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March 14, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
18:55
Ep. 268 - When The Media Alleges Racism, Do Your Research
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President Trump reportedly has a backup plan in case Trumpcare goes down in flames.
He'll simply leave Obamacare in place, blame Democrats, and then stump for more Republican votes in Congress to help him replace Obamacare.
Yes, really.
According to CNN, quote, During an hour-long meeting, sources said Trump chastised groups including Club for Growth, the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks, and the Tea Party Patriots for calling the House GOP proposal Obamacare lite, This is not a good strategy.
Here are three reasons.
First, you cannot keep selling people the same smelly garbage.
The Republican Party said he will have a football stadium event in states where he won by 10 to 12 points, and he is going to dare people to vote against him, a source at the meeting said.
This is not a good strategy.
Here are three reasons.
First, you cannot keep selling people the same smelly garbage.
Republicans said in 2010 they needed to be elected to Congress to repeal Obamacare.
They failed.
They said in 2012 they needed the Senate to repeal Obamacare.
They failed.
They said in 2014 they needed a bigger majority in the House to repeal Obamacare.
They failed.
They said in 2016 they need the White House to repeal Obamacare.
If they fail again, do you really think Republicans will keep going back to the well on the same old promise when Republicans could pass a one-line bill repealing Obamacare now?
As Alipunda says at Hot Air, at some point people get wise to the scam.
Second, entitlements don't fail.
They just grow.
Who thinks that Obamacare is going to fail for those on Medicaid?
Anybody?
Nope.
States will continue to pile people on Medicaid.
Those people will continue to vote for Democrats.
The entitlement program will get bigger, not smaller.
And when people on Obamacare plans can't obtain their doctor, who's to say they won't go to the government for more money and bigger subsidies, rather than decrying the evils of Obamacare?
We're already seeing a spike in Obamacare's popularity, now that there's talk of replacement.
Do we think that will stop when Republicans vow to kill a law affecting a larger and larger share of the health market?
No entitlement program has ever gotten less popular over time, no matter how bankrupt it is.
Let's put it this way.
Obamacare is already popular enough that Republicans are afraid of killing it outright.
Give it another couple years and Republicans will be talking about how they want to preserve it the same way they do with Social Security and Medicare.
Finally, it's a midterm, stupid.
The president typically doesn't have the upper hand in midterm battles.
That's because, as Alapunda also points out, midterm elections are naturally almost always referenda on the president and his party.
Does Trump really think he can run against Obama in 2018?
Plus, Trump already has control of Congress.
Who does he run against?
The Democrats, who don't matter because they're already in the minority?
So, is it a decent strategy to let Obamacare stay and then run against it?
Not once you've made Not once a president.
Promises were made.
They should be kept.
The biggest problem here is that Trumpcare has less to do with the actuality of repealing Obamacare than the rhetoric of it.
And talk is pretty cheap.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
All right, tons to get to today.
I want to talk a lot about this Steve King blow-up that's happened, because I think that it's pretty clear that the media are doing a hit job here.
And this is coming from somebody who says that, you know, when the media is right, the media are right.
When they are calling it accurately, they're calling it accurately.
I'm not somebody who's knee-jerk when it comes to the media is always wrong, the media is always lying.
Sometimes the media is right, sometimes the media is wrong.
In this case, I really think that Steve King is getting railroaded a little bit.
Some of that's his own fault, because he uses verbiage that is really kind of stupid.
But some of that, a lot of it, I think, is just the media lying.
And so I want to talk about that specifically in just a minute.
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Okay, so I was going to start with Trumpcare today, and then there was a big controversy that broke out this morning over Representative Steve King.
So, full disclosure, I know Representative King.
I think Representative King is, from the times I've met him, he seems like a nice fellow.
I don't think that Representative King is the brightest guy in the basket.
I think that Representative King tends to boil everything down to a little bit too simplistic a version of reality, but here's what happened.
So, Steve King gets on Twitter over the weekend, and he tweets out Wilders, talking about Gert Wilders over in the Netherlands, understands that culture and demographics are our destiny.
We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies.
Okay.
There are two ways to read this tweet, and I'll read it again slowly so people understand.
Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny.
We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies.
There are two ways to read the tweet.
The first way to read the tweet is that this is racism.
That if you bring in a bunch of foreign babies, they're going to destroy the country.
There's no way to assimilate them, and that's because they're black, or they're from Muslim countries, or they're Arab, or whatever it is.
That's one way to read the tweet, that this is just out-and-out racism.
You can't bring in a bunch of foreign babies and hope to maintain your culture, and that race is inherently connected to culture.
That is way one to read this tweet.
Then there is way two to read the tweet, and that is That it is badly phrased but not racist.
Basically, King is saying that multiculturalism and high levels of immigration from foreign cultures cannot coexist.
And that is utterly uncontroversial.
That is an utterly uncontroversial proposition.
Angela Merkel has said exactly the same thing.
In December 2015, she said multiculturalism leads to parallel societies and therefore remains a life lie or a sham.
The challenge is immense.
We want and we will reduce the number of refugees noticeably.
Is Merkel a white nationalist?
Is Merkel a white supremacist or a racist?
I mean, she wants to reduce the number of refugees, and it seems like what she's saying here is that multiculturalism connected with high levels of immigration from foreign culture creates enclaves that are dangerous for any sort of Western civilization that's attempting to thrive.
Is that racist?
No, that's reasonable.
David Cameron has said the same thing in Great Britain.
Again, Merkel in Germany has said the exact same thing.
Naturally, the media immediately jumps to the first interpretation, which is that King is a racist.
That he's saying that it doesn't matter if you have assimilation working full bore.
It doesn't matter if you reject multiculturalism.
If you're from the wrong country, that means you're inherently going to be a bad citizen of the country.
So, which one of these did King mean?
Did King mean that babies from everywhere else are terrible?
Right?
That somebody else's babies... We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies?
Does he mean by that that if somebody else raises their babies not in accordance with Western civilization, you can't restore your civilization?
Or does he mean Any babies from elsewhere are inherently bad, and babies are terrible because they have a different race.
So, fortunately, we have some answers to this.
So, he goes on New Day on CNN to clarify this, because this is something that does require clarification.
Right?
He goes on New Day with Chris Cuomo.
Now, Chris Cuomo has the IQ of a block of wood, as we've mentioned before.
And so what has happened here, what has happened here is that Chris Cuomo, you'll watch, we'll watch some of this interview.
Chris Cuomo jumps in and he immediately assumes the first, right?
That what Steve King is actually talking about is that babies from other countries are terrible and evil and that they can't be assimilated.
And Steve King keeps saying, no, no, no, I'm not talking about race.
I'm talking about culture.
If you come to a culture, if you come from a culture that's different from the United States or Western civilizations and you come in and you don't assimilate in any way, then that's dangerous to the culture, right?
He's making the Angela Merkel point.
They're talking at cross purposes and you'll see that.
And we'll talk about how the media have really skewed this thing and lied about it.
We need to be a country that's pulled together on similar values.
That makes us stronger.
That's the exact point.
I mean, because it seemed like you were doing the opposite.
Like you were trying to say someone else's babies means you're either white or you're not right.
And as you know, that is anathema to what America is all about.
Can we get agreement on that?
Well, if you go down the road a few generations or maybe centuries with the intermarriage, I'd like to see an America that's just so homogenous that we look a lot the same from that perspective.
I think there's been far too much focus on race, especially in the last eight years, and I want to see that put behind us, and I want to be as bonded together.
I gave a speech on this on Saturday, and half the liberals got up and left the room when I talked about Because when you say, when you suggest to anybody... They're looking for hatred is the point, Chris.
But hold on a second.
Congressman, if you suggest that somebody else's babies shouldn't be welcomed in a country, you seem inherently divisive.
That's why I keep asking you, what was your intention with this?
And you keep to seem doubling down on it.
I mean, you said America's got lots of different faces.
That's fine.
But you keep making this point that this country needs to be about white people raising their birth rate and not bringing in other people.
And then what King says there, as the clip continues, is, I never said white people need to raise their birth rate.
He actually overtly denies that, right?
What he says is that that's a lie.
He says, quote, I have never said that.
I tell them to go back and watch the tape.
Right?
I mean, this is, he said over and over.
What's amazing here is that, so here's where the media lies.
So the headline that you have seen this morning, undoubtedly, the headline that you've seen this morning is King, quote, I'd like to see an America that's just so homogenous that we look a lot the same.
If you just see that headline, you would assume immediately that what Steve King is talking about is that he just wants to see lots of white babies.
He wants a racially homogenous America with lots of white babies.
That's the implication of that headline.
But the first half of the sentence is, if you go down the road a few generations and maybe centuries with the intermarriage, I'd like to see an America that's just so homogenous that we look a lot the same.
Okay, let me explain something.
As somebody who's been labeled a cuck by the alt-right, As somebody who hates the alt-right, who despises racism, who thinks racism is disgusting, if I thought Steve King was being racist here, if I thought that what he was actually talking about was the first interpretation of his tweet, not the second interpretation, I'd be the first person calling for his censure on the floor of the House.
I'd be calling for his constituents to dump him at the nearest bus stop.
Okay, this idea that, you know, I'm looking to defend Steve King for racist comments is just silly.
But what's amazing here is, again, the first half of the sentence is that he wants to see more intermarriage, not less.
That he wants to see all the races intermingle.
Last I checked, that's not a white supremacist position.
It's not a white nationalist position.
It's not a position that suggests that race and ethnicity are inherently connected with culture.
Right?
That's not what he's saying.
He's saying precisely the opposite, actually.
It's awkward.
It's stupid, the way he's doing it.
It's silly, the way that he's phrasing it.
But that's not what he's saying.
He's not saying, I just want a bunch of white people.
He said, quote, if you go down the road a few generations or maybe centuries with the intermarriage, I'd like to see an America that's just so homogenous that we look a lot the same.
The reason I mention the alt-right here is because what the alt-right has called people like me, people who actually like immigration.
I think immigration is a good thing when combined with assimilation.
I want more immigration when combined with assimilation.
You're looking at somebody right now or listening to somebody right now who has said, I would trade 50 million people from abroad who share America's values for people who live in the United States and don't appreciate America's values.
I don't care where you're born.
I don't care what race you are.
I think that that's actually sort of what King is saying here and the media is out to jump on him because they're suggesting that what he really means is that black babies are bad as opposed to if we bring in people from a bunch of foreign cultures and don't assimilate them, those babies are not going to make American culture better because they're not going to be assimilated.
In fact, Listen to King talk a little bit more, because I want to show you what he's actually saying.
If you suggest that somebody else's babies shouldn't be welcomed in a country, you seem inherently divisive.
That's why I keep asking you, what was your intention?
with this and you keep to seeing doubling down on it and you said america's got lots of different faces that's fine but you keep making this point this country needs to be about white people raising their birth rate and not bringing in other people that's exactly what america is not but chris i never have made that point I've never said that.
I've been characterized as saying that.
I've had the blogs out there say I said that, but I tell them, go back and watch the tape, listen to it, just listen to the language.
Our language is precise.
That's not out there.
But I did defend Western Civilization that started this last summer at the Republican National Convention.
And when I said Western Civilization, that launched people that are opposed to Western Civilization.
That's a big problem.
If we have an element of Americans here, and that's a big element, that reject Western civilization, then what have we?
This is an effort on the left, I think, to break down the American civilization and the American culture and turn it into something entirely different.
I'm a champion for Western civilization, and yes, our English language is a big part of it.
It's a carrier of freedom.
Whatever the English language has gone globally, freedom went with it.
And science, technology, has always lifted up the standard of living on average of everybody on the planet.
So I want more of that, not less.
And there are civilizations that produce very little, if any.
This Western civilization is a superior civilization, and we want to share it with everybody.
Okay, he keeps saying civilization and culture, you know, civilization and culture, civilization and culture, and Cuomo just keeps going back to race, because Cuomo wants to get him on the race point.
But that's not what King is saying.
And so when you read the headlines today, and when you see people immediately jumping to Steve King is a racist, or what Steve King said here anyway, is racist, Just do yourself a favor and do your own research on this stuff, because the fact is, and listen to what they're actually saying, because the headlines do not convey what exactly was going on in this case.
And it's very frustrating, because I've been in arguments this morning on Twitter with people, and I keep just quoting King, right?
I just keep saying, okay, here's what he actually said.
Here's the actual text of what he said.
Here's what he tweeted.
Here's what he said.
Here's what he meant.
And everybody just keeps going to, but that's not what they want to believe.
Everybody just keeps doubling down on what they want to believe.
What's the narrative they want to embrace?
What's the convenient narrative to embrace?
And there's some virtue signaling, I think, going on from some people on the right who are looking to just disassociate with anybody who says anything mildly controversial and who are looking to prove to everybody they're not racist by throwing this guy under the bus for saying something that really actually is not racist.
What he's saying right now is not actually racist.
He keeps denying that it's racist and he keeps saying, again, I keep going back to this point.
When I'm called a cuck, the term cuck, what that means is that I want to see the races mixed.
That I want to see the races mixed because I'm a terrible person.
This is according to white supremacists.
If I didn't support Trump sufficiently, it's because I'm a cuck who wants my wife to have sex with a black person so I don't have black babies and be tweeted about it by my little Yiannopoulos.
That's demonstrative of the fact that I'm a cuck.
There's nothing more cuckish than what just got said there by Steve King with regards to intermarriage.
Okay, if you think that the white supremacists are into that, that's just- it's just not true.
So, I think that it's worthwhile debunking this kind of stuff because, you know, we're- we attempt to be fair-minded and objective and honest as we can be here on the program in line with conservative principles, and I'm not just gonna bend over backwards and say that the guy said something racist when we can all look at the tape ourselves and determine whether- who's lying here.
Is it King?
Or is it the media who are lying about him?
Okay, well before I get to Trumpcare, because there's a lot to talk about there, We have to say thank you to our friends over at Distilled.
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Okay, so now...
I want to talk a little bit about the myths and the facts surrounding Trumpcare, because this rollout continues amidst all of the chaos, amidst all of the hubbubs.
The fact is that the Trumpcare rollout continues apace, and the Democrats continue to lie about it.
And when I say Democrats, I mean the quote-unquote conservative columnists at the New York Times, too.
So David Brooks is the in-house conservative columnist at the New York Times, and he says that Trumpcare is just a boondoggle for the rich.
Here he was on NBC News.
This, again, the conservative at the New York Times.
Well, here's what I don't get about what's going on this week.
We just had 2016, an election about the working class.
Election where we learned that a lot of people are out of the job market, the social fabric is fraying.
And so the lesson of this election, pay attention and help these people.
So the Republican Party could help these people with market-based mechanisms, which I support.
Do they do that?
No.
They have huge tax cuts for the rich.
This investment income tax credit only goes to people above 250.
And that has been stable in all the plans that they've come up with and thrown around.
And meanwhile, they're throwing 8, 10, 15 million people off the rolls.
So it's a declaring war on their own voters.
And then there's a wing of the party that's saying, no, that's too much.
We need to totally decimate them.
So the Republican Party has to figure out, are we going to help our voters?
Or are we still the party that, you know, we're still going to be the party of the rich?
I hate this crap.
I hate it.
And I will explain how much I hate it in just a second.
But for that, you're going to have to go over to the DailyWire.com right now.
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