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March 16, 2016 - The Ben Shapiro Show
49:43
Ep. 90 - Is Trump The End of America, Or Just The Beginning?

Ben describes two theories of Donald Trump, talks about why Trump wins, and discusses why women who shout their abortions are covering for evil Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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A requiem for Marco Rubio.
Marco Rubio last night, he's out, he dropped out, and it's really sad.
But what's sadder is that Marco Rubio basically got Donald Trump elected the nominee.
He got him elected the nominee.
This is what makes me sad.
Marco Rubio, the man you see here, a good, honorable man who didn't deserve to lose to a very bad, dishonorable man in Donald Trump.
He was the margin of error in Illinois last night, where Cruz lost by 8%.
He sucked away 6% in Missouri, where Cruz barely lost.
Rubio took 8% in North Carolina, where Cruz lost by 3%, which means that Marco Rubio helped make Donald Trump the nominee.
So Donald Trump should have said thank you to Marco Rubio.
You know who else he should have said thank you to was Chris Christie.
Chris Christie, of course, stayed in just long enough to murder Rubio in New Hampshire.
Blunting his momentum and ensuring that Donald Trump won New Hampshire by big numbers and had all the momentum going into South Carolina.
So Donald Trump should say thank you to Chris Christie, a man who instead he treats as his personal butler.
He should also say thank you to, for example, Jeb Bush.
Jeb, who stayed in far too long and ensured that money and time that could have been spent pushing for Rubio or Cruz or someone who was not a milquetoast loser, all of that drained away to Jeb instead.
And both he and his good friend Ben Carson ensured that Donald Trump became the nominee by ensuring that Trump won South Carolina.
They combined for 15% in South Carolina, far more than the margin of loss for both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.
Carson was also the margin of victory for Donald Trump in Arkansas.
And now we have to say one more thank you, and that is to our old friend, John Kasich.
John Kasich, he stayed in enough to win Ohio, and now he's going to stay in just long enough to suck up votes to stop Ted Cruz and become Donald Trump's vice presidential candidate.
So thank you to all of you Republicans who let your egos trump the interests of the United States.
Donald Trump thanks you, and he will be sending you a Trump stick.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show. - You tend to demonize people who don't care about your feelings. - Okay, folks, so yesterday at the end of the show, I promised, I promised that if we had a choice, I said we had a choice in the country.
Either somebody was going to stop Donald Trump, or I was going to stick my hand in the garbage disposal.
And it went poorly.
It just went poorly.
Okay, it's time to take a time out here on a lighter note for Hillsdale College.
So, the Constitution is dead.
Woo!
But, don't worry, Hillsdale College is going to revivify it.
Hillsdale College is the place that is going to make sure that everybody knows about the Constitution.
I love Hillsdale College.
I've had personal dealings with Hillsdale College.
I've spoken for them multiple times.
I believe I've been featured or will be featured in Primus, which is their magazine.
But they have something super cool.
You don't just have to send your kid to Hillsdale College.
They have something super cool.
It's an online course called Constitution 101.
So you know what the Constitution is, you know the basic outline, how the system works, you understand all of these things, but if you want to know all the details, the ins and outs, everything there is to know about the Constitution, You need to go over to hillsdale.edu slash ben and they have a free constitution 101 course that you can get there.
You can download it, you can watch it on your computer, you can listen to it on your phone.
It's awesome.
And you should go there and take advantage of it.
It's free, so you're not going to lose anything.
And you're going to gain a lot of knowledge.
Hillsdale, truly, they're some of the best people in the United States.
And if the country does have a future, it's going to be because of graduates of places like Hillsdale College.
So go to hillsdale.edu slash ben.
Hillsdale.edu slash ben.
Make sure you get the slash ben there so they know that we sent you.
Know your rights.
Try that course.
Okay, so.
Last night was indeed a horror show of epic proportions.
For those of us who care about the country, for those of us who care about conservatism, last night was a ringing rebuke to the idea that Americans have brain cells.
It was very difficult to watch.
Why don't we start with Marco Rubio dropping out?
So as I mentioned at the top of the show, Marco Rubio is out.
He dropped out last night, and as I said, and I ripped off and plagiarized my friend Jeremy Boring to say this, but he has nothing to say about it since, hey, what's he gonna do about it?
You want to fight?
But Jeremy had said to me last night on the phone that it was near tragic watching Rubio because it was hard to watch a good man with whom he disagreed lose to a bad man with whom he also disagreed.
I immediately stole that line and used it in my piece, but admit it here now.
But it doesn't matter because whatever.
In any case, Marco Rubio spoke.
Here's what Marco Rubio had to say when he was dropping out.
That we find ourselves at this point is not surprising.
For the warning signs have been here for close to a decade.
In 2010, a Tea Party wave carried me and others into office because not enough was happening and that Tea Party wave gave Republicans a majority in the House.
But nothing changed.
In 2014, those same voters gave Republicans a majority in the Senate and still nothing changed.
And I blame some of that on the conservative movement.
A movement that is supposed to be about our principles and our ideas.
But I blame most of it on our political establishment.
A political establishment that for far too long has looked down at conservatives as simple-minded people.
Looked down at conservatives as simply bomb throwers.
A political establishment that for far too long has taken the votes of conservatives for granted.
And a political establishment that has grown to confuse cronyism for capitalism.
And big business for free enterprise.
Okay, everything he's saying here is, of course, true.
And again, you can see how broken up Rubio is in all of this.
I mean, he looks like death here.
He looks really bad.
For people who can't see the video of Marco Rubio, this is a man ending his political career, at least for the time being and probably for the foreseeable future.
He's not running for Senate again in Florida.
He already announced that before his campaign.
He lost his home state to Donald Trump by almost 20%, which is just humiliating and forecloses the possibility of running for governor of the state.
All of this is sad.
I'd be sadder, except that Marco Rubio should have dropped out a week ago.
It was obvious this was going to happen, and as I mentioned at the top, Marco Rubio's continued presence in the race meant, undoubtedly, that Donald Trump ended up winning at least two more states, maybe three last night, and ends up running away with the night, and has all the momentum right now.
Meanwhile, who's the next Rubio?
Who's the next guy who's gonna hand it to Donald Trump?
Who's the next guy gonna make sure that the votes split so that Trump can continue to win with 40%?
Why, it's our old friend, John Kasich.
And Kasich went out there last night, and this is the most important political speech of his career, the only time people care what he has to say, and instead he gets up there and he goes up there without a teleprompter and just looks like a complete nutbag.
So here is John Kasich.
You know what?
Look, this is all I got, okay?
This is all I got.
And all I can say is thank you from the bottom of my heart.
But I want you to know something.
All he's got is his mandates.
We're gonna go all the way to Cleveland and secure the Republican nomination.
This is crazy.
There's one crazy old man right there.
Woo!
There are just enthusiastic people in the eye.
You know, I also want to thank...
It's like watching a train wreck.
You know, my father was a Democrat all his life.
Well, there are those who would argue.
We had a lot of Democrats that said they didn't like a socialist agenda or a left-wing agenda or big government.
I want to thank them for coming over in this election and putting their confidence in me.
Because, you know, I think we all know that conservative principles can work.
That common sense can work.
That shifting power and money and influence from that big place in Washington and moving it to where we live, that empowers us.
Okay, so whatever, I don't care what he has to say now.
The only funny part of that is where he opens his jacket and tries to flash the crowd for no reason.
And then I love that in the screen behind John Kasich, for people who can't see, it says, as Ohio goes, so goes the nation.
Okay, John, we understand you want the vice presidential slot.
We get it.
You're trying to guarantee the state for the nominee.
You're sad.
You're a sad old man.
It's really pathetic.
So John Kasich does this routine, and even his daughter looks insanely bored in this particular screen grab, but John Kasich is going to stay in, and because he stays in, he's going to suck away just enough votes to prevent Ted Cruz from getting what he needs here, which is a one-on-one race with Donald Trump all the way down to the convention.
In a one-on-one race, Trump does not get enough delegates.
In a two-on-one race, Kasich and Trump, very likely that Trump gets enough delegates, which is just... All that come out of me are animalistic grunts at this point because logic has failed.
Okay, so on to the big winner of the night, Donald J. Trump, or as Sarah Palin likes to put it, Donald J. Trump!
Donald J. Trump gets up there and he says, you know, it's important that we bring our party together.
He's the great unifier, of course.
The man who calls his opponents Lion Ted and Little Marco.
The man who suggests that Megyn Kelly bleeds out of her whatever or wherever because she opposes him.
The man who suggests that his protesters punch other protesters and that he will pay their legal bills.
That guy is the great unifier.
And just before we start, important to note, That the man standing right behind him on his, it would be Trump's right, wearing the yellow tie, that's Corey Lewandowski.
Corey Lewandowski is the dude who grabbed Michelle Fields by the arm hard enough to bruise her.
And Donald Trump, Lewandowski never stands on the stage for these things.
Donald Trump, the great unifier, basically says screw you to everyone, I'm bringing my campaign manager up here because he's such a great guy.
Here's Donald Trump talking about how we're gonna bring the party together.
You know, so many.
We've had such incredible support.
Paul Ryan called me the other day.
Tremendous call.
I spoke with Mitch McConnell today.
We had a great conversation.
The fact is, we have to bring our party together.
We have to bring it together.
We have something happening that actually makes the Republican Party probably the biggest political story anywhere in the world.
Everybody's writing about it, all over Europe, all over the world they're talking about it.
Millions of people are coming in to vote.
This was an example of it today.
Many, many more people.
I'm looking at the polling booths.
I'm looking at different polling booths all around the country, where it's up.
And the lines are four, five, six blocks long.
And the woman — one woman was in there for 40 years.
She's been working the polls.
And she said, we'd have two people here.
We'd have three people.
Now look at the line.
And the line looked like it was, you know, long.
It was really long.
Uh, the eloquence of Cicero here.
Okay, we can cut him off.
This dude is Lincoln-esque in his language.
Again, if Donald Trump ever stumbles over a four-syllable word, it will be the first time that that ever happens.
Uh, and when I rip Donald Trump as stupid, sometimes people get mad.
Why are you stooping to his level?
Because this is his level.
I'm not sure that he understands English at any other level.
In fact, Donald Trump- But don't worry, Donald Trump- We'll get to- In a moment, Donald Trump assuring us he's very, very smart.
Smarter than anyone else who ever lived.
I mentioned Lewandowski.
Let's get- Let's grab clip- Which one is it?
Let's grab clip 12.
So clip 12 is this is Donald Trump singling out his campaign manager.
So he's a great uniter, right?
Donald Trump, big uniter.
He's bringing out the new people.
He's bringing out the old people.
He's bringing out young people and old people and white people and more white people.
He's bringing out all sorts of people.
I mean, the range of people is just astounding.
And so Donald Trump says, and who is he unifying?
He's unifying so much that he stands next to the guy who grabbed a campaign reporter, bruised her, lied about her, called her an attention seeker, linked to a discredited website in order to try and claim that she was a routine attention seeker.
And he brought him up on stage personally to thank him and then ripped the media.
By the way, at this particular rally, Donald Trump banned a reporter from Politico for writing a nasty piece, what he determined to be nasty.
It's also true, a piece about Corey Lewandowski, or it should be true, presumably, about Corey Lewandowski and his history of nastiness toward women.
Here is Donald Trump singling out Corey Lewandowski for praise.
He gets the Trump Medal of High Honor for loyalty and valor in the field.
Here we go.
Cory, good job, Cory.
Good job.
And Hope, and our whole squad, right?
Our whole squad.
When he singles out Corey Lewandowski for the first time in the entire campaign, just after Corey Lewandowski grabs Michelle Fields by the arm hard enough to bruise her.
Again, folks, the story there is not that Michelle was beaten to death with a jackhammer.
That's not the idea.
The idea is that if anybody grabbed my wife, or my sister, or my daughter hard enough to bruise her, they would owe an apology.
They wouldn't Go around smearing people.
Ted Cruz fired his communications director for retweeting a video that turned out to be false.
Donald Trump is basically pinning a medal on Corey Lewandowski's chest for lying about a reporter and smearing her.
So that's who Donald Trump is.
The great unifier.
By the way, the great unifier continued to unify today.
Trump, by the way, when I say he's on Lewandowski's side, he is on Lewandowski's side.
This is a flashback to last week.
Here's when Trump lied about Michelle Fields.
He says the reporter is lying, clip 11.
Well, they said absolutely nothing happened.
He didn't hear about it until, like, the next day.
So I wasn't involved in it.
But the Secret Service was surrounding everybody.
They said nothing happened.
Everybody said nothing happened.
Perhaps he made the story up.
I think that's what happened.
Perhaps you made the story up.
I think that's what happened.
Yeah, and then now there's tape of that not being true.
But, you know, Trump is showing that the media are deeply in love with Donald Trump.
You know, I've said the Breitbart News has become Trump's Pravda.
The entire media have essentially become Trump's Pravda when it comes to allowing him to get away with things that would hurt any other candidate.
Trump was on all four of the morning shows on Sunday.
He was not asked a single question about Lewandowski or Michelle Field.
The Great Uniter.
Get back to the Great Uniter.
Here's what the Great Uniter had to say about the next debate, right?
His chance to unite the country and really make an appeal to people that he is the person who can bring us all together.
What's he gonna do about the debate?
Trump, are you going to be at the Fox News debate on March 21st?
Well, you know, I'll be honest.
Nobody even told me about it.
And I might as well give it to you first, Steve, because you've always been so fair, the whole group.
This group, this is my group.
I love this show.
What can I tell you?
I don't know, do I have good taste or bad taste?
You have good taste.
I hope good taste.
OK, you better believe it.
So nobody told me about debates.
Nobody told me.
And as you saw, I thought the last debate on CNN was the last debate that was going to be it.
And I'm doing a major speech in front of a very important group of people.
I think it's 8,000 or 9,000 people that night, and it was scheduled a while ago, and nobody told me there were going to be more debates.
So you're not going to do the Fox News debate?
I will say this.
I will say this.
I think we've had enough debates.
We've had 11 or 12 debates.
I did really well in the last one.
I think I've done well in all the debates.
I mean, according to Drudge and everybody else, I won the debates.
Wow, according to Matt Tyler.
Can we even shut him up?
Okay, so first of all, notice a couple things about this clip.
You guys are fair.
You guys are the best.
Okay, by fair he means you are sycophants and you allow me to do whatever I want.
That's what Trump means by this particular comment.
And Drudge, I win all the Drudge polls right, because if you follow Matt Drudge's site, it has turned into a Trump fan site.
And they're pushing out ridiculous smears about Ted Cruz and nasty nonsense about Christians.
But this whole thing, he's, but don't worry, he's a uniter.
He's not gonna go to the debates and make the case that he's a uniter, but he is indeed a uniter.
I have the best piece of Donald Trump audio next, so you're going to want to stick around for that.
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Okay, back to Donald Trump.
So Donald Trump, Great Uniter, genius.
We've been told he's the greatest politician that people have ever seen.
Yesterday, I made the point that no one's going to control Trump.
Everybody's acting like they're going to control Trump.
You can't control Trump.
He's a force of nature.
Trump basically said that.
So today, Donald Trump was asked who his foreign policy advisors were.
And here's what Donald Trump had to say about his foreign policy advisors.
Who are you talking to consistently since we have some dire foreign policy issues percolating around the world right now?
Who are you consulting with consistently so that you're ready on day one?
I'm speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I've said a lot of things.
Well then, so he's speaking with himself, so he won't be debating, he will be master debating with himself on foreign policy.
He has a very good brain, which by the way, as a person who has attended many good schools and dealt with many smart people, I have yet to run into anyone with an IQ above 105 who says things like, I have a very good brain, and so I take counsel with myself.
This is what stupid people say, gang.
Okay, so Donald Trump is not particularly smart.
And, you know, I was talking with Andrew Klavan before the show today, and he was saying, you know, everybody else can complain, but you have to beat the field that you're in, right?
You can complain about the field being too crowded, but you've got to beat the people you're up against.
I don't believe that that's fair.
And the reason I don't think that's fair is because it's not like there are 10 people who are all competing to market Coke.
They're not all marketing the same product.
They're not all marketing conservatism.
There were basically about 12 people marketing Coke, which is conservatism in this case, and one person who was Who's marketing purple drink, right?
I mean, that's been, that was Trump.
And so it turns out that even if a minority of people like purple drink, he got a thousand people all competing for Coke.
The price of Coke is going to be less than the price of purple drink, right?
So that's, that's basically what happened here with Trump.
Chris Christie, by the way, no, no, no tour of Trumpville would be complete without comment from Chris Christie.
As I've said, the Renfields, Donald Trump's Dracula.
Here's Chris Christie defending Donald Trump, his new beloved.
And Chris Christie is beginning to look more and more like a character from Sesame Street.
I mean, he really is starting to bear a strong resemblance to Snuffleupagus.
And here's Chris Christie explaining why Donald Trump, you know, people should be loyal to Donald Trump.
To Donald Trump.
Okay, go.
I find it interesting, as it applies to Donald in particular, that all the rage back in July and August, and I remember having to do this actually on TV, was to sign a pledge That I would support the eventual Republican nominee.
Now, I think that was done because at the time, Donald was talking about, well, if it's not fair to me, I may run as a third party.
So the National Party required every one of us, as a condition of being in the debates, to sign a loyalty pledge to whoever the nominee was going to be.
Now, those very same people who made us sign the loyalty pledge are now saying, well, maybe we shouldn't follow what the voters decide to do.
I find that ironic and somewhat hypocritical.
Okay, so that's hypocritical that we had to sign loyalty pledges.
First of all, I said at the time, actually, I may have been the only person who said nobody should sign a loyalty pledge because what if Trump's the nominee?
What if it turns out that it's somebody you don't like?
Do you know what Trump is doing now?
The Great Uniter?
The Great Uniter says that if he doesn't actually get what he's looking for, if he doesn't get what he's looking for, clip nine, here's what's going to happen.
We're way ahead of everybody.
I don't think you can say that we don't get it automatically.
I think it would be—I think you'd have riots.
I think you'd have riots.
You know, we have—I'm representing a tremendous—many, many millions of people.
In many cases, first-time voters.
These are people that haven't voted because they never believed in the system.
They didn't like candidates, et cetera, et cetera, that are 40 and 50 and 60 years old, and they've never voted before.
Many, many of those people—many Democrats, many independents.
...coming in.
That's what the big story is, really, Chris.
I mean, the really big story is how many people are voting in these primaries.
The numbers are astronomical.
Okay, so he's the great... If you disenfranchise people... He's the great uniter.
Right, so he's the great uniter.
If you disenfranchise people, they're gonna riot.
I think you'd have riots if I'm not the nominee.
Great!
Great.
So now we've got... Way to tamp down the rhetoric there, Donald.
Everybody says that you're partially responsible for people at your rallies getting violent, and you say, and if I don't get the nomination, they're gonna riot.
Yeah, you're a real uniter.
You're really bringing the country together, Mr. Trump.
Way to raise the rhetoric.
You're really just enhancing the way American politics operates.
Okay, so I want to talk about a couple of things here.
I have two theories as to why Donald Trump is rising.
One is pessimistic and one is actually optimistic.
So, as you can guess, I tend toward the pessimistic.
But, there are two theories.
So, let's start with the pessimistic vision and then we'll go to the optimistic vision because for some reason I get a lot of mail like this.
People like listening to my show and then Klavan's show because I basically tell them that everything is going to hell and then Klavan says, yes, but there will be popsicles there.
So, let's go through the pessimistic version and then we'll go through the optimistic version of why Trump is rising and what it means for the country.
Here, the pessimistic version is Basically, in a nutshell, that this is not a conservative country anymore.
That this is not a conservative country, and it's not even close to a conservative country.
That the kind of nice myth that we've been telling ourselves is that there's this silent majority of people who deep down believe in small government, and in limited government, and in personal rights, and in individual decision-making and personal responsibility, and that those people have just been turned off, basically.
But that may be a myth.
It's possible, it's possible that there are just most people in the United States who don't know the Constitution from their own butts.
That they don't know anything about the Constitution.
That's why you go to Hillsdale and get a Constitution 101 course.
They don't know anything about what our rights look like.
And because of that, they're tending toward the authoritarian who promises them the moon and is going to deliver them nothing but the craters on the moon.
So here's Ted Cruz, and he says, you know, look, here's Cruz's, because the real question here is, okay, so Donald Trump is channeling the anger, right?
No question, he's channeling the anger, and the anger is justified, and we keep hearing about the anger of this and the anger of that.
I'm angry too, you may have noticed.
I'm not noted for being a gumdrop and fairy tale unicorn guy, right?
I'm pissed too, we're all pissed, we all have reason to be pissed, but The difference is that I'm not following the demagogue, and you shouldn't either.
If you're ticked off about how government works, maybe the answer is don't trust the government.
Give the government's control over to a guy who wants to dismantle large swaths of the government.
So why isn't Ted Cruz succeeding?
So Ted Cruz was asked about this, and here is what Ted Cruz basically said.
Here's the deal about Trump.
Here's why you shouldn't vote Trump.
Now I'd like to talk to you a little bit about Donald and the Constitution.
Nobody in America, in their right mind, doubts that Ted Cruz is committed to the Constitution.
Some of your colleagues in D.C.
might think you're overly committed to the Constitution sometimes.
But do you think, if Donald is the nominee, that Republicans can, in good faith, say, I trust him with the constitutional limitations on his office?
Well, I think Donald has given us no reason to believe that he respects the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
We know on the Second Amendment that Donald Trump supported Bill Clinton's national legislation banning some of the most popular firearms in America.
We know on the First Amendment that Donald Trump has spoken out against freedom of the speech, freedom of the press, that he does not like criticism and he wants to use government power to silence anyone who criticizes him.
And, you know, I'll tell you, one of the things I talk about on the campaign trail quite a bit is actually the question you asked us two debates ago, where, Hugh, you asked us about religious liberty in the Supreme Court.
And Donald turned to me and he said, Ted, I've known a lot more politicians than you have.
Now, in that, he is right.
He has been supporting liberal Democratic politicians for 40 years.
I have no experience doing that.
But Donald continued, he said, When it comes to the Supreme Court, when it comes to religious liberty, he said, Ted, you've got to learn to compromise.
You've got to learn to work with Democrats to cut deals and go along to get along.
Well, I think that is one of the sharpest divides in this primary.
Let me be very, very clear to your listeners.
I will not compromise away your religious liberty.
Okay, so you can stop it there.
And I will not compromise... So Cruz says, and he thinks he's going to win with this pitch, right?
Cruz thinks that his winning pitch is going to be, Donald Trump doesn't respect the Constitution.
And Cruz continues along these lines.
He says, look, Trump bribes people, right?
Hillary is bribed, and Trump bribes people.
This is what he said last night in his victory speech.
Or loss speech.
Far too many politicians focus on Washington, D.C.
To the lobbyists.
To those like Donald Trump, who buy influence.
And to those like Hillary Clinton, who sell influence.
Washington is the center of the universe.
But we understand that isn't right.
Okay.
So, and his pitch here is basically that there's corruption in Washington, D.C., He's a constitutional guy.
That's why you should vote for him.
Now I'm going to play for you Bill O'Reilly.
This is a Freudian slip.
Here's Bill O'Reilly explaining why people support Donald Trump.
The reason I think Trump won in Florida is because he comes across as more authoritarian.
Not authoritative.
Authoritarian.
And I was thinking about this all day today.
What happened to Rubio?
I'm not so sure Rubio did anything wrong.
It's that he just couldn't overcome the perception that many Republican voters have that you need somebody from the outside, number one, to punish the Republican establishment, but more importantly, to take it to Hillary Clinton.
I think the turning point in this race for Trump was when he attacked both Hillary and Bill Clinton a few months ago when they started the sexist stuff.
And he just laid them out.
I think a lot of people saw that and said, you know what?
This guy can punish as well as win.
And in this angry age, voters want a punishment along with a victory.
Okay, and I think that Bill O'Reilly, with whom I frequently disagree, may be right.
And if so, this is a real pessimistic vision of the future.
Because the fact is that half the country already believes in an authoritarian politics.
They already believe in Barack Obama's vision of him at the top, sitting there with the crown, telling everybody what to do, helping those he likes, hurting those he dislikes.
We already know half the country likes that because they've been fine with it for years.
But the idea was, I thought, that on our side we weren't supposed to like this.
And the idea that we had for ourselves was that the majority of Americans really don't like this sort of stuff.
They've just sort of been bamboozled, or they don't pay close enough attention, or they're low-information voters, as Rush Limbaugh likes to say.
And if we inform them, if we get them knowledgeable, they'll make the right decisions.
What O'Reilly's suggesting here is something different, which is that we may have reached the authoritarian age totally in politics.
The conservative ideals that Cruz are espousing, they might not be popular anymore.
If that's the case, then that speaks to why Trump not only cannot be the nominee, but cannot win.
And I mean, should not win.
And that is that if there is no one left to espouse constitutional values, everything that the founders fought and bled and sacrificed for, everything that their descendants fought and bled and sacrificed for, everything that your grandfathers and your great-grandfathers fought for in Europe, All of that is dead.
If that's what's happening right now, all of that is dead.
Because if we are now at the point where Americans no longer value basic liberty and basic rights against the government, then there's nothing more to say.
We've reached the end of the road.
The end of the road is here.
And if the end of the road is here, the only thing that we can do is fight back by building a movement.
Not this election.
Okay?
Everybody is focused.
Conservative audiences, typically, when you go to a speech, my audience tends to be actually wildly disproportionately young, which is one of the reasons why I think people find the movement that we're trying to create interesting and inspiring is because, I mean, Lindsay can tell you, she goes through our mail, you know, I would say that 80% of the people who write to us are under the age of 30 and probably 60% of the people who write to us are under the age of 20.
It's a lot of young people who listen to our podcast and follow what we do at Daily Wire and elsewhere.
But we need to build a movement.
All the older people in the movement are constantly thinking, but what about this election?
What about this now?
What if Hillary's elected right now?
If she's elected now, it's the end of the country.
And they keep saying this over and over.
This is why they say you have to vote Trump against Hillary.
You must support Trump against Hillary.
This election is the most important election.
Well, it is if you're looking at your timeline as two years or three years or four years.
If you're looking at your timeline as 50 years.
Then no, this isn't the most important election.
The most important election is the one where conservatives win.
Actual conservatives win.
And that takes people saying no, and it takes people gathering together and building an actual grassroots conservative movement, not a populist nationalism where you form a coalition with a bunch of people who just want to punish others.
Who think that if you jack up the tariffs that magically jobs come back to America, which is economically stupid.
So the pessimistic version of this, why Trump is rising, in the end may be an optimistic version, which is, okay, but we now need to build a movement.
Now that we know that we've hit rock bottom, that we're losing, you can't acknowledge how to win until you realize that you've lost.
And so the pessimistic version says we've lost, that Trump is a result of that loss, that even the conservative movement has been split in two, it's lost its way, it's time to consolidate and build a new movement.
Okay, that's the down-hearted side.
The up-hearted side is something that says that Trump is basically a temporary phenomenon.
Trump is not a permanent move in American politics.
Trump is a reaction to everything else that's happening around him.
And there's a decent case to be made for this.
So, for example, Donald Trump, you know, he said last night, Mitch McConnell called him up.
They had a wonderful conversation.
It was just spectacular.
And Mitch McConnell came out and he said, you know, when I talked to Trump, what I actually asked him is to condemn the rally violence.
That's what I asked.
And I took the opportunity to recommend to him that no matter who may be triggering these violent expressions or conflicts that we've seen in some of these rallies, it might be a good idea to condemn that, no matter what the source of it is.
And so McConnell says this, and it's a very mild rip on Trump, and then he turns around and he says, you know what I would really like is an apology from Ted Cruz for calling me a liar.
That's what I'd really like.
That ticks people off.
People feel like McConnell's on every side of everything, and they don't trust him.
And so you look at him and you say, okay, well, fine, if somebody's gonna come in and get things done instead of these rubes, let's do this thing.
Let's get that authoritarian in there.
So it's the same desire for an authoritarian, but in one case I'm saying it may be permanent, or at least a long-lasting feature of the American landscape, and in the other it's just a transitory reaction.
It's a backlash against the Republican Party and a backlash against the left.
And it's easy to see that this is plausible, too.
This is a plausible theory.
So, for example, take a look at Hillary Clinton.
Here's Hillary Clinton talking about why Trump shouldn't be the nominee.
She won big last night.
She is going to be the nominee, of course, as she always was going to be the nominee in the Democratic Party.
Here is Hillary Clinton wearing that gorgeous blue jumpsuit talking about how she is going to fight for us.
We live in a complex and, yes, a dangerous world.
Protecting America's national security can never be an afterthought.
Our Commander-in-Chief has to be able to defend our country, not embarrass it.
Engage our allies, not alienate them.
Defeat our adversaries, not embolden them.
Okay, so she says that we need a president who won't embarrass us.
You know, embarrass us like putting his schlong in an intern in the Oval Office.
Or like say, I don't know, giving a reset button to the Russians and then having them invade every country in the Western Hemisphere.
Or, for example, like, leaving four Americans to die for no reason and putting all of your classified emails on a server in your bathroom.
Like, that kind of embarrassment.
People react to this kind of stuff and they go, fine, screw you, Trump.
Right, really, that is what it is.
Trump and screw you are basically synonyms in this particular iteration of the theory.
Right, you look at Hillary and you go, oh, shut it.
Come on.
You look at Debbie Wasserman Schultz, or as I like to call her, Jar Jar Binks.
Here's what she had to say about Trump's divisive rhetoric.
That spells disaster for the Republicans and where they're headed as they hurdle towards nominating this extremist carnival barker who has been condoning violence at his rallies and America wants to continue to move forward.
They don't want the divisive, horrible, nasty rhetoric and backbiting that has gone on on the other side and they don't want to go backwards.
They don't want the divisive, nasty rhetoric.
You know, like from Debbie Wasserman, Jar Jar Binks, Schultz, who actually said about Scott Walker that he essentially beats women, that he hates women so much that it's like he beats women.
So people look at her and they say, screw you.
Right?
A.K.A.
Trump.
Or people look at Obama yesterday.
He did the same thing.
He said, we've had enough of this vulgarity.
We must stop this vulgarity.
It's not time for that anymore.
We have heard vulgar and divisive rhetoric aimed at women and minorities, at Americans who don't look like us or pray like us or vote like we do.
We've seen misguided attempts to shut down that speech, however offensive it may be.
We live in a country where free speech is Okay, we can stop it there.
But the vulgar and divisive rhetoric, you know, when I listen to this guy talk about vulgar and divisive rhetoric, he came into office with the most unified country in my lifetime and he proceeded to shatter it.
People on the left and even on the right.
I mean, Laura Ingraham was saying she was moved when Obama was elected because finally we had shown that we could elect a black president.
I, at the time, said that's the stupidest thing that I've ever heard.
I don't care whether he's black or whether he's white or whether he's green.
It doesn't matter to me.
He's going to stink.
He's of the left.
But Obama came in amid this great wave of good feeling and he proceeded to completely destroy it.
He had his Attorney General go out there and say that whites were cowards on race.
He sent his Department of Justice out there to rip on the police departments.
He sent members of his administration to go to the funerals of thugs like Michael Brown.
He went out there and he called all the people who disagree with him bitter clingers.
They cling to God and guns and the Constitution, those nasty people.
He said that his political opponents were quote-unquote the enemy.
His political allies give rioters, quote, space to people who want to destroy.
In 2010, he said that he was so angry with British Petroleum that he was just looking for, quote, who's asked to kick.
He said in 2009 to members of Wall Street, my administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.
In June 2008, he said, quote, if they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.
Because from what I understand, folks in Philly like a good brawl.
Everybody focused on that first sentence, but they forget the second sentence, where he specifically calls for a brawl.
In September 2008, while he was still running, he said his supporters should argue with people and, quote, get in their faces.
In August 2009, that's when Jim Messina, who is his campaign chief of staff, his deputy chief of staff, said, quote, if you get hit, this is to Democrats, we will punch back twice as hard.
So he's there talking about vulgar and derisive rhetoric, divisive rhetoric.
And the normal response is, screw you.
And since screw you and Trump, as I say, are synonyms, that's what's leading to the rise of the authoritarian Trump.
He's basically just a big middle finger to everything, to everything.
I think there's probably truth to both these theories.
I think there's truth to the idea that conservatism is on the wane because conservatives don't think institutionally.
We think individually.
Think about, as a conservative, how you talk about politics to people.
What you do is you find friends and family, people on Facebook, and you tend to have arguments with them.
You try to convince them.
Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't.
What the left does is not that.
The left doesn't bother with that.
The left takes over institutions.
They take over the universities, and then they indoctrinate everybody.
They take over the public school system, and then they use your tax dollars to indoctrinate everybody.
They go ahead and they take over Hollywood and indoctrinate everybody.
They take over institutions.
Because of that, the left has been successful in creating now two generations, three generations probably, of Americans who don't even know what the Constitution is.
They like the sound of it, but there was a poll recently of college students, and I think it was a plurality of college students, who thought that the phrase, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need, was in the Constitution of the United States.
It isn't.
It's from the Communist Manifesto.
People don't even know what's in there, which is again why you need Hillsdale College.
But that is a demonstration that that's true.
And then on the other hand, I think people are really ticked off and they're sick of hearing all this stuff.
And so there's a real screw everything element to the Trump move that separates it from kind of normal conservative backlash.
Okay, quick note, and then we'll get to things I like and things I don't.
Quick note, Merrick Garland is the guy who Obama has now appointed for or nominated for the Supreme Court.
He has said that he definitely, definitely, definitely thinks that the guy should get a vote.
He shouldn't.
Merrick Garland is a typical Obama lefty on the court.
He's very anti-gun.
He is supposedly pro-abortion.
He is, according to the New York Times, very much in the mold of Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.
It's a clever gambit by Obama.
He's picking a guy that the media's gonna call moderate.
When the media says somebody's moderate, that just means a leftist who we want to elect.
Right?
A leftist we want to appoint.
So we'll call him a moderate, so that you can't tell.
Ooh, spooky.
So he's trying to appoint a guy who seems moderate so that Republicans are forced to greenlight him because they're afraid that if Trump loses, then Hillary will come in and put up somebody completely far to the left.
So he's saying, here's the moderate.
You can take him now, or you can get Hillary's nominee later, and that ain't going to go well for you.
So that's sort of his calculation.
They shouldn't greenlight his.
They shouldn't greenlight hers.
They shouldn't greenlight any nominee who doesn't follow Justice Scalia's beliefs in the Constitution.
Because again, the Constitution matters, especially if you're on the Supreme Court.
Time for things I like and things I don't.
Things I like.
First, I want to announce that if you send in videos now, if you send in YouTube videos or Instagrams, links to us at Daily Wire, and you can send it to my email address for now.
We'll set up new mail addresses shortly.
But if you send it to my fan mail, which is bshapiro at dailywire.com, we will answer your questions in the mailbag.
If you send a video question, we'll play it, we'll answer it.
And also, if you have life questions, if you have life questions, we're thinking about starting a segment here on the Ben Shapiro Show, if people are into it.
I'll start a segment here on The Ben Shapiro Show where I answer some of your life questions, because I do get a lot of advice questions from young people.
I'm happy to dispense advice on topics I know nothing about, as well as topics that I know everything about.
So, happy to do that.
Lovely Lindsey will read the questions to you.
So you'll finally get to see what Lindsey looks like if she hasn't run into a wall that day, which she actually did yesterday.
Sort of like both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.
So, okay.
Other things that I like.
There's...
Going back to, I think this was the best picture of 1980, there are certain performances that are really iconic performances that are underappreciated.
One of those performances is a performance by Donald Sutherland.
So nowadays, most people think of Donald Sutherland and they think of the guy from MASH maybe, the MASH the movie, or they think of Donald Sutherland now as the old guy from the Hunger Games, right?
He's President Snow in the Hunger Games.
Donald Sutherland is one of the great underappreciated actors in all of Hollywood history.
Terrific, terrific actor.
Um, and, uh, he's just great in everything.
If you ever catch it, I think, uh, include, he's great.
He's just, he's terrific in, in virtually everything that he's ever been in.
This is a great performance.
He was not nominated for this.
Everybody else in this movie was nominated.
This won Best Picture as an Ordinary People, 1980.
Uh, and, uh, and he is just spectacular.
The story is Timothy Hutton, who now is obviously much older, uh, and he's in a bunch of TV series and new movies.
Timothy Hutton, uh, is, is a young guy.
He's...
Like a 17-year-old kid whose brother has died in a drowning accident that he was present for, and has completely torn the family apart.
And it's about how he's tried to commit suicide before the movie begins, and how the family deals with this, and it's tearing the family apart.
Mary Tyler Moore won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in this movie because she plays the mother who just refuses to acknowledge that anything has happened that's wrong, and Donald Sutherland is the one who's beginning to acknowledge You are unpredictable.
But you're so cautious.
You're determined, Beth.
But you know something?
is really, really angry with the son who survived for surviving.
So this is one of the key scenes of the film.
Great movie.
Here's Donald Sutherland in Ordinary People.
You are unpredictable.
But you're so cautious.
You're determined, Beth.
But you know something?
You're not strong.
And I don't know if you're really giving. .
Tell me something.
Do you love me?
Do you really love me?
I feel the way I've always felt about you.
It would have been all right if there hadn't been any mess.
Stop it there.
It's a great, great performance.
It's a really, really good movie.
You can see Adam Baldwin in it, too.
Young Adam Baldwin, with whom I'm friends.
And I made fun of Adam Baldwin one time because there's a scene in this movie where Timothy Hutton hits him and he goes down.
I said, dude, you're such a tough guy.
Timothy Hutton took you out.
He said, it was in the script.
It was in the script!
It's a great movie, Ordinary People, 1980, best picture.
Robert Redford, the best movie Robert Redford ever directed, by far.
Okay, things that I hate, and then we'll sign off.
So things I hate, um, there's this new movement on the left for women to shout their abortions, champion their abortions!
Yay!
I killed my baby!
Woo!
So Amy Brenneman is an actress, and I recognize her face, but I can't remember what she's been, and she's been in a lot of stuff.
But Amy Brenneman, she has now cut a video and wrote a piece for Cosmopolitan about how she is just wonderful because she's had abortions.
So here's Amy Brenneman talking about how she is just a better person for having killed her baby when she was 21.
You know, I remember being very, very, very young and, you know, my mother saying, take care of yourself, use birth control, know your body, and that abortion is a law of the land.
That was a big win.
I mean, just like, you know, women getting the right to vote.
I was 21.
I was in college, I think it was like after my junior year or something.
I'd been with a boyfriend for many years who was very loving and supportive and great I mean we used birth control and we did all the right things and and I remember we were I was in California visiting some friends in Northern, California And I was gonna meet him in LA and I realized like oh, I'm not getting my period I don't think I'm getting my period and I said to John I was like I think I think I might be pregnant and I guess I was wise enough to know, like, I'm not ready to be a mom.
John paid for it, and I was treated very well.
And the idea of, like, oh...
Wow, I get to choose.
But it's a big deal to become a parent, and it's a big deal to parent different kinds of children.
Now that I am a mom, I have a 14-year-old and a 10-year-old, and because I live in a country where I could wait, I chose the right time, and even so, parenthood just knocks you on your ass.
And I think what's amazing about today is, like, people telling stories, and some of them are sad, and some of them are not sad, and all of them celebrate this basic law of the land, which is... Okay, stop this for a second.
Okay, so number one, you keep hearing her say, this basic law of the land, this law of the land, law, law, law, law, law.
Have a morality.
Have a morality.
That's gone.
Notice that the left hides behind law when they don't have morality.
Oh, that's the law of the land.
The left doesn't give two craps about the law of the land.
They don't care about the law of the land.
You gotta be kidding me.
The left shifts the law of the land based on their own personal whim.
Roe v. Wade was an example of the left shifting the law of the land based on their personal whim.
And then for her to stand there, oh, well, you know, I had a loving boyfriend for a long time, and we did all the right things, and we got pregnant, and then we just decided we weren't ready.
What would have been so terrible?
Let me just ask a counterfactual for a second.
What would have been so terrible about you not murdering your baby?
What would have been so bad about that?
Well, I mean, there had been one good thing, which is that you wouldn't have killed the baby.
That would have been good.
But let's say that it was really troublesome.
You're 21.
I mean, I love that in our society, 21 is a kid, right?
You have a long-term boyfriend.
You're old enough to be in college and have sex as much as you want, but you're not old enough to be a mom.
Right?
And you just can't handle it.
And I couldn't handle it.
Guess what?
There are a lot of things in life that are tough to handle.
Doesn't mean you get to kill them.
Right?
What happens when you have a bad day with your 14 year old Amy?
You just put him out to pasture?
What exactly happens there?
It's so vile to deny the humanity of something just because it's convenient to you.
And no point here does she actually acknowledge that what was inside of her was a growing human being.
That's key to her.
Because the minute she acknowledges that, then this whole sham falls apart.
You can't have the inspirational music when you're talking about, it's all euphemisms.
I realized that I was pregnant and then I just decided I couldn't handle it and stuff happened.
It's all euphemisms.
Well, what kind of stuff happened?
Did you go to the grocery store?
Like, what exactly happened?
Or did it turn out that they put instruments up into your womb to cut out a living human?
Right?
Is it possible that it was that?
A growing human inside you that had a heartbeat and that was going to have a life.
Is it possible that maybe that was a bad thing?
It's all euphemisms.
This is why I've encouraged Republicans, don't use the euphemisms.
Don't use the euphemisms.
This isn't abortion.
It's not termination of a pregnancy.
It's killing of a growing human child inside you.
I feel very strongly about this, but my feelings don't matter.
I mean, the science is what really matters here.
But just on a personal note, my wife is now 29, 30 weeks pregnant, and the baby's kicking up a storm.
Kicking up a storm.
There are still states in this country where she could go into a doctor and have that baby chopped up in the womb.
There are still states in this country where that is legal.
And Amy Brenneman would celebrate that as my wife's choice.
As my wife's choice.
When I've compared abortion to slavery, I've said there's nothing more evil than the idea that you get to decide what's human and what's not based on your own personal convenience.
That's what slaveholders did?
Well, it's on my property.
If it's on my property, it's a slave.
If it's on my property, that's not a person, that's my property.
Well, just because your womb is your property doesn't mean that what's inside your womb you get to target and destroy and define as something convenient to you.
It really is gross.
This whole celebrate evil... And this isn't just... Remember safe, legal, and rare?
Remember when that was the slogan?
That it was immoral, but we wanted it to be safe, legal, and rare?
Forget that.
Now we're gonna celebrate it openly.
The open celebration of evil.
We're moving toward a very dark time in the country morally.
Morals have gone by the wayside in favor of what is personally beneficial to you.
And so, it's... I think...
Really important to recognize that we are on the precipice here, and if we don't start teaching our kids a basic morality, basic constitutionalism, basic founding philosophies, don't leave it to the government, don't leave it to the entertainment industry, infiltrate industries, take over industries, really fight back, create a movement, not just getting behind the latest demagogue, then there's so much left that we can still lose.
On the other hand, there's still so much that we can gain.
I'll be back tomorrow to talk more about how we do that.
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