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March 9, 2016 - The Ben Shapiro Show
51:11
Ep. 86 - ShamWow Guy For President!

The Donald sells steaks, Ted Cruz hands Trump the nomination (sort of), and ESPN shows why Ben calls it "MSNBC with footballs". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We're here again, and it's another day upon which Donald Trump can celebrate victories.
We'll talk about how he celebrated those victories.
We will also talk about Marco Rubio.
Should he stay in?
Should he get out?
Plus, we'll talk about some things I like and some things I hate.
So, as always, a chock-full show.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
You tend to demonize people because you don't care about your feelings.
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Okay, so Donald Trump had a big night last night.
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Okay, so Donald Trump had a big night last night.
He wins three out of the four states yesterday in the primaries.
Doesn't end up winning a huge delegate advantage.
He gets 71 delegates.
Ted Cruz gets 56 delegates.
Donald Trump, as we said yesterday, was somewhere in the mid 400s in terms of delegates.
And Cruz is about 100 delegates back.
Of the three states, Trump did the best in Mississippi.
He did well in Michigan as well.
And he eked out a victory in Hawaii.
Ted Cruz blew Donald Trump out in Idaho.
So, what does all this mean?
It means that we get a speech from Donald Trump.
But before we get to the speech from Donald Trump, I have to say that there's somebody who just came to mind, and I'll tell you why in just one second.
We'll tell you why we're playing these clips back to back in one second.
Donald Trump Basically, the only thing that separates Donald Trump from the ShamWowGuy is that the ShamWowGuy got bit on the tongue by a prostitute.
That's pretty much the only thing that separates them.
Just as a reminder, for those who don't know who the ShamWowGuy is, his name's Vince something.
Here's the ShamWowGuy for people who missed it.
Hi, it's Vince with ShamWow.
You'll be saying wow every time you use this towel.
It's like a chamois.
It's like a towel.
It's like a sponge.
A regular towel doesn't work wet.
This works wet or dry.
This is for the house, the car, the boat, the RV.
ShamWow holds 20 times its weight in liquid.
Look at this.
It just does the work.
Why do you want to work twice as hard?
It doesn't drip.
Doesn't make a mess.
Ring it out.
You wash it in the washing machine.
It's amazing!
Okay, so ShamWowGuy.
That was the ShamWowGuy, right?
A guy who's basically a television marketing guru.
He's a guy who sells you crap.
Here is the Republican presidential frontrunner last night after winning a bunch of delegates and well on his way to the nomination, Donald Trump.
The ShamWow guy.
Here we go.
Mitt got up and he really shouldn't have done it.
It wasn't, it wasn't becoming, honestly.
And he talked about the water company.
Well, there's the water company.
I mean, we sell water and we have water and it's a very successful, you know, it's a private little water company and I supply the water for all my places and it's good, but it's very good.
Trump Steaks.
Where are the steaks?
Do we have steaks?
We have Trump Steaks.
He said the steak company.
We have Trump Steaks.
And by the way, If you want to take one, we'll charge you about, what, 50 bucks a steak.
No, I'm only... We have Trump Magazine.
Let me see the magazine.
He said Trump magazine is out.
I said, it is?
I thought I read one two days ago.
This comes out and it's called The Jewel of Palm Beach and it goes to all of my clubs.
I've had it for many years.
And it's the magazine.
It's great.
Anybody want one?
Here, take one.
Club.
My club champion.
So...
And the airline, by the way, I sold the airline.
You know, he said, Trump Airline.
Well, I sold the airline.
And I actually made a great deal.
Complicated.
And in really terrible times.
The economy was horrible.
And I made a phenomenal deal.
I had the shuttle.
And I sold it.
Okay, so there's Donald Trump doing the ShamWow routine.
There's Trump water.
There's Trump wine.
There's Trump steaks.
And he said he was going to give people Trump steaks.
And he's giving away free Trump... Okay.
Only one problem.
None of these things are real.
Because Donald Trump is a con man.
So, the water that he's handing out there, that Trump water, that is repackaged water from another company that he slapped a Trump label on.
Seriously.
Trump Magazine doesn't exist.
There's an annual issue from Mar-a-Lago, which is his Mar-a-Lago, his resort down in Florida.
They put it out just for that resort.
It doesn't exist.
Okay, Trump vodka no longer exists.
Trump Airlines was sold specifically because Trump Airlines, he was going bankrupt at the time in the Taj Mahal.
He had to sell Trump Airlines in order to pay off his debts at the Taj Mahal.
Okay, the Trump steaks, right?
For sure, he can't fake Trump steaks, right?
Except he got it from a company called Bush Brothers, which is a steak company, a butchery down in Florida.
He grabbed it, and then he proceeded to take the Trump steaks and wrap them in Trump wrapping.
So, There you go.
Donald Trump, he's a magical, magical man.
And he is the ShamWow guy.
It's just, this is your next president of the United States.
But don't worry, don't worry.
Donald Trump says that it's time to unify, that we have to get it all together.
So here is Donald Trump saying it's time to unify.
Given your statement to Major about how easy it would be to Hillary Clinton, do you agree that you're going to need to get mainstream American Republican politicians, the establishment as it's been labeled, behind you?
And if so, what do you say to them tonight, given so many of them are pouring their money into trying to beat you?
I say let's come together, folks.
We're gonna win.
I say let's come together.
Carl, the answer is not 100%, but largely I would say yes.
You know, some people you're just not gonna get along with it.
It's okay.
But largely I would like to do that.
And believe it, I am a unifier.
I unify.
I mean, you look at all of the things I built all over the world.
I'm a unifier.
I get along with people.
I have great relations.
I even start getting along with you, right?
Huh?
Campaign Carl.
But no, I get along with people.
And I really say this, Carl, I think it's time to unify.
We have something special going in the Republican Party, and unfortunately, the people of the party, they call them the elites, or they call them whatever they call them, but those are the people that don't respect it yet.
We have millions and millions of people.
I discussed it before.
We have millions and millions... He's going to bring us all together.
He's the great unifier.
He unifies us in the way that Adam Sandler movies unify some people.
I don't understand for the life of me why anyone likes Adam Sandler movies, but clearly there's a market for them.
Clearly there are a lot of people who love watching Adam Sandler hit himself in the head and make tiny little voices and be weird and such.
Clearly there's a market for Donald Trump.
But let's not pretend here.
Donald Trump, you know, he's a strong man.
And the real reason so many are resonating to Donald Trump is because they love this sort of stuff.
They love the antics.
They're granting him all sorts of credibility based on the idea he's going to make great deals for you.
He's going to make spectacular deals for you.
He's the guy who can bring his businesses back from the dead, for goodness sake.
He can bring them back from the dead just for the day, and then they go back to being dead again.
He can do anything.
And then he can bring us all together.
And he doesn't have to make sense.
What he says doesn't really have to make sense.
Bob Woodward asked Donald Trump directly.
You know, you keep talking about you're going to make Mexico pay for a wall.
So, are you going to go to war with Mexico to make them do it?
Here's Bob Woodward versus Donald Trump.
I want to ask about the wall you're going to get Mexico to build.
We were talking about this earlier, and a number of my colleagues here say you really haven't answered the question how you're going to do that.
And you know from business somebody can have a good idea, but how are they going to do it?
And can you give us some idea?
Okay, look the wall first of all Mexico is not going to build it.
We're going to build it, and we're good It's going to be a serious wall It's not going to be a toy wall like we have right now with where cars and trucks drive over it loaded up with drugs And they sell the drugs in our country, and then they go back and you know we get the drugs They get the cash okay, and that's not going to happen.
How are you?
And the reason they're going to pay in the way they're going to pay Bob is this is We have a trade deficit now with Mexico of $58 billion a year.
The wall is going to cost $10 billion to build.
That's what it's going to cost.
It's going to be a power wall.
It's going to cost $10 billion.
Now, when you're losing, or essentially losing, but when you're losing $58 billion a year on trade, in addition to that, we give subsidies to Mexico.
Believe me, I have all the cards.
Now, will a politician be able to do it?
No, because they don't know how to negotiate.
That's how we have the Iran deal, where we give them $150 billion and other things.
But for me, that's 100%, Bob, and you can hold me to it, and you will hold me to it.
Okay, but how do you get a sovereign nation that says they don't want to pay, to pay?
There are five different ways you can do it.
You can do it through not giving them the subsidy that we pay them.
You know, we pay Mexico subsidy.
I don't know if you know, but the whole thing is ridiculous.
We're paying everybody subsidy.
We actually have a small portion of China where they get a subsidy from us because they haven't ended it for years.
We pay subsidy, money coming over the border.
There are so many ways that Mexico makes money with us, Bob.
There are so many different ways, five in particular, that we will take it out of there if they don't agree to it.
I'm sorry to press on this, but how would you grab that money if they say no?
Would you be willing to go to war?
I mean, this is insanity.
This is insanity.
I mean, what Trump is saying here, he's saying he's going to get Mexico to pay for it.
When I rejuvenate our military, Mexico's not going to be playing with us with war.
That I can tell you.
Mexico's not playing with us with war.
I mean, this is insanity.
This is insanity.
I mean, what Trump is saying here, he's saying he's going to get Mexico to pay for it.
I guess the implication is that we're going to raise our trade barriers, and then we're going to use the money that Mexico bribes us with to lower our trade barriers, to pay for the wall.
What if Mexico says no is what Woodward is asking.
What if they just say stick it?
You know, and so what's he going to do then?
And Trump says, don't worry, they're not going to want to go to war with us.
So he'll threaten them with war if they don't pay for the wall over to like $10 billion.
This is the this is the plan now.
It's all genius stuff.
I want to take a brief diversion here, a brief digression, to talk for a second about Trump's idiocy with regard to trade.
And you hear it again here.
We talked about this a little bit yesterday, but I want to go through it more comprehensively and more slowly.
So there are two groups of people who are backing Donald Trump on the sort of anti-immigrant protectionist front.
One is the group of people who say that we need a border.
It makes us safe.
We can't have people coming across who are criminals.
We can't have people coming across who change our culture and don't integrate.
I agree with all of that.
Then there are the people who are just anti-free trade because they think their jobs are being sent to Mexico.
And you've got people like Donald Trump out there saying, we run this vast trade deficit with Mexico, they must be screwing us.
China, we run a trade deficit with China, they must be screwing us.
And the only solution is tariffs.
So Trump has suggested to the New York Times that you put 45% tariffs on Chinese goods, which is insanity.
Let me explain for a second why tariffs don't work, why protectionism is silly.
So, I explained this briefly yesterday, but I want to be a little bit more comprehensive.
You've heard Trump talk about how protectionism is great, about how we need to put tariffs on China and tariffs on Mexico.
There are four reasons, four reasons, why protectionism is not good.
Why protectionism is, in fact, bound to destroy the economy, lose jobs, and make your life worse.
First of all, tariffs, as I said yesterday, are an unfair tax.
They're an unfair tax.
Trade always has two sides.
When we say we have a trade deficit with Mexico, what that means is that Americans are buying Mexican goods and Mexicans aren't buying a lot of American goods.
Okay, so, so, what happens?
Let me ask you this.
What do you think happens when we buy a Mexican good?
Does that dollar just sit around under somebody's bed in Mexico?
The dollar isn't useful.
It eventually has to make its way back here.
It's in American denominations.
They don't use the dollar, right?
So what do they do?
Eventually, that dollar comes back in the form of investment.
They buy land, they invest in our companies.
This is why we have a capital surplus when it comes to countries with which we have a trade deficit, because the money has to come back in.
But to get back to the tax point, Trump complains about us importing cars, for example.
That's because there are people like me and you who buy cars that are imported.
And what happens with all the money that these companies get?
They build factories in the United States.
More of a Honda car is built in the United States than a GM car is built in the United States at this point, because they have factories down south.
And the fact is that when you put tariffs on goods coming in, what you're really doing is taxing me.
It's a sales tax on me.
And you can send that money to the people who are in industries that are being priced out of the market.
So, for example, you want to keep manufacturing jobs alive, all you have to do is make me pay twice as much for a car.
That's basically a tax.
The government is taking my money and forcing me to spend it on some industry that is not competitive and that is dying.
And the people this hurts most are the people who are actually at the bottom of the economic scale.
You know, to me, it may not make a difference whether I'm spending $35,000 or $30,000 per car, but to the person who's making $30,000 a year, it matters a hell of a lot what that lease payment looks like.
Trade redirects money to the most efficient industries, to the people who do it the best, who do it the cheapest, who do it the smartest.
Restrictions on trade, by contrast, stop all of that.
So it's a regressive tax.
Second, tariffs actually destroy jobs.
So people like to say that in the manufacturing world, we need our manufacturing jobs back.
We need those back, and trade has destroyed the manufacturing base in the country.
I'm not somebody who worships at the altar of manufacturing.
I don't worship at the altar of any job type.
The fact is that there were lots of wheelwrights back in the day who were put out of business by tire companies.
There were lots of people who owned wagons, who used to build wagons, who were put out of business by automobiles.
Did we weep for them?
Did we create subsidies for them?
No, of course not.
When technology gets better, it puts people out of work, and when trade is good, that puts people out of work too in some industries, but it creates jobs in new industries.
Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump say the same thing when it comes to trade.
That's why Bernie Sanders, just the other day, he said about Detroit that in 1960 Detroit was a big boom town, and then we opened up the markets and stopped protecting Detroit, and then Detroit fell apart.
That's not what happened.
What happened is that Detroit was way ahead, the unions started negotiating for outsized wages, the unions started negotiating for better contracts, there were more regulations, the price of making a car went up, and then we were uncompetitive.
And at that point, people started buying other types of cars.
Of course, because that's how the market works.
And then, instead of getting rid of the regulations, or stopping the unions, Detroit didn't do that.
They tried to tax the people who were left, and all those people left.
So the truth is that if you want to destroy jobs, all you have to do is make industries non-competitive.
The way to make industries non-competitive is to protect them.
Again, if you really think that tariffs create jobs, all you have to do is make the tariff 100%.
Do it on all the goods, everywhere.
You know what you'll end up with?
A really, really crappy economy.
Because now no one can afford to buy anything good.
We're all spending twice as much for everything, and we're not earning as much, because no one's buying these things.
Because no one has any money to buy these things.
The fact is that you want to live in a world where cool stuff is cheap and available.
You want to live in a world with the iPhone 6, not a world where we're spending $1,000 for an iPhone 2.
By the way, even Steve Jobs said this.
He said if there's no outsourcing, there is no iPhone 6.
Okay, third reason.
We're not damaged by the so-called unfair trade practices of other countries.
Both Mitt Romney and Donald Trump is, ah, China's screwing us.
China's cheating us.
China is cheating us when they steal our intellectual property.
That's actual fraud.
But, China devaluing its currency, inflating its currency, that doesn't hurt you in any way.
It doesn't.
In fact, in some ways it helps you.
You can buy, for a brief period of time, their goods more cheaply.
But if you think inflation helps an economy, if you think inflation makes people's trade deficit greater, that it really helps you with trade, then the Weimar Republic should have been great when people were shoveling around wheelbarrows full of cash.
That's not how it works.
Right?
Currency is just a piece of exchange.
That's all it is.
It's just an exchange.
It's a measurement.
Okay?
Saying that inflation changes the underlying math of our trade is like saying that if I'm playing basketball with someone and I decide arbitrarily to change their height.
Right?
I'm playing with Yao Ming.
I'm a 5'9 guy.
Yao Ming's 7'2.
I decide that I'm gonna change the standard of a foot for Yao Ming.
So now he's 5'9 also.
Is he actually 5'9?
Of course not!
I can call him whatever I want.
He's still 7'2.
The economy in China is still the economy in China, which is to say it is a low-rent economy with lots and lots of people.
And they produce really cheap products.
That's all they do.
They're not a sophisticated economy.
They're not a powerful economy.
They're just really, really big.
And the fact is that devaluation doesn't change any of that.
It doesn't change anything.
Right now, by the way, China is desperately attempting to not inflate their currency, because it turns out they've destroyed all demand in their country for any products through their inflation, and so now they're in a spiral, which is why their stock market has crashed a couple of times in the past year.
Finally, everybody is acting... You hear Donald Trump use this trade deficit language.
Trade is not a zero-sum game.
It's not a zero-sum game.
Okay?
When I trade something to you, I don't worry about the fact that I spent more money than you did.
Right, if I buy a jacket from Macy's, then what I'm going to spend on that jacket... I don't worry about the trade deficit that I now have with Macy's.
I wanted the jacket and Macy's wanted my money.
I gave them my money.
They gave me the jacket.
That's not a trade deficit.
That's just a trade.
Right, so if the idea is that I spent more money than Macy spent on me, that's true, that's called a profit.
And you know what'll happen?
They'll take that money and they'll spend it on something else.
If I go to Japan, and I spend money on a Japanese good, they're gonna have to use that dollar for something else.
They can't use the dollar in the Japanese economy, they don't use the dollar.
So that money ends up coming back.
Thomas Sowell, the economist, he points out if the Japanese sends us lots of cars and we send them lots of dollars, then what do they do?
They end up coming here and buying a lot of American assets.
This is what happened in the 1980s.
Right?
Japan was this big, booming economy.
It was going to be great.
What happened?
They took all of their dollars and they bought American real estate.
All those dollars ended up back in the American economy.
It's called a capital account surplus.
It happens.
So, none of this has any sense to it, but this is what Trump does.
He panders to particular small groups of people with programs that hurt large groups of people who can't really...
Focus on why they're being hurt.
So this is what, when he's talking about trade, this is what Donald Trump does.
This is what Donald Trump does on a regular basis.
And it's not smart, but nothing he does is about being smart.
It's just about being in control.
And that's what this all comes down to.
People trust him to make good business deals.
He's not a businessman who's very good.
He's underperformed the real estate market.
He's underperformed the stock market.
I keep hearing from people that he's a genius because he's worth so much money.
If my financial analyst did as badly with my money as Donald Trump has done with his money, I would fire them ten times over.
Donald Trump has underperformed every market in which he's taken part.
But, you know, all of this really in the end is about strength, which is why yesterday at a rally, Corey Lewandowski, who's Donald Trump's campaign manager, apparently took Michelle Fields is a reporter for Breitbart and actually physically threw her out of the way.
He apparently physically assaulted her.
This is this is sort of what Trump's campaign is.
And Trump is doing it himself.
You know, there's all these stories about Trump U, about Trump University.
Here, for example, is and here's how Donald Trump responds to all of these stories about his his corruption and Trump University.
Here's Trump.
Quick thing about where you're at with delegates right now.
If you are leading, but don't get to 1,200, are you, do you think it's wrong?
Actually, this is it.
What I need is the Trump naming and threatening former Trump youth students.
This is clip five. - There's been so much talk by dishonest people about Trump University or Trump Entrepreneur Initiative, and I thought I should set the record straight.
Number one, it's something I could have settled numerous times.
I just don't believe in settling, especially when you're right.
Recently at the Fox debate, they said it had a D- rating from the Better Business Bureau.
I said, that's not true.
It had an A. They said, no, you're wrong.
It has a D-.
Well, I turned out to be right.
Before the end of the debate, I gave them the A we had sent to us.
And here's the A rating from the Better Business Bureau.
And they refused to put it on that night.
They probably sent it some other time when nobody was listening.
So we have an A rating, not a D minus rating.
Additionally, I just saw a commercial made by a very dishonest guy, Lightweight Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who's dying in the polls and dying as a candidate.
And he made a commercial with a few people, two of which, and we have the third we're looking for, is Bob Gallo.
And here's his report card on the school.
And he talks about excellent.
What creates your quality of presentation, quality of everything.
Okay, we can pause it here.
Excellent.
There's a commercial that was made with this guy, Bob.
He didn't reveal his last name.
Trump is outing him by last name.
And I promise you that Trump outing him by last name is a signal to his supporters that they ought to Do something about this.
Not violence, but they ought to target him.
They ought to harass him.
They ought to bother him.
This is what Trump does.
Trump outs people.
Trump hurts people who he perceives to be his enemies.
This is why his friends like him.
They figure that if he's the enemy of my enemy, he must be my friend.
The only problem is at a certain point, what happens when you cross Donald Trump?
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Okay.
So Donald Trump, the point of all of this is to say that Donald Trump is, is running what really looks like a ShamWow campaign.
He's running a ShamWow campaign and he's making promises he can't possibly keep.
When he talks about tariffs, when he talks about trade barriers, when he talks about forcing Apple to manufacture phones in this country, it's not going to happen.
When he talks about how he's going to force companies to relocate inside the United States, That doesn't happen, okay?
The fact is that Donald Trump apparently wants to not only build a wall to keep Mexicans out, he wants to build a wall to keep American businesses in.
It didn't work for the Soviet Union, and it won't work for Donald Trump.
But the thing that people like about Donald Trump is that he's strong.
So Ted Cruz, yesterday he was asked about Donald Trump doing his loyalty pledges, and here is Cruz explaining Trump isn't a king.
Senator, could you ever ask your supporters to raise their hands and pledge their support to you, or would you be concerned about the optics of that?
Um, you know, I am asking for the support of the grassroots each and every day, but it's not about pledging support to one person.
Anyone who thinks that you're making a loyalty oath to some candidate fundamentally misunderstands this process.
Listen, no political candidate is going to make America great again.
It's not going to be Donald Trump.
It's not going to be me.
It's not going to be any candidate.
Power strong enough to restore this nation as we the people.
It is not about us, it is about the people.
And so the idea that you would take this loyalty oath, you know what?
I raise my hand and I take an oath to you, to the people.
That's who's working for whom.
Okay, everything Ted Cruz is saying here is exactly right.
The only problem is it assumes that people don't want a strongman.
And people clearly want a strongman.
They want the guy who's going to sell them Trump water and pretend that Trump steaks are still a thing.
Trump steaks, by the way, went out of business in 2007.
So if he actually was serving Trump steaks, that's a massive Food and Drug Administration violation.
I mean, someone is going to die of salmonella if he was actually serving 10-year-old steaks.
All of this is to say that one of the advantages Trump has Is that he's tapped into the latent desire for people to have a guy who wins for them.
He's not going to do it for you.
He's not going to make Mexico pay for the wall.
If he raises tariffs, it's going to hurt you.
It's going to hurt the economy.
It's going to take away jobs.
There's a certain small segment of people who will be helped by Donald Trump, just like there's a certain segment of people who are helped by Hugo Chavez.
All of Hugo Chavez's friends were helped by Hugo Chavez.
There are certain industries that were helped by Hugo Chavez at the expense of the entire economy.
That's Donald Trump in a nutshell.
This is why he's not a conservative.
Okay, so this brings up another question.
Here's how the math works out right now.
So Donald Trump, Super Tuesday is coming up quickly.
Marco Rubio needs to get out.
Rubio needs to get out.
So Rubio said yesterday, Trump's not going to get the delegates.
Here's Marco Rubio, senator from Florida, explaining that he thinks that Trump is going to come up short.
You have to combine forces and take those delegates away from Donald Trump.
Yeah, it's just not accurate.
Donald Trump is not on pace right now to get the delegates he needs to be the nominee.
And if you look at it, over 70, about 70% of Republicans have said they don't want him as the nominee.
A significant percentage of Republicans say they will never vote for him if he's the nominee.
And that means we lose to Hillary Clinton.
So, he is not on track to have the number of delegates he needs.
I think Idaho can play a huge part in that tomorrow.
I'm asking everyone to come out and vote for me, Marco Rubio.
If I win Idaho, it is going to shake up this race in a major way.
It's gonna give us a real boost, and it's gonna give us a chance to overtake him in the long run.
Okay, not only did Marco Rubio not win Idaho, he didn't even finish, basically.
I mean, he got zero delegates out of Idaho.
Rubio needs to get out now.
Not because of Florida, folks.
Donald Trump is gonna win Florida.
But because right now, Illinois is tight.
And they have a lot of delegates.
Ohio is tight.
They have a lot of delegates.
Missouri is tight.
And they have a lot of delegates.
Florida is lost, okay?
But if you deprive Trump of those other three states, plus some of the delegates in North Carolina, which is still proportional, then Trump will not have a path to the nomination, and he'll end up with less than 1,237 delegates.
Right now, right now, if you look at the kind of magic number, how many delegates are needed to clinch, Right now, Donald Trump needs about 55% of all delegates to clinch.
He needs 55% of all delegates.
Cruz needs about 61%.
Rubio needs 76%.
Not gonna happen.
Rubio's toast.
And Kasich needs 83% of the delegates in order to win.
That's not gonna happen either.
But you can prevent Trump from getting those 54%.
The reason that Rubio's math doesn't work here, when he says Trump's not on pace, is because everything shifts on Super Tuesday.
Right now, Trump is winning proportionally 44% of the delegates, right?
That's not enough to win.
But when it shifts to winner-take-all, he's either going to win 100% or 0% in all of these states, and so the number of delegates he gets is going to raise dramatically.
So right now, even if Trump wins Florida, Then he still doesn't get to this number if he loses Ohio and if he loses Missouri and if he doesn't do well in North Carolina.
According to, according to, who is this?
Sean, sorry, Sean Davis over at The Federalist.
He's done this calculation.
He says if Trump wins Ohio and Florida, he'll need to win 48% of the remaining delegates.
Right now he's winning 44%.
So winning Florida and Ohio is a big boost for him, but if he loses Ohio, if he loses Illinois, if he loses Missouri, if he loses North Carolina, it's gonna be very, very difficult for Trump to win the nomination outright, which raises a big question.
And here's the big question that it raises.
What happens if Donald Trump has the lead in delegate number, but not enough to get the nomination?
What if he has the most delegates, but not the nomination?
So here's Donald Trump answering that question.
He's asked, well, what if you're winning, but not enough to win the nomination?
Here's Trump's answer.
Quick thing about where you're at with delegates right now.
If you are leading, but don't get the 1,200, do you think it's wrong to have a contested convention?
Yeah, I sort of do.
I think the people that, you know, whoever's leading at the end should sort of get it.
I would think so.
That's the way democracy works.
I don't know that that's going to happen, but I'll tell you there'll be a lot of people that will be very upset if that doesn't happen, because we have really fervent, wonderful people.
And I think that would be pretty unfair.
It'd be unfair.
So in other words, he plays by a different set of rules.
If he doesn't win as many delegates as he needs, he should still be handed it, just like he's been handed everything else in his life, apparently.
He should be handed it on a golden platter.
Oddly enough, Ted Cruz says the same thing.
Ted Cruz was asked about this, and he said, yeah, we shouldn't have a brokered convention.
If he ends up in a position where he's got the most delegates, then we should give it to him.
Here's Cruz.
Let me ask you about your political path.
Is it to win the nomination the delegates outright, or is it to just deny and get to Cleveland and figure it out there?
Look, we're campaigning to win and I will say anytime you hear people talking about a brokered convention...
I think that is the fevered talk of the Washington establishment.
The Washington establishment is in a panic.
They're confused.
They don't understand what's happening.
And their favorite candidates, the ones that they want to win, are not getting the votes.
But if a bunch of Washington dealmakers try to step in at a brokered convention and steal the nomination, I think we will have a manifest uprising.
If you want to beat Donald Trump, and I don't think Donald Trump is the right nominee to go up against Hillary Clinton, if you want to beat him, Our campaign is the only campaign that has demonstrated we can do so over and over again.
I think there's something illegitimate, though.
The question here is why Cruz is saying this, because here's the reality.
Cruz is probably not going to win more delegates than Donald Trump.
There's a very good shot that Donald Trump ends up with the most delegates, and even if he doesn't win the nomination outright, he has the most delegates.
So why is Cruz saying this?
One possibility is that Cruz is living in a bit of a fever dream of his own, in which he ends up with the most delegates, but he's afraid that the convention takes it away from him.
Possible.
It's also possible he doesn't want to look like he's an establishment guy who's just a stop-Trump-at-all-costs guy, because he still thinks that there are Trump people who might vote for him.
Possible.
Unlikely.
Okay, but here's the bottom line.
If Trump does not win 1,237 delegates, let's say he gets 1,100 delegates, should he be stopped at the convention?
There are a bunch of never-Trump people, like Eric Erickson, who says he'll never vote for Trump, who says, well, if he wins the most delegates, we should still give it to him.
Even if it's not the number necessary to win, we should still give him the nomination.
Glenn Beck has said much the same thing.
I disagree.
I disagree.
I'm enough of an anti-Trump guy.
This actually makes no sense to me, honestly.
It doesn't make any sense to me to say Donald Trump is such a problem for conservatism that if he wins the nomination, I can't vote for him against Hillary Clinton.
But if he doesn't get enough votes to win the nomination outright, let's just hand it to him.
That doesn't make any sense to me at all.
So I guess the normal argument is that it'll tear apart the party if we do that, that it'll make it look illegitimate, that Trump will run third party.
I don't care.
Okay?
Because the fact is the Republican Party has already fallen apart.
The Republican establishment is already hated.
It doesn't matter.
If ever they're going to stand up and do something that's worth doing, it would be stopping Donald Trump.
And this idea that Trump is going to go third party?
Okay, so he goes third party.
Is that worse than Donald Trump taking over the entire Republican Party and putting the Trump brand, the Trump stake imprimatur on conservatism?
This is a guy who's pro Planned Parenthood.
This is a guy who lies about virtually every position he's ever taken.
This is a person who is willing to associate with the lowest elements of the American populace in order to win.
Is that something that Republicans are comfortable with?
Let's play this out.
Let's do the logical game here.
Let's play it out for a second.
So, let's say that the Republican establishment decides we're going to deprive Trump of the nomination and we're going to hand it to somebody like Mitt Romney.
So yeah, there will be a manifest revolt.
There will be a revolt.
People won't vote for Romney.
Trump will go third party.
Conservatives will say stick it.
They won't go to the polls.
Okay.
Okay.
And, you know, and then, the establishment deserves to be hated.
Let them do that.
Let them stiff the conservatives and the anti-establishment group to put in somebody we know that they like.
And then, all their cards are on the table.
It's clear.
They don't want a conservative, and they don't want somebody who's anti-establishment.
Let them reject Cruz and Trump, and then we have clarity.
And in four years, if presumably Romney loses, in four years, then we can come back, and we can come back with an anti-establishment conservative candidate.
Who's not a liar about all of his policies, like Trump.
Okay, let's say that the establishment settles on Cruz.
Let's say they come back and they say, well, we hate Cruz and we hate Trump, but Cruz is the only one who's eligible other than Trump, because he's won eight states, so we'll give it to Cruz.
Good!
So if the Trump people leave, the Trump people leave, but then it's just obvious they're not conservative, because Cruz is certainly conservative.
Cruz, his border policy, is significantly more consistent than Trump's, who's been all over the place.
And if Cruz loses to Hillary, Trump people will blame the establishment and the conservatives, but they're going to blame us anyway if Trump loses.
If Cruz gets the nomination, at least 65% of the voters in the Republican Party who don't want Trump will be justified in their vote for Cruz.
Plus, the establishment then can't blame conservatives for what happened since they signed off on it.
Finally, the worst case scenario is that they actually do this.
They hand the nomination to Donald Trump.
I'll upend it over at Hot Air.
Who's anti-Trump?
He says there are two big risks with this, right?
One is you're handing a danger, the possibility that you're handing a dangerous authoritarian a much more viable path to the presidency than he would have as an independent.
And second, even if Trump loses, then the GOP is rebranded as, as Philip Klein puts it, the party of open-ended government entitlements, socialized medicine, partial birth abortion, gun control, Private property seizures, trade protectionism, authoritarianism, vulgarity, mindless policy pronouncements, celebrity worship, and white male resentment.
Right.
Which is the reason why, if you're a Never Trump person, there is no logic to this idea that you should give Trump the nomination if he doesn't have the right number of votes.
Here's the deal, Donald.
If you want to win, win it.
Once you've won it, we can't complain about you winning it.
We can say that you're the wrong guy, we cannot show up.
If you win it, win it fair and square.
If you get less than the number of delegates, there's no crying in baseball.
That's not the way that it works.
These are the rules and these were known beforehand.
Okay, so I've spent the entire show so far talking about the negatives on Donald Trump because I think that he's gonna win the nomination.
I do think he'll win the nomination when all of this is said and done.
I don't trust presidential candidates to put their ego behind the interests of the country.
If I'm relying on presidential candidates to not To put their ego aside, we're going to be waiting quite a while.
The one good thing about Donald Trump, and it always has been a good thing, is Donald Trump versus the media.
This is the one good thing about Donald Trump.
By the way, this is why there's a poll out today that shows Hillary Clinton beating Trump 51-38, just brutalizing Donald Trump.
And in a Sanders versus Trump poll, the numbers are even worse.
55 to 37?
An open socialist over Donald Trump in a poll today?
Okay, I still don't believe that it's that easy for the Democrats.
I don't believe that it's quite that easy for the Democrats because the media created Donald Trump.
He's their Frankenstein monster.
It's gonna be hard to tear him down.
It's gonna be hard to tear him down because of stuff like this.
Here is Donald Trump versus George Stephanopoulos.
Those exit polls out of Michigan show that voters who decided in the last couple days went overwhelmingly for John Kasich, 43%.
Only 12% went for you.
What does that say to you?
Well, it says to me that you're probably the only person negative out of a big win, because I had a tremendous win yesterday.
I had a, you know, in Michigan, in Mississippi, I was almost at 50%.
And don't forget, that's with four candidates.
That's not with two people.
That's with four candidates.
You know, I see nothing negative about Michigan.
The Michigan win was fantastic.
It was a monster win.
It was a, as you would call it, a massive landslide.
Look at where second is.
And Kasich wasn't even in second place.
He was in third place.
A distant third.
And he said that if he doesn't win Michigan, he guaranteed Michigan.
And he said if he doesn't win Michigan, he's pretty much out.
You'll beat him in Ohio?
We'll see what he does.
I think I will, yeah.
I mean, I have amazing relationships to Ohio.
Incredible people.
And they're like everyone else.
So there's Trump slapping around George Stephanopoulos.
Again, this is the thing that he does best.
And so all of his supporters say, if he'll slap around Stephanopoulos, he'll slap around our enemies.
Right.
Until you say something he doesn't like.
At which point he goes after you.
The same thing with Cokie Roberts, by the way.
And the media, honestly, one of the reasons for Trump's rise is hatred of the media.
And this is legitimate.
Fully legitimate.
Here's Cokie Roberts on MSNBC asking Donald Trump maybe the stupidest question in the history of American politics.
Here we go.
Mr. Trump, there have been incidents.
Hi, Mr. Trump.
There have been incidents of children, of white children, pointing to their darker-skinned classmates and saying, you'll be deported when Donald Trump is president.
There have been incidents of white kids at basketball games holding up signs to teams which have Hispanic kids on them, saying, we're going to build a wall to keep you out.
Are you proud of that?
Is that something you've done in American political and social discourse that you're proud of?
Well, I think your question is a very nasty question, and I'm not proud of it because I didn't even hear of it, okay?
And I certainly do not like it at all when I hear about it.
You're the first one that's told me about that, but I would not be proud of that at all, and that's not what the purpose of it is.
We want to make America great again.
We want to bring back our industry.
We want to bring back our jobs from China.
Here's why Trump is doing well.
One of the reasons he's doing well is because he doesn't take guff from people like Cokie Roberts.
Cokie Roberts says, how about the children?
The children being mean to each other.
He said, that's a really nasty question.
What the hell's wrong with you, basically?
Good for him.
Good for him.
That is the right answer from Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is good at this kind of stuff.
On the other side of the aisle, on the other side of the aisle, Hillary Clinton is having some problems.
So, last night, the big surprise was not Trump doing so well.
The big surprise was actually Hillary Clinton doing so poorly.
Hillary Clinton lost Michigan to Bernie Sanders.
She lost 31% of the black vote to Bernie Sanders.
She lost 81% of the youth vote to Bernie Sanders.
In Donald Trump's parlance, she got schlonged by Bernie Sanders.
And it was, you know, she's a very vulnerable candidate.
She's a very vulnerable candidate.
I don't know that she's most vulnerable to Trump.
I'm not sure she's not vulnerable to Trump.
I can't predict how a general election will go, because this is such a black swan.
You could see a debate that goes something like this.
Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton.
Oh, you're a corrupt old bat.
And Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump.
How about Trump you?
How about Trump you?
He says, well, you know, your husband rapes people.
And she comes back with, well, you cheated on your wife.
She says, well, and he says, well, but your husband cheats on you regularly.
This could actually be the debate.
You could see this shaking down.
It would be amusing.
Yeah, it would be great entertainment.
Absolutely.
How would it play out?
Who knows?
It's anybody's ballgame.
The reason that Bernie Sanders, by the way, is doing better than than Hillary is against Trump in general election matchups is because Sanders is actually popular and Sanders He's on the attack against Trump.
Sanders isn't going to win the nomination, but he sort of gives a preview of what an attack on Donald Trump will look like in a general election.
Here it is.
But I'll tell you why together, if Trump is their nominee, why we will defeat him.
And that is because the American people do not want a president who insults Mexicans and Latin Americans.
The American people do not want a president who insults Muslims.
One of the largest... Michigan is a very, very Muslim state.
That's why the big Jews are here.
The American people do not want a president who insults women, who insults African Americans.
Remember, don't...
Please, when you think about Trump, please do not forget that this was a guy who was one of the leaders in this so-called birther effort.
You remember that?
And that was an intentional effort to try to delegitimize the President of the United States because he was black.
Okay, so you can pause it here.
This is going to be the line of attack on Trump.
I don't know how effective it is.
Meaning, I don't think Trump is aiming for the minority vote.
I think Trump is going to try to get out the dispossessed white vote.
The angry white vote.
He's going to try and get them out in massive numbers as a reaction to the so-called political correctness of people like Bernie Sanders.
Some of what he's saying, by the way, is politically correct.
You know, it's perfectly legitimate to question whether political Islam is a problem.
It's perfectly legitimate to question whether people entering through the southern border are bringing increased levels of crime.
All of that is legit.
And I think on a debate stage, Trump will say that.
And Bill Maher said it over the weekend.
I think this is true.
If the race is going to be between one party that won't even say Islamic extremism and Donald Trump, Trump may win that race.
So before we call the race against Trump, it's worthwhile mentioning that this could be an outlier race.
It really could.
So this is, it's an important election, but it's devolving into an absolute clown show, for sure.
On both sides, on both sides.
Okay, couple of things that I like, and then some things that I hate.
So, couple of things that I like.
I think I've mentioned, people always ask about history books.
I think I've mentioned Modern Times by Paul Johnson before, but another great history book is a book by A.J.
Langeth.
It's spelled L-A-N-G-G-U-T-H.
A.J.
Langeth.
It's called Patriots, the Men Who Started the American Revolution.
And it tells the history of the American Revolution, talks about George Washington and Adams and Sam Adams and Ben Franklin.
Sam Adams is probably the greatest non-remembered founder.
I mean, Sam Adams was really a driving force in the early days of the Revolution.
He was hardcore.
I mean, Sam Adams was a hardcore dude.
And these guys were not milquetoast.
I mean, this was not Mitch McConnell out there.
These guys were firebrands, and they were willing to say it how it was.
It's a great book.
Patriots by A.J.
Langath.
Really good writer.
Really good book.
Okay.
Also, something that I thought was kind of funny.
Mitt Romney did the mean tweet reading on Jimmy Kimmel last night, and this was kind of funny.
Here's Mitt Romney, the failed 2012 candidate.
At real Donald Trump, Mitt Romney had his chance and blew it.
Lindsey Graham ran for president, got zero capitalized, and quit.
Why are they now spokesmen against me?
Sad.
Got zero.
Got zero.
The only people I know who got zero are the ones who paid $25,000 to be at Trump University.
They're the ones who got zero.
Right?
This is from a Trump supporter.
Okay.
Donald Trump is trying to pull America back from the brink and freaking Mitt Romney is playing with matches in the bathroom.
Is there any truth to that?
I'm not touching that, I'll tell you that.
Okay, alright.
Okay.
At Mitt Romney equals loser.
That's true, actually.
I lost.
You may not have noticed.
Let's see.
Who are you anyway?
And by the way, where do you buy the shoe polish you wear in your hair?
At Trump 2016.
I buy it at Costco in bulk.
Let's see.
I actually met Mitt Romney in a bank a couple of months back.
I'm now working on a time machine to go back and punch him in the throat.
Hashtag Trump.
Pick or it didn't happen.
One more.
Alright, one more.
Well, that's a handle.
At Cheddar Biscuit.
I'd pay good money to watch Mitt Romney crying in a ball pit at a Chuck E. Cheese.
How much?
Yeah, how much.
That's the right question.
Something tells me that Cheddar Biscuit may have had personal experience doing something like that himself.
One final question.
You've made a lot of money.
You've been very successful.
How much would you pay Donald Trump to get out of the race?
There's not a right price for that.
Donald Trump just needs to get out of the race.
He said in there that he's sad.
Let's make people happy and let's have a candidate we can be proud of.
Okay, so, you know, it's something that I sort of like.
I can't go full out liking it, but it's, but, you know.
All right, Mitt Romney, milk toast.
That was the best they could do, trotting out against Trump.
Okay, now some stuff.
Well, actually, here's one more thing that I like.
Yesterday, it turns out the toughest guy in the world was an Orthodox Jew in Israel who was stabbed multiple times by a Palestinian terrorist.
He was stabbed in the neck.
He took the knife out of his neck and stabbed the Palestinian terrorist to death.
Thumbs up, way to go.
Okay, things that I hate.
The American State Department is an absolute horror show.
So yesterday, an American citizen was murdered, a Vanderbilt University grad student who actually was a veteran, an American veteran in Afghanistan and Iraq, and he was murdered.
And this student, his name was Taylor Force, he was a student at the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vandy at Vanderbilt University, and he was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist.
And here is what the State Department said.
This is your U.S.
State Department.
The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms today's outrageous terrorist attack in Jaffa, Petach Tikva, and Jerusalem, which tragically claimed the life of U.S.
citizen Taylor Allen Force and left many others severely injured.
We offer our heartfelt condolences.
As we have said many times, there is absolutely no justification for terrorism.
We continue to encourage all parties to take affirmative steps to reduce tensions and restore calm.
All parties.
Last I checked, there was only one party encouraging people to go out and stab American students in the head.
There's only one party doing that.
This is why the moral equivalence talk from Donald Trump is disturbing on this note.
And it's disturbing, obviously, coming from the Obama administration as well.
Weird story of the day comes courtesy of the Wachowski brothers.
You remember the Matrix?
A lot of people are big fans of the Matrix.
Uh, I think it is a wildly overrated film.
I thought so at the time.
I thought it was, it was sort of like some of those 1960s Simon and Garfunkel songs, where it was kind of faux deep, but it's not deep at all.
It's just you pondering your navel, basically.
And then you're supposed to think, oh wow, such wisdom coming from a movie with great special effects.
There's no wisdom in the Matrix.
Oh, you see behind the Matrix.
Neo, it's not the spoon that is bending, it is you.
What are you talking about?
This is new age crap.
Anyway.
The movies are overrated.
The first one is actually watchable.
The last few are... I mean, they're just direct.
But, if you didn't know, a couple of years ago, the first Wachowski brother, the older Wachowski brother, came out and said that he is, in fact, transgender.
He's a woman, right?
So one of the Wachowski brothers came out and said he's a woman and now calls himself Lana.
Now the other Wachowski brother, Andy, is also coming out as a woman and calling himself Lily.
So the brothers are now sisters.
Lily was approached by a reporter at the UK outlet, the Daily Mail, who asked Lily if she could have my picture taken and tell my story, which was so inspirational.
Lily then slammed the Daily Mail's history with transgender issues.
And he says, yeah, I'm transgendered and yeah, I've transitioned.
So that's weird.
And we're supposed to, we're supposed to pretend now that these are both women as opposed to mentally ill people.
They were both born women.
They just didn't know it for 50 years of their lives.
And then they realized that they were women despite their genetics, despite their appendages, it turns out.
And it has nothing to do with mental illness, of course.
And clearly the best course of action is to take hormone therapy and cut off your genitals.
That is clearly the best course of action at this time.
None of this helps mentally ill people.
None of this helps transgender people.
Political correctness at its finest.
Okay, final thing that I dislike.
I've ripped on ESPN here as MSNBC with footballs.
They continued that reputation today.
Mike Ditka, who I was ripping on yesterday, saying he should have run against Obama in 2004, in that Senate race, and then saying that Mike Ditka should have stood up against Donald Trump instead of standing for him.
He did an interview, we played it yesterday, in which he endorsed Donald Trump and called Obama the worst president we've ever had.
He was just canned from his job.
On Sunday night football on ESPN.
The big lead reports that they've now hired Matt Hasselbeck to replace Ditka on Sunday NFL countdown.
Immediately, the comments that Ditka said about Obama set off speculation about whether he'd be fired, and indeed he was, because this is the way that it works now.
If you're Rush Limbaugh and you're hired to do commentary on the football programs, you're fired.
If you're Mike Ditka and you have a long history as one of the faces of the NFL, if you say something that doesn't fall in line with the politically correct orthodoxy, then you're fired as well.
I can disagree with people without thinking that they ought to be fired.
The only reason to fire somebody is if their views are impacting job performance negatively.
There's nothing to suggest that Ditka's views were in any way impacting his job performance.
He was doing the same thing he's always done.
He was one of the more popular figures on ESPN, and now he's basically been kicked to the curb because he had the temerity to suggest what everyone knows, that Barack Obama is a terrible president.
Once again, folks, you will be made to care.
You can watch your sports.
You can watch your entertainment.
They will come after you, and they will come after anyone who is in any way mildly conservative.
By the way, I have a feeling this is why, for example, Sylvester Stallone didn't win the Oscar for the latest Rocky movie, for Creed, because Sylvester Stallone is pretty openly a Republican.
In Hollywood, that's a big no-no, so they didn't give it to him in the end.
So, again, the left never stops their program, and there's no reason why we should allow the left to infiltrate the right in the form of Donald Trump.
We'll talk about all of this and more tomorrow.
Plus, the mailbag is coming up tomorrow.
That's always fun.
We'll give you our debate preview for whatever it matters.
And we'll find out if Marco Rubio is still sticking around.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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