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Sept. 5, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
45:07
Trump Dumps Obama’s Executive Amnesty | Ep. 376
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President Trump gets rid of President Obama's executive amnesty, sort of.
We'll discuss all the ramifications.
North Korea drops a hydrogen bomb, and we'll talk about what that means.
Plus, President Trump visits Louisiana and Texas, and the media lose their minds, of course.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
All righty, so I'm going to explain everything you need to know about President Trump's big move this morning to curb the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
This is President Obama's executive amnesty, and President Trump moves to sort of get rid of it, but sort of not, and we'll explain why this plan really doesn't please anyone.
There's a better way to do it.
There are a couple better ways to do it, especially if you would like to see immigration law enforced, as I would like to see immigration law enforced.
My long-standing policy on illegal immigration has always been That the federal government should be working to remove people, not only criminals, but people who are not of benefit to American society, while leaving the people who are of benefit for American society to the back of the line.
This has always been my policy on immigration.
I've never seen why a blanket policy with regard to entire classes of people should be adopted.
It's never occurred to me why it should be.
That everyone of a particular age from a particular country should get in or none should be.
That doesn't make any sense to me.
But I'm going to explain why it is that what President Trump did today is not likely to please anyone on any side of the aisle or to finish President Obama's executive amnesty.
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Okay so It was rumored over the weekend for the past several days that President Trump was going to announce an end to President Obama's executive amnesty.
So let's start from the very beginning, a very good place to start, and that is what exactly was the executive amnesty in the first place.
So if you go back to 2012, President Obama desperately wanted to win the election, and so what he decided to do was give a sop to the Hispanic community as he viewed it by basically granting blanket amnesty to so-called dreamers.
These would be children of illegal immigrants who arrived as children.
They weren't born in the United States, if they'd been born here they would be citizens, but they were brought to the United States afterward and they were like three or four years old or ten years old when they came here.
The restrictions were people Who were under the age of 16 when they were brought to the United States and below the age of 31, brought into the country by their parents before 2012, granted new legal status.
Presumably you had to be brought into the country, I guess by, I guess you wouldn't get a permit unless you'd been in the country since 2007 for some continuous period.
That was the basic rule under the so-called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and then there was DAPA, which was a program for their parents, Deferred Action for Parents of Childhood Arrivals.
Okay, so all of that was put in place by Obama through an executive order.
It never This was challenged in court and it was basically struck down because the idea was it's one thing for you to say you're not going to prosecute folks.
to people saying that they could work legally in the country and him calling it a refusal to prosecute the law.
He said that he was doing this under prosecutorial discretion.
His DOJ was not going to prosecute any of these people and therefore he might as well give them papers.
This was challenged in court and it was basically struck down because the idea was it's one thing for you to say you're not going to prosecute folks.
It's another thing for you to give them papers.
If you give them papers, it's no longer a question of executive branch power.
Now we're talking about something different.
We're talking about an affirmative action by the executive branch without legislative approval.
That's illegal.
So DACA had basically been held up by the courts, but none of the people who had applied through the DACA program were being deported.
And one of the things that happened because of all of this is a lot of people who are illegal immigrants went to the government, registered all their information because they were guaranteed a shot at essentially amnesty if they gave the information.
The problem was always that if there was a situation where the next president was a Republican and decided to walk this back, now the government knew exactly where to find you if you were an illegal immigrant.
Okay, so here is what Trump did.
He had a bunch of choices to what he could do on DACA.
I'll explain what I think was the best choice in just a few minutes.
But here's what he actually did.
He announced that the administration would stop consideration of new applications for legal status beginning tomorrow.
So if you were going to apply under DACA for legal status and a work permit, then you can no longer do that starting tomorrow.
Those whose current permits expire between now and March 5th, 2018, which is next March, can apply for a new two-year permit.
They must do so before October 5th, so they have to come along, reapply in the next month or so.
Some so-called dreamers will be granted new legal status, others will not.
But even after March 5th, which is the deadline for enforcement of DACA, that's the deadline where Trump says, okay, it's the drop-dead date, now we're going to start enforcing the law.
He really says we're not going to start enforcing the law.
He says we're not going to hand out new work permits or anything, but the Trump White House says it will not start deporting dreamers in serious numbers, but will continue to follow the Obama administration's focus on criminals.
So basically nothing changed, except for we're not going to give paperwork to people.
And there's a little bit more uncertainty if you're a Dreamer.
Maybe Trump will deport you, maybe he won't.
In all likelihood, he will not.
A lot of this springs from a key ambiguity in how the right wing feels about illegal immigration and Dreamers in particular.
And this is a key ambiguity.
Trump campaigned loudly and proudly on the idea that we have to have rule of law and these people have to go.
It doesn't matter if you were brought here as a child.
It's sad, but we as a country have a responsibility to fulfill the needs of our citizens before we start fulfilling the needs of other citizens.
You shouldn't have come here illegally.
Your parents shouldn't have.
And we don't have an obligation as a country to take in anyone, right?
That's not our responsibility.
That was what Trump said repeatedly during the campaign.
At the same time, Trump was saying during the campaign, and particularly afterward, that he wants to keep the Dreamers here.
So he had this sort of split message.
Here was Trump just a few weeks ago talking about how he loves the dreamers.
Thank you very much.
Sometime today or over the weekend we'll have a decision.
We love the dreamers.
We love everybody.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Okay, we love the dreamers.
We love everybody.
So he's got these conflicting messages.
One is I want to enforce the law.
Two is we love the dreamers.
So here is the split in the Republican Party over Obama's executive amnesty.
Everyone sort of wants the executive amnesty gone, but for two different reasons.
Reason number one, it's illegal for the executive branch to usurp legislative authority this way.
This is the position of Speaker Paul Ryan.
This is the position of a lot of the sort of leftists in the Republican Party on illegal immigration.
A lot of them say, you know, we sort of like what Obama did, but we don't like that Obama did it, right?
Obama should have gone through Congress.
We should have passed legislation.
This is not something the executive branch gets to do on its own.
Fair enough.
I agree.
It's unconstitutional.
And the courts have largely agreed with that as well.
The second reason that people disliked Obama's executive amnesty is because they actually didn't like the executive amnesty.
Not because it was illegally done, not because it was done in piss-poor manner by the executive branch, but because they don't actually want amnesty for DREAMers.
This is Trump's most vocal base.
This is people like Ann Coulter.
This is people like Steve Bannon.
This is people who were really on the Trump train from the earliest point, right?
People like Jeff Sessions, the current Attorney General.
These are people who actually would like to see a lot of Dreamers deported.
And this is crystal clear that there is this split in the Republican Party.
So, Trump now has to make a choice.
Is he going to revoke DACA on the first grounds or on the second grounds?
In other words, does he really agree with his own base?
Does he really want to get rid of DACA and start deporting DREAMers?
It's pretty clear that he does not.
It's pretty clear that he does not.
And it's pretty clear from his policy that he doesn't.
Because what it really looks like he's doing right now is he is saying that he's going to get rid of DACA in order to push Congress in order to actually enshrine DACA and then maybe as a stop to his base give him funding for the Trump wall.
So this is the trade that Trump is looking for.
Trump is looking for this trade.
He wants DACA to be replaced.
Okay, not actually gotten rid of.
He wants to see it encoded.
He wants to see it enshrined.
He wants to see Congress actually make Obama's executive amnesty the law of the land, not through the executive branch.
He wants to sign into law the executive amnesty so it's just amnesty.
Right?
Trump actually wants that.
But in return, he also wants the Trump wall.
And he's hoping that that will be enough of a stop to his base.
This is a serious problem.
This plan is not going to please anyone.
The only people it might please are some of the people who opposed DACA because of the manner in which it was implemented, but they're lefties on immigration.
People like Paul Ryan.
Paul Ryan might be happy with this particular plan.
And in fact, Paul Ryan basically came forward and said, yeah, I think we're going to try and pass something now.
But if Trump's legacy in the first year of his presidency is no Obamacare appeal, no tax cuts, No getting rid of the Iran deal.
And we will pass a piece of amnesty legislation that is actually stronger than what Obama did.
I think a lot of people in his base are going to be pissed and they have good reason to be pissed off.
So here's why everybody is going to be angry from all sides on this particular policy.
For the people who are advocates of getting rid of DACA because they actually don't want DACA, because they want the DREAMers deported, Trump clearly doesn't want to deport the DREAMers.
And the problem is that Trump has already signaled he doesn't want to deport the DREAMers.
So imagine you're a member of Congress, and Trump is coming to you and he's saying, listen, I'm going to get rid of DACA.
I'm getting rid of the executive amnesty, and then I'm going to start deporting people.
But if you want those people to stay, all you have to do, people, is give me the Trump ball.
That's all you got to do.
Just do it.
The Trump ball.
Imagine you're a Republican member of Congress now.
You are in serious trouble because you are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
If you vote to give Trump what he wants, your own base will crucify you for having caved on DACA.
Your own base will probably primary you for having said that you're going to enshrine DACA.
And if you don't give Trump what he wants, then your own base could go after you because you're not giving Trump what he wants.
So Trump has put them all in an awkward position, right?
And this is a serious problem for the people in the Republican Party.
So what's their easiest solution?
Their easiest solution is to do nothing, because they know that in the end, Trump actually isn't going to implement his new ban.
Trump isn't actually going to deport all these people.
So all these Republicans can just sit tight, stay out of the fight, vote for nothing, and then six months pass, and then Trump basically does nothing, and everything goes back to normal, and whatever.
That's the easiest solution.
No Trump wall, no nothing.
No legislation.
Republicans don't want to have to affirmatively own the executive amnesty.
They don't want to have to do that.
But Trump wants them to do that so that they'll give him the Trump wall and also because then it's not on him.
Then it's not Trump's responsibility for not getting rid of the executive amnesty.
It's all Congress's responsibility for not getting rid of the executive amnesty.
So basically Trump is kicking the can down the road because he doesn't want to take responsibility for getting rid of the executive amnesty in the first place.
Trump wants to make a deal.
And Trump's deal is not something his base is going to be happy with.
And then there are the people who love DACA.
And they're not going to be happy either, and I'll explain why in just a second.
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Okay, so I've already discussed the people who want to get rid of DACA, like really want to get rid of it.
They're gonna be upset because Trump doesn't actually want to get rid of DACA.
He just wants to make Congress re-enshrine DACA and then give him the Trump wall as some sort of SOP.
People like Ann Coulter are not gonna be happy with this.
And they shouldn't be happy with this.
If they are, they're being disingenuous.
Because Trump is basically saying that he is not going to deport DREAMers.
Okay, that was not what he ran on.
Okay, then there are a bunch of people who love DACA.
These are people like John McCain.
They're not going to be happy because they're going to suggest, okay, well, if you're just going to reinstall DACA in the first place, why not just leave Obama's policies in place?
Why are we going through this whole rigmarole?
Why are we putting uncertainty in the heads of all these dreamers who are going to get to stay in the first place?
Why are you destroying the credibility of the party on this question?
You're not going to get rid of these folks.
So what exactly is the political move here?
That's what people like John McCain are saying.
And on the left, of course, the left is always going to claim that Trump is a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, even if Trump didn't actually change anything here.
And by the way, Trump didn't really change much here.
Okay, DREAMers are not being deported.
The White House says that they are only going after what they call criminals.
Not illegal immigrants.
Criminal illegal immigrants.
People who have committed an additional crime besides being here illegally.
Not what Trump ran on.
Okay, so Trump is not actually getting rid of DACA.
This is very much like the healthcare debate.
It's very much like Trumpcare.
Trump was basically saying, I'm getting rid of Obamacare.
He wasn't getting rid of Obamacare.
And then, no Republican wanted to go on record as having re-enshrined Obamacare, and so Trumpcare failed.
This is almost the exact same thing.
You can see the exact same math playing out.
Again, because Trump won't take ownership of this.
Trump was not willing to take a hard position here.
He wasn't either willing to come out and say, full scale, listen.
I like the dream.
I like DACA.
DACA's good.
So here's the deal.
Let's just pass DACA.
He's not willing to say that because he knows his base will go after him.
And he's also not willing to own his own hardline immigration position, the one that he sold during the campaign, that we're going to deport everybody who's not here illegally.
Who is not here legally.
He's not actually willing to take that stand.
So, how exactly does all this play out?
Well, it plays out with nothing happening, basically.
Because Republicans are split on DACA.
The chances that a piece of legislation passes here, a big piece of amnesty legislation passes, with solely Republican support is low.
Democrats have no incentive to actually pass anything.
Democrats want to run on this.
There's a lot of optimistic thinking from people like my friend Hugh Hewitt.
The Democrats may jump on board and pass a piece of bipartisan legislation with Trump re-enshrining DACA.
They're not going to.
Democrats want to run on this in 2018.
They love the vice that Republicans are now caught in.
Republicans are caught between their base and the general public.
The general public is basically okay with the Dreamers.
The base really is not.
That means that all of these Republicans are now going to be forced to go on record with either a very unpopular position with their base or a very unpopular position with the general public.
This is bad politics.
Now, the reason it's particularly bad politics is because there is a better solution.
There's a far easier solution.
This one was suggested by Byron York of the Washington Examiner, who's a big Trump fan.
Byron York suggests there's a very simple solution here, and he is totally right.
That is, instead of Trump coming out and having Jeff Sessions make a statement about getting rid of Obama's executive amnesty, Instead, Trump simply could have used the same strategy that Obama used on same-sex marriage.
If you recall, Obama's strategy on same-sex marriage was not to come out personally and endorse some sort of executive action, right?
That's not what Obama actually did.
What Obama actually did was something very different.
What he did was he waited for a bunch of states to sue, and then he said, we're not going to defend traditional marriage.
We're not going to defend it in court.
I'm not going to make Eric Holder defend traditional marriage in court.
And then the Supreme Court said, oh well, there's nobody who's actually defending traditional marriage, so we'll strike down traditional marriage.
This is what Obama did with same-sex marriage.
Trump could have done exactly the same thing with the executive amnesty.
Like, beat for beat.
Note for note, he could have done the exact same thing.
All Trump had to do was just wait for all of these lawsuits against DACA to go forward, wait for DACA to be struck down, and then say, listen guys, if you want DACA back, just pass a piece of legislation that includes funding for the Trump wall.
That would have been his smartest move.
He could have waited for DACA to be struck down, say nothing, keep his mouth shut, and then he could have gone forward, DACA would have been dead, and now it's up to Congress to fix the problem.
Instead, Trump has taken this weird position where he struck down DACA on procedural grounds, but not on substantive grounds, and his fans want him to strike it down on substantive grounds.
Trump would have all the leverage.
Once the courts got rid of Obama's executive amnesty, Trump would have every bit of leverage, all the leverage, not some of it, all of it.
Because then we'd go back to the system beforehand and Trump wouldn't have even said anything yet.
Right?
Trump could have had a credible threat.
Listen, there's no law on the books preventing me from doing this.
I don't have to get rid of executive amnesty.
Executive amnesty was illegal.
And listen, we have to enforce the law.
That's what the law is on the books.
So guys, either fix it or go home.
Fix it and give me my wall.
Right?
That's not what Trump did here.
So this is actually really bad strategy.
It's actually very poor strategy, particularly going into a midterm.
And what it comes from is, for President Trump, I think a deep and abiding need not to be the bad guy.
I mean, this is actually one of the things that's sort of fascinating about President Trump as a person, is that Trump does not want to be the bad guy in any given scenario.
He doesn't actually like firing people.
For a guy who likes firing people and plays the bad guy on TV a lot, he doesn't actually like doing the dirty work of punching someone.
He doesn't actually like doing it.
When he got rid of James Comey, he tried to put it on his Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein.
When he got rid of Mike Flynn, he tried to make it look like Flynn was resigning.
When he got rid of Steve Bannon, he tried to make it look like Bannon was resigning.
Like, every move that Trump makes is designed to shift responsibility to someone else.
On this one, he's trying to shift responsibility to Congress.
Well, he could have done that without even getting his hands dirty.
But what he's doing by doing this so obviously is he's trying to posture for his base, saying, listen, I'd get rid of DACA, but this Congress, you know, it's up to them now.
I can't, I don't know.
Right, by shifting responsibility to Congress, he's avoiding the responsibility of having to take a position.
That's not good.
Because without that presidential leadership, DACA will be enshrined.
Okay?
Congress will try to pass something.
And you can see a situation very easily where Speaker Ryan, Mitch McConnell, they actually decide to put forward bills with Democrat support, enshrining DACA, or they decide to let this thing go all the way for six months, and then Trump has the situation back on his hands.
You can see Congress kick the ball right back to Trump, and then Trump says, well, you know, And then we just go on the way we were before.
If you're Trump's base, I don't know that you can be happy with this.
Like, if you're gonna be intellectually honest, I don't think that you can be particularly happy with this.
And again, I'm the guy who wrote the headline a week and a half ago when Trump was talking about getting rid of executive amnesty.
I'm the guy who a week and a half ago said that that was a good thing worth doing.
But it's only good and worth doing if you're willing to enforce the law or replace it with a better law.
It's not worth doing if your entire goal here is just to sort of posture about it and then go right back to the same enforcement policy that Obama had.
That's not good and it's certainly not a good policy if you want Congress to enshrine executive amnesty as the law.
It's not good on Trump.
It's not good on Ryan.
It's not good on McConnell.
It's laid out about as poorly as you can.
I wish I could say that Trump was doing a beautiful job with this, but I just don't think he is.
I think that he's unwilling to face up to the conflict inside the Republican Party and take a hard position, so he split the baby.
Splitting the baby in politics is basically the worst possible strategy, and I want to explain about that in a second, why Republicans have a tendency to split the baby while Democrats really don't.
I'm going to explain that in just one second, but first, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at Blinkist.
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Okay, so, here is the problem for Republicans.
What Obama did, and he did a lot of it while he was President of the United States, is he shifted the ground.
He shifted the ground.
That's what Obama did.
That's what Obamacare was.
This is what Democrats understand that Republicans don't.
Democrats understand that when you have power, you have to use it now, and even if it means that you're going to lose it for a little while, you change the nature of the playing field.
So, when's the last time Republicans had unilateral control of Congress and the presidency, and they passed a major piece of legislation that shifted the groundwork, making it nearly impossible for Democrats to roll back?
When's the last time?
Republicans had control of all three branches of government from 2002 to 2006.
Nothing major passed.
Nothing.
They didn't shift the groundwork in any substantial way.
Democrats had control of the House, the Senate, and the Presidency from 2008 to 2010, or 2009 to 2011.
And in that time, they passed Obamacare, which dramatically shifted the groundwork.
Now, Democrats lost a thousand seats across the country.
They lost the House, Senate, and Presidency on the back of Obamacare.
They didn't care.
The reason they didn't care is because they now understand that they've shifted the way Americans think about health care.
We now think it is government's job to provide you health care.
Once we're in that world, Democrats have now won.
They've now taken another area of territory off the board.
They just took Casterly Rock.
They may have lost a lot of troops to do it.
They may have put themselves in a bad political position.
That bad political position is temporary.
The change they made is permanent.
Democrats understand this.
Same thing is true of executive amnesty.
By Obama moving forward on executive amnesty, he lost Congress in 2014 based on his executive amnesty.
There's a huge backlash to the executive amnesty, but...
Because he knew that it was going to shift the groundwork, that it was going to make people feel like there were 800,000 people who had basically been given legal amnesty in the United States.
He knew that walking that back was going to be damaging for Republicans.
He shifted the groundwork.
Republicans are never willing to make those same sorts of sacrifices.
Republicans could have gone for broke on Obamacare, on repealing it.
They could have changed the circumstances on a fundamental level.
They didn't.
They could do it on taxes.
They're not going to.
They could do it right now on amnesty.
They're not going to.
Instead, Republicans are always fearful of losing power because when you're a conservative, your typical job is to stop Democrats from doing insane things.
But the problem is that if you think your only job is to stop Democrats from doing insane things, you can only do that so long as you have power.
Well, you're never going to have power indefinitely.
That means that if Democrats have power for five minutes, boom, they shift the game.
The playing field has now been tilted.
And now you're fighting an even more uphill battle.
And so you say, OK, well, the playing field's already uphill.
We can't lose power.
We can't afford to lose power.
They'll shift the playing field some more.
So they don't do anything.
They don't try to shift it back to level.
They don't try to shift the playing field back to level.
Instead, they stand right here, and they say, OK, we'll fight the uphill battle.
We'll try to stop that snowball from rolling down the hill.
Then they don't do anything.
They lose power.
And Democrats, boom.
They moved the entire hill, right?
The hill again shifts.
Okay, so this is why Republicans are failing at this.
Imagine if President Trump had come out and he had said, listen, we are now going to enforce immigration law.
The rule of law is back in force.
It's back in force.
And the new immigration law that we are going to enforce is that if you are not here and of benefit to the United States, you're gone.
That'd be a very difficult policy for Democrats to fight because most people in the United States believe that on a fundamental level.
But Trump isn't willing to do that because he's afraid of the bad headlines.
And he doesn't want to be the bad guy.
And the same thing is true of Republicans in Congress.
Basically, Republicans are a bunch of cowards on this issue, just like they are cowards on a number of issues, and they are not willing to take a hard and fast political position because they're afraid of the blowback if they do, which will give Democrats back power, and then Democrats will move faster.
What they fail to see is that if you do not expend political capital, you can never shift the playing field back in your direction in any serious way.
So this is a serious problem, and I'm not sure that Republicans know how to fix it.
I want to talk about North Korea as well, because over the weekend, this DACA news, this executive amnesty news, has obviously shifted the political discussion, but the actual biggest news over the weekend was that North Korea tested out a hydrogen bomb, which is pretty shocking.
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So what's odd about what Obama is doing with the, well, what Trump, rather, is doing with the executive amnesty is that Trump actually has some serious political capital now.
In the aftermath of the hurricane, Trump has real political capital.
Here's some video of President Trump in Louisiana over the weekend.
And here he is.
He decided to make a second trip down to the storm-torn region and hand out supplies and do some photo ops, which is stuff that is good for him, obviously.
Here's some video of Trump in Louisiana.
You can see this enormous crowd that showed up for Trump.
And here he is in one of the trucks, shaking hands with people.
With the happy dappy music.
Trump shaking hands with some more folks.
And then here is some video of Trump at the Houston, let's do the Houston shelter tape.
So here he is at the Houston shelter talking to a bunch of the victims of Hurricane Harvey.
Talking about how bad all this was.
I'm happy.
I'm sure a lot of happiness.
It's been really nice.
It's been a wonderful thing.
As tough as this was, it's been a wonderful thing.
I think even for the country to watch and for the world to watch.
It's been beautiful.
Have a good time, everybody.
I'm going to be doing a little help over here.
They're really happy with what's going on.
It's been something, it's been very well received.
Even by you guys it's been well received.
No, I didn't see.
You mean the flooding?
Yeah.
Oh yeah, yeah.
There was, there's a lot of water.
But it's, it's leaving pretty quick, pretty quickly.
But there's a lot of water.
A lot of water.
But it's moving out.
But I think most importantly, the governor, the relationship with the governor and the mayor and everybody, it's been fantastic.
And with, and with the federal government, it's been really great.
And we're signing a lot of documents now to get money.
Okay, so all of this is fine, right?
All of this tape for Trump is very good.
And you can see that the left are losing their mind because anytime Trump does something that's good for Trump, the left think that this is the end of the world.
So Joy Reid over on MSNBC, she was very angry because Trump says he's going to give a million dollars to Hurricane Harvey relief.
And here she is whining that it's not enough money.
His million-dollar pledge is also dwarfed by the efforts of celebrities like Beyonce and J.J.
Watt, who have launched their own fundraising campaigns, with Watt raising $16 million and counting.
Okay, so, uh, you know, there she is ripping him.
And then Gabe Sherman, uh, from New York Magazine, he comes out and says, the big problem here is that Trump is really trying just to avoid responsibility for the Mueller investigation.
That as the Mueller-Russia investigation goes on, he doesn't want focus on that, so he's going over to Hurricane Harvey land.
This is just, again, this shows how crazy the left is.
When the left is this crazy, folks, that's an indication that Trump is winning.
That's always a good indicator.
When the left goes nuts, it's for one of two reasons.
One, Trump actually did something completely illegitimate.
Or two, It's not that illegitimate and they're just going crazy because he's winning.
That's this, right?
Trump did something that's not illegitimate.
It's actually quite good.
He went down to Louisiana and Texas and did some photo-opping and the left is trying to suggest why this is bad and having a tough time of it.
This is a desperate effort by this White House to come up with a new storyline because the story that Donald Trump doesn't want the world focused on is the Robert Mueller investigation, which we know from new reporting this week that is moving ahead at rapid-fire speed.
He's teamed up with New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
I mean, this is a perilous time for this president.
So having any kind of visual or optics where he's in Texas is his effort to turn that corner.
Okay, so this idea that the left is going after Trump for stuff that is completely unobjectionable, it demonstrates that Trump had political capital.
Now, you would assume that Trump might use that political capital to do something big or politically popular, and instead, he decided to do this sort of milquetoast move on the executive amnesty.
Which is actually designed to, again, re-enshrine the executive amnesty, to make the executive amnesty law.
That's what Trump's move is explicitly designed to do.
He's saying it.
It's not me saying it.
People in the White House are saying it.
That seems to me a really foolish move.
He has all this political capital.
Use it, Mr. President.
Use it for something good.
You said last week you wanted to do the tax cuts.
Use it for the tax cuts, if that's how you want to use this.
You want to say that we need to jog the economy after a big disaster?
Now would be a good time to do that.
Listen, I don't agree with his trillion-dollar infrastructure plans.
But if Trump wanted to do that, would there be a better time than right after a hurricane?
He could even tie it to the Hurricane Harvey relief funds.
Instead, it looks like Trump is making minor moves because I really don't get the feeling that he has strong convictions on a lot of these policies.
You know, Steve Mnuchin was suggesting that Congress should tie the Hurricane Harvey relief fund to a debt ceiling increase.
I mean, again, this president came into office complaining that the government spent too much money, and now they're going to go out and they're going to borrow some more money.
Here's Steve Mnuchin as his Secretary of the Treasury.
Mark Meadows says he does not want to see that disaster aid tied to a bill to raise the debt limit.
Can you guarantee him and others that that won't happen?
No, I can't.
Quite the contrary.
The President and I believe that it should be tied to the Harvey funding.
That our first priority is to make sure that the state gets money.
It is critical.
And to do that, we need to make sure we raise the debt limit.
So if Congress appropriates the money, but I don't have the ability to borrow more money and pay for it, we're not going to be able to get that money to the state.
So we need to put politics aside and we're going to be urging Congress to get both of those things done as quickly as they can.
So this is what's driving me crazy.
You know, there's a whole very partisan feel to the United States right now.
Never have the parties been closer in actual policy.
Obama would have pushed the same thing.
Tie hurricane funding to a debt ceiling increase.
That's exactly what Obama would have pushed.
Obama would have pushed making his executive amnesty law, not just executive amnesty.
These are all things Obama would have pushed.
And yet, we're beating each other's brains in over everyone agreeing on policy.
It's quite insane.
Meanwhile, on the international scene, the North Koreans did a nuclear test that actually created a 6.3 earthquake.
That's how large this hydrogen bomb was.
So they now have an H-bomb and they are suggesting that they can affix it to the tip of these ICBMs that they've been test firing and that are capable of reaching the United States.
President Trump had a series of tweets on this over the weekend.
Here's a tweet.
He tweeted, North Korea has conducted a major nuclear test.
Their words and actions continue to be very hostile and dangerous to the United States.
He continued, North Korea is a rogue nation which has become a great threat and embarrassment to China, which is trying to help but with little success.
And then he finished by saying, South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work.
They only understand one thing.
Okay.
Again, I don't want to criticize Trump too much because I don't think that this was, it's not a problem of his making, it's a problem of Clinton's making, it's a problem of every president since Truman's making is North Korea.
But when he says things like South Korea is finding that their appeasement doesn't work, only one thing works, what's the one thing?
Force?
Threats of force?
How's that going to work exactly?
How's that gonna work?
So Trump was suggesting over the weekend that he's going to actually lead sanctions on any country that does business with North Korea.
The problem is that I'm not sure that he's actually willing to implement that because it would cause a pretty significant financial strain.
It may actually be smart policy.
It may actually be best policy.
Mark Levin was suggesting on his show the best thing the United States could do would be to station nuclear weapons.
In Japan, pointed at North Korea.
In South Korea, pointed at North Korea.
Basically, use the anti-Soviet strategy in order to get North Korea to calm down.
Let them know that if you were to nuke any of these places, they have the immediate backlash.
Capacity that it's not a question of whether they would nuke they would I think that's right He also suggested that we take financial measures against China.
I think that's right as well But when Trump is going after South Korea, I don't really see that as being particularly a smart move Also, Trump is threatening to end a trade agreement with the South Koreans in the middle of a conflict with the North Koreans I don't understand how alienating the South Korean government is a really smart strategy at this point Trump is talking about withdrawing from a trade deal.
Again, one of the reasons South Korea is working with us and not China is because we have a trade relationship with them.
If we don't, then presumably South Korea could start working with China, and China's sphere of influence could grow under the North Korean nuclear umbrella.
None of that makes a whole hell of a lot of sense.
Again, I think that President Trump, he says this is a big week.
I agree this is a big week.
So far, I'm not liking what I'm seeing.
He needs to take a stronger stance.
He needs to lay out an actual policy, not just vague talk on Twitter, an actual policy on North Korea, if he has one.
And when it comes to executive amnesty, Does he believe what he said during the campaign or was he fibbing?
Does he want Congress to make sure the Dreamers aren't deported?
And if so, then he ought to take the leading position on that and protect his own people from being primaried.
Otherwise, he's dooming his own party, which seems to me like a bad move.
Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
So...
Things I like.
I was reading this book over the weekend after my father recommended it to me.
It's quite good.
It's called The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
It's all about why we spend all of our lives trying to discern the systems behind predictable events, but the events that actually change our lives in major ways are highly improbable and unpredictable events.
And that's why we have to plan for those as well.
So how do you plan for the unpredictable?
Well, one of the ways is you have a certain amount of your assets, for example, in the financial market, you have a certain amount of your assets in really, really predictable, safe assets, and then you take a certain percentage and you put them in high-risk things because one of those risks could come up green and all of a sudden you're making a billion dollars.
That's sort of his investment strategy.
When it comes to planning for foreign policy, the same thing.
You should try and think of every possible contingency, because the fact is that there are going to be some things that happen that you don't know about.
Like I think, for example, that the risk of North Korea nuking us is actually much lower than the risk of Pakistan initiating a nuclear war at this point, because I think North Korea knows that they don't want to be destroyed.
Right now, there's a better chance that the Pakistani government follows to Falls to the Taliban, for example, and suddenly you have the Taliban in charge of nuclear weapons and they don't care.
Right?
Same thing with Iran.
So, you know, the black swan is a really interesting way of looking at the world that most people don't think about.
Talks about sort of what happens if all of life's events are identifiable on a bell curve.
And most of those events happen in the center of the bell curve.
The black swan is about why the events that happen all the way out here, on the ends of the bell curve, those are the ones that really determine the fate of countries and the fate of individual lives.
Okay, other things that I like.
So I have to, I have to laugh.
I thought this was funny what Trump did.
So Hillary Clinton, her new book is called What Happened.
And so Trump tweeted out, or retweeted, a meme that was going around.
So it says, What Happened Hillary Rodham Clinton?
And then the response is, I happened, and it's just a picture of Trump.
So I do think that that's funny.
You know, it's typical Trump.
It's people who love this, love this about Trump.
People who hate this, hate this about Trump.
But there's some truth to it, obviously.
And Trump did fight Hillary in a way that a lot of other candidates would not have.
So when people say, oh well, if Trump hadn't won, then Rubio would have won, I'm not sure that that's the case.
I'm not sure that campaign runs even close to the same way.
Okay, time for a couple of quick things I hate.
So, thing I hate number one, Jesse Jackson, literally one of the world's worst human beings.
He came out over the weekend and said, President Trump is definitely not gonna make it into the kingdom of heaven.
Trump says you must be able to speak English, qualified, and have a job skill.
Jesus would not qualify to come in Trump's country.
He would not qualify to get in Jesus' kingdom.
Okay, so why is it that Jesse Jackson gets to be the spokesperson for God's kingdom?
Now calm down there, Augustine.
This routine where a guy who is known to have had affairs as a reverend, who's been involved in alleged criminal activity for many years, you know, this is...
Him being the great judge of who goes into heaven or not, it seems to me a little bit of a stretch.
I have my criticisms of Trump on a personal level, but whether he goes to heaven or not seems to me much more of a God decision than a Jesse Jackson decision.
Okay, final thing that I hate.
There's this tape that's going around, and these are going around now all the time on the internet.
These parents who are looking for attention, and a media willing to grant it to them, they've decided to destroy the lives of their children.
These parents took an 8-year-old boy and made him into a drag queen.
And then all of the media decided to trumpet this as just the bravery of the parents.
The kid's 8, okay?
The kid doesn't have hormones yet.
It's not like you're talking about a 15-year-old boy.
You're talking about an 8-year-old who's not even hit puberty yet, and you're destroying his life because guess what his school's gonna be like next year?
Guess what it's gonna be like when all the kids at school say, like, is he actually a girl?
No, he's just a boy who likes dressing as a girl.
This kid could grow out of this stage.
I mean, why would you—like, I think that it's actually nasty for parents to post stuff of their kids on the internet at pretty much any point, because kids deserve privacy.
They're still figuring out who they are.
And here you are making your kid into a mockery in order for you to feel good about yourself as though you're some sort of tolerant parent because your eight-year-old wanted to do something.
Guess what?
My kids want to do stupid crap all the time, and I tell them no, because I'm the parent.
It's my job to guard them from their own stupidity.
It's my job to guard them.
Listen, if you decide as a parent that you want your kid to do this, do it in the privacy of your own home.
But exposing this to public view to millions of viewers?
What's this kid's life gonna be like?
Do you even give a crap about your kid?
I mean, really.
But the media, of course, is happy to run with this.
Lactatia is the devious diva you could ever think of.
Says she was transformed into a young queen.
I've been wearing, like, my sister's tutus since I was, like, threes and fours, even, like, twos.
And I've been dancing around in, like, little pink dresses and stuff.
So, yeah, I think I've had Lactation inside of me since I was born.
And that's why I love that song, Born This Way.
We just want our kids to express themselves however they should.
As long as it's respectful and there's people.
There's Jessica.
Mom.
We really don't care.
I like dancing.
And I like performing.
And I love, not only do you like, I love dressing up.
It makes me feel very happy, like I am accepted.
The red dress.
We put the red dress, and then the blonde wave with this dress.
When he was about two, he came to me with Mr. Potato Head earrings and asked me to put makeup on him.
So we did a little, like, drag photo shoot, and he duck-faced.
It was very sweet.
And yeah, any time he wanted makeup, I just put some on him.
A little bit of dark and a little bit of swoon.
When he was two.
When he was two.
And then a little bit of power couple.
I want... Okay, I have a question.
Where's Dad?
You see Dad anywhere in here?
I'm not seeing Dad anywhere in here.
You know why?
Because I don't think Dad's here.
I think that this is... I think this is a mom who is very screwed up, screwing up her kid from the time the kid is two, because she wants attention.
And how do I know she wants attention?
Because now I'm going to say something that is stereotypical but true.
Okay, if you wear giant... If you wear giant nose rings, and you have tattoos across your chest, and you wear low-cut things to demonstrate the tattoos across your chest, I'm going to go out on a limb here.
You want attention.
Okay, just go out on a limb here.
You're not somebody who is an introvert.
Taking an eight-year-old and suggesting that an eight-year-old is capable of making decisions about the rest of his life before he's even had a sexual feeling is just... It's just devastating.
It's just devastating.
And she's been doing this to this kid since the kid was two.
Well done, parent.
I mean, child endangerment should have picked this kid up from his parents a long time ago.
Really, just garbage parenting.
Your job as a parent is to guide your child not to indulge a two-year-old's fantasies.
What stupidity and what horror.
The moment a society decides parents are not to be parents but children are to be adults and adults should act like children, this society is done.
Okay, so we'll be back tomorrow.
I'd like to see what President Trump has to say.
I'm sure there will be more fallout from his decision about executive amnesty and we'll see whether the right wing is willing to go along with him or whether they are going to make a more honest assessment of what this policy actually is.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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