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Dec. 7, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show

51:49

Franken’s Frank Is Cooked | Ep. 432

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	Breaking news.
	Al Franken, Senator from Minnesota, is out.
	Yes, out.
	He just resigned on the floor of the Senate.
	We'll talk all about it.
	Plus, the media do their best to ensure that a wave of terrorism hits Israel.
	And, of course, President Trump stands tall in the face of withering attack over his talk about Jerusalem.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	Alrighty, so a lot to get to today.
	Right now in breaking news, Al Franken is stepping down from the Senate.
	When I say now, I mean like as we are recording this.
	We're going to grab the audio as soon as possible of Al Franken, the Senator from Minnesota, stepping down.
	He did what I think everyone sort of expected him to do.
	He came out and he said that he was totally innocent, but he's stepping down anyway, which is not true.
	He's not totally innocent.
	And also he then said, and what about Trump?
	And what about Roy Moore?
	This is The Democrats Play.
	We'll talk all about that, plus I want to give you the latest from the State of Israel, as well as a couple of stories that are just insane that you haven't heard yet today.
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	Speaking of people who could use a little bit of career insurance, Al Franken is gone, and he just came out and said, as I said, that he is innocent, that he didn't do any of these things, that all of these women are either liars or misconstruing his actions.
	It seems to me it's hard to misconstrue somebody grabbing your a** in the middle of a photo line.
	But, you know, to each his own.
	So, Franken stepped down after the Democrats turned on him.
	They turned on him in the last 48 hours, really not because of the new reports about Franken, but because they wish to throw Republicans under the moral bus.
	That was the goal here.
	The pretext they used for throwing Franken out was this report from The Atlantic that Franken had sexually harassed a woman at a Media Matters party.
	There's a woman named Tina DePuy who wrote for The Atlantic.
	She says, Not only had we just elected the first African-American president of the United States, but Franken's race had triggered a recount, leaving leftists giddy we would soon have a supermajority in the Senate.
	As you recall, Al Franken stole that Senate seat from Norm Coleman.
	They just kept recounting the votes until enough felons recounted that Al Franken was the senator from Minnesota.
	This woman writes, I don't let my husband touch me like Al Franken did in public.
	Right?
	Here's what she says.
	I saw Al Franken.
	I only bug celebrities for pictures when it'll make my foster mom happy.
	She loves Franken, so I asked to get a picture with him.
	We posed for the shot.
	He immediately put his hand on my waist, grabbing a handful of flesh.
	I froze.
	Then he squeezed, at least twice.
	What a class act that Al Franken.
	So Franken gave a statement in which he said all of this has been misconstrued he's totally innocent but he's leaving anyway and then he blabbered on for a while about activism and the wonders of activism and again he just kept calling them liars over and over and over hoping that he would have another shot at this.
	That's what Al Franken is hoping.
	Al Franken is hoping that he leaves in quote-unquote disgrace that he does his penance and then he comes back in a couple of years having cleansed himself of the stigma of this And in order to ensure that, he immediately wheeled and hit Trump and Roy Moore.
	Roy Moore, of course, the Senate Alabama Republican candidate who's been credibly accused of child molestation.
	Now, what's hilarious about all of this is watching the Democrats swing to push Franken out.
	So just a couple of days ago, we played the audio yesterday of Kirsten Gillibrand saying that she didn't know whether Franken should step down, he should really make his own decision.
	And then yesterday, she actually said Franken should step down.
	So she changed her opinion.
	Kirsten Gillibrand, who's been treated as a possible 2020 candidate, There is no better weather vane than Kirsten Gillibrand.
	I mean, there are no better weather vanes on planet Earth than Kirsten Gillibrand.
	And the woman has her finger in the air at all times, seeing which way the wind is blowing.
	She realized that she wanted the—she realized the wind was blowing against Franken, so she stepped out in front of that and said Franken should resign, is what she said yesterday.
	Well, obviously, there were new allegations today.
	And enough is enough.
	I mean, this is a conversation we've been having for a very long time.
	And it's a conversation that this country needs to have.
	And I think when we start having to talk about the differences between sexual assault and sexual harassment and unwanted groping, you are having the wrong conversation.
	You need to draw a line in the sand and say, none of it is OK.
	None of it is acceptable.
	And we, as elected leaders, should absolutely be held to a higher standard, not a lower standard.
	Well, that's a wild switch from Kirsten Gillibrand, who five seconds ago was saying that basically Al Franken might stay, but Roy Moore should go, and President Trump's a sexual abuser, but not Al Franken.
	This is all a wild shift.
	I will say that the logic that's used here, that we have to lump all of this activity together, is a little bit disturbing to me.
	I don't think that Harvey Weinstein should be lumped together with Al Franken, and I don't think that Al Franken should be lumped together with Clarence Thomas, who apparently made a crude sexual remark to Anita Hill one time, or was alleged to have done so.
	This does not seem to me that all of these things should be grouped together or pose equivalent threats to careers.
	Some of these activities are truly horrifying and your career should be ended and you should end up in jail.
	And some of these activities are bad, you're a creep, but I'm not sure that it rises to the level of the same outrage as a Harvey Weinstein, for example.
	In any case, what this is really about for Democrats, and we all know it, what this is really about is seizing the moral high ground.
	What Democrats truly want to do here is not push out Franken because they care about Franken.
	Not push out John Conyers because they care about John Conyers.
	They want to push all these people out so that they can turn and swivel and hit Donald Trump and Roy Moore.
	So Senator Mazie Hirono, the Democrat of Hawaii, she came out yesterday and she said, you know, now that Franken's going, you know what would be really great is if Trump and Moore stepped aside.
	And they say, what Al Franken did was wrong, but it's not even in the same ballpark.
	Why take this step?
	And why not also be calling for President Trump and Roy Moore to step aside?
	Well, I would love it if both of them stepped aside, because I have said publicly that President Trump has admitted to being a sexual predator, and as for Roy Moore, the credible allegations of him being a child molester, basically, should cause both of them to look at themselves and step down.
	I would love it.
	But at the same time, you know, I'm looking for, where are the Republican voices?
	So two things can be true at once.
	One, Democrats can be right to shove these people out the door, and Republicans should do the same with their own bad candidates.
	And two, this can be totally politically driven, because it is totally politically driven.
	I mean, there's no question about it.
	The fact is that the Democrats suffer zero repercussions for getting rid of Franken.
	The Democratic governor of Minnesota, Mark Dayton, is about to appoint his lieutenant governor, her name escapes me for the moment, but he's about to appoint her, a Democrat, to fill Franken's seat so Democrats don't lose a seat in the Senate.
	Forcing out John Conyers means nothing because some relative of John Conyers will fill that seat.
	It's very easy to take the moral high ground when it doesn't mean actually sacrificing anything.
	Anytime Democrats have to think about sacrificing something, they rally around the flag of the sexual abuser the same way that Republicans are currently rallying around the flags of alleged sexual abusers.
	So, there's no question that there's a bunch of hypocrisy going on here, and a bunch of political posturing.
	Bernie Sanders, another example.
	He came out yesterday, or this morning rather, and he said that Donald Trump and Roy Moore should both step down because Al Franken is going... Earlier this week, Bernie Sanders was literally running away from the cameras when he was asked about Al Franken.
	So what's happened here is that the Democrats waited until the Republican National Committee and Trump re-endorsed Moore, and then they said, here's our chance to draw a contrast.
	Now, is that smart politics?
	Of course it's smart politics.
	Now they get to claim that they have the moral high ground.
	And Republicans, meanwhile, are shoving the moral high ground away from them as fast as humanly possible.
	I mean, they're taking that moral high ground and they are running from it as fast as humanly possible.
	So much so, they are actually seeing Republicans now come out and start to defend Al Franken.
	So last night on Laura Ingraham's show on Fox News, Newt Gingrich was talking with Ingraham, and both Gingrich and Ingraham We're actually defending Al Franken because they understand what's happening next, right?
	Here's the logic.
	Well, we're not going to let Trump and Moore go until you get rid of Al Franken.
	The Democrats say, fine, we'll get rid of Al Franken.
	Then the Republicans say, well, hold on.
	Hold up a second.
	Maybe you don't want to get rid of Al Franken.
	Maybe that's a bad idea to get rid of Al Franken.
	It's all political partisanship at its finest.
	Here's Gingrich with Ingram suddenly defending Al Franken, a guy who routinely grabs women by the butt in the middle of photo lines, apparently.
	Al Franken was a comedian.
	Comedians often do weird things.
	He was in the entertainment business.
	He was doing the kind of things people in the entertainment business do.
	Now, I have not, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see anything that they've said he's done since he was a senator.
	I don't think they've said... I've tried to lose track.
	I think there are a couple allegations of inappropriate conduct, but I think it's minor stuff.
	But the point is...
	We're in one of those weird American moments when running around lynching people feels so good.
	Feels good to them.
	If you go back and watch the YouTube of Clarence Thomas.
	I was just going to say my old boss.
	You know how he felt.
	Explaining, who by the way was wonderful and swore in Calista.
	Oh, great.
	Great moment.
	And a fellow Georgia and everything.
	You go back and you look at what he said about an electronic lynching.
	And then you look at what we're saying.
	I mean, again, Conyers had a lot of good reasons to retire.
	But on the other hand, no hearings.
	No witness.
	No, there's no due process.
	If you're accused and you're a man, you're accused.
	Okay, so here we are now, right?
	So here we are.
	We've got Laura Ingraham and Newt Gingrich defending Al Franken.
	You think they're doing that because they really like Al Franken or they think Al Franken ought to get a fair shake?
	I mean, they were both calling for the prosecution of Hillary Clinton based on less evidence than Al Franken here.
	Hillary Clinton, by the way, should have gone to jail.
	The idea that they are out defending Al Franken today, the only reason they're defending Al Franken is because they want to defend Roy Moore, obviously.
	That's what's going on here.
	And the Democrats are only throwing Al Franken under the bus because they want to get Roy Moore and Donald Trump.
	So understand, this is all a political game.
	Don't suddenly think that politicians grew moral spines.
	They didn't.
	I would be happy if they had, and maybe we can force them into doing so.
	But I don't really see the purpose of pretending that there's no politics at work here at all, because that's just silly.
	In a second, I want to play you what Al Franken actually had to say, but first I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Birch Gold.
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	Okay, so we do finally have tape of Al Franken.
	The fact that Democrats thought this guy was a viable 2020 contender tells you everything you need to know about the state of the Democratic Party.
	But here is Al Franken on the floor of the Senate resigning, but not before claiming that he's innocent and that he's being martyred.
	Nevertheless, today I am announcing that in the coming weeks, I will be resigning as a member of the United States Senate.
	I, of all people, am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office And a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls' campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party.
	Yeah, and so that's the line the Democrats are going to use.
	So when you say this isn't political, of course it's political.
	Now, if Franken were smart, if he had any sense of the moment, what he would do instead is he would do a full mea culpa, right?
	He'd get up there and instead of denying that the accuser, instead of saying the accusers are a bunch of terrible people who are lying about him and that he's a wounded innocent, he then went on to say, I'll be fine.
	You know, I was a comedian before this.
	I'll be fine.
	Everything will be fine.
	What he should have done, if he were smart, is he would have said, All of these women, I believe them.
	Women deserve to be believed.
	I've made a lot of mistakes.
	I apologize fulsomely for the mistakes that I've made.
	And in this new America, I hope to change for the better.
	And President Trump is evidence that the Republicans are not changing for the better.
	If I have to step down, as I should, then I call on President Trump to step down as well, right?
	He should have actually turned it into a rallying cry, but he's not smart enough to do that.
	He doesn't have the wherewithal to do that.
	If he'd done that, the media would have actually orgasmed.
	Like, people actually would have experienced physical pleasure.
	And at that point, he could have run for president in 2020, but he doesn't have the brains to do that.
	As I say, the Republicans, meanwhile, are rushing to defend Roy Moore.
	And this is something that I think is both stupid and backwards.
	So there are a bunch of people saying, well, you know, the Democrats are only doing this for political reasons, so why should we cave?
	And there is this mentality on the right now that when the Democrats want something, you don't give it to them just because they want it, right?
	But that's not the case with Roy Moore, okay?
	There's this new mentality that I think has has taken hold among a lot of Republicans, among some conservatives, that just because the Democrats don't want something, or just because the Democrats want something, you can't give it to them.
	That the Democrats, because they're political, everything that they say is false.
	That's not right.
	And it also leads you down a pretty dark road.
	And I think that Steve Bannon is sort of the avatar of this.
	I think Steve Bannon really helps make this sort of mentality come to fruition.
	I talked a little bit about him yesterday with regard to what he was saying about Roy Moore and turning on Mitt Romney.
	And it is indicative of...
	of how a lot of Republicans are thinking right now, which is that Roy Moore must be innocent because the Democrats say he's guilty.
	That Roy Moore must be defended because the Democrats want him out.
	I don't see why you would surrender the moral high ground this way on a race that Republicans, you know, if they had thrown Moore out earlier or if Moore resigned, they would have won this race walking away.
	Even if Roy Jones or Doug Jones, the Democrat, were to win this seat, Republicans would be able to regain the seat in four years when it comes up again.
	It's a heavily red state.
	But instead, the Republicans seem to be pushing the high ground away with both hands, saying, listen, the Democrats got to play in the muck for a while, now we're going to play in the muck.
	They don't understand.
	There's a different standard that applies to Republicans.
	There is.
	As there should be.
	Not that there should be a different standard for Republicans, but the higher standard should apply to both Republicans and Democrats.
	And I don't see the Republicans recognizing that baseline reality.
	It is a baseline reality, by the way, that that is the case.
	You see that with the Republicans attacking Mitt Romney, right?
	Stephen Bannon yesterday attacking Mitt Romney.
	And I just thought to myself, there is a strain of the Republican Party that now says the worse the person, the more we ought to support them.
	And I think that's true among Democrats, when it's politically beneficial for that to be the case.
	I think they'll get there, too.
	And they'll use the polarization in politics as an excuse to get there.
	And Republicans aren't wrong that a lot rides on politics, that a lot is at stake.
	But they are wrong when they think that the way that they are going to win is by embracing the worst elements of their own egos and their own ids.
	I just think that's a huge mistake.
	Now with all that said...
	I understand why there's so much frustration among Republicans, why there's so much frustration that Democrats have been getting away with this stuff for 20 years, and not just on the sexual assault front, but on the corruption front.
	This is a story that sort of went unmentioned, but it's amazing.
	The New York Times has a report on the operation of the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau under the command of Interim Director Mick Mulvaney, and in the article is a real piece of news, that a group of bureaucrats have decided to hijack the CFPB as much as possible and operate in secret to defy Mulvaney.
	This is according to HotAir.com.
	Here's what they actually said.
	Agency employees said they were scrutinizing every comment and memo from their new leader for hints about their future.
	Some employees, including a few of the Bureau's top officials, have welcomed their new leader.
	Others, pointing to Mr. Mulvaney's earlier hostility toward the agency and its mission, are quietly resisting.
	One small group calls itself Dumbledore's Army, according to two of the people who are familiar with their discussions.
	The name is a reference to a secret resistance force in the Harry Potter books.
	An atmosphere of intense anxiety has taken hold, several employees said.
	So...
	First of all, read another book.
	Not every reference has to be about Harry Potter.
	But second of all, there's an actual band of bureaucrats inside the CFPB trying to buck Trump and calling themselves Dumbledore's army.
	And then you wonder why Republicans are so frustrated that they say, we need someone who's willing to break the rules to stop a bunch of people who are willing to break the rules.
	The frustration with partisan politics has driven both sides mad.
	And if the standard can only be restored through hypocrisy, then better that the standard should be restored through the hypocrisy of going after Al Franken in order to get to Roy Moore than that the standard never be restored at all.
	OK, so in other news, there's a lot of fallout over what's happening in Jerusalem right now.
	So the president of the United States yesterday made the announcement that Jerusalem was, in fact, to be recognized as the capital of Israel by the American government.
	After more than two decades of waivers, we are no closer to a lasting peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.
	perfect sense.
	Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish people, always was the capital of Israel, always will be the capital of Israel.
	Here is President Trump announcing that yesterday.
	After more than two decades of waivers, we are no closer to a lasting peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.
	It would be folly to assume that repeating the exact same formula would now produce a different or better result.
	Therefore, I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver.
	Today, I am delivering.
	I've judged this course of action to be in the best interests of the United States of America and the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
	And he gets full marks for this.
	I mean, this is a brave move by the presidents of the United States.
	And, of course, the media, because they foster terrorism and they don't mind terrorism and they were fine with the Gaza war and they were rooting for Hamas, many of them.
	Now they're turning on Trump and saying, well, it's because of this that there will be violence in the Middle East.
	You're right.
	The terrorist group Hamas, which is a terrorist group.
	They're really angry only over Jerusalem.
	They declared a three days of rage.
	I love this.
	The media, oh my god, days of rage from the Palestinians.
	Days of rage.
	Man, they wouldn't be enraged except for Trump.
	This is the fourth time the Palestinians, fourth, have declared a day of rage in the last eight months.
	Okay, since April, they've declared four days of rage.
	This is the last day of rage.
	Like, is it a danding and why?
	It's a day of rage.
	In the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
	In Judea and Samaria and Gaza.
	Right?
	The Palestinians are constantly pushing days of rage.
	Why?
	Because the leadership is corrupt.
	Because the leadership are a bunch of terrorists.
	Because the population voted for that leadership.
	And because the leadership knows that if they attack Israel, they don't actually have to provide anything to their own citizens.
	And so the media coverage, which is treating this as like, it's panic time, it's the end of the world, it's all because of Trump.
	It's just nonsense.
	Hamas, 1980, this is their covenant, this is their founding document, quote, Israel, Judaism, and Jews challenge Islam and the Muslim people.
	May the cowards never sleep.
	PLO Charter, this is the Palestinian Authority, right, this is Mahmoud Abbas's group, quote, The establishment of Israel is illegal and null and void.
	That was in 1964, before Israel even controlled the old city of Jerusalem.
	Before they even controlled East Jerusalem.
	And they were calling for the destruction of Israel.
	But no, something has definitely changed.
	Abbas, by the way, made a speech yesterday where he, quote, noted long Christian and Muslim history in Jerusalem Okay, so it's not the Jews not recognizing that Muslims have connections to Jerusalem.
	change our history, and it will not succeed.
	It's a Palestinian city, an Arab city, a Christian city, and a Muslim city.
	Okay, so it's not the Jews not recognizing that Muslims have connections to Jerusalem.
	I mean, it's the Jews, we Jews, and Israelis in particular, who have acknowledged that holy sites should remain open.
	But the fact that the Muslim population over there doesn't want Jewish sites to remain open, that, as I talked about yesterday, when the Muslims controlled Jerusalem, they refused to allow access to holy sites to Jews, and actually started riots if Jews brought so much as a folding chair for the ill and the infirm to pray at the and actually started riots if Jews brought so much as a folding And And now the media is blaming Trump for acknowledging a reality?
	It's just insipid.
	And because of that, because of that, you're going to get more terrorism.
	Because the terrorists know.
	It's funny.
	The same people who will say, let's not name mass shooters.
	We can't name mass shooters.
	So if we name mass shooters, it's glorifying the mass shootings.
	There's some merit to that.
	The idea that they are going to go out there and go out in the middle of the Gaza Strip or Judea and Samaria and put a camera on a bunch of people burning stuff and treat this as though it's Trump's fault.
	All that's doing is fostering terrorism.
	They're going to get people killed.
	The media's attempts to create a massive conflagration out of this, it's just going to encourage terrorists to be terrorists.
	This is what the media do.
	It's really despicable.
	And this has some far-ranging ramifications outside of Israel, by the way.
	We'll talk about those plus Bibi Netanyahu's response in just a second.
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	Okay, so, me being Netanyahu, thanks President Trump for what Trump did yesterday, as well he should.
	Here was Netanyahu yesterday.
	The President's decision is an important step towards peace.
	For there is no peace that doesn't include Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel.
	President Trump, thank you for today's historic decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
	The Jewish people and the Jewish State will be forever grateful.
	Okay, and that's exactly right.
	I was talking to some people who are in Jerusalem yesterday.
	They were ecstatic, as well they should be.
	And again, this is just a recognition of reality.
	It's not that something fundamentally has changed.
	If you aren't going to recognize the reality of how the world works, you're never going to be able to achieve peace.
	The media don't want to accept this, though.
	The media are trying to treat this as though this was some sort of crazy move by Trump, because Trump's a crazy man, and Trump's going to set the world afire.
	Let's be really clear about one thing.
	One of the things that's really ironic here, Saudi Arabia doesn't give a crap about Jerusalem.
	The Jordanians don't give a crap about Jerusalem.
	The Egyptians don't give a crap about Jerusalem.
	They're not going to back any Palestinian uprising against the Israelis.
	You know why?
	Because of Barack Obama.
	Not because of Trump.
	Because of Barack Obama.
	Because Barack Obama made Iran a regional power.
	And now Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt are all siding with Israel in an attempt to create a coalition to check Iranian growth in the region.
	So the Palestinians are on their own.
	So if you're lamenting the poor Palestinians being on their own against the big bad Israelis, talk to President Obama, not President Trump.
	Because the fact is that coalition only exists on the back of President Obama's decision to make Iran a regional power.
	Pretty incredible stuff.
	But, again, the media are stirring this stuff.
	They're stirring the pot.
	They did it during the Gaza War.
	I went on CNN.
	I said that if Hamas could have created a news network, it would look a lot like CNN.
	You can go back and look at the tape.
	And the reason I said that is because CNN always covers these conflagrations not as a bunch of terrorists who have decided to murder Jews as an excuse for media attention and an attempt to pressure Israel, but they treat it as a spontaneous outbursting of rage.
	It's not spontaneous, folks.
	Nothing happened yesterday.
	That means it's an organized effort.
	Apparently, there's basic lockdown in the city of Jerusalem right now.
	Jews have been told to stay home, stay indoors, not take public transportation because of the fears of terrorism.
	Again, the Israelis have been pressured into many concessions, including the full withdrawal of Jews from the Gaza Strip, making it completely Judenrein.
	They pulled out 6,000 Jews from their homes in the Gaza Strip.
	There was not one riot.
	There was not one killing from the Jews.
	Jerusalem is just declared the capital of Israel by the United States.
	It has been forever the capital of Israel.
	And the Palestinians are using that as an excuse to riot.
	But again, It's just an excuse.
	They rioted earlier this year when three Palestinians stabbed someone to death and tried to shoot some people up on the Temple Mount, and the Israelis installed metal detectors.
	There were riots in Jerusalem over metal detectors.
	So, as I say, basically, day ending in Y, Palestinians are going to riot, and the media is going to treat it as though they have a legit excuse to do so because they really despise the Israelis, and they despise the Israeli government led by Bibi Netanyahu.
	Chris Matthews is one element of this.
	So here's Chris Matthews.
	Alright, I was going to be safe.
	Got to come to the show.
	Don't know a thing about Israel.
	Don't know anything about Christians, but You know, the reason Trump did this is because of Jesus.
	That's why, because of Jesus.
	Go!
	And a couple more points on Alabama.
	Don't think this isn't related to Alabama next week.
	It is related.
	Because it's the Christian evangelicals down there with their crazy ideas about Israel, which is, I don't know, mythical.
	They don't understand the situation over there and how tricky it is ethnically and tribally.
	They don't care because it's a religious belief.
	Trump's playing to that this week.
	You can watch him.
	Okay, so it's all about the crazy evangelicals, their crazy beliefs?
	You mean the crazed Judeo-Christian beliefs that undergird all of Western civilization?
	Would that be those beliefs?
	Or is he talking about this myth that all evangelical Christians want all the Jews to go back to Israel so that Armageddon will come and Jesus will return?
	Because that's a very small minority of evangelical Christians.
	I've spent a lot more time with Evangelical Christians than Chris Matthews has, and he is just ignorant.
	He's just ignorant.
	I talk with Evangelical Christians all the time.
	The reason they support Israel is because they believe that they are the branch of which Israel was the root.
	That Israel was the root, the people of Israel were the root, God's promise to Israel was the root, and they are the branch from the same tree, and they believe that the Jews are God's chosen people, and they don't just believe that because they want Armageddon to come.
	That's a tiny minority of Evangelical Christians.
	Like, when I say tiny, I mean minute.
	Infinitesimal.
	If you want to see the level of support for Israel from people like Pastor John Hagee, for example, and CUFI, the Christians United for Israel, they're not doing that because they think that Jesus is going to come back and they're going to get raptured up to heaven and that's why they're doing this.
	But Chris Matthews has to slander all of the people who support Israel among the Christians in the United States because the left really despises Israel.
	This is one area where it's become increasingly partisan and it's really sad.
	The fact is that 90-nothing, you're seeing people like Dianne Feinstein come out and say, it's just terrible that Trump did this.
	90-nothing, including Dianne Feinstein's vote, they voted in June to say that Jerusalem was the undivided capital of Israel.
	That's what they voted in June.
	Okay, that's like a few months ago.
	And now they're coming out and saying it's the end of the world that Trump announced all this.
	And then of course you have media flacks like Fareed Zakaria on CNN.
	Saying that Trump isn't really siding with Israel.
	You see, when Trump declares that the Israeli capital, Jerusalem, is the Israeli capital, Jerusalem, and that the eternal capital of the Jewish people is the eternal capital of the Jewish people, he's not really siding with Israel.
	He's just siding with Netanyahu and the Israeli government.
	Israel doesn't need the United States as an ally anymore in the sense that they are the most powerful force on the ground by far.
	Israel is sort of a regional superpower, and compared to the Palestinians, the disproportion is now just gigantic.
	What they need is for the United States to have credibility with the Palestinians so that there can be a meaningful negotiation.
	If the United States is seen as blatantly one-sided, it doesn't help.
	And by the way, this is an issue on which the United States would be siding not with Israel, but with the Okay, this is absolute, sheer, unmitigated nonsense.
	The Labor Party, the left of Israeli politics, supports President Trump's decision on this.
	The left likes President Trump's decision on this, in Israel.
	When Fareed Zachariah says that America needs to be seen as an honest broker in order to broker a peace, that's not true.
	The United States should be throwing its weight on the side of the people who actually are in favor of liberty.
	Why should there be another terror state in the region?
	If there's going to be peace, the Palestinian Authority has to go.
	Hamas has to go.
	Islamic Jihad has to go.
	And what you need instead is something like a regular liberal government.
	You can't just say that the United States should be an honest broker between Al Qaeda and the government of Pakistan.
	And you can't say that, in a far worse way, you certainly can't say that the United States should be an honest broker between Israel and its terrorist enemies.
	It's just insipid.
	Okay, so, meanwhile, in other news, I want to talk a little bit about some trends in American thinking, particularly among young people, because this is pretty crazy stuff.
	There's an article today about capitalism and how young Americans feel about capitalism from the Wall Street Journal.
	And it is pretty stunning how few Americans, young Americans particularly, know what capitalism is.
	So there's an article that says that in a 2016 survey for Harvard University's Institute of Politics, 42% of younger Americans said they support capitalism.
	Only 19% identified themselves as capitalist.
	This is according to John Della Volpe, who's been polling millennials for 17 years.
	Right?
	42% of young Americans said they support capitalism, which means 58% do not.
	And 19% identified themselves as capitalists.
	The reason that I think this is the case is because the Democrats, and Bernie Sanders in particular, have done a wonderful job of redefining capitalism away from this meeting, and Republicans have never discussed capitalism in moral terms.
	It's something I like talking about a lot.
	The reason that capitalism is a good is not just because it's more efficient and creates better products.
	It's because it says that the stuff that you create, you get to keep.
	The stuff that you create, you get to keep, and no one can be the master of your time or labor.
	No one gets to enslave you just because they have needs.
	This is the John Locke view of capitalism.
	John Locke's view of property ownership is that you combine your labor with the land, and that's why you have a right to land.
	The same thing holds true of capital.
	You combine your labor with capital, you combine your input with capital, Your investment knowledge with capital.
	And now that is your money.
	And the idea that anyone can take that money away from you just because they want the money for their own purposes is morally obtuse.
	But people on the right don't talk about capitalism this way.
	Instead what we'll say is, well, you know, capitalism is just sort of the best available system.
	And there's also this tendency, I think, to say, as many have said in the past, that, you know, sort of two cheers for capitalism, that capitalism is the best possible system, but it doesn't tell you that you have to be moral.
	That's true.
	But when you're talking about economics, socialism doesn't tell you that you have to be moral either.
	There's nothing moral about socialism.
	And when you're talking about economic systems and why economic systems ought to be upheld, from a moral standpoint, you have to start from the basic notion that human beings have liberty, that individuals are guaranteed liberty, and they're all made in God's image, and we are all equal in our rights before God.
	That does not mean that we all get to steal stuff from one another.
	Socialism is immoral.
	Capitalism is moral.
	But young people are never told that.
	Instead, what they see is greedy plutocrats who are combining with the government.
	And capitalism itself is slandered in the media.
	So every time there is an actual greedy plutocrat who makes a deal with the government, anytime Wall Street gets rich off an insider crony deal with Congress, instead of people responding by saying, that's not capitalism, even the right will call it crony capitalism.
	Crony capitalism is not a real term.
	Crony capitalism is the reverse of capitalism.
	It's actually called corporatism.
	There is no reason to describe anything as crony capitalism because capitalism is about the free investment in exchange of goods.
	But the right never describes capitalism that way, and so young people don't know any better, and so they end up in this sort of weird spot where they think capitalism is bad.
	But it's not just ignorance on that.
	There's a Pew poll that came out yesterday that really is quite astonishing in its ramifications.
	So this is what the poll shows.
	It's assessments on whether life is better or worse than it was 50 years ago.
	And it shows what people think in various countries.
	So the very bottom of the list, of course, is Venezuela, where people are eating dogs.
	But the very top of the list is Vietnam, where they say 88% say it's better than it was 50 years ago.
	That makes sense.
	In 1967, we were in the middle of the Vietnam War, so things were pretty bad at that point.
	And the Viet Cong took over, and that was pretty bad, too.
	Vietnam has opened up a fair bit since then.
	India is number two on the list of places that are better off than they were 50 years ago.
	These are obviously countries that understand that economic development matters, right?
	South Korea, Japan, Germany, Turkey.
	Turkey's an interesting one because 50... I'm not sure, to be honest with you, where Turkey was 50 years ago, but in recent years they've obviously slid.
	And then you have the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland, Spain.
	A lot of countries that are from the former Soviet bloc.
	So where is the United States here?
	Where is the United States when it comes to, are people better off or worse off than they were 50 years ago?
	This is an amazing statistic.
	Only 37% of Americans say that Americans are better off today than they were 50 years ago.
	41% of Americans say that they are worse off than they were 50 years ago.
	50 years ago, in 1967, in the middle of riots in the United States, in the middle of the Vietnam War, with economic development that, you know, having a nice car was still a luxury.
	You know, where you didn't have the internet, the houses were smaller, air conditioning was still not universal, central air, central heating.
	There weren't such a thing as computers.
	The living standard in the United States is so much higher than it was in 1967, and yet Americans believe that this is not the case, that they were better off then.
	And this is one of the problems, I think, in American politics right now.
	There's this sort of nostalgia for a better time.
	There was no better time.
	I've said this before.
	You are living in the best time in history.
	Okay, this is the better time.
	When people say, when do you wish you had lived?
	Right now.
	You know why?
	Because I can connect with any piece of information on the planet at any time of night or day.
	I can go to the grocery store and I can get any delicacy I want from anywhere on planet Earth.
	I can live in a bigger house if I can pay for it, and I can pay for it.
	This is one of the beautiful things about living in the United States.
	Things have gotten incredibly better, but people refuse to recognize this.
	And so instead, you end up with this weird perception that things have gotten worse.
	And if you think things have gotten worse, you end up in desperate straits.
	Because if you think things are constantly getting bad, then every election, you're one step from the end of the country.
	Every election is the end of the road.
	You can't have a forward-looking view where you say, yeah, Obama was garbage.
	He was a bad president, if you're on the right.
	But guess what?
	The country didn't collapse.
	And that means that we can actually build a movement and move the country towards something even more glorious.
	Instead, every election becomes the be-all, end-all.
	You see the same thing from Democrats.
	We're one election from Armageddon.
	If you always think you're one election from Armageddon, you're actually bringing Armageddon closer.
	Talking about how Armageddon is right around the corner makes people act as though Armageddon is right around the corner.
	And if you act as though Armageddon is right around the corner, it probably is.
	By the way, life expectancy in the United States in 1967 at point of birth was 71 years.
	Today, life expectancy in the United States is 79 years.
	On that basis alone, life is significantly better in the United States than it was 50 years ago.
	I mean, especially for minorities.
	Are you kidding me?
	Like, black people in 1967 versus black people in 2017?
	Are you out of your mind to think that things were better in 1967?
	There were literal race riots in Detroit in 1967.
	If you were gay in 1967, are you better off now or better in 1967?
	If you're Jewish.
	It's all nonsense.
	But unfortunately, we have a tendency to be pessimists about reality and this leads us down some dark roads and toward a nostalgia on one side that says that we can rectify everything with big government and a nostalgia on the other side that says that we have to freeze everything in place lest we fall into the abyss.
	Okay, so.
	I want to get to some things I like and some things I hate.
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	All righty.
	So let's do some things I like, some things I hate.
	And then the big idea, because it's a Thursday.
	Can't believe it's a Thursday already, and also this week has been endless.
	So, okay, time for some things that I like.
	So the other night, my wife and I went to see a movie, which was just a pleasure.
	Once in a while, I actually get to see my wife, and it's nice when that happens.
	And the movie was Murder on the Orient Express.
	So I'm a big Agatha Christie fan.
	I own all of her novels.
	I knew the ending, my wife didn't.
	So this is one of those things where it's really fun to watch if the person you're watching with does not know the ending to Murder on the Orient Express.
	Because if you don't know the ending, it's one of the great endings in kind of murder mystery literature.
	The middle of the movie, where Poirot is sort of investigating the crimes, is not my favorite.
	The beginning, I think, is clever.
	And then you get to the end, and the end is, I think, actually quite effective.
	It's based on Murder on the Orange Express.
	I believe the book was written in 1934.
	It was originally based on the Charles Lindbergh baby kidnapping.
	So if you don't know about that case, Charles Lindbergh and his wife had a baby.
	The baby was kidnapped and killed by, I believe, a German guy named Bruno Hauptmann was the guy who was put on trial for it.
	This book was based on that.
	And it's not a giveaway to say that the character who's killed, right, it's called Murder on the Orient Express.
	Someone is killed.
	The person who is killed, it turns out, was involved in a similar kidnapping, and the whole movie is sort of about that.
	It's effective.
	I think Branagh uses some nice touches.
	I don't want to give spoilers because the movie's still out in theaters, but there are some differences from the books.
	Poirot himself, his whole character, is much more sympathetic in the movie than he would be in the books.
	In the books, Poirot is basically a machine.
	He uses little gray cells to logically deduce things.
	But in the movie, he has a lot more sympathy, and they sort of give him, not a love interest, but they say that he's had a wife who died.
	That's not true in the books.
	In the books, he never had a love interest, but The cast, I think a lot of the cast is quite good.
	Brawna is fun to watch.
	Michelle Pfeiffer is actually terrific in it.
	Johnny Depp is really good.
	I don't like Johnny Depp as an actor, and Johnny Depp actually is really good in this.
	So check it out.
	I'm around the Arctic Express.
	Here's a little bit of the preview.
	Would you mind if I join you?
	You're the world-famous detective Hercule Poirot.
	Avenger of the innocent.
	Is that what they told you in the papers?
	And you are innocent?
	Your fun.
	A passenger has died.
	He was murdered.
	The murderer is on the train with us now.
	And every one of you is a suspect.
	So, let us catch a killer.
	So there are a few things in the movie that would have made it better.
	One is that the murder takes place on a train, on a moving train.
	What would have been nice, of sleeper cars that are right back to back, it would have been nice to have like a map of the sleeper car.
	There's a point made by Sonny Bunch on the Weekly Standard podcast, and I think it's right, that one shot from above that shows where everybody was in the cars would be very helpful, but you don't actually get that.
	But the movie itself is worthwhile.
	Particularly the end of it is pretty effective, I think.
	Okay, so time for some other things that I like.
	So, this I thought was just hilarious.
	So yesterday, or a couple days ago on the show, I said that it was a lifelong dream to appear on The View, and I was very excited about this.
	Paula Faris, who is an occasional co-host on The View, and she's on Good Morning America, she tweeted out, hey Ben, I heard on your podcast that one of your lifelong dreams is to appear on The View.
	I'm running it by the incomparable Joy Behar.
	Stay tuned.
	Then she tweeted out a picture of herself with Joy Behar.
	All I can say is, I accept.
	Yes, make this happen.
	It would be the greatest hour of television in the history of daytime.
	It would be so good.
	I believe there's a petition online to petition ABC to have me on.
	It would be a lot of fun.
	I've made fun of the view at times, but I will...
	But I will be cordial and kind.
	So check it out.
	If they have me on The View, it'll be fantastic.
	I could not be more excited about this.
	I was dancing around the office yesterday, and it's hard to make me happy.
	So thank you, Paula Faris, and I hope that this actually happens.
	Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.
	So, thing number one that I hate.
	This is insane.
	So, there are a couple of things that are happening as far as college campuses that are trying to keep me out now.
	There's one college campus that is, I'm trying to remember which college campus it is.
	Concordia College, I believe.
	And they are now trying to withdraw funding.
	So they funded my event there, and now they're trying to withdraw funding.
	So that's very exciting.
	That's piece of college news number one.
	Piece of college news number two is that a sociology professor at the University of California, Merced, told students that he wouldn't debate me But he would enjoy ripping my arms out of the socket.
	Like a Wookiee, apparently.
	Here's a little bit of the audio that was gotten a hold of by Campus Reform.
	I wouldn't debate him because being in the same room with that fool is putting this nonsense fascist ideologue on equal footing with me using my real degree to legitimize garbage politics that are at best nonsensical.
	I love this gladiator thing.
	In my own world, words mean something.
	Gladiator?
	You should pass this around.
	Well, I won't debate this poll.
	Why don't y'all set up some kind of MMA thing between me and him?
	And then, the winner can take those $40,000 and give them to whatever charity they want.
	I'm completely down for this charity.
	This charity match?
	Oh, I'm completely down for that.
	Like, y'all don't think I wouldn't enjoy ripping this boy's shoulder out of its socket?
	Oh my God.
	Y'all don't know.
	Y'all don't know.
	So he's a real intellectual here, ripping this fool's shoulder out of his socket.
	He sounds like somebody who I'd have a real tough time debating, mainly because I'm not sure that he speaks in full sentences.
	What a genius he is.
	I mean, and I love when he says he wants me to use my real degree to debate him.
	Dude, you're a sociology professor, okay?
	Real degree.
	I went to Harvard Law School.
	Like, shut up.
	It's just, it's absurd.
	And this notion that I'm going to go and have a physical fight with you?
	We have this thing here.
	It's called civilization.
	It's where we have debates, right?
	It's where we talk about things.
	But your response to an actual civilized debate is, you want to rip somebody's arm out of their socket?
	What fascist nonsense.
	This is the second professor I know of who suggested that we have a fight.
	I know everybody always wants to have fights with me.
	Like, I know, you think I'm not physically pre-possessing and you think that you can beat me up and all this kind of nonsense.
	You know what?
	I have more money than you.
	I can pay people to beat you up if I wanted to.
	I don't need to beat you up physically.
	Plus, I can defeat you intellectually anytime I choose.
	So, of course, they revert back to their schoolyard bully nonsense that they've always been reverting to.
	Just, just, what's stupidity?
	Okay, so other things that I hate.
	How stupid are the American people about Star Wars?
	I just have to ask this because there was a poll that came out yesterday and I have to show you the results of this poll, okay?
	Classic, this is a poll from Morning Consult among 2,200 U.S.
	adults on the popularity of various figures from Star Wars.
	Now, not shockingly, none of the new Star Wars figures basically make the list.
	I'm shocked that Jyn Erso ends up so low, right?
	Jyn Erso ends up at 29%.
	She's the one from Rogue One.
	Okay, how is Jyn Erso at 29% and Jar Jar Binks is at 37%?
	Jar Jar Frickin' Binks, right?
	Finn barely nudges out Jar Jar Binks.
	BB-8 barely nudges out Jar Jar Binks.
	Okay, that's amazing.
	That's incredible.
	Emperor Palpatine, by the way, only finishing at 31%.
	Emperor Palpatine's only at 31?
	Like, how is that possible?
	Darth Vader's only at 49%?
	It's a percentage that is a favorable impression of each character.
	But I'll tell you what the worst injustice here is, okay?
	The worst injustice, obviously, is that the people who are at the top of the list, okay, Leia is number one, fine, you know, men have a good impression of Leia, and so do women, that's cool.
	But Luke Skywalker is number two, at 72%, and Han Solo is at 68%.
	Who are you people?
	What is wrong with you?
	Han Solo has less of a positive percentage than Luke Skywalker?
	I mean, even if you include the new movie, Luke Skywalker's been on an island, doing nothing, staring at rocks for like 20 years.
	Luke Skywalker over Han Solo, just insane.
	Luke Skywalker over Obi-Wan Kenobi?
	Luke Skywalker should be down by Jabba the Hutt.
	Skywalker.
	Lando comes in at 43%.
	How does Lando finish beneath C-3PO?
	Or Anakin Skywalker?
	They actually separated out Anakin and Darth Vader.
	How does Anakin finish above Darth Vader?
	How?
	How is that a thing?
	You all go to hell.
	Have you even seen these movies?
	What's wrong with you people?
	Okay.
	Time for the big idea.
	So on Thursdays we talk about a big idea that requires elucidation and so today we'll talk about freedom of association.
	Freedom of association is not an actual stated constitutional right.
	It's pretty obvious that the constitution means that you get to hang out with whoever you want to hang out with because freedom of speech and freedom of assembly both mean freedom of association, right?
	I get to say what I want and the government can't Control that.
	And I also get to assemble for petition and assemble in groups however I want.
	And the Supreme Court has found in cases like the NAACP versus Alabama in 1958 that the NAACP did not have to reveal to the Alabama Attorney General the names and addresses of NAACP members in the state because that would violate freedom of association.
	In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled that the Boy Scouts could revoke the membership of a former Eagle Scout when it found out that he was a gay rights activist because they said they have freedom of association.
	Freedom of association is vital because it seems to me that this should be applied to the business space as well.
	I get to associate with whom I want.
	I don't have to associate with anybody else.
	And I understand that there are lots of things that people do that are bad and of which you don't approve.
	And that historically speaking, there have been lots of people in the United States who have engaged in discriminatory practices against various members of the population.
	That does not mean the government gets to, at least the federal government, does not get to come in and force you to cater to audiences that you don't want or to perform businesses with people you don't want.
	Now, this is an extreme version of the argument that is being made in the Masterpiece Cake Shop case.
	In that case, they're not even basing it on freedom of association.
	They're saying, I have freedom of speech, you can't force me to express a message.
	Right?
	I'm an artist, you can't force me to express a message.
	Which is a very strong argument.
	I would go further.
	I would say you actually should be able to turn away people from your business, even if you just don't like their face.
	Right?
	You should be able to do that.
	Does that make you a jerk?
	Absolutely.
	Does it make you a bad person?
	Yes.
	Should you be able to do it?
	Yes, because that is true for every association, right?
	If I have a synagogue, I shouldn't be forced to admit a Christian to my synagogue.
	And if I have a church, I shouldn't be forced to admit a Jew, right?
	The idea of freedom of association requires that we all act in society together and that we cultivate good people.
	But the idea that government has to force it down our throats, I think, is a big mistake.
	This became a big debate during the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and there were a lot of people making exactly the argument I'm making.
	Barry Goldwater made this argument.
	Barry Goldwater was a civil rights activist, by the way.
	And people proclaimed that he was racist because he said that people have the right to choose with whom they do business, even if you don't like the choices that they make.
	And he was portrayed as some sort of evil racist for all of this.
	There is no principled argument for freedom of association if the government gets to decide with whom you associate.
	End of story.
	So, that's the history of freedom of association in a nutshell.
	It should still apply.
	Unfortunately, it's a right that's been increasingly written out over time.
	We should rewrite it back into the Constitution because if you don't like me, you shouldn't be forced to associate with me and vice versa.
	Okay, we will be back here tomorrow with all the latest and greatest.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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	Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
	Edited by Alex Zingaro.
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	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

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