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March 1, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
20:22
Ep. 262 - Trump's Best Moment EVER
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President Trump's approval ratings are nothing special.
Actually, they're extraordinarily low by historic standards.
He's clocking in at 44%, according to the latest NBC News Wall Street Journal poll.
His support base is highly polarized, with 85% of Republicans behind him and just 9% of Democrats.
If those rates dropped steadily for the next two years, and given the level of polarization, they certainly could, Republicans would be in serious danger of losing the House, since low presidential approval ratings correlate significantly with House elections.
Then again, Trump's support base may be stable.
Here is why.
According to that same poll, approximately 57% of voters say that Trump is doing about as well as they expected.
Meanwhile, his approval ratings far outclass those of Congress, which has just a 29% approval rating.
That's a nonpartisan statistic.
And 31% approve of Democrats in Congress, while 32% approve of Republicans in Congress.
The most unpopular figure in American politics?
That's still House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, with 19% of people feeling positively about her in any way, against 44% who feel negatively about her.
The Democratic Party's negatives double up the Republican Party's.
This relatively positive feeling toward Republicans means 60% of respondents are hopeful and optimistic about the future of the country, only 40% are pessimistic.
And that's with a sample that shows just 37% of respondents who voted for Trump himself in the presidential election.
None of this says that everybody is comfortable with Trump.
Fifty-two percent say Trump's chaotic style is unique to this administration and suggests real problems, but the American people largely agree with Trump's agenda.
Eighty-six percent say a small group in our nation's capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost.
53% say the news media and other elites are exaggerating the problems with the Trump administration because they're uncomfortable and threatened with the kind of change Trump represents.
While 37% of respondents say they want Democrats in Congress setting the agenda, 19% say Republicans in Congress should do so, and 37% say Trump should do so.
57% of Americans say Trump is likely to bring change, 63% of those people say he'll bring the right kind of change.
41% of Americans say the economy will get even better.
And 73% of those people attribute that success to Trump.
Only 4% of Americans think Obamacare works well the way it is.
And here is the best statistic of all for Trump personally.
38% of Americans say they like him personally, regardless of whether they like or dislike his policies.
All of this suggests that Americans are giving Trump a chance, and that they're tired of the media failing to do so.
They think Trump is going to bring change.
They want to allow him freedom to pursue that change.
Democrats and members of the media who keep saying Trump can't be trusted with the tiller of government ought to have an easy solution.
Give Trump all the leeway he wants, and then watch him pursue policies they think are unpopular.
By acting as foils for Trump, the media and the left actually prop him up.
They allow him to position them as obstacles to making change.
Look, Trump is in control.
He's the president.
The American people are ready to see him perform.
Now it's time for him to step up and create the change he's preached for so long.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
We're going to get to that amazing quasi-State of the Union address in just a second.
And it really was.
It was the best Trump has ever been.
And we're going to go through it.
We're going to talk about what it meant in terms of rhetoric, what it meant in terms of policy, why it was such a success even though he was basically preaching a lot of big government programs, where he was truly successful, and why the Democrats just can't help stepping on their own beliefs.
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Okay, so, Donald Trump gave the speech of his life last night.
It was the best speech he's ever given by far.
I'm not sure who wrote it, but it was really well written.
It was really good.
When I first saw the excerpts, I thought that it was horribly written because it had things about shouting your dreams and all this kind of nonsense that sounds like it's from a Joan Baez song.
But that's not what the speech actually was.
The speech had one moment in particular that everybody is talking about this morning.
And they ought to be talking about it for two reasons.
One, there was a feeling during the entirety of the Obama administration that the Obama administration really didn't like the military very much.
That they thought that the military were basically a bunch of grunts and rubes and that they were to be scorned as opposed to they were people to be honored.
And Donald Trump didn't do that last night.
Not only didn't he do that, he did what I thought was – it was the best moment I've seen in any State of the Union address ever, actually.
And that was when he decided to pay tribute to the wife of the person who had lost – her husband in Yemen, the Navy SEAL, right?
So this Navy SEAL, Ryan Owens, he's killed in this mission in Yemen authorized by Trump.
And he brings her wife to the State of the Union address.
And here's what it looked like.
And you'll see why it's such a stunning moment.
Ryan was a part of a highly successful raid that generated large amounts of vital intelligence that will lead to many more victories in the future against our enemy.
Ryan's legacy is etched into eternity.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, so pause it there for one second.
So at the beginning, you can see all the Democrats are standing right there at the beginning, okay?
Now let it go.
Right, the Democrats sit down.
You can see Kamala Harris sitting down, the senator from California.
Keep going, keeps going, look at the applause.
Now watch what the Democrats are doing, because that's the key to this clip.
That's it?
Okay, so as this clip continued, the Democrats continued to sit.
Here is some screenshots of what it looked like as this two-minute ovation continued.
Now some Democrats were saying, well, you know, we just sat down because the ovation was up.
No, it wasn't, right?
Look at that.
Stark partisan divide.
That row down the center right there, that separates the Republicans from the Democrats.
Even the Supreme Court justices are standing and clapping at this point.
And you can see in the far right of your screen, there's Nancy Pelosi next to Bernie Sanders.
Neither of them is standing and neither of them is clapping for this woman.
And that's not the only screencap like that.
Here's another screencap from the reverse angle.
You see Al Franken here is standing and clapping.
You can also see, again, there's Bernie Sanders in the far left of your screen and Nancy Pelosi.
Apparently, Keith Ellison and Debbie Wasserman Schultz were also sitting for this part.
So, look, they're not stupid enough to sit down at the very beginning when you're honoring the wife of a fallen Navy SEAL.
But immediately, as soon as they can, they sit down.
And once they're seated, they're seated and they don't get up again.
And it just demonstrates.
So why?
Why were they so eager to sit down?
I mean, this is a real question.
You know, people are treating this like this is a silly question.
Why were they so eager to sit down?
And the answer is they didn't want the optic of the entire chamber applauding for a long period of time with Trump as president.
In other words, they dislike Trump more than they like the military.
They dislike Trump more than they like this, the wife of this Navy SEAL.
And that's what was going on there.
You know, I got a call this morning from Debbie Wasserman Schultz's office.
They're very embarrassed about all of this.
And they wanted to clarify that she was sitting and clapping.
And I said, OK, well, Benny Johnson over at Independent Journal Review, he reported that she wasn't clapping.
In any case, what would be so bad about standing?
What would be so bad about standing?
In fact, George W. Bush at one point, Excuse me, Barack Obama, rather, brought a wounded warrior to the 2014 State of the Union Address.
Full standing ovation from both sides of the aisle, but when it's Donald Trump bringing somebody to the State of the Union Address, and it was really moving.
I mean, you can see she's weeping for her husband, and she's signaling to heaven, I love you baby, as she's looking up to up to heaven.
Amazing, amazing moment for Trump.
And the Democrats make it more amazing because the Democrats don't know what the hell they're doing.
I mean, the Democrats are so hell bent on trying to make Trump look bad that they forget that they look bad.
And that was sort of the running theme of this speech.
There were a bunch of themes that Trump hit during the speech that were, I thought, very powerful and very useful.
And what was just as amazing is watching the reaction of the Democrats to all of it.
So we're going to go through it right now.
So Trump opens by doing something smart.
There's been a lot of criticism that he hasn't paid enough attention to black Americans.
There was a lot of criticism recently that he hadn't paid enough attention to a spate of attacks on Jewish cemeteries.
Mike Pence tried to take the kind of sizzle out of that by going to a Jewish cemetery in Missouri and doing some work there.
But Trump opens the speech with that, which is smart.
Just get it off the way, get it out, get it off the table.
And then he went into his stock speech.
Tonight, as we mark the conclusion of our celebration of Black History Month, we are reminded of our nation's path toward civil rights and the work that still remains to be done.
Recent threats targeting Jewish community centers and vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, as well as last week's shooting in Kansas City, remind us that while we may be a nation divided on policies, we may be a nation divided on policies We are a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all of its very ugly forms.
Each American generation passes the torch of truth, liberty, and justice in an unbroken chain all the way down to the present.
That torch is now in our hands, and we will use it to light up the world.
He continues along these lines, but the fact is that Trump is, a lot of this is stock speech, but it works because, as you'll see, the Democrats don't agree with the stock speech.
So, the art of politics, the real art of politics is, it's like sumo wrestling.
Basically, what you want to do is you want to bring the audience into the circle with you and then throw your opponent out.
You want to bring the audience in and you want to say, I agree with you, you agree with me.
You know who doesn't agree with us?
That guy.
Right?
And Democrats made it real easy last night because every time Trump said something that was eminently true, the Democrats would sit on their hands or they would fuss or they would moan.
And that continued all night long.
So Donald Trump, you know, continues along these lines.
I am here tonight to deliver a message of unity and strength, and it is a message deeply delivered from my heart.
A new chapter of American greatness.
is now beginning.
A new national pride is sweeping across our nation, and a new surge of optimism is placing impossible dreams firmly within our grasp.
What we are witnessing today is the renewal of the American spirit.
Our allies will find that America is once again ready to lead.
All the nations of the world, friend or foe, will find that America is strong, America is proud, and America is free.
Okay, so he does that, and then the next thing he does is he begins describing some of the problems that we're facing and what he is here to fix.
Some of this is true and some of it isn't, but it's, again, smart speech writing because he's creating this contrast.
He's saying, here's what it was and here's what I'm going to fix.
So here he describes sort of where we were, and then he moves to, here's the big movement that's built up around me.
Again, all this is very smart.
I will not allow the mistakes of recent decades past to define the course of our future.
For too long, we've watched our middle class shrink as we've exported our jobs and wealth to foreign countries.
We financed and built one global project after another, but ignored the fates of our children in the inner cities of Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, and so many other places throughout our land.
We've defended the borders of other nations while leaving our own borders wide open for anyone to cross and for drugs to pour in at a now unprecedented rate.
Smart of him to do all of this, This is him just describing all the problems.
Then he talks about the earth shifting beneath our feet and the rebellion starting as a quiet protest.
All of this is smart.
It's when he gets to the stuff where he talks about drug dealers and criminals that it's clear the Democrats are not on the same wavelength.
And Trump is very good at drawing the contrast between himself and the so-called enemy.
And in this case, the enemy is not just the people on the left.
The enemy is the drug dealers and the illegal immigrants.
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Okay, so back to Donald Trump's.
So Donald Trump continues along these lines, and there's one point here where he says something really smart.
There are a bunch of phrases that he uses that are really, really smart.
One of the phrases that he uses that's really smart is he says, what would you say to the American family that loses their jobs, their income, or a loved one because America refused to uphold its laws and defend its borders?
That's the sort of smart phraseology that you need from Donald Trump.
You need him to pose his policies in opposition to Democrats who don't pay attention to those policies.
It's smart.
And the Democrats react by sitting on their hands because, of course, they don't want people vetted coming into the country.
And Trump does.
Again, very smart.
And you can see, I mean, we'll go to the parts of the speech where you can see the Democrats are just sitting there on their hands doing nothing.
It's pretty amazing.
It's pretty amazing.
There's one point, I don't know if we can find it because the clips are kind of cut together.
There's one point where it says, where he starts talking about police and sheriffs.
He says police and sheriffs are members of our community.
And it's pretty, it's pretty amazing to watch the Democrats sit on their hands as he talks about how wonderful the police and the sheriffs are.
Police and sheriffs.
are members of our community.
They're friends and neighbors, they're mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, and they leave behind loved ones every day who worry about whether or not they'll come home safe and sound.
We must support the incredible men and women of law enforcement.
And we must support the victims of crime.
I have ordered the Department of Homeland Security to create an office to serve American victims.
The office is called VOICE, Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement.
We are providing a voice to those who have been ignored by our media and silenced by special interests.
Okay, what's funny is when he says that final line, and the police line they sat on their hands too, but this is the biggest one.
He says, free nations are the best vehicle for expressing the will of the people, and America respects the right of all nations to chart their own path.
My job is not to represent the world, my job is to represent the United States of America.
When he says that, the obvious answer is, that's true.
Right?
The Constitution of the United States makes you President of the United States.
It doesn't make you President of Sudan or President of Somalia or President of France.
It makes you President of the United States.
And amazingly enough, I mean truly amazing, the Democrats sit on their hands for this.
The applause is muted.
They have nothing to say.
Because they don't think of themselves that way and it exposes again The vast difference between kind of right-wing policy and left-wing policy and right-wing philosophy and left-wing philosophy.
And this is not a conservative-liberal divide as much as it really is a right-wing-left-wing divide because there is a difference.
The right-wing-left-wing divide is that right-wingers actually believe in nationalism.
They believe in America.
Now, what we think about America, they're split.
But we believe in America and we believe the president ought to be upholding the interests of the people of America.
The left-wing doesn't believe that.
A lot of people on the left, progressives, they believe that they are world citizens.
That they are not citizens of the United States.
They are citizens of the world.
I believe I'm a citizen of the United States, a country with a creed.
People on the left believe that they are citizens of the world because the entire world should be united by an internationalist creed that may or may not jibe with what America wants.
That's a huge problem, and it's the reason why Donald Trump has really seen this upsurge, because there still is such a thing as nationalism.
You know, I've ripped down the idea of blood-and-soil nationalism, but I've never said that nationalism itself, as a feeling, is the thing that's wrong with the world.
In fact, what I've said is that nationalism is necessary but not sufficient.
If you're a good American, you must be nationalistic, but that's not enough.
You also have to be philosophically American.
So you can say, America's a great country, I want to stand with the flag, but you have to know what the flag stands for.
There are two parts to this, right?
Nationalism, and then beyond that, there's patriotism.
And you need both.
You need both.
You can't have one without the other, or it doesn't work.
If you're patriotic for ideals without being patriotic for the nation, then you don't understand what America is all about.
If you're patriotic for the nation without being patriotic for the ideals, you also don't understand what America is all about.
But at least Trump is providing this nationalistic perspective, and people on the left are rejecting it wholesale.
They won't cheer for this, because they think that they're global citizens, they're world citizens.
And so, you know, you end up with this bizarre situation where he's saying he's President of the United States, not of the world, and the left is basically confused by this, because they think the President of the United States ought to be the head of the UN.
Now, we'll continue by talking about the downside to Trump's speech, and that was the actual policy discussion.
We'll get to that in just a second, but to see that, you have to go over to dailywire.com, you can check it out there, dailywire.com.
And that is $8 a month.
If you want an annual subscription, then you can get that at dailywire.com as well.
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It's dailywire.com.
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