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Jan. 5, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
57:59
The Feds Target Weed | Ep. 447
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So, Steve Bannon has a new nickname, Sloppy Steve, deemed to be that by President Trump.
We'll talk about that.
We'll also talk about the Trump administration's new marijuana policy.
It's got a lot of people up in arms, or at least they would be up in arms if they could get up off their couch and leave the Doritos behind.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
So today is mailbag day, so if you are going to subscribe, you should do it right now so you can get your questions into the mailbag now.
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So go over and subscribe to the website right now and be involved that way.
Also, we are going to get to all of the late breaking news.
The FBI has now launched another investigation against Hillary Clinton's foundation, which is just incredible, and we'll talk about the ramifications of that.
Just a lot to get to today.
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All right.
We begin today with this supposedly bombshell book from Michael Wolff.
So there's been a lot of hubbub over the Trump administration's treatment of the Michael Wolff book.
So Michael Wolff, you'll recall, is this journalist who's kind of sketchy.
I remember during the Bush administration, there was a journalist named Kitty Kelly.
And Kitty Kelly came out with a couple of books that were very gossipy about what had happened.
One was about the Bush administration, another was about the JFK administration.
And it was all very gossipy.
It was very hard to peg down what was true and what was false.
And it sounds a lot like Michael Wolff's book is the same way.
Basically, he was given large-scale access to the West Wing, apparently by Steve Bannon, who allowed him in and just let him sit on the couch outside the West Wing.
And as Wolff says, the West Wing is very small.
It is.
I've been there.
It's a pretty small area.
And there are constantly people of note walking by.
And so Wolff would just sit there, and then he would sort of buttonhole people and ask them questions.
And then he writes this book, and this book is filled with kind of juicy anecdotes, stuff about how Trump would make his own sheets, he didn't trust other people to do his sheets, and how he would eat KFC because he was afraid of being poisoned, and how he'd watch TV endlessly and fulminate about his AIDS, and how he would just go crazy on a routine basis, how everybody around Trump thought that he was a moron and a crazy person, and how they would tell the public that he was a genius, and then secretly they would tell Michael Wolff that he was adult, and all of this kind of stuff.
So, what to believe and what not to believe.
First of all, don't believe everything that you read in Michael Wolff's book.
As I said earlier, I think that it should have been subtitled, as told by Steve Bannon, because it's pretty clear that Bannon is the guy who is spilling his guts to Michael Wolff.
It was Bannon who just got blown up for spilling his guts to Michael Wolff, suggesting that all of his enemies in the White House were guilty of criminal conduct.
During the campaign, that's what has led President Trump to go all out against Steve Bannon now.
So he released his statement about Bannon nuking him two days ago.
Yesterday, he came out and had the White House attack.
Bannon said that Breitbart should probably fire him.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked specifically whether Breitbart should consider firing Bannon, and here's what she had to say.
We were eager to call on ESPN to fire one of its sportscasters for criticizing President Trump.
It wasn't just criticizing, it was a little bit different than that.
It should ripe our part ways with Steve Bannon after the comments in these books.
I certainly think that it's something they should look at and consider.
Brian, thanks.
He said a couple things here.
Number one, of course the Trump administration feels this way.
Second, is it appropriate for the Trump administration to be dictating to a private news organization what exactly they should be doing with their own staffing?
The answer is no.
I opposed it when they told ESPN they should fire Jemele Hill or suspend Jemele Hill.
I feel the same way about Bannon, even though I think Bannon is a turd of a human being.
I don't think that the White House should be telling private organizations how to run their business.
On the other hand, since Breitbart is basically the press adjunct to the White House, I guess that they can fire people who are in-house.
I suppose they have a case to be made that they can fire Steve Bannon from the White House, considering that it was basically just the press outlet for the Trump campaign during the campaign itself.
Bannon has not only lost the support of the White House, he has also lost the support of the Mercers.
First, of course, he lost the support of President Trump.
So very late last night, President Trump slapped out at sloppy Steve over allegations in the book.
He said, quote, I authorized zero access to White House, actually turned him down many times for author of phony book.
I never spoke to him for book, full of lies, misrepresentations, and sources that don't exist.
Look at this guy's past and watch what happens to him and sloppy Steve.
Okay, first of all, great nickname.
Again, second slow clap in two days for President Trump.
This is an excellent nickname.
This one goes up in the treasured house, the treasured wing of the Hall of Fame of Trump nicknames, right?
I mean, there's Little Marco and there's Low Energy Jeb.
And Sloppy Steve is really high up there.
I mean, that'll stick.
That'll stick because Steve is a sloppy guy in a variety of ways.
So that is good stuff from Trump.
Trump came out today and he said that Demersers made a good move by getting rid of Sloppy Steve.
So he's just going to keep banging on this drum.
Bannon, for his part, is trying to kowtow before Trump, which makes sense, since the Mercers came out and slammed Bannon.
The Mercers, if you don't know, are the number one funding family for the Republican Party, essentially, and they were the number one funders of President Trump during his general election cycle.
Rebecca Mercer is the woman who is largely responsible for deciding where the Mercer family money goes.
And she said, I support President Trump and the platform upon which he was elected.
My family and I have not communicated with Steve Bannon in many months and have provided no financial support to his political agenda, nor do we support his recent actions and statements.
That's a pretty rare statement from Rebecca, who apparently tends to be rather reclusive in public.
Her father had disassociated from Breitbart and from Bannon back in early November.
So they've been basically cutting off ties for weeks now with Bannon.
There's a report that they'd even cut off the funding for Bannon's private security team.
So he's basically been isolated at this point, has Bannon.
And that, of course, has led him to one conclusion.
He must hang on at Breitbart, right?
It's the only thing that matters to Bannon right now.
He has to hang on at Breitbart.
If he loses his perch at Breitbart, he is done as a human.
He no longer has the ability to get in good with Trump, right?
The idea, I think, for Bannon is if I hang on long enough, If I just hang out here long enough, then at some point, Trump will bring me back in the fold, like Corey Lewandowski or Sam Nunberg or a bunch of other people.
I'm not sure that's the case.
I think that once you burn your bridges with the president's children, like all of them, then you're going to eventually reach the point where there is no way For you to avoid being blown out, basically.
I think that may be where Bannon is.
But Bannon feels like, if I just stick around at Breitbart long enough, and then something bad happens to Jared and Ivanka legally, then I'll rush back in and Trump still has my phone number.
If he's no longer at Breitbart, that's no longer an option.
So he's trying to hang on with the skin of his teeth.
Larry Solove, who is Andrew Breitbart's old business partner and best friend, Larry refuses to get rid of Bannon is my impression from the outside.
I don't have any inside information on that.
But if I had to guess, that would make a lot of sense.
It was Larry who brought in Bannon in the first place out of, I think, personal weakness.
But in any case...
The idea that he's going to dump Bannon by the side of the road is unlikely.
I think the Mercers would have to force the issue.
So Bannon is trying to hang on.
The way he's hanging on is basically by kowtowing to Trump and then hoping that Trump backs off of him.
So here was Bannon yesterday.
After all these quotes come up about how Bannon thinks that Trump is a crazy person and is going to either be impeached or resign and how his children are all criminals, now he comes out and he says, no, no, no.
Trump's wonderful.
Trump's great.
So here's Bannon on Sirius XM radio.
I know because I know at least one person who listened to it, which was apparently their entire audience.
So here we go.
The President of the United States is a great man.
You know I support him day in and day out, whether going through the country giving the Trump miracle speech or on the show or on the website.
So I don't think you have to worry about that.
But I appreciate the kind words.
Okay, so the idea that he has been supporting Trump day in and day out is sort of belied by the fact that he let this reporter into the White House, who then proceeded to savage the White House from every conceivable angle.
So this brings us to the actual nature of the book.
The actual nature of the book, it has a lot of problems.
The book is Fire and Fury.
Again, it is a deeply gossip-ridden account, and there are a lot of problems with the book itself.
It has all of these sort of weird anecdotes, and you don't know where they're sourced to, because Wolf doesn't have any end notes, is my impression.
He doesn't say, this is from my conversation with Steve Bannon in the West Wing, or this is from my conversation with Jared Kushner, or this is from my conversation with Mike Pence.
It doesn't have any of those footnotes.
There's no way to tell what is true and what is not in these accounts.
But we know already that there are some things in this book that are just not true.
We know there are accounts that are simply false.
There are certain descriptions of people that are just not true.
And in just a second, I'm going to tell you about some of the instances in the book that are clearly untrue.
I mean, I can personally attest to them being untrue in just one second.
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So, here's what we know in the book that is not true.
In the Michael Wolff book, Fire and Fury, which is soaring on the bestseller charts, here's how we know there's stuff that's not true.
So, number one, it says in the book that Donald Trump didn't know who John Boehner was, right?
The Speaker of the House.
That in conversations, Trump had no clue who Boehner was when he was recommended as a possible That's ridiculous.
I mean, Trump has golfed with John Boehner.
John Boehner was the Speaker of the House for the first four months of Trump's presidential run, basically.
The idea that Trump has no idea who Boehner is, is really hard to hold to scrutiny.
Beyond that, It's also ridiculous to suggest, as the book does, that Stephen Miller, who is one of Trump's top aides, one of his speechwriters, can't put together a sentence.
I mean, the guy did go to, I believe, Duke Law School, if I'm not mistaken.
Stephen did.
As well, not only that, Stephen is a policy wonk.
So there's an accusation that Stephen Miller is not, in fact, a policy wonk.
When it comes to immigration, I've spent hours talking with him about immigration.
The idea that he is not a policy wonk is just asinine.
Miller didn't go to Duke Law, rather he went to Duke itself.
So he's a smart enough guy to go to Duke, which is a top college.
The idea that he can't write a sentence is silly.
There are other claims in this book that are being called into question.
There's a claim that Sean Hannity expressed his willingness to let Trump review questions in advance.
Hannity said that he never did that.
I don't know whether to believe that or not.
If the interviews were friendly enough, I don't think Sean would have to do that, right?
I mean, Sean could basically just say to Trump, listen, I'm not going to sandbag you.
And Trump would agree, because Sean would never sandbag Trump.
So I'm not sure we'd have to actually offer to supply the questions.
Another one of Trump's top advisors and friends, Thomas Barrack, said of the president, he's not only crazy, he's stupid.
But Barrack denies ever having made the comment.
The British publication claimed that The Wolf Book says that Tony Blair, former British prime minister, Warren jarred Kushner during the campaign that British spies could have the campaign under surveillance, but Blair calls that report a complete fabrication.
So here's what it sounds like Michael Wolff did when he put together this book.
It sounds like Michael Wolff basically sat in the hall and listened to Steve Bannon tell tall tales around the campfire while roasting marshmallows and eating s'mores.
And then, when they were done, he just wrote down everything Steve Bannon said, and then he said, you filter it out.
You the reader.
It's your job to try and determine what's true and what's false.
So you get a sort of ambiance of what it's like in the White House with all the chaos and all the craziness, but it's not necessarily true that every individual story is true.
If that's the case, then there's not much to the book.
And the truth is, I'm not sure there's much to the book anyway, just because I believe a lot of the kind of general tenor and tone issues that the book raises.
I believe that Donald Trump is not Phi Beta Kappa when it comes to policy.
I don't think that Donald Trump is necessarily the most stable personality.
I mean, but I thought all of that for the last two years.
I mean, I've been saying that for years at this point.
I'm not sure how you look at his Twitter account and figure that this guy is a Washingtonian character.
He's like George Washington in his stolidness and stalwartness.
Like, I just don't see how you would possibly come away with that by watching Donald Trump for any lengthy period of time.
So what does the book add?
The answer is the book really doesn't add much at all, except for a bunch of accusations by Steve Bannon that the media want to take seriously for purposes of trying to destroy Trump.
Which, of course, is why Trump is going directly at Steve Bannon, and why Donald Trump should go directly at Steve Bannon, right?
Bannon is the guy who wanted to turn this into a self-aggrandizing homage to him, and it was a direct fail.
And I think that makes perfect sense that Trump decides that he has to strike back.
Now, the way that Trump strikes back at Bannon, which I think is correct, is very different from the way that Trump strikes back at the book.
Trump is now participating in what we in the internet world call the Streisand effect.
So a few years back, Barbara Streisand, the legendary singer and crazed liberal, she has a house on the beach down in Malibu.
And there was an environmentalist photographer who had taken some aerial photos of the beach and included her house.
Now, you never would have known that it was her house.
It didn't label her house.
It didn't have an arrow that said Barbara Streisand's house.
It was just a picture that included Barbara Streisand's house.
And the point of the photos was not to show where the rich and famous lived.
The whole point of the photos was to show coastal erosion.
Right?
So the entire series of photos was by an environmentalist guy.
It wasn't by some right-winger who was trying to stake out Barbara Streisand's house while she sung Feelings in the background.
That was not the idea here.
Well, what Barbara Streisand did is she got so mad that she sued the photographer for something like $5 million.
It was something crazy.
She sued the photographer for an enormous amount of money, claiming that he had violated her privacy rights.
Well, in launching the lawsuit, she then made clear where was she lived.
So suddenly the photo, which had been viewed I think a grand total of like seven times ever by anyone, was viewed by 1.5 million people.
People flooded onto the internet to see the pictures of Barbra Streisand's house and what she would be so touchy about that she'd sue some rando for millions of dollars for exposing the photo.
Well, Trump basically did the same thing with this book.
So the book was going to get coverage.
But Trump could have said all the same things I just said, right?
Trump could have said, listen, Steve Bannon's a piece of garbage who falsifies a lot of stuff.
This book is driven by Steve Bannon's agenda.
But the book is full of falsehoods and we're not going to talk about it anymore.
Right?
We're just going to leave it at that.
The book's full of falsehoods.
We're done.
It's full of a bunch of crazy stories.
Steve Bannon has an agenda.
He's self-driven.
He's garbage.
And everybody would have cheered, and that would have been the end of it.
Because, by the way, Steve Bannon is garbage, if I haven't made that clear already for the last two days.
So, or for the last two years for that matter.
With that said, that's not what the Trump administration decided to do.
So Trump unleashed his lawyers on the publisher.
Always a bad move.
He sends a letter to the publisher saying, you are going to pull this book or I am going to sue you for defamation.
No.
Okay, so putting on my lawyer hat, defamation against the President of the United States is not a thing.
Winning a defamation suit as the President of the United States is not going to happen.
You're a public figure.
You're the ultimate public figure.
And I'm not sure how you could prove anything that was maliciously and willfully false, which is the actual statement.
You have to prove maliciousness, right?
Like willful and maliciousness in defamation for a public figure, that's the standard.
That you willfully knew something was false and you maliciously published it anyway.
That is not going to happen for the President of the United States, particularly since most people are going to believe a lot of the allegations that are in the book anyway, including, I am sure, members of the jury.
So that was stupid.
By doing that, he basically handed a win to the author of the book.
Again, this is the problem with Trump's knee-jerk tendency to go after anybody who slaps him, is that it puts him in weird positions where he's actually elevating the people who are slapping him.
Now, I think he could slap down Bannon pretty safely because Bannon used to work for him.
Bannon was the barnacle on his butt, so anytime Trump wanted to slap him, he could, right?
Trump could just destroy him with a single swipe, and that's essentially what Trump has done.
It's a different thing when you're talking about a media member, and it isn't great policy to have the President of the United States suing individual members of the media for the stuff that they write.
It's just not—if Obama had tried to do this about Ed Klein, for example, the entire right would have gone nuts, and I think rightly so.
So, yeah, I think that's bad policy by Trump.
I think that it's over the top.
Go after Steve Bannon, by all means, since he's the one who's actually the leak.
He's the guy who's actually telling all of these tall tales out of school.
But going after the author, who you allowed to sit around in the White House for day after day after day, apparently for months, that seems like a big mistake to me.
And again, it creates a Streisand effect, where suddenly, like last night in DC, there were people who were waiting outside bookstores at 12, 15 at night for the early release of the book.
So the book was actually pushed up four days, and the publisher released the book four days early, specifically so that they could gain all of the sales from all of the attention.
So that's something that Trump ought not to have done.
You know, issuing a cease and desist to Bannon with a violation of the NDA, the non-disclosure agreement, as I said yesterday, there's actually a legal case for that.
There's no defamation legal case for President Trump against Henry Holt and publishers against Michael Wolff, this particular author, even though the author, I think, is making things up, or at least repeating tales that he has not bothered to verify.
Wolff, by the way, says this openly, that this is not his style, that he doesn't actually He doesn't actually verify the anecdotes that he's told.
He just sort of spills it out on the page and just assumes that everything is true.
So that is not called journalism.
That's just you being a tape recorder.
And that's essentially what Michael Wolff did.
So is this going to do lasting damage to the Trump administration?
There are a lot of people who say, oh, it's a bombshell inside the Trump administration.
Just a bombshell.
Is it, though?
Is it really?
Do you really think that members of the Trump administration are going to use their power, members of the Trump cabinet are going to use their power under the 25th Amendment to suspend Trump from service for 60 days and then kick it to Congress where Trump will actually be impeached, which is the actual process under the 25th Amendment?
Do you really think that's what's going to happen here?
Because it ain't going to happen.
Okay, nobody in the West Wing is going to launch an impeachment move against Trump on the basis of he's crazy.
People knew who Trump was when they voted for him.
And people refuse to believe anything that they don't want to believe.
I was talking with Andrew Klavan and with Michael Knowles yesterday, or rather, I was not, my business partner Jeremy was, and both Klavan and Knowles were insisting that this is all 40 MAGA MAGA MAGA chess, and I'm just telling you, it's not.
But if you want to believe that it is, you're going to believe that it is.
So people are still believing about Trump what it is they want to believe about Trump.
And that being the case, none of these new anecdotes are going to change one single mind.
Not one single person in the United States who didn't think Trump was already crazy is going to change their mind, and not a single person who thought that Trump is brilliant is going to change their mind based on Michael Wolff's book.
So the idea that there's a bombshell that really ruins the administration?
Kevin Williams had had a good line about this, right?
You can't take down Trump with this kind of stuff for the same reason that you can no longer assassinate Abraham Lincoln.
Abraham Lincoln's already dead.
Donald Trump cannot be taken down by this stuff because people who perceive him to be crazy already perceive him to be crazy.
People who perceive him to be sane already perceive him to be sane.
He is what he is in my view.
I don't think that he's the world's most stable guy.
I don't think that he has the character of a president that I would prefer, but I will enjoy all of the policy wins that he's brought.
And I can live with that cognitive dissonance.
Everybody else should learn to, too.
And that's just the way that it works.
OK, so I'm going to move on to Trump and Pott in just a second.
And no, that's not my recommendation that we all smoke weed to get through the next three years of this, or the next seven years, as the case may be.
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Okay, so...
A big policy change, or a sort of big policy change, happened yesterday, and all of the pot smokers and friends of pot smokers are just up in arms at the Trump administration.
Or as I said earlier, they are too busy staring at their own fingernails and finding them fascinating, but when the pot wears off, and before they've been able to re-up, then they will be very, very exercised about all of this, and then presumably they'll eat a pizza, smoke some more weed, and go back to sleep.
But in any case, Okay, when I make fun of people who smoke pot, folks, it's not because I think pot should actually be illegal.
It's because I think you're stupid if you spend all of your time smoking pot.
Okay, just that I think you're stupid, by the way, if you drink yourself into oblivion, too.
But in any case, here's what actually happened.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday rescinded, this is according to CNN, a trio of memos from the Obama administration that had adopted a policy of non-interference with marijuana-friendly state laws.
So there was something called the Cole Rule, okay?
Under the Cole Rule, it basically said Jim Cole was the former Deputy Attorney General, The whole idea here was that the Justice Department was going to let the states do what they wanted to do.
It was sort of the equivalent of DACA.
So if you remember, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was Obama saying, I'm going to use my prosecutorial discretion to instruct the DOJ not to actually prosecute cases for the so-called dreamers.
That's what DACA was, the executive amnesty.
Well, the Cole rule was basically the same thing for pot distribution.
So, the move now from Jeff Sessions essentially shifts federal policy from the hands-off approach adopted under the previous administration to unleashing federal prosecutors across the country to decide individually how to prioritize resources to crack down on pot possession, distribution, and cultivation of the drug in states where it is legal.
So while many states have decriminalized or legalized marijuana use here in California, they've decriminalized marijuana use, and that has obviously made California just a more wonderful place to live.
It was already wonderful, and now it's just made it a more wonderful place to live so that everybody on the streets is smoking pot and the homeless people who live right outside your house can now get high in their spare time.
In any case, the drug is still illegal under federal law, which creates this conflict between federal and state law.
Now, let me make my own position very clear on this.
I'm in favor of decriminalization of marijuana.
I have been for decriminalization of marijuana for years.
I believe that the federal government and the state government spend far too much time and effort trying to go after marijuana, and they do a terrible job of it.
It should still be heavily regulated for use under the age of 18.
There is serious damage that is done to teenage brains by repeat use of marijuana.
The argument as to whether marijuana is a gateway drug is not exactly settled.
You know, people have said it's not a gateway drug.
They say, oh, it's just a myth.
The data on that are really mixed.
When I say they're mixed, what I mean is that the vast majority of people who use heavier drugs did start off by using marijuana, but it's not clear whether those people just had a tendency toward drugs in the first place, and that drove them to use both marijuana and then heavier drugs, or whether they started with marijuana, and they said, I'm breaking the law anyway, but I'm not getting high enough, so now I'm going to try heroin.
It's not clear exactly how that worked.
In any case, that's an argument that has not been fully debunked, is the gateway drug issue.
But as somebody who's in favor of individual sovereignty and your capacity to make your own decisions as an adult, including stupid decisions without government intervention, I'm in favor of marijuana decriminalization.
I'm more split when it comes to harder drugs that are more addictive, things like heroin or things like cocaine.
There, I tend toward legalization even for those drugs is the truth.
But when it comes to things like Angel Dust or LSD that have actual externalities where it's going to cause you to act in violent ways, it actually changes how you act toward people.
As opposed to you just get high and you stay in your room all day and you drown in your own vomit.
That seems to me that's mostly a problem.
But if you are actually going to get high and then go out and kill a child, then the drug makes you more violent, it makes you crazy and hyper, then that's a different story.
That's my basic take on drug legalization and decriminalization.
With all that said...
Sessions is now reversing this Obama-era rule.
So he said this is a return to the rule of law, but he didn't go as far as some advocates worried that he would.
He didn't direct more prosecutions.
So here's what Sessions said in a memo.
He said, quote, In deciding which marijuana activities to prosecute under these laws with the department's finite resources, prosecutors should follow the well-established principles that govern all federal prosecutions.
These principles require federal prosecutors deciding which cases to prosecute to weigh all relevant considerations of the crime, the deterrent effect of criminal prosecution, and the cumulative effect of particular crimes on the community.
So, nationally, the media goes absolutely insane over this.
How dare Jeff Sessions?
He's done something terrible.
Look at him.
Now he's just going, he's re-upping the drug war, and that's all that this is.
That's not really what happened here.
As I say, the Cole Memo was this directive to federal prosecutors that basically said that the drug was still illegal under the Federal Controlled Substances Act, but federal prosecutors could focus their resources elsewhere so long as the states didn't threaten other federal priorities such as distribution of drugs to minors and targeting cartels.
That's what the Cole Memo did.
That's now been overruled.
So, a bunch of people in Congress are alarmed.
Oh no, the DOJ is going to come after us.
If that's the case, I have an idea.
marijuana prosecution decisions be governed by basic principles of law.
So a bunch of people in Congress are alarmed.
Oh, no, the DOJ is going to come after us.
If that's the case, I have an idea.
Change the law.
Here is why Sessions is actually correct.
So Sessions is correct, even if you agree with decriminalization of marijuana, as I do.
Sessions is not wrong.
The reason Sessions is not wrong is that we have something called the executive branch.
The executive branch's job is to, as you may have guessed, execute.
It is their job to execute the law.
It is not their job to rewrite the law at will.
It is not the job of the federal executive branch to simply decide, as Obama did, that we're not going to prosecute entire classes of crime because I don't like the law.
If that were the case, then I would hope to get elected president and I would spend zero of the dollars allocated to me by Congress.
I just wouldn't do any of it.
I would just nullify everything the legislature did.
That's not what the executive branch is there to do.
If Republicans in Congress and Democrats in Congress have enough of a problem with pot policy from the DOJ, maybe they should change the law.
Maybe they should just get rid of the provisions governing marijuana in the Controlled Substances Act and let the states deal with it, considering it's mainly a state problem in the first place.
I don't know why the federal government is really involved in any of this.
This came to a head in a Supreme Court case called California v. Raich.
It was back in 2003, in which the Federal Controlled Substances Act came up for review before the Supreme Court, because the state of California wanted to allow medicinal marijuana, and the federal government was coming in and arresting people.
And people in California were saying, well, we haven't committed a federal crime, right?
We're not involved in interstate commerce.
We're just growing marijuana to use ourselves, right?
Or we're growing marijuana to use in-state.
And the Supreme Court wrongly, in my opinion, ruled that the state of California could not do that, that it was a supremacy clause question, that they were overruling the federal government.
I disagree with that decision.
I disagree with the federal government getting involved in these issues in the first place.
But it is not the job of the executive to nullify federal law.
It's the job of the legislature to change federal law.
That's basically what Sarah Huckabee Sanders said yesterday, and I think that she's basically correct.
Does President Trump see marijuana as a state issue or a federal issue?
The President believes in enforcing federal law.
That would be his top priority.
And that is regardless of what the topic is, whether it's marijuana or whether it's immigration, the President strongly believes that we should enforce federal law.
The move that the Department of Justice has made, which my guess is what you're referencing, simply gives prosecutors the tools to take on Okay, so his basic idea here is that the only thing that matters in the end is that the executive branch does what the executive branch is designed to do, which is to execute the law.
So there's no question that this is correct, right?
This is basically correct no matter what you feel about marijuana.
So, it's time for Congress to change the law.
I will say, I think it is hilarious how the left has responded to this.
The left doesn't care about federalism in any other setting.
They don't care about states' rights in any other setting.
They're actively anti-states' rights in every other setting.
Like, against it.
Cory Booker, however, says that this is an attack on our most sacred ideals.
Like, really, this is what he says.
And so this is an attack on our most sacred ideals and the very purpose of the Department of Justice, which is to protect Americans, to elevate ideals of justice, and to do right by people.
It is a failure of this administration who said, as our president did during his campaign, that he would honor what states are doing.
It's a betrayal of our Attorney General who gave a commitment to a Republican, at least one Republican member of this body.
But most significantly, it is hurting, it will hurt America.
You know, Hurt America, it's our sacred principle that people should be able to smoke dope.
Pretty sure that that was not actually a sacred principle, like for anyone.
But apparently for Democrats, baby's in the womb, not sacred.
Pot, sacred.
I'm glad that we now know the priorities.
This is exciting.
Okay, so, we are going to get to the mailbag.
I also want to discuss this new FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton.
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Yes, every week feels like three.
There's just that much news going on.
In any case, the FBI has now launched a new investigation into Hillary Clinton.
The right, of course, is celebrating wildly that this is happening.
Listen, I think that if she did something, she should go to jail.
I think she should have gone to jail for what she did in exposing classified information in order to protect herself through her private server.
With that said, I'm a little uncomfortable with the precedent that's being set that we are now going to spend years prosecuting prior administrations.
Because if Trump thinks this is fun now, if he loses in 2020, things are going to get extraordinarily dicey, extraordinarily fast.
Like, Eric Holder, here's the reality.
Trump DOJ isn't doing anything wrong by investigating Hillary because the Holder DOJ was never going to investigate Hillary.
Well, we now live in a kleptocracy where the ruling cadre gets to prosecute its opposition and protect itself from prosecution.
Eric Holder is responsible for Hillary Clinton getting off the hook.
That's the reality.
Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch are responsible for Hillary Clinton getting off the hook.
So Trump going back now and looking at this again, or Sessions doing it, that would be in accordance with the rule of law.
But just be aware that when power shifts, and it will again.
Republicans will not rule forever.
There will be some time in the future, near or far, at which Democrats take power.
A lot of people are going to be put under the gun of the DOJ again, because once you start using the DOJ as your personal tool to take revenge against your enemies, things could go wildly wrong.
In any case, the Justice Department has launched a new inquiry into whether the Clinton Foundation engaged in pay-to-play politics or illegal activities while Hillary served as Secretary of State.
where the foundation was started, have taken the lead in the investigation.
They've interviewed at least one witness in the last month.
Law enforcement officials said additional activities are expected in coming weeks.
The officials, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said the probe is examining whether the Clintons promised or performed any policy favors in return for largesse to their charitable efforts or whether donors made commitments of donations in hopes of securing government outcomes.
This is all from The Hill.
So one witness has said that the FBI is acting in extremely professional and unquestionably thorough manner.
It will be interesting and fascinating to watch the same left that has been praising the FBI up the wazoo because of the Trump-Russia investigation now flip and insist that it is politically driven.
So, I'm looking forward to that very much.
Again, we'll have to wait to see what comes out from all of this.
inclination is to believe that the FBI should have prosecuted Hillary the first time around and James Comey botched the investigation and did so in purposeful manner.
With all of that said, it is not good that all of our politics is now caught up in the hands of the DOJ and the FBI.
And that's due largely to criminality, but it's also due to the fact that the DOJ and the FBI have become politicized tools, which is one of the reasons why Republicans are kicking back against Robert Mueller, Steve Scalise, the House Majority Whip, He came out yesterday and he said that the special counsel, Mueller, is now in question, that his legitimacy is now in question.
We're now going to play politics with every aspect of the federal government because we don't trust, I think rightly so, the DOJ or the FBI.
So Steve Scalise will challenge Robert Mueller, and presumably within the next five minutes, the Democrats will challenge the FBI.
Here's Scalise.
Plus, you've seen, through our oversight, by the way, in the House, you've seen an exposure of what I think is a lot of corruption and real concerns that have been raised about the special counsel.
In fact, just the credibility of the special counsel is very much in question because, as you mentioned, so many of the people that Mueller brought in, the people working on that, were very anti-Trump in the campaign.
And still to this day, I mean, you can't have people in the Justice Department working on an investigation who have predisposed.
All of this is a mess, by the way, because now that now the accusation is that Jeff Sessions over at the DOJ, the accusation is that he was actually trying to lead a PR campaign undercover against James Comey, even as he's recused himself from the Russia investigation in the middle of February and March and April.
So, just yuck.
All the way around, the DOJ and the FBI have been politicized.
We don't trust them.
And so the lack of trust in our public institutions continues to founder until we get into the business of electing politicians.
It's really our fault.
We have to stop electing politicians who are corrupt and then using the FBI and the DOJ as a check on our own stupidity.
That's not going to work because the DOJ and the FBI are, guess what, politicians.
Okay, time for some things I like, and then some things I hate, and then the mailbag.
So, things I like today.
We'll only do one thing I like because we have to get to the mailbag.
The thing that I like today is a biography that I'm reading on Johannes Brahms.
Brahms, of course, one of the great composers of all time.
And it's a really illuminating, very lengthy biography by Jan Swafford.
And the book really delves into who Brahms was as a person.
Brahms really had an eye toward how he would be perceived by future historians.
He burned a lot of his papers.
He didn't want people delving into his life.
Jan Swafford does a really good job of checking that out.
I don't know if I have to pronounce Jan, it might be Jan Swafford.
In any case, he does a very good job of delving into all of the details of Brahms's biography.
So if you're into biographies of musicians, as I am, we did Beethoven a couple of weeks ago, this biography of Brahms is considered the classic.
So Jan or Jan Swafford, it's called Johannes Brahms, a biography, check it out.
Okay, time for some things that I hate.
Okay, so we'll begin with this idiotic tweet that has 250,000 likes on Twitter.
It's a picture of Doug Jones, who's the new Democratic senator from Alabama, and his son, who happens to be gay, and Doug Jones' wife, who is swearing in Doug Jones into the Senate.
And Mike Pence is standing there presiding over it, because as the vice president, he is the guy who presides over the Senate.
So Doug Jones is standing there, and the gay son looks like he is giving side eye to Mike Pence, supposedly.
Okay, and Derek Millman tweets, "Photo of the Decade, Doug Jones being sworn in while his openly gay son quietly disintegrates the soul of Mike Pence." This is so stupid for so many reasons.
Number one, if you think Mike Pence has never met a gay guy, you are a moron.
Okay?
Mike Pence is the vice president of the United States.
He's the governor of Indiana.
I'm sure he's worked with gay people.
I'm sure he's friends with gay people.
The idea that Mike Pence has never met a gay person is just asinine.
Beyond that, this meme doesn't even make sense.
Look at the guy's eyes.
He's not even looking at Mike Pence.
He's looking at his mom in this photo.
Right?
The angle of the photo makes it look like it's ambiguous.
It is not ambiguous.
Look at his eyes.
He is looking at his mother because his mother is the one who is swearing in his father at this point.
But again, people are so driven by confirmation bias that they want to believe that Mike Pence is somehow threatened by the openly gay son.
Yeah, right.
I'm sure that's the case.
Yeah.
Good job, guys.
Okay, other things that I hate.
So, there's a website called Mike.
It is a stupid website.
Mike cuts a bunch of videos, MIC.
They cut a bunch of videos, usually about sexuality in the most sort of abhorrent and sensationalistic fashion.
They cut a video yesterday about cis men liking trans women.
It's a bunch of trans women, meaning men who believe that they are women and some of whom have had surgery and makeup done to confirm this.
They are complaining that men, when they find out that they actually have penises or are biological men, are unhappy about this, and that means that men must be afraid of their own masculinity.
So try to follow the logic here.
If you're a man who doesn't want to have sex with a man who has made himself up to look like a woman for the objective world, and I'm not getting into their head.
Maybe you believe you're a woman.
It doesn't matter.
Bottom line is...
Does a man have a right to say, I'm not into a penis?
And like, is that okay still?
Apparently not.
Apparently this makes you gay.
So if you're a man who doesn't like a penis, you're gay now.
I'm very confused by all of this.
Here's the mic video.
It's not good.
If the idea is that a guy dating a trans woman makes him gay, then what you're basically saying is that a trans woman is not a woman.
Okay, stop it there for a second.
I'm not saying that this person is quote unquote playing dress up.
I don't know what this person's mental condition is.
Okay, I would suggest this person is suffering from a delusion.
I wouldn't suggest that.
That is a fact.
This person is suffering from a delusion.
This person is not a woman.
This person is not a biological woman.
This person may believe they're a biological woman, they may believe they're a very feminine man, they may believe they're a trans woman.
That's not the same as a biological woman.
It's not that a man is... The guy who is looking at this person and saying, that's a man, and I'm not sexually attracted to that, or the guy who initially takes a look before realizing that that's a man, Okay, there's nothing that is wrong with that, either morally or in terms of sensitivity.
Dictating other people's sexual proclivities, I thought, was off the table.
Until five minutes ago, I thought it was stay out of my bedroom.
Now apparently it's get in my bedroom or you're a sexist.
Get in here and take a look at this.
That's not the way that this works.
You don't get to dictate to anybody else how they act.
This is my problem with a lot of what's happening in the radical trans movement is not that these are people who are just saying, leave me alone to live my life.
I'm fine with that.
Do whatever the hell you want to do.
You want to get a surgery?
That's your problem.
You're an adult.
You want to go out and have hormone treatments?
I don't think it'll be great for you.
That's your decision anyway.
I'm not your doctor.
That's your problem.
Go for it.
I'm completely libertarian on this.
But it is my problem when you're suggesting that somehow I am not secure enough in my own masculinity when I say I'm not into your penis.
Okay, stop, this is not logical, it doesn't make any sense, it's ridiculous, it's actually rather tyrannical, and it cuts counter to the entire privacy movement that you guys are trying to establish.
Or you guys, or girls, whatever, okay?
The whole thing is just silly.
So we can play a little bit more of this, but be ready to pause it, okay?
I am 24 seven.
Certain cis men who I find... I like the shots of the random guys.
They know they're even in this shot.
Their approach to trans women specifically is a very dismissive approach.
I think that their view on us is that of a weak boy.
They don't really see us as women.
So now you're a weak boy.
You understand?
They're challenging the masculinity of guys who don't want to have sex with guys.
Adam Carolla had a line in, I think it was his first book, where he says that we're eventually going to reach the point where we challenge the masculinity of boys who are not secure enough in their masculinity to be gay.
We're eventually going to say to young boys that if you want to show you're a real man and that you're secure in your masculinity, go over there and kiss another guy.
That'll show how secure you are in your masculinity.
Like, that's the way this is going?
We're pretty much there.
We didn't have far to go.
Okay, time for the mailbag.
Let's just go to the mailbag, because I can't do any more of this.
Alright, so, mailbag time.
Yes, I hope he does.
It's one thing I wish I'd had growing up, because I was smaller and slighter than the other kids in class.
Yes, I hope he does.
It's one thing I wish I'd had growing up because I was smaller and slighter than the other kids in class.
I was also smarter, and so this made for some bullying.
I wish I had known how to defend myself better so I could have beaten some people up.
That would have been good.
Canyon says, Dear Ben, regarding foreign policy, if you had to pick, would you rather see America adhere to the principles of the Monroe Doctrine or the Truman Doctrine?
If neither of those completely satisfy you, what would the Shapiro Doctrine entail?
So, for those who don't know, the Monroe Doctrine basically suggests that the United States is going to keep the Western Hemisphere free of European influence.
The Truman Doctrine says that we are going to defend democracy around the world.
Anytime a democratic regime is threatened by a non-democratic regime, we're going to back the democracy.
None of these completely satisfy me, because I don't think that America's foreign policy interests end in South America, Latin America, and Canada.
And the Truman Doctrine, which suggests we have to defend democracy as a chief priority, as opposed to America's liberty interests, I don't think that that's exact enough.
I think that's a little too Wilsonian for me.
Foreign interests lie in preserving our strength and our morality.
And that's a balance.
Because there are going to be times when we have to preserve our strength by not being able to overthrow a regime that will cost us enormous amounts of time and treasure and men and blood.
But we will be strengthening the world if we stay strong, right?
It's sort of the principle that if somebody is drowning, you have to make sure that you are not going to drown also at the same time so that you can save other people.
There is a balance here that I don't think is really taken into consideration with regard to the hardline Truman doctrine.
I mean, Hamas was elected by democracy.
Is that a regime that we now have to defend?
I don't think so.
RJ says, "Dear Ben, do you think it would be a fair trade for Republicans to agree to amnesty for Dreamers in exchange for an end to chain migration, E-Verify, plus the abolition of anchor babies?" Well, I mean, I think that I'm not in favor of amnesty for Dreamers as a blanket.
I think that amnesty for specific people who are in the country illegally and are of benefit to the United States is the solution.
I don't know why I can't advocate for all of these things.
If you asked me, would I make that exchange, if that were the choice on the table, an end-of-chain migration, E-Verify, let's say the wall, an abolition of anchor babies, I would probably say yes, because that would change the system so dramatically that you'd actually have a cut-off point.
But I don't think that that's what's on the table.
Rachel says, Hi Ben, I have three degrees but left academia to start a business with my husband.
The last time I went to dinner with old friends, we all named someone living or dead with whom we'd like to have dinner.
I said Winston Churchill.
Without exception, everyone else at the table said Michelle or Barack Obama.
These are smart people.
Well, first of all, I quibble.
How can so many academics be so stupid where politics are concerned?
Well, the answer is when you spend your entire life in a bubble, you tend to believe that the only people who are worth talking to are the people who are sort of at the upper echelon of the bubble.
That's Michelle and Barack, presumably.
You know, the world's greatest and most beautiful and wonderful people.
Again, I quibble with the idea that... I'll use Dennis Prager's model here.
I don't think that just because you're smart, you're wise.
And obviously, brains don't necessarily translate to your knowledge of values, to wisdom, or to any sort of historical knowledge.
Hunter says, Hey Ben, my question is, how and when should the welfare state be reformed and why haven't the Republicans initiated any new legislation regarding this?
So my understanding is that that's what they're trying now, is that the next thing they're going to try is a welfare reform that creates new work requirements for welfare.
I think that would be great.
I think that needs to be attempted as soon as possible.
I think welfare should also be devolved to the state level and federal welfare should basically be dismembered.
Well, Nate, that's a good question.
I would love to respond to all of the attacks on me and the stuff that I do.
I have to determine sort of what the time investment is.
I have other things in my life.
which ones to take on and how difficult is it to just ignore the rest?
Well, Nate, that's a good question.
I would love to respond to all of the attacks on me and the stuff that I do.
And I have to determine sort of what the time investment is.
I have other things in my life.
So it's a balance between how quickly can I respond and how many people Am I elevating the hit piece that's full of falsehoods by even responding to it?
Or is the thing just so damn long that I don't have time to pick apart this and then get into a mano-a-mano fight with some idiot who doesn't understand the points that I'm making?
That's also the question.
Once you respond to somebody, then they respond to you, and it turns into a firefight.
Is that something worthwhile?
You stated you didn't see why the U.S.
would get involved in Syria, as you didn't see what the U.S.' 's interest was there.
But you also described the U.S.
as the most moral force on the planet.
Thank you for considering my question.
I'm a new subscriber and a bit of a fangirl.
I appreciate it.
So here is my answer.
So here is my answer.
My answer is the same as it was earlier, which is if we can do it without it costing us very much, then we do it.
If we have to go in there with boots on the ground and tremendous expenditures of time and resources, we have to determine how that fosters our interests and how much it sucks us dry.
So if I could press a button now and end the genocide in Syria, you would, I would, everybody would.
But if the question is, are we going to send 20,000 troops in there to take out Assad, or 100,000 troops in there to take out Assad and then occupy the country, is that something where America really has an interest?
Is that something that we can do?
And this is a serious question to consider because there are awful, horrible humanitarian crises happening around the world.
We have to determine as a country what the balance of cost and effect is in each of these situations.
The worse the atrocity, the more America has an interest in stopping it, for sure.
But we also have to take into account what exactly the cost will be.
Do we get sucked into another prolonged war in the Middle East where we really have no solid interests Outside of presumably stopping Assad, who fosters terrorism, but not in the same way as Iran, for example.
Like, if you had to change a regime and spend American resources doing it, you'd have to start with Iran and then move on to Syria, since Syria is a client state of Iran.
Sparkling.
do you still prefer do you prefer still or sparkling water sparkling that is the answer for anyone of sane mind Imer says are you more conservative than your father you know hard to tell I would say that my dad is more conservative socially than I am probably.
I am more conservative than he is probably fiscally.
But I would say that my dad has, he's, I would say that as I have, you know, taken a more prominent position and studied more, my dad sort of gets his reading list from me a lot on politics.
So I'll read a book and I'll pass it on to my dad.
So his views tend to mirror mine in a lot of ways, but not in every way.
Well, the answer is get rid of federal welfare and it won't be a problem.
The reason red states receive more money than blue states on average is because there are more poor people in red states than blue states, and there are also more military bases in red states than blue states.
So on a per capita basis, more people are receiving aid in red states than blue states.
But it's not the red states that are voting for the federal welfare programs, you dolt.
If you don't want to spend all that much money on red states, I have an idea.
Don't do it.
Right?
Guess what?
The red states agree.
They're not the ones who are voting for the additional welfare programs.
So I was, for most of my childhood, a Boston Red Sox fan secondarily.
I was a White Sox fan primarily, and then a Boston Red Sox fan secondarily because I picked up all of my father's allegiances and he went to college in Boston with my mom.
My opinion on David Ortiz is that he seems like a nice guy.
I'm almost certain he was doing steroids.
It's amazing to me that he's been able to get away with being the one guy who's sort of allowed to do it and everybody sort of knew he was doing it.
Again, this is opinion, not allegations of fact.
You know, the guy went from hitting 20 home runs a year for the Minnesota Twins to hitting 50 home runs a year for the Red Sox.
I don't think that sort of stuff just happens overnight.
Plus he shared a doctor, I believe, with, was it Alex Rodriguez or Pujols?
In any case, I'm a big Red Sox fan.
I went down to Fenway Park and stood outside Fenway Park when they won the World Series in 2004.
I, like everybody else in Boston at the time, Stayed up all night watching the games with the Yankees so I'm a Red Sox fan and loathe the Yankees.
Jeffrey says, Ben the Hebrew Hammer Shapiro.
I credit Andrew Breitbart's Righteous Indignation as my awakening text and have tremendous respect for Andrew's career.
It's a great book.
He seemed like a gifted and unique man.
I also admire you and your approach to the issues.
I spoke with Andrew about Bannon.
I said, who is this guy?
me to be confused as to why Andrew would elevate Steve Bannon to Breitbart News when you know Steve to be such a terrible guy.
Why did Andrew Breitbart seem to like Bannon back when he was alive while you abhor him now?
Was this an error in judgment by Andrew?
The answer is yes, and it's also true that the relationship between Bannon and Breitbart was wildly exaggerated in the aftermath of Andrew's death.
I spoke to Andrew, you know, before I worked there.
I spoke with Andrew about Bannon.
I said, who is this guy?
Because he was occupying some office space, some Bannon office space.
And that was how they knew each other was Bannon was working on a documentary on Andrew, because this is how Bannon ingratiates himself with powerful people.
He's like, oh, I'll make you famous with my documentary.
He did it with Palin, he did it with Dick Morris, he did it with Michelle Bachman.
He's done it with a wide variety of figures.
In any case, there was a, Andrew was occupying the office space, and I said, who's this Bannon guy?
He said, but Bannon, Steve's okay.
He's just kind of, I said, are you close to him?
He said, no.
I mean, the answer was no.
He was not very close with Steve.
The exaggerated closeness with Steve was created as a mythical aftermath to Andrew's death when Larry Solove was looking for somebody to take over the company and Steve made a strong push for it and Larry decided to make him the chairman of the company.
I don't think that Andrew elevated Steve at Breitbart News.
I think Larry elevated Steve at Breitbart News.
Steve wasn't even working at Breitbart News until Andrew died.
He literally had no job at Breitbart News until after Andrew's death.
Do I think Andrew made an error in judgment by bringing Steve into the fold?
I do.
Do I think that Andrew would have elevated Steve to anything remotely resembling this position?
No.
I think that's absurd.
Prior to the election, you would say that our nation was a train headed for a cliff.
Hillary would greatly increase the speed of the train.
Trump would slightly decrease the speed.
Do you still feel this way?
And if so, what does President Trump need to do to turn the train around?
Well, I think that in one way, he has decreased the speed dramatically.
In one way, he has increased the speed.
So, he has decreased the speed toward which we are heading toward the fiscal cliff.
with his regulatory policies.
What's really going to kill us, in truth, is the entitlement programs.
Those are just going to murder us.
And the entitlement programs are not only not going to go away under Trump, they may grow under Trump.
There's an article today in which Trump was asking why there can't be Medicaid for all.
So, you know, I think that we're still heading toward the cliff.
It's just a lot slower than it would have been and a lot slower than I thought it would be.
In one way, we have elevated the speed of the train, and that is the partisan politicking and the hatred in politics has elevated to such an extent that if Democrats are elected again in the near future, the blowback is going to be ridiculous, right?
The only permanent changes that Trump has made are the courts and the tax cuts.
Everything else can be reversed by the Democrats, and it will be.
And not only will it be, they will go so far to the left that it will be wild.
It will be just insane.
And that's because of the partisanship that has been elevated and promulgated and pushed really, really hard.
Chad says, Hey Ben, I'm a longtime fan.
Have you ever lost a political debate?
On your opinion, would you say your opinion was changed during a debate?
Also, I'm calling BS that you can bench press 200 pounds.
Crowder will back me on this.
I know I can actually bench press 200 pounds.
I can't do it like a ton of times, but I can bench press 200 pounds.
Has my opinion ever been changed during a debate?
Not during a debate, I would say, but there are many debates where people will give me facts that I haven't thought about before, and I'll go up and look them up and see how that changes my opinion.
I would say that there are a couple of areas in my career where I've changed my opinion pretty significantly.
I think legalization of marijuana is one of those, and we talked about that today.
Christopher says, I'm in the military, and with the new policy that will allow transgenders to serve alongside me, I will be forced to use pronouns in which I disagree, including at functions outside of work that will include our families, such as Christmas or holiday parties.
Like you, I don't want my children to be confused.
While I would prefer to sacrifice myself on behalf of my children, I feel like the sacrifice I make every day is enough, and asking me to do what comes along with this beyond what I've conveyed is too much.
Yes, I could avoid these situations, but milestones like me advancing to the next pay grade, I don't want to have to exclude my children.
What should I do, or how would you handle this?
Well, I mean, I'm sorry that these are the rules that the military is pushing.
I really hope that Mattis undoes it.
I hope that Trump undoes it.
And the courts that are attempting to stop this are acting way outside their brief.
I think it's absurd that the government should have any policy cracking down on your basic right to say whether someone is a male or a female.
That's just crazy.
It's just insane.
But if that's the policy of the military, then I can't choose for you what to do.
I would say that we still need men and women serving in the armed forces and that you should use all of your power outside government in order to try and drive a change in policy that will make you freer.
Jeffrey says, Dear Ben, do you think Abraham Lincoln was right to throw away civil liberties like habeas corpus temporarily during the Civil War to save the Constitution and the Union?
Really difficult historical question.
I do wonder if Lincoln actually had to suspend habeas corpus in order to win the Civil War, or whether that was an overkill move by the president during a time of war.
That happens a lot.
I mean, that's not to blame Lincoln or say that Lincoln wasn't making a considered decision in light of the evidence, but in retrospect, there are lots of times during war when we go, virtually every time during war, when we go overboard.
The Patriot Act was overextended during the Iraq War.
The internment of the Japanese during World War II was egregious.
The attempt to prosecute people under the Espionage Act by Woodrow Wilson was egregious.
Every time there's a war, there's a tendency to go overboard in how that war is prosecuted.
And I think that suspension of habeas corpus, difficult for me to believe that was completely necessary for Abraham Lincoln to do.
Okay, one more question.
Final question.
Okay, final question.
Nick says, I'm a 26-year-old conservative who happens to be gay.
I get a lot of crap for being against gay marriage despite being gay.
When asked why, I explain why religion has helped me move to a good place morally over the last five years, and how I stand for what I find morally good.
And I can say from personal experience, the gay lifestyle has been a very negative and immoral one for me.
Then I get told I'm bigoted because I hold religious views in a political light.
Do you know a better way to argue this, and am I wrong for thinking this way?
When do you as a person separate your religious beliefs from politics?
I don't think I can when it is a question of morality.
I don't think you have to separate your religious beliefs from politics, and I think the attempt to do so is foolhardy.
The reality is we live in a Judeo-Christian system that was built on certain values.
Those values are reflected in our politics.
Now, do you have to make an argument that is aside from religious scripture in order to convince people?
Yes.
Is that the area where we should debate?
Yes, because I can't just argue from the Bible to somebody who doesn't believe in the Bible.
It doesn't make any sense, and we're not operating from a common framework of fact.
I think that you can make a very solid case for the opinion that you have, based not on the Bible, but based on public policy, and the value of marriage, and the value of man-woman relationships for the upbringing and raising of children, and serious problems in a certain aspect of, certain types of the gay lifestyle, more promiscuous aspects of gay lifestyle, for example.
I think you can make a fine secular argument against all of those things.
I would recommend that those are the arguments that you make.
As far as the implication that you're a bigot because you hold certain religious views, I would suggest that anyone who calls you a bigot because you hold religious views that don't impact anyone else, those people are the actual bigots in the situation.
Okay, we have reached the end of a nearly endless week.
But don't worry, we'll be back here on Monday, and surely the world will still be on fire, so we will see you then with the fire hose.
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.
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The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.
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