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Sept. 27, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
43:13
That Giant Republican Sucking Sound | The Ben Shapiro Show Ep. 390
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So, Roy Moore just won himself a Senate seat in Alabama.
What does that mean for Trumpism?
Plus, President Trump is winning the culture war, but are Republicans going to win the political wars?
We'll talk about it.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
So it's going to be a whirlwind day, which is why we are doing the show a little bit early today, because I'm going to be flying to University of Utah, where I have been guaranteed that Students for a Democratic Society will try to shut me down.
In fact, they wrote an entire letter, an open letter, suggesting that they would do so, and bragging that they would do so, and saying they were right to do so.
Apparently, there are also rumors that violence may be in the works.
We can hope not.
The police will be there.
The university is doing its job.
So thank you to the university and the police, as always, for protecting free speech from a bunch of thuggish morons.
But we'll talk about all of that in just a moment.
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Okay, so, I'll explain a little bit more about what's happening at University of Utah later, but the big story of the evening last night is that Roy Moore, Judge Roy Moore, won his race against Luther Strange in Alabama.
Now, this was seen as sort of a proxy battle over the future of Trumpism.
What does it mean for Trump, right?
Because now we all live in Donald Trump's world.
It is his world, we just live in it.
So, what does it mean that Trump spent an enormous amount of time and effort campaigning for Luther Strange, who is the incumbent senator in Alabama, And that Luther Strange was defeated pretty soundly by Roy Moore.
Well, a couple of things.
I think there are a couple of myths that are going around this morning.
Myth number one is that Breitbart and Steve Bannon were the people who drove Roy Moore to victory.
This is not the case.
The reality is that Roy Moore has been an extraordinarily popular figure in Alabama for a very long time.
I knew who Roy Moore was years ago because Roy Moore was the judge who refused to abide by the Supreme Court's decision that he had to remove a Ten Commandments memorial from his courtroom.
Roy Moore was the guy who had told his court clerks not to issue same-sex marriage licenses because he thought that the Obergefell decision was unconstitutional.
So, Roy Moore's been a very famous player for a very long time.
It's not like the Dave Bratt race, where Breitbart really was instrumental in helping push Dave Bratt over the finish line against Eric Cantor.
No one had ever heard of Dave Bratt, and now Dave Bratt sits in Congress and is a good guy.
Roy Moore was a very famous figure in Alabama for a long time.
He was always considered a popular figure in Alabama right-wing politics.
Luther Strange was more anonymous than his primary opponent.
So that's thing number one that we have to remember.
Thing number two that we have to remember is that Roy Moore reflects kind of the guts of a lot of the Republican Party better than Luther Strange.
Not because his perspectives on, for example, homosexuality are reflective of the entire Republican Party.
But because attitudinally, attitudinally, he's much more rudum tutum Yosemite Sam.
And that sort of goes to the heart of a lot of people who feel warm for this sort of thing.
So, for example, Roy Moore a couple of days ago, he's a culture warrior, Roy Moore.
And you can see that in this clip where he legitimately pulls out a gun on stage at his rally.
It's been very hard for my wife and myself to wither two, nearly three months of negative ads that we couldn't answer with money because we didn't have it.
Ads that were completely false.
That I don't believe in the Second Amendment.
I believe in the Second Amendment.
Right, so he pulls out the gun and everybody goes crazy in the media.
How could he pull out a gun?
Okay, first of all, if you're in Alabama and you don't own a gun, you're a weirdo.
That's the way things work in parts of the country where the media is not present.
But the way the media likes to play this is the media is so self-obsessed that they turn this into a media battle, right?
It's a Trump versus Bannon battle.
It's Bannon versus Trump.
Trump is saying that he's gonna stand for Luther Strange, but that's not really reflective of where his heart is.
And Bannon is trying to defend true Trumpism from Trump himself.
I don't think that that's actually what's going on here.
I don't.
I think there are a couple things that can be learned from this race.
Thing number one is that no Republican candidate right now across the country is going to do well openly opposing President Trump.
Roy Moore campaigned in favor of President Trump.
Roy Moore was spending this entire campaign talking about how much he loved President Trump.
That doesn't mean you have to love President Trump in order to win high office.
It does mean that you can't hate President Trump and win high office, at least not in the Bible Belt.
So if you are in Alabama and you say, listen, I don't like Trump.
Trump's a schmuck.
You're not going to win.
You're not going to win a seat.
But you don't have to be endorsed by Trump to win.
And the reason for that is because President Trump is much more of a symbol than he is an actual politician to most of these people.
Trump endorsing somebody doesn't mean anything.
But you being against Trump means something.
It means you're a squish.
Trump is perceived as just another ripple in the giant wave pool that is a movement.
So there's two ways of perceiving who Trump is.
Trump perceives himself as, I'm the leader of a great and glorious movement.
And Steve Bannon has sort of done this thing too.
Trump is the leader of a great and glorious movement.
And when he strays from his glorious movement, we will attempt to hold him accountable.
None of this is correct.
The great and glorious movement existed long before Trump.
It started with the Tea Party in 2009, 2010.
Republicans rode that to victory with 63 seats in the House.
In 2012, Republicans picked up the Senate.
And they did that by electing people like Ted Cruz.
I was involved in that election working at Breitbart at the time.
I was very much in favor of Ted Cruz against a guy named David Dewhurst, who was the Lieutenant Governor of Texas and considered a more establishment candidate.
And Ted Cruz took the seat in 2012.
So the idea that this movement, this anti-establishment movement, started with Trump is just nonsense.
Trump was just the latest iteration of that movement.
Remember, we've had these battles going on for a long time.
Dave Brat and Eric Cantor, Christine O'Donnell and Mike Castle in Delaware.
These sorts of swings against the establishment have been going on since 2009-2010.
And Trump was just a cork bobbing on the waves of that movement.
He was not the leader of that movement.
And last night's election showed that.
Because it showed that Trump doesn't have coattails.
Trump tried to pull Luther Strange over the finish line, so much so that this morning, Trump, who had tweeted a bunch of times about Big Luther, he actually went back and deleted the tweets.
Which, I mean, President Trump, that's not how Twitter works.
Deleting the tweets actually draws more attention to your old tweets.
It's just silly.
But because President Trump was campaigning for Strange, people see this as a slap in the face to Trump.
It really isn't a slap in the face to Trump.
It's just that Trump is not the most important thing about this movement.
This movement pre-existed Trump and will exist long after Trump.
It's more about McConnell.
People don't like McConnell.
People don't like the establishment.
Strange was identified as somebody identified with McConnell, even though he really shouldn't have been.
He voted with Trump 92% of the time.
Roy Moore campaigned hard against McConnell, and that made a lot of difference.
So, this means that Trump as an individual figure is not that important, except as a litmus test for loyalty.
And it means that Trumpism is not actually a movement.
Trumpism is incoherent.
Because if Trumpism meant anything, it would mean follow Trump against Bannon.
But Bannon basically said, I defend Trumpism against Trump, which means that Trump is really just a symbol.
But Roy Moore isn't a Trumpist per se.
Roy Moore is a guy who doesn't even believe in judicial supremacy.
I mean, Roy Moore is a pretty fundamentalist conservative Christian, which is not Trump's exact brand.
All this is to say that I think that there has been, people have gotten a little carried away with the Trump.
By a little carried away, I mean a lot carried away.
Not every battle is about Trump.
It's not that Trump lost in Alabama last night.
It's that the establishment lost in Alabama last night, or the perceived establishment lost, and that's been going on since 2010.
This was not the beginning of something new.
This was not a new rift inside Trumpism.
This is the same movement that's been going on for seven years now, and it is continuing through this election cycle.
So forget about Trump, forget about Bannon.
They're not really important.
The question is establishment versus anti-establishment.
That's all.
That's all.
It's going to make things tough for McConnell.
So McConnell has a fractious caucus already, right?
He has a caucus that is not doing what he wants it to do.
He couldn't get health care reform passed.
He's going to have a tough time with tax reform.
They haven't been able to build the wall.
He's basically got nothing done, Mitch McConnell.
It's a much more fractious caucus than the House Republicans, mainly because the House Republicans have such a big majority, a 23-seat majority, that they can afford to lose a few people and still get stuff passed.
McConnell has 52 seats, which means that he loses three and he's done.
And that's been the case so far.
Roy Moore's not going to make that easier on McConnell.
He's going to join the right wing of the party, and that means that McConnell is going to be more beholden to that wing of the party, which is a good thing.
It's a good thing.
And what we're seeing right now is a ground shift against the establishment.
by a lot of the new Senate Republican candidates.
So it's not just Roy Moore.
There were two big stories yesterday in the Senate for Republicans.
One was Roy Moore in Alabama, and the other was Bob Corker announcing that he would no longer run for his seat in 2018.
So Bob Corker is a very establishment figure.
Bob Corker is a squish.
He's kind of like a Lindsey Graham Republican, except not as hardcore on foreign policy.
Bob Corker was the guy who was largely responsible for the Senate allowing the awful, evil Iran deal to go through.
Bob Corker, as a Republican, did something unthinkable.
President Obama was supposed to submit the Iran deal as a treaty to the Senate.
It would then require 60 votes up or down for approval.
Actually, 66 votes.
Two-thirds of the Senate for treaties.
So it would require a huge number of votes in order for approval.
Bob Corker passed a bill in the Senate that would have forced Congress to vote 51 against in order to shut down the Iran deal, which is an asinine, asinine thing.
So Bob Corker is stepping down now.
He issued a statement.
He said, Elizabeth and I have decided that I will leave the United States Senate when my term expires at the end of 2018.
When I ran for the Senate in 2006, I told people I couldn't imagine serving for more than two terms.
Understandably, as we have gained influence, that decision has become more difficult.
But I've always been drawn to the citizen-legislator model, and while I realize it is not for everyone, I believe with the kind of service I provide, it is the right one for me.
And so he's stepping down.
Now, a lot of people are very concerned about Corker stepping down because of the ramifications for that Senate majority.
We'll talk about that in just a second.
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Okay, so here are the ramifications for the Republican Senate.
Moore is in.
This is a thorn in the side for Mitch McConnell, which is a good thing.
Corker is out.
Now, does that put the seat in play for Democrats?
It's Tennessee.
It's Tennessee, so it's pretty rare that a Democrat wins high office in Tennessee.
You know, wins the Senate seat in Tennessee.
It's been a little while since a Democrat has been the senator in Tennessee.
In fact, I'm going to look it up right now.
I think it's been about 20 years, if I'm not mistaken, since there was a Democrat in Tennessee as a senator.
So, you know, him stepping down, I don't think actually changes things radically in the Senate.
It does provide some risks.
So yeah, the last time there was a Democrat in the Senate was 1994, because that's when Bill Frist was elected in 1994, and so was Fred Thompson.
So Gore was the last Senator from Tennessee, Al Gore, before he became Vice President under Bill Clinton.
So it's been, you know, two decades.
So I don't think that that's a seat in danger of being lost to Democrats.
Which is a good thing, because I think that it's important that if the Republican caucus is going to be more unified on issues like Obamacare, we need people who are less pro-establishment, less pro-McConnell in there.
A lot of the Tea Party candidates have been very good on this.
Mike Lee is a great example.
We're going to Utah today.
I believe Utah has the best senator in the United States in Senator Mike Lee.
He's just terrific.
So, the more of these people we get in place, the better it's going to be.
I'd like to see somebody in the Tennessee Senate who really has the capacity to stand up to Mitch McConnell when Mitch McConnell decides to be a squish.
And that is the continuation of this movement.
The biggest problem is that Trump was never a good representative of this movement.
Trump rode this movement to victory, but he was never a good anti-establishment candidate.
The man's cutting deals with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.
I mean, Ann Coulter is pointing this out today.
She's pointing out that Luther Strange was running neck and neck with Roy Moore until the point where Trump made a deal with Schumer and Pelosi, at which point people said, okay, Trump doesn't even understand this movement, so what does it matter if he endorses Luther Strange?
So it's quite a fascinating dynamic and an important dynamic.
Republicans are going to have to get their act together or transform from the inside with a new set of senators who are going to be more anti-establishment and more traditionally conservative if they hope to actually be able to legislate.
Because Trump is good at one thing and one thing only, and that is starting culture wars and winning culture wars.
He's actually quite good at this.
The case in point, of course, the latest case in point, is this NFL controversy.
So if you look at the polls on the NFL controversy, Trump is winning.
There's no question Trump is winning.
So according to James Barrett over at Daily Wire, if you look at this issue specifically, this issue shows that he's doing really well.
So there's a Reuters-Ipsos poll, and the Reuters poll shows that on the NFL issue, Trump is winning dramatically.
A majority of adults agree that players should not kneel, according to Reuters-Ipsos.
They disagree that players should be fired.
So as I've been saying all along, I've been saying this all along, there's a wide consensus.
You shouldn't kneel for the anthem, you shouldn't be fired if you do.
Right, so the September 25th, 26th poll found 57% of adults do not think the NFL should fire players who kneel, but the results were split along party lines.
82% of Democrats and only 29% of Republicans agreed, disagreed with the president's comments about firing football players.
So, the firing of the football players is one issue, but the other issue is how many people think that it's good to kneel for the anthem.
85% of adults said they almost always stand in silence when the National Anthem is played in an event they are attending.
74% said they always put their hand over their heart.
58% of, I mean, this poll doesn't even make any sense.
58% of adults said professional athletes should be required to stand during the National Anthem at sporting events.
So that's pretty amazing, right?
58% say that they should actually be required, right?
So that means that they agree with Trump on that.
So they disagree that they should be fired.
They agree they should be required to stand, so it seems sort of contradictory and shows that framing and poll questions matter.
And a rising percentage of people, because of Trump, believe that it's okay for people to sit during the anthem.
40% of Americans said they support the stance that some pro football players have made not to stand during the anthem.
That's up from 28% last year.
So Trump picked a winning issue, but he's polarized it, and that's why the percentages have shifted.
So it's not actually a big victory for the right, but it is a big victory for Trump on this issue.
Now a lot of people have been trotting out the notion that Trump should have ignored this issue.
I think Trump should have ignored this issue.
I don't see the purpose of it.
It was dying out.
People thought it was unpopular and stupid.
Again, this whole thing breaks down along partisan lines in a way that it simply shouldn't.
It's one of my pet peeves now, is issues that unify the country breaking down along partisan lines.
And you can hear the White House using this as a political club.
So Trump yesterday was at a press conference, and he was asked about the kneeling.
And here's what he had to say.
I have plenty of time on my hands.
All I do is work.
And to be honest with you, that's an important function of working.
It's called respect for our country.
Many people have died.
Many, many people.
Many people are so horribly injured.
I was at World Health Organization Hospital recently, and I saw so many great young people.
And they're missing legs, and they're missing arms, and they've been so badly injured.
And they were fighting for our country.
They were fighting for our flag.
They were fighting for our national anthem.
And for people to disrespect that, By kneeling during the playing of our national anthem, I think is disgraceful.
Right.
He's going to win that battle every single time, right?
That talking point is one that he's going to win every single time.
But it is a partisan talking point, right?
It's become a partisan talking point instead of a unifying talking point.
You can see that from Steve Bannon, my former boss over at Breitbart and former White House chief strategist, now back at Breitbart.
Bannon was on with Sean Hannity the other night.
And here is Steve Bannon explaining why this is now a partisan issue.
I mean, this is pretty wild.
About taking a knee for the national anthem, I said in this speech tonight, if people in this country take a knee and the National Football League players want to take a knee, they should take a knee at night.
Every night.
And thank God in heaven Donald J. Trump is President of the United States.
He has saved this country so much grief.
He has done such a tremendous job, with virtually no help.
And that's what I meant when I said that.
I stepped out to make sure that Mitch McConnell and the Republican establishment starts to have a Republican back.
Because you know what?
Mitch McConnell wouldn't be Majority Leader if Donald Trump didn't drag a half a dozen senators across the goal line in November.
There are so many things here that are false.
First, the notion that Trump dragged senators over the finish line is 100% false.
Senators dragged Trump over the finish line, if anything.
Senators across the country outperformed Trump.
But beyond that, the idea that NFL players, you want to polarize this along political lines?
What Trump is doing is actually more unifying than what Bannon is doing here, right?
Trump is actually saying that we should stand with all of the people who have lost limbs for our country, and Bannon is saying that these players should kneel before Trump.
He's literally doing the kneel before Zod routine.
He's doing Terrence Stamp.
Kneel before Zod!
You think they're really going to take that well?
This is the game, right?
This is the game.
You overreach a little bit, and then you overreach a little bit more, and the other side reacts, and then you play this game where everyone is divided on an issue where we all should be united.
And what's happened is because it's become a partisan political issue, and because it's become divided, people who are not staunch enough in their language condemning people who kneel for the anthem, they're now considered squishes.
So even if you say that you think the players shouldn't kneel for the anthem, but they have the right to do so if they want to, it's America.
If you say that, but you aren't condemnatory enough of the people who kneel for the anthem, you're now considered a squish.
So, Steve Bannon is considered hardcore, but Paul Ryan is a squish.
Here's Paul Ryan being squishy.
People are clearly within their rights to express themselves how they see fit.
My own view, though, is we shouldn't do it on the anthem.
The national anthem, our flag, and the people who defend it and represent it, that should be celebrated everywhere and always, and that's my opinion.
Okay, so, you know, that, but he's not considered hardcore enough because Bannon's super hardcore, right?
Bannon doesn't want people kneeling, and they should kneel if they're gonna kneel to Trump.
They should kneel before him.
So how do you think Democrats are gonna respond?
Well, they're gonna respond in the stupidest possible way, because we've seen all week long, it's just a vortex of dumb.
So, Sheila Jackson Lee, the radical left congressperson from, I believe she's from Texas, here she is kneeling on the floor of the United States Congress yesterday in solidarity with the people who are protesting Trump.
You tell me which of those children's mothers are a son of a bee.
That is racism.
You cannot deny it.
You cannot run for it.
And I kneel in honor of them.
And on this floor, I kneel in honor of the First Amendment.
I kneel because the flag is a symbol for freedom.
I kneel because I'm going to stand against racism.
I kneel because I will stand with those young men, and I'll stand with our soldiers, and I'll stand with America.
So I'm confused why kneeling is standing with our flag and our soldiers when you're kneeling in front of the flag.
That's slightly confusing.
I think that confuses most Americans.
Only Democrats would be dumb enough to fall directly into this trap.
They could just stand there.
And you know what they could have done?
What they could have done is they could have saluted the flag, right, to protest Trump.
They could have said, President Trump doesn't even understand what the flag stands for.
Let's all stand and sing together the national anthem.
Can you imagine the impact of that?
They could have seized the symbol back from Trump, but they're dumb, so they don't do that.
And then it gets even dumber.
Okay, so over at Georgetown, a bunch of professors are now kneeling.
So Jeff Sessions, the Attorney General, we'll get to him later.
He did a great speech at Georgetown yesterday about freedom of speech on college campuses.
Look at this picture of all the, look at this video of all the Georgetown professors kneeling.
So stupid, man.
So dumb.
We hope in the future that the university can truly uphold the principles of our speech, including the rights and our people.
We thank you for being here.
And now they're all kneeling.
Oh, happy day.
Defend free speech, denounce Sessions.
Pretty incredible.
I mean, if they think that's a big win for them, they're just out of their minds.
They're just so stupid.
And it continues along these lines.
The Democrats can't help themselves.
They can't help themselves.
They can't react in a smart fashion, so they pick the dumbest fashion they can react, and then they do it ten times as dumb as that.
It's just unbelievable to me.
It's unbelievable how bad people are at politics.
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Okay, so...
If you thought the Democrats hadn't gone far enough by universally kneeling for the anthem like a bunch of morons, Hillary Clinton is now saying that she hopes that Trump hasn't ordered the killing of journalists.
So I'm old enough to remember when Donald Trump was the conspiratorial one.
Now we have this crazy old loon bat running around talking about how she hopes that Trump isn't murdering journalists.
Okay, so I'm one of the people who was saying for years, people would say things like that.
When I was on Joe Rogan's show, Joe Rogan would say, do you think that Hillary Clinton had, the Clintons had lots of people killed?
And I would say, no, I don't think the Clintons had lots of people killed.
I think Bill Clinton could even pull out his schlong and hide it properly, right?
So no, I don't think that they had lots of people killed and somehow got away with it.
But Hillary Clinton is now doing the same routine to Trump.
She's saying maybe Trump is ordering the killing of journalists behind closed doors.
Ooh, he's nefarious.
Because if we know one thing about Trump, it's that he's secretive and clever.
If you are the stupidest person on earth, you believe this.
Here's Hillary Clinton.
I think he's not a Democrat little d. No, he's not.
He's a top-down guy.
He's an authoritarian.
He has tendencies toward authoritarianism.
So he's no different than Putin.
Well, you know, hopefully he hasn't ordered the killing of people and journalists and the like.
I mean, hopefully.
He might have, but, you know.
Again, every time I see Hillary Clinton, I feel compelled to comment on her sartorial choices.
She got this one from Violet Beauregard, this particular outfit.
And by the end of the episode, she actually turned into a large blueberry and she had to be taken into the back room by the Oompa Loompas and squeezed.
But in any case, the Democrats continue to just overreact and trip over their own feet.
What I'm telling you on the show today, folks, is the world doesn't revolve around Trump.
That Senate race in Alabama didn't revolve around Trump.
Bob Corker stepping down doesn't revolve around Trump.
The NFL stuff, it shouldn't revolve around Trump.
It should be an issue of unity.
Instead, it revolves around Trump.
By shifting the polarity of politics from actual issues and policies and political differences to Donald Trump, all we're doing is confusing issues because it makes no sense.
Trump isn't consistent.
He doesn't have a consistent stance on any of these issues.
He sort of just says things off the top of his head.
So if you're reacting to Trump, you're reacting to the whirlwind.
You're trying to tack Jell-O to the wall.
So good luck with all of that.
Meanwhile, the media, still obsessed with Trump, are trying to demonstrate that Trump is the bad guy in all of this.
I'll explain why they say Trump is the bad guy in all of this in just a second, but first...
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So in their efforts to take down Trump, because all that matters now is Trump.
Trump is the only thing that matters in politics.
Now, the media have decided that Puerto Rico is Trump's Katrina.
So we never had Obama's Katrina, right?
No matter what, Obama always just did a wonderful job.
But now we're going to have Trump's Katrina in Puerto Rico.
It doesn't matter that FEMA is apparently doing a good job.
All that matters is that Trump, obviously, is not focused enough.
I hate this stuff.
Okay, again, I think the president's job should be to go sit in the back room and sign papers.
I don't think that it should be the job of the president to go out and talk about every issue under the sun.
I object to that logic.
But here is the media universally saying, this is Trump's Katrina.
This is the new talking point you're going to hear this weekend.
It's not the presidential leadership we've come to suspect.
And part of the question we've got to confront is, is Maria Donald Trump's Katrina?
Sure, Michael.
What do you see?
Do you see the president focused as much as he needs to be in Puerto Rico?
No, you know, I don't.
And originally being from New Orleans, I had a lot of family members that were actually impacted by Katrina.
And under the ordinary set of circumstances, I would probably say this would be the quote-unquote Katrina moment for Trump.
But unfortunately, I'm not certain there's much of anything that would push his base against him.
And we should be hearing more about that than we're Is this Katrina?
It could turn into Katrina or something worse.
We need to spend less time on putting out tweets and more time in addressing this humanitarian crisis because this is going to turn to be Mr. Trump's Katrina.
Okay, so they just keep saying Trump's Katrina.
This is their new talking point.
Is it Trump's Katrina?
No, the federal government is doing its job.
By the way, Bush's Katrina wasn't Bush's Katrina.
It was Kathleen Blanco's Katrina.
It was Mayor Ray Nagin's Katrina.
The federal government wanted it, and the local authorities wouldn't let Bush in, and then Bush got blamed for it.
So it wasn't even Bush's Katrina, but now this is gonna be Trump's Katrina.
This is their new talking point, because all they care about is Trump.
What is amazing to me, what I do love, is that yesterday, I think it was Don Lemon on CNN, whose show I enjoy doing, Don Lemon on CNN actually did this routine where somebody asked him at one point about President Trump and Puerto Rico, and he said, well, President Trump keeps talking about the NFL, so, you know, how are we supposed to cover Puerto Rico?
I say, well, do you not have agency?
Do you not have the capacity to, I don't know, ignore stupid commentary about the NFL and instead focus on the humanitarian crisis currently taking place in Puerto Rico, where, by the way, everybody's an American citizen?
I mean, is that weird?
Like, why can't you just cover it like normal people?
But again, the universe now revolves around the orange-haired man.
So that's what we all have to deal with now.
So much so that in response, no one cares whether good policy is being made.
All that matters is that Trump is being stopped.
So Jimmy Kimmel was out there last night celebrating that he had stopped this new Obamacare repeal effort and suggesting that he was the moving force behind it.
Right, it was Jimmy Kimmel who convinced John McCain not to vote for it.
It wasn't John McCain being John McCain.
It was that he watched Jimmy Kimmel's show the other night.
But you know what, it would be easy for me to dismiss this as some kind of right-wing hysteria, but he does have a point.
I'd like to make a confession tonight.
I think I need to come clean.
Here's what happened.
So my wife and I were worried about health care.
We didn't like what the Republicans were doing, so we decided to have a baby with congenital heart defects.
Okay?
And then once we had that going for us, I went on TV, I spoke out, And we may have stopped Cassidy Grimm.
I still can't believe we pulled it off, but we did.
It's amazing, isn't it?
I suppose I should be more upset about late-night hosts stopping Obamacare if it weren't for the fact that a reality TV host was trying to stop it.
You know, it's just the whole thing.
Our politics is so dumb.
Okay, time for some things I like and then some things I hate and then a little bit of Bible talks.
So, things I like.
There's a book that I'm in the middle of by Alistair McIntyre, who's a professor over at Notre Dame, called After Virtue.
It is an excellent study of why it is that it seems like more Americans are having these sort of pitched political battles these days without any common language.
And he traces that back to Enlightenment thinking, where he says that it used to be that we had common frames of reference for things like What human beings' aspirations were, and those frames of reference have now been left behind, and so we have these varying definitions of what is good for human beings, and so we can't even have decent political conversations because we're not starting from the same premises.
It's a very good book.
Alistair MacIntyre, after Virgie, a little bit hard in terms of a read.
Pretty sophisticated, but well worth it if you can slog your way through it.
Okay, other things that I like.
So, thank you to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who yesterday spoke at Georgetown, and he was talking about In advance, the school offered counseling.
shoes on college campuses, and he name-checked me, so that was really nice of him.
Here is the attorney general doing exactly that yesterday.
In advance, the school offered counseling.
In advance of this speech, they offered counseling to any students or faculty whose sense of safety or belonging was threatened by a speech from Ben Shapiro,
a 33-year-old Harvard-trained a 33-year-old Harvard-trained lawyer who has frequently been targeted by anti-Semites for his Jewish faith and who vigorously condemns hate speech from the left or the right.
that Well, in the end, Mr. Shapiro spoke to a packed house, and to my knowledge, no one fainted, no one was unsafe, no one needed counseling, I hope.
Okay, thank you, Attorney General Sessions, for getting that exactly right.
And that's a pretty cool thing, so thank you, again, Attorney General.
Okay, other things that I like.
So my good friend Dana Perino now has a show on Fox News, which I'm very excited about.
Her show, I believe that that's beginning on Monday.
It's 11 a.m.
Pacific time, 2 p.m.
Eastern.
It's called The Briefing, and Dana's just terrific.
So if you haven't had a chance, go and check out her show on Monday.
Well, you haven't had a chance, it's not on yet, but check it out on Monday when it premieres, because I'm sure that it'll be just great.
Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.
So I have to show you this incredible, wonderful tweet from MTV News.
It's just astonishingly wonderful.
So they're tweeting out about Kylie Jenner being pregnant.
So it says, Kylie Jenner is reportedly pregnant with a baby.
Okay, so there are a few things that I find just hysterically funny about this particular tweet.
First of all, MTV News, where, you know, they use, like, the rainbow flag as their actual logo at MTV News, so you can see where they are coming from politically.
What was she supposed to be pregnant with?
Like, an alien?
Was it gonna be, like, John Hurt?
Like, Kylie Jenner was gonna get pregnant and then she's just gonna be sitting back there and...
Like, what exactly is that supposed to mean?
Of course she's pregnant with a baby.
But I love that when celebrities are pregnant with babies, they're babies.
When non-celebrities are pregnant or have an abortion, then it wasn't a baby at all.
It was a magical, mystical clump of cells that meant nothing.
So that's pretty great.
I also love the level of disbelief here.
Kylie Jenner is reportedly pregnant with a baby.
My God!
These are the same people who have no problem whatsoever saying Caitlyn Jenner's a woman.
So I find it significantly less shocking that a biological woman like Kylie Jenner was capable of getting pregnant than Caitlyn Jenner being a woman because Caitlyn Jenner's not a woman.
So, good job MTV News, you suck at everything, and that is really funny.
Okay, other things that I hate.
So, I have to read you this letter.
There's a guy named Ian Decker, who's some sort of weirdo over at University of Utah with Students for a Democratic Society.
He is also with Black Lives Matter Salt Lake City, and the University of Utah Movimiento Estudiantil Chicante Atlan.
And here is what he writes in the Salt Lake Tribune.
He writes, We have no shame in saying we intend to shut down Ben Shapiro.
Great.
This is not a decision we came to based on youthful emotions or out of some desire for the world to be one big safe space.
This decision was arrived at based on a real, material understanding of the political environment of Utah and the material effects of an emboldened far right.
Woo-hoo-hoo!
I'm scary.
Says, as an example, Utah is already a state with a homelessness and suicide crisis amongst LGBTQ youth.
Okay, that's true of virtually every state and place on earth.
Okay, LGBTQ youth have a disproportionate homelessness and suicide rate.
That is not all due to discrimination.
Says, Ben Shapiro has openly called transgender people mentally ill.
Yes, because they suffer from a mental illness.
Gender dysphoria, gender identity disorder, whatever you'd like to call it.
He portrays the gay rights movement as a conspiracy to root out God-based institutions.
Well, no, I portray the militant gay rights movement that suggests that you're able to come into my synagogue and tell me what to do, or into my business and tell me what to do, as a conspiracy to root out God-based institutions, because that's what you're doing.
That's not even a conspiracy.
That's just what you're doing.
You're openly saying it.
And he says, he has recently defended conversion therapy, which is nothing short of abuse.
This one confused me.
I wasn't aware that I had defended conversion therapy.
You guys, it says recently.
Have I done that recently?
I remember doing that because I don't think conversion therapy works, so that's kind of weird.
I've defended the right of parents to utilize conversion therapy in terms of, like, have their kid see a psychiatrist, because I think that parents should be allowed to do whatever they see fit in terms of the mental and physical health of their child.
But that's not the same thing as saying that I think conversion therapy is effective.
I don't see the evidence that it's effective.
He says, these are all positions he has stated in naked terms in articles he has written himself.
Then why don't you quote me?
He says, to pretend that Shapiro does not spew racist and transphobic pseudoscience with the desire to justify and encourage violence is idealistic, ahistorical, and wrong.
Desire?
Why is he attributing desire to justify and encourage violence?
Where does that come from?
Can you name a line where I've ever encouraged violence at all?
At all?
Like, a line?
Like, again, these people just make things up out of thin air, and then accuse me of being a purveyor of pseudoscience.
Also, again, I think that the pseudoscience is that Caitlyn Jenner is a woman, not that Caitlyn Jenner is suffering from a mental disorder.
It seems to me like that one's pretty clear-cut.
It says, we intend on shutting down Ben Shapiro precisely because we don't live in a fantasy world where hate speech has no consequences.
We believe his hate speech can and will have a material consequence for vulnerable people.
Right.
So speech is violent.
I say stuff and then you get hurt.
Oh, ho, ho.
This will not be a violent protest, but we intend to exercise our free speech in the boldest and most unapologetic way we can.
Even if Shapiro, his fans and the university police would have it otherwise.
Well, if it's not violent, then have at it, gang.
Like if it's not if it's not violent and you're not interfering with my free speech rights, go outside and yell and scream as much as you want.
I mean, I don't care.
It makes you guys look stupid.
Enjoy.
Like, whatever.
That's the First Amendment.
I like it.
But, if you are going to get violent, or if you're going to invade the place where I'm speaking tonight and try and shut down the speech, then the police should quickly and easily arrest you because you're a bunch of fools who don't understand what the First Amendment is for.
Okay, so, before we part on this day, I will do a quick Bible talk here.
So, Coming up on Saturday is Yom Kippur.
Yom Kippur is the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, and it is the day of atonement.
So Jews fast and pray for 25 hours.
It's a pretty difficult day, I mean, to be frank with you.
You start fasting at like 6.30 at night.
You don't stop fasting until 7.30.
The next night, you're basically in the synagogue the entire day praying and fasting and fasting and praying.
And in Judaism, when you fast, you fast.
I mean, there's no food and there is no water.
So it is a full-on fast, and it's actually the second fast That's inside of a week.
So on Sunday we fasted also for a fast day called Psalm Gedalia about the destruction of Jerusalem.
So two times in a week we haven't eaten.
So it's a great weight loss program.
But it is also, but Yom Kippur does bring up one specific question.
And that is, what is this notion about God changing his mind?
There's this idea by Yom Kippur, or for prayer in general, that if you pray, then God, who is immovable, unchanging, the unmoved mover, What does that mean?
What does that mean?
Well, I think the answer lies in the idea that the prayer is not changing God.
The prayer isn't changing yourself.
It's about acknowledging God's mastery of the universe and acknowledging that you have to change in accordance with God's will.
Like, my child, I treat her with fairness every day because I love her, right?
But if she's bad, she gets a different consequence than if she is good.
And if she changes her own behavior, then she gets a different consequence.
Is that me changing?
Is it me changing my mind?
No, I'm perfectly consistent all the way through.
It's my child that's changing.
We have the same relationship with God.
So what does prayer do?
Why have these systemic prayers?
If you go to any Orthodox community, there are these prayers.
It's like a full prayer book, 700 pages of written out prayers, some of which people can't really understand because it's in ancient Hebrew, and you have to read the translation.
So what's the purpose of formalized prayer like this?
And what's the purpose of prayer in general?
The idea here is that there's two things that you need to be fulfilled in life.
There are two things that make you fulfilled in life, in terms of psychology.
One is what we call habit, and one is what we call flow.
So flow is this concept where the happiest you ever are in life, according to many psychologists, one whose name I can't pronounce, Mikhail Tselzheny or something like that, he basically says, That the happiest you are in life is when you are focused in on a task and you have the skills necessary in order to perform that task, right?
You sort of lose yourself in the task, right?
You're great at writing and so you're in the middle of writing and you lose yourself in it and it's enjoyable.
You feel like things are just flowing through you.
That's the best part of life.
You're purpose-driven and you have the skills to pursue that.
How do you develop those skills?
Through habit, right?
Through acting, making good habits for yourself.
That's what prayer is supposed to do.
It's why Jews like me pray three times a day.
Because it's supposed to become a habit.
It's supposed to become part of your background noise of your existence.
That you don't even have to think about it anymore.
You just frequently talk to God.
Right?
That's just something that you do.
And then, once you have the expertise in doing it, because we repeat the same prayers every day, then you can invest it with your own creative powers.
So it's not enough to say, okay, we're going to pray and start from scratch, make up your own prayers.
You're supposed to use the formalized prayers as a conduit for conveying the thoughts that you want to convey to God, because now you have the habit of praying, and you also have the expertise and the mastery of this particular set of prayers, so that you can use them to creatively express your emotions to God.
That's the purpose of prayer, and it's all about changing you, not about changing God, because God is unchangeable.
But you are changeable, and in fact it is your task on this earth to change yourself in a better direction.
And people who believe that, people who really believe that it's their job to change themselves instead of changing the world, changing society, changing God.
If you believe that your task is to change yourself so you can live a better life, you'll live a happier life than if you're constantly at war with the wind like King Lear on the moors.
Okay, we'll be back here tomorrow and I will explain you everything that happens at University of Utah tonight.
I'll see you then.
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