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May 9, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
16:58
Ep. 298 - Is Trump’s Big Win In The House Actually A Win?
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In Trump's America, rape is a pre-existing condition.
Under the new health care bill, rape could be a pre-existing condition.
Trump's health care bill allows rape to be a pre-existing condition.
Rape and domestic violence could be pre-existing conditions.
These are all real headlines from mainstream media outlets.
New York Magazine, Huffington Post, The Independent from the UK, and CNN.
Under the American Health Care Act, states have the ability to opt out of federal regulations requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions.
Naturally, the left immediately conjured up images of people injured in the most horrifying possible way, rape, and then suggested that the bill would suddenly leave rape victims adrift.
Here's New York Magazine, quote, Under Obamacare, pre-existing conditions were guaranteed to receive coverage, among them sexual assault.
The American Health Care Act is going to change that.
In addition to rape, postpartum depression, cesarean sections, and surviving domestic violence are all considered pre-existing conditions.
So, let's parse this for a second.
According to the leftist media, if you suffer an injury in a terrible situation, the situation itself is now a pre-existing condition.
In other words, these headlines could just have easily read, quote, in Trump's America, car crashes are a pre-existing condition.
Or, under the new healthcare bill, soccer accidents could be a pre-existing condition.
The bill itself says that pre-existing conditions are pre-existing conditions.
Nowhere does it give a list of pre-existing conditions, including rape or sexual assault, because these are activities leading to injury, not actual injuries.
The leftist case here is, as usual, idiotic.
Events are not pre-existing conditions.
Injuries that occur as a result of events, if they occur before you attempt to buy insurance, are definitionally pre-existing conditions.
Duh, but the debate has now been so skewed that we think the government can magically have health insurance cover rape, which doesn't even make sense.
If no injury occurred requiring medical attention due to a rape, what would the insurance company do to cover it?
Pray?
Hunt down rapists?
Yet the people who believe the government can protect you from all ills and apparently send insurance adjusters into the streets Charles Bronson style to mete out justice and prevent rape are out in force today.
Under new Religious Liberty Act, hospitals can deny rape victims emergency contraception.
Under AHCA, rape will be a pre-existing condition.
Katie Hneda, Clara Jeffrey, new version of AHCA wants to punish both special ed victims and rape victims.
Good luck in 2018, boys.
Here's a list of all members of Congress who voted yes to AHCA.
These people believe rape is a pre-existing condition.
This argument is the equivalent of saying that Obamacare sought to hurt rape victims by throwing people off their individual insurance plans.
Obamacare may well have thrown people off their individual insurance plans, but it wasn't because they were rape victims.
Come on, people.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
So much stupid, so little time, we'll talk about the leftist reaction to the American Health Care Act and the rollout of such.
We'll also talk about why the Republicans screw up every single major piece of legislation they apparently bring to the fore.
We'll also talk about Marine Le Pen and Sally Yates and all the news of the day.
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Okay, so lots going on in the news.
First, I want to give my brief reaction to the blowout election in France.
Marine Le Pen gets blown out in the French election by Emmanuel Macron.
Emmanuel Macron is a first-time officeholder.
He is the youngest president of France, the youngest leader of France since, apparently, Napoleon Bonaparte.
He won 90% of Paris.
He blew He blew Marine Le Pen out.
She's the head of the National Front.
She ditched her association with the National Front going into the election cycle.
A lot of people, including President Trump, were excited about the possibility of Marine Le Pen because she's very harsh with regard to the borders.
Instead, she gets absolutely walloped.
She loses 65 to 35.
The polls were skewed, but they were skewed actually in Marine Le Pen's direction.
The pollsters didn't want to be surprised by Marine Le Pen, so instead they were actually oversampling, apparently, her crowd.
A third of French voters spoiled their ballots or abstained.
They didn't like either of these two choices.
And the big generational gap is basically Le Pen ran even with Macron.
Among young people, among old people, he blew out Marine Le Pen.
What does this election say?
So there is this weird idea that nationalism all over the world was on the rise, that nationalism all over the planet was on the rise, and that you were going to see nation after nation following the Brexit model, following the Trump model, and they were going to elect nationalist leaders.
Now, normally, that only happens in opposition.
Historically speaking, The reason you get nationalist movements is in opposition to other nationalist movements.
So, for example, in Europe, you see the rise of a lot of nationalist leaders during the 1930s because there are lots of nationalist leaders arising.
So, what that means is that if you have a German nationalist leader coming to the fore, then it's a good shot that you might get a British nationalist leader coming to the fore in reaction to the German nationalist leader.
Nationalism tends to breed nationalism in other countries just as internationalism tends to breed internationalism in other countries.
But the French election was not going to be a reaction to Trump in the sense that they are going to now effectuate some sort of national stand against Trump.
In fact, if there was any Trump effect to this election at all, which I really doubt if there was any, it was a nationalist reaction against Trump by electing someone that Trump didn't like.
You see the point?
So, here's the problem with reading too much into this election cycle.
It is not a rejection of nationalism wholesale.
It's a rejection of Marine Le Pen, and it is a rejection of the old order.
Remember, Macron was not running associated with any party, and Marine Le Pen was running with the National Front.
The two historic parties that have won in France are the Socialist Party, the sort of Francois Mitterrand party, and then the Conservative Party in France.
Which was never all that conservative.
Francois Fillon was the candidate there.
Both he and the socialist guy ended up being ousted in the first round.
So you had two newcomers running against each other.
And that, I think, is the common thread that holds together Britain and holds together America and holds together France in sort of the electoral trends.
I don't think that there is a coherent program from any of these countries.
I don't think there's a coherent right-wing movement that is now on the rise anywhere.
I think what you're getting instead is just a reaction to, we hated what came before, give us something new.
Give us something new.
Whether it's David Cameron and get rid of that guy and put in Theresa May or whether it is Barack Obama and we hate Hillary Clinton so get rid of her and put in Donald Trump who's completely new or whether it is we're sick of Francois Fillon and we don't want Marine Le Pen because she's a little too scary so put in Macron because he's new.
I think there is this reactionary feel about politics that politics is failing, and therefore we need someone new in place, and Marine Le Pen was just too scary.
Now, I also think that on the left, it's too much to suggest that Marine Le Pen was ousted because of her border views.
I don't think that's right.
I think she was ousted because she has this long standing history with the National Front, which scares people, rightly so, because the National Front is historically an anti-Semitic party.
She's...
She's moved away from that because she wanted to win an election, but historically they were an anti-Semitic party.
Her father was a deep-rooted anti-Semite that she had to condemn, and so I think that There is the possibility, every possibility, that if there were a conservative candidate in France who came along and were not Marine Le Pen and said, we need to do something about all the immigrants who are swamping us, particularly from Islamic countries, I think that that person might have a better shot.
Marine Le Pen was just too off-putting.
And so that's the result.
It sort of suggests what might happen in the United States.
If there are any sort of ramifications for the U.S., it would sort of suggest in the United States that if there were somebody on the left Who are willing to make a nationalist argument and not be an old fuddy-duddy like Hillary Clinton that no one likes, that they might have a shot of knocking off Trump.
Because Trump is sort of a Marine Le Pen in the sense that there are a lot of people who dislike him.
He has very high negatives.
If there were somebody from the left who were not so scary but were a fresh face, I don't think it's a massive win for the left.
I don't think it's a massive loss for the right.
might be in trouble in 2020.
So that's the only thing that I'll say about the Marine Le Pen election.
I don't think it's earth shattering.
I don't think it's a massive win for the left.
I don't think it's a massive loss for the right.
I think that Marine Le Pen's a scary character for a lot of people.
And she was not the best candidate for the right, but the right is on the move just because new stuff is on the move.
And they haven't seen anything, even remotely right wing in France.
Plus, by the way, she's a socialist.
I mean, the fact is that her domestic policy is big government socialism, anti-trade socialism, so the idea that it was sort of right versus left in France is not really true.
It was nationalist left versus internationalist left, but nationalist internationalist left, if that makes any sense.
A sort of nationalist France that says, we are our common character is to be internationalist.
Okay, so that's one thing that's in the news.
The other thing that's in the news this morning, it's sort of the new breaking news, is Sally Yates, who's the former acting attorney general.
She took over for the former attorney general, Loretta Lynch, when Loretta Lynch stepped down.
And then she was, for a short period of time, the acting attorney general.
She obviously was messing with President Trump, and then he fired her.
She's now testifying before Congress.
And there is a suggestion that – so Donald Trump goes on Twitter this morning.
And President Trump tweets out that somebody needs to ask her under oath why she – why there was all this information leaking to the press after she talked to the White House counsel, spelled C-O-U-N-C-I-L.
He meant C-O-U-N-S-E-L, like the White House Counsel, but President Trump is not big with the spelling.
In any case, she's testifying on the Hill, and the left is using this as an opportunity to say Sally Yates was really ousted because she knew too much about Mike Flynn and she had to be silenced.
And so now they're very excited that she's on the Hill, and here's Trump responding, trying to go after Sally Yates.
Doesn't make him look great.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration officials are leaking, old Obama administration officials are leaking to the press that Obama had warned President Trump about hiring Mike Flynn.
Now remember, Sally Yates, according to the left, was fired because she knew too much about Mike Flynn.
That's what was going on here, was Mike Flynn was in heavy with the Russians, and Sally Yates knew it, and then Trump fired her in order to cover that up for some odd reason.
Which wouldn't make a lot of sense, because then she could just probably go speak about it under oath, which is what she's going to do today.
In any case, There's a story out today that I just wanted to debunk because I think it's silly that President Obama warned Trump about putting Flynn in his cabinet.
Okay, so did everybody who's a conservative.
A lot of people were very skeptical of Mike Flynn.
They didn't think that he was qualified for this.
The suggestion seems to be that Obama warned Trump that Flynn was enthralled of the Russians and Trump ignored that.
There's been no evidence of that whatsoever, that Obama was warning about that.
And if Obama knew about that, then why did he retain his security clearance?
He still had full security clearance in 2016 from the Department of Defense, did Mike Flynn, even after Obama fired him in 2012 or 2014.
So none of it makes any sense.
I think this is a little bit more of the Russian rumor-mongering that you're hearing from the left.
I don't see any material here to suggest that Trump was in deep with the Russians because of Mike Flynn and then fired Sally Yates.
At least I haven't seen any material to support such suppositions right now.
Okay, so.
I also want to talk about the blowout.
This is the big topic that I actually want to talk about.
Those are sort of topics of the day.
But now I really want to talk about, at length, the American Healthcare Act.
Because the Trumpcare that has been rolled out, Democrats are responding in predictably stupid fashion.
As I mentioned a little bit earlier, their first course of attack was to claim that the AHCA makes rape a pre-existing condition.
As I mentioned earlier, this is just stupid.
That doesn't even make logical sense.
Rape is not a medical condition.
Okay, so you can't have a condition.
No insurance coverage ever has covered rape.
It has covered injuries that may be resulting from rape, but that has nothing to do with covering rape itself.
That's silliness.
So, you know, number one, there's that.
Number two, This bill doesn't actually revoke pre-existing conditions.
It gives states the ability to opt out of required pre-existing conditions.
And the vast majority of employer-provided insurance programs cover pre-existing conditions.
Medicaid covers pre-existing conditions.
So the idea that people are just being left without any coverage on pre-existing conditions is just silly.
So that argument is really dumb.
The other argument that's been made, the left are trotting out some of the worst arguments ever on this bill, which is amazing because there are really good arguments against this bill from the left.
So, for example, they should be saying it makes care, it makes the acquisition of health insurance, it could make the acquisition of health insurance more expensive for elderly people.
Clearly true.
Clearly true, okay?
The AHCA Trumpcare makes it more expensive for older people.
It also creates a coverage gap for poor people, because one of the things that it does is, in restructuring Medicaid, it basically says that it's going to lower the subsidies for Medicaid on the state level, and then it's going to give grants.
It's going to give you basically a tax credit for buying health insurance.
But those tax credits are not enough for poor people and old sick people, so it creates a coverage gap for those people, driving them to rely on Medicaid, which the federal government is not spending as much as it used to spend on.
So that would be their best argument, is that a bunch of people are going to fall through the cracks in this program.
Because again, here is the bottom line with regard to health insurance, and this is why it's so stupid to discuss health insurance as the be-all end-all.
The bottom line is, unless you are going to mandate that pre-existing conditions are covered, and then issue a mandate that everyone has to buy, as what Switzerland does, unless you're going to do this, There will be coverage gaps.
There will be coverage gaps.
That's just the way that this works.
Once you say pre-existing conditions have to be covered, prices are going to rise.
The only way to cover that rise is either with a massive subsidy and or nationalization of the program, which if you create massive subsidies, by the way, the prices just continue to go up, so it doesn't really help anything, you have to keep subsidizing the program, or you nationalize the program altogether like Britain, or you do what Switzerland does, and you force people to pay 8% of their income into health insurance as a start.
By the way, that was sort of what Romneycare was, and that's what Obama's attempt at Obamacare was, although it was actually softer than that.
Republicans have actually, in some ways, done the worst of both worlds in this bill.
They've maintained pre-existing conditions, and then they've also removed the mandate.
So that means that you're actually exacerbating the death spiral.
You don't have enough young, healthy people paying into the insurance programs to keep these pre-existing conditions programs alive.
So that means that it falls apart.
The way the Republicans solve this is they say, okay, states can opt out if they want.
But the states aren't going to opt out because not a lot of governors are going to have the political courage to opt out of the system and then be told by their rivals in the next election that they're the ones who opted out of pre-existing conditions.
In any case, those aren't the arguments the left are making.
Those would actually be pretty good arguments.
The arguments they're making are, of course, the stupidest arguments you can make.
So Andrea Mitchell on NBC News, she says that the big problem here is that there are too many white men making health care decisions.
The celebration of this on Thursday, they were all, mostly all, men and white men at that.
There was no diversity there.
Women's health issues, arguably, are going to be disproportionately affected.
Take a look at this.
Obamacare includes maternity and newborn care, preventative care, mammograms, cervical cancer screenings, birth control.
All of this under the essential package no longer required under this House bill.
Again, the question that she asked there is the important one, because it's so stupid.
Look at all these horrible white men.
Look at all these terrible, horrible white men who are doing this thing.
How could they possibly do this thing?
Just awful, these terrible, horrible white men.
Again, this is intensely stupid.
This is a really bad argument that they're making.
They're making a lot of bad arguments lately, and this is one of them.
And then they're making the argument that millions of people are going to die because of health care, that millions of people are just going to fall apart and be killed because of health care.
Again, there's not a lot of evidence to suggest that a lot of people might fall onto Medicaid, and the states will have to pick up the slack, but again, that's wildly exaggerated.
Now, I want to break here, and I want to talk more about what the Republicans have been doing, because I think that that actually is stupid.
I don't know That while everybody was celebrating on Friday and Thursday, I don't think that this is something Republicans should necessarily be celebrating over.
It's not quite that easy.
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