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March 17, 2016 - The Ben Shapiro Show
34:19
Ep. 91 - Will I Finally Get On The Trump Train?

Ben talks about voting Trump, the Broken Promises Theory, and the vaunted mailbag! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And we're here.
It's a Thursday.
We're nearing the end of the week.
And I have a note for a lot of people who are criticizing those of us who say we'll never vote for Donald Trump.
You know, those of us who have said that we're not going to vote for Trump, we're not going to go along just to defeat Hillary Clinton.
That's not out of spite or personal pique.
Many of us really didn't like Mitt Romney or John McCain either.
We did vote for them.
Trump is different.
That's because we believe that beating Hillary in 2016 is significantly less important than defeating a leftist vision of the government's role, both in the Democratic Party and inside the Republican Party.
We may be entering an era in which conservatism has become a minority philosophy, as we said yesterday.
But so was nationalist populism until five minutes ago, when certain Republicans became so all-fire desperate for victory that they made common cause with all the disgruntled big government authoritarians like Trump in order to defeat Democrats.
Those same Republicans now have to be forced back toward conservatism, and the only way to do that, really, is to build up a conservative army loyal to principle rather than personality, and then for that army to use their voting leverage to stop candidates like Trump.
Trump's whole pitch is that he's bringing all these disgruntled voters back to the polls.
He says this all the time.
Millions and millions, lines of people.
Many mainstream Republicans are falling for this routine.
We conservatives, we can make the same pitch, but only if we leave Trumpism to its own bizarre, nasty style.
Building a conservative movement, it's a lot harder than cobbling together a coalition to win an election, to hand power to a dude who's going to implement a leftist vision of the world under the banner of the supposedly conservative party.
But it's really important that we do just that.
That we find a different mission, a mission of building that movement.
We calculate that Donald Trump If Trump wins, he does gut the only movement that we have.
for the foreseeable future, transforming the conservative movement into this European far-right-style authoritarianism complete with riots.
It's a lot more dangerous to the future of the republic than Hillary Clinton continuing us toward the cliff the way everybody else has for four years.
If Trump wins, he does gut the only movement that we have.
If Hillary wins, there may be a future for our movement yet.
And by the way, Trump isn't going to shut the borders.
He's not going to fight the war on terror properly.
He's not going to deport massive numbers of illegal immigrants.
It's not happening.
He's lying to you and you're being played.
So there's not going to be a detente.
If Trump is the nominee, I'm still never Trump.
This is not ending just because people say we ought to jump on the Trump train.
We'll talk about all of that and more.
I am Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
...tend to demonize people who don't care about your feelings.
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Okay!
So, here we are.
It's a Thursday.
And, you know, as we say, we have now entered a world where Donald Trump is the likely nominee.
Where Donald Trump is the likely nominee.
And there are so many different aspects to Trump's victories, to Trump's nomination, that are worth noting.
There are so many problems with it and so many aspects of it.
But let's start With the fact that Donald Trump continues along this line of going soft on potential violence.
You know, we don't have a lot left in common here in the United States, the right and the left.
I've said for a long time, I think leftism is an evil philosophy.
I think leftism does promote violence.
I think that leftism does promote stealing.
I think it promotes tyranny.
The one thing that we all had in common, at least until the last five minutes, was that if we disagreed, that was not an argument for us to beat the living hell out of each other.
We weren't going to get violent with one another.
And lately, that seems to be going by the wayside.
The latest indicator of this is there's this woman who's a Trump supporter, who I know, she's a nice gal, but she's a big Trump supporter.
She was on CNN last night, and here's what she had to say about Donald Trump, who had said just a little while ago that if he doesn't get the nomination, maybe there'll be riots in the streets if he doesn't get the nomination.
That right there would cause anger, and that would be an obvious backhand to all of the people who have been paying attention and who have been engaged in this political process.
So, you know, riots aren't necessarily a bad thing if it means it's because it's sitting there and fighting the fact that our establishment Republican Party has gone corrupt and decided to ignore the voice of the people and ignore the process.
Scotty, you really don't want riots to emerge at the Republican Convention in Chicago, where people could be injured, people could be hurt, they could be maimed.
You don't want riots.
It's not riot as in a negative thing, what we've seen in the past.
The fact is you have a large amount of people that will be very unhappy.
I don't think they would sit there and resort.
In fact, I know they would not resort to violence.
I know they would not do it.
However, they would make sure their voices are heard, that they can't be ignored.
And when we sit here and talk about it, you have to understand there's a process of these delegates being elected.
And that's why I am very skeptical of this idea that we will not have Mr. Trump as our nominee as he continues to grow in strength.
The majority of the delegates going to this convention have pledged their allegiance or have sat there and said that they are a supporter of Mr. Trump.
They will be the majority.
So if something happens to ignore their voice as they are representatives of the people, Okay, we can stop her here.
So she says she doesn't condone violence, but the word that Trump used was riot.
He didn't use the word protest.
He didn't say that all hell would break loose.
He said that there would be riots, that people would actually get violent.
And she pooh-poohed that and then she kind of backed off a bit.
No, I don't really mean violence.
I just mean kind of violence.
Just like a little bit.
The left constantly pushes the same message that if they don't get their way, they're going to let people loose in the streets.
They're just more subtle about it.
Trump is more obvious about it.
That doesn't make Trump right and the left wrong.
It makes them both wrong.
Both are allowed to be wrong.
There's something that I'm toying with, this idea that I'm toying with about Donald Trump, which is, you know, it's not just that he's degrading the political process.
Which was already degraded.
I have no illusions about this grand, glorious American political process where we all disagree in civilized fashion and then come to conclusions with one another.
I don't buy that.
I've never bought that.
But what Trump is doing, what Trump is doing is he's created inside the Republican Party.
It already existed for the Democrats, but now he's creating inside the Republican Party what I like to call broken promises theory.
So in 1982, James Q. Wilson, who's a sociologist, he coined the term broken windows theory.
Broken windows theory was this theory, that if you go into a neighborhood, any neighborhood, and you leave a car on the street, and you break one of the windows of the car, within a week, All the windows on the car will be broken.
The area around the car will be strewn with trash.
There will be graffiti on the sidewalk.
Essentially, that once people understand that they can get away with lawlessness, and there becomes a spirit of lawlessness that's growing, this feeling that you can get away with little things, little things lead to big things.
As a parent, I can tell you this is true with my daughter.
If I let her get away with small things, she's constantly pushing the envelope.
How far can she go?
How far is she willing to go?
Well, Donald Trump has done that not just with violence at his rallies, with his kind of soft pandering to that, not just with the soft pandering to racism and antisemitism that I see from the Trump campaign and that I'm seeing the response to every single day on my Twitter and in my email, and still getting all that silliness and inanity.
By the way, note to all you white supremacists out there, the great irony of life is that you white supremacists are some of the stupidest people on planet Earth.
I mean, honest to God, if you're trying to make the case that whiteness is supreme, you should find some people with higher IQ to make that case than you, because you are super stupid.
In any case, what exactly... So the broken promises theory also suggests that Trump isn't just...
Creating this kind of feeling of incipient lawlessness, but also he's creating this feeling that lying is okay.
Trump lies not just routinely but consistently.
Donald Trump cannot get through a paragraph without lying.
I mean literally not a paragraph.
We can pick any clip of Donald Trump and Donald Trump will be lying in that clip.
Today is a rare day where we actually don't have Trump audio, but Donald Trump lies about everything from Trump steaks to Trump vodka.
Trump lies about everything from Trump University to whether his campaign manager grabbed a woman by the arm hard enough to bruise her.
Donald Trump lies about everything, and this has ramifications, because he rewards people who lie on his behalf.
He rewards them, right?
We saw yesterday, Corey Lewandowski, that campaign manager, ends up on stage with Donald Trump, with Trump looking to his side saying, Good job, Corey.
Great job, Corey.
All you bastards in the media targeting my good boy, Corey, over here.
Well, one of the victims of broken promises theory, one of the people who's Now I do believe, and certainly in my discussions with Donald Trump, he does love America.
And he does want to be successful.
Remember, we talked about this.
Back on Monday, here's what Dr. Ben Carson said as a flashback clip.
Here's what Dr. Ben Carson said about why he supports Donald Trump.
Now, I do believe, and certainly in my discussions with Donald Trump, he does love America, and he does want to be successful.
And he will surround himself with very good people.
And will one of them be Dr. Ben Carson?
Certainly in an advisory capacity.
- In the administration?
- Certainly in an advisory capacity.
- That's been determined when you sat down with him, that was discussed?
- Yes.
- And you want to tell us, would it be advisory towards medicine, towards education?
- Well, you know, we haven't hammered out all the details. - Okay.
Okay, so that's Dr. Carson saying, I got a quid pro quo, I was paid off.
This is the grand emissary of morality and decency in the Republican Party, right?
This is the guy who ran just to add a touch of class and a feeling of conscience to the Republican Party saying, yeah, I sold out.
Well, because he's been infected by the infectious falsehood of Donald Trump, here is what Ben Carson said last night about whether Trump offered him a job on CNN.
Okay.
All right.
One question that I have to ask you, because everybody has been talking about this one as well.
You've said Donald Trump offered you a role in his administration.
And at the last debate, I remember listening to him.
He said he spent an hour talking with you about education.
So when people said, role in the administration, they said, oh, maybe it's going to be health related.
But then he emphasized education is something that you are very passionate about.
What are we looking at if Donald Trump is the next president of the United States for Ben Carson?
Education secretary, VP, Surgeon General, what?
Well, first of all, we did not discuss any quid pro quo.
There seems to be a great desire by many people to try to make it seem that way.
But we did agree that we're both extremely interested in saving America, particularly for the next generations, and that we will continue to work together in the process of doing that.
We talk about many things.
Healthcare, as well as the security of our nation.
Now he says there's no quid pro quo, right?
So now he's fibbing.
Everybody's learned from Trump.
Over the course of 48 hours, you can flip any opinion.
You've got Chris Christie doing it, and Mike Huckabee doing it.
Everybody wants to follow the Trump battle plan, and that is, if you say something that's inconvenient, you start fibbing about it.
And that's convenient for you.
All of this degrades not just the politics of the Republican Party, but the very nature of the Republican Party, which I thought was supposed to be honest.
You know, I have a basic rule here, folks.
Decency trumps everything.
Decency trumps everything.
Decency is basically, in the end, the only thing that allows us to live together in society.
And if you can't be decent, if you're lying to each other on the basis of politics, or if you're If you're just breaking rules of basic decency.
And by the way, it is breaking a rule of basic decency to encourage the authorities to take their guns and stick them in the faces of other people on your behalf just because you want something.
If that's where we've reached, then we're in some serious trouble.
And Trump is contributing to that.
He's not tamping it down.
He's contributing to that.
So, by the way, are the media.
The media are just cheerleaders for Donald Trump.
Absolute cheerleaders for Donald Trump.
Bill O'Reilly, over on Fox News, has become, I think, one of the most embarrassing things I've seen in this election cycle.
Was Bill O'Reilly talking about his milkshakes with Donald Trump.
You remember this a few months ago, where Donald Trump and Bill O'Reilly, O'Reilly was trying to wheedle Trump into coming to the last Republican debate.
And he says, well, you know, Donald, you owe me milkshakes.
You owe me milkshakes.
And Donald says, my milkshake brings all the O'Reillys to the yard.
And they're like, it's better than yours.
Damn right, it's better than yours.
It's huge!
It was very embarrassing.
O'Reilly did the same thing last night, essentially.
Now he's advising Donald Trump on how to run his campaign.
But we have very little problem.
Then in Chicago, we could have had a problem, and I made a decision, and got credit for that decision to cancel.
Yeah, I supported the decision.
Because there, that was really, that was very confrontational.
But that's what you're going to see now.
You're going to see Black Lives Matter move on, all of these people trying to brand you as some Nazi, and the press will go along with it, enabling them to do their deal.
But they're baiting you.
I'm speaking from experience.
I don't know whether you remember Al Franken, but he baited me.
I guess it was 10 years ago.
I fell for it like an idiot.
And he won.
In a sense, he got all this publicity, and he was able to lie at will and do what he did.
He's a despicable human being.
But he won because I reacted to him, well, I should have floated above it.
And I'm wondering whether you can float above, move on, and Black Lives Matter.
Is it possible?
I think I can.
The only thing I would say is that we have some very big... Oh, goodness.
What a waste.
Whatever Trump says here is irrelevant.
The bottom line is there are members of the media who are pushing Trump really, really hard.
Megyn Kelly, by the way, has now done an interview in which she complained that Donald Trump ripping her, O'Reilly hasn't defended her in any way, like on O'Reilly's show, which is basically true.
And O'Reilly isn't the only one at Fox who's doing this routine.
There are a bunch of hosts who are doing this routine.
You saw Fox and Friends yesterday.
Donald Trump says, you're my people.
You're good people.
You're my people.
And they're, yeah, we love you, Donald.
Yeah!
Well, you're not a bunch of Bobby Soxers.
You're supposed to be the media, I thought.
I've been very open.
All these people, by the way, don't say who they back.
They clearly back Trump.
I've been very open about the fact that I back Ted Cruz.
I mean, full disclosure, the people who back The Daily Wire financially are people who also support Ted Cruz.
Most of the people who are my friends support Ted Cruz.
It turns out I hang out and like to work with people with similar values.
I've been very open and obvious about my Cruz bias, but if Ted Cruz were in front of me, I would ask him tougher questions than that.
I mean, that's ridiculous.
We're now to the point where Jorge Ramos is basically right when he's ripping Bill O'Reilly.
Listen, I was a fan of when Donald Trump shut down Jorge Ramos for trying to invade a press conference and scream at him earlier this year, but here's Jorge Ramos going after O'Reilly, and he's not actually wrong.
What I'm going to do is bring it back to your network.
Alright, if you, the top guy, has demonized him as a racist, how can you possibly cover him?
I think as a journalist you have to take a stand when it comes to racism and discrimination.
How can you cover him, Jorge?
Corruption, public lies, dictatorship and human rights.
If you don't take a stand in those instances, then what's our role as journalists?
I think you have to be tougher on Donald Trump.
You haven't been tough on him.
Listen, I have confronted Donald Trump in ways that he has told me that I'm unfair, okay?
So I'm not going to get into me.
I want to bring it back to you.
You've talked to him so many times, and you let him get away with everything.
No, no, no, no, no.
I don't get to let him get away with anything.
I confront him.
That's not true.
Okay, so Jorge Ramos, when he says that half of his criticisms about Trump are not true, but when he says that O'Reilly has no criticisms about Trump, It's a little true.
It's a little true.
And that's a problem because you got the media basically shilling for him from the right to the left.
The left is shilling for him because he's ratings and because he's good TV and because they think he's going to lose to Hillary.
And you got some people on the right shilling for him because he's ratings and good TV and because they think maybe he'll beat Hillary.
So it's really kind of gross all the way through.
You know, it's just problematic.
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Okay, I wanna talk a little bit about why Donald Trump He's going to continue to do well here.
He's going to win, right?
I mean, he is going to win the nomination in all likelihood because John Kasich won't get the hell out because John Kasich is selfish beyond all human measure.
But President Obama has now nominated his new guy.
His name is Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court.
Merrick Garland is a lefty.
He's somebody who's very anti-gun.
He's somebody who the New York Times describes as in the mold of Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.
So just as left as anybody else on the court.
Here's President Obama yesterday telling Republicans to vote on his nominee.
To suggest that someone who has served his country with honor and dignity, with a distinguished track record of delivering justice for the American people, might be treated, as one Republican leader stated, as a political piñata?
That can't be right.
Okay, we can shut him up.
This idea that we can't treat him as a political piñata.
Well, the Republicans are saying we're not going to give him a hearing.
Ted Cruz says rightly, Donald Trump would probably like Merrick Garland as a judge.
Merrick Garland is somebody who has been very much to the left on most of his rulings, particularly on guns.
And that's sort of where Donald Trump was until the last 30 seconds.
Merrick Garland is a consensus pick with great, great qualifications.
He would swim through the Senate in a normal year with a lot of support.
And Cruz is right.
You know, the fact is that he's unlikely to ever nominate anybody like Merrick Garland, and Trump is at least half likely to nominate somebody like Merrick Garland.
The problem is that people are responding not to Obama nominating Merrick Garland and saying, okay, well, Trump might do the same thing.
They're reacting to the Republicans who are going to cave.
So the Democrats are already very excited about this.
The Democrats say the Republicans are going to cave.
Here's Chuck Schumer, who I believe is on the Judiciary Committee, the Senator from New York.
He says, yeah, don't worry, the Republicans will cave.
If either Chuck Grassley, Chairman of Judiciary, or the six or seven Republicans who are from purplish, bluish states, who are getting a lot of heat back home, not just from progressive groups, but from their editorial pages, from a lot of Republican leaders have said this, and they will crack.
And I think the likelihood is that we will have hearings and a vote.
I can't predict how that will come out, but you know these hearings are sort of magical.
If the nominee comes off very well, they get appointed.
Okay, so we can stop him here.
And then, you saw in that list of people there who are meeting with Merrick Garland, Jeff Flake.
Jeff Flake's a congressperson, I think he's a senator from Arizona.
And here's Jeff Flake talking about how Merrick Garland might not be so bad.
I think that Republicans are doing the right thing.
We're fully justified in saying let's wait until after the election to actually nominate somebody or approve the President's nomination.
But I said yesterday that if Republicans are not successful in the November election, I hope we are, but if we're not, then we ought to look at this nomination in a lame duck session in November.
I would rather have a less liberal nominee, like Merrick Garland, than a nominee that Hillary Clinton, if she were president, would put forward.
Okay, and this is how it's going to go, right?
And then people look at this and they say, God, so you're all lying to us.
You say that you're not going to cave, and then you're going to cave.
I'm angry I'm voting for Donald Trump.
By the way, that video from Andrew Clavin, which everybody should go watch right now, is up to well over 8 million views just on Facebook.
Overall, it's probably closer to nine million at this point.
Clavin, he does a good job of summing up, and this is what it's all about, right?
People are looking at Jeff Flake and a lot of these characters and they're saying, sure, Donald Trump may be more similar to Merrick Garland than to Ted Cruz, but at least he's not caving to people like Merrick Garland.
Oh, but he will.
Oh, but he will.
Laura Ingraham says basically this.
She says to the Republican Party, you have to listen to what the people want.
If people want Trump, give them Trump.
They're angry.
Give them Trump.
Who is going to write the platform?
Usually the nominee has a hand in determining who the keynote speakers are.
What's the order of the speakers?
I mean, those are small things, but symbolically they say a lot about the direction of the party.
So when Tucker was saying, maybe it's time for the party elders to listen to what the people want.
Whether it's Trump or Cruz or a combination of their views or maybe some of what Kasich says is a good idea.
The party has to get closer to where the people are on some of these issues and be less concerned about, in a way, who the vehicle for those issues are going to be.
Okay, we can stop it here.
What if the people are wrong?
Seriously, what if the people are wrong?
One of the great lies about our system of government is that it's a democracy.
It's not.
It's a republic.
The purpose of us being a republic and not a democracy is that sometimes the people are wrong.
This is why we have a constitution.
It was theoretically to prevent people from doing stupid things.
This is why the electoral college was in place.
To prevent people from electing someone completely unpalatable.
Right?
A lot of these systems have failed, but this was the founding idea, was people will indeed do stupid things.
And we need to stop them from doing stupid things.
Sometimes they let their emotions just get control of them, and they're so angry that Obama's gonna appoint somebody, and that the Republicans won't stop him, that they're gonna fight against whoever the Republicans don't like, even if that guy is basically another Obama, just our Obama.
Right?
What happens if the people are wrong?
Is there an obligation to stand up to the people?
It's an unpopular position.
It's an unpopular position, but here's the truth.
Even inside the Republican Party, the vast majority of Republicans are not happy with Donald Trump.
The vast majority of Republicans are voting against Donald Trump, and a huge swath of them, according to the latest exit polls, 37% of them, will stay home if Donald Trump is the nominee, or vote third party if Donald Trump is the nominee.
Does it behoove the Republican Party to go along with Trump, a guy whose infectious lying and broken promises have become a trend?
Does it behoove them just because a certain segment of people want it?
Is that better?
If so, this would be the first time in my lifetime that the Republican Party has bowed to the whims of the people.
It seems like they were manipulating events in 2008 and 2012 with McCain and Romney to get the guy they wanted.
So why is it now all of a sudden they're getting shy?
It's very troublesome, and it's quite perturbing.
Okay, so one thing I like, and then a couple of things from the mailbag.
Thing I like.
Today is St.
Patrick's Day.
Not my holiday, obviously.
St.
Patrick's Day is not a holiday for the Jews, but it's something that has become an American excuse to get drunk off your butt and vomit everywhere.
But, if you actually want to celebrate St.
Patrick's Day in a way that's respectful to the Irish, there's a great movie that you can take a look at.
Old movie from, I believe, 1952.
And the movie is The Quiet Man.
Great, great movie.
John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, directed by John Ford.
Sort of his love letter to Ireland.
And, uh, and this is one of the more famous clips.
You've probably seen it in E.T., actually, because this is- they use this clip in E.T.
when E.T.
is watching The Quiet Man on TV, and Elliot is at school, and he's released all the frogs.
You remember this?
And he grabs the- he grabs the girl, and he kisses her?
It's a rip on- on this, right?
Here- here is the- the fam- probably the most famous scene from The Quiet Man, but the whole movie is just grand, and- and lovely, and fun, and- and humorous.
It's a great movie.
Here we go.
All right!
Ah!
How bold you are!
And who gave you leave to be kissing me?
So you can talk.
Yes, I can, I will, and I do.
And it's more than talk you'll be getting if you step a step closer to me.
Don't worry, you got a wallop.
You'll get over it, I'm thinking.
Well, some things a man doesn't get over so easy.
Like what, supposing?
Like the sight of a girl coming through the fields with the sun on her hair, kneeling in church with a face like a saint.
You're a saint indeed.
And now come into a man's house to clean it for him?
But that was just by way of being a good Christian act.
I know it was, Mary Kay Denner.
And I was nice.
Not at all.
Great, Loving.
Just a great movie.
And the score is fantastic, too, by Victor Young.
Really makes the film.
The basic premise of the film is that John Wayne is an American who's come back to Ireland to take over his family inheritance.
He was a boxer in the United States, and he killed a man in the ring.
And now he's come back, and he's afraid to fight.
And her brother is kind of the renowned town pugilist.
He's a guy who just likes to fight people.
And hates John Wayne, and it's all about what it means to be a man, and what it means to be a married man, and how to stand up to bad guys.
It's a phenomenal, phenomenal movie.
It really is.
It's enjoyable.
Every frame of it, and it's beautifully filmed.
Great movie.
If you want something that puts you in a good mood, that would be it.
Okay.
Couple of entries from the mailbag.
We have to go a little bit shorter than usual today.
Sorry, folks.
I know you're disappointed, but don't worry.
Our crew is definitely happy about it.
A couple of things from the mailbag.
First of all, quick note to our subscribers.
So, if you are a subscriber, we're going to do something special for you.
If you send us an email with this number, so you can only see if you're a subscriber, right?
If you're just listening to this on audio, you don't know what number I'm holding up.
I could be holding up the number 3.
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It's not either one of those.
I'm holding up a number right now on a piece of paper.
You email us with this number and you will be given priority in the mailbag.
We get so much mail that we don't have time to respond to all of it from me personally or on the podcast, but if you use this number you have a significantly better shot of getting into the mailbag.
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and all will work out well for you.
We actually have started a new process with the mailbag.
By the way, our email address is bshapiro@dailywire.com for the mailbag.
And if you want to send videos, you can do that.
We have one video entry today.
This one's from James.
He's in the tech industry, and here is his question for today. - What, in your opinion, is the best way of going about expressing your political ideology and not damaging your reputation in the eyes of a potential employer?
So James works in the tech industry, a notoriously left industry, and he's asking, how can you be a conservative publicly without hurting yourself?
The answer is you may not be able to.
You just have to be smart about it.
I think that most leftists, unfortunately, most leftists are fully imbued with a sense of unearned moral righteousness.
They are good people.
They are wonderful people.
They are the best people.
And if you cross them politically, that means that you are by nature a bad, terrible human being.
So your safest bet may be to keep your politics completely out of the way.
That's hard.
That's hard.
But what I've recommended to people is we have to understand that, especially in the tech industry in California, for example, You're living in foreign territory, so you sort of have to keep it under wraps until you have enough power and enough acquaintances.
That nobody can mess with you.
So, just be smart about it.
Be strategic.
More important for you to keep your job, do well in life, use all your money, resources, and power to fight against what the left believes than to get fired now and then have to scrape together work.
That's not a smart solution.
Okay.
A couple more questions from the mailbag.
Jacob writes, Would you vote third party?
Libertarian, perhaps?
Will you stay home?
And do you think we'll ever get a true conservative on the ticket again?
Okay, I would vote for a third party, depending on who the candidate is.
Maybe libertarian, depends on who the candidate is.
Gary Johnson doesn't do very much for me, but let's say that Ted Cruz decided he was gonna shift over to the libertarian party and run against Trump just for the hell of it.
Let's say Ben Sasse did that, just to take advantage of the infrastructure.
Well, then I'd vote for him.
Do I think we'll ever get a true conservative on the ticket again?
I do.
I do, actually.
And I don't think it's that far off.
But I think that we have to hold fast to our principles.
Clay asks, Do you think that Trump is just a plant for Hillary Clinton?
I think that Trump's campaign is a ruse devised by the Clinton campaign.
I'd bet money Trump gets a fat check or the equivalent from the Clintons in the end.
No, I don't think that's right.
I think that Trump is stupid enough that you could get him to run just by playing to his ego.
But the problem is he's actually winning, so it's hard to say that he was stupid to run when he's actually going to win the nomination.
No, I don't think that he's a Clinton plant.
I think he's a Trump plant.
I think that Trump has planted Trump inside the political process to do what Trump could not achieve before, which is to benefit Trump.
Right?
Trump tried to bribe people.
That kind of worked, kind of didn't work.
Now he's just going to put Trump in office, and then he knows that Trump will work for Trump.
Daniel writes, you always describe yourself as a conservative.
You identify the positions you agree with as being the most conservative.
You and other conservatives define conservatism much in the same way libertarians define libertarianism.
Where is conservatism better than libertarianism?
Where does libertarianism fall short?
Okay, so there are two brands of libertarianism.
There's the isolationist brand of libertarianism that's pushed by some folks like Harry Brown and the Libertarian Party.
And then there's libertarianism that says we need a strong national defense.
Libertarianism with a strong national defense is basically my governmental philosophy.
One of the main quarrels I have with libertarianism is the social views of libertarians outside of government.
So it's not enough for many libertarians to just say the government shouldn't have any role in marriage.
They also say that there shouldn't be social institutions that push in favor of marriage because that defeats the libertarian ideal of all living as they see fit.
Well, you know, it turns out that, to me, you do need certain social ties that bind.
You need social institutions that shame and name.
You need ties that put us together, values that we share.
And libertarianism suggests the only value that we need to share is basically stay out of each other's way.
I agree, that is a very key value.
But there are other values we need to share or we can't even trust each other to stay out of each other's way.
Libertarianism, unfortunately, tends to collapse.
Into anarchy and then into leftism.
Because people tend to respond to anarchy with authoritarianism.
Well, I'll tell you where it started to go downhill for Marco Rubio.
He went wrong really in New Hampshire.
When he got pummeled by Chris Christie, that really hurt him pretty badly.
The truth is, he really went wrong in 2013 when he embraced amnesty.
When Marco Rubio embraced amnesty, he put himself on a collision course with the conservative base who don't like the Gang of Eight bill and who don't like amnesty.
So that's essentially where that comes from.
Final question for today.
Hmm.
Good question.
Good question.
What is something you've always wanted to try, but have been too scared to try?
Hmm.
Good question.
Good question.
Can I say eating non-kosher food?
Too scared to try?
Not scared is not the right thing.
It would violate my religious prescriptions to try non-kosher food, but I'll tell you, I go to a number of non-kosher restaurants with business contacts where I can't eat, and it does look spectacularly delicious.
Also, I think that if I had the guts, I would probably go skydiving, but I also have a brain, and that seems like a poor utilization of the noggin that I have.
All right, folks, we've reached the end of the week.
Sorry if today's episode was slightly shorter than usual, but we'll be back on Monday with plenty more for you.
Try not to ruin the world while we're away.
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are doing a fine job of that on their own.
They don't need your help.
So behave yourselves.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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