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Aug. 22, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
48:16
Commander-In-Chief Trump Tackles Afghanistan | Ep. 367
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We're live.
Ben, have you seen this video of Steven Crowder destroying our Leftist Tears Tumblr?
Who?
Alrighty, so here we are.
Lots of news to get to today.
We're going to get to all of it.
President Trump has announced his new Afghanistan policy.
We're going to talk about all that.
First, I just want to say that I do know, I think, who Steven Crowder is.
I've met him once or twice.
This is his mug, the Louder With Crowder mug.
If you want this, you should go over to CRTV and subscribe.
Crowder does, really.
Fantastic, funny material.
His mug is nothing in comparison to ours, of course.
Ours is much better than his.
His is apparently hand-etched by blind nuns or something who just stared at the eclipse, but you can check this out, this Ladder with Crowder mug, over at CRTV.
Otherwise, I don't know.
Okay, so now on to the news of the day.
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Okay, so President Trump gives a big statement last night.
It was his first address to the nation on the issue of foreign policy.
And it was pretty good.
It was pretty good.
I want to go through it.
I want to talk about what it spells, why there's resistance to it from some on the right.
It's really fascinating.
There's now a breakdown that's coming on the right.
Some of the people who are sort of the quote-unquote nationalist populist types, the Steve Bannon's of the world, the Laura Ingram's of the world, the Tucker Carlson's.
Those people are very upset with Trump's statement on Afghanistan, but I think that's because we've fallen into this trap when we discuss foreign policy of never looking at the choices that are actually on the table.
Instead, we make up choices that are in our own heads.
We make up choices that don't resemble reality very much.
We don't go to war with the army we have, we go to war with the army we wish we had, in Donald Rumsfeld's famous phrase.
We make up these situations in the sky where if we were just tough enough, Or strong enough, then everything would fall into place.
Foreign policy is messy, it's muddy, it's murky, and there are no good choices in places like Afghanistan, which is a tribal place where there has never been a strong national government, there has never been a strong secular government in Afghanistan, it's been a warring hellhole For literally hundreds of years, the British were driven out of there in the 19th century.
The Russians were driven out in the 1980s.
The United States is not being driven out of Afghanistan, but there has been no strong centralized government in order to prevent the rise of the Taliban again.
And this is presented...
An intractable situation for the Trump administration.
Trump didn't create this.
Trump inherits this.
So to understand sort of where we are, you first have to understand where we've been.
So we invaded Afghanistan after 2001, after 9-11, specifically because it was being used as a base by Al-Qaeda.
And we offered the Taliban, you either give up Al-Qaeda, you either give up bin Laden, you stop protecting him, or we're going to come in invade your country and topple you.
Mullah Omar was the leader of the Taliban.
He said that it was more worthwhile for him to protect bin Laden than it was for him to turn over terrorists.
And so we went in and we toppled the Taliban using the Northern Alliance.
That quickly devolved into a corrupt central government that had to pay off all of these tribal leaders because the strongest leaders in Afghanistan were the tribal leaders from the beginning.
And terror continued to be a serious problem in Afghanistan after we conquered the country.
We struggled to build a working system there.
This is a country that had no history of democracy or human rights, and went in there thinking we were going to be able to transplant democracy and human rights.
That ended up being, in large part, a failure.
President Obama came into office, and the first thing that he did is he said he wanted to get out of there, but first he had to surge troops.
So we have to review what President Obama said.
In order so that we know what Trump said last night, whether this was a major change or not.
Remember, Obama wanted to get out of Afghanistan.
More American troops ended up dying in Afghanistan under Obama's watch than under George W. Bush's watch, in large measure because President Obama surged troops, but he did so with a timeline.
He said, I'm going to throw 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan, but I'm going to take them out again right away.
So here is Obama.
This is December 1st, 2009, discussing his new Afghan policy about sending 30,000 additional troops.
This is eight years ago now.
This review is now complete.
And as Commander-in-Chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S.
troops to Afghanistan.
After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.
Okay, the problem with this particular line, when he says that after 18 months our troops will begin to come home, is as soon as he says that, the Taliban knows all they have to do is just wait out the United States.
Because if they just wait it out, then Obama's going to withdraw troops.
And then, the idea was we were going to build up Afghanistan's security forces.
Well, we built up some of their security forces, but then we didn't leave enough military advisors in place In order to really ensure that those security forces were capable of controlling any significant portion of the country.
Helmand province particularly has turned back into the hell hole that it was before Obama, before Obama surged the troops in the first place.
It's really become a disaster area and that's because of Obama's Myopic focus on getting out as soon as possible as opposed to achieving mission goals.
He also talked about Pakistan in this particular speech.
He suggested that we are going to forge a strong relationship with Pakistan.
The problem is that Pakistan has no interest in forging a relationship with us that revolves around getting rid of the Taliban.
The Taliban actually has substantial territorial holdings.
In northern and western Pakistan, and has been a serious threat to the government of Pakistan for years and years and years.
Obama made nice with the government of Pakistan, but then when push came to shove, he really didn't, right?
When we killed bin Laden, he apparently didn't even clear that with the Pakistani government supposedly, because he knew that the Pakistani government might leak that to bin Laden himself.
But his original vision was, we're going to be very nice to Pakistan.
In the past, we too often defined our relationship with Pakistan narrowly.
And those days are over.
Moving forward, we are committed to a partnership with Pakistan that is built on a foundation of mutual interest, mutual respect, and mutual trust.
Okay, and that obviously did not take place.
And then finally, Obama's biggest mistake is he suggested that we ought to do nothing, we have to get rid of Gitmo, that it was U.S.
policy that was driving terrorism.
This is always the apologetic foreign policy of President Obama, and it didn't end up helping us on the world stage in any real way.
And finally, we must draw on the strength of our values.
For the challenges that we face may have changed, but the things that we believe in must not.
That's why we must promote our values by living them at home, which is why I have prohibited torture and will close the prison at Guantanamo Bay.
And we must make it clear to every man, woman and child around the world who lives under the dark cloud of tyranny that America will speak out on behalf of their human rights and tend to the light of freedom and justice and opportunity and respect for the dignity of all peoples.
Okay, so this was also very George W. Bush-esque language.
This talk about dignity of all peoples and freedom and justice and opportunity.
The reality is that in Afghanistan, we basically have three choices, and we always had three choices.
One was an overwhelming surge in order to pacify the country, and maintaining that surge as long as necessary in order to pacify the country.
Number two was to get out completely, just pull out completely, right?
This is sort of what Obama wanted to do and then reality overtook him.
And that's why George W. Bush and Obama and now finally Donald Trump, a guy who campaigned on the idea that he was going to get out of Afghanistan ASAP.
Somebody who in 2013 was saying Afghanistan was a foolish war we never should have gotten into.
Now he is basically taking the same tack.
All three of these presidents have decided the only thing that we can do is muddle through.
We're not willing to expend the kind of resources necessary to actually occupy the country for 60 years, Japan-style or Germany-style.
There is no government for us to overthrow in Afghanistan in order to ensure the pacification of the population, and so we're going to have to muddle through a long counterinsurgency.
And Obama eventually ended up coming to that conclusion, and now President Trump has come to that conclusion as well.
Now what President Trump did do Is he is militating some of that policy.
So he's changing some of the mistakes that Obama made.
And he's getting a lot of flack on the right for this.
He's getting a lot of flack, as I said, from Laura Ingram and Tucker Carlson and the folks over at Breitbart.
There was even a piece over at Breitbart today by a columnist named Brian Darling suggested that if he had known that Trump was going to do what he said last night, he might not have voted for him in the first place.
I think that this is neglecting the fact that Afghanistan was the source of Al Qaeda that attacked us on 9-11.
That if we were to leave these people to their own devices, they would quickly rebuild the terrorist bases that would be used to strike at the heart of the United States.
And the rip on President Trump from the right is unrealistic.
I think it's the isolationist right and the isolationist left.
I think this is unrealistic.
It's Clintonian foreign policy.
We tried it during Bill Clinton's era.
This hands-off, leave them alone, they're not bothering us.
And the result was the USS Cole and the bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and 9-11, of course.
The fact is that while it is unpopular to say this, the war on terror has been largely successful in terms of reducing major terrorist attacks in the West.
We haven't seen anything remotely approaching a 9-11 since 9-11.
We've seen small-scale terror attacks from people who have been recruited through the internet by ISIS, but that is not of the same size and scope as the fully planned Cell-based terror attacks that al-qaeda was pursuing in the lead-up to 9-11 and then including 9-11 itself so trump looks at this and he gets into office and His generals tell him look mr. President you can talk all you want about pulling out of Afghanistan But the fact of the matter is that you are going to have to be responsible for for whatever comes next.
And I thought that Trump actually did an admirable job last night of doing something I've never seen him do before, explaining why he changed his mind.
He let off his speech after making some statements about American unity and unity of the armed forces, which was obviously an attempt to tamp down a lot of the anger over Charlottesville.
President Trump said this about having changed his opinions on Afghanistan.
This is clip one.
My original instinct was to pull out.
And historically, I like following my instincts.
But all my life, I've heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office.
In other words, when you're President of the United States.
So I studied Afghanistan in great detail and from every conceivable angle.
After many meetings over many months, we held our final meeting last Friday at Camp David with my cabinet and generals to complete our strategy.
This is the first time I've ever seen President Trump actually go back on something and acknowledge that new evidence had changed his mind.
I think that that's a good thing.
I'd like to see more of this from President Trump in different areas of his governance where he says, listen, I used to say a lot of things and some of those things were right and some of those things were wrong.
I have instincts.
I think they're pretty good, but When I see new evidence, I have to change my opinion.
So good for President Trump for doing that.
We'll talk about what his policy is and how it differs from President Obama's, because there are some significant similarities to President Obama's speeches and talks and policies in Afghanistan, but there are some pretty significant differences as well, I think mostly in the right direction.
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Okay, so.
Number one, Trump says that he's actually thought this thing through.
This, again, is a major difference from a lot of his other policies where it seems like he's just going off the cuff.
Then, Trump says that he calls for victory.
The problem that I have with Trump calling for a quote-unquote victory is that whenever, you know, Trump made a big deal during his campaign about saying, we never win anymore, we just, people, we never win, ever, no winning, ever, we haven't won.
Okay, the problem is, And we're not going to get victory in Afghanistan the same way that we got victory in Germany or Japan.
Because again, there is no government to surrender to us.
The Taliban are not going to surrender to us.
They'll just continue to break down into smaller and smaller terrorist groups.
So when you say victory, the American people expect the ticker tape parade down the middle of Fifth Avenue.
The American people demand a surrender document signed on the deck of a boat.
Okay, none of that's ever going to happen.
When he says we're going to achieve victory, then he needs to define what victory is.
Here is Trump talking about what victory looks like to him.
First, our nation must seek an honorable and enduring outcome worthy of the tremendous sacrifices that have been made, especially the sacrifices of lives.
The men and women who serve our nation in combat deserve a plan for victory.
They deserve the tools they need and the trust they have earned to fight and to win.
From now on, victory will have a clear definition.
Attacking our enemies, obliterating ISIS, crushing Al-Qaeda, Preventing the Taliban from taking over Afghanistan and stopping mass terror attacks against America before they emerge.
Okay, the problem with this particular definition of victory is it's exactly the same, almost word for word.
President Obama's definition of victory, or George W. Bush's definition of victory, there is no victory moment, right?
There is no win here, where we say, okay, we've accomplished our goals, now we're leaving.
Okay, what he's talking about is a long-range occupation.
This is what John McCain said in 2008 about Afghanistan.
He said, look, you want to pacify it, you're gonna have to stay there for 50 years.
That's basically what Trump is talking about here, but he doesn't want to admit it openly.
Hey, what he really should be saying is, look, victory is us preventing terror attacks.
That's what he's saying here, right?
Attacking our enemies, preventing terrorist attacks.
But there is not going to be a moment of victory.
The American people have to understand, our military is there to do just this.
Our military is there to prevent these things.
There's not going to be.
You know, expectations of the big ticker tape parade are not realistic.
And I think that because Trump had sort of pushed that expectation of victory in Afghanistan for so long, it's difficult now for him to back off that language, even though there's not going to be the iconic victory moment that people are looking forward to.
There is a difference in some of his rhetoric from President Obama.
So he is refusing, obviously, to pull out, unlike Obama, who said, we're going to pull out after a certain period of time.
Getting out is the most important thing.
He got a lot of criticism for this, Obama, and I think rightly so.
Because the mission has to be defined by what our goals are, not by your political goals in getting out as fast as possible.
What Trump did yesterday actually took a fair bit of political courage.
He said, listen, we're going to stay there because we need to be there.
And I think that's right.
Here he is saying that we cannot just pull out.
A hasty withdrawal would create a vacuum that terrorists, including ISIS and Al Qaeda, would instantly fill, just as happened before September 11th.
Okay, and he is right about that, of course.
He then goes on to talk about Pakistan.
So remember, President Obama talked about how Pakistan was going to be our new friend.
They were going to help us in the war on terror.
Trump said no such thing.
He said, listen, Pakistan is not being very helpful, and that's why we're going to build up democratic allies like India.
I think this is a very important thing, what Trump did here.
India is a democratic bulwark and an anti-Islamist bulwark against countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Building them up in opposition to the Pakistani government is something the United States should have been doing long ago.
What can India do against Pakistan in terms of tamping down terror?
Not much, but we can at least create allies in the region who are interested in working with us to tamp down terror, particularly along the India-Pakistan border.
That's a good thing.
Pakistan should be intimidated.
That if they don't do what we want, there'd be serious consequences, and those consequences may not come directly from us, but may come from our allies.
Here's Trump directly calling out Pakistan.
We can no longer be silent about Pakistan's safe havens for terrorist organizations, the Taliban, and other groups that pose a threat to the region and beyond.
Pakistan has much to gain from partnering with our effort in Afghanistan.
It has much to lose by continuing to harbor criminals and terrorists.
Now the most important thing Trump did last night is he talked about timelines.
You remember, I just showed you the clip of Obama saying we're gonna throw 30,000 troops in and 18 months they'll be out.
Really stupid, okay?
That's like saying to your child, I'm gonna give you a timeout, but the timeout's gonna end in three minutes.
Okay, you can't do that.
Your kid's just gonna wait out the timeout.
When you give a kid a timeout, the idea is that the timeout is indefinite until the kid does what you want.
When it comes to the Taliban, you have to throw troops in there for as long as it takes, and that's what Trump had the courage to say last night good for him here he is talking about this idea that the time-based approach needs to be gone and instead we are going to make an approach based on the conditions on the ground a core pillar of our new strategy is a shift from a time-based approach to one based on conditions
We will not talk about numbers of troops or our plans for further military activities.
Conditions on the ground, not arbitrary timetables, will guide our strategy from now on.
America's enemies must never know our plans or believe they can wait us out.
I will not say when we are going to attack, but attack we will.
Okay, so good for him.
Again, I agree that when it comes to arbitrary deadlines, that's foolishness.
It's exactly the sort of arbitrary deadlines that we used to set in Vietnam.
And I'll bet you a lot of what he is saying right now comes from H.R.
McMaster, his national security advisor.
H.R.
McMaster wrote a very good book called Dereliction of Duty about American military policy in Vietnam.
And one of his great critiques was this idea of graduated escalation.
Which was pushed by Robert McNamara, who was the Secretary of Defense under JFK and then later under LBJ, this idea that we are going to gradually, slowly increase the number of troops and announce every time how many troops we were adding to the battlefield, telling the Viet Cong exactly what sort of opposition they were going to face.
H.R.
McMaster says, listen, you go in and you do what you have to do, but you don't Give signals to your enemies and you don't tell them when you're pulling in and pulling out.
That seems to me eminently correct.
Now, here's something that I think is wrong.
Trump says he leaves the door open to negotiations with the Taliban.
I think this is a big mistake.
This is something that Obama pursued, but W didn't.
This idea that the Taliban will come to the table.
In fact, Obama actually set up an office in Qatar so that he could talk with the Taliban.
That did not do anything except make the Taliban more determined Someday, after an effective military effort, perhaps it will be possible to have a political settlement that includes elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
at the table.
Here's Trump opening the door to this.
Someday, after an effective military effort, perhaps it will be possible to have a political settlement that includes elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
But nobody knows if or when that will ever happen.
Okay.
Well, you know, still, you shouldn't be leaving that on the table.
It's If you don't want to negotiate with them, don't talk about negotiating with them.
A couple more points, and I think these are good on Trump, in one second.
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Okay, so...
Back to President Trump.
He dropped this little note that was sort of different from both W and Obama.
He said, we're not nation building.
So these are key words.
These are sort of buzzwords.
They don't mean a whole hell of a lot, but it was supposed to appease his more populist, nationalist, isolationist base.
Here's Trump talking about Afghan responsibility.
Here's what he had to say.
We are not nation-building again.
We are killing terrorists.
We will no longer use American military might to construct democracies in faraway lands or try to rebuild other countries in our own image.
Those days are now over.
Instead, we will work with allies and partners to protect our shared interests.
We are not asking others to change their way of life, But to pursue common goals that allow our children to live better and safer lives.
This principled realism will guide our decisions moving forward.
Okay, the reality of the situation, however, is that when he says we're not going to nation-build, we are going to continue building up Afghanistan's security forces.
It doesn't mean we have to build schools for them, but it does mean that we have to build up their security forces so that they can kill terrorists.
And then they can use their resources to build schools.
So this idea that we're not nation-building, it's a little bit of a false divide.
When you go and you build up a nation's security forces to ensure their government is stable enough to take care of terrorism, that is in fact nation-building.
The best thing I think that Trump did in his speech is he said we're changing the rules of engagement.
President Obama was very strong on the idea that he was going to, in top-down fashion, Control the rules of engagement in Afghanistan.
He was going to prevent our troops from being able to open fire on people if they didn't, if they'd hidden their guns.
So there'd be situations where there'd be a terrorist and he would know that there were soldiers watching him.
He'd drop his gun behind a car and run across the street and our soldiers were told, okay, don't shoot at that guy because he doesn't have a gun, even though they'd seen him with the gun one second beforehand.
Trump says, I'm going to relieve a lot of these rules of engagement and free our troops to do what they need to do.
Military commanders are now in charge.
This is good stuff.
Finally, my administration will ensure that you, the brave defenders of the American people, We'll have the necessary tools and rules of engagement to make this strategy work, and work effectively, and work quickly.
I have already lifted restrictions the previous administration placed on our warfighters that prevented the Secretary of Defense and our commanders in the field from fully and swiftly waging battle against the enemy.
Micromanagement from Washington, D.C., does not win battles.
Okay, good for Trump.
This is, I think, the most important point.
And this is, by the way, why we're winning against ISIS.
It's not because we've dumped in an enormous number of additional resources.
It's because Trump has taken the handcuffs off of our military commanders.
That's really good stuff.
So, I want to talk about the blowback from the right that you're seeing from people like Tucker Carlson, why I think it's misguided, why I think that they're wrong, and why Trump, I think, is right.
4,000 troops may not be enough, but at least his reorientation towards the idea that he's going to push For a longer counter-terrorism strategy in Afghanistan rather than just a unilateral pullout.
I think that's correct.
We'll talk about the blowback that he's received.
We'll also deconstruct some culture.
We have a pretty epic deconstruction of culture today.
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So I've had my criticisms of President Trump.
If you've been following the show for more than two minutes, you know that I've been very critical of President Trump when I felt that President Trump deserved the criticism.
I think that his speech last night in Afghanistan was quite good.
I don't think that it fulfills all of the promises.
I don't think that we're going to get some sort of clear-cut victory.
I don't, you know, he's been saying that he is not going to release to the American public how many troops are going in.
That sort of prevents us from getting a metric on how things are going in Afghanistan, but The idea that he was going to pull out, putting that aside, I think is a good move by President Trump.
And I think that while 4,000 troops may not be enough to ensure the goals he wants, at least he is aiming at right goals and he's correcting some of the worst mistakes of the Obama administration in Afghanistan.
He's getting flack from the populist Steve Bannon, Laura Ingraham, right?
So Laura Ingraham today tweeted out, who's going to pay for it?
What is our measure of success?
We didn't win with 100,000 troops.
How will we win with 4,000 more?
The answer, of course, is that we're not going to win.
We are going to maintain a presence there to prevent the creation of new terror cells that can harm America.
The war on terror, again, the war on terror has been a success.
While everyone likes to talk about how it has not been a success, the fact is that when Obama started to withdraw us from the war on terror, that is when you saw a dramatic escalation of terror attacks in the West, specifically from the areas where Obama withdrew.
He didn't withdraw from Afghanistan.
You're not seeing an uptick in terror from sources in Afghanistan.
You are seeing a massive uptick in terror from sources in Iraq and Syria, areas where Obama purposefully withdrew American troops.
Trump at least understands this.
Laura Ingram tweeted, I thought we were going to drain the swamp in Washington, not clear the desert in Afghanistan.
But we do have to clear the desert of terrorists in Afghanistan.
She's not the only one who's making these critiques.
A lot of the people warm with Trump were warm to him because they're sort of Pat Buchanan isolationists.
Tucker Carlson, who used to be much more interventionist, has flipped because I think Tucker likes the popularity of being isolationist on foreign policy.
Maybe it's sincere.
Maybe it is.
But in any case, here is Tucker talking about why he thinks that Trump's foreign policy here is wrong.
Second, if we increase our presence in Afghanistan, what long-term U.S.
interest are we pursuing by doing that?
The original goal was to eliminate state-sponsored terrorist training camps.
Those are long gone.
Even if those camps came back, it's not clear how relevant they would be.
Islamists now recruit on the Internet, and even an untrained extremist can kill dozens with a car.
We've learned that sad lesson recently.
So what is the point of this?
Equating all terror attacks is really stupid.
9-11 was not the same as somebody mowing a truck through a crowd.
He's right, of course, that that threat will continue to exist.
But the idea that if they reestablish the terror training camps, we don't know what comes next.
We know exactly what comes next because we saw what came next last time.
He says that he wants to rely on not importing all these people into the United States.
But the fact is that there are going to be people who come into the United States regardless... Listen, I'm in favor of President Trump's travel ban.
But I think that the idea that it's going to prevent terrorists from crossing the border in a myriad variety of ways... His travel ban only applies to seven particular countries.
It does not apply to people who are coming through Europe.
Europe doesn't have a travel ban.
So they can go to France, they can establish a green card, and then they can come to the United States.
Okay, so the travel ban is a hedge, but it is not a finisher.
The fact is...
The War on Terror was designed to draw terrorists to places like Afghanistan and Iraq to fight against American troops.
Imagine that you have terrorists all over the world.
And this is what's happened, actually.
You have terrorists all over the world.
Imagine they're like metal filings in a sandbox.
And you need to remove the metal filings somehow.
What do you need?
You need a magnet, right?
You need a magnet that's going to draw out the metal filings without damaging, without taking up the sand as well.
That's what the War on Terror has largely been.
To pretend that the War on Terror has been an utter unsuccess is to fail to look at the evidence.
We'll let Carlson finish his point.
If the goal is simply to keep Islamic extremism from our shores, why is a war in Afghanistan more effective than, say, a vigorously enforced travel ban?
Okay, and again, the answer is because this vigorously enforced travel ban, it mitigates the risk, it does not eliminate the risk.
Everything that we can do to mitigate the risk of massive terrorism seems worthwhile to me.
Over at Breitbart, they're ripping Trump, too.
I think a lot of this now at Breitbart is being driven by the idea that they're trying to prove that Steve Bannon, the chairman over at Breitbart, made a big difference to Trump.
Like, if Bannon were still in the administration, things would have changed.
Not real, okay?
Bannon could have stuck around.
This would have been Trump's plan anyway, because Trump had marginalized Bannon and didn't agree with him, obviously.
Over at Breitbart, Brian Darling wrote, quote, I voted for Donald J. Trump because he promoted a foreign policy of restraint.
I voted for Donald J. Trump because he promised change.
I may have made a mistake.
Okay, or maybe you're just mistaken on policy and Trump is right and you're wrong.
Okay, those are words that don't frequently leave my lips, so definitely take note of them when they do.
You're seeing people like Lindsey Graham cheer.
The problem is that Lindsey Graham is such an interventionist that whenever he says anything, people tend to go, oh boy, not Lindsey Graham.
But Lindsey Graham is warm on this policy.
I think he's right to be.
I'm proud.
I'm relieved.
I'm proud of the fact that President Trump made a national security decision, not a political decision.
I'm proud of the fact that he listened to the generals and most proud of the fact that he shows the will to stand up to radical Islam.
I'm relieved that he did not take the advice to withdraw, which would have been disastrous or create a mercenary army.
So I'm very pleased, very thoughtful, very inspiring speech.
And I can assure you a lot of people in Congress will be behind the president.
Okay, so I think that that is correct, by the way.
Now, in other news where Lindsey Graham is pleased, but this time you shouldn't be, this is according to McClatchy today.
Donald Trump aides are pushing him to protect young people brought into the country illegally as children and then use the issue as a bargaining chip for a larger immigration deal, despite the president's campaign vow to deport so-called dreamers.
So now they're trying to push him, Trump's aides are trying to push him to enshrine DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, executive amnesty.
Remember Trump promised he was going to get rid of it?
Now they're saying to him, you should give citizenship to these kids and in exchange you should ask government to build the wall and to ensure that legal immigration levels are brought down.
I see no reason why Trump should have to bargain with Congress on this particular point.
As I've said for a long time, I'm not against the idea that certain children who arrived here in the United States and are beneficial to the country should be allowed to stay.
I think that illegal immigrants should be judged on a case-by-case basis.
They should have to go to the back of the line, but if they're good for the country, if they're useful for the country, if they served in the military, for example, or let's say they're going to college in engineering, And they're good for the economy, and they pay taxes, and they have families.
I don't see why we would toss those people out of the country.
I don't think they have the right to be here, however.
And that means that you should deport the ones who don't belong here.
Trying to judge everybody as a class, I think, is foolish.
This attempt to now trade away one of Trump's key campaign promises in order to achieve another of Trump's key campaign promises.
You want to piss off Breitbart, you want to piss off Carlson, you want to piss off Coulter.
There's no better way to do it.
Okay, time for some things I like, things I hate, and then deconstructing the culture.
So, things I like, speaking of people going blind from looking at things in the sky, there is a, there is a...
So we'll start with a book called The Day of the Triffids.
This is a great science fiction novel by John Wyndham.
It's largely forgotten.
It's about agro-warfare, really, is really what it's about.
It's about this idea that the Russians create this sort of super species of plant that distributes poison, almost.
But what happens is that one guy gets poisoned in the eyes by this, and then there's some sort of nuclear explosion.
Everybody looks at the nuclear explosion in Britain and goes blind.
And so he's the only one who's left.
Able to be seen.
He's the only sighted person left in Britain, or one of the few.
And so, it's actually, the beginning of this book is the inspiration for the beginning of 28 Days Later.
You know, like the person who did 28 Days Later said, because the beginning of the book is the guy waking up in the hospital, and he's got bandages around his eyes, he takes off the bandages and the streets are empty, there are blind people wandering around, you know, that's the inspiration.
It's a good book.
It's...
A very weird sci-fi book considered sort of a modern classic.
So go take a look.
John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids.
Worth reading.
I read it several years ago.
Don't remember it that well, but remember enjoying it.
Okay, other things that are hilarious.
So Shep Smith, I thought, was hilarious yesterday about the solar eclipse.
As you noted from yesterday's show, I was not entranced with the solar eclipse.
I think it's like the pictures are cool and everything.
The people who are going nuts, like, ooh, an object moved in front of another object.
Right.
Like, that's, like, we move between the moon and the sun pretty much every month, which is why the moon looks like the sun looked yesterday.
Whoop-dee-doo.
Um, here's Shep Smith going crazy over it.
This is Total Eclipse of the Sun Watch 2017 on Fox News Channel.
The excitement must be building and building, like, like fireworks!
If I put this here, and my phone here, I have a total eclipse of the phone!
Fascinating!
It's amazing!
Oh my god, the moon has gotten in front of the sun!
Okay, well, I...
I don't know.
It's interesting looking.
The sun looks a little like the moon up there in my wall.
If you mention it, you gotta sing it.
Where the deer and the antelope play.
Wow!
Would you look at that?
It's a total eclipse of the sun!
They know this is all it's gonna be, right?
Just a moon over a sun.
Oh, the sun's coming back now.
The candles are coming out.
Oh my goodness, that didn't last long.
Yoo-hoo!
I wanna hear more!
No, because now you can look at the thing!
It's covered, so you can look at it!
Oh my God!
The sun is returning!
Jalapeno!
How was it?
Response.
Weird.
Dark.
Cold.
Another dark.
Amazing.
I love nature.
Amazing.
I'm gonna die now, and we hope that doesn't happen.
Wanna see a total eclipse of this monitor?
How about...
It's totally eclipsed.
Well, we're having a good time, too.
And there's some people who think we should take this a little more seriously on the Twitter.
Because for us, this is just a lot of fun.
We've been watching the Path of Totality so you can catch a DC on screen if you run.
Do you know that it goes vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv Okay, so Shep Smith having too much fun with the eclipse.
Yeah, I think that everyone went a little crazy.
I went out on the streets of California, and it was in L.A., and it was the first time I'd ever seen anyone look at the sky in L.A.
because the sky here is brown because of all this fog.
This is the first time anyone had ever looked at the sky.
President Trump, however, looked at the sky.
He decided that it was worthwhile.
He was wearing glasses.
Okay, so a lot of people I know glanced at the sun for a second because they didn't have the glass, and they're like, I want to see what's going on.
Um, President Trump had the glasses, and because he's just a contrary guy, he just decides, you know what, I'm gonna look directly at the sun for no apparent reason.
Like, people are literally shouting at him, don't look at the sun.
Never tell me what I can't do.
He looks directly at this side.
Here he is.
Don't look.
And he's looking up at the sun.
Because he just asked it.
Melania's like, what is wrong with you?
Melania's just looking at him like, what happened to you?
Were you dropped as a child?
Pretty spectacular.
So there's the president.
It's going to be sad when in three days he's clinically blind and he can't read the teleprompter anymore and then things are really going to get wild.
But, you know, he's such a contrary guy that I think that what we ought to do at this point is suggest to President Trump that he definitely needs to cut, no matter what he does, he should not cut taxes.
He should definitely not cut taxes and then he will just destroy the IRS immediately.
Pretty amazing, okay.
Speaking of science that actually does amaze me, actually really cool science, this is very inspirational.
There are a bunch of videos out now of people who are deaf and have been given cochlear implants or devices in their ears that allow them to hear for the first time.
It really is quite incredible.
So now technically your device is on.
Can you tell?
I just heard you hear it.
Hi, Cooper.
Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.
Now, that's cool science, okay?
So if we're going to talk about, like, amazing science, I'd rather watch that any day of the week over at the Solar Oclep.
Super, super cool stuff.
Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate, and then we'll deconstruct culture for a minute.
Okay, so.
So the media is going nuts because Katrina Pearson was on Fox News, and they're suggesting that Katrina Pearson, the former Trump spokeswoman, who is not good at her job, she's not a super articulate person, they're suggesting that she was defending slavery.
She's clearly not defending slavery in this clip, but the media have decided to make it seem as though she is anyway.
Here is Katrina Pearson talking Confederate monuments and slavery with Wendy Osifo, professor at Johns Hopkins University.
So this is not a symbol of patriotism.
This is a symbol of hatred and division.
And while it is a piece of American history, it's not necessarily the good part of American history.
It's actually nefarious.
So it doesn't deserve a place on state grounds.
It deserves a place in museums.
And that's where they need to be.
It absolutely deserves a place because bad history is still good history for this country.
Slavery is good history?
Where we are today!
Where we are today!
Absolutely!
Slavery is good history?
Absolutely?
During those times, during those times, think about this for a second.
Where would we be today if not for that Civil War?
Where would we be without slavery?
Okay, so Katrina Pearson is really bad at her job, but she's not actually defending slavery, okay?
What she's suggesting is that it is good to know American history, and slavery and Confederacy were part of that history, not that those were good things.
Okay, that's not what she's saying.
She just really sucks at her job.
So, that's it.
So, before people start saying that Katrina Pearson is defending slavery, maybe they ought to just recognize that never, never attribute to pro-slavery malice what you can attribute to incompetence, because that's actually what's happening here.
So, time to deconstruct a little bit of culture.
We haven't done a serious deconstruction of the culture in a while, so today we are going to do just that.
So, we'll begin with the song Wild Thoughts.
This is DJ Khaled and Rihanna.
We didn't cut the video for Wild Thoughts because apparently it's nipplicious.
This is according to Mathis, who said that it would have required a good amount of work and many lost man hours for people to blur out the assets of Rihanna in this particular music video.
But here is what this garbage song sounds like.
This song, again, is called... What the hell is this stupid song called?
Wild Varts, okay.
Another one.
Another one.
We the best music.
DJ Khaled.
I don't know if you could take it. - Okay, so sorry, you can pause it right there for one second.
So I've heard that this DJ Khaled thing is like a thing.
And then he just shouts random phrases into the microphone.
Jess, the person who does makeup here, she informed me of many of DJ Khaled's key phrases.
And she says he's very inspirational.
He's very inspirational because he shouts things like, we the best music.
We clearly not the best grammar.
I don't know why verbs were murdered, but I wish that we would bring them back.
Also, he apparently shouts DJ Khaled in all of his songs, which is a weird thing to do.
I do say that this is the Ben Shapiro show, but only to identify which show you are listening to.
I assume that DJ Khaled is aware that people know that it's his song.
Maybe he's doing the same thing.
Maybe he's saying DJ Khaled because he thinks people don't know he's there.
Apparently, also, he has inspirational phrases such as level up, Um, what are we, 11 and playing Super Mario Brothers?
And also, he says, bless up, which, I don't know what that means.
And major key is another one of his, apparently.
Apparently he just shouts randomly, major key.
Which is weird, does he also shout random music theory things?
Does he, does he suggest that we are, that we are now in, when it goes into minor key, does he, does he shout minor key?
Does he, does he shout how many flats are in the particular, does he shout like, F-flat major?
Like, what, what exactly does he, I'm confused.
In any case, he also... So DJ Khaled leads off.
Okay, we'll play some more of this garbage song.
It's bad music, and apparently Rihanna is also... She gave up on singing a long time ago, and now she sort of just, like, breathes into a microphone, and sounds as though she swallowed a kazoo and now is attempting to sing through it.
You're naked, naked, naked.
I wanna be your baby, baby, baby.
Spendin' in as much as I could gain from Mayday.
Why go and sit on the prowl?
Going to get like this, I can't be here of you Until it's a demon darn start Because I can listen to things that I'm gonna do Wild, wild, wild Wild, wild, wild thoughts Okay, so apparently Rhianna also has a thing in her songs now where she just repeats one One word, one thousand times Right?
Work, work, work, work, work Work, work, work, work, work And now wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild Wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild Yes, this clearly is Increasing the IQ level of the United States population Also, nothing says feminism quite like No, you wanna see me nakey, nakey, naked I wanna be your baby, baby, baby It's just like Cole Porter, isn't it?
I mean, really, the lyrics, it's just like the Gershwins The lyrics here are just spectacular on.
Spinning and it's wet like it just came from Maytag.
Nothing says sexy to me quite like a washing machine.
I mean, that's just hot stuff.
When I think hot, I think washing machine.
And then I love that she can drop lines like, white girl wasted on that brown liquor.
Things that you could never say with races reversed, right?
Black girl wasted on that vodka, like, that would be racist.
But white girl wasted on that brown liquor, totally fine.
Does any of this actually promote, like, good image of women?
And she's supposed to be—one of the things that I love about the Modern pop music scene is that feminism is basically like what a raunchy, randy dude would be thinking about at 2 o'clock in the morning after watching porn on his computer.
That's basically what feminism is now.
Right?
So much so that we can't even show you the video because it's nipalicious.
So it's basically softcore porn made by all of these pop stars who can't sing.
Because she can't sing, okay?
Her voice is now garbage.
I don't know what happened to her.
It sounds like Jon Snow strangled Littlefinger and now Littlefinger's trying to sing.
I mean, it's just bad stuff all the way through.
And again, you wonder why all these guys have a vision of women, that women are just sex objects who want nothing more than to get raunchy with them?
Maybe it's because pop is designed to play on those male emotions, and so there are a lot of women who are taking advantage of that, and it's generating a bad image of women generally.
I don't think that it's a good thing overall.
Okay, so, there is my critique of a garbage song called Wild Thoughts.
I was not inspired by DJ Khaled shrieking his own name.
I've been informed that he's a good person.
I was also told by Mathis that he's a good person because he loves his child.
I like that, I do like that the standard for being a good person now, maybe he is a nice person, I don't know, but I like that the standard for being a good person in pop culture world is basically you don't kill puppies in your spare time.
Like, oh, he likes his child.
Congratulations!
He doesn't have sex with corpses.
Like, great!
Like, it's just... Our standards in society have lowered somewhat.
If he does great things for people, that's great.
Like, those would be the things that I'd want to hear about.
So, you're gonna have to make a better defense of DJ Khaled next time, Mathis, and or Jess.
I am not inspired by his quote.
I wrote some of these down because they're so inspirational.
Key to more success is a clean heart and a clean face.
Doesn't he have a beard?
Weird.
Okay, well, you learn something new every day.
We will be back here tomorrow.
President Trump is supposed to make a big speech in Arizona.
I believe that's today, correct?
He's supposed to tonight speak in Arizona.
Some riots expected, so I'm sure there'll be much to talk about tomorrow.
We'll talk about it.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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