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April 27, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
23:18
Ep. 291 - Is The Trump Wall Dying?
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For the past couple of weeks, President Trump has been railing against the trade treachery of our neighbor to the north, Canada.
Canada has replaced China as Trump's new bugaboo.
At the same time Trump turned his anger against the evil Canucks, he said China was not a currency manipulator.
That's because Trump is now attempting to appeal to the blue-collar workers in the swing states who've been harmed by Canada's protectionism.
There's nothing wrong with Trump ripping Canadian protectionism on milk importation.
It's true that Canada has been tariffing American milk products in order to subsidize its domestic farming industry.
Here's what Trump tweeted today, quote, Canada has made business for our dairy farmers in Wisconsin and other border states very difficult.
We will not stand for this.
Watch!
But it's Trump's solution that's sort of a problem.
Instead of pressuring Canada to lower its tariffs on Wisconsin milk, Trump has decided to retaliate via tariffs of his own, with no sign that he's using those tariffs as leverage to tamp down protectionism from the Trudeau administration.
On Monday night, Trump announced to conservative allies he would put a, quote, countervailing duty of somewhere between 3% and 24% on Canadian lumber.
The United States buys nearly 80% of all Canadian softwood lumber exports.
This means builders will pay the price for Trump's trade retaliation.
As Cato Institute pointed out a decade and a half ago, quote, the resulting addition of $800 to $1,300 to the cost of a new home prices some 300,000 families out of the housing market.
Workers in the major lumber using sectors outnumber logging and sawmill workers by better than 25 to 1.
But this tariff does pay off domestic loggers who are celebrating along with their Democratic representatives.
Senator Ron Wyden is a radical leftist and he called the move a quote message that help is on the way.
Herein lies the problem.
The truth is that the trade dispute over lumber has nothing to do with the trade dispute over dairy.
The issues are not linked.
America has had a long-standing dispute with Canada over lumber for the past three decades.
But Trump likes tariffs and he wants to raise them.
He has a particular constituency that he wants to protect, and just as Democrats do with domestic spending, he's going to use trade to help them out through indirect taxation.
That's why Trump has blamed NAFTA for Canadian trade intransigence, which doesn't make a lot of sense considering that NAFTA lowered tariffs rather than raising them.
If Trump were using the new lumber tariffs as leverage for future negotiations, that would be understandable.
But it appears he's just using the milk dispute as a trigger for the protectionism he so desperately seeks.
Look for more punitive measures that harm American producers and consumers from the Trump administration, unfortunately.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
So, tons of breaking news this morning.
We're going to get to the latest on Mike Flynn.
It now appears that Mike Flynn may have broken the law and the White House is sort of stonewalling for him, which is really not good.
Meanwhile, we'll talk about the government shutdown, which is not just Trump's fault.
Republicans do not know how to handle government shutdowns.
And we're going to talk about what they actually should be doing on all of this.
Plus, I want to talk about a poll that is really disturbing to me.
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So, a lot to talk about today.
I want to start off with this poll from Pew Research that is deeply troubling to me and should be troubling to all conservatives.
That is, this poll shows that more Americans now want bigger government with more services now that Trump is president.
So if that seems counterintuitive, it shouldn't be.
The fact is that Trump did not campaign on the basis of small government.
He campaigned on cutting some regulations.
He campaigned on the basis of cutting waste, fraud, and abuse.
But when it came to funding of programs, It's hard to find a program that he wanted defunded other than the EPA and foreign aid.
Every other program he wanted to increase funding.
Veterans Affairs, he wanted to increase funding.
Military spending, he wanted to increase funding.
The entitlement programs, he wanted to increase funding.
He wanted to increase funding on health care because he said that nobody should be left out on the street and all the rest of it.
Trump is not a small government guy.
The era of small government, according to Republicans, apparently is over.
The poll shows that Americans now want more spending on programs ranging from veterans benefits and services to infrastructure, from Medicare to health care, from defense to environmental protection, from social security to assistance to the needy.
All of them, Americans now want more, more government than they did back in February 2013 when Barack Obama had just been re-elected and was starting his second term.
So for example, veterans benefits and services, 53% of Americans wanted more funding for that in February 2013.
Today that is 75%.
Let's take one that lefties like.
Let's take assistance to the needy in the United States.
Listen, we all like assistance to the needy.
I want it to be done through private organizations.
The left wants it done through government.
Only 21% of Americans in February 2013 thought that the government should provide more assistance to the needy.
Today, that number is 29%.
So it's risen by 8% since Donald Trump has taken office.
Government assistance to the unemployed, it's up 5% from 24 to 29.
Sorry, assistance to the needy in the world is from 21 to 29.
Assistance to the needy in the United States is up from 27% to 45%, an 18-point jump from the Obama era.
So what's happening here?
What's happening here is obviously, unfortunately, it now appears that a lot of the small government rhetoric of a lot of people on the right was just reactionary tribalism directed at Barack Obama.
As soon as they got one of their own in, then all of a sudden all the small government rhetoric went completely out the window because we like Trump, but we didn't like Obama, so it was bad when Obama spent, but it's good when Trump spends.
This is stupidity.
It's just silliness.
And you can see that a lot of this shift is coming from Republicans, not from Democrats.
In 2013, only 28% of Republicans wanted increased spending on roads and infrastructure.
21% wanted less spending on those things.
Today, 55% of Republicans want increased spending on infrastructure.
That is due to Donald Trump, and it's also due to the fact that Republicans have bought into, I think all Americans, unfortunately, have now bought into the idea that the government can fix your problems.
The government cannot fix your problems.
And you are seeing this from mainstream Republicans.
You've seen it for years from mainstream Republicans.
Today, the obvious example comes from John Kasich.
So John Kasich is the governor of Ohio, who I could not stand in the primaries.
As you remember, every time John Kasich spoke during the primaries, I said, oh God, no, please God, not John Kasich.
Oh yes, John Kasich, governor of Ohio and MSNBC this morning.
Listen to how he describes President Trump.
My wife says you're the father of Ohio.
Why don't you act like it?
It's in the book.
And I changed.
And you know, when you're running a big job like that, you have to not only use your head, but your heart and they have to work together.
And what he needs to know is he's the father of America.
And that carries a heavy responsibility.
He's tweeting less.
He's in less than 100 days.
Give the guy a chance is my view.
And look, there's nobody that has been, look, I didn't endorse him.
I didn't go to the convention.
I want him to be successful.
I'm going to give him a chance.
Okay, to paraphrase Triumph, the comic insult dog, I poop on this, okay?
The idea that John Kasich is the father of Ohio, Donald Trump is the father of America.
I'm old enough to remember when Chris Rock said about Barack Obama that he was like the country's dad.
And Republicans and conservatives said, are you out of your mind?
He's not like my dad.
I don't need Obama as my dad.
I have a dad.
My dad's great.
Okay?
I don't need Barack Obama or Donald Trump or John Kasich to be my dad.
Because government is not my parent.
Government is there to do a job to defend and protect my rights.
But it is not there to be my mommy or my daddy.
But now you have Republicans, including John Kasich, and I think to a certain extent Trump, buying into this generalized idea, only I can solve.
Okay, only you can solve.
Let's be real about this.
Trump cannot solve your problems.
Only you in a free country can solve your problems.
John Kasich cannot solve your problems.
Only you in a free country can solve your problems.
And this idiotic notion that government is supposed to sit over us and fix all of our problems is really a Democrat left notion.
This idea that Trump can do it with tariffs, this idea that Trump is going to change the economics and the working of economics to protect his specific group of people, it is no better than Democrats using direct taxation to redistribute wealth to use indirect taxation to redistribute wealth.
But I think Republicans have bought into this big government nonsense, and it really is upsetting, and it demonstrates the moral corruptness of a movement that claimed that it was small government through and through, and then turns around and says that it's not small government anymore as soon as somebody they like is in, and then blow out the spending.
That's really dishonest, and it's dishonest in a huge way.
You can see the dishonesty when it comes to the government shutdown.
Donald Trump wants his wall funded by Congress.
It should be funded by Congress.
We should have a physical barrier on the southern border.
It should either be fencing or a wall.
It should be monitored.
We shouldn't have people crossing the border illegally.
I was for a wall before Trump was, and after the Trump wall is not built, presumably, I still will be for the Trump wall when Trump has said he kept his promise.
Bottom line is that Trump says he wants funding for the wall, and Republicans in Congress go, And Democrats in Congress go and say, no way, we're not going to do it.
If you do that, we will shut down the government.
We will not pass a budget with funding for your stupid wall in it.
So what does Trump do?
Trump backs down and Republicans back down.
Trump and Republicans say, no, you know what?
We've decided differently.
We're not going to do that anymore.
Screw it.
No big deal.
We'll move off of it.
This is why Republicans cannot be trusted to cut the government.
Here's how the logic should work.
Republicans have been making the case for decades that small government is better.
That, as Ronald Reagan put it, the problem in America is not You, the problem is the government.
The government is the problem, right?
That was Ronald Reagan's case.
So if government is the problem, less of it would be a good thing.
So Republicans, to a certain extent, should be rooting for a government shutdown, because vital essential services continue to be performed, the military continues to operate, the social services, like social security, it continues to get paid.
Those are considered essential services that are not cut.
When there is a government shutdown, people continue to work, right?
That's just the way that the system works.
But Republicans are so damn scared of government shutdowns that they think that it's going to crush them.
Now, let's examine that for a second.
If you're a Republican, why are you scared of a government shutdown?
You're advocating for cuts to government every single day.
Why are you scared of a government shutdown?
Shouldn't you say, okay, fine, shut down the government.
Let's see what happens.
Is everybody going to die?
Right?
You're the ones who want the government open.
You tell me why the government should stay open.
You explain to me why the government should stay open on the terms that you want.
And if you want to shut down the government, fine.
We can all exist without the government.
We can all exist without the government doing all of these stupid things that the government is doing.
You know how meaningless the government shutdown was during when Cruz and the Republicans tried to defund Obamacare and there was a government shutdown for like a month?
You know how little it mattered?
You know how little it mattered?
It mattered so little that Barack Obama, in order to show you how much it mattered, had to forcibly shut open-air national parks.
That's how little it mattered.
Because he couldn't come up with a victim.
Zombies weren't stalking the streets.
There weren't people being shot en masse.
There wasn't mass chaos.
It wasn't the Purge, right?
Nothing bad was happening.
So, Obama, in order to show how terrible it was that the government had shut down, he had to forcibly shut, like, the World War II memorial and ban people in wheelchairs from going and visiting the memorial for their buddies.
That's how he, he had to do that, specifically in order to demonstrate how terrible, how terrible the government shutdown was.
He shut national parks, right, which caused nothing, nothing to operate.
He could have just redirected money.
He could have just redirected money and kept them open, but he wanted people to feel the suffering, and the only way he could make people feel the suffering was to shut down national parks.
What Republicans should have said is, dude, if that's all this is, like you're shutting down national parks, here's a bill to reopen the national parks, and let's just leave everything else closed.
Republicans, in other words, conservatives should not be afraid of government shutdowns, because we're constantly making the case that not only should there be a temporary government shutdown, a lot of these programs should just die.
They should just go away.
We shouldn't have them at all.
And yet Republicans treat government shutdowns like they're the end of the world, and Democrats treat government shutdowns like, well, You know, it'll just redound to our benefit.
What's the big deal if there's a government shutdown?
You know why that is?
It's because both parties have been complicit in pushing the notion that big government is good for you.
It does not make sense for a small government party to be scared of a government shutdown.
It only makes sense for a big government party to be scared of a government shutdown.
And right now, Trump has the perfect ground to stand on.
So I want to flashback to the last government shutdown.
This is the shutdown that happened over Obamacare.
And here is what Barack Obama said about the government shutdown.
And this was, and Obama did what a president should do during a government shutdown.
He's a terrible president, but he did what a president should do.
He blamed it on the opposing party.
And he said, here is their priority they think is so important.
And here is why the government shouldn't be shut down over that priority.
Here's what Obama did.
At midnight last night, for the first time in 17 years, Republicans in Congress chose to shut down the federal government.
Let me be more specific.
One faction, of one party, in one house of Congress, in one branch of government, shut down major parts of the government.
All because they didn't like one law.
This Republican shutdown did not have to happen.
But I want every American to understand why it did happen.
Republicans in the House of Representatives refused to fund the government unless we defunded or dismantled the Affordable Care Act.
Okay, so he was blaming it on Republicans don't want Obamacare funded.
So the case he was making is they shouldn't have shut down the government over they hate the Affordable Care Act.
Why can't Trump make that same case of you shouldn't shut down the government just because you don't want to fund a border wall?
It demonstrates how you're open border globalist, right?
This is his entire case.
This is his case for being president.
I am not an open borders globalist.
The Democrats are.
That's why we need a wall on the border.
Shouldn't he be out there screaming in favor of a government shutdown if the Democrats are going to do it?
Fine!
You don't want to fund the government because you want to keep that border open so anyone who wants to can cross it?
Fine.
Your problem.
Let's play this game.
Right, this is a game of chicken.
This is a game of chicken.
And what Republicans constantly do is they don't understand how the game of chicken works.
So, not to drop a tweet thread game theory on you, okay, but there's a basic concept in game theory called chicken, right, and this is the way that it works.
If there are two people who are running a car directly at each other, their worst outcome is if nobody swerves, right?
That's the worst outcome for both parties.
Nobody swerves and there's a crash.
The second worst outcome is if you're the guy who swerves and the other car just keeps driving straight forward.
That's the second worst outcome.
And the best outcome for you is if the other guy swerves.
That's the best outcomes if the other guy swerves.
So, how do you make the other guy swerve in a game of chicken?
The way that you make the other guy swerve in a game of chicken is you demonstrate openly and obviously to the other person that you are not going to swerve no matter what.
You put a brick on the accelerator and you take the club and you put it on the steering wheel.
I cannot swerve now.
I've pre-committed to not swerving.
So, either you're gonna swerve or you're gonna get in a crash, but you have no choices, right?
And the worst of those two options for you is to get in the crash.
So, you swerve, right?
Instead, what Republicans do is they pre-swerve.
They say, we're not going to shut down the government.
They always say that.
They always say, we're not going to shut down the government.
Under no circumstances are we going to shut down the government.
You idiots!
If you want to lose the standoff that is the government shutdown, continue to be this stupid.
Barack Obama was perfectly happy with the shutdown.
He was perfectly happy with the shutdown.
But here was Mitch McConnell talking about the shutdown at exactly the same time.
Let's switch to the issue of potential government shutdown.
You probably know that Democrats are making a big deal out of comments that you made talking about the strategy that you would use if you became Majority Leader to use spending bills to change policy.
And that you didn't rule out a government shutdown.
Can you just stay right there?
Oh, I did rule it out.
I'm the guy that gets us out of shutdowns.
Remember me?
I'm the guy that gets us out of shutdowns.
But that doesn't mean that Congress has an obligation to send appropriation bills to the President that are a blank check, which is the way it's been with the Democratic Senate.
One of the powers of Congress is to direct spending, and we have an abusive bureaucracy across the board that's been particularly bad here in Kentucky with the EPA and the coal industry that needs to have some directions from Congress.
The reason Harry Reid... Shutdowns are a failed policy.
Shutdowns are not a failed policy.
Shutdowns are a failed policy if you lose.
Okay?
I don't understand how this works.
So when Barack Obama is president, the shutdown hurts the Republicans.
But when Trump is president, the shutdown hurts the Republicans?
How does this work exactly?
It's just insanity.
I want to talk a little bit more about this in just a second and the reaction that people should be having to the wall and all the rest of this.
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So what actually gets shut down during a government shutdown?
What actually gets shut down during a government shutdown is they delay unemployment insurance.
They delay veterans benefits.
Maybe, maybe, that's unclear.
National parks, museums, and passport offices.
Whatever.
The Small Business Administration and FHA don't guarantee you loan applications, which is probably a good thing, considering that half of what they're guaranteeing are bad loans that private industry wouldn't give.
Farm subsidy checks stopped flowing.
Oh no, farm subsidies.
And IRS tax processing would slow down.
Oh no, it turns out the IRS won't be able to audit you.
That's so terrible.
Oh no, what are we ever going to do without the IRS auditing people?
Social security checks continue to go.
Military spending continues to happen.
Commerce and labor departments shut down.
Oh no.
That's so terrible.
All of this is temporary, by the way.
Right?
TSA continues to bother you.
FBI, VA, all of this continues to function.
Disaster relief continues to function.
The Postal Service continues to deliver the mail.
The Federal Reserve continues to work.
Right, so basically, the parts of the government that people consider vital, and many that aren't vital, continue to operate in a government shutdown, but Republicans are so scared, because they're all pansies, they're so scared of this stupid government shutdown.
People are asking, what about IRS tax returns, how about my tax refund?
Yes, the IRS will be slower to process your tax refund, they'll also be slower to audit you.
You can, honest to God, like, I think that you're better off with the IRS failing to audit you.
It's not a tax refund, it's your money in the first place.
So maybe you'd be better off for there to be a government shutdown.
If they were going to do one, let's do it like April 10th, right?
Do it right before tax season.
And then they can't even process your tax returns.
You won't even have to turn them in, presumably.
But here's the thing.
If the wall is that important, if the wall is that important, then you should be willing to stand up against the Democrats on this and say exactly what Barack Obama said and say, look, the people who are shutting this down are the Democrats.
It's not me.
And they're shutting it down to prevent a wall from being built that will protect all Americans.
Isn't that a publicity win for them?
Isn't that a publicity win?
But you can see the Trump administration futzing around on this because a big government party has to avoid a government shutdown.
Here's Sean Spicer being asked about Mexico funding the wall and the funding battle.
That in order to get the ball rolling on border security and the wall, that he was going to have to use the current appropriations process, but he would make sure that that promise would be kept as far as the payment of it.
I think if you're coming in from our southern border, he's taken a lot of steps so far that has deterred border crossing.
But this is a permanent step that will extend beyond his presidency.
Eight years from now, the next president will have that wall in place to make sure that it doesn't continue.
Okay, so he says that he is going to get built, and sure, Mexico will eventually pay for it.
You should be angry with Trump if Trump is not willing to go to the mat on this thing.
You should be angry with him.
And I understand he doesn't want the bad headlines on day 100 or whatever, but who cares?
Show some backbone here.
Show some backbone.
This was your key issue.
Show some backbone.
Charles Krauthammer, I think, mimics the talk of Democrats when he says that Democrats have the advantage.
Here was his take on this, and I think this is totally wrong.
People accept the barrier idea, but if you look at the polling on the wall, I think the Democrats have the advantage.
I don't particularly understand why anybody would object to a barrier of any sort at the border, even if it's marginally effective.
Okay, so, you know, this idea that the wall is unpopular, so Trump will lose this battle.
No, he won't.
The reason that he won't lose this battle is because what the polls show is that Americans don't care all that much about the wall.
But, if Trump makes this battle about, one side wants there to be no barrier whatsoever so people can enter illegally, and they're willing to shut down the government for it, that's a winning political battle, and he should stand by the power of his idea, rather than caving to the power of big government, which is unfortunately what I think the Republican Party, in large measure, has become, which is really quite terrible.
Well, as we continue here at the Daily Wire, we're going to talk about everything that's happening with Mike Flynn.
There's some big news breaking.
It looks like Mike Flynn may be in some deeper trouble.
The former National Security Advisor.
It's going to heat up for the White House, which is not good news.
And we're also going to be talking about the battle that's broken out on cable between Fox News and CNN over sexual harassment and all the rest.
Plus, I have to play you the most ridiculous video in the history of mankind.
Bill Nye Has now cut the most ridiculous video in the history of mankind, but to see it, you'll actually have to subscribe over at dailywire.com.
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If you become an annual subscriber, you get a free copy of The Arroyo, a fictional film set on the southern border all about why we need a wall.
Okay, the entire film is about a rancher who's facing down drug cartels using his land as a thoroughfare.
Really good movie.
You can get that for free when you become an annual subscriber, or if you're just a subscriber, go over to dailywire.com right now, subscribe, watch the rest of the show live, watch me make fun of Bill Nye, and be part of the mailbag in a couple of days, so check that out.
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