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Aug. 11, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
52:55
Democrats vs. Trump vs. North Korea | Ep. 360
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President Obama is coming back to the political scene.
The fire and the fury and the furiosa.
All of it will be discussed.
Plus, we talk about the mailbag.
We're going to do the mailbag today.
You can be part of it.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
Some Trump staffing issues, some Trump-Russia stuff, plus we're going to do a fulsome mailbag today.
But before we get to any of that, I first want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Birch Gold.
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Okay, so the hubbub over North Korea continues to unfold and evolve.
So, President Trump, I do love the fact that for President Trump, not only does he never back down, he always doubles down.
Like, everything is a double down for President Trump.
If you ever played poker with him, you would always want to go all in.
And this is sort of the problem.
The reason being that half the time he's bluffing, and half the time he's not.
And you really don't know when he's bluffing and when he's not, but you have a pretty good indication that he's bluffing sometimes because He can never get out of a hand.
He never just puts it down and says, okay, walk away from this hand.
Everything has to be doubled down on.
So, you remember a couple of days ago, Trump said about North Korea that if North Korea were to continue to threaten, then he would unleash the fire and the fury and frankly, the power.
You remember all of this.
The fire, fury, furiosa, frankly, power, Mad Max, Fury Road, unbelievable.
Draconis.
And so everyone went nuts.
The left just thought this was insane.
He's gonna burn everyone alive.
And I was saying calm down everyone.
That's not going to happen.
There are negotiations happening behind the scenes.
Trump tweets stuff because that's what Trump does.
And even the North Koreans know better than to fire a nuclear missile just because Trump is mouthing off.
They know enough to know that should they actually try something, we would finish them.
They would be done.
So this morning, Trump tweeted out, Okay, everybody said, oh, it's an escalation, a dramatic escalation.
The rhetoric is escalating.
Act on wisely.
Hopefully Kim Jong-un will find another path.
Okay, everybody say, oh, it's an escalation, a dramatic escalation.
The rhetoric is escalating.
The activity is not.
So we are doing the same flyovers of North Korea that we've always been doing.
We've been doing the same joint naval exercises with the Japanese and with the South Koreans, rather with the South Koreans that we've always been doing.
Nothing has really changed along those scores.
So the idea that Trump is dramatically escalating the situation, it's just not true.
His rhetoric is constantly escalating because Trump gets a high off of his own fumes when it comes to the level of his rhetoric.
I mean, this is why he has people apparently bring him folders filled with pictures of him looking powerful.
So yesterday, he's asked about the fire and the fury and the furious and phenomenal, phenomenal fury.
And he was, and he says, not only was I right then, I'm going to double down.
It's not even big enough.
I think we have to go even bigger with the rhetoric.
And frankly, the people that were questioning that statement, was it too tough?
Maybe it wasn't tough enough.
They've been doing this to our country for a long time, for many years.
And it's about time that somebody stuck up for the people of this country and for the people of other countries.
So, if anything, maybe that statement wasn't tough enough.
And we're backed by 100 percent by our military.
We're backed by everybody.
And we're backed by many other leaders.
And I noticed that Many senators and others today came out very much in favor of what I said.
But if anything, that statement may not be tough enough.
I love that he keeps saying that the statement may not be tough enough.
He did this during the campaign a lot also.
Anytime he was asked about something, he would say, there's some people who are saying I didn't go far enough.
Maybe I should have gone farther.
I should have talked about the ferocity, frenzy, furor.
I should have talked about the fierceness and the flare-up and the force.
I should have talked about all of those things just for alliterative Purposes.
Alliteration is where the first letter is the same of all the words and the sound is the same.
Yes.
Beep-bop.
Okay, so is all of this helpful?
You know, honestly, I don't think it's that bad.
I don't think it hurts.
I don't think it's the end of the world.
I don't think we're going to get in a nuclear war because Trump is doing any of this stuff.
And all the media members attempting to push you into feeling this way have an agenda, as we discussed yesterday.
Trump said, listen, this is not a dare.
You know, I'm not daring North Korea to do anything.
I'm just stating if they do something, then we'll finish them.
Let's see what he does with Guam.
He does something in Guam.
It will be an event the likes of which nobody's seen before what will happen in North Korea.
And when you say that, what do you mean?
You'll see.
You'll see.
And he'll see.
He will see.
It's not a dare.
It's a statement.
Has nothing to do with dare.
That's a statement.
He's not going to go around threatening Guam and he's not going to threaten the United States and he's not going to threaten Japan.
And he's not going to threaten South Korea?
No, that's not a dare, as you say.
That is a statement of fact.
So what's the actual likelihood of anything happening here?
Very low, because here's the reality.
The Kim Jong-un regime is mainly interested in self-preservation.
It's a stable regime because they don't care if they continue killing their own people and oppressing their own people for decades on end.
They've been doing it now for 60 odd years, so nothing really changes there.
All they care about is maintaining their own power, and that means the last thing they're going to do is launch a nuclear weapon at Guam or launch a nuclear weapon at the United States.
What they could do is act bellicose in an attempt to gain concessions from the world, because this is what they've been doing for the past couple of decades.
If Trump shows that they're not going to get any concessions for this, that in fact we're going to ratchet up sanctions every time they do this, then maybe they'll cut out even that.
Now, is that the greatest possible outcome?
No.
I mean, it would be great if the Kim family would just all drop dead immediately.
You know, that would be the best possible outcome for the world.
It'd be the best possible outcome for the North Korean people, who don't deserve this monstrosity that's been thrust upon them for the better part of half a century.
But, that said, are we at the verge of nuclear war?
No, we're not.
Now, what is the danger of them having a weapon like this?
There are really two dangers of the North Koreans having an intercontinental ballistic missile with an atomic tip.
Okay, there are two basic threats.
One threat is that all of the neighboring countries are then going to say, okay, well, if they have a nuclear weapon, we should have a nuclear weapon.
Like, South Korea will say, listen, we can't be living under the nuclear umbrella of the North Koreans.
We should have the capacity to say to them, if you fire anything at us, we will nuke you.
Right?
If you fire conventional weaponry at us and then threaten us with your nuclear weapon, we will finish you.
Right?
So the South Koreans might develop their own nuclear weapon.
Japan, which has been non-nuclear, they may develop their own nuclear weapon in order to deter the North Koreans.
And so you could see widespread proliferation around the world.
And Jon Podhors was making this point in his commentary podcast, and I think it's right.
We've spent, again, basically every waking moment since 1945 and the use of the A-bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
We've been spending all that time trying to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
There have been a number of states like South Africa that have gone non-nuclear.
Libya was giving up its nuclear ambitions.
There have been a number of states that have decided not to go nuclear.
Specifically because they felt like there is a global taboo against the use of nuclear weapons but now you're seeing proliferation spread.
Pakistan is proliferating.
Iran is going to proliferate thanks to the Obama administration.
Saudi Arabia in response could proliferate thanks to the Obama administration.
You could see Turkey and Jordan proliferate.
You could see a widespread development of nuclear weapons and that would be very dangerous because again all it takes is one mistake for things to go boom.
It's one thing when you're talking about two regimes.
When you're talking about the USSR and the United States, and we were basically the only nuclear powers, then, you know, that was hard enough to keep us from going boom, right?
We had things like the Cuban Missile Crisis during the Six-Day War in 1967.
There were serious nuclear threats that were issued by the Soviets with regard to the Middle East.
So, you know, it was very tenuous even between two powers, one of which was good, one of which was evil, but both of which were rational in terms of self-preservation.
What happens if you have a regime that is really tenuous and that feels that its only method of defense is a nuclear weapon and everybody else is proliferating?
So that's danger number one.
Danger number two is you could see a world in which the North Koreans start to pursue more aggressive action and attempt to ratchet up pressure on the world to give them concessions.
And so they start destroying South Korean boats.
They start threatening Japan, firing missiles at Japan every so often and basically saying, listen, what are you going to do about it?
You attack us, we'll nuke somebody.
Using that as their deterrent, not in order to calm the waters, but in order to rule the waters.
That's the danger in North Korea.
But is the danger immediate nuclear war?
No, I don't think the danger is immediate nuclear war.
So everybody ought to stop thinking that they're Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2, where they're grabbing a chain link fence as the blast wave hits them and rips their skin away from their body.
I don't think that's what's about to happen here.
By the same token, the military option certainly should not be off the table because things are only going to get worse, not better with North Korea.
I think everybody who's assuming that this regime is just going to magically collapse... Again, the Soviet Union collapsed because Mikhail Gorbachev made a vast miscalculation with regard to modernization.
He felt, okay, if we modernize, if we open our doors a little bit...
If we do Glasnost, the Soviet Union will survive.
Instead, everyone who could opt out of the system opted out of the system.
The Kim regime is not going to make the same mistake.
They're going to keep this thing locked down as long as humanly possible.
Kim Jong-un is a very young man, and that means that he is going to be around for quite a while, unfortunately, barring some sort of miracle that takes him out.
You know, you hate to pray for God to kill people, but if God's going to take somebody, let him take Kim Jong-un.
That guy is a piece of human debris.
And the entire family needs to be deposed.
But he's my age, right?
He's 33 years old.
In fact, he was born a week before I was.
So he's a young guy.
He could be around for another 50 years.
So the idea that this is on the verge of collapse is just not true.
And that's why it's such a dangerous situation.
Now, because it's a dangerous situation, you would assume that the Democrats should, for just a second, put aside their animus for President Trump and start talking instead about supporting A basic American stance on this, which is that North Korea has to calm this stuff down, or we're going to be forced into taking action.
In North Korea, the negotiations should be taking place, that when Trump says things, he does have the credible threat of force behind him.
And instead, Democrats have decided it's more important to shame President Trump.
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Okay, so naturally Trump is saying all this stuff and the media is trying to make it out that he's a crazy person who's gonna get us into a nuclear war.
Not happening.
And the Democrats are trying to suggest that Trump is actually the bad guy.
So a Democratic representative named Juan Castro He is, is this Julian Castro or Juan?
I know that Juan and Julian are twins.
So this one is Joaquin, sorry.
Joaquin Castro.
So Julian and Joaquin are brothers.
And Joaquin was arguing that North Korea is just getting more, more threatening because of Trump.
Not because they threaten and they've been threatening consistently for my entire lifetime, but because of Trump.
I mean, this is just, this is working in bad faith for Democrats.
It really is.
Here is Castro.
Well, the first thing is that I think some of these threats have been made because the president has also made his own threats.
And so that's why I'm saying that we need to allow diplomacy a chance to work instead of going tit-for-tat with a 32-year-old dictator in North Korea.
Okay, diplomacy is working.
In fact, there are reports today that diplomacy is moving forward, that the Trump administration has had contacts for months with the North Koreans, and that we are moving toward some sort of defusing of the situation.
But the idea that you're going to go on national TV and you're going to undercut the credible use of military force with regard to North Korea is a very dangerous notion.
Maxine Waters is doing the same thing again.
Maxine Waters has been proclaiming for months that Trump will be impeached, or Trump will plot, or something will happen that will get Trump out of there through some democratic created miracle.
She says that Trump is bluffing.
Okay, again, this is bad stuff.
You never want to say that the President of the United States is bluffing.
When Obama drew his red line in Syria, there were those of us who said, it's stupid to draw the red line if you're bluffing.
But it was not a good thing if we were out there saying he's definitely bluffing.
You don't want to show enemy regimes that you think the president of the United States is full of it because it means that their credible threat for use of force is gone.
How do you deter if people think that you're completely full of it?
Here's Maxine Waterhouse, however, whose top priority is not preventing North Korea from getting aggressive.
Her top priority is instead trying to humiliate President Trump.
I believe that North Korea is interesting threats to the United States.
But I think there are some things that they want from us.
And we have to find out whether or not we can work with them on the things that they're asking for.
And so this is something that we should be very concerned about.
But this is not the time to go bluffing and threatening.
This is a time for diplomacy.
Okay, so, you know, whenever Democrats say it's time for diplomacy, diplomacy involves the credible threat of use of force.
I mean, that's half of diplomacy.
The whole idea of diplomacy is supposedly the iron fist inside the velvet glove.
And you either get the velvet glove or you get the fist.
If there is no credible threat, then why engage in diplomacy in the first place?
I mean, if the North Koreans know we're not going to do anything, then why wouldn't they just continue to develop their nuclear weapons and threaten whomever they want and fire nuclear weapons at whomever they choose?
There has to be a credible threat of force.
Democrats treat diplomacy, it's a pet peeve of mine, they treat diplomacy as though diplomacy is an actual policy instead of diplomacy being a strategy toward the achievement of policy.
There is a difference.
A policy is something that you are attempting to forward.
Obviously, you would prefer diplomacy to force if they achieve the same end, but if they don't achieve the same end, then you have to determine, is diplomacy better, or is force better?
Diplomacy is a strategy.
It's like, you know, I'm in a fight with my wife, right, and I have a couple of strategies as to how I can defuse the situation.
Okay, the goal is not the strategy.
The goal is to defuse the situation.
Maybe to defuse the situation, I need to give her space.
Maybe to defuse the situation, I need to hug her and talk.
But those are strategies towards defusing the situation.
The goal of the situation isn't for me to have alone time.
The goal of the situation isn't for me to grab a hug.
You know, Maxine Waters and Democrats, they treat diplomacy as though the goal of the situation is to talk with North Korea.
Who wants to spend their time talking with North Korea?
The purpose of talking with North Korea is to achieve some sort of settlement where we're not on the verge of nuclear war every five seconds with a nutcase who lives there.
That's the purpose of all of this.
One of my pet peeves here is also Ben Rhodes, who just needs to go away and shut up.
Ben Rhodes is the idiot National Security Advisor under President Obama.
His great national security experience before that had been being a failed novelist.
He'd written half a novel that was never published.
And it's really, uh, he is the author of the egregious and horrifying Iran deal and he's tweeting out about this stuff.
He should shut up because the bottom line is that we're going to be in the same situation with Iran in about five minutes here because he signed a nuclear deal with the Iranians that allows them to pursue a nuclear weapon.
The minute they say they have developed a nuclear weapon, then all of a sudden we're going to get, oh, it's because Trump undermined the nuclear deal.
That's why all this happened.
No, the reason this happened is because Iran was pursuing a nuclear weapon, the Obama administration chose to ignore it in favor of trying to make overtures to one of the most evil regimes on the planet, exactly as the Clinton administration did during the 1990s.
Ben Rhodes, he said, he's tweeting out now, Trump turned to national security was inevitable given domestic failures and constraints, but this week doesn't bode well for next three years.
So now this is a distraction?
Remind me again, who was it who was threatening Guam?
Oh yeah, it was the North Koreans.
Remind me, who was it who was reported to have built a nuclear weapon that can fit on the tip of an ICBM?
That's right, it was North Korea.
But the Democrats hate Trump so much that everything, everything is Trump's fault.
And then you've got Ben Rhodes tweeting about how we can't back out of the Iran deal because if we back out of the Iran deal then it's just terrible.
He says this is a key point.
Any chance of a deal with North Korea goes out the window if Trump cancels a nuclear deal that Iran is complying with.
Then maybe you shouldn't have signed a bad nuclear deal with Iran handing them the store, opening the grocery store.
The Democrats keep signing bad deals and then they're shocked when everybody takes advantage of the bad deals.
That is far more of a problem than people trying to enforce deals and trying to ensure that places don't go nuclear and threaten others.
It's really quite amazing.
I mean, the delusion of the Democrats is insane.
He says they're ripping on Trump because of this tweet about military solutions and locked and loaded.
He says, are we coordinating with our allies?
Listen, I am sure that our military is coordinating with our allies.
Trump says stuff.
Everybody knows Trump says stuff.
So I'm highly doubtful that we're in the midst of a nuclear war here, but this is what Democrats want you to believe so that you're scared of President Trump.
Okay.
There's been some hubbub about Trump's staffing decisions with regard to national security.
And this is indeed a problem.
You want to present a united face when it comes to your national security team.
Trump's governing by chaos is not useful when it comes to national security.
So you've got open battles now between Steve Bannon, Trump's chief strategist, and H.R.
McMaster, Trump's national security advisor.
McMaster has ousted a bunch of Bannon loyalists inside the administration, some of whom should have been ousted, some of whom probably should not have been ousted.
McMaster is an expert on counterinsurgency.
His perspective on Afghanistan is apparently one of the things at issue with Steve Bannon.
Bannon just wants to get out of Afghanistan.
McMaster is saying, guys, Al Qaeda is still there.
If we get out of there, there will be another terrorist attack.
We ought to be staffing up, not staffing down in Afghanistan.
Bannon is arguing the reverse.
That fight is causing Bannon to feel marginalized and lash out at McMaster.
There are some ancillary issues regarding McMaster.
McMaster is not particularly pro-Israel, which I think is a problem, obviously.
But Trump is the president, and if he can check McMaster on Israel and then listen to his advice on Afghanistan, that seems to me probably a better strategy.
Trump has been forced to come out yesterday, for example, and say that he has confidence in his own national security advisor.
This does not provide the sort of Face to the world that you want.
What you want when it comes to foreign policy is a united front where people know that whatever you say is credible, that they're not arguments among your members of your administration publicly.
You don't want members of your administration arguing with each other.
That creates confusion and it leads America's enemies to sit around thinking, okay, what do they really think?
What do they really want?
So here is Trump being forced to testify to the greatness of McMaster.
Do you have full confidence in your national security advisor?
Yes, I do.
General McMaster?
Absolutely.
He's our friend, he's my friend, and he's a very talented man.
I like him, and I respect him.
Okay, so, you know, he's sticking with McMaster for now.
The right is very upset with McMaster because of all the purges of a lot of the abandoned people, and the feeling that McMaster is more of a traditional defense guy who's willing to work with Obama holdovers.
All of that is Trump's call.
All of it's Trump's call.
I keep hearing from people, you gotta trust Trump?
Fine.
Trust Trump.
It's his call.
Time for him to get his poop in order.
You know, the same thing is happening with regard to Sebastian Gorka.
Sebastian Gorka is one of the national security advisors, a foreign policy advisor to President Trump.
It seems like his main job is to go on TV and say stuff that Trump likes.
Sebastian Gorka, I've met him, I think, once.
Seems like a nice guy.
I think he's pretty knowledgeable about world events.
But...
Yeah, he and Rex Tillerson, Trump's own Secretary of State, are going at it because Tillerson is saying, don't worry about the militaristic rhetoric, we're working on something, and Gorka's out there saying, Tillerson's at SAIT, he doesn't get to talk about what Defense Department is doing, and so now Gorka is under fire for going to war with Tillerson.
Sebastian, you know this is going to be all over the papers, and whether you had the exact meaning that people have now interpreted it as, it looks like, to some people, it looks like, forget backstabbing, that you frontstabbed the Secretary of State, and, you know, people look at that and say, who was he to admonish any process that the Secretary of State would take?
He's handpicked by the President.
I was admonishing the journalists of the fake news industrial complex who are forcing our chief diplomat into a position where they are demanding he makes the military case for action when that is not the mandate of the Secretary of State.
That's why we have a Department of Defense.
If a journalist doesn't know the difference Okay, we see.
So Gorka tries to turn on the media, but again, Trump needs to get his team under control.
You'd hope that John Kelly would help him with this, but obviously Kelly is not able to get everything under control as of yet, and that is not a good thing.
Okay, so before we get to things I like and things I hate, and then I want to spend some ample time on the mailbag, First, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at PolicyGenius.
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Okay, so time for some things I like and things I hate, because I would like to leave ample time So, we'll go right to things I like.
So, today's thing is I like another book on North Korea.
I think people should be educated about this state.
The book is called The Impossible State by Victor Cha, and it is a history of North Korea.
It looks Back at what it was, it looks forward to what's going to happen there.
It talks about its level of stability, what comes after if the Kim family should basically lose power, whether there is in fact some sort of internal turmoil.
It's very difficult to tell.
North Korea is sort of a black box.
And so the reporting on North Korea It tends to be a little bit haphazard because they don't allow foreign journalists in.
But this book is quite a good look at North Korea, how it operates, and why it has the problems that it has.
The Impossible State in North Korea, Past and Future by Victor Cha.
You can go check that out.
Okay.
Other things that I like – So Barack Obama is coming back.
So this is exciting.
He's going to campaign for the Democrats.
I could not be more excited about this.
Democrats are so screwed that they are trying to bring back the ghost of Christmas past.
They're bringing back the president who lost them a thousand seats in state houses across the country, 12 governorships, 10 Senate seats.
63 house seats.
That's the guy that they are trying to restore to the leadership of the Democratic Party.
The guy who created a coalition so fragile that even Hillary Clinton couldn't mobilize it in her own favor to defeat a reality TV game show host.
And Obama is back.
Apparently he's going to help them fundraise.
Ha ha ha.
The Democrats have raised apparently half the funding that Republicans have since the election cycle, which is amazing.
And he is apparently also going to help the politicians out by speaking.
That is not going to work for them.
So congratulations to Democrats.
You have hit on, yet again, one of the world's worst strategies.
So that is just excellent.
Other news that I like.
It's not really news that I like, but I do like when reality takes hand.
So here is the piece of news by Amanda Prestigiacomo.
She is one of our favorite writers over at Daily Wire.
A woman who enlisted to become the first ever female Navy SEAL quit after one week of training.
One week of training.
According to the report from the Washington Examiner, the unidentified female candidate dropped out in early August during a three-week course in San Diego that began July 24th.
It was the first assessment of potential SEAL officers before they can be sent on to more grueling courses, according to the website, which cited multiple Naval Special Warfare Command sources.
So, before January 2016, women were not allowed in military combat roles.
There were no female applicants in the 18 months since that historic change until July, which is when this woman enlisted.
She lasted for one week.
She lasted for one week.
Okay, so the fact that she signed up, listen, anybody who signs up is doing more than I have, so I can't criticize them on that basis, but the stupidity of a left that suggests that women are exactly the same as men in every way is demonstrated every single day by reality.
By the way, this is one of the reasons I think this movie Atomic Blonde is failing.
We were discussing this Before the show, Mathis and Austin saw the movie, he thinks it's really good.
I haven't seen it yet, so I really have no opinion on the quality of the film.
Apparently it has a 20-minute fight sequence that's really amazing.
I have a general problem with female fight sequences where you get one woman beating up guys who are 200 pounds, like she's 105 pounds soaking wet, and she's beating the crap out of guys who are 200 pounds.
It's like, uh, no.
No.
In boxing, we have weight classes, right?
If there's a 10-pound difference between two boxers, they're in different weight classes.
You think that doesn't apply to a 75-80 pound difference between men and women?
Like, come on, gang.
Come on.
I think that's one of the reasons why the female action star genre hasn't been doing particularly well.
There have been a bunch of movies that have come out recently with the female action star, and they just don't work that well, typically, because the suspension of disbelief to watch some beautiful woman the size of my wife Throw around some six-foot-three dude who weighs 240 pounds.
It requires certain suspension of disbelief.
I think also the marketing for that film, it seemed to make a lot of the lesbian relationship in the film.
And I think that that's a mistake for the marketers.
Not just because some people are put off by that, but also because... This is a question I asked Austin.
I asked, in the film, is there a reason that Charlize Theron's character had to be a woman instead of a man?
Is there anything about her character in the film that makes her necessarily female in any real way, other than the fact that she's a female?
And Austin said no, right?
She's seducing a woman in the same way that James Bond would seduce a woman.
So, what is the relevance of her being a woman?
If she's a female action star, but she's basically just a dude who's a lady, then what have you gained from this?
Like, the best written female action stars?
Think of Terminator 2.
Linda Hamilton's character is really well written because her entire motivating feature Is trying to care for her child trying to make sure that John is safe, right?
That's the entire motivation of her character if you think of other great action movies where a woman is put in a position of peril Often she's given a motivation that is more typically feminine than, you know, basically she could be James Bond.
And I think that's a good thing.
I think that people, there's something that doesn't ring authentic about women who just could be men on screen, or men who could just be women on screen.
You know, that men and women are different, and we pick up on that, and films lack authenticity when they don't play into that, I think.
So that's not sexism.
That's just the reality of men and women being different, which I understand is something we're not allowed to talk about anymore.
I get all of that.
So, other things.
Okay, so you know what?
Let's do some things that I hate.
So, I think that President Trump needs to shut up about Russia.
And the reason I think he needs to shut up about Russia is every time he opens his mouth, he just gives fodder to the Democratic side.
Now, I still see no evidence that Trump colluded with Russia in this election cycle.
I see evidence that his son, Donald Trump Jr., attempted to collude with Russia, but that is not evidence of collusion.
The person who is most closely tied with Russia in the Trump campaign was Paul Manafort.
Paul Manafort was his chief campaign staff.
He was the head of his campaign for three months and he was raided by the FBI apparently in the last couple of months.
Trump was asked about Manafort and the raid on him by the FBI and here was Trump's statement.
To do that early in the morning, whether or not it was appropriate, you'd have to ask them.
I've always found Paul Manafort to be a very decent man.
And he's like a lot of other people, probably makes consultant fees from all over the place.
Who knows?
I don't know.
But I thought that was a very, pretty tough stuff.
To wake him up, perhaps his family was there.
I think that's pretty tough stuff.
Okay, the reason that he should not say stuff like this is because literally a week and a half ago, he was on tape talking to police officers and saying, when there is a criminal suspect, don't put your hand on the top of their head.
If you have to rough them up a little bit, go ahead.
Right now he's talking about it's really tough stuff that Paul Manafort got woken up in the middle of the night.
It's not a good look.
Okay, not a good look.
Like, that's not the problem here.
What he should say is, if he thinks Manafort's innocent, he should say, Paul Manafort is innocent.
If he doesn't think he's innocent, he should shut up.
But doing this whole, he's a victim of the system routine, it just doesn't wash.
And it especially doesn't help that every time Russia does something bad, Trump seems to feel the need to defend them in some weird way.
So Vladimir Putin kicked out 755 diplomats out of the U.S.
Embassy in Moscow apparently, and here was Trump's response to that.
No, I want to thank him because we're trying to cut down on payroll.
And as far as I'm concerned, I'm very thankful that he let go of a large number of people because now we have a smaller payroll.
There's no real reason for them to go back.
So I greatly appreciate the fact that they've been able to cut our payroll for the United States.
We'll save a lot of money.
So he's sort of half-joking there, but I'm not sure what that joke is supposed to mean, considering that all of these people are still employed by the United States.
So it's not really true.
Shouldn't he say, you know, that's inappropriate?
Like, there are a bunch of people who just were kicked out of their homes, out of their living quarters, kicked out of the country.
Shouldn't he at some point say, uh, that's bad?
Like, I'm sorry, they're saving us a lot of money.
First of all, it's not even technically true.
And second of all, it's not even a good joke.
So I'm not sure what exactly he's trying to accomplish with all of that.
Okay, other things that I hate.
Kathleen Rice is a Democratic Congresswoman.
She's very angry because the NRA and Dana Lash have cut a series of ads.
The ads are very kind of tough in tone and tenor.
They're not my favorite ads.
I love Dana.
Dana's wonderful.
I don't think this is the best use of Dana.
I think Dana's a wonderfully charming person.
A very warm and inviting personality.
And I think the ads have become very kind of growly.
So they're not my favorite thing in the world, but this is insane, okay?
So Kathleen Rice is a Democratic representative.
She says, I'm just gonna say it.
Okay, first of all, on Twitter, and in life, whenever you say, I'm just gonna say it, it's usually followed by something you really should have thought more about saying, right?
She says, I'm just gonna say it.
NRA and Dana Lash are quickly becoming domestic security threats under President Trump.
We can't ignore that.
Domestic security threats?
Are you crazy?
I mean, the answer is yes.
You are crazy.
I mean, that's a crazy statement.
Domestic security threats.
Your domestic security threat, when you suggest that Americans ought to be armed in case of violence, that Americans ought to be armed in order to protect themselves from home invasion, exercising their Second Amendment rights, that's what the NRA is for.
And when Dana Lash points out that it's a threatening world out there, they're a domestic security threat?
No wonder Republicans say the Democrats are fascists when they issue stuff like this.
Once you label someone a domestic security threat, that leads to a justification for shutting them down.
That's utterly, utterly nuts.
Okay, final thing that I hate, and then we'll do some mailback.
So, final thing that I hate here is ABC's chief political analyst, a guy named Matthew Dowd, he tweets out dumb stuff about religion all the time.
He used to be a Bush 2004 campaign chief strategist.
About a month ago, he tweeted out that he was Catholic, and he said, being Christian is a state of being.
Practicing Louvre, some of the most Christian folks I know in life are atheists.
And every Christian went, wait, wait, wait, hold up a second, just what?
Like, being a nice person and being a Christian are not identical, right?
They're not quite the same thing.
Some of the most Christian people that he knows are not atheists, because, like, I'm a very nice person to my employees, despite me making fun of them a lot.
I'm a very nice guy with my family.
I'm generally a nice person who tries to go out of my way for others.
I am not a Christian, I am a Jew, right?
I mean, like, there's a certain set of beliefs you have to engage in.
Okay, that wasn't even the worst.
So yesterday he tweets out, quote, No.
Okay, if I see a guy in the park shouting, Jesus saves, and he just runs into the park holding a briefcase, and he shouts, Jesus saves!
I think to myself, okay, you know what?
I'm gonna, like, probably, you know, like, shy away from him, but I'm not really that afraid that maybe he's going to blow himself up.
However, if he runs into the park carrying a briefcase and he shouts Allahu Akbar, then my reaction will be slightly different.
And that's for a reason.
That's because the vast majority of bombings worldwide, the vast majority of terrorist bombings worldwide are being carried out by radical Muslim fundamentalists.
Okay, tens of thousands of people dead every year thanks to radical Muslim fundamentalism.
24% of Americans believe that the Bible is the literal, unerrant word of God.
And there's another 47 who believe that it's inspired by God.
So, the vast majority of Americans are at least religious to that extent, and a quarter of Americans are religious fundamentalists, according to Matthew Dowd, and yet we don't see Christians going around and raiding gangs, raping and looting and blowing people up.
But this is the stupidity of the media that's looking for moral equivalence wherever it can find it.
Okay, so, let's do some of the mailbag now.
Alright, Dean says, Ben, quick, top 5 Halloween October movies, go.
Okay, so, I have to admit, I am not a scary movie fan.
Scary movies are not my thing.
They tend to be kind of off-putting to me.
If I were forced into it, I would say The Shining is in my top five.
I'm not a huge psycho fan.
The reason being that the first two-thirds of it is great, and then the ending is so weird.
Like, the last ten minutes of it is so meh.
I'm having a hard time coming up with movies that I think are really scary, that are good, that are not sci-fi.
Like, for example, I really like 10 Cloverfield Lane, but I don't think that counts as a horror movie, even though maybe it should.
It's sort of a quasi-horror film.
I like lock-box movies, the ones where it's like Two people in an enclosed space and they sort of have to deal with it, but that's not my favorite thing.
So instead of answering your question, I'm gonna answer a question I'm making up on my own because it occurred on Twitter yesterday, and that was top five action movies.
So I separate action from adventure, which is why my list is a little bit different from other people's lists.
So I don't include movies like Indiana Jones in my top five action movies because it's more of an adventure movie.
Adventure to me is characterized by going to I know a lot of people disagree with this.
in period combat, you know, like Adventures of Robin Hood.
But my top five action films are, and let me see if I can find the list that I made.
My list was Die Hard, Terminator 2, The Fugitive, The Born Identity, and Taken.
So Taken makes the list.
I know a lot of people disagree with this.
There are some other action movies that I think are close up on the list, particularly like some people put Gladiator.
Gladiator's not an action movie to me.
It's a historical epic.
It's not really as much of an action film.
For me, if no one fires an automatic weapon at any point in the film, then it's probably not an action movie, unless there are a bunch of great action set pieces, like a train trying to run you over, like in The Fugitive.
It's amazing how The Fugitive has sort of been forgotten, but it's so eminently watchable.
If you're flipping around TV and The Fugitive is on, then the chances are that you're going to end up watching at least 15 minutes of it.
But Die Hard, obviously top of the list.
Die Hard is just an amazingly good film.
The script is so good.
The key to a great film, period, is that the villain has to be fantastic.
And each one of these films, the villain is really good, or at least the situation is really compelling.
So Die Hard, the villain is one of the greatest villains in film history.
Hans Gruber is one of the best villains ever.
Terminator 2, Robert Patrick playing the kind of puddle...
Of metal that can morph into the T-1000.
It's just, it's spectacular.
The Fugitive is a great performer.
I mean, Tommy Lee Jones won Best Supporting Actor Oscar for it.
Born Identity has some of the great action scenes in film history.
And Taken, I love Taken, I gotta admit.
I think Taken is an amazing action film.
Taken is, it's become so iconic that now everybody is, that now everybody is, you know, makes up lines from it.
You know, the I have a particular set of skills.
I mean, look, it ushered an entire new career in for Liam Neeson, being like this old tough guy who beats people up.
Liam Neeson also happens to be one of my favorite actors, so there's that.
Like, one of the great tragedies of Gangs of New York is that they take him and murder him in the first 15 minutes of the film.
And it's like, and I have to watch three hours of Leonardo DiCaprio versus Daniel Day-Lewis when I could have watched three hours of Liam Neeson versus Daniel Day-Lewis.
Wouldn't that have been a better film?
Yes.
What if they had made Leonardo DiCaprio, like his father, like reverse the casting?
And Liam Neeson, young Liam Neeson versus Daniel Day-Lewis for the rest of that film?
So much better.
Like Liam Neeson just makes stuff better.
Darkman is not a good movie, but it's a good movie because Liam Neeson is in it.
It's- Liam Neeson is awesome.
They have to stop killing him in the first 10 minutes of every film.
There's like a thousand films where Liam Neeson gets killed in the first 15 minutes.
It's stupid!
Stop doing that, people!
It's annoying.
Like, even in silence.
He's the best thing in silence.
He's in silence for like 10 minutes.
And it's fantastic.
By the way, good movie silence.
I actually- I think it's the best Scorsese film in silence.
Okay.
Um, Eric says, Hey Ben, how much can you bench?
So, I am, I know this sounds geeky, I'm more of a CrossFit guy than a bench press guy because I'm not looking to gain bulk.
I'm long and lean.
I'm just a massive, coiled tension and muscle.
The last time I tried to do any sort of benching, I think I topped out around like 215.
Um, so, not huge amounts of weight, but I, I benched it, I think, six times?
So, I don't know what my top, my top bench is, but I'm not like a, I'm not a bodybuilder or weightlifter.
Um, I can say that I can pump out a hundred push-ups pretty easily.
I can pump out thirty pull-ups pretty easily.
Um, you know, the, all, all the sort of active stuff that, that I'm, that I flip lots of tires and hit things with, with hammers and such.
Hey Ben, what is a good non-religious argument against issues like euthanasia and assisted suicide?
So, I've told people, this is an issue where I am split when it comes to the legality of euthanasia this is an issue where I am split when it comes to the What I have a problem with, with regards to euthanasia and assisted suicide, is making doctors into modes of death dispensation.
Where do you draw the line?
Right, so some people say, okay, well, for terminal patients, euthanasia.
That's the strongest case.
But just like abortion, that's like using rape and incest to justify the whole thing.
What about somebody who just has depression?
Right now, I think the statistics are like 1 in 200 people in the Netherlands is put to death through euthanasia.
I don't want doctors to be trained in death.
You actually get a market for that then, right?
You get a market in doctors who dispense death at the lowest available prescription rate.
And I think that a society that forwards dealing in death is likely to start taking life less seriously.
Plus you could have a lot of malfeasance.
I mean, you could see a situation in which family members are pressuring an older member of the family to just get it over with so that they can take the inheritance.
Or somebody has Alzheimer's and the family just decides, okay, put them out of their misery.
I think it's a bit of a slippery slope, euthanasia.
That's the secular argument.
Dakota says, Does the Bill of Rights apply to the state?
If so, are any of California's new gun laws in violation of the Second Amendment?
So, great question.
The Bill of Rights originally did not apply to the states.
It is only about the federal government because it is a federal document.
Over the course of time, the Supreme Court gradually did what they called the Incorporation Doctrine, where in order to apply a lot of the elements of the Constitution to southern states, particularly, that were violating those provisions of the Constitution with regard to their black population, The Supreme Court started using the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, the Due Process Clause, to try and suggest that states were bound by the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause to enforce all of the other elements of the Constitution.
That seems bad constitutional law to me.
The First Amendment actually does not apply.
I mean, the wording of the First Amendment obviously doesn't apply to the states, right?
It says, Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech.
Congress.
Congress is a federal institution.
I don't know how you apply that to the states, but now that it's been legally applied to the states, it applies.
So, if you were to apply the Second Amendment to the people of California, then yes, California's gun laws almost universally violate the Second Amendment to the Constitution.
Tyler says, Do you think legalizing medical marijuana on the federal level would help combat the opioid epidemic?
Also, do you think Big Pharma would lobby against this?
So, Tyler, I haven't seen evidence that marijuana presence in particular states has lowered effects of the opioid epidemic.
So, if you could show me evidence of that, then I'd be all in favor of that.
I'm in favor of legalizing marijuana on the federal level anyway, because I don't think that the federal government has done a good job of policing it.
With that said, I think that it is worth noting that the high apparently that you get from marijuana is not even close to the high that you get from opioids.
And opioids are significantly more addictive.
The evidence on marijuana addictiveness is mixed at best.
The evidence on opioid addictiveness is extraordinarily strong.
Maybe next week we'll talk a little bit more about President Trump's decision to declare the opioid epidemic a national emergency.
I'm not sure what the federal government can do here.
The bottom line with the opioid epidemic is it sprang from two particular sources.
Influx of heroin from down south across the Mexican border to the over prescription of drugs like Vicodin and Oxycontin that started in the in the 1990s and 2000s and so people would have an injury and then they would go get Oxycontin.
They'd be basically using what is a soft form of heroin and then they would go out and seek a further high.
Actually one of the things the federal government did was exacerbate this because people who are on Medicaid could go get a bottle of pills that was worth like a thousand dollars of oxycodone buy it for three dollars and then sell it on the open market in order to make some money while at the same time addicting themselves uh there's a lot to talk about with regard to the opioid epidemic but you know it is it is a several prong problem one is enforcement of the border two is we need to ensure that doctors stop over prescribing this medication and three is there's an actual spiritual problem among young americans
right now who are searching for meaning and filling it with drugs and that's a serious issue callie says if you were to ask a question for the mailbag what would it be Well, it would be, Ben, why don't they double your salary?
That would probably be, and my answer would be, I don't know, I'm the boss, I should do that, shouldn't I?
Tyler says, hey Ben, I don't like sports, I don't drink, I'm 22, how on earth am I supposed to have a social life?
I find it hard to have friends when most of my peers have totally different priorities.
I'm generally a social guy and by no means an introvert, but I have almost no interest in what most people my age care about.
I imagine this is a rather common problem with young conservatives.
How would you advise people like me deal with this dilemma?
So, you know, I think that, listen, when I was in college, I was not the world's most social animal.
When I was in law school, I also don't drink.
Not out of principle, because I'll have a drink every so often, but because I have some bad acid reflux, so it doesn't do, it does a job on me.
But, I do like sports, I can talk about that, but I think that America's a huge place with lots of people with varying interests.
Obviously, we have a huge audience here at The Ben Shapiro Show, and that means there are lots of people who think like you, if you listen to the show, and want to talk about issues like this because they spend time every day listening to this content.
If you're interested in politics, politics is a conversation starter, and you should be able to find people who are willing to talk about deep issues.
By the way, when you're dating, that is the stuff that you should talk about, are the deep issues.
My wife, I've said this before, our first date was legitimately a three-hour conversation about free will and determinism.
Not joking.
We've been married now for almost ten years, we have two beautiful children, and we are an extraordinarily happy couple.
Jackson says, Does the Jewish faith teach that some sins are worse than others?
Also, does it teach that there are unforgivable sins?
So, Judaism says that some sins are more serious than others.
Obviously, there's a different level of punishment for different levels of sins.
Murder is a more serious crime than eating not kosher, for example.
And I think any religion that suggests that all sins are equally as egregious is not a religion worth listening to because obviously that's not true.
Judaism does say that you can't impute to God your own justification for a particular sin.
So it's up to God to decide which ones are more severe.
But yes, there are levels of severity.
When it comes to sin, as evidenced by the different punishments.
Some you can bring a sacrifice for, some you die for, right?
As far as unforgivable sins, so I believe that they say the unforgivable sins in Judaism, and forgive me if I get this wrong, I'm sure other Orthodox Jews will write me if I do, but the unforgivable sins, in the sense that you must pay for them, are adultery, idolatry, and murder, I believe are the three biggies.
So if you do those three, any of those three, then those are essentially unforgivable.
Jackson says, what's your beef with Michael Knowles?
I don't have a beef with Michael Knowles.
My beef with Michael Knowles is, where is the beef?
I mean, that's my beef with Michael Knowles.
He wrote an empty book and sold 120,000 copies of it.
That's my beef with Michael Knowles.
I mean, come on.
Come on!
Okay, Chris says, Well, first of all, I mean, I think that you should just say that.
I'm at the point in my life where I want to get married.
What is the best way to address my past with my girlfriend, possible fiance?
Well, first of all, I mean, I think that you should just say that.
I think that you should say exactly what you say here.
You didn't wait for marriage.
You wish that you had.
You want to bring up your children so that they do that.
And I think repentance is a wonderful thing.
I think that you realizing that you made a mistake and that you wish you hadn't, that's okay.
You know, we all make mistakes in life.
You know, being honest about your past and suggesting that you've gotten beyond it is the best way for your potential spouse to know that you're capable of that sort of thing, which is really important.
No, I don't think that they've wasted their education at all.
I think that whatever choice you make to be at home with your kids is a good choice.
wasted their education, thank you.
No, I don't think that they've wasted their education at all.
I think that whatever choice you make to be at home with your kids is a good choice.
And the balance that you choose to make between career and being at home is your choice.
I think that, you know, women who choose not to be at home with their kids at all have a serious problem.
It's why, one of the reasons my wife is working the way she's working is because she's hoping that when she's done, she's able to create a much better work-life balance than if she didn't go through a couple of years of poop to get to the roses.
And as my grandmother used to say, sometimes you have to walk through the poop to get to the roses, the manure to get to the roses.
And I think that that's what a lot of, you know, the educational process is all about.
But no, I think that, you know, stay-at-home moms are doing something that is Is vital.
I mean, you can see that there's been a tremendous impact on children who don't have parents around as much, thanks to things like divorce.
This is not a rip on working women, but everybody has to balance out how much time is necessary with your kids and how much time is necessary in the workplace.
And this idea that you can have it all.
No, you can't have it all.
You can have a lot of most things, and this is not a case against women in the workplace either.
Okay, a couple more questions and then we'll go.
Callie says, with Google and the memo being a hot topic in the news this week, I was wondering what is your belief the role should or should not play if a business is discriminating in hiring and or paying employees?
My belief is that the government should pay no role in this because if a business discriminates in hiring, then they are losing money because the idea is of discrimination inherently is that you're going to avoid hiring the best person for a particular job.
And you're going to hire instead somebody else, which means somebody else is going to hire the best person to make more money than you, and if you don't pay employees that well, then you're going to be able to, then that person can go across the street.
Free markets tend to get rid of discrimination, not for everybody, but over the course of time.
I'm going to try and read this backwards.
Oh no, that's it?
Okay, so Mathis is going to fix this because otherwise I'm literally reading an email live backwards and upside down.
Okay, it's loading.
There we go.
Bunbury.
You're fond of saying students shouldn't sacrifice their grades to make their argument for conservatism.
After the Google memo, it's clear you're not even safe after school.
What can we do?
Well, again, I think that there is something to be said for the Google memo guy, who we had on yesterday, just in the sense that he has now raised the consciousness of the country with regard to the sort of discrimination that's happening at Google.
So, that's a calculated decision.
You have to decide whether you think you're going to do the most good by fighting the power where you stand, or by, you know, staying in the closet as conservative until you have more power.
And I think that that changes situation by situation, but I don't think that it's worthwhile always granting a baton to the bad guys in order to make a point, because sometimes that point does not go over or is worthless.
Okay, so, we'll be back here next week with all of the latest news.
Thanks so much for everything that you do for the show.
We really appreciate it.
Again, we are the number two podcast in America after Oprah, and if we continue to grow, then we will overtake Oprah, Oprah Delenda-esque, and we will eventually take that top slot on iTunes, which would be pretty awesome.
So, we will see you next week.
Have a wonderful weekend.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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