 And yet we're wildly unhappy, right?

00:51:00.960 We have depression, suicidality, huge fentanyl crises.

00:51:04.060 We're worried about the – I mean the problems we're talking about are real problems.

00:51:06.800 We've apparently lost our societal minds because we're believing complete untruths.

00:51:10.140 We're so angry at each other that we're willing to send each other death threats over whether men are women or women are men.

00:51:13.640 Like what – where is that coming from?

00:51:16.560 And the answer is the social fabric that undergirded all of that progress has fallen away and we thought we could have all of the nice things that lie on top of the foundation while taking a jackhammer to the foundations.

00:51:25.600 And so people don't want to talk about the foundations because it might mean that you have to – I get a question a lot.

00:51:29.960 So obviously I talk about religion a lot.

00:51:31.260 And people will say, I don't believe in God, but I have kids.

00:51:34.320 Should I go to church?

00:51:35.640 And my answer is yes, you should go to church.

00:51:37.040 If you grew up Christian and that's your religion, you should go to church because you know what? 0.69

00:51:41.340 That may be the way that your kid understands the values the best.

00:51:44.360 It's very difficult to make a sophisticated argument to a three-year-old.

00:51:47.360 It really is.

00:51:48.240 When they're 20 and they have questions about God and they say, listen, I can't get there.

00:51:51.300 You can say, like, listen, I'll make an argument for God, but maybe you don't want to.

00:51:54.200 Maybe that's not your thing.

00:51:55.300 Fine.

00:51:55.800 But you know who can't handle that argument?

00:51:57.620 A three-year-old.

00:51:58.300 Yeah.

00:51:58.440 And niceness is not a moral value system.

00:52:01.740 It really isn't.

00:52:02.880 Ben, there's a question that I want to ask.

00:52:05.360 The thing or the slogan or the words that people will associate with you are, facts don't care about your feelings.

00:52:12.420 But isn't there an issue with that statement in that feelings are the most important things we have,

00:52:19.400 which is why the left is winning, because they make you feel good.

00:52:23.080 And it's actually really not about facts anymore.

00:52:25.580 It's about the way I make you feel.

00:52:27.180 And if you look at our entire conversation, it really is about that.

00:52:30.960 You know, if you think about kids, kids don't always make you feel great.

00:52:34.360 And, you know, they're going to challenge you.

00:52:37.020 You want someone to come in and solve your problems.

00:52:39.520 Why is that?

00:52:40.220 Because confronting your problems doesn't make you feel good.

00:52:43.780 In fact, it makes you feel sometimes inadequate.

00:52:46.480 Isn't that really the problem here?

00:52:48.100 Yes.

00:52:48.480 I mean, it's why.

00:52:49.540 So the other phrase that I've been fond of using a lot over the past couple of years is reality always wins.

00:52:53.560 So here's the thing.

00:52:54.460 Facts don't care about your feelings, and the facts are going to win. 1.00

00:52:56.560 It's just a question of if you're stupid enough to run up against them enough times in a row. 0.98

00:53:00.100 And so when I say facts don't care about your feelings, I don't mean that, you know, you're not – that your feelings don't matter. 0.99

00:53:04.200 What I do mean is that if you are running directly up against the wall of facts over and over and over in reality over and over and over and over, then you're going to break.

00:53:12.360 Like those things – reality doesn't change just because you wish for it to change.

00:53:16.120 And so my friend Andrew Klavan, he's very fond of saying people are – you know, a woman will come to him and she'll say, I can't find Mr. Right.

00:53:21.980 And I say, well, but did you make yourself Mrs. Right yet, right?

00:53:24.320 Like if you want to find Mr. Right, you have to be Mrs. Right. 0.99

00:53:25.980 You have to make yourself the thing.

00:53:27.300 People don't want this.

00:53:28.140 They want the standard to change or the world to change for them.

00:53:30.420 And the world is not going to change for you.

00:53:31.840 The world is just the world.

00:53:33.160 You can effectuate small changes over time in the course of the world.

00:53:35.660 And, you know, this is – the truth is that the vast majority of change – because we're in politics, we tend to think of like great figures who effectuated large-scale change.

00:53:43.000 The truth is there are millions of people who stand behind those people.

00:53:45.940 And most change that occurs is really a bunch of people whose names you don't know at the graveyard and who are completely forgotten now, right?

00:53:51.620 Those are people who are like changing their society from the inside by doing the things that we're talking about.

00:53:55.820 It's a lot less glorious.

00:53:57.020 You're right.

00:53:57.480 I mean this is the problem.

00:53:58.340 But I don't see a way of combating that with more feelings.

00:54:01.060 Meaning – so I think that it's a mistake, for example, for conservatives to talk about if you do these things,

00:54:05.580 then you will be happier.

00:54:07.080 Because I don't know whether you'll be happier.

00:54:09.760 I know that you'll be more fulfilled.

00:54:11.860 But I don't like the word happier because I think that happy is a – it's a messy word.

00:54:16.940 You feel happy when you have an ice cream, right?

00:54:19.140 The words that are used by the ancients, you know, eudaimonia or in Greek or simcha in Hebrew, like these sorts of – those sorts of words have broader meanings, right?

00:54:29.540 It didn't just mean like you feel good one day.

00:54:31.220 But we're a society that sort of boiled down happiness to you feel good that day.

00:54:34.180 And that's a really bad standard because what makes you feel good today is not going to make you feel good in the long run.

00:54:39.220 I mean very often – I was just reading a study actually by a social scientist named Roy Baumeister.

00:54:43.420 And he was looking at things that make people feel fulfilled versus things that make people feel happy.

00:54:48.620 And very often there's overlap.

00:54:50.200 But there are certain areas where there is no overlap.

00:54:52.320 So, for example, things that make you feel happy but not fulfilled would be things like parties.

00:54:56.480 You go to parties and it might make you happy in the moment but it doesn't make you feel very fulfilled.

00:54:59.300 It's just a night, whatever.

00:55:00.060 However, things that make you not happy but extremely fulfilled, having kids.

00:55:03.600 Having kids is number one on the list of things that make you not happy but extremely fulfilled, which is true.

00:55:07.800 Having kids is not a happy – it has happy moments, joyous moments.

00:55:12.000 But overall, it's a slog.

00:55:13.740 And people need to know that getting in.

00:55:15.080 But it's also the most important thing that you're ever going to do.

00:55:17.180 Important is a word that's totally left our sort of conversation.

00:55:20.240 No one talks about doing important things.

00:55:21.020 Yeah, because it implies the existence of a moral structure.

00:55:23.320 Correct.

00:55:23.860 It implies there are certain things you're doing that are unimportant.

00:55:25.900 Yeah.

00:55:26.140 And you can't say that to me.

00:55:26.920 What I do every day is important.

00:55:28.020 No, it isn't.

00:55:28.780 No, it isn't.

00:55:29.240 The vast majority of things you do in a given day are not important.

00:55:31.580 Ben, we're running out of time, unfortunately.

00:55:33.660 So a couple more questions before we go to locals.

00:55:36.420 Having established that politicians don't matter as much as personal behavior, nonetheless, I have to ask you.

00:55:41.400 We're sitting here in Florida.

00:55:43.180 You guys are going to have an election the next couple of years.

00:55:45.400 The governor of this state, Ron DeSantis, is very likely to challenge Donald Trump for the nomination.

00:55:51.640 Who do you back? 0.69

00:55:52.540 DeSantis.

00:55:53.500 Why?

00:55:54.280 Because – do you want this from the why not Donald Trump or the why Ron DeSantis?

00:55:58.160 It's fine.

00:55:59.000 Yeah, I mean there are two sort of angles.

00:56:01.420 First of all, I'll preface this with whoever is the Republican nominee.

00:56:03.960 I'm a conservative.

00:56:04.640 I'm very likely to vote for them.

00:56:05.900 Now, as between DeSantis and Trump, we'll start with the shortcomings of Trump.

00:56:09.500 He's 76 years old.

00:56:10.580 He has no ability to control his mouth or his typing fingers.

00:56:12.740 He has no sort of actual plan to win.

00:56:15.640 I mean he literally complained in 2020 that he was robbed of the election through voter fraud.

00:56:19.800 But no one will ask him a simple question.

00:56:21.000 How do you plan to unrob the election in 2024?

00:56:24.000 Right?

00:56:24.180 Like what's your plan for victory?

00:56:25.460 I did ask that of his former deputy assistant, Seb Gorka, when we interviewed him.

00:56:29.080 Well, people will have to wait and see.

00:56:31.620 Okay.

00:56:32.100 I'm curious.

00:56:32.780 They'll tell me off here.

00:56:33.400 But yeah, he's trailing in every swing state poll.

00:56:37.900 He is wildly unpopular with independents.

00:56:40.400 He's wildly unpopular with women.

00:56:41.480 He has an approval rating, last I checked, in the 20s.

00:56:44.480 And he is 76 years old and he already served a term.

00:56:48.460 I mean that is – that's a pretty formidable list of reasons why you don't nominate – and he lost to the guy who's going to run on the Democratic Party side already by 7 million votes.

00:56:57.360 And by the available data, he will probably underperform how he performed in 2020, at least with – again, one of the hardest things in politics is to switch somebody's mind.

00:57:06.620 Saying to millions of people, yeah, you voted for me in 2016.

00:57:10.320 Then you voted against me in 2020.

00:57:11.860 And now I want you to switch back and vote for me.

00:57:13.360 That's not even switching minds once.

00:57:14.620 That's switching minds twice.

00:57:15.460 That's super difficult.

00:57:16.560 So, you know, that's a hard thing.

00:57:19.420 You know, and that's putting aside all of the oddities and all the rest of the scandals and all that kind of stuff.

00:57:24.180 The case for DeSantis is that DeSantis is extremely meticulous about how he approaches politics. 0.99

00:57:30.500 You see, for example, there are no leaks from his campaign because he actually staffs up correctly as opposed to Trump who's going on Truth Social and bashing somebody he hired as an idiot every other day. 0.99

00:57:37.640 He hired them. 0.98

00:57:38.680 DeSantis actually doesn't have any leaks.

00:57:40.360 He hires a team.

00:57:40.920 He's very meticulous about it.

00:57:41.820 When he focuses on an issue, he really focuses on an issue.

00:57:45.080 He is good at actually governing.

00:57:46.880 So the dirty little secret about Florida is to really well govern a state, right?

00:57:50.160 We have all the culture war stuff that makes the national media.

00:57:52.020 But the stuff that doesn't make the national media is that when there's a hurricane, we're rebuilding bridges within like a day, right?

00:57:56.340 That the problems actually get solved here, that DeSantis has brought down crime rates dramatically, that he offered a police officer a $10,000 stipend to move into the state.

00:58:03.060 Then in the state of Florida, if you have a kid who's going to school, you have available to you now as of July like an $8,000 school tax credit.

00:58:11.760 So you can actually take your kid out of a public school if you want to and move them to the local private school if you think that that's a better school.

00:58:16.440 I mean these are very good things for people who are living in the state of Florida, which is why it's the number one incoming state for population.

00:58:21.280 So he's very good at just like the pure governance of it.

00:58:23.660 And then on sort of the culture war front, he's taking on a lot of the culture wars in a way that really animates the base.

00:58:28.200 The base doesn't want a Mitt Romney type who's going to be sort of dull as ditch water, really glossy.

00:58:34.680 They want somebody who's willing to get in the trenches and fight, which is why he's very popular in the primaries right now because the media chose him as sort of its opponent. 0.98

00:58:40.780 And that was over COVID where he happened to be right and the left happened to be completely wrong on that using Andrew Cuomo whose two missions in life were killing old people and grabbing ass and he ran out of old people.

00:58:51.140 You know, DeSantis has – his governance during COVID, keeping the state open, keeping the economy running was against all of what the media was saying and he succeeded with that.

00:59:01.620 So that's a really good case for DeSantis.

00:59:03.400 Now, listen, there are flaws with DeSantis as a candidate.

00:59:05.060 He's not nearly as sort of magnetic as Trump because no one is.

00:59:07.860 I mean Trump is just like – he's been on TV for years and years and years and years and the cameras are just drawn to him.

00:59:14.060 You know, I think that the battle for Trump is going to be between the fact that he's magnetic and the fact that he's extraordinarily tiring.

00:59:19.800 Like if you see him too much, everybody's just like, oh, oh, like I can't.

00:59:22.840 I can't with this.

00:59:23.820 And for DeSantis, the battle is going to be how do you keep people interested because he's very pugilistic but he's not like an amazing speaker or something.

00:59:30.220 He's not super personable.

00:59:31.960 Trump's a big people person.

00:59:33.020 He likes ripping people and giving them a hug and he likes – or at least shaking their hand.

00:59:37.800 He likes going out in public.

00:59:38.940 He likes the adulation.

00:59:39.820 He likes interactions.

00:59:40.780 That's not DeSantis.

00:59:41.340 DeSantis is a lot more kind of reserved as a person and so that's an uphill battle for him.

00:59:45.660 But he also knows how to run a government.

00:59:47.440 And if he gets into the presidency, then he presumably will not allow the quote-unquote deep state to thwart him.

00:59:51.440 He'll just go in and he'll fire a bunch of people.

00:59:53.220 He was in Congress.

00:59:54.520 He's been a governor.

00:59:55.420 He knows how to run things.

00:59:56.220 So that's the case for DeSantis and I think also against Trump.

01:00:00.100 And what would you say to those people who say DeSantis simply doesn't have the cut through with ordinary people like Trump does?

01:00:05.820 I mean I don't know who the ordinary people are.

01:00:07.580 So I think that it's true that Trump for, let's say, blue-collar conservative white voters, there's nobody going to be like Trump.

01:00:14.780 No one.

01:00:15.360 I mean like Trump has a magic with this group.

01:00:18.140 And it's not an insignificant group of people by any measure.

01:00:20.200 But the question for those people is going to be do you want to vote for the guy you love but who's likely to lose?

01:00:24.360 Or do you like to vote for somebody who you like but is significantly more likely to win?

01:00:27.760 And that really is going to have to be the question for people.

01:00:30.560 I mean I had this conversation with a guy the other day and he's like, yeah, I think DeSantis has a better shot.

01:00:34.780 There's a Wall Street Journal poll that came out this week that says the same thing.

01:00:37.120 41 percent of Republican voters say DeSantis is more likely to be Biden.

01:00:40.260 31 percent say Trump.

01:00:41.520 That same poll showed 51 percent voting for Trump in the primaries versus 38 percent for DeSantis.

01:00:45.340 It's like who are these 20 percent of people who don't think that Trump is likely to win but will vote for him in a primary?

01:00:52.320 Who are those people?

01:00:53.380 Like that's such a weird thing.

01:00:54.540 You're going to vote for him in the primary knowing that he's likely to lose?

01:00:56.400 That seems very strange to me.

01:00:58.280 I think that people have to get over this sort of weird dream-esque quality that they have about Trump, which is that he's sort of a miracle worker.

01:01:06.320 And again, I think that actually goes back to 2012 because in 2012 when Romney ran and Obama was unpopular and Romney lost, the Democrats decided they were never going to lose another election.

01:01:15.340 And Republicans also thought Democrats are never going to lose another election.

01:01:18.160 They've built a new minority majority coalition with some college-educated white people.

01:01:21.320 They're never going to lose.

01:01:22.200 They've got this thing from here on in.

01:01:23.460 That was the theme for Hillary. 1.00

01:01:24.920 And then Trump wins.

01:01:25.840 And everybody's brain just breaks.

01:01:27.720 The left goes, it must have been the Russians. 0.99

01:01:29.260 The Russians must have stolen this thing. 1.00

01:01:30.380 And the right goes, he must be a wizard.

01:01:32.120 I mean there's no way for us to win.

01:01:34.340 I mean look at this.

01:01:35.180 He lost by three million votes but he pulled exactly like right in this place.

01:01:39.100 Like the bolts hit from Zeus and suddenly he's president.

01:01:42.380 Like that's – the man works miracles.

01:01:44.080 And then 2020 happens.

01:01:45.220 And now the presuppositions are challenged again.

01:01:47.460 So the left goes, well, maybe our coalition is more durable than we thought it was in 2016.

01:01:53.120 And the right goes, well, maybe he's not a miracle worker.

01:01:56.380 And then Trump says, I didn't lose.

01:01:57.720 Well, maybe he's a miracle worker who got stiffed.

01:02:00.280 He's still a miracle worker.

01:02:01.520 And so the question for a lot of Republicans is going to be, do you still think he's a miracle worker?

01:02:04.380 Do you think that he's being jobbed?

01:02:05.500 Or do you think that like political gravity applies?

01:02:08.360 And he won one election and then he lost like three elections.

01:02:11.020 He lost 2018.

01:02:11.640 He lost 2020.

01:02:12.280 He lost 2022.

01:02:13.100 Like those are three elections he did not do well in.

01:02:15.500 Ben, we're about to ask you a few questions from our supporters on Locals.

01:02:18.680 But we always end the show with the final question, the same one for all our guests, which is what do you think is the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be?

01:02:25.340 I mean I think that was probably the first 40 minutes of this conversation, right?

01:02:29.180 It was.

01:02:29.340 Yeah, I mean the thing that we –

01:02:31.040 The breakdown of the family.

01:02:31.860 And mainly the duties that you have as an individual in your daily life, how do you get up in the morning and do those things?

01:02:38.940 Because that's how you actually change a society.

01:02:40.560 It's not with all the stuff I talk about on a daily basis.

01:02:43.860 That stuff is important.

01:02:45.240 But the stuff that's significantly more important is how you get up and interact with the people in your life, what sort of duties you perform, what obligations you undertake to make the social structure more secure and also to provide for a future.

01:02:57.220 That's the thing that matters.

01:02:58.900 Ben, thank you so much for joining us for the show.

01:03:00.500 Thank you guys for watching and listening.

01:03:02.060 Head over to Locals for the bonus questions and we'll see you there.

01:03:04.620 Take care and see you soon, guys.

01:03:07.900 Ben, while your stance on guns is understandable in a US context, would you recommend more guns in other countries, for example, UK, Australia, New Zealand, for example?

TRIGGERnometry - May 03, 2023

An Honest Conversation with Ben Shapiro

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