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May 12, 2016 - The Ben Shapiro Show
50:22
Ep. 117 - Paul Ryan Gets Trump-curious

Ryan and Trump appear on a joint episode of "The Bachelor," Ben talks Caitlyn Jenner, and the vaunted Ben Shapiro Show mailbag! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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On Thursday, The Wrap reported on a new book by Ian Halperin.
He's the author of a book called Kardashian Dynasty, the controversial rise of America's royal family.
The book claims that, quote, multiple sources told him that the former Olympian had been miserable for months and has now considered transitioning back to being a man.
According to Halperin, quote, one source confirmed to me, Caitlyn has made whispers of sex change regret, hinting she might go back to being Bruce Jenner.
Jenner says Halperin could, quote-unquote, detransition, which would be admitting he's a man, within the next couple of years.
So, this means there are two possible Caitlyn Jenner stories.
Story one, a mentally ill man, thought he was a woman, was reinforced in this perspective by a perverse sick media and a pathetic medical establishment, urging him to overrule his own second thought, underwent surgery and hormone therapy, realized surgery and hormone therapy don't cure mental illness, now regrets his suffering and is finally considering detransitioning.
Story number two.
A man magically became a woman.
The woman now magically wants to become a man.
You get to pick.
Pick one of those stories.
Those are the only two stories.
The Department of Justice says Americans should be forced to embrace story number two.
Instead of recognizing the reality of mental illness and media exploitation, we'll all be told to repeat story number two until it becomes second nature, or we'll be called bigots and have our businesses and our states boycotted, or we'll be fined by the government.
The reality of sex and the reality of mental illness, these have to be memory hold, just gotten rid of.
Those who suffer from mental illness must believe, we have to drive them to believe fictions about their own sex, and we must be forced to embrace their mental illness as reality.
So, here are three truths that could have stopped this charade if society actually cared about truth.
Truth number one, suicide rates among transgenders do not decrease thanks to sex change surgery.
Suicide rates among transgender don't drop after surgery.
41% of transgender people attempt suicide sometime in their life.
That's compared to 4.6% of the general population.
It's 10 times higher.
The suicide rate among transgender people who say they are never identified as transgender is 46%.
Okay, that's people who are not being harassed because nobody can identify them as transgender.
45% of transgender people who undergo hormone therapy attempt suicide.
That's higher than the general transgender suicide rate.
And by the way, really, really high comorbidity between transgenderism and depression and suicidality generally.
Number two.
Most children who are supposedly transgender grow out of these feelings.
Dr. Paul McHugh is a former head of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University.
He finds 70 to 80 percent of all children with transgender feelings grow out of it.
This is important because the media have already told parents that children confused about their sex should consider whether they're transgender.
Truth number three.
Transgender regret is a very real thing.
Walt Heyer is a man who underwent sex change surgery and then regretted it, and he wrote at The Federalist, quote, "There was a study commissioned by the Guardian of the UK in 2004.
It reviewed 100 studies and found 20% of people regret it.
Considering the findings of a 2011 Swedish study published seven years after the 2004 UK review, it looked at the mortality and morbidity after gender reassignment surgery, it found people who changed genders had a higher risk of suicide." In that study, all the sex reassigned persons in Sweden from 1973 to 2003, that's 191 male to females, 133 female to males, were compared to a comparable random group.
The sex reassigned persons had substantially higher rates of death from cardiovascular disease and suicide, substantially higher rates of attempted suicide.
Gender surgery is not effective treatment for depression, anxiety, or mental disorders.
And by the way, folks, Jenner showed early signs of regret.
Remember that Vanity Fair piece?
He was on the cover of Vanity Fair looking all purdy.
Well, here's what it actually said in that Vanity Fair piece.
It's a direct quote from the piece.
Quote.
Caitlin went into the long hallway and paced back and forth on the dark wood floor, where not even the footsteps made a sound.
The panic attack lasted about 15 seconds, but a single thought continued to course through her mind.
Quote, A counselor from the LA Gender Center came over to the house so Caitlyn could talk to someone with professional expertise.
The counselor helped ease her mind.
She said such reactions were often induced by the pain medication.
She also said such second-guessing was human and temporary.
The thought has since passed and has not come back.
There's no buyer's remorse.
This is from Vanity Fair.
Not that it matters anyway, because there's no turning back.
So Caitlyn Jenner can't switch back because the media would have a field day and make Caitlyn Jenner out to be some sort of sex traitor to femalehood or something.
The media and the Obama administration have a narrative.
Sex doesn't exist.
But it does exist, and it isn't malleable.
Caitlyn Jenner was always a man, no matter what he chose to call himself.
If the media force him into a lifetime of suffering just to double down on their own cruelty, his suffering is at least partially on them.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show. - Tend to demonize people 'cause they don't care about your feelings. - Okay, so here we are, and it is a Thursday.
We've reached the end of the week, which is exciting for me because this weekend is going to be my son's circumcision ceremony.
It's his brit milah, his bris, and we'll be doing that on Saturday, so that's exciting.
I want to talk a little bit more about that later if we are not cut off short.
Okay, we are also going to be talking momentarily about Paul Ryan.
And his meeting with Donald Trump.
So why don't we just jump in with that.
So, there was a big buildup to this meeting between Paul Ryan and Donald Trump.
You remember that Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House, he said he wasn't sure he could get behind Donald Trump.
And a lot of people said, right, because you're conservative, or at least semi-conservative, and Trump isn't.
You're in favor of entitlement reform.
Trump says he'll uphold all the entitlements.
And the entire Trump side of the Republican Party went ape.
And they lost their minds.
Paul Ryan says, we don't need Paul Ryan.
Screw Paul Ryan, we don't need him.
Sarah Palin, who's become the screeching, harpy voice of the Trump right, she writes, quote, Trump has a powwow with unsupportive GOP-E, that's GOP establishment, House leader Paul Ryan today, anticipate Ryan, after following crucifiers of our conservative frontrunner and all of his early supporters, to now position himself as the leader of these political wussies to the cool kids table.
Typical politics.
Makes me ill.
Donald J. Trump can't capitulate.
Crucifiers of Trump?
Crucifier?
Is he Jesus now?
Crucifying Donald J. Trump?
I mean, I understand, by the way, Donald Trump's father, his middle name was Christ.
His name was literally Fred Christ Trump.
So, Donald Trump is the grandson of God, apparently.
But, aside from that, this is, I mean, this is ridiculous stuff.
So, you've got people on the Trump right who are saying, Oh, well, Paul Ryan, you know, we don't need him.
We don't need him in the first place.
But they're going crazy over it.
So, at the same time, they say, We don't need Paul Ryan.
They're saying, oh, well, Paul Ryan's awful.
It's so awful.
It just drives us nuts that he won't join us in any way.
Eric Trump, who is Donald Trump's son, he said that Donald Trump doesn't need Paul Ryan's endorsement.
So Fortune magazine has a piece out today that says this.
Trump badly needs Speaker Ryan's endorsement.
Do you agree with that?
Listen, I don't think so, right?
He's got tens and tens of millions of votes.
I mean, he's really run away with this.
He has more votes than any Republican in any primary, you know, ever.
I mean, the guy's done an incredible job.
He really has grown the party.
He has brought the party together, for whatever that's worth.
And, listen, if he doesn't have the Speaker's vote, if he doesn't have the, you know, his will, or whatever it may be, we'll go on, right?
And those people will continue to march behind my father.
Would it be nice?
Yes.
Is the ultimate goal to beat Hillary Clinton?
Yes, that's everybody's goal.
No one wants her to be President.
It would be an absolute disaster.
So everybody should band together, and they should march forward.
If he doesn't have it, will life go on?
Absolutely.
So we don't need, we don't need Paul Ryan.
Like, we'd like it, but we don't need Paul Ryan.
Mike Huckabee, who just got destroyed in this primary race, but now is back because he's the most sycophantic, ridiculous Trump supporter.
He and Chris Christie are competing for this.
Two heavyweights.
Kind of, they're kind of the sumo, the people in the sumo suits who are knocking each other over at a kid's party.
So they're competing to be the biggest suck up to Trump.
So here's Mike Huckabee on Fox News sucking up to Trump.
I'm not sure what Paul Ryan's thoughts are here.
He's a good guy, and I respect him, and he's a very respected guy within the party, but I don't think he fully understands how angry people in the party are at all of the people in Washington, including him, for such things as the trade deal, immigration policies, Syrian refugee relocation, Planned Parenthood funding, the Iranian deal.
All of these things have Really become the reasons that Donald Trump is the nominee right now.
And for him to act like, well, I'm going to have to bring him to the table.
No, actually, I think they need to come to the table and say, we surrender.
We obviously have messed up.
And we need to understand what you understand about what the voters are asking for.
Okay, so he needs to come to the table.
He needs to surrender.
So there's this call from the Trump people for Ryan to surrender.
Now, there are two ways that Trump could have played this.
I mean, that Ryan could have played this.
Number one, he could have just come out in favor of Trump originally.
He could have done the Bobby Jindal routine.
I think Donald Trump stinks, and therefore I'm going to vote for him because at least he doesn't stink as much as Hillary Clinton, right?
He's a flaming bag of dog crap, but he's our flaming bag of dog crap.
That could have been the Paul Ryan response to Donald Trump.
I would have disagreed, but it would have been typical.
Or he could have said, I'm not going to back Donald Trump because I find him utterly unpalatable and I think that he's a smear on our brand.
He could have said that too.
Instead, he chose a third way.
So there's all this big media buildup, all this massive media buildup to this big meeting between Paul Ryan and Donald Trump.
Trump goes to Washington DC to meet with the Speaker of the House and he's ushered in by apparently a guy who was straight from the old Judaic temple, ushering him in with a ram's horn.
And chanting and singing for his god king, Donald Trump.
This is a guy who I've started calling folks like this Trumpsexuals.
He's a Trumpsexual, this fellow.
And he is horny for Trump, apparently.
So here he is, standing outside and singing to Donald Trump.
He sings a worship song to Donald Trump.
And it's pretty absurd.
I want to see you.
Yes, you are.
I want to see you.
Yes!
So, I'm going to be here.
I want to see you.
Yes!
So, I'm going to be here.
I want to see you.
So, God Emperor Trump ushered in by his horn-playing barbarians, and it's very, very exciting stuff.
So again, the Trumpsexuals, they have very specific turn-ons, by the way, the Trumpsexuals.
They're like stubby fingers, the color orange, dominant-submissive roleplay.
And they are also big fans of taking tons of sexy positions on various issues.
So that's the Trump sexuals.
And so he's ushered into all of this.
They have their secret meeting, their clandestine meeting between Paul Ryan and Donald Trump.
And Reince Priebus, who has now become the lackey to the kingdom of Trumpkins, he comes out and he says, The only way to really fully enjoy the kind of insanity that you're watching here is to take Trump up on his proposal that basically this is just a giant reality show.
That's the only way to really enjoy all of this.
So if you see it that way, Reince Priebus is basically the host.
of The Bachelor, and Donald Trump is going in to visit The Bachelor, and we will see if Paul Ryan gives him a rose.
That's really the only way to sort of view this.
Here's Ryan's Priebus on the reality show. - You feel like a couples therapist? - No, you know what?
You wouldn't say that if you were in the room.
It was great.
It had very good chemistry between the two of them.
Like I said before, I don't want to be repetitive, but it can only be described as positive.
I can't imagine two more different kinds of people than Donald Trump and Paul Ryan.
They had good chemistry?
It was positive, it was give and take, and it was also something that I think if anyone was a fly on the wall would agree with everything that I'm saying.
But you are a fly on the wall, so what else can you tell us?
I can't say a whole lot.
Look, I've got to honor confidentiality.
I'm not going to say a peep about any specifics that were discussed.
Can you just talk broadly?
Did they discuss tone and tenor, the things that Ryan has said publicly that he's not thrilled with?
Did they discuss the policy differences, both?
Look, I hate to spoil the fun, but I'm just not going to get into the details other than to say that, um, it was, uh, it was a meeting that I think went as well as I would have hoped.
Okay.
As I toss it back, you expect an endorsement soon from Paul Ryan now?
Uh, you know, look, like I said, it was a great first step toward unifying the party.
And I think if you read both of the statements that came out of Speaker's office and Donald Trump's campaign, they echo the same feeling.
Okay.
So in other words, it was just a first date, but they're not ready for the fantasy suite yet.
That's where we are right now, so apparently Ryan is not ready to take him up on the fantasy suite, and where they go into the jacuzzi and massage each other's back.
They're not quite there yet, but they had great chemistry, and he was given a rose, so that just means that we'll have future episodes of this particular season of The Bachelor, and we'll have to tell you whether Ryan chooses Trump or Trump chooses Ryan, it's all very exciting.
Ryan then comes out looking like something from a hostage video.
I mean, honest to God, straight from a hostage video.
The hostage videos are piling up here.
You've got Chris Christie from his hostage video, and you've had Ben Carson from his hostage video, and now you have Paul Ryan from his hostage video.
The hostage videos at the hands of Donald Trump just keep piling up.
Here is Paul Ryan at his press conference talking about his bachelor experience with Donald Trump.
What the hell, people?
Seriously?
Okay, just play it.
I was very encouraged with what I heard from Donald Trump today.
I do believe that we are now planting the seeds to get ourselves unified, to bridge the gaps and differences.
And so from here, we're going to go deeper into the policy areas to see where that common ground is and how we can make sure that we're operating off these same core principles.
This is our first meeting.
I was very encouraged with this meeting.
But this is a process.
It takes a little time.
You don't put it together in 45 minutes.
So that is why we had, like I said, a very good start to a process on how we unify.
And it's very important that we don't fake unifying, we don't pretend unification, that we truly and actually unify so that we are full strength in the fall.
There are policy disputes that we will have.
There's no two ways about it.
Plenty of Republicans disagree with one another on policy disputes.
but on core principles.
Those are the kinds of things that we discussed.
And again, I'm encouraged.
His personality, I thought he was a very good personality.
He's a very warm and genuine person.
Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.
Raymond Shaw is the bravest, kindest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.
I said Raymond Shaw is the kindest, warmest, bravest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.
So, I actually had a very pleasant exchange with him.
Look, there are just things we really believe in as conservatives.
We believe in limited government.
We believe in the Constitution.
We believe in the proper role of the differences in the separation of powers.
We believe in things like life.
I know not everyone is pro-choice in our party, and we accept all comers, but we are a majority pro-life party, and these are things that are important to us.
has gotten more votes than any Republican primary nominee marked right in the history of our country.
And this isn't even over yet.
He hasn't even gone to, like, California yet.
So it's really a remarkable achievement.
So the question is, and this is what we think we can be a party to helping, how do we unify it all?
So this is really a big and growing movement.
How do we keep adding and adding and adding voters while not subtracting any voters?
And to me, that means a positive vision based on core principles, taking those principles, applying them to the problems facing our country today, and offering people positive solutions, and speaking to people where they are in life, addressing their anxieties, and show that we have a better plan.
Okay, so, there are a bunch of things that he says there, all of them are stupid.
So, my favorite, of course, is the part where we clipped in, for those who missed it and you're not watching, you missed the joke, but it's from the Manchurian candidate, okay?
In the Manchurian candidate, a bunch of U.S.
soldiers are kidnapped by the communists, and they are programmed, they're brainwashed.
To be at the behest of the bad person in the movie, but one of the things they're trying to say is they're trying to say that one of the guys from their squad is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most generous human being I've ever met in my life, right?
This is what they're...
Train to say.
And you can see it from from Ryan, right?
He doesn't believe that Donald Trump is a very warm and genuine human being.
Come on.
Come on.
And then when he says my favorite thing here, my favorite thing is when he says that we're not going to just compromise for the sake of compromising.
We're not just going to cave for the sake of caving.
But I can tell you that Donald Trump and we agree on limited government and we agree on the Constitution.
Wait, what?
Uh, no you don't.
No you don't.
Donald Trump doesn't know the word constitution because it has four syllables.
Okay, Donald Trump doesn't know what the constitution is or what it says.
He has never uttered the words limited government.
He doesn't know what a limited executive looks like.
He thinks that judges, justices on the Supreme Court investigate people like Hillary Clinton.
He thinks the President of the United States can unilaterally cut trade deals.
He thinks the President of the United States has the capacity to unilaterally make policy On domestic issues like punishing corporations and raising taxes.
This is all insanity, but what's happening here is that Ryan really has no choice on a practical level.
He has a choice, but he's not going to make it.
He feels like his power is tied up in the House majority for Republicans, which is true.
If Donald Trump doesn't get any votes, nobody's going to show up to vote down ballot either.
He's afraid he loses power in the House, and then he becomes quasi irrelevant.
He becomes the Minority leader again, instead of the Speaker of the House.
So, he's playing this game, and it's the same game that he's played with President Obama a thousand times, and the Republicans constantly play with Democrats.
In this case, Trump is the Democrat, because Trump is a Democrat.
And the game that they play is play, fight, and surrender.
It's play, fight, and surrender.
Oh, I don't know.
I don't know if I can side with Donald Trump.
I don't know if I can do this.
And then, well, but we really have to unify.
It's really important that we unify.
I think that we really have to unify.
And then it is, well, he's making some overtures to me.
I'm really feeling a lot better about things now.
I really think that things are going well.
I think that we're really going to get together here.
So it transitions from opposition to agreement in the matter of a week, right?
Because a week ago, he was saying he couldn't support him.
Now it's obvious he's going to end up supporting him.
And it's just a matter of Trump And whether Trump is willing to say a couple of conciliatory things before he reverses himself and says zero conciliatory things.
I also like the part in this press conference where Paul Ryan said, our policy teams are going to get together.
Somebody said to me today, okay, well, you know, you should really stop complaining about Trump, and you should work on working with his policy team.
Donald Trump does not have a policy team.
He has a group of people who write positions that he ignores at will and has never read.
And Donald Trump doesn't even know his own tax plan, which is why he's disassociated from it.
He doesn't know his own immigration plan, which is why in the middle of a debate, he disassociated from his own immigration plan.
Donald Trump doesn't do policy.
It's not something he's interested in.
He doesn't do the Constitution.
Donald Trump, like Woody Allen, does himself.
That's all he does.
So the idea that Donald Trump is suddenly going to become a policy wonk and you'll be able to convince him to be a conservative Republican... Again, I prefer Bobby Jindal's, he's a sack of crap, but he's my sack of crap, to No, he's really conservative.
We're just sort of working on him, sort of moving him that way.
So they issued a joint statement, did the two of them, Paul Ryan and Donald Trump, from the fantasy suite of the bachelor room.
And here's what the statement said.
It said, "The United States cannot afford another four years of the Obama White House, which is what Hillary Clinton represents.
That is why it's critical that Republicans unite around our shared principles, advance a conservative agenda, and do all we can to win this fall." What's fun about this joint statement is you can actually see which person wrote which part of the statement.
So, the first couple of sentences are all Paul Ryan, right?
Because he used words like shared principles, conservative agenda, right?
Those are things that Trump has never talked about.
Trump is the guy who said on Sunday, it's the Republican Party, not the conservative party.
The statement continues.
This is still, this is still Paul Ryan writing here, right?
Few differences?
While we were honest about our few differences, we recognized that there are also many important areas of common ground.
This is still Paul Ryan writing here, right?
Few differences?
Few differences?
Name issues on which you have complete agreement.
Can we start on that?
He mentions pro-life there.
Donald Trump isn't pro-life.
Anybody who believes that Donald Trump is gonna push pro-life principles is out of his mind.
Out of his mind.
Okay, the only thing Donald Trump might do that Hillary Clinton wouldn't is if there was some magic move and suddenly Republicans kept the House and Senate and the presidency and they passed some sort of pro-life bill.
Maybe then he would sign it, but that's not gonna happen.
Come on.
Let's get real.
He's not gonna appoint pro-life judges.
He doesn't even know what that means.
The statement continues.
That's a Trump sentence, right?
Because it has the word totally.
So that means that we're totally committed to working together to achieve that goal.
This is Trump saying, yeah, I already shlonged Paul Ryan.
He's on my side now.
I've already co-opted him.
He's on my side.
We're totally committed to working together to achieve that goal.
This is Trump saying, yeah, I already, I schlonged Paul Ryan.
He's on my side now, right?
I've already co-opted him.
He's on my side.
And all the rest of this is optics.
It continues, we are extremely proud of the fact that many millions of new voters have entered the primary system, far more than ever before in the Republican Party's history.
Trump sentence, right?
I mean, he uses this in all of his rallies.
And so he says that he's added many new voters.
Ann Coulter today tweeted out, you know, it doesn't really matter if Paul Ryan backs Donald Trump.
Donald Trump has won 10 million votes.
10 million, 10.7, 10.8 million votes.
What's it gonna matter?
What does it matter?
And, that is, legitimately, that is 4% of the electorate.
4% of the electorate.
Okay, so before we get all hot and bothered about him winning 10 million votes, understand, Bernie Sanders will finish the Democratic primaries with probably as many votes as Donald Trump.
And he's gonna lose.
So the idea that Donald Trump is just some world-beater when it comes to driving vote, yes, both for and against.
A record number of voters voted against Donald Trump, too.
Final sentence, this was our first meeting, but it was a very positive step toward unification, and we look very much forward to sharing chocolates and bath oils in the fantasy suite.
So that final sentence was the Paul Ryan sentence.
Okay, so, they're all coming together now, and they're unifying, and it's just glorious, And as I say, this is more damaging to the conservative cause because Paul Ryan played this game.
and they shall dance together into the moonlight.
So it's just lovely.
Meanwhile, Donald, and as I say, this is more damaging to the conservative cause because Paul Ryan played this game.
Again, Paul Ryan saying, "I don't like Donald Trump very much, but he's our guy." That would be better for conservatism than he's actually conservative.
No, he isn't.
He doesn't hold conservative positions.
And you perverting the ideal of conservatism in order to fit your guy is gross.
So, listen.
I voted for Mitt Romney in 2012.
I also said, I made the argument people are now making about Trump.
I don't think it applies to Trump.
I think it did apply to Romney.
He's not fully conservative.
He's much better than the other person.
I don't think Trump is much better than the other person.
I think he's probably going to lose anyway.
And beyond that, I think that he's really, really bad for our argument that we're not a bunch of racist bigot nativists who hate trade and are know-nothings about politics.
I don't think he's helpful to that at all.
I think he's gonna be a smear that we're gonna be running down the rest of our lives.
Okay, so meanwhile, Donald Trump As we said yesterday, he takes every position on every issue.
This is one of the things that Trump sexuals like about him, is that he has more positions than the Kama Sutra.
He said all of this within... So first, let's flashback.
December of 2015.
Here's Donald Trump talking about banning all Muslim immigration to the United States in debate.
We are not talking about isolation.
We're talking about security.
We're not talking about religion.
We're talking about security.
Our country is out of control.
People are pouring across the southern border.
I will build a wall.
It'll be a great wall.
People will not come in unless they come in illegally.
Drugs will not pour through that wall.
As far as other people, like in the migration, where they're going, tens of thousands of people having cell phones with ISIS flags on them, I don't think so, Wolf.
They're not coming to this country.
And if I'm president, and if Obama has brought some to this country, they are leaving.
They're going.
They're gone.
Okay, so he says all that and what he means, and as he said, like very strongly at the time, no Muslims in, right?
No Muslims in.
This was his policy proposal.
And as I said at the time, radical Islam provides a danger to the United States.
That means that our screening procedures should be more strenuous for Muslims trying to enter the United States because radical Islam is a subset of Islam.
It doesn't mean that no Muslims ever get into the United States.
I mean, there are Muslims who serve in the United States military.
There are Muslims on our police forces.
It means that you can apply different levels of scrutiny to people based on their ideology.
But this is like saying there should have been no German immigrants during World War II.
Well, it turns out that there are many types of German immigrants, right?
Including Jews who are trying to escape.
There are Muslims who are trying to escape from Syria who may not be the world's worst people, but we have to check them out.
We have to do what we can.
And if we can't check them out, then tie goes to the you don't get in, right?
I mean, if we don't know, you don't get in.
So Trump says that.
He's very strong on it.
Then there's a lot of blowback.
And he gives the same defense of this that he gave about, that we heard him give yesterday, about his ripping on John McCain and POWs.
He said this back in March.
He said, well, when I said it, it was popular.
My polls went up, so it must mean I'm right.
It's a disgrace what's going on.
We have a serious, serious problem.
And when I called for a temporary ban, I thought that was a very bad thing for me to do politically, but I felt I should do it.
And I didn't know that I would go up in the poll as opposed to down.
I did that because I really felt there had to be something done.
Okay, there had to be something done, but he didn't know he was going to go up in the polls.
But now that he's gone up in the polls, everything is hunky-dory, the world has turned in its orbit again, and everything is fine.
By the way, this notion, we talked about it yesterday at length, the kind of might-makes-right notion of Trump, the idea that what he does is popular and therefore it's okay?
is so antithetical, really antithetical, to what the founders stood for.
So I just want to read you this quote from James Madison.
Okay, this is written in 1786.
James Madison to James Monroe, both of them would later be presidents.
James Madison wrote, "There is no maxim, in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which therefore needs elucidation than the current one, that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.
It would be the interest of the majority in every community to despoil and enslave the minority of individuals, and in a federal community to make a similar sacrifice of the minority of component states." In fact, it is only reestablishing, under another name and a more specious form, force as the measure of right.
That's what James Madison had to say back in 1787, 1786, around the time of the Constitution, about this idea that the majority always ought to rule and the majority is always right.
So that's nonsense.
Okay, so anyway, Trump says all this stuff, he says it makes me popular, and now he's gonna give you another position.
If you didn't like those two positions, you could just wait for five minutes.
Here is his new position on the Muslim ban.
Have you decided whether you'll back off on the ban?
I realize it was a temporary ban, but that temporary period could go on forever.
No, it was never meant to be.
I mean, that's why it was temporary.
Sure, I'd back off on it.
I'd like to back off as soon as possible because, frankly, I would like to see something happen, but we have to be vigilant.
There is a radical Islamic terrorism problem that our president doesn't even want to talk about.
All you have to do is take a look at the World Trade Center.
Take a look at San Bernardino or Paris, what a disaster that was.
And so many other locations.
Just last night in Germany, look what happened on the train.
And it's a big problem.
People will have to solve the problem.
But I think by putting together a commission, a group of people that are highly respected in this field, like Rudy and others, I think that could lead to something pretty good.
The ban the way it's described, even as a temporary ban, would have, for instance, barred Amir Hekmati, the Marine who was over in Iran, held prisoner.
He wouldn't be able to come back.
And the Muslims who are serving in our military overseas, they wouldn't come back.
No, they would all come back.
I mean, we have exceptions, and again, it's temporary, and ultimately, it's my aim to have it lifted.
Now, right now, there is no ban, but I would like to see, there has to be an idea, there has to be something, because there are some pretty bad things going on, and I have Muslim friends, great Muslim friends, who are telling me, you are so right, it's, there's something going on that we have to get to the bottom of.
Okay, so he says he's sort of backing off of it now.
I'd like to get rid of it.
I'd like to get rid of it as soon as humanly possible.
Just like all of his other policy positions, just to recount this week, he's flipped on minimum wage twice.
Yesterday, he flipped again, right?
He said he was against minimum wage, then he said he was for minimum wage, then he said he was against minimum wage again, and late last night, He tweeted that he is for minimum wage again.
So he's taken four positions on minimum wage in the last week.
He's flipped on taxes twice this week.
He's flipped on his pro-life positions multiple times during this campaign.
He's now flipped on the Muslim ban.
It's gonna be real awkward for all you immigration folks when he flips on the wall too.
Because the fact is, let's be real about something.
Donald Trump, the real fact is about immigration, building the wall is great, I'm for it.
If you're not going to deport the people who arrive at the wall, none of it means anything.
None of it means anything.
If you're not deporting anyone, what's happening right now is people are waiting across the Rio Grande and flagging down ICE officers knowing they will not be deported.
So we'll see if Trump has the guts to actually deport people.
I don't think he does.
I think that he'll reverse himself on that when he realizes that it's unpopular and makes him look bad.
So anyway, there's Donald Trump reversing himself on policy once again.
That's the guy that Paul Ryan says he can trust.
We can make a deal with that guy.
Peace in our time.
I mean, he comes out of that meeting waving a paper and shouting, conservative peace in our time.
Yeah, I kind of doubt it.
Meanwhile, it's so clear that everybody has a different standard for Trump than any other politician in the race.
So Mitt Romney, so yesterday Trump said again he's not going to release his tax returns.
And he gave this nonsense, garbage, stupid answer.
And it is stupid.
That he's being audited so he can't release his tax returns.
This is the dumbest thing ever.
You can release whatever you want.
There is no provision of an audit that says that you cannot actually release your tax returns to the public.
There's nothing there that says it.
And there are probably a number of reasons why he doesn't want to release the tax returns.
It probably shows he doesn't give a lot of charity, for one.
It probably shows his income is not nearly what he says it is, for two.
It probably shows that his wealth level is certainly not what he says it is, for three.
There are probably a bunch of things on there that he doesn't like and doesn't want to show.
When Mitt Romney came out yesterday and he said, well, we really should just Force him to do it.
It's inappropriate for anybody not to release their tax returns.
You remember Mitt Romney got smacked with this in 2012 and ended up releasing his tax returns because there was so much pressure.
Former presidential nominee Mitt Romney says Donald Trump's refusal to release his tax returns is, quote, disqualifying.
In a Facebook post, Romney, a longtime Trump critic, says, quote, it is disqualifying for a modern-day presidential nominee to refuse to release tax returns to the voters, especially one who has not been subject to public scrutiny in either public military or public service.
Romney goes on to say, "There is only one logical explanation for Mr. Trump's refusal to release his returns.
There is a bombshell in them.
Given Mr. Trump's equanimity with other flaws in his history, we can only assume it's a bombshell of unusual size." Okay, so there's a guy who actually has seen Trump's tax returns, and he says, he saw it because Trump sued him for libel, because he said that Trump was worth less money than Trump said he was worth.
The case was dismissed.
He says that this is what Trump does.
He doesn't like what you say.
I mean, I'm expecting a lawsuit at any time from Donald Trump.
He doesn't like what you say.
He tries to find an excuse to sue you.
I don't think Donald Trump is worth $10 billion.
I think he's closer.
To a couple of billion, if that.
I really don't think that he's anywhere near the kind of wealth he's talking about.
What this guy says, he says, it's under court order so I can't talk about what's in there.
He says, here are some of the questions that will be answered by his tax return.
This is the way he puts it.
He says, Trump has made the size of his fortune a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, implying it's a measure of his success as a businessman.
He said Trump is not responding to requests for income statements.
Business activities.
He won't make clear how many people he actually hires.
Charitable giving.
Tax planning.
Is he using Overshore's contingencies in order to shield his income?
Transparency and accountability.
How transparent is he with the tax authorities?
So, all these questions remain unanswered.
But it doesn't matter to all of the Trumpkins.
The Trumpsexuals are ardently in love with him.
And if you want to see this in action, Bill O'Reilly, interviewed Lou Dobbs, Lou Dobbs from Fox Business.
I like Lou Dobbs, I like Bill O'Reilly.
They seem like people who've been nice to me in any case.
And Bill O'Reilly asks Dobbs and Dobbs just, I mean, you wanna watch some serious shilling on behalf of Donald Trump, here it is. - Is there anything that Trump has done or said so far in the campaign that you disapproved of? - There are a number of things that I would, well, I'm not gonna give them to you, Why not?
Because you'd be just like the rest of those guys in the national media.
You'd just focus on it.
Instead of talking about America first foreign policy.
I'm asking you.
Instead of talking about border security.
I'm asking you.
Free and fair trade.
Are you kidding me?
You know where I stand on all of those issues.
I'm asking you, as an analyst, if there's one thing that Trump has said or done.
You yourself said it.
I am a superstar host of an important podcast on the Fox Business Network.
You are not willing to say one thing.
It would be so miniscule amongst the many things.
Miniscule.
So bright and so impactful that he is proposing.
Why would you even be interested in such insignificant things?
So are you one of his VP picks?
You know what?
I mean, really, I mean, you know, there's nothing you will say.
He made me promise not to admit that I'm being vetted carefully for the vice president.
Now you know after, and Dobbs is an honest guy.
I applaud his honesty.
But you know you're going to get hammered.
You're going to get people going, how can you analyze this?
How?
You and I. How?
There's nothing that he does if he's Jesus!
How can you analyze them?
How can I analyze them?
Because I have a superior mind that competes, I think, well, at least fairly favorably with your own, August Eminem.
Alright, so let's just recap.
So he's Jesus, and they're joking about how he's Jesus and no one can criticize Donald Trump under any circumstances.
He is a Christ figure, and that means that he's being crucified according to Sarah Palin, and he cannot be criticized according to... By the way, Jesus himself was probably cool with being criticized, right?
Because if he was, in fact, as the Christians claim, the Son of God, God can take it, it turns out.
But the whole thing is just insanity at this point.
That's the story with Trump and Paul Ryan and the continuing worship for the Trump train.
Get on or we run over.
Is there spiel?
Kneel before Zod 2016.
Those of us who refuse to kneel because we believe in principle, well, I guess that we'll just be left out in the cold.
And you know what?
We can deal with that.
Okay, time for some things that I like and time for some things that I hate and then mailbag.
Okay, so things I like.
Best series ever on television in the history of TV is the series Band of Brothers.
If you haven't seen it, you need to go get it right now.
It is a tremendous, tremendous series.
They made a sequel called The Pacific, which is not good.
Don't bother with that.
But Band of Brothers is really, really good.
It's about the war in Europe, and it stars Damien Lewis, who would go on to be in everything from Wolf Hall to Homeland.
Really good actor.
And it's beautifully shot.
Nothing will give you... You put this on Blu-ray and you watch this, nothing gives you the sensation of what the danger and chaos of war must be like more than this series.
Here's a little bit of the preview.
Each trooper will learn this operation by heart, and know his and every other outfit's mission to the detail.
We will drop behind this Atlantic wall five hours before the 4th Infantry lands at Utah.
Easy Company will destroy that garrison. - This is about one old person. - So what made you decide to join the paratroopers?
I wanted to fight with the best, sir.
So it's a wonderful preview for people who can't see.
But it is a magnificent piece of work.
I mean, it's based on Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers, and it's really a magnificent piece of work.
It starts from literally boot camp all the way through to the end of the war.
And it's an amazing, amazing... It's much better than Saving Private Ryan.
I know people love Saving Private Ryan.
This is much, much better than Saving Private Ryan.
It's more complete.
It's more comprehensive.
All right, and it's better, just from a dramatic and a visual standpoint.
It's just as good as Saving Private Ryan from a visual standpoint, and it's better written and better acted.
So it's a really, really good piece of work.
Okay, so things that I hate.
So over the last couple of days, Joe Biden has been out there talking, and one of the things he's been talking about is what he likes to call the Cancer Moonshot.
Well, I didn't know cancer was on the moon, but there you have it.
So the Cancer Moonshot.
This is the idea that we're gonna spend inordinate amounts of federal money in order to research cancer treatments and end the cancer.
Here's, we'll listen to Joe Biden talk about it for a second, then I'll tell you what I don't like about this.
Here's Joe Biden.
I've committed, and I promise before we leave, we will mow down any of the impediments that exist bureaucratically in the federal government to slow up the process.
So cooperation is one key.
Money.
Money.
Money is a key.
And I know that you've asked for a billion dollars.
We will get a billion dollars because this is the, I've been doing this a long time.
This is a truly bipartisan issue.
Okay, so it's a bipartisan issue.
You'll get lots and lots of money.
The barrier... There's always this idea on the left, and it's easy to fall into on the right, too, that all the differences between us curing cancer and not curing cancer is just throwing money at the problem from a federal government perspective.
It isn't true.
It isn't true.
There are certain areas in which the federal government is useful and good, although they screw it up a lot, too, like vaccinations, for example.
Production of vaccinations during an emergency.
There have been times in American history where we've gone into production on vaccines and it's been a complete waste of time, like in the 1970s.
When it comes to cancer, first of all, people think of cancer as one disease.
It isn't.
It's an enormous spectrum of diseases.
There are many different types of cancer.
I'm speaking as somebody, you know, my aunt died at 42 of cancer, of breast cancer.
My other aunt had a preliminary double mastectomy because she was afraid of getting cancer.
My grandfather died of cancer.
My father has had a melanoma.
Like, this is, you know, this...
Is something that everybody in the United States has experienced.
What I'm saying here is I don't like the idea that government is God and if we just give it enough power, it'll cure cancer for us.
It's not true.
What's actually going to cure cancer is not the kind of things the federal government is doing, but the things that the federal government hates on.
Like the pharmaceutical companies, the drug companies that actually produce the research that leads to practical results.
So what the federal government does, they fund grants.
My wife works in the medical industry.
She's worked at a lab.
This is true.
They fund grants.
The grants are for broad-based research.
The idea is supposed to be that this broad-based research is then used to create the drugs that we use to treat the disease.
That is very infrequent.
Usually the way medicines are developed is that it's trial and error, right?
This is why you have animal trials.
It's not like, oh, we're going to go at it conceptually, a priori, blank slate, we just come in, tabula rasa, and we just create it out of our mind.
Instead, what it is, is here's a cancer, we know it exists, let's try a bunch of different things on it and see what works.
That's how can- Medicine is stumbling through the dark.
Science is stumbling through the dark.
That's why the scientific method of hypothesis and failure is the way it is.
It's not come up with a great idea in your head and then later see if it works.
It's we try it.
If it fails, we come up with another hypothesis.
If it fails, we come up with another hypothesis.
So even from that perspective, the idea of mass federal funding is actually a relatively large waste of money.
Certainly the idea of punishing pharmaceutical companies Which is so near and dear to Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton and probably to Donald Trump as well.
This idea is actually horrible because those pharmaceutical companies create the exact drugs that you are going to need if God forbid something happens to you.
Okay.
Time for the mailbag.
So it is a Thursday.
The vaunted mailbag.
Alright.
So, Sylvia writes, Well, you use it as a vehicle.
writes, as a conservative, how do we continue to support the Republican Party when it is so apparently not conservative as Trump has made clear?
Most Republicans seem to have cared less.
He was in many ways the opposite of conservatism.
Well, you use it as a vehicle.
So just like any other political vehicle, the idea is that you nominate candidates inside the Republican Party in order to take advantage of their infrastructure.
Think of the Republican Party as a car that can be driven in many different directions, but we have to determine who the driver is going to be.
The reason I'm not going to get in the passenger seat right now is because Donald Trump was chosen as the driver, and that dude be crazy.
So I'm not going to ride over the cliff with him Thelma and Louise style in the name of unity with the car.
That's not something I'm interested in doing.
Who drives the car matters to me a lot more than the car itself.
Matthew writes, "Question: I think you and Andrew may be missing," Andrew Klavan may be missing, "the key point on the transgender bathroom issue.
By this I mean, Loretta Lynch may well be the new patriarchy's Joan of Arc.
For years our armies have been stymied after the misguided decision to give them the vote, but the wisdom of this is playing out before our very eyes.
Loretta has put the final nail in the coffin of our struggle with female opposition.
When we can watch a woman undress in her own changing room and call her degrading names if she doesn't like it, then make her leave, it's safe to say the victory is ours." It is true the new patriarchy wears a dress.
I think we can all agree this is a small price to pay for all the implied benefits.
That is obviously sarcastic and Matthew funny email.
Yes, it turns out that if you want to destroy the notion of femininity and destroy what it means to be a female, just say that anyone can be one if they say they're one.
Okay, as I said, I watched my wife actually give birth to a child the other day.
Caitlyn Jenner never did and does not belong to the same sex as my wife, and if you think this, you are clinically stupid.
Okay, you are a clinically stupid human being.
I don't even need to meet you.
I can diagnose you right now.
You are dumb, or you're letting ideology blind you to the point where it makes you dumb.
So this is, so it is amazing.
But yes, get rid of all the standards, by the way, and men will win everything.
Right?
Really?
You get rid of all the standards?
Because it turns out, for example, in the workplace, you're not going to need maternity leave.
It's just going to be whoever works the hardest.
Right?
My wife is off work.
She specifically took off more time.
She took off a year with our first baby.
She created her schedule so that she could have more time with this baby, and she's taking maternity leave right at the beginning of her new job.
Right?
I took off, let's see, the baby was born on Saturday, so I took off Sunday, just like I do every week.
Right?
And then I was here on Monday doing this podcast.
If you level the playing field to the extent that the transgender advocates seem to want, where we're all held to the same standard, and if we get rid of the differing standards for men and women, then I'm not sure women are going to like the outcome of this.
As I've said before, transgenderism kills feminism dead.
Okay, Eric says, "While debating leftists about the transgender bathroom situation, many of them argue that gender is nothing more than a social construct.
How do you argue against leftists who use ambiguous genitalia, hermaphroditism, etc. as a basis for disregarding the current system by which we distinguish sexes, i.e.
genitalia and biology.
I assume this is a red herring or a category error on their part.
I'd like to hear your thoughts nonetheless.
Okay, so people have said this about, for example, Kleinfelter syndrome, where somebody is born with XXY genetics.
By the way, Kleinfelter's always register as males.
If you have a Y chromosome, almost, as far as I know, invariably you register as a male.
So the idea of hermaphrodites, people who are androgynous, this goes all the way back to Talmudic times.
I mean, this is actually mentioned in the Talmud on many occasions.
The idea here is not that the categories don't exist.
It's that you have people who are exceptions to the rule.
That doesn't mean the rule doesn't exist.
Right?
If I say to you, all human beings have two eyes, and you say, well, that's not true.
There are people who are born with three.
There are people who are born with one.
Yes, that's true.
Does that mean that human beings don't have two eyes?
No, it doesn't mean that.
It means there are exceptions to every rule.
It doesn't mean that the rule doesn't exist.
To every rule, you can find an exception.
To virtually every rule, there is an exception.
There are folks who don't fit into either category.
That doesn't mean the categories don't exist.
This is one of the stupidest things the left does, is to say that the exception means that the rule no longer exists.
This is silly towns.
As I said about same-sex marriage, people use this on same-sex marriage.
When I say marriage is about the production and rearing of children, and they say, well, what about infertile couples?
Okay, you're right.
Infertile couples cannot produce and rear children.
That does not mean that the category of male-female does not exist anymore when it comes to producing and rearing children.
As I said in a column long ago, okay, this is similar to the argument that you have a car, the ignition on the car is broken.
Thus, it is perfectly viable to suggest to everyone that it is just as effective to put the key in the tailpipe.
No.
False.
This is not how it works, right?
It just means that your car is broken.
It doesn't mean that all cars are broken or all cars operate by putting the key in the tailpipe.
Okay.
Let's see.
Matt asks about Austin Peterson, who's a libertarian candidate, getting a lot of questions about this.
So my problems with Austin Peterson are that I don't agree with Austin Peterson on national defense and the military.
He's isolationist like Ron Paul.
I don't agree with him when it comes to abortion because while he says that he is anti-abortion, he does not really He doesn't really say anything about it, is the truth.
He's a libertarian on that.
He's defending life.
It says, encourage a culture of life adoption and educate Americans about the consistent pro-life ethic, which means abolishing the death penalty.
This is from his website.
Yeah, it requires more than a culture of life.
It requires that the government prosecute abortionists who kill babies, right?
On crime and punishment, he believes that we ought to basically let a lot of prisoners out.
I'm not in favor of the war on drugs generally, but when it comes to people who are distributing hard drugs to children, they should be in jail.
So, there are a lot of problems that I have with some of the libertarian positions.
I agree with some of them, I really disagree with some of them.
You know, Austin Peterson is probably better than Trump, but he's not a conservative, he's a libertarian, and I have significant disagreements with the libertarians.
Okay, I have a couple questions on Judaism.
I don't know how to pronounce this name, I think it's Siabhan?
Not sure.
It says, uh, Hi Ben, congratulations on the birth of your son.
My question stems from curiosity about Shabbat.
This is Jewish Sabbath.
I understand Shabbat rituals include not touching electricity or driving a car or using a telephone, having grown up near the Orthodox synagogue in Newton, Massachusetts.
Do emergencies preclude the observation of rituals, or are such emergencies mitigating actors?
How did that work?
So here's how it works.
So there's a basic rule in Judaism.
It's called pikuach nefesh, and this means that if a life is in danger, then you're allowed to violate the Sabbath.
So, I was allowed to take my wife and I was allowed to jump in the car in an emergency and drive to the hospital.
During the actual procedure, during her labor, we didn't use my phone.
There was a doula there who used my phone to kind of notify people, friends and family what was going on.
But I didn't use my phone, we didn't play music, we didn't use electricity, we did not write, we minimized everything that would be violating Sabbath.
But if you have to break Sabbath in order to save a life or protect health, then you're allowed to do that, and it is save a life, is the general standard.
So that's the standard there.
Okay, speaking of which, as I mentioned, circumcision is happening on Saturday.
A quick word about circumcision, and as I said before, for those who want to cut this off early, enjoy.
So the reason for circumcision...
The basic spiritual concept of circumcision, unlike female circumcision, which does actual damage to a human being, permanent damage that cripples women for life.
Male circumcision has never crippled anybody for life.
Everything is in working order and everything feels great.
So, you don't have to worry about that.
From the medical perspective, most doctors still say circumcision is more healthy than non-circumcision.
It lowers the rates of STDs and penile cancer.
Putting aside the science, the spiritual rationale behind circumcision in the Bible is the idea that if there's one driving force for masculinity, it is the penis, okay?
This is just... men think with their penis far too often, okay?
Your passions control you.
The idea behind circumcision is that you are marking yourself and you are dedicating your highest passions, the things that drive you the most, and the things that can get you in trouble the most, to God.
It's the idea that you're now able to... you're supposed to control yourself.
Every time you look at yourself, presumably, it's a reminder that you are dedicated not to your own hedonism, but to the God who created you, and that's what it's all about.
And that's why one of the blessings that we say over at the circumcision, I'm looking it up right now so I get the text exactly right, because I'll be saying this in a couple of days, so I want to make sure that I get it right when I actually do, is there's a blessing.
And what we say is, what we say is, blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has sanctified us with his commandments and commanded us concerning circumcision.
By the way, cool thing about circumcision in Jewish law, it always happens on day eight.
Day eight is the day in a human being's life when your clotting factors, vitamin K in your blood, is the highest of any time it will ever be in your life.
Which is a cool thing.
So what you actually say is you say, and then you say about your son, just as he was introduced into the covenant, so may he enter the Torah, marriage, and good deeds.
So that's what you say.
And that's the idea here, is that you're entering him into a covenant with God, which means subjecting your own passions, subsuming your own passions for the glorification of God.
And notice the importance of those three things, right?
Torah, which is our rule book, marriage, which is how you become a better person and generate children, And good deeds.
And the idea, again, is that your passions should be secondary.
Your own personal passions should be secondary to your observance of godly law and making the world a better place according to that law.
So as I tweeted earlier today, he who controls himself, he who masters himself, has no master but God.
So on that note, have a great weekend, and we will see you next week.
I would say don't destroy things while I'm gone, but it's too late.
You already did, so...
You know, apparently we need a biblical, we need a prophetic circumcision of the heart, as they say.
The entire country needs one.
We need to circumcise our hearts, not just our bodies.
And we need to recognize, once again, that this is a country subject to rules, subject to responsibility, not just to libertinism.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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