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Feb. 17, 2016 - The Ben Shapiro Show
48:47
Ep. 75 - Trump Smacks Down Pope -- And He's Right

The Pope bashes Trump, and Trump fights back; Cruz and Rubio square off on feelings vs. substance; plus the Mailbag! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Here we are, it's a Thursday, the last broadcast day of the week, unfortunately, but there's so much to get to.
The Pope and Donald Trump are now smacking each other in an epic battle of biblical proportions.
We'll talk about who is right and who is wrong, plus some brand new imagery from the Bernie Sanders campaign that will make you think of great dictators long gone.
All of this and more, plus the mailbag, Ben Shapiro Show.
And I'm Ben Shapiro.
You tend to demonize people because you don't care about your feelings.
Well, we begin today with Pope Francis.
Let me say up front, I think Pope Francis is a disaster area.
Okay?
I liked Pope John Paul II.
I liked Pope Benedict.
I'm not a Catholic.
I'm not even Christian.
So, my views of the Pope are the same as they would be of any other world figure.
I don't consider him to be a religious authority to me.
I consider him to have the power of moral authority just like any other religious leader would.
They have a moral weight when they speak.
And so it's really disconcerting when those moral leaders spend more time babbling about global warming and hanging out with the Castros than actually doing anything about the Christians being murdered in the Middle East, for example.
I've been highly critical of the Pope on immigration before.
I've been highly critical of him on his rifts on capitalism.
This Pope is a liberation theologist.
Liberation theology is a concoction of Marxism and Catholicism that was cooked up back in Latin America.
And the Pope is an emissary of that.
Pope Benedict said that liberation theology was not only a departure from Catholicism, it undermined the Catechism.
It was actually an undermining force in the Catholic Church.
Pope John Paul II felt exactly the same.
Pope Francis, however, does not.
The reason I say this as precursor is because of what happened over the last 24 hours.
The Pope went to Mexico.
He went to a place called Ciudad Juarez, right?
My accent stinks, but it's just across the border from El Paso.
And it's one of the most violent cities on Earth.
It's a really terrible place.
It's dominated by the drug cartels.
It's also the source of many illegal immigrants who have been coming across the border.
A lot of people travel through So, Pope Francis goes to Ciudad Juarez, and there he walks up a walkway to a cross, all of this lined with flowers, and the cross was, quote, erected in memory of migrants who have perished trying to reach the United States just a stone's throw away, according to Reuters.
There, the Pope then talked about how the United States' immigration policy was quite terrible and inhumane and all the rest of this.
Now, you remember, The Pope has done this sort of thing before.
Last time the Pope came to the United States, the Pope went before Congress, lectured them about immigration, he did a rally on the National Mall where he lectured everyone about immigration, and in one of the things that I truly despise about this Pope's perspective, he did not even bother to talk about abortion when faced with a chamber of Democrats and Barack Obama Who are pro-abortion in every circumstance, instead he talked about the death penalty.
So this is somebody who does not have a solid moral hierarchy.
And again, I'm not Catholic, so I don't feel any allegiance to the Pope.
And I'll criticize him just like I would, by the way, I would criticize a rabbi the same way.
I have criticized Orthodox rabbis the same way.
So, all of that being said, here's what happened today.
So, the Pope did an interview with reporters and he said, quote, He was asked about the presidential election.
He said, quote, So if you're only interested in building walls and not bridges, then you are a bad Christian.
You're not Christian at all, right?
You're not Christian at all.
So this is the same Pope, by the way, who has said in the past, who am I to judge with regard to a homosexual banker in the Catholic Church?
He was asked about that.
He said, who am I to judge?
But when it comes to building border walls, if you want to build border walls, then you are apparently not Christian.
Forget the fact that the Bible is replete.
Replete!
With walled cities.
Jerusalem is a walled city.
If you go to Jerusalem, there's a giant wall all around the old city of Jerusalem, and fortifications are...
Throughout the Holy Land, throughout the land that Jesus walked, fortifications were everywhere.
All the cities were walled.
If you read the Talmud, they talk about the differences between walled and unwalled cities all the time.
So historically speaking, this is nonsense.
People built walls all the time back in the old days to keep people out.
That's what walls are for.
In fact, all the Pope has to do is go to his bedroom window and take a look out and this is what he will see.
This is the wall around Vatican City.
As you can see, it's 50 to 100 feet high.
I've been there.
It's obviously impenetrable.
I mean, this sucker is big, and it is rough, and no one is getting in.
Vatican City itself has one of the strictest immigration policies on the planet.
There are 800 people who live in Vatican City.
Only 450 of them, however, are citizens.
As Bernie Sanders might say, for a Vatican that is worth in excess of $10 billion to have only 450 citizens, that's an average of $12,500,000 per citizen.
I mean, the GDP per capita, the wealth per capita is immense.
Why not just redistribute all that wealth?
Pope Francis, I mean, you're in favor of redistribution.
Why not just open these borders?
I mean, I've been to the Vatican.
It's a beautiful place.
There's plenty of room.
It's a small city, but there's plenty of nice stuff there.
St.
Peter's Basilica is enormous.
You can probably fit a few beds in there, a few cradles in there.
Why not just open it up to the world's poor and hungry and make them citizens of Vatican City?
Why not just pay for their welfare?
Now, there are people who are Catholic who are very upset at criticism of the Pope about this.
They say, well, he didn't build this wall.
Right, well, it turns out that Gorbachev didn't build the Berlin Wall either, but he tore it down, didn't he?
Or he allowed it to be torn down.
So if the Pope really doesn't like walls, then he can tear this one down all the same.
The Pope is a political leftist, and that's his prerogative.
But to masquerade that his political leftism is in fact religious in its nature is silly.
Okay, there are people who do this in the name of the Bible in Judaism and in Protestantism, and they do it in Catholicism also.
It just so happens that this Pope is doing it in the name of Catholicism.
So, Donald Trump fights back, and Donald Trump releases a long Trumpian statement.
And here's what Donald Trump has said.
He says, in response to the Pope, If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS's ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the Pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president, because this would not have happened.
ISIS would have been eradicated, unlike what is happening now with our all-talk, no-action politicians.
Okay, the ISIS slap is actually not a terrible slap.
That's right.
I mean, the Pope has really done very little to stop ISIS.
And Trump says I'll destroy ISIS?
That's not a terrible case.
Then Donald Trump goes on, because this is what Donald Trump does.
It does.
The Mexican government and its leadership has made many disparaging remarks to me about me to the Pope.
First of all, you can tell Trump wrote it himself because it's grammar free.
free.
It says they want to continue to rip off the United States both on trade and at the border, and they understand I am totally wise to them.
The Pope only heard one side of the story.
He didn't see the crime, the drug trafficking, and the negative economic impact the current policies have on the United States.
He doesn't see how Mexican leadership is outsmarting President Obama and our leadership in every aspect of negotiation.
For a religious leader to question a person's faith is disgraceful.
I am proud to be a Christian, and as president, I will not allow Christianity to be consistently attacked and weakened, unlike what is happening now with our current president.
No leader, especially a religious leader, should have the right to question another man's religion or faith.
They are using the Pope as a pawn, and they should be ashamed of themselves for doing so, especially when so many lives are involved and when illegal immigration is so rampant.
So most of this I actually agree with.
The part with Trump that I disagree is it's all about him personally, of course, of course.
They're just bad-mouthing me to the Pope.
It's what the Mexican government is doing.
And then this one line always bugs me.
He says, I'm proud to be a Christian, and then he says, no leader, especially a religious leader, should have the right to question another man's religion or faith.
The Pope has said this sort of thing in the past, too.
There are a lot of Christians who say this sort of thing, you know, judge not lest ye be judged, and all this routine.
Okay, that's taking the Bible significantly out of context.
The fact is that Jesus wandered the earth telling people that they were bad Christians.
Well, really, they were bad Jews.
He walked and wandered around the earth telling them that they were not sufficiently religious, and he wasn't the only prophet to do so, right?
I don't believe in him as a prophet, I'm a Jew, but there are plenty of Jewish prophets who did this too.
Tons of them.
Isaiah did this routinely, walking around telling people that they were bad Jews because of what they were doing.
Moses did this routinely like religious leaders always tell people that they're bad at being Jews or Christians or Muslims It's just something you do because if there's no standard then your faith doesn't really matter all that much I've said I think Trump is by the way Trump is a hypocrite on this He called Ted Cruz a bad Christian like 24 hours ago, and he's saying no one can call me a bad Christian But he's not a bad Trump is not a bad Christian because he does because he wants a wall Trump's a bad Christian for a variety of other reasons, but he's not a bad Christian because he wants a border wall.
That's idiotic.
That's idiotic so Reluctantly, I have to side with Trump.
Reluctantly, Donald Trump is right.
And it's only reluctant because I really, if you can't tell folks over the past few weeks, I've gotten to really not appreciate Trump.
Okay, but the fact is...
That Trump in this situation is right.
Trump is correct on this.
And by the way, he's actually kind of lucky that the Pope attacked him and the media construed it as attacking Trump personally.
You'll notice from the Pope's statement, he didn't actually call out Trump by name.
He said, anybody who wants a wall.
So that would apply to Cruz and Rubio, by the way, and also pretty much everybody but Jeb Bush.
Even John Kasich says he wants a wall.
But the media played it as Trump versus the Pope, and Trump has never been afraid of shying away from a headline, and also, he likes the battle, and so Donald Trump jumped right in there.
Okay, so with those kind words for Donald Trump out of the way, now I want to talk about what happened on TV last night.
So last night, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz both did interviews on CNN, town hall interviews on CNN, and Donald Trump counter-programmed with his own routine on MSNBC.
And so we'll start with Trump, because I want to compare these three candidates.
Donald Trump is the kind of guy who sues People who disagree with him, right?
So Donald Trump yesterday said that he would sue, we talked about this yesterday, he said he would sue Ted Cruz if he doesn't apologize for the ads that he's running.
Here's Donald Trump.
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.
So, the nice thing about the strongman is that he's willing to say things that need to be said to people as powerful as the Pope.
The bad thing is that he also thinks that he can basically just shut people up whenever he pleases.
Ted Cruz, by the way, responded to this, and he said, please, please, Donald, please sue me, this is clip seven.
Here's Cruz responding to that.
By threatening that if we will not pull down the ad, that Mr. Trump will seek immediate legal action to prevent the continued broadcast You know, I have to say to Mr. Trump, you have been threatening frivolous lawsuits for your entire adult life.
extent of the law for any damages resulting therefrom.
You know, I have to say to Mr. Trump, you have been threatening frivolous lawsuits for your entire adult life.
Even in the annals of frivolous lawsuits, this takes the cake.
So Donald, I would encourage you if you want to file a lawsuit challenging this ad, claiming it is defamation, file the lawsuit.
It is a remarkable contention that an ad that plays video of Donald Trump speaking on national television is somehow defamation.
The operative words in that ad come from Donald Trump's own mouth.
And I understand, if a candidate has a record like Donald Trump's, how he could consider anyone pointing to his actual record being defamation.
Okay, so there's Cruz.
We can stop it there.
There's Cruz coming back at Trump from a legal basis, from a constitutional basis, saying, you don't just get to shut people up because you don't like what they're saying, but this is who Trump is.
So last night, in what was a humorous turn of events, Trump said a couple of things that were ridiculous.
First of all, he implied that there was some sort of 9-11 conspiracy theory to hide the true source of the 9-11 attacks.
Here's Donald Trump doing that last night.
This is a routine in South Carolina.
We went after Iraq.
They did not knock down the World Trade Center.
Okay?
It wasn't the Iraqis that knocked down the World Trade Center.
We went after Iraq.
We decimated the country.
Iran's taken over.
Okay.
But it wasn't the Iraqis.
You will find out who really knocked down the World Trade Center, because they have papers in there that are very secret.
You may find it's the Saudis.
Okay?
But you will find out.
But it wasn't Iraq.
So you say, but when I look at a guy like Lindsey Graham, then I hear his theory on the war.
You'll be in there forever.
You'll be in there and you'll end up starting World War 3 with a guy like that, too.
We don't want World War 3 over Syria.
Okay?
We don't want World... Do we agree with that?
We don't want World War... But... So if we just check the papers, we'll find out who actually perpetrated 9-11.
Here's the worst of Trump, okay?
Here's... Here's... All of this is Trump at his... This is all peak Trump.
So peak Trump on the positive side is the Pope says something ridiculous about border walls and Trump's maximum.
That's peak Trump.
Valley Trump, you know, he has the deepest valleys.
Valley Trump is, I'll sue people if they run things about me that I don't like, and 9-11 we're gonna dig into and find out who is responsible, and presumably we'll also open up Area 51, and we'll get into that as well.
And then finally, this, honestly, this next clip, for all you Trump supporters out there, this should tell you who Donald Trump is.
This is Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski over on MSNBC with Donald Trump last night.
Here we go.
I wanted to describe a candidate to you.
The candidate is considered a political outsider by all the pundits.
He's tapping into the anger of the voters, delivers a populist message.
He believes everyone in the country should have health care.
He advocates for hedge fund managers to pay higher taxes.
He's drawing thousands of people at his rallies and bringing in a lot of new voters to the political process.
And he's not beholden to any super PAC.
Who am I describing?
Or any special interests or any donors.
You're describing Donald Trump.
Actually, I was describing Bernie Sanders.
Well, that's good.
Okay, and then he goes on to suggest that Sanders is good on trade.
And what's amazing about this, I mean, truly amazing about this, first of all, for those of you who are fans of the Bible, right, I'm a fan of the Old Testament, New Testament, I'm not as big on, for obvious reasons, but the Old Testament, I'm really big on.
And one of the books of the Tanakh, the Torah and the Vim and the Ketuvim, that would be the Bible, the Pentateuch, I'm trying to translate it into English, the Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the Writings.
One of the books of that is something called the Book of Esther.
We celebrate it on Purim.
In the Book of Esther, there's a situation in which Ahasuerus, Ahasuerus, He is trying to, he's trying to reward Mordecai for having done him a service.
And so he goes to Haman, he goes to Haman, who is his, who is his advisor, the evil guy in the story, and he says to him, you know, okay, Haman, come here.
I want you to tell me if...
If the king wanted to reward someone, what would he do for him?
And Haman immediately thinks, oh, he's talking about me.
I would, you know, I would put him on a horse, and I would have him ride through the city, big parade, put him in the king's garments.
And then Ahasuerus says, well, all that you've said, go do that to Mordecai, who's kind of his mortal enemy.
That's this, right?
So Trump, first of all, the fact that he can't see the telegraph punch coming is kind of amazing.
Like, they read him this vague description, and you ask that to me, and I would immediately say, I know exactly what you're doing, right?
You're citing me all this stuff about Bernie Sanders.
Trump doesn't see it coming.
But more importantly, One of the characteristics was in favor of universal health care.
And Trump goes, yep.
He's been bashing Ted Cruz for saying that Cruz is lying when Cruz says that he's in favor of universal health care.
And right there, he just says that he and Bernie Sanders basically agree on universal health care.
So there's Donald Trump.
Okay.
Candidate number two, Marco Rubio.
So Rubio last night, he does the CNN town hall and everybody is just over the moon about how well Rubio does.
This is a forum that fits him.
He gets to talk, he gets to be sensitive.
This is his thing.
He's a very sensitive candidate.
You know, you've seen me, you've heard me on the show.
Sensitivity ain't exactly my cup of tea.
I don't really care about sensitivity because, honestly, I don't care about your feelings.
Your feelings don't matter to me.
What matters to me is whether you do good things or whether you do bad things.
A feelings-first society is a leftist society.
A behavior-first society is a conservative, free society.
And that's what I care about.
Okay, Rubio is a feelings-first candidate.
New poll, by the way, just came out.
Trump 33, Rubio 20, Kasich 15, Cruz 13 in South Carolina.
If that's the way that this goes, then Trump will win the nomination walking away.
Plus, that's a real favor for Cruz, if that's the case.
The polls are all over the place in South Carolina, except for Trump having this major lead.
Here's Marco Rubio last night on CNN.
And here's him saying something that I really find rather distasteful about racism.
Here we go.
But I also know But I also know that there are communities in this country where minority communities and the police department have a terrible relationship.
I personally know someone who happens to be a police officer and a young African-American male who told me that he's been pulled over seven, eight times in the last few years and never gets a ticket.
What is he supposed to think?
He gets pulled over for no reason, never gets a ticket, no one has any explanation for why he's being pulled over.
What is he supposed to think?
So I also know that in this country there is a significant number, particularly of young African males, who feel as if they're treated differently than the rest of society.
And here's the bottom line.
Whether you agree with them or not, I happen to have seen this happen.
But whether you agree with them or not, if a significant percentage of the American family believes that they are being treated differently than everyone else, we have a problem.
And we have to address it as a society and as a country.
Because I do not believe we can fulfill our potential as a nation unless we address that.
I'm not sure there's a political solution to that problem, but there are things we can do.
For example, one of the reasons why you see both educational and academic underperformance, not just in the African-American community, but also in the Hispanic community, It's because a disproportionate number of our children are growing up in broken homes, in dangerous neighborhoods, living in substandard housing, and forced by the government to attend a failing school.
Okay, let's pause it right there.
So the last part of what he's saying is, of course, true.
But here's the part that matters to me, the part that annoys me, and there's the part about Rubio a lot of Republicans love.
But he says there are people who have feelings, and whether those feelings are justified or unjustified, they have the feelings.
I don't care.
I don't care.
If you have an unjustified feeling, I don't care about your feeling.
Not only do I not care about your feeling, me humoring your feeling is counterproductive.
Okay, as I'm fond of saying, it's my pinned tweet, my only pinned tweet.
Facts don't care about your feelings.
Okay, the reality is, the problems in the black community are not attributable to some out-there-in-the-ether racism.
They're not.
If you want to find individual racists who are doing stuff, go do something about it.
By the way, Rubio's a hypocrite here too, when he says, I've seen it happen, I've seen black people pulled over for no reason.
Okay, so why didn't you report them?
Right?
How would you know?
Were you in their head?
How do you know it was for no reason?
I'd like to hear the specifics on that.
What was the racial profiling incident you saw, Marco Rubio, and you didn't report?
What was it?
Obviously, he's not going to cite that because he's just trying to... What that is, is it's a signal to black communities, I care about your concerns.
But what if your concerns are wrong?
What if the concerns are wrong?
What if it turns out that the things that you are saying are not actually correct?
What if it turns out that you are perceiving something that is not real and is actually an obstacle to your success?
Wouldn't it be better to say to people, look, racism is not the biggest problem in American life.
It's not even on the list of top hundred problems in American life.
Here are some things that you can do to succeed right now.
The problem with the way that Rubio phrases it is he's trying to connect two things that are actually disconnected.
He's saying people feel discriminated against.
Also, single motherhood is bad.
How does that address your feelings of being targeted on the basis of race?
It doesn't do anything.
You still feel targeted on the basis of race, even if what Rubio is saying is true at the end.
The only way to really do this is to say, look, some feelings are justified, some feelings are unjustified.
But feelings don't matter.
All that matters is behavior.
If you want to succeed in America, work hard, fly right, get married before you have a kid, hold down a job, don't be a criminal.
That's it.
And if you just say that, then it would be better.
But that's not Rubio's ball.
What Rubio does is he talks about how he's experienced the American experience.
And maybe I'm an anachronism in politics.
Maybe this is not the way politics works anymore.
Maybe we all have to pour out our hearts on the floor about how our common experience is.
I'm not somebody who tends to believe that who you are defines the rectitude or decency of your argument.
I believe that an argument is either good or it's bad and it doesn't matter who says it.
If a bad person makes a good argument, the argument is still good.
If a good person makes a bad argument, the argument is still bad.
And so I'm not gonna buy into the idea that all feelings are equally decent or relevant or that they matter or that they should matter to everybody.
What's he gonna say to all these women who say that they're being paid less than men?
You say you're being discriminated against and who am I to say your feelings are wrong?
Well then, do something about it, right?
So people will say, the other shoe needs to drop.
What are you going to do about it, right?
And then he says, well, government can't do anything, so why don't I vote for Hillary?
Hillary not only says that my feelings are correct, Hillary also says that she'll fix this.
Hillary says the same thing Rubio does, except she doesn't then shy away.
She then says, I'll dump hundreds of billions of dollars into the black community.
This is the mistake.
You actually have to speak truth to people.
This is my problem with Rubio.
Rubio does it again when he talks about, less so here, but he talks about how he's lived paycheck to paycheck, and this is the part where the Republican higher-ups just, they orgasm over this stuff.
It's just, oh boy, doesn't Marco Rubio just get people?
He just feels like he cares about you.
Here's Rubio doing that routine.
Big government hurts people that are trying to make it.
Because the bigger the government, the more the people that influence government win at the expense of everybody else.
Look at Dodd-Frank.
It passed.
The big banks are bigger today than ever.
The regional banks and the community banks are getting wiped out.
So we have a message and we're going to take it.
We're going to take our message to people living paycheck to paycheck.
You know why I know I can take that message to them?
Because I grew up paycheck to paycheck.
Because my wife and I have lived paycheck to paycheck.
Because I've written a check on Wednesday knowing that the money doesn't get there till Friday, so I date it Saturday.
I've had to do that.
I know what that feels like.
We're going to take our message to young Americans struggling under thousands of dollars in student loan debt.
We're going to be the party of the single mom that is struggling to raise her children on $11 an hour because we're going to be the party that makes it easier for her to go back to school and get the degree that allows her to find a better paying job.
We're going to take our message to parents raising their children in the 21st century, because my wife and I are raising four children right now.
We know how hard it is to instill in our children the values that they teach in our church, instead of the values that the culture tries to ram down our throat.
My goal is not just to unify the party, but to grow it, and ultimately to unify our country.
That doesn't mean everyone's going to agree with me on everything.
But I'm going to be a president for all Americans.
Even the people that don't vote for me?
And he's rattling it off and it all sounds very good.
This is the part where I look at Rubio and I think this is a bit robotic for me.
I mean, it's clear that he's so smooth, there's not even a pause.
There's not even a pause for breath or to think about what he's going to say next.
No one speaks spontaneously like this.
This is a stump speech, which is fine.
I mean, stump speeches are stump speeches.
But when he says things like, you know, I know that I can fix things for people who've lived paycheck to paycheck because I've lived paycheck to paycheck.
Let me explain something.
If your qualification for fixing things for people who live paycheck-to-paycheck is that you live or have lived paycheck-to-paycheck, I'll just go find someone who's lived paycheck-to-paycheck and is living now paycheck-to-paycheck to solve my problems.
This is not a qualification.
The fact that you understand the plight is not a qualification for a good answer.
I mean, the reality is Trump actually has a better case, right?
He's never lived paycheck to paycheck, but he says, at least I've made a lot of money.
You want to know how to make a lot of money?
Talk to me.
Right?
That's a better case then.
I understand your problems.
And you've lived paycheck to paycheck.
This is why, again, I don't talk about the fact I grew up middle middle class because it's not important.
Right?
I take care of my money.
I try to earn money.
I try to better myself.
I try to increase my skill set.
I try to diversify the kinds of jobs that I'm capable of doing.
That's how you succeed, but you shouldn't believe me just because at one point my parents were poorer than they are now.
That's silly.
That's silly.
So, you know, all the things about Rubio that people like are things that I tend to dislike.
So, finally, we get to Ted Cruz.
So here's Ted Cruz, and the problem with Cruz is that he's Cruz.
You know, Cruz is—I would say that Cruz is all substance and no style, and Rubio is all style and no substance.
They're almost inverse of each other.
And they're the two candidates I like the best in this race, but they're inverse in those terms.
So Cruz tried to pull a Rubio last night.
He tried to be a little bit more likable.
And a lot of the Cruz fans are saying, oh, it's the best Cruz has ever looked.
He looked the most likable he can look.
Right.
He looks the most likable he can look.
And that's, you know, there's an upper limit for Cruise.
Again, I think that Cruise would actually be better off going full out.
Not trying to do the I'm smooth, I care about you routine.
Nobody believes that.
But just embracing the fight.
Embracing the fight and taking joy in the fight.
And instead, the feeling you get from Cruz is that he's sort of tiptoeing along a balance beam always.
So here's Cruz talking about how he met his wife and how he sings to his wife sometimes when he's on the road.
But your wife mentioned this to CNN a while back that you occasionally, when you call her on the phone, you sing to her?
You sing musicals?
Is that true?
Well, embarrassingly enough, yes.
And I am a painfully horrible singer.
Is this punishment?
I'm hoping it is sort of sincere and endearing.
What's your favorite musical?
I actually don't sing musicals.
I will sing things like...
Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Heidi Tine.
Okay, alright.
Which is really corny.
But, you know, I used to do it when she'd put it on speakerphone in her office and embarrass her.
Or, you know, I'd kind of do, you know, I just called to say I love you.
I just called to say I care.
I cannot sing to save my life, but my wife seems to at least laugh at it.
Alright.
Okay, this is, so, so, Cruz, you know, this is all supposed to be endearing.
The problem with Cruz, you can see all the gears turning, right?
There's actually a point here where, where, where Anderson Cooper says to him, you know, is this supposed to be, like, torture?
And what Cruz should say back is, well, it depends on, you know, if we're fighting or not.
It's like, yeah, maybe it's torture.
I mean, it's pretty awful.
But instead he says, well, I'm actually just hoping that it's sincere and endearing.
Don't show your hand.
I mean, you're playing political cards, and you say, well, I'm hoping that this story will make you feel warm feelings about me so that when you go in the ballot box, you remember how much I love my wife, and then you think, oh, well, he's probably a good guy, and then you vote.
That's what I'm really hoping.
Like, why would you possibly expose that in front of the entire world?
He can't help himself.
And that's the problem for Ted Cruz.
And again, he's better when he's on attack.
Like yesterday, for example, he went on attack against Marco Rubio, and here's what he said about Marco Rubio.
And this is actually Cruz when Cruz is being Cruz.
Here we go.
Marco Rubio is behaving like Donald Trump with a smile.
At the debate, I made points about Marco's record on immigration.
Number one, that Marco right now, currently, supports granting citizenship To the 12 million people here illegally.
That is a fact.
It is a fact, he said, just a couple of debates ago, on the debate stage, that he currently supports that.
And he acknowledged, this may not be the majority view in my party, but I, Marco Rubio, support it.
And he said it on Meet the Press, with Chuck Todd, just a few weeks ago, where he went even further and said he would grant citizenship to illegal aliens with criminal convictions.
The first point I made about immigration that Marco currently supports granting citizenship to the people here illegally is a fact.
It is his own record, it is his own words.
The second observation I made about it is that in Florida he supported granting in-state tuition to illegal immigrants.
That likewise is a fact.
There's no gray area, there's no interpretation, it is a legislative fact.
And the third point I made is that Marco went on Univision in Spanish and said that on his first day in office he would not rescind President Obama's illegal executive analyst.
Thank you.
Now that, too, is a fact.
Look, the Univision, you can go watch the video.
He said this on national television.
It is this bizarre notion that the words said on national television somehow don't exist.
And Marco's response was exactly the same as Donald's.
It was to yell, liar, liar, liar.
And indeed, to respond with a tip.
We can stop there.
So the bottom line is that what Cruz is doing here, this is where Cruz did his best.
He's being a lawyer.
Cruz is a terrific lawyer, and he's being a lawyer, and this is Cruz being good.
It doesn't have the same warmth as Rubio, but it has a lot more substance than Rubio.
Here's the thing.
Rubio is pithy, but empty in many ways.
Cruz is not pithy and not empty.
And Trump is both pithy and empty.
And so you sort of have these balances among the candidates.
The one who I care about is, of course, the substance guy, and that's why I back Cruz.
And that's why I sort of object to the case that Rubio is the greatest possible candidate.
I think he actually hands the Democrats half their argument.
And then when he says things like, your feelings are deeply, deeply important to me.
Also, I'm not going to use the government to do anything to help you.
Why don't you try the other party?
That's not a particularly helpful tack.
Okay, so the other candidate who's been hanging around is the guy who's been seeing the biggest surge, and this makes me just want to put my head in a cheese grater, is of course, John, oh god no, Kasich.
John, oh God, we're about to watch a clip of two of my least favorite people in one room together and the universe didn't implode.
Chris Matthews, I mean, I'm as you say, is asking John Kay some questions.
Both of them brushed their hair with their shoes this morning and then they went on national TV to talk about things.
What do you say about things, John Kay?
What do you think about these things, John Kay?
Let's talk about it.
Let's go.
No.
So they're ready.
They are ready to work with us.
And then in Europe, I mean, we've never had Europe more prepared.
Why don't they join the United Force?
Why doesn't the Arab League get together?
Well, because we have to show the leadership.
They're not going to do all this.
OK, what do we do?
What do you do?
Don't you remember when Saddam got kicked out of Kuwait and the Egyptian ambassador was in the Rose Garden saying we're committed to the West?
It's still our troops.
Well, we have to have our troops there.
No, they didn't fight.
We did.
Some of them were there.
They were absolutely there.
But look, here's the thing.
If we're not leading, they're not coming.
And they're not going to lead and we're going to fall.
How do you have a limited war with ISIS?
If we put guys in the field, and they pick up one of our guys, and they say they're going to behead him, how can the American people put up with that?
Well, that's why we've got to go destroy ISIS.
No, but what would you do as president?
What would you do if we had a guy over there about to be beheaded by ISIS?
What would you do?
What I would do is I would be on the ground and in the air to destroy ISIS.
That's what I would do.
I don't want to wait any longer on this.
They say we're going to do it in three days.
What are you going to do?
They're going to behead the guy.
What do you do about it?
That's why we're there.
We're there to destroy them.
So we watch the clock and then we just watch the guy get beheaded?
Come on, Chris.
That's such a silly question.
That's a terrible situation.
It's war.
I know.
It's war.
They take hostages.
I mean, this happens in war.
And the longer we wait, the bigger this problem is gonna be.
I mean, can't you see what's happening with those folks?
There's no negotiation with ISIS.
I mean, these folks, they despise the way we live.
Their trip to paradise is to destroy us.
I agree.
Okay, we can even stop this here, and honest to God, I like John Kasich here.
Honest to God, I'm watching this, and for the first, a sentence that will never again pass these lips, I like John Kasich here.
What John Kasich is saying here is absolutely correct.
And then, I'm reminded that John Kasich is still John Kasich.
Here is John Kasich last night with another person who I think is just a horror show of a human being, Stephen Colbert.
And, again, the universe comes close to but does not completely implode when the two of these people meet on air for the first time.
Here we go.
If I can't win by being, you know, fundamentally positive, what's the point in winning?
I mean, you ought to win.
Okay, so what's the positive message?
I mean, the positive message that I'm hearing so far is that I'm positive.
But what's your positive vision for America?
Look, I mean, we have to balance budgets, have common sense regulations.
We've got to cut taxes.
So some regulation's okay.
You're running as a Republican.
Some regulation's okay.
Look, the Republican Party is my vehicle.
It is not my master.
Okay?
It has never been.
So here's the thing, Steven.
Boom, boom.
I got a mic drop on that one.
That's crazy.
Okay, and watching him kiss up to Stephen Colbert, what he really should say when he says, well, what's your message other than your positive?
You should say, well, you never asked Hillary Clinton or Bill or Barack Obama that.
You've been buying into their platitudes for years.
You don't care about my agenda.
But he doesn't see Colbert as an enemy.
He sees Colbert as an ally in this whole thing.
And so every time John Kasich says something where I listen, I go, okay, that's not bad, like ISIS.
Then he immediately comes back with something like this.
Meanwhile, just to cap off the presidential talk portion here, Hillary Clinton, she's caught on video talking to a 10-year-old dreamer that's an illegal immigrant child, and here's how that looked.
And I'll tell you why this is important in a second.
When my parents, they have a rule of deportation, I'm scared for them because of the deportation.
because I have a deportation.
I'm scared I have a deportation.
Come here a minute.
Come here.
I'm going to do everything I can so you don't have to be scared.
And you don't have to worry about what happens to you or somebody else in your family.
Feel really, really strongly that you're being very brave.
And you have to be brave for them, too.
Because they want you to be happy.
They want you to be successful.
They don't want you to worry too much.
Let me do the worrying.
I'll do all the worrying.
Is that a deal?
I'll do the worry.
I'll do everything I can to help, okay?
Oh, people smiling.
I'm Hillary Clinton, and I approve this message.
Yeah, I'm sure you did.
That's not a setup at all, by the way.
You got the crying girl, and then she's, oh, come up here for a big hug from Grandma.
It's just it's such a setup.
But the reason that I'm showing this is because what I say about Rubio and when I say that Hillary takes Rubio one step further.
So what would Rubio say to this girl, right?
Supposedly he's now campaigning as a border security guy.
So what would he say?
What do you say to her?
I'm gonna do everything in my power to make sure that you say you don't worry about it.
I'll take care of you.
Rubio would say I totally understand how you feel.
But these are problems that have to be solved outside of government.
And you know, there's there's we do have a border and all this.
This is why the Feelings and Carings message, it's very difficult to overcome a party whose entire reason for being is fascism through feelings with freedom through feelings.
It doesn't work that way.
Freedom is not a feelings-oriented concept.
You're not free because you have a feeling of freedom.
You're free because nobody is in your grill.
You're free because no one is bothering you.
And so when you talk feelings, you're going to end up in further and further left territory.
Okay, a couple of things that one thing that I like and then some things that I hate and then the mailbag and we'll get it all in.
I promise.
Okay.
So the thing that I like there's if you ever want to read a really good book debunking utilitarianism and one of the one of the great challenges to conservative philosophy.
is the philosophy of utilitarianism, which suggests the greatest good to the greatest number, essentially.
John Stuart Mill is the father of utilitarianism.
There's a guy named James Fitz James Stephen, who was a lawyer in the 1870s in England, and he wrote a book called "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" that is an excellent book.
I think you can still get it on Amazon, it may be out of print, but if you can check it out, go check it out, it's really good.
"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." Okay, some things that I hate.
Okay, so number one, I just have a question about the media.
So there was a story that came out the other day that one of Bill Clinton's old mistresses is now talking to the media.
She's a former Miss Arkansas.
Her name is Sally Miller.
And she is saying that she had an affair with Bill way back when.
Way back in the 1980s, she had an affair with Bill.
And she says that at the time, that at the time that she had this affair with Bill, that Bill said to her that Hillary was a lesbian.
That Hillary was more vile language than that, but something like, Hillary's got more women than I do, essentially, is what Bill said to her.
This is the second person to claim this.
Jennifer Flowers, if you remember, actually claimed this about Bill too.
Let me just ask you one question.
Question for the media.
If, let's say, that George W. Bush had had some mistresses, and he'd been telling his mistresses, That Laura was a lesbian.
Do you think the media might have covered that?
Do you think that the media might have asked Laura Bush whether she was a lesbian?
Not that it makes a huge difference whether Hillary's a lesbian.
It makes some difference because she's campaigning on the basis of her beautiful lifelong marriage to a serial philanderer and rapist.
But aside from that, it doesn't make any difference to me whether she's a lesbian or not.
I think she's a horror show either way.
But wouldn't the media be all over that if it were Republican?
Like all over it?
But they're not because it's Hillary and she's a Democrat and so it just remains kind of this underground rumor and all this stuff.
So, just a point of fact, something that I hate, the media favoring the Clintons, even on small, silly things like that.
Okay, let's do some mailbag.
So I get tons of mail now, and if I don't get to your letter, folks, I'm really sorry.
We literally get hundreds of emails, and I've actually had Lindsey start going through them and pick out the ones she thinks are most interesting.
So, here we go.
This is from Harrison.
So Harrison writes, I have had an issue conveying the viability of Senator Cruz as a presidential candidate to other conservatives.
Their main talking point is his lack of authenticity and his link with Goldman Sachs.
They're flocking to Trump in droves.
How would you respond to their concerns?
Donald Trump is the least sincere candidate in this race.
Donald Trump is the person who is only out for Donald Trump.
Whatever flaws Cruz may have as a candidate, at least Cruz believes in conservatism.
As far as the link to Goldman Sachs, his wife worked for Goldman Sachs.
Goldman Sachs is an investment firm.
Goldman Sachs has cozy relationships with the government.
Cruz is cutting against his own interest when he says he wants to cut off the relationship between Wall Street and Washington, D.C.
Okay, Alexander writes, I hope I don't come off as prejudiced, but why are Jews so successful?
There's literally no area where they're not successful except maybe sports.
Is it something in your religion, upbringing, or did everyone forget about it?
Well, okay, so there are a couple of theories.
Charles Murray suggests that Jews, they've done IQ studies, and they find that Jews are on average at about 115, which is a full standard deviation above the average for the rest of the United States, for example.
Average person in the United States has an IQ of 100.
Average Jew has an IQ of 115.
The reason that Charles Murray thinks this is because Judaism is both a religion and a culture.
It's a religion and a culture on the one hand, and it's an ethnicity.
So, because it is both a culture and an ethnicity, it's a culture that values reading and studying very highly.
So, people who like reading and who are good scholars tend to procreate more.
Like, evolutionarily speaking, the rabbi's son is going to have his pick of the women in a particular community, and he's studied a lot.
Like, this is actually one of the things that kind of distinguishes some Jews from others, at least it used to in Judaism, was the idea of the scholar versus what they call the Amhaaretz, the man of the land.
Like, the farmer was seen with a little more disdain than the guy who studied all day.
So, study has long been kind of a part of Judaism, and that means that We tend to procreate with other smart people and then we have smart babies and those smart babies tend to succeed.
Also Judaism is a philosophy with a real work ethic to it.
But my first answer explains why secular Jews who have nothing to do with Judaism are still very successful in their field.
They come from a long line of people who are involved in Judaism and thus valued intellectual pursuits.
Derek writes, I'm friends with a few liberals that are hardcore Bernie supporters.
Then they're not liberals.
They're leftists.
He says, I've tried to argue with them, but one friend on Facebook who's a hardcore Bernie fan doesn't seem to budge.
So he says, my friend has apparently suffered nth degree burn wounds.
He's definitely a burn victim.
I guess he can say, I honestly just want to hear you tear him a new one.
Bernie Sanders.
And your friend.
Your friend is stupid.
Your friend is immoral.
Because Bernie Sanders is stupid and Bernie Sanders is immoral.
What Bernie Sanders says about income inequality is fascist.
His vision of a leftist utopia should not govern your freedom.
Just because he thinks you shouldn't have as much money as you do, if you didn't steal your money from anyone, if you didn't exploit anyone, then he has no business taking your money from you.
It makes him a fascist to try and do so.
And your friend is a fascist if he believes in Bernie Sanders too.
And that brings me to a brief detour here.
I want to talk for a second about this new Bernie Sanders political art.
Shepard Fairey, the guy who did the Hope poster, he has this new Bernie Sanders political art.
Can we bring that up?
This is the Bernie Sanders political art.
This is 16.
So, here's the Bernie Sanders political art.
This is made by the Shepard Fairey guy.
It says, Bernie Sanders for President.
Feel the Bern.
And then it's a woman with wings coming out of her back.
And it looks like an old-style fascist.
It's an old-style fascist routine.
I mean, it's a woman with the wings coming out of her back holding up what looks like a ribbon with another eagle inside.
And it was kind of reminiscent of another piece of political art that kind of sprang to mind.
This one, right?
I mean, this is what it looks like.
It looks like old-style fascist iconography.
And there's nothing new here.
I mean, Hillary Clinton has been doing the same thing.
So, for example, here is Hillary Clinton's political banner.
This was put up at a recent rally for Hillary Clinton, for Hispanics.
And here is Mao's political banner.
You may notice that there are some similarities in the iconography here.
Bill Whittle has a very good video you should watch about iconography in politics.
The fact is that there's a fascist iconography, a fascist imagistic that is very, very rich in the Democratic Party because Democrats are, in essence, fascists.
They want to rule your life in any way they possibly can.
Josh writes, My open-minded coworker is reading an anti-death penalty book after watching the Making of a Murderer series.
Can you suggest a book that makes the case for the death penalty?
Yes, it's called the Bible.
The Bible says it in one sentence, you know, he who sheds blood by man shall his blood be shed.
End of story.
The reason for the death penalty is very simple.
It's either deterrence, which may or may not work.
It's society making sure that people don't just wander around taking revenge on each other.
And if you actually look at the Bible, when there was manslaughter, what happened?
Not purposeful murder, manslaughter.
People ran to what are called Ere Miklad.
They ran to cities of refuge.
And they ran to these cities of refuge, and they're supposed to stay there until the chief Kohen, the chief priest, died.
The reason for this is that you didn't get into what we have in the inner cities right now, which is gang warfare.
Right?
If you have gang warfare where someone kills somebody in your clan, you go and you kill somebody in their clan.
This is what most of the world is like.
The government executing murderers is a way of saying clans don't run after each other in an endless circle of Hatfield versus McCoy.
That's why society has the death penalty.
Okay, Will writes, in today's pop culture, who are the top three most obnoxious overrated artists or celebrities?
Also, what three living artists or celebrities are actually contributing to art and making the world better?
The last one's harder.
I can give you a hundred who I think are awful, awful, awful.
In terms of obnoxious, overrated artists, Lena Dunham, Lady Gaga, Those would be the top two, and it's hard to come up with a third who's in it.
Beyonce.
That'd be a solid top three.
Those three are doing serious damage to Americanism and American unity.
Okay, I think that Christopher Nolan makes terrific films.
I think that Clint Eastwood obviously contributes to art, and I think Tom Wolfe writes novels that are worthwhile.
So there's three.
Finally, so many to get to, but let's do a quick legal question from Michael.
He says, why is the Attorney General who serves as head of the Department of Justice a cabinet-appointed position?
Right now, people are saying Hillary won't be indicted because the Department of Justice is a place that is run by Obama, basically.
It's under the executive branch.
Why is it a cabinet-appointed position if we don't trust them to prosecute someone like a former Secretary of State because of their political interests?
How was this not foreseen in the drafting of the Constitution?
The answer is that the Constitution assumes that the executive would actually be really small.
There weren't going to be these vast bureaucratic infrastructures.
So, the Constitution says if you have a Secretary of State who's a criminal, you impeach her.
Right?
And then she's prosecuted, presumably, for her crimes on the state level.
Or, if you have a President who does something bad, then he's impeached.
But the executive branch was meant to police the legislative branch.
The legislative branch was meant to police the executive branch through impeachment, and the judicial branch was meant to be policed through both, right?
So that's why, for example, the DOJ was put in the executive branch.
If you only have three branches of government, that's the way it works.
If you had an independent prosecutorial body, the problem is, then you have another problem.
Right?
You have a center of power, and the head of that department is now the most powerful man in America, or woman in America.
They just go around prosecuting whoever they want, and their department will never prosecute anyone.
So this department is always going to rely on a sort of decent person running it.
The reason it's in the executive branch is because there was an assumption that the legislative branch would check the executive branch.
That has completely fallen by the wayside, obviously, because the legislative branch has abdicated all responsibility To the executive branch.
So there are a bunch more letters here.
I'm sorry that I couldn't get to all of your letters.
You can write me at bshapiro at dailywire.com.
If I'm not able to respond to you on the podcast, I'd say there's probably a 50 to 75% shot that I'll try and respond to you personally via email.
Always happy to take your questions.
It's gonna be a busy weekend.
The South Carolina primary happens on Saturday.
If Donald Trump wins by 15 to 20 points, this race is basically over, gang.
Unless there's a major consolidation that happens in the near future.
Polls show that that is unlikely.
So, we're about to head in some rough waters.
But don't worry, we'll all be in it together as we head down the River Wild with Kevin Bacon trying to murder us.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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