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March 3, 2016 - The Ben Shapiro Show
50:11
Ep. 83 - Romney vs. Trump: Clash Of The Titans

Why Mitt Romney's attack speech on Trump won't work, why so many conservatives are pledging #NeverTrump, plus the vaunted mailbag! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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This presidential race is getting crazier and crazier tonight.
Another interminable Republican debate.
We'll preview it, talk about what needs to happen.
Plus, a blast from the past as Mitt Romney enters the presidential fray.
Guns a-blazing and mouth a-flapping.
We'll talk about that.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show. - We tend to demonize people 'cause they don't care about your feelings. - Okay, so we're gonna start with Donald Trump, as always, because he's the Republican frontrunner, and also because he is wildly entertaining.
And I want to talk about a couple of things.
First off, I just want to remind people, every day I feel the necessity to remind you, this is the man who is likely going to be your Republican nominee unless there is a major movement to stop Donald Trump.
And then I'm gonna talk about Romney, and then after that, I'm gonna talk about the Never Trump movement, which has started to gain a lot of steam online.
Okay, so let's start off with a reminder who Donald Trump is.
So Donald Trump put out this video yesterday.
They put out this video yesterday, and here is the video of Donald Trump talking about how he's going to make America great again.
In making deals, even if it's big deals with Congress or maybe other countries, it really takes a certain amount of common sense.
You have to have personality.
You have to size up the other side.
Some people are going to be different.
When you're dealing with Russia, it may be different than dealing with China.
You have different personalities.
You have to be able to size them up.
You want to make great deals for our country.
You have to get people together.
When you're dealing in Congress, we have to get them all into a room and we have to say, fellas, let's go.
It's for the good of the people.
We want to take care of the people.
It's been a long time.
It's been decades since this has happened.
We're going to take care of the people.
We're going to get things done.
We're going to reduce your taxes.
We're going to get the economy going.
And of course, military and all of the other things, they are going to happen.
But that's a whole new subject.
You're next president of the United States.
Military and all of the other things, they're going to happen.
Well then, you've answered all my questions, Donald Trump.
I feel so safe and secure in your stubby little fingers.
It's just so ridiculous.
This, this, this is what you're choosing people.
You make me weep for the country.
Okay, so Trump puts out videos like this, and as I tweeted yesterday, you have to have the IQ of a platypus to find this convincing and interesting.
I mean, if this is what you're looking for, again, I understand the whole anti-establishment, he'll break things apart, he'll change things.
Do you really think that Donald Trump is gonna change things with logic?
Like, we have to get everybody in a room together and say, fellas, let's do this for the good of the country.
Wow, I'm sure that's never occurred to anyone, ever, in the history of man, that when you negotiate with somebody, you have to get them in a room.
Wow.
I thought that they were gonna do it, like, across a park from each other with bullhorns.
And of course, what is he even ta- And when you have Russia and China, you have to treat them differently.
They're not the same.
Thank you, Captain Avioso.
Who knew?
Russia and China, not the same country, different priorities.
Wow, wow.
What a master negotiator he is.
The whole Donald Trump is a genius thing, I think, is just absurd.
He makes a big deal out of it.
He went to Wharton.
He went to University of Pennsylvania Business School at Wharton.
Yeah, because his daddy knew one of the admissions officers.
Okay?
Like, again, daddy was very helpful to Donald Trump.
He let people say that he was the number one graduate in that class.
But again, I don't want this to turn into a Trump bashing session because it'll do that naturally on its own.
We don't have to sort of force that sort of thing.
You know, it's one thing for- I will say this.
It is one thing for me to bash Donald Trump because I am consistently conservative.
I was not a fan of Mitt Romney.
I thought that Mitt Romney was not conservative enough.
I didn't think John McCain was conservative enough.
I stand with conservatism.
I stand with conservatism.
I don't stand with the party.
I don't stand with any of the candidates.
If Ted Cruz were to betray conservatism tomorrow, I would move off of Ted Cruz.
If Marco Rubio betrays conservative, I move off of Marco Rubio.
I care about the principal.
I don't care about the politician.
And by the way, Trump supporters, you should take note, because you should be this way about Trump.
Okay, there are good things about Trump, there are bad things about Trump.
Most of them, in my view, are bad, but none of them are conservative.
So you're allowed to criticize your own guy.
There's a sort of idolatry of Trump that's set in that's sort of upsetting.
Anyway, Mitt Romney decided that he was going to... Mitt Romney decided that he was going to jump into this.
I think he felt the necessity, just as a human being, to try and stop the Trump train as fast as he could.
So he did a speech at the University of Utah today, and it was typically Mitt Romney.
In other words, he was good on the substance, and stylistically, it was just a big... I mean, it was just nothing.
So here is Mitt Romney at the University of Utah today, trying to stop the Trump train.
If we make improvident choices, The bright horizon I've described will not materialize.
And let me put it very plainly.
If we Republicans choose Donald Trump as our nominee, the prospects for a safe and prosperous future are greatly diminished.
If Donald Trump's plans were ever implemented, the country would sink into prolonged recession.
A few examples.
His proposed 35 percent tariff-like penalties would instigate a trade war, and that would raise prices for consumers, kill our export jobs, and lead entrepreneurs and businesses of all stripes to flee America.
His tax plan, in combination with his refusal to reform entitlements and to honestly address spending, would balloon the deficit and the national debt.
So even though Donald Trump has offered very few specific economic plans, what little he has said is enough to know that he would be very bad for American workers and for American families.
But you say, wait, wait, wait.
Isn't he a huge business success?
Doesn't he know what he's talking about?
No, he isn't.
And no, he doesn't.
Look, his bankruptcies have crushed small businesses and the men and women who work for them.
He inherited his business.
He didn't create it.
And whatever happened to Trump Airlines?
How about Trump University?
And then there's Trump Magazine, and Trump Vodka, and Trump Steaks, and Trump Mortgage.
A business genius he is not.
Okay, so first of all, we learned two things from this.
One, Mitt Romney clearly watched my video on Donald Trump because he's quoting it verbatim.
I mean, there's a part of the video, if you go online, it's now one of the top viewed political videos in the history of Facebook.
My spiel about Donald Trump and his business ventures is part of it.
And I list them off in almost this exact order.
So clearly, Mitt Romney, you magnificent bastard, you watched my video.
Okay, so, that's number one.
That's the first thing we learned.
The second thing is that this is going to have zero effect.
Zero effect on any of the Trump voters.
Because I saw a Venn diagram today.
You know, a Venn diagram, typically, it's like a circle crossing over with another circle, and the common area is where the crossover is, in terms of any idea.
So, here was the cartoon.
The cartoon was one circle, and it said people who care about Mitt Romney's opinion, and another circle, all the way over here, that said Trump voters.
And that's exactly right.
Nobody in the Trump circle cares about Mitt Romney's opinion, especially because juxtaposed, juxtaposed, I know it's a big word for some people, juxtaposed, okay, Mitt Romney's language with the language of Donald Trump.
So again, that Donald Trump video that we just watched a few minutes ago, the one where he was saying, we're gonna make great deals and you have to treat people differently.
Russia and China are actually different and distinct countries.
I didn't know if you knew that, but they're actually different countries.
And you gotta get people in a room.
A room is a place with four walls and a door.
Sometimes there's a window, sometimes there isn't.
You know, that's how Trump talks.
And then you got Romney.
And Romney listed in that two-paragraph segment, implemented, prolonged, tariff-like penalties, entrepreneurs, Combination, entitlements, balloon the deficit, specific economic plans.
That's in two paragraphs.
You think anyone in Trumpland cares about that?
You think anyone in Trumpland cares about that?
And beyond that, Mitt Romney... Here's the thing about the establishment that's so irritating about the GOP establishment.
I watch this and I like Mitt Romney more.
And I agree with everything.
I mean, I watched I Like Trump more.
Everything that Mitt Romney's saying, I agree with.
Everything.
But he's the establishment, right?
He's the guy who created Obamacare.
Now here he is lecturing us on why it would be bad business to pick Donald Trump.
Okay, well, you're the guy who brought us here.
I don't know what the establishment is thinking.
I said this yesterday.
You're gonna bring forward Bob Dole and John McCain and Mitt Romney all to testify about how Donald Trump's a big loser?
They all lost.
And not only did they all lose, none of them were that conservative.
And you're gonna bring them forward as the spokespeople for conservatism?
And again, the way that Romney attacks is just so... The substance is great, and the style is so lacking in every way.
Here's Mitt Romney attacking Donald Trump on foreign policy.
Now, Donald Trump tells us that he is very, very smart.
I'm afraid that when it comes to foreign policy, he is very, very not smart.
Now I'm far from the first to conclude that Donald Trump lacks the temperament to be president.
After all, this is an individual who mocked a disabled reporter, who attributed a reporter's questions to her menstrual cycle, who mocked a brilliant rival who happened to be a woman due to her appearance, who bragged about his marital affairs, and who laces his public speeches with vulgarity.
Donald Trump says he admires Vladimir Putin.
At the same time, he's called George W. Bush a liar.
That is a twisted example of evil trumping good.
There's a dark irony in his boasts of his sexual exploits during the Vietnam War.
While at the same time, John McCain, whom he has mocked, was imprisoned and tortured.
Okay, we can stop it there.
So this is, again, nothing he's saying here is wrong, but it's typically Romney.
Right?
It's typically Romney.
He says, I'm afraid when it comes to foreign policy, he's very, very not smart.
Why not smart?
Why not just say, he says he's really, really smart?
He's a dumbass.
Right?
He's really stupid.
Donald Trump is a dumb guy.
Donald Trump is not a smart guy.
Right?
Speak in language that people are very, very not smart.
Okay, I understand you're being genteel, but you're launching an attack on a guy.
Launch the attack.
And when he says, Trump lacks the temperament to be president, all the Trump people go, screw you, man!
Temperament to be president?
We gotta win!
Who cares about temperament to be president?
He shouldn't have talked about temperament.
He should have said, Donald Trump is gross.
He's just gross!
Talking about Megyn Kelly's menstru- Talking about Megyn Kelly bleeding from her wherever.
He should have just quoted him directly.
It's worse.
If you're going to launch an attack, the lesson of today's program, if you're going to launch an attack on a politician, launch an attack.
I mean, linguistically, rhetorically, you need to use the kind of language people understand.
This is not about the elegance with which you knife fight.
This is about how deep the knife goes.
You're gonna plunge that knife in.
Plunge it.
Plunge it.
There's only one point at which Romney actually did that.
He calls Trump a phony.
This comes a little bit later in the speech.
Mr. Trump is directing our anger for less-than-noble purposes.
He creates scapegoats of Muslims and Mexican immigrants.
He calls for the use of torture.
He calls for killing the innocent children and family members of terrorists.
He cheers assaults on protesters.
He applauds the prospect of twisting the Constitution to limit First Amendment freedom of the press.
This is the very brand of anger that has led other nations into the abyss.
Here's what I know.
Donald Trump is a phony.
A fraud.
His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University.
Okay.
So, number one.
Don't bury the lead.
Don't bury the lead.
Right?
First rule of writing, first rule of speaking, don't bury the lead.
So if your lead is he's a phony, say up front he's a phony.
Don't give me all the evidence of why he's a phony, then say he's a phony.
Say he's a phony, then give me all the evidence.
And again, this is all playing right into Trump's hands.
Because listen to the things he just noted.
He said he creates scapegoats of Muslims and Mexican immigrants.
All of Trump's people go, well, he's politically incorrect.
Of course he's talking about criminality of Mexican immigrants.
And of course he's talking about the risk of radical Islam.
Right?
It makes it sound like Romney is defending all Muslims and all Mexican immigrants.
He's not.
He's defending the law-abiding, which is fine.
But he should say that.
He should say he creates scapegoats of law-abiding American Muslims and Mexican immigrants.
That'd be one thing, but he doesn't do that.
He says he calls for the use of torture.
Most of Republicans are for torturing terrorists.
We don't care.
He says he calls for the killing of innocent children and family members of terrorists.
Okay, most of us are not really in favor of this.
We think this is kind of dumb policy, but if we have to do that to kill terrorists, then I guess we have to do that to kill terrorists.
I think that's how most conservatives feel.
He cheers assaults on protesters.
Again, I think that's bad stuff.
But Romney is just, he's making the case that the reason that Trump ought not be president is because he's not a milquetoast.
And so all of his supporters go, yeah, but you're a milquetoast and you lost and you're a loser.
Well, it's just, it's a waste.
It's a waste.
So now I want to talk a little bit about, so Rubio's thing is going to back, I mean, Romney's thing here is going to backfire.
It's not going to have any impact on the race.
If it does, it's actually going to help Trump.
And tonight with the debate coming, now instead of it being Cruz and Rubio on the attack, it's gonna be Trump attacking Romney and the other two being forced to defend Mitt Romney.
Romney's now the central issue, so it's actually really bad tactics in a whole variety of ways.
Especially since, gang, everybody now has the same op-o-file.
I know, I wrote it, and I put it out.
You're all reading my op-o-file.
Okay, good.
I'm glad.
But the spokespeople for the op-o-file should be people with real conservative bona fides.
And meanwhile, there's a debate that's now breaking out inside the Republican Party.
And it's one on which I am pretty torn.
One on which, I have to say, I'm not torn on a lot of issues.
Typically, you may have noticed.
But here's an issue on which I am seriously torn.
I'm leaning toward one side.
I'll tell you which one it is in a second.
And that is this debate over the Never Trump movement.
The group of people who say, we're never voting for Donald Trump.
No matter what, we will not vote for Donald Trump, even in a general election.
We're not going to vote for Donald Trump.
We're just not going to do it.
Right?
Okay, so there is a There are a bunch of arguments in favor and a bunch of arguments against.
Let's start with some of the arguments in favor of Never Trump.
In favor of we're never going to vote for Trump.
So, one of the arguments in favor of we're never going to vote for Donald Trump is that we're going to lose with Trump.
We're just going to lose.
There's no way to win with this guy.
I think there is truth to this.
I think the media have not begun to open up their guns on Trump.
I think Trump is bringing in new voters, sure, but he's alienating a hell of a lot more voters than he's bringing in.
And it's because Trump says things like this, for example, clip 17, here's Donald Trump talking about, remember, we've talked about it all week, Donald Trump refusing to disown the KKK, and then disavowing them the next day, and all of this stuff, and then blaming his magically white hooded earpiece, and he didn't hear properly, and his earwax was a member of the KKK, so it whispered bad messages to him, and all the rest of it.
Donald Trump was on MSNBC this morning still trying to walk this back and here was Donald Trump ridiculously trying to walk this back.
Here we go.
David Duke is a bad person who I disavowed on numerous occasions over the years.
And the one question that was asked to me, I guess on CNN, he's having a great time.
He talked about groups of people.
And I don't like to disavow groups if I don't know who they are.
I mean, you could have Federation of Jewish Philanthropies in groups.
I don't know who the groups are.
He's talking about disavow groups.
And that's what I was referring to.
But I disavowed him.
I disavowed him.
I disavowed the KKK.
I just did the Today Show and it was the same thing.
And I said, how many times do I have to disavow?
Do you want me to do it again for the 12th time?
Well, I want it on the record on this show.
Let me follow up and then I'll open it up to the table.
Just to put it clear, I disavowed him in the past, and I disavow him now.
And it was very clear that I disavowed, but the press doesn't want to go with it.
They just love the story.
And by the way, if you look at my Twitter, which took place just about the same time as that show, you'll see I disavowed right there too.
Okay, so in answer to his question, how many times do I have to disavow, the answer is all the times.
All of them.
There is no 99% solution here.
100% of the time, it's such an easy call.
You disavow the white supremacist.
Trump didn't do that.
I told you yesterday the reason I think Trump didn't do that.
Okay, so Trump has asked this and he says, well, I didn't know what groups Tapper was talking about.
Maybe he was talking about Jewish philanthropies.
Yes, I'm sure that Jake Tapper was talking about Jewish philanthropies.
I'm sure that Jake Tapper was talking about High Lifeline.
I'm sure that's what he was talking about.
He was talking about the Israel Defense Fund.
I'm positive that's what he was talking about.
What stupidity?
How dumb do you have to be to buy into that particular lie?
I had this argument online with a friend of mine, Patrick Coriolchi, this morning, and I really like Patrick a lot, but anybody who believes that Donald Trump didn't hear the questions did not watch that interview.
Because Donald Trump was repeating the questions back to Jake Tapper.
In any case, that's argument number one in favor of Never Trump.
You get behind this guy, he's going to lose.
And so regardless of whether I vote for him now or in a general, he's going to lose anyway.
That's argument number one.
I think there's truth to it.
I don't know that there's full truth to it.
As I've said before, I don't do the crystal ball gazing routine.
And so I'm not gonna say there's no chance Trump wins.
I'm gonna say I think it's unlikely that he wins.
Okay, argument number two in favor of Never Trump.
The second argument is we have to say no at some point.
Right?
We have to say no at some point.
Jonah Goldberg of National Review, he says, "For far too long, Trump has benefited from the assumption that the non-Trump faction of the party will be reasonable and support the nominee.
Such thinking paves the road to power for demagogues." And I think this is basically correct.
I think this is a good argument.
In other words, if the idea for the Republican Party is no matter who we nominate, you're going to have to vote for them because the alternative is always going to be worse.
It's always going to be Bernie Sanders or Hillary.
Then we really don't have a say in the nominee.
Right?
We don't.
We just have a say in whether we vote for the worst, the least of the two bad options.
Right?
That's how you end up with McCain and Romney and now Trump.
This is how you end up with George W. Bush and Bob Dole and H.W.
This is how you end up with all these people is because we're constantly being told, well, you may not like Mitt Romney, but do you really want a second term of Barack Obama?
And at a certain point, conservatives have to say no.
They have to say, no, we're not going to accept the lesser of two evils.
We're just not going to show up.
And if you want to lose with your people, you lose with your people.
But if you want to unify the party, you are going to have to do something for us.
This, to me, seems like a better argument.
Right?
That conservatives have to say no at some point.
And that conservatives saying no is a defense of conservatism.
There's an argument with which I agree.
I think this is a good argument, right?
You can't just keep saying to us, hold your nose and vote.
Because if I'm just gonna always hold my nose and vote, you can take my vote for granted.
If you can take my vote for granted, you never have to give me what I want, which is an actual conservative candidate.
And third argument, also a good argument, in favor of Never Trump.
Victory before conservatism perverts conservatism.
In other words, if all you care about is winning, if all you care about is winning, you're going to end up embracing a lot of things that sully the name of conservatism and destroy conservatism.
And here, I want to talk about Trump's argument.
Trump's counter-argument is, I'm gonna win.
I'm broadening conservatism.
I'm broadening the base of conservatism.
Here's Donald Trump this morning, suggesting that he's brought millions of people into the GOP.
Here we go.
And we're showing the chart right now on TV, completely reversed around.
And this year, it's now the Republicans that are up to 8 million people.
What is the difference?
What do you think you are doing?
What do you think you were saying that are bringing out these new voters?
Well, Joe, first of all, it's an even bigger number.
And Obama did a great job then.
And this is an even bigger number.
The number going into the Republican Party is an even bigger number as the number that went in in the past went in for Obama into the Democrats.
So this is a huge story.
And it's really the big story.
Now, they focus on Romney, who's, you know, just trying to stay relevant.
But the biggest story out there, by the people that really understand it, is the fact that the Republican Party is gaining millions and millions of people.
And you saw that with South Carolina, you saw that with Nevada.
I went to Nevada, the polling booths, and I tell you what, you couldn't even get within, you couldn't get within 200 yards of the polling areas.
The places were packed.
And the people working there said, Mr. Trump, I've never seen anything like this, and I've been at these booths for years, and I've never seen anything like what's happening with the Republican Party.
So he's saying that he's broadening the party, making it bigger.
Millions of people are joining, and he's right.
He's right.
There are a lot of people who are joining the Republican Party who have never voted Republican before.
The problem is, as Grover Norquist was fond of saying with regard to tax policy, if you have a big tent, you're going to let in a lot of clowns.
And the fact is that if you have no defining principles, no centralizing principles, the center cannot hold, things spin apart, and you end up with this fragmented party that stands for nothing except for its own self-aggrandizement and power.
You allow Trump to define the party, this is what you're going to get.
Here's some video yesterday, and this is already going around, okay?
This is already going around.
Again, I've spent my entire career fighting against perceptions that the Republican Party and conservatism are racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, and Trump is making it very easy for the other side.
Very easy for the other side.
Voting for Trump, under any circumstances, makes it too easy for the other side to say conservatives don't really stand for anything, they just don't like Hillary Clinton, they just don't like Their program, but they're willing to even in there.
They're even willing to go along with racism and bigotry in order to achieve their ends, which is not a group of people.
That's not something I want to go along with.
Here's here's what happened at the rally.
There are a bunch of rallyers who started assaulting.
There's black woman who came to protest and she came to protest and she came to make an issue and I've as you've seen in recent days dealt with protesters in the recent past.
The way you do this is you have security in the room and if someone protests you call security, right?
This is what people do.
Here's what actually happened at the Trump rally.
...rallied today with several interruptions by anti-Trump protesters.
It was Governor Chris Christie who came out first and introduced Trump.
Trump spoke for about 30 or so minutes, and when a protester did interrupt him, Trump would yell, get them out of here, and many were escorted out by police.
Some protesters have signs that read, love Trump's hate.
And it went on like that, people kind of pushing this lady around.
Another thing that Trump mentioned several times was the Saturday Republican caucus.
And it went on like that, people kind of pushing this lady around.
All of this isn't Trump's fault, except that Donald Trump is the guy who said this about protesters.
But I will tell you that the man that was, I don't know, you say roughed up, he was so obnoxious and so loud, he was screaming.
I had 10,000 people in the room yesterday, 10,000 people, and this guy started screaming by himself.
And they, I don't know, rough up?
He should have been, maybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.
This was not handled the way Bernie Sandals handled his problem, I will tell you.
But I have a lot of fans, and they were not happy about it.
And this was a very obnoxious guy who was a troublemaker who was looking to make trouble.
Maybe he should have been roughed up.
There it is.
Maybe he should have been roughed up.
And he said this in one of his speeches, too.
Clavin likes to play this clip of Trump where he's saying in his speech, you know, get that guy out of there.
Maybe he should be roughed up.
This kind of language, it has consequences.
And we will all be tarred with this particular brush.
Even if you don't like this.
You vote for Trump, you're now tired with that particular brush for all of time.
And the people who are backing Trump are some of the worst people on earth.
Not all of them, obviously.
I'm talking about some prominent people.
So we talked about Louis Farrakhan, who's a gross individual, and David Duke.
Well, yesterday, Pat Buchanan came out, and he's backing Trump, too.
Here's what Pat Buchanan said about Donald Trump.
And again, this is demonstrative of the fact that Donald Trump and Trumpism stand for nothing that looks like conservatism in any real way.
I think, to a degree, it is hurting, I think it hurt Trump, the attack ads in northern Virginia.
I don't know if the KKK was in there, but these things are designed to hurt him.
My guess would be you might see some kind of closing in Florida, but again, you gotta wait for April 15th, or excuse me, March 15th, and I'll tell you.
Then, at that point, we're going to see whether Trump has a clear shot to the nomination and can't be stopped, or whether he's going to be short in terms of delegates.
Does he have to win Ohio and Florida on the 15th?
No, I don't think so.
I think if he wins one of the two, frankly, even if he loses them both, he's not done.
There's races between now and then.
But I will say this.
Look, the people in the Republican establishment, the enormous turnouts we're getting, I've never seen anything like this.
They should be ecstatic!
They should be happy!
If you can pull this party together, Sean, you can beat Hillary.
Her turnouts of her and Bernie are anemic despite the big turnouts for Bernie.
Isn't it amazing?
This thing is winnable.
They hate, but they hate the two top guys, the two most popular people that are winning in this process.
They hate them.
Well, they're going to have to get over that after March 15th, I'll tell you, or they will be responsible for blowing not only the opportunity to win, this, I think if you drive these Trump people off from the party who are coming in... They're gone.
The party is gone, and I don't know what shouldn't be.
Look, the establishment positions have been repudiated.
They're not coming back on trade or intervention or open borders or all the rest of it.
That is over.
Bush Republicanism is yesterday, and the establishment has got to wake up to it.
Otherwise, it's not going to have any future at all.
So, Papukannan, for those who don't know, Papukannan is an actual anti-Semite.
Papukannan was fired from MSNBC for anti-Semitism.
This is a guy who said specifically that the Jews want a war between Israel and Iran.
He said that Israel's position is a greater threat to the United States than Iranian nuclear weapons.
He has a publication called The American Conservative that is an isolationist garbage...
Publication, it features the writings of people like Taki Theorakopoulos, who calls himself a sui de sang anti-Semite.
He once characterized Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld as a very homely, simian-looking Jew who couldn't punch his way out of a nursery.
These are the kind of people who write for Pat Buchanan.
He's engaged in Holocaust denial.
He said that diesel exhaust couldn't have killed 850,000 Jews at Treblinka.
He's criticized the U.S.
government for its apology for sheltering the Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk.
Demianic, William F. Buckley wrote of Buchanan, I find it impossible to defend Pat Buchanan against the charge that what he did and said during the period under examination amounted to anti-Semitism.
It was Pat Buchanan who urged Reagan, when he was communications director for the White House, to visit an SS cemetery at Bitburg in Germany, providing a great photo op for neo-Nazis everywhere.
And then he lectured any Jewish leader who objected, saying that they should be Americans first.
And he wrote over and over in his notebook, succumbing to the pressure of the Jews.
Okay, this is the guy, Pat Buchanan, the fact that he's been re-mainstreamed is incredible to me, but he's been re-mainstreamed.
And some of Trumpism is this, the isolationist, the anti-trade, The tariff, the high tariffs, the anti-immigration, and there's a difference between anti-illegal immigration and anti-immigration.
I'm anti-illegal immigration.
I want a wall.
I want restrictions on the number of people who are coming in and where they come from.
If you don't believe me, go watch an interview I did with Ann Coulter about her latest book on YouTube.
It's an hour long and we talk about all of these issues.
Our one area of disagreement is on H-1B visas, right?
On high-tech visas.
Okay, but Pat Buchanan is an emissary of an ideology that is not conservatism.
It is not Reagan conservatism.
It's what they call paleo-conservatism.
It's kind of an old-school, crypto-racist conservatism.
Pat Buchanan's a bad guy, okay?
And the people who he's suggesting the Republican Party has to cater to, these are not people who are going to help conservatism or make it better.
Now listen, every time I do a podcast or a column on one of these things, I know there are people who oppose this, who disagree.
That's fine.
You want to disagree, you can disagree.
But, conservatism has to have a definition.
Define your conservatism.
And one side or the other here is going to win.
The implication here seems to be, and it's troubling, the implication here seems to be that either the voters who stayed home for Mitt Romney and John McCain come out and they get what they want, an isolationist, anti-free trade, Anti-immigrant party.
Or they stay home and they take their ball and they go home.
Those are the two choices.
Well, if that's my choice, that we have to sacrifice conservatism to these people, then take your ball and go home, gang.
Take your ball and go home.
Because I'm not willing to sacrifice conservatism on the altar of beating Hillary Clinton for a guy like Donald Trump, who, by the way, is going to be a terrible president.
Donald Trump will be a very, very bad president.
And he may be better than Hillary Clinton, but George W. Bush was better than Al Gore, and without George W. Bush, there's no Barack Obama.
What happens after Trump becomes Republicanism?
What happens after Trump becomes Conservatism?
What happens after Conservatism looks like Pat Buchanan and Donald Trump?
What do you think the reaction from the left is gonna be?
They're already moving to the left.
How fast do you think it's gonna go bad?
Not just for the left, but for the mainstream of the country that begins to oppose all of this.
Okay, and he's just making it easy.
He's making it easy for the left.
He's making it easy for them.
Joanne Reed, who I think is despicable.
She's on MSNBC.
Here's what she said about Donald Trump dog-whistling to racists.
There's also the physical interaction, really scary and menacing, in which protesters are manhandled and thrown out of the door.
And he encourages that from the dais.
He encourages that.
From the podium.
Which George Wallace did.
George Wallace essentially said if a protester lies down in front of one of our vehicles it'll be the last vehicle that they run, that they lay down in front of, and encourage the crowd from the dais to throw out black protesters.
And that is why it is so throwback.
Well, Donald Trump, you know, he may not be as brilliant as he claims he is, but he's not stupid, right?
He understands who he is attracting.
He's going to now be competing in Louisiana, which you talked about gave David Duke nearly 60% of the white vote.
You know, Barack Obama got 14% of the white vote in 2008.
It was the third worst performance among white voters.
The only worst ones were Mississippi and Alabama.
So this Friday, when Marco Rubio was supposed to be in Baton Rouge, they've canceled their event.
Donald Trump will be there in Louisiana competing for what he knows it is.
If you look at that map of the old slave states of the Union, that was the Democratic Party's old South stronghold.
This is the point.
This is not what conservatism is.
This is not what Republicans are.
I don't believe that the vast majority of conservatives are David Duke fans.
I don't believe the vast majority of white people in the South are David Duke fans or KKK fans.
Donald Trump is making the case easy.
He's making the case easy for the left.
And in the process, he's making it hard for the rest of us conservatives who actually believe in things he doesn't believe in, like small government and individual liberty and a constitution with checks and balances.
It's just, it's really quite devastating.
Ben Sasse, who's become, I think, one of the moral leaders of the Republican Party, Senator from Nebraska, here's what he had to say about Donald Trump if Donald Trump becomes the nominee.
I want to celebrate what's great about America in the Republican Party.
But if the Republican Party becomes the party of David Duke, Donald Trump, I'm out.
And I think lots and lots and lots of people are out.
And so ultimately, there will be more choices than these two if Trump is the nominee.
And you hope there are more choices than these two if Donald Trump is the nominee.
Okay, on to some of the other candidates.
Marco Rubio is having a real rough time.
He's canceled a couple of rallies.
There's apparently some rumblings that he is getting pressure to drop out before Florida.
Because if he sticks around until Florida and loses, his political career is basically over.
He already said he's not running for Senate again.
His only possibility, if he loses this race, is to run for governor.
If he loses a statewide election to Donald Trump, the chances of him running for governor and winning are extraordinarily low.
So there's been some pressure to do that.
Meanwhile, Rubio is, for some odd reason, his people are starting a fight with Sean Hannity.
Now, listen, I'm friendly with Sean.
I like Sean a lot.
I think Sean's a good guy.
Sean has been very, very friendly to Donald Trump.
And the Rubio people slammed Sean Hannity personally, and yesterday Hannity fired back on Rubio.
Here's what it looked like.
I saw Rubio's attacks turning into a suicide mission, and could it actually ruin his career and destroy and hurt the Republican Party?
Here to answer that question, author of the book The Greatest Comeback, the original insurgent himself, Patrick J. Buchanan.
Sir, how are you?
I'm fine, Sean.
So I watched Marco in two interviews last night, and I want to be very clear here.
For the record, I've always liked him.
It's very hard not to like Marco Rubio.
I get the sense that he couldn't get out the word con artist, fraud, supporting the KK, hiring illegal immigrants, Trump University, over and over and over, enough.
Probably a preview of tomorrow's debate.
Here's my question.
Do you agree with me that probably this is not the Marco we've known, and B, that he's probably being influenced, and he's the hired gun now, to take out the insurgency?
Okay, we can stop it there.
He's the hired gun to take out the insurgency.
No, he's not.
No, he's not.
The hired gun, that was Jeb, okay?
Jeb was the hired gun to take out the insurgency.
By the way, Donald Trump is the hired gun, but he's not being hired.
The establishment is basically okay with Donald Trump.
That's why Rupert Murdoch came out yesterday.
Doesn't get more establishment than Rupert Murdoch.
He came out yesterday, and he said the party, if Trump is the nominee, ought to unify behind Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is the one who's taking the heart out of conservatism, hijacking it, and using it for his own purposes.
Marco Rubio, though, his campaign is fading.
Here is Marco Rubio now explaining that he doesn't have to even win the most delegates in order to win the nomination.
So he went from, I don't have to win states, to I don't have to win delegates.
Here's Marco Rubio explaining that last night.
Is there anything wrong with a convention, in theory, this is not a process question, it's a very important political science question, anything wrong with a convention nominating someone other than the delegate leader if that delegate leader, when they arrive at the convention, does have the most number?
In other words, is there anything wrong if Donald Trump has 1,100 delegates, and that's the most, with him not being the nominee?
You know, that's why the rules are written the way they are.
And, you know, I still think there's a chance it may not come to that, that there could be something between now and then, that even if someone doesn't have a delegate lead, if someone's clearly in the lead, you can work through that.
It's so premature right now to even discuss that.
There's so much to go.
I know Super Tuesday's a big deal, because a lot of delegates were awarded.
But I want to remind everybody, they're awarded proportionally.
Look at Virginia.
We came in second place, but we got one less delegate than he did.
We even got four delegates out of Texas.
Okay, this is weak stuff, and it's not gonna fly.
Which is why even some of the members of the establishment now are saying that Ted Cruz is the guy.
They're coming back around to the idea that only Cruz can beat Trump, not only because Cruz has beaten Trump more often than Rubio, but because if Rubio loses Florida, it's over for Rubio, and they know it.
So if he tosses his support to Cruz, then he's not expected to win Florida, but Cruz will actually start to consolidate.
A lot of the support and you'll finally have this two-man race you've wanted for so long.
Lindsey Graham, who despises Ted Cruz, senator from South Carolina, even he came around yesterday and he said, yeah, it's possible we may have to go with Cruz to stop Trump.
So there is no way you seem to be suggesting at the convention or before the convention to stop Donald Trump from being the nominee?
Short of a major scandal, probably not.
If Marco doesn't win Florida, I don't know how he goes forward.
If Kasich loses Ohio, You know, Ted Cruz is not my favorite by any means, and I don't wish him ill.
I was making a joke about Ted.
But we may be in a position where I have to rally around Ted Cruz as the only way to stop Donald Trump, and I'm not so sure that would work.
But you'd recommend that in order to stop Donald Trump rallying behind Ted Cruz?
I can't believe I would say yes, but yes.
Okay, so he obviously doesn't want to do it, but even he's beginning to admit it.
Okay, time for some things I like, some things I hate, and then a couple of letters from the mailbag, even though we're running a little bit long here, but there's so much to talk about, obviously.
By the way, here's your very brief preview for tonight's debate.
It's going to be an all-out attack on Trump.
Trump is going to fight back.
Please, somebody at Fox, please lower his microphone if he just starts shouting over people.
It's not appropriate.
Okay.
Things I like.
So, I've mentioned Stephen Sondheim in the past.
I've mentioned how much I like Sweeney Todd.
There's one particular number from Sweeney Todd.
I hope this is the right one.
Um, the quartet number from Sweeney Todd that is just spectacular.
For people who have never listened to Sweeney Todd, don't bother with the movie.
It's awful.
Instead, go pick up the original cast recording with Len Carew and Angela Lansbury.
It's really terrific.
We'll listen to a little bit of that here.
I feel you, Joanna.
I I feel you.
Do they think that walls can hide you?
Even now I'm at your window.
I am in the dark beside you.
Very sweetly in your yellow hair, Joanna.
OK, so we can stop it there.
This actually is, believe it or not, this is not the right number.
There's another number.
It's my fault because I sent the wrong number.
But there's another number that's even better.
It's a really phenomenal number.
It comes in the second act.
It's such good stuff.
You just listen to the whole cast recording.
The orchestration by Jonathan Tunick is spectacular.
This is Stephen Sondheim at his best.
This was his apex, then he started the slide, and now he makes stuff that nobody wants to possibly watch or listen to.
But this is really quite brilliant stuff.
Okay.
A couple of things that I, oh, one more thing that I like, one more thing.
This one is a remix, thanks to Lindsey.
So people who enjoyed the spectacle of Chris Christie and his face yesterday standing behind Donald Trump, Lindsey had this idea.
She thought she'd seen it somewhere before, but it turns out it was just in her imagination, in her fervent imagination.
So here is Lindsay's remix of Chris Christie's face at the Donald Trump rally after he won the other night.
I close my eyes only for a moment and the moment's gone.
All my dreams pass before my eyes, a curiosity.
Dust in the wind.
It's really good, and it's well choreographed here, so we'll pause it there.
If you want to watch the whole thing, you can go to my YouTube account, Lindsey's Setup, and we put it up there.
It's got several thousand hits.
It's really funny.
The whole thing is just amazing, this kind of blank stare from Chris.
This is the moment at which Chris you realize that life is meaningless, and then you die.
This actually happened right now in this moment.
He realized that it's all over, gang.
All the revelations of Sartre finally hit him at once, and it was the conclusion of The Stranger.
Okay, things that I hate.
So Colin Cowherd, who I've ripped before on the program, Colin Cowherd has done it again.
This time, he's a real lefty, Colin Cowherd, and he likes to pretend he's a sports host.
He likes to pretend that he plays it down the middle.
He doesn't.
He's a very, very strong political leftist.
And he's ripping on Tim Tebow again.
Tim Tebow should have a job in the NFL.
He should at least be a backup quarterback somewhere.
There are enough bad teams that you would assume one of them would pick him up just because people would watch the games with Tebow in them.
But Colin Cowherd rips the Tebow fans.
He says because Tebow fans tend to be religious, that's why he's not able to get a job.
Here's Colin Cowherd.
I've said this.
From his work ethic, to his humanity, to his kind of spree decor, I'd put him on my roster, but I would tell him, you're not, you're never going to be my starting quarterback.
I have no interest at all building my team around you.
But I like you in my locker room.
So what, why would Bill Belichick cut him?
I feel like once that happened, I was like, okay, he's not going to make it.
I think with Tebow, his fans ended up hurting him.
Tim Tebow's fans, what's that book in Mice and Men, Lenny squeezes the dog to death?
I think Tebow's fans hurt Tebow more than Tebow.
Nobody wants Tebow to run because of his faith-based, crazy fans that take over the stadium.
And that's why Denver had to go out and get Peyton Manning, because Tebow Mania took over Denver.
Tim's a good enough athlete to be on every roster in this league.
Absolutely.
Okay, let me stop you right there.
So, can you, like, just think about that for one second.
Just think about that.
This shows the bias in sports.
And it really is.
There's a bias in the sports media and in the sporting world, and it's gross.
Listen to what he just said.
He said, it's Tim Tebow's crazy religious fans who take over stadiums.
I thought the purpose was to sell tickets.
I thought you weren't supposed to care who you sold the tickets to.
So if the answer is that the crazy fans were taking over Denver Stadium and rooting for your team because of your quarterback, I thought that would be a good thing.
But his implication is if they like Jesus, and they like a guy who's clear about his faith in Christ, that that's something that has to be stomped out right now.
We need to go out, we need to get another quarterback, we can't deal with this.
We can't have somebody who's bringing all these Jesus folks to the stadium.
You want to talk about discrimination?
That's discrimination right there.
Because it turns out religious people, our money is just as good as anybody else's money.
These are the same people who would use government to force religious people to cater to gay weddings, but they want to say that religious people basically shouldn't have any input into the people Okay.
So, our mailbag was unbelievably full this week.
We'll only have time for a couple.
Again, I apologize, folks.
If I don't get back to you directly, Lindsey will.
I can't answer... I really feel bad about this because I like answering emails, but we literally, in the last, like, three days, we got over a thousand emails, so it makes it impossible for... I would...
I would have to stay up all night and quit my jobs to do this.
So instead, I've made this podcast for you.
So instead, we'll answer some of your questions right now.
Ethan writes, "Do you think Obama will pardon Hillary for anything related to her emails in Benghazi if she gets the nomination?" My answer: no.
I don't think that Obama is going to pardon Hillary.
I don't think he'll waste his political capital on her.
I also don't think she'll be indicted.
I think that Obama will exercise whatever influence he can to prevent that, now that she's the clear nominee.
Levi writes, "Hello Mr. Shapiro, I have a question about media bias.
We often talk about how the mainstream media is biased toward the left, but how does this work exactly?
Is it some vast conspiracy or a headless mob or something else?" Well, the reality is the people who tend to go into journalism are people who are idealistic about how the world should work and they feel like they're crusading for fairness, and then they tend to hire people who are just like them and surround themselves with those people.
And the difference between the right and the left is, listen, I run a media company, right?
And the people who work for me are conservative.
I believe universally conservative.
That's because they reflect the worldview in which I believe.
The difference is, I'm open about the fact that I'm conservative.
The folks in the media, I wouldn't, I don't, you don't see me criticizing Salon for being left.
Excuse me, I criticize Salon for being stupid.
I don't criticize them for being left.
I criticize the New York Times for being left because they pretend that they're not.
That's when we talk about bias.
Bias exists everywhere.
The problem is not informing people of your bias beforehand.
Oliver writes, I've got a son around the same age as your daughter.
He was born January 2014.
What toddler appropriate television shows do you allow her to watch in moderation, of course?
I don't really allow her to watch TV.
TV is bad for her brain, and she's too smart.
But if she is watching things, it's usually short videos online.
She likes Pocoyo.
She does like Thomas the Train Engine.
She's a big Thomas the Train Engine fan, but mostly because she likes the books and because she likes trains.
But mostly, she's really into books.
She loves books.
She woke up at 5 o'clock this morning.
As is her want.
She woke up at 5 o'clock this morning, and we have one of those baby monitors in her room, and we hear... She doesn't just cry for us.
She gets up and she goes, And so my wife had to go in at 5 o'clock in the morning and read to her.
Sometimes it's me.
I'm not a sexist.
Sometimes it's me, but tonight it was her, that night, because I have to be up at 5.30 to do my other radio show.
Yes, yes there are.
Go pick up my book, Primetime Propaganda, if you want a full listing of those sorts of shows.
You have to watch out for pretty much anything on the Disney Channel, which has moved significantly to the left.
ABC Family is not ABC Family.
It's a garbage heap.
And as far as some of the older shows, Sesame Street isn't bad, but it's not great either if you're gonna pick, take old episodes of Mr. Rogers over Sesame Street any day.
Okay, John writes, my family leans left and often spouts statistics that 97% of scientists believe in climate change.
The only basic argument I have heard from conservatives is that there is no evidence for climate change or that it is too limited.
If the argument is we are not 100% sure climate change is happening, wouldn't it still be prudent to err on the side of caution and take necessary steps just in case?
Can you give a more detailed defense of your position?
Okay, so there's a great article at Daily Wire, you can search for it.
It was written by a climate scientist debunking all of the various myths about climate change.
Here's the short answer to your question.
Number one, 97% of scientists do not agree with certainty that the world is going to warm to the point where it's actually dangerous.
Plus, 97% of scientists includes people who have nothing to do with climate.
I mean, you ask my wife, she's a scientist, she's a doctor.
Does she know anything about climatology?
No, she doesn't know anything.
She's a family physician.
Okay, so scientists are not all in the same field.
Number two, there's one thing we agree on.
There's something called the greenhouse effect.
That exists, okay?
If you put carbon into the atmosphere, it warms the Earth.
No question.
The question is, how much does it warm the Earth?
Does the Earth have patterns that cool it?
Meaning they've been saying now that the oceans might be absorbing some of the emissions, so that's preventing all of this from happening.
How much does it matter?
How much of this is due to natural weather patterns?
What level is certainly attributable to human behavior?
And most of all, even if you wanted to reverse this, what would it take?
The problem is that when you say, wouldn't it be better to err on the side of caution, well, when you're talking about doing away with fossil fuels, which power pretty much everything, when you're talking about going back to 1850 standards of living, complete with 1850 lengths of life and all the rest of it, no, I'm not willing to bet on that, especially when You know, everybody talks about the end.
It's not the end of the world, okay?
If cities have to move, cities have to move.
I mean, the fact is that Venice has been obviously sinking for the last couple of hundred years.
More than that, a couple of thousand years.
So, you know, that happens.
I'm not willing to sacrifice the well-being of all of Western civilization on the 50-50 bet that the waters are going to rise afoot.
I'm just not willing to do that.
Pat writes, with the Trump nomination possibly looming over us, what will this do to the future of American presidential elections?
In 2020 and 2024, will we see any successful person in the business or entertainment industry?
Give it a go.
I would be surprised if not.
He's opened the door to everybody, and so did Ben Carson.
The door is open.
People are going to jump through that door now that the door is open.
Okay, this is the last one.
I promise.
Mathis, I promise.
Albert writes, I was wondering if you have any advice for me.
Besides writing your student newspaper, how did you become a nationally syndicated columnist?
I would like to write for newspapers.
Is it worthwhile to write a book?
Okay, so the way that I became a nationally syndicated columnist is I applied.
Cold.
That's it.
I wrote for the student newspaper, and then I took some of my columns, I sent them to Creators Syndicate, and they didn't know how old I was, and they read them, and they liked them, and then my parents had to sign the contract, because I was 17.
And it's not illegal to sign contracts if you're under 17, if you're under 18 in California.
So, that's how, and then I parlayed that into a book.
Bottom line is, you have to start writing for free.
Just find an outlet, start writing for free, you'll start building up a following, you'll start building up a followership, and then you can go to people and you can say, look, I'm gonna bring you something material if you print my column.
And if you start to give me an outlet for my writing.
Okay, folks, tonight is the next big debate.
I will be live blogging it over at Daily Wire.
Make sure that you check it out.
And again, as I said yesterday, we're now in a fight for the future of the conservative movement.
It ain't just about Trump anymore.
Whether it's Trump or whether it's not Trump, conservatism, the fight for the ideology, does not waver and it does not die.
We're still going to have to fight this battle.
If Trump's the nominee, Then the battle is against Trump and Hillary.
If Trump is not the nominee, then perhaps we have somebody who's more conservative that we can feel a little bit better about.
But the battle never ends.
We have to hold people's feet to the fire.
Your loyalty should be to a good philosophy, not to any man.
Do not place your faith in princes.
Place your faith in the Almighty and the principles that he espouses.
And those principles do indeed include the founding principles of the United States.
We'll see you next week.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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