All Episodes
Previous Next
Nov. 30, 2016 - The Ben Shapiro Show
21:47
Ep. 219 - Trump Eats Dinner With a Side of Romney
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
One of the biggest problems dogging the incoming Trump administration would be Donald Trump's vast business holdings conflicting with his performance as president.
In the week after the election, the Washington Post reported that Trump D.C.
hotel officials had done outreach to local foreign embassies.
Trump met with Indian businessmen who work with his brand.
Ivanka Trump took part in a state meeting with the Japanese prime minister.
An Argentinian reporter said that Trump and his daughter had requested a business favor on a phone call with the Argentinian president.
By the way, the favor was later granted.
Trump himself told the New York Times that he'd be capable of running his business alongside his presidency.
All of that was kind of disquieting.
But Trump actually understands the problem now.
He tweeted this morning, quote, I will be holding a major news conference in New York City with my children on December 15th to discuss the fact that I will be leaving my great business in total in order to fully focus on running the country in order to, all caps, make America great again.
While I am not mandated to do this under the law, I feel it is visually important as president to in no way have a conflict of interest with my various businesses.
Hence, legal documents are being crafted which take me completely out of business operations.
The presidency is a far more important task.
So here's the deal.
This isn't enough.
We still need to know exactly how these legal documents will shape up.
Is Trump giving up his ownership stake?
There's no indicator he is.
Will his children continue to run the business, and yet continue to also advise him in his role as president?
That would actually maintain the conflict.
Will Trump liquidate his businesses?
Really, really unlikely.
In a joint statement, Richard Painter, who's George W.' 's ethics lawyer, and Norman Elson, who's Obama's ethics lawyer, they said Trump's continued business interest would, quote, sometimes conflict with the public interest and constantly raise questions.
But!
But, at least Trump recognizes the problem.
That's at least half the battle.
We can actually hope that he'll be cautious enough to silo his businesses and political interests, preventing the taint of his scandal from destroying his White House before it launches.
Good for Trump!
Now let's pray that he carries out his pledge.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
All righty, so here we are.
Lots to get to today.
We're going to be having on Adam Carolla in just a few moments to discuss his new movie, his new documentary out called The 24-Hour War.
I've watched most of it.
It is really, really good, really fascinating, and about the American auto industry and about car racing in general.
We'll talk to Adam in just a second.
But first, we have to say hello to our friends over at Legacy Box.
This is an advertiser I feel very strongly about.
It's Legacybox.com slash Ben.
The way Legacy Box works is they allow you to keep all of your memories by basically sending all your old films.
We're talking reels.
We're talking VHS videos.
And they convert all of this stuff to a digital file.
They put it on a CD or they put it on a thumb drive for you so you can keep this stuff forever.
It's LegacyBox.com.
You get a 40% discount on your order.
So old photos, cassettes, home videos.
My parents are doing this right now.
They're gathering up all of my dad's old film reels, his dad's old film reels.
So these are 50, 60 years old in LegacyBox.
They stamp them all with a – they put a sticker on there with a barcode so you can actually see where in the process all of your film is.
They have experts who go through it, make sure that it still works, make sure that it's all in order.
And I'm very big on preserving memories of the past, because I think you lose the past, you lose your family history, that's a real tragedy.
There's a reason why, when everybody says there's a fire, you grab your photo album.
There's a reason why they do that.
And right now, this allows you to instead of have 20 boxes full of stuff you'll never look at in your garage, Now you have it all on a convenient thumb drive or a DVD, so you can actually enjoy it and take part in it.
LegacyBox.com slash Ben.
That's a 40% discount on your order.
It can be really, really expensive if you do this just on your own.
LegacyBox makes it really easy and really convenient.
LegacyBox.com slash Ben to get that 40% discount on your order.
Okay, so joining us on the line is, oh, actually, sorry.
He'll be joining us shortly, so we'll get to that in just a second.
First, we'll jump right into the news.
So, the big news of the day yesterday was that Mittens-McRomney met with Donald Trump, and I do love how this went down.
So basically, they met, and here's a picture of that.
Well, first of all, I just need to set the stage.
Here's what Mitt Romney said about Donald Trump during the campaign, if you recall.
If we make improvident choices, the bright horizon I've described will not materialize.
And let me put it very plainly.
If we Republicans choose Donald Trump as our nominee, the prospects for a safe and prosperous future are greatly diminished.
If Donald Trump's plans were ever implemented, the country would sink into prolonged recession.
A few examples.
His proposed 35% tariff-like penalties would instigate a trade war.
And that would raise prices for consumers, kill our export jobs, and lead on to... ...a phony too, right?
He says that Trump is a phony, he's a conman, he's a liar, basically.
I mean, this is a pretty brutal speech, if you recall, this was in March during the primaries.
And so, you know, bottom line is that Romney was not very friendly to Trump.
And now they get together for dinner, and here's the picture of them at dinner.
It's just astonishingly good.
Oh, it's just wonderful.
I love it so much.
I will say that this presidency thus far has been wildly entertaining.
The picture of Trump with Obama was great enough.
This picture, just the way that it's lit, and the expressions on their face, so spectacular.
For folks who are going to be listening to this later, Look at Romney's face.
Romney's like, oh my god, what happened to me, right?
This is the typical, this is like the photo.
Freeze frame.
How did I get here?
Well, let me explain from the beginning.
And then you rewind it six months.
It's incredible.
So there's his face.
Go back to the first picture for a second.
Uh, the first picture of Trump sitting there and he's lit from the bottom like you're in a campfire and they're, they're doing like a, you're gonna tell a horror story.
And he's lit from below and his face is red.
It's like, it looks like Mitt Romney just signed away his soul in a really bad business deal to Donald Trump.
And Trump's sitting there grinning like Satan, like the Cheshire Cat.
It's just spectacular in every way.
I love it so much.
Just the, the fact that Romney keeps going there and going there just to like get slapped around.
And people were getting very funny about this.
Like, the, the, for example, Look, this is the Trump-Romney dinner, and the first thing that popped into my head is, of course, from The Little Mermaid.
Yeah.
That was the first thing that popped into my head when I saw that picture, because that's exactly what it looks like.
The other one that popped into my head, of course, was from Silence of the Lambs.
Horrifying.
It's just Romney being fed his own brain by Donald Trump.
The best one, though, was this tweet that somebody had.
They put it in black and white, this picture, and in black and white it's even better.
It says, I made the Trump-Romney photo black and white and it looks like a Twilight Zone episode where a guy just made a foolish deal with the devil.
And that, of course, is exactly right.
It's so spectacular.
Oh my goodness.
So good.
The one that's making the rounds a lot is this one.
It's great.
Somebody photoshopped Trump and Romney into the dinner scene from Empire Strikes Back where Han Solo walks into the room and realizes that Lando is sold about and Darth Vader is sitting at the other end of the long table.
And it is pretty amazing.
It is pretty amazing.
It is also worth noting, by the way, that remember when Donald Trump ran as a blue-collar working-class hero?
Remember that?
And now he's worth $10 billion.
Mitt Romney's a hundred millionaire.
And here's what their menu was the other night.
This is the menu.
It's a three-star Michelin-rated restaurant.
It's called Jean Georges.
Jean Georges is what it's called.
Gene George, as I like to call it.
And here is the actual menu.
Next they had diverse scallops with caramelized cauliflower and a caper raisin emulsion.
For their main course, both Priebus and the president-elect had primed sirloin with citrus-glazing carrots.
Romney had lamb chops with a mushroom bolognese sauce.
All three had chocolate cake for dessert.
Sounds like men of the people to me.
No corrupt bargains happening among the people who are eating frog legs.
Although, I have to say, poor Pepe!
Poor Pepe!
I mean, they ran this entire campaign, and Pepe was with Trump the entire way, and then Trump just ate him.
And somewhere, the alt-right cries and tears of sorrow roll down Pepe's cheeks.
It is all very, very tragic.
Then Mitt Romney came out afterward, and he made this statement after the dinner, and he just looks—I mean, Trump and his people had asked for basically an apology from Mitt Romney.
And Romney clearly wants the gig, and so now he's apologizing.
Pretty amazing.
These discussions I've had with him have been enlightening and interesting and engaging.
I've enjoyed them very, very much.
I was also very impressed by the remarks he made on his victory night.
By the way, it's not easy to win.
I know that myself.
He did something I tried to do and was unsuccessful in accomplishing.
He won the general election.
And he continues with a message of inclusion and bringing people together.
And his vision is something which obviously connected with the American people in a very powerful way.
It's a joke, right?
It's a joke.
I mean, Romney is looking for an excuse to jump back on the Trump train here.
And he's finding it in, you know, his speech and his cabinet.
Hey, Romney still thinks with Trump exactly what Romney always thought of Trump.
There are two ways to read Romney's behavior here.
One is Romney really, really, really, really wants back into power.
That's the cynical way to read this.
The other way to read this is that Romney believes and thinks that Trump could use some staid, steady, sober judgment around him until he's willing to undergo the humiliation of dealing with Trump and maybe being thrown under the bus by Trump in order to do it.
Again, Trump hasn't selected him yet for Secretary of State, so this could all go wildly wrong, right?
There are only two possible ways this plays out as far as Romney is concerned in terms of public image.
These are both from Game of Thrones.
Way number one this turns out for Romney, just in terms of how this plays out politically, is this right here.
What is to be done with this traitor, Your Grace?
So long as I am your king, treason shall never go unpunished.
Like that.
That's possible.
That he goes out, he makes his obeisance to Trump, and then Trump aheads him and picks Rudy Giuliani, which would be hilarious, I will say.
It would be really, really funny.
The other way that this could go is that Trump actually gives him what he wants, but that involves him being a little bit humiliated.
Go on, Rick.
A nice, close shave.
Hey.
It could go, Rick.
Right, it could be reek.
In reality, the truth is, a lot of this stuff is overplayed.
Trump likes to play reality TV.
It is reality TV.
It's very entertaining, I will admit that.
And I have all of my Bachelorette outtakes for when he actually makes this call, because the Bachelorette outtakes will fit Giuliani or Romney.
One of the two will be sobbing in a car about how they were so deeply in love, and then they were left at the altar.
But, in reality, is Trump playing this right?
Trump is playing this about as well as he could have played this, really.
I mean, he's making Romney look foolish.
He's making Romney look like he has to bend the knee to him.
And then, if he actually picks Romney, it's a brilliant move politically, because it looks like he's getting over his own pettiness about Romney in order to stock his cabinet with people who are good.
And if he doesn't pick Romney, well, then he's done what a lot of people expected him to do.
On his own side, you know, in his own base, and he stomped Romney in the face.
And he's going to get a lot of credit for that from his own base.
He's in a no-lose situation.
Romney played along, I assume out of patriotism and a sense of duty, but it could have also been out of ego.
Both are possible.
But it is fascinating to watch.
This sort of stuff typically is not done in front of the cameras, and yet Trump is doing it all in front of the cameras, which is going to make for a very, very entertaining four years.
Meanwhile, Trump is being given a lot of credit for this, for Carrier keeping a bunch of jobs.
Carrier is an air conditioner manufacturer and they just announced they're going to keep a thousand jobs in Indiana.
And I want to talk about this in a pretty serious way because I think that a lot of people are ignoring the real story here and that's a problem.
A lot of people are immediately celebrating the fact that Trump kept jobs in America.
That's great, okay?
That's wonderful.
Except for that's not the actual story.
Lots of people can use the government to keep jobs in a particular place.
Barack Obama used the power of government, the threat of the pitchforks and torches, to leverage the banks to do things that he wanted.
Barack Obama was able to make the auto companies come on bended knee to him in order so that he could get them to do what he wanted by threatening them.
The bottom line here is not the thousand jobs saved.
The bottom line is what we still don't know, which is what did Trump do to get Carrier to keep its jobs there?
So a lot of people are saying we shouldn't even ask the question.
We should just sort of accept what it is.
We should just sort of take it how it is.
No big problem.
No big issue.
You know, at least he kept the jobs here.
That in and of itself is wonderful.
And that would be okay, except for the fact that how you use the government is really the issue for me, not necessarily the outcome.
You can always keep a company here.
Listen, if I were in charge of the federal government, pick a company in America.
I could keep it here just by paying them a lot of money.
I could bribe a company to stay here.
Or, alternatively, I could threaten that company in order to make them stay here, right?
The power of the presidency is vast.
The power of the federal government Is vast.
The question is, what did Trump do in order to ensure the carrier would stay?
So here's what we know.
We don't know anything, really, because Trump has not announced what the deal was.
Mike Pence is the governor of Indiana.
He's the one really offering the incentives because he's still governor of Indiana.
Carrier is located in Indiana.
So we still have to figure out exactly what Pence offered.
And this does make a difference.
Here's what we know, or at least the little that we do know.
According to the New York Times, United Technologies, which is the owner of Carrier, is among the country's biggest military contractors, producing engines for the Pentagon's most advanced fighter jets, receiving more than $5 billion annually from the federal government.
That equals 10% of the company's revenue.
So there's the idea that perhaps Trump said, we'll have the Defense Department cut our contracts to you if you move those jobs.
Okay, that's bad.
That's bad.
That's the government Leveraging businesses into making bad business decisions through threat.
Right?
Not getting the best deal for the American people because presumably the reason that they're contracting with United Technologies is because United Technologies provides the best service at the best price.
Here's what we know courtesy of CNBC.
Quote, while terms of the deal are not yet clear, the sources indicated there were new incentives on offer from the state of Indiana, where Pence is governor, that helped clear a path for the agreement.
Well, while United Technology was seeking the savings that would come from moving some production to Mexico, people familiar with the situation indicated the savings were not worth incurring the wrath of the incoming administration, including the potential threat to the significant business United Technologies currently conducts with the U.S.
government, largely in the form of orders for jet engines and other defense-related equipment.
So it's the federal government leveraging people.
Now, I don't like the federal government leveraging people, whether the person at the head of the federal government is a Republican or a Democrat.
That is not the job of the federal government.
The job of the federal government is to preserve your rights.
And if it has contracts that it needs to do, then it should contract with the best available operator, not the operator that makes bad financial decisions in order to please the federal government, right?
That's a backdoor form of bribery from United Technologies.
And by the way, this also sets up a pretty bad precedent.
A company says, we're going to move 2,000 jobs to Mexico, and then they wait for Trump to come in with an oodle of cash and just dump it on them.
Okay, this is not particularly a rip on Trump.
It's a rip on the policies that are bad.
Look, Trump made a promise and Trump is trying to keep that promise, but the way you keep the promise matters to me.
The principle doesn't change just because the name of the guy in power changes.
And I understand everybody's going to celebrate the thousand jobs, but these kinds of headlines routinely, routinely come out from administrations ranging from Barack Obama's to Hugo Chavez's.
The question isn't whether Carrier keeps the 1,000 jobs in Indiana.
The question is why they kept the 1,000 jobs in Indiana.
If Carrier kept the 1,000 jobs in Indiana, if they kept the 1,000 jobs in Indiana because Donald Trump was pursuing positive economic policies that benefit everyone, and they say in expectation of lower taxes and in expectation of loosened regulations, We've decided that we're going to keep the jobs here.
Wonderful!
All credit to Trump.
If they say we're keeping the thousand jobs here because Donald Trump bribed us, or because Donald Trump threatened us, that's not something that I'm cool with.
And as a conservative, you shouldn't be cool with that either, because that's just using government to pick winners and losers.
And as I am fond of saying, I'm old enough to remember when we thought that was bad, when Obama did it with green jobs and stimulus packages and auto bailouts and bank threats.
Again, Barack Obama actually used the threat of pitchforks and torches.
He actually said, he brought bankers to the White House in the early part of his administration.
He said, my administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.
And then he leveraged them into doing what he wanted.
He did the same thing to the health insurance companies.
He said to them, listen, I'm going to offer a public option if you don't cave to me and give me what I want.
That was bad.
It wouldn't be any better if Trump did it.
Hey, Hugo Chavez used to do this.
Hugo Chavez actually had a show, the Venezuelan socialist dictator.
He actually had a show in Venezuela.
When it was called Hello President, that was the name of the show.
It was a full day show.
He would literally go on camera at like 8 in the morning on Sundays all the way to like 6 in the evenings.
And the producer of the show would explain this way.
He said, the president decides everything, it's his show.
It was called Hello President because people would call in, but it became like a lottery.
Everyone looking to get a job, a house or something.
Chavez would literally give jobs to people on the air.
People would call in and say, I don't have a job.
Chavez would say, I'll give you a job.
Look at my magnificence.
The only way he could give a job, of course, was to take a job away from somebody else or to take money away from somebody else.
This is the definition of the swamp.
When people talk about the swamp needs to be drained and crony capitalism, This is the definition of it, and it doesn't become good just because our guys are doing it.
So before we get too excited about the Carrier Decides to Keep a Thousand Jobs in the United States headline, let's find out how it was done.
If the headline said, Cylindra Decides to Keep a Thousand Jobs in the United States Thanks to Obama Promises, we'd all be saying, wait a second, that's bribery, you can't do that.
Again, consistency in principle.
I know people get upset with consistency in principle.
I know people get very upset with the idea that we're going to hold everybody to the same standard, or that we're going to mandate that Donald Trump actually act in accordance with conservatism.
But the fact is, that if we don't hold him accountable for his sins, then who are we going to hold him accountable to?
Like, who's going to be accountable?
The way that you hold presidents accountable is making them accountable for their behavior.
So, I hope that Trump reveals his plan, and his plan is get rid of regulations, get rid of taxation, lower the corporate tax rate.
That's why Carrier kept the jobs.
If that happens, I will celebrate louder and longer than anyone, because that will be excellent Trump.
Not good Trump, excellent Trump.
But, if this was just another crony capitalist payoff to Carrier, so that he could have his headline in his moment in the sun, where he said that he kept Carrier there with its thousand jobs, that's a bunch of crap.
And it's crap whether a Democrat does it, and it's crap whether there's a Republican that does it, okay?
These things do not change just because the name at the top of the ticket changes, the name in the White House changes.
The minute you sacrifice principle for political convenience, the principle no longer matters.
It no longer matters.
So before you celebrate headlines, let's look for the actual content of the story, right?
For example, I'm willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt right now on, is he going to separate from his business?
He's gonna have to fill that out with content.
If the content is, my kids will run the business, and they'll also advise me, in the White House, the conflict still exists.
If he separates off, and his kids run the business, and they have nothing to do at the White House, good for him.
I'll be cheering, because I want his presidency to be a success.
I want him to govern like Ronald Reagan.
I would love to see it.
I would love to be wrong about him.
I would.
But we have to call out bad things when we see them, and we can't just say that they're good if they're not.
We actually have to see evidence of good.
We just have to see evidence of good.
That's all.
And this whole idea, you know, Steve Bannon has said this, we're going to create a 50-year dominance based on big government spending and Obama stimulus packages.
It was bad when Obama did it, it's bad when Trump does it.
I don't need to beat a dead horse here.
Okay, now as far as the sort of drain-the-swamp language, As far as the drain the swamp language, remember everybody's chanting drain the swamp, drain the swamp.
Let's go through some of the picks that Trump has made.
We're still waiting on Secretary of State.
The people who are currently up for it, I guess Bolton has fallen out of contention on the latest reports, which is too bad.
He was my number one choice.
I think Bolton knows the State Department, knows that place has to be absolutely gutted.
And knows how foreign policy works, but he's fallen out for some reason, probably because he and Trump don't agree on foreign policy.
That's actually one of the more bizarre aspects of the Romney thing, is that no one has actually said that Romney shouldn't be Secretary of State, because he and Trump disagree on foreign policy.
And they do, right?
Romney was super anti-Russian.
Trump was very, very pro-Russian during the campaign.
They really disagree on this stuff.
The only real criticism has been that Romney ripped Trump during the primaries.
But in any case, I guess it sounded like Corker and Romney and Giuliani, and Petraeus are the ones that they're discussing.
All big names of the people who are left, Romney and Petraeus would probably be at the top of my list, probably Romney at the top of the list, then Petraeus, then Giuliani, and then Corker.
Corker would be the worst of all of them.
If he's picked, I'll explain why.
But some of the other picks that Trump has made, These are pretty typical establishment Republican picks.
He actually just picked a bunch of Democrats.
He actually just picked a bunch of Democrats to staff out his administration.
It isn't quite draining the swamp.
And we'll explain all of those things if you go to dailywire.com right now and subscribe.
There's plenty more to come here on the show.
I've got to talk about the persecution of Christians that is being attempted by the left media.
Which is really insane.
They're attacking now the Gaines family, these home builders on TV.
We'll talk about that.
I have a lot to say about that.
And we have some pretty awesome things I hate coming up, plus some Bible talks.
So lots coming up here on The Ben Shapiro Show.
Go to dailywire.com to subscribe.
Eight bucks a month gets you a subscription.
Annual subscription gets you a free copy of my novel Signs.
Plus there are lots of goodies coming up.
Tomorrow's the mailbag.
You get to be part of the mailbag if you're a subscriber.
▲
Export Selection