All Episodes
Previous Next
July 26, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
40:24
Ep. 348 - Has The Conservative Movement Hit Its Limit?
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Meet Imran Awan.
Awan was an aide to 25 members of the House Democratic Caucus.
Over the past decade, Awan and his family members were paid some $4 million by House Democrats.
He was arrested on charges of bank fraud yesterday while attempting to flee the country.
He was headed to Pakistan, where he had reportedly wired nearly $300,000 to himself.
Smashed hard drives were reportedly found at his home.
According to Politico, Awan and his wife had been investigated for stealing equipment from some House members.
There are suspicions that Awan may have put information from that equipment onto the cloud.
While other House members fired Awan months ago, former DNC head Debbie Wasserman Schultz decided to keep him on payroll until the day of his arrest and attempted to stop the cops from looking at her smashed laptop, which Awan apparently had.
Naturally, top Democrats are claiming that Awan may have been arrested due to, you guessed it, Islamophobia.
All of which should raise some serious questions.
Question number one, why was Awan being paid so much money for so long?
According to the Daily Caller, Awan wasn't even doing a good job.
In fact, he and his team weren't on mandatory phone calls.
They write, fellow IT staffers the DCNF interviewed said the Awans were often absent from weekly meetings and email exchanges.
One of the fellow staffers said some of the computers the Awans managed were being used to transfer data to an off-site server.
Second question, What information did Awan transfer?
The Daily Caller, which has been all over this story, reports that Awan had, quote, access to all emails and files of dozens of members of Congress, as well as the password to the iPad that Debbie Wasserman Schultz used for DNC business before she resigned as a TED in July 2016.
Question number three, what is Wasserman Schultz trying to hide?
Not only did Wasserman Schultz keep paying Awan until yesterday, She reportedly threatened the chief of the U.S.
Capitol Police with consequences for holding equipment that she says belongs to her.
Again, here's the Daily Caller.
Quote, "When the Daily Caller asked Wasserman Schultz on Monday if it could inquire about her strong desire for the laptop, she said, 'No, you may not.' After the Daily Caller asked why she wouldn't want the Capitol Police to have any evidence they may need to find and punish any hackers of government information, she abruptly turned around in the middle of a stairwell and retreated back to the office from which she had come." Fourth question and final question.
Why aren't the media reporting this story?
Thus far, only political among the mainstream media news outlets has covered the Awan story.
Nothing from ABC News, nothing from NBCNews.com, nothing from CNN, nothing from the New York Times.
That is pretty stunning, considering the potential scope of the story.
One suspicion.
Are mainstream outlets concerned that maybe Awan might be in some way connected to DNC leaks that damaged Democrats or that will do so in the future?
This is a major, major story.
We're just beginning to learn the ramifications.
And it's certainly weird, at the very least, that it's being buried by mainstream media outlets.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
So that is the story that's on the top of the conservative mind.
That is not the story that's on the top of the national mind.
We'll get to President Trump's announcement that transgenders will now be banned from the military.
We'll also get to John McCain's big speech on the floor of the Senate yesterday.
We'll get to the latest on Trumpcare, all of it.
But before we do any of that, I first want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Tracker.
So there is nothing more irritating in my life, I promise you this, than when my wife loses her phone, or at least when she used to lose her phone, because now she uses Tracker.
She used to lose her phone like every single day.
I mean, we were at a movie one time, and she lost her phone in the middle of the movie.
And she turns to me in the middle of the film, and she says, I can't find my phone.
So for 45 minutes, I'm grasping around in the dark, touching people's feet, trying to find her phone.
It is a source of great irritation.
But thanks to Tracker, we no longer have to do that.
I can say, honey, just wait till the end of the movie, because I have this Tracker right on my keys.
It's a coin-sized device.
I hit it, and it actually rings through on the phone, even if the ringer is off.
And you can use your phone to locate things in your house by using the app on your phone to locate your keys, or your wallet, or other things that you look at your child.
If you've lost your child, you can put the Tracker in their pocket.
Do not actually get a piercing for the Tracker.
But you can attach it to your child's clothing.
It is a great device, and obviously, it helps you mostly with keys and wallet.
I'm just joking about tracking people.
Don't do it.
In any case, the fact is that the Tracker is the best device for lost objects.
And they have changed everything.
Right now, they have something called the Tracker Pixel.
It is the lightest Bluetooth tracking device on the market.
It is the, again, place it anywhere, and it will help you find it using your phone, or if you want to find your phone, you can do it in reverse.
They have a 30-day money-back guarantee, which means that you really have nothing to lose.
Go to thetracker.com and enter promo code BEN to get 20% off any order.
That's thetracker.com.
No E at the end.
It's thetracker.com.
Promo code BEN for 20% off.
T-R-A-C-K-R.
TheTracker.com.
Promo code Ben, you get 20% off your order.
And again, it has made my life and my marriage significantly better.
So go over and check out TheTracker.com and use that promo code Ben so they know that we sent you.
Okay, so that Democratic story about the IT staffer who was caught leaving the country after having wired a bunch of money to Pakistan, that's not making the rounds anywhere in the mainstream media.
And there are suspicions that perhaps that's because This was one of the sources for WikiLeaks, right?
This is unsubstantiated.
So this is the speculation that maybe this guy was actually taking all of that information and funneling it to WikiLeaks, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz doesn't want to let that cat out of the bag, because if the Democrats were to find out that Russia didn't have to do with this, then it completely implodes their entire narrative.
That, again, is total speculation.
I don't tend to believe it.
This guy looks more like a scamster who is Maybe blackmailing somebody like Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
I mean, he was, again, getting untold sums of money.
Wasserman Schultz had him hired until the last five minutes.
I doubt that he has anything to do with WikiLeaks, and we've had no indications that he did.
So I wouldn't put that conspiracy theory sort of on the back burner until there's at least a shred of evidence for any of that.
But it is highly weird that the media are ignoring it, and it is even more weird that Debbie Wasserman Schultz is trying to kill an investigation into a guy who apparently stole and smashed her laptop.
So that's pretty weird stuff.
I mean, that's just weird stuff and we ought to keep an eye on it.
Okay, in other news, President Trump has been on a rampage against Jeff Sessions.
So this morning, President Trump, seeking to distract from the Jeff Sessions stuff, and I think it's pretty clear that's what he was trying to do, he tweets out that he wants to end the policy that the Obama administration put into place in June of last year that would allow transgenders to serve openly in the military.
It was a bad policy because it made the entire army and the entire military Change its policies to basically fit the needs of a very small contingent of people who unfortunately suffer from severe mental illness.
Suddenly you have women who are expected to shower with men who say they are women.
The military is expected to cover the cost of transgender surgery and hormone replacements and all the rest of it.
You know, that's something that has nothing to do with military readiness and unlike race, which has no impact on military readiness and ability to serve, Mental illness has always been a 4F issue.
You don't have a right to serve in the army.
No one has the right to serve in the army.
And listen, this is not a rip on the patriotic transgender people who want to serve in the army.
I mean, that's an amazing thing, and good for them.
They're making a sacrifice that I was not willing to make, so I have nothing but praise for them.
But that does not mean that the army, that the military has a responsibility to take in people who it thinks are going to harm unit cohesion, destroy the ability of people to get along in small areas under lots of pressure, and the ability of the military to actually take a look at the mental status of the people who are attempting to enter.
Like, there are lots of people who want to enter the military who are really out of shape, and I'm sure the military turns them away as well, right?
If you have flat feet, you can be 4F.
So, then the military has lots of standards.
If you can't meet those standards, and it seems to me definitionally, if you're a man who thinks he's a woman, you have a mental illness that it's going to be difficult for you to serve in the military at the level that the military would expect you to, It creates all sorts of issues.
It also creates standards issues.
Let's say that you're a guy who's trying out for the military, but you're transgender now.
So are you expected to fulfill the female requirements or the male requirements?
Because there are two different requirements for women who are trying out for the military versus men.
It's not the same standard.
This is always the question about women serving in combat positions.
Do they have to fulfill the same rigorous physical standards as a man, right?
If you want a woman to be a Navy SEAL, are you going to have a lowered standard for her to become a Navy SEAL?
How about a man who says he's a woman?
Now can he get the female standard So that's an issue.
People who have served on the front lines, I have yet to meet a soldier who serves on the front lines who thinks that unit cohesion will not be harmed by the inclusion of transgender soldiers on the front lines, in battle areas, in combat areas.
So, in any case, President Trump is right on the policy, but how he rolled it out, I think, is really not appropriate.
So he goes on Twitter, and as a... I think this is all a distraction from Sessions, because within five minutes he's tweeting about Sessions again.
He said, After consultation with my generals and military experts, please be advised that the U.S. government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military.
Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.
Thank you.
So here is my problem with how President Trump did this.
I think he made the right call here, and for this he deserves praise.
It looks like a desperation move to distract attention from the session stuff.
That's what it looks like.
And the reason I say this is because this was not a well-timed, well-coordinated rollout of an organized policy.
As I said this morning, General Mattis at the Department of Defense should have been the leader on this.
He's in the middle, like a month ago, he announced that there was going to be a pause on the recruitment of transgender troops, and he was going to do a six-month study on how it was going, the embedding of transgender troops in the military.
And so we were going to have a full study, he was going to make a full case for why transgenderism in the military is not a good idea for morale and unit cohesion and all the issues that really matter on the battlefield.
General Mattis is the guy who should be in charge of this effort, and Trump should have used him, right?
I mean, because the fact is that if General Mattis comes to Trump's conclusion, then he is the best advocate for that.
It's very difficult for the left to say that General Mattis doesn't take seriously military readiness.
It's a lot easier for them to point to Trump and say, well, you draft dodged, and all these people are braver than you are, so what are you doing saying they can't serve in the military?
Just from a political point of view, it doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense for Trump to just tweet this out.
It's also sort of disrespectful to the transgender individuals currently serving in the military to just tweet out the policy with no supporting details, no explanation of where this is going.
Right now, the Department of Defense website still has the old Obama policy on it with regard to transgender individuals, so I'm glad the policy is apparently changing, but the Pentagon seems a little bit bewildered by this.
It's not that Trump never talked to Mattis about it, apparently he has, But it looks like the Pentagon was taken by surprise by the process.
Like, you don't tweet out major policy decisions like this and then just expect everybody to fall in line.
Also, the timing really could not be much worse because it looks like what Trump is doing is picking on transgender individuals in order to distract from the session stuff.
At least that's how the left is going to play it.
And the timing is even worse than that.
On this date, this date in 1948, was the date when President Harry Truman integrated the military racially.
So, if you are trying to draw the perspective that the military should not be used for social experimentation, I would really prefer, from a PR standpoint, that you not pick the day that Harry Truman integrated the military, because obviously the left argument is going to be that integration of the military racially is the same as integrating the military in terms of transgenders.
It's just, the way this was rolled out was once again, 987,000 degree wizard, underwater, upside down, mahjong, Hungry Hungry Hippos wizard style.
I mean, it doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense the way this is rolled out, except that it's a big distraction.
It's not distracting people though, because it's so obvious.
Because within literally 40 minutes of Trump tweeting out this major shift in American military policy, he's back to tweeting about Jeff Sessions.
And this was the big story of the day, it continues to be the big story of the day.
He tweeted this morning, quote, Why didn't Attorney General Sessions replace acting FBI director Andrew McCabe, a Comey friend who was in charge of Clinton investigation, but got big dollars, $700,000, for his wife's political run from Hillary Clinton and her representatives?
Drain the swamp.
Okay, Mr. President, you are the president.
You have the capacity to fire Senator Sessions, or Attorney General Sessions, and now you are in the position of basically whining about something you have power over.
He did it again today, by the way, on Iran policy.
There was an interview at the Wall Street Journal where he said, if it were up to me, I would have gotten out of the Iran deal 180 days ago.
It is up to you.
You can stop whining on Twitter now.
If you want to do something about it, do something about it.
And the problem is that Trump has sort of put his credibility on the line here.
There's a good case to be made that when a president makes a commitment like this, when a president goes after his own AG, he's got to follow through for credibility reasons.
If you are a politician in the Senate and Trump threatens you right now, are you going to take that threat seriously?
It's hard to take the threat seriously when he's out there fulminating over Jeff Sessions but not actually doing anything about it.
If you are a foreign adversary and you see President Trump fulminating over his own attorney general, but then in sort of ham-handed fashion trying to get him to resign without doing anything, then you're thinking, okay, this guy might be all bluster.
So listen, I'm not for him firing Sessions.
I think Sessions should stay.
I don't think Sessions did anything wrong.
And I think it is important to point out here that not only did Sessions not do anything wrong when he recused himself, but Sessions' recusal had nothing to do with the special counsel.
The reason the special counsel was appointed is because President Trump fired James Comey without any rhyme or reason except for the Russia stuff, which he then went on national television and talked about and in the process tried to hide behind a letter written by Sessions' deputy, right?
Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General.
That forced Rosenstein to recuse himself.
And that's how you get the Special Counsel.
Not because Sessions recused himself.
Rosenstein was still in place.
But Trump got rid of Rosenstein, basically, by botching it himself.
So, again, using Sessions as his sort of whipping boy makes very little sense right here.
And again, if you want Trump to have a successful presidency, he needs to rein it in.
He really, truly needs to rein it in.
So, yesterday, Trump is speaking about this on the campaign trail.
And you can see that there's a rift that's beginning to open in the conservative movement, which is actually a rift that I think is overdue and worthwhile.
Because one of the questions that was going to be asked throughout the Trump administration is, what can he do to alienate his base?
Is there anything Trump can do to alienate his base?
Are they really just so in love with all of the fulminating about the media?
Are they so in love with the sort of red meat that he throws to his base every so often that they are willing to overlook the facts that he's not really getting a lot of policy done?
What does he have to do in order to alienate them?
And it seems that there are a lot of Trump fans who are alienated by the Sessions thing, which I think is encouraging because their standard may not be my standard in terms of what they think Trump is doing wrong, but there is something that Trump could do that can alienate some of them.
So Trump leads off last night by saying, Aside from Lincoln, he can be the most presidential president ever.
He said this during the campaign as well.
It's an absurd statement.
Here he is saying it yesterday.
With the exception of the late, great Abraham Lincoln, I can be more presidential than any president that's ever held this office.
That I can tell you.
It's real easy.
Okay, it's real easy except he's not doing it, and he's spending his days online watching TV like my grandmother, and then tweeting things out not like my grandmother.
It's just not good policy.
He came out yesterday, and again, he continued to express anger with Sessions.
He said he's disappointed in the AG.
I am disappointed in the Attorney General.
He should not have recused himself.
Almost immediately after he took office, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me prior to taking office, and I would have quite simply picked somebody else.
So I think that's a bad thing, not for the president, but for the presidency.
I think it's unfair to the presidency, and that's the way I feel.
Again, it's not unfair to the president for the AG to recuse himself in a situation where it is politically appropriate for him to recuse himself.
And again, Sessions has nothing to do with the appointment of the special counsel.
Right now, it's pretty clear that Trump wants to pressure Sessions into quitting.
So you can claim he didn't fire Sessions, but everybody knows that he wants Sessions gone at this point.
So I want to talk a little bit more about this and the reaction from the right and whether Trump is susceptible to reason from people who are to his right, because this is going to be a good indicator for the rest of his presidency.
Talk about that in just a second.
But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Birch Gold.
So right now, a lot of people are uncertain about the presidency, about the direction of the country, about North Korea, about the economy.
There's just too many questions in the air, which is why you should have at least part of your portfolio in precious metals.
Birch Gold helps you make that happen.
They will give you a comprehensive 16-page kit revealing how gold and silver can protect your savings, how you can legally move your IRA or 401k out of risky stocks and bonds and into a precious metal IRA.
So, if you get your no-cost, no-obligation kit, you go to birchgold.com slash ben.
Birchgold.com slash ben.
Again, they have countless five-star reviews, an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau.
They're the people I trust to invest in precious metals.
You should trust them, too.
They're great people.
You should ask all the questions you want about investment, and then You should put at least part of your portfolio in precious metals as a hedge against inflation.
There's a report today that the dollar looks like it's beginning to weaken.
Gold has been up, I think, several months in a row now.
So, investing in precious metals, it's a pretty good time to invest in precious metals.
And Birchgold.com slash Ben can help make all of that happen.
Okay, so...
What you're seeing from the Trump administration is that the people who are loyalists to Trump, not the people who are policy focused, but the loyalists to Trump, the people whose job it is to make Trump look good, they keep saying Sessions has to go.
So, Sarah Huckabee Sanders yesterday, she says, I don't think that Trump's issues with Sessions are just going to dissipate.
She doesn't think that this is going to be glossed over and made better in any real way.
He's continuing to move forward and focus on other things, but that frustration certainly hasn't gone away.
And, you know, I don't think it will.
Okay, and you're starting to see some people, even on Trump's right, you know, people who have been longtime fans of Trump, begin to lose faith with him on the Sessions thing.
I want to get to that, but for that you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com for a subscription, $9.99 a month, and that means you can see the rest of the show live.
It's not just an audio show, it is a video show as well.
You can see My beautiful Poonam, you can see all of the clips.
You can be part of the Mailbag Live, which we're going to be doing on Friday.
It should be a great mailbag, since I'm testifying on the Hill tomorrow.
You can do all of that for $9.99 a month, plus you get our website ad-free.
You get to check out Andrew Klavan's show live.
You get to check out Michael Moulse's show, God Help Us Live.
That'll be launching next Monday.
And if you get an annual subscription, you get all of those things, plus you get the magnificent Leftist Tears Hot or Cold Tumblr.
It is just the best thing that you'll ever experience in your entire life.
You'll love it.
It is glorious in every possible way.
You get that for free when you get an annual subscription.
We appreciate your listenership, and if you want to go over to iTunes or SoundCloud just to listen later, then head over there, subscribe, leave us a review.
We are the largest conservative podcast in the nation.
So I've said for a long time that the litmus test, there has to be some sort of litmus test for Trump.
It's one of the reasons that I've respected, for example, Ann Coulter's take on Trump more than I've respected Breitbart News' take on Trump as a general matter.
Because Ann actually has a standard.
It may not be my standard again, but if Trump violates that standard, she's willing to say so.
So Ann wants her wall.
And if she doesn't get her wall, she's going to tweet about it, right?
She's going to say, I want my wall.
And good for her.
Good for her.
If you elected Trump because you wanted something and he's not giving it to you, then you should say something about it.
Well, finally, it seems with Sessions, there are a lot of people who are on the Trumpian right, who are beginning to lose a little bit of faith in Trump.
That includes people like Brit Hume.
So Brit Hume yesterday, he came out, he said, listen, Trump seems to have this bizarre idea of what the AG is.
What the AG is is definitely not a goalie.
I wonder if this is a message that that agenda is no longer operative.
I don't think so.
I think the President has a peculiar concept of what the Attorney General's job is.
He seems to think the Attorney General is some kind of goalie for him to protect him from whatever may come his way from forces that he finds inimical to him.
That's not the job of the Attorney General.
No, I know.
It isn't.
And the Attorney General's job has always been a little apart from other cabinet jobs.
The Attorney General has to be the man who enforces the nation's laws involving everybody, including the President.
Okay, so Brit Hume is even saying, okay, don't get rid of Sessions.
Tucker Carlson, who has been full on on the Trump train, he comes out yesterday and he says, listen, these attacks on Sessions are nuts.
It's completely a waste of time and effort.
Mr. President, get back to work.
It helps nobody but the partisans who are pushing it.
So it's easy to understand the frustration the president feels.
But publicly attacking Jeff Sessions for all of that, that is nuts.
Senior White House staff thinks so too.
They have asked the president to stop, so far without success.
Meanwhile, Sessions hasn't said a word.
Okay, so Tucker, too, is saying that there is a breaking point.
Breitbart News yesterday printed a story in which it said Trump vs. Trump and attacked Trump for attacking Sessions.
Pat Buchanan said Sessions deserves far better than the manner in which he's being treated.
Gingrich says that Trump should stop his attacks on Sessions.
So, you're seeing virtually the entire Trumpian right, at least the academic class, Say to Trump, this is something you can't do.
And the reason you're seeing that is because there is a group of people who believed that Trump was going to be the avatar for their policy.
They didn't just elect Trump to yell at things and scream at the TV and tweet silly things.
They actually elected somebody because they thought he can be, he can do all those things and that's great, but he can also be the avatar of our policy goals.
And when Trump does things that just not only distract from that, but undermine it, Jeff Sessions is a person who was on the Trump train before anyone else.
I mean, he was the engineer on the Trump train.
This is a guy who, he was the first senator to endorse Trump in the primaries.
He was the driving force behind Trump's immigration policy, which is probably Trump's most popular policy with his base.
Getting rid of Sessions is a huge mistake for Trump.
We will see whether Trump has painted himself into a box here.
That is the big question.
Has Trump gone so far down this path that now he can't afford to back off?
Will he have to fire Sessions because he's come out so obviously against Sessions, and is that why he's trying to feed red meat to the crowd with the transgender policy stuff and mentioning how people will talk about Merry Christmas again?
He's basically going to revamp all of the old Fox News talking points from five years ago, the war on Christmas kind of stuff, in order to pander to a particular crowd, so then when he fires Sessions, we go, oh, okay, fine, but at least he said no transgenders in the military.
That's what I'm not, I'm hoping that's not what happens here.
I'm hoping that Trump pursues good policy like the transgender policy that he is pursuing in accordance with General James Mattis, who actually knows what he's doing, and that he lays off accessions and gets back to work because that's what we need more of.
And Trump is perfectly capable of doing this.
So Trump is perfectly capable of doing good things.
So do we have good Trump, bad Trump?
Because we just did a bunch of bad Trump, but there's some good Trump here.
So if we have good Trump, bad Trump, let's play that as well.
Good Trump, bad Trump, which one will we get today?
Okay, so President Trump, he's perfectly capable of talking straight to the American people when he wants to.
The problem is he's so easily distractible.
So yesterday, he did a speech in Ohio.
This is where he is at his best.
I've said for months now that the White House should basically just put Trump on tour.
They should just put him in Rust Belt areas, talking to people, doing his speeches, enjoying himself.
Here is Trump saying that he's here to talk straight to the American people.
This is his shtick.
This is where he should live.
He should never move off of this.
We have spent the entire week celebrating with the hardworking men and women who are helping us make America great again.
I'm here this evening to cut through the fake news filter and to speak straight to the American people.
Okay, so this is where Trump is at his best.
And, you know, he has these moments that are great.
So there's a protester who showed up at one of his protests with a hammer and sickle.
And here is Trump just mocking the crap out of him deservedly.
Boy, he's a young one.
He's going back home to mommy.
Oh, is he in trouble.
He's in trouble.
He's in trouble.
And I'll bet his mommy voted for us, right?
So look, I mean, that's where Trump is at his best.
If you paired that with some actual policy prescriptions, then he'd be golden because Trump is great at that part of this.
He's great at that part of this, but he needs to actually get back to that part of this and stop focusing so much on these loyalty tests.
I mean, you remember that supposedly he asked FBI Director James Comey before he appointed him, would he get his loyalty?
And then he denied later that he'd asked.
Comey for his loyalty?
Is there any doubt at this point that he asked Comey for his loyalty?
Is there any doubt?
I mean, he's going out there.
He spent the last week saying that Jeff Sessions isn't loyal to him.
Jeff Sessions is the most loyal to him.
And he's out there questioning his loyalty.
It's very difficult to claim that Trump isn't motivated by loyalty to him above all.
He needs to get beyond that.
He needs to be bigger than that.
He's the president of the damn United States.
For goodness sake.
For goodness sake.
The most powerful man on earth.
Get over your issues and start working for the American people.
Meanwhile, speaking of people who are not working for the American people, the United States Senate is right now looking at a bunch of options on healthcare.
They passed the motion to proceed that basically needed 51 votes to consider the House bill On, uh, Obamacare revision.
I'm not gonna call it repeal and replace because it isn't, it was Obamacare revision.
Uh, they had this vote to proceed on it.
That didn't mean a vote to pass it, that meant to proceed to debate.
They got 51 votes, uh, and protesters from the left, being the idiots that they are, they immediately started chanting to kill the bill.
There's only one problem.
No one knows what the bill is.
So they presented the BRCA, the House version of the bill, last night.
It went down to flaming defeat.
Nine Republicans voted against it, showing once again that Republicans don't actually want to touch Obamacare.
And the protesters were chanting, kill the bill.
There have been like five different bills that are being presented.
We still don't know the final text of the bill, so it's kind of weird for them to chant this, but there you are.
Don't kill them!
Sergeant at Arms will restore order in the chamber.
Okay, meanwhile, Mitch McConnell is saying that, you know, this is a vote to open debate.
We're finally going to get to this open debate.
Guys, for seven years you should have been having this debate.
I don't know what you were doing for nearly the last third of my life.
What were you doing?
You were just sitting around bitching about Obama.
I get it.
It's fun.
But, at some point shouldn't you have figured out what you were going to do?
So here's Mitch McConnell, you know, championing the idea that we've finally opened debate.
Yay!
We've opened debate.
You have a majority in this chamber.
You should have been able to do this pretty easily.
They didn't send us here just to do the easy stuff.
They expect us to tackle the big problems.
And obviously we can't get an outcome if we don't start the debate.
And that's what the motion to proceed is all about.
Many of us on this side of the aisle have waited for years for this opportunity and thought it would probably never come.
Some of us were a little surprised by the election last year.
I'm sorry, I can't play too much of this audio, lest everyone drive off the road if you're listening and burst into fiery flame, the boredom from listening to Mitch McConnell.
I mean, that dude, he has a gift.
He has a gift.
If we could somehow bottle his charisma into pill form, it would cure insomnia for millions.
In any case, the big news that came out of the speeches yesterday was John McCain.
So McCain comes back to the chamber, you know, grouchy old John McCain.
Uh, grizzly old John McCain.
He comes back to the chamber after, you know, being diagnosed with brain cancer.
Uh, he's got a big scar over his eye, uh, because they had to carve into him to get rid of some of this.
I mean, it's amazing that he came back and he, he shows up and he gives a speech.
And this is widely hailed, uh, on both the left and the right is sort of the, the final cry of the lion.
Now, I think that McCain, with the help of God, should be around for some time to come, you know, all prayers with him.
But he was getting a lot of praise for this speech.
On the left, they were angry at the speech because he was saying we should return to regular order.
We need some sort of bipartisanship.
And then he voted in favor of the motion to proceed.
So the left was saying, well, if you want bipartisanship, why are you voting on a motion to proceed to move forward?
And the right was saying, but in the same speech, he said he's not going to vote for the actual bill.
So if you're not going to vote for the actual bill, why vote on the motion to proceed?
You already have two Republicans, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, who say they won't vote for any underlying bill, which means basically all this stuff is DOA.
In any case, McCain gave this speech, and a lot of people were celebrating it.
I did not like this speech.
I did not like this speech from McCain, and I didn't like it for a variety of reasons.
There's one thing I liked about it, and there were a bunch of things that I didn't.
McCain is one of these people who believes, he's like John Roberts on the Supreme Court.
He believes in the prestige of the institution, the magic of the Senate.
You know, John Roberts felt this about the Supreme Court, which is why he supposedly ruled the way he did in the Obamacare case.
He said, I don't want to undermine the prestige of the court as a body that's above politics.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to make it totally political, and I'm going to rewrite law from the bench.
John McCain does some of that same stuff.
Oh, the prestige of the Senate.
A collegial body where we get together and we discuss the issues on a higher level while ignoring all of the noise from outside.
I hate this garbage.
I hate this garbage because it's both disingenuous and it's a losing strategy.
In any case, he starts off with the stuff that I like.
He talks about, look, we're a co-equal branch of government.
We are not Donald Trump's subordinates.
And that means that we should pass policies that we think are beneficial for the country.
This part is true.
Here is McCain yesterday.
This place is important.
The work we do is important.
Our strange rules and seemingly eccentric practices that slow our proceedings and insist on our cooperation are important.
Our founders envisioned the Senate as the more deliberative, careful body that operates at a greater distance than the other body from the public passions of the hour.
We are an important check on the powers of the executive.
Our consent is necessary for the President to appoint jurists and powerful government officials, and in many respects, to conduct foreign policy.
Whether or not we are of the same party, we are not the president's subordinates.
We are his equal.
Okay, that's all fine.
That's all fine.
But then here's the part that's the problem.
Okay, so he has two things that are a problem.
He calls for a return to regular order.
Regular order means that you're not going to use reconciliation in order to pass things.
You're actually going to gather a filibuster-proof majority in order to move things to debate, and that would probably require bipartisan consensus.
So he calls for this yesterday.
Here's what he says.
Our system doesn't depend on our nobility.
It accounts for our imperfections and gives us an order to our individual strivings that has helped make ours the most powerful and prosperous society on earth.
It is our responsibility to preserve that, even when it requires us to do something less satisfying than winning.
Okay, so then he finishes up by bashing talk radio because this is John McCain's thing, he has to be above it all, he bashes talk radio, of course.
I hope we can again rely on humility, on our need to cooperate, on our dependence on each other, to learn how to trust each other again, and by so doing better, serve the people who elected us.
Stop listening to the bombastic loudmouths on the radio and television and the internet.
To hell with them!
And then he gets applause from the chamber, of course.
Stop listening to all those younguns who are in their cars and on their phones using the telephoners and the infowebs.
Here's my problem with all this.
Number one, Democrats don't play by the rules with regard to this kind of stuff.
In 2005, John McCain worked with Democrats to avoid Democratic filibusters.
So Democrats filibustered a bunch of Bush judicial nominees.
You recall this.
And in doing so, John McCain put together what they called the Gang of Fourteen, and he made a deal with a bunch of Democrats that certain judicial nominees would go through, and certain judicial nominees would not, but they wouldn't use the filibuster in order to shut down the process.
It was unprecedented to use the filibuster to shut down judicial nominees before this point.
Great for John McCain.
Bipartisan solution.
Look at that bipartisanship returning to regular order.
Okay, in 2010, the Democrats are short votes on Obamacare.
And they're attempting, through a bunch of procedural manipulations, to ram through their agenda.
And John McCain approaches the Democrats.
This time, the Republicans are in the minority in the Senate.
So in 2005, they're in the majority.
In 2010, they're in the minority.
And John McCain goes to the Democrats, and he says, I would like a new gang of 14.
Let's put together a gang of 14, and we'll get together, and we'll hash out some compromises on health care that we're able to proceed with.
And the Democrats turn to John McCain, and they go, you go screw yourself.
Return to regular order is only a thing if Democrats are willing to work with you.
Democrats are not willing to work with Republicans, and they are willing to bend the rules and break them, which means that the rules themselves no longer apply when it comes to these sorts of niceties.
Listen, I would prefer that we had bipartisanship in the Senate, too.
I would prefer a lot of things.
I would prefer that every senator were Ted Cruz and Mike Lee look-alikes.
I prefer that Ben Sasse were the chair of the Senate.
I prefer a lot of things.
I prefer that unicorns were able to power our cars with their magic poop.
Lots of things I wish, but John McCain's wish for what the Senate should be is not what the Senate is.
And when John McCain says, stop listening to those bombastic loudmouths on talk radio, it's those bombastic loudmouths on talk radio that won your party a majority and ensured that Obamacare repeal stays on the table and does not allow you guys to get away with crappy compromises that end up compromising the promises that you made.
I'm getting kind of tired of this elitist, and this is elitism, this elitist routine where we in the Senate, we know better, don't listen to those people who elected us.
The people who elected you are the ones who listen to those of us who actually speak about politics for a living because we care enough to try and tell our audiences what's happening.
All best wishes to John McCain.
I appreciate that he has a lot of respect for the processes of government, but he needs to live in the real world with regard to this stuff, and stop trying to pretend the Senate is something it's not, and more than anything, stop trying to pretend Democrats are something they aren't.
Okay, before I get to things I like and things I hate, first I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at the U.S.
Concealed Carry Association.
So, you're in your house, middle of the night, you hear somebody with a crowbar at the front door.
The person is trying to crowbar open your front door.
You grab your gun, you rush out, person comes through the door, and you shoot them.
End of the story, right?
You're the hero.
Not the end of the story.
The police are going to come.
They're going to arrest you in all likelihood.
They're going to question you.
It's going to take years of your life to get out from under the burden of having fired a shot, even in self-defense, even in your own home.
That is what the USCCA is for.
They educate you.
They train you.
They make sure that you're legally and financially protected for after you pull the trigger.
In honor of July 4th, they're also making sure that you're able to get guns if you're a responsible American.
They're doing the Great American Giveaway.
They want my listeners to be some of the people who know about it.
Right now, five chances to win $1,776 worth of guns and ammo of your choice.
$1,776?
Yeah, that's a lot of money toward guns and ammo of your choice.
You can register to win over at DefendMyFamilyNow.com.
DefendMyFamilyNow.com.
Again, you should sign up with USCCA anyway because they provide you all the resources you need in terms of education, but also after you pull the trigger.
But you also have a chance, five chances actually, to win Almost $2,000, $1,776 for the guns and ammo of your choice, which is awesome.
DefendMyFamilyNow.com, DefendMyFamilyNow.com, go and check it out.
There is no right more important than the right to keep and bear arms, and there is no group that is better dedicated to helping you achieve that right than the USCCA.
Go over to DefendMyFamilyNow.com and go register and let them know that we sent you as well.
Okay, time for some things I like, things I hate, and then the Bible.
So, things I like.
This week we are doing music that is featured in movies.
So yesterday we did Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, which of course is in Platoon, and Lorenzo's Oil.
This is another piece of music that you will all recognize, but some people don't know what it is.
This is Strauss' Blue Danube Waltz.
You'll remember it from 2001 A Space Odyssey when there is a three hour shot of a turning spaceship.
And here is the Blue Danube Waltz.
Blue Danube Waltz .
So, great piece.
Of course, everybody knows this piece.
It's been used in cartoons all over the place.
Great story about this.
It's composed in 1866, and Strauss' stepdaughter went and met Johannes Brahms, who's actually one of the nicer composers.
A lot of composers are jerks.
Brahms was not.
When he signed something for her, he wrote down the first few bars of the Blue Danube Waltz, and then he wrote down, alas, not by Brahms.
Underneath, that was his autograph on the piece of paper.
So, great piece.
Okay, a quick thing I hate.
We'll do that.
Okay, so Van Jones is one of the things that drives me absolutely up a wall, and we talked about this a little bit yesterday, is the attempt to infuse politics into every aspect of pop culture.
The one that drives me the most nuts is infusing politics into sports.
Sports is just a competition.
Leave me alone.
I want to see somebody hit a ball, or shoot a ball, or hit somebody in the face.
That's all I want from my sports.
Van Jones says athletes should be more political.
No, for the love of God, they shouldn't.
Here is Van Jones saying this.
Do you think athletes should be more vocal than they are?
Of course, on both sides, on all issues.
And I'll tell you why.
The number one rare thing in the world right now, it's not money.
I mean, there's money all over the place.
I don't have enough.
You don't have enough.
It's all over the place.
It's time.
It's attention.
The richest people I know are still time poor.
So if somebody has attention, if they're famous, They have the most valuable commodity in the world.
If you can use that to make the world better, you should.
And part of the problem I see now is people are saying, I'm not going to speak out.
Here are these great issues that are going on.
Bad things are happening.
I'm not going to speak out because I want to protect my paycheck.
That's very inspiring, sir.
We're gonna put that on your tombstone.
like said nothing.
But they don't have to speak out, okay?
The idea that athletes' job is to speak out.
Listen, if you want to speak out, more power to you.
But the idea that athletes are in a unique position to speak out, no, if you're in a unique position to speak out, you should know something about it.
This does not mean that every athlete is a dummy.
There are some athletes who actually know something about the policies upon which they expound.
But the fact is, the vast majority of athletes are not people who are in their position because of their grand knowledge of budgetary process.
When Muhammad Ali was mouthing off about politics, It was not because he was widely knowledgeable about politics in the United States.
Most of what he was saying was wrong and fed to him by the Nation of Islam.
The idea that athletes, on a routine basis, are saying intelligent things is just silly, and it demeans our culture.
You want to know how you got Donald Trump as president, lefties?
It's because of this.
You merged culture and politics, and then you're surprised when a cultural figure becomes a politician and wins everything.
Okay, so, before we leave, quick Bible note.
So, we've gone through all of the various parts of the Old Testament, so now we've been doing parts of the Prophets and the Writings that correspond to the Old Testament.
So, one of the pieces that we read this week is from the Book of Isaiah, and there's one particular verse from the Book of Isaiah that I want to point out, and that is from Chapter 1, the very beginning.
It says, The vision of Isaiah, the son of Amos, what he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, And it says, Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken.
Children I have raised and exalted, yet they have rebelled against me.
So, what does it mean to have the heavens and the earth actually testify against a people, right?
I mean, they're not living things.
How can you have them testify?
And the idea is that God created the world for a purpose.
He created the world for the purpose of man, and created the world as a testimony to man.
And this is why man's control of nature Is so unbelievably beyond anything else that you find in the animal kingdom because he created our minds in accordance with his.
He created our ability to shape the world around us in accordance with his will.
He also gave us the power to destroy and what we do with the world around us is going to be the testimony against us.
So this is not an environmentalist call never to cut down a tree, but it is a suggestion that if we do not do the right things, Then the Earth itself will be testimony against us for having done the wrong things, because if the Earth was only created in order to help us be better to one another and fulfill God's mission, then our failure to do so will basically disown the reason for Earth's creation in the first place.
You know, Earth is not the center of the universe, obviously, but we are the center of God's universe, and that's what makes... and He loves us so that He placed us in a place that we had the capacity to control the elements around us.
If we fail to do that in proper fashion, if we fail To use our powers for good, then the existence of the universe essentially becomes meaningless in the religious point of view.
Okay, so, we'll be back tomorrow.
I'll be testifying from Washington, D.C., so I'll give you the update on how it went on the Hill.
I'll be testifying about colleges and crackdowns on free speech.
If you're over near the Hill, feel free to show up.
I believe it's open to the public.
We will talk to you tomorrow.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
▲
Export Selection