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Feb. 10, 2016 - The Ben Shapiro Show
48:27
Ep. 70 - Why Trump and Sanders Won: We Love Tyrants

Sanders and Trump cruise to victory, plus The Ben Shapiro Show gets a prominent new listener! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's Wednesday, and here we are, the day after the New Hampshire primary.
And just when you thought that the universe was about to give us a glimmer of hope, the asteroid of death wiped out everything.
So we'll talk about that.
We will also talk in more uplifting terms about things that I hate, which is always uplifting.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show. - Tend to demonize people because they don't care about your feelings. - So first the results, and then I'll talk about why I think that basically all human life may have ended yesterday.
And that's that's my optimistic side speaking there.
So okay, so here's what actually happened in New Hampshire yesterday.
Hillary Clinton got her clock cleaned.
This is the good side of the coin is that Hillary Clinton got destroyed and that's just fun mostly for spectator sport.
So he beat...
Bernie Sanders, who's a 79,000-year-old socialist, an absolute loon bag, old man screaming at the moon, he beat her by 22 points in New Hampshire.
He beat her 60% to 38%.
Thank God, in the Democratic Party, they really worry about fairness on a really deep level.
They want to make sure that everybody gets their fair shot and their fair share.
So they then redistributed the delegates.
So Hillary Clinton actually ended up with 15 delegates, and Bernie Sanders ended up with 13 delegates.
Yes, that's right.
Bernie Sanders won by 20 percentage points and got less delegates than Hillary Clinton because that's the way the Democrats work it.
They have these things called superdelegates and the superdelegates are basically just handpicked cronies of the Clintons who vote for Hillary Clinton when asked to do so.
So Bernie Sanders just destroys her and ends up losing the delegation anyway.
So, in terms of the breakdown of the polls, he beat her 93% to 5% among those who valued honesty and trustworthiness, which makes you wonder who the 5% are.
He beat her by 11 points among women.
So remember yesterday we played Madeleine Albright saying that any woman who didn't vote for Hillary Clinton had a special place in hell.
Hell's gonna be really, really full of women who didn't vote for Hillary Clinton.
Bernie Sanders won every single non-elderly, non-wealthy group.
Literally, the only people who voted for Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire were old, rich women.
So basically, Hillary Clinton's friends.
That's pretty much who voted for Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire.
Meanwhile, on the Republican side of the aisle, Donald Trump just destroyed all comers.
He ended up winning, I think, 35% of the vote.
They're still tallying a couple of precincts that are left.
So he won 35% of the vote.
John, oh God, no, not John Kasich!
He won 16% of the vote, so Trump doubled him up.
John Kasich has no hope for the rest of this race.
This was Kasich's final hurrah.
He's John Huntsman without the charm, but with the ninja fruit-chopping abilities.
He won 16%.
Coming in after him was, shocker, Senator Ted Cruz, who wasn't supposed to do well in New Hampshire.
The Cruz camp spent less than a million dollars on television advertising in New Hampshire to win 12% of the vote or 11% of the vote.
Why is that relevant?
Because the guy who came in just behind Ted Cruz was Jeb Bush, who also won 11% of the vote.
Jeb Bush spent $35 million.
on television advertising in New Hampshire.
And then he declared victory, by the way.
Jeb said he did a great job.
And he said that his camera, he actually said into a camera, it's as though he was created never to have been put in front of a camera.
He got in front of a camera and he said, I'm not dead.
If you have to tell people that, you might be screwed.
So he spent, so for several thousand votes, he spent $35 million Ted Cruz spent $800,000 to win the exact same number of votes.
Marco Rubio, he came in fifth.
Fifth.
And that's because, obviously, of his gaffe on Saturday.
And we'll talk about where he goes from here and how he's playing.
All of that.
And I want to give a brief breakdown of what the rest of this race looks like.
So Hillary Clinton, we'll get into, I want to save kind of my discussion for Hillary Clinton about what she's doing, what her strategy is for tomorrow.
Suffice it to say that Bernie Sanders is cleaning up among white voters and Hillary Clinton is cleaning up among black and Hispanic voters.
So basically Hillary Clinton is Barack Obama in 2008.
Almost exactly.
Hillary Clinton ends up losing Iowa in 2008, and then she wins New Hampshire in 2008, and then she goes on to lose the nomination when Barack Obama cleans her in South Carolina because 50% of the electorate in Democratic primaries in South Carolina is black.
And 87% of those people went for Barack Obama last time around.
This time around, Hillary wins Iowa.
I mean she really lost Iowa but she wins Iowa and then she goes to New Hampshire and she gets destroyed and now she's gonna go to South Carolina where she's got her black firewall and that's pretty much what it is.
She needs black voters to show up for her in outsized numbers.
Unfortunately for her, today Bernie Sanders is holding a meeting with racial conflagrationist Al Sharpton.
Bernie Sanders just got an endorsement from Harry Belafonte.
And Bernie Sanders just got an endorsement from Ta-Nehisi Coates, who is considered, you know, this all-wise, all-knowing black thinker.
Really, Ta-Nehisi Coates is an overrated, opaque writer.
His thought is extraordinarily muddy and muddled.
He's the same guy who said that on 9-11 he hates the racial legacy of the United States so much that he watched the towers come down on 9-11 while sitting on the top of his apartment building smoking dope and not feeling anything.
He said that out loud.
He endorsed Bernie Sanders.
All of which is to say that Bernie may actually be giving Hillary a race among minority voters.
If he wins 40% of minority voters, she's toast.
Kiss Hillary Clinton goodbye, and that would just be eminently satisfying in every possible way.
It would be wonderful, it would be delightful.
It'd be like watching The Witch King of Endor.
You remember when he gets killed, he sort of crumbles inside and then...
That's sort of what you'd end up with if Hillary Clinton were to implode based on what Bernie Sanders is doing.
So, that's what's going on on the Democratic side.
On the Republican side, Trump is now the clear frontrunner.
Trump has a lead in South Carolina.
They're saying the polls are old.
They are.
It's before Iowa and New Hampshire.
But coming off this massive victory in New Hampshire, nothing really changes from the polls before Iowa.
He had the momentum going in.
He has the momentum now.
In the polls in South Carolina, Trump is at I think 32% in the RealClearPolitics polling average.
Cruz is at like 19%.
Rubio's at 12%.
Jeb is at 10.
And here's the big problem for people who are anti-Trump.
The big problem for people who are anti-Trump in the establishment is that all of the establishment candidates who are supposed to be winnowed away by New Hampshire, no one's going anywhere.
John Kasich's going to stick around now because why not?
He has nothing better to do with his life.
And by the way, he just finished second in New Hampshire, so he can say with honesty that he did better than Jeb Bush, who's still going to be around.
Who is spending scads, oodles, reams of money.
I mean, he's printing money just to flush it down the television advertising toilet and win low percentages of votes.
He has declared victory in New Hampshire.
And the media's doing the same thing.
Media's saying, oh, well, Jeb, that was a real comeback, Jeb.
Really, if you had told anybody a year ago that Jeb Bush was going to finish so far out of the money in Iowa that you don't even know where in order he finished, and that Jeb Bush was going to finish fourth in New Hampshire, and that he'd be declaring victory, everybody would have said you're nuts.
Well, Jeb Bush goes forward now, and the reason he goes forward is because the guy who was supposed to do well in New Hampshire, somebody I suggested last week when the momentum was behind him, might even have a shot to challenge Trump because he was moving up in the polls three points a day, Senator Marco Rubio.
Rubio imploded.
Rubio finishes fifth.
Rubio, he says now that it's his own fault.
He performed badly in the debate.
He also performed badly after the debate.
His entire campaign didn't know how to handle the campaign gaffe, which really was a bad gaffe.
And so now he goes into South Carolina with no momentum.
He's in serious, serious trouble.
And if he doesn't somehow consolidate any base of support, if for example, Chris Christie just dropped out of the race.
So Chris Christie's great contribution to American letters this year has been to make Donald Trump President of the United States by killing Marco Rubio in this campaign.
The bottom line is that Rubio's chances of winning South Carolina are very low.
Very low.
And if you look at the GOP schedule from here on out, how many states can Marco Rubio go without winning anything?
I mean, we already had Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina.
He was supposed to be doing well in Nevada, but that's after South Carolina where he's not going to win.
So if we go to Nevada and he performs poorly, Nevada is Trump territory.
Cruz has a good base in Nevada.
Good shot, he doesn't win there.
And all of a sudden, it's March 1st.
And March 1st is what they call the SEC primary.
And the SEC primary is a bunch of southern states that Ted Cruz is going to dominate.
This includes Alabama, Alaska, where Cruz has an advantage right now, Arkansas, Colorado, that might be the only state where Rubio theoretically has a good shot to win, Georgia, which is Cruz territory, Massachusetts, which is clearly Trump territory given how New Hampshire performed, Minnesota, which is probably Trump territory, Oklahoma, which is Cruz territory.
Tennessee, Cruz territory.
Texas, Cruz territory.
Vermont, Trump territory.
Virginia, Cruz-slash-Trump territory.
So Rubio, theoretically, could go all the way to March 5th without having won a single state.
And maybe Jeb, you know, does better than expected in South Carolina, but what is driving Trump to the top of the polls, among other things, is the fact that Jeb is still in the race.
I mean, Jeb is tailor-made for Trump.
Jeb is just one of those things that, when you were a kid, you remember that you'd get the inflatable doll with, like, the weighted sand on the bottom that was round on the bottom, you'd hit it, and it would pop back up.
That's basically what Jeb is to Trump.
Every so often, they show up at a debate, and Trump just clocks Jeb, and Jeb falls away, and then he comes back, and he's still made of air, but he thinks he's winning, because he's still there.
And as long as he stays in the race, it's going to be very difficult for Marco Rubio to grow.
Chris Christie is getting out, but Chris Christie had two conversations with Trump today.
He could theoretically endorse Trump, which is incredible.
So the race is basically a mess for anybody who's an establishment person, which in a certain sense makes me happy.
I hate the establishment GOP.
I think they're terrible at what they do.
I don't want to see Jeb as president or the nominee.
I think that Marco Rubio was a better second choice for conservatives than Donald Trump.
I think he's a better second choice than Jeb Bush.
But the establishment is taking it on the chin.
So that's the good news that comes out of New Hampshire.
The other piece of good news out of New Hampshire is that if Rubio and Bush, if all these guys clock each other, the person who benefits most is probably Ted Cruz.
Ted Cruz is now clearly the conservative lane guy.
Trump is sort of the grassroots blue-collar guy.
Most of his support tends to be moderate.
And then the establishment lane is all clogged.
So Cruz, theoretically, this could turn into a two-man race, Cruz versus Trump.
And then the question becomes, who in the establishment decides to move behind Cruz or behind Trump?
And as we were saying before Iowa, because this was sort of the question before Iowa, I think the establishment moves behind Trump.
Trump is less of a threat to them.
And this is really what I want to talk about today.
The Sanders and Trump phenomenon, everybody is just puzzled by this.
What could possibly be going on?
How could you possibly have these two outsiders both winning massive victories in New Hampshire?
I mean, understand, Sanders winning in New Hampshire?
One year ago, one year, Hillary Clinton was leading.
This wasn't her poll number, this was her lead.
Her lead in New Hampshire was 56 percentage points.
That was her lead in New Hampshire.
She lost by 22 percentage points yesterday.
Okay, so that is a 78, 78 point swing for Hillary Clinton in one year.
I mean, she literally almost went into negatives.
So that, I mean, that's an amazing, amazing thing.
So why exactly the thrill around Sanders and why exactly the thrill around Trump?
And more importantly, there are a bunch of independent voters who apparently were considering between Sanders and Trump, trying to figure out who they were going to vote for, Sanders or Trump.
And, you know, when you think about that, you think, OK, the voters must be dumb, right?
I mean, there's a difference between Sanders and Trump.
Trump is a successful billionaire businessman.
Trump presumably likes business.
Sanders doesn't.
He's a career politician.
Trump is a loudmouth braggart.
Sanders is a loudmouth, but he's not a braggart.
He's just a socialist.
So what exactly is the similarity?
And today, I really want to talk about a phenomenon that does concern me deeply about Trump and about Sanders, because I think that the passion for them So let's start by going through exactly what Trump had to say in his victory speech.
So Trump gets up, and now he's finally got his big win.
And I have to say, watching Trump speak is always amusing, but more in the sense that watching my daughter kind of stumble around the living room is amusing.
Like, it's cute.
I would like for her to walk better.
But Trump, he's not the most articulate man in the world, even though his supporters tend to think that he is just Cicero.
Here's Trump in his victory speech.
Here he goes.
You know, when I came out, I heard the end of Bernie's speech, and I heard some of the beginning.
No, no.
First of all, congratulations to Bernie.
In all fairness, we have to congratulate him.
We may not like it, but I heard parts of Bernie's speech.
He wants to give away our country, folks.
He wants to give away.
We're not going to let it happen.
We're not going to let it happen.
I don't know where it's going with Bernie.
We wish him a lot of luck, but we are going to make America great again, but we're going to do it the old-fashioned way.
We're going to beat China, Japan.
We're going to beat Mexico at trade.
We're going to beat all of these countries that are taking so much of our money away from us on a daily basis.
It's not going to happen anymore.
We have the greatest business people right now in the world.
They call me all the time.
They want to be involved.
We have political hacks negotiating our deals for billions and billions and billions of dollars.
Not going to happen anymore.
We're going to use the finest business people in the world.
We are going to do something so good and so fast and so strong, and the world is going to respect us again.
Believe me.
It's that sort of command of the issues and real detailed analysis of how we're going to have an economic comeback that has drawn people to Donald Trump.
But that's not the point that I want to make here.
The point that I want to make is you heard Trump on trade.
Okay, Trump on trade basically he thinks that we're being screwed by the Chinese, we're being screwed by the Mexicans, we're being screwed by the Japanese.
First of all, the Japanese economy has been in a recession for the last 15 years.
Okay, the Japanese economy has been garbage for at least a decade.
The Chinese economy is falling back into the toilet.
The Mexican economy has been garbage for a really long time.
So if they're schlonging us, as Trump likes to put it, then why exactly are they in such terrible shape?
Because all of these countries are in really bad shape.
And why is it that a well-made product from overseas is supposed to make me feel bad about my life?
The reality is that trade is not a zero-sum game.
This is one of the problems with Trump's ideas on trade.
Trump is a protectionist.
All protectionism is, is a tax on you for buying foreign products.
That's all it is.
If you want to buy a foreign car, a tariff on that car means you have to pay more for that foreign car.
It may be a better product.
We're going to make you pay more to supposedly keep jobs here at home.
So we're going to tax you.
It's a welfare program.
We're going to tax you So that we can keep an American car worker in his job.
That's Trump's idea.
So in other words, Trump is a big government guy when it comes to trade.
And you know what?
It turns out that Sanders and Trump are on exactly the same page.
On exactly the same page when it comes to trade.
In fact, Donald Trump.
Sanders describes trade with China as, quote, catastrophic for our economy.
Same sort of wording as Trump.
And days ago, Trump said this, quote, the one thing we agree very much on, him and Bernie Sanders, the one thing we agree very much on is trade.
We both agree we are getting ripped off by China, by Japan, by Mexico, everyone we do business with.
So in other words, Trump and Sanders actually agree.
So you hear he says, you know, Sanders is going to give away the store.
He's going to give away the store to all these people.
Except he and Sanders actually agree on this particular policy.
And Trump goes on.
He talks about special interests.
Here is Trump continuing at his rally last night.
Special interest money, and this is on both sides.
This is on the Republican side, the Democrat side.
Money just pouring into commercials.
These are special interest folks.
These are lobbyists.
These are people that don't necessarily love our country.
They don't have the best interests of our country at heart.
We're not going to let it happen.
We can't, we have to do something about it.
When you see, when you see the kind of deals made in our country, a lot of those deals are made because The politicians aren't so stupid.
They're making them for their benefit.
We have to stop it.
We have to stop it.
We are now going to make it for your benefit.
We're going to make the deals for the American people.
That's the way it is.
So campaign finance is super corrupt.
Everybody who's spending money on commercials is super corrupt.
Let's play clip one of Bernie Sanders' victory speech last night.
I'll come back to Trump, but let's play Bernie Sanders' victory speech clip number one.
Together, we have sent the message that will echo from Wall Street to Washington, from Maine to California.
And that is that the government of our great country belongs to all of the people And not just a handful of wealthy campaign contributors and their super PACs.
So, you notice any similarities there?
Right?
You got Donald Trump on the one side saying, you got all these super PACs and they're running everything, money is corrupting politics.
On the other side you have Bernie Sanders saying, these super PACs are terrible, their money is corrupting everything.
This seems like not much of a choice, actually.
And the pattern tends to hold.
The pattern tends to hold.
If you look at Trump and Sanders on policy, I'm going to explain why I think that both of them are rising in a second, but their policies are actually extraordinarily similar for people who are supposed to be on opposite sides of the coin.
Trump is supposed to be this uber-capitalist and Sanders is this uber-socialist.
The truth is they're both crony capitalists.
Right, Sanders' version of socialism is not that we do away with capitalism entirely, it's that we put an 800-pound gorilla on capitalism's back, it's called the government, and then we redistribute all of the capital from certain people to other people.
Trump's idea is that the government works with certain rich people to help them at the expense of other people.
That's what he says about eminent domain, for example.
And this is, over and over you'll see there are similarities in the record.
So, for example, Trump and Sanders both talked about Obamacare last night.
And Sanders went after Obamacare.
Here's what Bernie Sanders had to say.
Let's see if we have the clip of Bernie Sanders talking about Obamacare.
Maybe not.
So in any case, Bernie Sanders talked about Obamacare yesterday.
He said 29 million Americans should not remain uninsured and even greater numbers should remain underinsured with large deductibles and co-payments.
We should not be paying by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs at a time when the three top drug companies in this country made $45 billion in profit last year.
That's an obscenity, let me tell you something.
When we make it to the White House, the pharmaceutical industry will not continue to rip off the American people.
Donald Trump last week said that he would, quote, stop the insurance companies getting rich, and said, quote, we're going to take care of the people on the street dying.
How about entitlement programs?
On entitlement programs, here is Trump talking about Social Security and other entitlement programs last year.
Quote, I'm not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican.
I'm not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid.
Bernie Sanders last night.
No, we will not allow huge tax breaks for billionaires.
We will not allow huge cuts to Social Security.
Veterans needs Medicare, Medicaid, and education.
In other words, same policy.
And when people say, well, you know, Trump, the real thing that he runs on is immigration, right?
Trump's big thing is immigration.
Okay, let's be real about this.
Trump says he wants to build a wall.
He's anti-immigration.
This is Bernie Sanders just a few years back.
Quote.
We keep bringing in all kinds of people, working for two or three dollars an hour.
That'd be great for them.
But real immigration reform puts the needs of working people first, not wealthy, globe-trotting donors.
So basically, Bernie Sanders, in his heart, he and Trump are on the same page on immigration.
Sanders still kowtows to the, we need to win Hispanics routine.
And says he wants amnesty and he wants and he wants various open cities and sanctuary cities, but the reality is they feel sort of the same on foreign policy on foreign policy.
They're very similar, right?
So for example, Donald Trump at the debate last week said quote, I was very much opposed to the war in Iraq.
A lot of these guys were all for the war in Iraq.
Look what that's got us.
Spent $2 trillion.
Now we're handing Iraq over.
Just handing it over to Iran.
I'm very much into the military.
We'll build our military better and stronger.
That's opposed to what we have now.
I was opposed to the war in Iraq.
Most conservatives, they were gung-ho.
Every one of them wanted the war in Iraq.
Look where it got us.
Trump also said that we should let Russia handle ISIS and added that he wanted to cut military spending.
And then there was Bernie Sanders last night.
Okay, Bernie Sanders last night talked about his foreign policy, and here's a direct quote from Bernie Sanders about his foreign policy.
Quote, As president, I will defend this nation, but I will do so responsibly.
I voted against the war in Iraq.
That was the right vote.
While we must be relentless in combating terrorists who would do us harm, we cannot and should not be the policemen of the world, nor should we bear the burden of fighting terrorism alone.
Now, they don't look a lot alike on tax policy.
Trump's tax policy is conservative.
In other words, Trump and Sanders look a lot alike on that, too.
Now, they don't look a lot alike on tax policy.
Trump's tax policy is conservative.
Bernie Sanders' is not.
They don't look tremendously alike on social policies.
Sanders is a wild leftist.
And Trump is sort of unspecified.
He says he's pro-life now, but it's not something that pro-lifers tend to trust for good reason.
So here's the question.
Why are both Trump and Sanders doing well?
Why are both Trump and Sanders doing well?
It's the combination of two phenomena.
One is good, and one is bad.
The good phenomenon that is helping Trump and Sanders is this real rage against the corruption entitlement culture of Washington, D.C.
This insidery, we all know each other, we're all gonna help each other out, we're going to live off the backs of the taxpayer, we're gonna do what we want, we're corrupt, all of this.
It's a good phenomenon.
People should be unhappy with how the government works.
But then there's a second phenomenon.
There's a second phenomenon.
And the second phenomenon is a desire not for freedom, but for a strongman.
And this is not unique to Americans.
I mean, it is becoming an American trait, which is really disturbing.
But it used to be that Americanism, conservatism, was about opposing the strongman.
Didn't matter if you're talking a strongman of the right or a strongman of the left.
What you really want is somebody who's going to slash government Have you ever heard Donald Trump talk about limited government?
He's talked about what he thinks government ought to do.
He's talked about winning, but has he ever given a real cohesive statement of the role of government in Americans' life?
What do you think?
I have a cohesive idea of what the government should and should not do.
The government has prescribed powers to prevent externalities from personal actions.
That's pretty much what the government is there to do.
It's there for the common defense, and it's there to stop crime and property crime.
And that's almost it.
That's pretty much it.
But I don't know what Donald Trump's philosophy of government is.
But his supporters don't know what Donald Trump's philosophy of government is.
Let's listen to Donald Trump being conservative.
So Donald Trump, he has his third, let's do his third clip here.
This is where Donald Trump does his impersonation of a conservative.
Here we go.
We're gonna have borders again, and we're gonna work with you people to help you solve that very big problem.
and we'll get it done.
That's so beautiful.
What a group of people.
You know, and on top of this group, we have thousands of people outside that can't even get in.
That's what we have.
Thousands of people.
Healthcare.
We're going to repeal and replace Obamacare.
It is a total disaster.
We're repealing and replacing Obamacare.
It's gone.
We're getting rid of Common Core.
We're going to educate our children locally.
We educate our children locally.
We are going to preserve our very sacred Second Amendment.
Okay, so the Second Amendment that he was assaulting a few years back when he said he wasn't really that into guns, but, you know, all of this is crackerjack box conservatism.
This is him reading the ingredients off the side of the crackerjack box.
Because there's no actual statement here as to what government should and should not do.
For all the flack that Ted Cruz got over his 97-hour speech in the aftermath of his Iowa caucus victory, he actually spelled out what he thought government's role was.
What government should do.
Nowhere in here do you hear any of that.
All you hear is Trump listing things, and then him glorifying himself, right?
I'm wonderful.
I'm spectacular.
All the people here are great because they're cheering Trump.
If they were cheering Cruz, they would be terrible people.
There are thousands of people outside waiting to get in.
They love me.
That just demonstrates what tremendous human beings they are.
We have a desire.
We do.
Human beings have a desire for a strong man who's gonna come in and smash the things that we don't like.
Right?
We all have this desire.
It's why we like gangster movies, because the gangsters don't actually have to... I told you I was watching Black Mass.
One of the reasons we like gangster movies is because the gangsters don't follow the rules.
They come in and they do the things that need to be done.
That's why we like Batman.
Batman comes in and he just breaks the rules and he does what has to be done.
That's why people like Death Wish.
The government fails, you do what has to be done.
And people sort of want that in a leader.
And this is less characteristic of Americanism than it is of European countries and some Latin American countries.
But it is not uncommon across planet Earth, the desire for a strong man who's going to take you where you want to go.
This is why when you talk to some Trump supporters, there are a lot of Trump supporters who are good conservatives who think that Trump is just the best guy to win.
And again, in 2011, I wrote a column called The Magic of Donald Trump.
I'm getting flack over it today because I'm criticizing Trump.
But this column I wrote back in 2011, I specifically said, Trump may be the most electable Republican in America.
Because Donald Trump doesn't care what the media thinks, because he's self-funded, because Donald Trump is willing to say anything, all of those are good reasons why Trump is super electable.
So I was right then, and I'm also right now when I say that Donald Trump has a lot of support not based on his electability, But because they trust that he's just going to do stuff for them.
You hear this all the time.
He's going to win.
And you hear Trump say to himself, I'm going to win for you.
I've won before, and I'm going to win for you.
I'm going to make deals, right?
It doesn't matter.
I don't know what deals I'm going to make, but I'm going to make the deals.
And Sanders supporters actually say the same thing.
Sanders supporters say the same thing.
So true conservatives look at government like it's the ring of power in Lord of the Rings.
We want to take it to Mount Doom and we want to cast it into the fiery chasm from once it came.
As a general rule, there are certain things government should do, but the vast majority of government power should be taken back to that fiery chasm and cast in because no one can safely wield it.
There's no way to wield that power without it corrupting you.
Trump supporters are like, this is the nerdiest episode ever, but they're like Isildur.
Okay, so the Trump supporters are people who believe that they should be able to grasp that ring, wear that ring, and use it for their own glorification and power.
And Trump will bring America back by using the power of government.
And this is why Trump says things like, I'm gonna use government to take care of healthcare, I'm gonna use government to take care of Social Security, I'm gonna use government to take care of everything.
Right, everything will be taken care of by the government.
Even which businesses rise and fall, we're going to help decide that by making great deals because he's a dealmaker for you.
Bernie Sanders supporters believe the same thing, except they don't actually believe that the ring has any evil to it at all.
They're not even ambivalent about the ring.
They're not even tempted to throw it into the fiery chasm from whence it came.
They're Gollum.
The Democrats just want that ring, and they want it forever, and they want to keep it, and they don't care if it decays them and makes them a hollowed-out shell.
They don't care if it destroys everything.
They want the ring, and they want to hold the ring, and they want to keep the ring.
And Bernie Sanders is Gollum.
Bernie Sanders... So the solution is, we've got... So, again, the phenomenon that started all of this is government is corrupt.
Government is cronyistic.
Government is basically bad.
And then, The second phenomenon is we want a strongman.
So what you end up with is government is bad, let's pick the crony capitalists to fight crony capitalism, or let's pick the socialists to fight big government.
Neither of these things is destined for success, but the socialists want a Hugo Chavez figure, Bernie Sanders, to ride in on the wind and use the power of government to give them all of their deepest, most fondly held desires.
And you can hear that from Bernie Sanders.
I mean, when Bernie Sanders speaks, it's all about what he can give to you.
What he can give to you.
So let's take, I think it's clip four here.
This is where he talks about economics.
And you're gonna hear that this is, his definition of democracy and rights, this is wielding the power of the ring and reveling in the power of the ring, the same ring that has destroyed, by the way, every inner city the Democrats have ever touched.
Here's Bernie Sanders.
As we all remember, the last time Republicans occupied the White House, Their trickle-down economic policies drove us into the worst economic downturn since the depression of the 1930s.
No, we will not allow huge tax breaks for billionaires.
We will not allow packed huge cuts to Social Security, veterans' needs, Medicare, Medicaid, and education.
We can stop it there because what he's saying here, obviously, what's ironic is he always – Democrats say this.
Oh, it brought us to the worst depression since the 1930s.
Say, who was in charge in the 1930s?
Oh, that's right.
Your socialist friend, FDR.
Like, for the entirety of the 1930s.
And, by the way, the policies that created the latest recession in the United States were policies that were crafted by Democrats in the housing market and allowed to go forward by cronyistic Republicans.
So basically, people like Bernie Sanders, like Barney Frank and the House Financial Services Committee, and people like Donald Trump on the right.
It was those kinds of people who ended up creating this recession.
But let's go to, Donald, let's go to Bernie Sanders.
He really made two key points here, and that is, we're gonna do, this will be clips, let's see, clips five and six of Bernie Sanders.
So here is Bernie Sanders explaining what he thinks America is based on, and what it really is based on is a principle that suggests that he should have ultimate power to do whatever the hell he wants.
Here we go.
Now, what the American people understand is that our great country was based on a simple principle, and that principle is fairness.
Let me be very clear.
It is not fair when we have more income and wealth inequality today than almost any major country on earth.
And when the top one-tenth of 1% now owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90%, that's not fair.
It is not fair when the 20 wealthiest people in this country now own more wealth than the bottom half of the American people.
So you guys ready for a radical idea?
Together we are going to create an economy that works for all of us, not just the 1%.
This is what happens when you're looking for a Caudillo.
This is what happens when you're looking for a strongman.
What you end up with is somebody like a Bernie Sanders or a Donald Trump who's gonna fix all your problems.
Because reality is rife with problems.
Reality creates problems for everyone.
We have health inequalities.
We have wealth inequalities.
We have lifestyle inequalities.
We have all sorts of inequalities in human life.
But the minute that those inequalities become the business of the government, your solution to a government that doesn't work for you is a government that does work for you, as opposed to just less government.
When that becomes your ideal, you end up with Bernie Sanders.
And by the way, it's going to get ugly, okay?
Because Bernie Sanders, the next thing he says right here, this clip 6, is basically, it's time to take out the guillotine.
Let's go full Robespierre.
Here's Bernie Sanders.
Well, my critics say, you know, Bernie, that's a great idea.
You're into all this free stuff.
How are you going to pay for it?
I will tell you how we're going to pay for it.
We're going to impose a tax on Wall Street speculation.
The greed, the recklessness, and the illegal behavior of Wall Street drove our economy to its knees The American people bailed out Wall Street.
Now it's Wall Street's time to help the middle class.
Go get the guillotines, folks.
It's time to grab all those rich people, bring them out into the streets, chop off their heads and take their wealth.
He wants to raise taxes by $19 trillion.
The entire economy of the United States is not $19 trillion.
You could confiscate every piece of income this year in the United States.
It would not suffice to pay for the programs that he is talking about.
And morally, what he is saying is so wrong.
What he's saying is that if you're a high earner, you therefore, we have the right to take from you everything.
First of all, the idea that everybody who's rich in the country works on Wall Street is absurd.
It's just absurd.
Most of the people who are rich in America don't work on Wall Street.
There are tons of rich people all over the United States.
Most of them do not work on Wall Street.
Second of all, the real reason that Wall Street caused this crisis is because Wall Street was working with the government.
If there had been no bailouts, there wouldn't have been a problem.
Wall Street knew there would be bailouts.
Wall Street knew there would be bailouts because all of the mortgage-backed securities were backed in the end by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which was a government-sponsored entity.
It was GSE, a government-sponsored entity.
So the government creates the conditions, and then they blame the private sector when things go bad, and then the solution on both sides of the aisle is, we need a strong man to fix all of this.
We don't need a strongman to fix any of this.
The only purpose for a strongman would be to slash the government.
This is what made George Washington such a magnificent figure in American history.
Far greater, really, I believe, far greater figure than Abraham Lincoln.
What made George Washington such a magnificent figure is that Lincoln had to maximize the power of the government in order to hold the Union together and to end slavery.
Obviously wonderful goals.
George Washington had ultimate power.
If he had wanted, he had the control of the army, he had the control of everything.
George Washington is one of the unique figures in human history because George Washington said, all the power is right here in front of me, I can feel it with both hands, and instead, I'm gonna cut myself out.
Instead, the power of the government is going to be given back to the people.
You realize what a magnificent thing that is?
That's what makes America what America is.
Not a strongman like Bernie Sanders.
Not a strongman who's gonna win for you.
Let me tell you something.
There is no strongman who wins for you.
There is none.
The only person who wins for you is you.
The only person who has your best interest at heart is you and your family, your wife and your children.
That's it.
No one else cares about you.
Bernie Sanders does not give two good damns about you.
He doesn't care about your kids.
He doesn't care about your family.
He doesn't care about your friends.
Bernie Sanders has a grand idea of what utopia should look like and everybody is either a speed bump or a tool on the road to his utopian vision.
So don't trust when people say, we need a strong man.
No, we don't.
We don't need a Trump strong man.
We don't need a Sanders strong man.
And don't tell me Trump wins.
Don't tell me Trump wins.
The only way that you win is if government loses.
I'm not talking about on foreign policy.
Government is supposed to defend us, but the only way that you win is when you have more power to control your life.
Bernie Sanders is not going to do that, neither is Donald Trump, and neither of them is going to save you.
And the ego that you see right there on the surface for Donald Trump, it's buried in the ideology of Bernie Sanders.
He has just as much of an ego.
It's just buried in the socialistic philosophy of do-goodism.
Bernie Sanders thinks he's God, too.
He just thinks that his God-like mission is to spread the wealth around, and Donald Trump thinks his God-like mission is to get everybody to put up a picture of Donald Trump in his house.
So this is what's disturbing to me about what's happening in New Hampshire.
I think it's indicative of what's happening more broadly in the country.
Okay, so in the rest of the Republican race, we'll run down some of what some of the other candidates are saying.
Marco Rubio, who, as we mentioned before, has totally been beaten about the ears in New Hampshire.
He basically admitted, this was my fault.
This never should have happened.
Here's Marco Rubio, the guy who was the great white hope of the Republican establishment and some conservatives.
It's on me.
It's on me.
I did not, I did not do well on Saturday night, so listen to this.
That will never happen again.
That will never happen again.
One of the problems with Rubio is that no matter what he says, he always seems a little bit, a little bit nervous.
Just a little bit.
Not like a lot, but a little bit.
And so when he says it'll never happen again, he's not saying it with the confidence of somebody who really, really knows that.
John Kasich, meanwhile, he's out there celebrating.
He won his big victory.
This will be the highlight of his political career.
He's got nowhere to go but down from here.
Someday you'll find him on a street corner in Los Angeles with a chopped fruit stand because that's what he's best at.
He does the hand motions, the ninja chop.
So here is John Kasich last night getting all hot and bothered about his big showing.
Maybe, just maybe, we are turning the page.
on a dark part of American politics, because tonight, the light overcame the darkness of negative campaigning.
Yeah, we can cut it there.
The light overcame the darkness of negative campaigning, except that you got doubled up by Donald Trump, the most negative campaigner in the race.
Except for that, sure.
Also, John Kasich has been doing this quasi-religious campaigning, and I just want to point one thing out.
He uses language like, the light overcame the darkness.
Imagine if Ted Cruz said, the light overcame the darkness in Iowa.
The media would lose its mind.
Their collective mind would just be gone.
Oh my god, he's talking Jesus again with this Jesus guy.
Unbelievable.
John Kasich cites Jesus as a rationale for expanding Medicaid in the state of Ohio.
And the media says, oh well, I love when he talks about Jesus.
It's just great.
I mean, when he talks about God, that's real godly behavior.
You may notice this has nothing to do with God and everything to do with leftism.
All right, finally, Ted Cruz came in third.
This is sort of a surprise finish for him.
And Cruz, you know, he's got something to celebrate.
He's now one of the top two contenders.
I still think that Trump is a prohibited favorite, but Cruz is in good position.
He's about in as good position as he could be going into a long run of primaries, many of which take place in states that favor him.
Here is Ted Cruz.
I want to congratulate Donald Trump on an impressive win tonight.
And John Kasich had a good night tonight.
But the real winner, the real winner is the conservative grassroots.
Who propelled us to an outright victory in Iowa and to a far stronger result and outcome in New Hampshire than anyone had predicted.
Okay, and that's true.
All of that's true.
The biggest problem with Ted Cruz, honestly, is his optics.
His optics are just not good.
I mean, no matter what he does, his optics are just not good.
I don't even really have to talk about it too much.
If he had the optics of Marco Rubio, he'd be an unbeatable candidate, Ted Cruz.
Alright, time for some things that I like and some things that I hate.
So, I always give you my reading list right now.
I'm doing some light reading.
A book called The Devils by Dostoevsky, so there's some light reading for you.
And if you want to, I noticed that Klaven Drew has been doing his Valentine's Day stuff I like.
Because he's a pansy and come on, but but I'm gonna do but I'm gonna do a Valentine's Day stuff.
I like thing here So the most romantic musical of all time is actually one called an American in Paris.
It's a movie musical It wasn't a stage musical and it is just beautifully done.
It's well produced.
It really is quite fantastic and one best picture actually I believe it won over a streetcar named desire and So it's a very, very good film.
It's all Gershwin tunes.
It's terrific.
You can go out and rent it tonight.
Leslie Caron is a knockout in it.
It's a really fun movie.
I grew up on that movie.
And I do think that the traditional concepts of romance are becoming increasingly important in an age where we've decided to throw them by the wayside.
Also, in things that I like, I want to say hello to our new listener, Sarah Evans.
Sarah Evans, of course, is the country singer.
This is kind of cool.
She tweeted out yesterday.
She has almost half a million followers.
She tweeted out, my new favorite podcast and talk show, The Ben Shapiro Show.
Check him out.
So Sarah, thanks so much for watching.
I really do appreciate the plug.
That is very cool stuff.
For people who don't know Sarah Evans, here's a little bit of Sarah Evans's music.
This is from like 2003.
She was in the backyard, say it was a little past nine.
When a prince pulled up a white pickup truck Her folks should have seen it coming It was only just a matter of time Plenty old enough So thank you, Sarah Evans, for watching the podcast and listening to the podcast.
Hand, round of applause.
So that's pretty cool.
And also, this is a person who will never be performing at a Super Bowl halftime show.
I mean, given what they will put out there, the kind of nonsense that Beyoncé put out there, the racist garbage Beyoncé put out there, I really do not think that Sarah Evans is going to be making a Super Bowl appearance anytime soon.
And if she does, I guarantee you they won't allow her to do anything conservative.
Maybe in Dallas.
Maybe.
Maybe.
I don't know.
Maybe.
Okay, let's be on the hopeful side.
Okay, now some things that I hate.
So, Lena Dunham is the worst.
Lena Dunham is a human manatee, and she also is a sexual abuser of her sister, which naturally earns her a spot next to Michelle Obama, pushing, let girls learn.
What they don't tell you in this ad is that Lena Dunham wants young girls to learn about their older sister lesbian kissing them when they're young girls and paying them candy to do so and masturbating in bed next to them when they're teenagers.
Like, that's not, I think, I don't think that's what Michelle Obama's going to talk about here, but you never know.
I mean, things are getting wild around here.
So here's Lena Dunham with Michelle Obama, two of the most charming women in America.
Ladies!
Yes, I'm talking to you.
Please don't.
The strong, educated, independent woman.
Did you know 62 million girls are not in school today?
That is crazy.
Join Lena and me.
Do your part to help girls around the world get the education they deserve.
Visit LetGirlsLearn.gov today.
And the best way to get girls to learn, of course, is to back Hillary Clinton, who has allowed basically every Muslim country to slip into anti-woman dictatorship.
That's the best way to let girls all over the world learn.
And Lena Dunham can learn you some things, young ladies.
Alright, so, next on the... next on the things that I hate...
Next on the things that I hate, Chris Matthews.
He's gone completely bananas over Ted Cruz.
I mean, of all the things in life that Chris Matthews hates, Ted Cruz ranks number one.
Here's Chris Matthews react.
By the way, MSNBC is so in the tank for Trump.
I mean, on the Republican side, they are so in the tank for Trump.
Do you know Joe and Micah from Morning Joe actually sat in Trump's room last night, his hotel room, as the New Hampshire results came in?
There's a troll-like quality to Cruz.
So here, anyway, here is Chris Matthews.
Why am I Chris Matthews on LACC?
He's talking about stupid Ted Cruz, he's so stupid, that Latino, Cuban, stupid guy, go! - There's a troll-like quality to Cruz.
He operates below the level of human life. - Okay, Chris, that's a little tough.
You have not gotten sleep.
We're going to try that again.
Am I allowed to have an opinion?
I got an opinion!
Okay, let me clarify it.
I think he appeals to people's negativity, and there's something about his negativity that's menacing.
So when I say below the level of human life, I mean the good nature of human life, not just being a person.
He's not even a human!
I mean, this guy, I mean, first of all, look at him.
He's Latino.
Latinos aren't people.
I mean, only Irish people like me are people.
Those are the only people who are people.
They're the loneliest people of all.
Ted Cruz?
Terrible guy?
So negative all the time with his negativity?
I mean, I'm not negative.
I just say that people aren't human.
That's not negative.
That's just a description.
I mean, he's Latino.
He's from Cuba.
You know what I think of the Cubans?
You wouldn't want to watch two Cubans debate with each other like Cruz and Rubio.
You wouldn't want to do that.
You know what?
I need to go back to sleep.
Okay.
Bye.
So, there's Chris Matthews.
Again, the media despises Cruz because they know that Cruz is an actual threat to do all the things that I talked about earlier, like cutting government and cutting off their revenue source and cutting off all of their friendly relationships in Congress.
Cruz can't do all of those things, but Cruz can certainly make life less friendly for the folks over at MSNBC, because the people over at MSNBC rely on the patronage of the Democratic Party in order to get ahead.
Okay, final thing that, this is actually a thing that I like.
So Ted Cruz, you may have noticed I'm a fan of Ted Cruz in this primary process.
I will criticize him as somebody who's weak on optics.
I criticized him over some of his activities in Iowa, although I think that was vastly overblown.
Ted Cruz has cut a really terrific ad on Donald Trump.
Here it is.
Yes!
Look, I got the Trump action figure!
No way, that's huge!
What does he do?
He pretends to be a Republican!
I like bailouts for the banks.
Too big to fail!
I gave money to Pelosi, Reid, and Anthony Weiner.
Hey, Hillary.
I'll give you money to be my friend.
Check out my house, Mr. Trump.
That's a lousy house.
I'm gonna take your house with eminent domain and park my limos there.
Eminent domain!
Eminent domain!
We wouldn't tolerate these values in our children.
Why would we want them in a president?
Eminent domain!
Okay, so I'm always ripping on people using kids in commercials.
The reason that I don't object to it this time is because the kids are stupid, and that's the point.
So whenever you're using kids as a model of what not to do, I'm generally okay with it.
Democrats use kids as a model of what to do because Democrats are children.
Republicans say, we don't want people acting like children, so you shouldn't give them power.
And by the way, Donald Trump, as we went through earlier, all of these things are true.
Donald Trump is not a true conservative.
He's a very loud guy, and that has a certain appeal.
But loud is not conservative, and strong man does not mean you get what you want.
Even if you do get what you want, it's only a temporary matter, because who knows which way Donald Trump turns tomorrow.
And we will be back tomorrow with more on this topic and others, as well as the Vaunted Ben Shapiro Show Mailbag.
It's a Thursday tomorrow, so we'll do that.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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