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Jan. 4, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show

59:34

Trump Destroys Bannon, Salts The Earth | Ep. 446

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Time	Text
	President Trump does have a nuclear button on his desk, but it is just for Steve Bannon.
	And I have many, many thoughts on this.
	Many a thought.
	Plus, Oregonians apparently don't know how to pump gas, which is a weird thing I didn't know.
	But we'll talk about all of these things.
	Ah, so many emotions.
	So many things to talk about.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	Steve Bannon's the worst person ever.
	Okay, let's just start with that.
	Steve is just a garbage human being.
	So, to watch the President of the United States turn his wrath towards Steve Bannon is very much akin to the scene in the new Star Wars film, spoiler alert, in the throne room, with Kylo Ren, with the lightsaber.
	Okay, so...
	It's a lot of things happened yesterday and many of them are good.
	I think very good for the administration.
	Actually, the short term effect is everybody's gonna say, oh, it's chaos in the White House.
	Guess what?
	Everyone's always saying that crap.
	But the question is whether it's good for the administration short and long term.
	And the answer is the disembowelment of Steve Bannon and Strewing the the planes with his intestines was I think in the end a quite good move for the administration I'll explain why in just a second.
	We'll go through all the details all of the gory details why this has happened What's going on?
	No one knows except for me.
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	All right, so.
	Here we are, gang!
	Now, you may sense a bit of personal satisfaction from yours truly that Steve Bannon just got cut in half by the President of the United States.
	You would not be mistaken.
	Steve Bannon is a bad man.
	I've been saying for well over a year that Steve Bannon is a bad man.
	I said in March 2016 that Steve Bannon had betrayed Andrew Breitbart's legacy and that he had sold out Breitbart to become his personal political vehicle.
	So I was first on this boat.
	And I don't mean like one of the first.
	I mean the first.
	I was the guy who was saying this for over a year.
	I said for two years that he was a self-aggrandizing con man who leeched himself to more powerful players in order to maintain power.
	This is stuff that I was saying.
	And I was eminently correct.
	And the president now agrees.
	I'm glad that the president of the United States has come to the truest, most proper conclusion he has ever come to in history ever.
	He said the truest things that have ever been said about Steve Bannon.
	So here is the lead up.
	So the lead up is that Steve is constantly leaking to the media for his own self-aggrandizement.
	I've been saying this to members of the media.
	Look at every interview that I've done over the last year, I've been saying, Steve Bannon does not have any actual power, he just had the perception of power.
	That perception of power was being driven by a rabid media interested in painting President Trump as a rube and a hick who didn't know what he was doing, and therefore Bannon was the power behind the throne, manipulating things like some great puppeteer.
	It was all nonsense.
	Bannon was never a great puppeteer.
	Bannon was always a guy who plastered his lips to the ass of the most powerful person that he could find and glued them there like a barnacle until he could ride them to glory.
	And then, when the whale died, then he, like a virus, would find a new host and the parasite would move on.
	He did this to Sarah Palin.
	He did this to Andrew Breitbart, who literally died, not because of Bannon, but then he took over Breitbart's shop and turned into Bannon.com to the point where they were selling Bannon fidget spinners like five months ago.
	We were trying to get some yesterday here at the office, but unfortunately they are all out of stock.
	In any case, Steve Bannon has been doing this as a career move for a very long time.
	And he had cultivated a lot of people.
	Like he had cultivated some of the hosts at Fox News.
	He'd become close with people like Sean Hannity.
	He tried to paint himself as the intellectual veneer of Trumpism.
	And then he started to buy his own press.
	And this is always the fatal flaw.
	In this particular Greek tragedy, Steve Bannon was the guy who was the gimlet-eyed, steely-souled fellow who was going to maneuver his way to the top.
	It was going to be like How to Succeed in Business without really trying, except without Robert Morse's charm.
	And he was going to simply ride that wave all the way to power.
	The problem is, Steve began to believe his own press.
	He began to believe that he was the philosopher.
	Right?
	He was the brain of the Trump administration.
	Trump was the balls and the heart, and Steve Bannon was the brain.
	He was the guy who was really driving all of the activity.
	And he tried to make the media believe this, right?
	He would go into the White House, and he would have his whiteboard behind him with all of the promises, I'm the guy who sits here for 20 hours a day trying to get things done.
	Within three months, he'd been marginalized.
	Like, very quickly, he'd been marginalized.
	So he put himself basically on the cover of Time magazine, and that was step number one.
	And Steve started to believe because he would go to these rallies, and people would cheer for him because they saw him as a proxy for Trump.
	Instead, he started to believe that people actually cared about Steve Bannon.
	No one ever cared about Steve Bannon.
	People cared about Sarah Palin.
	She built herself a movement.
	People cared about Andrew Breitbart, who is a legitimately good human being, whose legacy has been betrayed and spit upon by a subversive, disgusting con man.
	I knew Andrew.
	I was close to Andrew.
	I was friends with Andrew for virtually all of my adult life.
	I mean, literally, I met him when I was 17 years old, and I worked closely with him until his death.
	Steve Bannon took his legacy and pissed all over it for Steve Bannon's own personal aggrandizement.
	These are people who actually built something.
	Steve Bannon has never built a damn thing in his entire life.
	He did not build the Trump campaign.
	He was not even part of the Trump campaign except for Mercer Money.
	The reason that Steve Bannon was on the campaign is because the Mercers went to Donald Trump and they said, we want to put money into your campaign.
	Why don't you take a couple people we're close with, Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway.
	That's how they both got on the Trump campaign.
	This is obvious and publicly available information.
	Okay, Bannon was not the great manipulator.
	He was not the great genius.
	He has a good gift for getting in good with people, right?
	This is what he does.
	What he does, he goes to more powerful people and he says, I can make you even more powerful.
	Just follow you, be you.
	Let Trump be Trump.
	Let Palin be Palin.
	Let Breitbart be Breitbart.
	This was his shtick.
	But then something happened to Steve.
	It's a good shtick.
	It's a good shtick as far as it goes.
	But then I think something happened to Steve.
	And what happened to Steve is Steve began to buy his own press.
	Never buy your own press, particularly when the press is being created by the leaks that you are supplying to the press.
	So Steve began with this wishful thinking that he was this very powerful player.
	He would go to the press.
	He would leak all this information to the press, making him seem like a powerful player.
	And then he'd start to believe what he read in the press that he had leaked to the press, that he was a very powerful player.
	And this made him think, I am the new face of Trumpism.
	There is Trump, and then there's Trumpism.
	Trumpism is nationalist populism.
	It's this grand philosophy of a government that is going to stand up for blue-collar working Americans through tariffs and infrastructure plans and higher taxes on the rich.
	It'll be a merger between Bernie Sanders' domestic policy with regard to taxing the rich for the benefit of the Rust Belt workers, and it'll be a combination of that with Pat Buchanan-esque isolationism on foreign policy in some areas.
	This kind of hard-nosed realism.
	That was Bannon's take.
	And Bannon thought that he could do it.
	Bannon thought that he was going to take Trumpism away from Trump.
	And once you start thinking that you are going to take the movement away from the man, you are done.
	Because there is no Trumpist movement outside of Trump.
	There isn't.
	People voted for Trump because they liked the attitude.
	They didn't vote for Trump because he had a list of policy proposals.
	If people had voted for a list of policy proposals, Mitt Romney would be president right now.
	People don't vote for lists of policy proposals.
	They vote for people.
	People voted for Trump.
	They voted for Trump not because of his policy.
	I know Ann Coulter has this shtick today where she's saying people voted for him because they wanted the immigration reform.
	It's true that if he had run on a different platform on immigration, he might have gotten a different voter base.
	But to suggest that if Donald Trump moved to the left on immigration, his entire base would desert him, that they are all ideologically driven, is just not the case.
	It's just not the case.
	People voted for Trump for two reasons.
	He wasn't Hillary Clinton, and he had this kind of This feel of aggression, right?
	And people wanted the feel of aggression.
	It was much more about Trump than it was about any sort of cohesive political philosophy.
	So Steve tried to build a false cohesive political philosophy around Trump.
	But even Steve didn't believe that.
	See, this is the thing.
	Steve didn't even believe that.
	What Steve believed is that he was powerful enough to dupe people into believing that he had a political philosophy, and then he was building a movement around that.
	Steve is dishonest.
	Steve is not interested in a political philosophy of any kind.
	I talked to him on the phone for two hours a day for two years.
	I know Steve pretty well.
	I know Steve better than to believe that Steve has a set notion of his own political philosophy.
	And every time the media would ask me about this for years, I would say, he doesn't have one.
	He's doing this for convenience.
	He thought, how do I distinguish myself in the marketplace?
	Well, if I'm a typical conservative, then I'm no different than Mitch McConnell, or than Paul Ryan, or than a bevy of other conservatives who push conservatism.
	So what can I do?
	Well, Trump is different.
	And his policy proposals are different and all over the place.
	What if I craft a new philosophy?
	And I make myself the avatar of that new philosophy.
	And then, Trump is superfluous to that philosophy because people voted for the philosophy, they didn't vote for Trump.
	And I'm a better face for that philosophy than Trump is.
	I'm smarter than Trump.
	Probably true.
	I'm more ballsy than Trump.
	Probably not true.
	I'm more charismatic than Trump.
	Obviously not true.
	He looks like a homeless refugee from the Vietnam War.
	Right?
	The idea that Steve Bannon was ever going to capture the Trumpist movement and move it away from Trump is just asinine.
	It was never going to happen.
	But Steve began to buy his own press.
	And that's why Steve, after he was ousted from the administration, had become completely marginal.
	He had no impact on the administration.
	None.
	Because he had no impact on the administration, he had to come up with a new plan after he left Breitbart.
	I mean, after he left the Trump administration.
	So he went back to Breitbart, which was the only place that would have him.
	He wasn't going to get hired anyplace else.
	He'd been marginalized already.
	He goes back to Breitbart and he comes up with a new plan.
	And in just one second, I'm going to explain to you Steve Bannon's new plan and how it dramatically backfired and destroyed him.
	I'm going to explain that in just a second.
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	In any case, Steve Bannon.
	He has to come up with a new philosophy of what he's going to do.
	So what Steve has done is he's always used people to get where he wants to go, right?
	He used Breitbart.
	He used Palin.
	He used Hannity.
	He used Fox News.
	He used Roger Ailes.
	He uses all these people, and then he turns on them when they become inconvenient, and he throws them under the bus, because that's who Steve is.
	He did it with the alt-right as well, right?
	He said that he made himself a platform for the alt-right, and then when Milo Yiannopoulos ran into trouble, then suddenly Milo was dead to him.
	He rode Roy Moore until Roy Moore dropped like a horse.
	And then suddenly he said, Roy Moore is dead to me.
	Paul Nealon.
	We'll back Paul Nealon against Paul Ryan.
	And then when Nealon goes toxic, then he's dead to me.
	This is Steve Bannon's routine.
	OK, so now Steve Bannon is out at the White House.
	But he has to prop up his position of looking like he's powerful.
	So what can he do to look powerful?
	Well, he has to find, again, this distinguishing point.
	So he is now, he's made himself the face of this so-called Trumpist philosophy.
	But where can he find somebody who reflects that Trumpist philosophy?
	Well, he has a couple of options.
	One, he could go the Karl Rove method.
	He could start a super PAC.
	He could raise a lot of money.
	He could stay behind the scenes.
	He could try to manipulate.
	But that's not Steve.
	Steve wants to be out front.
	Steve is the only media mogul in human history who had his own radio show.
	I was a personality before I ran Daily Wire.
	Steve Bannon was nothing until he was associated with Breitbart, but he was the guy who was doing Breitbart News Radio.
	It just demonstrates what Steve's sort of idea of himself is, which is he wants to be a public figure.
	He wants his face to be on things.
	He likes the President Bannon shtick.
	So, he wants to be a public figure.
	So, he can't do Karl Rove and just fund things from behind the scenes and build a movement, which is what you would actually do if you wanted to build a movement.
	Instead, he has to do something different.
	And what he has to do is he has to find candidates who will allow him to go on stage and be the biggest guy there.
	He has to go find a place where he is different than Mitch McConnell and the quote-unquote establishment, and he has to try and channel Tea Party anger against the establishment into support for the Bannon philosophy movement.
	To the Bannon movement.
	So he's going to try and turn the Tea Party to the Bannon party.
	That's going to be his plan.
	And the person who chooses to do this, because Bannon is not a particularly bright political operator, is Roy Moore.
	He says, I'm going to make Roy Moore in Alabama my man.
	So first, he tries to support Mo Brooks in Alabama, which is the correct move.
	Then, when Mo Brooks loses, he says, I'm going to support Roy Moore over Luther Strange in the runoff, despite all of Roy Moore's toxicity.
	And in part because of Roy Moore's toxicity, because Roy Moore is the kind of guy who will say anything.
	He's much more of a Trumpy figure than Luther Strange.
	He'll say anything that he wants to say.
	He'll stand up to anyone.
	He's a tough, rough son of a... Right, that's the shtick.
	And so he's going to support Roy Moore, especially because Mitch McConnell's supporting Luther Strange.
	And then Trump comes down on Luther Strange's side and Bannon says, well, it doesn't matter.
	I'm more of a representative, in some ways convenient, I'm more of a representative of Trumpism.
	Trump is a figure, but I'm a philosopher.
	If Trump really were a philosopher, he'd support Roy Moore.
	But there's only one problem.
	Roy Moore is a horrible candidate.
	Such a horrible candidate that Roy Moore goes on to lose, goes on to lose, for the first time in 30 years, a Republican seat in Alabama because of allegations of child molestation.
	And Steve is so deep down this hole now, he can't pull out.
	Steve is so deep down this hole that he takes Breitbart, a publication he had always used as his personal baton to wield against his enemies, He takes Breitbart and he uses it as a baton to wield against the alleged victims of molestation for Roy Moore.
	He has Alex Marlowe, a guy I know well and a guy with whom I was once close friends.
	He takes Alex and he, and Alex goes out and says openly that he believes the accusers against Roy Moore, but then they deploy reporters down to Alabama to try to discredit the accusers against Roy Moore and get Roy Moore elected senator, supposedly in an attempt to defend Trump or something, which makes no sense since Trump was not even supporting Roy Moore in that primary.
	And then Bannon, to make matters worse, convinces Trump to jump in last minute to support Roy Moore, humiliating the president, humiliating Bannon, and humiliating the Republican Party as Roy Moore goes down in absolute flames, as morally he should have considering the allegations against him.
	So all of that said, now Bannon is in a real pickle.
	He's in a real pickle because he's picked a bunch of candidates and they all lost.
	And Mitch McConnell is suddenly working hand-in-glove with President Trump.
	Suddenly, Bannon has not only been edged out, he's been edged out by the establishment.
	There's suddenly Republican unity around a Republican program.
	And his philosophy of, I'll burn it all down and build a giant statue of Bannon in the aftermath, that's completely fallen apart.
	There's nothing he can do.
	Because Mitch McConnell did not back Roy Moore in Alabama.
	Mitch McConnell, the Senate Conservatives Fund, did not back Roy Moore in Alabama.
	The National Republican Senatorial Committee did not involve itself in that race.
	So Mitch McConnell was not the guy who convinced Trump to go all in for an incredibly alleged child molester.
	And then Mitch McConnell passes tax reform.
	The only big win, the only big legislative win of Trump's administration comes after Steve Bannon leaves and comes in direct contravention to Steve Bannon's own tax reform plan, which would have involved raising taxes on wealthy people, which this bill did not do.
	So Bannon's on the ropes.
	So now what can Bannon do?
	And it gets worse.
	A few weeks ago, I hear a rumor that Steve Bannon has been cut off by the Mercers.
	The Mercers were his money fund, and basically after Roy Moore, the Mercers said, enough of this con man, we're done.
	And they decide they're not going to fund any more Steve Bannon projects.
	That was at least the going rumor in sort of political circles.
	So Steve's desperate.
	So what does Steve do?
	Well, Steve only has one ally left.
	It's not Trump, because Trump isn't really taking his phone calls.
	The last time Trump talked to Bannon was early December, apparently.
	It's no longer his allies at Fox News, who won't have him on after the Roy Moore thing.
	Bannon's basically been absent since then.
	It's not the Mercers, because the Mercers aren't providing him cash anymore.
	So he has only one ally left.
	The only ally he has left are the people who built him up in the first place, and that is the members of the mainstream media.
	That's all he has left, is the members of the mainstream media who have a concern And an interest in making Bannon continue to appear a powerful figure so they can foster conflict inside the Republican Party.
	Because the longer Bannon is out there lurking, sniping at Trump, sniping at McConnell, creating chaos, the better it is for the media, the better story it is, the better narrative, and the worse it is for conservatives and Republicans.
	So Bannon has to go back to the media, right?
	He goes finally back to his only ally, the people he's been lying about ripping, right?
	The reality is that when Bannon left the White House, only one thing was lost.
	Only one thing declined when Bannon left the White House, and that was the phone bill to Maggie Haberman at the New York Times, and the phone bill to Politico, and the phone bill to all the other outlets that Steve Bannon was allegedly leaking to.
	Steve Bannon loves talking to the press, which is why he was quoted recently, and this is what I'm going to talk about now, he did an entire series of interviews with Michael Wolff, who has now written a book called Fire and Fury.
	Right?
	The Fire and the Fury.
	And this book is coming out.
	It's number one on Amazon.
	It's doing all sorts of business because it's basically a bunch of gossip from the White House.
	The guy who brought Michael Wolff in was Steve Bannon.
	Steve Bannon was sitting there for hours a day, apparently, talking with Michael Wolff on tape about his perception of the universe, right?
	How Steve Bannon was the most powerful figure who would be the next president of the United States.
	So he goes back to his friends in the media, and his friends in the media, he's going to leak to them and make it appear that he's still a power player, even though he is not a power player, even though he never was a power player, even though the only perception of him as a power player had been created out of whole cloth by Steve Bannon and the mainstream media.
	And the luck of Andrew Breitbart dying and leaving him in charge of Breitbart.
	By the way, he wasn't left in charge of Breitbart.
	Larry Solove was Andrew Breitbart's partner in crime.
	Larry Solove should have taken the reins at Breitbart as well he should do now by firing Steve Bannon.
	He should never have hired Steve Bannon.
	I urged him at the time not to hire Steve Bannon, but in any case, he did.
	Now he should move away from that as fast as possible.
	So, he goes back to his members of the mainstream media, and he leaks to them, just as he was fired from the administration for leaking to the American prospect about how Trump didn't know what he was doing in North Korea.
	And what he dropped to Michael Wolff was a bunch of crap about all of his enemies in the administration.
	That's all this was.
	It was just him riffing about the administration.
	And a bunch of people in the media picked up on this Wolff book and they say, well, he must have inside knowledge of corrupt activities inside the Trump administration.
	This is what they jump on.
	They're looking for an excuse to club Trump into submission over Trump-Russia collusion or over criminal activity because, let's face it, the members of the media are still waiting for the D.O.S.
	machina, they're still waiting for the God and the machine to come in Or outside the machine to come in and fix everything.
	They're still waiting for Mueller to come in from the skies like a vengeful Valkyrie and behead President Trump and make Hillary president.
	So now, Bannon is out there telling the press that Donald Trump Jr.
	acted treasonously, he was unpatriotic, and it was bad bleep.
	Right?
	And that they should have called the FBI.
	And the media say, well, that means that he must have known something bad was going on at that meeting.
	Steve Bannon didn't join the campaign until August.
	Okay, that meeting took place in June.
	June, July, August.
	Last I checked, June is before August.
	Steve Bannon had no internal knowledge of what happened at that meeting.
	I think the meeting was bad myself, by the way.
	But the idea that Steve Bannon has the goods is just asinine.
	And then he says that Breitbart is not even a legit publication, which of course we already knew.
	I said that in March 2016.
	It was roundly excoriated by a lot of people who were on Trump's side.
	How dare you say Breitbart isn't a legit publication?
	Because it wasn't since Bannon took it over.
	Since Bannon really began running the shop, it had turned into Bannon's personal tool.
	And then he goes after Kushner.
	He went after Jared Kushner, and he said that his involvement with Russia was greasy, and it was all about the Deutsche Bank corruption, and they're sitting on a beach trying to stop a Category 5.
	We went through some of this yesterday.
	And then Steve Bannon apparently says in the book also that Ivanka is dumb as a brick.
	So he's just a brilliant guy.
	He decides to go back to the media and leak on everybody and talk about how terrible everybody is and all the rest.
	The entirety of all of this amounts to he goes to war with the guy who made him prominent in the first place.
	He goes to war with the guy who made him prominent in the first place.
	And finally, Trump has had enough.
	This brings us to Donald Trump losing it with Bannon and doing the finest thing any human being has ever done on this planet.
	And going off on Bannon, And in truly epic fashion.
	And in second, I'm going to tell you what Donald Trump had to say and why Donald Trump is right about all of it.
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	All right, so Finally, President Trump loses it on Steve Bannon, right?
	He just, he absolutely loses it on Bannon and releases one of the great epic burns in the history of American presidential politics.
	It really is unprecedented for the president to take a member of his own cabinet, basically, and just dump, I mean, this dump, it's an epic dump.
	I mean, it basically is the scene from Back to the Future where Marty McFly somehow maneuvers Biff into driving his brand new car into the back of the manure truck.
	And that's essentially what happened here.
	And so Trump, here, we'll do Trump's statement in just a second, but you know what?
	I'm gonna make you wait.
	I'm gonna make you go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.
	Should we do that right now?
	No?
	Not yet?
	You know what?
	No?
	You know what?
	We'll do one more.
	Okay, fine.
	So, here is the statement from President Trump.
	I won't tease you like that.
	Here's the statement from President Trump.
	Here it is.
	You ready?
	Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency.
	When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind.
	Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination by defeating 17 candidates often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the Republican Party.
	Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn't as easy as I make it look.
	Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country.
	Yet Steve had everything to do with the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama held for more than 30 years by Republicans.
	Steve doesn't represent my base.
	He's only in it for himself.
	Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spends his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was.
	It's the only thing he does well.
	Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue whom he helped write phony books.
	We have many great Republican members of Congress and candidates who are very supportive of the Make America Great Again agenda.
	Like me, they love the United States of America and are helping to finally take our country back and build it up, rather than simply seeking to burn it all down.
	Slow clap that builds into an impressive round of applause for the President of the United States.
	Every word of this is true.
	Steve Bannon is not responsible for Trump's victory.
	He is not responsible for Trump's agenda.
	He is not responsible for Trump's philosophy.
	He is not responsible for Trump's accomplishments in the last two months.
	Trump has gotten more done in the last two months without Steve Bannon there than he did in the entirety of Steve Bannon's tenure in the White House.
	Now, other members of the Trump team have also sounded off about Bannon.
	My former colleague at Breitbart and my friend Larry O'Connor, he had a good piece of the Washington Times saying, that's basically correct.
	No one likes Bannon.
	The reason no one likes Bannon is because Bannon is a bad man.
	He's a bad man who uses people and abuses people.
	He's a person who doesn't have any thoroughgoing philosophy.
	He does not care about policy.
	He does not believe in a conservative approach to governance.
	He is not somebody who believes in anything but Steve Bannon.
	And watching Bannon burn down and watching Trump recognize the flaw in Bannon and cleanse his administration of a nefarious force that was willing to make common cause with him.
	It was Bannon who was telling Trump, apparently, to blame both sides in Charlottesville.
	It was Bannon who originally formulated the travel ban that ended up being struck down by the courts because he was too stupid to actually go to the lawyers and ask them how to do it.
	Trump's administration just got a lot better by separating off from Steve Bannon.
	Even Breitbart knows it.
	Breitbart is running the story straight today.
	The commenters at Breitbart are very anti-Bannon, as well they should be, because Bannon was undermining Trump's agenda.
	When I was anti-Trump, I was anti-Trump because I didn't feel that Trump was for the conservative agenda.
	When Trump has been for the conservative agenda, I have cheered him.
	When Bannon cheered for Trump, it wasn't about the conservative agenda.
	It was about what does Trump do for Bannon?
	That's it.
	I think the readers over at Breitbart are aware now of that.
	I think the readers over at Breitbart are issue-oriented, many of them.
	I think that they like Trump because they think that they're going to get out of Trump what they want to get out of Trump.
	I used to work there.
	I believe that a lot of the people who follow Breitbart aren't doing so because they want to follow Steve Bannon down the rabbit hole of his personal ambition.
	And I think that people are beginning to wake up to this.
	So there is widespread celebration.
	It's basically the recut of Return of the Jedi, which I just watched recently.
	The recut, which is not as good as the original.
	But in the recut, after the second Death Star is blown up, spoiler alert, there are a bunch of shots of random people around the galaxy celebrating.
	They just inserted this for the re-release and it's like people on Naboo celebrating.
	Okay, that's basically how it was around conservative media yesterday when Steve Bannon was torched by the president, when he was set on fire.
	The metaphor actually works because Bannon called himself Darth Vader.
	In any case, Donald Jr.
	went off on Bannon and he's exactly right.
	He says, Steve had the honor of working in the White House and serving the country.
	Unfortunately, he squandered that privilege and turned that opportunity into a nightmare of backstabbing, harassing, leaking it, lying, and undermining the president.
	Steve is not a strategist, he is an opportunist.
	Amen.
	Hey, Mitch McConnell, who is the guy who got Trump not only Justice Gorsuch, but also the tax cut.
	I love, the troll is strong in this one.
	I had tweeted out myself that Mitch McConnell, that this would be Mitch McConnell's reaction.
	So apparently, Team Mitch basically picked up on it.
	"Here is what Mitch McConnell tweeted out "in the aftermath of Trump's statement about Bannon." For people who can't see, it is a shot of Mitch McConnell just slowly smiling And it's pretty glorious.
	Sarah Huckabee Sanders, you have to understand, no one likes Steve Bannon because Steve Bannon is a toxic personality.
	I know many people who work in the White House.
	There was not a note of disapproval about anything that happened yesterday.
	Sarah Huckabee Sanders, here's what she had to say about President Trump's I mean, all I can say about the statement, honestly, it's so brutal.
	For the first time, Rosie O'Donnell realized that Trump was going easy on her after reading that statement about Steve Bannon.
	Trump basically went full Zoolander gas fight on Bannon.
	He basically took a tank of gas and threw it all over Bannon and then lit a match and just real men walk away from explosions.
	Here's Sarah Huckabee Sanders explaining there ain't that much to talk about here.
	I mean the statement pretty much speaks for itself.
	Does he feel betrayed by Steve Bannon?
	Does he regret hiring him?
	I think the president's statement is extremely clear what his position is.
	Mr. Bannon is pretty lengthy and pretty detailed and there's not really much to clarify or to add.
	But is there regret there?
	I mean, he says a lot in this book and they did have a long and close working relationship.
	So is there a sense of betrayal?
	Once again, I think the president's statement fully addresses what his position and what his relationship with Mr. Bannon is.
	Okay.
	So this is exactly right.
	And all of this is well-deserved.
	This was coming to a man who thought that he was bigger than the president, not only bigger than the president, bigger than the conservative movement, bigger than the Tea Party, bigger than Andrew Breitbart, bigger than Sarah Palin, a man with outsized ambition buried by his own ambition.
	If you want to see whether this is good for Trump, all you have to do is see how Democrats are reacting to it.
	So suddenly, Bannon is their hero.
	So Bannon had been ripping Trump up and down and suggesting that there was widespread corruption inside the Trump campaign.
	And you can see the Democrats are seizing on that as though Bannon has anything new to say.
	Bannon was not in the know.
	Bannon was not there until late in the campaign.
	Okay?
	Mueller is the one who's going to know whether something went on.
	I don't know whether something went on.
	You don't know whether something went on.
	The media don't know whether something went on.
	And guess what?
	Steve Bannon doesn't know if something went on either.
	Steve Bannon is not aware if something went on either.
	So you can see the Democrats seizing on this and trying to pretend that this is good evidence that Trump is going to go away very soon.
	Julian Castro, the Democratic representative, he says that Bannon definitely has evidence of money laundering.
	That's really the key here.
	I can't talk about what I heard in the interview, but I can tell you that my impression, after sitting through those hours of that interview, is that the president should be concerned about issues of money laundering, of collusion, and of obstruction of justice.
	I say that—that's my impression, not only from hearing that witness, but also many of the other witnesses that have come before the committee.
	So, this White House should be nervous about what has been told to the committee.
	And do you believe, as you said you can't necessarily tell us exactly what you heard in those hearings, do you believe that you heard evidence of crimes committed by members of this administration?
	Okay, so again, they're jumping on the Bannon stuff in order to try and discredit Trump, which shows you why Bannon had to be ousted and why he had to be burned by Trump here.
	It was all Bannon's own doing.
	Well, we're going to have to take a break here in just a second.
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	So, in just a second, I'm going to explain the conservative fallout, because what you'll see is there's a split a little bit in the conservative movement Over all of this.
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	So the goal of the media is to keep banding around.
	So understand that capping Bannon, taking the gun and leaving the cannoli is the best strategy for Trump and for the conservative movement at this point.
	The leftists want to keep Bannon around because they want to keep fostering this internecine warfare.
	If you read the excerpts from Michael Wolff's book Fire and Fury, it's a lot of inside gossip.
	It's a lot of stuff about how Trump's a crazy guy who likes to stay up late and watch TV and he tweets a lot.
	OK, if you follow his Twitter, none of this is foreign information to you.
	He tweets at all hours.
	We already know he likes KFC.
	We know that he is petty and vengeful in many cases.
	None of this is breaking news.
	Welcome to the real world, folks.
	A lot of it is just gossipy stuff that makes people turned on.
	Melania didn't actually want to be First Lady.
	Maybe that's true.
	Who cares?
	And a lot of it is Steve Bannon basically just mentally masturbating about his own power.
	I tweeted yesterday that this book should have been called As Told by Steve Bannon because it just reads like that.
	It reads like Bannon's fever dream about what his role in the movement is and who Trump is and calling all of his enemies bad people and idiots and morons.
	And yet, magically, the administration seems to be working incredibly better since Bannon left than while he was there.
	Weird how that works, isn't it?
	Isn't it weird how dysfunction seems to follow that guy?
	In any case, People are making a big deal out of the revelations in this book.
	The revelations are of no value to me.
	The reason they're of no value to me is because I already knew this.
	If you think that Trump was not a dysfunctional character, I don't know what show you've been listening to for the last couple of years.
	I've always thought that Trump had serious character issues.
	Now, the question is, how do those manifest themselves in policy?
	In the last couple of months, they've manifested themselves in some bad tweeting, in some silly statements, in undercutting his own popularity.
	All that's bad.
	I've discussed all of that.
	But in terms of policy, hadn't done much.
	Okay, so Trump changes his own sheets because he's afraid that somebody's going to poison him or something.
	Right?
	This is what the book says.
	Or that he eats KFC because he's afraid that the White House chef is going to kill him.
	Let's say all of that's true, for the sake of argument.
	Maybe it is.
	Maybe he's like that.
	Yeah, JFK was allegedly doing LSD and knocking on the interns, right?
	I mean, the idea that any of this necessarily translates to governance is not true.
	Now, is it great?
	Would I prefer we had a character of moral uprightness and rectitude in the White House?
	Of course.
	Have I not been clear about this?
	Did I stutter?
	Let's be also clear about something.
	All of the revelations people are finding so juicy in this book are really not revelations at all.
	We already knew this.
	It's just confirming detail.
	But the media is going nuts over it because they want to paint the picture of Trump as a crazy person, and the country can't handle a crazy person, when in reality, the stock market just crossed $25,000, and the economy is doing really well.
	And on foreign policy, we are making moves that are excellent for our national prestige and power.
	All of it's good.
	So that bifurcation may be weird to people, but unfortunately, that's the way that reality works sometimes.
	Joy Behar, though, is trying to jump on all the bandwagon and say that Trump needs to be hospitalized.
	He's just crazy.
	Is this kind of a crazy game we're playing?
	You know, Trump needs to be medicated and hospitalized.
	At this point.
	Or he is going to just kill all of us.
	And you know, my feeling is that probably they're getting closer to him in the Mueller investigation.
	And that's what this is about.
	A lot of it.
	It's like he'll blow the whole world up so he and his stupid sons don't have to go to jail.
	Yeah, that's clearly what's happening right here, right?
	Is that he wants to blow up the whole world so his sons don't go to jail?
	Yeah, that's... Like, this is the picture the left wants to paint, and Bannon helped them paint it.
	That's on Bannon.
	Now, there have been a number of conservatives who have been sort of hedging their bets in the Bannon vs. Trump flame war.
	So, Bannon himself went silent yesterday.
	He hosted Breitbart News Radio, and he had nothing to say.
	He said, Trump is a great man, and I support him in every way.
	Except for, you know, routinely leaking on him and ripping his children and tearing apart members of his administration and crapping all over his agenda and leaking to the American prospect that his North Korean policy is stupid and suggesting that he's a child and a moron.
	Except for all of that, I'm really on his side.
	I've been fantastic, right?
	That was Bannon's take.
	There are a couple takes on that.
	One is that Bannon knows he's in trouble and the only thing he can do here is basically Grab Trump's leg and refuse to let go, right?
	Like my toddler when I'm leaving the house.
	I just grab that leg, and if I don't let go, then maybe Daddy won't leave.
	Daddy left.
	Steve, you're done, right?
	Okay, so there's that.
	There's also the possibility that Steve shut up because Trump actually had his lawyers draft up and send a letter.
	Threatening Steve with violations of his nondisclosure agreement.
	So Steve had, apparently, a pretty strong nondisclosure agreement with the Trump campaign.
	Now, the nondisclosure with President Trump isn't going to hold because, for public policy reasons, when you leak about the President, unless it's classified material, no judge is going to uphold that.
	There are First Amendment concerns that come into play when you're giving out information about a public official like the President.
	When it comes to private information on the campaign trail, then Steve very well could have violated the NDA, and there is a significant possibility that Trump could actually have a pretty strong case for violating the NDA in all of these leagues.
	So that's a problem for Steve.
	So maybe that's why Steve shut up.
	Maybe.
	I mean, we don't know.
	So that's a possibility.
	It's also possible, as I say, I think that the more likely scenario is that Steve is just The firestorm yesterday was so intense.
	It was like the scene at the end of The Last Jedi with the AT-ATs and Luke.
	Like, it was that yesterday, except Steve was not a hologram and Steve is not a Jedi, so that really did not go well for him yesterday.
	He ended up looking like Uncle Owen in Aunt Beru in Star Wars Episode IV by the end of yesterday.
	So, a lot of Star Wars references today.
	In any case, he doesn't say anything about it.
	A lot of his allies, he only has a couple of allies in the media, Steve.
	These are people he's cultivated for years.
	He cultivated Sean Hannity.
	He cultivated Laura Ingraham.
	He cultivated Ann Coulter.
	He has a habit of cultivating people.
	And then they were still useful to him, so he hadn't thrown them over yet.
	Sean is torn because Sean had basically painted Bannon as the ideological sort of avatar of the conservative wing of the White House.
	I don't know how Sean—honest to God, I don't know how Sean holds that view, given the fact that the White House has gotten more conservative, not less, since Bannon left.
	I've never understood how Sean has been able to rectify his view of Bannon-esque policy with conservatism, right?
	I grew up listening to Sean.
	I grew up watching Sean.
	I own his books.
	I'm friendly with Sean.
	I think Sean's a really good guy.
	But I've never understood how Sean was able to so easily move into nationalist, populist nonsense when he spends his entire career advocating conservatism.
	So you'll see Sean try to play the middle road here.
	He feels bad about just dumping on Bannon.
	But he also knows that Trump is not going to stand for him not dumping on Bannon.
	So here is his way.
	So he tries to blame it on the media.
	This is always the easy out.
	It's the media's fault.
	Except for one problem.
	Bannon wasn't misquoted.
	So the easy out here would have been Bannon saying, well, I was misquoted by Michael Wolff, it was all false.
	Only one problem.
	Bannon brought Michael Wolff into the White House, sat with him, and taped with him for hours.
	For hours.
	And Wolff has the tapes.
	So here is Sean, desperately trying to avoid condemning Bannon, while also desperately attempting to avoid offending Trump.
	The media loves, loves Steve Bannon for the moment.
	They love when Republicans or Conservatives are fighting and create a circular firing squad.
	In real life, they hate Bannon, and they hate Trump.
	And, but they'll, you know, right now they'll be supportive of Steve Bannon if he, if they think he's...
	Advancing their cause.
	They love these intramural fights.
	They love palace intrigue.
	They love to analyze who's up, who's down.
	It's another example.
	The media's priorities are so screwed up.
	When do they ever talk about you?
	When do they ever talk about making your life?
	Okay, so as I've said, I agree with Sean that the media loves this internecine warfare, but the solution to the internecine warfare is to go after the guy who's the leaker!
	Right, we kept hearing that leakers were bad.
	There was all this Deep State stuff.
	You know who was the head of the Deep State leaking in favor of his own interests?
	The head of the Bannon Deep State was Steve Bannon.
	Steve Bannon was the Steve Bannon Deep State.
	And Sean's trying to avoid that implication, but that is the reality.
	The media doesn't have this material unless Steve, in his self-aggrandizing arrogance, believes that he can leak all this material to the press and get away with it.
	Laura Ingraham did the same thing last night, slamming Trump and Bannon and saying, well, why do you guys have to fight?
	Why do mommy and daddy have to fight?
	But, fellas, it doesn't really make sense for a high-profile advisor and his former boss to publicly attack each other when the stakes are this high.
	How does that make any sense?
	Okay, well, Laura, let's start with something.
	Hold on.
	Hold on one second.
	Hold on one second.
	Steve Bannon attacked before Trump did.
	Okay, all of Trump's fans are always saying that he only hits back.
	In this case, he did only hit back.
	It was not Trump hitting Bannon.
	It was Steve Bannon hitting Trump, doing it publicly, hitting his kids, suggesting there was actual crime committed inside the Trump campaign, which would lead to the impeachment of the president.
	According to Michael Wolff's book, he was leaking to Michael Wolff that he thought there was a one-third chance of impeachment and one-third chance of resignation, and a one-third chance Trump finishes his term, and he wanted to run for president to replace Trump.
	If you are a fan of Trump, if you want Trump to succeed, how in the world are you still holding out for Steve Bannon after that?
	How in the world are you holding out for Bannon?
	In what world have I become more pro-Trump than a lot of the Trumpites who are now trying to defend Steve Bannon?
	First of all, there aren't very many of them.
	And all of the ones who are think of themselves as personal friends of Bannon.
	But for Laura to draw moral equivalence between Trump and Bannon in this fight is just ridiculous.
	This is on Bannon, pure and simple.
	Trump is right to smack him, and Trump did the right thing by taking him down at least a thousand pegs here.
	I'm leaving him a smoldering husk of humanity.
	Listen, am I happy that he did this on a personal level?
	Yes, I am.
	Because I think Steve Bannon is a bad man.
	I'm not going to hide it.
	I think Steve is a bad man who did bad things, sided with bad people, made good people's lives miserable, used those bad people to target his opponents.
	I think Steve is a very bad influence on the president of the United States.
	I think the president is much better off that he's no longer associated with this piece of crap.
	But with all of that said, I would believe that whether or not I knew Steve Bannon.
	Steve has not been of net benefit to this presidency, and I dare anyone to name me a way, one way, in which Steve Bannon has been of net benefit to the President of the United States.
	Do you really believe that Trump wouldn't have won if Bannon hadn't joined the campaign?
	Do you really think that?
	Because you'll have to explain to me how that works, considering that Bannon never did anything with the campaign.
	In any case, I want to get to some things I like and some things that I hate, but that's a lot of Bannon for one day, and hopefully that will be one of the last times we have to mention Steve Bannon on air.
	Good riddance to bad rubbish.
	Alrighty, time for some things I like and some things I hate, and then we'll do a little bit of Bible talk in which I will mention Steve Bannon.
	So, things I like.
	Let's begin there.
	Adam Driver has become, maybe I just didn't know about him, he's a really good actor.
	Like, Adam Driver's a very good actor.
	He's the only thing that makes Last Jedi worth watching, I think, is Adam Driver's performance as Kylo Ren.
	Kylo could have been a whiny, annoying character, and instead he really makes him quite interesting.
	I think that Adam, and if you watch Adam Driver in anything, the guy can do anything.
	There's a movie called Logan Lucky.
	Steven Soderbergh film with Channing Tatum, who also is a surprisingly good actor, and Daniel Craig, who is also a surprisingly good actor.
	And basically, it's about a heist where they rob the Coca-Cola 600.
	Is that what it is?
	The Coca-Cola 500?
	I can't remember the name of the actual NASCAR race that they robbed.
	In any case, it's Daniel Craig really playing against type, like really playing against type in a major way.
	But the one who steals the show is Driver.
	So Driver plays this rock war vet who's lost his arm and has an almost uncontainable temper that he hides behind this implacable exterior.
	Here's a little bit of the preview of Logan Lucky, which is definitely worth the rental.
	It's a fun movie.
	It's just a fun popcorn movie with some really good... It really is not an action movie, per se.
	It's much more just a heist movie.
	And it's a top 10 heist movie, I'd say.
	Maybe a top 5 heist movie.
	It's really that good. -Jimmy, I'm just gonna say it.
	I gotta let you go.
	You were just fired.
	I was let go for liability reasons involving insurance.
	The one-armed bartender.
	You need to show a little respect.
	Charlotte Motor Speedway.
	Okay, the preview itself is, the movie itself is really good.
	Adam Driver is a revelation.
	I've seen him in three or four different films now, and he inhabits characters in a way that, really, there are very few actors who inhabit a character.
	Like, I actually think Channing Tatum does in this movie, too.
	I think Channing Tatum's actually quite good as well.
	But Adam Driver, I can't speak highly enough about his ability to perform.
	Really, it's pretty incredible.
	As an actor, Like Christian Bale, when you're watching a Christian Bale movie, you don't actually see Christian Bale, you just see the character that Christian Bale is playing, which is the opposite of movie stars like Jack Nicholson, where no matter what part he's playing, he's Jack Nicholson playing the part.
	I think even Meryl Streep has that problem.
	When you watch Adam Driver, you're like, wait, is that Adam Driver?
	Even though he's not wearing any makeup or prosthetics or anything?
	You go, oh yeah, that is Adam Driver.
	Like, that's Kylo Ren, but he's a completely different character.
	Really, really good in this film.
	Check it out.
	It's a fun movie to watch.
	Hilary Swank has kind of a fun bit part.
	And Daniel Craig is also a lot of fun in the movie.
	Okay, so a couple of things that I hate.
	There is a phenomenon that is now taking place that I don't really know how to describe.
	It is a phenomenon where People get so used to the government taking care of them, they get so used to a regime of regulation that they forget how to be normal human beings.
	This is a criticism that a lot of people on the right have had for a long time, is that every time the government passes a law and makes you dependent on that law, every time the government does something where they essentially tell you what to do and what you can't do, When they tell you you can't do something, then they fill it in with government regulation, then you start to think you can't do it yourself.
	This is what happened with welfare.
	People started being able to receive a check for being a single mother, and so people said, well, maybe I don't need to marry a guy, right?
	Incentives change.
	And government can enervate you.
	Government can turn you into a mewling droop of humanity.
	Government can turn you into a dependent of the state.
	The most obvious example is in the last couple of days.
	In Oregon, there was a law.
	I used to work for a company that was based in southern Oregon, so I recall this.
	There was a law in Oregon that you are not allowed to pump your own gas.
	Really, this was a law, that you had to have an attendant pump your gas.
	Like, it's 1953, and you're pulling into the drive-in.
	They'd have somebody come over to your car and pump your gas.
	And the first time it happens, you're like, oh, this is kind of nice.
	And the second time it happens, you're like, this would be a lot quicker if I could just hop out of my car and pump my own gas.
	We, who have been growing up in regular America, where you pump your own gas since, like, the 1920s, We've been thinking, well, what's up with this law?
	But here's the funny part.
	So there's a House Bill 2482.
	It took effect on Monday.
	And retailers in counties with a population of less than 40,000 are now allowed to have self-service gas pumps.
	Drivers in those 15 counties can now pump their own gas any time of day, while in those other three rural counties, they can do so after business hours, between 6 p.m.
	and 6 a.m.
	It was a make-work program.
	The idea was, there are a bunch of un-hireables, except for pumping gas, and so we will actually make a law preventing you from pumping your own gas.
	But the result was, thousands of people who don't know how to pump their own gas and think they're gonna light themselves on fire.
	So these are some of the Facebook posts from these people.
	Are you ready for this?
	Because it truly is pretty incredible.
	Quote, I don't even know how to pump gas, and I'm 62, native Oregonian.
	I say, no thanks.
	I don't like to smell like gasoline.
	I pump my own gas, like, once a week.
	I don't smell like gasoline after doing it.
	I don't know what you're talking about.
	And another woman writes, no, disabled, seniors, people with young children in the car need help.
	Not to mention getting out of your car with transients around and not feeling safe.
	This is a very bad idea.
	Grrr.
	Okay, I promise you, there are a lot of disabled senior people with young children and old people and transients in California.
	Like, we're big on the transients.
	No one gets attacked while pumping their gas.
	Another person writes, This is a service only qualified people should perform!
	Qualified people!
	Like, you have to have a state license to pump gas.
	I will literally park at the pump and wait until someone pumps my gas.
	Okay, screw you people who think this.
	And screw the government for having led people to believe they are incapable of pumping their own gas.
	You wonder why we have a population that seems so incapable of performing basic daily functions?
	Maybe it's because the government tells them they can't.
	When you have people your entire life telling you you can't do things, this is why I hate so much of the talk about white privilege.
	The implication being, if you're not white, you can't succeed.
	You can.
	Work hard.
	Succeed.
	Basically, when people say that you are a victim, or you're incompetent, there are very few professions where you should need a license.
	To pump gas is not one of those professions.
	It's so ridiculous.
	But again, it shows that human nature is that when you've been told for years and years and years you can't do something, you actually think you're not qualified to do something.
	There are a lot of people in blue states who feel this way about guns.
	I've never seen a gun.
	I've never held a gun.
	Guns are so scary.
	I could never fire a gun.
	No, you can.
	I promise.
	Like, go to a gun range.
	Somebody will teach you.
	Ain't that hard.
	OK, other things that I hate.
	Speaking of the ridiculous left, a food safety expert has now warned that there is a raw water trend.
	OK, there's a raw water, this is a real thing.
	OK, there's a New York Times trend piece on Silicon Valley's recent obsession with raw water.
	According to the Times, demand for unfiltered water is skyrocketing as tech industry insiders develop a taste for water that has not been treated to prevent the spread of bacteria or other contaminants.
	In San Francisco, Unfiltered, untreated, unsterilized spring water is selling for as much as $61 for a 2.5 gallon jug.
	There are startups dedicated to untreated water.
	There are a bunch of people who say that raw water is perfect for people who are extreme about health.
	You know how stupid you have to be to believe this?
	Not treating water makes people sick.
	Why do you think people die of dysentery in third world countries?
	Why do you think they tell you to bring bottled water when you go to Mexico City?
	The whole point here is that if you have untreated water, you could die.
	Virtually every contaminant is neutralized by treatment of water.
	Why do you think it's imperative that we actually give equipment to people in third world countries so they can boil water and turn it into drinkable?
	People in the West are so stupid, we're so dumb, and we've become so prosperous that we now think that going back to primitive ways of living that killed people are more healthy.
	This is the same when people say, organic.
	Organic will heal you.
	They say this about pot.
	Pot's organic.
	How can it hurt you?
	Poison ivy's organic too.
	I wouldn't use it as skin cream.
	I'm not saying that pot is poison ivy, but I am saying this argument that organics are naturally healthier is just ridiculous.
	Cancer is organic, what stupidity.
	Okay, final thing that I hate.
	Well, actually, sorry, two more things that I hate because I run the show.
	Okay, here's the first.
	Keith Ellison, Democrat from Minnesota, he was nearly the head of the Democratic National Committee.
	He tweeted this out yesterday.
	Keith Ellison was associated with Louis Farrakhan.
	Keith Ellison is a radical anti-Semite.
	Here's what he tweeted.
	At Moon Palace Books, and I just found the book that strikes fear in the heart of Donald Trump.
	And it's him holding up a book called Antifa, the anti-fascist handbook.
	Antifa is basically a domestic terror group.
	Okay, Antifa, there's tape of Steven Crowder's assistant, not Gay Jared, being offered actual weaponry at one of my lectures by members of Antifa.
	Antifa break things.
	Antifa commit acts of violence.
	Antifa is a, the reason that they call themselves Antifa, they say they are anti-fascist, but then they say by any means necessary, meaning violent means.
	One of the leading Congress people in the Democratic caucus is now calling for support for a violent leftist group.
	And then you wonder why we think, why there's been a reactionary move to Trump?
	This is how you got Trump gang.
	The final thing that I hate, so President Trump announced on, what was it, Monday?
	I've completely lost track of all time.
	I think it was Tuesday, actually.
	I've lost track of time because every news cycle is now one and a half seconds long.
	By the end of the show, I assume I will have missed two news cycles.
	On Tuesday, Trump tweeted out that he was going to have the fake dishonest media news awardsies.
	On Monday, which I look forward to.
	5 p.m.
	on Monday.
	As I say, I hope that he takes over all three broadcast networks to do it.
	And members of the media don't understand what's happening.
	So they've been releasing ads trying to troll Trump.
	So here is the one from Stephen Colbert.
	And it's a picture of Stephen Colbert looking like he's in Good Night and Good Luck with a series of quotes from Sean Hannity and various other people saying how terrible he is.
	And a quote from Trump himself, and it's a nomination poster, right?
	It's like a nomination poster for the Oscars.
	It says, "In all categories, including outstanding achievement in parroting George Soros' talking points, best sound mixing, best checks mixing, least Breitbarty, the Eric Trump Memorial Award for disappointment, fakest dishonesty, corruptest fakeness, dishonestest corruption, smallest button." Okay, sounds a little funny.
	I'll admit that it's pretty funny.
	I will also suggest that one of the problems here is that Stephen Colbert actually does disseminate a bunch of left-wing talking points.
	And if you want to make the case that you're not a left-wing talking points organization, the way you do that is not by trolling Trump about his fake news stuff by saying, we are fake news, right?
	The only people I understand, you know, Colbert doesn't portray himself as an objective news source.
	He portrays himself as a comedian.
	But when he covers news, he is not objective.
	He was not the only one doing this routine.
	Like, they revel in this, right?
	You wonder why Trump could run against Stephen Colbert and win.
	The reason he ran against Stephen Colbert and won is because Stephen Colbert is running against Trump.
	They're all running against Trump.
	But it's not just Colbert.
	It's also Samantha Bee and Trevor Noah.
	Here's Samantha Bee.
	So Samantha Bee tweeted out her own ad.
	It said, for your consideration, Samantha Bee for shrillest reporting.
	Which, I mean, I would vote, if she were up for that category, I would certainly vote for that.
	And it's a bunch of comments from YouTube commenters.
	She says, She's not even funny.
	Like, that one's not even funny.
	Okay, Colbert is at least funny, but Samantha Bee is just comedy death.
	I mean, she's Ebola of comedy.
	And then there's Trevor Noah, who's also in an open competition for this.
	By the way, I should mention, I'm not going to do it so it's live to tape and get cut apart the way that Jonah Goldberg was on The Daily Show.
	This is always my insistence when I do a show like that.
	but only if they broadcast it live.
	I'm not going to do it so it's live to tape and get cut apart the way that Jonah Goldberg was on The Daily Show.
	This is always my insistence when I do a show like that.
	Anyway, Trevor Noah put this up as well.
	Most dishonest and corrupt media awards of the year consideration.
	And then it's a bunch of quotes.
	One from Breitbart News, one from Fox & Friends.
	I'm just disappointed he didn't put one for me.
	So here's one for Trevor Noah from me.
	Trevor Noah is in a running gun battle for least funny human being with Samantha Bee.
	Plus he is a political hack on behalf of the left who has no clue about how American politics actually work.
	How's that?
	Might be a little long for the blurb, but there it is.
	In any case, if these people want to push Trump to greater heights, please continue to do this.
	Okay, final word.
	We'll do a little bit of Bible talk today, but this will be a very, very quick Bible talk.
	So, here it is.
	This is from Malachim Aleph.
	Okay, so in English that would be 1 Kings 2-6.
	Okay, and basically what it says is, it's the story of what David says to Solomon, right as Solomon is about to take over.
	So David's about to die, and he instructs Solomon to basically kill Yoav, the son of Zeruiah.
	Okay, so Job, it's spelled J-O-A-B, he was one of his commanders, and he broke a ceasefire that David basically had with his son Absalom.
	And Joab killed Avner, the son of Ner.
	And so David says, listen, I couldn't do anything while I'm alive, because I made a promise I wouldn't touch him.
	But once I'm dead, you can go after this guy.
	The reason he said that is because Joab was acting on his own orders.
	He was basically off on his own, representing Davidism without David.
	And it didn't go well for him.
	Maybe Steve should have read First Kings, because there were some lessons in there about how the king actually treats you when you disobey his wishes.
	His anger may sleep, but not for long.
	Alrighty, we'll be back here tomorrow with all the latest news, plus the mailbag.
	So if you're going to subscribe, now's the day to do it.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Mathis Glover.
	Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
	Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
	Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
	Edited by Alex Zingaro.
	Audio is mixed by Mike Cormina.
	Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

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