The Ben Shapiro Show Ep. 257 - Is Trump Actually Making The Left Insane?
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This week, the media blew up over President Trump's allegations last Friday night at a rally that there had been some sort of terrible event in Sweden.
He said, quote, last night.
They suggested that Trump had mentioned a phantom terror attack in the same way Kellyanne Conway mentioned the Bowling Green massacre and Sean Spicer referenced a terror attack in Atlanta that never happened.
Here's what Trump actually said in his speech.
We've got to keep our country safe.
You look at what's happening in Germany.
You look at what's happening last night in Sweden.
Sweden!
Who would believe this?
Sweden!
They took in large numbers.
They're having problems they never thought possible.
This is a near perfect example of how Trumpian rhetoric polarizes the electorate.
Why?
Because Trump was wrong to say something had happened in Sweden last night.
Nothing had happened that night.
But he was absolutely right to point out increased crime problems among Muslim immigrants to Sweden.
Conservatives reacted to Trump's comments by pretending that Trump had never used the phrase last night.
Leftists pretended nothing terrible had ever happened in Sweden, ever, ever, ever.
Then, last night, actually last night, news broke of a Muslim immigrant rally.
This is from the local newspaper.
Sweden's capital was plunged into chaos on Monday as police were forced to fire at rioters after violence erupted in an area described as high risk.
The terrifying scenes took place just hours after the country's Prime Minister, Stefan Löfven, slammed Donald Trump for claiming Sweden was in crisis as a result of its liberal refugee policy.
Stockholm police were forced to fire a shot into the rampaging crowd in the hard-hit suburb of Rinkby after a mob of around 30 thugs started attacking the officers with rocks.
Violence erupted after the police had tried to arrest a wanted person on the subway.
Here's the thing.
Sweden does have a serious problem with rising rates of rape correlating with increased immigration from Muslim countries.
As Joe Curl of Daily Wire points out, quote, there were 66.5 cases of reported rapes per 100,000 inhabitants last year.
That's triple, right?
It's up from 24.9 in 2003.
It's one heck of a jump.
Even ABC News was forced to acknowledge that Trump wasn't entirely wrong.
This is from ABC News.
Last year, 112,645 violent crimes were reported in Sweden, an increase from 108,739 in 2015, 108,071 in 2014, and 104,738 in 2013, according to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention.
from 108,739 in 2015, 108,071 in 2014, and 104,738 in 2013, according to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention.
Those numbers include attempted murder, muggings, and rape, but not other types of sexual assault and murder, the council said.
And this is from one of the mayors of one of the towns.
He said the police reports don't have a box you tick about whether it's a Swedish citizen or an immigrant.
The council looks instead at a number of factors, according to ABC News.
The council looks at a number of social factors, including income and education, but not immigration status or ethnicity.
Trump rightly tweeted, give the public a break.
The fake news media is trying to say that large-scale immigration in Sweden is working out just beautifully.
NOT, all capital letters, like we're in 1993.
Malmo, Sweden has turned into a hotbed for anti-Semitism thanks to rising Muslim immigration.
Here's Fox News on the rising problem of violence in Malmo.
Last month, the police chief for the southern Swedish city of Malmo issued a desperate plea for help, curtailing a plague of attempted murders, beatings, and rapes.
About 32% of Malmo's occupants are migrants, although it is not clear what role migrants play in the crime wave.
We cannot do it on our own.
Chief Stefan Sintius wrote in an open letter about the upward spiral of violence.
Malmo had 52 hand grenade attacks in 2016 alone, a jump from 48 attacks in 2015, according to figures provided by the Swedish police authority.
You want to know why conservatives don't trust the media?
It's because of media overreach, suggesting that when conservatives get a specific wrong, but the general right, the general is also wrong.
That's not an excuse for Trump to make silly mistakes, he's the president, but it does demonstrate why conservatives are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt so long as he's talking about real problems the left refuses to contemplate.
I'm Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
Okay, tons to get to on today's show.
As always, we're going to get to the emotionality of left, why they seem to be over-emotional about this election.
We're going to talk about the ongoing war between Trump and the media.
And we're having a special guest later in the program, as well as deconstructing the culture.
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Okay, so.
I want to talk today about the absolute mental breakdown that is apparently happening among some folks on the left because of Donald Trump's election.
And I don't mean this figuratively.
I mean this literally.
This is an article from CNN, okay?
Wally Fingsten has always been a news junkie, but since President Trump was elected, he's been so anxious about the political tumult that even just having the TV on in the background at home is unbearable.
It's been crippling, said the 35-year-old San Mateo, California resident and political moderate who has supported both Democrats and Republicans in the past.
I feel angry, really, really angry, far more angry than I expected to be.
He's tried hard, this is CNN, he's tried hard to quell his anxiety.
First, he shut down his Facebook page to limit his exposure to the daily soaking of news from Washington, but not knowing the goings-on made him nervous too.
He found himself sneaking onto Facebook in an account he made for his dog.
Oh, yes.
There's a fellow who made a Facebook account for his dog.
I felt like I was cheating, he said.
Kingston is not alone in his politics-induced anxiety.
It's so common it's been given an unofficial name, post-election stress disorder.
Mental health professionals around the country, especially those working in Democratic strongholds, report a stream of patients coming in with anxiety and depression related to or worsened by the blast of daily news on the new administration.
Well, I can actually personally vouch for this.
My wife, who's a doctor, says that they've been having an influx of people who are coming in with stress-induced anxiety because of the election.
There are psychiatrists who are reporting all around the state of California that they've seen their roles just dominate.
They've been going up and up.
They've never had to book patients like this because people are so upset about the election.
You know, says, in the past, therapists say it's been fairly uncommon for patients to bring up politics on the couch.
It's big money to talk about politics with me.
That's not what we do, said Maria Limberis, a psychiatrist in Santa Monica, California.
So the question becomes, why is it that the left has lost its mind about this particularly?
You remember there was Bush derangement syndrome.
They really hated George W. Bush.
They couldn't deal with the fact he was president.
But this is, it's another level.
Howard Dean, who's the former head of the Democratic National Committee, here's what he had to say about people being traumatized by the election.
Now is the intensity of the Hillary favorables becoming more intense, but it's not changing the overall numbers.
I don't hear her name lately.
Only when Trump brings it up.
No, really, not that she'll come back, but right now she should.
That is 100% right, but I'm betting what happens is these young people have been traumatized by Trump's election because it was essentially a reneging on every single value that somebody in this country under 35 has.
They were shocked.
Okay, so everybody is traumatized by the election.
James Franco, right, the overrated actor, he said that he has, this is what he said, he said, I mean, I've been reacting really badly.
I spiraled into depression.
I've been questioning everything that I am.
I wish he had questioned everything that he was before he was the Green Goblin in Spider-Man, because that was quite awful.
So the, okay, so everybody is losing their mind over Trump's election.
And now we have to discuss why that is.
So, there's no question that Donald Trump is a stressful human.
Okay?
Donald Trump is a stressful human.
He induces stress in his opponents, in his friends, in his family.
You can see, like, everybody around Trump is stressed all the time.
Trump's the only person who seems pretty sanguine about being Trump.
Like, it's kind of amusing, actually.
Donald Trump looks very happy to be him, but everyone around him looks like they're, like, they're biting through a pencil.
Like, if they had a pencil, there'd be teeth marks all over the pencil.
That's true, okay?
He says things that are wild and crazy.
He does things that are weird.
All of that's true, but that's not the real reason why people are stressed.
It's not the real reason why people are anxious.
Because it turns out that we've had a bunch of weirdos in the White House before.
That Bill Clinton was no picnic.
I think Trump's another level, but Bill Clinton was no picnic.
LBJ was no picnic.
We've had a bunch of weird presidents before.
People who are weirdos and kooks.
In the 19th century, there was a whole series of weirdos and kooks right in a row before the Civil War.
So, you know, this idea that the president is always some sort of beacon of calm and decency in the country is just not true.
It's just not real.
So what's the real reason why this is?
It's because the media ratchet everything up.
The media ratchet everything up.
Here's the thing.
Two things can be true at once.
Things can be very chaotic in Trump land.
And also, that chaos can manifest in very small ways that don't actually matter to most people's lives.
Here's my question.
How does it matter to your life, left or right, how does it matter to your life that Trump is president?
Has your life changed in any marked way?
Did it really change all that much under Obama?
Like, I hated Obama as a president.
I thought he was a terrible president.
I thought he was really bad for the country.
You know, and that made me anxious.
It made me upset.
Did it make me, like, go see a psychiatrist?
No, of course not, because that's silly.
But, you know, but did he change my life in any serious, material way?
I don't...
I think so.
I really don't think so.
And I don't think that, and I think that's true for most Americans.
Like, if you're, if you're a baronel stutsman living in Washington State, and the local government is shutting you down because you're a religious business owner, then you can say the government is really affecting your life in tremendously horrible ways.
But the truth is, most of what happens in Washington, D.C.
does not have direct impact on you.
Yes, there are times when it impacts you, but it's few and far between, I think, for the vast majority of Americans.
So why is everybody really going nuts?
It's because everybody's into the news, and we watch the news as entertainment, and the entertainment news has decided that everything in the world is about to collapse.
We are on the edge of collapse.
We're sitting right there on the cliff, and one little push by Trump, and the entire country is going to be like Wile E. Coyote.
We're going to look down, we're going to be in midair, we're going to look down, realize we're in midair, and then it's going to be And you see the cloud of smoke puff up from the ground, right?
That's sort of how the media is portraying all of this.
And the media's bias on this is really making people kind of nuts.
So here's an example of some of the media's bias.
This is an amazing headline from NBC News yesterday.
NBC News 3.
This is NBC News yesterday has this headline, right?
It's a real headline.
President Trump reaches 32 days, won't be shortest U.S.
president.
First of all, James Madison was the shortest U.S.
president at 5'4", but second of all, it says he reaches 32 days and he won't be the shortest U.S.
president.
The implicit expectation of this headline is that we are so crazy here that we have to get Trump out of here, like right now, in the first 30 days, and we should just be grateful the world hasn't ended in the first 30 days of his administration.
I think, number one, everybody is underestimating the durability of the constitutional system.
There are lots of checks and balances.
It turns out it's actually hard to push your agenda.
It turns out that Barack Obama couldn't do all the things that he wanted to do because there were checks and balances in the system.
Trump is discovering those same checks and balances inside the system.
He really hasn't done anything that major yet.
He hasn't.
Right or left?
I understand the right wants to be over the moon about Trump.
Okay, fine.
I understand the left wants to be crazy about Trump.
That's a little less fine.
Here's the reality.
Trump hasn't done anything very big yet, right?
He had the Mexico City policy.
He's done a lot of little things that I think are good.
He's nominated Gorsuch, which I think is a big, good thing.
But that's pretty much it.
Have you seen a big piece of policy come out of the Trump administration?
Not yet.
And so wouldn't it behoove us to wait and see?
I was talking to Andrew Klavan about this yesterday, because Klavan is over the moon about Trump.
And what I was saying to him is, it's a little too early to make hard and fast judgments about whether to be over the moon about Trump.
You're at a museum right now, and you're standing right up close to a Seurat painting.
Okay, for people who don't know Seurat, he's a pointless painter.
You know, Sunday in the Park with George, which just made this more obscure.
Okay, if you're standing in front of a Seurat painting, okay, it's a bunch of dots.
That's all you see.
If you're right in front of it, there's a bunch of dots.
And then as you pull out, you see that it's this amazing picture of Sunday in the park with George.
But if you are too close to it, it just looks like a bunch of dots.
We're only 30 days in.
Right now, Trump's administration is a bunch of dots.
It's a little too early to say that when you pull out from the picture, it's going to be a picture of nuclear Armageddon.
Or that it's gonna be a picture of utopia.
We just don't know yet.
But the media are portraying it as Armageddon, or they're saying we're right on the verge of Armageddon unless you're worried.
Unless you're worried.
Quick rule about worrying, folks.
Worrying has never done anybody any good.
Concern that drives you to action is one thing.
Worry, fretting, nobody's ever had a better life because they worried more.
Okay, worry does not make your life any better.
But this is what the media are pushing, this idea that we're in the middle of this giant crisis all the time.
NBC released this series of propaganda videos starring children who are worried, worried about Donald Trump.
These kids, I mean, this is indoctrination here.
Dear Mr. President, I'm excited for a political outsider that can solve the disconnect between the American citizens and the legislators in Washington.
When you speak on things that make me feel uncomfortable or I disagree with, you make me feel small because I know I can't change it.
I want you to know that I don't like your definition of American because I don't seem to fit within it.
Most of my family is black.
I'm afraid that you're gonna hurt some of us blacks.
Right now, you're just kind of in the middle.
You're swaying towards bad, but I think you can sweep back to good.
You are here attempting to whitewash America.
You're gonna separate me away from my family, and I really don't want that.
Beautiful piano music.
Okay, I hate, I hate in politics when people use children as a sort of proxy for what they want to say themselves.
I hate when you use children as tools.
Unlike some other folks.
I hate when you use children as tools.
I think that it's just terrible.
And so, you know, when you look at this kind of video and the media is using these kids as propaganda vehicles, what do you expect people to feel like?
Does this make you feel not anxious?
Makes me feel more anxious?
Does it make you feel anxious?
It makes you feel like, this poor kid, right?
She's gonna be walking around homeless on the streets of Los Angeles because Donald Trump personally went and kicked in a door and dragged away her screaming mother.
Right?
How's that supposed to not make you feel nervous?
And then you wonder why the anxiety is up?
That's not good, by the way.
When the country's anxiety is up, like, we on the right, we can laugh at it.
Ah-ha-ha, the snowflakes!
Ah-ha-ha!
Okay, first of all, the easiest thing in the world is melting snowflakes.
I do it for a living.
It's very easy.
It's not hard.
But, beyond that, it's not good when the entire country feels like it is a series of snowflakes that are melting, because eventually, when you have a bunch of people who are in constant crisis, anxiety, panic mode, something busts loose.
And I think that we're entering the verge of that, and the media is really propagating that in a major way.
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Final note about the media.
Especially about immigration, they're really making it seem like crisis point, like Trump is going out there knocking down doors, dragging people out of their houses.
I mean, I seem to remember when Bill Clinton literally knocked down doors, literally had his SWAT teams knock down doors to drag a kid away from his family and back to Cuba.
And the media didn't make a huge deal, as huge a deal out of that as they're making out of this.
It was a big deal, but it wasn't as big a deal as what they're doing now.
Here's a story that's being promoted all over the media.
A child in an anti-Trump protest talking to MSNBC, talking about how his father and how the father and uncle were deported.
And actually, we've been walking with these marchers for a while now, and we were surprised to see that some of the littlest ones are leading this rally.
People like Jose right over here.
Jose, tell me, why were you leading the march just now?
Because I hate Trump, and so do my parents and other friends.
And he deported my father and my uncle because they were illegal immigrants.
Thank you so much, Jose.
So, the immigration issue very near and dear.
Random child who can now tell us a sob story.
Okay, we don't know anything about his father and his uncle.
You notice that we don't know anything.
Did she ask, like, so, do they have criminal records?
I don't know who they deported, right?
The Trump administration so far has been focusing on people with prior history of criminality, so I assume that he's not just rounding up illegal immigrants.
I live in Los Angeles, okay?
Los Angeles is like the number one city in America for illegal immigration, and I haven't seen the ICE vans on the street going and rounding people up at Home Depot.
It ain't happening.
So this idea that there's this vast crackdown on illegal immigration, it's just not true.
But now we're getting stories about women taking sanctuary in churches to avoid Donald Trump's evil deportation squads.
Jim, this is a Quaker meeting house, as they call it, where they have taken in a woman from Peru and her two young children who were born in the U.S.
because they say they don't want to see families split apart.
Not beyond the door does Ingrid Encalada Latore feel safe.
What will happen if you go back to Peru?
You know, I have two children here.
They go to school and I don't want to go back.
Here in the Mountain View Quaker Meeting House, she and her two children have been living for the past three months.
The assumption is immigration agents would not come and get her in a church.
We don't expect that ice would violate that sanctuary here.
She came here from Peru 17 years ago to visit a relative and didn't leave.
She was convicted of a felony for using a false social security number and has been ordered to be deported.
That is pretty much why Jeanette Vizquerra, a mother of four, took sanctuary in a Unitarian church.
So now we've got all these people taking sanctuary in churches.
It's something out of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, right?
Quasimodo swings down on his rope, grabs Esmeralda, and there they are up in the tower shouting, Sanctuary!
Okay, so, do we need a better comprehensive immigration policy?
Yeah, we do.
We do.
Okay, I've been an advocate for a long time of the idea that we close the border and then we go through the illegal immigrants who are here and we figure out who deserves to stay and who deserves to go.
I don't think that we ought to treat people as a class exactly.
I don't think that just because you came in the country illegally, everybody who came in the country illegally is exactly the same.
I don't think that's right.
I think that's actually kind of silly.
That said, the media coverage of this makes it seem, like, if you watch this, you would think that the Trump Gestapo is going door to door knocking down doors and grabbing people out of their houses.
I mean, how can you watch that and not feel anxious?
This is why the left is anxious, and that's not going to be good.
That's not going to be good.
Now we're going to have to continue talking about this on the other side of the break over at dailywire.com.
There's a lot more to come.
I want to talk about how Trump is responding to all of this and whether it's ratcheting down or ratcheting up tensions.
Over at dailywire.com, become a subscriber for $8 a month.
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