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July 28, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
47:51
Mr. Shapiro Goes To Washington | The Ben Shapiro Show Ep. 350
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While ESPN and the NFL cheered the supposed courage of former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who sucked at his job, for failing to stand for the national anthem, it turns out the viewers were less sanguine.
According to a new poll from J.D.
Power, the number one reason fans decided not to watch the NFL last year was the national anthem protests.
Which ended up spreading to several teams and multiple players.
Fully 26% of people who said they watched less NFL content last year said they did so because of the National Anthem crap.
Another 24% said that domestic violence and delay of game penalties kept them away.
This is the second major poll to confirm that leftist politics drove Americans from watching football.
In October 2016, 56% of fans said they believed ratings were down because of the National Anthem protests.
They were right.
Which means that the left's unwavering desire to infuse politics into even the most apolitical content comes with a cost, alienation of an audience that disagrees.
While polls show that the vast bulk of Americans despise the National Anthem protests, those statistics polarize by race.
63% of white Americans disliked the protest, a plurality of Hispanics disapproved, 45% to 36%, but fully 74% of black Americans liked the protest.
but fully 74% of black Americans liked the protest.
Overall, 54% of Americans opposed the protest with just 38% approving.
That racial polarization that gripped the nation over the last several years, thanks to the rise of Black Lives Matter and President Obama's decision to humor racially divisive politics, it didn't leave football untouched.
And the leftists at the sports networks, in an attempt to mirror their political idols of the Democratic Party, celebrated as their own industry imbibed from the intersectional bottle.
The cost?
Ratings.
Mixing politics into sport has withdrawn an essential part of our civic culture from the realm of the universal.
And that's going to have larger ramifications than merely a drop in NFL ratings.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
Some days there is so much news that it is impossible to get through everything.
That is why I am now going to speak at three times my normal speed, because there was just so much news that happened yesterday.
I was on the Hill.
I was testifying about censorship on college campuses.
We'll play some tape of that because it was a lot of fun.
I testified, Adam Carolla testified, and it was a unique experience that I want to tell you about.
I had some thoughts on it.
Also, in bigger news, Anthony Scaramucci, who is the soon-to-be White House Chief of Staff, if the rumors are true, Lost his mind in an interview with the New Yorker.
And I have to tell you about it because at this point, I am just in it for the amusement.
At this point, you know, I'd like to see good policy be made, but if I can't get good policy, then I damn well want to be entertained.
And Anthony Scaramucci makes that happen for me.
So I will be telling you about that.
And speaking of policy that's not getting passed, skinny repeal went down to flaming defeat after John McCain throttled it with his with his old hands.
And we'll tell you about what happened there and why it actually This actually isn't the worst thing in the world for Republicans if this happens.
I'll give you actually a bit of good news today.
I know, shocking, it's me, but I will.
It'll still happen.
But before I get to any of that, if that's not a lineup, I don't know what it is.
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Okay, so I don't even know where to begin because there is so much entertaining So many things!
All the things!
So I'm actually going to start in a place where I think the media is not covering things.
And that is, there's a story that came out yesterday that really does throw a crimp into the style of the Democrats when it comes to this Russian narrative.
I talked about this a little bit yesterday.
I wanted to give you the update.
So, since Hillary's election, the left has been saying that Russia wanted Trump to win, and that's why Trump won, that there was some sort of collusion.
So far, there's no evidence of actual collusion.
There's willingness to collude from Don Jr.
to these Russian lawyers, but there's no actual evidence of collusion, and there's no evidence that the Russians actually wanted Trump to win, as opposed to just screwing with our election cycle.
Well, last week, in a little-noticed move, the Senate Judiciary Committee called a guy named Bill Browder to testify.
Browder's a financier who's been targeted by the Vladimir Putin regime, and he testified, according to the Weekly Standard, that Fusion GPS, which is a Democrat-linked Apple research firm, arranged the meeting between Donald Trump Jr.
and Russian lawyers.
And furthermore, Browder stated that these Russian lawyers had hired Fusion GPS to conduct a smear campaign against him.
And the reports are that Fusion GPS has contracted the Russians, and maybe they were hired by the Russians.
In order to come up with this anti-Trump dossier.
The reason this is important is because it does again destroy the Democrat narrative that the reason Trump won is because the Russians wanted him to win.
What it looks like more is that the Russians were screwing with all sides.
They were working on the Trump dossier at the same time they were playing the other side of the aisle with Trump.
Which means that that's a pretty large confounding factor.
When you say, did the Russians hurt Trump or did they help Trump?
Well, it's possible that the Russians did both.
And so I think that that hurts the Democratic narrative in a pretty significant way, which is one of the reasons why the Democrat media does not want to report all of that.
Okay, but what they do, here's the thing.
Trump could be saying all of that, right?
Trump could be focusing on that.
He could also have been focusing in on healthcare.
Healthcare went down to flaming defeat yesterday.
And I'll talk about that before I get to Scaramucci.
I always save dessert for last.
Scaramucci is the dessert.
Scaramucci is just, it's fantastic.
But, last night, very late at night, I'm on a plane because I'm an idiot and I went to Dulles Airport instead of Reagan National Airport to get home from Washington, D.C., so I had to hop a later flight.
And on the flight home, I'm sitting there.
There's nothing worse than being in a middle seat watching CNN cover a late night health care vote.
It's just a bunch of old people milling around on a floor.
And you don't know what's going on, but everyone's trying to read body language.
And what was up for a vote was what they called skinny repeal.
So as I mentioned yesterday, skinny repeal was basically they get rid of the individual mandate for a small amount of time.
They get rid of the employer mandate for a certain amount of time.
What they really repeal are the penalties for the individual mandate and the employer mandate.
In reality, the medical device tax was suspended for only three years.
Philip Klein had a good breakdown at the Washington Examiner.
And the employer mandate penalties would go to zero at first, but would come back actually by 2025.
Taken together, According to health policy analyst Chris Jacobs, the bill would keep 411 out of Obamacare's 419 sections of legislative text intact.
So it was not a repeal.
That's why they called it a skinny repeal.
The biggest problem with skinny repeal, and the reason a lot of people opposed it, is because it left all of the Obamacare regulations in place, but it got rid of the funding mechanism for the Obamacare regulations, which means all the prices are going to immediately begin rising very, very quickly in the individual market.
It also didn't make any sort of Medicaid restructuring, so a lot of people would presumably be thrown onto Medicaid, a cost the government would then absorb.
So, it's not a good bill.
I mean, skinny repeal is not a good bill.
It doesn't either fix Obamacare or repeal Obamacare.
And those are the two choices.
You can either try to fix Obamacare by strengthening a lot of its repercussions, by subsidizing insurance companies, by creating higher taxes on it, because the money has to come from somewhere.
This is what Democrats Would presumably like to do, or move to single-payer.
Or you can get rid of Obamacare entirely, which is what Republicans were unwilling to do.
Instead, they sort of settled for the worst of both worlds.
Keep the regulations, get rid of the funding mechanisms, which destroys the insurance companies and forces Republicans to bail out the insurance companies.
It's a crappy bill.
So here is the process of thought.
Republicans wanted to pass something more comprehensive.
That was rejected on Wednesday.
Then they said, OK, well, how about if we just do repeal only, which would be a broader version of repeal, but it would still leave the regulations in place.
That went down to flaming defeat.
And finally, he said, we'll do skinny repeal.
But we in the Senate don't actually want to pass skinny repeal.
We'd like to have some subsidies in there, but we can't pass that through our Senate right now.
So what we want to do is pass skinny repeal and make Paul Ryan say that he won't pass skinny repeal in the House.
And then we'll go to conference committee, we'll come up with a bill that we can all agree on, and then we'll revote it.
And Paul Ryan was not giving a lot of signs that he was going to do that.
He sort of kind of committed to the idea that they were going to go to a committee that was going to put together a conference committee that was going to put together a new bill.
But in the end, the bill goes down to flaming defeat after John McCain, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski decide they're not going to vote for it.
Collins and Murkowski were never going to vote for it because they don't actually believe in repealing Obamacare.
McCain didn't vote for it, presumably because McCain was angry at the process.
So as we played his speech a couple of days ago, he basically said, I don't like how this is being done.
I'm going to vote on a motion to proceed, but I'm not going to vote on any bill.
And he fulfilled that promise to the Democrats.
That's who John McCain is.
That is no great shock.
However, I think a lot of the sort of freak out is over the top.
I think a lot of the freak out is over the top.
Now listen, Ted Cruz was right in 2012.
When there was the government shutdown and Ted Cruz said, listen, if we don't defund Obamacare right this instant, it is going to be ensconced in American life.
It is going to be enshrined in American life.
It's going to be very difficult to get rid of it.
He was exactly right when he said that.
That has obviously been proved to be true.
The Republican Party has been lying for seven years that they actually wanted to get rid of this thing.
They clearly do not want to get rid of this thing.
Cruz last night, he said, listen, no party can remain in power by lying to the American people and then not fulfilling promises.
There's no issue I have fought harder on, devoted more time to, than stopping the disaster that is Obamacare.
And mark my words, I am committed to this fight, as long as there is breath in my body.
I will be fighting for the working men and women of this country that are being hurt by Obamacare, and I believe It will be repealed.
No party can remain in power by lying to the American people, and I hope and pray that our party doesn't try to do that.
Okay, and that is what the party is going to try to do.
They were lying for a long time.
However, the political costs here are not quite as clear-cut as the Democrats are trying to make it.
So the Democrats are saying, big victory for us, big win for us.
Not quite.
So it's a loss for Mitch McConnell, who was supposed to be able to get his caucus together to do something, and he couldn't.
It's a loss for Senator Turtle.
It is a loss for Donald Trump, who, unfortunately, his late-game push for healthcare, namely saying that his attorney general is a poophead, Did not actually have the impact that people thought it was.
His closing argument that his attorney general was garbage, that actually didn't, believe it or not, push this bill over the finish line.
So tweeting out a couple of times, we can do it, which is basically what he tweeted out, like two minutes before this vote, and then it failed.
That isn't going to do it because, unfortunately, the way the system works, you know, it's not Trump's fault completely, but Trump has to be the spearhead.
He has to be the guy who builds up the credibility of the bill.
He's got to be the guy who creates public pressure.
This is what Obama did on a regular basis.
Obama was good at this.
Trump is not.
And so it is Trump's fault a little bit.
But here is the truth.
If Republicans had passed the skinny repeal bill, and if that had gone to Trump's desk, and if he had signed it, they would have had a momentary celebration.
And then the premiums would have started rising dramatically.
It would have been very difficult to get Republicans to vote for subsidies to bail out all the insurance companies.
If they did, they would then own the subsidy regime.
And, as the insurance premiums continued to rise, and they were now sponsoring subsidies, there would be a call for a single payer from the left, and Republicans would own this thing.
Right now, it's unclear who owns this thing.
Democrats made it.
All the failures are Democrats' fault.
Are voters going to blame Republicans for not fixing it, or are they going to blame Democrats for creating it?
That's not actually clear.
Also, when you push a bill that was proposed at lunchtime, And you vote on it by midnight.
That's not going to make anybody happy.
Process doesn't matter very much.
When there's a widespread perception that the process has been corrupt, that does matter.
I mean, we should have learned this from the Democrats.
In 2010, the Democrats rammed through Obamacare through a crappy process.
They hid the text of the bill.
Nancy Pelosi said, we'll only know how it works basically once it's implemented.
And the effect of that was that they lost a thousand seats across the country.
They lost the House, they lost the Senate, and they lost the White House.
So we have a good history of what happens when you pass an unpopular bill through inauspicious means, an unsavory means.
It's not good.
So, to a certain extent, there's a good possibility that John McCain and Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski actually saved the Republicans from themselves on this thing.
Better to pass no bill, in some cases, than to pass a crappy bill that gives you ownership of the entire system.
So I'm not completely, you know, you know how cynical I am about politics.
I'm not completely sold on the idea that this is a killer for Republicans if they don't pass anything.
And I think that Trump is not entirely wrong when he says if this thing continues to fall apart, people are going to look for a fix and they're not going to look to, they may not look to Democrats who built the thing in the first place.
So, with all of that happening, it would have been helpful if Trump actually wanted to push something through, which apparently he did.
If he wanted to push something through, it would have been helpful if he weren't distracted by stupidity.
It would be helpful if he wants to fight back on the Russia thing if he weren't distracted by stupidity.
Unfortunately, he's deeply distracted by the stupidity inside his own administration.
It has basically become Game of Thrones.
And it's really quite hilarious.
It's like Game of Thrones, but if it were with Muppets.
That's sort of what's happening here.
So, in just a second, I'll give you the Scaramucci update.
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Okay, so.
I hesitated to share this with you until later in the show because it is so glorious that I'm going to lose my mind.
It's so fantastic.
So, we have now initiated the Scaramucci update for as long as he's in the White House.
So it is time for the Scaramucci update.
Let's play his theme song.
Got a moosh, got a moosh, will you do the pandango?
Stop the bolt of lightning, very, very frightening me.
Excellent.
Okay, so time for the Scaramucci update.
So, it all begins yesterday morning.
We go back in our time travel machine.
Okay, we're back in time.
Yesterday morning, Anthony Scaramucci sees that Ryan Lizza, who's a reporter that he called Wednesday night, Ryan Lizza's reporting.
You guys know who the leakers are.
I respect them for not telling me because I understand and respect journalistic integrity.
Romucci calls into CNN, and he starts off the conversation by saying, I never meant to threaten Reince Priebus.
I never meant to suggest that Reince Priebus is the leaker.
Within 30 seconds, he's explaining that Reince Priebus is probably the leaker and should defend himself.
You guys know who the leakers are.
I respect them for not telling me because I understand and respect journalistic integrity.
However, when I put out a tweet and I put Reince's name in the tweet, they're all making the assumption that it's him because journalists know who the leakers are.
So if Reince wants to explain that he's not a leaker, let him do that.
If Reince wants to explain he's not a leaker, let him do that.
Yeah, that's- that's a real strong repudiation of the idea that you don't think he's the lea- that you think he's the leaker.
Anthony Scaramucci, this dude can do the fandangle like nobody's business.
Then, he says- I mean, he's declared war inside the administration against all of these people.
Right, he's declared war again in the administration against Reince and against Bannon.
Basically, anyone who wants to do conservative policy is on Anthony Scaramucci's poop list because Anthony Scaramucci wants to be Trump's right-hand man and he has somehow parlayed being on national television saying nice things about Trump and ripping CNN into becoming probably the second most powerful man in the country, which is incredible.
It's such a great scam.
In any case, here he is going after other members of the administration.
Again, remember, this is on CNN.
He called in to do this.
He's like, He is Trump's mini-me.
I mean, it's like Trump went out and had a mini-me crafted just like Austin Powers.
And now Trump is sitting there, and Scaramucci's performing for him.
This is what this is, right?
He's performing for Trump.
And it's amazing!
Here we go.
Last night we were having dinner.
I told his wife, I looked over to the First Lady and I said, I forgot how much fun I used to have when I hung out with him on the campaign trail.
Okay?
He's a very interesting and very unique guy.
There are people inside the administration that think it is their job to save America from this president.
Okay, that is not their job.
Their job is to inject this president into America so that he can explain his views properly and his policies so that we can transform America and drain the swamp and make the system fairer for the middle and lower income people.
I understand that.
You understand that we have to inject Trump like Botox into the buttocks of America.
That's what has to happen here.
We can't contain him in any way.
We can't ask him to promote policy in any way.
We need more.
Let Trump be Trump.
And this was always going to happen.
I thought it was going to be Bannon, by the way, who pushed this line because Bannon is a sycophant to power.
But it turns out that Steve Bannon, at long last, has some principles and actually wants to promote those principles in power.
I mean, this is weird for me because I really do not like Steve Bannon personally.
But Bannon is one of the people who is now on the poop list for Anthony Scaramucci.
And then he decides that it's important for him to go after Reince even more.
He says that we're like brothers.
Maybe we're like Cain and Abel.
Maybe we're not.
We don't know.
If you want to talk about the Chief of Staff, we have had odds, we have had differences.
When I said we were brothers from the podium, that's because we're rough on each other.
Some brothers are like Cain and Abel.
Other brothers can fight with each other and get along.
I don't know if this is repairable or not, that will be up to the President, but he's the Chief of Staff, he's responsible for... The literacy at this administration is so high.
Cain murdered Abel.
Okay, so if you're on national TV suggesting that you might be like Cain and Abel, you might also just be like brothers who fight a little bit and then get along, but I might murder him and bury him in the backyard.
I mean, basically, Scaramucci is Joe Pesci from Casino.
It's incredible.
I love it.
And then, Sarah Huckabee Sanders is out there, and it's pretty clear that this is now Scaramucci's administration, so far as Trump is concerned.
Huckabee Sanders is out there saying that she won't commit to saying whether Trump supports his own chief of staff.
Remember, this is in the same week that Trump has been tweeting out about how his own AG's a poophead.
You can't say right now if the president has full confidence in Chief of Staff Mike Spriggs?
I think I just answered that.
Look, I think what we have, this is a White House that has a lot of different perspectives because the president hires the very best people.
They're not always going to agree.
There are going to be a lot of different ideas.
Unlike previous administrations, this isn't groupthink.
It's not groupthink?
It's not groupthink?
If you don't kiss Trump's ass enough, then he starts yelling at you on Twitter.
At one point yesterday, Scaramucci said he doesn't hire yes-men.
Literally, Scaramucci's only job is to say yes to Trump.
That is his only job.
It's amazing.
Okay, so, that's not even the good part, guys.
I didn't even get to the good part yet.
For the good part, you're gonna have to go over to Daily Wire.
Yeah, I know, right?
Great tease.
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Okay, so now the good stuff.
So, last night, after Scaramucci goes on CNN, and things seem to have calmed down a little bit because now we're all going to focus on the healthcare stuff, and now we're all going to focus on what Trump is doing about sessions, and we're all going to focus on some of the Russia stuff, and we'll go about our daily business.
No, we won't.
Because the magic happened.
Ryan Lizza releases a piece about what Scaramucci had said to him on Wednesday night.
Scaramucci apparently does not know, this is what Scaramucci basically says, he does not know the difference between on the record and off the record.
So, for those who don't understand how this works, when you're speaking with a journalist, And you're a source for a journalist.
The person who you are speaking to, the journalist, has to agree that something is off the record in order for it to be off the record.
So if I'm on the phone with a journalist and I say, hey, this is off the record, and the guy doesn't agree, it's not off the record.
It's all an honor system, essentially, because journalists don't want to burn sources, because then they can never use the sources again.
So off the record means what I'm saying to you can never be printed in any circumstances.
On background means that you can print it, but you're going to quote me as, say, you know, an unnamed Daily Wire employee, right?
That would be on background.
And then finally, there is on the record, which is you can quote me as it stands.
Anybody who has done one iota of media knows this.
Anthony Scaramucci is the head of White House Communications, and he did not know this.
At least that's his excuse.
Then he said, no, it's kind of on purpose that I did this.
OK, so why does that matter?
Because he did an interview with Ryan Lizza, and I'm going to tell you about this interview.
So he started off by threatening to fire everyone on the White House communications staff.
He said, the Mooch said, first of all, every time I see him, all I am reminded of, I mean, he's like a cross between, he's like some perverse cross between Christian Bale from American Psycho, Leonardo DiCaprio from The Wolf of Wall Street, and Ellis from Die Hard.
You know, Hans, Boobie, I'm Your White Knight, that guy.
So anyway, the Mooch I love it so!
I love it so!
Like Patton, I love it so.
He says, I asked these guys not to leak anything and they can't help themselves.
You're an American citizen.
He's talking to a reporter now.
You're an American citizen.
This is a major catastrophe for the American country.
So I'm asking you as an American patriot to give me a sense of who leaked it.
So he's asking the reporter now to tell him who the leakers are, which is not what reporters do.
And then when Liz has said no, the mooch said, okay, I'm going to fire every one of them.
And then you haven't protected anybody.
So the entire place will be fired over the next two weeks.
Okay, this is like the stupidest threat ever.
He's basically saying, if you don't do this, I'm gonna punch myself directly in the nuts.
That's what I'm gonna do.
I'm just gonna fire everyone around me.
And then we'll see how you like it.
Okay, go ahead.
I'd be like, alright, I suppose you could do that.
Yeah, but it gets better!
He says they'll all be fired by me.
I fired one guy the other day.
I have three to four people I'll fire tomorrow.
I'll get to the reason who leaked that to you.
Reince Priebus, if you want to leak something, he'll be asked to resign very shortly.
And this is all on the record, guys.
This is on the record, meaning he wanted it to be printed.
Reince is an effing paranoid schizophrenic.
A paranoiac.
And then, imitating Reince's voice, he goes, Oh, Bill Shiney's coming in!
Let me leak the effing thing and see if I can bleep-block these people the way I bleep-blocked Scaramucci for six months.
This is all on the record.
Okay, so he's ripping the Chief of Staff for the President of the United States at the White House, and he's saying that he clock-blocked him.
I mean, that's insane!
And it gets better!
Yes!
So then, Scaramucci was very upset because there was a release of his public disclosure forms.
He was working at the Export-Import Bank, and you have to fill out all these forms.
Those are public record after a certain period of time.
So those were released this week.
He thought that Reince leaked them to the media and accused Reince of committing a felony.
He said, quote, I've called the FBI and the Department of Justice.
The swamp will not defeat him.
They're trying to resist me, but it's not going to work.
I've done nothing wrong on my financial disclosures, so they're going to have to go F themselves.
And then it got even better.
It's so good.
It's like Inception, Layers of Awesome.
Scaramucci, he finishes by saying this, I'm not Steve Bannon.
I'm not trying to suck my own clock.
Except he didn't say clock.
He said, I'm not trying to build my own brand off the effing strength of the president.
I'm here to serve the country.
So now he's attacking the White House chief strategist as a guy who is in love with the media and wants to be in front of the cameras and also wants to perform anatomically impossible acts on himself.
I know Steve Bannon.
He's not that physically flexible.
There's just no way.
There's just no way.
I could say other things about this, but I'm going to leave it at that.
So he has now accused the White House chief of staff of being a paranoid schizophrenic.
And accused Steve Bannon, the White House strategist, of trying to suck his own thing.
And then he continued, Okay, the mooch showed up a week ago.
This is gonna get cleaned up very shortly, okay?
Because I nailed these guys.
I've got digital fingerprints on everything they've done through the FBI and the effing Department of Justice.
Well, the felony?
They're gonna get prosecuted, probably, for the felony.
Which felony?
Nobody knows.
Also, how did he get a hold of the FBI and DOJ records?
Why does he have fingerprints?
No one knows.
So all of this is going swimmingly.
And then, he says, you know what?
Let me go.
I gotta start tweeting some bleep to make this guy crazy.
A minute later he sent that tweet, directed at Reince Priebus, in which he accused Priebus of being a leaker, and then the next morning he went on CNN and said that's not what I meant by that tweet.
Just unreal.
So good.
So, here is the question for everyone.
I'm wildly entertained, okay?
If I had my druthers right now, the only person in the administration I care about maintaining is Anthony Scaramucci.
I don't care if they fire everyone.
I don't care if they fire Pence.
All I want from life right now is Anthony Scaramucci in front of the camera every minute of every day.
I don't think Trump feels the same way.
The reason is because Trump wants to be in front of the camera every minute of every day, which is why Steve Bannon did the clever thing of going to his old friends at Breitbart.
He went to Tony Lee, who's a reporter very friendly to Trump.
I mean, and to Bannon, who was very friendly when Bannon was there.
And Tony Lee ran a long piece about how Scaramucci was stealing the spotlight from Trump, which is, of course, the smartest way to appeal to Trump is to say, someone is stealing your spotlight.
And Trump goes, no, no one steals my spotlight.
Hit him with a hammer and bury him in the desert.
So that's, that's Bannon's take.
So they're both trying, it's great.
Scaramucci's trying to accuse Bannon of trying to steal the spotlight, and Bannon's trying to accuse Scaramucci of stealing the spotlight, all in a battle to try and be second in command to Trump.
But Scaramucci has no principles and doesn't care about what Trump pushes, and Bannon has some principles, but some of them suck.
So all of this is just going awesome, as I think the short story here.
Also, Jeff Sessions, who's the Attorney General, he's just got to be relieved that now he's out of the spotlight, because earlier this week, all Trump cared about was ripping on Jeff Sessions.
Jeff Sessions was talking to Tucker Carlson, and he said Trump's tweets have been very hurtful this week.
You've seen the President's criticism of you.
Do you think it's fair?
Well, it's kind of hurtful, but the President of the United States is a strong leader.
He is determined to move this country in the direction he believes it needs to go to make us great again, and he has had a lot of criticisms, and he's steadfastly determined to get his job done, and he wants all of us to do our jobs, and that's what I intend to do.
The president, that's sort of the latest.
So even as Sessions is trying to be the loyal soldier here and saying it's kind of hurtful, it's basically turned into a dating show.
Will Trump and Sessions make up?
Will Scaramucci and Reins get into a clawing match?
I mean, there's basically, this is reality housewives of Washington, D.C.
It's incredible.
I mean, one of these people could end up replacing Melania.
I mean, you just don't know.
It's wildly entertaining now.
Does it forward any policy?
Of course not!
It doesn't do anything to forward policy, okay?
We haven't had any policy except for Gorsuch in, like, six months.
But at least this part of it's ramping up.
At least this part is entertaining, so...
What you're starting to see is that it undermines Trump's entire agenda because Trump's personnel is policy, and he's not selected the best people, and not only has he not selected the best people, he's treated his own employees like the Joker treats people in The Dark Knight.
He's basically said, I'm hiring, here's a pool cue.
There's one pool cue in two of you.
One of you comes out alive and gets hired.
This is not the way to run an administration.
And this is why you're seeing senators beginning to buck Trump.
Ben Sasse has openly said now that if Trump is going to fire Sessions and then try to make a recess appointment of a new Attorney General, that we're going to stop him in the Senate.
In 2014, the U.S.
Supreme Court ruled that the Obama administration had made unconstitutional appointments when it declared this body to be in recess, when the U.S.
Senate was not, in fact, in recess, and it functionally claimed power, that is, the administration functionally claimed power that belonged to the Senate under our Constitution.
So today, I've come to the floor to keep my promise and to offer a word of humble advice to the president.
If you're thinking of making a recess appointment to push out the Attorney General, forget about it.
The presidency isn't a bull, and this country isn't a china shop.
Okay, so even the senators are starting to buck him.
Lindsey Graham came out and he said, That any effort to go after the special counsel would basically finish Trump.
You know, the senators are beginning to be fed up with this, and they're not getting any policy.
So, you know, I hope that everybody's enjoying the reality show.
I hope they are.
But this is an F week for Trump, okay?
I grade him every week.
The last two weeks have been Fs.
He needs to do better than this.
Get back on your policy horse.
Shut up on Twitter.
Stop attacking your own employees.
If you don't like Sessions, get rid of him.
If you don't like Reince, get rid of him.
Be a man.
Man up.
Clean up your administration, okay?
You know, I keep hearing that Trump's this master businessman, okay?
I run a business.
If somebody here is bad at their job, we fire them.
That's how it works.
If you don't do your job, you get laid off.
And then you get somebody else who replaces you, who presumably does a better job.
And then if the business fails, that's my fault, because I'm the head of the business.
Okay, that's the same thing at the head of the government.
The executive branch is an executive branch that are supposed to execute.
Are you seeing anything executed except some random staffers?
I mean, at this point, Sean Spicer is just sitting around, basically... Sean Spicer is sitting around on a beach in San Juanto, sipping a beer and going, thank God I escaped.
He crawled through 300 yards of foul-smelling, I can't even imagine, and came out clean on the other side.
Sean Spicer.
I mean, it's just... that's what it's become now.
You know, good things!
How about some good things?
Okay, so, um, now I want to, uh, I want to take a moment and talk about what happened in Washington, D.C.
yesterday.
So I had the privilege of speaking before the, uh, Government Oversight Committee, a subcommittee on the, uh, a subcommittee on, uh, education, as led by, um, Representative Jim Jordan, uh, from 4th District of Ohio.
A bunch of people stopped by.
Dave Brat stopped by from Virginia, and, um, and, uh, Representative DeSantis stopped by from Florida.
Eleanor Holmes Norton stopped by from District of Columbia.
And there were a couple of moments that I thought was worthwhile, so here was my opening statement.
We won't play the whole thing, we'll play a little bit of it in just an Easter egg.
That is God-King of the Daily Wire, Jeremy Boring, sitting behind me to my right, wearing the three-piece suit, looking glorious, of course.
Here is some of my opening statement.
It's an honor to testify before you here today.
The reason that I'm with you is that I speak on dozens of college campuses every year, so I have some first-hand experience with the anti-First Amendment activities that have been taking place on the college campuses.
I've encountered anti-free speech measures, administrative cowardice, even physical violence at campuses ranging from California State University at Los Angeles to University of Wisconsin at Madison, which is driving the legislation that Ms. Demmings was talking about, to Penn State University to UC Berkeley, and I am not alone.
In order to understand what's been going on at some of our college campuses, it's necessary to explore the ideology that provides the impetus for a lot of the protesters who violently obstruct events, pull fire alarms, assault professors and even other students, and the impetus for administrators who all too often humor these protesters.
Free speech is under assault because of a three-step argument made by the advocates and justifiers of violence.
The first step is they say that the validity or invalidity of an argument can be judged solely by the ethnic, sexual, racial, or cultural identity of the person making the argument.
The second step is that they claim those who say otherwise are engaging in what they call verbal violence.
And the final step is they conclude that physical violence is sometimes justified in order to stop such verbal violence.
Okay, so I went on from there, but I slapped out at intersectionality.
I said that intersectionality was the root of the modern Democratic Party, which set off some of the Congress people.
I thought the best exchange was there was a representative named Plaskett, who's actually from the Virgin Islands.
She's not technically a congresswoman.
She's a representative who sits with Congress.
And she came after me because she was upset that I had said that the arguments about white privilege on campus are a way to shut down debate and provide impetus for a lot of the protesters who simply think that nobody else should be able to speak.
Here is our exchange.
I had a conversation with Rachel Lazar, who's done some work, a Jewish American woman who's done some work on this area, as well as having extensive conversations with Dr. Greg Parks of Wake Forest University, who's also talked quite a bit about critical race theory.
And it's my understanding that white privilege is not telling individuals that they cannot But it is a term for societal privilege.
that individuals have as a benefit of their white skin.
And I don't think that, and I think universities would be remiss to then say that because you're white, you're not allowed to say anything that's critical of white people.
I didn't know that white privilege actually went into that sphere.
My understanding is it's just, and the issue is, is that white privilege makes people uncomfortable to talk about the societal privilege that they have.
Well, to me, what I say on campuses all the time is if you want to cite instances of racism that we can all find and fight together, that's something that I'm more than willing to stand next to you and fight because that's obviously stuff that we should fight together.
But when you just say that there is a white privilege out there in the ether and that by dint of birth your skin color generates for you an advantage, what you're really saying to people Is that your view is less valuable because you have not experienced what I've experienced.
And that is an identity argument, that's a character argument, that's not a rational political argument that can actually be taken on in any way.
It's more of a cudgel in a club than it is an attempt to open a discussion.
Okay, so you can see it got a little bit heated from time to time in the hearing.
It was really worthwhile.
Because I want to get to things I like, things I hate in the mailbag, we'll cut it short there, but it's worthwhile.
You should go and watch, I think somebody's put together a compilation of all the sections where I'm talking, if that's the part you want to watch.
A lot of the other people who were speaking had interesting things to say, but a really fascinating hearing, and it was kind of a kick.
I mean, thanks to all of the kids who came.
A bunch of college students who showed up, filled the audience.
It felt like a movie.
We were walking through the hallways and everybody was cheering.
It was pretty hilarious.
I wanted to have Jeremy behind me start a slow clap after I finish his stuff.
But we didn't actually do that.
I was also deeply tempted to just open my testimony by saying, it's me.
I'm the leaker.
Just to see what would happen, but I did not, in fact, do that.
Okay, time for some things I like, and then some things I hate in mailbag.
So, we'll do only one thing I like today, because I want to get to the mailbag.
The thing that I like, we've been doing all week, music that you've heard from movies.
This one is really overused, but it is, of course, super famous.
This is Rachmaninoff's Pair.
It's a...
On a theme of Paganini.
It's the... The Rhapsody.
Thank you.
On a theme of Paganini.
This is the orchestral version.
It's been used in a number of films.
It's been used in a number of films.
It's been used in a number of films.
It's been used in a number of films.
This is used in movies ranging from Dead Again, which is a little-known Kenneth Branagh film, to Somewhere in Time, which is the most famous use.
This is with Christopher Reeve, and what's her name?
I can never remember the name of the Jane Seymour.
It's Jane Seymour, which is a takeoff on movie time and again, which is a better book than it is a movie.
Apparently, it was used recently.
It was using Groundhog Day also.
They use it briefly in Groundhog Day because Bill Murray learned us to play the piano, and then he uses this to woo women.
But it is a great piece of music.
Rachmaninoff is great in short sections.
I'm not sure I like Rachmaninoff that much overall, but this is the best of his, the best of Rachmaninoff.
Okay, the other thing that I like, I lied, there will be one more thing I like.
Representative DeSantis, who's just a hilarious fellow from Florida, he's a big fan of the show, and his wife is a sweetheart, and he had me FaceTime with her a little bit beforehand, and he actually asked me, Ben Shapiro Thug Life is now part of the congressional record.
This is a thing that happened.
Ben Shapiro, who came up with the thug life Ben Shapiro?
I have no idea.
What me?
I have never listened to a complete rap song in my entire life.
It's funny and it's well done and has some of your greatest hits.
So I'm sure the Thug Life guy, he gets a pat on the back for all of that.
Whoever you are, well done.
I can't believe, in retrospect, I really missed the opportunity to say the Thug Life chose me and put that in the congressional record.
That would have been so epic and I'm really pissed at myself.
Okay, so... Okay, so time for a thing that I hate.
So the thing that I hate today is I hate when the left pretends that Trump is doing something that he's not.
So, President Trump's DOJ has told businesses that the Civil Rights Act does not cover sexual orientation.
That's because the Civil Rights Act does not cover sexual orientation.
Laws mean things, okay?
They mean the things that they said when they were written.
And the Civil Rights Act does not cover discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
So there's a headline that says, from Mediaite, Trump's DOJ tells businesses it's now totally cool to discriminate against LGBT.
No, that's not what Trump's DOJ says.
Trump's DOJ says there is no legislation on the books on the federal level that prevents discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, which is true.
Okay, the law is still the meaning of the law.
And this is how the left likes to twist things.
What they do is they like to take the most egregious misuses of freedom, and they say, well, you're for that.
Therefore, we should quash the freedom.
And that's really disgusting, right?
You see this with free speech all the time.
They say, well, free speech, on campus a lot.
They say, well, free speech, that means that you're in favor of people saying the N-word, aren't you?
It's like, no, I'm in favor of the right for people to say the N-word, but I think saying the N-word's a terrible thing.
I think that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is a bad thing, unless you're talking about in a religious context or in some context where it might be values-laden and relevant.
But this idea that the federal government has a role to play in jumping on this, number one, I think is anti-freedom, and number two, I don't think that the government at all should be involved in issues of this order, but it is certainly not covered by the Civil Rights Act.
You don't just get to rewrite law because you wish that the law said something that it doesn't say.
So that needs to stop.
Okay, so let's jump right into the mailbag.
We have a little bit of time for the mailbag, so let's do it.
So Andrew says, Dear Ben, you seem like a ladies' man.
How can I use my conservative beliefs to attract women?
Do I start off with light discussion on religious liberty or go in confident with my line-by-line analysis of the Declaration of Independence?
So far, neither method has been successful.
Andrew.
So, I am not, in fact, a ladies' man.
I know.
I'm highly attractive to women.
But, the first long-term girlfriend that I had, I married.
So I was not a ladies' man.
And I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that Not only am I an abrasive human being from time to time, but also I think that I was a couple years younger than everyone else wherever I went ever.
So there was that.
Listen, I am not into the ladies man lifestyle also.
So that really is the real answer.
I'm not into the sleeping around.
I'm not into the... I don't think men should do this.
I don't think that being a ladies man is a worthwhile goal.
I think you should try to find the person who's going to make you a better human being and you should Create a family with that human being and create children with that human being.
And that means that you should lead with values.
On my first date, I've said this before, my first date with my wife, we talked about free will versus determinism.
Legitimately, this was a three-hour first date on which we talked about free will and determinism.
And it's not like my wife was deeply into philosophy.
It was just that we were talking about religion and free will and all this stuff.
And that's because values matter.
Values matter when you're trying to determine with whom you should partner in life.
Okay, Robert says, Hey Ben, I know you aren't against birth control.
This is true.
As an Orthodox Jew, what is your opinion on sterilization like tubal litigation and vasectomies?
So, I am not in favor of irreversible surgeries that prevent you from having children.
I am, you know, I'm going to separate my own religious viewpoint here because, you know, I'm not going to speak for Orthodox Judaism.
You can ask a rabbi if you want the Orthodox Jewish perspective on these things.
I don't like the idea of sterilizing yourself unless you are attempting to, you know, Unless you're... If you really, really don't want to have kids, which I think has a moral component to it, if you really don't want to have kids.
I think you need to be a better person if you don't want to have children.
But if you really, really don't want to have kids, then I don't have a problem with you doing what you want to do.
It's a free country.
On a moral level, I think that taking...
Permanent steps to cure a transitory issue is not the smartest thing to do.
I think there is a secular case in the sense that you don't have to mention the Bible or God, but I do think that eventually you're going to have to fall into a Judeo-Christian history that's a little bit vague, and this is the problem with natural rights theory as a general theory.
It's all well and good to say that it is self-evident that there are natural rights, but it is clearly not self-evident that there are natural rights.
That springs from a particular Judeo-Christian ideology that goes back to the foundations of Christianity and Greek thought and Judaism.
And to pretend that you can just sit there in a room and come up with life, liberty, and property as the fundamental principles, I think that's a little bit misguided.
There's a reason that not every society on planet Earth, in fact most societies for the majority of history, Did not believe that life, liberty, and property were inherent rights.
It required a Judeo-Christian civilization developing toward an Enlightenment freedom to believe that.
Okay, Rachel says, Hey Ben, this week in my sociology class at Brooklyn College, we mentioned the idea of being woke, and there was a debate about whether awareness is enough to help invoke change.
First of all, I hate the phrase being woke because it suggests that everybody else is asleep, and also it's improper grammar, okay?
It's being awakened.
You're not woke.
Idiots.
Some argue that awareness of the situation was irrelevant if action was not taken.
What is your stance and how do you find the idea of being woke?
So listen, I think that you should be aware of as many things going around you as possible.
Being woke, again, is I think a moral judgment that people use.
If you don't agree with them, they say that you're not woke.
Maybe I'm aware of your argument and I think it blows.
I mean, that's a possibility.
But that's never taken into account when you say that I'm not woke.
Being woke is basically saying you're not part of the club, man.
You're not cool.
Like I give a crap.
Ian says, Humility, which is why I'm so damn humble.
But I actually think the single greatest quality a person can have, like the president, actually.
I believe in loyalty, but I don't believe in loyalty to humans.
I believe in loyalty to God and to values.
I think if you're loyal to those things, then it's hard to go wrong.
Jackson says, Hey Ben, do you believe people that come into this country legally and don't speak English should be given a choice to attend free classes to learn English?
I mean, I don't believe in friggy anything.
I believe that if you come here, it's your obligation to learn English, and that's on you.
That's an affirmative obligation on you.
Now, I think that Israel makes a smart move.
If you want people to assimilate, there's a case to be made that you should attempt to facilitate that, but I'm not sure that that is... I'm not sure that you should have to pay for it.
Okay, final question.
Hi, Ben.
Well, I go home and I separate.
This is the beauty of the Sabbath.
days.
How do you manage to stay happy and in a good mood?
I find that the news, especially involving Trump and the GOP, is supposed to be on my side, really turning me off.
What do you do to keep yourself sane?
Well, I go home and I separate.
This is the beauty of the Sabbath.
I was talking with God King of the Daily Wire, Jeremy Boring, just yesterday about this, that if I have to turn off my phone from Friday night to Saturday night and not turn on my computer from Friday night to Saturday night, and then on Sundays I spend the time with my children and I don't do politics, you need that break because it returns you to what is truly valuable.
It also reminds you what you're fighting for, which is a social fabric that is worth upholding and a freedom from government intrusion that is worth fighting.
And the freedom is worth upholding, obviously.
I think you need to take breaks.
You need to take breaks.
Being ensconced in politics, there's a tweet that came out today from this idiot Democrat, Chris Murphy, where he said, Last night proved once again there's no anxiety or sadness or fear you feel right now that cannot be cured by political action.
Only a fascist says crap like that.
Anxiety, fear, or sadness can only be cured, not by political action and changing the world, but by you Creating a safe place for yourself, surrounded by people that you love and who you want to protect, and that also gives you a rationale for fighting in the first place.
Okay, we'll be back here next week with more entertainment, more wildness, more joy.
Sunday, if you're out in California, make sure that you come out to Politicon.
I am debating Cenk Aiger.
I think that's how his name is pronounced.
I know his first name, Cenk, right?
Oh, the Young Turks dude.
It should be entertaining and informative, or at least I hope it is.
And so if you come out on Sunday, you can come and watch that.
I'd be glad to meet you and see you over at Politicon on Sunday.
And we will be rehashing all of that come Monday morning.
So lots to get to already by Monday.
We'll talk about all of it.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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