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Nov. 11, 2016 - The Ben Shapiro Show
21:52
Ep. 207 - Today Is The Day
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If Hillary Clinton becomes President of the United States tonight, God forbid, she'll have one force to thank above all others.
The love and protection of the mainstream media.
Yes, they've covered her foibles, but only after being forced to do so by WikiLeaks and the FBI.
Sure, they've criticized her, but only just enough to maintain the patina of credibility.
In reality, The media pushed Clinton to her perch atop the Democratic Party, then ensured that she would stay there despite being destroyed by Barack Obama in 2008 and nearly beaten by septuagenarian asylum escapee Bernie Sanders in 2016.
A charisma-free, grating personality, visionless candidate like Hillary never could have ascended to the White House without her friends in the media.
If nothing else, this election has exposed the media for what they are.
Between new Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile funneling CNN town hall questions to Hillary, and the networks running anti-Trump fact-checking chyrons under Trump's speeches, the media have made pretty clear where they stand.
Which is a good thing!
Next time around, no matter how this goes, Republicans will have one crucial advantage.
Nobody, nobody, nobody will trust the lying media to tell the truth about the next Republican.
HBO's Bill Maher admitted he'd spent more than a decade fibbing about Republicans and their Hitlerian tendencies, then of course immediately called Donald Trump Hitler.
He'll do the same thing in 2020, but Americans won't take him seriously.
After all, we've now seen the Democrats and the media, but I repeat myself, will treat Mitt Romney and Donald Trump exactly the same way, which means they'll treat the 2020 nominee, if Trump loses, the same way.
Which means we should never, ever, ever take their opinions seriously on candidates ever again.
This election has been a real acid test for everyone from Democrats to Republicans.
But the ultimate losers of this acid test are the members of the press, who may have told the partial truth about Donald Trump, but in doing so demonstrated how often they lie outright about non-Trump Republicans and in favor of all Democrats.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
So today has come.
Election day is here and we have so much to talk about.
I'm going to give you sort of my election guide.
I'm going to give you five arguments in favor of voting for Donald Trump and five arguments against voting for Donald Trump.
Today we'll try to be as fair-minded about that as possible.
We'll go through all of the news of the day.
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So, today is the day.
We have finally arrived.
You didn't think that it would happen, and let me tell you, everybody is very excited to vote.
This is a live video from people rushing out to the polls, actually.
Yep, there it is.
People very pumped up about voting today, and I'm very excited to announce that we have a real choice on our hands.
It's a pretty spectacular choice between two of the best candidates America has to offer.
This is Debate 2004 with your host, Jim Lehrer.
Welcome to the cable access televised debate between a giant douche and a turd sandwich.
We'll start with giant douche.
Sir, some students and parents are reluctant to have a giant douche represent them.
What do you say to those people?
Jim, first of all, I would like to thank you for monitoring this debate.
And I would like to thank all of the students and their parents for coming.
Uh, suck up!
Suck up!
Shh!
What?
That's an obvious suck up move.
But I would hope that those students and their parents who question my qualities would simply look at my opponent.
He is a turd sandwich.
You're a turd sandwich.
No, sir, if you'll pardon me, you are in fact the turd sandwich.
You're a turd sandwich.
Sir, you are a turd, Sam.
You're a turd, Sam.
So who's excited to vote today, guys?
Pretty exciting.
And in fact, you know, look, it is a binary vote.
It's a two-party system.
One or the other of these people are going to win, and it really matters.
We've been told this is the most important election of our lifetime.
Hey, it's a two-party system.
Politics of failure have failed.
We need to make them work again.
Tomorrow, when you are sealed in the voting cubicle, vote for me, Senator K- Bob Dole!
I am looking forward to an orderly election tomorrow, which will eliminate the need for a violent bloodbath.
Thank you.
America!
America!
Take a good look at your beloved candidates!
They're nothing but hideous space reptiles.
It's true.
We are aliens.
But what are you going to do about it?
It's a two-party system.
You have to vote for one of us.
He's right.
This is a two-party system.
Well, I believe I'll vote for a third-party candidate.
Go ahead.
Throw your vote away!
Oh, yes, it's a very important election.
It is.
It's very, very important, this election.
And, you know, look, the fact is that we're lucky.
We live in a country where voting is an everyday process, where it's easy and it's free.
And everyday processes never have bad consequences at all, as you see.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, there may be some bad consequences.
Yeah, it could go badly.
And I know everybody is very up today.
Everybody's very excited.
I know that people are eager to go to the polls.
People are just, people are really, really, really excited.
We're really feeling it today.
I mean, we have some live footage from some folks, you know, just, and, and, you know, how people are really feeling just about this election cycle.
You know, make sure you enjoy a drink today.
You know, just feel good about yourself, because it's America.
Yeah, just, you really got, yeah, that's how we're feeling today.
America is soaring like an eagle today.
We are just, we're flying like an eagle into the future.
Make sure that you dress up when you go to the polls today as well.
I mean, put on your Tuesday best, as I like to say.
And I know I'm pretty stoked for the election results tonight.
Yep, just launch yourself right into the stratosphere.
That's how things are just going spectacularly today.
You know, this is how I sort of feel about this, I gotta be honest.
If you're really revved up for the vote today, I don't blame you.
I mean, it's an exciting day.
It really, really is exciting.
And if all else fails, I mean, if all else fails, then you can always just hang under your favorite tree.
You can do that as well.
So just, you know, I know everybody's very pumped up, and I know we're all excited to go.
But look, the outcome is already preordained.
There are only going to be winners in this election cycle.
We laugh so we don't cry, folks.
I mean, this is just the way that this has to be.
It's pretty spectacular.
Okay, so here is the deal.
All joking aside, it's a crappy day.
It's just a crappy day.
And so now we're going to go through some of the arguments for and against voting for Donald Trump.
Because here's the reality.
As I've said before, there are good arguments for voting for Donald Trump to stop Hillary Clinton.
There are good arguments for not voting for Donald Trump because he's a turd.
So we'll go through those arguments.
And I'm going to try not to bias these arguments.
You know where I stand on this.
I'm not voting for either of these two people because crap sandwich versus giant douche.
Neither of them meet my basic standard for human beings who get to be presidents of the United States.
And my vote means something to me beyond the instrument of my vote.
But, I want to go through the honest arguments for voting for Donald Trump, because I think that there are a lot of people who are convinced by these arguments, and I'm not going to try and argue you out of it.
I'm just going to make the arguments on both sides.
So, I think there are five good arguments for voting for Donald Trump.
First of all, there are people who argue that if you're voting for Trump, you're not voting for Trump the person, you're voting for Donald Trump's platform, or against Hillary Clinton's platform.
So you don't have any moral qualms, right?
My vote for Trump is not a vote for Trump.
It's a vote for all these other things that I think are not Trump.
Dennis Prager says this, my friend.
He says that voting Trump is the most decent thing you can do with your vote.
You're showing Hillary that she can't get away with this sort of corruption and leftism.
Your vote is just a vote.
It expires November 9th.
You might as well use it against the person you like the least.
Your vote is an instrument of policy only.
Then there's the most popular pro-Trump argument, which is really just that Trump is better than Hillary.
Right, the argument that you saw in that South Park cartoon, that Trump is better than Hillary.
Andrew Klavan, my good friend, we were having a knockdown-dragout battle before the show about this particular argument, but basically what he says is that there's a binary election.
One of these two people is going to be president, and he writes today, in principle, and to some degree in truth, for a conservative not to choose is to give aid to the greater leftist Hillary Clinton.
These people are bad, but one of them is going to be president, and if one is better than the other, it's my patriotic duty to try to figure out which one that is and vote for him or her.
Trump is clearly better.
Dennis, of course, agrees.
He has a piece over at National Review today.
He says, the only relevant moral lesson here is not that the lesser of two evils is still evil.
It is that choosing the lesser of two evils, by definition, increases good.
And he says that we know Hillary will be awful.
Trump may not be.
And Victor Davis Hanson basically says that on a bunch of issues like the Supreme Court and Obamacare and the debt and rebuilding the military and the Second Amendment, Trump is different than Hillary and better than Hillary.
So that's the Trump is better than Hillary argument, which has some merit to it.
Third argument in favor of voting for Donald Trump today.
And this comes from Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, and Drew makes the same argument.
Basically, Trump is less corrupt than Hillary Clinton.
He's been part of this crony capitalist machine, but Hillary has actively corrupted government.
That's what Ed Morrissey writes at Hot Air.
Drew says, there will be moments of grotesque bad behavior that will lower the dignity of the office from Trump, but they'll be nowhere near as damaging as a new Clinton-ocracy.
She'll corrupt government itself.
Trump's a goon, but if he were as dirty as Clinton, we'd already know about it.
So Clinton will corrupt government in a new way by exposing the executive branch to her corruption even more than what Obama has done.
Trump won't do the same thing.
He may not drain the swamp, as he's fond of saying, but he'll be better than Hillary on that.
The fourth argument that I've seen is, why worry about character?
Why worry about any of Trump's foibles?
Why worry about the fact that the guy's terrible?
The Democrats do this stuff all the time.
Why hand them the electoral advantage?
Why would we hand them the electoral advantage of they solidify behind their candidate no matter who he or she is?
Well, we have qualms.
We can't hand them that sort of advantage.
Republicans have to hold their note and vote in the same way the Democrats hold their nose and vote, or we'll never win another election.
And finally, there's the argument that I think underlies a lot of this, and this one comes courtesy of Dennis as well.
Also, this is the Flight 93 election argument.
And Dennis says that he's not willing to turn America over to four more years of leftism since the damage would be permanent.
He says, America, as envisioned since its founding, as the world's beacon of individual liberty, Lincoln's last best hope of earth, it won't be here.
This is the end stop.
This is the last stop.
If it's the last stop, you can either go to Trump Town or you can go to Hillaryville.
Those are the only two choices.
The last stop on the train is this election cycle.
That's it.
We're done.
Okay?
And Flight 93 election basically says the same thing.
We're either hitting the building or hitting the ground, but this is the last stop for the plane, so you may as well hit the ground as opposed to letting this hit the World Trade Centers.
Now, here are the arguments, and a lot of people find these arguments convincing.
I'm not going to try to convince you that those arguments are wrong or false.
I think they're flawed.
I do.
That's why I'm not voting.
But I find some of these arguments have logic that is compelling.
Okay, now I want to talk about the five arguments against voting for Trump from a conservative perspective.
And note, by the way, there are zero arguments for voting for Hillary.
There are no arguments for voting for Hillary.
Hillary does not reflect any character or policy positions that conservatives should support in any way and in fact it is imperative that conservatives never show support for Hillary Clinton because then it gives her permission to do all the terrible things that she's going to do.
So these are just five arguments basically for voting for McMullin or for not voting at the top of the ticket at all.
I voted today already in California.
I did not vote at the top of the ticket which is something I did not foresee certainly when this election cycle started and makes me sick to my stomach as I sit here.
Okay, so here are five arguments for foregoing voting in favor of Donald Trump.
First of all, your vote is more, and I think this is true, your vote is more than an instrument of policy.
So the Trump people say, look, your vote is a coupon, it expires November 9th, and that's it.
You use it, you don't use it, doesn't really matter to anybody else, your vote's your vote, that's all.
I don't think that's true, particularly for public figures.
When you vote, you send a message.
This is acceptable.
It's the reason I would never vote for Hillary Clinton.
You cannot vote against Hillary without also voting for Donald Trump.
You can't.
Everybody inherently understands this.
If you can simply vote for one or the other as an instrument of policy, a lot of Republicans would vote for somebody like David Duke to repeal Obamacare in the Senate.
So ask yourself this.
You have a minimum standard.
Everybody has a minimum standard of a Republican who they think they agree with more on policy but they wouldn't vote for on character grounds.
Does Donald Trump meet your basic standard on character grounds?
Trump may meet your standard for president, but if he doesn't, that's a problem even if you hate and despise Hillary Clinton and think she'll be terrible as I do.
Donald Trump's policy knowledge is nil.
He's an ad hoc nationalist populist.
He panders to some of the worst people on the planet, from Vladimir Putin to the alt-right.
He has no history of listening to his advisors, despite all talk to the contrary.
He said he wants to cut deal with Democrats.
He is toxic to every demographic group that is growing in the United States.
He's the worst Republican candidate of my lifetime, which is why he's losing to the worst Democratic candidate of my lifetime, Hillary Clinton.
If he earned your vote, Then you earned your vote.
But if you didn't earn your vote, then maybe your vote has to be earned.
Maybe it's not just a coupon that expires November 9th.
That's argument number one.
Your vote is more than an instrument of policy.
It says something about your minimum standards for qualifications for the Oval Office.
Argument number two.
Okay, the Trump that people have been building up is fantasy Trump.
Trump will not just be a—he won't be a good president.
He'll be a mediocrity at best.
So let's not make the argument that Trump is going to be some sort of great god-king who comes in and fixes everything.
It's not true.
Okay, first of all, on Supreme Court justices, which is the one you hear all the time, the chances that Donald Trump nominates and confirms a Supreme Court justice who is conservative are essentially nil.
This entire election cycle was predicated on the idea that Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, that Senator Mitch McConnell was going to ram through, was a wimp.
I mean, that was the entire, the entire election cycle was Mitch McConnell's a giant pansy.
We need somebody who's a tough guy.
That was the entire election cycle, right?
Well, now the idea is Donald Trump's gonna nominate somebody, Mitch McConnell will have maybe 50 senators, maybe 50 senators, and then he's gonna ram through a conservative?
Using the nuclear option?
It ain't gonna happen.
Okay?
He's awful on trade, Trump is.
He's awful on foreign policy.
He's a Buchananite isolationist, paleoconservative.
His pro-life stance is dicey at best.
It's better than Hillary Clinton's for sure, but I don't think he's going to be strong on abortion in any real way.
He said he doesn't mind losing the Senate because he wants to cut deal with Democrats.
He will multiply the debt.
He says he wants to expand entitlements.
He says he wants to repeal Obamacare.
But by the same token, he says he wants to expand Medicaid.
So you don't have to create fantasy Trump, but people have been creating fantasy Trump, which means that the fourth argument against voting Trump is happening right now.
Handing the conservative movement over to Trump is a big mistake.
If you support Trump, it means you're handing party leadership over to him.
It means carving the heart out of a possible constitutional conservative party and replacing it with Steve Bannon-esque nationalist populism, Trumpian nationalist populism, which basically is just big government leftism on behalf of a voting bloc that Donald Trump likes better.
Donald Trump has never talked about freedom or liberty.
He doesn't care about the Constitution.
He actually sees these things as obstacles to his Trumpian rule and fixing all the problems, unrigging, uncucking the system for his supporters.
It turns the Republican Party into a far-right nationalist party from Europe, and that's not something I want to see happen.
Fourth argument.
Republicans are better than Democrats, okay?
The argument before from the other side was Republicans have to act like Democrats if we want to win.
The counter-argument is Republicans should never act like Democrats because Democrats act like bad people when it comes to elections, and we shouldn't just fall into that trap morally.
And finally, this is the one I think is the most real.
This is not the last election.
This is not the last election, okay?
Hillary will be an awful president.
Chances are she will also be a weak president.
She'll be crippled by her own corruption.
She will probably experience a recession while she's president of the United States.
She's gonna have to fight a Republican Congress, and if not a Republican Senate this year, then a Republican Senate in two years in 2018.
Hillary lost to Obama in 2008.
She nearly lost to an old socialist loon bag in 2016.
The chances are pretty good that she loses in four years.
So, if this isn't the last election ever, you have to make a calculation.
Do you think that Hillary Clinton for four years is worse than Republicans for the next eight after that?
Non-Trump Republicans for the next eight after that?
Or do you think that Donald Trump's mediocrity for four years is better than eight years of Democratic dominance after that?
Because let's face this thing, okay?
If Donald Trump wins today, he's not going to be winning in four years.
He's not going to be running against the worst candidate Democrats have ever fielded.
It's not going to happen.
They'll run somebody young.
They'll run somebody better.
They'll run somebody who's likely to beat Donald Trump, who is really, really unpopular.
Plus, Donald Trump's going to spend the next four years making asinine comments about every minority group that he can possibly find and alienating all of them.
So those are the arguments against voting for Trump.
So now it's up to you.
You're an adult.
I've given you all the arguments for voting Trump that are good, and I've given you all the arguments for voting against Trump, and those are all the arguments.
You have to take a—well, you consider your vote.
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Terrific.
Okay, so all of that said, everybody is now making their final pitches.
Barack Obama is making his final pitch, and again, every time you listen to Democrats, this is the way that this election works.
Every time you listen to Democrats, you want to vote Republican, and every time you listen to Donald Trump, you want to shoot yourself in the face.
So, Barack Obama makes his final pitch, and he makes a strong plea why you should vote for Donald Trump.
Here he is saying that we have to make the GOP pay for not listening to me.
You know, gridlock is not mysterious.
It's not something that happens because both sides are being equally unreasonable.
It has been a stated Republican strategy since I took office.
And the only way to break it is to make those who engage in it pay a price.
By electing more Democrats tomorrow.
Okay, so he says that we have to elect Democrats because that way people like Obama can ram through their agenda.
Thankfully, it looks like the Senate is, at least today, the polls show that it's pretty dead even.
Republicans will maintain the House.
A good shot that Republicans may even keep the Senate.
538 has it as a toss-up right now, like literally 50-50.
I think it's 50.3% chance Democrats take the Senate, 49.7% chance Republicans maintain the Senate.
At the very least, you have to vote today and vote down ticket, even if you choose not to vote for Trump.
You have to vote down ticket for your senator to stop Hillary Clinton and stop the left's agenda.
Because the fact is that Obama is just, whatever you think of Mitch McConnell and the senators, and I think that a lot of them are terrible, the fact is that Obama's agenda in the first two years does not even come close to what he was not able to accomplish in the last six.
All of his hard work, Obamacare, the stimulus package, all the most brutal stuff that Obama did except for DACA and the executive orders, the immigration executive orders, which he could have done anyway because he did it as the president, and then he lost in court about it.
All of that happened in the first two years.
Handing Hillary Clinton the Democratic Senate is a dangerous, dangerous thing, and we should make Hillary Clinton pay.
At the very least, by giving her a Congress that she has to overcome.
We have to, unfortunately, stop the live feed at Facebook now, but if you want to subscribe, watch the rest of today's show, go over to dailywire.com right now.
Eight bucks a month will get you access.
It's going to be a very, very busy week.
We'll be back on Facebook tonight, by the way.
We are doing a live broadcast on Facebook of the election coverage tonight.
Me, Drew, Andrew Klavan.
Jeremy Boring is the managing editor who usually hides in his office but will actually be part of the broadcast tonight.
He'll be here too.
We have a stellar lineup of guests.
Jonah Goldberg is stopping by.
Steven Crowder is stopping by.
It really is a big cast tonight.
Glenn Beck is stopping by.
It's a bunch of people who are stopping by.
Both NeverTrump and ProTrump people are stopping by.
So it should be a lot of fun.
But dailywire.com to subscribe.
And right now, if you get the annual subscription, you still get A free copy of my book, True Allegiance, signed.
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