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Oct. 5, 2016 - The Ben Shapiro Show

59:54

Ep. 190 - VP Debate: Pence Dominates, Kaine Loses It

Pence runs circles around Kaine, Trump ceases to exist for an evening, and Hillary invites an old friend to campaign with her! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	During Tuesday's night's vice presidential debate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence shined a spotlight directly on former Virginia Governor Tim Kaine's extreme abortion position.
	Pence said he could not understand, quote, with Hillary Clinton and now Senator Kaine at her side, why they would support a practice like partial birth abortion.
	The very idea that a child is almost born into the world could still have their life taken from them is just anathema to me.
	Kaine maintained that, quote, we really feel like you should live fully and with enthusiasm the commands of your faith.
	But it is not the role of the public servant to mandate that for everybody else.
	First off, that isn't even accurate.
	Cain stands with a candidate who has said that millions of Americans must change their religious persuasions in order to encompass her view that men can become women and women can become men and gay people can marry each other.
	But beyond that, pro-life does not require religious belief.
	It requires scientific belief.
	Unborn children are still children.
	Cain didn't acknowledge that.
	Instead, he said he supported Roe v. Wade, which he mischaracterized as allowing, quote, American women to consult their own conscience.
	That's not what Roe does.
	It allows American women to define someone else's life, their baby's life, as non-life for whatever reason they choose.
	Of course, Cain also now says he wants to reject the so-called Hyde Amendment, which makes it, which says that federal funding isn't necessary for abortion, which means that it isn't just women making decisions for their babies, it's us subsidizing those decisions.
	So the whole let's agree to disagree thing doesn't even apply.
	Then, most disgustingly, the Catholic Cain quoted the Gospel of Matthew.
	To tear into Donald Trump's nutty declaration months ago, women should be prosecuted for abortion.
	Now, Trump was wrong on that.
	But Cain quoting the New Testament in order to defend the killing of the unborn isn't merely disgusting, it's blasphemous.
	It's taking the name of God in vain if you're a religious Christian.
	But Cain continued along those lines.
	He said, quote, "That's what we ought to be doing in public life, living our lives of faith or motivation with enthusiasm and excitement, convincing over, dialoguing with each other about important moral issues of the day.
	But on fundamental issues of morality, we should let women make their own decisions." Except that, as a society, we don't do that on fundamental issues of morality.
	Women don't get to commit murder because they decide to do so.
	Women can't hold slaves.
	Women can't redefine away inconvenient humans simply because they have, quote, different moral judgments.
	By relegating the status of fellow human beings to the do-what-you-feel category of government, Cain undermines any concept of a government worth defending.
	No government that refuses to defend human life is worthy of existence.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	Ah, here we are, it is a brand new Jewish year, and we started the year off right, with a vice presidential debate.
	Oh God, at least the Christians do it right.
	They hit January 1st, it's a brand new year, everybody sort of takes one extra day, they have fun.
	We do our brand new year, we come back and watch Mike Pence and Tim Kaine debate about who's the whiter guy.
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	All righty, so, last night, the huge, long-awaited vice presidential debate.
	Okay, so no one was awaiting it, and it was not huge, and vice presidential debates make no difference, but for the sake of this show, we're gonna pretend they do.
	Okay, so here's the thing.
	Vice presidential debates, just to be historically accurate, they don't really do anything.
	Tim Kaine, Mike Pence fighting it out.
	When's the last time a VP debate mattered?
	Well, everyone likes to cite Lloyd Benson and Dan Quayle.
	Lloyd Benson, of course, dropped that famous line on Dan Quayle in the 1988 vice presidential debate, where Quayle said, yeah, he's really young, but JFK, Jack Kennedy was really young, and Lloyd Benson said, Senator, I knew Jack Kennedy, you're no Jack Kennedy, right?
	And everyone goes, oh my god, he's not Jack Kennedy!
	Which is probably true, he wasn't doing LSD in the White House and screwing interns.
	But, aside from that, it was this big, you know, everybody went crazy, wow, Lloyd Benson, what a great, okay.
	Except that Lloyd Benson's candidate, Michael Dukakis, went on to lose 40 states.
	So, VP debates don't matter very much.
	But, maybe this one will matter, because...
	Donald Trump has really hit the skids.
	Donald Trump, his campaign is in a lot of trouble.
	He spent the last week and a half being an idiot.
	He reverted to type.
	That was always the big question here.
	Was Donald Trump going to revert to type?
	And the polls are showing that that's had a pretty significant impact on his campaign.
	There are two separate polls out that now show that he's trailing in Ohio, which is not good.
	According to the YouGov poll, there's a new YouGov poll.
	They show nationally she's up four, but in the state she's killing him.
	She's up five in Michigan, five in Colorado, four in New Hampshire, three in Wisconsin, two in North Carolina, two in Florida, two in Pennsylvania, two in Nevada, one in Iowa, which was supposed to be a blowout state for him, one in Ohio, tied in Georgia.
	If that is anything like reality, Donald Trump has a serious problem on his hands.
	He has a pretty major problem on his hands.
	So he needed something to shift the debate away from the latest stupid thing that he decided to tweet.
	And the debate, I think, provides him that opening.
	Because Mike Pence did what Donald Trump couldn't.
	He actually debated really well.
	Tim Kaine absolutely collapsed.
	The former governor of Virginia just looked awful all the way through.
	He looked like garbage.
	He couldn't stop interrupting Donald Trump.
	Now, I'm old enough to remember.
	I'm old enough to remember when somebody interrupting a moderator or interrupting a fellow candidate, a lot of times that was mansplaining.
	That was sexism.
	When Tim Kaine does it to Mike Pence or to the moderator, then it's totally fine because he's a Democrat.
	Here is a montage of Tim Kaine not shutting his piehole.
	...employed tens of thousands of people in this country... ...and paid a few taxes and lost a million dollars a year... ...the newly emboldened aggression of Russia, whether it was in Ukraine... ...she had a Clinton Foundation accepting contributions from foreign governments...
	You are Donald Trump's apprentice.
	Instead of Hillary Clinton expanding the Syrian refugee program.
	Or instead of violating the Constitution.
	We can't know for certain who these people are coming from Syria.
	And we don't let them know.
	We don't let them in.
	Senator, I think I'm still on my time.
	Isn't this a discussion?
	This is our open discussion.
	Hyperactive Badger, Tim Kaine, not performing well.
	Okay, so Hyperactive Badger, Tim Kaine, not performing well.
	I thought, by the way, the funniest tweet last night was somebody tweeted a picture of Mike Pence, and they said, Eminem really looks terrible.
	Mike Pence did a much better job.
	Mike Pence is very smooth.
	Mike Pence is a former radio host, so he knows how to do this.
	Tim Kaine looked hot and bothered the entire debate.
	He looked a little unhinged.
	He looked angry the entire time.
	We're going to go through the debate.
	There are two things that are worth noting.
	One, well, there are really three.
	One, Mike Pence is a normal conservative politician, and he wiped the floor with Tim Kaine, wiped the floor with him.
	So all these Trump fans, people who are ardent Trump supporters in the primaries, they were sitting around during this debate going, this is great, look what this conservative, normal conservative politician can do.
	And the rest of us were like, Right.
	We know.
	We were there.
	You picked Trump, right?
	There are a bunch of normal conservative politicians in the primaries.
	Instead, we got the one guy who could make Hillary Clinton look stable and composed.
	Okay, that's number one.
	Number two...
	Mike Pence did a great job during this debate of redirecting.
	So every time he was attacked about Trump, he immediately redirected to Hillary Clinton.
	We're going to show a lot of examples of that.
	This is what Trump should be doing in the debate on Sunday.
	So this should provide some sort of roadmap for what Trump needs to do in the second debate on Sunday.
	We'll talk about what he needs to do in the second debate on Sunday.
	Third point to make about all of this, and this is the one that did bother me, and that is, yes, Mike Pence won the debate.
	Of course, Mike Pence won the debate.
	His points about Hillary Clinton were all exactly correct.
	His avoiding kind of defending the stupider comments that Donald Trump has made, that was smart.
	But he did what I like to call construction of fantasy Trump.
	And this is something that a lot of people who I respect have been doing, and I find it just absolutely obnoxious.
	Every time Tim Kaine would say something true about Donald Trump, it wasn't just that Mike Pence would swivel from it to another topic.
	Instead, what Mike Pence would do is pretend that it never happened, like Donald Trump didn't exist.
	According to Mike Pence—it's good news for me—according to Mike Pence, Donald Trump has never existed.
	It's all been a figment of our imagination.
	All the terrible things Donald Trump said during the primary season, they just went away.
	They never happened at all.
	And you must be crazy if you thought that they were real.
	They weren't real.
	How dare you?
	And he's great at it.
	He does the kind of tut-tutting every so often.
	You'll see Mike Pence just...
	Just shake his head like, I can't believe this guy Cain.
	I can't believe what this guy Cain is saying that Donald Trump is done.
	And it's like, we have him on tape doing it, but that's the routine.
	And since this is a non-truth election, since truth has no bearing on this election whatsoever, the person who lied better about their candidate last night did better, and that was Pence.
	This construction of fantasy Trump is one of the things that drives me nuts, because it actually prevents the consolidation of the conservative movement.
	Like, I understand, Pete, for the one millionth time now, I think we have a running count, the one millionth time, celebration, we hit one million, the one millionth time during this election cycle, I totally understand voting for Trump to stop Hillary Clinton.
	What I do not understand is lying for Trump to stop Hillary Clinton, because I wouldn't lie for members of my own family.
	And I'm not going to sell out my basic moral principles in order to fib about a guy who I think is kind of a crap heap.
	You know, there are people who feel the necessity to create this fantasy Trump.
	So there are people who I think are really smart who do things like they say, well, if Donald Trump would just talk in detail about Egypt or Russia or Syria or about Obamacare.
	And then you say, right, but he's not going to because he doesn't have the capacity to do that.
	And they say, right, but he could.
	Why don't you support him?
	You need to support him.
	It's like, right, but the guy who you say exists doesn't exist.
	And the guy who does exist, you say doesn't exist.
	They've created this fantasy, this kind of blow-up doll of Trump.
	And then they say, well, this blow-up doll is real.
	And if you say, no, that's just a blow-up doll.
	Trump is real.
	You can still say he's there and he's bad, but you're going to vote for him anyway.
	But don't tell me the blow-up doll is Trump.
	They say, no, the blow-up doll is Trump.
	And if you refuse to acknowledge that this blow-up doll is Trump, you're helping Hillary.
	Saying, well, no, gang.
	No, I'm not.
	He is, by not being a better candidate.
	Okay, so, you'll see Mike Pence did some of that.
	So, we'll jump right in.
	Tim Kaine led off.
	He started talking about Hillary Clinton and why he's so happy to be at the debate.
	This is a very special place.
	65 years ago, a young, courageous woman, Barbara Johns, led a walkout of her high school, Moton High School.
	She made history by protesting school segregation.
	She believed our nation was stronger together, and that walkout led to the Brown v. Board of Education decision that moved us down the path toward equality.
	I am so proud to be running with another strong, history-making woman, Hillary Clinton, to be President of the United States.
	Okay, Hillary Clinton has nothing to do with LAD.
	Nothing.
	So he's immediately citing some other woman, and then he's going, but they both have vaginas.
	That's why you need to vote for Hillary.
	Okay, very weak opener.
	And then he continues, he's asked why we should trust Hillary Clinton, and his answer is not good.
	We trust Hillary Clinton, my wife and I, and we trust her with the most important thing in our life.
	We have a son deployed overseas in the Marine Corps right now.
	We trust Hillary Clinton as President and Commander-in-Chief, but the thought of Donald Trump as Commander-in-Chief scares us to death.
	By the way, both Pence and Kane have kids in the military.
	When Kane says that he trusts Hillary with his son, he just better hope that his son doesn't get stuck in an embassy in the middle of the night in a country that Hillary invaded and then forgot to care about because it was politically inconvenient.
	Pence started this way.
	He started by thanking Donald Trump.
	I also want to thank Donald Trump.
	for making that call and inviting us to be a part of this ticket.
	I have to tell you, I'm a small-town boy from a place not too different from Farmville.
	I grew up with a cornfield in my backyard.
	My grandfather had immigrated to this country when he was about my son's age.
	My mom and dad built everything that matters in a small town in southern Indiana.
	They built a family and a good name and a business, and they raised a family.
	I dream someday of representing my hometown in Washington, D.C., but I Honestly, Elaine, I never imagined I'd have the opportunity to be governor of the state that I love, let alone be sitting at a table like this, in this kind of a position.
	Okay, so Pence obviously is better.
	He's a better speaker.
	He addresses direct to camera sometimes because he knows that the real audience is out there.
	Now, forgive me, I have my own, you know, predilections when it comes to candidates.
	I find Pence just personally kind of smarmy.
	I look at Kaine and Kaine drives me nuts because Kaine is obviously just out there, like, he's hyperactive.
	Pence's kind of soft-spoken smarmyness hits me the wrong way, the same way that for a lot of people Ted Cruz is kind of smarmy.
	I don't know if that's a good approach hit them the wrong way.
	It hits me that way with Pence, too, and I can't lie about that, but he's doing a much better job on any objective level.
	And then Cain keeps coming back to, here's why you should trust Hillary Clinton, and it keeps being a giant fail.
	Here's Cain doing that again.
	Elaine, let me tell you why I Here's what people should look at as they look at a public servant.
	Do they have a passion in their life that showed up before they were in public life?
	And have they held on to that passion throughout their life, regardless of whether they were in office or not, succeeding or failing?
	Hillary Clinton has that passion.
	Okay, so we're supposed to trust Hillary because she has a passion for public life by turning public life into a giant coffer for her.
	Just a giant piggy bank for her.
	Very, very weak answer on that.
	Here's Kane on Donald Trump.
	Donald Trump always puts himself first.
	He built a business career, in the words of one of his own campaign staffers, off the backs of the little guy.
	And as a candidate, he started his campaign with a speech where he called Mexicans rapists and criminals, and he has pursued the Discredited and really outrageous lie that President Obama wasn't born in the United States.
	It is so painful to suggest that we go back to think about these days where an African American could not be a citizen of the United States.
	And I can't imagine how Governor Pence can defend the insult-driven, selfish, me-first style of Donald Trump.
	Okay, so what he's saying is partially true, right?
	He didn't say all Mexicans are rapists and criminals, but what he's saying about Trump and birtherism and all this stuff, some of that's true.
	Look at Pence's expression.
	Look what Pence is doing.
	He knows he's on split screen, and he looks like he just can't wait to jump in, right?
	He's doing kind of smirk, like, what kind of BS is this guy spouting?
	And as you're watching the split screen, if you don't know any better, you assume that Kane is not telling the truth, because who would say such outrageous things?
	Two such outrageous things.
	This was the fantasy Trump that Mike Pence did a wonderful job of creating last night, this magical Trump who didn't actually exist in reality.
	And he continued along these lines.
	The moderator, who's awful, Quahano, Elaine Quahano, she asked Trump about, asked Pence about Trump's personality, and here's Pence's answer.
	Governor Pence, let me ask you.
	You have said Donald Trump is, quote, thoughtful, compassionate, and steady.
	Yet 67% of voters feel he is a risky choice.
	And 65% feel he does not have the right kind of temperament to be president.
	Why do so many Americans think Mr. Trump is simply too erratic?
	Well, let me say first and foremost that, Senator, you and Hillary Clinton would know a lot about an insult-driven campaign.
	It really is remarkable.
	At a time when literally, in the wake of Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State, Where she was the architect of the Obama administration's foreign policy.
	We see entire portions of the world, particularly the wider Middle East, literally spinning out of control.
	I mean, the situation we're watching hour by hour in Syria today is the result of the failed foreign policy and the weak foreign policy that Hillary Clinton helped lead in this administration and create.
	Okay, so look at Kaine.
	Kaine looks pissed, right?
	Kaine looks angry, he looks sullen, he looks annoyed by what Pence is saying.
	Now notice, Pence didn't even remotely come close to answering the question, right?
	The question was, why do you think that Trump isn't erratic?
	And his answer was, Hillary Clinton's foreign policy is garbage.
	This is what Pence is smart at.
	Every time he was asked about Trump, he redirected over to Hillary Clinton.
	Very, very smart.
	If Trump does the same thing on Sunday, he'll be in much better shape.
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	So, Mike Pence is trying desperately to avoid being connected with Donald Trump.
	And Tim Kaine's entire schtick last night was to try and connect MIKE PENCE WITH DONALD TRUMP. SO HERE IS THE KEY LINE FOR TIM KAINE RIGHT HERE. THIS IS HIS KEY LINE.
	YOU ARE DONALD TRUMP'S APPRENTICE.
	LET ME TALK ABOUT THIS.
	SENATOR, I THINK -- OK, SO HE SAYS, YOU'RE DONALD TRUMP'S APPRENTICE.
	THE PROBLEM IS, OF COURSE, KAINE'S DELIVERY IS AWFUL.
	HE SHOULD SAY THAT SERIOUSLY.
	HE SHOULD SAY, YOU KNOW, MIKE, YOU'RE DONALD TRUMP'S APPRENTICE.
	You've humiliated yourself on behalf of Donald Trump, and for an honorable, upstanding guy like you to do that is really something, right?
	I mean, you should have dropped the hammer on him.
	Kaine can't do it, but one of the questions from this debate is going to be—is going to be, yes, Pence won the debate walking away.
	He appeared more serious.
	Kaine appeared frivolous, and we'll—we have plenty more to go through here.
	We'll talk about it, but—but did Kaine do damage to Trump?
	Pence was attacking Kaine and Hillary.
	He may have done damage to Kaine.
	Kane was attacking, not Pence really, he was attacking Trump.
	He brought up every comment Trump has ever made that was bad.
	Now, Kane looks uncomfortable in the role of attack dog.
	He doesn't look like he's capable of doing it well.
	But, if you actually hear what Kane is saying, and you're just a normal voter, does this make you feel more secure with Trump?
	It might make you feel more secure with Pence.
	It doesn't make you feel more secure with Trump.
	I don't think it goes that far because I don't think VP candidates ever really make you feel that much more secure.
	Okay, we gotta let you go now.
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	So, Kane's whole tack last night is paint Mike Pence as mini-Trump.
	And Pence doesn't let him do it because Pence obviously doesn't act like Trump.
	What Kane should have done instead is instead of trying to paint Pence as mini-Trump, he should have forgotten about Pence entirely.
	He should have just said, look, Mike, I think you're a wonderful guy.
	Maybe you'd make a wonderful president.
	Your guy is just awful.
	Your guy is just awful.
	And he sort of tried to do that a little bit.
	Pence is better at it than he is, though.
	Pence is a better attack dog.
	And so here's Mike Pence going after Tim Kaine over the Clinton Foundation and Hillary's private server.
	On that point, Governor Pence recently, the New York Times, released part of Mr. Trump's 1995 tax return and reported that he could have avoided paying federal income taxes for years.
	Yesterday, Mr. Trump said he brilliantly used the laws to pay as little tax as legally possible.
	Does that seem fair to you?
	Well, first, let me say I appreciate the you're hired, you're fired thing.
	Senator, you used that a whole lot, and I think your running mate used a lot of pre-done lines.
	Look, what you all just heard out there is more taxes, $2 trillion in more spending, more deficits, more debt, more government.
	And if you think that's all working, then you look at the other side of the table.
	I mean, the truth of the matter is... The clip here, the one that he's talking about here, this is again Pence being smart.
	The question was, and we have to play this game because I want to show you what Pence is doing, which Trump should do on Sunday.
	He was asked about Trump's tax return.
	His answer was Hillary wants to raise your taxes.
	Right?
	Has nothing to do with the question asked.
	But it's a long answer.
	He's doing it sincerely.
	He looks good doing it, and that's all that matters.
	Kane continues to try and pin Pence down, and Pence just continues to spin away from it.
	It's as though they're boxing, and Pence is a great defensive boxer.
	He's kind of Floyd Mayweather here.
	Here's Kane trying to hit him, and here is Pence evading the punch, talking about whether he'll defend Donald Trump not releasing his tax returns.
	I am interested in hearing whether he'll defend his running mates not releasing taxes.
	Absolutely, I will.
	Governor, with all due respect, the question was about whether it seems fair to you that Mr. Trump said he brilliantly used the laws to pay as little tax as legally possible.
	Well, this is probably the difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and Senator Kaine.
	I mean, Hillary Clinton and Senator Kaine, and God bless you for it, career public servants, that's great.
	Donald Trump is a businessman, not a career politician.
	He actually built a business.
	Those tax returns that came out publicly this week showed that he faced some pretty tough times 20 years ago.
	But like virtually every other business, including the New York Times not too long ago, he used what's called net operating loss.
	We have a tax code, Senator, That actually is designed to encourage entrepreneurship.
	But why won't he release his tax return?
	Well, we're answering the question about the business thing.
	I do want to come back on this.
	His tax return showed he went through a very difficult time, but he used the tax code just the way it's supposed to be used, and he did it brilliantly.
	How do you know that?
	You haven't seen his tax return.
	Because he's created a business that's worth billions of dollars.
	How do you know that?
	And with regard to paying taxes, this whole riff about not paying taxes and people saying he didn't pay taxes for years.
	Donald Trump has created tens of thousands of jobs.
	So what Cain is saying here is actually correct.
	He's saying you didn't turn over your tax returns.
	How do you know what's in your tax returns?
	How do we know?
	What Pence is saying is also correct.
	But he's answering a different question.
	He's saying, why didn't Trump pay more tax?
	Well, because he doesn't have to, which is the right answer.
	He created a business.
	You guys are career public servants.
	He paid the taxes he owed.
	And Kaine is right.
	He keeps saying, well, how do you know any of this?
	I mean, you won't turn over the tax returns.
	And Pence keeps evading his grasp.
	And you'll see, he just keeps evading it.
	Here's Kaine doing it again.
	Kaine says, you know, Governor Pence, you had to turn over your tax returns to Donald Trump.
	Why doesn't he have to turn over his tax returns?
	Governor Pence had to give Donald Trump his tax returns to show he was qualified to be vice president.
	Donald Trump must give the American public his tax returns to show that he's qualified to be president, and he's breaking his promise.
	Elaine, I have to respond to this.
	You get very little time here.
	20 seconds.
	I'll be very respectful.
	Look, Donald Trump has filed over 100 pages of financial disclosure, which is what the law requires.
	But he said he would release his tax returns.
	And the American people can review that, and he's going... Senator, he's going to release his tax returns when the audit is over.
	All right, gentlemen, I need to ask you about Social Security.
	Richard Nixon released tax returns when he was under audit.
	Gentlemen, if you can't meet the Nixon standard... Gentlemen, the people at home cannot understand either one of you when you speak over each other.
	I would please ask you to wait until it is that the other is finished.
	Okay, so this is Pence, again, evading Cain's grasp.
	And Cain is hitting him correctly, and Pence is evading it, because Pence is much better at this than Cain is.
	And just as final proof that Pence is significantly better at this than Cain is, look at Mike Pence go after Tim Cain.
	Cain starts talking about Hillary's record, so Pence does a great job of never really having to defend Trump.
	He sort of defends fantasy Trump, or he defends the aspects of Trump that don't really need defense, because he's not going to defend Trump on the parts where he's really bad.
	Here is Tim Kaine just getting smoked by Mike Pence on foreign policy.
	Under Secretary Clinton's leadership, she was part of the national team, public safety team, that went after and revived the dormant hunt against bin Laden and wiped him off the face of the earth.
	She worked to deal with the Russians to reduce their chemical weapons stockpile.
	She worked a tough negotiation with nations around the world to Eliminate the Iranian nuclear weapons program without firing a shot.
	Eliminate the Iranian nuclear weapons program?
	Absolutely, without firing a shot.
	And instead of 175,000 American troops deployed overseas, we now have 15,000.
	These are very, very important things.
	And Iraq has been overrun by ISIS.
	Because Hillary Clinton failed to renegotiate.
	If you want to put more American troops in Iraq, you can propose that.
	Hillary Clinton failed to renegotiate a status of forces agreement.
	No, that is incorrect.
	And so we removed all of our troops from Iraq and ISIS was able to be conjured up in that vacuum and overrun vast areas of Iraq.
	Okay, so that is Pence just destroying Cain.
	And his pacing is great, his tone is great.
	It really is first-rate debating.
	It's first-rate debating, which is what makes this so frustrating.
	We could have had somebody like Mike Pence at the top of the ticket.
	Instead, we have Donald Trump who can't string two sentences together without talking about the size of his junk.
	But I guess this is the business we have chosen.
	Kane, again, his whole point here was not to defeat Mike Pence.
	His whole point here was Mike Pence is not Donald Trump.
	Here is, I thought, the most effective part of Tim Kaine's shtick.
	This is clip 14 that we're going to play here.
	And here he goes after Donald Trump directly, again, about all the comments he's made.
	And I just want to talk about the tone that's set from the top.
	Donald Trump during his campaign is called Mexicans, rapists, and criminals.
	He's called women, slobs, pigs, dogs, disgusting.
	I don't like saying that in front of my wife and my mother.
	He attacked an Indiana-born federal judge and said he was unqualified to hear a federal lawsuit because his parents were Mexican.
	He went after John McCain, a POW, and said he wasn't a hero because he'd been captured.
	He said African Americans are living in hell.
	And he perpetrated this outrageous and bigoted lie that President Obama is not a U.S.
	citizen.
	If you want to have a society where people are respected and respect laws, you can't have somebody at the top who demeans every group that he talks about.
	And I just, again, I cannot believe that Governor Pence will defend the insult-driven campaign that Donald Trump has run.
	And look at, again, look at Pence, right?
	It's an effective attack, but look at Pence, just sitting there.
	Nah, Tim.
	Donald never said those things.
	What are you, crazy?
	Who would say those things?
	Donald Trump never heard of the guy.
	Is there such a guy?
	I don't think so.
	The people don't think so.
	Come on!
	No one would believe anybody said that.
	And that's what he does, right?
	Here's the next clip.
	And here's Mike Pence evading this one and basically ignoring the fact that Trump did say all these things.
	I apologize, this is your two minutes.
	Thanks, I forgive you.
	He says ours is an insult-driven campaign?
	Did you all just hear that?
	Ours is an insult-driven campaign?
	I mean, to be honest with you, Donald- Pause it for one second.
	I just want to point something out.
	While he's saying incredulously into camera, ours is an insult-driven campaign, Donald Trump is legitimately tweeting, at this point retweeting, jokes about how Tim Kaine looks like the Joker from the original Batman.
	Seriously.
	So at the same time, yeah, yeah, a little bit.
	Okay, so here's Mike Pence continuing.
	Trump had said all the things that you said he said in the way you said he said them.
	He still wouldn't have a fraction of the insults that Hillary Clinton level when she said that half of our supporters were a basket of deplorables.
	She said they were irredeemable.
	They were not America.
	I mean, it's extraordinary.
	And then she lailed one after another ism on millions of Americans who believe that we can have a stronger America at home and abroad, who believe we can get this economy moving again, who believe that we can end illegal immigration once and for all.
	So, Senator, this insult-driven campaign, I mean, that's small potatoes compared to Hillary Clinton calling... So, again, the key part here is, first of all, he's doing righteous indignation better than Kaine, right?
	He's doing it better.
	I mean, this is an acting job.
	He's doing it... I mean, they called us deplorables?
	I mean, that's just so terrible?
	Really, like, okay, fine.
	But—and Tim Kaine doesn't do it as well, so Pence wins that exchange.
	Even—my favorite line there, he says, if Donald Trump had said all of the things that you say, he did.
	He said those things, right?
	He didn't make—Kaine didn't make that up.
	But again, we're now creating fantasy Kaine—fantasy Trump in the minds of the general public.
	Now, here's some more fantasy Trump.
	Here's Mike Pence talking about abortion.
	No, it's really not.
	Donald Trump and I would never support legislation that punished women who made the heartbreaking choice to end a pregnancy.
	And why did Donald Trump say that?
	We just never would.
	Why did he say that?
	Well, look, he's not a polished politician like you and Hillary Clinton.
	And so, you know, the lines don't always come out exactly the way he means them, but I'm telling you what other policy or administration would be.
	Great line from the Gospel of Matthew.
	From the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks.
	Yeah.
	When Donald Trump says women should be punished, or Mexicans are rapists and criminals, or John McCain's not a hero, he is showing you who he is.
	Senator, you whipped out that Mexican thing again.
	Okay, first of all, whipping out the Mexican thing again, not the greatest line by Mike Pence right there.
	But, again, yeah, I love that he says, we just never would support such legislation.
	We never—okay, so why did he say it?
	Well, he's not a businessman.
	Well, he's not a politician.
	He's not a polished politician.
	Again, this is one of my least favorite Trumpian excuses, is Trump says something utterly incoherent and stupid.
	something really nasty, and they go, well, he's not a politician.
	Well, which is it?
	Okay, if he says something bad, he's not a politician.
	If he says something good, he's not a politician.
	The idea is that it justifies allills.
	If he says something that is just flat out wrong, well, he's not a politician.
	You can't expect him to know that.
	And if he says something that is correct, but impolitic, they say, well, that's the best part about him.
	He's not a politician.
	He's going to tell it like it is.
	So is he telling it like it is, or is he just wrong?
	Again, he's building fantasy Trump.
	Trump would never say things like that.
	He would never say things like that.
	And again, Cain tries it again, and Pence does the same routine.
	Look for Donald Trump apologizing to John McCain for saying he wasn't a hero.
	Did Donald Trump apologize for calling women slobs, pigs, dogs, disgusting?
	She apologized for saying... Governor, it is his two minutes, please.
	Did Donald Trump apologize for taking after somebody in a Twitter war and making fun of her weight?
	Did he apologize for saying African Americans are living in hell?
	What Pence is doing... Look at this crazy guy, just going, just going, just saying things like a crazy guy.
	He's not, he's not lying.
	I mean, like, again, it must be frustrating to watch this as a Democrat.
	For me, it's just amusing because at this point we're so far beyond the truth that it doesn't matter anymore.
	But this fantasy Trump that's being created is really quite amazing.
	And then, here's another one.
	Cain says that Trump wanted a deportation force.
	Okay, Trump did say at one point, many times actually, he wanted a deportation force and he would deport every single illegal immigrant in the country.
	He did say that.
	Here's Mike Pence denying that ever happened.
	These guys, and Donald Trump has said it, deportation force.
	They want to go house to house, school to school, business to business, and kick out 16 million people.
	And I cannot believe that Governor Pence would sit here and defend his running mate's claim that we should create a deportation force so that they'll all be gone.
	Senator, we have a deportee.
	It's just nonsense.
	It's not true.
	It is true, okay?
	I could actually show you the clip if I wanted to.
	It is actually true.
	Okay, here's another one of these, right?
	Again, again and again and again.
	Here is clip 21.
	Here's Tim Kaine going after Donald Trump on NATO.
	Again, what he's about to say about Trump is accurate.
	Watch as Pence just flat out denies it.
	That's why Donald Trump's claim that he wants to, that NATO is obsolete and that we need to get rid of NATO is so dangerous.
	It's not his plan.
	Well, he said NATO is obsolete.
	And look, if you put aside, push aside your alliances, who are you going to share intelligence with?
	NATO's obsolete?
	Who would say that?
	Donald Trump said it, like a lot.
	He tweeted it out.
	Unbelievable.
	I love it.
	It's just amazing.
	It's just amazing.
	Okay, here's another one, okay?
	Tim Kaine asks about, this is clip 23.
	This is Tim Kaine going after Trump on Russia.
	And again, Mike Pence is just gonna pretend that Donald Trump doesn't exist.
	He's like a child on a milk carton.
	He's just gone missing somewhere.
	We don't know where he is.
	He's probably kidnapped by a van that said free candy on it.
	Here's Tim Kaine again.
	And Hillary also has the ability to stand up to Russia in a way that this ticket does not.
	Donald Trump again and again has praised Vladimir Putin and it's clear that he has business dealings with Russian oligarchs who are very connected to Putin.
	The Trump campaign management team had to be fired a month or so ago because of those shadowy connections with pro-Putin forces.
	Governor Pence made the odd claim, he said inarguably, Vladimir Putin is a better leader than President Obama.
	Vladimir Putin's run his economy into the ground.
	He persecutes LGBT folks and journalists.
	If you don't know the difference between dictatorship and leadership, then you gotta go back to a fifth grade civics class.
	I'll tell you what offends me.
	That offended me.
	Okay, and again, he's shaking his head through the whole thing.
	Everything he just said there was true.
	Everything he said there was true, right?
	He said the only thing that was mildly wrong is when he said that Trump said that Putin was a better leader than Obama.
	No, he said he was a stronger leader than Obama, okay?
	A distinction without not much of a difference.
	But it's just amazing.
	I mean, Pence just said, no, what are you talking about?
	What world are you living in?
	You must be crazy.
	And again, and again, here's Tim Kaine going after Trump over his ridiculous assertion that we'll just stop defending other countries and they can develop their own nuclear weapons.
	Donald Trump's idea that more nations should get nuclear weapons.
	Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea.
	Ronald Reagan said something really interesting about nuclear proliferation back in the 1980s.
	He said, the problem with nuclear proliferation Is that some fool or maniac could trigger a catastrophic event.
	And I think that's who Governor Pence's running mate is, exactly who President Reagan warned us about.
	Senator.
	Senator, that was even beneath you and Hillary Clinton, and that's pretty low.
	But do you think we should have more nuclear weapons in the world that will make us safer?
	Senator, Ronald Reagan also said nuclear war should never be fought because it can never be won.
	And the United States of America needs to make it.
	He's got nothing there.
	But again, oh, come on, Senator.
	That's low.
	That's low.
	How dare anyone sink into the mud?
	You're running mate is Donald Trump, okay?
	Like, oh my god.
	It's just, it's maddening to watch this because both campaigns are operating in this alternative reality.
	And I'm picking on Mike Pence here, but the fact is that Kaine did the same thing on the flaws on his candidate.
	You know, there's one point where Pence just starts hammering him on foreign policy and he's got nothing.
	I mean, Pence hammers him.
	Tim Kaine is one of the few senators who boycotted Bibi Netanyahu when he spoke to a joint session of Congress, and Kaine just outright denies it.
	This is the problem with politics, okay?
	They're just lying about each other.
	They're just lying—well, more than anything else, they don't lie about each other.
	They lie about themselves.
	Anytime they're on attack, they're speaking something that's true.
	Anytime they're on defense, they're lying.
	And so the lies are just insane.
	They're just insane.
	And so we've created these fake versions of each candidate.
	If you're someone who buys into Trump, you buy into the idea that he's this great, wonderful guy.
	Because, hey, Mike Pence is saying so, and that guy looks honest.
	And if you like Hillary Clinton, you're buying into the idea she's not corrupt.
	I mean, Tim Kaine, what a nice guy.
	Would he hang out with Hillary Clinton if he were corrupt?
	Meanwhile, they're both lying like fury.
	I mean, it's really, really frustrating from any perspective where you like truth and not falsehood.
	Now again, Pence won, and this provides Donald Trump another chance to try and save himself.
	So this takes us to the final part of the debate.
	First of all, I want to play one more clip of this.
	I think this is the one where, let's see, the one where they talk about the insult-driven campaign again.
	This is clip 28, clip 28.
	Well, thanks.
	I'm just trying to keep up with the insult-driven campaign on the other side of the table.
	You know what?
	I'm just saying facts about your running mate.
	Yeah.
	And I know you can't defend him.
	Senator, please, this is Governor's two minutes.
	I'm happy to defend him, Senator.
	Don't put words in my mouth that I'm not defending him.
	You're not.
	I'm happy to defend him.
	Most of what you said is completely false.
	And the American people know that.
	I'll run through the list of things where you can defend him.
	Senator, please, this is Governor Pence's two minutes.
	Okay, and again, Cain is not wrong here, but the lies just don't matter.
	The fake Trump must—and the problem is that so many people believe in the fake Trump now.
	They believe the blow-up doll Trump that Mike Pence is blowing up for them right here, that they think, okay, why couldn't people like Shapiro just back this Trump?
	And here's the thing.
	If the Trump that were real were the Trump being presented by Pence, I would support that Trump.
	I would support that Trump, but that's not real Trump.
	That's fake Trump.
	That's fake Trump.
	So, yes, Pence won, but what he really did was he gave Donald Trump a chance to put one over on the American people come Sunday, because now there's this gap.
	Now people are saying, okay, what do I believe about Trump again?
	Do I believe that he's this crazy person that Tim Kaine is describing, or do I believe that he's this gentle, nice guy just like Tim Kaine, the kind of fellow who would pick Tim Kaine?
	Okay, well, an argument I don't buy, by the way.
	Donald Trump must have wonderful judgment because he picked Mike Pence as his VP.
	I just, I don't buy that, in the slightest.
	There are plenty of great presidents who had crappy VPs.
	There are plenty of crappy presidents who had great VPs.
	I don't think your VP pick says a lot about you, particularly when we know Donald Trump desperately wanted Shinebox Chris Christie as his VP, and only his family forced him into Pence.
	In any case, I thought that Mike Pence did all the things right that Donald Trump did wrong.
	His body language was excellent.
	He was very good on reaction.
	He looked like a grown up every time, whatever his words were.
	And of course, he was playing with a couple of deuces against the guy with a full house.
	that Mike Pence did all the things right that Donald Trump did wrong.
	His body language was excellent.
	He was very good on reaction.
	He looked like a grownup every time, whatever his words were.
	And of course he was playing with a couple of deuces against the guy with a full house.
	So it was very difficult for him in terms of the issues.
	I mean, he had to defend Donald Trump.
	But he came across as a grown-up, strong.
	I thought he was very effective at being a conservative.
	But I really think that Convis tonight has made himself probably the front-runner for the Republican nomination in 2020.
	He hit all the bases on the conservative side.
	He was pro-life and rather eloquent on it at the end.
	You may not agree with him, but he was eloquent.
	I also thought that he was very good on the policing issue for the conservative side, very strong against illegal immigration on the conservative side.
	So I thought he was very effective at securing Trump's right-wing flank.
	And I think that may be important in the numbers the next couple of days, to stop this hemorrhaging of Trump, to hold him on the right and hold him on the conservative side.
	Okay, so, Matthews thinks that this was important for Trump.
	I think that it was maybe—I'm not going to guarantee it was important for Trump.
	I think that, again, people don't pay that much attention to VP candidates.
	In the end, the polls showed that—I think it was the SNAP poll from CNN was 48% for Pence, 42% for Kaine.
	I think that it was pretty clear that Kaine lost.
	It was pretty clear that Pence won.
	How much impact that has, it's up to Donald Trump.
	Donald Trump now has to capitalize.
	It's up to Trump.
	It's Donald Trump's turn to actually see if he can be any good at this.
	And you can see the media are upset about it.
	Andrea Mitchell, who's a Hillary worshipper through and through, she says it was very clear that Cain was awful.
	Andrea Mitchell.
	A lot of people feel that Tim Cain was too aggressive, that the impression that the viewers had was that there were too many interruptions.
	And so she wasn't the only one.
	Joy Reid from MSNBC, she came out and she said that Cain really did an awful job.
	Yeah, you know, it's interesting, Rachel.
	I, too, was extremely distracted by the cross-talking.
	I thought it made it very difficult to listen to and understand what they were doing.
	And Tim Kaine was the more aggressive interrupter and cross-talker.
	I don't think that helped him.
	And he was firing so many attacks, so rapid-fire and so broad at Mike Pence that he was sort of losing the point.
	Now, I came into this debate thinking that, you know, Tim Kaine's the guy they put on the ticket to solve their White man problem.
	That of course cannot be done.
	They're not going to do well with white male voters.
	But then the secondary audience for him would be your white suburban voter to try to pull them over if they could.
	That wasn't his audience tonight.
	Clearly Tim Kaine came in with one mission only.
	Fire off as many salvos at Mike Pence as he could and try to force Pence to defend Donald Trump.
	Mm-hmm.
	And in that sense, if that was his goal, he was successful.
	Look, if you're a Republican voter, you probably watch — if you're an old-fashioned Republican, and you probably said, wow, that Mike Pence guy seems interesting.
	I wonder who he'll pick for his running mate, right?
	He came across as if he were the candidate.
	He stated his own positions on Russia, his own ideas.
	He defended the Mike Pence brand.
	But if Tim Kaine's goal was to try to force him to defend Donald Trump and to force the viewer to watch him not do that, then if that was his mission, he succeeded.
	But I think the overcast — I don't think he succeeded because I think Pence was too slick for him.
	I think that he was too slippery for him.
	I think that the casual watcher did not get the impression that Pence ran away from Trump so much as he just ignored Trump utterly.
	That he ignored Trump utterly.
	And so that means that now Trump has to redefine himself because Pence can't do it for him.
	Pence can't do it For him at all.
	Meanwhile, Hillary is increasingly confident.
	You can see it.
	It's clear that she thinks that she is going to win this thing now.
	She's got her base rallied around her and that's allowing some fishers to appear in the Democratic base a little bit.
	Michelle Obama is out there rallying for Hillary Clinton, but meanwhile Hillary is undermining the Obamas.
	It's really kind of interesting.
	Here's Michelle Obama pushing for Hillary Clinton.
	Because when making life or death, war or peace decisions, A president can't just pop off or lash out irrationally.
	And I think we can all agree that someone who's roaming around at 3 a.m.
	tweeting should not have their fingers on the nuclear codes.
	Okay, so she's making the strong case in favor of Hillary Clinton.
	The Clintons, you'll notice, are now starting to draw away from the Obamas.
	So, this shows Hillary's confidence.
	A year and a half ago, when Hillary first talked about announcing, she was already drawing contrast between herself and Obama.
	She was saying, yes, but.
	I like a lot of what Obama does, but.
	And then for a year, she didn't do that because she was afraid that Obama would pull the rug out from under her and support Joe Biden or throw some silent support to Bernie Sanders.
	Now, the Clintons are feeling confident.
	They feel like they're up in the polls again.
	They can afford to tick off Obama a little bit.
	And so Bill, yesterday, he came out and he ripped into Obamacare.
	But the people that are getting killed in this deal are small business people and individuals who make just a little too much to get any of these subsidies.
	Why?
	Because they're not organized, they don't have any bargaining power with insurance companies, and they're getting whacked.
	So you've got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care, and then the people are out there busting it sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half.
	It's the craziest thing in the world.
	He's ripping into Obamacare like that, right?
	And this is—people are taking this as this is just Bill popping off, undermining the campaign.
	No, this is a concerted effort now for Hillary Clinton to draw a little bit away from Barack Obama, create enough distance that she's not tied to him at the polls, make that overture to some of those white suburban voters that Joy Reid was mentioning, and then hopefully win a broad victory.
	So, that's one idea.
	Maybe that's what she's doing.
	Or maybe she's just incompetent, because here's what we found out today.
	Hillary Clinton wants to make an appeal to millennials, to young people, the way she wants to appeal to millennials.
	is by trotting out Al Gore.
	Really, like people my age.
	She wants to appeal to me by trotting out Al Gore.
	Honestly, the only contact that I've had with Al Gore since I was 16 years old, or I was 16 when the 2000 election happened, the last contact I had with Al Gore since 2000 was in ManBearPig, like from South Park, like this.
	I'm here to educate you about the single biggest threat to our planet.
	You see, there is something out there which threatens our very existence, and may be the end to the human race as we know it.
	What do you mean, the cave-in is over?
	I'm afraid you have a much bigger problem than a cave-in.
	What's that?
	It is a creature which roams the earth alone.
	It is half man, half bear, and half pig.
	Honestly, our fluency with Al Gore is now, I mean, it's been 16 years since he ran for president.
	It's that crappy documentary, Inconvenient Truth, that they made us watch in high school, but that was full of lies.
	It was Al Gore having his chakras touched by a masseuse and then getting divorced from Tipper, who he was making out with in 2000.
	And it was man, bear, pig.
	Half man, half bear, half pig.
	from South Park, and that's the person that Hillary's trotting out.
	He's 68, by the way.
	She's trotting him out to rally the millennials.
	OK, maybe she doesn't know what she's doing.
	Maybe Bill is sinking the campaign.
	Clearly, they have a problem.
	OK, time for some things I like, some things I hate, and then some Bible talk.
	OK, so things I like.
	Over the weekend, I was reading William F. Buckley's The Unmaking of a Mayor.
	And it is a really interesting book.
	It's particularly interesting—people don't know this about Buckley.
	Buckley ran for mayor of New York in 1965, not because he thought he was going to win, but because he thought that there was no one representing the conservative position.
	He ran against a Republican who ended up winning and was expected to win named John Lindsay.
	John Lindsay was the most liberal Republican in the U.S.
	Congress.
	He was running for mayor of New York, was running on a very, very left platform.
	Buckley ran against him, got all sorts of crap for it.
	Oh, it's because of you the Republican's gonna lose.
	How dare you go against your party?
	You're gonna let the Democrat win.
	Why don't you just support him?
	Why don't you just acknowledge that when he gets into office, he's gonna be a lot more conservative than you think he will?
	If any of these arguments sound familiar, that's because all of them are familiar.
	Right?
	And there's one point in the book, I talk about it in my National Review piece today, there's one point where somebody wrote to Buckley and they say, why can't you just acknowledge that John Lindsay is going to be much more conservative than you give him credit for?
	And Buckley writes back, I don't think John Lindsay's a liar.
	I think when he says he's going to govern like a liberal, he'll govern like a liberal.
	Sure enough, after John Lindsay is elected, he governs like a far leftist.
	He's the most left mayor in New York history to that point, and he helps destroy the city wholesale.
	Buckley was right.
	Lindsay and his supporters were wrong.
	And I think that that's worth noting.
	The book is really interesting, and you'll be astonished at how much of it is still relevant.
	I mean, talk about race and talk about the police and talk about the media.
	Really an interesting book, The Unmaking of a Mayor.
	I know it's back in print now.
	This is an older version, but it's back in print with Encounter Books.
	Uh, and it's really, really good.
	Okay, things that I hate, so...
	After the debate, it turns out that it was time for a bit of dancing.
	It was time for a bit of dancing and prancing.
	Terry McAuliffe is the deeply, deeply destructive and corrupt governor of the state of Virginia.
	He was Hillary's bag man for years and years and years.
	Here is some tape of Terry McAuliffe dancing after the debate.
	That is governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, doing a little bit of the cabbage patch.
	He's stirring it up a little bit.
	He's feeling good.
	He's getting his shoulders moving.
	The governor joins us now.
	What are you so happy about, governor?
	Well, Chris, first of all, I apologized to my staff yesterday.
	I broke the cardinal rule.
	I danced in public.
	Oh God, that was horrifying.
	Okay, so, Terry McAuliffe dancing.
	Just note to people, don't dance in public.
	It's awful.
	Always.
	Even if you want to pretend they're cool, like you pretend Michelle can dance and Barack can dance.
	None of them can dance.
	Okay.
	The second thing that I hate, Eric Trump was on CNN on taxes and he's talking about his father's tax returns and things get ugly.
	Can you just put this to rest?
	Has your father paid federal income taxes?
	We pay a tremendous amount of taxes.
	Federal income taxes?
	Yes.
	And beyond taxes, we also employ tens and tens and tens of thousands of people.
	The difference between my father and Hillary Clinton is Hillary Clinton has lived off of the government her entire life.
	She's never created a single job.
	Eric, my question though is, has he paid federal income taxes over the last 18 years?
	Yes or no?
	Of course, yes.
	Absolutely.
	My father pays a tremendous amount of tax.
	We as a company pay a tremendous amount of tax.
	We as a company also hire a tremendous amount of people, which leads to people being able to provide for their families, people being able to take care of their families, people being able to educate their children.
	If you look at Hillary on the other hand, she has never signed the front of a check once.
	She's never balanced a budget.
	So if we ever see your father's income taxes, it will show that he has paid federal income taxes.
	There is no question about it.
	We pay tremendous Will we see it?
	Have you seen his tax returns?
	Listen, when the audit is over, my father will release it.
	Have you seen his tax returns?
	And quite frankly, when is she going to release the hundreds of speeches that she gave to special interests?
	When is she going to release the hundreds of speeches that she gave to Wall Street?
	Where are those speeches?
	Why won't she release them?
	When is she going to release the 33,000 emails that she deleted after, quite frankly, lying to the Department of Justice, lying to the FBI, and also lying to Congress?
	Eric, I'm pretty impressed, actually.
	You should show up at the event for that.
	Exactly!
	You haven't been in politics that long and you're doing the pivot quite well.
	If you can just put a button on this.
	Have you seen your father's income taxes?
	Yeah, I don't study our tax returns.
	No, but have you seen them?
	Of course you see tax returns.
	No, have you seen your father's tax returns?
	I'm answering the question.
	Of course I've seen my father's tax returns.
	He's paid federal taxes.
	My father pays a tremendous amount of tax.
	As a company, we pay a tremendous amount of tax and it goes so far beyond federal income taxes.
	How about Real estate taxes.
	How about employment taxes?
	How about sales taxes?
	How about every other type of tax that goes into that?
	We pay a tremendous amount of tax as a company.
	That is very, very, very different than Hillary Clinton, who's lived off the government for the last 40 years.
	Okay, so the thing I hate about this is not Eric Trump.
	Eric Trump actually does a very good job with this.
	What I hate about this is Dana Bash is just bashing him over the head with the same question that he answers six different times.
	Six different times, same answer, yes, he has paid federal income tax.
	And instead of her just saying, okay, so why won't he turn it over, and the audit is not an appropriate response, She just keeps hitting him over and over, like, he's going to give a different answer one of these times?
	It shows you the absolute unwillingness of the press to believe anything that Trump's people have to say, where they would be sitting there just nodding along to anything Hillary Clinton had to say about her emails.
	Like, if that were Hillary, sorry, if that were Chelsea sitting right there, you think they would ask her six straight times?
	So, it was all yoga emails, those 33,000 emails?
	All yoga?
	All wedding emails?
	That's all it was?
	You think they'd ask her that six straight times?
	Why did your mom set up a private email server?
	No, but really, why did she do it?
	You think they would do that?
	Of course not.
	The media bias here is astounding.
	It really is.
	And what Pence showed, by the way, in this debate, is that even with a biased moderator, and Elaine Quintao was a very biased moderator, even despite that, he was able to win.
	If conservatives are on point, if Republicans are on point, they can still brush back the media.
	But they have to be on point, and weakness is not a recipe for victory.
	Okay, time for a slight bit of Bible talk.
	So, a quick preliminary note on Bible talk today.
	I want to make a mention of something Mike Pence did in the debate last night that I didn't like.
	And that was, at the end of the debate, he was talking about abortion.
	And he said, at the very beginning of this part of the debate, he said, the reason that I believe, and the reason I'm pro-life, is because God talks in the Bible, and he's specifically citing the Psalms, I think, about God knits you together in the womb.
	Right?
	And so that's why I think that that's why I'm pro-life.
	The reason I hate this, and I'm a religious Jew, okay?
	Look, I mean, I took off two days because of Rosh Hashanah.
	The reason that I hate this is because the reason that you're pro-life, the real reason that you're pro-life on a public policy level, is not because of what you think God said in the Bible.
	The reason that you're pro-life on a public policy level is because that is a human in there.
	Not because you have a religious belief it's a human in there, but because that is a human in there.
	Science shows that is a human life in there.
	And the problem is he opened himself right up and Cain immediately says, well, we can't make your religious belief the law of the country.
	This is the problem.
	I understand Pence is trying to make an overture to religious people.
	I understand that this pleases people like Chris Matthews because Chris Matthews can call him eloquent while still disagreeing.
	He said, well, you know, we just disagree on our faith interpretations.
	What Pence ought to have said is, I don't understand how any human being could contemplate the notion that a baby that's seven months old should be forcibly aborted, that that baby should be, should be, its brain should be mashed in and its brain sucked out.
	That seems to me a much more effective tact than God said in the Bible.
	Because guess what?
	For people who don't believe in the Bible, that cuts no ice whatsoever.
	And it allows even people who do believe in the Bible, but who are leftists, which I don't understand, but it allows even those people to kind of slide out of it by saying, yes, I believe in the Bible, but that's my personal belief, not the society's belief.
	Okay, now.
	As I mentioned, every week the Jews read a different portion of the Bible.
	This week's portion is from Deuteronomy.
	We're getting close to the end of Deuteronomy.
	This one is from Vayelech.
	So this is Deuteronomy 31, 26 to 30.
	So this is God giving his—this is Moses giving a final Order to the Jewish people.
	He's about to die.
	And really, this whole—at the end of the Torah, the end of the Old Testament, the five books of Moses, is really, really devastating.
	When you read it as just a human being, talking about Moses, this guy leads these people, this entire people, this rebellious, stiff-necked, obnoxious people from slavery through the desert for 40 years, and finally gets to the cusp, and God says, you can't go in.
	God says, you can't go in.
	Not only does He say that, God says to Moses, by the way, After you die, these people are gonna go right off the rails.
	Just want you to know, you did all this hard work, after you die, these people, boom, they're just gonna go right off the rails.
	It's, you know, God really delivering the coup de grace to Moses here.
	But this is what Moses says to the people right before he takes his leave.
	He says, Take this Torah scroll and place it alongside the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God, and it will be there as a witness.
	For I know your rebellious spirit and your stubbornness, even while I am alive with you today, you're rebelling against the Lord, surely after my death.
	Assemble to me all the elders of your tribes and your officers.
	I will speak these words into their ears.
	I will call upon the heaven and the earth as witnesses against them.
	For I know that after my death you will surely become corrupted and deviate from the way which I had commanded you.
	Consequently, the evil will befall you at the end of days because you did evil in the eyes of the Lord to provoke him to anger through the work of your hands.
	Then Moses spoke into the ears of the entire assembly the following song until their completion.
	The idea that Moses is chiding people right before he's going to die, that his final message is, guys, I know you're going to go off the track.
	And it's not even him warning people, if you go off the track, then bad things will happen.
	It's him, you will definitely, definitely go off the track.
	I think that this is, it just demonstrates the humility of Moses as a leader, of Moshe Rabbeinu, as we call him, Moses our rabbi, our teacher, as a leader.
	Because if you're given your valedictory, if you're given your valedictory and you're about to say to these people, you're about to die, you're about to leave them, you've led them for the better part of the last 40 years, the last 45 years.
	As you finish, wouldn't it be nice to say, look at how far we've come?
	You know, the Ronald Reagan's Shining City on a Hill speech.
	Look how far we've come.
	Look what we've accomplished together.
	We took an entire people out of slavery, took them to the foot of Mount Sinai, heard the new moral law from God directly, and here we are, and now I have to go, but look how far we've come.
	Instead, Moses is telling people, you're going to fail.
	I know you're going to fail.
	I know you're going to fail.
	Now, why does God have Moses do that?
	Why doesn't God allow Moses that one last moment in the sunshine here?
	And the answer is that God understands that Moses is the ultimate tool for godly teaching.
	And so what Moses is doing is Moses is saying, look, you guys are going to fail.
	And then the next thing that happens, what's happening here is God goes to Joshua, Moses' successor.
	Not his own children, not Moses' children.
	He goes to Joshua, the successor, and Joshua says, we're going to go up into the land, and we're going to be victorious.
	And so what he's doing there is he's shifting the burden of leadership from Moses to Joshua by making Joshua the hopeful voice and making Moses the call of rebuke.
	And Moses goes along with it.
	Moses goes along with it because Moses knows his role now.
	He can't lead them into the land.
	So the last thing they have to hear from him is, you guys, you really, you're terrible.
	You're awful.
	I mean, you're gonna fail.
	You're really awful.
	And not an if.
	I know you'll fail because I've had to deal with you people for 40 years.
	And then the next thing they hear is from Joshua saying, Guys, it'll be okay.
	We're gonna go up.
	We're gonna take control of the land.
	God is going to help us.
	It's an amazing thing.
	And Moses isn't lying, of course, because everybody goes off the rails, and obviously his prophecy is correct, and people do all of these things.
	And he calls the heaven and the earth as witnesses against them, and he says all of these things are going to witness, all these objects are going to long outlast any human witness.
	You know, the covenant, the Torah scroll, the earth and the heaven, they're all going to witness that I warned you about this today.
	But what this really is, more than anything else, is the handing over of leadership.
	And the problem is, it's very difficult, as George H.W.
	Bush learned about Ronald Reagan, very difficult to take leadership from a guy who's deeply popular and optimistic.
	Much easier to take leadership from somebody who is chiding people.
	And then you come along and you say, OK, now I'm the voice of hope.
	Joshua's the new voice of hope.
	It just shows that the length of Moses' final sacrifice, that he's willing to let the valedictory go in order to serve as the final tool of transition of power.
	And then, of course, This beautiful kind of romantic moment, and it is, not romantic sexually, obviously, but a romantic kind of notion that Moses goes up, and we'll talk about this next week, he goes up to the top of the mountain, and God kisses him.
	It says that God kisses him and takes his soul, and they say that, the rabbis describe it this way, they say that, you know, when people die, typically, you're having your soul extricated from your physical body, and it's very painful for Moses, because Moses was such a holy person, it was like a hair being drawn from a glass of milk, that there was no friction whatsoever.
	Okay, so we'll talk about all that next week, but tomorrow is the mailbag, so make sure you get in your final mail and you tune in tomorrow live.
	You can send me questions and we'll talk about all of these things.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.

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