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Feb. 22, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
22:50
Ep. 256 - What Do Conservatives Stand For?
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After President Trump's incredible press conference on Thursday, a war broke out between people on the left and in the media, and people on the right.
People on the left and in the media insisted Trump had savaged the media unjustifiably, and lied repeatedly, and refused to answer easy questions, and twisted innocent questions into attacks on the questioners.
Jake Tapper of CNN said it was unhinged, it was wild, it was an airing of grievances, it was festivus.
Those on the right chortled gleefully as Trump savaged the press.
We were glad to watch Trump take the air out of the media's overhyped Flynn hot air balloon.
We were excited to watch Trump redirect from the media's controversy of the day approach back toward his policy victories.
Most of all, we were ecstatic to watch Trump baffle the media with his concoction of vicious deserved attacks on the left.
Rush Limbaugh said, you get caught up in the moment, but this was one of the most effective press conferences I've ever seen.
Naturally, those on the left accused those on the right of being in a bubble.
How could they watch that nutty press conference and come away happy?
And those on the right responded, this is why Trump won.
Here's the truth.
Both sides are now in a bubble.
Right now, Trump enjoys an 84% approval rating from Republicans and those who lean Republican, according to Pew Research.
He gets just 8% approval from Democrats and those who lean that way.
By contrast, at this point in their presidencies, Ronald Reagan had a 39% approval rating among Democrats.
George H.W.
had a 46% approval rating among Democrats.
Obama had a 37% approval rating from Republicans.
This is the most polarized electorate in modern American history.
Quinnipiac actually makes the polarization even more stark.
According to their polling, Trump has a 91% favorable rating among Republicans, but a 3% favorable rating among Democrats, and we are less than a month in.
That's because everybody is now seeing the news through the prism of revenge.
That's not because of Trump.
This has been brewing for years.
Those on the right have railed correctly for decades at the overwhelming leftist bias in the media.
When Trump shouts fake news, we resonate.
We've been saying the same thing forever.
Normally, this would probably be healthy.
The media have it coming.
Each time members of the media complain about Trump's attacks on the press, Republicans and conservatives laugh hysterically.
We've been the targets of media bias as long as we can remember.
There's something innately satisfying about watching Trump become the avatar of our rage.
Meanwhile, those on the left stand agape as the right guffaws at Trump's fibs.
Don't they understand Trump isn't answering important questions?
Don't they get that Trump clearly knows little about policy and half of what he does know isn't so?
We're now at an impasse.
The right conflates Trump's fibs with his media slams, and then we excuse both.
And the left conflates Trump's media slams with his fibs, and dismisses all concerns about the media.
Everybody is so excited to see somebody on the other side of the political aisle get slapped, nobody seems to care much about what's true and what's false anymore.
It's revenge politics at its finest.
And that desire for revenge is reinforced by social media, which encourages you to interact with people who think like you.
Social media algorithms dictate if you enjoy a right-wing outlet, you'll probably like other right-wing outlets.
The same holds true on the left.
Thus, everybody on the left believes Donald Trump has troubling ties with Russia.
Everybody on the right believes Donald Trump is a pure victim of the deep state in the press.
Nobody on either side acknowledges there may be truth to the claims of the other because nobody's even reading what the other side has to say.
This is actually a problem.
It's a problem for two specific reasons.
First, the social fabric requires we be able to discuss issues of the day with one another rationally.
And that requires sharing a common set of facts, rather than everybody bringing their own facts to the party.
We can argue over the conclusions to be drawn from that set of facts.
We may not agree, or we may agree.
But if we can't agree on facts, we can't just... then we end up just standing in our respective corners, screaming at each other.
Second, if we never know whom to believe, or worse yet, if we believe that those in power, when they agree with us politically are right, no matter whether what they say is right or wrong or true or false, we run the risk of actual tyranny.
Truth was supposed to be the check on government.
Sunlight was supposed to be the best disinfectant.
But if truth goes out the window, then government becomes merely a machine for retaliation.
Elections just become a vehicle for taking out your ire on your enemies.
This isn't a new problem.
George Washington experienced the problem of partisanship early on in the history of the republic.
He talked about its risks in his farewell address.
It's pretty prescient stuff.
Here's what he said, quote.
Let me now take a more comprehensive view and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.
The alternate dominion of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.
But this leads at length to a more formal Formal and permanent despotism.
The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual.
And sooner or later, the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty.
It serves always to distract the public councils, enfeeble the public administration.
It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasional riot and insurrection.
It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions.
Thus, the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.
Washington recommended we all take a step back and fight against the spirit of party.
He said, quote, The media should be hit when they propagate fake news, and their bias should be exposed routinely.
The left and media should acknowledge the problem of media bias isn't illusory.
Trump should be hit when he lies, too.
The right should acknowledge that truth isn't secondary to political power.
This may not please those whose first priority is the victory of their party on either side, but it should make for a better country, a place where facts and truth still actually matter.
One final note for people on both sides who think that truth will never defeat lies, that if you unilaterally disarm by calling balls and strikes, you're helping the enemy.
If we truly believe truth no longer holds sway, we might as well end this great experiment of Republican government.
The argument against truth is an argument against consent, against representation, against democracy itself.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
All right, lots to get to.
President Trump has been very, very busy since we last spoke.
We spoke last on Thursday morning before that massive press conference, so we still have to go through that because that's still making waves.
We'll talk a little bit about some of the policy proposals that are being tried out.
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I gave a grade to Donald Trump at the end of last week.
I do this every week now, and I gave him a grade of C- last week because it started off with the Flynn debacle, and then he had the Netanyahu meeting, which was great, and then he had this press conference, which was all over the place.
What I said in that piece about how to grade Trump is that one of the problems with grading Trump is you end up with one grade.
Trump is actually a series of grades, right?
Trump is A or he's F. There's not a lot in between.
He's got really high highs and he's got really low lows, and you saw it all in that press conference on Thursday.
So the right was picking out the highs, and they were very excited about those highs, and the left was picking out the lows, and they were very happy about those lows.
There really wasn't much in between, and the question is which side are Americans going to take, or is it all just going to become part of the background noise, which is what I actually think.
I think a lot of this is going to become part of the background noise.
There's a broader message I have here for the right that I want to discuss in just a second, but we'll start off with a little bit of Good Trump, Bad Trump, because it was epic Good Trump, Bad Trump.
It was ultimate Good Trump, Bad Trump.
Good Trump, Bad Trump, which one will we get today?
So he started off, did President Trump, with some good Trump.
And that was slapping the media.
Because the truth is, the media are wildly biased.
Now, I would always prefer that if you're going to attack the media, you do it on the basis of them lying, not on the basis of them doing things you don't like.
You shouldn't attack people just because they're doing something you don't like.
You should do it because they're lying, not telling the truth, saying something that's false.
I'm perfectly fine with slapping the media.
I do it on a regular basis.
Watch me.
Anytime I go on any network, the chances that I'm slapping the media are about 117%.
But, it's always based on what did the media do today, not just based on, well, those darn media people, they're just terrible.
And Donald Trump, you know, finished off this press conference, by the way, with a tweet in which he basically called the media the enemy.
Here's the tweet from Donald Trump.
He said, the fake news media, Failing New York Times, NBC News, ABC, CBS, CNN is not my enemy.
It is the enemy of the American people.
That's not good, Trump.
The part that's good, Trump, is the part where he actually slaps the media for doing what they're doing.
The reason this isn't good, Trump, is because the president of the United States should just, as a matter of course, not be calling broad swaths of the American public the enemy of the American people.
It's dangerous language.
It suggests that, I mean, unless he's going to prosecute them.
Like, Barack Obama actually treated the media Who are adversarial to him as members of the enemy.
He actually prosecuted them.
Trump hasn't suggested he's doing that yet, but once you start saying things like the press is the enemy of the American people, you're suggesting that every time the press attacks Donald Trump, they're attacking the American people, and that isn't true.
Again, conflation of something false with something I don't like is a dangerous business.
And that's particularly dangerous when you conflate your own interests with those of the American people.
When, as president, you say, an attack on me is an attack on all Americans, that's ugly stuff.
Okay?
That's not the way that it works.
Woodrow Wilson used to think this way.
He used to think that the president was sort of the great embodiment of the American people.
That's not what the president is.
The president is a constitutionally elected officer with specific duties.
If you attack the president, that doesn't mean you're attacking the American people.
Sometimes, if that were true, then we were all guilty of treason going after Barack Obama.
Okay?
Barack Obama was wrong a lot.
I don't like this business where the president is the representative of all the American people.
You attack him, you're attacking Americans.
It's a bunch of crap.
If you want to say that they're the enemy of the American people because they're lying, then you have to actually point out the lies.
So, here is the good Trump.
Okay, that was a little bit of the bad Trump.
Here's the good Trump.
Trump starts off by attacking the media, and here's what he has to say.
Unfortunately, much of the media in Washington, D.C., along with New York, Los Angeles, in particular, speaks not for the people, but for the special interests And for those profiting off a very, very obviously broken system.
The press has become so dishonest that if we don't talk about it, we are doing a tremendous disservice to the American people.
Tremendous disservice.
We have to talk about it to find out what's going on.
Because the press, honestly, is out of control.
The level of dishonesty is out of control.
And I think there's a lot of truth to that.
I think that the press have been jumping on every bad headline.
I proposed a rule last week that every headline, you didn't have to wait 24 hours to find out whether it's true or not, because there's such a race to be first, and there's also such a race to slap Trump, to get Trump, that a lot of what's coming out of the press is false.
So this is good Trump, and it's fair for him to say all of this.
It's also fair for him to say that he inherited a not-wonderful situation.
Now, here's what I like about this.
It's honest.
Here's what I don't like about it.
It's the sort of stuff that Obama used to say about Bush all the time.
I'll be okay with it for a month.
If in three years, Donald Trump is still saying what a terrible situation he inherited, that's not gonna wash.
At a certain point, you have to start being president.
Here's Trump talking about the mess he inherited.
To be honest, I inherited a mess.
It's a mess.
At home and abroad.
A mess.
Okay, so that's true.
But again, he's gonna have to stop doing that at a certain point.
Okay, then we get to some of the bad Trump, unfortunately.
And the bad Trump is just confusion.
Okay, so the bad Trump is confusion and misinformation.
And again, this is where I think that it's important that we note something about what people on both sides are doing, and it's not good.
And that is, Most politics, and I've said this for literally years, you can look back at my speeches, I've been saying this for probably ten years.
Most politics is driven by the negative.
Most politics is driven by, here's what I don't like, right?
It's driven by, as I would say on this show, stuff I hate.
Right?
Most politics is driven by, here's something I don't like.
So when Trump slaps the media, people on the right cheer, yeah, that's great!
And it is, it's good.
But at a certain point, you're going to have to determine whether you stand for more than just stuff that you stand against.
And the danger of falling into the trap of, I'm only going to support politicians because the politicians are breaking things I don't like, is that they may be breaking things you do like also.
It's possible they're breaking things you do like also.
Like one of the things that I like is truth.
I'm just a big fan.
I like facts, I like truth.
I'm not a big fan of fibs.
And so when Donald Trump says stuff like this about the size of his electoral margin, this is 11-D, You know, people on the right sort of overlooked this.
They said it was no big deal.
I don't think it's a huge deal, but I think it is indicative of the fact that the right buys into Trump because he slaps the media, and they ignore some of the stuff that he says that isn't true.
And I don't see why that should have to be the case.
Why can't you enjoy him slapping the media when he's telling the truth?
It doesn't seem to me like these two ideas should be in conflict.
Here's what he had to say.
Well, I'm talking about Republican.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, no, I was told I was given that information.
I don't know.
I was just given we had a very, very big margin.
Okay, I was just given that information.
That doesn't wash.
You're the President of the United States.
For God's sake, you have the greatest information-gathering superpower in the history of man on your side, and you can't come up with, like, a simple answer for this?
That doesn't wash.
People on the right sort of shrugged it off and laughed.
Okay, fine.
It's not a big deal.
I get it.
I don't think it's a big deal either.
But when there's a constant stream of this sort of stuff, it's a problem.
And Donald Trump makes This happened through a constant stream.
Here's, in a second, I'm going to play the clip that I thought was sort of got to the essence of this.
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Okay, so, What I'm saying about Trump here, and I think this is true not just of Trump, I think this is true for all Republicans everywhere, the conservative movement in many cases has become so about opposing the left, which is great.
I'm opposed to the left.
There's no one who fights harder against the left than I do.
It's become so much about opposing the left that sometimes we're willing to ignore sins on our own side in order to do that.
And I think that that's a mistake because one of the things that makes you a right-winger as opposed to a left-winger is the idea that truth is not relative.
Truth is not malleable.
Truth is not something that you can just shift aside for your own political benefit or for the benefit of the collective.
And when you start shifting it aside for the benefit of the collective, you're no longer on the right anymore.
So when Donald Trump says things like this, here's Donald Trump talking about the leaks, this is nonsensical stuff and the right should not be defending it.
The leaks are real.
You know what they said, you saw it.
And the leaks are absolutely real.
The news is fake, because so much of the news is fake.
Well, okay, so the question was, you said the news is fake, but the leaks are real, and then he says, that's right.
Okay, if they're repeating, if they're just repeating the leaks, and you say the leaks are real, the news can't be fake, obviously.
Now, I think what he's saying here, what he's trying to say, is that the narrative they draw from the news is fake.
That's fine.
But he should be more specific in how he goes about this because otherwise he's just undermining the notion of truth altogether.
And he says this kind of stuff throughout the press conference, right?
There was one point where he was talking about the travel ban.
And here's what he said about the travel ban.
No one in their right mind believes this.
Let me tell you about the travel ban.
Wait, wait, wait.
I know who you are.
Just wait.
Let me tell you about the travel ban.
We had a very smooth rollout of the travel ban.
Okay, so this is a perfect embodiment of what the right likes about Trump, and also what the right should not like about Trump.
So, he says, wait, I know who you are, shut up, basically.
And the right goes, yeah, that's awesome!
The media's been pissing all over Republican presidents for years!
I mean, George W. Bush just hid in his cubbyhole, and Republicans for years have been so afraid of the media, and here's a guy who isn't afraid of the media, and that's great.
It would be spectacular, okay?
I would be able to sit here in all happiness, just being super happy about that, except for the fact to be saying things that aren't true, okay?
So two things can be true at once.
It's great the media is getting slapped.
The media should be slapped over truth.
They should not be slapped over lies, okay?
They shouldn't be slapped over things that are being said that are just false.
And this is the point I'm making about bubbles.
It's really important.
Think of news like geometry.
If you're trying to determine the truth, There's a right-wing line and there's a left-wing line, and they are not parallel.
Okay?
They do cross at a certain point.
The point at which they cross is the point of fact.
Okay?
This is why it's important for you to actually look at outlets from both sides, because if one side says a fact and the other side says a fact, that's the point where they're gonna meet.
They're gonna totally diverge when it comes to the narratives they draw from the fact, but the point at which they meet is the factual point, and that's what you need to know.
Okay?
Then you can make your own decisions.
But you need to actually garner facts, not just follow the guy who's slapping the media.
Because, yeah, it's fun to slap the media.
Yeah, it's fun to slap the left.
That's great.
But this is a point I've been making for a long time, okay, about provoking the left, being a provocateur, about slapping the left.
If you're gonna do these things, the point here is to tell the truth, and if the left takes offense, that's their problem.
The point here is not just to offend the left.
If your definition of conservatism is it makes the left angry, lots of things make the left angry, including some things that ought to make the left angry.
Okay, and it is not your job just to make the left angry or to celebrate when the left gets angry.
You have to determine, are they angry for a good reason or a bad reason?
You have to determine, are they angry because you spoke facts, or are they angry because you lied?
Because pretending that everybody on the left is just an inhuman monster and that none of them have any capacity for reason at all, and that they're all just making things up a hundred percent of the time, that's not a recipe for politics, it's not a recipe for having a rational conversation.
So all I'm advocating here is that we all take a step back here, and that we look in the mirror, and that we say to ourselves, okay, what's true and what's false?
We look in the mirror and we say, okay, are we excited because Trump is opposing the left, or are we excited because the left opposes Trump?
And there is a difference.
There is a difference, okay?
Are we excited because Trump is opposing the left, or are we excited because the left opposes Trump?
Because people use this as shorthand.
Okay, the left opposes Trump.
That must mean he's doing something right.
Not always.
Not always.
A lot of the time that's true.
A lot of the time that is true.
But sometimes it's not.
And that's true for everyone in the right-wing movement.
Just because the left opposes you, in the right, that doesn't necessarily mean that the left is wrong.
The left is sometimes correct about things they oppose.
They're not wrong 100% of the time about everything.
They're wrong on principles.
But they're not necessarily wrong when it comes to, we oppose this person because he did X.
And so it's important for you, as a conservative, to say, do I support this person because of what they stand for?
Because they stand for standing against the left?
Or do I support this person because they're eliciting a response from the left?
The easiest thing in the world is to elicit a response from snowflakes.
The question is, how are you doing it?
And is it a good thing?
Are you speaking truth, and that's what's ticking off the left?
Or, is the left just ticked off at you, and now your entire side goes, oh, well, if the left's ticked off at you, then you must be doing something right.
You get in real dangerous territory when you start saying, just because somebody ticks off the left, that means they're a good person or an ally.
That's a mistake.
It's a big mistake.
Okay, so just to finish up on this Trump press conference, he said a couple of things that were, I think, silly about the media.
There's one point where he said about the media, That it was the fake reporting that was making it difficult for him to make a deal with Russia.
Okay, he's the President of the United States.
If he wanted to make a deal with Russia, he'd make a deal with Russia.
And most of the American people would probably be happy if he took nuclear war off the table.
I have to put this in Good Trump just because it is so typically Trumpian, and I love this quote so much.
He was talking about the chances of a nuclear war with Russia, and it was wonderful.
You can't help but admire this language.
11G.
I can tell you one thing about a briefing that we're allowed to say because anybody that ever read the most basic book can say it.
Nuclear holocaust would be like no other.
Fact check?
True.
Nuclear holocaust would be like no other.
Fact check true.
Okay, so we're gonna have to, we're gonna have to break there.
If you want to watch the rest, we have a lot more coming up that we're gonna be discussing.
Stuff I like, stuff I hate.
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