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Jan. 22, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
56:21
Shutdown Showdown | Ep. 458
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Well, looks like that government shutdown is pretty much over.
We'll discuss how it all comes to an end today.
Plus, we'll talk about President Trump, who apparently has some pretty good grounds to shut down the Mueller investigation, or at least some new ones.
And Hollywood can't stop ripping on Melania.
Melania, of all people.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
By the end of last week, I decided that while the rest of the world didn't deserve Disneyland, So I took my children to Disneyland yesterday.
So I'm in a good mood because I got to watch my kids have a really good time, and I got to pawn them off on the grandparents for a few minutes as well.
So it was really wonderful.
We'll get to all of the late breaking news, and there is some that is breaking right now.
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Okay, so Okay, here we are.
Apparently, Mitch McConnell has made a new offer to Democrats on the government shutdown, and they are going to pursue it.
They are going to go for it.
What exactly was his new offer?
So, when last we left, our epic story, our epic story last week, it looked like the Democrats were going to run this government shutdown into the ground.
Their goal here was to make sure that Trump was in the middle of a government shutdown on the first anniversary of his inauguration.
Their outside goal may have been to make this thing last beyond the inauguration, beyond the State of the Union address, so that Trump would actually have to speak about the State of the Union in the middle of a government shutdown.
That looks like that's about to end.
And when I say about to end, I mean like right now as we are recording this show, it looks like they're about to take a vote that will end the government shutdown, which lasted All in all, three days, two and a half days.
And that comes to an end as Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, offers the Democrats virtually nothing.
He says, we will have a short-term CR, a continuing resolution that funds the government through February 8th.
So it takes us past the State of the Union address.
And he says, before we get there, we will have a vote on DACA.
So we'll try another three weeks to come up with a vote on DACA.
If not, then I guess we'll have another government shutdown on February 8th when Democrats try to attach DACA legislation to the government budget, to the continuing resolution.
Remember, that's how this whole thing went down in the first place.
We needed to fund the government.
The Democrats said, we're not going to fund the government unless you give us DACA, unless you give us Obama's executive amnesty and a shrine in law.
Republicans said, we're not going to do that unless you give us some concessions.
Democrats said no.
And then we went into this government shutdown that started Friday night and is over by Monday morning.
So it really is not even worth the time.
Here was Chuck Schumer last week blaming Trump for it, suggesting that it was all Trump's fault this government shut down.
I love the shutdown clock on CNN.
I came back online Saturday night, but when I left for Sabbath, The government had not yet shut down.
I came back on Saturday night, and lo and behold, everything was the same.
Like literally all of the things were the same.
No one's check had not gone out.
You have to wait until the first of the month for people's checks to not go out.
People were still going to receive their social security.
The government was still going to collect all of its revenue.
The government was going to continue to function.
90% of the government continues to function during a government shutdown.
88 to 90% of the government continues to function as essential services during a government shutdown.
And yet we were supposed to believe, look at that counter on CNN, that this was the end of the world.
Right?
Oh my God, we're counting down to Armageddon.
The asteroid is finally going to hit Earth.
Here is Chuck Schumer blaming Trump for it, although Trump really had little to do with it, the Senate Minority Leader, who thought that he was going to get a big win out of this.
Now, it's possible Schumer can still get a win out of this if Mitch McConnell then makes a bad DACA deal.
He didn't say, it was really the threat of my government shutdown that forced the Republicans into a bad DACA deal.
They didn't want to redo this in February.
So a lot depends on what comes next.
But here is Senate Minority Leader Schumer going after Trump.
Americans know why the dysfunction is occurring.
A dysfunctional president.
Hence, we are in a Trump shutdown.
And party leaders who won't act without him.
Only President Trump can end it.
We Democrats are at the table, ready to negotiate.
The President needs to pull up a chair and end this shutdown.
Okay, so the President did not, in fact, have to pull up a chair and end the shutdown.
Chuck Schumer ended the shutdown.
The White House was doing a pretty good job of undermining the Democratic claims on this.
The Democrats were basically making two claims.
One, Republicans are responsible for the shutdown.
Two, we have to shut down the government to get DACA.
Those claims are not coherent.
You cannot claim both, right?
They are sort of in conflict with one another.
Anytime there's a government shutdown that one party is responsible for, and in this case it was the Democrats who were filibustering, right?
The Republicans had the votes to get past the government shutdown to fund a continuing resolution.
Democrats were forcing that bar to go up to 60 votes as opposed to 51 in the Senate through use of the filibuster.
You can't argue, we're shutting down the government because it's so important to shut down the government, and also it's the other side's fault the government is shutting down.
Because message number one, we're shutting down the government for this other priority, suggests the government shutdown is less important than the other priority.
Message number two, it's your fault, suggests the government shutdown is a terrible thing and should never happen in any case.
So, yeah, a stupid move by the Democrats.
Here was the White House comment line.
The White House did something clever.
When you call the White House comment line, no one picks up the phone.
No one picked up the phone before, but now they left an outgoing message saying, the reason we're not here is because Democrats shut down the government.
Unfortunately, we cannot answer your call today because Congressional Democrats are holding government funding, including funding for our troops and other national security priorities, hostage to an unrelated immigration debate.
Due to this obstruction, the government is shut down.
Okay, I love that.
I have to admit, I really like that.
I think that that is good politics.
I think what the White House is doing by simply messaging outright is smart.
Mike Pence did the same thing.
He was speaking in front of the military, and he was asked about pay to American troops, and here's what he had to say.
You know, I'm sure you're all aware of what's going on in Washington, D.C.
Despite bipartisan support for a budget resolution, a minority in the Senate has decided to play politics with military pay.
But you deserve better.
You and your family shouldn't have to worry for one minute about whether you're going to get paid as you serve in the uniform of the United States.
So know this.
Your president, your vice president, and the American people are not going to put up with it.
Okay, so that was, you know, all of this is smart politicking by the White House.
The brutal, the most brutal politicking came courtesy of Trump himself.
So, the Trump administration released an ad accusing Democrats of being complicit in all murders by illegal immigrants, basically, suggesting that the Democrats are upholding the rights of illegal immigrants to stay in the country over funding of our military, and then going even further.
President Trump is right.
Build the wall.
Deport criminals.
Stop illegal immigration now.
Democrats who stand in our way will be complicit in every murder committed by illegal immigrants.
President Trump will fix our border and keep our families safe.
OK, so this is paid for by Trump for president.
So this is his re-election campaign, and he's running a full ad basically saying, side with illegal immigrants, don't side with illegal immigrants, side with members of our military, side with the people who need to be funded by the budget.
This is hardcore politicking, but I kind of like it.
I'll admit it.
People get very uptight about the Willie Horton ad, which was taken out against Michael Dukakis, who allowed a guy on furlough who then went out, Willie Horton, and killed William Horton, I guess, and then killed a couple of people, is my understanding.
And there was an ad that was quite brutal and it really hurt Michael Dukakis.
People are saying this ad is too much.
I don't see what's politically stupid about the ad.
Most Americans agree with this.
They don't want Democrats Standing up for illegal immigrants in the country for no reason.
They're not up for that.
And the idea of Democrats siding with illegal immigrants over American citizens, I think, strikes them as weird.
That's why, you know, Paul Ryan came out, he said he didn't think that this ad was necessarily productive, but it was productive.
I mean, it actually did help force the Democrats into a corner.
They were not winning this government shutdown, at least in terms of the public debate.
Well, they're certainly not helping us keep the government open.
They're certainly not helping us get into a solution on immigration.
When you shut down the government and stop negotiating on immigration reform, they're complicit with not getting things done.
I'm not going to comment on that.
I just saw that.
I don't know if that's necessarily productive.
It's no secret the president has strong views on immigration.
But what is not productive is a pointless government shutdown that the Senate Democrats have foisted on this country.
OK, so, you know, I disagree with Ryan here.
I think it was productive.
During the government shutdown, you've got to bring the bricks and you've got to hit each other with them.
I mean, that's basically what Obama did during the last government shutdown.
Now, Trump did—I think the White House did a fine job handling this.
What comes next is going to be questionable, because, again, Mitch McConnell has offered a deal.
So I'm going to talk about that deal in one second and what has to happen here, because now the onus is sort of on Trump.
It'll be interesting to see This is the first time that Republicans are sort of going to be divided on politics on any matter of serious consequence.
They were divided on Obamacare repeal.
There was confusion.
I think that there may be similar confusion, I guess, the second time.
There may be similar confusion over immigration.
I'll explain that in just a second.
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Okay, so speaking of the Republicans being confused on this, what comes next after the So, as I say, Mitch McConnell has promised that there will be a vote on immigration, right?
That there will be a vote on immigration at some point here.
Before February 8th.
But what does that actually look like?
So, the only deal that is currently on the table, the only deal that is currently being discussed is a bill from Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina.
And it would, according to The Hill, offer a pathway to citizenship for so-called dreamers and permission to stay in the country for their parents.
And what would Republicans get in return for basically legalizing?
This could be up to 8 million people.
They'd get $2 billion in border security funding.
Can be a giant fail of a bill.
A giant fail.
There'll be no serious changes to the visa diversity lottery.
There'll be no serious changes to the chain migration laws.
There'll be no serious changes to immigration.
Basically, it'll be Trump caving on DACA, knowing the deadline is coming up in March, and knowing that another deadline is coming up in terms of the continuing resolution as of February 8th.
Now, the White House opposes that deal.
They say 8 million illegal immigrants could be allowed to stay.
This is according to Daily Wire.
Graham, meanwhile, is attacking the special adviser to President Trump.
So Trump is being torn, I think, within his administration a little bit over this particular issue.
Lindsey Graham, of course, is the most dovish of all Republicans on immigration.
He says that Stephen Miller, who's one of the president's special advisers on immigration, is undermining the deal.
I have to say, I know Stephen.
I know him, I wouldn't say, like, really, really well, but I know Stephen relatively well.
There was a dinner that I was at in 2014, and the dinner was Jeff Sessions, Ann Coulter, Stephen Miller, me, and, like, one other guy.
And we were just sitting around talking immigration deep into the night.
And Miller and Coulter were very much on the same page.
Stephen and Ann are friends, I believe.
And Stephen is a wonk on immigration.
He's also incredibly hard-line on immigration.
He's also in the presidency on immigration.
As long as Stephen Miller is in charge of negotiating immigration, we're going nowhere.
even three years ago.
Lindsey Graham is very upset with Stephen Miller and he lashed out at him over the fact that Miller and the Trump administration are putting a crimp in his plans with regard to this immigration shutdown.
As long as Stephen Miller's in charge of negotiating immigration, we're going nowhere.
He's been an outlier for years.
OK, so the truth is that Miller is a very hardcore guy on immigration, but Graham is also an outlier.
He's much more dovish than the rest of the party.
This is just his latest and greatest attempt to move toward amnesty.
The White House is firing back on Graham directly.
Hogan Gidley said, quote, as long as Senator Graham chooses to support legislation that sides with people in this country illegally and unlawfully instead of our own American citizens, we're going nowhere.
He's been an outlier for years.
So this sets up the conflict.
Right, this sets up the conflict, because Democrats are going to offer some sort of pittance in exchange for DACA.
Gutierrez, I think this is, I'm trying to remember, Luis Gutierrez, a Democrat of Illinois, he came out and he said about the government shutdown, but he's really talking about DACA, that maybe we'll give Trump a little bit of funding for his wall.
If that's what we have to do in order to make sure that the dreamers stay, then fine.
Any deal approved by Luis Gutierrez is a garbage deal.
Okay, that's the rule of thumb.
Luis Gutierrez is the most dovish member of Congress on immigration, and particularly illegal immigration.
Here's what he had to say.
Look, I think the wall is a monumental waste of taxpayers' money.
And it's to build a monument to stupidity, and it's just idiotic.
Having said that, if that's what it's going to take in order to put 800,000 young men and women in this country, Dreamers, and put them in a safe place, and put them on a course to full integration in our society, if that's What the hostage takers of the dreamers, if that's their ransom call, I say pay it.
Okay, so if he's saying, pay off the wall, give him a couple billion bucks for the wall, and then we'll get the dreamers in, that's a deal that no Republican should take.
Again, this is a great litmus test.
Anytime Luis Gutierrez is for something, you run the other way.
You just run the other way.
And one of the problems here is that for President Trump, when it comes to negotiation, he has proved not to be particularly adept at negotiation with Democrats.
Remember, he signed off on a budget deal last year.
He undermined Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and went far more dovish on immigration, I mean, on the budget, than his fellow Republicans would have had him do.
He got Republicans almost in trouble on this government shutdown.
Like, he tweeted out over the weekend this, right?
Here's what he tweeted, quote, Great to see how hard Republicans are fighting for our military and safety at the border.
The Dems just want illegal immigrants to pour into our nation unchecked.
If stalemate continues, Republicans should go to 51% nuclear option and vote on real long-term budget, no continuing resolutions.
This is stupid strategy, what he was doing in the middle here.
The whole point was to blame Democrats for the shutdown, not to put the onus on Republicans to end the filibuster by going to the nuclear option, which, of course, would grant Democrats basically the precedent to do the exact same thing when they get into power again, which eventually they will.
I mean, the chances that Republicans rule forever are extraordinarily low.
I would say even chances that Republicans rule in the midterms are diminished.
So, you know, Trump is not great at negotiations.
I mean, this is the dirty little secret.
Trump is good at what he's good at—signing things, saying stuff.
Trump is not great when it comes to these negotiations in Congress, and so he should really stay out of them.
But now, it looks like there's a divide in the Republican side of the alley.
You've got the Republican doves on immigration, and Mitch McConnell has pledged to give a vote.
So what if the only bill that comes up is Graham's bill?
What do the Republicans in the House do?
Do they stymie it?
Do the Republicans in the House turn down the Graham Bill?
Do they fight against the Graham Bill?
Do they say, we'll go to another government shutdown?
And then the Democrats say, hey, listen, the Republicans and we voted for a bill that would have averted the government shutdown, and you guys wouldn't do it.
Do Republicans have the stones to do that in the House after the Senate passes something?
And then, does Trump have the capacity to actually veto something?
And that's the big question here.
Trump has never had to use his veto pen.
Grover Norquist, during the election cycle, made the suggestion that Trump's presidency was going to essentially be an auto pen, that Republicans would put up whatever they want in front of him and he would sign it.
And so far, that's been exactly the case.
Trump hasn't had to veto anything because he has a Republican Congress.
But what happens when his supposedly cherished priorities on immigration run up against the reality that a lot of Republicans disagree with him?
Is he going to veto such a bill?
Is his tough talk anything but tough talk?
Or is it just going to be that he lets it go past?
Now, he's made signals in the past that he's going to sign anything Congress puts in front of him, including a bad DACA deal.
If he does that, he'll lose a lot of his base, at least on immigration.
I don't think that a huge percentage will care, but the Ann Coulters, Mickey Causses of the world, they'll be very upset, obviously.
And there are going to be a lot of people who feel like he betrayed them if, after all of this hubbub over Obama's executive amnesty, Republicans Republican Congress and a Republican president re-enshrine it in favor of $2 billion in increased border security.
The urgency is growing.
I mean, there's a report today There's a report today that the border wall prototypes have been sitting there in the desert doing nothing, right?
We have a bunch of prototypes that have been sitting there in the desert.
And meanwhile, there's been a major surge.
There's been a major surge in illegal immigration.
And it continues to grow.
Because the economy is doing better.
This is how it always works, by the way.
Obama got a lot of credit for diminished illegal immigration.
That was not because of Obama.
That was because the economy was not very good under Obama for most of his tenure.
It was only at the end it started to pick up in any real way.
In the last year, of course, it's really been booming, so people are pouring into the country.
Mexico is not doing as well, so a lot of people are crossing the border illegally.
In December, U.S.
Border Patrol agents, according to Breitbart, apprehended almost 30,000 illegal immigrants trying to cross into the country between ports of entry.
That would be where the border wall is.
The idea that Republicans are going to cave on anything, but they may not get a full border wall, they may not get an end to diversity visa lottery, the idea that they may not get an end to chain migration.
It speaks to the fact that Trump may not have any serious principles.
This is going to be a real problem for him.
It's a serious issue.
It's a serious problem.
So, you know, I think that This is going to be Trump's really first test.
He hasn't been tested yet.
His first test is going to be, what if Congress disagrees with him?
What if Congress decides that they are not going to go along with his hardcore Stephen Miller immigration plan?
Instead, they're going to go along with Lindsey Graham.
It's going to open up some serious questions inside the Republican Party.
And that cannot be good for President Trump.
So while the government shutdown is a loss for Schumer, as it currently stands, while the government shutdown does not look like it's a big win for Democrats on this, it looks like they're going down in flames, frankly.
With all of that said, it depends on what comes next.
The fact is that the polling for Democrats has been bad.
There's a late poll that was coming out in the last two weeks that showed—well, last week, actually—that showed that Republicans have been picking up serious ground in the congressional polling.
It used to be Democrats plus 18 just two months ago.
Now it was Democrats plus 7.
That's a major shift in favor of Republicans.
That's because of the tax cuts.
It's also because Chuck Schumer is doing a bad job.
The last thing Democrats want is another one of these government shutdowns.
Republicans do have some leverage here.
So I'm encouraging Republicans, do not cave.
Do not cave.
If Democrats shut down the government again, they shut down the government again.
But do not give them a bill in the Senate that's going to be something they can't get past the House and get past President Trump.
You need to go with Trump's agenda here.
At least you need to go with what Trump's stated agenda was here, because caving, preemptively, is really, really foolish.
So, here we go.
Let's move on to the Mueller investigation, which has become more and more of a debacle over time.
More news that just is not good for the Mueller investigation.
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Okay, so this is actually big news.
It's breaking over the weekend.
Representative Jim Jordan from Ohio, he's going to be on Facebook Live with us a little bit later today because he wants to sort of give us the update on what's going on in the Mueller investigation.
There are a couple of pieces of breaking news that are quite crazy with regard to the Mueller investigation.
A lot of coincidences piling up with regard to the Mueller investigation and how it was conducted.
So, you recall, a lot of them come down to this one guy.
Peter Strozok.
It's spelled S-T-R-Z-O-K.
I have no idea how to pronounce this.
I'll just pronounce it Schrock.
I'll just pronounce it differently every time and make fun of his name.
In any case, this guy is an FBI agent.
He was having an affair with another FBI agent named Lisa Page.
They were both working on the Trump-Russia probe.
So we know that Strzok was involved in the Hillary Clinton email investigation.
We know he had been involved in launching the Trump investigation.
And we know that he was staffed on it as well.
Now, we also know that Strzok texted Page on August 15, 2016 regarding Trump, quote, I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe's office that there's no way he gets elected, but I'm afraid we can't take that risk.
It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40.
Which makes it sound a lot like the Trump collusion investigation could be a way of stopping Trump's candidacy, right?
It's an insurance policy against stopping Trump from becoming president.
Now we learned that Stroke and Page send each other messages suggesting they knew before the FBI had reported to then Attorney General Loretta Lynch that Clinton was going to be exonerated.
On July 1, 2016, you recall Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced she'd do whatever FBI Director Comey told her to do.
That announcement followed a tarmac meeting in Arizona between Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton.
That day, Stroke texted Page, quote, She's not supposed to know no charges will be brought.
Right?
The FBI was not supposed to be telling the DOJ what their judgment on this case was until the judgment was out.
But apparently Comey and the rest of the FBI had been regularly informing the Obama DOJ that Hillary would not be prosecuted, which is super corrupt.
And the coincidences don't stop there.
This is a crazy story.
This is the most insane coincidence of all.
So, something like 400 pages of text messages between FBI agents have been delivered to the Senate Oversight Committee.
Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, he announced on Monday that the FBI had somehow failed to deliver months of text between Stroke and Page.
Text beginning at December 14th, 2016, ending May 17th, 2017.
What happened that day?
That's the exact day that Mueller was appointed to head the investigation.
So in other words, all text before Mueller took over the investigation from December to May were deleted.
The FBI says they were lost in a technical glitch.
How do you lose just the text that we need?
How do you lose precisely the text that determined the shaping of that Russia collusion investigation?
During that period of time, you had Trump's inauguration, all of the activity with Mike Flynn, Mike Flynn's firing, the Manafort—I believe the Manafort investigation ran into high gear—the firing of James Comey.
All of this stuff was happening in that time, and we have none of the texts between Stroke and Carter Page?
None of them?
So, Representative Jordan has called for a second special counsel to investigate the first special counsel now.
He tweeted out earlier today that it was time for some sort of investigation.
First, the IRS destroyed emails pivotal to our investigation of their political targeting.
Now the FBI, quote unquote, failed to preserve tax between Peter Stroke and Lisa Page following the 2016 election.
The time for a second special counsel is now.
Well, yes.
Yes, I believe that it is.
I believe that it is.
I mean, just for the sake of my own peace of mind and for the sake of the peace of mind of the American people, there's a lot of suspicion of this investigation.
Now, there would have been anyway, but that suspicion is really high, particularly after the so-called memo that people want released that was supposed to shed light on how the FISA warrant was originally garnered from the Obama administration to check out Carter Page.
And now you have all these deleted FBI texts and you have these texts between Stroke and Page and Lisa Page, no relation to Carter, suggesting that there was a sort of conspiracy afoot in all of this.
It's just, it's all insane.
I mean, how was this investigation run this badly?
Now Mueller wasn't there for all of this, right?
He fired Lisa Page and he fired Peter Stroke upon taking the office.
That has nothing to do with Mueller, but you have sort of a fruit of the poisonous tree thing going on.
Now in law, there's something called fruit of the poisonous tree.
Basically the idea is that if I break into your house illegally, I'm the police.
I break into your house illegally and I find evidence that you murdered someone.
I can't use that evidence in court because it's fruit of the poisonous tree.
Because I broke the law in order to obtain the evidence.
Well, the same thing sort of holds true with regard to this investigation.
If the investigation was launched on the basis that there was a Democratic op-ed research file from Fusion GPS that was used for political reasons by the FBI to target Carter Page and therefore the Trump campaign, and if it turns out that separate from that, the FBI was exonerating Hillary Clinton for political reasons at the same time they were investigating Trump, and if it turns out that separate from that, There are members of the FBI who are texting each other that the Trump collusion investigation was actually a way to prevent Trump from becoming president.
And if after that it turns out that the FBI purposefully deleted months of texts between two of their key agents in all of this, I think the American people have a right to know, and the American people might have some serious questions.
All of this calls into serious question our faith in our institutions.
It was our lack of faith—this is deeply troubling to me—the lack of faith in our institutions that already exists.
is deep and abiding.
It's a serious, serious problem.
The lack of faith in our institutions is what led to the rise of Donald Trump.
It's what led to, it's frankly what's led to the growth of government because people, instead of looking at the institutions and figuring those institutions are corrupt, take all the power away from them, instead they say, well, if we just had a guy who will break all the rules and use the power of those institutions to reinstall virtue, everything will be great.
Unfortunately, the human tendency is not toward liberty when it comes to misuse of institutions.
It's toward the belief that those institutions can be corrected if they have the proper leadership.
The founders disagreed, but that's unfortunately how most people think.
None of this is good, right?
You want institutions that are worthy of our trust.
Right now, I'm not sure the FBI is completely worthy of our trust, if what we're hearing is true.
The Obama DOJ certainly was not worthy of our trust.
And for all the flack that Jeff Sessions has gotten, Jeff Sessions' DOJ has operated much more along the lines of law than the Obama DOJ has.
I mean, he literally had the sitting Attorney General of the United States calling himself the President of the United States' wingman.
That is not exactly what we want from the head of the DOJ and the chief law enforcement officer in the country.
All these institutions now need a thorough cleansing, top to bottom.
They all need to feel clean to the American people.
I don't know if Trump is capable of doing that, by the way.
It may be left up to the next president, because Trump is so politicized, because his presidency is so despised by so many.
Anything he does is not going to be seen as cleaning house, except by members of his base and maybe some Republicans.
But that said, Another oversight investigation of this investigation may be necessary.
The Mueller investigation itself may be fatally flawed at this point.
We'll have to see what comes out from it.
Democrats are hoping there's a kill shot in there.
If there is no kill shot, then this is going to be seen, I think, Half-rightly, as Trump says, is one of the greater political witch hunts in modern American political history.
If nothing major comes out of this and went on for a year, and it was Democrats in the media propping up this nonsense, then there's going to be hell to pay.
There will be political hell to pay.
And Democrats will have made a huge, huge mistake.
One that, in its inception, goes back again, as always, to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
OK, so in just a minute, I want to talk about the Women's March that happened over the weekend.
I want to talk about the pro-life march that happened over the weekend.
Things I like, things I hate, a Federalist paper.
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So as we speak right now, it's worth noting that Dick Durbin is thanking Democratic senators for shutting down the government over DACA.
He's trying to make excuses for why he led them into this suicide strategy, into this box canyon of politics.
He said, you stuck your necks out, and I'm going to go on record, even if it's hard to explain back home.
That's code for it's hard to explain back home, and we made a big mistake here.
And then he dumped on Trump a lot and talked about how Trump was really bad.
But Democrats obviously lost on this one.
They all lost.
Luis Gutierrez has tweeted out, quote, So now he's saying that he's very angry that Republicans are going to stick to Republican principles, as well they should.
As well they should.
build the wall if that's what it takes.
But now that we have offered the wall, they want cuts to legal immigration.
So now he's saying that he's very angry that Republicans are going to stick to Republican principles as well they should, as well they should.
So we'll see how all of this plays out and whether the Republicans have the stomach to actually stand up for all of this.
So I guess that the next CR, the next continuing resolution date is February 8th.
So, if you enjoyed this government shutdown, you'll get government shutdown 2, the revenge, on February 8th, unless there's some sort of deal that gets cut.
Okay, so, meanwhile, over the weekend, there were a couple of big marches.
One was the pro-life march.
The other was the women's march.
The Pro-Life March is one of the great events that happens every year.
Hundreds of thousands of people show up in Washington, D.C.
to protest the Roe v. Wade decision.
For those who don't know, the Roe v. Wade decision is legitimately one of the worst judicial decisions in the history of the United States.
It stands up alongside Dred Scott as an egregious violation of human rights, as well as a breach of constitutional protocol.
There is nothing in the Constitution.
Nothing.
Zero things about your right to kill your own baby.
Nothing.
In fact, there's a good case to be made that the Constitution of the United States, which is dedicated to equal protection of the laws, that that should apply to unborn children.
That the idea that you should be able to kill a child for convenience is just plainly insane.
This is a case the pro-life movement makes.
They say the 14th Amendment guaranteeing equal protection of the laws should apply to unborn children.
The Roe v. Wade decision, which is based on a bunch of pseudoscience about what fetal development looks like and when babies are viable and all of this stuff.
It's sheer nonsense.
It's been garbage forever.
It's based on a series of cases that established a non-existent right to privacy.
Now, there is a right against unreasonable search and seizure in the Constitution of the United States.
That is not the same thing as a right to privacy.
You do not have a blanket right to privacy, certainly not one that extends to you doing something as non-private as going out to a doctor and having that doctor perform a surgery on you that kills a baby.
That is not a private act.
Your medical records may be private, and they're guarded against government unreasonable search and seizure.
But if you're acting on a third party, under libertarian principles, libertarians can take a pro-life position here.
If that baby is a baby, you do not get to harm it, just as if I am a person, you do not get to harm me.
The latter is probably more questionable than the former.
So the fact that, as far as the humanity of the people involved, the fact is that the pro-life march, it's demonstrative of the fact that there are a lot of people in the United States who still care about civil rights.
It's so funny, the media do this routine where they talk about the great civil rights issues of our time.
Now they're always trying to Make things akin, to liken, make analogies between race and women's issues, or race and gay issues, or race and transgender issues.
None of these comparisons hold.
Women are not treated remotely like black people were treated in the United States today.
Gay people are not treated remotely like black people were treated in the United States Also, the idea that homosexual acts are on the same par as color of skin is inane.
It just logically does not hold to suggest that even if there were government regulation of homosexual activity, which I oppose, by the way.
I'm a libertarian.
I oppose that.
But even if there were, that is not the same thing as regulations on somebody's race.
Race is an immutable characteristic.
Sexual activity is activity.
Your orientation may be immutable.
Maybe.
I mean, there's some scientific evidence that goes both ways, but There's no question that activity is mutable, right?
All activity is mutable.
So it's not quite the same thing as I'm discriminating against you because of the color of your skin.
So that analogy doesn't hold either.
The transgender analogy certainly doesn't hold.
The idea that transgender people in the United States are being treated like black people in the United States or that these two things are akin That the disorder that is gender identity disorder, or gender dysphoria, whatever you wish to call it, that that is akin to being black, is just insane.
Again, there is no manifestation in behavior with regard to being black.
There is manifestation in behavior with regard to transgenderism inherently, so long as you are claiming you are a member of the opposite sex.
In any case, there is one civil rights issue that is very much akin to the civil rights issues that are facing black folks.
And that is the treatment of unborn children as second class citizens, or worse, as chattel.
The truth is that when you're talking about the murder of unborn citizens, what you're talking about is more on par with slavery than it is with Jim Crow.
You're talking about killing.
You're talking about the treatment of people as property.
What you're talking about when you say that a mother has the right to abort her baby for any reason whatsoever is that that baby is her property and she can dispose of it as she will.
The people who are marching in Washington, D.C.
deserve the same respect as civil rights heroes As the media tried to accord to the women's marchers.
I mean, the media have been making this big deal out of women's marchers.
Again, women have never had it better in the history of mankind than they have in the United States today.
They just have not.
Anybody who argues with this knows nothing about world history or about multiculturalism.
They're celebrating cultures very often that hate women, that despise women.
But the Women's Marches nonetheless have been paid honor and tribute by the vast majority of media outlets.
They were given front-page status.
My understanding is that the attendance was way off this year from the Women's Marches last year, because the Women's Marches last year were a coincidence with Trump's inauguration.
Millions of people attended those.
I don't think the Women's Marches this year were anywhere close to that.
What I'm seeing is that, let's see, it looks like they have a list here.
Over at Heavy.com.
So, in New York, it was about 85,000 people, I guess.
That is not close to what it was last year.
In Richmond, Virginia, it was like 1,000 people.
In Chicago, Chicago was the only place where it actually increased.
Apparently, there were 300,000 people who participated in the march.
There were only about 12,000 people in D.C.
Last year, it drew half a million people.
Half a million people.
In L.A., a lot of people showed up.
There were about 700,000 who participated last year.
There were about 500,000 who participated this year.
A lot of bored people who feel like marching on a Sunday.
The weather was good yesterday, so I guess that if you have nothing better to do, I guess you can go and march.
Also, all these women, I mean, they weren't watching the football games, so I guess they left their boyfriends and husbands at home and decided to go march for women's rights while their husbands sat home and ate Cheetos and actually enjoyed themselves.
So, again, the idea that these women are marching for anything material, I'm wondering what exactly they're marching for.
They always say equal pay for equal work.
They've achieved equal pay for equal work.
If they're marching for broader acceptance of opposition to sexual harassment and sexual assault, I don't know what they're marching for, since I'm not sure who is in favor of sexual harassment and sexual assault outside of Hollywood executives and apparently all of the fellow actors of the actresses who are speaking at this march.
Nonetheless, Jessica Chastain appeared on Saturday Night Live to push the women's marches, and here's what she had to say.
But I'm really excited to be here, especially today, because this weekend is the one-year anniversary of the Women's March.
Yes.
And everyone knows women never forget an anniversary.
So today, hundreds of thousands of people were out there for the cause, and they are so, so brave, because it's the worst flu season ever.
God bless them.
I wish I could have been there marching alongside him.
Hey, we'll march with you, Jessica.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm always wearing practical footwear.
Girls, let's tell him what's up You don't own me Don't try to change me in any way You don't own me Don't tie me down Cause I can never stay Okay, is this funny?
Did I miss the part where SNL turned into literally just a fundraiser for Democrats?
It's really, really awful.
Remember, this is on Saturday Night Live, a show that used to be funny at some point, and now we've got a bunch of women who can't sing.
First of all, if you can't sing, don't sing.
Okay, I'm a good violinist, and I don't make my violin playing the centerpiece of what I do, because I'm not at the level of Hilary Hahn, right?
These women cannot sing at all, and yet SNL features them every week singing.
I guess that the Me Too movement means that they also get to sing badly.
But they get to sing more often because, I guess, they're social justice warrior-ing.
Jessica Chastain, by the way, is unbelievably wealthy.
Jessica Chastain made at least a couple of million dollars for The Martian, and people are complaining, oh, Matt Damon made $18 million for The Martian, and Jessica Chastain only made a couple of million bucks for The Martian.
Right, she's in it for like 10 minutes.
Was Jessica Chastain even in The Martian?
I don't even remember her being in it.
The entire movie is Matt Damon on Mars.
That's the entire film.
Of course he made more money.
Also, Matt Damon happens to be something called a box office draw.
Nobody goes to see a Jessica Chastain movie.
No one.
I like Jessica Chastain as an actress.
I think she's good.
But the idea that people went to see Zero Dark Thirty because they were desperate to see Jessica Chastain in a film.
What has Molly's game earned?
I want to look at the earnings for Molly's Game.
Okay, Molly's Game is now out.
So let's look at the box office.
Let's see if we can get some box office stats for that massive hit.
It has now earned $28.1 million.
$78.1 million.
Ms. Sloan, which she also starred in last year, earned a whopping $9.1 million at the box office.
Okay, the last time—I'm going to look up Jessica Chastain's IMDb because whenever people complain about the wage gap in Hollywood, it makes no sense whatsoever.
All of her films that have been successful were successful because everyone else in the film is a box office draw.
Let's just be totally frank about this.
Here are the films that she starred in where she was the leading lady.
Okay?
Woman Walks Ahead.
Never even heard of it.
Zookeeper's Wife.
Earned nothing.
Miss Sloan.
Total box office bomb.
Crimson Peak.
Mmm.
The Martian.
Matt Damon starrer.
Made lots of money.
A Most Violent Year.
Very small film.
It's her and Oscar Isaac.
She's very good in it.
But again, very small film.
Interstellar.
She's not the star of it.
Matthew McConaughey's the star of it.
And it's a Christopher Nolan film, so it made lots of money.
The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby.
Made no money.
Salome.
Mama.
She's Mama in Annabelle.
Okay, but that is not actually, or no, she's Annabelle in the movie Mama, which I've never even heard of.
Zero Dark Thirty, like, these are not big box office draws.
None of them.
Zero of these things are big box office draws, but we're supposed to worry about her wage gap with Matt Damon?
Okay, now I'm gonna read you Matt Damon's IMDb, okay?
Okay, Matt Damon's IMDb.
Here are the films that Matt Damon has starred in over the last few years.
Okay, he was the producer on Jason Bourne, which made a bajillion dollars.
Okay, he was also, let's see, what did he act in?
Oh, so he was in Thor Ragnarok, where he was uncredited.
He was in The Great Wall, which made a bajillion dollars in China.
Jason Bourne made a bajillion dollars.
The Martian, a bajillion dollars.
Interstellar, a bajillion dollars.
Elysium, which is a big budget, but it busted.
The guy's actually a box office draw, and then people are like, oh well, why is she earning less than Matt Damon?
What women are marching for?
If you're marching for we want to be treated equally, then I'm going to treat you equally.
You suck at singing, don't sing ever again on national TV.
Okay?
Let's just start with that.
And also, if you're going to stand for equality, I'd like half of Jessica Chastain's paycheck for every movie that she makes.
Because, my goodness, all these women on SNL, I mean, for the quality—by the way, everyone on SNL should donate their salary to charity given the fact they suck so much lately.
Just awful.
It wasn't, by the way, just Jessica Chastain.
Kirsten Bell, over the weekend there was the SAG Awards, and I haven't seen this movie Three Billboards, which is winning all of the awards.
Have you seen it yet, Mathis?
So we'll have to see it, and I'll give you my opinion after I see it, because I have a feeling I'm not going to like it very much.
That's why I've been holding off on seeing it.
But in any case, Kirsten Bell felt the need to slap at Melania Trump, because why not?
I mean, it's just such a fun thing to do.
Good evening, my friends.
Welcome to the 24th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards.
You know, there has never been a host for this award show before.
Yeah, it's the first time.
First person.
First lady.
Right?
And I honestly never thought that I would grow up to be the first lady, but you know what?
I kind of like it.
I think my first initiative as first lady will be Cyberbullying.
Because I have yet to see any progress made on that problem quite yet.
And I'm looking at you, Tony Hale.
You're a bully.
You guys, he's savage on Twitter.
I'm serious.
So obviously that slapped Melania, who's leading a cyberbullying initiative because President Trump is a bully on Twitter.
Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
A Trump joke.
Yay.
Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Okay, so there's that.
Kristen Bell, by the way, is a massive lib.
She loves to plan, she loves to campaign on behalf of Planned Parenthood.
She's very, very pro-choice and pro-abortion.
Also, I'm going to say something politically incorrect now.
Okay?
When all of these women are pushing Time's Up, and they're pushing Don't Sexually Harass Me, and they're pushing Treat Me the Same as Men, and then Kirsten Bell wears a dress that is cut down to the navel, I'm just suggesting to women that if you want men to treat you in a non-sexualized way, that that may not be the strongest move.
The suggestion is, you can dress however you want, and men still shouldn't treat you in any way other than respectful.
But just as a point of risk allocation, as a point of, you don't want to be treated, you want to be treated less in a certain way, there's certain activities that you can do that will make you treated more in a certain way.
You wear a dress cut down your navel, men are going to look at your dress differently than if you do not wear a dress cut down your navel.
End of story, that's just the way human nature works.
Again, that's not a justification, but it is a hint.
Okay, time for some things I like, and then some things I hate, and then a Federalist paper.
So, things I like.
Over the weekend, I was—I've just started my latest Brandon Sanderson book.
I'm a big fantasy sci-fi fan.
There are not very good—many good fantasy books, is the truth.
Most fantasy books are quite terrible.
There are some pretty good sci-fi books.
There are a lot of good sci-fi books.
Actually, I would suggest that a lot of the books in the Star Wars canon are better than a lot of the sequels that have been made, right?
A lot of the Timothy Zahn books.
I remember reading those when I was younger, and I remember really enjoying those.
I'll have to go back and reread them.
But in any case, one of the better fantasy writers on the scene today, I would say the best, is Brandon Sanderson.
He has his new book out called Oathbringer.
Oathbreaker?
Oathbringer?
I'll check it out.
But in any case, the old trilogy that he wrote that's really good is the Mistborn trilogy.
I believe they're making a series out of this now.
It's really creative, and he does a lot of world building, so the entire basis of it is that there's a certain set of people, a certain set of skilled people, who basically swallow metal and then can use their bodies almost as magnets.
It's very bizarre, but it's really interesting.
It's in an alternate reality, of course.
Brandon Sanderson is a very good writer.
His books are a little over long, but that's just genre specific.
There's not such a thing as a fantasy book that is under long.
Every fantasy book is 700 pages.
It sells by the pound, not even by the page.
But the Mistborn trilogy is really worth reading, so go ahead and check that out.
It's a lot of fun.
Okay, other things that I like.
So, I was ripping on Hollywood earlier, but I will say that the SAG Awards did something correct.
They did something better than the Emmy Awards.
They actually invited some of the women who had been victimized in Me Too, and then they had them speak.
So they had Rosanna Arquette and Marisa Tomei, who paid tribute to the Silencebreakers.
I believe Rosanna Arquette is one of the original women who alleged something.
She had alleged that she was assaulted, I believe, by Harvey Weinstein, if I'm not incorrect.
In any case, they actually invited the women, which was something that the Emmys should have done, and they spoke about it openly, which if Hollywood wants to get past this, they should all do.
And Rosanna, you are one of those voices.
Since you're one of the silence breakers, and we all owe you a debt of gratitude.
I'm here supporting...
Many women.
Asiara Gentle, Hannabella Sciorra, Ashley Judd, Daryl Hannah, Mira Sovino.
So many.
Anthony Rapp.
I'm Anthony Rapp.
Thank you.
Olivia Munn.
All of you.
Thank you.
Okay, so still, the one who never gets mentioned here is Rose McGowan, who got the whole thing started in the first place.
She's still been blackballed by Hollywood, so I guess that she's never going to be thanked from the stage.
But at least they're starting to bring forth the actual woman who did this, as opposed to the posturing from a bunch of women who didn't actually say anything about this stuff for years.
Okay, other things that I like.
So the Eagles beat the Vikings yesterday, which is too bad.
I was rooting for the Vikings, at least insofar as I was rooting, which is not very hard.
This was pretty funny.
So a lot of the Eagles fans had been climbing.
They had an evening with poles over there.
Apparently the Eagles fans, when they win, have been climbing the actual, like, light poles in the city.
But this guy had a different experience with a pole.
He was running after the bus in Philadelphia after the game, and this is the hardest shot that anybody took from the Minnesota defense yesterday.
He's running.
Boom!
Tough actin' to actin'.
Oh!
He just takes one right in the kisser, and he's running, and... Oh!
Hammered.
Wow.
Okay.
Okay, he's running out for the subway, I guess.
There's no way not to laugh at that.
Okay, it's just... He's really picking up speed.
My question is what he was running for.
Like, it's already moving.
You're not gonna, like, stop the bus, or stop the car, and boom!
Okay, if you can't enjoy that, folks, then I guess you just can't enjoy life.
The guy's fine, by the way, at least from what I understand.
Or he's dead, I haven't really checked it out.
But that's it, but that's funny.
The way that's going around the internet, if something bad had happened to the guy, we'd already know about it.
Okay, time for a couple of quick things I hate, and then the Federalist, number 12.
So, things that I hate.
So, what I love about every government shutdown is, while nothing actually changed for nearly all Americans, the media suggested that all would end.
All would die.
End of world.
Okay, so, this is my favorite aspect.
CNN ran a report about how, because of the government shutdown, asteroids could destroy Earth.
I am not kidding.
Like, Bruce Willis would be on break, and he would not be able to actually sacrifice himself in favor of Ben Affleck.
Bad move, by the way.
Never sacrifice yourself in favor of Ben Affleck.
But the idea that the government would be on break and that if something terrible happened, we would all die because Trump and Schumer couldn't come to an agreement over DACA registration or something.
Here's CNN's report about how an asteroid could murder us all in our sleep.
And in space, that same year, for more than two weeks, NASA reportedly stopped monitoring potentially dangerous asteroids.
A big one, by the way, is expected to brush by Earth on February 4th.
Okay, by the idea, by the way, that a big one is about to brush by Earth by February 4th, I mean, this one is going to miss us by a bajillion miles, okay?
This asteroid is not going to come close to hitting the—it's not going to come close to hitting the Earth.
And if it were, I promise you that the government would try to do its best about it.
We wouldn't all just die.
We wouldn't have, like, a dinosaur-level extinction event because there was a government shutdown for three days.
It's just ridiculous.
It's just ridiculous.
It's not going to come particularly close.
Like, it misses us by a huge margin, actually.
It misses us by a huge swath.
So, it's supposed to fly safely past the Earth on February 4th.
There have been a bunch of asteroids that have been flying past us, but missing us by a fair warning.
It's missing us by, oh my goodness.
And they have a chart here on how much it's missing us by.
And the answer is 2.6 million miles.
So, a lot.
A lot.
OK, so, other things that I hate.
Jimmy Kimmel, again, does not understand government shutdowns, and he's just—all he does now is take talking points from Chuck Schumer.
Again, I don't understand why Hollywood feels the need to do this, but the more they do, the better it is for Trump, so I guess good for them.
Keep it going.
You're going to win Republicans to Congress again.
Here's Jimmy Kimmel deciding that he needs to speak out of politics again because, obviously, me shellacking him over his ignorance the other nine times hasn't done anything.
Hello, I'd like a cappuccino, please.
OK, great.
That's one cappuccino and one giant bag of horse s**t. But I don't want a bag of horse s**t. Yeah, it's kind of a two-for-one thing.
If you want the cappuccino, you also have to pay for a giant bag of horse s**t. But what if I just want the cappuccino?
Whoa, buddy.
You start making demands like that, I will shut down this entire coffee establishment.
You'll shut down the store you work at?
Yeah.
It's absurd.
Your job is to sell coffee.
Okay.
And scene.
Okay, so that's what's happening.
Okay, that is not, in fact, what is happening.
The Republicans offered a separate chip bill back in December.
Democrats shot it down because Democrats do not want spending offsets.
Republicans included full funding for six years for the chip bill.
In this current continuing resolution, Democrats tried to shut it down anyway.
Okay, so that's not what's happening.
This happens every time there's a government shutdown.
Every time there's a government shutdown, they put forward a continuing resolution with a lot of goodies in it to make the other side look bad.
That's just the way that it goes.
Okay, so that is what it is.
All right, time for a quick analysis of the Federalist No.
12.
So we go through a Federalist paper every week.
We've gone through 11 of them already, so we are now at Federalist No.
12.
This is Alexander Hamilton talking about why a federal government, why a strong, nationalized government is going to be able to gather more revenue than state governments would be able to be.
First, Hamilton gives a really good defense of capitalism.
Here's what he says.
It says, quote, it has been found in various countries that in proportion as commerce has flourished, land has risen in value.
And how could it have happened otherwise?
Could that which procures a freer event for the products of the earth, which furnishes new incitements to the cultivation of land, which is the most powerful instrument in increasing the quantity of money in a state, could that in fine, which is faithful handmaid of labor and industry in every shape, fail to augment that article, which is the prolific parent of far the greatest part of objects upon which which is the prolific parent of far the greatest part of objects That's complicated language for saying it makes land more valuable and the economy is good.
Believe it or not, this was not actually common knowledge.
Back at the time Hamilton was writing this, he's read Adam Smith.
Some of the other founders had not.
He says that commerce creates revenue to the federal government.
He says that he recommends no direct taxation.
Now, what's fascinating is that the founders believed that the government would not have the power to actually levy an income tax.
There would be no direct taxation.
Instead, they were forced to revert to what they called excise taxes, which were basically sales taxes, as well as tariffs.
They spoke out in favor of tariffs in a different way than they would today, because commerce today is so much easier.
So, it was a lot easier to control tariffs than it would be today, considering that the United States had essentially one long border.
And also, the United States was three weeks' ride from any other place on Earth that was capable of trading with it, essentially.
He recommended excise taxes and tariffs.
He says it's evident we must a long time depend for the means of revenue chiefly on such duties.
In most parts, excises must be confined within a narrow compass.
The genius of the people will ill-brook the inquisitive and peremptory spirit of excise laws.
He says we could try to do sales taxes.
People are going to avoid it.
He says the pockets of farmers, on the other hand, will reluctantly yield but scanty supplies in the unwelcome shape of impositions on their houses.
So he says a land tax probably won't do it either, especially because there's so much land here for people to settle.
And he says personal property is too precarious and so we won't be able to do that either.
A lot of the reason that they did tariffs in the early days of the United States is because it was impossible to gather taxes any other way, not because they were in favor of tariffs as a principle.
This is an important point because a lot of people today will suggest that tariffs were something favored by the founders as good trade policy.
That's not true.
The founders were not all in favor of tariffs.
In fact, they only were using tariffs because they had no other available option for gathering tax revenues.
Right.
He suggests that apparently there was a 3% tariff essentially.
There was a 15% tariff in Britain and there was a higher tariff in France and a higher tariff even in Britain.
He wanted a 9% tariff and suggested beginning with an alcohol tax on tariffing alcohol that was coming into the United States.
So that gives you a little bit of background on the founding ideology with regard to taxation.
Which was a very light footstep.
And that's why when people talk about how the Founding Fathers would be anti-government shutdown, the Founding Fathers would not care at all.
The Founding Fathers would look at our tax rates and go, are you out of your damn minds?
Are you guys crazy?
Are you crazy?
And Hamilton sort of does that in backhanded fashion in Federalist 12.
OK.
We'll be back here tomorrow with the full review of the Democrats caving on the government shutdown.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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