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Jan. 14, 2016 - The Ben Shapiro Show

52:43

Ep. 55 - Is Marco Rubio Toast?

As Rubio flails, Jeb cheers; Debbie Wasserman Schultz goes full Jar-Jar Binks; and Ben celebrates his birthday with a full inaugural mailbag! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	Wow, here we are, and it is Wednesday, the second-to-last debate before Iowa is happening tonight, and we'll talk about all of that.
	We will also do the first, the inaugural Ben Shapiro Show Mailbag on the podcast.
	We used to do it on the old show, we will do it on this show too, so we'll be doing that.
	Plus, all these balloons are here because my birthday is tomorrow, so happy birthday to me!
	I'm a 32-year-old Jew tomorrow, which means I have one more year until I become the second most famous 33-year-old Jew in history.
	I'm Ben Shapiro, and this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	All righty, so here we are, and it is indeed the day before my birthday.
	That's why these balloons are out here for decoration.
	They're also out here to signify the competitors in tonight's second-to-last penultimate Republican debate.
	So here is Ben Carson, and here is John Kasich, and here is Jeb Bush.
	And here, of course, is Ted Cruz.
	Here is Marco Rubio.
	And here's Chris Christie.
	So, in any case, leading up to the debate, I have to say that all of the pressure tonight is going to be on Marco Rubio.
	Everybody is saying it's all about Cruz.
	Cruz is the one who has a lot to lose.
	I don't think that's true.
	Here's why.
	The main line of attack on Cruz tonight, there are going to be two lines of attack on Cruz.
	The first line of attack on Cruz is going to be along the birther lines.
	He was born in Canada, therefore he's ineligible to be president.
	I don't think that this plays on a debate stage.
	I think it plays in the press.
	I think it plays with a certain level at the grassroots.
	I don't think that it plays on a debate stage, and here's why.
	Donald Trump is going to say, they'll ask him about it, and Donald Trump is going to say, I think he's eligible, but I think that we need to ask the question, because otherwise the Democrats will sue.
	And Cruz will say, let them sue, the only reason they'd sue is because they're afraid of me.
	Right?
	That's going to be his answer.
	And if they ask all the other candidates on the stage if they think that Cruz is eligible, there's only one way that goes badly for Cruz, and that's if multiple people on the stage all raise their hands and say they think he's ineligible.
	That's not going to happen.
	The reason that's not going to happen is because this is basic game theory.
	The worst outcome for any one of those candidates is if they are the only person on the stage raising their hand when asked if Cruz is ineligible.
	If only one candidate raises their hand and says, yeah, I think Ted's ineligible, that person becomes the kook.
	Right?
	So to avoid becoming the kook, nobody is going to raise their hand and Cruz will get away with it.
	Plus, it's an implicit rebuke to Trump, and they all dislike Trump.
	So, I don't think this is going to be a big problem for Cruz.
	The other reason that they're going after Cruz is because of the so-called Goldman Sachs controversy.
	So apparently, when Cruz was running for Senate a few years back, He took a loan from Goldman Sachs to run.
	And this is not uncommon.
	People take swing loans from banks all the time, actually, to run.
	And this wasn't even a swing loan.
	It was something even more obscure.
	And they were saying that he didn't report it.
	Okay, first of all, the idea that people are supposed to be ignorant of Cruz's ties to Goldman Sachs.
	His wife works for Goldman Sachs.
	Heidi works for Goldman Sachs.
	So the idea that he has no ties to Goldman Sachs, that's silly.
	But nonetheless, the media are jumping on this and trying to finish Cruz off with this one.
	Joe Scarborough on MSNBC, for example, He says that he thinks that Cruz's Goldman Sachs scandal is really going to cost him.
	So here's Joe Scarborough, if we can grab that clip.
	It's about halfway down the list.
	I think it's clip five.
	Mark, the big complaint when you talk to Republicans, especially Republicans who worked with him on Bush campaigns and in past administrations, is they say he's a hypocrite.
	They say he's a phony.
	They say that he preaches populism, but he went to the best Ivy League schools in America.
	He's got deep ties with Goldman Sachs.
	He was George W. Bush's, you know, at the center of that campaign.
	That he was Mr. Republican establishment is plugged into the East Coast establishment as you could be.
	And then in 2010, the Tea Party movement erupted, and suddenly he became a Tea Partier's Tea Partier.
	I wonder if that's why this Goldman Sachs story stings so much.
	I'm not saying that.
	You've heard it too.
	I didn't know Ted before this, but that is a constant knock, is that he's a phony.
	And this seems to feed into that, doesn't it?
	It's a constant knock, and it's one that he's well aware of.
	Okay, the idea that the Goldman Sachs thing makes Ted a phony, first of all, worth noting.
	Joe Scarborough, his face appears to be shrinking while his glasses and hair enlarge.
	So he's actually beginning to look like a cartoon of himself a little bit, but here he is ripping Ted Cruz for being a phony.
	Here is the real story.
	Ted Cruz basically got a swing loan from Goldman Sachs for about a million dollars for his 2012 Senate campaign, which of course he won.
	The New York Times suggested that it didn't appear in Cruz's FEC filing, his Federal Elections Commission filing.
	Cruz's spokeswoman said that they did receive a loan and the failure to report it was inadvertent.
	And the truth is, however, that actually, Cruz did disclose the loan.
	He disclosed the loan in July of 2012.
	So it's not like he was trying to keep this hidden, like nobody knew about it, like it's the end of the world.
	The media are trying to treat it as the end of the world.
	They're trying to say that Cruz said that he self-funded, he didn't really self-fund, he took a loan from Goldman Sachs.
	Okay, taking a loan is still self-funding.
	I mean, unless people are unaware of how loans work, you actually have to pay them back.
	It wasn't a gift.
	If I take a loan in order to start my business, I am self-funding because I'm going to have to pay back that loan.
	If I go out and I raise capital from somebody else that I never really have to pay back, that's not self-funding anymore.
	So there are these attacks on Cruise.
	I don't think this one is going to fly.
	I think that there are some people who are desperate to stop Cruise, but I don't think that this is particularly going to work.
	And Ted Cruz said this.
	He said, look, they're after me for one reason and one reason only, and that's because I'm starting to win.
	Here is Senator Cruz explaining why all of a sudden everybody is focusing their field of fire on him.
	You know, four weeks ago, just about every Republican candidate in the field was attacking Donald Trump.
	Today, just about every Republican candidate is attacking me.
	And I think that suggests maybe something has changed in the race.
	But I will note that Mr. Trump is relying on ultra-left-wing liberal law professors at Harvard to make this argument, and the same professors he's relying on are major supporters for Hillary Clinton.
	And, you know, some folks are asking, gosh, why is it That Hillary Clinton's biggest supporters are echoing Donald Trump's attacks.
	And perhaps it's the case that, you know, we've seen the last couple of elections Democrats were thrilled with the Republicans they ran against.
	Right now, Donald Trump is losing to Hillary Clinton in national polls.
	Right now, I'm beating Hillary Clinton in national polls.
	And we're seeing Clinton allies amplifying the Trump attacks.
	It seems to me we need a strong conservative who can win because we don't need another four or eight more years of these same policies we heard tonight in the State of the Union.
	Stagnant economics and weakness to radical Islamic terrorism.
	We need strength.
	And so this is what you're going to get from Cruz tonight.
	What Cruz is going to say is they're all coming after me for a reason.
	The reason they're all coming after me is because they know that I can beat Hillary Clinton, and they know that I'm doing well in the primary fight.
	Okay, so let's talk a little bit about what's happening to the various candidates.
	I think Cruz is going into this one, into this particular debate, in relatively strong position.
	I don't think it's formidable because I think that Trump is still on top right now, but Cruz is in pretty good position.
	If he wins Iowa, right now he's running second in New Hampshire, or third in New Hampshire.
	It's very, very tight for second place in New Hampshire.
	If he wins Iowa, he will win second place in New Hampshire.
	Then they go to South Carolina, and it's clear that Nikki Haley doesn't like Donald Trump very much.
	And so there's a significant possibility that she endorses Cruz before that primary, and suddenly Cruz sweeps to victory in South Carolina, and it turns into a two-man race.
	All of this leaves out, you remember him over here, Marco Rubio.
	Marco Rubio, the senator from Florida.
	I wanna spend one second talking about the problem I think that Rubio has.
	And this is that Rubio is actually a relatively insecure guy.
	I've interviewed Marco Rubio only once.
	I only had one interaction with him in my entire life on a one-to-one basis.
	It was at the 2012 Republican National Convention down in Tampa.
	Beautiful place to hold a convention.
	And so we're there, and I'm running around interviewing various people, and I run up to interview Marco Rubio, and he's doing a walk-in talk.
	Like, he's been avoiding reporters all day, and I kind of track him down in a stairwell, and I'm asking him questions, all of which are pretty basic questions.
	It wasn't attacks on him.
	It wasn't about amnesty.
	It wasn't about any of that stuff, because this is before amnesty was a thing for him, really.
	And so I asked him some questions about Romney versus Obama, and he was extraordinarily careful in how he answered the questions.
	And he knew I was on his side.
	I mean, I was flattering to him.
	He knew that we thought alike politically.
	And instead of giving me a headline, he was being extremely careful, very calculated in how he answered the questions.
	That's either a sign of smarts or it's a sign of fear.
	Because if you're very careful in how you answer questions, it's because you don't trust yourself to get out of any situation you create for yourself.
	I think the real difference between Cruz and Rubio is that Cruz is smart and knows he's smart, and so he feels like if he steps on a landmine, he'll be able to step off the landmine.
	He trusts his own intelligence.
	I think that Rubio Isn't quite as trusting of his own intelligence, and so he appears insecure.
	When you watch him, he appears insecure.
	He appears smooth, but he's one of these guys where the faster he talks, the more insecure he appears.
	The fact that I talk quickly, I'm generally a fast talker, it's not coming from insecurity, and it's pretty obvious it's not coming from insecurity, because I always speak quickly, and because I have a lot to say.
	Rubio, it's a little bit of a different story.
	So, that's been a problem for Marco Rubio, and it's why he hasn't been able to pull away from the pack.
	So, as we go into the debate tonight, here are the poll standings as we go into the debate tonight.
	In the RealClearPolitics primary averages and national averages.
	National averages, Donald Trump is way ahead.
	He's way ahead.
	Coming in in second place is Ted Cruz.
	Behind him in third, according to the Reuters national tracking poll, is Jeb Bush.
	According to the RealClearPolitics national tracking poll, or the average of the various polls, it's Marco Rubio in third.
	Carson is at 6, Jeb is at 4, and Chris Christie is at 3, according to the national average.
	But, the polls are all over the place.
	Reuters shows Jeb actually surging a little bit.
	The bottom line for Rubio is that Rubio is static.
	Rubio is absolutely static.
	Right now, in the Iowa polling... In the Iowa polling, Rubio is running third.
	And when it comes to New Hampshire, Rubio is tied for second in some polls, but he's losing ground.
	In the latest Monmouth poll, for example, he's actually tied for fourth.
	In the latest Monmouth poll, he's now running behind John Kasich.
	So, he's got problems.
	He has real problems.
	And those problems were exacerbated yesterday.
	Nikki Haley, who we talked about yesterday, she gave her response to the State of the Union and spent an inordinate amount of time attacking Donald Trump and the anger within the Republican Party.
	And I have to say, I'm getting very tired of hearing, and angry about hearing, about how the anger of the Republicans, it's unjustified.
	The grassroots anger is unjustified.
	And I agree with Drew, that when Andrew Klavan says that anger is the devil's cocaine, I agree with him.
	I think that's a hilarious and smart description of what anger is.
	I will also say that doesn't mean it's unjustified.
	And when it comes to being angry at the Obama administration and the RNC, don't let it make you stupid, but understand that the anger is justified.
	There is something else that is the devil's cocaine, or let's call it the devil's heroin for a moment, and that is a feeling of tonal superiority.
	There's nothing more infuriating than the people on NPR who believe they are smarter and better than you because they speak in soft, soothing tones.
	When Jeb does it, it's very obnoxious.
	When Nikki Haley did it, it was very obnoxious.
	If you've ever been in a fight with your spouse or significant other, and they tell you to calm down, there is nothing more likely to make you enraged and punch you a plate glass window than if they tell you to calm down.
	I know because this is how my wife sliced up her hand.
	But in any case, You don't tell people to calm down in the middle of an argument, and in the middle of a political argument, you don't tell your own base to calm down, especially because their anger is what drives them to the polls.
	So Nikki Haley did her State of the Union response, in which she ripped Donald Trump, and the establishment is thrilled with her.
	She does a media tour.
	Everybody's talking about it.
	She's going to be a great VP candidate.
	She and all 6,000 of her teeth will be spectacular.
	She's going to be awesome in every respect.
	And then, and then, she disappointed them.
	Nikki Haley was asked about Marco Rubio, and everybody sort of assumed she's bashing Trump.
	That means she must not like Cruz either, so she probably likes Marco Rubio.
	She was asked about Marco Rubio, and here was the toothy governor of South Carolina.
	What did you say earlier today?
	Did you misspeak?
	Yes, it's been a long couple of days.
	What I said was that I didn't agree with him.
	I meant what I didn't agree with him was on the Gang of Eight bill.
	I said that he wasn't for amnesty.
	That's not what I meant.
	What I meant was that he supported the Gang of Eight bill, and I did not.
	Okay, good.
	Okay, so that was her trying to walk it back a little bit.
	But earlier in the day, she had said that she didn't like that Rubio was pro-amnesty.
	And so she was bashing Rubio.
	And she didn't just bash Rubio, obviously.
	She said openly that she was bashing Trump, right?
	So she's bashing Trump and she's bashing Rubio.
	Who does that leave left, right?
	That leaves Cruz.
	I mean, if you're talking about the big three, that leaves Cruz left.
	And so the establishment is now panicking because the fact is that Marco Rubio is stagnant.
	Marco Rubio is not, he's not rising.
	Everybody thought by this point he'd be consolidating support.
	And right now, as I've said the past couple of days, the Republican establishment side of the aisle in this election cycle is a total crab pot.
	It's a bunch of crabs in a pot, one trying to escape, the others pull him back in, another tries to escape, they pull him back down to earth.
	That's Kasich, that's Christie, that's Jeb, that's Rubio.
	That's Christie.
	That's Jeb.
	That's Rubio.
	And they're all trying to pull each other down.
	So that means that Rubio has the toughest job in the debate tonight, and generally.
	He should be surging by now.
	We should start to see the momentum build for Marco Rubio.
	And it's not happening.
	And so there was an article in the New York Times today suggesting that, in fact, Support from the establishment may be consolidating behind Cruz.
	I don't believe it.
	I don't think that that's what's happening.
	But I've been encouraging that for weeks.
	I've said for a long time the best shot you have to stop Donald Trump is to get out of the establishment business entirely and get behind Cruz.
	And it may be coming to that point.
	Chris Christie tonight at the debate is going to have to go hard after Marco Rubio because Christie's only hope is winning New Hampshire or finishing second to New Hampshire and putting Rubio down in the pack.
	I think basically Christie's line of attack on Rubio is going to be he's immature, he's weak.
	You can't trust him to stand tall, and he'll use amnesty as an example of that, even though Christie is actually not anti-amnesty either.
	So he'll attack him on that.
	I think John Kasich is going to be his usual weird, wild self.
	I think that when it comes to Jeb Bush, Jeb is, if you watch him on TV lately, Jeb seems like he's having fun again, which suggests that he thinks he's doing well.
	Here's Jeb on MSNBC going after Marco Rubio.
	Yeah, but Jeff, do you own any platform boots that make you taller?
	I got my cowboy boots on, Big Joe.
	Rocky Carroll.
	Do they make you three inches taller, or are they just normal cowboy boots?
	I don't have a height issue.
	Let me just make it clear here.
	Just to be clear, I'm height challenged.
	- Oh wow.
	- Gene Robinson.
	- This is Gene Robinson from the Washington Post.
	- Gene, let me just make it clear here, just to be clear, I'm height challenged.
	My wife tells me there's an inverse relationship between height and intelligence, so I'm struggling.
	- We're in trouble. - He tries to buy it back there, and this is the part of Jeb where, honestly, that's why Jeb is losing, right?
	If Jeb just lets the insult sit out there, he's fine.
	Instead, what he does is he backs off of it by making a self-deprecating joke, which I guess is a charming thing to do, but it makes him look weak.
	So here's, the dynamics of this thing are so fascinating.
	So Chris Christie's big target tonight is gonna be Marco Rubio.
	Jeb's big target is not gonna be Rubio.
	It's not gonna be Rubio.
	So he's going to, he's gonna continue going after Trump.
	And I've been asking this whole time, Why does Jeb keep going after Trump?
	Why does Jeb keep doing this routine where he challenges Trump to a fistfight in front of a mass national audience and then gets his ass kicked?
	I mean, it happens every single debate.
	There's always one moment where Jeb says to Trump something and then Trump looks at him and sneers at him and gives his little look.
	And then Jeb just collapses and whimpers in the corner.
	And so I keep wondering, why is he doing that?
	Well, here's the reason why he's doing that.
	The reason he's doing that is because he believes that Rubio and Christie and Kasich are going to take each other out.
	He thinks that they're going to have basically a clown car crash, and all of them are going to be laid out on the side of the road.
	And then the establishment is going to turn back to him as the parent in the room, and how do they know that he's the adult in the room?
	Well, because he's taking care of the toddler.
	He's the only one fighting the toddler, Donald Trump.
	While all the rest of them are fighting each other, he's trying to take care of the toddler, Donald Trump, and to contain the toddler.
	So he's going to try and play above the fray tonight, and he's going to go after Trump again.
	And he doesn't even have to beat Trump, he thinks.
	He thinks he just has to consolidate the feeling among establishment folks that he is the guy Who can be trusted and is responsible and is willing to take on all of the people that the establishment wants to take on, namely Trump and Ted Cruz.
	So that's going to be his mission tonight.
	Chris Christie's mission tonight is to knock Rubio down a peg.
	And he's going to do it on foreign policy.
	He's going to say Rubio votes a certain way on foreign policy.
	I was a prosecutor on 9-11.
	If you drink every time Chris Christie mentions 9-11, there's certain things I think we will find out tonight in the debate.
	For example, crucial questions we must have answered, such as, was John Kasich's father a mailman?
	Such as, did Marco Rubio's father work in a bar?
	And also, These are crucial questions, I think, that we're all waiting to have answered tonight.
	But Chris Christie's going to go after Rubio.
	Rubio's going to be trying desperately to avoid the fray, and he's going to be dragged back down into the crab pot, and he's going to get pummeled by all these guys.
	John Kasich is going to try and consolidate a second place finish in New Hampshire.
	If he finishes out of the money, he's out.
	So right now, he's also going to try and play above the fray.
	He's just going to do the populist thing that he's been doing, the establishment populist thing he's been doing.
	He's going to air chop watermelons, and he's going to play Fruit Ninja, and he's going to try and play above the fray.
	Jeb will try and play against Trump.
	and Rubio and Christie will go at each other.
	That's what tonight is gonna look like.
	And meanwhile, everybody is gonna take snide shots at Ted Cruz, and Cruz is gonna try and ride it out.
	So that's the dynamic of the debate tonight.
	You heard it here first, and if I'm right, then I don't win anything because that's my job.
	I get paid to do that.
	I win a nice salary, so congratulations to me.
	All right, so moving on from the debate, I wanna talk about Hillary falling apart a little bit On the other side of the aisle, the enthusiasm gap for Hillary Clinton continues to grow.
	So, Hillary has a nasty habit, and you'll see it in this next clip, and we've talked about it before.
	Every time she's asked an uncomfortable question, she laughs.
	And when she laughs, when Hillary Clinton laughs, My God.
	I mean, when she laughs, it sounds as though the devil's maw has opened.
	And all of the butchery of the last several million years are flowing through him.
	I mean, it really is terrifying.
	So she was asked whether Bill Clinton was in fact a liability to her campaign.
	And the Devil's Mall will open.
	So we're about to see.
	Don't be frightened.
	Don't be frightened.
	The power of Christ will compel her.
	But here is Hillary Clinton talking on NBC News about how her husband is actually not a liability to her campaign.
	In a word, does he undercut the effectiveness of Bill Clinton as a surrogate for you?
	Oh, I am so proud of my...
	My husband's out on the campaign trail.
	In fact, in New Hampshire and Iowa in the last week where he has now been to both states, people were asking me, when was he coming back?
	When could they see more of him?
	So, he carries a message of peace and prosperity under his presidency, and I think a lot of Americans would like to get back to those days.
	Hillary Clinton, when can he come back and when will we see more of him?
	Okay.
	Number one, no woman is asking when he can come back and he's saying to every lady, you can always see more of me, gang.
	So Hillary Clinton, the fact that she's dragging Bill out of the closet this early and wheeling him around, I mean, he looks like death.
	I mean, let's be real.
	Bill Clinton is beginning to look like a warmed over corpse.
	It's weekend at Bill's.
	They're stapling that wig on him and wheeling him around South Beach.
	But Hillary Clinton is dragging Bill out of the closet here because Hillary is starting to feel a little bit of pressure from Bernie Sanders, which is amazing!
	Bernie Sanders is the kookiest person in the United States Senate, and he is going to win New Hampshire.
	And there's a very good shot that he wins Iowa as well, if he's got any sort of organizational base in Iowa.
	So, Bernie Sanders was asked about Hillary Clinton, and Hillary has, by the way, been sending out Chelsea Clinton as her surrogate to attack Bernie Sanders.
	So, Chelsea, and this is, it's so Clintonian, right?
	Hillary doesn't want to attack Bernie directly, because then he'll fire back on her.
	She doesn't want Bill to do it, because then Bernie will fire back on her.
	She wants Chelsea to do it, so that way Bernie can't fire back on her daughter, and if he does, she says, That's my child!
	That's my child prop!
	You can't fire back on my child prop!
	So, Chelsea goes out and makes fun of Bernie Sanders and says that Bernie Sanders wants to overthrow Obamacare and Medicare and all the rest of this.
	And Bernie Sanders is now beginning to open fire on Hillary Clinton.
	I think for the first time, Bernie Sanders is actually considering the possibility that he could win.
	You can see the crazed gleam in his eye.
	A gleam that we haven't seen since he was writing about how lack of sex caused uterine cancer back in the 1970s in Vermont.
	He actually wrote that.
	Bernie Sanders, you can see the gleam in his eye as he talks about taking down Hillary Clinton in this race.
	Here we go.
	Do you have the campaign infrastructure and the support from the DNC to take this all the way?
	Well, maybe not the support from the DNC, but we have the support from the American people.
	Thomas, as you know, we have raised more individual campaign contributions than any candidate in the history of the United States of America.
	Two and a half million contributions averaging 27 dollars apiece.
	So we are getting small contributions from the middle class, from working families.
	Not only do we have enough money to wage a very strong campaign in Iowa and in New Hampshire, we are all working hard in Nevada, in South Carolina, and in many other states as well.
	So answer your question.
	I think the American people are tired of establishment politics, establishment economics.
	They want to see leadership stand up to the billionaire class.
	Our message is resonating all across this country.
	And yes, we have the energy, we have the funding to take this to the convention.
	He's so excited.
	You can just see it.
	I mean, Joy Behar should just look out, gang, because Bernie's on the loose.
	Bernie also says that Hillary is actually getting nervous about this entire campaign.
	He says that he's gaining momentum and Hillary is starting to feel the pressure a little bit.
	These two octogenarians are going to have a death match.
	They club each other with their walkers until only one remains.
	It's Mad Max, Nursing Home Thunderdome.
	And so here is Bernie Sanders continuing to talk about how Hillary is now feeling the pressure.
	Well, I think what's happened is, you know, we started this campaign at 2% of the polls, and now some polls actually have us ahead.
	And I think we have a really good chance to win in Iowa and to win in New Hampshire.
	And obviously, as we have gained momentum, I think it's fair to say that the Clinton campaign has become very nervous.
	They're becoming very, very nervous.
	Every time I see Bernie Sanders, it just, if you don't think Barack Obama has transformed the country, and I was having this fight in the hallway with Andrew Klavan a little bit earlier, I listened to Drew's podcast yesterday, and Drew said that Obama was not a transformative president.
	If he's not a transformative president, how is this old codger, this dude, gonna win Iowa and New Hampshire, and in national polling, defeats all Republican comers?
	If there has not been a transformation, this old badger, Who's the kind of guy who you go to a party at your parents' house, and there's a guy who lives down the street they really didn't want to invite, but he showed up because there's free cake, and he sort of corners you, and then he starts jabbering about UFOs, and he's wearing overalls and a dandruff-flecked flannel shirt, and he's kind of spitting on you a little bit, and you're just trying to get up the spit guard.
	How did that guy end up as the leading candidate for President of the United States?
	How?
	Okay, if Barack Obama was not a transformational president.
	It shows the weakness of Hillary Clinton and the transformed nation that we have become.
	And I think one of the reasons for that is because there's such a disconnect in the narrative.
	My mom said this in 2012.
	In 2012, a lot of people on the right side of the aisle, including me, we got suckered into believing that Mitt Romney was going to win.
	And if you looked at the Huffington Post, there was no doubt that Obama was not only going to win, but that he was the godchild, that he was the god-king, and everything under his tenure had been just spectacular in every available way.
	And if you looked at Breitbart, which is the website that I'm senior editor-at-large of, and I worked for them more at the time, if you looked at Breitbart, What you got was Romney was definitely gonna win, Obama was the worst president that ever was.
	Now, I agree, Obama's the worst president that ever was, but the Democrats, the reason Bernie Sanders can win is because the media have crafted this alternative universe where Bernie Sanders is right, and Hillary Clinton is right, and Barack Obama is right.
	This alternative universe where they never even see, it doesn't even occur to people, that perhaps Obama's lying to them.
	So, just more evidence of this.
	Yesterday we discussed the fact that what went down with the Iranians seizing two American boats was a lie.
	That all of that was nonsense.
	That when the administration claimed that two boats just suddenly had mechanical failure and floated into Iranian waters, and the Iranian AAA showed up just to help out, and the friendly Honda people got out and changed a couple of tires and sent them on their way.
	That was nonsense, and we showed yesterday that was nonsense.
	You had Joe Biden on national TV claiming that we didn't apologize to the Iranians, and the Iranians forcing one of our sailors into apologizing to them on Iranian national TV.
	But you wouldn't know that unless you listened to this podcast, unless you watched this podcast.
	The narrative.
	So all these facts are out yesterday, right?
	All of these facts are out.
	You've got all the pictures of American sailors on their knees with their hands behind their head.
	You've got the picture of the American female sailor who's been forced into a hijab.
	You have all of the information.
	You have the video of the guy apologizing to the Iranians.
	So what do the Democrats do with the compliant media?
	What do they do?
	The Democrats decide that they're going to just keep pushing.
	This narrative, it doesn't matter to them.
	So, here is John Kerry, the Secretary of State, thanking Iran for, by the way, there was a news breaking this morning, Fox News says there was no mechanical failure, which means the Iranians went out of their waters, grabbed a couple of American boats, and did it to humiliate Obama.
	Here is John Kerry thanking the Iranians for the privilege of American soldiers being detained and captured and forced onto their knees at gunpoint.
	Here's John Kerry, our Secretary of State.
	I want to underscore how pleased I am that our sailors were safely returned into United States' hands this morning.
	As a former sailor myself, as General mentioned, I know as well as anybody how important our naval presence I know as well as anybody how important our naval presence is around the world, and certainly in the Gulf And I could not be, and I know the President could not be, prouder of our men and women in uniform.
	I also want to thank the Iranian authorities for their cooperation and quick response.
	These are always situations which, as everybody here knows, have an ability, if not properly guided, to get out of control.
	Well, okay, we can cut this idiot off.
	To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, you never really expect, it's not that you expect an Easter Island head to speak well, it's that he's speaking it all.
	That really is the astonishing point here.
	But there's John Kerry thanking Iran for Essentially kidnapping some American sailors.
	So thank you, Iran.
	And it wasn't just John Kerry.
	It was the head of the Democratic National Committee, Jar Jar Binks.
	And she went ahead and she also said that all of this is just directly related to the fact that the Obama administration is so stellar and stunning when it comes to their foreign policy.
	So here is Debbie Wasserman Binks talking about how it is that the Obama administration's been so brilliant with its diplomacy.
	I think an example of the ability for us to quickly negotiate the release of our sailors yesterday was directly related to the fact that we have been working through Secretary Kerry and the Iranian leadership over these last two years.
	And without that relationship, I think the results could have been very different and very unfortunate.
	Oh, really?
	Okay.
	And then she added, Mr. Love Barack Obama!
	I do believe the theory, by the way, the George Lucas theory that Debbie Wasserman Banks is in fact a Sith Lord.
	I do believe the countervailing alternative theory.
	So this is the alternative world in which the left lives, and this is why Bernie Sanders is considered a frontrunner, and why he's doing well.
	And so on the right side of the aisle, you have people who even refuse to recognize that their own base is angry.
	And on the left side of the aisle, they live in an alternative universe where John Kerry and Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are pillars of absolute strength on foreign policy.
	And then you wonder why our politics are broken, and this is why our politics are broken.
	Okay, so we have some extra stuff to get to today.
	A couple of things that I like, and then some things that I hate, and then finally I want to do a couple mailbag entries because we have to go... We actually got some letters from folks, actually a lot of letters from folks, and so we'll go through some letters to the Ben Shapiro Show podcast.
	Okay, a couple of things that I like.
	So I'm a violinist.
	I'm a violinist from the age of five.
	I haven't practiced extensively for probably, at this point, six or seven years, which is really unfortunate.
	When I was a kid, I thought I was going to go to Peabody School of Music at Johns Hopkins, and I studied with one of the top ten violin teachers in the world.
	I was actually a world-class violinist at one point.
	I decided you have to make a commitment at a certain point as a kid, If you really want to be world-world-class, like soloing with orchestras world-class, you have to practice six, seven, eight hours a day, and you have to give pretty much everything else up.
	And I decided I didn't want to do that.
	I was only practicing like three hours a day, and that wasn't enough to make it happen.
	And so, you know, it's a fun hobby for me.
	But I do love the violin repertoire, and if you've never heard the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, it's a wonderful piece, and you should check that out.
	My favorite violin concerto.
	Probably.
	And there's so many great pieces in the violin repertoire that are fun to play and fun to listen to.
	The Brahms Violin Concerto is terrific.
	There's a showpiece called Preludium and Allegro by Fritz Kreisler that's a lot of fun.
	And I thought that since my birthday is tomorrow, we may as well celebrate with a 20-year-old piece, a video.
	So, you know, 20 years ago, I was 12, and I was playing at the Israeli Bonds Banquet.
	So I know that a lot of people have seen this already.
	It has probably 50,000 hits on YouTube or something.
	But if you haven't seen it, here's a small piece of me playing violin when I was but a lad.
	And not much has changed.
	I basically have that amount of fat on my cheeks still.
	but here is me when I was 12 years old playing some violin.
	piano plays
	softly piano
	plays softly
	piano plays softly Oh, I was a cutie.
	And look what all that talent has brought me to.
	Balloons on my desk.
	So, Schindler's List.
	It was actually introduced by Larry King, and it was weird because I was interviewed by Larry King like two years ago, and I brought this tape up to him.
	He did not, of course, remember it, but he introduced me in this piece beforehand by saying that at the time I wanted to be on the Supreme Court of the United States, and so the Supreme Court would have to close early on Fridays.
	So there are some things that I like.
	Not necessarily me playing violin.
	It's hard to watch yourself, you know, because you realize where you're making all the mistakes, but it's fun anyway.
	Okay, some things that I hate.
	The Oscar nominations are out today.
	And the Oscar nominations are out, and one of the things they did in 2009, the Oscars, is they decided they were going to broaden the category of best picture to include anywhere from 5 to 10 movies.
	So it could be all the way up to 10 movies.
	And the stated goal was that they wanted to include movies that people liked, right?
	They were sick of putting up movies that nobody had ever seen.
	Yeah, not so much.
	So there were eight nominees for Best Picture this year.
	The press secretary, Sid Gannis, he said that the goal was to make it more interesting and less cloistered.
	And Variety reported the other big winners could be the TV audience if the expanded list includes more populist fare.
	Yeah, not so much.
	So there were eight nominees for Best Picture this year.
	The Big Short, Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn, Mad Max Fury Road, The Martian, The Revenant, Room, and Spotlight.
	So I will freely admit the only one of these movies I've seen, like pretty much everyone else, is The Martian, right?
	The That's the only movie on this list that I've seen.
	I know a lot of people saw Mad Max Fury Road.
	It made about $150 million at the box office.
	There are two movies on this list that made over $100 million at the box office, which is kind of, for a big-budget film, that's at this point almost break-even point for a lot of big-budget films.
	The other films, Bridge of Spies, which was the Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg movie, that one pretty much bombed at the office.
	The Big Short never did big business.
	And so the question is, why is it that none of the films that actually made money got nominated for Best Picture or pretty much for anything?
	Because Hollywood is so leftist that even when it comes to the acting categories, they didn't put up anyone who you would possibly think was up for it.
	So for example, I think that there's a good case that Han Solo, right?
	Harrison Ford.
	Why not give him a Best Supporting Actor nomination?
	Right?
	Why is that so bad?
	Why would it be so terrible?
	It's a weak category this year.
	Why not give him a Best Supporting... Like, everyone went to the theater to watch Han Solo.
	Right?
	That's why you went.
	If Han Solo's not in that movie, you don't go to see the movie.
	Right, then you're back in the prequels and everyone hates those because they're garbage.
	So the fact is that Harrison Ford, right, he could have been nominated, that wouldn't have been a big deal, but they did nominate Cate Blanchett and Rudy Mara for being lesbians in the 50s in Carol, a movie that has now more nominees than people who have ever seen it.
	They nominated Eddie Redmayne for playing a transgender woman from the 1920s in this ridiculous movie called The Danish Girl, which we've talked about on the show before.
	So did Alicia Vikander, who's a very beautiful woman, but she plays the wife in The Danish Girl.
	That's not even her best role of the year, right?
	Ex Machina came out this year, and she's actually really good in Ex Machina.
	If you're gonna nominate her, nominate her for that.
	That was a surprise hit.
	So the question is, why didn't they nominate any of these?
	Especially because, if you go back in history, for example, wouldn't it have been so terrible?
	There are ten movies.
	Star Wars isn't gonna win Best Picture.
	Couldn't you give it a nod?
	Give it a nomination?
	Okay, it's the number one earning picture of all time.
	You couldn't give it a nomination?
	Like, really?
	The original Star Wars, Episode IV, was nominated for Best Picture in 1978.
	Or Jurassic World, would it be so terrible to give that a nomination for something?
	It wasn't a great movie, but it's a good, fun movie.
	Jurassic Park won three Academy Awards back in 1993, and probably should have been nominated for Best Picture that year, considering that Remains of the Day was, and that is the single most boring thing ever put on film.
	Inside Out certainly should have been nominated.
	Inside Out, the animated flick?
	Really a terrifically creative film.
	Really creative.
	They left two slots empty.
	They didn't even fill out all their slots.
	Would it have been such a terrible thing for all the people and made $356 million at the box office, at the domestic box office, would it have been such an awful thing to give this sop to the American public?
	We saw a movie and we want to root for that movie to win.
	When's the last time like a real blockbuster big picture epic won best picture?
	Was it Return of the King maybe?
	I think it was Return of the King.
	And then it's been nothing since.
	None of the Batman flicks.
	Dark Knight certainly should have won best.
	What came out the year of Dark Knight?
	What won that year?
	Does anyone even remember?
	Hurt Locker.
	I mean, that's a joke.
	Hurt Locker won that year.
	That's exactly right.
	Hurt Locker won that year.
	Hurt Locker is a mediocre flick at best.
	At best.
	And last year, American Sniper loses to Birdman?
	Are you kidding me?
	Are you kidding me?
	Right?
	But this is even worse.
	At least American Sniper was nominated.
	Of course, if it had not been made by Clint Eastwood, it wouldn't have been nominated.
	And the critics would have savaged the crap out of it.
	No question.
	Clint Eastwood gave that film a shield.
	But here's the point.
	There are a bunch of movies on this list.
	Cinderella.
	Did anyone here see Cinderella?
	The Disney film?
	Charming.
	Absolutely charming.
	Just a beautifully made film.
	The only thing it got nominated for, basically, was Best Costume Design.
	Beauty and the Beast was nominated in the early 90s for Best Picture.
	Would it be so terrible that a movie that, like, my kid could see would get nominated for Best Picture?
	But instead, we have to, you know, get...
	Instead we have to get the big short?
	Something about the financial collapse?
	Like anyone cares?
	We lived through it, okay?
	It sucked.
	Got it.
	You know, it's fine.
	You want to make that movie?
	Blow your money on making it.
	The cast for the big short is maybe the best cast of the last 10 years.
	And it's in a movie that made 33 million dollars.
	Because the priorities of Hollywood are always their politics and never what you care about.
	They just use what you care about to fund their own priorities and then slap you in the face over it.
	Which is why all of the ratings are going down for the Oscars as well they should.
	So, you know, that's something that I really hate is the elitism of the Academy.
	It really would not kill them.
	It would not kill them at all if they were to nominate at least a couple of flicks that some people might have liked.
	I mean, even at the Golden Globes, they couldn't even put the Martian in the right category.
	They give it an award for comedy or musical.
	Musical!
	I wasn't aware that Matt Damon was singing while he sifted his own crap in a Martian tent.
	I wasn't aware that that was part of the film.
	Okay, so that's something I hate.
	And speaking of Hollywood things that I hate, there's something that's making the rounds right now that's really quite horrible.
	It's this show on Netflix, and I've watched a couple of episodes of it, called Making of a Murderer.
	It's about a guy named Stephen Avery, and it's become a big thing now.
	It's a 10-part documentary, 10 hours of your life that you can waste watching this.
	In which basically these documentary makers leave out all of the evidence to suggest that a guy who murdered a girl didn't actually murder the girl, that it was a big conspiracy by the state of Wisconsin in order to get this guy because they had wrongfully imprisoned him on charges of rape, he got out, and then they framed him for murder, right?
	And here's the trailer for Making of a Murderer in case you missed it.
	Let's grab the trailer if we can first.
	And then we'll go to the woman who is the fiancé.
	And we don't have the trailer?
	Okay, fine.
	So here, in any case, Stephen Avery's ex, his ex-fiancé, she's now coming out.
	This is the guy who was the supposed innocent in all of this.
	She's coming out and she's saying, oh no, he absolutely did it.
	And here is her testifying about the fact that he absolutely did it and what kind of a guy he was.
	So we can play that.
	Do you believe Stephen Avery killed Teresa Halbach?
	Yes, I do.
	Why?
	Because he threatened to kill me and my family and a friend of mine.
	How did he threaten you?
	I was in a bath and he threatened to throw a blow dryer in there and he told me that he'd be able to get away with it.
	What was the reason?
	He's sick.
	What was your relationship like with him?
	Not good.
	Abusive.
	What kinds of things would he do to you?
	He'd beat me all the time, punch me, throw me against the wall.
	I'd try to leave, he'd smash the windshield out of my car so I couldn't leave him.
	I was at work one day and he was up there spying through a window.
	I got in the car after work, I knew nothing about it and he just started slapping me and got back to the jail.
	They told me I wouldn't be working anymore so I couldn't see him because they noticed the red marks on my face.
	How long were you in a relationship with him?
	Two years.
	Just about two years.
	Okay, we can cut it off there.
	First of all, stellar camera work by Headline News.
	The camera's on the reporter literally this entire interview, so you're just hearing this woman cry off-screen.
	But, okay, so for people who don't know, this guy murdered a woman named Teresa Halbach.
	He was a 25-year-old photographer, and he catfished her to his house.
	He said that he wanted her to come there to do a photo shoot for Autotrader magazine.
	and asked specifically for her to come there.
	And according to the prosecution, he then changed her to his bed, raped her, forced his nephew to rape her, stabbed her, killed her, and then drained her blood in the bathtub and burned her body in a trash can, basically, after torturing her for a prolonged period of time.
	And the documentary makers try to make it seem like he's innocent.
	And they do the same thing on a routine basis.
	I mean, this is what Hollywood does.
	Hollywood finds a certain romance.
	We were talking about this yesterday, a little bit after the show.
	Hollywood finds a romance in turning villains into victims.
	And this is true going- Bob Dylan did this with the hurricane, right?
	Hurricane Carter was a guilty man.
	He was not innocent.
	They tried to turn him into an innocent man.
	They made a movie about him with Will Smith.
	It's not true.
	He was guilty.
	Now Fox is about to do this with O.J.
	Simpson.
	They have a miniseries they're doing with Cuba Gooding Jr.
	about O.J.
	Simpson where they leave it up to the audience whether O.J.
	did it.
	Which is just... O.J.
	did it, okay?
	Just telling you straight out.
	O.J.
	murdered his ex-wife, and then he murdered Ronald Goldman as well, and he's a brutal murderer.
	Okay?
	But this is what Hollywood likes to do, and the way that they explain all of this is they talk about the backstory, the side of the killer that you didn't know.
	The side of the killer you didn't know.
	And what's really fascinating about the Bible... Obviously, I love the Bible.
	I'm a believer in the Bible.
	It's why I wear a yarmulke.
	It's why I'm an Orthodox Jew.
	When it comes to the Bible, God, who wrote it, does not care about backstory.
	One of the fascinating things, if you read any element of the Bible, is basically what you get is the lineage of the person, and then fast forward to when they're adult making decisions.
	You don't get anything about how they were mistreated by their siblings or how they were bruised in childhood.
	No, all you get is here's them being born and now here's what they do as a human being.
	And they're responsible because they're adults.
	They're an adult so you're responsible for your own actions as a human being.
	What Hollywood focuses in on is backstory all the time.
	And what they don't understand is that the backstory is usually the least interesting part of the person.
	It's why Hollywood likes backstory and not plot, and plot has gotten weaker over time and backstory has gotten stronger over time.
	We were talking specifically about the fact that now they're gonna make a movie with young Han Solo talking about his formative experiences.
	I don't care.
	I don't care.
	I'm not gonna watch that movie.
	The reason I'm not gonna watch that movie is because Han Solo is cool the minute he arrives on screen and shoots Greedo first.
	Right?
	That's how you know that he's cool.
	The way you know that he's a badass is because he's not gonna take crap from people, somebody's hunting him, and he shoots him right off the bat.
	Right?
	You don't need to know where he went to high school and was he was he bullied for being gay and like you don't need to know any of this stuff.
	The backstory is not important.
	But for the left, backstory is always important.
	Always important.
	Except when it comes to people with whom they really disagree, in which case the backstory doesn't matter at all.
	But it is fascinating that the left's obsession with backstory Goes here, too.
	I mean, the first half of Making of a Murderer is what a glorious kid Stephen Avery was and how all of his youthful hijinks were just that.
	They were hijinks.
	Like, for example, in the documentary, at least the part that I saw, they say that Avery was goofing around with a cat and burned it to death.
	I've never goofed around with anything and burned it to death.
	It's never actually happened.
	When I goof around with my child, I'm never in mortal fear that I'm going to burn my child to death.
	What he did is he set his cat on fire, he soaked it in gasoline, and then watched it burn to death.
	That's what he did, because he's a sociopath.
	Right?
	Or at the very least, he's somebody who's very sick.
	Or evil.
	But, again, the left's obsession with backstory is something that actually hurts its art, because they're so interested in backstory.
	Books are for backstory.
	Movies are for action.
	Backstory tends to hurt.
	Okay.
	A couple of entries to the mailbag.
	I know we're running really long, but, you know, we do it all the time.
	So, a couple of entries.
	A couple of entries from the mailbag, because I've been promising, particularly subscribers, if you are a subscriber, we know.
	And we love you.
	And if you write us an email at bshapiroatdailywire.com, we will answer your emails in our mailbag.
	So, a couple of letters from the mailbag that I want to discuss.
	So, one is from a guy named Ari.
	He says, Do you realistically believe millions of workers can just get a different job?
	Technology is getting more powerful and sophisticated.
	Many agree this is unprecedented in human history.
	Why are you so convinced this won't be a problem in the workforce?
	Do you realistically believe millions of workers can just get a different job?
	We'll answer that one first.
	Yes!
	Because it turns out that we've had massive technological change over the last two centuries and the unemployment rate has stayed basically the same or gone down.
	Because when technology gets better, it creates more jobs in different sectors.
	And the fact is, that it's what makes your life easier.
	The reason that we have weekends and it doesn't hurt the economy, the reason that we have leisure time and it doesn't hurt the economy, the reason you can take a week vacation and it doesn't hurt the economy, is because of all the technologies that took over for you.
	The reason you have nice stuff and live longer is because of the technology.
	And listen, there was no IT sector 40 years ago.
	Right?
	There was no high-tech medical sector 40 years ago.
	There wasn't a computer sector at all 40 years ago.
	And now, how many people work in the service sector?
	The answer is a bajillion.
	Right?
	There would not be a podcast.
	There wouldn't be any of the people behind the cameras.
	There wouldn't be any of the frustrated faces I'm looking at who just want me to stop now.
	There wouldn't be any of this if it weren't for the advances in technology.
	Right?
	So, yes, technology does not kill jobs.
	It just changes the form of the economy.
	And you wouldn't want to live back in agricultural days where everybody had to pick their own vegetables.
	It wouldn't be fun for you.
	The second question is why can't socialism work in the United States?
	And the answer is because it doesn't work anywhere else.
	So we're no different.
	It doesn't work in Europe.
	Despite all of the lies, Europe will go bankrupt.
	It is going bankrupt.
	It's going both morally and economically bankrupt.
	And it's unsustainable over the long run.
	They've also had to pay for no military budget because we've been paying for their military budget for basically more than half a century.
	Okay, here is another question.
	This one I thought was interesting.
	From a gal named Christine.
	She writes, Dear Mr. Shapiro, a few months ago, I watched your lecture at YF, Young America's Foundation.
	And thanks to YF, I'm going to be going to a national tour of college campuses.
	So keep an eye out for that.
	And when asked about your opinion on transgender people, you were talking about how people on the left believe men and women are inherently the same and you could just switch between them.
	Right.
	This is what the left believes.
	The left believes I could walk in today, say I'm a woman, and you have to treat me as a woman.
	I had a discussion about this with a friend of mine.
	They told me about the brain scans of transgender people, which show that transgender people, on average, have a brain matching their gender identity.
	In the Caitlyn Jenner debate, they wanted to talk about brain scans.
	What are your opinion of these brain scans of transgender people?
	Okay, so there have been a couple of studies.
	They're very flawed because they have very small sample sizes, and the people you're dealing with are self-identified transgenders, so there's no real control group.
	What you'd really need, theoretically, is a group of people who haven't identified as transgender yet, so you don't have any clues, and then you look at their brains and say, do they look more female or male?
	There's also another flaw, which is that of all the parts of the human body, the brain is what we understand least.
	In a hundred years, they're gonna look back on what we're doing to people's brain chemistry right now, and they're gonna look back on it like people who watch the Nick look at the surgeries on the Nick on Showtime.
	It's brutal and it's barbaric.
	I mean, it truly is.
	Our understanding of how the brain works, extremely limited.
	All of which is to say that I've never said that transgenderism is not something that is a chemical disorder in the brain or even a structural disorder in the brain.
	Of course it's biological, I assume, because I think that pretty much everything that happens in your body is biological.
	I think schizophrenia is biological, for example.
	The question is, what's the best solution?
	Pretending these people are women is not the best solution, and the proof is in the pudding.
	When we do transgender surgery on people, and remove their genitals or add genitals, the suicide rate is precisely the same as it was before, and the suicide rate in the transgender community is 40%.
	And it's not because people are mean, or because of lack of social services.
	It's 40% in San Francisco, it's 40% in Timbuktu.
	It doesn't matter.
	The fact is that when you have people, the high comorbidity between transgenderism, gender identity disorder, is what they used to call it, now they call it gender dysmorphia, when the idea that there is no sort of biological component is not true, but it's also not true that you can magically cure it by calling a man a woman and then slicing off some parts.
	It's not true.
	And so you have to determine, okay, if this is a mental illness, which it is, there are lots of structural mental illnesses, Then how do you treat that best?
	And it doesn't mean talk therapy.
	It's possible you should be looking to produce drugs that help this.
	But one thing that is clear is that you should not buy into the idea that chopping off people's genitals or an 11-year-old who thinks he's a girl actually is a girl.
	We don't have enough information, even with brain scans of the living, to tell whether that is true.
	And even if it were true, the solutions being proposed are not the correct solutions.
	By the way, there was a study that came out this week, or two weeks ago, that said that they've done brain scans of men and women and they can't even tell structural differences between men and women, let alone say that a brain looks more like a woman than a man inside a man's body.
	It just doesn't, that's, the science is not developed enough for any of this.
	Okay, we'll do, I promise, one more and then we'll be done.
	So, here is the, here is the last question.
	The last question is, this one goes to... let's see.
	Tim, one topic I find particularly interesting and does not seem to be touched a lot in politics is obesity.
	Michelle Obama touches on it a lot.
	If I'm not mistaken, heart disease is one of, if not the leading cause of death in the country, which is both largely and directly linked to obesity.
	Besides the fact that being obese and not taking care of your body is objectively wrong, the left seem to sweep this issue under the rug or tell people to embrace their body types.
	That doesn't particularly go to say that people on the right are all macho, muscular, or in shape, because most people are obese.
	But the overarching question is, why do you think obesity is not a central topic of discussion in politics?
	It's certainly more instrumental in deaths than things like gun violence, and it's completely and 100% preventable with proper self-control.
	Well, Tim, your question answers itself.
	Because it is preventable, as a general rule, not all the time, there are people with genetic disorders, because it is generally preventable with proper self-control, that is why we don't talk about it.
	Because the left believes self-control doesn't exist, the left believes you can't control yourself, you don't have free will, your biology drives you, and so if your biology drives you to eat unending portions of sugar and get fat, We can't in any way suggest that perhaps you should make different decisions.
	Either that or we'll use government to regulate you into making different decisions.
	You have no capacity to make the decision on your own, but we can use government to cram it down on you, making crappy lunches and forcing your kids to eat them.
	So, happy birthday to me!
	I hope that you're going to enjoy the... I will be live-tweeting and live-blogging the Republican debate tonight.
	Follow it at dailywire.com for all the fun.
	We do lookalikes, I make jokes, I scream in unending pain every time John Kasich speaks.
	You can be a part of all of it over at dailywired.com.
	And for my birthday, my present, you want to buy me a present?
	Subscribe to our podcast at dailywired.com and help pay for all of these poor mules who will have to now process all of the data I've just spewed forth and put it on the internet so you can listen to it.
	I am Ben Shapiro.

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