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Feb. 16, 2016 - The Ben Shapiro Show
49:18
Ep. 73 - Why Americans Love Trump: Balls
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Here we are, it is a Tuesday, and Donald Trump continues to dominate the headlines.
Plus, we have to get to me making fun of Mathis later.
It's been far too long since I've made fun of Mathis.
I'm Ben Shapiro, this is the Ben Shapiro Show. - You tend to demonize people because you don't care about your feelings. - Okay, so here we are.
And I want to start today by talking a little bit about why people support Donald Trump.
And I know, I've been talking about Trump non-stop, but that's because Trump is dominating the headlines.
Tomorrow night, there's supposed to be a town hall event with Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.
Originally, it was supposed to include Donald Trump.
Trump canceled, and instead he went across the way to MSNBC.
He's gonna be counter-programming with his own town hall with MSNBC, because this is what Trump does, and it's a smart media play.
This is what he's very good at.
The reason that people like Donald Trump, I think, can be summed up in basically one clip.
Well, two.
Really, it's two.
So, in Team America World Police, there's a moment in which the hero of the film, whose name is Gary Johnston, he attempts to infiltrate a terrorist group.
And he gives this long speech about how he was hurt by the Americans.
He's pretending to be a Muslim Arab terrorist at the time.
He says, I was hurt by the Americans.
And he says, quote, it was on that day that I put a jihad on them.
He does it in that kind of accent.
And if you don't believe it, you better kill me now, because I'll put a jihad on you too.
And the terrorist turns to him and says, I like you.
You have balls.
I like balls.
That clip, along with what I'm about to show you, sum up the Donald Trump phenomenon.
So, from the Goodfellas, if you recall, in the Goodfellas, Joe Pesci, who's one of the most frightening characters ever to play on screen, Joe Pesci, who actually is a guy who apparently is mobbed up, he plays a guy named Tommy.
And there's a very famous scene from Goodfellas.
If you've never seen the movie, it's a real guy movie.
It's not something that most women are into.
There's a select group of women who like this movie.
My wife, though, for example, would despise this movie.
But there's one moment that sort of sums up who this Tommy character is, this Joe Pesci character, and let's play it.
Here we go.
You're really funny.
What do you mean I'm funny?
It's funny, you know.
It's a good story.
It's funny.
You're a funny guy.
What do you mean?
You mean the way I talk?
What?
It's just, you know, you're just funny.
It's funny, you know, the way you tell the story and everything.
Funny how?
I mean, what's funny about it?
Tommy, no, you got it all wrong.
Oh, Anthony.
He's a big boy.
He knows what he said.
What'd you say?
You're right.
Funny how?
Just... What?
Just... You know, you're funny.
That's all.
You mean... Let me understand this, because I don't even know.
Maybe it's me.
I'm a little f***ed up, maybe.
But I'm funny how?
I mean, funny like I'm a clown?
I amuse you?
I make you laugh?
I'm here to f***ing amuse you?
What do you mean, funny?
Funny how?
How am I funny?
No, just... You know how you tell a story?
No, no, I don't know.
You said it.
How do I know?
You said I'm funny.
How the f**k am I funny?
What the f**k is so funny about me?
Tell me.
Tell me what's funny.
Get the f*** out of here, Tommy.
You mother f**ker!
I almost had him!
I almost had him!
You stuttering b**ch!
Frankie, was he shaking?
Okay, and that is the Donald Trump phenomenon.
So Donald Trump is that guy, right?
Donald Trump is the guy, he's the big swingin', you know, he's the guy who's busting everybody's balls, and that's a big thing in the Good Bellas, all these guys busting each other's balls, and the idea is that the bigger man is always intimidating everybody else.
That's Donald Trump in a nutshell.
And the reason people are resonating to this, the reason that Republicans are resonating to this, Is because for eight years, and longer than that, Republicans have felt castrated.
Americans have felt castrated.
They've got President Obama telling them they're racist, sexist, bigot, homophobes.
If they could just drop the masculinity at the door, that would be great.
You got Hillary Clinton saying that Americans are secret rapists who are attempting to kill black people.
They really need a more feminine president.
You've got Bernie Sanders saying, we have to take that sort of explosive testosterone-y American-ness, you know, the kind that produces economic booms, and we have to curtail it.
We have to curb it.
Still, we can have more equality.
And so Americans respond with, well, we need somebody with balls, right?
We're not going to win anymore unless we have somebody with balls.
And that's what Trump is, right?
He represents a visceral response to all of that, as I wrote this morning at Daily Wire.
He plays like he's an extra from a gangster movie.
Like, Joe Pesci has the same accent that Donald Trump has.
Right, Donald Trump?
He makes these ridiculous over-the-top promises that he may never keep.
He makes ridiculous over-the-top threats that he probably will never fulfill.
His opponents are not opponents, they're enemies and they have to be destroyed.
Everything he does is big, everything that he does is bold, and there's a scene in which Joe Pesci, in this film, near the beginning, beats a guy to death for mocking him.
The guy tells Joe Pesci to go get his shine box, because he used to be a shoeshine boy, and Joe Pesci literally beats the man to death.
He calls him a mother-blanker, and then he beats him to death.
And that's sort of the Trump feel.
And then there are a lot of people who say, well, that's great, he'll do that for us, he'll do that for America, right?
If somebody insults us, we'll go after them, we'll beat their brains in.
That's why we need Donald Trump.
So he has balls, and apparently, just like in Team America, voters like balls.
There's only two problems with this, of course.
The first is that Tommy in The Goodfellas is the kind of guy where, about two-thirds of the way through the movie, for no reason at all, he just shoots a guy.
There's a guy who's hanging around, his name is Spider, and at one point, he tells Tommy to go F himself, and Tommy just shoots him.
Just kills him.
And that's Trump.
You never know who he's gonna kill.
He could be joking around with one guy one minute, and then you could kill him the next.
That's what makes that scene actually incredibly tense, is that you've seen him do these kinds of things.
So you don't know if he actually, he's so unstable, is he actually going to kill Ray Liotta sitting right there in the Goodfellas?
Second, gangster films, the reason we like gangster films is because they're all about consolidation and power.
They're all about, will the Corleone family be able to overcome all of the divides in their own family to beat back the various other families in New York?
Or will Tommy and Robert De Niro and Ray Liao, will Joe Pesci and all those guys get together and take over the mafia, right?
It's all about consolidation and power.
American politics is about the opposite.
It's about diffusion of power.
We don't want one guy with too much power because that means he can interfere in our lives, right?
We learned this with President Obama and Bush and Clinton and everybody else.
We don't need more power in the hands of a single powerful individual.
This is the problem with Trump.
But Again, the response to the pansy years of Obama and Hillary and the left and Hollywood, which tells us that all men are villains because men are testosterone filled and all women are heroes, but only if they ditch men and act like men.
Ronda Rousey is a hero, but the mom who stays home and takes care of her two kids is not.
This idea has created a backlash, and the backlash is, if we can't find anybody who's really masculine on the Republican side, we just go for the most masculine-looking guy there is, and that's Donald Trump.
So with that in mind, here's Donald Trump as Joe Pesci yesterday.
He did a press conference yesterday, and he's very, very upset with Ted Cruz, because Ted Cruz has been running all sorts of ads in South Carolina that point out that Trump is not really conservative, and he's been bashing Trump as not fully conservative.
And so Trump did a press conference yesterday in which he basically threatened the Republican Party.
He said, I'm going to run third party.
I'll sue Ted Cruz, right?
He's my enemy.
And I'm going to, if he, if he tries to bust my balls, I'll, I'll cave his skull in basically.
Here's, here's Donald Trump slash Joe Pesci yesterday.
But the only way you can fight it, and the only way I can fight it, is all the press here.
But most people can't fight it.
But he's a liar.
So he'll go up and he'll absolutely lie.
In fact, Henry, who is Lieutenant Governor, said, I can't believe the things he's saying, because he understands the views on everything, and he just comes out and boom, boom, boom.
Absolute lies.
Now, he'll apologize, but I don't want an apology after the election.
I want the apology before.
And if he doesn't, I'm going to bring a lawsuit because, in my opinion, based on what I've learned over the last two, three days from very top lawyers, he doesn't even have the right to serve as president or even run as president.
He was born in Canada.
So I will bring that lawsuit if he doesn't apologize.
And so all of Trump's supporters look at this and they say, look at the set on this guy, right?
If he doesn't get his way, he's going to sue.
He's going to force Ted Cruz to apologize.
He's going to force people to back down.
During that last debate when he was talking over people, that just shows what a set Trump has, right?
When he said that Ted Cruz was a blank and the blank was a word for female genitalia, That just showed what a tough guy he was.
What a real tough guy he is.
Now, the only way to fight Trump is on his own terms.
Once you get into—and this is a common thing, by the way, in all cultures.
In all cultures, there are games where men fight each other.
When I was in high school, there'd be guys dissing each other.
There's a game apparently in the black community called The Dozens that's been kind of glorified in film, where people insult each other.
You've got breaking each other's balls in the mafia movies.
It's a very common masculine form of showmanship.
It's kind of, we're going to show how tough we are without actually having to kill each other.
Trump is playing this game with everybody, as a columnist for the New York Post says today, and nobody on the Republican side of the aisle knows how to play the game.
So you mentioned this yesterday, and when Trump did this at the debate, you had Ted Cruz saying, you know, adults don't, you know, adults don't interrupt each other, Donald.
And Donald, and Trump immediately responds, oh yeah, you're a real adult, Ted.
You're a real adult.
It's like teenage stuff.
And that's why I said yesterday what actually needed to happen is somebody needed to look right at Trump and they needed to say, you're a spoiled brat, you grew up rich, nobody's ever said boo to you, nobody's ever said no to you because you've been able to buy your friends, you have to hire people to come to your wedding, and you're the guy who's sitting up here telling us what a tough guy you are?
Sit down, shut up, you have nothing to say, the only reason you're here is because you're extraordinarily wealthy.
If you're a poor guy, no one would care what you have to say.
And the only reason you're rich is because your pops gave you $400 million.
If somebody actually said that to Trump, now we're engaged in the game, right?
This is the game.
And a bunch of Republicans would go, oh, that's a tough guy.
That looks like a tough guy now.
That guy has a pair on him.
So Trump is doing this routine yesterday.
And he doubled down on it.
He continued by saying that Ted Cruz is unstable and crazy.
I walked in, I gave two great judges.
Oh, that was another thing Cruz just said.
Donald Trump is going to appoint liberal judges.
Liberal judges.
I mean, in fact, Keith just said that.
He said, it just came over Fox, that Cruz said that Donald Trump will appoint liberal judges.
Now we got three, four days to go.
How do you fight that?
It's a total lie.
In fact, I had mentioned, as you probably saw, I mentioned a couple of names during the debate.
And they were very conservative people, highly thought of, and I got actually very good marks for it.
But I mentioned some names during the debate of very serious conservative people, judges, highly respected.
And, you know, I would think of those two, but I think of others.
And I will be appointing.
But, you know, what do you do when somebody says on television he's going to appoint liberal judges?
Now, if I'm watching that, I'm going to say, oh, Trump's going to appoint liberal judges?
I'm not going to vote for Trump.
We've got to be very smart.
We've got to be very careful.
You've got a very unstable guy in Cruz.
He's nuts.
He's nuts.
Cruz is nuts.
Okay.
What would have been funny there is if somebody had actually interjected, Donald, name those people again.
Those two judges, because clearly he doesn't know, right?
That's why he keeps saying there are these two people, and I mentioned them, and I don't remember their names right now, but I mentioned them.
The reason that Cruz says that Trump would appoint liberal judges is because the person who he had said before all of this he'd appoint was his sister, who's a federal appeals court judge, and who has said in the past that partial birth abortion is mandatory under the Constitution.
It's a right under the Constitution, partial birth abortion.
And Trump says he's unstable, he's nuts.
And it's, again, it's just Joe Pesci.
What, are you calling me a clown?
You saying I'm a clown?
Like I'm funny to you?
Like I'm a clown?
You're the clown!
Right?
I mean, it's all the same kind of thing.
And Trump gets away with it because he has this, the gall to say anything.
I mean, he will literally say anything.
So, in this same press conference, He said, he did not say that Bush lied to get us into Iraq.
So you remember during the debate, he actually said this.
We'll show you the two clips back-to-back so you know what we're talking about.
Let's do the flashback first.
Here's what Donald Trump actually said about George W. Bush during the debate.
Here's Donald Trump, and I mean, his face was color-coordinated to the background apparently.
I want to tell you, they lied.
They said there were weapons of mass destruction, there were none, and they knew there were none.
There were no weapons of mass destruction.
Okay, so we can pause it there.
That's what Trump said during the debate.
Here's what Trump said yesterday about what he said two days ago.
I didn't see the debate live, and I read about it afterwards, and it said, Trump says Bush lied purposefully and got us into 9-11 based on a lie.
He lied.
And then I saw the debate, and I said, well, that wasn't what Donald Trump said.
I didn't say it.
Yeah, they write it the way they want.
But that was the way it was characterized.
No, look, we had, you know, the brother stands up, says, my brother kept us safe.
I say, well, what about the World Trade Center came down?
The worst attack in the history of the United States.
He said, oh, how dare you speak about my brother like that?
Well, I mean, I'm just giving the facts.
The World Trade Center, you understand, Mike, I mean, the World Trade Center came down during his reign.
And I said, what about that?
I mean, did it come down during his reign?
So, you know, you can't say your brother kept us safe because after the World Trade Center, I mean, the World Trade Center came down during his reign.
And frankly, there was a lot of information that the CIA and the NSA, you know, you had a lot of different agencies that were poorly coordinated.
Because they could have found out about this.
You know, there's a lot of theory that they did not get along, and they were not sharing information properly, and they could have maybe done something about it.
Who knows?
Who really knows?
But you can't say that the World Trade Center, you know, was not like an event.
I mean, he was president, the World Trade Center came down, and you have Jeb, who doesn't even like using his last name, you have Jeb, and for good reason, I understand that, but you have Jeb saying that his brother kept us safe.
Okay, so you've got Trump saying that.
Well, what Trump actually said there, I mean, you heard, first of all, Mike Gallagher does a terrible job there asking the question because nobody said that Trump said that Bush got us into 9-11, right?
What Trump said was 9-11 happened on Bush's watch and You hear him double down on that, basically say that Bush should have known Bush should have done something about it.
By the way, his spokesperson came out yesterday and said that Jeb Bush should have done something about 9-11 because he was governor of Florida at the time when Zacharias Moussaoui, the 20th hijacker, was doing his flight training in Florida.
Because apparently he was doing that flight training in Jeb's basement or something.
But what's ridiculous about this, you hear Trump and he's just lying.
I mean, he's outright lying.
I didn't say that Bush lied to get us to invade Iraq.
Also, Bush lied to get us to invade Iraq.
He'll say anything.
He'll say anything.
I mean, it's just, it's total madness.
And it's okay, though, because he's just playing the dozens.
This is just, it's just a disc fight.
And because the right doesn't know how to play this game, because the right has no clue how to play this game, and they don't know what it signals, and again, it's universal to human cultures.
There are no human cultures in which men do... By the way, it's in animal culture, too.
You'll see, I just read this book, The Professor in the Cage.
I talked about it on the show.
In which they talk about how animals will present to each other, like they'll growl at each other, they'll do fangs and basically do what they call the monkey dance, where they just dance around each other and mock combat.
That's when you see deer and they go at each other and they fight each other.
You notice they never kill each other.
They just fight each other to establish dominance.
That's what Trump is doing rhetorically here, and the right doesn't know how to fight it.
So instead, they trot out George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
So here's George W. Bush ripping Donald Trump at a rally yesterday.
George W., by the way, he's campaigning for Jeb exclamation point Bush.
And here he is.
He looks exactly like his dad, by the way.
He is aging exactly like H.W.
Here is George W. You have to man a humble, deep and genuine faith.
Faith that reveals itself through good works.
Not loud words.
I think you should look for someone whose humility helps him understand what he doesn't know and surrounds himself with people who do know what he doesn't know.
So he says that Trump just isn't humble at all, right?
It's a very civil way of saying it.
You have Dick Cheney doing the same thing here as Dick Cheney saying that Trump sounds like a liberal Democrat.
He sounds like a liberal Democrat to me, Brett.
He's wrong, and he's, I think, deliberately promoting those views in order to advance his political interest on the question of the WMD charge that the administration lied.
That was thoroughly investigated by the Rob Silberman Commission.
They found absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support that.
On the notion, for example, that the President failed to act before 9-11 to stop it, we had no actionable intelligence at that point.
It simply wasn't available.
There was nothing we could have done, and we didn't have intelligence at that point to suggest other than there's a general kind of a threat.
Now, again, nothing that he's saying is wrong, but Trump's response to all of this, all of this is, oh, you're stupid.
You're stupid, mother.
I mean, and so there's no way to come back from that unless you're actually willing to hit Trump in the mouth, unless you're actually willing to get in a verbal fist fight with Donald Trump.
And nobody seems like they're willing to do that at this point.
Meanwhile, Trump actually is doing damage.
I mean, when he says that Ted Cruz is dishonest, when he calls him a liar, Rubio's jumping on that bandwagon, too.
Rubio, Marco Rubio, senator from Florida.
One of the most disappointing things about this race is watching Rubio and Cruz, both of whom I like, go at each other while basically leaving Donald Trump alone.
Like, while Cruz is trying to defend against Trump, Rubio sees his opening and jumps on top of Cruz.
Rubio isn't attacking Trump now.
It's amazing.
All of the Rubio supporters who were fighting angry for months that Ted Cruz would not attack Trump, now they're just fine with Marco Rubio not attacking Trump so that he can attack Cruz.
It's amazing how politics Makes hypocrites of us all.
But you've got everybody attacking each other, and Trump just standing there off to the side.
And now, the Rubio supporters are very upset, and they're saying that Cruz is corrupt.
Why?
Because there's this Cruz ad that apparently had to be removed by a television station about Rubio.
Here's what the ad looked like, and now Rubio is saying that Cruz is corrupt also.
The reason he's saying that is because Cruz's base of support is among conservatives who want a consistent conservative and evangelicals who want somebody honest.
And so you have Rubio and Trump both slamming Cruz by saying that he's dishonest, that he's a liar.
So here is the ad that had to be pulled and we'll talk about what Rubio had to say about it.
Our porous borders and weak visa system allow dangerous people and enemies of America to easily enter the country.
And Marco Rubio worked to allow sanctuary cities that attract illegal immigrants who have already proven they don't respect our law.
Still forefinding a way for them to legally stay in the United States.
Yeah, look, I don't think you're going to round them into 4-12 million people.
Marco Rubio and Chuck Schumer's risky plan?
An America full of sanctuary cities.
Stanford Truth, Inc.
is responsible for the content of this advertising.
So the Rubio campaign got in touch with some television stations and got very, very upset about this and got a couple of television stations to pull it.
Rubio then went on the campaign trail and he said that Ted Cruz is lying about his immigration record.
So, let's take a minute and go through Rubio's position on immigration.
Or rather, his positions on immigration, all 1,167 of them.
Because Marco Rubio is all over the place on immigration.
The Gang of Eight bill did, in fact, give incentives to cities to be sanctuary cities.
That's in the Gang of Eight bill that Marco Rubio endorsed.
So back when he ran for Senate, Marco Rubio said, quote, I'm strongly against amnesty.
The most important thing we need to do is enforce our existing laws.
Then he got into the Senate and he pushed forward this Gang of Eight bill.
So the Gang of Eight bill would have allowed millions of illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship.
It authorized spending with no guarantee of border security.
It allowed government services for people who are granted amnesty.
Eventually, Rubio dropped his support, and now he's lying and saying that the version of the bill he supported originally was never meant to pass.
The House was going to amend it.
Which, of course, he didn't say at the time.
So where does he stand now?
Basically on every side of the issue.
In April 2015, he said of Obama's executive amnesty, quote, I've always said eventually that will not be the permanent policy of the United States.
I hope it comes to an end because we've improved our immigration laws.
He said to Univision, and Cruz quoted him on this in the debate, and this is when Rubio said, how'd you know what I said on Univision?
You don't even speak Spanish.
And then Cruz started jabbering in Spanish to him.
It's just, what a terrible debate.
He told Univision, quote, I wouldn't undo Obama's executive amnesty immediately.
The reason is that there are already people who have that permission, who are working, who are studying.
I don't think it would be fair to cancel it suddenly.
It will have to end.
God willing, it'll end because immigration reform is going to pass.
So the guy who said he was now against the Gang of Eight says that he's actually for the Gang of Eight.
He just wants it to happen later.
In November, he said that he wants illegal immigrants not to get citizenship, but they should be given a green card.
Which, of course, as anybody who knows anyone who's ever had a green card means, you can apply for citizenship.
That's what a green card allows you to do.
After a certain period of time, my wife became a citizen because she had a green card, and she used that green card to apply for citizenship.
So, it's a six-in-one, half-dozens.
But the rap is what matters here, and the rap is that Cruz is dishonest, The rap is that Cruz is a bad guy, and Trump is leading the groundwork here.
He's laying the groundwork for every attack on every candidate.
It was Trump who laid the groundwork for the Marco Rubio is a wuss argument, and everybody else jumped in.
He laid the groundwork for the Ted Cruz's dishonest argument, and everybody else jumped in.
Because he's good at it.
This is the one thing he's good at.
And people resonate to the guy with the balls, which is just ridiculous.
And as I say in my column today, you know, all balls and no principle make Johnny a silly boar.
And that's basically what we've got here.
So, meanwhile on the other side of the aisle, the Clintons are going similarly crazy.
So Hillary Clinton yesterday, she's got to be the worst candidate.
I mean, she's a worse candidate than Donald Trump by far.
Donald Trump is actually good at some of this stuff.
Hillary is just awful at it.
Here is Hillary Clinton barking like a dog yesterday at her rally.
Seriously, here we go.
One of my favorite political ads of all time was a radio ad, rural Arkansas, where the announcer said, wouldn't it be great if somebody running for office said something We could have an immediate reaction as to whether it was true or not.
Well, we've trained this dog.
And a dog, if it's not true, he's gonna bark.
And then the dog was barking on the radio.
And so, you know, people were, like, barking at each other for days after that.
I'm trying to figure out how we can do that with the Republicans.
You know?
We need to get that dog and follow him around, and every time they say these things, like, oh, you know, the Great Recession was caused by too much regulation.
Arf!
Arf!
You know?
I think we could cut right through a lot of their claims.
Okay, so there she is, Miss America, talking about how she wishes the campaign went.
She does a very credible imitation of a dog, actually.
I mean, that's probably her best quality on the campaign trail, is that she can bark like a dog.
And I could drop a really inappropriate joke here, but instead we'll just slide right over the hat.
And it's really tempting, but we're not going to do it.
Okay, so that's Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail yesterday, and she's a terrible candidate.
And so Bill Clinton has now been trotted out to try and help Hillary Clinton, his barking mad wife.
And here's Bill Clinton going after Bernie Sanders supporters.
He says that they are basically crazy.
They're totally nuts.
Here we go.
It's not altogether mysterious that there are a lot of people that say, well, the Republican Party rewarded the Tea Party.
Just tell people what they want to hear, move them to the right, and we'll be rewarded.
Except they didn't get anything done.
Then, that's going on now in our party.
If you don't deal with the fact that we are politically polarized, and we keep rewarding people who tell us things they know they can't do, because it pushes our hot buttons, we can't go forward together.
First of all, Bill knows something about hot buttons being pushed.
Second of all, it's clear that if you're actually watching the tape of this, Bill Clinton has no idea where he is.
I mean, he could be in his bathroom for all he knows right now.
He is totally out of it, and he is reviewing lesbian pornography in his mind as per his usual.
So he's out there insulting the Bernie Sanders supporters as too polarized, as too far left.
I mean, that means that he's already running a general election campaign, and so is Hillary Clinton, and so, by the way, is Donald Trump.
Trump and Bill and Hillary are all part of the same group.
They're all very much aligned.
And here's the proof.
Bill went on yesterday to talk about taking Donald Trump's money.
He said that Donald Trump donated money to the Clinton Foundation.
Here's Bill explaining.
She had come to Arkansas to be with me and organize the first legal aid clinic in the most conservative mountain county of the Ozark.
Thank you.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
And by the way, wait, no, no, wait, wait, wait, wait.
I want you to hear this.
I want you to hear this.
And by the way, before he became a Republican, or when he was, I certainly did.
And I certainly did.
And I took his money from my foundation, where I used it, to better than he's using it now, I'll guarantee you.
Okay, so what's happening there, for those who can't see, is there's a guy who's standing there waving a Donald Trump sign.
Here's what I want to say to you about this.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
I remember when he called me to say how terrible the Republicans had been to me and Hillary, and how unfair they were, and what a brilliant job Hillary did as a senator.
So, and by the way, a lot of Republicans thought that, which is why they spent the last three years trying to tear her down, 'cause they know if you nominate her, they're gonna have to eat the words that they said when they weren't running for office. - And then, they're gonna have to eat the words that they said when they weren't running for We can pause it there.
Every time Bill gets to an applause line, his mouth kind of opens randomly, and it looks like he's going to start drooling.
But in any case, you've got the guy there with the Trump sign, and he says at one point, you hear him shout to Clinton, you took Trump's money, right?
You took Trump's money.
And Clinton comes back with, yeah, I took his money.
I took his money and then I used it for better stuff than he's using it for right now.
When Trump is asked about giving money to Bill Clinton, what does he say?
I was in business!
I needed to get them to do things!
So number one, somebody or both of them are lying, right?
Because one is saying I gave him money to do things and I got those things, and the other is saying he gave me money and I used it for whatever I wanted to.
So somebody is lying.
But second of all, just notice the similarity in persona between the Clintons and Donald Trump.
So you've got Bill up there saying that Trump used to call us and tell us how horribly the Republicans were treating us.
That's why we like Donald.
Donald Trump about Vladimir Putin, right?
Vladimir Putin!
He calls me a genius!
I like Vladimir Putin!
It's all about the Clintons.
It's all about Trump.
And they don't care what kind of money they have to spread around or take.
They're deeply corrupt.
It's all about them.
It's all about them.
And this is the battle right now.
That it's all about a bunch of politicians for whom it is all about them.
The Clintons and Donald Trump.
And this is a very serious time.
It's a very serious time, and I don't want to start lecturing you about what a serious time it is, but we spent the entire broadcast yesterday talking about the impact of Justice Scalia's death, and the fact that we are one Supreme Court justice away from losing everything.
From the Constitution becoming a club that the left can use to push forward social policies, economic policies, gun policies of their choosing, to push those down the throats of the American people.
And Ted Cruz had this right.
Cruz slammed Donald Trump yesterday over his Supreme Court picks.
Here's what Ted Cruz had to say about this.
Actually, those polling numbers are predominantly taken before the debate.
What we are seeing happening is Donald's numbers are plummeting after the debate.
And I think it's a couple of things.
I think, number one, the time for the circus, I think, is over.
People realize, particularly with Justice Scalia's passing, that the stakes are serious, that we need A serious nominee who will defend the Constitution.
And listen, Donald, I like Donald personally.
He's a very talented entertainer.
But he has been a liberal his entire life.
He has, for 60 years of his life, described himself as very, very pro-choice.
He has supported partial birth abortion.
Even on the stage, this weekend, he supported taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood.
He called me a liar when I said it.
He says his transformation came to Ronald Reagan.
But the difference is Ronald Reagan became a conservative.
Donald Trump has never become a conservative.
And you know why we know that Donald would appoint liberals to the U.S.
Supreme Court?
We know that because for four decades he has been giving money to liberals from Jimmy Carter.
He supported Jimmy Carter against Ronald Reagan.
He's given money multiple times to Hillary Clinton.
He's given money to Chuck Schumer.
He's given money to Harry Reid.
And he's also given money to Republicans, too.
He has given money to John Kerry.
He supported John Kerry against George W. Bush.
He supports Senator John McCain.
Right.
What he has said is, being a businessman in New York, he's had to give money to everybody.
Real quick.
Ten seconds.
But hold on.
Let me finish this point.
Anyone that writes checks to John Kerry and Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid does not care about putting conservative justices on the court, because those individuals fought tooth and nail to prevent conservative justices, and we are one justice away from losing the Second Amendment.
If you vote for Donald Trump, we will see the Second Amendment written out of the Constitution, because one liberal justice will do that.
It is amazing, by the way, how Fox News treats Cruz as adversarial there.
I mean, they're really treating him like, you know, but Trump says this and Trump says that and Trump says that he would never appoint a liberal justice.
Trump doesn't care.
Trump would appoint whoever makes him popular at the moment.
He'd appoint Oprah Winfrey to the Supreme Court.
He doesn't care at all.
And by the way, I don't actually buy Cruz's entire argument that Trump would certainly appoint somebody left on the court.
I don't think that's true.
I think that Trump might appoint somebody right.
He might appoint somebody left.
He might appoint a chicken.
I mean, I don't know what's going through Trump's head at any given time.
But here's the difference between Trump and Hillary.
I do know that while Hillary is self-interested, Hillary Clinton also is an ideologue.
So, for example, here yesterday is Hillary Clinton talking about the requirements for the next justice on the Supreme Court.
With Chris Matthews, I have to say... They don't even want to talk about filling the seat of Justice Scalia.
Well, Chris, I find that's the height of irony.
You know, Justice Scalia was known for his strict interpretation of the Constitution.
So I find it hard to understand the Republicans wanting to blatantly ignore the Constitution in replacing him.
Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution clearly says it's the President's job to nominate justices To the Supreme Court with the advice and consent of the Senate.
The Constitution doesn't say wait a year and hope for a president of a different party.
And trying to flout the Constitution is a really funny way for the Republicans to be honoring Justice Scalia's memory and legacy.
And there are huge issues at stake.
You know, the Supreme Court's in the middle of considering the President's executive order to let Dreamers stay in the country.
That's essential to over a million young people.
Considering the very burdensome restrictions Texas placed on women's reproductive decisions, that could affect millions of women.
They're going to have a big, big impact deciding the fate of President Obama's plan to cut greenhouse gas pollution and address climate change.
So I think the Supreme Court deserves nine justices, and I think we should demand that the Senate do its duty and receive and act on whoever the president nominates.
Let me ask you about your position about appointing a Supreme Court justice should you be elected president.
Your rival Senator Sanders says he would put a litmus test.
They must be someone who wants to get rid of Citizens United.
Where are you on that?
Well, I would hope that anybody I appoint ...understand the grave damage that Citizens United is doing to our democracy.
I think we need to appoint Supreme Court justices who are living in the, you know, the real give-and-take of the world... Okay, we can pause it there.
I mean, this is... So, in other words, she says that it's against Scalia's idea for the Senate to have advice and consent, but...
Hillary Clinton also says that we need people who don't abide by any element of Justice Scalia's philosophy.
That's what we really need on the Supreme Court.
She's an ideologue.
There's no question who she would appoint to the Supreme Court of the United States.
This is why it's a very serious time.
Okay, time for some things that I like and some things that I hate.
Okay, first, something that I like.
There's a new trailer for Daredevil.
If you saw Daredevil on Netflix, It's good.
It could be... I thought season one was good.
I didn't think it was as great as other people did.
This is the trailer for season two of Daredevil.
And let me just say, I'm totally Team Punisher.
Okay, so the Punisher is a character in the Marvel Comics universe, and he actually is... He's like Batman who kills people, basically.
He's a vigilante, but he actually kills all of the mobsters.
He doesn't just...
Put them in jail.
I've talked about the morality of comic books before, how stupid it is that we have this new routine where if you kill a bad guy who's about to blow up an entire city, you're just as bad as that bad guy.
You're not.
So this trailer makes me happy on the inside, and I hope the Punisher wins, and Daredevil is replaced by the Punisher, and this series actually becomes the Punisher from season three on.
Here we go.
One batch.
Two batch.
Billion time.
Father, why do I still feel guilty?
*music* The gelt means your work is not yet finished.
Downtown office thinks we got a new player in Hell's Kitchen.
What do they want?
The DA's office says the shooter's independent.
He's tracking gangs to their home turf and taking them out with military precision.
Acknowledging hardware to take out half the city.
Hell's Kitchen is about to explode.
Bang.
Maybe we created him.
All of us.
There's no connection.
We never stopped to think that Daredevil's actions could open the door for men like this.
How much longer before innocent people start getting caught in this crossfire?
Blood is being shed.
And you've donated more than your fair share!
The city needs him.
I need to take care of the scum that killed my family.
People don't have to die.
You hit them and they get back up, I hit them and they stay down!
Why are you doing this?
Because I think you're a half-measure.
I think you're a man who can't finish the job.
I think that you're a coward.
You know you're one bad day away from being me.
Okay, so there it is, the trailer for Daredevil Season 2, which looks great, by the way.
Totally team Punisher.
Totally team Punisher.
He's right, Daredevil is a half-measure.
So is Batman.
When he hits people, they stay down.
This is the way that you take care of bad guys.
So, that's...
Thumbs up on the Punisher.
It's gonna be sad when he loses, but it's good that he's in it.
Also, on my reading list, I always give you the update on my reading list.
The book Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein is an important book because this is one of the founding documents of the Obama administration.
Whenever they talk inside the Obama administration about using the power of government to nudge people towards certain behavior, This is what they're talking about, and so I like to read what the left has to say so that we can learn how to combat it and what's there that's of use.
So I will give you an update after I have read that book.
Okay, so now some things that I hate.
So first of all, I promised I would mock Mathis, and it's been months.
I mean, it's really been too long.
And I know Mathis has been waiting with bated breath for the other shoe to drop.
And now it's gonna drop, but this shoe isn't just gonna hit Mathis, it's also gonna hit Andrew Klavan.
So Klavan, the other day, I listen to Klavan's show every day, as you should, over at Daily Wire, and you should subscribe so you can see all of this and enjoy it.
Klavan does his Things That I Like, which was the genesis for Things That I Hate.
And Stuff I Like, Klavan said, and you recommended this, this was his last pre-Valentine's Day recommendation, was the movie Shakespeare in Love.
Yeah.
And he said that it was a great movie.
It's on his top 20 list.
He said it was nearly a perfect movie with a perfect script.
And so I did what I always do with Clavin.
I gave him a fair hearing.
I went out and I re-watched the movie over the weekend.
And as I suspected, it is complete garbage.
It is hogwash and it is garbage.
And then I come in here and Mathis says, no, I love Shakespeare in Love.
Of course you do, Mathis.
Of course you do.
That's all.
So, Shakespeare in Love, the reason that it's stupid is because the entire premise of Shakespeare in Love is that Shakespeare needed to get it on in order to write.
Okay?
That this was basically Shakespeare's drive.
That Shakespeare, if it hadn't been for him getting laid regularly, then Shakespeare would have just turned into a dried-up poet who wasn't able to utter a word.
He needed to experience love with the most vacuous person on earth, Gwyneth Paltrow, in order for him to be able to write great poetry and terrific plotlines.
And, by the way, he didn't even come up with his plotlines.
It was Christopher Marlowe who came up with his plotlines.
Never mind the fact that Christopher Marlowe is a raging anti-Semite, but that's aside from the point.
Also, they make it out that the historical incorrectness of it is one element, which is just, there's so much historically incorrect here that it's not even worth it to really go into it.
I mean, the idea that the Earl of Wessex is heading off to America to grow tobacco is like 50 years before anyone was growing tobacco in America.
The idea that Romeo and Juliet started off, Romeo and the Pirate's Daughter, No, it's actually an ancient myth.
The whole thing is dumb.
But what's particularly insulting is the idea that great artists, people who work at their art, people who work at their craft, what really inspires them is getting laid regularly.
No, I'm sorry, it just doesn't hold.
I mean, imagine what Gregor Mendel, a priest, could have discovered.
I mean, he only discovered Mendelian genetics.
How much more could he have discovered if he was having sex regularly with prostitutes?
I mean, goodness gracious.
That's sort of the premise of Shakespeare in Love.
Matthews was arguing this with me yesterday, but he's not on the show, so I don't care.
He just sits back there, and he hits buttons, and, you know, alright, you don't have any- he can't argue, so there's nothing he can say.
He doesn't get paid to talk on the show I do.
So, in any case, he says that...
He says that that's unfair to the script, that it's really about how love, how love is what causes people to write well.
Except that at the very beginning of the movie, there's a scene where Shakespeare, played by the entirely effeminate Joseph Fiennes, does a routine where he's having sex with some random broad, and then he goes and writes a scene for Romeo and Juliet, and it's magnificent, and he's super excited about it.
What utter nonsense, what utter stupidity.
Shakespeare was a genius because Shakespeare was a genius.
He wrote beautifully about human emotion, not because he was in a lusty relationship with a woman dressed as a man dressed as a woman dressed as a man.
It's a dumb movie, and the fact that it beat L.A.
Confidential for Best Picture that year is just a travesty.
L.A.
Confidential is a truly terrific movie.
L.A.
Confidential, excellent movie.
Shakespeare in love.
Okay.
Other things that I hate.
Kanye West Number one, over the weekend, Kanye West started tweeting that he's $53 million in debt, and then he begged Mark Zuckerberg over at Facebook to bail him out.
Why?
Because Kanye West is an insane person, and Kanye West said that he's the greatest artist in two generations, and thus, he should be bailed out.
He said all he wants to do is engage in his art, which he could do for free.
I mean, I'm not sure why we should rack up $53 million of debt.
That's not the part about Kanye West that I actually hate.
The part about Kanye West that I hate is that he has now decided He has now decided that white people should not be able to review his albums.
He wrote this on Twitter, quote, to Pitchfork, which is a publication, to Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, New York Times, and any other white publication, please do not comment on black music anymore.
So, never mind the fact that 80 to 90% of the entire hip-hop audience is white.
Really, like it's all white suburban kids who listen to hip-hop.
It has been known since the 1990s.
Never mind the fact that all those people reviewing Kanye is what helps make Kanye famous.
Never mind the fact all those are super, super duper leftist publications that bend over backwards to praise Kanye's stupidity, his yeezes, idiocy.
West tweeted, quote, I love, love, love white people.
But you don't understand what it means to be the great grandson of ex-slaves and make it this far.
What?
What?
I love, love, love white people.
Okay, yes, that's really just, that's utterly inspiring.
Thank you for your love, love, love of white people, Kanye.
And he says, you don't understand what it means to be the great-grandson of ex-slaves.
The great-grandson?
My God, how far back are we gonna go here?
The great-grandson of ex-slaves?
First of all, I don't, like, that math I don't think matches up.
The great-grandson of ex-slaves.
How old is Kanye?
Do we have any idea?
How old is Kanye West?
Okay, I'm gonna check this now.
Kanye West, He's 38 years old, so he's six years older than I am.
Okay, my great-grandparents got to the United States in 1907.
So, unless his great-grandmother was having kids at like age 65, I don't think the math totally matches up here, because the Civil War ended in 1865, so presumably if they were ex-slaves, she would have had been born in like 1855.
Okay, so that means that Kanye West was born in 1977.
Okay, a generation is approximately 30 years.
Okay, this would mean that everybody, that there were like three generations where everybody had kids at 40.
So, I'm not doubting that he is descended from slaves, that's probably true, but I don't think that he's the great-grandson.
He might be the great-great-grandson or the great-great-great-grandson of ex-slaves, just in terms of the timing.
But even so, What?
Who cares?
Who cares?
As the great-grandson of... Right, you've really suffered if 150 years ago your great-great-grandparents were freed from slavery.
That's definitely been you suffering over it, Kanye.
I can see how much you suffer now.
With your giant $20 million house in the hills, white people should definitely not review your music.
Here's what I say.
White people shouldn't listen to your music.
And let's see how this goes for you.
You want white people reviewing your music?
White people shouldn't listen to it.
After all, isn't it cultural appropriation for them to listen to and enjoy your garbage?
Isn't that cultural appropriation?
For that matter, black people shouldn't review white people's stuff.
And whenever a white person says something, a black person apparently should shut up.
They don't understand the white experience.
I mean, if some racist says something anti-black, maybe black people should just shut up because they don't understand that racist background.
How do they know where that racist came from?
Do you see how stupid this idea is?
This idea that people of different races cannot comment on the activities of one another.
Talk about creating a racist America, a stupid racist America.
So, Kanye West, a horrible example of humanity, continuing to be a horrible example of humanity.
And by the way, producing garbage, this stuff is just not good.
I understand this is not my field of expertise.
To have a field of expertise in which Kanye West is a genius, you have to have an IQ under 110.
For sure.
Maybe under 100.
I'm sorry.
It's not intelligent music.
It's not music that stirs the soul.
It's a bunch of crap.
But apparently, only people who are experts in Kanye West garbage can comment.
And only if they're black.
Because then they truly understand what it's like to be the victimized great-grandson of people who were killed.
You know what I've never said in my entire life?
People shouldn't review my work or comment on my comments because my great-great-grandparents were busy getting killed in pogroms in Russia.
Like, this has never occurred to me.
Okay, I've never said people shouldn't judge me because much of my extended family was murdered in the Holocaust.
Because guess what?
It wasn't me murdered in the Holocaust, so I don't get to actually stand on that tragedy.
I don't get to stand on that monstrosity.
What silliness.
Okay, final thing that I dislike today.
The Grammys are just an utter crap show.
I mean, I never watched them.
Lindsay asked me if I watched them last night, and I looked at her and laughed because that's silly.
And apparently, Adele sang last night, and this does make me happy.
Apparently, Adele was terrible.
If you've watched the program at all, you know that I have a peculiar hatred for Adele.
I think Adele is awful.
I think that she is overrated.
I think that she shrieks like a...
She sounds like Hillary Clinton doing a dog imitation, except howling at the moon over prolonged piano chords.
I think Adele is awful.
So, Adele apparently did a performance last night.
I did watch part of it.
It was the pitchiest thing.
I mean, deeply pitchy and screamy and horrible.
And as somebody who grew up in a musical family, I mean, like, my sister had a full opera scholarship at USC, my dad is a professional pianist, I played violin near-professionally for many years, like, this is... I know the difference between somebody who has talent and somebody who is riding their 20 pounds of extra fat to prominence, and, uh, Adele is the latter.
And tomorrow we'll talk about 20 pounds of extra fat when we get to the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition.
Well, we'll save that for tomorrow because I know that we're running short on time, but the actual thing at the Grammys that I really dislike As you know, who won the Spoken Word Award at the Grammys?
You know, who won the Spoken Word Award at the Grammys?
Jimmy Carter.
Jimmy Carter won the Spoken Word Award at the Grammys.
He won a gold for, this is his second Grammy.
It's his second Grammy.
He won a gold for his, at the event, for his memoirs, for his audio book, A Full Life, Reflections at 90, in the Best Spoken Word Album category.
He had also gotten a victory When he won for Our Endangered Values, America's Moral Crisis, he was nominated in 1998, 1999, 2008, 2010, and 2015.
That great spoken word artist, Jimmy Carter.
You know, the guy who used to stand in the Oval Office with a sweater on and jabber about how you needed to keep your thermostat low because oil prices were too high.
That guy.
Barack Obama, by the way, also has won two Grammys.
He won for Dreams for My Father and also The Audacity of Hope.
Right?
And also, Bill Clinton won a spoken word Grammy for his autobiography, My Life.
Hillary won in 1997 for It Takes a Village.
Are you noticing a pattern here?
That perhaps it has nothing to do with your speaking talents.
After all, Hillary Clinton is the world's worst speaker.
But it's just, it's amazing.
By the way, Al Franken has won a spoken word Grammy.
Jesse Jackson won a spoken word Grammy.
Everett Dirksen won a spoken word Grammy.
So, if this doesn't tell you the Grammys are leftist, I don't know what exactly will.
So that's it.
We're done here.
I promised that we would be out by a certain point today.
And thus, we will leave you wanting more, as always.
And so we'll be back tomorrow.
We'll talk about the continuing agony of this presidential race.
We'll talk about whether Donald Trump has, in fact, imploded.
I mean, physically.
And we'll also talk about the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, which features, apparently, a kind of fatty on the front cover.
We'll talk about that and whether it's important or whatever.
Who cares?
Let's get out of here.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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