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Aug. 4, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
42:42
The Media Exposes Itself | Ep. 354
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We have tons to get to today.
We're going to be talking about President Trump's new proposal on legal immigration.
We're going to be talking about the media blowback.
CNN's Jim Acosta makes a total ass of himself.
I was on Joe Rogan's show yesterday.
Just tons to get to.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
So before I get to any of that, plus we have this amazing graphic that apparently I have not seen it yet, but I've been told by staff it's incredible.
The Mortal Kombat version of the Trump White House, like the 1990s video game.
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Indochino.com promo code Shapiro for any premium suit just 379 bucks plus free shipping and use that promo code Shapiro also not just so you get to this camp, but they know that we sent you okay, so I really want to see this Moral Combat at the White House, just because I've heard so much about this.
So, instead of us waiting until Things I Like, we're just going to do it now, because I don't know whether I like it or not.
So, apparently, I had asked if they would do a Moral Combat mashup of staffing decisions over at the White House.
So, it is Scaramucci, Anthony Scaramucci, versus Reince Priebus, followed by General John Kelly, the new Chief of Staff, versus Anthony Scaramucci.
Let's see what you guys came up with.
Fight!
Scamogy Moon.
Flawless victory.
Fight.
Finish him.
Oh, no.
Flawless victory.
That's pretty spectacular, guys.
Oh, well done by the graphics team over at the Daily Wire for that.
So on that uplifting note, let's jump into something that is good that President Trump did.
So, you know what?
Do we have good Trump, bad Trump on hand?
Because there's a lot of good Trump, and when there's a lot of good Trump, I like to play good Trump, bad Trump.
Do we have it available?
Okay, we'll grab that in just a second, but suffice it to say...
So the production team is both on top of it and not on top of it today, but there is a lot of good Trump today.
So the good Trump begins with President Trump introducing what he's calling the RAISE Act.
First of all, I'm very irritated with the general notion that every bill has to be some sort of acronym.
So you come up with these insanely long names for a bill just so that it is called The RAISE Act, as opposed to just being, like, the Immigration Act.
So it's the RAISE Act.
But in any case, what the RAISE Act does is actually really good.
Now I want to talk about the content.
Here was Trump introducing it yesterday.
He's standing next to Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Louisiana.
The RAISE Act is designed at limiting legal immigration, not illegal immigration.
That's what the non-existent wall will be built for, we hope.
That is why you have seen an increase in actual enforcement.
But, crackdowns on legal immigration.
And I will explain my view on when legal immigration should be increased, when it should be decreased in just a second, but here's Trump introducing this bill yesterday.
The RAISE Act.
R-A-I-S-E.
The RAISE Act will reduce poverty, increase wages, and save taxpayers billions and billions of dollars.
It will do this by changing the way the United States issues green cards to nationals from other countries.
The RAISE Act ends chain migration and replaces our low-skilled system with a new points-based system for receiving a green card.
This competitive application process will favor applicants who can speak English, financially support themselves and their families, and demonstrate skills that will contribute to our economy.
The RAISE Act prevents new migrants and new immigrants from collecting welfare and protects U.S.
workers from being displaced.
Crucially, the Green Card Reforms and the RAISE Act will give American workers a pay raise by reducing unskilled immigration.
This legislation will not only restore our competitive edge in the 21st century, but it will restore the sacred bonds of trust between America and its citizens.
Okay, so overall, the proposals that he's proposing here are just...
They're really good.
They're really good.
Okay, so what the RAISE Act does, and a lot of it is really good, is it limits legal immigration, and it does it based on a points-based system.
So right now we have a visa lottery, which is just idiotic.
Why should it be a lottery to get into the country?
We are the greatest country on the face of the planet in human history.
We should be able to choose who comes in and who does not.
We should only bring in people who are beneficial to the country at large.
People who can help the economy, people who are going to assimilate, People who are going to integrate, people who are going to better the stock of the United States.
I don't mean racial stock, but I mean the intellectual and moral and social stock of the United States.
You know, all of these things, this is not a very difficult call, right?
I mean, if you were to start a community, you'd want to be pretty selective about who is allowed to enter the community.
If you go to a church or a synagogue, you want to be selective about who's allowed in your community because you don't want it being overrun with people who don't agree.
This is why we have social clubs.
The United States is a country that is founded on an idea.
If you bring in hundreds of millions of people who don't believe that idea, you've got a problem.
And this has been the problem with the way that America has approached immigration since the 1960s.
So until the 1960s, the vast bulk of immigrants coming to the United States were coming from Western Europe.
Uh, and some from Eastern Europe.
And the reason that that was better than what came afterward is because one of the criteria to get in is that number one, you weren't going to take welfare and number two, you spoke English or you were willing to integrate, you were willing to assimilate quickly into an English speaking language.
And in 1967 they decided no longer would they privilege people who had educations, who had degrees, who had economic backgrounds, who spoke English, who had a history in Western civilization.
Now we're just going to take in basically anyone who applied first come first serve.
What that did is it changed the kinds of people who are coming over into the United States.
Not because they're bad people, but because when you change the countries from which you draw, you change the cultures from which you draw.
When you change the system, of government in the United States toward a welfare-based system, you're going to change the kinds of people who apply for entry.
I mean, if you have a store that's giving away free products, you're going to get a different clientele than if you have Burberry's where everything costs a bajillion dollars.
This is why you have a different crowd that goes to Disneyland than goes to Magic Mountain.
In Disneyland, the prices are much higher.
Very, very different crowd goes to Disneyland than goes to Magic Mountain.
So, none of this is really, or should be controversial.
Trump points out that more than 50% of all immigrant households receive welfare benefits compared to only 30% of native households in the United States who receive welfare benefits, which is obviously true.
He's also pointed out crime that is connected with immigration, both legal and illegal.
People point out that there is not a tremendous crime wave coming from immigrants, but the question is not whether there's a wave like above and beyond what happens in America.
The question is whether the people who are being brought in are more likely to behave like people at the lower end of the socioeconomic status in the United States in terms of crime, or whether they're more likely to behave like the people at the higher end of the socioeconomic status in the United States with regard to crime.
My father-in-law came to the United States as an engineer from Israel, right?
He already spoke English.
He came here.
Was he likely to commit a crime or was he more likely to commit a crime if he was a person who was coming in from El Salvador with no marketable skills and was coming in in poverty and trying to provide for his family?
Which one is more likely to integrate?
Which one is more likely to provide benefit to the United States economy?
So all of this is good stuff.
The other stuff that this does, it rewards education, English language ability, high-paying job offers, past achievements, and entrepreneurial initiative.
Great!
It will reduce immigration among low-skilled and unskilled labor.
The idea here is twofold.
One of these ideas is good and one of these ideas is bad.
So the good idea about decreasing immigration among low-skilled and unskilled labor is that you're bringing in a group of people who are more likely to end up on welfare.
So if you have a lot of people who are likely to end up on welfare, then it is not worthwhile to have them come into the United States.
The part of this that is stupid is the suggestion that you're undercutting the labor market by bringing in immigrants.
That wages go down and jobs are lost.
Okay, so wages probably will go down when you have more supply of labor.
Obviously the wages go down, right?
I mean, demand is now exceeded by supply, the wages go down.
But here's the problem.
There are two arguments, and you can't make them both simultaneously, but Trump does.
Argument number one, China and Mexico are taking all the jobs.
Argument number two, we have to increase the wages.
You can't really say both those things, right?
If you believe that American companies are offshoring and outsourcing because wages in the United States are too high, you can't deliberately drive up the wages in the United States and then be surprised when companies outsource.
The argument for limiting immigration in order to drive up wages by limiting the labor supply is exactly the same as the argument for minimum wage, which I assume Trump opposes.
Right, the fact is, minimum wage artificially drives up the price you have to pay for labor.
This forces businesses to raise their prices.
This forces them to be non-competitive, and that forces them to outsource.
It forces them to go to other countries for labor, or to fire people.
Okay, the same thing is true if you artificially drive up the price of labor by keeping prospective workers from coming into the United States.
You're not going to boost the economy by preventing workers from coming into the United States.
There are only two reasons to limit immigration into the United States.
I'm very libertarian when it comes to this.
There are only two reasons, okay?
One is safety, and the other is culture.
And that's it.
Safety, culture, welfare.
Really, those three.
So if they're on welfare, no.
If they are not going to assimilate to the culture of the United States, no.
And if they are a threat to safety, no.
Otherwise, I have no problem with anybody coming in who wants to work hard, not be on welfare, and compete for jobs.
And that's my really only problem with the way that Trump is expressing this.
It's sort of pandering to an economic falsehood.
The content of the bill itself is just fine.
The content of the bill I'm totally fine with.
And I want to explain a little more about what's in the bill, and then I want to show you an exchange that really was making the rounds yesterday, as well it should, because it demonstrates why people like me, people like you, probably, dislike the media so much.
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Okay, so...
The bill itself would limit refugee status to 50,000 people a year.
It would kill that diversity visa lottery program, which, as I said, is stupid.
You shouldn't have a lottery for diversity.
That's dumb.
It would prioritize immediate family members of people who immigrate.
So, my father-in-law comes in, now he can bring his wife and children, but it doesn't allow him to bring in his entire extended family from Morocco, right?
That's just not a thing.
This is what Trump was talking about when he talks about chain migration.
This idea that one person sets roots and then now you get a thousand people who are the extended relatives coming in because that one person settled down.
We should be able to pick and choose who we bring into the country.
It seems fair that we would bring in immediate family members so people who are of benefit to the country can have their immediate family around them, but I'm not sure why Cousin Bobbo should be allowed into the country just because I was allowed into the country and I'm of benefit to the United States.
So all of this is really good stuff.
I mean like like Top-notch stuff.
The biggest problem is that this is not going to pass, right?
So, Dianne Feinstein, Democrat from California, she was saying this is not going to pass.
In all likelihood, it's going to be very difficult to get people like John McCain on board.
And here's Dianne Feinstein, you know, suggesting as much.
So, it's a program that I hope, candidly, won't see the light of day.
I don't know whether it will or not, but I think in the Judiciary Committee, it's not going to be very welcomed.
The White House and Stephen Miller and the President, they kept referring to what they called a fact that this new policy, this new immigration policy, would help African-Americans and Hispanic workers who are here in the United States.
Do you accept that?
Well, I can't.
I don't see how, candidly.
I don't see how, when you cut back on all of these categories, which make America, help America to be what the Statue of Liberty says.
And we do it within reason.
And there have been cutbacks.
And there are long lines.
And it is difficult to come to this conclusion.
Here's why Trump is really doing it.
Not because he thinks that this is going to pass, but because it's a good political move.
Exactly the stuff he's talking about with immigration that I dislike is the stuff that a lot of voters like.
They want to be told that the reason they're losing their jobs is because of these people coming across the border legally on low-wage visas who are taking their jobs.
And the truth is that there is some of that going on.
Like, to pretend that in the short term there is not a job substitution that happens when low-wage immigrants come into the United States, Would be foolish.
Of course there's a substitution that happens.
What I'm saying is in the medium to long term, you end up with a net loss of jobs as businesses close their doors.
In the same way that a union will break a company and the company will end up moving out of state or out of country, limiting the labor supply inevitably means a higher cost to the company.
So in the mid to long term, it's bad economics.
But for those people who are living in Ohio or Michigan and they're afraid that bringing in low-wage labor is going to undercut them, of course that's what they're pandering to.
It's a political move for Trump to talk about that stuff.
I'm in favor of the bill because we ought to be picking and choosing the people who come into the country and making sure that they actually are not on welfare, are not safety threats, and are going to assimilate to the U.S.
culture.
Now, the media don't know the first thing about immigration.
The history of immigration in the United States is filled with ebbs and flows.
There were times when there were tons of immigrants coming to the United States.
In 1907, when my great-great-grandfather got to the United States, Harry Shapiro, when he came in 1907, there were over a million immigrants that came into the United States that year, mostly from Western and Eastern Europe.
That's not rare in U.S.
history.
But then there was a crackdown in the 1920s and immigration plummeted.
So we've had times when there was lots of immigration, times when there was not as much immigration.
And this sort of ebb and flow in terms of immigration is perfectly natural.
There's nothing quote-unquote nativist about it, depending on the motives.
You know, sometimes there is nativist.
Sometimes they're trying to ban the Chinese or Ban the Jews, or ban the Irish, or ban the Germans.
But in this particular case, that's not what's going on here.
This is a case that you have to have people who are willing to assimilate, and you have to have people who are not safety threats, and people who are not going to be on welfare.
All of which seems perfectly decent to me.
Now, what happens is the media, because they are so eager to call President Trump a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, and all the rest, they immediately decide, without any evidence, that this bill is based on racism.
This is their routine.
So Stephen Miller, a guy I know, and who is definitely an expert on immigration, I mean, as I've said before, I remember in, it must have been 2013, there was an event, or it would have been 2014 actually, 2014-15, there was an event at which I did, it was like a late night dinner slash drinking session, With Stephen Miller, Ann Coulter, Jeff Sessions, and me.
And Stephen knows what he's talking about.
When it comes to immigration, this is his specialty.
This is where he's best.
Now, his manner is very aggressive, and that's abrasive to some people, but the person who gets hammered here is not Stephen Miller.
It's Jim Acosta.
Jim Acosta is the reporter from CNN.
He doesn't know anything about immigration.
Like, nothing about immigration.
You're gonna see that on full display in this particular clip.
But what you're proposing, or what the President is proposing here, does not sound like it's in keeping with American tradition when it comes to immigration.
The Statue of Liberty says, give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, your aim to breathe free.
It doesn't say anything about speaking English or being able to be a computer programmer.
Aren't you trying to change what it means to be an immigrant coming into this country?
If you're telling them you have to speak English?
Can't people learn how to speak English when they get here?
Okay, so there's nothing wrong with telling people they need to learn how to speak English.
I love this idea from the left, and from the media, that what it says in Emma Lazarus's poem on the Statue of Liberty is somehow U.S.
law.
When it says, give us your tired, your weary, your huddled masses yearning to be free.
Well, the key phrase in that, actually, which everyone seems to be ignoring, is yearning to be free.
Okay, it doesn't say yearning for free stuff.
It means yearning to be free.
So, the English language requirement is only a requirement now because we've had two generations of immigrants who have not bothered to learn English in many cases.
Their kids learn English, but they themselves have not bothered.
Like, when my great-great-grandfather came to the United States, He spoke Yiddish.
His kids did not speak Yiddish.
It was actually forbidden in the household for them to speak Yiddish because they wanted their kids to learn English and integrate into American society.
That's not the way that it works anymore.
Now here in California, we have English as second language, right?
You have full classes taught in Spanish in public schools.
You know, that is not the way that we were told immigration was supposed to work.
So, when you have Jim Acosta doing the, you know, huddle masses yearning to be free, the immediate and obvious point is, okay Jim, there have to be some restrictions on immigration.
What would you propose those be?
Should we just welcome seven billion people into the United States?
Should everyone come in?
Because clearly you think that's what Emma Lazarus' poem means.
If you want to come here, you should be able to come here.
Well, that would immediately destroy the United States as it stands, and that's where Stephen Miller goes with this.
Well, first of all, right now it's a requirement that to be naturalized you have to speak English.
So the notion that speaking English wouldn't be a part of immigration systems would be actually very ahistorical.
Secondly, I don't want to get off into a whole thing about history here, but the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of liberty enlightening the world.
It's a symbol of American liberty lighting the world.
The poem that you're referring to that was added later is not actually part of the original Statue of Liberty, but more fundamentally You're saying that that does not represent what the country has always thought of as immigration coming into this country?
That sounds like some National Park revisionism.
I'm sorry.
No, here, Jim, let me ask you a question.
That sounds like some National Park revisionism.
No, what I'm asking you is, Jim, let me ask you a question.
Jim, do you believe, Jim, you're not always going to speak English.
Jim, do you believe... Jim, pause it for a second.
He's being such a contentious douchebag, Jim Acosta, right here.
I mean, this is, like, even if you think that Jim Acosta is correct on this, Jim Acosta just badgering Steven Moe, not even letting him get an answer, and this is a press conference, right?
You ask a question, you get an answer.
Maybe you get a follow-up.
But the idea that you just get to grandstand, this is one of the reasons why the White House, they're getting a lot of flack for this, they've been saying we don't want on-camera press conferences.
Why?
Because it's a complete waste of time.
Because people like Jim Acosta are trying to edge in and steal all the airtime so maybe Jim Acosta can one day get a show on CNN.
I mean, that's really what this is.
You know, right after this happened, he started tweeting out lines from Emma Lazarus's poem.
Okay, this is the same guy who said, we are not fake news, Mr. President.
Is it news to be tweeting out lines from from Emma Lazarus's poem?
It hasn't been news for nigh on a hundred years, more than a hundred years that hasn't been news.
It's been a while since that was actually plastered on the Statue of Liberty.
You know, this is advocacy.
It's issue advocacy, which is fine.
I advocate for issues all the time.
But for Jim Acosta and CNN to pretend this is objective journalism is just a joke.
It continues along these lines.
Jim, Jim, Jim, I appreciate your speech.
Jim, I appreciate your speech, so let's talk about this.
Jim, let's talk about this.
In 1970, when we let in 300,000 people a year, was that violating or not violating the Statue of Liberty law of the land?
In the 1990s, when it was half a million a year, was it violating or not violating the Statue of Liberty law of the land?
Tell me what years meet Jim Acosta's definition of the Statue of Liberty law of the land.
Tell me what years, tell me what years, tell me what years meet Jim Acosta's definition of the Statue of Liberty poem, Law of the Land.
So you're saying a million a year is the Statue of Liberty number.
900,000 violates it, 800,000 violates it.
You're sort of bringing a press one for English philosophy here to immigration and that's never been what the United States has been about.
But your statement's also shockingly ahistorical in another respect too.
If you look at the history of immigration, it's actually ebbed and flowed.
We've had periods of very large waves, followed by periods of less immigration and more immigration.
We're in a period of immigration right now that wants to build a wall.
Surely, Jim, you don't actually think that a wall affects green card policy.
You couldn't possibly believe that, do you?
Actually, the notion that you actually think immigration is a historic wall, the foreign-born population of the United States today... Jim!
Jim!
Do you really... I want to be serious, Jim.
Do you really, at CNN, not know the difference between green card policy and illegal immigration?
I mean, you really don't know that?
He came to this country in 1962, right before the Cuban Missile Crisis, and obtained a green card.
Yes, people who immigrate to this country can eventually...
So Jim, as a factual question, Jim, as a factual question... ...do obtain a green card at some point.
They do it through a lot of hard work.
And yes, they may learn English as a second language later on in life.
But this whole notion of, well, they have to learn English before they get to the United States.
Are we just going to bring in people from Great Britain and Australia?
Jim, actually, I have to honestly say, I am shocked...
at your statement that you think that only people from Great Britain and Australia would know English.
It's actually, it reveals your cosmopolitan bias to a shocking degree that in your mind, no, this is an amazing, this is an amazing moment.
This is an amazing moment that you think only people from Great Britain or Australia would speak English.
It's so insulting to millions of hardworking immigrants who do speak English from all over the world.
Jim, have you honestly never met an immigrant from another country who speaks English?
Okay, and Miller is totally right on this.
Okay, what he is saying here is exactly right.
There are more English-speaking people in China than in all of the UK and the United States put together.
Okay, there are more English-speaking people in India than there are in the United Kingdom and Australia.
Why?
Because there are lots of people in India, right?
There are lots of people in China.
There are a billion people in China, and probably a third of them speak English, right?
Forty percent of them probably speak some form of English.
If you go to Israel, everybody speaks English, right?
Hebrew is the first language.
Everybody speaks English in Israel.
You go to Italy, everybody speaks English.
You go to France, everybody speaks English.
The idea that only the UK and Australia, they speak English, I mean, they teach English everywhere because English is the universal language of commerce right now.
And it has been for the last 400 years.
This idea that, you know, this is somehow racism and discriminatory.
Again, this doesn't mean that you can't get in if you don't speak English.
It means you get extra points because it's easier to integrate you into society where you speak the common tongue.
Okay, but Jim Acosta, it's just demonstrative of what the media is.
Stephen Miller did a very good job with this.
He was getting raked over the coals by a lot of the media.
Oh, he's too abrasive.
He's too abrasive.
What do you expect him to do?
Jim Acosta's being a jerk.
He's being a jerk.
Now, I want to get to more of this, and I want to get to how the media painted this afterward.
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So as you see, Stephen Miller absolutely hammers CNN's Jim Acosta And what is Acosta's response to this?
I mean, this is full-on delusional crap, right?
Because Jim Acosta then goes on CNN, and he says, It was odd to see the White House wolf in the form of Stephen Miller, one of the top policy advisors, sort of sound like a Statue of Liberty originalist.
As if there's some difference between what the Statue of Liberty looked like when it was first brought over here to the United States and what it looks like now with a poem attached to it.
I just thought that was an odd moment.
It was just a poor argument.
And whenever they're bashing the media wolf, My sense always is, is that they're just losing the argument, and I think you saw that today.
Which is just a joke.
I mean, there's no way that you watch that exchange, and what you come up with is that Jim Acosta wins this exchange.
He looks ignorant.
He looks stupid.
He looks foolish.
He actually said, though, live on CNN, that this was- it was obvious that he couldn't take that kind of heat, that Stephen Miller couldn't take that kind of heat.
He said, I think what you saw unfold in the briefing room is that Miller just couldn't take that kind of heat and exploded right before our eyes.
Um... No?
No, that's no one who watched that thought that that's where that was coming from.
No.
And, you know, Acosta then said that Stephen Miller, when he says you have a cosmopolitan biases, it's not often you're accused of a cosmopolitan bias from someone who went to Duke University wearing cufflinks in the White House briefing room.
Not a completely unfair critique of Stephen Miller, except for the fact that It is a leftist, a left-wing coastal bias.
Like, to pretend that Stephen Miller doesn't represent the thoughts and feelings of people in the middle of the country more than Jim Acosta is just silly.
But that's not really what this was about.
It was about virtue signaling.
And Jim Acosta says that this was a dog whistle.
It was just a giant dog whistle.
He says that, quote, when you hear about, the president makes some of the comments he makes about immigrants, and when you see Stephen Miller of Policy talking about this, it's a wink, right?
Here's what he had to say.
Talking about deportation forces, and when you see Stephen Miller, a policy advisor to the president, talking about an English language preference for people coming into this country, it is a wink, it is a dog whistle to certain parts of this country that they are going to be looking at the racial and ethnic flow of immigrants coming into this country.
What absolute horsepucky.
Again, it's not about the ethnic and racial flow, it's about the cultural flow, it's about the income flow, it's about the education flow.
But this is what the left never understood.
When they made the immigration case, for the last 20 years, they kept saying things like, well, you let anybody in and it's not a problem at all.
You have people in the middle of the country going, wait a second.
You have people like Victor Davis Hanson, who lives up in Northern California, Central California, saying, my entire town has been transformed by people who don't speak English, who don't abide by basic Western standards of civilization.
You know, there are a lot of people who suffer, and there is a cosmopolitan bias to this.
I know, I live in L.A.
I've lived my entire life in L.A.
In L.A., here's the truth about how people like Jim Acosta and members of the media think about this kind of stuff.
The way they think about this kind of stuff is they live in very nice houses, they went to top universities, and the only time they see immigrants, legal or illegal, Is usually when they are working with them at the top notches of business, right?
They're working with them as like an IT person or the person comes in and now they're a nurse, right?
Or illegally, they're the people who mow their lawn, right?
The nanny who takes care of their kids.
Those are the only people they see.
They don't ever see the people who aren't working because the people who aren't working are down at the Home Depot waiting for somebody to pick them up, or alternatively, they're in East L.A.
working with some sort of heroin cartel, right?
I mean, like, the fact is that most of the people who are coming in are not participating in drug-related activity, of course, but...
To pretend that that doesn't exist is just silly, it's just foolish.
To pretend the criminal element doesn't exist is foolish.
To pretend poverty doesn't exist is foolish.
Drive over to East LA, look around and tell me that the poverty that is endemic in that community has nothing to do with the immigrants who are being brought in, that it's just the American system that causes that poverty.
No, if you come in and you bring a bunch of people who have no skill set, then this is what you are going to get.
Okay, that is not their fault.
And it's not your fault.
That's just the way it is.
Okay, people with no skill set are not the top choices for the United States to bring in and that has nothing to do with race.
There are a lot of people, there are countries in the world where if you bring white people in from those, I mean, like people don't like to talk about the fact that, you know, there are a lot of Russian immigrants to this country.
Well, presumably this new bill would harm Russian immigrants to this country if they can't speak English properly and have no skill set.
Those people are white.
So it's not about ethnicity.
It's not about place of birth.
It's about culture.
It's about skill set.
Again, the left refuses to acknowledge any of this and so instead they castigate everyone who agrees with Trump that maybe we ought to be worried about the shifting culture of the country based on bringing in legal immigrants who then stay illegally, by the way.
Illegal and illegal immigration are connected.
There are a bunch of people who have overstayed their visas, for example.
That's like half illegal immigration is people who came into the country legally and then overstayed their visas.
But Acosta says, no, this isn't about actually attempting to protect culture and safety and economic growth.
No, what this is really about is the unhealthy fixation on Mexicans.
The whole notion that people who want to come to the United States, immigrate to the United States should know English before they arrive.
Why is that so central to this new strategy that the president is putting forward?
Well, Wolf, I think at times this White House has an unhealthy fixation on what I call the three Ms, the Mexicans, the Muslims and the media. - Yeah.
Their policies tend to be crafted around bashing one of those three groups, and we just see it time and again.
And today, on immigration, what the White House is essentially saying, in a wink and a dog whistle to some of these battleground states that they won, is that Immigrants coming in from Latin America are taking your jobs.
Well, if immigration is not the reason why the factory closed in Pittsburgh or the coal mine was shut down in West Virginia, the people who are struggling in those states, they need policies that will help get them out of this mess that they've been in for generations.
You have to bring in everybody from Latin America who has a low skill set and creates wage competition, and then you have to pay welfare to all the people who are thrown out of work.
Like, that's his idea because Jim Acosta is on the left.
This is all grandstanding.
When he says Muslims, Mexicans, the media?
Listen, I'm not in favor of people attacking Mexicans.
During the election cycle, when President Trump went after Judge Curiel and suggested that because his parents were Mexican he couldn't be fair in his trial, I said that's disgusting.
When it came to his Muslim ban, I said I don't think that a full Muslim ban is good policy.
But when it comes to the media, there's a reason he's bashing the media, and it's because of the guy you see on your television screen right now.
It's because of Jim Acosta.
That's why he's bashing the media.
It's not just Acosta, by the way.
Glenn Thrush, over at the Washington Post, he and Miller go at it, and here's what that looked like in the briefing room yesterday.
And no recent study said that as much as $300 billion a year may be lost as a result of our current immigration system in terms of folks drawing more public benefits than they're paying in.
But let's also use common sense here, folks.
At the end of the day, why do special interests want to bring in more low-skilled workers?
And why, historically, Well, I think it's very clear, Glenn, that you're not asking for common sense, but if I could just answer, if I could just answer your question.
I named, I named, I named the studies, Glenn.
Glenn, Glenn, Glenn.
I named the studies.
I named the studies.
Glenn, maybe we'll make a carve-out in the bill that says the New York Times can hire all the low-skilled, less-paid workers they want from other countries and see how you feel then about low-wage substitution.
This is a reality that's happening in our country.
Maybe it's time we had compassion, Glenn, for American workers.
President Trump has met with American workers who've been replaced by foreign workers.
And ask them how this is affecting their lives.
Again, this is a strong political case.
Again, I don't think it's a strong factual case that in the long run this is going to help the economy in any real way.
But the political case that he's making against Thrush is an obvious one, and it's not nativism as much as it is, you know, the idea that if you don't want people coming in who are going to threaten the wage base, Then you can't have people coming in who are low-skilled.
Okay, it's an argument with which I disagree economically, but it's at least a fair argument to suggest that it's based on racism is just nonsense.
Especially because, as Miller says, a lot of the low-wage skill in the United States are people who are black or Hispanic.
But that didn't stop Thrush from ripping Miller and then suggesting that this was, you know, it was just terrible.
Just terrible.
Miller got mad.
I think Stephen Miller got airtime.
And I think he enjoyed it immensely.
He was not getting off that stage.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders was standing around long enough to have been charged rent standing next to him.
I thought she was going to get out of hook and like hook him after a while.
I mean, he was like that guy who just kept going and going.
And it wasn't going well, but he kept going anyway.
It was Scaramucci-esque.
Right!
It was in the mold of Scaramucci.
You're right.
This is your objective media, gang.
This is your objective media going at it.
This is not even people like Ana Navarro, a former Republican strategist, okay?
This is people like Glenn Thrush, objective media.
Jim Acosta, objective media.
Does this look objective to you?
Another element of the objective media today, the Washington Post revealed leaked transcripts from January 27th phone calls made by then-brand-new President Donald Trump to his counterparts in Mexico and Australia.
It's dangerous stuff, okay?
They gotta crack down on these White House leaks.
The content of the calls is not edifying, you know, for people who either support Trump or oppose Trump.
I mean, it doesn't show a guy who has tremendous command of the issues, but it is a serious security issue, and you do have to wonder whether it is worthwhile for the Washington Post to be printing full-scale transcripts of national security-related calls to Australia and to Mexico.
I mean, this is just...
The media is out to get Trump, there's no question about it.
Now, I've been very critical of Trump.
I've said that I think Trump needs to do a better job.
But when you watch things like what happened in the White House briefing room yesterday, it is impossible not to come to the conclusion that the media have an agenda, and they are going to force that agenda through, and that agenda has nothing to do with policy and everything to do with character assaults, suggesting that everyone who agrees with some sort of crackdown on immigration or a change in the way we do immigration to bring in people who are more likely to assimilate and add to the economy rather than subtracting, that those people who want to crack down on that stuff Those people are the bad guys.
They're evil, they're nasty, they're racist.
It should be unacceptable for the media to do that, but that's their entire game at this point, and that's why Trump continues to hold his base.
Okay, so time for some things I like, some things I hate, and then we'll get to the big idea.
So, things I like...
We've been paying late homage to Anthony Scaramucci and doing characters who are like Anthony Scaramucci in movies, and he is a stock character from the films.
And so this one, today's, comes from Boiler Room.
Boiler Room is a really underrated film with Giovanni Ribisi and Ben Affleck.
Ben Affleck sort of plays the Alec Baldwin, Glenn, Gary, Glenn Ross part, but this is all about basically a scam firm, kind of a Wolf of Wall Street firm, That's basically a pyramid scheme.
They just call people up, they sell them leads on stocks, and then when the stocks collapse, then they're not around to pick up on it.
They get a commission based on the amount they sell.
It has nothing to do with whether the stock goes up or down, and they're paid by companies to basically sell all the stock, these penny stocks that are not heavily regulated, and then if they collapse, no big deal.
Here's the scene where Ben Affleck makes the pitch to all of the prospective Series 7 stockbrokers as to why they should work for his firm.
Sorry, man.
This is my seat.
I'm so sorry.
It's okay.
Don't worry about it.
Get the f*** out of here.
What?
Don't talk to me.
Don't look at me.
Just pick your a** up out of that Italian leather chair and get the f*** out of this room.
Right now.
C'mon, let's go, schleprock!
Out!
That's it.
We expect everyone here to treat their co-workers with a certain level of respect.
Okay, before we get started, I have one question.
Has anyone here passed the Series 7 exam?
I have a Series 7 license.
Good for you.
You can get out too.
What?
Why?
We don't hire brokers here.
We train new ones.
That's it, Skippy.
Pack your shit.
Let's go.
Okay.
Here's the deal.
I'm not here to waste your time, okay?
And I certainly hope you're not here to waste mine.
So I'm gonna keep this short.
Become an employee of this firm, you will make your first million within three years.
Okay?
I'm gonna repeat that.
You will make a million dollars within three years of your first day of employment at J.T.
Marlin.
There is no question as to whether or not you'll become a millionaire working here.
The only question is how many times over.
Okay, so, that is the Scaramucci routine.
He eventually goes on in this little speech to talk about how he has the nicest car and beautiful women and all this kind of stuff.
This sort of attitude, people who find this sort of thing attractive, found that attractive.
The movie's really good, actually, and has some pretty good performances by a bunch of actors who have had really a lot of bit roles.
Affleck is pretty good in this role.
Whenever Affleck plays a jerk, he's good.
Whenever Affleck plays somebody who's supposed to be nice, he's terrible.
So, the movie is boiler room and worth watching.
Other things I like...
I talked a lot about Venezuela and Hugo Chavez yesterday.
The best book on this that I know of is a book by Rory Carroll called Comandante, which is a biography of Hugo Chavez, and it is quite good.
It really explains where he came from, why he was who he was, and why demagoguery works.
So, pick it up.
Worth reading.
Okay, time for a thing I hate.
So let's do a thing I hate.
Okay, so the thing I hate today is Al Gore, who has made literally a billion dollars off of global warming, He was on national TV on CNN, and he's talking to a priest, and he explains that global warming is a moral and spiritual issue.
The habits of over-consumption and looking for happiness in just more things, that definitely is a part of the issue, for sure.
Now, I was taught in my church that the purpose of life is to glorify God, and if we are heaping contempt on God's creation, then we're not living up to the duty that God is calling us to.
And so this, the way we live our lives is definitely connected to this.
It is, it's not a political issue.
He's on morganchery, okay?
He's selling spiritual solace in global warming.
Okay, this idea that this can teach you not to be so materialistic.
Like, if you were just a little bit less materialistic, then maybe you'd worry more about global warming.
What utter stupidity.
Maybe you're not a human being.
Maybe the reason I don't worry so much about global warming is because, at best, the IPCC says that we're going to have a seven degree increase Fahrenheit.
This is like, this is their outside estimate.
Seven degree Fahrenheit increase over the next hundred years, average across the planet.
They also say that there's really no way to stop a pretty significant temperature increase from happening anyway, even according to their best estimates.
And I have more faith in the human capacity to adjust to climate change than I do to the idea that we're all going to suddenly become Communistic, poverty-ridden saints who share all property in common.
I mean, Al Gore has made $200 million off this scam.
$200 million.
So before he starts talking to us about what's really good in life is having no money, dude, give up your private jet and then we can start talking about it.
Okay, so we don't have time, unfortunately, to do the big idea this week because we ran out of time.
That is my fault.
I arrived late to the studio.
But we will do it next week because I think that the Jerusalem versus Athens issue is one that has a lot of ramifications for our politics, but you'll have to wait Until next week's big idea in order for us to do that.
Maybe we'll do it early next week instead.
But we will see you tomorrow.
We have the mailbag and we'll bring you all the latest updates.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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