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July 14, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show

48:57

Collusion Confusion | Ep. 339

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	On Thursday, Politico announced that Huffington Post would be taking its readers on a voyage of discovery to strange, uncharted lands.
	Like Vasco da Gama, venturing out into new territories, Huffington Post will be packing a few of its staffers onto a leaky bus and taking them on a cross-country, seven-week tour through the dark, mysterious Middle America.
	The cost?
	One million dollars.
	Yes, I am not joking.
	This is the story.
	Quote, Starting in September, a traveling party of rotating HuffPost staff members, led by Editor-in-Chief Lydia Polgreen, We'll visit more than 20 cities, eschewing the coasts for the likes of Fort Worth, Indiana, Oxford, Mississippi, and Odessa, Texas.
	At each city, the site will host events, roll out planned stories with local media outlets, send out reporters to write about the communities and collect stories from residents in their own words.
	This would be identity defining for HuffPost, said Paul Green in an interview.
	We are in a moment for determining our own identity and the role we play in the overall news ecosystem and what the next iteration of that looks like.
	And this felt like a great way to go out and report out the story of who we should be in the world.
	Don't worry, gang.
	The leftist media isn't out of touch or anything.
	This does show that so-called flyover country is new to the media.
	Their disconnect with people who live in Texas and Oklahoma and Alabama and Michigan and Wisconsin, it's quite real.
	They don't understand their values.
	They don't understand their lifestyles.
	This is why CNN's Aaron Burnett mocks Christian pastors for laying hands on President Trump.
	They did the same for Obama, but nobody cared.
	And why the entire media was shocked that anybody would vote for Trump in the first place.
	But it won't just suffice to visit these places.
	Until the media begins hiring in these areas, they won't have boots on the ground, or perspective into the places they seek to cover.
	Jet-setting through Odessa isn't exactly going to provide the sort of empathetic analysis the left lacks about people outside of New York and LA.
	And so the Huffington Post tour is much more likely to be a sort of Jeff Corwin experience for city folk than a real educational experience.
	Look, Bill, what is that lady doing going into that building with the cross on top?
	It's a Sunday!
	Doesn't she know it's time for brunch at the local coffee house?
	I mean, they serve avocado toast, and the avocado's from Whole Foods on Sundays.
	Good luck, Huffington Post.
	May God, well, Planned Parenthood be with you.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	So, we'll get to all of the latest on Trump-Russia.
	We'll also get to the latest on Trumpcare.
	The Senate has now unveiled its new package.
	The details are just starting to come out.
	Some good stuff, some bad stuff.
	We'll get to all of that.
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	Okay, so I do want to jump into the latest on Trump Russia and the latest hubbub.
	But there's an article that I think it is necessary to go through because it really struck me.
	This is why the left loses.
	So the left thinks that if they hit Trump enough on Russia, that the American people will just swivel around and hate Trump then.
	And what they fail to acknowledge is the reason that people like Trump is because they hate the left.
	The reason that Trump is almost completely a reactionary phenomenon.
	It is the stupidity and the out-of-touchness of the left that has led to the rise of President Trump and these Republican rubes that the left so despises.
	It's why Trump was really the apex of this.
	I mean, the fact is that Barack Obama lost 1,000 seats across the country in state legislatures.
	He lost 12 governors.
	He lost 10 senators.
	I mean, Barack Obama devastated his party because the left took off its mask in the last eight years, and what people saw underneath was worse than Phantom of the Opera.
	And so you can see this day in and day out when the left sort of reveals itself.
	So today's example of this, it actually comes from Monday.
	There's a column by a woman named Colleen Krajewski.
	This was actually a column at the Washington Post.
	And the title of it was, I used to be quiet about the fact that I perform abortions.
	Now I'm upfront.
	Okay, but the article is even crazier than this.
	And this is the left bragging about what they do, right?
	Like, when I brag about things that I do in daily life, you know, if I'm gonna brag about it, I'll tend to brag about, like, career achievements, or maybe I'll brag about something nice that I did in terms of giving charity.
	Maybe I'll brag about, you know, the good things that I do with my wife and kids.
	I don't typically associate I killed somebody else's baby as something you brag about, but not the same, I guess, if you are a leftist.
	So, here is what Colleen Krajewski writes, and again, this is in the Washington Post on Monday, one of the nation's premier newspapers, right, quote, I leaned back in a black leather chair as a man hovered over me.
	For the first time in decades, the fate of Roe v. Wade seemed to be in real doubt.
	Feeling a mix of anxiety, sadness, and resolve, I thought, I'm committed now.
	Was she getting an abortion?
	No, she was getting a tattoo!
	The tattoo artist slowly etched on my right forearm a rather large coat hanger, the symbol of illegal abortions that cost unknown numbers of women their lives in the years before Roe, overlaid in bold lettering with the words, Never Again.
	Now, as one of the Juden, let me say, I do not like the appropriation of the phrase never again to apply to regulations against the killing of unborn human beings.
	This is sort of like...
	It would be sort of like if the Nazis posted a picture of a hook-nosed Jew and then said, never again.
	You're sort of missing the point of never again.
	If never again, which the phrase used for the Holocaust is now used to refer to, never again will we be stopped from killing babies in the seventh month.
	She continues.
	From now on, unless I was in long sleeves, everyone I met would see my tattoo the moment we shook hands.
	At the office, at parties, in the supermarket, on first dates.
	Now, normally we'd say this person's a crazy person.
	Like, this is not a great idea.
	I'm a Republican.
	I'm a conservative.
	But I don't actually tattoo that on my arm.
	Like, I don't have a picture of Ronald Reagan tattooed on my arm, because that would be weird, gang.
	But she actually went and she got a picture of a hanger, a coat hanger, with the words Never Again tattooed on there.
	Again, it could be slightly vague.
	I mean, maybe...
	Maybe never again means don't kill babies, but apparently it's virtue signaling for her leftist friends.
	But that's not the worst part of this, that she got this stupid tattoo.
	My favorite part of this article is that she goes on to talk about how abortion, her being an abortionist, has now enhanced her dating life.
	Seriously, that's what this article is about, how her abortion has enhanced her dating life thanks to President Trump.
	She says, embracing the symbol of the coat hanger meant also accepting myself as a symbol, which I had always resisted.
	But as I shed the stigma of being an abortion provider, I felt free.
	I was tired of playing games, and for the first time in my life I was ready for someone to love me because I provide abortions, not in spite of it.
	Okay, with that tattoo I made some other changes.
	No more batting my eyelashes on dates, feigning innocence, or acting apologetic about who I am.
	No more waiting the requisite three days to call back, or counting down three dates to have sex if I wanted to.
	She goes on and she says, an unexpected side effect of the 2016 election is that many people have become vocal about their support for reproductive rights.
	Suddenly, dating an abortion provider can be cool!
	A way to proclaim one's liberal street cred.
	Yeah, I'm sure that's what guys are thinking.
	I'm sure they're dating this girl and they go, you know what, she's so awesome, she kills babies.
	Yeah, bring this one home to mother.
	She's awesome.
	Third trimester, second trimester, she doesn't care.
	She'll do it, I mean.
	Okay, let me just make a quick point.
	I have a feeling, she links her own abortion tattoo to the fact that she will have sex before three dates.
	I have a feeling that some of the people she is dating might have the same idea.
	And these two things, maybe that's what guys are thinking.
	Not, oh it's so awesome I'm dating a woman with an abortion tattoo, but I'm dating a woman with an abortion tattoo, and maybe that means that she will be a little bit easier to get where I want her to go.
	I saw this, by the way, at the 2012 DNC.
	I went to the Democratic National Convention in 2012, and there were guys who were wearing around pins that said, I love pro-choice girls.
	And I thought to myself, yeah, I...
	Can see that?
	Yeah?
	That is not a shock.
	Remember, this isn't at the salon.
	It's not at Slate.
	close to a decade younger than I am.
	For him, my profession seemed to add to the edginess of dating an older woman.
	I love how insecure this lady is.
	I mean, she's writing a personals ad in the Washington Post.
	Remember, this isn't at the Salon.
	It's not at Slate.
	It's in the Washington Post.
	Right?
	Democracy dies in darkness, Washington Post.
	Like Woodward and Bernstein, Washington Post?
	For him, my profession seemed to add to the edginess of dating an older woman.
	There was the hard-partying Alaskan fisherman on an extended shore break who found my commitment to reproductive justice hot.
	I'm gonna go with the Alaskan fisherman on the extended shore break did not find your commitment to reproductive justice hot.
	He wanted to get in your pants, and so he told you that, lady.
	And she says, so abortion providers are hot now?
	As time goes on, I sometimes forget about the tattoo entirely.
	Once, I wore long sleeves before becoming intimate with a fascinating biomedical engineer.
	And when he first saw the tattoo, he burst out laughing, apparently delighted by my commitment to the cause.
	Well, maybe that was your read.
	Obviously, she's ended up in a long-term relationship.
	She's gotten everything that she wants out of life.
	I love that this is like Carrie Bradshaw talking about being an abortion provider.
	It's just amazing.
	Neither the tattoo nor my perspective changed everything.
	There's the entrepreneur with political aspirations who sent mixed signals and ultimately drifted away.
	You mean unlike the Alaskan fisherman on shore leave from the porno you watched three days ago?
	Was it because I could be a liability to him in some future election, or was he just not over his ex?
	Being more open about what I do has not led to perfect communication or the end of insecurity.
	How she concludes this column is the whole thing.
	First, she says, Recently, and I have to say, I love this column.
	I think it's the greatest column that was ever written.
	I think this ranks up there with, like, Cicero and with Plato.
	I mean, this is just fantastic.
	She says, Recently, an online dating match messaged me and, without knowing my specialty, began lamenting the threat of SB3.
	He's an attorney temporarily based in North Dakota where he's defending Standing Rock protesters.
	Of course he is.
	Our conversation about social justice led to such a strong connection that we ended up meeting despite the distance.
	Wow, what a love story.
	He defends Standing Rock protesters and you kill babies.
	Just a match made in heaven.
	She says, whatever happens, I will no longer be silent or fearful when a new love interest or anyone makes me feel exposed and vulnerable.
	As my tattoo says, never again.
	Okay, so now she's applied never again to killing babies and also telling guys who she wants to have sex with that she does that for a living.
	Again, please do not hijack holocaust phrases to justify your crappy dating life.
	You wonder why Trump wins?
	This lady just won 100,000 votes for Trump in Wisconsin.
	I think Donald Trump should actually have copies of this column printed out and handed out to everyone in the Midwest.
	Well done, Washington Post.
	So, this is why Trump isn't losing support.
	Okay, Trump can't lose support because a lot of the people who support Trump are not going to move over to the side of Colleen Krajewski or whatever her name is.
	They're not going to move over to that.
	They're going to look at this and go, I don't want to be associated in any way with these crazy people.
	And if Trump talked to some Russians, whatever, at least he doesn't have an abortion tattoo and then talk about his dating life.
	Like, really.
	It's amazing stuff from the left.
	So well done, leftists.
	You've done a wonderful job alienating every person of decent mind and heart in America.
	Please continue to do so as fast as possible.
	Okay.
	Meanwhile, there's more fallout from the Donald Trump Jr.
	Fredo Corleone spilling of the emails yesterday.
	As you recall, Donald Trump Jr., a couple of days ago, he spilled emails that showed that he was approached by some nutty British promoter, and that nutty British promoter is also the agent for a guy that Trump did business with in Russia, and he said, the Russian government really wants to help out your father, he says this Donald Trump Jr., and so we want you to meet with a Russian government lawyer who has some dirt on Hillary Clinton, and Trump Jr.' 's like, yeah!
	Sounds awesome!
	And so, first of all, CNN uncovered footage of Trump with Russians.
	And I do love the media bias here because it is pretty stunning.
	CNN uncovers this media.
	I was watching CNN because it was on at the gym and there was nothing I could do about it.
	And CNN was playing this footage over and over and over again like it was some sort of smoking gun.
	This is from, I think, 2013, 2014, long before Trump was running for president.
	The behind-the-scenes video, obtained exclusively by CNN, shows then-businessman Donald Trump in Las Vegas in 2013, at several events during the weekend of the Miss USA pageant, hanging out with the men now at the center of the newest development in the Russia controversy.
	The men, Russian pop singer Amin Agalarov and his father Aras, a real estate developer in Russia, were helping Trump hold his Miss Universe pageant in Moscow later that year.
	This is the most powerful people in all of Russia.
	The richest men in Russia.
	In the video, Trump is seen having dinner with the Agalarovs, along with their publicist, Rob Goldstone, seen here leaning over to talk with Trump.
	Right, so there's that boy, Rob Goldstone.
	That's Les Grossman from, as I say, from Tropic Thunder.
	And then CNN thinks, oh, we got him now.
	We have tape.
	Okay, first of all, we knew that Trump knew all these people.
	Why is this a shock in any way?
	Ooh, he had dinner.
	Okay, well, Barack Obama used to, like, hang out with Bill Ayers, and CNN spent years pretending that didn't matter, so why in the world would it matter that Trump knew these people?
	Of course Trump knew these people!
	How do you think they had Trump Jr.' 's email address?
	It's just silly.
	Okay, so, Trump responds, the Trump team responds, and as always, they respond in perhaps the dumbest possible way.
	So Kellyanne Conway leads the way, and I understand that everything is so polarized right now that Kellyanne Conway could basically go on Fox News and do some arm farting and everybody would just say that it was brilliant in Trump land and she could do that and then she could do this a couple of times and all of CNN would claim that this was in fact secret Morse code to the Russians that we need more of their help in the next election cycle.
	Arm farting is policy.
	But here is Kellyanne Conway doing what, like, this is not real life, folks.
	This cannot be real life.
	Here she was with Sean Hannity.
	This actually happened.
	This was a thing.
	This is how I see it so far.
	This is to help all the people at home.
	What's the conclusion?
	Collusion?
	No.
	We don't have that yet.
	I see illusion and delusion.
	So just so we're clear, everyone, four words.
	Conclusion?
	Collusion?
	No.
	Illusion?
	Delusion?
	Yes.
	I just thought we'd have some fun with words.
	Sesame's Grover Word of the Day, perhaps, Sean.
	As Seth Mandel over at New York Post said, I think that the Trump administration has had enough fun with words for one week.
	But this is... First of all, confusion.
	Okay, how about that one?
	Confusion.
	How about some decency exclusion?
	This is all insane.
	The profusion!
	Ah, it's giving me a contusion.
	It's just ridiculous.
	First of all, I do love the fact that when she does this and she's holding it up, she had to physically cross out collusion.
	She didn't actually just make a collusion with a strikethrough through it, which is available on Word.
	They actually had to have her physically strike it out and then cross it out.
	How dumb does she think voters are?
	I mean, I guess pretty dumb.
	You actually have to show up, you say collusion, conclusion, illusion.
	Delusion.
	Exclusion.
	Profusion.
	Contusion.
	McFusion.
	Nuclear fusion.
	Okay.
	Alright.
	Okay, like, how about an actual defense?
	Here's the defense, okay?
	Donald Trump Jr.
	allegedly tried to collude with the Russians to do bad stuff.
	Nothing came of it.
	So it was attempted collusion at best.
	It shows motive, but it doesn't show means or opportunity, as I've been saying for two straight days now.
	And the media have been trying to say this was the beginning of a nefarious collusion.
	Again, one of the things that I don't understand is what exactly would that collusion constitute?
	Okay, let's actually say for a second that Donald Trump Jr.
	had somehow gotten together with the Russians.
	What would that constitute?
	Remember, the Trump administration, the Trump campaign, did not drop any new material about Hillary Clinton.
	They didn't drop anything.
	So I guess the collusion would have been something like Wikileaks and the Russians go to Trump and they say, in two days we're dropping a new stash of emails.
	But that's not how it worked.
	I mean if anyone actually thinks back to the campaign, this is not how it worked.
	So unless Trump was providing the Russians with material to go out and spill, or unless the Russians were providing Trump with heads up, that's not how it worked.
	Because as I recall, I mean I was there the entire election cycle and so were you, as I recall there would be a dump of Wikileaks.
	And Wikileaks was obviously dumping because they didn't like Hillary Clinton, but that doesn't mean that Trump was behind it.
	And then, there'd be people like me who would sip through the Wikileaks.
	I mean, thousands of pages of Wikileaks trying to find the most damning portions.
	This is exactly what happened during the election cycle.
	I'm still confused as to what collusion would actually look like.
	All of these would be good defensive points.
	Going on TV and rhyming like Grover from Sesame Street on Sean Hannity's show is not an actually good defense.
	Turns out it's not a great deal, but none of this matters.
	I mean, none of it matters because people are stuck in their lanes.
	So Trump goes on with Pat Robertson yesterday, providing certainly a contrast in visuals.
	And he says that the weird thing about all of this is, like, everybody keeps saying that Putin wanted me, but Putin would rather have had Hillary.
	As an example, if Hillary had won, our military would be decimated.
	Our energy would be much more expensive.
	That's what Putin doesn't like about me.
	And that's why I say, why would he want me?
	Because from day one, I wanted a strong military.
	He doesn't want to see that.
	We're going to be self-supporting.
	We just about are now.
	We're going to be exporting energy.
	He doesn't want that.
	He would like Hillary where she wants to have windmills.
	He would much rather have that because energy prices will go up and Russia, as you know, relies very much on energy.
	So there are many things that I do that are the exact opposite of what he would want.
	So when I keep hearing about that he would have rather had Trump, I think probably not because When I want a strong military, you know she wouldn't have spent the money on the military, but when I want a strong military, when I want tremendous energy, we're opening up coal, we're opening up natural gas, we're opening up fracking, all the things that he would hate, but nobody ever mentions that.
	Okay, so what Trump is saying here is actually right, which is that Trump's policies have not been particularly pro-Russia.
	I mean, aside from some sanctions talk, there really is a bit, like Trump's, again, Trump's White House is very weird because Trump says stuff and then his administration does stuff, and the stuff that he says and the stuff that his administration does are two separate things.
	So his administration is pursuing some pretty vehement anti-Russian measures on certain things.
	Uh, Trump himself will say very warm things toward Russia.
	I don't buy his argument that Russia wanted Hillary and not Trump in the last election cycle, because there's not a lot of evidence to that effect.
	And in fact, that email from Rob Goldstone specifically says, the Russian government wants to help you and your campaign.
	And Russia has been very warm toward Trump for years.
	I mean, predating this election cycle.
	He is correct to say, you know, when you say that I'm in collusion with Russia, so where's the pro quo?
	If you're saying there was some sort of quid, like they did me a favor, where's the pro quo?
	What am I doing for them that's a favor?
	And the answer is, not much aside from some of Trump's rhetoric.
	Like, this is an actual fair point.
	Okay, well...
	With all of that said, you know, I do want to get to other things that Trump is doing, and I want to get to the Democrats, of course, doing what they do best, which is making everyone hate them.
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	Okay, so naturally, the Democrats are completely incapable of stopping themselves.
	And it's funny, there's a little bit of a battle that's breaking out among the Democrats.
	There are Democrats who are positioning for a presidential run in 2020 who are trying to say, let's not talk about Russia.
	And then you've got the people in Congress who are saying, let's talk about Russia nonstop.
	The reason is because of immediacy.
	That's the actual gap.
	They don't disagree with one another.
	So Brad Sherman yesterday, who is my congressperson, Yes, really.
	California, you suck so much.
	You suck California.
	Anyway, so Brad Sherman, he actually made a proposal that Trump should be impeached and he introduced a bill on the floor of the House, a bill of impeachment against Trump on the floor of the House.
	Yeah, good luck with that.
	Why are you doing this?
	Of course he's not going to be impeached in this congressional term, knowing what we know now.
	So what would be the point of doing this?
	Well, it can have either of two effects.
	The hope is that it triggers an intervention in the White House, and this is a faint hope.
	That his staff is finally able to say, now it's real articles, and for that and for so many other reasons, Mr. President, you've got to stop announcing reversals in foreign policy at 4 in the morning and 140 characters.
	You've got to stop making foreign policy in complete ignorance of the facts.
	Wait, so you're impeaching him so he'll stop tweeting?
	My hope is that we end incompetent, impulsive government.
	Okay, yeah, good luck with that.
	All this is, of course, is PR, and the Democrats know it.
	Then you have the ones who are running for president, like Gavin Newsom.
	He's going to run for governor in California, and then he's going to run for president.
	He says that we should all stop talking about Russia, because let's focus on the issues.
	You can tell the difference between the guys running for the presidency and the guys who are running for Congress, because the Democrats think they're going to win Congress in 2018 on the Russia stuff.
	Democrats know that in order to win the presidency, they're going to have to do more than just talk about Russia.
	So here's Gavin Newsom.
	Obviously the media is obsessed for good reason with the Russia story.
	Prosecutors, thank you.
	That's where I'm talking.
	Could you explain to Democrats out there and your base how talking about Russia on the campaign trail is not going to get you back in power?
	And I don't know what more evidence you need.
	I mean, at the end of the day, even if you gain this thing out, you get rid of Trump.
	You're left with a guy who's, you know, who's out there talking about conversion therapy.
	Don't do anything for the Democratic Party and our agenda.
	So unless we deal with the issues of economic anxiety, cultural issues in a substantive way, and we get in the how business and we actually demonstrate with some acuity and strength a clear conviction in terms of the fate and future of this country, then we're never going to take back.
	Oh, that makes sense.
	Okay, so Gavin Newsom obviously positioning himself for president.
	Is that going to work for him?
	I don't think so.
	Gavin Newsom is any other Democrat, he just likes to say iPhone a lot.
	Like really, this is his shtick.
	I live in California, he's the lieutenant governor here.
	He basically goes around and he says, all the Democratic policies except on an iPhone.
	And then everyone goes, ooh, he's tech savvy.
	It's all stupidity.
	Okay, so as we continue here on the Ben Shapiro Show, I want to talk about what's going on with Trumpcare.
	I want to talk about the new FBI nominee who had his hearings on the Hill yesterday, plus some epic things I like and things that I hate and the big idea.
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	Unbelievable.
	Magnificent.
	Incredible.
	Leftist Tears Hot or Cold Tumbler.
	Okay?
	You've never seen anything like it.
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	that we are the largest conservative podcast in the nation.
	Alrighty, so in actual substantive news, away from Trump-Russia, Trumpcare is moving forward, sort of.
	So today Mitch McConnell has now revealed his bare-bones plan for the Senate bill.
	It's difficult in the Senate because you've got conservatives like Ted Cruz and Mike Lee and Rand Paul on the one side, and on the other side you have Susan Collins, who basically would like to double down on Obamacare.
	And so trying to cobble together 51 votes is sort of difficult.
	Republicans can only lose two.
	They can lose two, they can have 50 votes, and Pence is the tiebreaker.
	But if they lose three, it's over.
	There's not a lot of votes that you can afford to lose if you actually want to pass some sort of change to Obamacare.
	So Trump is out there, of course, saying he wants Trumpcare passed.
	Now, one of the problems here is that Trump has been absent from the campaign trail for three days.
	He's now in France, which is not going to do Trumpcare any good.
	If he actually wanted to pass this thing, it would be useful for him to Maybe go out on the campaign trail and stump for it and discuss the details and talk about why it's good.
	But instead you sort of get these generic comments about why he wants Trumpcare passed, but Trump doesn't know what the hell is in it, obviously.
	Number one, repeal and replace.
	I am sitting in the Oval Office with a pen in hand waiting for our senators to give it to me.
	Now we have a president that's waiting to sign it.
	I have pen in hand.
	So now it means something.
	What'll happen if they don't?
	Well, I don't even want to talk about it, because I think it would be very bad.
	I will be very angry about it, and a lot of people will be very upset.
	But I'm sitting, waiting for that bill to come to my desk.
	I hope that they do it.
	They've been promising it for years.
	They've been promising it ever since Obamacare, which has failed.
	It's a failed experiment.
	It is totally gone.
	It's out of business.
	And we have to get this done.
	Repeal and replace.
	Okay, so he's just saying slogans now.
	This is going to have no impact on Congress, because the problem is, you know that even if you pass something, if it starts to go bad, Trump is then going to turn on you and blame you, right?
	He did this with the House.
	They passed a bill, and then he promptly turned around and crapped all over the bill by calling it mean, mean, mean.
	So Trump doesn't have a lot of weight here.
	So what does this new Obamacare replacement bill actually look like?
	There are two, there are several major problems with the Obamacare replacement bill.
	In some ways it got better, in some ways it actually got worse.
	So, they restored a bunch of the taxes that they'd cut in the original Senate bill in the bizarre hope that somehow this will lead Democrats to now think that they don't have to attack them for, their slogan has been that they are cutting healthcare for poor people from Medicaid in order to subsidize tax cuts for the wealthy, right?
	This is the way that the left puts it.
	So the Republicans cut a lot of the tax cuts for the wealthy, but they left A couple.
	They left some.
	And that means the Democrats are going to say the exact same thing.
	So you really have not won anything, have you now?
	They also have said Mitch McConnell is apparently encouraging people, he's telling moderates to support the health care bill, including the Medicaid cuts, because, quote, they will never go into effect anyway.
	Okay, so in other words, the entire selling point, the Paul Ryan selling point that we're going to restructure Medicaid, it doesn't even apply according to Mitch McConnell.
	So basically they're lying to all of you, and Mitch McConnell is telling the moderates they're lying to all of you.
	So even the main thrust of the bill, which was to cut Medicaid expansion, it's not even cutting Medicaid, it's cutting Medicaid's expansion in the future.
	Even the main thrust of it, McConnell saying it's never going to go into place, which means that you're basically keeping Obamacare in place.
	The other major provision that changes is Ted Cruz and Mike Lee had proposed an amendment.
	The amendment would have said that if you are in an Obamacare state and has an Obamacare exchange, you're still subject to Obamacare regulations on pre-existing conditions and essential benefit services and all the like.
	But, if you offer one of those plans in the healthcare exchange, then you can offer other plans outside the healthcare exchange.
	So, the reason that matters is because if it's inside the healthcare exchange, it still has to provide certain benefits, it has to be subsidized by the government, you're grouped together with other people in terms of community rating.
	So, the way that...
	Cruz and Lee were thinking about it was, okay, here's what we should do.
	We'll still have the Obamacare pool.
	Those will be basically high-risk pools and we'll subsidize them and we'll toss money into it.
	And then all the healthy people, they can opt out and buy cheaper insurance.
	So everyone will get insurance.
	The people who are unhealthy will get subsidized by the government to be in the Obamacare exchange.
	The people who are healthy will go back to having a free market system where they don't have to buy insurance they don't want to buy.
	McConnell comes back with a version of this, but the version of it that he proposes doesn't make any sense.
	Instead of separating out these other plans, these low-cost plans, it throws them into the Obamacare exchange as well, which means they're still subject to the Obamacare regulations, and it means that the rates on those low-cost plans are actually going to go up, because if they're all in the pool together, that means that they're going to have to pay for the unhealthy people.
	So you end up back with Obamacare.
	So basically it's backdoor Obamacare.
	Again, Rand Paul, rightly so, is excoriating the bill.
	Even yesterday he was.
	He has a piece over at Breitbart where he says, I miss the old days when Republicans stood for repealing Obamacare.
	He says, now too many Republicans are falling all over themselves to stuff hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into a bill that doesn't repeal Obamacare and feeds big insurance a huge bailout, right?
	This is all the subsidies for these high-risk pools.
	Is Obamacare regulation still here?
	Taxes?
	Many still in place, totaling hundreds of billions of dollars.
	Insurance company bailouts?
	Those too.
	Remember when Republicans complained about Obamacare's risk corridors?
	Remember when we called corridors nothing more than insurance company bailouts?
	I remember when one prominent GOP candidate during a presidential debate explicitly called out Obamacare risk corridors as a bailout to insurance companies.
	Does anyone else?
	Now the GOP plan being put out forward is chock full of insurance bailout money to the tune of nearly $200 billion.
	Republicans, present company excluded, now support the idea of lowering your insurance premium by giving a subsidy to the insurance company.
	If the GOP now supports an insurance stabilization fund to lower insurance prices, maybe they should support a new car stabilization fund to lower the price of cars.
	Or maybe the GOP would support an iPhone stabilization fund to lower the price of phones.
	The possibilities are limitless.
	Rand Paul is right here.
	Listen, this was always a foregone conclusion.
	As soon as they said repeal and replace, and as soon as it was clear that Donald Trump was never going to stand for a straight repeal, it was pretty obvious that this was moving in the wrong direction.
	It's not a... it is just not a...
	It's still not a useful bill.
	It's still not a useful bill.
	They're going to do their best to try and pass off this crap sandwich as something good, as an advance.
	But as we say, even the parts that advance, even the parts that I supported of this bill, like the Medicaid, the Medicaid cutbacks, even those restructuring, even those are now being cut according to McConnell.
	It's all just in name only to get something through.
	So well done, Republicans.
	Once again, you have somehow, you have somehow achieved failure out of what could have been victory.
	What is a victory is on the Hill, President Obama has an FBI director nominee named Christopher Wray.
	Christopher Wray was questioned on the Hill yesterday and he was basically asked by Congress, are you going to be independent from the President of the United States or are you going to be a lackey?
	And here's what he had to say about being a lackey.
	Call me.
	Did you see the press conference they gave about the Hillary Clinton investigation in July of last year?
	Not live, but yes.
	Would you have done that?
	Well, Senator, there is an Inspector General investigation into Director Combs' conduct.
	I'm not asking about the investigation.
	I'm asking about you.
	Would you have done that?
	I can tell you that in my experience as a prosecutor and as head of the criminal division, I understand there to be department policies that govern public comments charged to individuals.
	I think those policies are there for a reason.
	I think they're important and I would follow those policies.
	He talked about somebody that was never charged in a despairing fashion.
	Do you agree with that?
	That's the way I understood his comments.
	Do you also agree that he took over the prosecutor's job by saying there's no case here?
	Well, Senator, again, there's an Inspector General investigation into his conduct.
	You would not have done either one of those, is what you're telling this committee.
	At least, I hope that's what you're telling this committee.
	I can't imagine a situation where, as FBI Director, I would be giving a press conference on an uncharged individual, much less talk in detail about it.
	Okay, so, you know, this is of course the correct answer, that he's not going to be like James Comey, and then he was also asked about Bob Mueller, because President Trump has suggested that the special prosecutor, special counsel, that he's on a witch hunt against the Trump family, and here was Ray's response.
	You say that Mueller's a good guy, right?
	That's been my experience, yes.
	And you will do anything necessary to protect him from being interfered with when it comes to doing his job?
	Absolutely, I think he's a- Do you believe that, in light of the Don Jr.
	email and other allegations, that this whole thing about Trump campaigning Russia is a witch hunt?
	Is that a fair description of what we're all dealing with in America?
	Well, Senator, I can't speak to the basis for those comments.
	I can tell you that my experience with Director Mueller- I'm asking you, as the future FBI director, do you consider this endeavor a witch hunt?
	I do not consider Director Mueller to be on a witch hunt.
	Okay, so that is the correct answer.
	Wray will be confirmed.
	He should be confirmed.
	A bunch of Democrats trying to hold him up just because they're angry at Trump and they want to talk about Russia a lot, but Wray will be confirmed.
	He is a good pick by President Trump.
	The question is, will Trump allow him to do his job, or will Trump interfere and get angry at him the way he has at Bob Mueller or Reince Priebus or Steve Bannon or Jared Kushner or every single other person he has ever appointed to his administration?
	So, we'll find out, but Christopher Wray will be a fine pick for FBI, and he did a good job in his hearings yesterday.
	Okay, so I want to get to some things I like, things I hate, and Big Idea.
	Before I do that, I want to say thank you to our new sponsor, DollarShaveClub.com.
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	Okay, time for some things that I like and some things that I hate.
	So, things that I like.
	We've been doing movies about sons who have disappointed their fathers this week.
	We've been doing all sorts of material on that.
	We did East of Eden.
	We've done a bunch of different... We did Arrested Development.
	We did Pete Rose.
	Today, it's In the Name of the Father.
	So, one of the great tragedies of this year that has yet to be remarked upon is Daniel Day-Lewis says that he's retiring from acting.
	Which is just horrifying.
	He has to... I mean, Mathis says that he is lying.
	We can only hope that Mathis is correct, because Daniel Day-Lewis is the greatest living actor.
	He is just phenomenal in every part that he has ever played.
	His versatility is ridiculous.
	The only other person, I think, who is even in his league at this point might be Christian Bale.
	But even there, I think that it's A plus versus A. Daniel Day-Lewis is just phenomenal at everything.
	One of his earliest films, I think he He won an Oscar for this.
	Did he win an Oscar for this?
	He won for My Left Foot.
	I'm not sure if he won for In the Name of the Father.
	But the movie In the Name of the Father is a really good film, great acting.
	It's about the Guildford Four.
	This is a group of people who are convicted of terrorism.
	They apparently confessed under duress.
	They were convicted of terrorism in an IRA bombing in the 1970s.
	And Daniel Day-Lewis plays one of the Guildford Four, and his father is arrested.
	Basically because he just gets dragged into this because his son is a ne'er-do-well.
	And the entire movie is about him trying to live up to his father's memory because his father dies in prison.
	Great movie.
	Is it Pete Postlewaite who plays his dad?
	I'm trying to remember who plays his father.
	But great performances all around.
	Here's a little bit of the preview.
	It was a time of innocence.
	No property, no law, just love.
	What should we call you?
	Call me whatever you want.
	In the wake of the Ilford Pub bombing deaths, the government has responded with emergency legislation and increased police powers of search and arrest.
	Get him up!
	Have you a right to speak to me, son?
	You are in trouble, Conlon.
	What are you charging me with?
	The murders of five people.
	You're gonna be mine!
	I taught you how to make the bone, Jerry.
	I didn't do this.
	What are you trying to do to me?
	Stop, what are you doing in here?
	Conspiracy to murder.
	Their arrest was only the beginning.
	My name's Giuseppe Conner.
	I'm an innocent non-socialist son... ...of a remarkable journey.
	All of the defendants claim that they was objected to physical and mental abuse while under police custody.
	We're never harmed in any way.
	The entire film is basically about his relationship with his father because his father gets dragged into this and his father's an honorable man and he really isn't at the beginning of the film.
	It's about how he learns to live up to his father's standards.
	In the Name of the Father is the name of the film.
	Very, very good movie.
	Okay.
	Other things that I like.
	So Bernie Sanders says he wants to run again, which is great.
	I could not be more excited about this.
	He's asked about will he run again in 2020 at the age of 1,293.
	And they're already apparently raising money for Pudding Cups.
	So here is Bernie Sanders talking about it.
	Are you leaving 2020 on the table, or are you taking it off the table?
	No, I'm not taking it off the table.
	I just have not made any decisions, and I think it's much too early.
	That means that he's going to run.
	That means he's going to run, right?
	Whenever someone says, I'm not taking it off the table, that means that he's going to run, or in Bernie Sanders' case, hobble.
	So that'll be great.
	I'm mostly excited about it so that I can continue to do my Bernie Sanders impression forever.
	For years and years, and I hope that long after he passes, when he is 120 years old, when he passes, that they wheel his corpse around and he continues to run so I can continue to talk about vacation homes and pudding cups as he so richly deserves as a crazy socialist who has two vacation homes and a thousand pudding cups.
	So that's exciting.
	Okay, time for some things that I hate.
	Okay, so I saw this video on Twitter this morning.
	I couldn't really believe that it was real.
	There's some group out there that is making the case that women should be paid more than men.
	Why?
	Because it costs more to be a woman than it costs to be a man.
	Because you have things like shoes you have to buy.
	This is perhaps the worst commercial for closing the pay gap in the history of humanity.
	Listen up.
	There's still not equal pay for equal work anywhere in the world.
	Basically, it says that women should break things and stomp their feet and whine and cry until they get what they want.
	That's basically what this commercial is.
	So well done, feminists.
	Listen up.
	There's still not equal pay for equal work anywhere in the world.
	And it seems most women are not even angry about it.
	But we should be.
	So let's set a new goal.
	From now on, equal pay is no longer enough.
	Because women...
	There's a woman who's kicking a mug at her boss there.
	See.
	Our underwear is ridiculously more expensive.
	It's simply more expensive to be a woman than to be a man.
	Should we seriously get paid less than someone who applies body lotion to his face?
	He doesn't need a new outfit for every new occasion.
	He doesn't even know that the shoes make the outfit.
	This is real, guys.
	This is not a parody.
	This is real, guys.
	This is not a parody.
	Fashion is expressing yourself.
	And what every stylish woman is expressing is that equal pay is not enough.
	Equal pay is not enough.
	Okay, and then a woman throws her high-heeled shoe at a window and shatters the window.
	And the woman jumps on the hood of the car and ruins the hood of the car.
	And a woman kicks the mug into her boss's face and it breaks.
	Must be the weakest mug of all time, by the way.
	And then she's just screaming at her boss.
	And then it shows a high-heeled shoe and it says, hashtag women need more.
	Bianco.
	I don't know what Bianco is, but that is legitimately the worst ad for female empowerment I have ever seen in my entire life, because if the case is that you're going to whine about the cost of your underwear so I should pay you more, and then you're gonna break my crap because of it, you are fired, okay?
	You're not gonna raise, you get fired.
	Assault.
	Hitting people with bugs.
	Bad things, folks.
	You don't get to do this.
	Women should be paid more because their underwear costs more.
	I mean, what the hell?
	Should I be paid more because my Jewish rituals cost more?
	They do, okay?
	Passover's super expensive.
	Should I get paid more because I'm a Jew?
	What absolute utter horse nonsense.
	Okay, other things that I hate.
	Linda Sarsour.
	Has now said that she's taking names, gang.
	She's taking names.
	She says, I just know that I'm taking names of those who have lied about me to defame my character.
	I may be quiet now, but not for long.
	I am working.
	Be scared of Linda Sarsour, okay?
	I'm honestly more scared of Linda Sarsour's friends, like, you know, Rasmia Oda, like actual terrorists.
	Then I'm scared of Linda Sarsour.
	I understand that the left likes to use lawfare.
	I've been a victim of this.
	That was what happened with Clock Boy.
	But the Anti-Islamophobia Scam Brigade is up in arms.
	Linda Sarsour is very angry because people are pointing out things that she said and she doesn't like it when people point out things that she said.
	Pretty, pretty amazing.
	So, Linda Sarsour, yeah, okay, fine.
	She's like evil Santa Claus, checking her, making a list and checking it twice.
	Okay, other things that I hate.
	Riley Dennis is a prominent transgender person on Twitter, and Riley Dennis is a, he, because he is a man, is He is saying that his argument, this is a direct quote, quote, my argument, maybe your preference for women with vaginas over women with penises is to some degree influenced by our cissexist society.
	So Riley Dennis, who is a man with a penis, I believe, I don't know about the surgical status, Riley Dennis, I'm fairly certain on this, and believes he is a woman, he says that your desire not to have sex with a man because he's a man is because you are cisgender, not because Of things like science, right?
	He says it's because the reason that you as a straight man only want to have sex with women, you know, like actual women with vaginas and chromosomes and such, the only reason you'd want to do that is because of sexism in society.
	There's another reason.
	It is called evolution.
	Okay, it's called procreation.
	Like, God made things this way.
	Nature—you don't even have to be atheist to believe this.
	Nature made things that men who want to have sex with women want to have sex with women who actually have the body parts that produce children, because that is what nature desires.
	Full insanity.
	Okay, final thing.
	So, usually we do Big Ideas on Thursday.
	I can do this in about a minute thirty, so we'll do Big Ideas here on The Ben Shapiro Show.
	This is where I take an idea that I think has been under-discussed and we talk about it so that you know more about it.
	So, due process of law.
	So there's been a lot of talk about whether Donald Trump Jr.
	broke the law this week, as though Donald Trump Jr.
	Collusion is a crime.
	And I keep saying, no, collusion is not a crime.
	You actually have to cite me the statute.
	And people on the left go, that's a crime.
	It's bad.
	Bad means it's a crime.
	No, bad does not mean it's a crime.
	Due process of law means there must be a law on the books that you have violated, and now we take you to trial, and then you get a lawyer, and then we decide whether you are guilty or innocent.
	That's what due process of law means.
	It's under the Fifth Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment.
	Now, the left is so bizarre that they believe there should be no due process of law for people like Donald...
	Trump Jr., but they also believe in this concept, this idiotic concept called substantive due process.
	Substantive due process is a Supreme Court term that is self-contradictory.
	Process and substance are opposites, okay?
	It's like saying, it's like saying red sky blue, okay?
	That's not how it works.
	Substantive due process doesn't make any sense, but the concept is that if you pass a law I don't like, you have violated my due process rights.
	That's not what due process means.
	Due process means that once the law is in place, I now get a due process of law Before it is enforced upon me.
	But the left has been using substantive due process to cram down abortion and the so-called right to privacy and same-sex marriage.
	They say that any law against these things violates your due process rights.
	No, it does not violate your due process rights.
	In fact, the concept of substantive due process was actually coined by Justice Taney.
	In the infamous and horrific Dred Scott decision in which he actually said that an act of Congress which deprives a citizen of the United States of his liberty or property merely because he came himself or brought his property into particular territory of the United States and who had committed no offense against the laws could hardly be dignified with the name of due process of law.
	So what he said is that if your slave escapes into the north and you go there and then you want to bring your slave back, You should be allowed to bring your slave back because otherwise you are being deprived of your property without due process of law.
	Except for the fact that that has nothing to do with anything, okay?
	That's not due process of law.
	Due process of law would mean there would have to be a trial to determine whether you get your slave back or not in this context.
	But it doesn't mean that you get to automatically overthrow the law because your due process has been denied.
	Due process of law is very important.
	Substantive due process, by contrast, is a Supreme Court adjudicated evil that allows them to do whatever they want.
	So I thought that it was worthwhile elucidating that concept a little bit.
	Okay.
	We will be back here tomorrow.
	It's a Thursday today, correct?
	So tomorrow is the long-awaited mailbag.
	We were going to do the interview with Mark Levin today.
	We'll be doing that tomorrow as well on the show.
	So the great one will be joining us tomorrow to talk about his brand new number one New York Times bestselling book.
	And that will be awesome.
	So be there or be square.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.

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