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Dec. 12, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
56:05
Jimmy Kimmel Weaponizes His Baby...Again | Ep. 435
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Well, Jimmy Kimmel is back, and he brought his baby, and he used his baby for a political prop, and we'll talk about it.
Plus, it is down to the wire in Alabama.
Roy Moore rides in on a horse, yes, literally, to vote in Alabama today.
Plus, President Trump may have a better case today against the Mueller investigation.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
We're going to talk at length about Jimmy Kimmel who brought his baby again to use as a political prop again.
I hate this again so much.
Can't say.
I will discuss all of this.
I'm going to break it down for you.
No, no, no, not yet, not yet.
Wait on it.
Just wait.
We'll get there.
But we're going to get to that.
We'll also get to Roy Moore, who had a very interesting close of the campaign last night.
His wife got on stage and talked about the Jews.
So we'll talk about that and whether she was, in fact, being anti-Semitic.
Not really.
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OK, so we begin with Jimmy Kimmel.
So Jimmy Kimmel trotted out his child again last night.
And I hate this more than I can tell you when people do this.
I can safely say, because it has been scientifically verified, that I have the two cutest children on planet Earth.
In fact, I have a child of three and a half years, a girl of three and a half years old, who is so cute that last night She actually started doing lines from The Room.
And no, I'm not kidding.
She is amazing.
But she also happened to have a heart condition.
She had an open heart surgery that was performed at the same hospital by the same doctor as Jimmy Kimmel's son.
And yet, I do not routinely trot out my daughter's story whenever I talk about healthcare.
When I'm talking about Obamacare policy, I don't say, and I know about this because my daughter had her chest cut open because they had to fix an ASD, a hole in her heart.
I don't do that because it's stupid.
I don't do that because I don't think that there's virtue in victimhood.
I don't think that just because something bad happened to you in life, that means that now you know more about that thing than anyone else.
I think that this reference to personal experience when it comes to policy matters is actually the end of policy because the reality is it's a very watered down form of identity politics.
The reality is that politics is based on the idea that I can talk about ideas and you can talk about ideas because we can Sympathize with one another.
Because we can think what it would be like to walk in one another's shoes without actually having walked in those shoes.
If talk about healthcare is restricted to only those who have used the healthcare system.
If talk about financial systems is restricted to only those who have worked in the financial system, then pretty quickly we are going to come to the end of politics.
We can all have opinions on matters of public policy, specifically because we have the capacity as independent human beings to think about what all of these things mean for us and for others.
The way that politics is done is by shaping policy around what we would think it would be like to be another person.
We don't actually have to have experienced that thing.
You don't have to have actually experienced the Holocaust in order to think the Holocaust was bad.
You don't actually have to have experienced homophobia in order to think homophobia is bad.
You don't have to have experienced racism in order to think that racism is bad.
All of these things we can think about.
This is one of the reasons why I really dislike what Jimmy Kimmel does whenever he brings out his child to talk about health care policy.
So here's his unsuspecting kid.
His unsuspecting kid had a second surgery last week.
I guess he has one more when he's age six, and then he is done for life, we can hope and pray.
So Kimmel brings out his kid to talk about the Children's Health Insurance Program.
So Children's Health Insurance Program is basically a supplemental health insurance program for kids who are poor, So Kimmel brings out his kid to talk about CHIP.
What does his kid have to do with CHIP?
The answer is nothing.
His kid has nothing to do with CHIP.
Republican from Utah in the Senate in 1997.
Republicans have been continuously funding it ever since.
So have Democrats.
And now there's a bit of a holdup in terms of final funding for the CHIP program.
But that is not because Republicans are uncaring or unfeeling.
Yet that is what Kimmel says.
So Kimmel brings out his kid to talk about CHIP.
What does his kid have to do with CHIP?
The answer is nothing.
His kid has nothing to do with CHIP.
His kid is not on CHIP.
The fact is that Jimmy Kimmel is a very, very wealthy man.
He's a very, very wealthy man.
He's He has health insurance, I am sure, through ABC.
But Jimmy Kimmel brings out his child and he starts talking about Chip because, for some reason, the experience of his child connects with Chip in some way.
Like, you don't have to show me a sick child in order for you to make the case for Chip, whether it's good public policy or bad public policy, but that's just what Jimmy Kimmel does.
So here is Jimmy Kimmel jumping right in and talking about why his son's surgery links up to healthcare policy for poor people who are not him or something.
CHIP is the Children's Health Insurance Program.
It covers around, um... It covers around 9 million American kids whose parents make too much money to qualify for Medicaid but don't have access to coverage, affordable coverage for their jobs, which means it almost certainly covers children you know.
About 1 in 8 children are covered only by CHIP.
And it's not controversial, it's not a partisan thing.
In fact, the last time funding for CHIP was Authorized was in 2015.
It passed with a vote of 392 to 337 in the House and 92 to 8 in the Senate.
Overwhelmingly, Democrats and Republicans supported it until now.
Now, CHIP has become a bargaining chip.
It's on the back burner while they work out their new tax plans, which means parents of children with cancer and diabetes and heart problems are about to get letters saying their coverage could be cut off next month.
Merry Christmas, right?
Oh, those evil Republicans, Mary Crispin.
Then he goes on and he talks about how tax cuts are the real problem with this.
He says, they let this money expire while they work on getting tax cuts for their millionaire and billionaire donors.
So this is the shtick that Jimmy Kimmel is pushing right now.
By the way, the so-called tax cuts for the millionaire and billionaire donors, we talked yesterday about how the Senate botched the bill.
If you make over $615,000 and you're self-employed and you have like a kid, There's a good shot you're actually gonna pay more in taxes than you will make in money, above a certain amount of money if you live in a high-tax state like California or New Jersey.
But Jimmy Kimmel doesn't know what he's talking about.
And this is the problem, right?
Everyone is sitting here, and the visuals matter.
So you're sitting here, and you are watching his very cute child.
And that is a very cute child, right?
That's an adorable kid.
And you feel terrible for that adorable kid.
As well you should.
Right?
I know.
I've been in this situation.
I know what it's like to have an adorable child who's had to be cut open.
I get it.
Okay, but...
What he is saying is pure nonsense here.
What he is saying is not factually correct.
The House passed legislation last month to fund CHIP for five more years.
Democrats opposed it.
Democrats opposed it on the grounds they didn't like its funding mechanism.
It passed the House anyway.
The Senate Finance Committee passed a version of that bill too.
They haven't figured out the offsets for funding it.
Why do they need the offsets for funding it?
They need the offsets for funding it because in order for them to pass it through the Senate without it being filibustered, you have to show that it's not going to add to the deficit.
Okay, so the Senate already is considering pushing it.
President Trump, last week, last week, signed funding for CHIP.
That will take it all the way through the end of January 31st, funded by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
That federal agency has been signing checks to states for the last two months.
CHIP is not going unfunded.
Senator Hatch, again, the original sponsor of the CHIP program, has pushed forward the Kids Act, reauthorizing CHIP for another five years as well.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Sunday said, quote, It's not that people are wasting time on tax cuts.
These two issues are completely disconnected.
The tax cuts have nothing to do with CHIP.
It's not that people are wasting time on tax cuts.
These two issues are completely disconnected.
The tax cuts have nothing to do with Chip, nothing.
But Kimmel's trying to promote a narrative that isn't even true and he's using his son to do it, which is just yucky.
It's just gross.
The fact is, again, tax cuts have nothing, these are two completely separate legislative efforts.
And not only are they completely separate legislative efforts, what's hilarious about this is that Kimmel is saying that the Republicans are trying to hold up chip because they're trying to help out their millionaire and billionaire friends.
They're taking money from kids like Jimmy Kimmel's son, except if Jimmy Kimmel's son were poor, and they're trying to use that money to pay off all of these super wealthy people.
You know where the Republicans are trying to get the money to pay for chip?
You wanna know where they're trying to get the money to pay for chip, where the offsets are?
For high income earners on Medicare.
In other words, they're trying to get it from rich, old people.
They're trying to take the money from rich, old people and make sure that young, sick kids can get it.
And Jimmy Kimmel is sitting there ripping on the Republicans for it.
Now, again, the point of this is that optics in politics means everything.
Optics in politics is the whole shebang.
And the fact that he is willing to use his child for opticals, for optics like this, I find it really distasteful.
I think it's bad for the country.
I think, again, that it drives us to a place in politics where we can't have conversations with one another.
Because if I say, if I didn't have a kid who had a condition, would I be able to critique Jimmy Kimmel when people pay attention to it?
If I were just another conservative commentator, if I were Avik Roy, right, who's not even particularly conservative on all things healthcare, let's say I were Avik Roy, and I don't know, I don't think Avik has had a kid with a condition like this, but let's say that you're a full-on expert in healthcare.
This is what you did full-time, right?
You worked over at Cato Institute or at Heritage Foundation, and this is what you did full-time, but you don't have a sick kid?
We're not gonna pay as much attention to you as we do to Jimmy Kimmel because Jimmy Kimmel has a child who's playing with his thumb while he talks.
I hate this stuff more than I can tell you.
I think it's opportunistic.
I think Jimmy Kimmel is doing something morally bad here.
I think it is morally bad to use your child's condition as a lever in order to promote your favored policies, especially when your child's condition has nothing to do with those policies.
Policy is about what's good for the bulk of the American people.
It is not about what sympathy level you can garner by bringing out a cute child or a cute puppy.
To me, this argument is no different than if Nancy Pelosi would start stumping for Obamacare, and she'd bring out a cute puppy and stroke it while she was talking, and then every so often reference the puppy.
Again, not because puppies and children are the same.
I'm virulently against this notion, right?
Whenever people say that they have a dog and it's their four-legged child, I just want to kind of kick them in the ass.
But what is particularly ridiculous about this is, again, the notion that Jimmy Kimmel, what he's saying is factually wrong, but somehow it's given added credibility.
And if you look at the headlines today about Jimmy Kimmel, I'm going to tell you what some of the headlines say, right, on various outlets.
So, USA Today, joined by his son Billy, an emotional Jimmy Kimmel makes the case for Chip.
TV line.
Jimmy Kimmel brings son to live for CHIP funding plea.
Daily Beast.
Jimmy Kimmel with son in tow delivers tear-filled plea for health insurance.
Jimmy Kimmel and Billy blast Congress for holding CHIP hostage according to deadline.
Jimmy Kimmel brings out his son to talk about healthcare.
At any point in here, would somebody like to point out the fact that everything Jimmy Kimmel says about this thing is actually not true?
Like, would that be useful at any point?
Do you actually talk about the facts of the situation?
Or are we just gonna be bamboozled by the fact that he's bringing out a cute kid?
Again, I can bring out cute kids too.
It would make the show more visually interesting if I were to have my son and daughter on my knees while I did it.
I just don't think that it would add to the political points I'm making very much, and I think it would be a cheap political trick.
We have known for years that politicians kissing babies is a cheap political trick.
It is no less cheap when a late night host brings out his own baby in order to push a message that has nothing to do with reality.
Okay, so meanwhile, Today is the big day in Alabama.
Voters are heading to the polls to choose between a pro-abortion fanatic Doug Jones and an alleged child molester Roy Moore.
So all the best of America on display in Alabama today.
Roy Moore apparently rode up to the polls on a horse because we just have to signal that cowboy and vest and cowboy hat.
I really want someone to go back and score in the score from Gunfight at the OK Corral with Kirk Douglas.
I think it'd just be great.
OK Corral!
We may as well just go full on here.
And the closing pitch for Moore was interesting, to say the least.
Steve Bannon made the closing pitch for Roy Moore.
He ripped into Joe Scarborough.
He mocked Joe Scarborough's college education.
He apparently said that he got into better schools than Joe could have, Georgetown and Harvard.
There's only one problem with this line of attack.
Joe Scarborough went to?
Wait for it.
University of Alabama, yeah.
I love Steve Bannon jet-setting in from Los Angeles, like the schmuck he is.
Jet-setting in from Los Angeles.
Outsiders cannot have any impact on this race.
Steve Bannon from Harvard Business School and Los Angeles and Goldman Sachs and Joe Scarborough.
Listen, I'm not a huge Joe Scarborough fan.
I've hit Joe on this program a number of times, but Joe went to the University of Alabama, dude.
And then, Another speaker at the Moore event told a story that was supposed to show how moral Roy Moore was.
It was weird.
It was weird.
And he took us to this place, which turned out to be awful.
We walked inside.
I can tell you what I saw, but I don't want to.
It was clear to us what kind of place it was.
And Roy turned to me in less time than it took for someone to come up to us.
And there were certainly pretty girls.
And they were girls.
And they were young.
Some were probably very young.
I don't know.
I don't remember that.
It wasn't really long enough.
Roy said to me, we shouldn't be here.
I'm leaving.
Or words to that effect.
In fact, I think those were his exact words.
Okay, so the story is, again here, because the echo's pretty bad here, one of Roy Moore's old Vietnam buddies says that when they were in Vietnam together, they somehow stumbled into a brothel, there were a bunch of underage girls there, and Roy Moore said, let's get out of here.
And this is the exonerating tale for Roy Moore.
First of all, I would just say that I wasn't in Vietnam, so I don't know how often you just sort of stumble into a brothel, but beyond that, Weird story.
Weird story.
And then it got weirder.
So I'm going to play you audio of Roy Moore's wife, who is trying to rebut allegations that Moore is anti-Semitic.
I'm not sure who made the allegations that Moore is anti-Semitic, because I haven't seen a lot of rationale for that allegation.
The only anti-Semitic thing I saw in this Alabama race was the attempt by somebody who was allied with Moore, I guess, to put out robocalls suggesting that there was a Jewish Washington Post reporter, Bernie Bernstein, who was calling around And trying to pay people to tell tales about Roy Moore.
That was pretty bad.
But I'm going to play you another weird piece of audio.
We've basically entered the Twilight Zone in this race, and thankfully it's going to come to an end by tonight.
We'll find out whether Moore is a senator or whether he's not.
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Okay, so this was the clip that had the media agog last night.
Roy Moore's wife, Caleb, She's trying to rebut allegations that Roy Moore was an anti-Semite.
Again, I'm not sure who had made those allegations.
I guess there were some people who had made those allegations with regard to something having to do with George Soros.
He made a comment about George Soros going to hell, which may very well happen.
I'm not sure what that had to do with Soros being Jewish per se.
Soros is not exactly an Orthodox Jew.
In any case, here was Kayla Moore making a very weird reference.
Fake news would tell you that we don't care for Jews.
I tell you all this because I've seen it all, so I just want to set the record straight while they're here.
One of our attorneys is a Jew.
And the other guy's like, "Oh, you're so sweet." She smiles and she looks into the camera and she kind of nods.
We have very close friends that are Jewish and rabbis and we also Okay, she should have started with that one.
We have close friends who are rabbis and Jewish, and we fellowship with them.
That would have been the best place to start, not, we have a lawyer who's a Jew.
Yeah, welcome to America.
Everyone has a lawyer who's a Jew.
Or an accountant or a doctor.
Not a particularly strong defense there, but this entire race has been weird.
Does it mean they're anti-Semitic?
No.
Everybody who's going off on that last night on Twitter, you're just being silly.
Kayla Moore may have gotten that out of order.
Maybe she shouldn't have said her lawyer was a Jew as a defense, because that's a dumb defense of anti-Semitism, if it in fact existed.
But putting all of that aside, no, I don't think that there's a lot of proof that Moore is anti-Semitic.
I think there are plenty of other reasons not to vote for Roy Moore, among them the credible allegations of child molestation.
But now we are down to the wire in Alabama.
President Trump He's really ramping up his support for Roy Moore.
He's attempting to get Roy Moore over the finish line.
If Roy Moore were to lose after Trump has signed off on this, it would be pretty devastating to Trump.
Particularly it would show that he doesn't have a lot of coattails.
It would show that he probably should have stayed out of it in the first place.
Like, this was actually a safe position for him.
If he had just stayed out of it, There's a good case to be made that he is safest politically, like Trump is safest politically if he stays out of this.
Now, if Roy Moore wins, then Trump gets to own Roy Moore, so I'm not sure that's much of a booby prize.
I mean, what a parting gift that is, right?
You win and now you are stapled to the guy who's probably going to be put up before a Senate Ethics Committee investigation for possible child molestation when he was a younger man.
None of this is good.
Either way, this goes bad for Republicans.
If Moore wins, Republicans get to answer questions about Roy Moore until the end of time, and Roy Moore is not a guy who keeps his mouth shut.
He's gonna say a lot of dumb stuff.
If Roy Moore loses, then Republicans lose the seat to Doug Jones.
So well done, primary voters, and well done, Roy Moore, who wouldn't step out in the first place.
It does show you shamelessness will get you everywhere in politics.
If he had any sense of shame, he would have stepped out during this election cycle.
He has none.
And that benefits politicians, I will say.
It benefits politicians not to have any serious sense of shame.
Okay, so...
Now I want to turn to the Democrat attempts to oust President Trump.
So they've used the Al Franken quasi-resignation.
Franken still hasn't set a date for leaving.
They've used this as an excuse to go after President Trump.
They're using the sexual allegations against Roy Moore as a lever to go up against President Trump.
Now all the Democrats are saying that President Trump should step down.
And yesterday I talked sort of briefly about whether Trump should quote-unquote resign over allegations of sexual abuse.
And this brought me, I was trying to think about this in a more systematic way last night.
I was trying to figure out, you know, when should politicians in general resign?
And it seems to me that there are five different options as to when politicians should resign.
This is not when politicians do resign, this is when politicians could or should resign.
So, answer number one is never.
Politicians should never resign.
Unless they are dragged away in chains, they should never resign.
They were elected by the people, there's no excuse for them resigning.
Unless there is due process and they are convicted in a court of law, they should never, ever, ever resign.
This seems to be the way that Roy Moore is going about it, or Trump, or Bill Clinton, or most politicians who have a generalized lack of shame, is the way that they deal with allegations is simply by saying, listen, there's been no due process, I deny the allegations utterly, I'm not leaving.
This is actually in some ways the most clear-cut standard, that we're never gonna pressure a politician to resign, or that a politician shouldn't resign unless the politician has actually been convicted of a crime.
This makes a certain amount of sense, but it means that you're going to have to say to Democrats it's okay for Bob Menendez to sit in the Senate in the same way it's fine for Roy Moore to sit in the Senate.
So we're in the final stages.
There's been a criminal prosecution.
Bob Menendez is on trial.
Is he going to be convicted or not?
He should resign now because it's not good for convicted felons to be sitting in the United States Senate even for five minutes.
So in this case, Roy Moore, there's been no prosecution against him.
He's not about to be convicted of anything.
It's sort of the Richard Nixon strategy.
He's about to be impeached or convicted, so now it is time for him to step down.
That's standard number two.
And again, relatively clear-cut standard, but most politicians are not going to hold by it.
Number three is before an election.
So bad allegations come out before an election.
Typically, politicians have.
The reason that politicians typically have is because politicians don't want to sully their party with the allegations.
But, again, if you have no shame, then you stick around.
So that's standard number three.
Before an election, you step down because you don't want to force the voters to choose between somebody about whom there are credible allegations of bad behavior and somebody who does not have those allegations but whom you disagree with.
You want to avoid the Moore-Jones race.
Moore should have stepped down earlier in this race.
Option number four.
Is when new information arises about something horrible you did post-election.
So this is the Al Franken scenario.
So nobody knew about the stuff that Al Franken did before the election, when he was elected in 2010, or 2012 rather.
And when Al Franken, let's see, Franken was 2010 I believe, so yeah, when he was first elected in that special election.
These allegations were not out.
The allegations came out afterward.
New information means he should reevaluate himself and he should resign.
And then finally, there's the only standard by which Democrats could credibly argue that Trump should step down, and that is when he's done something horrible at all.
So we find out that 30 years ago, not we find out, we knew that 30 years ago you did really bad stuff, and we knew that during the election cycle, but now we're going to call on you to resign.
The reason I'm making these distinctions is because I was trying last night to figure out what's the difference between Al Franken and Trump.
Now, the easy answer is there is no difference between Al Franken and Trump.
But I don't think that's exactly correct.
There may be very little difference in the allegations, but there is a difference in the timing.
All of the allegations about Trump came out before November.
Trump was then greenlit by the American people.
Now, could there be an impeachment over this sort of activity?
Sure, you could have an impeachment over anything.
It's a political crime.
But the idea that you're going to treat Pressure to push Trump to resign in the same way you treat Franken is weird, considering that the American people knew about every single allegation that's currently being aired about Trump before the election cycle, and they greenlit him.
That's a different thing than Franken resigning, because none of his voters knew about any of these allegations when they greenlit him.
New evidence means that Franken could step down and spare his party the heartache of running for reelection.
We already know what Trump is.
We already know what the allegations against Trump were.
So lumping in Trump and Franken together, I think, is logically incorrect.
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Okay, so...
Meanwhile, the Democrats have turned to the sexual harassment allegations with regard to President Trump, specifically because they are, I think, trying to move away from the allegations with regard to Russia.
Those are panning out into nothing.
I mean, those have really turned into just a big nothing.
Victor Davis Hanson has a very good piece over at National Review.
Now, Hanson is much more of a supporter of President Trump's than I am, obviously, but he has a very good rundown about all the problems with Special Counsel Mueller's investigation.
He talks about all of the various members of the investigation who have been in weird positions.
He starts with the James Comey subordinate deputy director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe.
He ran the Washington, D.C.
office that was involved in the Clinton email investigations.
He did not recuse himself from the email investigations until one week before the presidential election, even though his wife was running for a Democrat Senate seat in Virginia.
And he received a huge donation of almost $700,000 from the Clinton organization, basically.
And then it turns out that at least six of Mueller's staff of 15 lawyers had given to Hillary Clinton.
Okay, you know, that's not just positive.
A lot of people did give money to Hillary Clinton.
But then, there's Peter Strzok, Peter Stroke, right?
An FBI investigator assigned to the Mueller investigation of Russian collusion.
According to Victor Davis Hanson, Stroke and Lisa Page, a consulting FBI lawyer, were for some reason relieved from the investigation of Trump in late summer 2017.
Mueller's office refused to explain the departure of either, other than to let the media assume And then we learned that they were having an extramarital affair and had been sending anti-Trump text messages.
And then we found out that Andrew Weissman, who's another veteran prosecutor who's been assigned to Mueller's legal team, praised Sally Yates.
You remember Sally Yates?
She was the administration holdover, the Obama holdover from the DOJ, who'd broken her oath of office and refused to carry out Trump's immigration order.
And Andrew Weissman, who's been working on the Mueller legal team, he wrote to Sally Yates, and that came out.
And then we found out another attorney on the Mueller staff, Jeannie Rhee, was at one time the personal attorney for Ben Rhodes, the fiction writer turned Obama national security advisor, who's a garbage heap of a human being when it comes to his policy and his political opinions.
And then it turns out, so I mean the list goes on and on, that a senior Justice Department official, Bruce Ohr, connected with various ongoing investigations under the aegis of the Justice Department and was reassigned for his contact with the opposition research firm responsible for the Clinton-funded anti-Trump dossier, which in theory could have been the catalyst for the original investigation of collusion by the FBI.
It turns out that his wife, Nellie Ohr, whose experience is Russian politics and history, actually worked for Fusion GPS during the 2016 campaign.
Her husband was working apparently on the Russia investigation.
And then we found out that there's a guy named Aaron Zebley, who served as Mueller's Chief of Staff while at the FBI and was assigned to the FBI's Counterterrorism Division in the National Security Division at the DOJ.
And he served as Assistant U.S.
Attorney in the National Security and Terrorism Unit in Virginia.
But he represented a guy named Justin Cooper, who was the IT staffer who set up Hillary's illegal and unsecure server at her home.
So basically, half the people who are involved in the Mueller investigation have been compromised in some way or another by connections with Hillary Clinton or opposition to President Trump.
This is bad stuff, right?
This is bad stuff, and it's one of the reasons why President Trump is now being rumored to be thinking of opening up a special counsel investigation into the special counsel investigation.
That's how far we've gone.
So we are now at the point where it's like Dr. Seuss.
You know the places you'll go.
There's a bee-watcher, and then he's not doing his job, so you have the bee-watcher watcher who watches the bee-watcher.
But it turns out he's lazy, too, so you have the bee-watcher watcher until the entire town of Hotch Hotch is on bee-watcher watcher and watcher and watch.
That's basically what we're going to have.
Special investigations of the special investigator all the way down the line.
Turtles all the way down.
Very exciting stuff.
I can't believe that Mueller botched the investigation this badly.
Or maybe I can.
Maybe I can.
But that's the reason why Democrats are now turning to the sexual accusations about President Trump.
The reason that they are doing so is because obviously they think the Russia investigation is beginning to fall apart.
It's the reason why Kirsten Gillibrand is going after Trump.
Trump, by the way, fighting back against Kirsten Gillibrand today.
I don't know.
This is one of those cases, again, where I just wish Trump would shut the hell up on Twitter.
It's so stupid what he's doing.
Kirsten Gillibrand is going after him for all of the sexual harassment allegations from last year.
Remember, Kirsten Gillibrand was best friends with the Clintons until five minutes ago when she decided it would be more useful to throw their bodies under the bus.
Kirsten Gillibrand.
Received money from Trump when Trump was just a big Democrat donor.
And now Kirsten Gillibrand was ripping on Trump.
And she says that we need to investigate Trump.
Here's what she had to say.
An unprecedented time in American politics and the world is gripped by this saga.
I mean, here it now takes aim squarely at President Trump as this whole Me Too movement, you know, gains momentum.
Should he, should the White House be worried?
Well, President Trump should resign.
These allegations are credible.
They are numerous.
I've heard these women's testimony, and many of them are heartbreaking.
And President Trump should resign his position.
Okay, so she says that there should be a full investigation, so Trump tweets back at her, and here's what Trump tweets.
It's 18.
So Trump goes directly at her.
Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.
So, lightweight is one of his favorites.
Again, Trump only has a lexicon of about seven insults, and he just rotates them.
So it's lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Chuck Schumer, and someone who could come to my office begging, again in scare quotes, for no reason.
For campaign contributions not so long ago, and would do anything for them, is now in ring fighting against Trump.
Very disloyal to Bill, and crooked.
USED.
I don't know, used.
Okay, I thought that was, for a second I thought that was the US Department of Education, that used, because of the random, random capitals.
All of this, the syntax, putting the crazy syntax of this tweet aside, and the fact that it's barely written in English, the fact that he's going after Kirsten Gillibrand is very stupid, okay?
The reason that it's stupid is because why would you possibly raise her profile this way?
Kirsten Gillibrand wants to run for president in 2020.
This is an in-kind contribution to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.
She could not hope for better.
She, of course, comes out and strikes back at Trump.
This is what drives me nuts.
Guys, that's not what sexual harassment means.
Being mean to a woman online is not sexual harassment.
Sexual harassment is acting in a sexually inappropriate way toward a woman.
Saying that she's dumb or that she's corrupt, that is not a thing.
President Trump says that about everyone.
Like, there are five people left in the United States he hasn't said that about.
Most of them work for the administration.
The idea, maybe.
I mean, he's said half of his administration is dumb and corrupt.
Like, I don't understand why this even comes close to looking like sexual harassment in any real way.
But the president of the United States is lifting Kirsten Gillibrand's profile.
Elizabeth Warren, who, again, a highly overrated intellect.
I love the fact that Elizabeth Warren then tweeted out that Trump had slut-shamed her in this tweet.
She tweeted, Are you really trying to bully, intimidate, and slut shame, Senator Gillibrand?
Do you know who you're picking a fight with?
Good luck with that, President Trump.
Nevertheless, hashtag she persisted.
Oh, my God.
All these people need to go away.
Just go away!
Is it Christmas yet?
Can we just take the time off?
Like, please.
Elizabeth Warren.
It's Focahontas, right?
Not Pocahontas.
Focahontas.
Focahontas.
Where exactly did Trump slut-shame Senator Gillibrand there?
Does she even know what slut-shaming means?
Slut-shaming is to say to a woman that she is somehow morally less because she's sexually promiscuous.
It was always a weird insult in my, it was always a weird critique in my view to quote unquote slut shame somebody.
I wasn't aware that being sexually promiscuous was a net positive.
But in any case, this is now the line the Democrats are gonna use, that Trump is sexually harassing Kirsten Gillibrand.
Oh, the level of stupid.
Oh, the insane level of insane stupid.
And Trump didn't need to get into this.
It's a waste of time.
He should have just ignored it.
It was gonna go away.
Everybody was gonna know that this was driven by politics more than it was by policy.
Or by reality, but that's the way that it goes.
Okay, so before I go any further, I first want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Dollar Shave Club.
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Okay, so I do have to tell you about this insane piece from Everyday Feminism just because it is hilarious.
So this piece from Everyday Feminism discusses what intersectional feminists are looking for today.
It is not a wonder that they are miserable people, intersectional feminists, because these are questions, there are 10 questions you are supposed to ask.
Your date, if you're an intersectional feminist.
The following list of questions writes, who wrote this?
Lara Witt.
I'm not going to assume his, her, gender.
I'm not going to assume gender because we're not allowed to do that at Everyday Feminism, the greatest site on the internet.
But here is what Lara writes.
Well, there's a hell of an opener.
is applicable to all relationships, certainly not just cisgender heterosexual ones.
One, do you believe that black lives matter?
Well, there's a hell of an opener.
You sit down for a date and before you even start talking, the woman says to you, "Do you believe that black lives matter?" Like, how are you supposed to answer that?
What happens if you say no?
I mean, like, what?
First of all, like, does anyone in the United States say no to that question?
Of course everyone believes Black Lives Matter.
The question is whether you think the movement is actually worthwhile or whether it is a vast misinterpretation of variable data on police activity.
But nevermind all that.
It's just... Then, what are your thoughts on gender and sexual orientation?
I love this.
The gender binary is a tiny box.
I wish it didn't exist, but it does.
I wouldn't want to be with anyone who is queer-phobic.
Is that your opener?
That's another one of your opening questions?
You're a straight woman and you're dating a straight guy and your first question is, would you have sex with a dude?
Or are you queer-phobic?
Do you believe that I'm a woman?
How do you work to dismantle sexism and misogyny in your life?
What are you talking about to me?
I'm just a plumber.
What?
Well, I feel like this is sort of a weird arbitrary boundary that you're drawing here.
It seems to me that what you are is very much related to what you do.
So that's sort of a weird take on things.
toxic masculinity questions are threatened in any way.
And they love us as a monolith.
They love what women have to offer, whether it's sex, food, love, care, emotional labor.
They love us for what we can do for them, not because of who we are for ourselves.
Well, I feel like this is sort of a weird, arbitrary boundary that you're drawing here.
It seems to me that what you are is very much related to what you do.
So that's sort of a weird take on things.
What are your thoughts on sex work?
Like this is one of my favorites.
What are your thoughts on sex work?
Really, the intersectional feminists want you to ask your date what your thoughts are on prostitution.
Hint to the ladies.
If you say to a man, what are your thoughts on prostitution, the guy's like, love it, all for it.
You shouldn't date him.
It's gonna go badly.
But apparently this is a question to ask when you're dating because being pro-sex worker is a necessary pillar for dismantling the patriarchy.
There's nothing that dismantles the patriarchy like making it more available for scummy men to have sex for money.
Nothing dismantles the patriarchy just like that.
Which is why when you watch old westerns, everyone goes to the whorehouse because they're all trying to dismantle the patriarchy.
It's a thing.
Are you a supporter of the BDS movement?
Perfectly.
I love this.
I love this.
It's just great.
Wow.
that on your first date you should ask whether you hate Jews and want to divest from Israel.
What is your understanding of settler colonialism and indigenous rights?
Wow.
Do you think capitalism is exploitative?
First of all, I would say yes to that question just so that I could avoid actually having to pay for dinner.
Capitalism is exploitative, so let's break the check.
If a woman asks you any of these questions, run as fast as you possibly can, because that's horrifying.
That'll be the worst marriage ever.
And does your allyship include disabled folks?
If a woman asks you any of these questions, run as fast as you possibly can because that's horrifying.
That'll be the worst marriage ever.
But I guess marriage is to shut anyway, so who cares?
All right, so before we go any further here, and there's much more to come, I first have to say that you need to go over and subscribe.
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Okay, so I'm going to go right to you some things I like and some things that I hate.
So things I like, I want to start with some Beethoven ones.
So I said yesterday I'd read a Beethoven biography over the weekend.
Really enjoyed the biography.
And now I want to play for you a little bit of Beethoven music that you may not know.
It's sort of off the beaten track a little bit.
So the only ones that everybody knows are his Fifth Symphony and his Ninth Symphony.
Some people know the Sixth Symphony from Fantasia, but there's a lot of Beethoven music that people have missed because they just don't follow it that closely.
So Beethoven's Opus 130 is one of his string quartets, and there's a movement called the Cavatina in the middle of the string quartet.
It is so well known to sort of aesthetes that it was actually placed on the permanent disc that was sent with the The Voyager, the Starship Voyager, the shuttle that we sent out into deep space.
We sent out a CD on that shuttle.
It's actually a golden record.
So in case the aliens find it and they want to know what kind of music we listen to, we put on some crap and then we put on some good stuff.
So the good stuff is Beethoven and Mozart and Bach.
And this Cavatina from his string quartet is part of it.
The part that I've pulled here, It's not actually the most melodic part, but it is one of the most heartbreaking parts in music.
What happened is that Beethoven was suffering with his nephew.
His life was really difficult, Beethoven, and he had a big fight.
His brother died.
His brother's wife was an actual convicted criminal, and he seized the son away from his sister-in-law.
He had the court actually relocate the son with him.
So his nephew was sort of his surrogate son.
He wasn't a particularly good father.
and his surrogate son had all sorts of trouble.
And in the middle of that trouble, he wrote the string quartet.
And there is a part where he actually writes in the notes.
Well, it would be verklempt in Yiddish, but I'm trying to remember what it is in German.
I'll look up the word in a second.
But in any case, the point here is that the violin is supposed to sound like it's actually crying, and it's as good an imitation of musical crying as you'll overhear.
Here it is, the Cavatina, one of the movements from Beethoven's Opus 130.
*Music*
*Music* Okay, so then he goes back into the regular theme.
You should listen to the entire movement.
It really is beautiful.
That portion there is supposed to be the sort of person sobbing, struggling to catch their breath.
It's the only thing that Beethoven ever wrote where he said he cried when he wrote it.
It is glorious music.
Beethoven is just spectacular.
A lot of his late music is so complex.
The Grosse Fugue, which I may or may not play on the program, it's so complex that I don't understand it properly.
I really want to know some more music theory before analyzing it.
It was so complex that at the time people called it repellent.
It was the last movement of this particular string quartet, I believe, and he removed it from the string quartet because people didn't understand it.
A hundred years later, people were still calling it modern music because it was so sophisticated in the way that he'd written it.
Time for some other things I like.
So I have to give Sarah Huckabee Sanders some credit.
The press went after her yesterday, and she went directly back at them over inaccuracies in their reporting.
And I'm on Sarah Huckabee Sanders' side here.
Here's what the press secretary had to say.
When journalists make honest mistakes, they should own up to them.
Sometimes.
And a lot of times you don't.
But there's a difference.
There's a very big... I'm sorry.
I'm not finished.
There's a very big difference between making honest mistakes and purposefully misleading the American people.
Something that happens regularly.
You can't say, I'm not done.
You cannot say that it's an honest mistake when you're purposely putting out information that you know to be false, or when you're taking information that hasn't been validated, that hasn't been offered any credibility, and that has been continually denied by a that hasn't been offered any credibility, and that has been continually denied by a number of people, including people with direct This is something that I'm speaking about the number of reports that have taken place the last couple of weeks.
I'm simply stating that there should be a certain level of responsibility in that process.
Brian, I called on Jim.
This is not the line of questioning that I was going down, but... Okay, and she really, she lacks Acosta, as well she should.
Acosta is one of the most repellent reporters working at the White House.
Okay, time for one thing I hate, and then we'll get to a quick deconstructing the culture.
So here is today's thing I hate.
So my wife and I were bored the other night and we decided to grab a movie from Netflix and to chill, as they say, as the children say.
And the movie that we grabbed, we had not seen in the theaters, it was Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Volume 2, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2.
This movie is hot garbage.
This movie is just terrible.
Which makes me sad, because I liked Guardians of the Galaxy 1.
It is a bad movie.
It's not just a bad movie.
It's atrociously, insultingly bad.
This movie got 83% on Rotten Tomatoes, which demonstrates to you, do not trust the critics when it comes to comic book movies.
Trust me.
I never say to trust me on things.
Trust me.
When it comes to comic book movies, my taste is significantly better than the average critic on Rotten Tomatoes, who don't know what the hell they're talking about.
This movie is no better than Justice League.
In fact, in significant ways, it's actually worse than Justice League.
At least Justice League has a couple of memorable scenes.
There is nothing remotely memorable about this film.
They somehow blow having Kurt Russell in the film, which is just ridiculous.
I don't know how you blow having Kurt Russell in the film.
Kurt Russell is great in everything.
Go watch Tombstone instead of watching this.
You'll enjoy it much better.
It's a bunch of CGI nonsense.
The only thing that's even mildly interesting or funny is Dave Bautista, who is actually turning out to be quite a screen presence.
He's the only thing in the film that's even remotely worth seeing.
The rest of the film is just awful.
Bradley Cooper's part is garbage.
Chris Pratt turns into a non-entity in this movie.
The CGI is unwatchable.
It'll give you a headache.
I can't express to you how much I dislike this movie.
So here's a bit of the preview so you two can see.
It'll show you sort of how you can turn a really bad movie into an okay trailer.
That's basically the message of this particular segment.
The fate of the universe lies on your shoulders.
Now whatever you do, don't push this button.
Because that will set off the bomb immediately and we'll all be dead.
Now repeat back what I just said.
Okay, so this is the whole movie, and this is every funny bit in the movie, in the first 30 seconds of this trailer.
It's just, and I'm sorry, but Baby Groot is just such a pandering play.
It's like, oh, well, we need something to sell at the...
C.V.S.
for Christmas.
So, baby Groot.
Okay, do not watch this film.
If you have watched this film, see if you can get a refund.
If you can't get a refund, see if you can invent a time machine and go back and take the two hours of your time back.
And if you can, let me know because I want it back.
Okay, I'm going to deconstruct the culture here very briefly.
I'm going to spoil two things that are currently in theaters and or on Netflix.
So if you don't like spoilers, then this is the part where you tune out for the show and you come back tomorrow.
So here are the two things that I'm going to spoil.
I'm going to spoil, not really, but a little bit.
I'm going to spoil Godless on Netflix, and I'm going to spoil Mudbound, which is also available on Netflix and in theaters right now.
Because they both make the same plot mistake, and it drives me up a wall.
So to introduce why this is a mistake, I wanna show you a scene from the classic Western Shane.
So Shane, if you haven't seen it, one of the great Westerns of all time, just terrific, Alan Ladd, Van Heflin, Gene Arthur, and the whole point here is that Alan Ladd is sort of a wandering gunfighter.
It's basically the same plot as Godless.
He's basically a wandering gunfighter who stumbles into a town that's being dominated by bad people, and he is signed on as sort of a farmhand at Van Heflin's farm.
Van Heflin and Gene Arthur are married.
They have a child, Brandon DeWild, who I believe won an honorary Oscar for this film.
And Alan Ladd sort of becomes the boy's hero.
He sort of becomes the boy's hero, even though the father's a good guy.
And the mother starts falling in love with Alan Ladd.
And that's the whole theme of the film.
The whole theme of the film is duty outweighing your necessity to have feelings, basically.
You have duties to do good things, even when your feelings would drive you in the other direction.
It's a really good film.
It's a little bit long, but it holds up.
So, here is a scene in which you will see Jean Arthur, who plays the wife, Alan Ladd has just gotten in a fight.
Both Alan Ladd and Van Heflin have gotten in a fight.
Your head needs a bandage.
It's good enough, Marion.
It's fine.
Thanks very much.
You want to know something, Mother?
and you can see she's falling in love with Alan Ladd and her husband Van Heflin is sort of watching this happen.
- Your head needs a bandage.
- Oh, it's good enough, Marion.
It's fine.
Thanks very much.
- You wanna know something, mother?
- What is it?
- What is it, Joey?
Mother, I just love Shane.
Do you?
I love him almost as much as I love Pa.
That's all right, isn't it?
He's a fine man.
He's so good.
Don't you like him, Mother?
Yes, I like him too, Joey.
Joe.
Hold me.
who can't see, Alan Ladd walks out of the room and Jean Arthur comes out of her kid's room.
And she opens the door and she's looking out after Shane.
And then Van Heflin, her husband, opens the door.
The other bedroom door.
Joe.
Hold me. - Don't say anything, just call me. - Okay, so this is called subtlety.
Okay, this is a thing that is completely now lacked in movies.
It's so good, right?
I mean, it's so good.
And the subtlety of it, right?
You know that she has a thing for Alan Ladd.
You know Alan Ladd has a thing for her and that he's walking out because he wants to preserve the family and protect the family.
The reason he leaves at the end is because he wants to protect the family.
He's already helped save the town.
He's already helped clean the town.
And now he has to leave.
And the boy doesn't understand it.
It's heartbreaking and it's wonderful at the same time.
It's such a good film.
Okay.
Now, here's where I'm going to spoil a little thing about Godless.
So in Godless, basically, there's a town of women, and all the men in the town have died in a mining accident.
This is all in the first five minutes of the show.
And a character exactly like Alan Ladd comes to town, right?
You don't know his background.
You know that he's sort of a criminal.
But he comes to town, and he gets involved with Michelle Dockery, who you'll remember from Downton Abbey.
And she also has a son, and in exactly the same way.
I mean, it's exactly the same plot, OK?
It's a rip-off.
And Roy comes in, and he's training the kid.
He's training the kid to, you know, ride a horse, and he's training the kid how to farm better, and all this kind of stuff.
And meanwhile, the mother is sort of falling in love with him.
Now, she's not married, right?
Michelle Dockery's not married, but it's pretty clear that there's another guy in the town who has a crush on her, and he's also a good guy, right?
He's a sheriff who's going blind, and it turns out that he has known her for a while, and I won't spoil that part of it, but in any case, One of the things that ends up happening is that very much near the end of the show, near the end of the show, she goes into the barn and they have sex.
Okay, this is paralleled in this movie Mudbound.
In the movie Mudbound, basically, as I talk about on the show, Carey Mulligan is a woman who's living with her husband in the down-home South, and her husband is kind of a schlub.
They have a couple of kids, and her husband's brother is this sort of romantic pilot figure who has PTSD.
He comes back to town, and the two brothers go up against one another because one of them's racist and one of them isn't, basically.
And near the end of that movie, she has sex with the brother.
In both cases, let's just say that they end very similarly to Shane.
In both cases, the people don't end up together.
The people who have sex don't end up together.
And the reason that this drives me up a wall is because both of those films would have been better with a little more subtlety.
You actually end up destroying the character of the man by having him have sex with the woman in those films.
But our modern society cannot take the idea of two people being in sexual tension without there being consummation.
I can't take that idea.
Right?
That was the entire idea of human virtue, was the idea that you can be tempted to do something and you should not do it because it's immoral.
And what makes you a good person is withstanding the temptation to do things that are immoral.
That's what makes you a better person.
Not consummating it.
And it's a throwaway once you consummate it, okay?
The fact is that Godless would have been significantly better if Roy never consummates with this woman, because then he comes in, he helps the son, and you know that he wants to get together with her, but he also is not willing to stick around, and it's not kind to the woman, and it's not good for him, for him to consummate this relationship and then leave her to this other guy.
Like, that's bad, right?
That's why Alan Ladd leaves.
He leaves in Shane because he wants this family to be together, because it's important for the family to be together.
In Godless, it's exactly, I mean, it is down to the note, exactly the same plot, and yet the guy sleeps with the girl, and it ruins, it's not good, it's not smart, and it's bad, and it says something about modern society.
And the same thing is true in Mudbound.
They're trying to make a hero out of the pilot who stands up against racism, because they have him sleep with his brother's wife, one time, and then leave.
What the hell is the point of that?
Why would you do that?
It's only because we, as a society, have decided that self-control is no longer a virtue.
Self-control is no longer something worth prizing.
And then you wonder about harassment of women?
Seriously.
A society that does not prize and treasure and cherish and burnish self-control is a society that incentivizes men not to take part in it.
The ethics of Shane are much better than the ethics of Godless, and they're much better than the ethics of Mudbound, and it's also a better movie.
It's better art, because it's more true to what a good man does.
A good man withholds his own feelings when it means damaging other people.
Okay, we'll be back here tomorrow with the results of the big election in Alabama, which I'm sure will be a fascinating talk no matter which way it goes.
I'm Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Mathis Glover.
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Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
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Audio is mixed by Mike Cormina.
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