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Oct. 6, 2016 - The Ben Shapiro Show
56:58
Ep. 191 - Round II: Trump vs. Hillary, The Revenge

The second presidential debate is almost upon us, Ted Cruz makes the world's saddest face, and the vaunted mailbag! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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This has been a pretty gut-wrenching election for conservatives.
It's not gut-wrenching because of Hillary Clinton.
We know how awful and evil Hillary Clinton is.
Most of us have been thinking and writing about how she's horrible for at least two decades.
It's gut-wrenching because of, of course, Donald Trump.
Trump's candidacy raises two questions that have rarely come into conflict for conservatives.
First, who will be worse for the country for the next four years?
And second, who will be worse for the conservative movement and its political vessel, the Republican Party?
Now, normally, these two questions resolve in favor of the Republican harmony, of course.
The first question, who will be worse for the country for the next four years, is, by default, the Democrat.
That's because the Democratic Party only selects candidates of the left, people who believe in never-ending government power and the full-scale destruction of individual rights in pursuit of that power.
The second question is usually obvious, too.
Republican candidates winning strengthens the reach and power of the Republican Party and, therefore, the conservative movement.
This year, the questions aren't quite so simple.
Conservatives have actually broken down into three groups.
One is the just-say-yes Trump voters.
Now, many intelligent conservatives say this is a pretty easy call.
Yes, Trump will be better than Hillary for the next four years, because how could he not be?
At worst, he won't be any worse than Hillary.
At best, he'll fulfill all the promises he's made to the Heritage Foundation on judges and the NRA on guns and evangelicals on religious freedom.
As my friend Dennis Prager puts it, if you have to choose between two doors, the first is a man-eating lion, behind the second is either a man-eating lion or a beautiful woman, you're going to choose door number two every single time.
As for the second question, whether Trump or Hillary will be better for the Republican Party, they say there's no issue here either.
Trump's victory doesn't endanger the party.
Good conservatives will stand up to Trump when he strays.
If, for example, he doesn't nominate a conservative for the court, Hugh Hewitt says, Mitch McConnell will stand up to him.
So there's no downside risk to Trump leading the GOP.
These same people generally suggest that should Trump lose, the chances of another Republican ever being elected drain away as older voters die and the voting base becomes more diverse and redistricting moves forward.
Then there's the second group of conservatives.
These are the just-say-no Hillary voters, right?
These are people like Bret Stephens at the Wall Street Journal and Max Boot at the Council on Foreign Relations.
They say Trump will be worse than Hillary.
They point to his personal instability, his ignorance, his constitutional apathy toward learning, his contentious relationship with the truth.
Brett Stevens wrote weeks ago, quote, Then there's the second question for them.
election isn't Mr. Trump's ideas such as they are, it's his character such as it is.
Boots says, quote, "He hasn't studied how to be president, in particular the commander in chief part of the job.
He's totally unfit to be commander in chief.
The chances of a foolish war they think under Trump are extraordinary." Then there's the second question for them, who will be worse for the Republican Party?
These Hillary voters point to Hillary's political incompetence and unpopularity, They say she'll probably be a one-term president.
Better one term of Hillary than eight years of disastrous Trump reign.
Let him lose.
Let Republicans come back in four years with a better candidate.
Then there are those of us in the third-way group.
There are people like me who simply can't vote for either of these two.
Most of these people in this camp wake up in the morning considering whether or not to vote Trump.
We generally believe Hillary will be way more damaging to the country than Trump over the next four years, but we do fear the possibility that Trump could be catastrophic.
It's possible.
We think that Trump will likely govern as a centrist Democrat.
We suspect he'll cave on judges, that he'll broker a deal with Democrats, that he'll push us into a trade war, that he'll put forth an isolationist foreign policy.
We think he'll work to undermine the essential causes of life in Judeo-Christian ethics.
Even then, he'd probably be better than Hillary, if only by a degree.
In answer to this question, I'd of course much rather that Donald Trump won.
Then there's the second question.
Trump has spent a year convincing conservatives to give up truth itself in order to fight Hillary Clinton, to sign on to an amoral politics that disdains decency or even conservatism.
He's poisoned the well with young people, with minorities, with women.
He's turned the GOP into the party of Bush lied people died.
Republican thought leaders are carrying water for him.
The chances that they'll suddenly discover their spines when he becomes President Trump are pretty much zero.
Another eight years of this, we think, will destroy the Republican Party utterly and the conservative movement and salt the earth.
By this logic, for the sake of the conservative movement and its only tool, the Republican Party, a Hillary election would be preferable to a Trump one.
In answer to this question, I'd rather that Hillary won, if only so that we can rebound in opposition to a bad president, instead of permanently sacrificing our principles in order to collapse into support of a bad president.
Note, I said I'd rather Hillary won on this score, not that I'd vote for her.
That's something I'd never do.
I'd never vote Hillary, never even consider it, because my vote is not only a tool of political calculation, it's my personal moral and political affirmation.
I will never affirm this despicable woman and her plans to smother freedom and extend the culture of death.
Which leads us to the third way.
The third way is to simply reject the idea of a binary choice outright.
Yes, one of these people will be the next president.
But that does not recommend that we give one of them our moral imprimatur.
As I've said for months, I plan on skipping the top of the ticket.
Neither one of these candidates fulfills my basic requirements to be president.
I won't vote Trump, and I certainly will never vote Hillary Clinton.
That decision on Trump, by the way, is always subject to changing evidence.
Trump could change.
I think that's probably unlikely.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
happen.
Or Republicans could change.
They could stop humoring him.
They could provide evidence that they'd stand up to him, in which case the threat of his ascension is greatly diminished.
If nothing changes, however, I'll remain torn, and Trump will continue tearing conservatives and conservatism apart.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
All righty.
So tons to get to today here on The Ben Shapiro Show.
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Okay, so we may have reached the point in this election cycle where tragedy turns to comedy.
It's possible we've reached that point.
And when I say possible, I mean we've reached that point.
So, Ted Cruz is now out there, and he's campaigning for Donald Trump.
Now, to be fair, he wasn't really campaigning for Trump.
He was in a campaign office in Texas doing the phone banking thing to show people how much he cares about the Republican Party in this election cycle, and it was caught on tape, and here was Ted Cruz Trying to make phone calls, leaving messages for people, and you got the Trump-Pence signs in the background.
And in this video, Ted Cruz legitimately looks as though he's a small child realizing for the first time that his parents will eventually die.
Hi, this is Ted Cruz calling.
I was calling to encourage you to come out and vote on Election Day.
This election is critical for the direction of our country, and I urge you to come out and support freedom and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
You can vote by absentee ballot, and if you need help getting an application for an absentee ballot, the Republican Party of Texas can help you with that.
Or you can vote in person, but I just wanted to encourage you to come out and vote.
Thank you, and God bless you.
Okay, so there is a freeze frame that's going around right before the end.
He kind of gives the Ted Cruz sad face.
And that was going around.
The best tweet on this, I don't know who this guy is, Urban Achiever, he said, record scratch, freeze frame, let's see if we can find it.
It's really, that one, there you go.
Yep, that's the image.
That is the image that is now headlining sites across the country.
Ted Cruz realizing that life is meaningless, the universe is empty, and after you die, you turn into dirt.
And so this tweet from Urban Achiever says, record scratch, freeze frame.
Yep, that's me.
You might be wondering how I ended up here.
I'm sorry.
I know Senator Cruz personally.
Senator Cruz is a good guy.
It's funny.
I'm sorry.
We've now reached the point where this is actually funny, where everyone has been forced to pay homage to Donald Trump.
We all have to bend the knee and pay homage to Donald Trump.
What's amazing about this, so Paul Ryan is supposed to campaign with Donald Trump on Saturday in Wisconsin.
The polls, by the way, look really bad for Donald Trump lately.
The 538 has Hillary up five points nationally.
They say this is starting to look like a blowout unless he flips it on Sunday.
And we'll talk in a moment about what he has to do, if he can indeed save himself, what exactly we have to do to flip this on Sunday, what he has to do to flip this on Sunday.
But Paul Ryan is going out there, and he's going to be pushing his better way agenda, standing next to Donald Trump, which is just That's the awkwardest thing in the world.
Remember, Paul Ryan's the guy who said that Donald Trump engaged in what he called textbook racism over his Mexican judge comments.
And then there's Ted Cruz.
Just, I need the image back.
I'm sorry.
I need to bring it back.
Yeah.
There's Ted Cruz talking and we'll find it.
Don't worry guys, because...
Oh my God.
Do you laugh?
Do you cry?
Who knows?
This is the guy, he's sitting there with Trump pen sign in the background.
This is the guy who's now sitting there phone banking on behalf of the guy who said that his wife is ugly and his dad murdered JFK.
And it's just, and it's just, I'm sorry, it's just, it's too much.
It's just too much.
Hand it to Reince Priebus, okay?
Reince Priebus has somehow dragged all of these screaming parties, kicking and screaming, onto the deck of the Titanic just before it hits the iceberg.
People are trying to escape wildly, and Ryan's like, no, get up here!
We're like, okay, okay, okay!
And that's the picture of a man realizing his impending doom is afoot.
Sorry, gang, it's just too much for me.
I've been overcome by 2016.
First the death of Harambe, and now this.
So here's the problem.
For Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz, the real reason they're doing this, of course, is not because Ryan Suprebus asked them to do so.
It's because they have an eye on 2020.
He's campaigning, by the way, for Barton for Congress.
He's not really campaigning for Trump, so it's not totally fair to Cruz, but the image is just too much.
But the fact is that The reason that Ryan and Cruz are doing this is because they think that all of the donors are going to take revenge on them if they don't endorse Donald Trump.
This is just silly.
Honestly, it's silly.
There's one group of donors who are really in the Trump camp, the Mercer family, they're very much in the Trump camp, for example, and it's possible that they'll be so upset at people like Paul Ryan or people like Ted Cruz that they'll never back those people if they don't back Trump.
Possible.
I don't even know if that's the case, but that's the speculation anyway.
There are lots of donors all over the country.
You think in three years anyone's gonna care who voted for Donald Trump or supported him after the primaries?
Anyone?
Donald Trump didn't even support, really, John McCain in 2012.
I mean, in 2008.
He may have voted for Obama in 2008.
Donald Trump was giving Hillary Clinton money until five minutes ago, and now we're all told that if we don't jump on that Titanic with him, then we're disloyal.
In three years, nobody's going to recall this.
What will be recalled, however, is the picture of Paul Ryan saying better way and then hands up with Donald Trump, right, holding the hands awkwardly.
So it's just—it's bad political calculation.
Everybody in politics has the attention span of a gnat, and that's true whether you're a politician trying to look down the road or whether you're a donor right now saying saying to people like Cruz, "I'll never give you money." In a year and a half, when Cruz is running for Senate again, they'll give him money.
And they would have even if he hadn't endorsed.
Because the bottom line is, Cruz is a very good senator.
So, it's just, I just have to point out that this is, it just demonstrates that in the end, everyone says Trump is anti-establishment, he's anti-establishment.
The entire establishment is backing Donald Trump.
I mean, except for the Bush family, who no one cares about at this point.
Everyone is backing Donald Trump.
And the Republican Party is four square behind him.
So with that out of the way, let's talk a little bit of good Trump, bad Trump, because he had a busy day yesterday.
All righty.
So we start with some bad Trumps.
So I said earlier, here's the face.
Yeah, I know.
Otherwise I get complaints.
Yeah, there's the face for bad Trump.
Okay, so we start with bad Trump.
So Donald Trump's surrogates have been going out there saying the reason that Donald Trump didn't pay taxes or may not have paid taxes or took a billion dollar deduction is because he's a genius, because he's brilliant.
Donald Trump's tax advisor is on national TV saying what I've been saying for a while, which is That's not a tax strategy, okay?
No one says, no one gets up on January 1st and they say, okay, year's beginning, how do I avoid taxes?
I'll lose a billion dollars.
No one does that, right?
He has an accountant, the accountant put down his losses, he realized those losses, and then that counts against his net income operating.
So his net operating loss is what they call it.
In any case, here's Trump's tax advisor explaining, no, it's not genius, it's not brilliant, it's called taxes.
Was he brilliant in the way he used the tax code?
Smart and a genius?
No, those returns were entirely created by us.
So what level of involvement did he have?
Virtually zero.
Virtually zero.
So the idea he says that he knows how to work the tax code.
Did you see any example or have any reason to believe that he does know how to work or game the tax code as much as he says he does?
Not what I dealt with.
Okay, so he's saying what's true, obviously, that he had nothing to do with his own taxes, and then he went back into the crypt.
So, that's his tax advisor.
Okay, so they overplayed their hands on this whole tax thing, but it's a silly attack in the first place.
Trump is not obligated to pay extra taxes.
Anybody who does pay extra taxes is doing it wrong.
If you want the government taking more of your money, I suggest that you just fill out that line on your tax form where it says that you can give them more money than you have to.
Okay, other bad Trump.
So Donald Trump, this is all yesterday in Reno, Nevada.
Hillary Clinton has cut an ad that picks on Trump for going after John McCain on the POW stuff.
And it's an effective ad.
It's a World War II veteran who's sitting there complaining about Donald Trump having used this language.
He's disrespected the troops.
All right, that's how every Hillary ad now shows some sobbing person talking about how Trump said something mean one time and it's ruined their life.
That's every Hillary ad now.
We showed the one with the little girls who are sitting around apparently developing bulimia because Donald Trump said Rosie O'Donnell's fat or something, and then we've now had the one where a World War II veteran who went through POW camps in Germany is very upset that Donald Trump said bad things about POWs, which by the way is Perfectly normal.
I assume that if I were a POW, I'd be upset too.
In fact, I'm upset and I'm not a POW.
I think that Trump's a moron and he should have apologized for a long ago.
Here's Donald Trump's response to that attack ad.
And then I saw today, I left the room and I saw a commercial where it was really a nasty commercial, totally made up about me with vets.
There is nobody that loves the vets more or respects the vets more.
They're spending hundreds of millions of dollars on false commercials and it's a disgrace.
So what we'll do, I guess we'll sue them.
Let's sue them, right?
Let's sue him.
Yeah, let's sue him, guys.
Yeah, let's sue him.
Okay, no, we should not just sue people.
We should not just sue people because we disagree with what they say.
I'm on the receiving end of such a frivolous lawsuit right now from Clockboy.
Okay, I'm not a big fan of this routine.
I don't like what he says.
Therefore, we're just gonna sue.
What do you say, folks?
Let's sue him.
What kind of garbage is this?
I mean, I hate this election cycle so much.
So, before it was tragedy is comedy with Cruz, now it's just tragedy is tragedy.
I mean, this is, we have on the one side Hillary Clinton, who wants to shut down every company that uses political speech in a way she doesn't like, and on the other side we have Donald Trump who wants to change the libel laws to be like Britain, so anytime you say anything about anybody, they can sue you.
Whether it's woeful and malicious or not, it's just absolutely silly.
Okay, quick break here.
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Okay, final note.
So Donald Trump.
This is the end of bad Trump.
And then we'll get some good Trump.
Bad Trump.
Donald Trump is in Nevada.
It's pronounced Nevada, apparently.
I know there are some people who pronounce it Nevada, Nevada, as though they're from Great Britain and they're drinking tea.
Donald Trump decides that he's going to talk about this for some odd reason while in the state of Nevada.
Memo to all those political candidates trying to win votes in the Silver State.
Nevada.
Not Nevada.
Nevada State Archivist Guy Rocha says he's blasted politicians for messing it up.
In Nevada.
No disrespect to the President, but when you're here, you need to pronounce the state's name the way we do.
The President got the word.
It's great to be here in Nevada.
You didn't think I'd get it right, did you?
If you want to get it right, just ask the patrons at Heidi's Restaurant in Carson City.
Nevada.
What happens when you hear somebody call it Nevada?
They don't live here.
On the broadcast tonight from Nevada, the name of this place comes from the Spanish word Nevada, meaning snowy.
But according to the official NBC handbook of pronunciation, Okay, so they're obviously very concerned with all of this.
Donald Trump then goes forward and actually mispronounces Nevada.
He says Nevada at his rally.
Do we have the clip of Donald Trump talking about it or no?
Okay, the clip is gone.
In any case, Donald Trump went out there and he said, he pronounces it correctly, Nevada.
And anyone who pronounces it Nevada is wrong.
And then he says, but I had a friend who made the mistake of calling it Nevada one time and you really meant Nevada.
What are you doing?
Okay, so that's bad Trump.
But there is some good Trump today.
But to see the good Trump, you have to pass.
That's the way this works.
So to see Donald Trump be good Trump, you have to go to dailywire.com.
We have some epic stuff coming up.
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A lot of material to get to.
DailyWire.com, eight bucks a month, and you can become a subscriber and become part of our magical team, part of our magical podcast, DailyWire.com.
Okay, so we did some bad Trump, so now it's time for a little bit of good Trumpy.
Yay!
There's some good Trump today.
We're always excited when there's some good Trump.
So, it starts off with Mike Pence.
Mike Pence, obviously, he's sort of the ideal VP candidate.
He kicks Tim Kaine's butt all around the stage in that vice presidential debate.
And then he comes forward and he says, but I didn't do the winning.
Donald Trump did the winning.
Which of course is not accurate.
Donald Trump had nothing to do with Mike Pence winning.
Donald Trump pulling Mike Pence's strings would have been a bizarre sight indeed.
But here's Mike Pence paying honor to Donald Trump.
Some people think I won.
But I'll leave that to others.
You know, what I can tell you is from where I sat, Donald Trump won the debate.
Donald Trump's vision to make America great again won the debate.
Yeah, kind of tepid.
Everybody's like, yeah, you won, Mike.
You did it.
And he's like, it's Trump.
Trump won.
And they're like, wait, what?
He wasn't there.
I saw you.
Like, I saw the guy with the white hair, not the guy with the weird hair.
Like, that's OK.
Whatever.
Again, I can't get over every time.
Now, every time I see Mike Pence, I just see Eminem.
Somebody tweeted during the debate that Eminem has really aged poorly.
In any case, that is Mike Pence setting the table.
So now it's up to Trump, right?
Trump has this big debate coming up on Sunday and he has to do a couple of things in order to emerge victorious.
First, he actually has to win.
So in the last debate, he didn't have to win in order to win.
If he had just emerged unscathed, he would have won the debate.
Everybody thought Hillary was on her final footing, that she was about to collapse, no pun intended, and she was in trouble.
I mean, the polls were even, he had all the momentum, and then he went in there and acted like an idiot.
He actually has to win this one.
So it's not enough for him to appear stable.
Now he has to make Hillary appear unstable.
So he has to be aggressive without looking crazy, which is a hard line to draw.
He also has to be very, very disciplined in how he leverages his attacks.
He has to Take her hit and then quickly flip it and hit her back.
It has to be like Pence did with Cain.
We showed a lot of that yesterday.
We said this is a tactic that Donald Trump should certainly be using.
And he also, I mean, he has to beware of a couple of traps she's going to set.
She's going to try to obviously trigger him into saying something crazy.
I would not be surprised if she sort of physically approaches him.
And then if he recoils, then she claims that she scared off the big man.
And if he doesn't, then she claims that he hulked over her.
I would not be surprised because they're walking around the stage.
Honestly, his best strategy here would be to be like Danny Kaye in one of those old 1950s comedy flicks, where he's just running around the edge of the ring.
Trump should just stay away from her as far as possible, which, I mean, any sane person would do, given her bouts with crucial diseases.
But Trump has to win.
I mean, it's all on Trump now.
And if Trump does badly on Sunday night, the sucker's over.
It's done.
It's finished.
Kaput.
We're talking about 2020 already.
But Donald Trump is setting the stage.
So, Donald Trump starts here by talking about the fact that Bill Clinton is now going up against Obamacare.
So Hillary, as I mentioned, I think this is a concerted strategy by Hillary Clinton's team.
Now what they are attempting to do, it's pretty clear, they're attempting to draw distance between Hillary and Obama.
They feel comfortable enough with their lead to figure, okay, now we're going to go for that broad middle that doesn't love Obama, and we're just going to separate just enough.
So we'll say Obama does a good job, but, yes, but, Clinton added that it doesn't make any sense and that the insurance model doesn't work.
Now, Trump is going to try and drive away.
She's going to try and say, "Okay, well, the left simply shouldn't vote for Hillary.
She's not far left enough." So here is Donald Trump ripping into Hillary and Bill.
Clinton added that it doesn't make any sense and that the insurance model doesn't work.
Now, I've been saying that for a long time.
At least he's honest.
He's very late.
In the meantime, she wants to double down on Obamacare.
I'll bet he went through hell last night.
Can you imagine?
Can you imagine?
Can you imagine what he went through after making that statement?
Okay, so he's hitting them, and that's a smart tactic to hit them.
And then he says, you know, everybody keeps saying I should apologize for all the things I've said.
Obama should apologize for Obamacare.
Oh, if you say something, just apologize.
Just apologize.
I think that President Obama should apologize for Obamacare.
Okay, so good line.
President Obama should apologize for Obamacare.
Of course he should, and he won't.
It's crucial to his policy.
You know, Trump theoretically could apologize for all the terrible things he's said, but that's not in his character.
So, the stage is set for this debate.
And as I say, I think Obamacare is going to come up.
In this next debate, and you can see the left trying to figure out what's the angle here.
So you've got Hillary's team trying to separate away from Obamacare.
You've got certain members of the Obama administration trying to blame the Republicans for Obamacare.
Ezekiel Emanuel is Rahm Emanuel's brother, and Ezekiel Emanuel is a radical.
I mean, Ezekiel Emanuel has a piece titled, Why I Want to Die by 80 Years Old, or Why I Want to Die by 75.
He talks about why he wishes his dad had died, basically, when he was sick instead of them spending Republicans bear some of the responsibility for this.
Ezekiel Emanuel is at least honest enough to recognize that Obamacare is just redistribution of health care.
Now he's on Megyn Kelly last night and he just blamed the GOP for Obamacare.
They're looking for some excuse here.
Republicans bear some of the responsibility for this.
Remember, Marco Rubio eliminated some of the risk adjustment that actually buffered and helped the insurance companies in this situation.
He took it out of the budget.
And that is a serious problem.
Chelsea Clinton is out there hitting Obamacare.
No, no, it's not plenty of blame.
It's Republicans.
It's Republicans clamoring.
You are the architect of the law.
OK, so she's in.
Of course, Kelly is right.
They're trying to figure out how do we escape the wrath of Obamacare.
Chelsea Clinton is out there hitting Obamacare.
See if you can stay awake during this clip.
So empowering Medicare to negotiate on behalf of our millions and millions and millions of Americans who are on Medicare is good for people on Medicare and those of us not on Medicare yet.
The second thing, she thinks, that we have to do is to kind of pass through tax credits real relief to help control premium costs and out-of-pocket expenses.
And the third thing she thinks that we have to do is to enable people starting at 55 to be part of Medicare.
So to lower the age for Medicare.
And to introduce a public option in every state so that there's real competition.
So we have to do all of that.
Okay, we can stop.
Oh God.
But she's saying Obamacare needs work.
It's not fully done.
Kellyanne Conway is out there hitting Bill Clinton, saying that Bill hitting Obamacare is really great for Trump.
What I think the Trump campaign is missing is that it's actually Hillary campaigning to the left and the middle at the same time.
They're trying to say Obamacare is insufficient, and also Obama does things that are wrong, which is not the stupidest strategy in the world.
Here's Kellyanne Conway.
Donald Trump, you know, in terms of health care, I think it's a huge issue that's been left on the table in these debates.
We've got now President Bill Clinton as our best surrogate.
That's a good development.
I'm thinking of having him in the spin room with us.
And this is going to be the line, is that Bill now sides with Trump, and you watch Trump will hit Hillary with that over Obamacare.
Okay.
Meanwhile, Hillary still has one major built-in advantage.
Well, she has two.
One is that she's not Trump.
Trump has the same advantage about Hillary.
But her second major built-in advantage is the media.
I mean, this is an amazing thing.
So, Saturday Night Live did a recap of the debate between Trump and Hillary Clinton, and Hillary was just over the moon about all of this.
Here's Hillary talking about SNL.
Saturday night, last Saturday.
Where were you?
Were you at home?
Were you watching Channel 4?
Did you watch Saturday Night Live?
I have to tell you, I saw it on delay, but I did see it.
And I'll tell you, when Kate McKinnon came out with the walker, I thought I was going to fall off my chair.
I mean, she makes me laugh anyway.
She is so funny, just naturally.
Yes.
Oh my gosh, she was amazing.
Now, I wish I could do, you know, the jumps, the splits, the somersault.
I've been working on it.
I bet you could.
Maybe sometime in the next 35 days.
I know you can.
You're pretty agile.
Yeah, I may pull it out and let you see it.
The next debate!
I love all these Hollywood people sitting around Hilary laughing as though she's funny and amusing.
I mean, Hilary is the least amusing person on planet Earth.
Wow.
Elizabeth Banks, who's just a pro-abortion fanatic, sitting there just laughing at Hilary.
The media love her.
They don't love her.
They're willing to push her.
Hillary, in breaking news, Hillary was on with Steve Harvey, and Steve Harvey, who is not apparently doing Family Feud at this point, if you want to see something funny, by the way, maybe we'll have to save it for another time.
Have you guys ever seen the montage of Steve Harvey reacting to people saying dirty things on Family Feud?
Never seen it?
Oh, well, we'll have to pull it.
It's hysterically funny.
I mean, it's really, really funny.
But she was on Steve Harvey's show, and I want to show you a clip of her with Steve Harvey, and then I want to explain what's happening here.
I have 12 grandchildren and I was looking for new ideas for entertaining them, keeping them up and having fun with them.
Do you have any ideas?
I'm a new grandmother and so I'm pretty experienced with babies to 16 months.
So if you've got any grandchildren in that category, I have first-hand experience.
But I think probably the best thing is, you know, I have friends who have a lot of grandkids, and what they try to do is actually run what they call grandparents camp.
Oh, that sounds great.
And they do try to get all of them together, maybe once or twice a year.
And they have games for them.
Oh, games!
No one's ever thought of that.
They do board games, they do outdoor games.
For children?
Games?
Outdoors?
Kids look forward to it because they're going to camp with their grandmother.
What you might not know is that she's been breaking ground in her personal and professional life since she was a kid.
So let's go back to when you were just a kid.
Oh boy.
No, I'm surprised.
Oh, so cute.
Oh my goodness.
You wanted to be an astronaut.
I did.
I was excited about the space program.
I was excited about President Kennedy saying we were going to send a man to the moon and bring him back.
Here's the key about this.
First of all, I mean, goodness gracious, if somebody asks you what's the best way to play with kids and your answer is, I know, board games where you go outdoors with them.
It's like, oh God.
And I like the woman there going, yes, that's brilliant.
I never thought of that.
What have you been doing with your kid the whole time?
Do you stick your kid in front of the TV and just leave?
Do you leave him in a hot car?
What do you do with the kid?
But more than that, there are now memos revealed that every question, virtually every question that Hillary Clinton was asked on the Steve Harvey special, she was pre-rehearsed.
They told her what was coming.
And yet you see her doing the, oh, I've never seen anything.
I'm so surprised.
This is new.
Surprising to me.
Yeah, the media are playing her game, obviously.
They would like to see her win.
And you can see this.
I mean, the media bias here is just insane and continuous, right?
You have Chris Cuomo, for example, very, very upset in the VP debate.
Mike Pence wasn't pressed from the left on gay rights.
Why should he be upset about that?
I thought he was an objective journalist, Chris Cuomo, right?
He actually helped Pence out in two cases.
One, he got a pass on LGBTQ last night, which is going to be a significant weakness for Mike Pence with a big chunk of the independent and center electorate, any of those people who are open-minded.
That's why people knew who Governor Mike Pence was.
He tried to pass laws unsuccessfully that were discriminatory.
Not that just Democrats thought they were, but it did not come up last night.
I agree.
I think in NetNet that Pence wound up looking good for him because in deflecting off of what Trump has said, he didn't have to deal with some of his own problems with LGBTQ positions, his Syrian refugee struggles within his own state.
But it also may have made people feel like, wow, this guy might be better than the guy at the top of the ticket.
OK, so we can stop it there.
I mean, it's just Chris Cuomo, just awful, awful, awful anchor, really a terrible anchor.
OK, so on the other side of the aisle, on the other side, so the media is helping out Hillary, Hillary very, very clearly.
Which has created the impression from some people on the other side of the aisle that the proper role of the right-wing media is to push Donald Trump as hard as the left-wing media pushes Hillary Clinton.
Our job is to be the mirror image of them.
If there are going to be hacks for Hillary, then we have to be hacks for Trump.
It's important that we all shill for Donald Trump.
And this has created some real significant tensions inside sort of the conservative media space.
It's created real tensions.
And it's really unfortunate.
Glenn Beck reached out to Shazam.
Sean Hannity.
Sean Hannity's been a big Trump booster ever since the primaries.
He denies he was boosting Trump during the primaries.
He clearly was.
And whether he—maybe Sean doesn't even know he was doing it, but that's clearly what was happening on any objective level.
And let me just preface this by saying I really like Sean personally.
I think Sean's a spectacularly good guy.
I think Sean's a very nice human being.
Generous to a fault.
I know too many good stories about Sean to be angry at Sean, even though I think Sean's wrong on this stuff.
But Glenn Beck reached out to Sean and he said, look, we disagree on Trump.
After the election, we're going to have to get together.
After the election, we're going to have to be friends again.
And Sean responded.
And here's how Sean responded to it.
This is clip 18.
And then you just lie about ever doing it.
And he quotes, he says, Jesus didn't teach, when they hit you, you hit back twice as hard.
Well, my martial arts kind of teaches that.
When people attack me, I'm gonna fight back.
Okay, so again, pushing this martial arts notion.
He's in a street fight, and he's going to use his kung fu skills to beat down Glenn Beck.
I mean, this kind of stuff is really dumb.
Megyn Kelly mildly tapped Sean Hannity for something very, very obvious last night.
She was pointing out that Hillary Clinton is only doing friendly media, and so is Donald Trump.
They're both trying to escape media where they will be asked tough questions.
Here was Megyn Kelly talking, and you'll see she name checks Hannity, and this starts a giant firefight.
And now they're both in their own version of a presidential protection program with, you say, they've designed her situation so she's not in a place where she feels uncomfortable or anything unexpected could come at her, which is why she sat for a half an hour with Mary J. Blige, the singer, which is why she did entertainment tonight.
Uh, this evening, which is why we just found out that when she went on the Steve Harvey show, she had every single question given to her in writing in advance, and then she feigned surprise as the questions were asked.
And Donald Trump, with all due respect to my friend at 10 o'clock, will go on Hannity, and pretty much only Hannity, and will not venture out to the unsafe spaces these days, which doesn't exactly expand the tent for either one of them.
There, that's my two cents.
Okay, and so Hannity fires back.
What she's saying there, by the way, is 100% accurate.
Of course Trump is only doing Hannity.
Of course he hasn't been with Bret Baier.
He hasn't been with Brit Hume.
He hasn't been with Megyn Kelly.
He hasn't been with Dana Perino.
He hasn't been with any of the people on Fox who might ask him a tough question.
He's been going and sending his surrogates every night to Sean Hannity.
So every night it's Sean Hannity starring Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and Laura Ingraham in Newt Gingrich.
And sometimes Sarah Huckabee.
You know, that's been the entire lineup for Sean.
But Sean was very mad about this, and so Sean tweets this out.
He tweets, Megan Kelly, you should be mad at Hillary Clinton.
Clearly you support her, and real Donald Trump did talk to you.
Okay, real Donald Trump talked to her one time, months ago, after she had to go to Trump Tower to basically, to basically make overtures to him because he had to be, because the Fox News bosses wanted her to do so.
And then, this idea that Megan Kelly supports Hillary Clinton, like, I'm not close with Megyn Kelly.
Megyn Kelly doesn't support Hillary Clinton.
I've seen no evidence that Megyn Kelly supports Hillary Clinton, but this is Sean now doing this routine, and the routine is any mild criticism of anything associated with Donald Trump, including basic truths like Sean Hannity's show, is obviously pro-Donald.
I mean, Sean Hannity cut a commercial for Donald Trump.
He cut a commercial for Donald Trump.
He got in hot water with his bosses at Fox News for cutting a commercial for Donald Trump.
You don't get to do that and claim that you're objective at the same time.
Megyn Kelly is, of course, exactly right here, but what's happening is, and it's really, it's disturbing and devastating because I liked a lot of the people involved in these fights.
I really do.
It's sad to me.
Is that people have so welded themselves into the various corners that they've decided it's no longer important to be friends or allies with people with whom they disagree about Trump.
Instead, those people must be saboteurs, they must be enemies, they must be beaten up with kung fu style.
If you don't support everything Donald Trump does, if you say something like Donald Trump only goes on friendly media like Sean Hannity, that means that you're a Hillary supporter.
That's the routine now.
Even though you never vote for Hillary Clinton, even though you think Hillary Clinton is a terrible, terrible person, even though you have qualms about this election, even mild qualms about this election demonstrate that you're pro-Hillary.
I mean, I just got a letter from somebody who I used to be friends with, and here's the letter.
I can read it to you.
It says, So, you've determined to put everything you've got into getting Hillary elected?
If she is, I will hold you, Rich Lowry, John Podhoretz, Bill Kristol responsible for every villain put on the Supreme Court, Every baby aborted, the entire shambles that ensues.
Let me just point out, Donald Trump was pro-choice until five minutes ago, and he's not very pro-life now.
Let me just point out, we're not getting a conservative on the Supreme Court because Mitch McConnell's in charge of that, not Donald Trump.
Finally.
I love this.
It says, every snide remark about Trump gains votes for Hillary.
My job is, if you want Donald Trump reflected at you, all you have to do is watch a tape of Donald Trump.
That's all you have to do.
But this is the fight that's now broken out.
If you do not reflect everything that Donald Trump wants you to reflect, you are therefore in Hillary's corner.
This sort of small-minded thinking destroys movement.
We can disagree on a lot of things.
We can disagree on a lot of things.
But what we can't disagree on is that the left is the enemy.
We may disagree on approach, but the idea that we're in separate camps now or that we desperately want Hillary to be president I don't want Hillary to be president.
I don't want Trump to be president either.
I hate this entire election cycle.
But you're putting the enemy camp if you don't mirror everything Trump says.
And what they really want is not your vote, obviously, because I live in California.
They don't care about my vote.
What they really want is for me to stop criticizing Trump altogether.
That's what Sean is saying about Meghan.
And it's really, it creates an ugly future for the movement.
Okay, time for some things I like, and then things I hate, and then mailbag.
So, things I like.
I don't think I ever recommended this after I read it, but it is a very good old sci-fi book called The Canticle for Leibowitz.
It's considered sort of a classic of the genre.
It's by Walter Miller Jr.
And it's a really interesting sci-fi book.
A lot of sci-fi books are interesting because they're idea-driven, not character-driven.
This one is about sort of there's a nuclear war, but it's not a typical nuclear war and then how do you survive?
It's almost as though a new Middle Ages is created and how does humanity rebuild and what does that lead to?
It's really fascinating.
It's a really interesting take on religion versus science, the contributions of religion to science in the Middle Ages, even though it really is supposed to be about the future.
Really interesting book.
I can't spell for Leibowitz.
Not the easiest read, but has some really fascinating ideas in it.
Okay, time for some things I hate.
Let's do it.
So, our good friend Mackalickamore was at the White House, and when he wasn't doing his crappy thrift shop song, which is the only song, that one isn't even that bad.
What's the love one that he sings that's awful?
Same Love.
One Love, Same Love, Chicken Love, I don't know.
That song is terrible.
But Mackalickamore is at the White House, and Mackalickamore is standing next to President Obama.
Here's a tweet from Mackalickamore.
It is, 9-11, Bush knocked down the towers.
Yeah, that guy's at the White House.
But don't worry, the real conspiracies are about Barack Obama's birth certificate.
We would never want anybody who was a birther anywhere near the White House, but we can have the guy who thinks Bush knocked down the towers on 9-11 standing next to President Obama.
Very, very nice President Obama.
I wonder why people think that we need a reality star as president.
Oh, maybe it's because this guy is a reality star.
The one we currently have is a reality TV star.
Maybe it's that.
Okay, now for the things I hate.
Now this one, this is a thing I really hate.
Here's Olivia Wilde, who's the actress most famous from being in House, and here she is talking about why she is in favor of abortion.
This is one of the more disgusting videos I've ever seen.
This election cycle, I'm thinking a lot about reproductive rights.
Everyone's right to plan when they want to have a family.
And it's on my mind because I'm literally about to have a baby.
Like, in a minute.
To be able to decide exactly how.
Okay, so, she says that she's thinking about reproductive rights one minute from having a baby.
This is about as perverse a notion as I could possibly imagine.
That as you're about to have your child, you're thinking, boy, wouldn't it be great if I could still kill this thing?
It's really imperative that I be able to still kill this thing.
You know, here I am.
Look how pregnant I am.
There's a baby in here.
This is my beautiful child.
And I was thinking, maybe I should just kill it.
You know, it's really important that women be able to kill it anytime they please.
She continues along these lines, not, of course, understanding really what she's saying on a moral level.
How and when and why and where I want to have a baby.
And I believe that is a basic human right.
I care about reproductive rights.
What do you care about?
If you care about your future, vote for it.
Okay, what I care about is not killing babies.
This is going to be mildly graphic, but this is important because I'm sick of the euphemisms.
It's not aborting a fetus.
It's not getting rid of a ball of tissue.
What I'm about to show you right now is a picture of a baby.
This is a picture of a baby that was aborted by Kermit Gosnell.
Okay?
This is, Gosnell was somebody who was not covered by the media in any way, shape, or form.
He was the most prolific serial killer probably in American history.
And this was a baby girl aborted by Kermit Gosnell.
And the only question was whether it was legal for him to kill this baby or not.
And the only question there was how old was the baby and was the abortion done inside the womb or outside the womb.
Okay, so this baby, I believe, was after the 24-week cutoff, but not by much.
So this baby is, let's see how old this baby is.
This is a case where an abortion went awry, she went to a hospital, and the baby ended up dying at the hospital.
By 24 weeks, most babies born prematurely will survive.
This is a late-term abortion.
This is what her baby looks like in the womb.
We can see that picture again.
That's what that baby looks like.
This is a less graphic picture of what an abortion looks like.
A more graphic picture of what an abortion looks like involves the snipping off of the crushing of the skull, the sucking out of the brains.
And these are fully formed children.
These are fully formed children.
I have two beautiful children.
The idea that you get to murder a kid.
Okay, no one has a right to choose that picture.
Go back to the other one.
No one has a right to choose this.
No one.
No one has a right to choose this.
You don't have a right to choose this, okay?
That's a baby.
You don't get to kill it just because it's convenient to you.
You don't have a right to say, it's my decision where and when and how to have the baby.
That's an individual human being, and if that baby were outside the womb and you stuck a knife through its chest, you'd be charged with first degree murder.
You kill it in the womb, and we call it a human right.
That's not a human right because that's a human and that human doesn't have any rights because you just decided its rights are less important than your right to your own convenience.
Despicable.
Despicable.
And so I wanna, we're now gonna play a game with the left.
Let's play a little game with the left.
The game goes like this, okay?
Show the other image.
The game goes like this.
At which point should you be able to kill this baby?
Okay, we're gonna play a game called, when should you be able to kill this baby?
Because I've been told by people like Hillary Clinton that you're able to kill this baby all the way up to the very end, right?
32 to 30 weeks.
Right?
And that's when the baby is fully formed.
It can be born alive.
It is a fully formed human being.
I've watched two of them come out of my wife.
These are human beings.
These are not balls of tissue.
These are not clusters of cells.
And I'm sick of being told that it's just an abortion.
I don't like the euphemisms.
It's not a termination of a pregnancy.
It's a termination of a human life.
Okay?
It's a murder of a human being when you're talking about these babies and this idea that you get to choose that.
Look, you got to choose a lot of things in life.
You don't get to choose another human being's death.
That's not something you get to choose.
So, when is it okay to kill this?
When is it okay to kill this?
Is it okay to kill this thing at week 14, when the heart is pumping several quarts of blood through the body every day?
How about week 15, when the baby has an adult's taste buds?
How about month 4, when the bone marrow is beginning to form?
How about that?
How about weeks 9 and 10, when the baby's teeth are already beginning to form?
It's fingernails are already beginning to develop.
We're talking about two months old, right?
The baby can turn the head and frown.
The baby can hiccup.
Is that okay to kill?
How about week four?
By the end of week four, the kid is already 10,000 times larger than the fertilized eggs was.
There's already the beginnings of eyes and legs and hands.
There are already brain waves detectable.
Mouth and lips are present.
Fingernails are forming.
How about week three?
By the end of the third week, the kid's backbone and spinal column and nervous system are forming.
The liver and kidneys and intestines are beginning to take shape.
How about day 22?
The heart's already beating with the child's blood, which may be of a different blood type than the mother.
So where in here exactly do you think it's okay to murder that kid because you have a personal convenience issue?
Where do you think that you're right?
And I love the glowing way she presents this.
Here I am.
I can't be a bad woman because I'm pregnant.
I can't hate babies.
I mean, here I am.
I'm pregnant.
Well, if you don't hate babies, or if you're not interested in killing them, then why are you in favor of people being allowed to kill them?
It's not a matter of a woman's right to choose.
A slave owner didn't get to choose to hold slaves.
Nazis didn't get to decide which Jews got to live.
And don't give me the, it's legal, therefore it's okay.
Lots of things were legal.
Lots of things in human history have been legal that were totally evil.
It is evil to suggest, as Hillary Clinton does, that the minute before a baby is born, you should be able to drag it by the feet, out of the mother, except for the head, stick a scissors in there, ram it into the baby's skull, rip the skull open, suck the brains out, crushing it, and then pull it out.
Hillary believes that that's something you should be allowed to do.
When I talk about stuff I hate, this is a grave sin.
It's a blot on the American Republic.
It's a blot on the morality of the American people that we treat the killing of literally the most innocent among us.
We treat the killing of these human beings As nothing more than just an issue of convenience and choice and all the rest of it.
It's just no more euphemisms, no more euphemisms.
And I wish to God that Mike Pence would have said that instead of citing to the Bible, okay?
I haven't cited the Bible one time because I don't think that the Bible, I think the Bible is right, but I don't think the Bible is the important textbook here.
I think what's important here is the science.
And I think you're talking about the creation of a unique human life on day one, and you can see it, and you can see the growth, and if you're willing to point out to me where it is that this becomes a human as opposed to a ball of tissue, then let's hear it.
Let's hear it.
I've gotten tweets, by the way, I tweeted this out earlier, and somebody said, well, the brain waves only start at week 20.
So how about that?
You know, do you think that people who are brain dead are alive?
Well, people who are brain-dead don't turn into not brain-dead three weeks later.
Would you kill somebody in a coma because they're brain-dead, but you know they're not going to be brain-dead in four weeks, in ten weeks?
Would you do that?
Would you pull the plug on them knowing, for a full-on fact, that if you just wait a few weeks, that person's going to be fully functional again?
Would you do that?
And it's just, it's truly incredible to me the way that we can blind ourselves to this.
I remember when I was at the 2012 DNC, and I went to, you know, it was in Charlotte, and I walked past an exhibit.
And it was a picture, it was the anti-abortion crowd, the pro-life crowd.
And they were out there with these pictures of aborted babies.
And I walked past and I thought what most people from big cities thought.
I thought, wow, how gauche.
How gauche.
I mean, those are ugly pictures.
Should I really have to look at that in the public square?
That's really ugly.
And then I realized that that's probably how people treated pictures of slavery back in the 1850s.
That's probably how people treated pictures of the Holocaust back in the 1940s.
The bottom line is, if it's that ugly, maybe you should do something about it instead of whining about how ugly it is.
And it's not a matter of personal choice.
Okay?
I have a stake in whether my neighbor gets murdered.
And I have a stake in whether my neighbor's baby gets murdered, too.
Okay, time for, on that light note, it's time for the mailbag.
So let's do a little bit of mailbag.
And you, right now, if you're watching this online, if you're watching this, then you can send us notes and we will answer your questions.
Alrighty.
Alan, I'm currently in eighth grade.
My history teacher's extremely liberal.
She likes to talk about the wage gap, racist police, how America was founded by immigrants, and a lot more.
I wouldn't care, but she's teaching this to other students who don't know much and probably believe what she teaches.
I wanted to know what you think I should do.
Okay, number one answer, don't get a bad grade just to show up the teacher.
Talk to your fellow students outside class if they're open to it.
Talk to your teacher about the possibility of bringing in somebody with a different viewpoint to speak to the class.
You know, go ahead and see if you can present an alternative without your teacher getting mad, but don't compromise your own grades because you shouldn't be put in a position where your power is sort of in their hands.
Casey writes, Ben, if we look at conservatism as the Cincinnati Zoo and Harambe as the Republican Party, What do we do when some juvenile mouth breather falls in the cage?
Do we A. Watch from a distance and see how it plays out?
B. Somehow try to extract the intruder before things get worse for Harambe's sake?
C. Realize it's gone too far, take Harambe out, and plan on building a new exhibit with Cecil the sea lion in four years.
Well, I'm not sure that I buy the analogy, but I appreciate the creativity, and I always appreciate a good reference to Harambe.
I don't have a good answer to that really quite awful analogy.
Zachary writes, Ben, I really appreciate your deconstructing the culture segment.
I despise pop music not only for its poor musical quality, but also the terrible lyrics.
My music of choice is usually metal.
Lamb of God, Korn, Rob Zombie, etc.
Okay, I can't take this supremely seriously when you say that you despise pop music for its poor musical quality and then you name corn as your preferred alternative.
That being said, I'd like to see you deconstruct something from the metal top 40.
I know metal music has its own flaws and would like to see what you can point out.
Metal horns for Harambe.
I know that Harambe has become a big thing with my listeners.
Okay, so I will do that.
I will take a look at the metal selection.
I have to say that if any music could reflect my mood on most days when I do the podcast.
It would probably be some sort of death metal, right guys?
I mean, let's be real.
Matthew writes, Hey Ben, so my question is, why is the idea of socialism so popular among millennials?
As a current college student, I get the appeal of free tuition, but then again, what would that mean for a degree?
If everyone is able to get a higher education, what's the reason to get a degree?
Love the show.
Thanks for your time.
It's my birthday today.
I bought a subscription to the Daily Wire as a birthday gift to me.
Well done, Matthew.
You've really rewarded yourself in a magical way.
Okay, so, the answer is, I mean, you mentioned some of the rationales why the idea of free college tuition is idiotic.
The reason socialism is popular among millennials is because millennials are looking for un-based moral superiority.
They're looking for an unearned sense of moral superiority.
Socialism provides that to you because everybody gets to be a victim.
You get to sympathize with everybody who feels like a victim, and then you get to say, I'm fairer than you to everybody else.
Politics, for a lot of people, This is about the game of unearned moral superiority.
Socialism provides that in spades, because you get to go around saying to everybody, well, I'm not a selfish person.
I think all income should be redistributed.
And when you say, well, why don't you give away your own income?
Well, no, I mean, as a society, we should share.
Not that I should give away my wealth.
As a society, we should share.
Millennials believe that fairness of outcome is imperative, and therefore, they're for socialism.
This is what they neglect to mention is that fairness of outcome can only be achieved by unfairness of means.
Fairness of outcome can only be achieved by unfairness of means, and unfairness of means is evil.
Jamie writes, Hi Ben.
My husband and I are huge fans.
I look forward to your morning show and your podcast every day.
I also enjoy binge watching many of your YouTube videos.
You have mentioned multiple times the problem plaguing poor inner-city black communities is out-of-wedlock births, and this is a problem of culture, not race.
My question to you is, what exactly are poor black women or any poor woman supposed to do when pretty much most of what they have to choose from are pieces of crap?
Your advice is do not have sex or children with pieces of crap.
But what if because of your socioeconomic class, you are surrounded by poor male specimens?
Plus, this is gradually becoming a problem for all women as gentlemen become an endangered species and I watch one after the other of my girlfriends who are doctors end up married, unmarried, and alone.
You know, I'm not going to say that I think that poor women suffer from the problem of being surrounded by more males who are crappy.
I think that if a woman holds out, then she's going to get a guy who's not a piece of crap.
I would also suggest that if you live in an area where a lot of people are crap, you move out of the area.
Right, and I know that that sounds harsh to people because, you know, this is the area where I grew up, but legitimately, most of the people who ended up in the United States over the course of time are people who came from another country to be here because they wanted a better life.
It seems to me that moving from Compton to North Hollywood, for example, is a lot easier than moving from Denmark to New Amsterdam.
And so the idea that you should move out of an area that's bad for you because you want to get a job and be around people who have better social standards, that doesn't seem too out of range for me.
Cass is asking live, why does the left hate the west so much?
I never understood the self-loathing.
The answer is, as I say, the left believes in fairness of outcome.
They believe in fairness of outcomes.
They look at the west.
The west is super successful and rich.
They look at the rest of the world and they say, these people are really poor.
Excuse me.
They say these people are really poor.
Therefore, the West must have done something to exploit and hurt all of these poor countries.
Therefore, the West must be bad.
That's why they hate the West.
They reason backwards.
They start from the end.
They say it's unequal.
Therefore, the people who won are the people who are bad.
That's their logic, even though it's really deeply flawed.
Angeli writes, Ben, your discussion with Andrew on Judaism and Christianity prompted me to ask this.
You believe Judeo-Christian civilization is at the root of what is best in our society.
The best Christians would admit that civilization could not have existed without you.
Well, I mean, without my people, I assume.
I wasn't around like 3,000 years ago.
Why do you think that civilization would be without us?
What if all the people who are now Christians had become Jews instead?
Do you think the same civilization would have resulted?
Have you ever thought about this?
I haven't, which is why I'm curious to hear yours.
I haven't actually thought about that.
You know, I think that the answer that I would give is the same answer that Maimonides gives, which is basically that Christianity and Islam have been a way of spreading monotheism to the entire world, and maybe monotheism couldn't be spread Through conversion to Judaism, because Judaism is a very works-based religion.
I mean, we have to do a lot of stuff that isn't fun.
Yesterday, I was fasting.
I did the entire show not eating, drinking.
I did that the entire day.
It was a fast day.
Next week, I have to do it again.
It's a very demanding religion, Judaism.
And Christianity is less demanding in terms of works.
It's more demanding in terms of grace.
So...
You know, it's possible that Christianity has done a—I mean, not possible, it has—done a better job of outreach on a monotheistic basis, on the basis of the Bible, including the Old Testament, than Judaism has done.
Even though I disagree with a lot of Christianity, and I disagree with the historical veracity of the New Testament, and I disagree about Jesus.
I still can recognize what Christianity has done for the world, and what Christianity has done for the world is obviously immense.
Well, I mean, I used to think that this used to be a phenomenon of the left.
left just completely mimic word for word what their party leader says.
They do not know how to think for themselves.
It's all the same arguments worded exactly the same.
Well, I mean, I used to think that this used to be a phenomenon of the left.
Unfortunately, in this election cycle, what's been demonstrated to me is that there are a lot of people across the political spectrum who are willing to mirror what their politicians say, and they're willing to not think about it, and they're just willing to follow the leader.
And that's a dangerous thing.
We need more independent thinkers in all parties.
We need more people thinking through their positions, having good, useful, powerful discussions.
If we don't do that, then we're not living up to the founding ideal, which is to be people who truly think through the issues before we make up our Okay, that brings us to the end of the week.
Sunday night, big debate.
Make sure that you're at dailywire.com.
I, personally, will be live blogging that monstrosity, so make sure that you at least justify my time by being there and watching me suffer, because, after all, I suffer for your sins, apparently, when it comes to the debates.
But, you know, we'll all be there together.
We'll suffer through this thing.
We're, what, 30 days from the election?
Almost there, almost there.
Alrighty, guys, getting close.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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