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Jan. 13, 2016 - The Ben Shapiro Show
50:38
Ep. 54 - Obama's Bestest Friends In Iran Humiliate Him

Iran seizes two vessels and 10 sailors, and Obama apologizes -- plus Obama's full State of the Union address deconstructed, and Nikki Haley! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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barack obama
07:45
b
ben shapiro
37:54
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joe biden
00:47
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tom homan
00:23
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Speaker Time Text
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
A bright new day has dawned.
President Obama is done with his final State of the Union address.
We will go through all of it.
Plus, President Obama, he told a lie about the Iran nuclear deal that's being exposed right now, and it's really quite horrifying.
We'll tell you what that is, plus things I like, things I hate.
Glad you're here.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show. - I tend to demonize people because they don't care about your feelings. - Yes, indeed you do.
So, let's begin today with what's actually happening over in Iran, because you need to know the backdrop of what is happening in Iran to truly appreciate the alternative universe in which our President of the United States resides.
And he does.
He lives in a completely fictional universe where all glasses are half full, all horses are unicorns, and all countries, all enemies around the world, they love us.
All of our enemies just love us.
Well, Here's a bit of contrast.
So yesterday, we talked about this briefly.
Yesterday, the Iranian Navy, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Navy, they picked up a couple of U.S.
Navy ships in the middle of the Persian Gulf, and they took them back home.
You know, like toys.
They took them back home to what they call Farsi Island.
And there were two separate stories that emerged from this situation.
The Obama administration said that what actually happened is that these two boats, these two U.S.
Navy boats, broke down in the middle of the Persian Gulf at the same time apparently.
Supposedly.
And drifted magically into Iranian waters, at which point the Iranians, like a naval AAA, like a helpful Honda people, Farsi edition, they showed up and they dragged them back to Iran for safekeeping and then released them the next day.
And virtually the entire Obama administration then celebrated that they were released this morning.
Overnight, while the State of the Union address was going on, our guys were being held, our guys, nine guys, one gal, were being held captive by the Iranians.
They were released this morning, Iranian time.
And the U.S.
celebrated this.
This is a wonderful, wonderful thing.
So the U.S.
Naval Forces Central Command Public Affairs Office said, quote, Ten U.S.
Navy soldiers safely returned to U.S.
custody today after departing Iran.
There are no indications that the sailors were harmed during their brief detention.
The Navy will investigate the circumstances that led to the sailors' presence in Iran.
Secretary of State John Kerry Then issued a letter where he praised the Iranians to the skies for basically hijacking and kidnapping a couple of US ships.
He said, I'm very pleased that our sailors have been safely returned to U.S. hands.
As a former sailor myself, he served in Vietnam, you know, I know the importance of naval presence around the world and the critical work being done by our Navy in the Gulf region.
I'm proud of our young men and women in uniform and know how seriously they take their responsibilities to one another and to other mariners in distress.
So in other words, the Iranians treated our mariners in distress just like we would treat their mariners in distress.
It was really all just beautifully handled.
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, he added his voice to the chorus.
He said, quote, I am pleased that 10 U.S.
Navy sailors have departed Iran and are now back in U.S.
hands.
I want to personally thank Secretary of State John Kerry And then there was Vice President Joe Biden.
Joe Biden was on NBC News.
And here's what Joe Biden had to say about the entire situation.
the U.S. Navy routinely provides assistance to foreign sailors in distress, and we appreciate the timely way in which this situation was resolved.
So just like we help other people, we in turn are helped.
Thank you, Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
And then there was Vice President Joe Biden.
Joe Biden was on NBC News, and here's what Joe Biden had to say about the entire situation.
Here we go.
joe biden ▲ ● ▼
Well, I can tell you that what happened was, apparently we had, from our military, ONE OF THE BOATS HAD ENGINE FOR FAILURE, DRIFTED INTO IRANIAN WATERS.
The Iranians picked up both boats, as we have picked up Iranian boats that needed to be rescued, and took them to, I'm not sure exactly where, I don't want to misspeak here.
And realize they were there in distress and said they would release them and release them like, you know, ordinary nations would do.
That's the way nations should deal with love.
That's why it's important to have channels open.
unidentified
Did we apologize to the Iranians?
joe biden ▲ ● ▼
No, there's no apology.
There's no apologize for.
When you have a problem with the boat, you apologize the boat had a problem?
No.
And there was no looking for any apology.
This was just standard nautical practice.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Okay, it's just standard nautical practice.
Okay.
Let's talk a little bit about standard nautical practice for a second.
The Iranians have now released photos of the confrontation with the U.S.
sailors.
Here are some of these photos.
So here is photo number one.
Oh, here we go.
These are American sailors.
It's a picture by the Iranians of American sailors.
They've got their hands, for those who can't see because they don't subscribe, this is why you definitely need to subscribe to the Ben Shapiro show and to our podcast because the fact is that the images that we show are actually very important and you're going to see them on the news tonight.
But you can actually get the straight story over here.
What you're seeing in this photo is all of the American sailors with their hands behind their head like prisoners of war.
You know, I remember when the helpful Honda people showed up to pick me up and help me when AAA showed up to help me.
I had a flat tire just a couple of weeks ago.
My wife was in the car.
The first thing they did is they told me to get on my knees and put my hands behind my head.
The second thing they did was they took my wife and they slapped her in a hijab.
So if you can't see this photo, here's a bunch of American sailors and one of them is a woman.
And the woman is now in traditional Islamic garb.
She's now wearing a headscarf.
I guarantee you that she wasn't wearing a headscarf when she was serving on the boat, but now that she is in Iranian naval territory, she must put on the headscarf.
And what you can't see in those photos, by the way, is that none of our sailors are wearing shoes.
Presumably this has something to do with Islamic traditions about wearing shoes.
So this is normal naval procedure.
And you heard Joe Biden say there that we've not apologized to the Iranians.
We never apologized to the Iranians.
No one apologized to the Iranians.
They did not ask for an apology from the Iranians.
Okay, well, there's a video that's been released by the Iranians.
They played it on Iranian national television.
We had it up a second ago of that soldier.
And this particular soldier is about to do something that Joe Biden said never happened.
Not at all.
Here we go.
unidentified
It was a mistake.
That was our fault.
And we apologize for our mistake.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Our vice president of the United States, we never apologized.
Quote, no, there was no apology.
There was nothing to apologize for.
When you have a problem with a boat, do you apologize?
This was just standard nautical practice.
So somebody's lying.
I don't think it's the Iranians.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard, here's the story they told.
They said the Americans were quote-unquote snooping.
I don't think the Americans were snooping.
I think that they went out and they grabbed a couple of ships because they wanted to humiliate Obama.
They said, Iran's army chief, He actually said the seizure of the boats itself was a rebuke to Congress.
"This incident in the Persian Gulf, which probably will not be the American forces last mistake in the region, should be a lesson to troublemakers in the U.S. Congress," said Major General Hassan Firouz Abadi.
It should be a rebuke to Congress.
Why not a rebuke to President Obama?
Because Obama loves them.
Because Obama's out there defending them.
Because Obama is sending out his Vice President to talk about how the Iranians are just doing everything right.
By the way, the photos, the video that you just saw, that's what we call a violation of I think Article 13 of the Geneva Conventions.
You're not supposed to use Or abuse detainees for purposes of PR.
You're not supposed to take pictures of them and release them to the press.
That is against the rules of warfare.
But no, don't worry.
This is all handled perfectly.
According to Reuters, too, Biden was fibbing the Iranians he asked for an apology and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
Who is apparently related to, I think he's a distant relative of Kerry's son-in-law, I believe.
He, in fact, led the way asking for an apology.
And those pictures, I mean, there's nothing more humiliating, at least since Benghazi, than that picture of American soldiers on their knees with their hands behind their head to a bunch of Iranian Revolutionary Guard thugs.
And the president of the United States and the administration defending the Iranians and saying that the Iranians are just doing everything totally right.
Now, why do the Iranians do this?
They did it to humiliate the United States.
That's why.
Because honor culture demands that when you are given something by a greater power, you have to take it.
Right?
It's one thing for you to be given something by America.
That makes it look like you're America's running dog.
But if you take it, If you take it from them through a show of strength, then you are, in fact, the person in the superior position.
So, the Iranians are about to be handed $100 billion today by President Obama in seized assets.
The people who put our soldiers on their knees and their hands behind their head, our sailors on their knees, hands behind their head, and slapped our female... I love that the Obama administration on the left, they're constantly talking about the wonders of female soldiers and sailors, but they go completely silent the minute that foreign nations slap our female sailors in hijab.
It completely goes by the wayside.
No big deal.
But the idea here is that we're now freeing up hundreds of billions of dollars for the Iranians, and the Iranians don't want it to look as though the United States is doing them a favor, so they slap us across the face in the most public possible way, specifically so that it makes it look to their own people and the Islamic world like they're dictating terms to us.
And the truth is they are dictating terms to us, because Obama wanted the Iran deal worse than Iran wanted the Iran deal.
And therefore, he basically gave away the store.
And this is not the first time they've tried this routine.
In 2007, Iran captured 15 British sailors and held them for 13 days, if you recall.
And eventually, the West stood down, and now the West is standing down again.
No surprise there.
Okay, so, against that backdrop, President Obama gave his State of the Union address last night.
Now, you would imagine that with 10 sailors being held, In custody by the Iranians.
You would imagine that with 10 more Westerners killed in Turkey yesterday, there were 10 Westerners killed in Turkey, 10 Germans killed by a Syrian Muslim refugee.
You know, some of the glorious Syrian Muslim refugees were supposed to take in.
That President Obama might in fact talk about the threats to the United States and the threats to the world.
But no, this was a non-traditional speech.
Instead, he focused solely and completely on the fact that America sucks.
If it's good in any way it's because he's made it good, that anybody who opposes him is bad-hearted, and that the only reason we didn't give him everything he wanted over the last eight years is because of our deep and abiding cynicism, cruelty, and malice toward President Obama personally, but also toward The magic of change.
Oh yes, change came back from the dead yesterday.
And President Obama used the word change dozens of times in this speech because change is what he is all about.
So we'll start with clip one.
Here is President Obama's opening talking about change and the magic of change.
unidentified
Here we go.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼
America's been through big changes before.
Wars and depression.
The influx of new immigrants.
Workers fighting for a fair deal.
Movements to expand civil rights.
Each time, there have been those who told us to fear the future.
Who claimed we could slam the brakes on change.
Who promised to restore past glory if we just got some group or idea that was threatening America under control.
And each time, we overcame those fears.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Okay, we can pause it there.
President Obama here trying to draw a connection between Republicans who don't like Obama's brand of change and segregationists and people who are anti the women's vote and people who hate immigrants and people who reveled in depression and war, whoever these people might be.
So what he's saying there is that we've had big changes before.
We've always gotten through them by ignoring Donald Trump, right?
That's really what he's saying right there.
He is, and it's a cynical trick, because the fact is that it was Democrats.
It's his own party.
They were the segregationists.
When it came to people attempting to shut down immigration, it was really Democrats in the North who were attempting to shut down immigration for large swaths of time, large periods of time.
And fear of Syrian Muslim refugees is not quite the same thing as fearing a bunch of westernized Jews from Eastern and Western Europe.
who FDR turned back during World War II so they could be murdered by the Nazis.
Like, that was FDR, number one.
And number two, Jews are not the same as Syrian Muslim refugees.
But Obama is trying to say all change is the same.
It's always in the same direction.
And anyone who impedes our path to change is just the same as those evil, terrible, segregationists, horrible people.
President Obama went on to talk about what he thinks are the four crucial questions facing America.
Here we go, clip two.
unidentified
So let's talk about the future.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼
And four big questions that I believe we as a country have to answer, regardless of who the next president is or who controls the next Congress.
First, how do we give everyone a fair shot at opportunity and security in this new economy?
Second, how do we make technology work for us and not against us, especially when it comes to solving urgent especially when it comes to solving urgent challenges like climate change?
Third, how do we keep America safe and lead the world without becoming its policemen?
unidentified
They're cheering for questions, folks.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼
And finally, how can we make our politics reflect what's best in us and not what's worse?
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
And there's Joe Biden who's desperately trying not to fall asleep during this.
So he says, four questions there are and four questions there shall be.
The first was, how do we give everyone a fair shot at opportunity?
Well, the answer would be get out of their way, you jackass.
But that's not President Obama's answer.
We'll get to his answers in a moment.
The second was, how do we make technology work for us and not against us?
When has technology worked against us?
Did I miss the part where the rise of the machines is happening?
When exactly does Terminator begin?
Is he aware of a Skynet program with which we are not familiar?
Turns out the technology has generally worked for us because the free market has generated the technology.
And the beautiful thing about the free market is it gives us crap we like.
It gives us things that we want.
It gives us iPhones.
And it gives us better weapons, which we want, and which have been useful in quashing war, by the way.
Everybody likes to rip on the nuclear bomb.
Whenever you say, give me an example of a bad technology, oh, the nuclear bomb, that's a bad technology.
Okay, the nuclear bomb came at the end of World War II.
Between 1914 and 1945, significantly, significantly more people were killed in war than between 1945 and now.
You know why?
The threat of the nuclear bomb.
That's why.
Because you had two great superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, and they never went to full-scale war anywhere.
unidentified
Why?
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Because both of them had nuclear weapons and nobody wanted to get nuked.
The nuclear bomb is actually an amazing technology.
It's an amazing technology.
It's an amazingly destructive technology.
It's an amazingly destructive technology that exists so that you don't have to use it.
And guess what?
It's only been used once in human history, right?
To end World War II, the bloodiest conflict in the history of the planet.
So, you know, when President Obama talks about how do we make technology work for us and not against us, what he's really saying is, I want government to come in and create technological changes that I like, but I won't let the market do what it will do on its own.
We'll get to that question and his answer in a second.
And he says, how do we keep America safe and lead the world without becoming its policeman?
And his answer is, false dichotomies and unicorn poop.
And finally, he says, how can we make politics reflect what's best in us and not what's worst?
This is the one where President Obama spent the most time.
We'll get to it in just a second.
Let me just say as a preface, there is nothing more galling than listening to the most divisive politician of my lifetime lecture us on how we have to have an elevated discourse.
This man has called the Tea Party terrorists.
This man has suggested that he would put his boot on the throat of British Petroleum.
This man has suggested that Republicans are his enemies.
This man has said that if you are a Democrat, you should bring a gun to a knife fight.
This is a president who has sicked the IRS on his political opponents, who has sicked the Department of Justice on his political opponents, who has sicked the NSA and DOJ on journalists.
This is a man who has broken every rule of American government there is, and he's sitting there telling us that we need a more civil politics.
The cynicism and the lie is just breathtaking.
But, you know, that's what he's good at.
So, on to the lack of substance of his speech.
I have to say, at this point, I was watching the speech at home, and I had tickets, as I mentioned yesterday.
By the way, my prediction was spot on.
I said that he was going to talk for about one hour.
He talked for 59 minutes.
He lied before the speech.
He said he would give a uniquely short speech.
In fact, he gave the 16th longest State of the Union address since 1966, so he's a liar.
But about halfway through the speech, my daughter, who is just the cutest thing that ever was, she toddles up to me, and she's just under two years old.
She toddles up to me, and she puts her hands on the back of my laptop, and she starts pushing it closed, and she goes, And I thought to myself, oh, if only I could give in to you.
If only I could give in to you, small child.
You have the right idea.
She's always been great about the State of the Union.
She was born during Obama's State of the Union a couple of years ago, so I didn't actually have to watch it.
And last night she tried to shut down his State of the Union again, so I really, really love my daughter.
In any case, President Obama He decides to answer the economic question by basically telling lies about how much he likes the private sector, but he loves the private sector so much that he has to stop the private sector from doing things.
Clip three.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼
I believe a thriving private sector is the lifeblood of our economy.
I think there are outdated regulations that need to be changed.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
He says it's the lifeblood of our economy, and there's like one guy who applauds on the Democratic side.
He's like, And then he shyly puts his hands back in his lap because Bernie Sanders is giving him a death glare.
If you believe that Obama thinks a private sector is the lifeblood of our economy, then you haven't been watching him quash the private sector.
That's not how Democrats view the private sector.
The private sector is a necessary evil, according to Democrats.
Maybe not even necessary, but certainly evil.
They see that the private sector, yeah, we kind of have to give it its due, but it's really a terrible place.
And that's what he goes on to say right here.
Let's continue.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼
There is red tape that needs to be cut.
joe biden ▲ ● ▼
There you go.
tom homan ▲ ● ▼
Yeah.
Keep it true.
unidentified
Whoa.
I'm the best.
Everybody laughing in the background.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
All these people are so great.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼
But after years now of record corporate profits, working families won't get more opportunity or bigger paychecks Just by letting big banks or big oil or hedge funds make their own rules at everybody else's expense.
Middle-class families are not going to feel more secure because we allowed a tax on collective bargaining to go unanswered.
Food stamp recipients did not cause the financial crisis.
Recklessness on Wall Street Vid.
unidentified
And Michelle Obama loves that one.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Big applause for Michelle Obama.
Anyway, they cut to Bernie Sanders in here.
And Bernie Sanders looked like he was having a battle movement.
He was so excited someone was speaking to him.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼
Immigrants aren't the principal reason wages haven't gone up.
Those decisions are made in the boardrooms that all too often put quarterly earnings over long-term returns.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Okay, we can pause it there for a second.
All right, so he tells a string of lies.
So the private sector is great, but here are all the reasons it sucks.
Okay, the private sector, it's the lifeblood of our economy, and now, like a vampire, letting me get a taste of that.
tom homan ▲ ● ▼
Mm-hmm.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
He says, after, there's so many lies in a row here.
First, he says there's red tape that needs to be cut.
This is a man who has added more regulations to the federal register in the last seven years than I think the last five presidents combined.
I mean, he's added just regulation on top of regulation on top of regulation.
And then he says, after years of record corporate profits, working families won't get more opportunity by letting big banks or big oil or hedge funds make their own rules at the expense of everyone else.
I wasn't aware that big banks and hedge funds had a separate set of rules, like a magical set of rules.
What's the set of rules that he's talking about?
Where can I find a copy?
Is it secret?
Is it the Jews?
Who's making these rules to quash working... Where is this conspiracy?
Did it meet at my synagogue?
Did I miss it?
This idea...
That families don't get more opportunity from big banks.
Where do you think you got your home loan?
Where do you think you got your student loan?
Okay, when he says that big oil won't give you your job, where does he think pretty much all the jobs have come from under his tenure?
It ain't coming from sectors that, it ain't coming from green stimulus packages.
It's coming from the fracking industry.
Okay, it's coming from the oil industry.
President Obama says in here, somewhere in here, he goes, and hey, we got two buck a, we got two buck a gallon oil too.
That ain't bad.
You're not doing it.
Okay?
It's big oil that's doing it.
And as for those hedge funds everybody's always bitching about, okay, all a hedge fund is, is an investment firm.
All a hedge fund is is a group of people who sit around making investments in particular companies.
And one of the things that has happened under President Obama is that hedge funds have stopped investing in startup companies because the conditions for business are just too risky under President Obama.
Instead, they're investing in things that have already started up.
They're taking their money and putting it into Google.
They're not trying to find the next Google.
That's because of President Obama.
And when he says, we can't allow a tax on collective bargaining to go unanswered, unions have bankrupted company after company in this country.
There's a reason that in the private sector, the unionization rate is at an all-time low.
I think it's 6% in the private sector.
Only the government has massive unions.
40% of the government workforce is unionized, which is why it's so expensive and crappy.
And then he says, food stamp recipients didn't cause the financial crisis, recklessness on Wall Street did.
Okay, I'm not sure who said that food stamp recipients caused the financial crisis, but let's be real about something.
There were some food stamp recipients who probably did cause the financial crisis if they took a subprime loan they couldn't pay back.
unidentified
Right?
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
And it was the federal government that caused the subprime crisis because it was the federal government telling Wall Street that they could have free money.
That there would be bailouts.
That no matter what, the federal government would push them to give loans to people who could never pay them back.
So yeah, it was Wall Street.
But Wall Street is not capitalism.
Wall Street is just making money.
That's what Wall Street is.
Capitalism and making money are not the same thing.
You can make money in a lot of ways.
As Hillary Clinton knows.
As all of our Congress members know.
And then when he says, immigrants aren't the reason wages haven't gone up enough.
Those decisions are made in boardrooms.
Okay, there is no boardroom in America where they're thinking, okay, how can we depress wages more?
That's not how companies work.
Okay, I'm in a boardroom.
There's not a point at which we have said, how can we pay people less?
unidentified
Right?
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
How can we take all these people and fire them and pay them less?
What we've asked is, what do we have to pay?
The same question every employer asks.
What do you have to pay to get quality people?
That's always, it's always the same question.
And immigration does drive down wages, of course, because this is basic supply and demand.
If there is more supply of labor, then it has met the demand and surpassed the demand and the price goes down.
But President Obama makes up all of this because he wants to say that there's some evil cabal in back rooms with their Scrooge McDuck money, making all these decisions to make the economy crappy.
By the way, he's been president for seven years.
What has he done about these people?
And why is it that all of his measures to crack down on Wall Street, including Dodd-Frank, have done precisely the opposite?
Why is it the only people in America benefiting under President Obama are the people who own stock?
The fact is that if you're in the manufacturing sector under President Obama, you ain't doing well right now.
You're not doing well right now because no one's investing their money.
There are trillions of dollars sitting on the sidelines.
President Obama's second question was, how do we make technology work for us?
And the answer, of course, is always more government.
As though government created all the technology that's good around you.
By the way, if this were true, then kings long past would have developed the best technology because it's easy for them, right?
You'd always have the king and he could just take everybody's property and then spend it on whatever technology he thought was cool.
But Obama says that technology has to be directed by the government.
He called for a moonshot against cancer.
He's quoting Vice President Joe Biden on that.
I've never understood, by the way, the moonshot analogy when it comes to cancer.
Is cancer on the moon?
Did I miss it?
And also, government investment in cancer research is not going to cure cancer.
Drug companies trying to make a fortune off of cancer drugs is what is going to end up fighting cancer.
And this has been true for pretty much every disease in the United States.
Government research grants typically go to theoretical matters, and drug company research grants go to people who are trying to create drugs for profit.
Your plumber may not know how physics works, but he knows how to change a screw.
He knows how to change a pipe.
Well, when it comes to your body, your body is basically just a plumbing system.
And the people who know how to fix it are typically in the drug companies because they want to make money off fixing your plumbing.
If you think of it that way, you realize how silly it is.
This whole, oh, if we just throw money at the problem, that's the real problem.
If anybody thinks there's a shortage of money being invested in cancer research in the private sector, they seriously don't know what they're talking about.
But then Obama moves on to his favorite thing in the world, climate change.
So here's President Obama getting all snarky with Republicans who doubt climate change, clip four.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼
Look, if anybody still wants to dispute the science around climate change, have at it.
You will be pretty lonely.
Because you'll be debating our military, most of America's business leaders, the majority of the American people, almost the entire scientific community, and 200 nations around the world who agree it's a problem and intend to solve it.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Okay.
So, President Obama, first of all, I wasn't aware that science was decided based on polling data.
This is a new one for me.
That you know something is scientific, you know something is science, if enough people agree.
Right, because this is how, because everybody, that's how we figured out the theory of relativity was true, is Einstein put it up for a poll, and then we went, oh, for sure, that's probably right, that's probably right.
That's how we knew it was true.
And then he says he's going to invest, this is the part that was crazy, so he just finished saying that everybody who's blue collar in the country is being hurt by Wall Street, and his first move is he's going to shut down the coal and gas industries, which is where all those people get their jobs, all of them.
So he's gonna shut those industries down and he's going to invest in windmills.
He talked about windmills.
You know what percentage of American electricity is provided by windmills at this point in time?
It is less than 4%.
Less than 4% of all of America's electricity is provided by windmills.
Less than 2% is provided by solar energy.
All of the rest is gas, natural gas, and coal.
He wants to shut down the other 96%.
Brilliant.
He's just brilliant.
Then he got to foreign policy clip 5.
President Obama talking about his brilliant foreign policy.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼
I told you earlier, all the talk of America's economic decline is political hot air.
Well, so is all the rhetoric you hear about our enemies getting stronger and America getting weaker.
Let me tell you something.
The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth.
Period.
tom homan ▲ ● ▼
Period.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼
It's not even close.
It's not even close!
unidentified
Okay, look at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and I'll pause it for a second.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
The Joint Chiefs of Staff are sitting here going, you are out of your damn mind.
Okay, this man has slashed the military, he has slashed the military down to the bone, and he says that we're not weaker?
Again, I remind you, we began this program with 10 American sailors in the custody of the Iranians with their hands behind their head and our female sailor being put in hijab.
Don't worry, we're well respected around the world.
President Obama then jumped to how he's beating ISIL, and the way he's really going to defeat ISIL is by strictly refraining from ever mentioning the word Islam ever, ever, ever, ever.
Clip six.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼
But as we focus on destroying ISIL, over-the-top claims that this is World War III just play into their hands.
Masses of fighters on the back of pickup trucks Twisted souls plotting in apartments or garages.
They pose an enormous danger to civilians.
They have to be stopped.
But they do not threaten our national existence.
That is the story ISIL wants to tell.
That's the kind of propaganda they use to recruit.
We don't need to build them up to show that we're serious.
And we sure don't need to push away vital allies in this fight by echoing the lie that ISIL is somehow representative of one of the world's largest religions. -Al Frank and a common sense of clapping right there. And here's the punchline.
We just need to call them what they are.
Killers and fanatics.
Who have to be rooted out, hunted down, and destroyed.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Oh, that's all we have to do.
It's that simple.
We just have to call them out.
They're killers and fanatics.
Boom!
In fact, Obama just did it.
ISIL's done.
Congratulations, gang.
We won the war.
It was awesome.
You may have missed the part where we won, but it did happen.
You just missed it.
So, he went on to lecture us all about how we're Islamophobes and we're terrible and we're horrible.
And of course he dropped the obligatory Osama Bin Laden reference.
I love it.
He said, quote, if you doubt America's commitment or mine to see justice is done, ask Bin Laden.
Dude.
Okay.
Have you ever met somebody who was a high school quarterback, and now they're fat, they have a big belly, they sit on their couch all day, and they work a crappy job, and they beat their wife.
They're just like the people you see on the TV shows, the way that Hollywood prefers rednecks.
Have you ever met somebody like this?
Or seen somebody like this?
Barack Obama is that dude.
Okay?
Barack Obama is still living off the legacy of Bin Laden.
First of all, we don't have to go into the revised history on Osama Bin Laden.
It wasn't a gutsy call.
It was a very easy call.
Once you know where Bin Laden is, you kill him.
It's the end of the story.
And Obama delayed for literally weeks before making the decision, apparently.
But, beyond that...
High school quarterback time.
unidentified
You got the guys, oh man, back when I was in high school, I was the best quarterback there ever was, and if I hadn't blown out my knee, I'd be in the NFL right now, and I'd be nailing Gisele Bundchen.
That'd be me.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
That's Barack Obama on terrorism.
unidentified
I killed bin Laden.
Doesn't matter if ISIL killed 130 people in Paris.
I killed bin Laden.
Don't you forget it.
It was me.
I did it.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
And he just grabs a beer from the fridge and swigs it.
It's such nonsense.
The part of the speech that was the most galling.
We're gonna play two more clips of President Obama, and then we'll move on.
But President Obama, there were two things that he did that were truly galling.
It's hard to choose the parts of his speech that are the most galling, is the truth.
Clip nine, I think, is definitely a strong contender.
This is where President Obama lectures everybody about Islamophobia, because as Muslims kill people all over the world, what we have to be careful of, we have to be careful, do not have bad feelings about Islam.
Are you listening?
Islam is not the problem.
You're the problem.
Tell him, President Obama.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼
And that's why we need to reject any politics.
Any politics that targets people because of race or religion.
tom homan ▲ ● ▼
Let me just say this.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼
This is not a matter of political correctness.
This is a matter of understanding just what it is that makes us strong.
The world respects us not just for our arsenal.
It respects us for our diversity and our openness.
Pause it for a second.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
What the hell is he talking about?
What world respects us for our diversity and our openness?
What part of the world is he talking about?
Is he talking about the Muslim world that wants to convert us to Islam?
Is he talking about Europe, which couldn't care less about our openness and tolerance?
What is he even talking about?
When people say diversity is our strength, really?
I mean, if we had a room and in the room were me and a neo-Nazi and Barack Obama, would diversity be our strength?
I think not.
I think probably not.
I don't think diversity would be our strength.
But President Obama acts like all ideologies don't matter, Islam first and foremost.
And he dropped the line, when politicians insult Muslims, when a mosque is vandalized or a kid bullied, that doesn't make us safer.
Talk about a straw man.
He actually went to the original set of The Wizard of Oz, took Ray Bolger and set him on fire here.
When politicians insult Muslims when a mosque is vandalized... Like, who said when a mosque is vandalized or a kid is bullied, that makes us safer?
Like, who ever said that?
Was there anyone who said that?
But Obama has to make it that he is the great defender of all that is good and true, and if you have fears, rational fears, about a religion of a billion people, of whom a significant percentage say that they hate the West and want to destroy it, if you have concerns about that ideology, then you must want to bully children.
Okay, the second clip, and again, it's very hard to choose the ones that drive you the most nuts, but what we'll choose, I think, I think that we will choose clip 11.
Clip 11 is President Obama talking about his hopes for, you know, remember he posed four questions, and his fourth question was, how do we have a better politics?
And now he's going to lecture us on how we have a better politics.
After spending seven years degrading our politics, talking up Black Lives Matter, saying Trayvon Martin was his imaginary son, suggesting that cops are killing black people for no reason, suggesting that Americans murder Muslims for no reason, suggesting that all of us are Islamophobes, suggesting that religious people want to kill gays.
After all of this, President Obama is going to lecture us on our better nature.
So here we go.
President Obama, in his valedictory State of the Union address, lecturing us on how he's great and we all suck.
Here we go.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼
What I'm suggesting is hard.
It's a lot easier to be cynical.
To accept that change is not possible.
And politics is hopeless.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
This kid's falling asleep, by the way.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼
And the problem is, all the folks who were elected don't care.
And to believe that our voices and our actions don't matter.
But if we give up now, then we forsake a better future.
Those with money and power will gain greater control over the decisions that could send a young soldier to war.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Okay, we can pause it here.
I mean, it's just, it's him talking about how cynicism can't be allowed to rule, that he is the most cynical politician of all.
This is a president of the United States who, in his State of the Union address, said he understands the state and federal balance.
He understands the balance of powers between the branches.
When does the man own a mirror?
For God's sake, I wrote an entire book about how he broke every rule in the book.
It's called The People vs. Barack Obama, available on Amazon for just $15.99.
President Obama, when he does this routine where he's going to lecture us on the better angels of our nature, he's going to be this Martin Luther King-esque figure bringing us together, he neglects the fact that he's been a political Malcolm X in his bad period, before the conversion to Islam and the let's all come together routine.
I think that, honestly, my favorite thing that he did, I lied, there's one more piece of audio I want to play from President Obama.
Clip 12.
This is just stunning because this is the way the Democrats think that America works.
Listen to the moral equation he draws between various types of citizens in the United States and their level of bravery and heroism.
His litany here is pretty telling.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼
Here we go.
Our brand of democracy is hard.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
No, it isn't.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼
But I can promise that a little over a year from now, When I no longer hold this office, I will be right there with you as a citizen, inspired by those voices of fairness and vision, of grit and good humor and kindness that have helped America travel so far.
Voices that help us see ourselves not first and foremost as black or white or Asian or Latino, not as gay or straight, immigrant or native-born, Not Democrat or Republican.
But as Americans first, bound by a common creed.
Voices Dr. King believed would have the final word.
Voices of unarmed truth and unconditional love.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Oh, preach it, President Obama.
Preach it.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼
And they're out there, those voices.
They don't get a lot of attention.
They don't seek a lot of fanfare.
But they're busy doing the work this country needs doing.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
And here's the litany.
Here we go.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼
I see them everywhere I travel in this incredible country of ours.
I see you, the American people.
And in your daily acts of citizenship, I see our future unfolding.
I see it in the worker on the assembly line who clocked extra shifts to keep his company open.
And the boss who pays them higher wages.
Instead of laying him off.
I see it in the dreamer who stays up late at night to finish her science project.
And the teacher who comes in early.
Maybe with some extra supplies that she bought because she knows that that young girl might someday cure a disease.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
No word on the aborted fetuses, by the way.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼
I see it in the American who served his time Almost there.
Almost there.
takes as a child but now is dreaming of starting over.
And I see it in the business owner who gives him that second chance.
The protester determined to prove that justice matters.
And the young cop walking the beat, treating everybody with respect, doing the brave, quiet work of keeping us safe.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Almost there.
Almost there.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼
I see it in the soldier who gives almost everything to save his brothers.
The nurse who tends to him till he can run a marathon.
The community that lines up to cheer him on.
It's the son who finds the courage to come out as who he is.
And the father whose love for that son overrides everything he's been taught.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Okay, that's an amazing litany.
And Obama is all of these people, by the way.
Obama is all of you.
He encompasses all of you.
Like God Almighty, he encompasses every soul.
Okay, so in that litany, he equates Black Lives Matter protesters with cops, right?
He said the protesters insisting on justice and the cops who keep us safe, right?
They're all part of this great American tapestry.
And then he talks about the dreamer, right?
The illegal immigrant kid.
And he equates that with the line worker whose job that dreamer will someday take, presumably.
The best one is the back-to-back of the soldier and the gay kid, right?
The soldier who's out there defending freedom and the gay kid who has the courage to tell his father he wants to do dudes.
It's the same thing, right?
They're all just part of this rich America.
That's bravery.
It's that incredible country of ours that he loves.
And there's this emphasis from Obama on unconditional love.
Let me tell you something, folks, about unconditional love.
It doesn't exist.
It's a figment of your imagination.
The only person who has unconditional love for you isn't a person, it's God.
Okay, every person, every love is conditional.
There is no such thing as unconditional love.
Because the fact is that every person you know could do something, could do something that would make you cut off the love for that person.
Every person you know.
But Obama is making himself into a god-like figure and so he says that he is all about the unconditional love.
And the left loves unconditional love because it means there are no standards.
Right?
He celebrates the father who loves his son being gay despite everything that he's been taught.
Which is, by the way, Obama's way of slapping at religion and slapping at it hard.
unidentified
Right?
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
If you're a religious parent and you think that it's immoral for your child to participate in homosexuality, for example, Obama thinks that you're a mean, nasty bastard who's given in to strictures that you don't understand in order to target a poor gay child, who, of course, is the same as a soldier.
This is how leftists see the world.
This is why Barack Obama's dangerous.
And by the way, the danger is evident everywhere from the home front to the foreign front.
Okay, so briefly I want to discuss, I know we were very long here, but briefly I want to discuss Nikki Haley's response to the State of the Union address.
So, Obama lays out all of this.
It takes 59 minutes.
And this is all happening, again, against the backdrop of 10 American sailors being held captive by the Iranian government, forced to apologize, humiliating pictures taken of them, distributed all over the world.
Nikki Haley gets up, the governor of South Carolina, to give the response to the State of the Union Address.
And in her response to the State of the Union Address, Nikki Haley says a couple of things.
Here are the things that Nikki Haley said, and it's pretty clear what she's talking about.
Nikki Haley, clip one.
unidentified
There's an important lesson in this.
In many parts of society today, whether in popular culture, academia, the media, or politics, there's a tendency to falsely equate noise with results.
Some people think that you have to be the loudest voice in the room to make a difference.
That's just not true.
Often the best thing we can do is turn down the volume.
When the sound is quieter, you can actually hear what someone else is saying.
And that can make a world of difference.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Okay, so she lays that comment out there.
I'm not sure she's looking on this camera.
There are multiple cameras in the room, so in fairness to her, she looks like she's looking off-camera.
She's looking at a different camera.
But there's comment number one.
Tone it down, guys.
Just tone it down.
So, Barack Obama, the worst president in American history.
We need to tone it down when we worry about him, because if you're too loud, then we could substitute voices for action.
So tone it down, all you Republicans.
Just calm down, you people in the base, and particularly you, Donald Trump.
Shut it down.
Shut it down.
And in case you missed the Donald Trump reference there, she clarified about one second later.
Let's go to clip two of Nikki Haley.
unidentified
Today we live in a time of threats like few others in recent memory.
During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices.
We must resist that temptation.
No one who is willing to work hard, abide by our laws, and love our traditions should ever feel unwelcome in this country.
At the same time, that does not mean we just flat out open our borders.
We can't do that.
We cannot continue to allow immigrants to come here illegally.
And in this age of terrorism, we must not let in refugees whose intentions cannot be determined.
We must fix our broken immigration system.
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
Okay, we can cut it off there.
That means stopping.
So what is she doing?
So Barack Obama gives a 59-minute address summing up his leftist philosophy after seven years of the most leftist governance in the history of the nation.
And she hits Donald Trump.
The GOP establishment response has hit Donald Trump.
She was asked about it today.
She said, absolutely, I was speaking out against Donald Trump.
She said, I was rebuking him.
And then she was asked, well, why didn't you use the State of the Union to attack President Obama?
Why didn't you do that?
And she said it was, quote, not me.
So it is her to attack Trump, but not to attack President Obama.
Now, I want to call out the false dichotomy she's drawing.
She said that no one who is, A, who works hard, B, abides by our laws, and C, loves our traditions, should be turned away.
Even Donald Trump doesn't argue with that.
He just thinks that Syrian Muslim refugees don't, one, abide by our laws, or two, love our traditions.
unidentified
Right?
ben shapiro ▲ ● ▼
At least, if you're given no other information.
And he doesn't trust our vetting process.
That's his entire case.
Nobody disagrees with the premise that she's stating there.
Everybody thinks that if you want to come to the United States, and you love our traditions, you're abiding by our laws, and you're working hard, and you're not taking from the system, then we want you here.
Nobody disagrees with that.
But her whole spiel here is that Donald Trump is bad.
Donald Trump is super bad.
I can't think of a speech better calculated to get Donald Trump elected than this speech.
Because the base is so angry at this point.
And here is the GOP establishment, in a nutshell, telling everybody to calm down.
By the way, Nikki Haley is clearly running for Marco Rubio's vice president right here.
I don't understand.
I mean, I actually only read the transcript of the speech yesterday.
I didn't actually stick around to watch it.
Once my daughter said night-night compootie for the fourth time, I let her night-night the compootie.
But this was widely praised.
I mean, people were saying, oh, Nikki Haley did a stellar job.
I'm watching this.
I'm not sure what the stellar job is.
She looks so awkward in front of the camera, actually.
And so I'm sort of confused by all that.
Also, it looks like she's doing this speech from a hallway somewhere.
The Republicans always pick the weirdest places to do these speeches.
It's always like a random hallway, or they've done it from... Bobby Jindal, I remember, did it in front of a banister.
They're always doing it in front of weird things.
But Nikki, the point is this.
The GOP establishment hates Donald Trump more than it hates Barack Obama.
Donald Trump frightens them.
Donald Trump is too loud.
He makes loud noises.
And I agree, he does make loud noises.
He says stupid things.
But, eye on the ball, gang.
You got the most leftist president in American history and the worst secretary of state in American history running to succeed him, and you're attacking the loud-mouthed businessman who says impolitic things about Muslims.
Like, really?
This was your priority?
This is why the GOP establishment is going down in flames, and they ought to.
Okay.
Very, very quickly.
One thing I like, and then one thing that I hate.
Okay, one thing that I like.
I'm gonna go conventional here.
People sometimes ask me what is my favorite book.
My favorite book is Moby Dick.
I think Moby Dick is a brilliant piece of literature.
I know there are people who think that it's too long.
I agree.
The wailing sections are difficult.
I get it.
If you sort of view them as the Leviticus of the book, then it's easier to deal with it.
But the story of Moby Dick is obviously phenomenal.
And the writing is just glorious.
It's a terrific, terrific book.
And I'll save my... You know, I was gonna talk comic books, but I'll save that for tomorrow because we had a long comic book discussion here at The Daily Wire after yesterday's show, so we'll save that for tomorrow.
But here is the thing that I hate for today.
Everybody's going nuts over this whole Powerball thing.
It's up to what, $1.5 billion, the Powerball?
The Powerball is an immoral scam run by corrupt and evil people.
Okay, the Powerball is garbage.
If you are somebody, and I understand why you have the temptation.
You figure, okay, two bucks is nothing.
If I lose two bucks, fine, that's fine.
I agree.
If you lose two bucks and it means nothing to you, and you figure, okay, it's the same thing as flushing it down the toilet.
Who knows?
I could flush it down the toilet, and a treasure chest could float up to the top of my toilet like in the conversation.
Then, okay, fine.
That's your prerogative.
But the lottery itself is actually evil.
The government running a lottery is actually evil.
I remember a few years ago, the state of California ran an ad campaign.
You guys remember this?
They ran an ad campaign here in the state of California for Powerball?
And it was called Believe in Something Bigger, and they played California Dreamin', and it was a bunch of people walking around on the street, and lottery balls, like ping pong balls, were falling from the sky, the whole deal.
And the theme was Believe in Something Bigger.
Not God, not America, not your family.
Believe in your statistically non-available possibility of winning the lottery.
That's what you should believe in.
The chances of winning the lottery are infinitesimal.
You are, for this particular Powerball, and for the lottery in general, your chances are 17 times better of being hit by a piece of falling debris from a blown up airplane, seriously, than they are of winning the lottery.
So in this particular Powerball, there will be over a billion tickets sold.
Apparently there's a 97% chance that somebody would win, and it could be you, but it won't be.
It definitely will not be you.
Okay?
Your chances of winning are 1 in 292 million.
You are not going to win the Powerball today.
If you're watching this and you win the Powerball, then you can yell at me from high atop your perch of money.
But, if not, then you're wasting your money.
And I think it's actually immoral, because it generates the idea in people that wealth is just a matter of luck.
That wealth just descends on you.
You take a shot, And sometimes you make it and most of the time you don't, but it's all luck.
Wealth is not luck.
And by the way, the lottery proves that wealth is not luck because the people who win the lottery end up back in poverty.
70% of all people who make significant money from the lottery or from an inheritance blow through all of that money and end up poor again.
Because people who suck with money, it turns out they suck whether that money is $10,000,000 a year or $1.5 billion a year.
It's just the state taking advantage of people who suck with money.
Because disproportionately, the people who buy lottery tickets are poor.
There's a study that came out in 2008.
For families whose household income is $13,000, they spend in excess of $1,000 a year on lottery tickets.
They spend almost 10% of the money they make every year on lottery tickets.
That is a scam, and it's a sham, and it's really, really disgusting.
And every time the lottery lights up like this, it's because of a recession.
During the 2008 recession, 29 of the 42 states with lotteries, according to Michelle Malkin, lit up the bank.
I mean, they made all sorts of money.
So it's a way of the government suckering you.
It's a scam.
It takes advantage of degenerate gamblers and people who have no real path in life.
And it's really sad.
If you have $2 and you're a person who can't afford to buy a lottery ticket, please, don't buy the lottery ticket.
Go get some investment advice.
Because you're wasting your money.
I am Ben Shapiro.
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