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Nov. 28, 2016 - The Ben Shapiro Show
19:01
Ep. 215 - Good Trump/Bad Trump: Thanksgiving Edition
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On Monday, President-elect Trump held a meeting at Trump Tower with top members of the media.
The New York Post reported, quote, Donald Trump scolded media big shots during an off-the-record Trump Tower sit-down on Monday, sources told the Post.
It was like an effing firing squad, one source said of the encounter.
Trump started with CNN chief Jeff Zucker and said, I hate your network.
Everyone at CNN is a liar, and you should be ashamed, the source said.
The meeting was a total disaster.
The TV execs and anchors went in there thinking they'd be discussing the access they'd get to the Trump administration, but instead they got a Trump-style dressing down, the source added.
According to the Post, attendees included NBC's Lester Holt and Chuck Todd, ABC's George Stephanopoulos, David Muir and Martha Raddatz, Fox News' Bill Shine, MSNBC's Phil Griffin, and CNN's Jeff Zucker and Aaron Burnett, among others.
Here, in no particular order, are a few random thoughts.
First of all, the media totally deserve this.
The media destroyed Mitt Romney in 2012 by turning him from an honorable family man and excellent business person into the scourge of the earth, searching far and wide for gay kids so he could practice his haircutting skills, hunting down dogs to strap them to his car.
The media then decided to treat Barack Obama with kid gloves for eight years, soft-peddling his lies on everything from Obamacare to Benghazi.
Then finally, the media built up Donald Trump in the primaries and then attempted to tear him down in the general.
They've earned every bit of scorn Trump can level at them.
Second, Trump's going to start every single firefight he can.
The media didn't leak this story to the Post gang.
Trump's people certainly did.
The Post was one of the friendliest publications in the country to Trump.
And this bolsters Trump's favorite case, that he's a powerful god-king, willing to face down the scurrilous media and hammer them into the ground.
Trump relishes this sort of fisticuffs.
It's why he singled out reporters during his campaign.
It's why he went to war with Hamilton in Saturday Night Live over the weekend.
Trump gets that most of his voters are sick of watching the media monopoly, and they're more than willing to countenance a president blasting away at the media if it means destroying that monopoly.
Third, the media will seek revenge by turning up the volume.
The media just don't know how to handle a Republican who doesn't seem to care about their adoration.
Their solution thus far is turning up the volume to 11.
That's not working.
They're treating every Trump tweet as apocalyptic, every Trump outrage as plumbing new depths of Dante's Inferno.
That only succeeds in making Trump look justified in slapping them with both hands, then poking them in the eyes like a member of the Three Stooges.
The only way the media could cover Trump properly would be to understate their case, rather than trotting out Howard Dean to label Trump cabinet appointees Nazis, or covering Richard Spencer's alt-right hate fest as an extension of Trump world.
Finally, this is not actually great news for Americans.
Despite the delicious scheidenfreude, this is not good news.
Americans are best served when the press of every stripe have access to information about the executive branch.
Closing off access for political gain was bad when Obama did it, and it isn't good when Trump does it.
Many conservatives can't see past their own shortling over the media shamefacedly shuffling from Trump Tower tails between their legs, which is understandable, but the presidency is still a government office.
It requires more daylight, not less.
So, here's the bottom line, the lesson.
You ought to be worried about a president who's not granting access to the press, even if you're happy that he's slapping them.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
Oh, so much to get to today.
It's going to be an epic, epic day for Good Trump, Bad Trump.
Epic day for Good Trump, Bad Trump.
So, once again, we say thank you to Brandon Snipes, the author of the Good Trump, Bad Trump theme, because there's going to be so much invocation of that over the next four years, I can't even begin to describe it.
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Slash Ben.
Okay, so just right off the top, we're gonna play the Good Trump, Bad Trump theme because there's a lot going on today.
Alrighty, let's play.
Good Trump, Bad Trump, which one will we get today?
Alrighty, so we begin with a little bit of Good Trump.
Yay, Good Trump!
See, here's the thing, folks.
I wish that I could spend the entire show doing good Trump.
There's one person who stands in the way of that.
His name is Donald Trump.
You may have seen him on TV.
Donald Trump does a lot of silly, silly things.
And in a minute I'm going to go over all the things that he's telling the New York Times as we speak, because he's doing some live interview.
With the New York Times.
And they're tweeting out the interview.
This is after he spent most of last night ripping on the New York Times and explaining why he wouldn't do an interview.
And then it turned out that the real reason that he wasn't doing the interview, supposedly, is because his chief of staff, Reince Priebus, told him not to do the interview and then supposedly lied to Trump about the terms of the interview because he thought that Trump wouldn't be prepared for the interview and would look stupid.
So this is going well.
The Chief of Staff to the President-Elect of the United States thinks that the President-Elect is too dumb to handle the New York Times, so he just lies to him about the New York Times interview.
This is according to Trump's camp, okay?
This is not according to the press.
This is what Trump is trotting out there.
Why?
Because one of two things happened.
Either Trump said, I'm not interviewing with those terrible people at the New York Times, or Reince Priebus told him not to and lied to him, and so Reince Priebus's body goes SHOOP!
Right under the Trump train.
So, it's in little pieces like Anna Karenina, so that's very exciting.
But, I promised there would be some good Trump, so we will begin with good Trump.
So, Trump has now outlined some of his policy plans for the first hundred days, and it's a mixed bag.
Here's what he had to say.
My agenda will be based on a simple core principle, putting America first.
Whether it's producing steel, building cars, or curing disease, I want the next generation of production and innovation to happen right here on our great homeland, America, creating wealth and jobs for American workers.
As part of this plan, I've asked my transition team to develop a list of executive actions we can take on day one to restore our laws and bring back our jobs.
It's about time.
These include the following.
On trade, I am going to issue our notification of intent to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a potential disaster for our country.
Instead, we will negotiate fair bilateral trade deals that bring jobs and industry back onto American shores.
On energy, I will cancel job-killing restrictions on the production of American energy, including shale energy and clean coal, creating many millions of high-paying jobs.
So here's a bit of the mixed bag, right?
So on energy policy, this is great, right?
When he's talking about getting rid of these restrictions.
Now, the truth is that the biggest problem the fracking industry faces right now is not regulation, although the regulation should go.
The biggest problem they face is that the price of gas is minuscule.
I mean, because all of the OPEC countries are attempting to out pump each other.
Thanks to foreign policy.
Saudi Arabia is trying to pump Iran into the ground.
Iran is trying to pump Saudi Arabia into the ground.
That means there's a glut of oil, and that means that the prices have gone down, so the profit margin in fracking has gone down too.
So that's the biggest problem facing the fracking industry, is actual pricing in the market, not the regulations.
But it's good that Trump is saying that.
On the bad side, when he talks about TPP and revoking it, there are only two reasons to oppose TPP.
Okay, reason number one is that it included a lot of secret side clauses that Obama had negotiated and reason number two is because the Congress of the United States should actually have the entire agreement in front of them before they approve it and they didn't in the case of TPP.
The idea that we're going to pull out of multilateral trade agreements and then just negotiate bilateral trade agreements When Trump says fair for us, what he means is he wants to make foreign products more expensive for you, the consumer, because he wants to protect certain classes of people in the United States.
So he wants to protect steel workers in Ohio or farm workers in Iowa.
When Democrats do this sort of subsidies, that's bad.
When Republicans do that sort of subsidies, it's also bad.
So I'm not in favor of this kind of stuff.
Cracking down on free trade is just a welfare program for people who are protected.
Okay, if it really helped economies to put up tariffs, if it really helped economies, then the greatest economy on earth would be Venezuela.
Venezuela has tariffs on virtually every product, and people are literally eating dogs.
They're shooting dogs and eating them.
The fact is that you as an American have the freedom and the ability to purchase any product you like.
In the marketplace at the lowest price that you can find.
That's one of the things that's beautiful about free market capitalism.
Trump doesn't get that.
So there's the mixed bag.
But he said some other stuff that's good.
He talks about how he wants a plan on security to harden the infrastructure with regard to terrorist attack.
This is talking about the idea of electrical grids being vulnerable to terrorist attack.
All that's good.
There are a few things he didn't mention.
He didn't mention the wall.
He didn't mention getting rid of Obama's executive amnesty.
He didn't mention tearing up the Iran deal.
So a lot of the big promises he made, he completely ignored.
But, you know, what he said here, I would say about 70% of this is correct.
So good.
Good for him.
Other good Trump.
So there was a cop that was shot in San Antonio, died.
And Trump immediately called the family of the cop.
That is a major shift from President Obama, who spent most of his tenure reaching out to the people who are shot by cops, both rightly and wrongly, and making the cops into the issue.
Trump is not going to do that.
That is a very, very good thing.
So good for Trump for doing that.
Other good things that Trump's doing.
Trump met yesterday with the founder of Black Entertainment Television.
And this is smart.
Again, this is Trump doing outreach.
And outreach is a good thing for Republicans to do.
Does it disturb you?
How do you get your arms around the fact that you've got people like that supporting him?
But you had what you describe as a positive, frank and candid meeting and you think he's committed to reaching out to black America.
You know, as an African-American who's been in business and had to come up and grow up from someone who was the first to go to college to create successful businesses and create wealth for myself and a number of other African-Americans, I know that there are people like that in America.
It's been that way ever since slavery existed in this country.
They're not going to go away tomorrow or the next day.
Okay, so he actually came out and he said that he was happy that he met with Trump and they're hoping that they can work together.
Again, smart of Trump to reach out in that way.
Okay, so all of that is good Trump, or at least decent Trump.
Now it's time for some bad Trump.
Oh no.
A few things to begin.
First of all, you remember that Trump had in Mitt Romney to the White House and said that he wanted to, or to Trump Tower, and said that he wanted to consider him for Secretary of State.
In this off-the-record meeting with the press, he then started bragging that Romney desperately wanted to be Secretary of State.
He also had Kelly Ayotte, the senator from New Hampshire, who didn't back him, and there was talk about her possibly being Secretary of State or SEC defense, and Trump just said to the New York Times, We're not gonna use Kelly Ayotte.
I don't even like Kelly Ayotte.
So he's just bringing these people in to stomp on their faces, which, is that surprising?
No, of course it's not surprising!
This is Donald Trump you're talking about.
Of course Trump was gonna do this.
I spoke with a higher-up in one of these people, who is not a big Trump backer, met with Trump, and I spoke with a higher-up in this person's team, and I said, um, you should just be aware he's gonna stomp on your face at the first available opportunity.
Yes, yes he will.
Okay, so start with that.
Now, Trump is also backing away from, you recall, just a few short days ago, you recall, stadiums full of people shouting, lock her up, lock her up, lock her up about Hillary Clinton.
Remember?
I'm old enough to remember that.
Aren't you old enough to remember that?
I think you are.
If you're watching this show, I hope you are because it's obscene for those under the age of two weeks.
But the bottom line is that now Donald Trump is backing off of this.
Kellyanne Conway, Who's his campaign manager.
Now she's saying that Donald Trump will not move for prosecution of Hillary Clinton.
So, before we even get to this, let me just point something out.
If Barack Obama... Okay, we're going to use the prop we used yesterday.
This is the other foot shoe.
Right?
You remember this?
This is the shoe that says, take what Trump is doing, pretend Hillary was doing it, and then see if you like it.
If Hillary Clinton had been elected and she said, I am not going to pursue investigation of the Clinton Foundation, we would have said, that's bad, the president doesn't get to decide those sorts of things.
When Barack Obama took office, if he had said before taking office, I am going to tell Eric Holder to ignore all possible prosecution of the Black Panthers, People would have said, oh, that's bad.
You're not supposed to do that.
The President of the United States or the President-elect is not supposed to direct the Attorney General to investigate or not investigate anything.
By Kellyanne Conway, she says, don't worry, Donald Trump isn't going to prosecute Hillary Clinton again.
Just for people who don't understand the Constitution, prosecutorial power lies with the Department of Justice.
The President doesn't get to prosecute people.
The Supreme Court, Trump didn't know this, but the Supreme Court doesn't get to prosecute people.
The Congress only gets to impeach people.
Okay, they get to issue contempt orders also, but here's Kellyanne Conway saying something that if Hillary said it, we'd be a little bit upset about.
I think when the president-elect, who's also the head of your party now, Joe, tells you before he's even inaugurated he doesn't wish to pursue these charges, it sends a very strong message, tone, and content to the members.
And I think Hillary Clinton still has to face the fact that a majority of Americans don't find her to be honest or trustworthy, but if Donald Trump can help her heal, then perhaps that's a good thing.
Help her heal?
I didn't remember those chants in the stadiums.
Help her heal!
Help her heal!
I don't remember those.
Kellyanne Conway, by the way, you're put on warning, folks.
If you think that Trump's going to keep all his promises, you have now been officially warned by Kellyanne Conway.
She says, well, meh.
I do, look, I think he's thinking of many different things as he prepares to become the president of the United States.
And things that sound like the campaign aren't among them.
Okay, so things that sound like the campaign are not things he's going to do.
Wait a second, so what is he going to do?
Because I thought that the campaign is where you tell people what you're going to do.
I thought that's what campaigns were for.
What was the campaign for then?
Was it just because he likes speaking in front of crowds?
Okay, so you've got, look, he's not president yet.
We'll hold off judgment on what he does as president until we know what he's actually going to do, right?
But the idea that you're going to get all the things that you wanted, remember he was saying this, he actually said, all your dreams will come true if he's elected.
Well, that first dream that Hillary would go to prison, that dream is not coming true because he's actually actively interfering with the criminal justice system.
So let's start with that.
Let's start with that.
Okay.
Other things that Trump is doing.
Okay.
This interview with the New York Times is truly astonishing, and it just demonstrates that there are not really... Trump kept talking during the campaign about how he would turn into presidential Trump, how he would just become, magically, presidential Trump.
And I'm trying to be intellectually honest, folks.
I know I'm saying things that people don't want to hear.
That's because we're being intellectually honest here.
We're trying to analyze this guy like he's the leader of the free world or the president-elect of the United States, not like he's our best friend and we're so excited he got elected, oh, let's grant him all the opportunities.
I don't believe in honeymoons.
I don't.
I believe in them when you're married.
I don't believe in them in politics.
There's no such thing as a honeymoon in politics.
Once you have power, it's not my job to owe you support.
It is your job to do your job for me.
You work for me.
Donald Trump works for me.
Donald Trump works for you.
We do not work for Donald Trump.
We do not work for him.
It's not our job to support him.
It is our job to say he's the President of the United States and he has governing power, but that comes along with some responsibility.
So it is his job to live up to that responsibility, not our job to play nice with him when he does not.
So, just start with what he is saying today in this New York Times interview.
So, first he starts with ripping the New York Times.
Okay, that's sort of normal.
And he talks about the Electoral College.
And then he starts talking about the alt-right.
And he says about his alt-right supporters.
So for people who haven't been following this show, we were some of the first people to expose the alt-right.
The alt-right, the alternative right.
It's a group of people.
There's a lot of people who identify as alt-right who don't actually know what the alt-right is.
They think they're alt-right because they like memes and they don't like Paul Ryan.
That's not alt-right.
Alt-right is people who believe in the philosophy of Richard Spencer or Jared Taylor.
These are people who believe in the philosophy of Vox Dei.
They believe that Western civilization is inherently and inextricably bound up with European ethnicity.
like.
They believe that the only way to preserve Western civilization is to have essentially more white people.
That's the basic concept here.
And a lot of alt-right people are very, very excited with Donald Trump.
They like Donald Trump.
And the reason they like Donald Trump is because Donald Trump has done a few things where he sort of winged and nodded at them.
So, for example, when he refused to condemn the KKK, the alt-right got a big boost out of that.
When Donald Trump hired Steve Bannon, Steve Bannon, who's his new chief strategist, a person I know, Bannon is somebody who has called Breitbart the platform for the alt-right.
Breitbart has printed pieces praising the alt-right and Richard Spencer, the alt-right neo-Nazi leader, basically.
Specifically, praising Richard Spencer as an intellectual.
So Steve Bannon, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he downplayed the alt-right as, oh, they're just a group of people who don't like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and they don't care.
No, that's not the whole thing.
He acknowledged Bannon did.
Yeah, there's a tinge of racism and anti-Semitism to the alt-right, but that's just fringy.
That's just fringy stuff.
No, the alt-right has a very specific philosophy.
They mean what they say.
Here is Trump on the alt-right.
It's not a group I want to energize, and if they are energized, I want to look into it and find out why.
Hmm, I have a few ideas.
I have a few ideas.
Perhaps you shouldn't have hired the guy who said that he created Breitbart into a platform for the alt-right, and then proceeded to downplay what the alt-right was in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, and then say that the alt-right's racism and anti-Semitism are not really part of the movement, okay?
Maybe that's why the alt-right is really excited.
About your administration, and maybe you should think about that a little bit more deeply.
And then Trump reiterated that he was not interested in investigating the Clintons.
And then he said that he's keeping his mind open on anthropogenic climate change.
So he's saying that the climate change treaties he'll think about deeply, which is for sure Obama in his ear.
And then this is the part that's truly amazing, right?
He was asked about his company.
So we're going to get into some of his business conflicts in a second.
Because again, if you want to see an actual successful Republican presidency, the president cannot be impeached Because he's using the power of the federal government to boost his businesses.
That's a bad thing.
Where I come from, that's a bad thing.
If you're rooting for Trump to succeed, you want him to separate off from his businesses so he's not involved in corruption.
We'll explain what exactly is happening with that in just a second, but to do that, you have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.
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