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March 23, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show

20:04

Ep. 273 - Is Trump In Trouble?

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	Speaking in Louisville on Monday night, President Trump slammed former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who made an enormous production out of kneeling for the national anthem last season.
	Trump recounted an article he'd read.
	He stated, quote, NFL owners don't want to pick him up because they don't want to get a nasty tweet from Donald Trump.
	I said, if I remember that one, I'm going to report it to the people of Kentucky because they like it when people actually stand for the American flag.
	This isn't good.
	Actually, it's quite bad.
	That's not because Kaepernick doesn't deserve criticism.
	This is a fellow who wore socks depicting police officers as pigs, who thinks the same America that has made him rich and famous for being a one-shot talent is deeply racist and horrible.
	NFL teams are reticent to pick Kaepernick up not just because he's a headache, but because he's flamed out as a football player.
	But the President of the United States should not be in the business of bullying businesses into firing particular employees, or even being perceived to do so.
	That's scary.
	Imagine if President Obama had celebrated Mozilla Firefox firing former CEO Brendan Eich over his support for traditional marriage.
	Conservatives would have been outraged, and rightly so.
	This isn't even Trump celebrating the predictable results of making deeply stupid political stands.
	It's him celebrating his own impact on creating consequences for people who aren't even in a political business.
	Yes, NFL owners are right to shun Kaepernick, but Trump certainly isn't right to involve himself in pressuring owners to do so through his own Twitter feed.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	Oh, so much to get to today.
	We're going to get to President Trump putting the screws to House Republicans and Senate Republicans in order to get them to buy into his Trumpcare.
	We'll get to all of that.
	We'll also get to all of the fallout from yesterday on Trump-Russia.
	We'll get to the fallout on the The leaks, we'll get to all of that.
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	All righty.
	So here we are, and Donald Trump has gotten himself in trouble for yet another day.
	But I want to begin with a bigger story than everything that's happening with the wiretapping and the Russia connections and the leaks and all that.
	We'll get to all that in just a second.
	I want to talk about the latest developments on the Hill, the thing that I think is going to have more impact than any of those things on President Trump's presidency, and that is how this health care bill goes down.
	So right now, President Trump is on the Hill threatening people.
	According to MJ Lee over at CNN, the White House gave a message to senators yesterday.
	The legislation is done.
	There are not going to be any more changes, according to Mike Lee.
	Mike Lee is a senator from Utah.
	First off, it is important to note that there are alternatives to what is being done here.
	of the Constitution really doesn't like Trumpcare because he says it's Obamacare light.
	And now the White House is saying no more changes.
	First off, it is important to note that there are alternatives to what is being done here.
	You know, Trump and Ryan are basically saying that there are no alternatives to what is being done here.
	There are two alternatives.
	One is just repeal Obamacare without a replacement, and then replace it piecemeal.
	You can do that with a straight Republican vote.
	But Tom Price, who's the Secretary of Health and Human Services, he's already come out and he says that's not a possibility, they're not the votes for it.
	Which just shows you that Republicans were lying to you for years.
	Lying to you for years.
	They weren't promising you that they were going to replace Obamacare with something that was Obamacare-lite.
	They weren't promising you there weren't going to be any effects, there were going to be no effects from repealing Obamacare.
	They promised you they were going to repeal Obamacare, and now Tom Price is telling you they don't have the votes.
	Paul Ryan says the same thing, to just repeal the damn thing.
	So instead of just repealing it, we have to go through this whole rigmarole where we put together an omnibus package bill, a 120-page bill, with tons of regulations that are going to be attached to it.
	That is really a crappy bill, and it's a crappy bill for a number of reasons.
	The only good thing about the bill is the shifting away from need-based Medicaid aid from the feds to the states toward a block grant from the feds to the states, $10 billion a year for 10 years.
	If you think, however, that Congress is going to hold to those strictures, you're out of your mind.
	Congress is going to have that block grant, it's going to apply for about five years, and then there's going to be a lot of complaints at the state level, and Congress is going to up the amount of the block grant.
	How do I know that's going to happen?
	Because that's what's happened with every single federal program ever created for the benefit of states.
	It always expands in size and scope.
	That's just how these things work.
	That's on the good side, okay?
	On the bad side, you've got a bunch of tax credits for health care, which is basically just a new entitlement program.
	You have the fact that it keeps in place all of the Obamacare regulations on insurance companies, or at least the vast bevy of them.
	It doesn't actually do what Trump promised during the campaign.
	It doesn't end the state lines that prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines.
	It doesn't do any of those things.
	It's a really, really bad bill.
	But that's not stopping Trump.
	Trump is pushing hard.
	And the reason Trump is pushing hard is because this is a no-lose proposition for Trump at this point.
	is pushing hard because he doesn't have the patience to actually go through a negotiation.
	So if you didn't just want to repeal, if you wanted to repeal and replace, there's something else you could do.
	You could push as the original, as the original sort of bill, you could push a very conservative bill, and then you could negotiate with the Senate inside the House.
	You put up your ideal bill, and then you negotiate.
	Your opening position is the position for which you are negotiating, right?
	You wouldn't start with what Paul Ryan did, which is he negotiated against himself.
	The House Republicans negotiated against themselves.
	They created what they thought was a bill They could pass through Congress.
	But it's not going to pass through Congress specifically because whatever the bill is that you first put up is subject to negotiation and everybody wants input.
	So what you really want to do if you're going to do this right is you put up a bill that your base agrees with and then you have your solidified your base and then you move towards something that more people can agree with.
	That's what you would do.
	But Trump doesn't have the patience for prolonged negotiation, nor does he have the policy expertise to actually speak about a prolonged negotiation.
	So instead, they decided they were going to fast track this thing, have Paul Ryan write up a bill that he thought could pass, put it in front of Trump, have Trump ram it through.
	That was basically the plan here.
	And now Trump is in a position where he's ramming through a bill he doesn't fully understand.
	He doesn't get it.
	The reason you can tell he doesn't get it is when he speaks publicly about the bill, he's still making promises that do not apply to this bill.
	He's still saying things like nobody's going to get thrown off their health insurance.
	Okay, there are people on Medicaid who are not going to be on Medicaid anymore if this plan goes forward.
	So, I never thought that that should be a promise that any Republican makes.
	The fact is that it's not government's job to keep you on health insurance, it's your job to go out and buy your own health insurance.
	And it's the government's job to get out of the way so that competition ensures that the price is lower for health insurance and the quality is higher for health insurance.
	Doesn't matter, Trump right now is trying to ram this thing through.
	In typical Trump fashion, he apparently said to a bunch of House members, We won't have these crowds if we don't get this done.
	He's talking about all of the crowds that he's speaking to, as though those crowds are in any way indicative of the level of public support for this plan.
	And the polls show this plan is highly, highly unpopular.
	It's really unpopular.
	According to Nate Silver, who's quoting all of the polls right now, and yes, polls still matter.
	It's not, we don't live in Bill Mitchell world where polls don't matter.
	Polls still matter, just because they were off on the state level, does not mean that polls are now completely out the window.
	Okay, here is the favorable numbers on the Republican healthcare bill.
	Fox News has the favorable number on Trumpcare at 34%.
	54% opposed.
	Morning Consult has it at plus 11.
	That is the only poll that has it in positive territory.
	YouGov CBS News has it at 29 below.
	YouGov Huffington Post has it 21 below.
	Public Policy Polling has it 25 below.
	The Average, 16 below.
	30% support, 47% oppose.
	Nobody likes this bill.
	Conservatives, Democrats, nobody likes this bill.
	Now, Obamacare had a 40% favorable rating and a 49% unfavorable rating when it was passed.
	That means that this is significantly less popular than that.
	And Democrats lost 63 seats in Congress because of Obamacare.
	So if you want to hold the House, this is not the way to do it.
	This is not the way that you hold the House.
	By the way, only 13% of Trump supporters strongly support this.
	They think that it's Paul Ryan's plan, and they do not strongly support this.
	But Trump is coming in hard because he knows that if this whole thing falls apart, he's not going to get blamed.
	He's going to be seen as the good soldier, and the person who is going to be blamed in the end is going to be, you guessed it, Paul Ryan.
	So Paul Ryan is going out there and he's saying that Donald Trump is here to close the deal, guys.
	Donald Trump is here, and he's going to close the deal.
	It's what he does best.
	That is Ryan trying to kiss Trump's ass.
	It is not going to work.
	It is not going to work.
	The sycophancy is going to maybe drive Trump to support the Ryan plan, but if the Ryan plan goes down in flames, if he thinks that Trump is going to be there for the incoming fire, he is totally wrong.
	It's Ryan's butt on the line, not Trump's here.
	Mark Meadows, who's one of the representatives who opposes the bill, he's been saying he doesn't back the bill, and Trump is targeting him directly, which is really ridiculous.
	I mean, we're now targeting Republicans for not voting for a bill that's not conservative enough.
	If this busts, if this whole thing falls apart, the results are going to be disastrous for conservatives particularly.
	Trump will likely blame Ryan.
	He will likely shift more to the economic populism and nationalism of Steve Bannon and away from Reince Priebus.
	I'm not a Reince Priebus fan.
	I'm not a Paul Ryan fan.
	But I'd rather have the economic program of Paul Ryan and Reince Priebus than the economic program of Steve Bannon and Trump.
	Trump tends to be more on Bannon's side anyway on this sort of stuff.
	You could see very easily Donald Trump moving away from working with House and Senate Republicans at all, and just crossing the aisle and working with Democrats on his populist economic program, if this thing flames out.
	Because he's going to blame Ryan for anything that falls apart here.
	He's going to blame Ryan Suprebus for anything that falls apart here.
	You can see him doing the, okay, now I'm going to swivel to the middle.
	I tried working with you guys.
	I tried to do it your way.
	I tried it your way, and now I'm not going to do it anymore.
	You saw tendencies like this from Trump during the campaign.
	He said he didn't care if the Republicans held the Senate because maybe he'd be able to get things done with Democrats more easily.
	He has a tendency not to really like the the quote-unquote establishment of the party and right now if he goes down in flames over this bill he's gonna blame them and he's gonna turn away from them.
	And that's going to be really, it's going to have really negative ramifications for people who want to see some conservative governance, because you're not going to get conservative governance between Trump, Bannon, and the Democrats in the House and the Senate.
	It was interesting, I was listening to another podcast, there's some top Democrats who do a podcast, Pod Save America, which is an interesting podcast I like to listen to to get, you know, kind of what Democrats are thinking.
	And they were saying that they're upset with Trump, not because Trump is backing Trumpcare so much, but because Trumpcare isn't Trumpy enough.
	They want Trump to swivel toward the economic nationalist populism of Steve Bannon, and they say openly there might be a political realignment in store if Trump does exactly that.
	Trump sees that same opportunity, so this could be the precursor to a solid move to the left.
	Now, maybe not.
	Maybe Trump sticks with the program.
	Maybe Trump maintains conservative policies, like he's been doing about 70% so far.
	Maybe he maintains that even if this bill goes down.
	I think that's doubtful.
	I think that's doubtful.
	Okay.
	With that said, Donald Trump did have a very bad day yesterday.
	It's not even going to be his worst day of the week if this bill goes down on Thursday.
	It's supposed to be voted on in the House on Thursday.
	Wouldn't be the first time that House leadership has presented a bill that went down in flames.
	Happened regularly under John Boehner.
	Yesterday was a bad day for Trump because there were basically two stories, neither of them good for Trump.
	One was Jim Comey, the FBI director who is not particularly competent, speaks out of line a fair bit.
	He was in front of the House Intelligence Committee yesterday and he said that Donald Trump's tweets about wiretapping, they just weren't true.
	Jim Comey talking to Adam Schiff of California.
	Director Comey was the president's statement that Obama had his wires tapped in Trump Tower a true statement.
	With respect to the President's tweets about alleged wiretapping directed at him by the prior administration, I have no information that supports those tweets.
	And we have looked carefully inside the FBI.
	The Department of Justice has asked me to share with you that the answer is the same for the Department of Justice and all its components.
	The Department has no information that supports those tweets.
	As you understand the term McCarthyism, do you think President Obama or the FBI was engaged in such conduct?
	I'm not going to try and characterize the tweets themselves.
	All I can tell you is we have no information that supports them.
	Director Comey, you're a good lawyer.
	Can you make out a great case that President Obama wiretapped Mr. Trump's phone as just part of the election, in light of the fact you have said there's no evidence of that?
	All I can say is what I said before, that we don't have any information that supports those tweets.
	Okay, so, you know, and he keeps saying it over and over and over.
	The Democrats keep hammering it home over and over and over.
	There is no evidence that Trump was wiretapped by Obama.
	Now, here's what actually happened, in all likelihood, by all the available reports.
	Basically, there are FISA warrants out on a bunch of Russians.
	And those FISA warrants allowed the government to listen in on all of these Russians who were apparently doing business with Americans or talking to Americans, and a bunch of Trump associates were swept up in those wiretaps.
	So in other words, let's say that Austin were a Russian agent, which is not implausible, and the government decided to put a wiretap on Austin, and I called Austin up.
	Well, now I'm on the wiretap.
	That's what was actually wiretapped, and that's how Mike Flynn got caught up in this conversation.
	We're going to get to the leaking portion of this in a second, because that is also a real scandal.
	But it is not a real thing that Obama ordered a direct wiretap on Trump.
	The reports that were promulgated by Heat Street that the FISA warrant had been issued for Trump Tower, that was debunked yesterday by, I think it was Mike Rogers, who's the head of the National Security Agency.
	None of this is good for Trump.
	Now, Trump could have, after the original tweet, said, look, I was speaking figuratively.
	I was speaking broadly.
	What I really meant was that there is obvious government Surveillance of people in my campaign because people in my campaign were talking to the Russians and it's just ridiculous That information about that stuff is being leaked to the press.
	That's accurate.
	That's good But because Trump two things Trump only reads the headlines He never reads below the headline and to Trump always doubles down and that means that he created this entire big problem for himself in which he looks foolish in which he looks like he made this case that is Unsubstantiated and that is a disaster for him Because, again, it goes to credibility.
	His approval ratings are already low.
	He's going to need that credibility when it comes time to ram through legislation.
	If you're going to make the case to Republicans that they need to get on board with Trumpcare and that you've got the American people behind you, you actually have to be able to show data showing that the American people are behind you and trust you.
	And right now, he's undermining that trust.
	And we'll talk in a second about, you know, more of the fallout from this because it's not good for President Trump.
	If you want him to be successful, you need him to stop with the Twitter.
	Honestly, his administration would be much better off if he would just stop with the Twitter altogether.
	I know people who are fans of his don't like that idea.
	The fact is that he's doing himself more harm than good with the Twitter account at this point.
	If he wants to be sporadic in his use of it, targeted in his use of it, that's one thing.
	He is not.
	He's a blunderbuss.
	Okay.
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	Okay, so it wasn't just James Comey who's slapping around Trump on this Trump wiretapping allegation.
	Again, all Trump had to do was tell the truth.
	Instead, Donald Trump has a very rudimentary understanding of how the news works.
	He reads the headlines.
	He determines what he wants to determine from the headlines.
	He puts it out there and then he triples down on it and goes mole hunting on the basis of a fantasy that is only in his head.
	It's just dumb.
	It's just dumb.
	Forget about whether, you know, you think that Obama's a bad guy or not.
	I think Obama's a bad guy.
	Forget about whether you think that Obama intelligence people are leaking bad things about Trump.
	I think they are right now.
	And I'll get to those leaks in just a second.
	Trump needs to stop with this crap.
	It makes him look stupid.
	Here's Mike Rogers of the National Security Administration saying that Trump, you know, trotting out this theory that the British were behind some sort of tapping of him.
	He said that's utterly ridiculous.
	Did you ever request that your counterparts in GCHQ should wiretap Mr. Trump on behalf of President Obama?
	No, sir, nor would I. That would be expressly against the construct of the Five Eyes Agreement that's been in place for decades.
	And the Five Eyes are some of our closest intelligence partners and Britain is one of them?
	Yes, sir.
	Have you seen any evidence that anyone else in the Obama administration made such a request?
	No, sir, and again, my view is the same as Director Comey.
	I've seen nothing on the NSA side that we engage in any... Address that should be noted was appointed by Donald Trump.
	So his own guy is saying right here that this is nonsense.
	Devin Nunes, who's a Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, he debunked that story that said there was a FISA warrant for Trump Tower.
	He said there is no FISA warrant for Trump Tower.
	His administration.
	No evidence of any wiretapping of Trump Tower.
	There was no FISA warrant that I'm aware of to tap Trump Tower.
	And that's after you received this information?
	That's accurate.
	Okay, so, again, that whole thing, it's really dumb.
	I wish that Trump would just stick to the facts.
	Again, this has been my critique of Trump all the way through the campaign, since the beginning.
	If you sacrifice truth in favor of power, you end up with neither power nor truth.
	That's what's happening right now.
	Tendencies for untruth tend to come back and bite you.
	We're going to get next into the Russia connection scandal and into the leaks, which I think is the biggest scandal of all.
	The Democrats don't want to talk about that one.
	We'll talk about that one.
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	It is coming.
	And it's not coming just like Obamacare repeal is coming.
	It's actually coming, okay?
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