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Feb. 1, 2016 - The Ben Shapiro Show
50:21
Ep. 64 - Iowa Is Tonight. I Hate Everyone And Everything.

Ben makes the case against and for Trump, talks about Hillary's email scandal, and makes some observations about both of Susan Sarandon's SAG awards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Time Text
The day has come.
We have arrived.
The apocalypse is here, and we will talk about all of it.
I left on Friday hating the universe.
I come back hating the universe twice as much!
So there's so much to talk to.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
- The un-political stuff. - Tend to demonize people 'cause they don't care about your feelings. - So here's the Republican presidential race We've got a guy who lies all the time against a guy who is for amnesty, and a Republican who's the most conservative person in the field who's now despised by the anti-establishment crowd because, for some reason, I don't know.
Also, on the Democratic side, we have a multiple felon against a man who is utterly out of his mind.
So, Everything's going great.
The country's in fantastic hands.
And welcome back.
It's Monday.
We have a full work week ahead of us.
So if that doesn't put you in a good mood, I don't know what will.
We'll start with, of course, the Iowa caucuses.
We don't know what the outcome is as we record this.
Obviously, it could go late into the night.
The caucuses start at 7 o'clock.
Iowa time, which is two hours ahead of time and also in an alternative universe where corn and snow dominate the news.
But apparently it starts at 7 o'clock.
It usually takes them at least a couple of hours to do the whole process and then you start getting the vote counts.
It could be late.
It could be late tonight.
It could be 10, 11 o'clock tonight before we begin getting results out of Iowa.
But one thing is certain.
I am already depressed.
And the reason that I am already depressed Is because how could my fellow conservatives do this to me?
Not to me, but to conservatism as a general matter.
I've been telling you for a week, a week, months, that Donald Trump is not a conservative.
But last week, as you remember, about this time last week, we did a full-on explanation of all the issues on which Donald Trump had flipped, and people went a little bit crazy.
People on Twitter said that I was Jewish, which is true, but somehow it was meant to be an insult.
People on Twitter said that it was crazy.
How could I doubt Trump?
Trump was the strongest.
Trump was the best.
Trump was the most glorious.
Trump had the greatest hair.
Trump had the most wonderful eyes and the greatest demeanor and not stubby fingers, all sorts of things.
And so I come back the following Monday, and it turns out that the world is still insane.
It turns out that Donald Trump is officially telling people, officially telling people that he's lying to them, that he's actually a leftist, he's saying these things out loud, and all of his followers are still saying, not all, some of his followers are still saying, well he, you know, how dare you criticize him?
You criticize Trump?
That's terrible!
Donald Trump's the most, he's gonna save America!
He's gonna make America great again!
And, He's not.
Okay?
He's just not.
He's gonna make Trump great again.
Trump is Trump.
But, as I've said for weeks, the only good reason to vote for Donald Trump is because you think that he is the most electable.
Now, thinking he's the most electable, I wanted to bunk one myth.
There is a poll out from Gallup that says that Donald Trump is the most disliked candidate in the history of their poll.
He has 60% unapproval rating.
An unpopularity rating of 60%.
I think only 32% of Americans say they like Trump.
52% of Americans say they dislike Hillary.
So Trump is officially the only Republican in the field with unpopularity higher than Hillary's.
I actually don't think that that's a particularly telling statistic because Trump has been hit with everything including the kitchen sink.
And I don't think that being unpopular necessarily means you don't win.
Hillary is unpopular and she's going to win the primaries and she's going to end up being the nominee.
So what's kind of fascinating is that people identify these two things.
There is a decent argument that Donald Trump is the most electable Republican simply because he's not really conservative.
He says whatever is convenient at the time.
He clocks people randomly.
All the things that people like about Trump.
That's actually a decent reason to vote for Donald Trump.
What is not a decent reason to vote for Donald Trump is if you think that Donald Trump is a conservative.
Donald Trump is not.
He is not.
I repeat, he is not a conservative.
Donald Trump is not a conservative.
So, I mean, he's flipped on every single issue.
He flipped on everything from immigration to abortion.
He flipped on everything from From same-sex marriage to partial birth abortion, even flipped onto ISIS.
I mean, he's flipped on everything.
Everything that is possible to flip on, Donald Trump has basically flipped on.
And he is laughing.
He's laughing at Republicans who are voting for him right now.
And the way you can tell that he's laughing at these folks is because he knows that they're saps.
Okay, here's what he told the New York Times over the weekend.
You ready for this?
Here's what he told the New York Times, quote, You know, if it gets a little boring, if I see people starting to sort of maybe thinking about leaving one of his rallies, I can sort of tell the audience I just say, quote, So in other words, he doesn't necessarily believe any of this stuff, but he knows what keeps people in the room.
And he was doing the same routine over the weekend.
Donald Trump said over the weekend that he is going to end up winning Bernie Sanders supporters because he's going to appeal to them on trade, he's going to get Democrats to vote for him.
This is supposed to be the stalwart conservative that people are talking about?
Come on.
So in that way, we're the same.
I think a lot of his people are going to come over.
One of the reasons that I'll win, and I think none of the other guys will win, is because I'm going to get states that they'll never get.
I have a good chance of getting New York, as an example.
I have a good chance of getting Virginia.
I'll get Pennsylvania.
I'll get Ohio.
I'll get Michigan.
I'll get Florida.
You know, my numbers just came down.
I'm at 48.
The sitting senator is, I think, at 11 or 12, and a former governor is in the 8s.
But I think I'll win Florida and I'll win a lot of states.
And one of the reasons I'll win them, a lot of Democrats are going to cross over to me because they're tired of what's happening.
He says a lot of people are going to cross over and they're going to endorse him.
And then he said this.
OK, so that's the good reason to vote for Trump, because you think that he might win.
There's only one downside.
He'll actually be president if he wins.
So, you know, the fact is that he'll be better than Hillary Clinton, I assume, just because, again, Pretty much anything, including a flaming bag of dog crap, would be better than Hillary Clinton in the presidency.
But, here's the problem with Donald Trump.
Here's what Donald Trump had to say, same weekend, about nationalized healthcare.
You ready?
At a rally.
You say that Ted Cruz is a liar, but you have said that you want everyone to be covered on healthcare, and the government's going to pay for it.
How is that not like Obamacare?
That's true.
I want people taken care of.
I have a heart.
I want people taken care of.
But people have no money.
We have to help people.
But that doesn't mean single payer.
It means we have to help people.
If somebody has no money and they're lying in the middle of the street...
And they're dying.
I'm going to take care of that person and try and get them back to health.
We're going to work with our hospitals.
We're going to work with our doctors.
We've got to do something.
You can't have a small percentage of our economy, because they're down and out, have absolutely no protection.
So they end up dying from, you know, what you could have a simple procedure or even a pill.
You can't do that.
We'll work something out.
That doesn't mean single payer.
And I mean, maybe he's got no heart.
And if this means I lose an election, that's fine.
Because frankly, we have to take care of the people in our country.
We can't let them die on the sidewalks of New York or the sidewalks of Iowa or anywhere else.
So, but that's not single-payer.
And as far as Obamacare is concerned, one of the staples of my speech, and you can ask any of my many supporters, is repeal and replace Obamacare.
It's a disaster.
The premiums are going up 25, 35, 45 percent, George.
I mean, you take a look at what's going on with Obamacare.
It's an outrage.
It's probably going to fail on its own unless the Republicans renew it like they have been in 17.
But by 17, Obamacare will fail on its own.
A whole staple of my campaign is repealing getting rid of Obamacare and replacing it.
*Groans* What?
*Groans* *Groans* Okay, so, there's Donald Trump saying in approximately a minute that he wants to- first of all, he drops a line there, he says, "You have no heart if you don't want to help the people who are on the streets, dying on the streets." First of all, I've missed where in America there are people who are dying on the streets for lack of healthcare.
They're sitting around and they're just keeling over, dying for lack of healthcare.
We have laws on the books already, that if you walk into an emergency room, the doctors have to take care of you.
That's already on the books.
But he says all this stuff, and then he's asked, okay, specifically, what do you mean when you say the government will pay for it?
He says, yeah, I mean that.
He says, well, how is that not nationalized healthcare?
He says, don't worry, we'll work something out.
We'll work something out?
We'll work something out?
This is the guy who you're claiming is gonna be the conservative?
This guy?
We'll work something out on national- But don't worry, he's against Obamacare.
But he's for government paying for healthcare.
But he's gonna work something out.
But he's not for nationalized healthcare.
For you to buy into this.
For you to buy into his routine.
And again, there's a difference between the cynical take on Trump that he's the most electable, which people said about Romney and people said about McCain.
There's a difference between that take and the take that Trump is actually a conservative who is going to implement conservative principle.
There is no evidence he's going to do that.
None.
Zero.
Zip.
Zilch.
Nada.
None.
Okay?
The idea—you can watch that.
Can you imagine any—Rick Perry, in 2012, lost his presidential bid not over the oops moment.
Go back and look at the polls.
Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, who was probably the most qualified guy in the field at the time, Rick Perry in 2012 lost the nomination because in debate he said that he wanted to spend taxpayer dollars to send the children of illegal immigrants and illegal immigrants to public college.
He said this is the dreamers program.
He wanted the dream program to be in place and he said if you disagreed it was because you had no heart.
Donald Trump just said that if you don't believe that it's the government's job to take care of everybody's health care you have no heart and nothing is happening to him.
You know, this is not endemic to the right.
It's true to the left also.
We've reached the point in American politics where worship of particular personalities is so strong, so powerful, that principle no longer matters.
And they've taken polls on this.
They've taken polls.
They say, okay, Barack Obama...
He wants to make healthcare affordable through state exchanges.
Are you in favor of this?
Yes or no?
And a majority of Republicans, vast majority, say no.
Then they say, Donald Trump wants to make healthcare affordable through state exchanges sponsored by the federal government.
Are you for it or no?
Majority of Republicans, yes.
This suggests that you don't know what the hell you're talking about.
It suggests that you don't have a clue.
It suggests that you're basing your opinions on thought leaders.
If Donald Trump is your thought leader, the man doesn't have a thought.
So how can he be a thought leader?
He's just a me leader.
So what you're really doing is you're just following Donald Trump because you follow Donald Trump.
Again, there are good reasons to vote for Donald Trump.
His policies are not one of them.
And Donald Trump doubled down on this over the weekend.
He said Senator Ted Cruz is the most consistent conservative in the race.
You don't have to like Cruz personally.
You don't have to think that Cruz is charming.
You don't have to think that Cruz is a great campaigner.
I think Cruz has significant flaws as a candidate, but there's no question he's the most conservative guy in the race.
Here is Donald Trump calling Ted Cruz a liar.
Ted Cruz is the liar.
Donald Trump calling Ted Cruz a liar.
Donald Trump calling Ted Cruz a liar.
Here we go.
On that Obamacare issue right there, he's saying because you want the government to pay for everyone to have health care, that is just like Obamacare.
Look, Ted Cruz is a total liar.
I am so against Obamacare, I've been saying it for two years in my speeches, I'm going to repeal and replace Obamacare.
I don't even know where he gets this, but he's a liar.
He didn't even put down in his financial disclosure forms that he borrowed money from banks At low interest loans, lower than you could get, lower than anybody could get.
He's got these favorable deals from banks on Wall Street.
He never put it down in his financial disclosure forms.
I mean, look, Ted is a liar.
This is why nobody likes him.
This is why he doesn't have one endorsement from one senator, not one.
He works with these senators, doesn't have one endorsement.
Okay, the reason that he has no endorsements is because all of the senators are willing to work with each other on the Senate floor and Ted Cruz is not willing to do that.
The idea that they're not endorsing him because they somehow oppose Goldman Sachs, the idea that Donald Trump opposes Goldman Sachs is absurd.
Donald Trump is as inside a Wall Street guy as it is possible to be.
Where do you think he gets his loans?
Where do you think he gets his bridge loans?
Where do you think he gets his mezzanine loans to build his stuff?
You think he's got all that money just sitting around?
He takes loans to do all of these things.
So did Ted Cruz.
You may not like Ted Cruz loans, but you want to talk about a liar?
Let's talk about a liar.
Donald Trump... I'm a religious person.
Donald Trump, he, over the weekend, decided that he was going to send a message to evangelicals.
Here's Donald Trump sending his message to evangelicals.
I really appreciate the support given to me by the evangelicals.
They've been incredible.
Every poll says how well I'm doing with them.
And you know, my mother gave me this Bible, this very Bible, many years ago.
In fact, it's her writing right here.
She wrote the name and my address, and it's just very special to me.
And again, I want to thank the evangelicals.
I will never let you down.
You have got to be kidding me.
You've got to be effing kidding me.
Honest to God, this is- How stupid does he think- I mean, apparently they are, but how stupid do you have to be to buy into this crap?
I mean, honestly, if you were reading the Bible on an irregular basis, you might take a look at, like, the Seventh Commandment.
You know, the one about adultery?
You might try that one.
But Donald Trump- Okay, Donald- Donald Trump is such a panderer.
He is lying to you.
He's telling you what you want to hear.
In the latest poll out of Iowa, he's running neck and neck with Ted Cruz among evangelicals.
Here's what people miss.
He's so pandering.
The two Corinthians thing.
You remember a few weeks ago, people made a big deal because he said in a speech that he made a reference to 2 Corinthians.
And he called it 2 Corinthians, like 2 Corinthians walk into a bar.
Or like, I just bought 2 Corinthian sofas, right?
2 Corinthians.
And then he proceeded to blame Tony Perkins.
He's an actual religious guy, because Tony Perkins sent him a letter saying, here's a verse from Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 3.17, right?
And it said 2 Corinthians 3.17.
And Trump blamed Perkins.
He said, well, he didn't write 2 Corinthians.
Right, because this is how you notate the Bible, you dumbass.
Okay, honest to God, when I quote the book of Samuel, it's Samuel 2.
Okay, there are two books of Samuel.
There's the first one and the second one.
It's not called 2 Samuel.
But that's not even the problem.
That's not even the problem.
Okay, so he screws that up.
Fine.
And then he pretended that his mother used to teach him that way.
Oh, she was from Scotland.
And oh, in bonnet Scotland, you know where I'm from in Scotland, they used to say two Corinthians, not second Corinthians.
From his long history of Being part of William Wallace's army.
But the part of the quote that people missed is what he continued to say.
He said two Corinthians, right?
Two Corinthians, 317.
That's the whole ballgame.
Is that the one?
Is that the one you like?
I think that's the one you like.
What?
Okay, so he's clearly saying to religious people, I don't know this verse, I have no idea what this verse is, but that's the one you like, right?
Come on, it's the one you like!
I mean, you know it, you like it, come on!
Right, and he does this all the time.
He said, today, again, he said, if I'm president, you're gonna see Merry Christmas in department stores.
Believe me, believe me.
Really, how?
You can use executive order.
Is that how this magically works?
You're gonna see Merry Christmas.
If I become president, Jesus Christ will descend from the sky in my person.
If you believe this stuff, I mean, this is quasi-religious gobbledygook.
And it's very upsetting.
Again, for the ninth time this particular episode, there are reasons to back Trump.
But don't pretend he's anything else than a conman.
You can say we need a conman, that's okay.
But the man's a conman.
He's Professor Harold Hill in Iowa trying to sell tubas.
Okay, here's how much so.
So yesterday, he goes to First Christian Church in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
Well, first, before we get to that, last week at his rally that he held at the same time as the debate, at the very end, he turns to his daughter, his daughter Ivanka, and he says, Ivanka over here, Ivanka, she's pregnant, and I want her to come back here and give birth in Iowa.
In fact, I wish you would give birth right now, I'd win Iowa.
If you vote for him because of this stuff, What?
What?
Okay, so anyway, he was at First Christian Church in Council Bluffs, Iowa, yesterday.
It was a Sunday, and Donald Trump, as we know, is a very religious man.
And so Donald Trump goes to church, and they're passing around the communion plates, okay?
I'm a Jew.
I figure that if there's a plate with little wafers on it, it's a communion plate, right?
Am I right here?
Okay, it's a communion plate.
Trump sees the communion plate.
Seriously, he did this.
of silver, right?
Like a lot of communion plates are.
And passing around this communion plate, he proceeds to reach into his wallet, pull out money, and put it on the communion plate.
Seriously, he did this.
He said, I thought it was for offering.
Well, it's possible that Trump doesn't actually know that much about communion, because here's what he told CNN a few months ago about communion.
Quote, when I drink my little wine, which is about the only wine I drink, and have my little cracker, I guess that's a form of asking for forgiveness.
And I do that as often as possible because I feel cleansed.
I think in terms of, let's go on, let's make it right.
When I drink my little wine, and have my little cracker, Okay, everybody in this room, except for me, does this.
Right?
Okay.
Have you ever described it as drink my little wine, have my little- it sounds like a Frank Sinatra song.
Drink my little wine, have my little cracker.
Like, what?
And yet people are buying into this.
And people are buying into the idea that he's anti-establishment.
The guy who just came out for national healthcare yesterday, but said he's not for it because he's against Obamacare, but he's for national healthcare.
And then proceeded to drop all of this language about Christianity and call Ted Cruz a liar, all of this.
He says he's going to stand up against the establishment.
Okay, yesterday, Bob Dole was on the radio.
You know it.
I know it.
The American people know it.
Bob Dole.
Bob Dole was on the radio.
And honest to God, it's just, I mean, the positive news is he's still alive.
I'm glad.
But Bob Dole was on the radio, and Bob Dole decides that he is going to, Bob Dole decides he's basically going to endorse Donald Trump.
Here's Bob Dole endorsing Donald Trump over Ted Cruz.
Well, I won the caucuses twice, and I still have a lot of friends in Iowa.
They've gotten a little older, but I still have a lot of friends.
I'm a conservative.
As I said, I'm a Grassley-Earths conservative.
During my 28-plus years in the Senate, I had a strong conservative record.
But that's not good enough for Ted Cruz.
He wants us to be on the far, far right.
And there are some people out there.
But what's he gonna do if he's elected?
He's gonna cost us wholesale losses, and the Congress, and governors, and state legislators.
But how do you know?
How do you know?
One of the things that he brought up is, Bob Dole really prefer a Donald Trump to me, that he thinks I will be more disrupted than a Donald Trump?
You say what?
Well, I'm a, again, I want to reiterate, my candidate is the best qualified in the group, Jeb Bush.
But if it comes down to Trump and Cruz, I would vote for Trump.
I think he's a negotiator.
He knows many members of Congress.
In fact, he's contributed to Democrats and Republicans.
He's worked for Democrats and Republicans more than I can say for Ted Cruz, who's a lone ranger in the Senate.
His way or the highway or shut down the government certainly doesn't do anyone any good and cost billions of dollars.
There's a lot of good federal workers out of work.
They just are weak.
Okay, I'm glad we reached the end of the tape because we're all going to die of boredom, which is why we were actually going to perish before Bob Dole, which would have been a shock since no one in this room is above the age of 40.
So it's, in any case, there's Bob Dole endorsing Donald Trump and endorsing him specifically because Cruz is too extreme and Donald Trump will work with the establishment.
You getting all this, folks?
Donald Trump, your anti-establishment champion.
The guy's gonna go in there like a bear in a china shop, a bull in a china shop.
He's gonna break things!
He's gonna make America great again by saying stuff and making deals!
Bob Dole just said, he's my kind of guy.
Bob Dole.
He's like Matt Damon.
Matt Damon.
Bob Dole.
Okay, so.
All of this is to say, again, vote for who you want to vote for.
But please, for the love of God, would you please take a look at who the people are that you are voting for?
The slavish worship of any candidate is bad.
I mean, I've spent time on this program.
I've spent time on every program I've ever done saying that Ted Cruz is the guy who I like in these primaries.
Ted Cruz is not an ideal candidate.
Ted Cruz has lots of holes as a candidate.
He's got lots of problems as a candidate.
But I understand where those holes and problems are.
What I can't deal with is the dishonesty of people who are pretending that Donald Trump is going to get in there and somehow be any sort of conservative.
He isn't.
He just isn't.
In a minute I'm going to talk about, you know, questions that I have for these various campaigns.
But I just wanted to go through that because I think it's important for people to understand why it is that Donald Trump is not who you say that he is.
He's not who you say... Now, here's the case for Trump.
You ready?
Here's the case for Trump.
Here's my even-handedness after spending 20 minutes here bashing the living crap out of Donald Trump.
Here's my case for even-handedness.
Here's Donald Trump on with CBS's John Dickerson.
And here's Donald Trump being asked about his Twitter feed.
But there's a lot of drama around your campaign.
You're occasionally in Twitter wars.
Is that presidential?
Do you think these Twitter back-and-forth fights?
Well, I'm in Twitter wars before really I was a politician, and now I'm carrying it out.
Don't forget, I started out with 17 people, including myself.
Now a lot of them are dropping out, and many more will be dropping out, and we'll get it down to a normal number.
But I was being barraged from all different sides.
Having Twitter is great.
And between Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, I have 12 million people, more than 12 million people.
So it is a great way of getting the word out.
But certainly, I mean, look, I went to great schools.
I was a good student, all of that stuff.
I'm very capable of slowing down Twitter or doing whatever I want to do.
But Twitter is actually, I found it to be, and Facebook, a wonderful modern way of communicating.
Okay, so here's the upside for Trump, right?
The upside for Trump is he understands how the media work.
And when he's asked about Twitter wars or whatever, he sort of brushes it off because he understands that most people who are watching don't care whether he says things on Twitter.
And the other case, the case for Trump is really not the case for Trump.
The case for Trump is the case against the media.
So today, Matt Lauer, who's legitimately a left-wing kook, he had on Sarah Palin.
And Sarah Palin, we've said, Sarah Palin made a mistake in endorsing Donald Trump.
She sold out conservatism in endorsing Donald Trump.
But she was on with Matt Lauer, and on the Today Show, and Savannah Guthrie, and it completely derailed.
And here is what it looked like when it derailed.
I want to ask you about something you mentioned on the campaign trail, which is the Arrest of Your Son track.
And you talked about it, and then you mentioned PTSD.
And you said that President Obama may be to blame for some of the PTSD that's out there.
I never said that.
Let's take it piece by piece.
What exactly did you mean?
Let's start piece by piece by you guys brought me here to talk about Iowa politics and the caucus tonight, not to talk about my kids.
And that was a Promise!
But, um, as things go in the world of media, you guys don't always keep your promises, evidently.
I never blamed President Obama.
What I have blamed President Obama in doing, though... Will you stop it there?
Because the rest is not relevant.
The part that's important here is the case for Trump is the case against the media.
Here's what's happened.
Republicans, conservatives, despise the media.
And we despise them for a great reason.
They are liars, and they are leftists, and they sandbag people with stupid garbage like this.
Right?
And so we look at them and we say, okay, you won't ask Hillary Clinton about calling Republicans enemies, but you'll ask Donald Trump about getting in Twitter fights with people.
Right?
You won't ask Hillary Clinton about being- I mean, Hillary Clinton was on the Today Show this morning, by the way, and got this many questions.
Zero.
She got this many questions about her email scandal, which, by the way, is blowing up, as I'll mention in a moment.
It won't matter, by the way, that she has an email scandal that's blowing up because she's Hillary Clinton.
She's never going to jail.
It doesn't matter what she does.
She could murder a baby, and she would stand there and grin, and the cameras would pretend she's fine.
But the point is this.
The media that have been attacking Trump are the same media who have been pushing the notion that Trump is... The same people who have been attacking Trump have been attacking conservatives for years.
So they lost all credibility.
All credibility was basically shredded.
So when they attack Trump, then we look around and we go, well, that doesn't make any difference to us.
You know, we don't trust you guys.
We don't trust you in any way, shape, or form.
And that's been the problem because some of their critiques of Trump are true.
Some of their critiques of Palin are true.
But when you lump that in with the rest of their garbage, you have to take everything as false.
And so that's been the case for Trump.
The case for Trump is really the case against the media.
It's not even the case against the left.
It's not even the case against the Republican establishment.
It's the case against the media.
Okay, now meanwhile, the two guys who continue to battle it out in Iowa are Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.
So, Marco Rubio has been setting himself up in pretty good position for Iowa.
Basically, obviously we're taping this before the caucuses take place tonight.
The narrative sort of goes like this, and this is the problem for Cruz in terms of the narrative.
There really is a problem for Ted Cruz in terms of the narrative.
Ted Cruz set it up so that people think he's going to win Iowa, and that if he doesn't win Iowa, he's in serious trouble.
So, there are a few different scenarios that happen tonight.
One, Cruz narrowly beats Trump, and Rubio finishes a strong third.
So, let's say that it's Cruz 30, Trump 28, Marco Rubio 23.
Right?
If that's the case, the narrative is actually going to be Rubio surging, not Cruz winning, because everybody has assumed that Cruz is going to be strong.
So it's a narrative win for Rubio.
Second scenario, Cruz narrowly beats Trump, Rubio finishes a distant third.
Then, the media will probably hold up their verdict on Trump until New Hampshire, before declaring Cruz the outright victor.
Because Trump still has a massive lead in New Hampshire, and Cruz is really trailing in New Hampshire.
So they'll say, good win for Ted Cruz, but Trump is still a factor.
Let's say Cruz blows out both of them.
Well, if he blows out both of them, then it's a clear win for Cruz.
But that's unlikely.
That's unlikely.
Let's say that Cruz blows out Trump, and Rubio finishes a strong third.
Well, then all three are roughly equal, because going into New Hampshire, Trump still has a lead.
Now Rubio is strong, and now Cruz is strong.
So it's a three-man race.
Finally, let's say that Trump wins.
Either way that Trump wins, it's a problem for Cruz, right?
So the media narrative, there's really only one scenario in which Cruz gets a clear win, and that's if he blows out everybody.
But if he blows out Trump and Rubio rises, then one of the narratives will be the rise of Rubio, because this is the way the media have set it up.
The game of expectations is just as important as what actually happens in Iowa.
So that's a problem for Cruz.
And this is why Rubio's playing this up.
So Rubio over the weekend said, yeah, yeah, yeah, Ted's in the lead, Ted's in the lead, 'cause he understands that if Cruz is in the lead and somehow he doesn't win, that's a problem for Ted Cruz.
Here we go, Marco Rubio. - Well, we've always felt great about our campaign here and we continue to feel that it's growing in our support.
We'll see what it leads to on Monday night.
I mean, Ted Cruz is clearly the frontrunner going into the night.
He has 10,000 volunteers on the ground.
He's spent an exorbitant amount of time here, tremendous amount of time here, and has gotten every endorsement he wanted.
So we know it's a tough hill to climb, but we feel very good about our campaign and very positive about what it means going into New Hampshire.
We'll be leaving as soon as the caucus is over, and we'll be in New Hampshire early Tuesday morning ready to work.
So you can see, Rubio is already looking forward to this, because he doesn't have to do that well.
If Rubio finishes anywhere higher than the mid-teens, it's a big win for Marco Rubio.
Okay, and then there's Ted Cruz, who's still trying to defeat both Trump and knock down Rubio.
So here's Ted Cruz talking about Trump.
Why did you suddenly stop going after Trump on paid ads and going after, in your campaign, attacking Marco Rubio?
How concerned are you about Senator Rubio catching you here in Iowa?
Listen, we are drawing contrast.
Both Trump and Marco are attacking me.
They're attacking me with all their might.
And we're drawing contrasts.
And the contrasts are clear.
And the contrasts, by the way, are substantive and policy-based.
A vote for Marco Rubio is a vote for amnesty.
And a vote for Donald Trump is a vote for Obamacare.
If you look at their positions, Marco Rubio, right now as a presidential candidate, is advocating amnesty, advocating citizenship for 12 million people here illegally.
And Donald Trump, right now as a candidate, is advocating full-on expanding Obamacare to make it socialized medicine.
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have the identical position on health care, which is they want to put the government in charge of you and your doctor.
Now my views are polar opposites of both of those.
If I'm elected, there will be no amnesty.
We will secure the border.
And if I'm elected, we will repeal every word of Obamacare.
So that gives a clear and simple choice for the voters.
Okay, and Cruz is exactly right here, but the problem is he's a little bit squeezed.
The establishment wants Rubio, and the media desperately want Trump.
60% of all media coverage this month went to Trump.
60% of all media coverage went to Donald Trump.
The other person who benefits from that, of course, is Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton did an interview with George Stephanopoulos over the weekend, and the fact that George Stephanopoulos interviews Hillary Clinton, I mean, honestly, that's like me interviewing my wife.
Okay, George Stephanopoulos interviewing Hillary Clinton.
And Clavin has read about this, talked about this on his podcast, that in George Stephanopoulos' autobiography, after the 92 election, he and Hillary saw each other backstage and had a moment together in which Hillary looked at George and said, I love you, George.
And he looked back at her with tears in his eyes and said, I love you too, Hillary.
And now he's interviewing her on national television while she runs for president.
And all of the Trump and Cruz and Rubio, all of the Trump really, is obscuring the fact that the Democratic presidential frontrunner is not just a felon, she's a multiple felon.
Okay, she is, by putting all of this classified information on her server, which was attached to the World Wide Web, which means it was hackable, which means everybody saw it.
I mean, they're now saying today that there was information on that server that could have gotten people killed, but Hillary Clinton is still saying it's a vast right-wing conspiracy.
Here she is.
He has to run his campaign.
He has to present his views.
We have differences, and I've been pointing out those differences.
I think that it's important for me to tell voters what I want to achieve and how I will go about doing that because I want them to hold me accountable.
And then it's going to be up to caucus-goers tonight, primary voters next in New Hampshire, to decide who they think offers the best path forward to keep the progress that we've made going.
Hillary Clinton is saying that as these revelations leak out.
And what does Hillary really think about this?
Well, she thinks nobody cares is the reality.
So here is Hillary explaining voters don't really care about any of this.
But Secretary Clinton, something does seem to be happening with this investigation, or at least the FBI seems to be talking about it more, because in the past week, several media outlets have said that their sources in the FBI say, quote, something's going to happen.
What does that mean to you?
It means that people are selectively leaking and making comments that have no basis in anything I am aware of.
And, you know, I regret that that seems to be part of the atmosphere because we need to, you know, let this inquiry run its course, get it resolved.
But I can tell you, Alison, that is not on the minds of the literally thousands of people that I have seen the last few weeks.
And I'm glad it isn't, because the facts are the facts.
And no matter how much selective leaking or anonymous sourcing and all that kind of stuff that goes on, what people want to know is what I can do to be the best possible president for them and their families.
And I've been thrilled.
Nobody really cares.
Nobody really cares.
That's what she's saying.
Bernie Sanders has decided that he cares now.
Here's Bernie Sanders saying that Hillary's candidacy has a problem with all these emails.
I'm looking forward to people coming out, expressing their opinion about who can be the best president and commander in chief.
Nobody really cares.
Nobody really cares.
That's what she's saying.
Bernie Sanders has decided that he cares now.
Here's Bernie Sanders saying that Hillary's candidacy has a problem with all these emails.
I'm old enough to remember a time when Bernie Sanders was saying that he didn't care about her damn emails.
Well, it turns out like two days before the caucuses, he sort of cares about her damn emails.
Here's Bernie Sanders, that crazy old kookaloo.
And you don't think you're going to be a problem for House Democrats who don't want to run on raising taxes?
No, I think, in fact, Hillary Clinton will be the problem.
Because I think our campaign is the campaign that is generating excitement and energy that will result in a high voter turnout.
Republicans win when voter turnout is low.
Democrats win when voter turnout is high.
I think our campaign is raising the issue about A rigged economy, a corrupt campaign finance system.
Secretary Clinton yesterday just announced, I suppose with pride, that her super PAC brought in $50 million.
I don't have a super PAC.
Our average contribution is $27.
And Bernie Sanders is now going after her.
But here's the truth.
Sanders is wrong and Hillary is right.
Voters don't care.
This is the part that's dispiriting.
I started off by saying this is a really, really dispiriting time politically.
It's dispiriting because you have people on the one side, on the Democrat side, who are looking at Hillary.
And they're saying, I don't care if she's a criminal.
I don't care if she's a felon.
It doesn't matter to me if she's a liar.
None of this matters.
Because Hillary is Hillary.
And there are people on the Trump side who are doing the same thing.
You're not supposed to worship at the altar of human beings, and it's very upsetting to me when I see that happen, particularly on the right.
The good news, however, is that Chris Matthews is feeling butterflies.
We have to keep sort of track of Chris Matthews' physical response to campaigns.
Remember that he had a tingle up his leg about President Obama.
Now he's feeling butterflies in his tummy over Hillary Clinton.
Let's do it.
Well, I have to start by saying I feel butterflies out here in the locker room.
It's a very strange time to try to be a pundit or a journalist in politics because we're in this strange territory.
The polling, as you just pointed out, shows Donald Trump leading in Iowa.
Now think about that.
Oh, you feel butterflies and gradually losing energy.
Oh my god, I drank too much.
And then he keeled over about five seconds after this clip ended.
But the good news is he's feeling butterflies.
We're all feeling butterflies.
And tomorrow, who knows?
The butterflies may be gone because an asteroid has hit us and wiped out Earth.
I mean, that's possible.
But barring that, we will be back then.
Okay.
First, some things that I like and some things that I hate.
Aha, guys, you thought you were getting off easy.
Some things that I like and some things that I hate.
So over the weekend, I saw a couple of movies.
Both of which were good.
I saw Brooklyn, which is nominated for Best Picture.
And I thought it was a very good film, a good depiction of what immigration to the United States is like, what it means to integrate into American society.
Very interesting movie.
It had some holes in it, but I'd be giving it away if I told you what the holes are and my problems with it.
So I'll just say that it was like an 8 out of 10 for me.
There's another movie that I actually saw over the weekend that I liked better.
And it's a movie nobody is talking about.
It got no Oscar nominations.
And it had some actually pretty big stars in it.
It's a movie called Pawn Sacrifice, and it got no attention.
I mean, it was reviewed, obviously, but it didn't make any money at the box office.
It's about the battle in the late 60s, early 70s, between Bobby Fischer, the American chess master, and Boris Spassky, the Soviet chess master, which became, for a time, it was the biggest battle in sports, and it was the biggest story in the world, because they had a chess match.
The Russians were always assumed to have dominated the chess world, and Fischer came along, and Fischer was creative, and Wild and came in and suddenly he was going to take Spassky's crown from him.
Here's the preview looks like just in case you're interested.
This game... It's a rabbit hole.
After only four moves, there's more than 300 billion options to consider.
I'm going to take you very close to the edge.
I taught him to move like this.
He taught himself.
If I take the pieces away, he just keeps playing in his head.
I'll admit, I have a fondness for chess movies, which is a very small subset of film.
But there's another really good chess movie called Searching for Bobby Fischer.
So if you really want to see a great chess movie, that's an older chess movie about a guy who was a chess prodigy named Josh Waitzkin.
And it's a really, really good movie with Ben Kingsley and Lawrence Fishburne.
So check that out.
Check Pawn Sacrifice out.
I was shocked.
Ed Zwick directed it.
He's a real lefty.
But there really are no sucker punches in this particular production.
And Liv Schreiber, who's quickly becoming one of my favorite actors, is in it as well.
He's in Spotlight, too.
Really good actor.
So, that's the thing that I like.
Okay.
A couple of things that I hate.
So Bernie Sanders is, as we say, a socialist loon bag from Vermont.
And Bernie Sanders tweeted this out earlier today.
For those who can't see, it's a picture of Bernie.
from the back and a big crowd in front of him.
And it says, it is absurd that one family, the Waltons of Walmart, has more wealth than the bottom 130 million Americans.
I immediately tweeted back at Bernie Sanders, well, you could just kill them and take all their money.
Because that seems to be the implication, right?
Is that they've somehow, it's ill-gotten gains, somehow they did something terrible, they stole it from the 130 million Americans at the bottom.
Last Friday we talked about how income inequality, the argument that income inequality is really a gauge worth measuring.
This is actually an evil argument because what it really says is, I deserve your cash if you have more than I do.
It's absurd.
And this is what, and every, by the way, every Bernie Sanders tweet, all of them, they all start with, it is absurd that X, and X is always something that is plainly obvious to everyone, right?
It's always, it's absurd that the sky is full of airplanes, and some people cannot fly on those airplanes.
It is absurd, absurd, that we are going to spend $1 billion on this campaign and that there is water that is not drinkable in some places on Earth.
Okay, yes, facts.
Congratulations.
What sort of change do you suggest?
And this is where socialism is successful.
This is why it's important.
Because socialism is successful in getting people to feel angry and jealous.
That's what socialism is good at.
And then the solutions they suggest are terrible, but they point out things and they suggest that You know, there's some sort of grand scheme, some grand evil scheme to make the Waltons rich.
How the Waltons, who came from nowhere, got control of this much wealth?
It must have been some evil, cronyistic scheme.
But here's the amazing thing about wealth, and people should really take this to heart.
The reality is that the Waltons live more like poor people today than poor people today lived like poor people 50 years ago.
So the Waltons have the same phones that you do, right?
They probably have iPhones.
The Waltons still drive in a car, right?
The kind of car that you probably, they probably have a slightly nicer car, probably, maybe a very much nicer car.
Okay.
They fly in a plane.
You can fly in a plane.
They have TVs.
You can also have TVs.
The gap between rich and poor in the United States in terms of material living standard has never been so narrow.
It's never been the case that the rich people and the poor people basically had the same life expectancy.
It's not true.
There's inequality all over the world.
The question is, if you go back to, for example, Howard Hughes, who's the richest man in America.
Howard Hughes was the only guy in America who had a cell phone, basically.
He had a portable phone.
Nobody else had this.
Everybody now has a cell phone.
Technology has evened everything out.
So the same commerce that made Walmart rich means that Walmart distributes the products that make everybody have a better lifestyle.
Right?
Your living standard is really not that much different than the Walmart's living standard.
They just have more of the same stuff that you do.
Right?
They may have slightly nicer meals, but you can get the same meal.
It's just not as good.
You can get the same car, it's just not as good.
You can get the same phone, it's just not as good.
It used to be that rich people had electricity and poor people didn't have electricity.
Right, so it's important to recognize that the amount of money you have in your bank account is not really a measure of wealth.
It's a measure of how many goods you can purchase.
But the kind of goods you can purchase are basically very similar between somebody who's very rich and somebody who's very poor.
I have the exact same computer as, you know, I earn a nice income, thank God.
My computer is exactly the same as the barista at Starbucks.
We have exactly the same computer.
I may earn ten times as much as the barista at Starbucks, but we have exactly the same computer.
That's because commerce evens out living standards.
It doesn't have to even out the amount of wealth that you have in your bank account.
So Bernie Sanders is a thing that I dislike.
Another thing that I dislike today, a thing that I hate...
This comes courtesy of our listener, Jacob.
Apparently, there's a new MTV series, and everything on MTV is garbaggio.
MTV is a garbage network, and they have a show apparently called Decoded, and so they have decided that they decode everything in life, of course, from a leftist perspective.
So here's a video from Decoded about the PC culture, and they say, don't worry.
Political correctness isn't anti-free speech.
It's not anti-free speech at all.
They're gonna decode it for you.
Here we go.
From YouTube comments to presidential candidates, it seems a lot of people think freedom of speech is under attack.
And who, might I ask, is to blame?
The goddamn PC culture!
If you've ever called out racism, sexism, ableism, or any other oppressivism, you've probably been accused of being too PC.
PC is, of course, short for politically correct.
Political correctness is avoiding words or behaviors that exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against.
Basically, treating people with respect.
Now if you ask me, that doesn't sound like a bad thing.
But a recent poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University found that 68% of Americans and 81% of Republicans agreed that a big problem this country has is being politically correct.
Even 62% of Democrats polled agreed that being PC was getting out of hand.
For these folks, political correctness is synonymous with weakness, or being overly sensitive.
Similar to the new term, social justice warrior, Calling someone PC is a way to derail and dismiss conversations about inequality.
Okay, PC police, you're just offended by everything.
The term PC is almost always used as an insult.
While it's been around for a while, it gained popularity- Okay, we can cut this now.
Okay, so this is what's incredible.
So she's saying that PC doesn't silence debate.
You saying PC silences the debate.
Okay, so you remember how this video started, right?
If you call out sexism or ableism or racism, then that's not being PC, that's just being awesome.
Okay, what shuts down debate?
What shuts down debate more?
You saying that I'm a racist and therefore we can't have a conversation, or me saying that you are using political correctness as a cover to not have the conversation?
Politically correct just means you don't want to have the conversation.
Racism means you're an evil person.
When I say somebody is politically correct, I'm saying that you're attempting to shut down conversation, and that's what she's attempting to do.
Since when has calling somebody a racist ever led to a decent conversation?
Ever.
Even if the person's a racist, it doesn't lead to a good conversation.
Right?
That's not the point of calling somebody a racist.
The point of calling somebody a racist is to end the conversation.
It's a label, so you slap on them, you say this conversation is no longer worthwhile, right?
That's what it means to label somebody.
But according to her, it doesn't shut down free speech.
Okay, two things.
One, PC doesn't necessarily shut down free speech in the legal sense.
I mean, they're not prosecuting you.
But there is no question that if I say that black crime rates are out of control in the United States, and you say, well, you're a racist, that that is politically correct and it is shutting down PC.
I mean, you're shutting down conversation.
That's the goal.
But it's amazing that they'll push this stuff, and then they wonder, they wonder why 40%, 40-odd percent of people who are young, millennials, think that there should be hate crimes legislation?
This is how PC bleeds over into actual legal ramifications.
According to a Pew poll earlier this year, 40% of millennials say that we should make it illegal in the United States to say things that are offensive based on race, sex, or sexual orientation.
So in other words, when she says that this is just treating people decently, well the problem is this.
Your subjective definition of what offends you doesn't mean that I'm wrong for saying it.
Black crime rates are out of control and a problem mainly for black people.
If you say that that's not politically correct because it's offensive, what you're doing is you're stopping the conversation and you're preventing it from going forward.
And there's no question that's what you attempt to do.
And that's why people who are young, people who watch stuff like MTV, they say, well, PC, you know, hate speech is bad, right?
Hate speech is bad, so we should stop it, right?
We should use the government to cut down on it.
The problem is your definition of hate speech is very different from my definition of hate speech.
And that's why we shouldn't have the government in the business of abridging freedom of speech and freedom of the press, as the First Amendment clearly states.
So, there you are.
Okay, a couple final quick things that I hate.
One, Susan Sarandon was at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and they declared these the Diversity of Awards because they're a bunch of black people who won.
Yeah, they won for TV productions.
No shocker there.
At the Emmys, they won.
In any case, here is the picture of Susan Sarandon.
And ironically, she did wear this to the SAG Awards.
For people who cannot see, this is why you should subscribe, or maybe this is a case against subscribing, but Susan Sarandon is wearing, like, a white blazer, and she's wearing it basically over a black bra, and so all you see is, like, her saggy boobs coming halfway down her torso.
This is not the Susan Sarandon of Atlantic City.
She's long beyond that.
There are no oranges to be squeezed here.
I mean, this is... I mean, this is...
I'm sorry, a song that my daughter likes to listen to about your ears hanging low and they wobble to and fro comes to mind.
In any case, the thing that I hate about this is not that women's boobs sag as they get older.
It's called gravity.
Okay, we all understand.
Men's faces sag as they get older.
We all start to sag as we get older.
Welcome to planet Earth.
But what I hate about this is this idea that older women in Hollywood are supposed to be Act just like younger women.
That they're supposed to be treated like younger women.
And older women today are supposed to act like younger women or be treated like younger women.
There used to be such a thing called aging gracefully.
That didn't mean that you had to like retire to the old age home and become an old crone.
But it did mean that you were supposed to recognize at a certain point that dressing like a 16 year old tart when you're 80 is really not your best option for anybody.
For a viewer, for participants, it's not good for anybody.
And it's kind of pathetic because you're setting a social standard that suggests... It's so funny.
All these people who say that women... We have to stop objectifying women.
Then they say that you have to objectify women to the extent that you're supposed to expect these kind of boobs on your 70-year-old grandmother.
It's ridiculous.
First of all, don't look at your grandmother's boobs.
It's gross.
Second of all, when you're talking about this idea that there's expectations of women, unrealistic expectations of women, you don't want to talk unrealistic expectations of women.
This is unrealistic expectations of women in a nutshell.
Redoing the body on the Barbie ain't gonna do much.
But starting to treat people of all ages, women of all ages, with a little bit of class and respect would be nice.
And this is just absurd.
I mean, it's just vulgar.
Okay, final thing that I disliked for the day.
Bernie Sanders, back to Bernie Sanders.
He had a big rally over the weekend in Iowa and people were like, oh my god, so many people showed up.
I don't follow pop music mainly because it's garbage that could be produced by- most of which could be produced by a horse's anus, but there's some group called Vampire Weekend.
You guys have heard of Vampire Weekend?
Yes?
I see Lindsey has heard of Vampire Weekend.
Okay, I've never heard of this group.
Apparently people have heard of this group.
All right.
So they showed up at this- at this Bernie Sanders thing and, uh, and they sang a Bernie Sanders song.
This land is your land.
This land is my land.
And there's Bernie and the crowd looking all awkward and clapping out of time.
As they say, there's an old bumper sticker about a jazz critic that everybody hated.
And I can't remember his name, but he said, so-and-so claps on one and three.
Because, it's a musical joke for those of you who know music, you're supposed to clap, syncopation is two and four, like one, two, three, four, right, syncopation.
Bernie Sanders is clapping wildly out of time in this video.
It's like he's clapping to a different song.
One of the things I hate is the merger of celebrity and political culture, which we've talked about and which has generated Trump and Hillary.
The merger of all of these things has led to the rise of politicians who truly have no sort of what's best for the country.
I mean, when you bring in, Bernie Sanders is bringing in Vampire Weekend now, and last election cycle, President Obama was campaigning around with Katy Perry, and now you've got Hillary Clinton campaigning around with yet another sexual abuser, Lena Dunham.
She only surrounds herself with sexual abusers of some sort or another.
It really is kind of gross, and it turns our politicians into celebrities, and our celebrities are royals, so it turns our politicians, by the transitive property, into royals.
So we may as well just crown them kings and be done with it.
Which we may do tonight!
It's the Iowa caucuses.
Is Trump the man who would be king?
The hair who would be monarch?
Can anyone stop the Trump train?
Will Marco Rubio surge?
Will we even come back tomorrow if I decide to take a sleeping pill and miss the show?
Who knows?
All of these questions and more will be answered on the morrow.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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