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Dec. 21, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
52:37
A Big Leftist Myth Implodes On Taxes | Ep. 442
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Fallout from tax reform continues.
Nikki Haley is my spirit animal at the UN.
Plus, Hollywood actually did something right.
Really.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
Oakley Doakley, so much to get through.
You know, at the end of the week, it's been a long week and it's only Thursday.
I mean, it really feels like it should be Friday at this point.
So we're just sitting around the office making Star Wars jokes at this point.
I won't spoil Star Wars further with the joke that I just made that is spectacular and that I stole from Ben Dominich over at The Federalist.
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Okay, so we begin today.
I'll do taxes in a second.
You know, I'm gonna begin today instead with the UN.
So the UN right now as we speak is voting on whether to condemn the United States for moving its embassy to Jerusalem.
To which we should say...
F off!
Who cares what you have to say?
Why do I possibly care what Venezuela, where its citizens are eating dogs, have to say about where we put our embassy?
Why would I care about the organization of Islamic countries?
57 Islamic countries who hate Jews.
Why would I possibly care what they have to say about whether Jerusalem should be Jewish territory?
Why in the world would I have to care about that?
Yet somehow we're supposed to care about this.
We're supposed to care deeply that the UN, which is basically Mos Eisley, You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than the United Nations General Assembly.
I hate the United Nations so much that while I'm against the use of eminent domain to hand over to private businesses, because I think that that's illegal, I would be willing to make an exception if President Trump wanted to use eminent domain to bulldoze the UN and build a Trump Tower on top of it, I'd be fine with that.
In fact, I think the best use of the UN would be to throw out all the diplomats and use it as an asylum housing project For all of the people who have to run from the garbage countries that occupy the U.N.
The U.N.
is an awful institution.
It has done literally nothing good since basically inception except for voting for the establishment of the state of Israel.
Name the good things the U.N.
has done.
I'll wait.
Okay, then the U.N.
is a terrible organization and it is a wildly anti-Semitic organization.
Is it a shock?
They're trying to pass another assembly resolution against Israel?
Is that a shock?
Let me explain to you why this is not a particular shock.
I begin with a few statistics.
So, for all those people who are like, well, you know, the UN, the center of moral gravitas, When they come after Israel, that really means something.
No, it doesn't mean anything.
It doesn't mean anything.
Here are some statistics for you.
How much does the United Nations hate Israel?
There are 193 countries in the UN.
More than a quarter of them are Muslim countries who hate Israel.
And then, you haven't even gotten started with the Europeans, okay?
Jews ain't exactly popular in Europe, as demonstrated by Exhibit A, the Holocaust.
So, things have not gone well for Jews in Europe historically.
Here's how the UN has voted with regard to Israel, a country full of Jews.
Okay, UN Human Rights Council, which is supposed to be there to, you know, promulgate human rights.
You might think that they would have some resolutions against China for being a repressive communist country that forces abortions on its citizens.
Or maybe against North Korea, a giant prison state, a giant gulag.
Or maybe against Venezuela, an oil-rich petrol oligarchy that has been using its oil to prop up its leadership while simultaneously forcing its citizens to shoot animals to eat in the streets.
You might think that the UN Human Rights Council might have some things to say about that.
Well, nah.
From its creation in June 2006 through June 2016, a full decade, the UN Human Rights Council has adopted 135 resolutions criticizing countries.
This is thanks to unwatch.org.
They've adopted 135 resolutions criticizing countries.
135.
How many of them were against Israel?
They've adopted 135 resolutions criticizing countries. 135.
How many of them were against Israel?
One country. 68. 68.
68.
Literally half of all UN resolutions at the Human Rights Council criticizing a country have been directed not against North Korea, not against Iran, not against Saudi Arabia, not against Egypt, not against China, not against Venezuela, not against Cuba, against Israel, the only democratic free country in the Middle East.
Half of them.
The UN General Assembly.
As I say, the Star Wars cantina of garbage, of human debris.
From 2012 through 2015, the UN General Assembly has adopted 97 resolutions criticizing countries.
How many of those were against Israel?
Does anyone have a wild guess?
I'm taking guesses.
Jonathan, how many of the UNGA has adopted 97 resolutions criticizing countries?
How many of those have been against Israel specifically?
83 of the 97.
83 of 97 resolutions criticizing any country are directed against Israel.
How about the UNESCO?
The UN Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization.
They're there for education and health.
They're there to inform people.
Did they have any resolutions criticizing Hamas for literally using UN schools as launching pads for rockets during the Gaza War?
No, but they do have 10 resolutions a year.
They adopt around 10 resolutions a year.
How many of those resolutions have been against Israel?
All of them.
Literally all.
There has been one, one resolution against another country, and that was against Syria in 2013.
Since then, Syria's been great, by the way.
Things have just been swimming in Syria.
I mean, UNESCO has had nothing to say about Syria while 500,000 Syrians were slaughtered.
But Israel, boy oh boy, that Israel.
The World Health Organization.
They don't even adopt resolutions against countries.
They adopt resolutions against Israel.
Literally, they adopt one resolution a year, singling out Israel for condemnation.
The International Labor Organization was established to improve conditions of labor, regulate work hours, and fight unemployment, and ensure adequate living wages.
Israel has the strongest economy in the Middle East, and it ain't close.
At its annual conference, the ILO only produces one country-specific report.
Guess the name of the country.
So, is it super shocking that the UN has decided to single out Israel and say that Jerusalem is not Jewish territory?
Is it super shocking that the Palestinian Authority, a terrorist group, has come out and said, how dare the United States try to blackmail us?
They're trying to blackmail us.
They're trying to say that if we oppose them, they'll cut off aid to the United States.
Okay, the Palestinians don't get to talk about blackmail, Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Islamic Jihad.
Their entire strategy is, if you don't give us what we want, we will come into your house and murder your children.
Extortion is their entire political strategy and has been for decades, but they're ripping the United States.
So, as I said earlier, Nikki Haley, the UN ambassador under President Trump, is my spirit animal.
President Trump let off this UN thing by saying himself, listen, if they want to oppose us at the UN, We'll just cut their funding.
Take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars and then they vote against us.
Well, we're watching those votes.
Let them vote against us.
We'll save a lot.
We don't care.
Love it!
Love it!
Yes!
Okay, this is the Trump who in 2011 I thought maybe he'd be a good president.
This is, okay, this is not just good Trump.
This is not just great Trump.
This is exhilarating Trump.
Okay, this is fantastic Trump.
The big F you to all these countries who take our money and then use it for terrorism.
And he says, fine, you want to vote against us?
We'll just cut off your money.
How's that?
How do you like that?
How do you like them apples?
Love it!
And then Nikki Haley goes full-bore Jean Kirkpatrick at the UN, and it is fantastic.
Nikki Haley, you can see the, you know, I don't know whether to say that I have Haley-esque rage or she has Shapiro-esque rage, but whatever it is, we have mind merged here.
Nikki Haley is now my, at the UN, not Nikki Haley all the time, but Nikki Haley at the UN, at the General Assembly, this is my spirit animal right here.
The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation.
We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world's largest contribution to the United Nations.
And we will remember it when so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit.
America will put our embassy in Jerusalem.
That is what the American people want us to do.
And it is the right thing to do.
Yes.
Yes!
Okay, this is correct.
Why we even spend a dime at this defunct, pathetic institution is beyond me.
We should just bulldoze the damn place and we should make all these jackasses pay their parking tickets.
We should make all these diplomats who have been out there raping people and they have diplomatic immunity, we should drag them into court.
Enough of this nonsense.
The U.N.
is a garbage institution.
It's been a garbage institution for quite a while.
Okay, in a second, I am going to discuss the Trump tax plan and the fallout.
It's been a very good week for Team Trump.
Very good week for Team Trump.
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Okay, so.
The Democrats have been struggling ardently to figure out exactly how to counter President Trump's tax reform bill.
What exactly do they do?
How exactly can they counter this?
And they've been having a really rough time of it.
Because it turns out that the tax bill actually gives a tax break to pretty much everybody.
The tax bill is going to be good for the economy, that it's not going to harm the economy.
The real only point of pushback on the tax bill comes from some conservatives who are deficit hawks like Kevin Williamson, who says, listen, at some point we're going to have to get our spending under control.
That's true, but that's not really a critique of the tax cut so much as it is a critique of our failure to cut our spending.
Even if there were no tax cut, we'd have a massive debt.
So we have to cut our spending, in other words, anyway.
But the tax cut itself is slated to help the economy, and this is what's scaring Democrats also.
The polling numbers have apparently started to turn around for the tax cut already.
As people begin to see that this tax cut is not some sort of boondoggle to help the rich, the Democrats are beginning to panic.
They're starting to freak out.
That's led by folks like Seth Meyers.
Seth Meyers, of course, the late night host.
And now we have to have all of the political thoughts of our late night hosts.
It's vital for me to hear what the guy who used to write for Comedy Central has to say.
A guy who used to write comedy lines for President Obama has to say about the tax cuts.
This seems like a real honest broker to me.
Here's Seth Meyers saying that the GOP tax bill is a brazen heist.
Brazen.
First of all, I do love when people use the word brazen, but really only when it's followed by hussy.
I think that brazen hussy is a great historic film phrase, but in any case, it's a brazen heist, according to Seth Meyers.
Here we go.
Okay, a brazen heist of the country?
overhaul of the tax code that will overwhelmingly benefit corporations and the wealthy, amounting to nothing less than a brazen heist of the country. -Okay, a brazen heist of the country?
Who stole the country?
It's like, where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?
If you ever watched that show or played that game, it would be people stealing actual monuments.
It was like, Carmen Sandiego just stole the Washington Monument.
Where did the country go?
If it was heisted, why am I still here?
Or are we in a different zone?
What's happened?
First, I was killed, and then they stole my country.
It's so weird!
What's going on?
Why does everything seem exactly the same?
It was weird.
I woke up very early this morning, and I got in my car, and I looked around.
I saw there was no one on the roads, and I figured everyone had been killed by the tax bill.
But as it turns out, it was just 5.30 in the morning, and who the hell's on the road at 5.30 in the morning?
So that was the actual solution, because at 9 o'clock, everybody was out doing their normal stuff.
In any case, the Democrats are struggling to come up with the rationale for opposing this thing.
So they've tried the Seth Meyers, it's a brazen heist.
They've also tried the tax cuts just don't do anything.
So we've heard this from a couple of Democrats saying, well, you know, at the lower end of these tax cuts, some families are only getting back like $80 a month.
Is that really a lot of money?
Is that enough to do anything?
Does that even matter?
It matters to the person who's getting back $80 a month.
It's not nothing.
It's better than not having $80 a month.
Let's put it that way.
My favorite, though, my favorite defense of opposition to the tax cut comes courtesy of one of the worst representatives in Congress.
I've actually openly supported his opponent.
I generally don't support politicians and races, but I've openly supported his opponent in California.
This guy is Ted Lieu.
Ted Lieu is the congressperson from, he's somewhere in the city, in like La Brea area.
And Ted Lieu says that this bill will harm Americans.
Here was his initial statement on it yesterday.
Democrats are not opposed to tax reform.
We're opposed to harmful tax reform.
And this bill is going to harm America by exploding our deficit by $1.5 trillion.
It's then going to require automatic cuts of $25 billion to Medicare.
And most of the benefits of this tax bill go to the super wealthy.
Okay, so all of this is happy talk.
Then he got to his real point.
His real point he made on Twitter.
And it is demonstrative of how some people on the left think about the role of government and what it's supposed to do.
Here's what Ted Lieu tweeted, quote, GOP underestimates how people feel when they know others got a better deal.
If Sally gets a tax cut of $380, but others get $200,000, she will be upset.
And wait until Joe finds out he is getting a tax increase for residing in California.
That's why tax bill is so unpopular.
Human nature.
Mmm.
Deep thoughts there from Ted Lieu.
Human nature.
Now here's the thing.
I agree with Ted Lieu.
I agree.
Human nature is for us to be jealous jerks.
That is our nature.
Our nature is to see the guy next door with the Lamborghini and think, But if I work harder, maybe I, too, will have a Lamborghini, which is totally acceptable.
But that guy has a Lamborghini.
I'm gonna go key it.
Or that guy has a Lamborghini.
What if I stole it?
That is human nature.
We are a jealous crew.
We are not kind.
The green-eyed monster of envy gets us all.
This is why there is an explicit commandment in the Ten that specifically deals with this.
That thou shalt not cover thy neighbor's ass, Al Franken.
That you shall not covet your neighbor's property.
That's the idea.
It's actually breaking a commandment to fall in with Ted Lieu's logic here.
This is why we have created institutions to prevent us from acting out on our jealousy.
The founders also believed that we were jealous and that we wanted each other's stuff.
And so instead what they said is, we will set up a system where you can't take each other's stuff.
There will be checks and balances.
There will be people who can vote against you.
There will be institutional barriers to you being able to do this.
Ted Lieu apparently believes that jealousy as a motivating factor should decide policy.
Right?
The jealousy should decide policy.
Now, how does he get from the is to the ought?
How does he make that jump from people are jealous to we should humor their jealousy by stealing some people's money and giving it to others?
How does he get from one to the other?
The answer is, of course, that Ted Lieu believes like so many Democrats believe.
That what you're jealous of is actually not that guy's property.
What you're jealous of is not jealousy.
It's rage at the injustice of a cruel universe that can be healed by an overarching government power.
You're not jealous of that guy's Lamborghini.
You're angry at the system that allows a douche like that guy with the Lamborghini to have a Lamborghini.
And it's the system that's responsible.
Your neighbor?
He's not responsible for the Lamborghini.
The system's responsible.
So if we just change the system, you two can have a Lamborghini.
Or even better, no one can have a Lamborghini ever.
This is the illogic here, which coincidentally violates at least two others of the Ten Commandments, right?
The commandment that says you're not allowed to steal.
It turns out that it is still theft if you vote for somebody to go steal something.
If Austin and Mathis both come into this room and they say, we just told to vote, there are three of us here, the two of us vote to take half your salary, this would be theft.
I would also fire them.
This would be theft.
The idea that it's not theft so long as you vote for the theft is really stupid.
So that violates another one of the Ten Commandments.
Then there's the third of the Ten Commandments it violates, which is the notion of a supreme arbiter of the universe, a God, who is just and good.
The idea that government can replace God and that government can provide to you all of the necessities that you seek.
That is what Democrats are basically saying.
That if a poor person exists and a rich person exists, government can come in and heal all woes.
So the Democrats are beginning to show their hand, and it's an ugly hand, it really is.
I mean, this is ugly stuff that you're hearing from the Democrats.
And this is why you have people like Bernie Sanders, whose entire raison d'etre is jealousy, right?
Everything Bernie Sanders is about is the idea that income inequality, this talking point, I've said it many, many times, I'll say it again, that income inequality is not an issue to me so long as my life is getting better.
If it's an issue to you, even though your life is getting better, it's because you're a bad person.
Really.
I think it's that simple.
If income inequality is an issue for you, if everyone's life is getting better, but income inequality is still an issue for you, it shows a moral shortcoming.
If you think income inequality is bad because it breaks social fabric, or you think income inequality is bad because it's a zero-sum game, I think you're wrong, but that's at least arguable.
But if you just think that income inequality is bad because you're jealous, Or because you think the system is quote-unquote rigged, but you have no evidence the system is rigged?
If everyone's life is getting better, but you're angry that everyone's life is getting better, that everyone's life level is going up, but the people at the bottom, it's going up this much, and the people at the top, it's going up this much...
If you're angry about that, that makes you a bad person.
Because what you should really be focused on is are you rising or are you falling?
Is the society rising or is the society falling?
Bernie Sanders, of course, works from the zero-sum game philosophy of life in which no one can rise without someone else falling.
So, you know, somebody apparently in New Guinea had to pay for Bernie Sanders' second lake house.
In any case, here is Bernie Sanders saying that the fact is that we need revenge.
I would like pudding.
I will stand on the barricades with my pudding.
I will stand there with my vanilla pudding.
That is the flavor that I prefer after a year of doing Bernie Sanders' impressions.
I can tell you vanilla pudding is my flavor.
I love vanilla.
I am lukewarm on chocolate and caramel tastes like dog crap.
But the pudding I enjoy is vanilla pudding.
I will stand upon the barricades like the people in Les Mis.
Which is, not coincidentally, also my favorite musical, except for the god parts.
And I will tell you that we need revenge.
Revenge on Trump.
And I will lead it.
I will use my walker, and I will walk over to the White House, and I will beat him with the tennis ball end of my walker.
Bernie Sanders, go.
This whole policy is based on the fraudulent theory of trickle-down economics.
And that is if you give huge tax breaks to large corporations and the wealthy, somehow the middle class and working families benefit.
Problem is, that theory has never worked.
It didn't work under Reagan.
It didn't work under George W. Bush.
It didn't work recently in the state of Kansas.
Tax cuts do work, and I will explain why in just a second.
And I will show you how the Democrats are making complete fools of themselves.
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Okay, so, the Democrats have been claiming, without any evidence to support it really, that somehow this is going to hurt the middle class, that corporations don't actually spend the money on people, that somehow the corporations just sock it away in their Scrooge McDuck money bins, and every evening they go swimming in the coins.
The physics of that I always found puzzling, by the way.
I'm not sure how Scrooge McDuck was actually able to penetrate the metal of the coins.
He was always able to sort of jump between the coins.
But I get the feeling that if you tried to jump into a pile of coins, you'd really hurt yourself in a severe way.
In any case, that's beside the point.
The actual point that I did want to make is that the Democrats are claiming that this tax cut will be wildly ineffective, that corporations have no intention of helping you.
They have no intention of helping you at all.
And leading the charge here is Chuck Schumer.
So Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader from New York, Here's what he had to say about the tax breaks.
Now, there's great irony in this.
You're going to hear him rip one particular company here.
That company is AT&T.
I'll explain why this is so hilarious and ironic in one second, because he basically says something and it gets debunked as he is saying it.
It's pretty astonishing.
Well, if you believe trickle-down economics, he's right.
The trouble is, no one in America, not the American public, not the economists, believe that trickle-down works.
Corporations are flush with cash right now.
The stock market's booming.
Job creation isn't.
Look at all the companies that have already said they're going to use their tax break for stock buybacks, For dividends that don't affect average Americans.
And I love the example of AT&T.
Over the last 10 years, AT&T has paid an average tax rate of 8% a year.
They have 80,000 fewer employees today than they had then.
Tax breaks don't lead to job creation.
They lead to big CEO salaries and money for the very, very wealthy.
Okay, so here's the part that's hilarious and ironic.
So as he's saying, AT&T, they didn't spend any money on their employees.
They've paid very little taxes and they're spending no money on their employees.
First of all, this is sort of reversing the polarity.
One of the reasons corporations pay less in tax is because they're making less money or they've had realizable losses in the last year, right?
I mean, it's not like they can just pay less taxes and get away with it.
In any case, What did AT&T do?
As Chuck Trumor was speaking, in the same hour, the same hour, AT&T announced that once President Trump signed the bill into law, they would, quote, invest an additional $1 billion in the United States in 2018 and pay a special $1,000 bonus to more than 200,000 AT&T U.S. employees.
Oops.
Oops.
Picked the wrong company to pick on that time, Chucky.
And it's not just AT&T saying this.
Boeing has announced $300 million of investment in corporate giving, in workforce development, in new facilities and infrastructure.
Fifth Third Bank Corp is a bank headquartered in Ohio.
They announced they would give a minimum hourly wage, raise it all the way to $15.
You remember the left was saying they wanted $15 minimum wage?
They got it approved by President Trump.
How?
Through economic growth.
They're also going to give a one-time bonus of $1,000 to more than 13,500 of their employees.
Wells Fargo, there's a lot more employees than that, announced they will increase their minimum hourly pay rate to $15, and they will aim for $400 million in philanthropic donations next year due to the newly passed GOP tax bill.
Ryan Saavedra writes about this over at Daily Wire.
Comcast has announced they're going to give $1,000 bonuses to over 100,000 eligible frontline and non-executive employees and invest $50 billion over the next five years in infrastructure based on the passage of tax reform.
FedEx announced that they will ramp up hiring in response to the bill.
They say they're going to see a $1.3 billion increase in annual profit, and they are promising extended hiring.
CVS announced last month that they would create 3,000 permanent new jobs if the tax bill passed.
So much for Chuck Schumer's talking point that businesses do not respond to economic incentives.
Of course they respond to economic incentives.
Of course they do.
And as I discussed yesterday, when Ireland lowered its corporate tax rate from 40% to 12.5%, they basically tripled their GDP growth.
When businesses have more money to spend, they either invest it, or they do stock buybacks, which raises stock prices, or they spend it on investment in employees and innovation.
It might as well just go nowhere, as opposed to when Democrats spend the money, when it legitimately goes almost nowhere.
So this is good stuff.
And I will say another thing here about a differentiation that I think is important.
So if you recall all the way back to the show last, it would have been December.
So last December, a year ago, President Trump announced that he and Mike Pence had basically cut a deal with Carrier to keep 500 jobs in the United States with Carrier.
And I said I didn't like this deal.
The reason I didn't like this deal is because it wasn't a broad-based tax cut.
It was a special giveaway to Carrier.
It was basically a subsidy to Carrier.
I don't like subsidies, and so when Carrier said they'd keep the jobs there, I said this is a cheap trick, it's a parlor trick, and I don't like it.
It looks a lot like corporatism.
This is not that.
When companies say a broad-based policy that affects millions of people across the United States is good for us or bad for us, that is necessary.
Companies should be doing that.
Corporate heads should routinely be speaking out about how public affairs impacts their company.
Why?
Because the government constantly does.
If you're a Democrat, you spend your entire life going around telling people, you know this government program that I love?
You love it too.
You know why?
Because it puts money in your pocket, right?
This is what Democrats do for a living.
For a living, Democrats go around telling people that food stamps are great, and the way you know it is because there's an EBT card in your pocket.
Welfare is great, and the way you know it is every week when you go to pick up your welfare check, it's a little bit more because of me.
The Democrats are constantly letting people know that they are dependent on government programs.
Capitalists don't tend to spend a lot of time letting people know that they are reliant on capitalism.
I don't run around the office telling people around the office, guys, you know what?
You are reliant on me for your hiring.
But not only that, you're reliant on the capitalist system.
You're reliant on free market enterprise for your continuation of your employment.
Because that'd make me a jerk.
Like, we're kind of polite.
We don't go around saying these sorts of things.
But they are true.
My employees will have a better year because there were corporate tax cuts.
Maybe not in California, but overall, there will be a better year for us as a company because of these corporate tax cuts.
The rate just went from 35% to 21%.
That's a massive decrease.
And people should be telling their employees this.
The reason they should be telling their employees this is because otherwise, the Democrats have a stake in basically suggesting that employees and employers are on two sides of the ledger.
They're not related.
That you can damage the employer without harming the employee.
That's not true.
When you raise taxes, it harms the employee.
And when you lower taxes, it helps the employee.
And this is what we've seen.
You know, President Trump deserves a moment in the sun to celebrate, and thus he did.
So he came out yesterday and he said, hey, it's a lot of fun when you win.
Can't argue with that.
Paul Ryan and Mitch, it was a little team.
We just got together and we would work very hard, didn't we, huh?
It seems like it was a lot of fun.
It's always a lot of fun when you win.
If you work hard and lose, that's not acceptable.
OK, and I do love the rabid laughter in the background from the vice president and from all of the assembled.
One of the things that I think Republicans have learned is sort of how to play with Trump.
And the way that you play with Trump is by basically laughing at all his jokes and telling him he's the best.
If that's what it takes to get some good policy, I can live with that.
Is it sycophantic?
Is it ridiculous the president is this way?
Yes, but hey, the policy over the last three weeks has been pretty, pretty, pretty good.
Okay, now, in a second I'm going to explain something that Trump said that is not true about this bill.
And then I want to get back to some of the Democratic reactions to all of this, because some of the Democratic reactions are truly astonishing.
So let's start with something President Trump said about Obamacare.
When it comes to this bill, one of the things the bill does is it repeals the individual mandate.
As I explained yesterday, the repeal of the individual mandate does not mean Obamacare has been repealed.
It has not.
You are not forced to buy an insurance program now, but insurance companies are still forced to cover pre-existing conditions.
There are still all sorts of costs.
The cost caps on what insurance companies can do.
There are still heavy regulations on insurance companies across the country, which is one of the reasons why cutting the insurance mandate, the individual mandate, may result in higher prices in the individual insurance market.
Because if you're forcing a bunch of healthy people, young healthy people to buy insurance in order to cover the cost for older non-healthy people, and then you take all the young people out of the system, The costs rise for the insurance companies.
There are only two ways of filling that gap.
One is to remove the regulations.
That would be killing Obamacare.
It's killing the regulations.
And the other way to do it would be to backfill that gap by basically signing subsidies to the insurance companies with government cash.
Unfortunately, it looks like the Republicans have sided with the second way.
They're looking at the Alexander Murray bill to do exactly that.
That'd be Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray of the state of Washington, this bipartisan bill.
But Trump made an announcement that was somewhat disquieting here and should, I think, give people a little bit of pause going into next year because this has been a great last three weeks, okay?
I've said it, I said it yesterday, the last three weeks, the last month of policy from this administration has been the most conservative policy of any policy I have seen in my lifetime.
Now, granted, I don't remember the Reagan years particularly, but certainly in the last 33 years, I mean, as long as I've been alive, this is the most conservative policy that I've seen in the last three weeks ever, right?
Much more conservative than anything George W. Bush did.
But going into next year, the question is, are we going to keep up this?
Is this where we're going to go?
The indicators are maybe not.
The reason I say this is because here is President Trump talking about the repeal of the individual mandate and what comes next.
Here he explains.
The individual mandate is being repealed.
When the individual mandate is being repealed, that means Obamacare is being repealed, because they get their money from the individual mandate.
So the individual mandate is being repealed.
So in this bill, not only do we have massive tax cuts and tax reform, We have essentially repealed Obamacare, and we'll come up with something that will be much better.
Okay, that is not true.
We have not essentially repealed Obamacare.
We repealed a funding mechanism for the insurance companies, but all the regulations are still in place.
Unless the Republicans remove those regulations, then they are basically enshrining a new government.
I mean, if they basically are just going to give giveaways to sick people who can't afford insurance, then that is a new government entitlement program.
The problem with that is that you're not always talking about sick old people.
Those people are covered by Medicare already.
You're really talking about young people who should have bought insurance and didn't.
If you want incentives for people to buy insurance, then there has to be a punishment, right?
An incentive system is based on reward and punishment.
There has to be some sort of punishment for not buying insurance when you could have when you were younger.
If you just pay for it, then there's no incentive.
It's a pathway to a government-sponsored program.
So I'm glad the individual mandate is gone, but it is not true that Obamacare itself has been taken apart.
Now, the same thing is true with regard to DACA.
Mitch McConnell is smartly saying that the Republicans should wait on pushing deferred action for childhood arrivals.
This would be the Obama executive amnesty that Trump revoked, but then asked Congress to pass again.
I guess the Republicans are going to put this off until next year.
One of the reasons for that is that they don't want to sort of blot the joy that so many conservatives feel over Republicans finally having a signature piece of legislation.
McConnell says they might do DACA next year.
Is DACA on the table?
Senator Schumer and I have already discussed this.
No, we'll not be doing DACA this week.
That's for a matter to be discussed next year.
The president's given us till March to address that issue.
We have plenty of time to do that.
So the point here is that what we could see next year is some programming that we don't like so much.
The last three weeks, it's all stuff I like.
We may see next year DACA.
We may see new subsidies to insurance companies.
We may see this giant infrastructure package that Trump apparently still likes talking about.
There are other priorities, right?
There's welfare reform.
That one's on the table.
That would be a good one.
I'd like to see President Trump pursue that.
He's talked about adding more work requirements for welfare.
This makes perfect sense to me.
He's also talked about maybe restructuring some forms of food stamps in some ways.
Again, entitlement programs need to be reformed.
The major reforms that need to take place are really the reforms that are happening in areas that he's not going to touch.
Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security.
That's the vast majority of the American federal budget.
That's the stuff no one is willing to touch.
We'll see where the agenda goes from here.
But I was talking with a member of the Trump administration last night.
What I said is, I'm really hoping that this is the Trump administration turning the corner.
If not, if this is just a high point, I'll celebrate the high point.
But, you know, you sort of have to hold off the full-scale celebration until you know where things go next in terms of everything's hunky-dory from here on in, particularly with the approval rating so low.
I mean, the fact is that Trump's approval rating is still down in the 30s.
Not only has he not suffered any severe crises as president, the economy is doing really well and he just passed a tax reform package.
Really, his approval rating should be about 53%.
At the very least, it should be in the mid-40s.
This is why I say, you know, Mr. President, please, just sign off on Twitter.
Spend the next couple of weeks enjoying yourself.
Let the media fulminate over this.
Because the Democrats will raise your approval rating for you.
The Democrats will play your Hillary Clinton, right?
Donald Trump won because Hillary Clinton was a garbage candidate.
Republicans can win as long as Democrats continue to be insane.
So, speaking of insane, Nancy Pelosi has apparently been digging into one of her grandchildren's high school reading list because every reference she makes is now some sort of literary reference, but a bad literary reference.
Like a literary reference that makes no sense at all.
So, she made a literary reference yesterday to Tiny Tim from A Christmas Carol because she can't come up with an actual victim of the tax bill since it's just people keeping their money.
But she can come up with a fictional reference, and that fictional reference comes courtesy of Charles Dickens circa 1843 in London.
Let me just suggest to Nancy Pelosi, if you have to go all the way back to a fictional child in London in 1843 to find a victim of the tax bill, you're not very good at this.
Here's Nancy Pelosi, those dentures a-slippin' and a-slidin', explaining that Tiny Tim will be unceremoniously sacrificed to the gods of capital.
Simon has a rare disease and cerebral palsy.
His mother spoke of how their family watches the Muppet version of A Christmas Carol and how Simon sees himself in Tiny Tim, another kind boy with braces on his legs.
Unfortunately, this story, as of today, does not have the same kind of happy ending as A Christmas Carol.
But this story is not over.
And like Tiny Tim, Simon and his family now find their future in danger because of the greed of those with power.
Tiny Tim!
Oh, they're gonna kill Tiny Tim.
By the way, she's not the only person making the Tiny Tim reference.
Jackie Speier, Democrat from California, she is also relying on the Tiny Tim reference.
I'm just very confused.
I understand that all these Democrats think that the Christmas Carol story is a Democrat story.
The story is about private charity based on religious observance.
If you missed that, it's because you didn't read the story.
It's because you're illiterate.
As maybe some of these people are.
A Christmas story is about a private guy giving charity after being shamed into it on Christmas, a day honoring the birth of Jesus.
Right?
If you're a Democrat, by the way, and you're citing Tiny Tim, let me just suggest that you probably lay off the abortion stuff, because Tiny Tim is a kid with apparently some sort of genetic condition, living in poverty.
So that would be like number one on your abortion target list.
If Nancy Pelosi is around in 1838, and Tiny Tim is in his mommy's tummy, and they know that Tiny Tim is gonna have some sort of condition, and they're living in poverty, she tells mommy to get an abortion, and both cratchits to go into nude body painting in France.
In any case, here is Jackie Speier in California, again, making a Tiny Tim reference.
You know, this is the ultimate bad Christmas Carol story.
This may be the most shameful day in the history of Congress.
Today, in the House, we are going to shake down hardworking Americans for a 1.3 or 2.3, depending on how you count it, And at the same time, we're going to put 9 million kids in this country at risk.
And these 9 million kids aren't eligible for Medicaid, and their families can't afford the Affordable Care Act because they have to pay a certain amount, and the subsidized amount doesn't cover the cost.
Okay, she's just making things up now.
Okay, the Congress is about to pay for the Children's Health Insurance Program.
The vast, vast, vast majority of people who are going to be quote-unquote thrown off their insurance are opting not to be on insurance after the end of the individual mandate.
Again, the Tiny Tim references are just absurd.
I love when she says this is the worst bill in the history of Congress.
Do you even 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, bro?
I mean, like, really?
Do you have... How about prohibition?
Was that a really solid one?
How about the Alien Sedition Act, where we actually put a congressperson in prison?
How about the public act that allowed FDR to establish Japanese internment?
How about the Chinese Exclusion Act, which prevented Chinese people from becoming American citizens after immigrating to the United States?
Or the Indian Removal Act, which set the road for the Trail of Tears?
Or the War Powers Resolution?
It turns out that Congress has done a lot of super-duper crappy things.
This exaggeration is not helping.
I do love that Nancy Pelosi made a second literary reference, which she also botched.
She said that the tax bill is, quote, a Frankenstein, and anybody who's familiar with Frankenstein knows it was a creation, a monster that was created.
Well, no, again, Frankenstein's the name of the doctor.
The monster is not named Frankenstein, you moron.
And then she says, do you know the ending of Mary Shelley's story?
The monster comes back to destroy.
That's not the end of the story.
Does she know how to read?
The end of the story is that the monster, after Dr. Frankenstein's death, runs into the Arctic wilds, right?
Just runs off into the ice.
That's what happens at the end of the story.
So, I mean, if you're going to make a literary reference, at least get it right.
Nancy Pelosi literary reference is not, not solid, not solid at all.
But it just shows the desperation of the Democrats in attempting to So with that, I'm going to ask Ben Carson, you can stay if you want to because you need the prayer more than I do, I think.
You may be the only ones.
awful lot of people.
By the way, the press are just beside themselves over this.
And I do have to, I do have to thrill with President Trump as he taunts the press.
Here, here was a glorious moment yesterday when the president taunted the press about them needing prayer.
So with that, I'm going to ask Ben Carson, you can stay if you want it because you need the prayer more than I do.
I think you may be the only ones, maybe a good solid prayer and they'll be honest.
Okay.
I got to love that because they have been deeply dishonest this week.
They have been deeply dishonest this week.
Well, in a second I'm going to explain to you, oh well actually this is breaking news.
So here's a little bit of breaking news.
The breaking news is that the UN General Assembly voted 128 to 9 to declare US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital null and void.
So breaking, UNGA votes against Israel.
To which I respond, breaking, who gives a flying bleep?
Who cares?
Breaking.
Not me.
Just stupid.
Okay, so, in just a second, we're gonna do some things I like and some things I hate, and we have some pretty good things I like and things I hate today for you.
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All righty, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
So, let's begin with a couple of things I like.
So we've been doing some old westerns.
So yesterday we did Gunfight at the OK Corral, which is one that I really enjoy.
Today I'm going to do the original True Grit.
Not the new True Grit.
The new True Grit is not my favorite movie.
I don't know when Jeff Bridges decided that English was no longer his native tongue, but it's a It's of great irritation to me that Jeff Bridges has decided to speak like Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady with a mouth full of marbles, because Jeff Bridges really is a good actor.
In Hell or High Water, he's terrific.
I think the True Grit remake is nothing special.
I think the original True Grit is a much better movie.
It has a much better score.
And it has, of course, the Oscar-winning performance from the late John Wayne in full John Wayne mode.
It's pretty great.
So here is the original True Grit.
Says Life Magazine.
True Grit is good enough for me.
It's good enough for you.
And if it isn't good enough for some movie company, then the free enterprise system is really going to hell.
Move along!
They tell me you're a man with true grit.
What do you want?
Speak up.
Boy, you wrinkled the paper.
It's pretty loose because your makings are too dry.
I'm looking for Tom Cheney.
Who's he?
He's the man that shot and killed my father, Frank Ross.
Says the New York Times, as touching as it is irreverently amusing.
Marshal Lester Cogburn and I are going after the murderer, Tom Chaney.
It also features the late Glenn Campbell, the singer, who cannot act his way out of a paper bag, but is charming enough in the part.
And it features also a great turn by Robert Duvall.
Robert Duvall is the villain in the movie, and creepy and interesting.
It's a really good movie, the original True Grit.
And of course it has some classic lines.
It has the very famous Yes.
Really.
very famous duel scene near the end where John Wayne is across the field from the bad guys and then they charge at each other.
It's just, it's a very good movie.
It's a very enjoyable film.
Okay.
Other things I like.
Now, a thing from modern Hollywood that I like.
Yes.
Really.
It's a thing.
Okay.
So I've said that I like a lot of things actually that Hollywood has been producing lately.
And I watched a couple of movies on the plane the other day that I liked, and so I had no internet access, which is as close to hell for me as possible.
But I watched a couple of movies.
This one is not one of them.
This is a trailer that has come out for a movie called Chappaquiddick.
Oh yes, you know what's coming.
This movie is actually about, you guessed it, Ted Kennedy basically murdering a woman.
So the Chappaquiddick incident happened in 1969, July 18th, 1969.
So apparently, it only takes Hollywood 50 years to come around to actually making a movie about an obviously publicized event.
It took six months for them to come around to making a movie about Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame, a nothing of a story that had made it for a crappy movie.
It takes them five seconds to make a movie about Sarah Palin, but it takes them 50 years 50 years to make a movie about a guy who probably would have been president except he left a woman at the bottom of a river and then swam to a house, went to sleep, woke up the next morning, and oops, she's dead.
Yeah, Ted, turns out that's what you happen when you leave a woman at the bottom of a river.
It was obviously manslaughter at best, murder at worst.
In any case, the new movie is Chappaquiddick, and here's a little bit of the preview.
My dad once said to me, Tragedy has a way of defining people.
people.
Cripple some people until they curl up into a ball.
Oh my god, what have I done?
Hello, Mr. Kennedy.
Mr. Kennedy.
Dad?
Is he still the man with all the influence?
What the hell happened, Teddy?
It was an accident.
I was driving.
A story like this could dominate the headlines for weeks.
Chief, we got a body.
A dead body holds a lot of secrets.
Those can be the difference between guilt and innocence.
So we need to be in control of them.
There's not a lot of senators that are charged with manslaughter that go on to become president.
OK, this was basically the thing that destroyed Teddy Kennedy's political aspirations for president.
He nearly won the nomination anyway in 1980, away from Jimmy Carter, which demonstrates the moral standards of the Democratic Party.
But finally, Hollywood has decided that it might be worthwhile making a movie about the most corrupt family in American history.
No, not the Bush family.
No, not the Clinton family.
The most corrupt family in American history, by a fairly long margin, is the Kennedy family.
The Kennedys were deeply corrupt.
The Kennedy men were particularly evil.
You leave a woman at the bottom of the river, you don't get to get away with the I'm a good guy routine.
Especially when you then spend the next several years of your career sexually assaulting and abusing women.
Which is apparently what Ted Kennedy did for decades.
You know, into his late old age.
There was a friend of mine who was working in Washington, D.C.
And an old man was hitting on her and she didn't realize who it was.
It was Teddy Kennedy.
She was like 17 at the time.
So Teddy Kennedy was a disgusting perv his entire life.
Just because he put his name on some important legislation means nothing.
But it's just, it is astonishing that it took Hollywood 50 years to come around to the idea that the Kennedy family might need a little bit of scrutiny.
Okay, time for a couple of quick things I hate.
So, thing that I hate, number one, And Tom Hanks says that he doesn't want his movie The Post screened at the Trump White House.
First of all, I don't know why in the hell anyone at the Trump White House would want to screen this monstrosity.
I mean, this movie looks awful.
This movie where Tom Hanks looks at Meryl Streep and he says, you know, they really doubt that you can do this because you're a woman.
And she says, oh, thank you for telling me, Tom.
The smarm level is 1 million on a scale of 1 to 10.
Oh my god, the Washington Post was nearly shut down.
So here is Tom Hanks saying that he wouldn't want this shown at the White House because Trump is a dictator.
He's a dictator, don't you understand?
He's a dictator.
And on the subject of truth, the actor confesses to Galloway honestly that he would decline to screen the film at the White House if President Donald Trump asked him to.
Hanks explains, He continues, It's totally taken to the ramparts, by the way.
we would be living in a country where neo-Nazis are doing torchlight parades in Charlottesville and jokes about Pochontas are being made in front of the Navajo code talkers.
He continues, And individually, we have to decide when we take to the ramparts.
It's totally taken to the ramparts, by the way.
It is taken to the ramparts to make a movie about lionizing the press and then not going to the White House.
You're a real, real heroic activity, Tom.
Way to go.
Again, he's not even been asked to go to the White House.
It's not even like Trump was asked and then he refused.
He's just preemptively saying, I wouldn't go to the White House to meet Trump.
I wouldn't go to the White House to screen my movie.
Yeah, these are people of real high moral quality, real high moral standards, all of them defending Bill Clinton up to the last five minutes when it became inconvenient to defend an alleged rapist.
Okay, other things that I hate.
So, did I mention the cat person story yesterday on the air?
A little bit.
So I talked a little bit about this cat person story, this short story called Cat Person from The New Yorker, about this 20-year-old woman who has sex with a 34-year-old guy, and then she regrets it, and somehow she's the victim.
That woman who wrote that story is now going to receive a $1 million advance.
A $1 million advance for writing a story about awkward sex.
Welcome to America, where I guess that you telling your story and making yourself into a victim or creating a fictional character who's a victim, not because they're victimized, but because they made bad decisions, this makes you very, very wealthy.
I don't think it says a lot of good things about the country.
Okay.
Well, we're going to stop there for today, but we will be back here tomorrow with the mailbag.
So if you are going to become a member, now is the time to do it because you want your questions answered.
I know you do.
And after tomorrow, we are on Christmas break, right?
We don't have any shows next week.
So tomorrow is the last show of the year.
is the last show of the year, of a grand and glorious year.
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