Ep. 127 - The Media's Pathetic Self-Obsession
David French (who?) could jump in, Donald Trump vs. the media is the media's favorite thing, and Ben praises Snoop Dogg. Yes, really. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
David French (who?) could jump in, Donald Trump vs. the media is the media's favorite thing, and Ben praises Snoop Dogg. Yes, really. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Last week, California State University Los Angeles held a healing space to provide a safe forum for students and professors to unleash their feelings about my campus speech back in February, sponsored by Young America's Foundation. | |
That speech, as you may recall, was originally canceled by the university president, William Covino. | |
After I decided to go to the campus anyway, hundreds of screaming students blocked the doorways and they assaulted prospective speech goers and pulled the fire alarm. | |
Professors egged on the protesters. | |
One even threatened student organizers. | |
I was forced to enter through a back door. | |
I exited, surrounded by a full phalanx of armed and uniformed officers, thanks to the near-riotous conditions outside. | |
So, naturally, the professors and students who caused the commotion had some hurt feelings. | |
At their little get-together, Covino announced he would, quote, never have anybody like Ben Shapiro to campus. | |
Covino fretted that, very tragically and unfortunately, somebody like me could show up on campus again. | |
Meanwhile, Professor Malina Abdullah, who is the chair of the university's useless Pan-African Studies Department, said I had advocated, quote, anti-blackness. | |
She called me a neo-Nazi. | |
After realizing it was sort of awkward to label an Orthodox Jew a neo-Nazi, she then shifted her language slightly and she said that I was a neo-KKK member. | |
She said students came to her feeling Traumatized by a speech they definitely didn't hear and feeling brutalized physically, emotionally, and mentally by me. | |
I spent the bulk of my speech talking about how racial diversity was irrelevant, diversity of viewpoint mattered. | |
This was enough to drive chaos and insanity at the school for months. | |
Apparently, quoting Martin Luther King, which I did, makes me a Neo KKK member. | |
Meanwhile, David Duke, who's the former KKK Grand Wizard, has labeled me an enemy of the KKK. | |
I've been hit daily on Twitter by certain alt-right white supremacist Donald Trump supporters labeling me a cuck, which means a weak-kneed leftist who wants to watch his wife have sex with a black man. | |
Prominent Breitbart News columnist and provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos tweeted a picture of a black child at me upon my announcement of the birth of my second child, a boy. | |
The neo-Nazi Daily Stormer routinely attacks me. | |
Some of Trump's alt-right fans tweeted that I, along with my wife and two kids, Should be sent to the gas chambers, those joyful pranksters, as Milo likes to call them. | |
This is the toxicity of our crazy politics. | |
The campus left... | |
Enthused by people like Bernie Sanders and sought by Hillary Clinton, call anybody who disagree a Neo-KKK member. | |
The KKK, meanwhile, calls anybody who won't support Donald Trump a cuck. | |
This is what happens when basic American principles are no longer taught. | |
This is what happens when grievance politics replace the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. | |
If you speak in favor of free speech, it makes you a pariah for those who would control speech in order to build their own magical utopia. | |
So, what happens to people like me who really hate the KKK and think the Black Lives Matter movement is terrible? | |
What about those of us who think white nationalism is despicable and that the censorious brutality of the diversity clique is gross? | |
Well, we've got a bit of a long road. | |
We're gonna have to teach a new generation from scratch that freedom and liberty still matter regardless of race. | |
We'll have to attempt to restore the notion of a social fabric rather than the racial tribalism that now seems to dominate our conversation. | |
We'll have to stand against authoritarianism, unfortunately, from both sides. | |
I'm Ben Shapiro. | |
This is The Ben Shapiro Show. | |
So first of all, let me lead off by saying it's time for you to subscribe to Daily Wire. | |
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Go to dailywire.com right now and subscribe. | |
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And there will be videos today that you are definitely going to want to see. | |
So, let's begin. | |
Okay, so the big news of yesterday is that Bill Kristol, who's the editor of the Weekly Standard and an ardent Never-Trumper, He has come out and he says that he now has the guy he thinks is going to run a third-party candidacy against Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. | |
And this person is David French, Mark Halperin of Bloomberg. | |
He's the one who announced this yesterday. | |
But wait! | |
Everybody wants to know who's the independent candidate who Bill Kristol has been touting. | |
According to our sources, we can now report that the man being hired by Crystal is a conservative lawyer, writer, and Iraqi war veteran named David French. | |
You've probably not heard of him. | |
We hadn't either. | |
The big guessing game has been going on since Crystal tweeted this weekend that he has a candidate in mind who he said would be a strong candidate. | |
John and I both talked to French and Crystal late this afternoon. | |
Both of them declined to comment, but here's what we know. | |
French is a staff writer for the National Review. | |
He lives in Tennessee with his wife and three kids. | |
We reached him tonight. | |
He was traveling. | |
He says, he declined to comment, but the two Republican sources were too intimately familiar with what Crystal has in mind, says that while French has not made a final decision, that is indeed who Crystal was talking about. | |
And John, he wrote about French in the current issue of the Weekly Standard, kind of hiding him in plain sight. | |
Okay, so the fact is that David French has, let's give a little bit of information about David French. | |
So first of all, David French, nobody knows who he is. | |
I know who he is because I follow National Review, and I've read his stuff, and I'm a big fan of his writing, and have been for a very long time. | |
Here's his basic biography. | |
He graduated from Harvard Law School, and then he became a constitutional lawyer for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, so if you like how the campuses are going, That's exactly what David French is trying to fight. | |
He's trying to stop the censorious left, the people who want to stop free speech on campus and rip on religious people on campus. | |
He worked also for the American Constitutional Law and Justice Society. | |
So he's worked for a bunch of right-wing Conservative, constitutionalist organizations as a lawyer. | |
After 9-11, and after the beginning of the Iraq War, he was sitting around, and he was reading about how the Iraq War was going really badly, and he realized that he felt like he wasn't doing his part. | |
So even though he had a couple of young kids, he signed up for the Iraq War. | |
You can see he's a middle-aged guy in this particular picture, and he signed up as a middle-aged guy to go fight in Iraq. | |
He did a tour in Iraq, came back, and now he is a lawyer in Tennessee. | |
So, Everybody is asking the question, who is this guy? | |
Why is this guy even here? | |
So, first things first. | |
Do I think it's a good idea for conservatives to run a third party candidate? | |
I've said before, I'm not sure that it's a good idea for conservatives to run a third party candidate for a few reasons. | |
First of all, I think that it won't work. | |
He's not going to beat Hillary or Trump. | |
I don't think that it appears non-desperate. | |
It appears desperate. | |
It looks like he's just, like Crystal was just searching for somebody and grabbed somebody and threw him out there. | |
It minimizes the level of actual disenchantment with Trump and Hillary because there are gonna be a lot of people who don't vote for David French who don't like either Trump or Hillary Clinton and Also, there's something to be said for the idea that the Trumpsters sort of deserve what's coming to them in November. | |
That if you ardently supported Donald Trump and now you say it's the Trump train or be run over, that what happens in November basically ought to be on you. | |
Now, with all of that said, I think there are some good arguments in favor of David French. | |
By the way, I would vote in a heartbeat for David French above both Hillary and Trump. | |
And it would not take any... I'd vote for David French. | |
In probably a primary. | |
David French is a very, very good thinker. | |
David French is a real constitutional thinker with a sterling personal record. | |
He's obviously a veteran. | |
And there are a lot of things to recommend David French. | |
Let me explain to you six reasons why I think it's good for the country that David French is going to be running, apparently. | |
First of all, I like the fact that he's a relative unknown. | |
So everybody's going, oh, he's not famous. | |
He's not famous. | |
Good, good. | |
Really, I think this is a good thing for America. | |
It's good for America for the critique of a candidate to be about his ideas and not about his persona. | |
We've had a year of Donald Trump and all of his various scandals and all of his various peccadilloes and all of his various personality quirks analyzed on the front page of your daily paper. | |
We've had 20 years. | |
How about we get somebody who's just a normal person? | |
You know, somebody who's not famous? | |
Somebody who didn't make his money off The Apprentice? | |
Or off riding her husband's coattails to the White House? | |
I like the idea of somebody who just has principles but isn't famous running for the highest office in the land, because I care about the principles. | |
I don't care about the level of fame. | |
And here's the thing. | |
Nobody's going to know what to talk about with David French except for principles when he's on the air, because they don't know anything about him. | |
So what are they going to say about him? | |
They don't get to talk to him about whether he molested people. | |
They don't get to talk to him about whether he said he wanted to have sex with his daughter. | |
So they're actually going to have to talk with him, presumably, about issues. | |
So I like that. | |
He's also honest. | |
I mean, I've read David French, and the nice thing about French is no one expects him to do any damage in this campaign, so he can say whatever he wants. | |
He can say what he thinks. | |
All of the Trump people keep saying, well, Trump is honest. | |
He's honest. | |
He says what's on his mind. | |
No, sometimes Trump says what's on his mind, and sometimes he's lying to you, and he changes his mind every so often. | |
So, you don't really get the full, honest Trump. | |
You never get the full, honest Trump. | |
French, you actually will. | |
You'll get the full, honest French, because he has nothing to lose. | |
He has nothing to lose. | |
Third reason. | |
The fact that he's an Iraq war vet is pretty cool. | |
Here's what he wrote about being an Iraq war vet, why he joined up the military as a middle-aged guy. | |
America wasn't too soft to fight a long war. | |
I was too soft and I had no excuse. | |
Think about that wounded officer. | |
Did he love his wife less than I loved my wife? | |
Did he love his kids less than I love my kids? | |
Yet he was risking everything and I was risking nothing, so I enlisted. | |
I became a JAG officer in the US Army. | |
And deployed to Iraq as part of the surge in 2007, attached to the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. | |
I prayed throughout my deployment, every night when I fell asleep, every time a friend and brother fell, every time I put on my gear, we called it battle rattle to go outside the wire. | |
No assurance came. | |
No assurance ever came. | |
Now, granted, Donald Trump, that tough guy Donald Trump, did survive his own personal Vietnam while attempting to avoid STDs during the go-go 80s. | |
This is what he actually called it, because it was his own personal Vietnam, quote, I feel like a great and very brave soldier. | |
Granted, I mean, that's real bravery. | |
And Trump did go to a military high school, which is basically like serving in the military, except not like serving in the military. | |
And he did dodge the draft, of course. | |
And granted, I mean, Hillary Clinton did get four Americans killed in Benghazi and then blamed a video, and tried to mandate when she was in the White House that military members not be able to wear the uniform in the White House. | |
And she did try to join the Marines as a woman, specifically in order to try and call them out for sexism. | |
But, I mean, we can't all be heroes. | |
I mean, David French can't rise to those standards, but still, I think that's kind of nice what he did. | |
Fourth, he's a constitutional scholar. | |
He actually knows something about the document. | |
So watching him argue with Trump or Hillary, if they actually gave him the time of day, which they probably won't, watching him argue with them would be entertaining, to say the least, since he's actually read the Constitution, which puts him one up on Donald Trump, and actually believes in the Constitution, which puts him one up on Hillary Clinton. | |
Fifth reason. | |
He's actually a family man. | |
So, one of the attacks on David French that was brought up immediately upon the Immediately upon this whole thing breaking was by Kevin Robillard of Politico. | |
He tweeted this section about David French. | |
It was from a National Review article. | |
Before David left for Iraq, he and Nancy put together rules, Nancy's his wife, in a painfully honest conversation about human frailty. | |
There would be no drinking during the year of separation. | |
Nancy would not have phone conversations with men or meaningful email exchanges about politics or any other subject. | |
She wouldn't be on Facebook where the ghosts of boyfriends past could contact her. | |
When Nancy innocently started emailing about faith with the man associated with the radio show she was on, she told David about it and he asked her to end the relationship. | |
David knew with his stomach clenching that the most intimate conversations a person has about are about life and faith, and that spiritual and emotional intimacy frequently leads to physical intimacy. | |
So Robillard tweeted, when David French was in Iraq, he wouldn't let his wife email men or use Facebook. | |
That's not what that says. | |
What that says is that he and his wife jointly agreed that there were certain restrictions they would place on themselves so they didn't put themselves in risky situations. | |
Which, by the way, every married couple does, to one extent or another. | |
And I assume that if you're gone for two years overseas, those restrictions would have to be a little bit more heavy-handed than me going to the supermarket. | |
Now, granted, I mean, granted, the man has, clearly, he has marital issues. | |
He doesn't have a joyful three marriages like Donald Trump, with children from all of them and his wife raising them, and he hasn't made jokes about having sex with his own daughter. | |
Granted, I mean, he doesn't have a great family life like Donald Trump, and granted, he doesn't have a great family life like Hillary Clinton, defending her husband against charges of rape by attacking the rapist. | |
And it's not like David French has great children. | |
It's not like he adopted a kid from Ethiopia, which he did. | |
He adopted a kid from Ethiopia. | |
And here's what he wrote about adopting his daughter. | |
I think he has three kids, this is the third, from Ethiopia. | |
He says, In 2010, we adopted Naomi, our beautiful youngest daughter. | |
She's from Ethiopia. | |
For those who have not adopted, it's difficult to fully communicate the immediate intensity of the connection. | |
I remember looking at her sleeping in the crib the night we arrived back in America and feeling indescribably blessed. | |
The same feeling I had with our older biological kids, just with more jet lag. | |
And she is one incredible, joy-filled little girl. | |
We grow more thankful for Naomi every day. | |
She's the light of our lives. | |
We pray every night for the strength and wisdom to be the parents God intends for us to be. | |
This immediately was met with tweets from Donald Trump supporters calling his daughter, and this is a direct quote, a nigglet, which is the N-word, but for a child, apparently. | |
And a picture of Donald Trump hitting the button on a gas chamber with a black girl inside it. | |
So, granted, I mean, David French doesn't have delightful people like that supporting him, but, you know, at least he seems like a decent guy. | |
Finally, final reason why David French would be good, he's an alternative. | |
So, There are a lot of people who are worried that those of us who don't support Trump will be blamed if he loses. | |
If Donald Trump loses because David French draws too much support, that just demonstrates what a weakling Donald Trump is as a candidate. | |
Five people in the United States know who David French is. | |
I'm one of them, but very few people know who David French is. | |
If David French starts to draw 10-15% of the vote, that's a testament to the fact that Donald Trump is insanely weak. | |
Right? | |
You would figure that the Trump people, who are super confident about their man, they would look at David French and they'd laugh. | |
They'd go, oh, David French? | |
I never even heard of this guy. | |
Like, that's gonna go anywhere? | |
But instead, what I'm seeing is people very angry that somebody named David French is running. | |
They don't even know who he is, but they're very angry that he would be running because Trump can only run unopposed and hope to win is sort of the idea. | |
In reality, do I think that French's candidacy will go anywhere? | |
No, I don't think that he's going to win a ton of votes. | |
I don't think David's going to win a lot of votes. | |
I can't predict anything because this election cycle is not predictable. | |
I don't think he's going to get a lot of votes, but his campaign will be worthwhile. | |
And one of the reasons his campaign will be worthwhile is because of what I said in the intro here. | |
America has been lacking. | |
The capacity to even have basic conversations about constitutional freedoms, and our candidates are not going to have those conversations. | |
Our candidates are not interested in those conversations. | |
Donald Trump wants to talk about how the press is mean to him, and Hillary Clinton wants to talk about how Donald Trump is mean to everybody, and that's the level of our political conversation. | |
David French is actually going to talk about values. | |
I would love to see a campaign based on that. | |
I would love to see a campaign based on that. | |
I think that that would be something that's worthwhile. | |
All that said, the media's addicted to its own gas fumes. | |
The media, they're, as a friend of mine likes to put it, they're the kinds of folks who fart in closed cars and enjoy the smell. | |
And the media are really, they're very upset that David French, anybody would deign to To jump into a race that's so clearly going to be won by these famous people that they made famous, like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. | |
How dare anybody try to jump into a race, edge into a race, that the media doesn't run? | |
So, Mika Brzezinski, who, she along with Joe Scarborough, big Donald Trump fans, she's very upset about this. | |
She's Bill Kristol, who recruited David French. | |
He needs to take a long vacation. | |
I never saw this coming. | |
Literally. | |
I never saw this coming. | |
I think Bill needs to take a vacation. | |
No, like a long one. | |
Okay. | |
And not that there's anything wrong with this. | |
Okay. | |
He hinted over the weekend at the possibility of a third party candidate to rival Donald Trump. | |
Now remember, it was the possibility of a third party candidate to rival Donald Trump. | |
Okay, so that's got to be someone... Uh, big. | |
Big! | |
And aggressive, and somehow has got that talent that can punch back and yet lead the country in the right direction. | |
Immediate recognition. | |
A political ally. | |
You gotta have immediate recognition. | |
Well, now we know who this person might be. | |
Mark Alperin, John Heilemann, Bloomberg Politics News yesterday. | |
I love the guy. | |
He's a great guy. | |
He's been on our show. | |
Okay, so it's all dismissive. | |
He's not famous. | |
He's not famous. | |
Okay, so I got this argument also from my co-host in the morning. | |
I do morning radio here in LA. | |
And he was very upset about this. | |
And you can see that the media is very, excuse me, very upset about this. | |
It's just terrible. | |
How dare anyone? | |
How dare they? | |
I mean, come on. | |
What has the country come to? | |
If this is where you draw the line as to what the country has come to, if where you draw the line is not the nomination by a major party of a felon, if where you draw the line is not the nomination by a major party of a know-nothing, isolationist, alt-right idiot, if where you draw the line is a constitutional attorney with a Harvard Law background and Iraq War experience, if that's where you draw the line because you don't know who he is, you're shallow. | |
You're shallow. | |
If that's where you draw the line, it's because you're shallow. | |
Because you want a celebrity politician. | |
You want somebody you know and you feel comfortable with. | |
You're too lazy to do the research yourself. | |
Because the fact is, conservatives who are not voting for David French, let me ask you this. | |
A vote for Trump is a vote for Hillary. | |
You could be voting for David French. | |
A vote for Trump is a vote for Hillary. | |
I mean, you're preventing David French from being the president. | |
Or somebody good like David French from being the president. | |
And by the way, you vote for Trump, and you're gonna get half Hillary no matter what. | |
The only question is whether you get the full Hillary or authoritarian Hillary. | |
So this idea that French running is the end of the world, look, again, do I think French is going to win? | |
No, but I think it is. | |
What I like about it is his entry into the race provides clarity on a few crucial questions. | |
Do you value principle over party? | |
Do you care about the Constitution or do you just care about quote unquote winning? | |
Do you think that Donald Trump is the best conservative in the race? | |
These are questions that I think people ought to answer, and that's what I like about this. | |
It's a crystallizing moment, whether you vote for David French or you don't vote for David French. | |
And I, again, hear the argument, you gotta vote for Donald Trump because only he can beat Hillary Clinton. | |
David French has no shot at beating Hillary Clinton. | |
Okay, I guess that argument still holds. | |
But you have to acknowledge that you're rejecting principle in favor of the lesser of two evils. | |
That's because now you have a choice. | |
You do have a choice. | |
But you're not going to take that choice because the reason that David French is not going to be a viable candidate is because people think they have to vote for Donald Trump in order to stop Hillary Clinton. | |
They think Trump has a better shot of stopping Hillary than somebody who actually is a decent human being like David French. | |
Well, you know, then there's the argument, and then the entire media is on the side of this. | |
So Charles Krauthammer says it's a mistake to run a third-party candidate. | |
I actually agree, it may be a mistake generally to run a third-party candidate, but as long as there's going to be one, I think that in many ways French is almost the ideal, because he's not going to, quote-unquote, steal the election from Trump. | |
He's going to be coming from nowhere. | |
He's not going to jump in with a base of 15% support. | |
He's not somebody who's going to, quote-unquote, split the vote with Trump to allow Hillary in. | |
He's going to be building on the basis of conservatism and we'll see how far that building gets him. | |
Here's Charles Krauthammer saying that a third-party candidacy is not a good idea, however. | |
Sure, but until you put the name behind it, you don't know where the numbers fall. | |
Last word. | |
Whatever name it is, I think it's a mistake. | |
For conservatives to run another candidate with the explicit intent essentially of blocking Trump from winning. | |
Either he's going to win. | |
He is the nominee of the GOP chosen by the people. | |
He's either going to win or not. | |
And if he doesn't win, he should not be able to claim he was stabbed in the back. | |
That would be a terrible mistake in the future. | |
And that's the argument that I've heard, and I think it's a good argument that Trump is going to start his whole stabs-in-the-back myth and anybody who didn't back Trump is going to be on the table. | |
Okay, if I back David French and he gets 100,000 votes and Donald Trump loses by 10 million votes, that ain't on me. | |
That's on Trump. | |
Okay? | |
Because I voted for the guy. | |
Ralph Nader can only be a spoiler in Florida. | |
Ralph Nader can only be a spoiler in a state that's so close that Ralph Nader is the margin of difference. | |
A Ralph Nader isn't the spoiler in a Barack Obama versus John McCain election. | |
And the same thing holds true here. | |
Either David French, one of two things happens, either he's wildly successful beyond his imagining, in which case it underscores how weak Trump was, or David French doesn't go anywhere, in which case me voting for David French is not going to make any difference in this election, because he's not going to have enough votes to actually make a difference, he's not going to be the margin of difference. | |
In this election. | |
But the part again that's amazing is that Chris Matthews, you know, he's out there smacking third party talk and he's very upset with the third party talk because obviously that would take control out of the hands of a media that have generated Hillary and Trump. | |
That's what we can't get past here, folks. | |
The media created Donald Trump. | |
He's an apprentice guy for 20 years. | |
The media created Hillary Clinton. | |
She was a nothing. | |
She was the first First Lady to actually be considered as a political candidate. | |
She's a nothing of a nothing. | |
And the media created her and made her a hero. | |
Here's Chris Matthews going after the third-party talk. | |
Number two, I think... Can they win states? | |
I don't know if they can win states, but that's really not, at this point, the objective, okay? | |
The objective here is to get to 15%. | |
This is a step-by-step process for them. | |
But it's not just to get to 15%, it's to keep... So what do you think, a country should be governed by somebody who loses a three-way race? | |
Is it good for the country to be governed by somebody who loses a three-way race? | |
What happens? | |
Ralph Nader gets 92,000 votes in Florida. | |
Al Gore loses Florida. | |
That's not what this is about. | |
This is anti-Trump, anti-Hillary Clinton. | |
But, you know, even as the... First of all, I don't think the country's ready for the Libertarian Party. | |
And if the country begins to sort of look at Libertarians... | |
If they're going to try to reach out to the quote-unquote Obama coalition and go after women and African-Americans, people are going to start asking questions like, for example, when Johnson over the weekend said he would have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1954. | |
Why don't we get booed? | |
The real choice is between the top two. | |
Exactly. | |
So one of them will be president. | |
The question is, don't we want honest voting? | |
You vote for the person you want against the other person. | |
You start voting for third or fourth party candidates. | |
You are not actually deciding who you want. | |
But at some point a third or fourth party candidacy has to begin to take hold. | |
This is the perfect cycle for that to happen if it's going to happen. | |
However, the Libertarians are not going to appeal primarily to disgruntled Democrats, okay? | |
Okay, so Chris Matthews, you can see the media, they're just flustered. | |
What do we do with this? | |
What do we do with this? | |
Meanwhile, I do have to point out one thing that's ironic. | |
Mitch McConnell, who so many of the Trump people think is just, he's the establishment, he's terrible, Mitch McConnell. | |
As always, as soon as Mitch McConnell swings behind Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell becomes a working class hero. | |
So here's Mitch McConnell going after Bill Kristol, and all the Trumpsters were tweeting this today. | |
Well, I hope he's not successful because that will help elect Hillary Clinton to the presidency. | |
It's hard to run as an independent and be successful. | |
You could conceivably take votes away from a right-of-center nominee and make it more likely that a liberal gets elected president. | |
So I like Bill Kristol. | |
He's a smart guy, but I hope he's unsuccessful in this effort. | |
And the Trump people suddenly love Mitch McConnell. | |
They found love for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. | |
And so the fact that they're all of a sudden getting behind Mitch McConnell demonstrates that this is, at least for a segment of the Trump base, a cultish support for Trump, not a principled support for Trump. | |
But again, I think one of the things that's been driving Trump is the media. | |
If you want to make sure that you get media attention, attack the press because they are self-obsessed They exist in a world of mirrors and cameras. | |
All they care about is themselves. | |
And that was, nowhere was that more obvious than yesterday. | |
Donald Trump did a press conference yesterday, we talked about it, in which he called the press sleazy and he said they were terrible. | |
And the press, kind of, they're like an abused woman, the press. | |
They hate it, but they sort of love it. | |
You know, the girl who you really should get out of there because your husband's a terrible person, please leave. | |
But she keeps going back because she feels like she deserves it? | |
It's not even that. | |
They don't think they deserve it. | |
They actually like the attention. | |
They're so sick that they like the attention no matter what. | |
So they're obsessed with this stuff. | |
They love it. | |
They can't stop talking about Trump because if they're battling with Trump, then the story is about them. | |
I remember when Barack Obama started cracking down on the press. | |
He started cracking down on the AP and he was wiretapping them. | |
And people like me were saying, well, where were you guys when they were doing this to other people? | |
And the answer was they didn't care when it was everybody else. | |
The press cares about the press. | |
They're very upset with Obama when he attacks the AP. | |
They're not as upset about President Obama when his IRS is attacking Friends of Abe, right? | |
That's that's a different thing. | |
So, watch the press obsession with itself. | |
Chris Cuomo, who, again, should not be anywhere near a television studio. | |
I mean, Chris Cuomo, who is the brother of Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, and the son of Mario Cuomo, who's the former governor of New York. | |
Chris Cuomo is now an anchor at CNN. | |
He's talking to Katrina Pearson. | |
And look how self-upset. | |
I mean, this is just such a self-absorbed interview. | |
Here we go. | |
Katrina, when you don't like what I say, do you call me an idiot? | |
No. | |
Why not? | |
Why is it okay for Donald Trump to do it, but not for you to do it right now with me? | |
This is your chance. | |
You don't like the reporting? | |
You don't like how I put the questions? | |
You're not going to call me something like that, right? | |
Why is it okay for him to do it? | |
Well, it depends. | |
If you're attacking me personally, I might call you an idiot, but you don't do that. | |
And we are talking about the issues. | |
And Mr. Trump is being attacked personally on a daily basis by many in the media. | |
How? | |
Has anybody ever said Mr. Trump? | |
Mr. Trump, you're an idiot, aren't you? | |
Nobody's ever asked him a question like that, to invite this kind of invective. | |
And again, the media... | |
Absolutely. | |
I do. | |
No, absolutely. | |
At Chris, there was a debate where he was actually asked if his campaign was a clown and if it was an act. | |
I mean, of course he's been attacked personally by the media and you see it in social media as well by reporters specifically. | |
And look, it's not just Mr. Trump that doesn't trust the media and believes that they're dishonest. | |
I mean, Gallup tracking shows- That's absolutely true. | |
Okay, and it's both ways. | |
He's right. | |
He loves the media, and the media loves Trump. | |
That's why he does it. | |
I would argue that's why he does it, because Donald Trump loves the media more than you ever have on your best day. | |
He loves the media. | |
He works the media. | |
He uses it. | |
He appreciates its value and it has served him well. | |
And it's both ways. | |
He's right. | |
He the media. | |
He loves the media and the media loves Trump. | |
They love Donald Trump. | |
So you got Chris Cuomo. | |
And this is why they love covering Trump. | |
Because Trump will talk about the media to the media, the media will talk about itself to Donald Trump. | |
By the way guys, great dating strategy, just ask a girl questions about herself. | |
Everybody loves to talk about themselves, right? | |
And this is nowhere more true than the media. | |
The media love the media! | |
Of all the people in the United States, the media love. | |
The media are number one on their list. | |
I mean, it's Woody Allen's old line about self-pleasure, right? | |
At least it's sex with someone he loves. | |
That's how the media treats itself. | |
So if you're talking about the media, then the media loves it. | |
They're so happy with all of this. | |
And you can see that the media, even when they're angry at Trump, they still love that they get to talk about themselves as the righteous defenders of truth. | |
So CNN's Dana Bash, she was blasting Trump yesterday because she says, well, Trump's attacking us for no reason. | |
We're the great defenders of truth. | |
Instead, what did he do? | |
He attacked the press, as you said, as sleazy, as dishonest, multiple times. | |
And, you know, not to get too corny about it, but it is the press. | |
Number one, it is our job to ask questions, particularly of public figures. | |
Especially somebody who wants to be the leader of the free world, when they make a promise, and they do it in a very public way, like you did with this big rally for veterans, to say, it is our job to say, where's the money? | |
Where did it go? | |
How much did you raise? | |
It is a fundamental requirement and responsibility of a free press. | |
Makes us different than North Korea or other places. | |
And he hasn't had to answer questions like this in his prior life. | |
He's been a public figure for decades and he hasn't had to answer questions because he's been a public figure in the press, if you will. | |
Dana Bash loves this. | |
Dana Bash is the same person who attacked, who was it, Major Garrett for going after President Obama too hard, but here she's a crusader for truth. | |
This is what she loves. | |
Dana Bash is in love with the idea that she is the great crusader for truth. | |
And the media loves this stuff. | |
I mean, they love it. | |
Trump talks about the media. | |
It's just a giant echo chamber. | |
Just a giant echo chamber. | |
Then there are the people who are actually in love with Donald Trump. | |
So last night, breaking news, Sean Hannity's gonna vote for Donald Trump. | |
I know. | |
Don't be surprised. | |
It'll be okay. | |
We'll get through it together. | |
Sean Hannity announced that he would vote for Donald Trump, and it got pretty romantic, actually. | |
I am not the corrupt press. | |
I am, uh, I'm actually the conservative here. | |
You happen to be right about that. | |
Yeah, well, I'm an opinion show, and I don't hold back that I'll be voting for Donald Trump in November. | |
All right. | |
Okay, that's, I mean, but that's just the text of what he's saying. | |
We also have the subtext of what he's saying, and here's the subtext of what Sean Hannity is saying. | |
He's saying you really have to sort of subscribe to see this and enjoy it. | |
But slow motion, Sean Hannity endorsing Donald Trump. | |
Love is a many splendor thing. | |
It's the April Rose that all... | |
I did see a very funny tweet about this. | |
Somebody tweeted, I wish my wife looked at me the way Sean Hannity looks at Donald Trump. | |
But there's, I mean, look, Sean's been pushing Trump for a long time. | |
The only thing that's wrong with that, in my view, is number one, don't back Trump, but number two, this idea that you are just as obsequious to the other candidates is clearly not true. | |
But look, Hannity, I love what he says there, even in that clip. | |
Sean Hannity says, I'm not the corrupt press. | |
I'm nice to you. | |
Right? | |
So that's pretty spectacular. | |
He's not the corrupt press. | |
He's nice to Donald Trump. | |
And meanwhile, you got the corrupt press saying to Donald Trump, we're not the corrupt press. | |
Let's give you lots of media coverage and be nice to Hillary Clinton. | |
So you're all the corrupt press. | |
We get it. | |
You're all the corrupt press. | |
And there's nothing you like better than talking about you. | |
There's nothing you like better than talking about you. | |
So you've got CNN. | |
And this is, this is again, how Trump turns the entire media narrative on its head. | |
And it's amazing. | |
And it's that I've been saying for literally my entire political career, the media is terrible, they lie about conservatives, they're unfair to conservatives. | |
Totally true. | |
Trump comes in, and he says the media is lying, they're terrible, and they treat me unfairly. | |
But he says it about things where they're actually not treating him unfairly, where they're actually saying things that are true. | |
As you mentioned yesterday, it is perfectly in bounds to say, you pledged to give a million dollars to the vets, it's five months later, where's the cash? | |
That is totally inbounds. | |
There's nothing wrong with that whatsoever, right? | |
So the left press attacks him, he calls them corrupt, and then what happens? | |
Members of the right press come to his defense because they're so used to being reactive to the left press that they just come to his defense. | |
So Sean Hannity, he comes out and he says, what, did the press think that you were going to steal the money or something? | |
I mean, why were they even asking these questions? | |
I watched this and I'm thinking, what do they think? | |
You need the money? | |
Do they think you're gonna steal it? | |
You were going through a process, though, of vetting these groups, which, by the way, is a responsible thing to do, right? | |
You want to just feed him the entire defense, Sean? | |
I mean, like, word for word, you want to actually just put your hand up the back of his jacket and control his mouth from behind it? | |
Didn't you think that these charities had to be vetted? | |
That would be the responsible thing. | |
Yes, I think they would be correct. | |
I mean, like, what? | |
It wasn't just Sean Hannity. | |
Bill O'Reilly did the same thing last night. | |
He says that it's terrible that anybody would accuse Donald Trump of holding back. | |
Guys, he said he gave the money five months ago, the day the Washington Post report came out. | |
The day. | |
It's just a big coincidence. | |
That's when the vetting of the charities ended. | |
Big coincidence. | |
Five months, nothing. | |
Report comes out that day he signs a bunch of checks to charities. | |
Here's Bill O'Reilly doing the same routine. | |
The lead is, thank you for giving money to the vets, but he created his own controversy. | |
But why would you say that when there was no data, Colonel, that said he didn't give the money? | |
It was basically a supposition fabricated by anti-Trump people in the press. | |
I mean, there was no data that came out and said Trump is stiffing the vets. | |
There was no accounting that said that. | |
So why would you be so hard on Trump? | |
Okay, we can stop it there. | |
There's no accounting. | |
Okay, you can't prove a negative. | |
You can't prove a negative. | |
If I say, if I say, Lindsey, you need to stop beating small children in your apartment, right? | |
And Lindsey says, well, I don't do that. | |
I say, well, prove it. | |
Prove it! | |
There's no way to prove it, right? | |
There's no way to prove she doesn't beat small children in her apartment. | |
There's no way to prove it. | |
Because she doesn't have a camera in her apartment 24 hours a day. | |
Or if she does, she shouldn't show that tape to anyone because it's weird. | |
But the fact is that this is the same way that... So that's what O'Reilly's saying now. | |
He's saying, well, there was no proof that he didn't give the money. | |
Yeah, there was. | |
None of the veterans group said they'd received the money. | |
That's the best proof that you can offer. | |
But, again, I'm not gonna say that Hannity and O'Reilly are just in the tank totally for Trump, although I think that there's some truth to that. | |
There's also, I mean, listen, Bill O'Reilly's the guy who wanted to have milkshakes with Trump, and Sean Hannity is, I mean, gazing lovingly into Trump's eyes during these interviews. | |
But there's something else, too, and that is they're just reacting to a media that has been habitually and consistently in favor of Hillary Clinton and the left. | |
For example, look, Hillary Clinton, she came out and she talked about Trump not making these contributions and then finally making the contributions. | |
Here's what Hillary had to say about that whole scandal is clip six. | |
What is your reaction to what happened at Trump Tower today? | |
Well, I think the problem here is the difference between what Donald Trump says and what Donald Trump Trump does. | |
You know, he's bragged for months about raising six million dollars for veterans and donating a million dollars himself, but it took a reporter to shame him into actually making his contribution and getting money to veterans groups. | |
I, of course, over the course of my life, I've not only donated personally, but I have worked to provide hundreds of, you know, millions of dollars over time to help our veterans by what I voted for, what I've worked for. | |
Actually, John McCain and I helped raise funds for the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund to build a rehab facility at Brook Army Medical Center in San Antonio. | |
So here's the thing. | |
So that our returning- She's terrible in every way. | |
She's talking about how she raised lots of money for the troops. | |
Yeah, sure. | |
I mean, you used my money for the troops. | |
There's a difference. | |
That's me giving money to the troops. | |
That's not you giving money to the troops. | |
When you tax me and give money to the troops, that's actually my money, not your money. | |
And you ran a $100 billion scam foundation. | |
I mean, the Clinton Foundation. | |
Yeah, no, I don't buy that in any way, shape or form. | |
So people react to that and they say, OK, well, if Hillary says it, then it must be then it must be false. | |
Therefore, Trump must be justified in all of this. | |
The lengths to which people are willing to go to defend Trump. | |
This is why I think the French run is interesting because. | |
It's casting a light on the lengths to which people will go to defend Donald Trump. | |
So last night, I was on with Megyn Kelly. | |
And she had me talking about Donald Trump, of course, because that's all anybody can talk about. | |
And I was on with Robert Wohl, or David Wohl is his name, I think. | |
And David Wohl is a lawyer, he's a very pro-Trump lawyer. | |
And she had me talking about the fact that Donald Trump, during one of his rallies, came out and attacked a judge in his Trump University case. | |
So for people who haven't been following this, Trump University is a scam university Trump set up. | |
It's basically a timeshare company. | |
And what he would do is he would get people into the room. | |
He would upsell them and sell them these really expensive courses on how to make money in real estate. | |
Only one problem. | |
Nobody really ever learned to make money on real estate. | |
They just spent tons and tons of money to get Trump's imprimatur. | |
Trump would tell them things like, I'm gonna come and you're gonna take pictures with me. | |
And then they would actually end up just taking pictures with cardboard cutouts of Trump. | |
They revealed in court filings, court papers, the kind of playbook for people to get people enrolled in Trump University. | |
It's not like Prager University, which is also not accredited, but is a donation-driven system that has an educational product. | |
There is no real educational product, apparently, at least that's the allegation. | |
In any case, Trump was talking about the judge. | |
The judge releases a bunch of documents. | |
The judge happens to be a guy whose parents are Mexican. | |
He was born in Indiana. | |
His parents are Mexican. | |
Naturally, this means that Donald Trump has to attack the judge for being Mexican, right? | |
He doesn't attack him for saying that you're an Obama appointee, or attack him on the grounds that he has associations with groups that Trump doesn't like. | |
Instead, he goes directly to, this guy's a Mexican, that's why he doesn't like me. | |
So, that would be, in any real world, pretty unacceptable, right? | |
Just saying that you're Mexican, therefore, you must not like me. | |
You're Mexican, therefore, you must believe X. | |
Okay, Mexican, it turns out, is not an ideology or philosophy. | |
It's an ethnicity. | |
But it doesn't matter to Trump. | |
So watch, you know, I'm beautiful and handsome here, but watch David Wall, who's the lawyer, because his defense of Trump, this is how far Trump advocates are willing to go in defense of a man. | |
And if you say that this doesn't tear the beating heart out of decency and conservatism, I don't know what does. | |
For Trump, there's some sort of bizarre connection between the ethnicity of the person and the ideology the person must hold. | |
I don't know why him being a Mexican would even be relevant to the conversation, especially when he's not from Mexico and his parents are Mexican. | |
David, why would it be? | |
Yeah. | |
I don't think it is. | |
I think it's a non-sequitur, Megan. | |
Why are you mentioning it over and over when he rips on this judge? | |
I think his ethnicity is Hispanic. | |
He's from Indiana. | |
Non-sequitur, Megan. | |
The issue of him going after this judge, though, I gotta say, how is this any different than Barack Obama in 2010 at the State of the Union when he excoriated Supreme Court justices who were sitting right in front of him? | |
Appropriate and out of line. | |
About the Citizens United case, Megan. | |
Out of line, wasn't it? | |
He intimidated them. | |
He bullied them right in front of him. | |
And you know what, Megan, after that incident... So are you justifying bad behavior by pointing to other bad behavior? | |
Well, Megan, I'm just saying. | |
And you know what? | |
Bill Burton, by the way, who was Obama's press secretary at the time, you've got to listen to this. | |
He said, I'm quoting, one of the great things about our democracy is that powerful members of government at high levels can disagree in public and in private, and this is one of those instances. | |
Wow. | |
This is all it is, Megan. | |
He's got the First Amendment right. | |
He does have issues, as Bambi pointed out, and it's frustrating him because I've reviewed this case. | |
It should have been dismissed. | |
A long time ago, on the summary judgment motion, no question about it. | |
No, no. | |
I mean, Ben is not a lawyer. | |
David and I are lawyers. | |
I completely disagree with you on that. | |
And the Court of Appeals... Actually, I am a lawyer. | |
Oh, I'm sorry, Ben, I didn't know that. | |
And the Court of Appeals, the Court of Appeals actually upheld this. | |
It wasn't all this judge. | |
Listen, you can say that there's no merits to the case and Trump will get his day in court, but to go after the judge as a, quote, Mexican and hater takes it to a different level, Ben. | |
Well, absolutely. | |
And the fact that Trump defenders have to rely on Barack Obama was a bad guy, therefore if our guy does the exact same thing, it's just doubly as awesome. | |
It's typical of the Trump campaign. | |
So you tell me, David, why is it better that Trump did it now that Barack Obama did it? | |
I thought we were running against Barack Obama if we're on the right. | |
The point is, the point is, you know what he said immediately after that? | |
He said, I love the Mexican people. | |
I've got millions of Mexicans supporting me. | |
He clarified it immediately. | |
So, you know, take it out of context. | |
The majority, Megan, the substance of his criticism... | |
Take this opportunity to express my love for the Mexicans. | |
Hey, come on! | |
Well, Megan, you know what? | |
Sometimes you have a slip of the tongue and I submit to you that's all it was. | |
He does it repeatedly! | |
That's the thing that's so crazy about it, David. | |
I don't know why he's doing this. | |
Listen, listen. | |
Nobody give Trump a hard time if he said, I don't like this judge. | |
I don't think he's been fair to me. | |
I'm going to get my day in court. | |
I'm going to win this case. | |
Great. | |
Go for it. | |
That's fine. | |
No, it isn't. | |
What we're debating here is he's taking it a step further, personalizing it, going after the guy's ethnicity, and he does it every time. | |
You know something, Megan? | |
Maybe he misconstrued that membership in the La Raza Lawyers Association. | |
I don't know. | |
There are a lot of people that have gone after him because of his border policy. | |
I don't know whether he felt this judge should recuse himself because of those issues. | |
That's what he's saying now. | |
He doesn't need to recuse himself. | |
There is no basis for the judge to recuse him. | |
This is what he does. | |
He creates a bias where none exists and then demands that the person be removed. | |
That is not the case with this judge. | |
Right after Mr. Trump complained last week about the judge, the judge releases the documents immediately right thereafter. | |
Now I submit to you, does that create an appearance of impropriety? | |
It may well do so. | |
And if he doesn't recuse himself, it may be up to Mr. Trump's lawyers to file the motion for recusal with a different judge. | |
I've done that many times in these circumstances. | |
You don't know. | |
So basically, you insult the judge, and then when the judge does something that he's perfectly allowed to do under the law, and there's a motion before the court in order to release these documents, then you say he has to recuse himself. | |
So you create the issue. | |
You don't find anything? | |
You don't find anything? | |
Hold on, let Ben finish. | |
Hold on. | |
So you create the issue, and then the only solution is for Trump to get what he wants. | |
And by the way, this is a whole slip of the tongue nonsense. | |
When your tongue keeps slipping in the same direction, at a certain point you sort of have to figure that there's a little bit of intentionality to it. | |
The guy's tongue is a slip and slide. | |
He doesn't just slip every so often. | |
Okay. | |
So, you know, the reason I played the whole segment here, beyond the fact that it's wildly entertaining, is if you look at Trump's lawyer, he's spinning every which way. | |
And this is what Trump's defenders have to do. | |
And the media is happy to cover it because with every spin, with every spin, the media either gets to portray itself as the beautiful victors or as stumped by Trump, which means that they're still being Cucked by this wonderful man, by this egregious man. | |
So the media gets to play itself as great in opposition to Trump. | |
Trump's their foil. | |
Or Trump is just a master manipulator of the media and so we're still worshipping at our own altar, right? | |
Because we're the ones who still make the power decisions. | |
It's all about the media for Trump, and that's why it would be wonderful if conservatives would actually stand up for principle and stop backing this nonsense. | |
Because you're gonna go down with this ship. | |
You want this ship? | |
You're gonna go down with this ship. | |
You want to defend Donald Trump calling judges Mexican because he opposes them? | |
It's all yours, baby. | |
I mean, you broke it, you bought it. | |
You said you wanted to break the Republican Party? | |
Well, you did so. | |
And now there's an alternative for you. | |
You may not like it, you may think he's obscure, He may not be as fancy, he may not have the same number of wives, he may not have the Solomon-esque kingdom of horses, but he's somebody who actually believes in principles you supposedly do, so I'd like to see you defend why exactly Trump is your man instead of somebody like David French. | |
Okay, time for a couple of things I like and then a thing I hate. | |
So, couple of things that I like. | |
There's this great show, I think it's the best show on TV, there are two shows I'm in the middle of right now. | |
No, I'll talk about one of them tomorrow. | |
I'll mention it's Man in the High Castle, but I'll talk about that one tomorrow. | |
The other one that I'm really into, and the last episode was last night, is Turn. | |
Turn on AMC. | |
Great, great show. | |
The show is about Washington spying, how he was gathering information on the British, and it really is a fascinating, well-written period Sensitive piece. | |
It's really good. | |
All the characters are really well drawn. | |
Washington plays a major role and is a pretty cool character. | |
It's a terrific show. | |
Here's what the preview looked like for the first season. | |
Are you sure you want him to learn to walk so soon? | |
Well, he's almost a year old. | |
Faster he learns to walk, sooner he learns to march. | |
That's a good point. | |
Law! | |
Where are you taking Selah? | |
Past curfew! | |
Order. | |
You need someone to protect you. | |
Captain, I beg you. | |
Authority. | |
We're celebrating your king's victory in New York. | |
We are the beacon of authority and we bear the burden of that authority. | |
What are you doing here? | |
I saw Ben Talmadge trying to recruit me for a secret mission. | |
Against the British. | |
I won't do it. | |
Why not? | |
I, Abraham Woodhull... What more do they need to take from us? | |
...do sincerely and faithfully promise and swear... Washington's been trying to get a man inside the city since how it took it over. | |
...that I will bear true allegiance to His Majesty King George III. | |
Whatever you're doing, we can't afford to lose you. | |
That was impressive. | |
I know you lied. | |
I'm done protecting you. | |
So it's really good. | |
I mean, the whole show is really terrific. | |
It's getting better and better, actually. | |
It started off solid show. | |
Now third season is really, really good. | |
It's got Benedict Arnold and his whole story in the back story. | |
It's got the story of John Andre, who is the sort of charming spy master for the British. | |
It's a really good show, so you should check it out. | |
It's not kid-appropriate, but it's teenager-appropriate. | |
And it's really, really good. | |
OK, other things that I like. | |
So Snoop Dogg, there's a show on TV. | |
They're doing a remake of Roots. | |
And this remake of Roots is apparently an even less flattering portrayal of white people in America than the original version of Roots. | |
So the original version of Roots by Alex Haley, it turns out a lot of it was fabricated. | |
Which is not to say slavery wasn't horrific, of course it was. | |
But Roots, factually speaking, was fabricated. | |
It was a very big scandal at the time. | |
The new version of Roots says there are no good white people. | |
All the white people are bad, basically. | |
This is what all the reviewers say. | |
Snoop Dogg has now done a video In which he talks about why he's not watching Roots. | |
He has one comment here that I'll quibble with, and then the rest of it is actually pretty spot-on. | |
So, I mean, I can only assume he was high when he did this, because he's high, like, 98% of the time. | |
And the other 2% of the time, he's either sleeping or on the toilet. | |
So, since he was filming a video, I'm gonna assume he was high, but here's Snoop Dogg explaining why he's not watching Roots. | |
No disrespect, but I can't watch no motherf***ing old black movies with n****s getting dogged out. | |
12 years a slave. | |
Roots. | |
Underground. | |
I can't watch none of that. | |
I'm sick of this s***. | |
How the f*** they gonna put Roots on on Memorial Day? | |
They gonna just keep beating that s*** in our heads or how they did us, huh? | |
I mean, I don't understand America. | |
They just wanna just keep showing the abuse that we took hundreds and hundreds of years ago. | |
But guess what? | |
We taking the same abuse. | |
Think about that part. | |
When y'all gonna make a motherfuckin' series about the success that black folks is having? | |
The only success we have is roots and 12 years of slavery and shit like that, huh? | |
Fuck y'all, I ain't watching that shit, and I advise you motherfuckers that's real niggas like myself, fuck them television shows. | |
Let's create our own shit based on the day. | |
How we live and how we inspire people today. | |
Black is what's real. | |
Fuck that old shit. | |
Right, Jews? | |
And then he cuts to a shot of his dog. | |
So, obviously the one quibble I have is when he says that we have the same stuff going on today that was happening in the days of slavery. | |
This is factually incorrect, as noted by the fact that Snoop Dogg is a convicted criminal who's worth a bajillion dollars, mainly because he raps and smokes enormous quantities of ganja. | |
So, the idea that Snoop Dogg is living just as his ancestors lived During the times of slavery, yeah, not so much. | |
But when he says that it would be good to actually provide a vision for young black people in America of what black success looks like, that's exactly right. | |
What you don't need is more victimization TV. | |
And listen, I think we should all know our history. | |
I saw 12 Years a Slave. | |
I think it's an important film. | |
I saw The Original Roots. | |
I have rented that. | |
I think that it was important for what it did at the time. | |
I think that it's significantly more important for black people in the United States and Jewish people, every person in the United States, to see the possibilities of the American dream, what you can do if you put your nose to the grindstone, than it is to talk about all the terrible things that have happened to people who looked like you 150 years ago. | |
Okay, thing I hate. | |
Okay, so Marco Rubio has now endorsed Donald Trump. | |
This is not a huge surprise. | |
It was kind of predictable, and that's not something I like, but I can't say it's something that I truly hate, that it's the worst thing in the world. | |
Some people feel really betrayed by Marco Rubio. | |
I think that Marco Rubio, like most Republican politicians, feels the necessity to rally around the candidate because he feels like he wants a future. | |
In Republican establishment politics and party politics is all about the establishment. | |
So, that's one thing. | |
But Marco Rubio now says that he wants to apologize to Donald Trump. | |
This is the part that I hate. | |
Here we go. | |
And I actually told Donald, one of the debates, I forget which one, I apologized to him for that. | |
I said, you know, I'm sorry that I said that. | |
It's not who I am, and I shouldn't have done it. | |
And I didn't say it in front of the cameras. | |
I didn't want any political benefit. | |
I'm not a candidate now, so I can say that to you. | |
Because, not because of him, but because of me. | |
You know, I didn't like what it reflected on me. | |
It embarrassed my family. | |
It's not who I am. | |
And you did it almost in a sense of, you know, nothing at this point, you know, nothing is working. | |
I mean, this guy is out there every day making, mocking people, saying horrible things about people. | |
But if you respond to him somehow, you're, you know, you're beneath, you're hitting below the belt. | |
And that was my sense of it at the time. | |
What I didn't realize was, you know, it isn't who I am. | |
And if you're not being who you are, It doesn't come across well. | |
And he could do that, because for whatever reason he can do that. | |
But I couldn't do that. | |
It's not who I am. | |
It's not what I do. | |
And by doing it, I ended up hurting myself, not him. | |
Oh my god. | |
Okay, so this whole, you gotta pay homage to Mr. Trump. | |
You know, you gotta go in before unbended knee and apologize for using exactly the same tactics on Trump that he's been using on you. | |
This is sad sack kind of stuff. | |
And the fact is that it's revisionist history to suggest that Marco Rubio lost because he was harsh with Trump. | |
No, the reason he lost is because he lost. | |
He was already trailing in the polls in Florida by the time he decided to go after Trump. | |
It was too late. | |
Trump had already been defined in the public mind. | |
There was not much that he could do there, but it's just, it's, it's... | |
Sad that this campaign has basically come down to a bunch of people now going on bended knee before Donald Trump. | |
There's nothing wrong with going after Donald Trump in the manner that he attacks you. | |
I'm not a civility guy, and I don't think that civility is necessary when you're talking about a Bulgarian like Donald Trump. | |
I think it makes you look like a fool. | |
Okay, final thing that I hate. | |
So UCLA, there's apparently a shooting today at UCLA, my alma mater, where my wife is graduating med school the end of the week. | |
And it's a really, apparently what they're reporting now, this is the latest news so it may change, what they're currently reporting is that it was a murder-suicide at UCLA, they had the campus on lockdown. | |
This prompted Deborah Messing, who has not been relevant since Will and Grace, to come out and tweet this. | |
So she tweeted a picture of herself and she wrote, "Horrendous! | |
Watching news about shooting at UCLA with casualties while taking selfies to bring awareness to gun violence." And then it's a picture of her wearing a t-shirt that is the t-shirt for Katie Couric's new documentary. | |
Okay, there are a couple of things about this that are just asinine. | |
Number one, Katie Couric's documentary has been discredited to the point where Epix actually pulled it. | |
That's the network that was gonna run it. | |
They pulled it because, as we discussed yesterday, Katie Couric inserted a pause in the film to make it look like the gun advocates she was talking to were stupid and didn't know answers to her questions. | |
So that's number one. | |
Number two, isn't it typical celebrity garbage to... there's a shooting going on, and so they say, I'm posting a selfie? | |
Like, this is the way you solve the world's problems? | |
Well, I guess I wish that she had a black shirt that said, hashtag no death, and then we could end death in the world. | |
That'd probably be the best way to do all of this. | |
We could really just... Or maybe even better, we could do hashtag world peace. | |
It could be pink. | |
And then we could really just finish this whole thing off once and for all. | |
World peace, no death. | |
Boom! | |
All your problems solved! | |
And, but this is how celebrities treat the world. | |
What I say is so deeply important. | |
What I say is more important than what I do. | |
I can, I assume she's a nice person, but it wouldn't matter even if she weren't. | |
There are plenty of not nice people like Sean Penn who do the same kind of stuff. | |
What I do as a human doesn't matter. | |
What I say as a human matters. | |
And so if I selfie myself wearing a t-shirt about gun violence, you know how many less people will die in gun violence because she took the selfie? | |
The answer is zero. | |
The answer is zero. | |
But it's all moral posturing. | |
That's all this is. | |
It's just moral posturing. | |
The real morality would have been if somebody at UCLA had had a gun to stop this person, Presumably. | |
UCLA does, in fact, have a gun-free zone policy. | |
So if you are a person who wants to carry a gun at UCLA, that is verboten. | |
You're not allowed to do that. | |
California is already the most heavily gun-regulated state in America. | |
They got an A from the Brady campaign. | |
And right now, there are a bunch of bills on Jerry Brown's desk, including a bill to ban so-called assault rifles that have a capacity for switching the magazine. | |
So they, I guess, want to go back to either bolt-action or back to you're stuck with one magazine and you can't eject the magazine and change magazines. | |
Which means you have to unscrew the magazine between each time you use it, which is just absurd. | |
Every time I go shooting, I'm supposed to unscrew the magazine when I practice with my rifle? | |
This makes perfect sense to me. | |
So, again, moral posturing from the left. | |
This is what they do. | |
Okay, so, end of story. | |
Politics is not about moral posturing, but it is about the idea that you should have some principles in your life that you centralize to. | |
Maybe your principle is just stop Hillary Clinton. | |
If so, I gotcha. | |
Alright, I understand why you're voting for Trump. | |
Maybe your principles are beyond that. | |
Maybe you actually want somebody that you can vote for. | |
Whatever your principles are, make them clear and don't make them subject to the whims of any one political figure. | |
Because the moment you do that, you're no longer a principled person. | |
You're just a follower of a god-king, orange or otherwise. | |
I'm Ben Shapiro. |