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Feb. 8, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
55:03
A Black Eye For The Trump Administration | Ep. 471
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A top Trump advisor enmeshed in allegations of wife beating, the Republicans decide to blow out the budget, as always, and Democratic women decide that they have to get naked to fight the patriarchy, or something.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
Oh, we have so many great stories to get to.
Apparently coin tosses are racist.
I will hope to get to that a little bit later in the program as well.
There's also a woman who's suggesting that women only read books by women.
So I guess that they should all read Fifty Shades of Grey and not Tolstoy, because the patriarchy or some such.
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Okay, so let's get into something that is not good.
So now we have to get serious because there's actually a terrible, terrible story.
So it turns out that one of Trump's top aides, a guy named Rob Porter, nobody's ever heard of Rob Porter.
He's just one of these guys who hangs around the president.
I know some folks in the White House, they say that Rob Porter was indeed very close to the president.
Obviously, that is true.
He's in half of the pictures with the president.
And apparently, Rob Porter is not good to his ladies.
So his first ex-wife, he has, I guess, two ex-wives is the idea?
I don't know what it is about Trump and the people who surround him or who are his fans, but there are a lot of thrice-married people—or at least twice-married people, twice-divorced people—who surround President Trump.
This one is actually not on Trump.
Rob Porter was an aide to General John Kelly.
He's seen as sort of his right hand, helping to ensure that the wrong people don't get into the Oval Office to talk to the President of the United States.
Well, apparently, his first ex-wife is—accused Rob Porter of spousal abuse.
And there is a picture of this.
Apparently, his first ex-wife is—her name is Colby Holderness.
And she spoke on the record to DailyMail.com about their five-year marriage.
Apparently, they met at their Mormon church in 2000 while they were in college.
She says that he was never physically abusive until our honeymoon, and that floored me.
And then she said, quote, he would throw me down on the bed, put his full body weight on top of me, then grind a knee or elbow into my body, expressing rage.
She says the violence escalated to the point where Porter was choking her, quote, it was not hard enough for me to pass out, but it was scary, humiliating, and dehumanizing.
And here is a picture that she posted of herself.
Apparently, he took the picture.
He says, I took the picture.
She says, right, I guilted him into taking the picture.
So that is a shiner right there.
That is not good stuff.
Just horrifying.
And then there is Jennifer Willoughby.
Jennifer Willoughby is Porter's second ex-wife, who shared the story of her abusive marriage with DailyMail.com.
I believe we actually have video of her talking about her abusive marriage to Rob Porter, this top Trump aide.
I did know that my marriage was bad.
I knew that it wasn't healthy, that the fights and the verbal and emotional abuse that I was enduring was not quote-unquote normal.
But I don't think that I had yet put myself in the category of someone whose husband laid hands on her until that moment.
Rob and I were married in November of 2009.
It was a very quick courtship and engagement.
Within a matter of a couple of weeks after being married, I was aware of his temper.
OK, and his temper apparently escalated all the way up to apparently dragging her wet and naked out of the shower and verbally abusing her, calling her an effing bee.
The White House originally gave Porter its full support.
By the way, I believe there's an ex-girlfriend now who's come out and also accused him of this sort of activity, which is just wonderful.
The White House originally came out and defended Rob Porter.
They said that They didn't see anything, you know, they didn't see anything that was worthy of firing him over.
And then the picture came out of the black guy and suddenly they have shifted their tune.
So Porter said in his original statement, quote, these outrageous allegations are simply false.
I took the photos given to the media nearly 15 years ago and the reality behind them is nowhere close to what is being described.
I'd like to hear, was she hit in the face by a door?
Did she do that with makeup?
Like, what happened?
I've been transparent and truthful about these vile claims, but I will not further engage publicly with a coordinated smear campaign.
My commitment to public service speaks for itself.
I've always put duty to country first and treated others with respect.
I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to have served in the Trump administration and will seek to ensure a smooth transition when I leave the White House.
Apparently, originally, the answer from John Kelly was that he came to the defense.
Originally, John Kelly's statement was that he stood by Porter.
I'm trying to find the actual text.
So, let's see.
Apparently, Kelly's original statement stated, quote, that Rob Porter is a man of true integrity and honor, and I can't say enough good things about him.
He is a friend, a confront, and a trusted professional.
I am proud to serve alongside him.
That's the quote that was circulating online as of last night.
Before Colby Holderness's black eye came out.
Then, of course, they shifted tune, and they decided that things had changed.
The question is, what did they know and when did they know it over at the White House?
Did they know all along this guy was an accused spousal abuser?
He didn't have his FBI clearance, apparently, because of all of these allegations.
Apparently, the first ex-wife called up the White House counsel, Don McGahn.
That's what CNN was reporting and actually told Don McGahn about this.
It was never relayed to the president of the United States.
CNN reported last night, quote, senior aides to President Donald Trump knew for months about allegations of domestic abuse levied against top White House staffer Rob Porter by his ex-wives.
Even as Porter's stock in the West Wing continued to rise, multiple sources told CNN on Wednesday, Porter denied the allegations, but resigned on Wednesday.
A scramble ensued inside the West Wing to defend him when the claims became public this week.
That effort continued even after his resignation.
According to sources—this is CNN sources, so you have to take all that with a grain of salt, obviously, they're not named—senior White House officials were aware for months of the allegations made against Trump's staff secretary.
According to two sources, Trump himself first learned of the allegations this week.
So it really wasn't Trump.
He was upset when shown reports of the abuse.
His daughter Ivanka was also deeply disturbed by the allegations, particularly the photographs.
So apparently by early fall, it was widely known among top Trump aides, including Chief of Staff John Kelly, both that Porter was facing troubles in obtaining FBI clearance and that his ex-wives claimed he had abused them.
So that's a pretty significant allegation that months ago, Kelly knew what was going on here and he didn't do anything.
Instead, Kelly and others oversaw an elevation in Porter's standing.
That's a fireable offense.
Okay, if John Kelly knew that the guy who's getting closer and closer to the President of the United States was, in fact, an alleged spousal abuser who could not obtain FBI clearance, right, if that's the case, then there's no—not only is there no excuse for it, but Kelly needs to go, right?
If Kelly knew that there was a guy who had three separate allegations of abuse against him and a restraining order taken out against him, and also I think that the police had slapped some sort of legal bar on him.
In any case, if Kelly knew all of that and he let him get close to Trump, that's a dereliction of duty to protect his boss.
As Ala Pundit says, Kelly and the White House counsel Don McGahn left Trump vulnerable by refusing to disarm the grenade.
The Times of London, let's see, yeah, the New York Times, sorry, claims that Kelly was duped by Porter, but that excuse really only goes so far.
It says, two White House officials, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak about the internal deliberations, insisted that Mr. Porter had misled Mr. Kelly and several other aides about the severity of the allegations.
He had portrayed the woman as making up stories to cause trouble, and few, if any, aides in the White House considered conducting their own investigations to discover what might have taken place.
In fact, it turns out that Rob Porter was apparently dating Hope Hicks, who's another top aide.
So the president, Hope Hicks, has terrible taste in men, apparently.
She also supposedly dated Corey Lewandowski, a married man, on the campaign trail.
Corey Lewandowski famous for grabbing Michelle Fields and then lying about it.
So she has really top-notch taste in men, does Hope Hicks.
She may be a nice gal, but she really needs to examine her choices in life better, if all of this is true about Rob Porter.
So, you know, the rumor is that Kelly is going to pay for it.
I doubt that Kelly is going to pay for it.
More likely that they just claim that he didn't know in the first place that all of this was going on.
But, you know, Sarah Huckabee Sanders essentially dodged the question.
So Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked about this, and she says that Porter made the decision to leave.
Well, look, I think that was a personal decision that Rob made, and one that he was not pressured to do, but one that he made on his own.
So, he is out at the White House, but I don't think this blowback is going to end any time soon, and there will be serious questions asked about Who knew what, when, and why?
And there is going to be an allegation that's made about the White House.
And the allegation that's made about the White House is that they go easy on people who are accused of abusing women, because if they don't go easy on those people, then it might redound on Trump.
It might bounce back on Trump.
There might be people who say, well, you're so hard on Rob Porter, why aren't you harder on President Trump?
There were allegations made in his divorce proceedings by Ivana Trump that he actually raped her.
That was in the divorce proceeding.
way back in the 1980s.
So why is it that Trump is treated by a different standard than he treats his own aides?
That's where the media is going to go next with this.
That said, there's no excuse for anybody covering up this sort of stuff if they knew about it.
And it's, again, dereliction of duty if John Kelly knew about it and did nothing because he was friendly with Rob Porter.
So his final statement here, he says, I stand by my previous comments on the Rob Porter that I have come to know since becoming chief of staff.
I believe every individual deserves the right to defend their reputation.
I accepted his resignation earlier today and will ensure a swift and orderly transition.
He says, I was shocked by the new allegations released against Rob Porter.
There's no place for domestic violence in our society.
But I'm wondering exactly how that squares with the, I believe, Rob Porter on virtually everything.
Okay, so in just a second, I'm going to get into the conservatives who are lining up behind a bad budget deal.
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OK, so meanwhile, while all of this is going down in the White House...
And to Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell have come up with a budget deal.
Yay!
Except whenever there's a bipartisan budget deal, the bipartisan budget deal sucks.
Okay?
There's no such thing as a good bipartisan budget deal.
They're all garbage.
Whenever there's a bipartisan budget deal, it means they're going to blow out the budget, because the truth is that what really drives our national debt and our national deficit are the entitlements.
It is not military spending.
It is not the ancillary spending.
It is not foreign aid.
Right?
There's a lot of waste and fraud and abuse in the budget, but when Trump said that he was going to cut the government down to size by whittling away at that, That's nonsense.
The only way that you're actually going to cut the government down to size is to do something that no one wants to do.
Now look, it is politically unpalatable to talk seriously about what needs to happen with the American budget.
The American budget breaks down heavily on the side of entitlement programs.
Entitlement programs generate an enormous amount of the American budget every single year.
Military spending only accounts for approximately 20% of the American budget, so the vast majority of the American budget every year is taken up instead by the Entitlement programs that all of these people supposedly rely upon.
Now, there's discretionary spending, right?
Discretionary spending, a lot of that is defense and homeland security.
So, by 2015 standards, for example, the discretionary spending for defense and homeland security was 54% of discretionary spending.
But that's not where the vast majority of the budget goes.
If you look at the share of all spending, which is what we actually need to do, right?
That's what we actually need to look at.
16% of all spending is military spending by 2015 standards.
That'll probably rise to closer to 20% this year.
The Health and Human Services Department, which means Medicare, that is 28% of all discretionary and mandatory spending.
25% of all discretionary and mandatory spending is Social Security.
That means that Nearly 60%, right?
That's 53% of all spending in the budget is just from Medicare and Social Security.
And that doesn't count welfare programs, food and agriculture, which is really the food stamp program.
That's 4% of the budget.
The education is another 3% of the budget.
State Department 4 and 8 is 2% of the budget.
But the two biggest numbers on that list are not military.
They are Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security.
That's where all the money is going.
And nobody wants to touch that stuff.
Paul Ryan wants to touch that stuff.
Trump does not want to touch that stuff.
Mitch McConnell doesn't want to touch that stuff.
Republicans in Congress don't want to touch that stuff.
They're afraid there will be blowback.
So instead, they've come up with just another budget compromise that really amounts to, we agree to spend a crap load of money.
Do you agree to spend a crap load of money?
Sure, let's all agree to spend a crap load of money.
Now, you're not hearing a lot from the Tea Partiers.
Which just goes to show you that the Tea Party has basically been soul-sucked, I think, by the Trump movement.
And that's a serious problem.
Right?
President Trump has been good for a lot of things.
He's not good on this.
He's not good on entitlements.
He was never good on entitlements.
During the campaign, he said he didn't want to change Social Security.
In fact, he wanted to increase the amount in Social Security and increase the amount available through Medicare.
So the idea that Trump was ever going to be a Tea Party ally in the sense that the Tea Party was about curbing government spending was not true.
And the problem is that if the Tea Party does not stand up to bad government spending on both sides, they're going to be accused of simply being anti-Obama as opposed to being principled.
So they really should be standing up to this budget deal, which is a garbage budget deal.
The deal would add $500 billion in federal spending for both defense and non-defense spending.
Why do you have to come up with a compromised budget deal in the first place?
You've got 51 Republicans in the Senate.
You got a big majority in the House.
Why do you have to come up with a compromised budget deal?
The answer is you don't.
Force the Democrats to filibuster a budget deal that gets rid of defense sequestration but keeps caps on discretionary spending and other aspects of the budget.
Force them to do that.
They're not going to get away with that.
They tried to shut down the government two weeks ago, and it failed.
But instead, Republicans didn't have the stones for that, and the Senate at least.
So conservative lawmakers and organizations are, of course, saying this is fiscally irresponsible, because it is fiscally irresponsible.
Paul Ryan is saying they have the votes for it.
He just wants the Democrats to go along with it.
Representative Mo Brooks, who's a conservative from Alabama, he says, the spending bill is a debt junkie's dream.
I'm not only a no, I'm a hell no.
Club for Growth is urging members of Congress to vote no on the big government budget.
And they say in 2011, when Congress passed the Budget Control Act, Senate Leader Mitch McConnell praised the deal, proclaiming the big government freight train was slowing down.
Well, now the BCA spending caps are busted under this deal again, and it's clear that McConnell and the GOP want to speed up the big government freight train with the help of big spending liberals on the other side of the aisle.
Apparently, the deal includes $80 billion plus in so-called disaster relief spending, cronies tax extenders, and expansion of farm subsidies, another suspension in the debt ceiling, conveniently timed to expire after the midterm elections.
Nowhere in the deal are the $54 billion in spending cuts outlined in Trump's budget.
Instead, the big government freight train is running out of control.
So this is a continuing blot.
Nonetheless, President Trump, of course, is pleased with the deal because Trump just wants a deal.
Look, Trump is not a principled guy when it comes to budgets.
We know that.
And he signed a budget over the objections of his own Republican Party back in, what was it, November?
When he called Schumer and Pelosi into his office, negotiated to deal with them on his own, which amounted to, do whatever you want with the budget.
Trump just doesn't want the government to shut down again because he doesn't want the blame for it, the media blowback.
He tweeted out yesterday, quote, the budget agreement today is so important for our great military.
It ends the dangerous sequester and gives Secretary Mattis what he needs to keep America great.
Republicans and Democrats must support our troops and support this bill.
So this is the game Republicans play.
The game is, we'll raise military spending, and when we raise military spending, if a few other things go up, that's okay, because we need more military spending.
The game Democrats play is they say, well, I guess we'll be okay with the military spending if you allow us to blow out the budget on these other elements.
Bottom line is, America spends way too much money.
The deficits are not occurring because we're not taking in enough tax revenue.
They're occurring because we're spending out the wazoo.
And this new budget deal, which breaks the sequestration, is not a good thing.
There's a reason that the National Review editorial board came out today and condemned the deal.
They were obviously, you know, more concerned with the spending that's non-military.
But I think there's some good arguments that military spending It's always easy to say we need more spending on the military, but instead that military spending should actually be more targeted.
The National View Editorial Board writes today that the deal would raise budget caps that were established by the Budget Control Act in 2011 by almost $300 billion just over the next two years.
It would also fund the government for the next month while the Appropriations Committee decides where to direct the money.
This is a bad deal.
It's bad because it hikes domestic spending.
It also ends the chance for a conservative legislative achievement in 2018.
How so?
A two-year spending deal means Republicans probably won't go to the trouble of passing a formal budget for 2019.
That means no chance for a so-called reconciliation process that could allow them to enact meaningful legislation with only 50 votes in the Senate.
This is a great point.
Once the government is funded, then you can't use the reconciliation process.
Right?
You can only use the reconciliation process if there's a formal budget.
Because the way the reconciliation process works is that if you can... So here's the way that you pass a bill.
You need normally 51 votes to pass a bill.
Democrats can filibuster.
That takes your limit up to 60.
You need now 60 votes to pass a bill.
In order for you to pass a bill with 51 votes under reconciliation, you have to show that your budget, that your new bill, would be budget neutral.
That it would not add to the debt.
If there is no budget, there is no line against which to gauge if a bill is budget neutral or not, which means that you can't use reconciliation.
So, National Review says if Republicans accept this deal and then forego the reconciliation process, they will have given up their chance to pass a law without Democratic support, and measures such as easing the Obamacare regulations that will contribute to higher premiums in the coming years or reforming welfare will stand no chance of making it through Congress.
With this deal, Republicans are hurting the chance to add to their ledger of accomplishments prior to November.
Which, of course, is true.
The actual cost of this bill will be $1.5 trillion over the next decade, which is just as expensive as tax reform.
So, again, bad deal by Republicans, but this is not rare.
I mean, they're always making these sorts of deals.
Because they're attempting to avoid political blame.
And the easiest way to avoid political blame in our politics is not to be fiscally conservative.
Fiscal conservatives, unfortunately, are unicorns.
They exist only in our imagination.
This is true by polls.
If you look at Americans, they are fiscally conservative.
They always say, we wish the government would spend less.
And then you ask them, would you like to cut this program?
And the answer is no.
Would you like to cut that program?
And the answer is no.
A lot of that is because the growth of the federal government has enshrined in our minds that we need the federal government in order to protect us from the vicissitudes of life.
Unfortunately.
But, you know, the truth is that's not true.
This is why you have states.
This is why you have localities.
This is why you have communities.
The federal government is not there to fill every gap.
But we as a country have decided that the federal government is there to fill these gaps.
And therefore, if the federal government were to shut down or if we were to cut these programs, millions would die.
Millions would die.
Now, what's hysterical about all of this is that Trump Trump doesn't have to do this in order to win.
Trump right now is actually winning.
The polls show that Trump's approval is all the way back up to about Barack Obama's approval at this time in his presidency.
So according to the Rasmussen daily presidential tracking poll, 48% of likely U.S.
voters approve of Trump's job performance.
There's another poll I saw yesterday, daily tracking poll, that had Trump up to 45% in the daily tracking poll.
The Democrats remain unpopular on issues.
Trump remains popular.
So it's not like Trump had to be forced into this.
It's not like Trump was on the verge of collapsing if he didn't do what he was supposed to do here.
But instead, he's decided to back a budget program because he doesn't want the blowback.
He's basically going to gamble that everything the Republicans have done is enough to get them over the finish line in 2018 and will be enough to get them over the finish line in 2020.
I'm not sure that that's the case.
The only thing that stands for that, the only thing standing in favor of that proposition, is that the Democrats continue to be absolutely awful at their jobs.
And in just a second, I'm going to show you just how terrible the Democrats are at their jobs, because the Republicans are about to pass a bad budget, and Democrats don't know what to do, because they're terrible.
Absolutely terrible at this.
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OK, so while the Republicans passed a giant budget because fiscal conservatism does not exist anymore, and Republicans should be resisting this budget, not going along to get along for President Trump's sake, The Democrats continue to stink at this.
And yesterday, Nancy Pelosi decided that it would be worthwhile to stand up there for eight hours and jabber nonsensically about why we can't pass a budget because we need to protect illegal immigrants.
So her complaint, what she should have said, is she should have said, listen, we made a budget sequestration deal.
It reigned in spending for the first time in forever.
She should have stood up for the deal that she helped cut back in 2011.
She should have said, listen, we made a deal then.
The deal's still good.
You want to lower?
We were spending too much money.
We just spent a lot of money on a tax cut.
She should have talked fiscal responsibility.
Instead, because Democrats are nuts and because Democrats have decided they want to bank on identity politics overall, Nancy Pelosi gets up there and she jabbers about DACA and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and about shutting down the government on behalf of illegal immigrants.
United States of America will know that these DREAMers are part of that history and that their stories We'll be there to make judgments about us as to how we have responded to their greatness.
Okay, she went on and on and on and on and on.
I mean, just there is there actually video of this woman, I'm not sure who it was, who's sitting behind her during this, who started falling asleep during the speech.
And every time Pelosi would turn in her vague direction, she'd sort of wake herself up.
It's really, really funny.
First of all, the media treated this as though it was great heroism.
So when Ted Cruz did this, it was the end of the world over Obamacare.
When Ted Cruz said, listen, I'd rather not fund Obamacare and have a government shutdown than fund Obamacare and not have a government shutdown, the media went nuts.
And when Ted gave his filibuster, everybody, oh my God, how could Ted Cruz do this?
Look at this grandstanding.
Nancy Pelosi stands there for eight hours, and all the headlines are, look at courageous Nancy Pelosi.
Look at that.
Just incredible.
Just incredible.
The bravery of Nancy Pelosi.
I mean, it's like Normandy.
I saw a tweet yesterday, somebody from the media saying, she's been standing there for five hours, five hours without drinking or going to the bathroom.
Yeah, so?
Like, so what?
I do that pretty much every day.
I mean, sure, she's a thousand years old, so I guess from a physical level, that's pretty amazing, but the kind of worship for Nancy Pelosi for doing this is really stupid.
Also, Republicans—apparently a lot of Democrats were pissed.
A lot of Democrats were saying, why is Nancy Pelosi Grande standing like this?
We're trying to kind of deal with Trump to get past this.
We don't want to be seen as shutting down the government for illegal immigrants again.
But Nancy Pelosi can't help herself.
The best quote From her speech yesterday is where she explained that she has a grandson who apparently wants to be a black person.
I don't know why that's worthy of note on the floor of the house, but sure.
All right.
This was such a proud day for me because when my grandson blew out the candles on his cake, they said, did you make a wish?
And he said, yes, I made a wish.
He said, well, what is your wish?
He said, I wish I had brown skin and brown eyes like Antonio.
So beautiful.
So beautiful.
The beauty is in the mix.
What now?
Like, this is your pitch?
Your pitch is we should shut down the government because my grandson wants to be black?
First of all, this whole line of thought from Democrats, that you want to be a black person, therefore that means that you're a better person, I just don't understand that.
Because the converse obviously doesn't hold true, right?
In Brown v. Board of Education, one of the points of logic used by the court in defense of the idea that segregation should be illegal is that too many black kids wanted to be white.
So apparently, if you want to be black, that's great.
If you want to be white, that's terrible.
How about this?
How about we all just don't care about our skin color?
Like, if you're black, you wouldn't care.
And if you're white, you wouldn't care.
And if you're green, you wouldn't care.
Because who cares?
I mean, honestly, God, who cares?
What a stupid thing.
It's so stupid.
But again, this is the entire Democratic Party.
They have an opening here to push fiscal responsibility.
They can actually grab away the idea of fiscal responsibility from Republicans.
Instead, they're going to go full identity politics.
It's not just Nancy Pelosi.
They continue to associate with kooks like Linda Sarsour.
Linda Sarsour, of course, who has supported terrorists in the past.
Linda Sarsour, who is an anti-Semite extreme.
Linda Sarsour, who is just a disgusting human being.
She was featured in this speech by, again, one of these women's marches.
I'm talking to Chuck Schumer, who's also from Brooklyn.
Schumer actually wants to cut a deal with Trump because he's politically smarter than Nancy Pelosi.
And Sarsour says that she is tired of white men negotiating on the backs of people of color.
I'm talking to Chuck Schumer, who's also from Brooklyn.
I'm tired of white men negotiating on the backs of people of color and communities like ours.
OK, one of the things that's hilarious about Linda Sarsour saying that, of course, is that Linda Sarsour once said that until she had actually converted to Islam, that she was considered white.
So, very weird that she has changed her definition based on that.
But, again, if this is how Democrats want to go, go for it, man.
Go for it.
Trump will continue to win.
Republicans will continue to win if you keep banking on this sort of idiotic politics.
Even some members of the Democratic Party understand this.
Representative Tim Ryan, who, if the Democrats were smart, they'd make him Speaker of the House.
He's a representative from Ohio.
And he says, listen, our economic messaging is just terrible.
Our economic messaging sucks.
We're focusing on all the wrong stuff.
We're focusing on identity politics.
It's why we're going to lose.
I'm wondering if you think some of your colleagues regret keeping Pelosi around in that position of power, considering some of the things she's recently said.
Well, I mean, you're going to have to talk to them about it.
I will just say that I don't think that the Democratic Party as a whole, both in the House and in the Senate, have sharpened an economic message that speaks to the aspirations of most Americans.
Yeah, you think?
I mean, obviously that's the case, and Democrats should be very, very concerned about that.
One of the reasons that they should be concerned is because there are so many Democrats who really are out of touch.
Speaking of out of touch, Katie Tura over at MSNBC, she actually was talking about how Trump had suggested that there were $1,000 tax cuts for a lot of people, and then she basically doubled down on suggesting that $1,000 is nothing.
$1,000 is nothing if you're making half a million dollars a year like Katie Tuerer.
But if you're making $40,000 a year and you get a $1,000 tax break, you're making $60,000 a year, you get a $1,000 tax break, that's not no money.
I mean, that pays for your car insurance for half a year, for some folks.
Here's Katie Tuerer, though, doubling down on it.
And a thousand dollars is a very big deal.
But along with cheering one-time bonuses, shouldn't we be pushing for long-term salary hikes?
The kind of sustained help that would transform big-ticket dreams into everyday realities.
Because think about it, starting a family, owning a home, sending your kids to college, these should be within the reach of every American, bonus or no bonus.
Or does that make me seem out of touch?
I'm just not sure.
Yes, it does make you seem out of touch.
It makes you seem out of touch when you suggest that $1,000 is not a lot of money, and then you say, well, I was just pushing for more.
Well, it wasn't just that you were pushing for more.
Because if you were pushing for more, you'd want lower taxes, wouldn't you?
But she's not interested in lower taxes because she's a Democrat.
Again, this sort of out-of-touch feeling from the Democrats is what is going to doom them if they continue.
By the way, the redistricting in 2018 is really bad for Democrats.
There's a study out from FiveThirtyEight that shows that even if Democrats were to win on the generic ballot by seven points, they might not pick up any serious ground in the House.
They could win a few more seats.
There was a shift in a bunch of seats from lean R to lean D, but that may not be enough for Democrats to pick up seats in the House and take the majority.
So, pretty amazing that they could go through this entire political cycle and still not end up with the Senate or the House.
Just amazing.
Well, when we continue here, I want to discuss Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition is doing something incredible.
something incredible to stand up for women and stand up to the patriarchy.
It's something that's, when I say incredible, I mean unbelievably stupid.
I'll get to that in just a second.
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Okay, so now I'm about to do a little bit of mansplaining.
It's time for some mansplaining.
So in order for me to mansplain here, the reason I'm going to mansplain is because I'm about to mansplain men to women.
Okay?
And this I think I am qualified to do as a man.
So I'm not going to mansplain to women how women should think about themselves or their lives or their bodies.
That's your business.
I don't really care.
Do what you want to do.
But I will mansplain to you what it's like to be a man.
Because I know, and you don't, because I'm a man.
You can't womansplain to me what it's like to be a man, just like I can't mansplain to you what it's like to be a woman.
So here is some mansplaining, and as Andrew Klavan says, let's try to do some women understanding.
Here is a problem, okay?
The Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue is made for men to get off.
Okay, let's be real about this.
The vast majority of men who subscribe to Sports Illustrated are men.
The vast majority of people who subscribe to Sports Illustrated are men.
And those men tend to like beautiful women, which is why half of the ads in Sports Illustrated are of scantily clad women holding sports drinks.
There's a reason for that.
It's not because men are deeply concerned with the inner beauty of a woman.
That's just not the case.
There's a line in Liar Liar Where Jim Carrey, who's—the whole premise of the film is that he can no longer lie because he's received a curse from his son, and his son comes out of class, and Jim Carrey is talking about how at one point his wife was pregnant and fat, and the son says something like, my teacher says true beauty's on the inside, and Jim Carrey says that's just something ugly people say.
OK, the reason that that's a laugh line is because that's how a lot of men think.
OK, that's that's men's instinct.
Men's instinct is to look at a woman's physical beauty, which is why all actresses, you know, all of these celebrities who talk so much about the patriarchy are beautiful, right?
They're all good looking.
OK, the vast majority of actresses in Hollywood are not.
They don't look like Melissa McCarthy.
They look like Jessica Chastain.
They're all gorgeous women.
So, Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition decides that it's time to have their own Me Too moment.
And the way they're going to have their Me Too moment is by demonstrating that the patriarchy can be smashed with naked, beautiful women.
So, Vanity Fair writes about this here.
First of all, I hate this phrase, the male gaze.
It's called instinct, okay?
Men look at beautiful women, just like women look at attractive men.
Although not exactly like that, because the fact is that a woman is more likely to get to know a man and make a judgment based on that than a man is likely to get to know a woman outside of the physical.
Okay, the reality is men are much more driven by sex than women.
This is true in virtually every Every species.
Men are the ones who initiate sex.
Males are the ones who initiate sex in virtually every species.
They are the ones who seek sex more aggressively and more often in virtually every species.
Sorry to break it to folks, but this is just biology.
The male gaze.
Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition surely ranks in the top three, mostly safe for work division.
One could be forgiven then for thinking that the staff of the issue were reconsidering their efforts last fall as Me Too trended.
Stories about sexual harassment consume news cycles, and audiences thought more deeply about the ways their media and entertainment were made, and who was making them.
It turns out the issue's staff had already been on their way to rethinking all of it, according to Vanity Fair.
Editor MJ Day and her core team, comprised of all women, had decided as early as last spring to try in 2018 to make a magazine where models were as much participants as objects.
She says, quote, I'm thrilled that this movement is going on because I feel like it's going to change things for the better.
Apparently, she runs the swimsuit issue like a den mother, paying attention to the emotions and comfort level of models and employees She says this is a safe space.
She loves to post selfies with the models she works with.
And last year, uploaded a photograph of herself in a bikini in the name of body positivity.
Yes, I'm sure that men are thinking about the positivity.
I mean, it is amazing how men and women can see the same image and see two different things.
I guarantee you that if you show a woman this picture, the first thing that most women will see is the word artist on this lady's arm.
If you show a man this picture, that is about the seventh thing the man will see.
No joke.
Mathis can confirm this.
The reality is that if you're a man and you look at this picture, it takes you a long time to realize there are actual words on this woman's body.
Because she's naked!
And men are into naked women.
Sorry to break it to women, this is the way that it works.
For Day, the 2018 issue, which arrives on newsstands next week, will be the culmination of a shift in her thinking that's happened over her time at Sports Illustrated.
That the images could be a place where different standards of beauty could be celebrated.
Traveling and shooting on location put her in situations where she was talking about bodies and the idea of beauty with people from vastly different cultural milieus.
Okay, so I'll be curious to see if the swimsuit issue features a bunch of very, very overweight women.
Let's show some more of these images that smash the patriarchy.
So here is a very sexy woman wearing a bikini that she seems to be pulling down and a skimpy shirt that is wet, demonstrating that she does indeed have nipples beneath the shirt.
And then it says something but I couldn't read what was on the shirt because I was distracted by all the other things.
Because I'm a man.
Because that's how men work.
A woman does not have to be modest in order to be respected.
A woman does have to be modest in order for a man to read what's on her t-shirt.
I agree.
I respect you as a woman.
And I would check your credentials if I were hiring.
But I'm not looking at what's on your shirt, lady.
I'm looking at what's beneath the shirt because that's the way men operate.
Okay, that's not sexism.
That's called human biology.
A woman does not have to be modest in order to be respected.
No, but again, a woman has to be modest in order for me to pay attention to what's coming out of the words coming out of her face.
My goodness.
Okay, here's another one.
These are all smashed patriarchy.
Here's another beautiful naked woman.
Again, I'm not seeing a lot of ugly naked women in this particular issue.
A beautiful naked woman.
Putting her hand over her breasts and her other hand over her lady parts.
And it says mother.
And then it says beneath her hand something that you can't read because her hand is covering the word.
It says human, I guess.
So apparently Justin Trudeau will be lecturing her about use of the word human.
It should say person.
And then it says nurturer on her arm.
And then something down her leg that you can't read because she's naked!
Okay, again.
Ladies, men's brains operate on two levels, just like everyone's brains operate on two levels.
There's the level of instinct and there's the level of reason, right?
There's the prefrontal cortex, which allows you to do your higher level thinking, and then there's your lizard brain.
Okay, men's lizard brain kicks in.
Women, okay, women who are married know this.
The worst time to talk about matters of great import is in the middle of a sexual peccadillo.
Okay, this is not a good time to talk about the taxes.
Men are not going to be paying attention.
That's not their fault.
Not everything that you dislike about the world means that it's a man's fault.
It's not a man's fault that a man who looks at this picture is more likely thinking, what's under the hands, than how do I complete that crossword puzzle on her chest?
Okay, do we have one more or is this the last one?
So here's the last one.
Beautiful naked woman smiling in what is obviously a sexual pose, completely naked, right?
Lying back replete, lying back, You know, vulnerable.
And then it says on her ribcage, truth.
Again, I don't know what that's supposed to mean, and I don't know why truth on her ribcage is supposed to mean anything.
There's an H on her butt, which I, again, don't know what the rest of the word says because there's no way to tell.
I don't—you want to talk about truth?
You want to talk about reality?
Here is the reality.
Men read Sports Illustrated.
Men buy the Swimsuit Edition.
Now, I'm the kind of man who respects women so much that when I was a teenager, when I was a teenager and the first year I got Sports Illustrated, I called the number.
I unsubscribed from the Swimsuit Edition, which you can do, right?
You can unsubscribe from the Swimsuit Issue.
So for years and years and years, I got Sports Illustrated.
I never once received Swimsuit Edition in the mail because that was not something that I morally believed in.
I think it was softcore pornography, essentially.
Because that's what it is.
This is very, very softcore pornography, right?
It's like PG-13 rated porn.
But the idea that you paint a word on a woman's body and suddenly the man sees the word and not the body is just idiotic.
It's idiotic.
This is the height of idiocy.
That's not the extent of it.
Yes, that's what we need.
Written contributions from models.
I care deeply what Brooklyn Decker has to say about the state of Syria.
I need to hear from models who are most famous for getting naked for the pleasure of men.
I need to hear from them about the patriarchy.
More donations and causes and empowerment.
One model's t-shirt reads, own it.
Last year's issue pretended to change.
I guess that one was from last year, the one that said a woman doesn't have to be modest to be respected.
Again, how about a woman seeks respect rather than seeking to make money off men pleasuring themselves to her picture?
How about that?
In order to be respected, I think first you need a little bit of self-respect.
Is that too much to ask?
I think that's not too much to ask.
In a first in its 54-year history, the 2018 swimsuit issue will also feature a nude spread shot by female photographer and an all-women crew.
Wow!
Like any dude gives two craps about that.
How many guys have actually watched the credits at the end of a porn movie?
Have any guy ever watched the credits?
They could be directed by all women.
That doesn't matter.
I will say this.
Men who watch pornography have a gift for separating the art from the artist.
They have a unique capacity to be able to say, I don't care who made this film.
All I care about is that there are two women making out on screen naked.
It's amazing how that works.
To be sure, this year's swimsuit issue will still have the swimsuits in sandy beaches its readers have come to expect.
The cover was shot in the Caribbean, like approximately 20 of the ones that preceded it.
These are sexy photos, they said.
At the end of the day, we're always going to be sexy, no matter what is happening.
We're Sports Illustrated Swimsuit.
The idea is to create something artful, to create a beautiful image that both the subject and the team is proud of and collaborates on together.
And then she says she sees the connections between the Me Too movement and her own work, quote, Okay, again, this is one of the great lies of the modern feminist movement, is that women love presenting themselves this way.
It's empowering for women to present themselves this way.
If this were true, you know how many women would be walking around wearing nothing?
You know how many women, like, how many times have you seen a woman dressed like that woman, you know, just walking around during the day?
Like, they dress, women dress on the beach in bikinis, but the reality is that the vast majority of women walk around the workplace wearing stuff that is relatively modest.
Why?
Because they don't want men looking at their cleavage.
They want men looking at their faces.
It's so backwards, and what's amazing about it, and the thing I object to about it, is that the feminist movement says all this kind of stuff, they say all this kind of stuff, and then they yell at religious people for not being sufficiently respectful toward women.
What I am suggesting is that the feminist movement is not respectful enough toward women.
The feminist movement has made life worse for women.
The third wave feminist movement, not the first wave, which said women are equal and should vote.
Of course, that's true.
Women are equal and should work.
Of course, that's true.
I'm talking about the second and third wave feminist movement that said men and women are exactly the same, treat sex exactly the same, treat modesty exactly the same.
It's obvious nonsense.
And this has real ramifications for real women.
It's not just about men and the male gaze.
It's also about men seeing women in a certain way.
So one of the things the feminist movement has done in modern times is they've said that pornography can be a feminist issue.
Because women watch pornography, too.
First of all, the percentage of women who watch pornography is significantly less than the percentage, is significantly lower than the percentage of men who watch pornography.
This will always be true, invariably and always, because men are creatures of visual stimulus and will seek it out in terms of sex.
Just the reality.
But the feminist movement has embraced pornography and said that it's liberating and empowering.
It is not liberating and empowering.
It gives terrible ideas to men about what women want from sex.
OK, this is there's a long, long article over at the New York Times today.
It's a piece called What Teenagers Are Learning From Online Porn.
And essentially what it says is it's not healthy.
It's not healthy.
Basically, there's a huge percentage of young men who are watching pornography, and then they think this is what women want.
Because in the pornography, again, men are visual learners, and they are stimulated by visual imagery.
And when you're watching pornography, then you're not actually going to spend a lot of time thinking about Whether this is true or false, whether there are people behind the camera or not, you're just going to believe what's in it.
In pornography, women are always being, they're always happy, they're always feeling pleasure.
And the more aggressive the man is in pornography, typically, the more the woman enjoys it.
And the more creative the man is, the more the man does weird things to women, the more the woman enjoys it.
Because that's their job, is to act like they're enjoying it.
But in real life, women don't enjoy this stuff.
So what this is convincing women is that they have to try all of these things that men have seen in pornography in order to hold their man, because it's created a competitive market for women in the dating pool.
And then they presumably have to pretend to like it in order for the man to think that it's cool.
And then men think women actually do like it because men are stupid.
Again, the feminist movement should have said, here's what women actually believe about sex.
Here's what women actually feel about sex.
Women, for women particularly, sex and intimacy are deeply intertwined.
It's why women orgasm more often by every study in married relationships or committed relationships than they do in the sort of one night stands that you hear about in Rihanna songs.
In comfortable situations with a partner who they feel comfortable with, women are much more likely to get sexual pleasure than in these one-night raunch fests that you see promoted in Ke$ha songs.
And yes, I corrected it.
It's like Ke$ha, not Keisha, apparently.
And so this idea that's been pushed forward by women, that all of this is liberating for women, the only people who are feeling liberated right now are horny men.
So well done, MeToo movement.
Well done, feminist movement.
Just geniuses.
Okay.
Time for some things I like, and then we'll do some things that I hate.
So things that I like.
If we're talking about things that Me Too actually should advocate for, here is something that Me Too should spend some time on.
Here's a rape survivor talking about a topic that she thinks is important for Me Too to glom onto.
As things started to get, you know, a little more violent, I knew that I had no way to defend myself.
I couldn't carry.
My gun was, you know, unloaded and locked in my gun cabinet in Virginia.
God forbid someone was to ever try to hurt me again in that way.
I had a way to protect myself.
For me, I think the Me Too movement and the movement for women's right to self-defense, I mean, they sort of go hand in hand.
I'm not advocating that everyone should carry a gun or that everyone should concealed carry on campus.
Really what I'm advocating for is giving women a choice on how to defend yourself in the way that you best see fit.
Yeah, but the women's movement isn't going to do that.
They're instead going to say the best way that women can defend themselves is by posing naked in magazines and then demanding that men respect them.
That's what the MeToo movement is all about.
Not, how do we protect women from actual rapists, actual predators?
How do we stop actual evil people from doing actual evil things?
No, we have to somehow fight against the biology of men and pretend that writing words on women's bodies is somehow going to make things better for women.
Just absurd.
Other things that I like.
So this is pretty amazing, and I do love it.
They've decided that the new Gerber baby is actually a baby with Down syndrome, which is just wonderful and pro-life.
That's the subtle pro-life message.
Here it is a little bit about it on the Today Show.
He's always been such a good baby.
I've never met anyone to come in contact with Lucas and not smile.
Is it for me?
I thought he was adorable and I thought, well, maybe the world might.
Courtney submitted this picture of Lucas, the winning photo.
The first time a baby with Down syndrome has won.
What was your reaction when you read that email?
We had just walked in to the house and we opened the mail and she started screaming.
Then it really set in, oh my goodness, my child's Okay, so that's really cool.
That's really great.
It is worthwhile noting here something mildly controversial, but true.
True.
If the left had its way, babies like Lucas would not exist.
There's a eugenics movement that is now happening in Northern Europe, particularly eugenic abortion, in which parents who know their baby has Down syndrome are aborting their kids before they are born, killing the babies in the womb.
The idea that everyone celebrates babies like Lucas is just not true.
There's a whole variety of people who say that babies like Lucas are a blot on society and should not live, or that the mother has an inherent right to murder a kid in the womb if the kid has a severe disability like Down syndrome.
This should remind us that there is beauty in the diversity of human life, and there is beauty in life itself, even if somebody has a disability like Lucas does.
So it's an amazing story.
Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate. .
So, thing number one, I have to talk about this.
This is becoming a major issue now.
So, University of Minnesota has decided to move me off campus.
So, the president of the University of Minnesota has now responded to accusations that the university was forcing my February 26th lecture off campus.
Originally, the group applied for a 1,500-seat theater.
The university said no.
They applied for an 800-seat theater.
The university said no.
They applied for a 500-seat theater.
The university said no.
And then they moved the entire venue off campus completely.
And what they suggested is that it was all about security.
So they said, as the university hosts a wide variety of events welcoming tens of thousands of people to campus each and every day, we strive to meet the unique needs for each and every event.
And the event scheduled for later this month is no different.
When working to accommodate a venue request, our top priority is and will always be the safety and security of our university community.
And with that in mind, the university works with organizers to determine a location that meets everyone's needs to the best of our ability.
Student leaders with Students for a Conservative Voice and Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow worked with student activities staff and the University of Minnesota PD to determine a space that would accommodate the 400 to 500 attendants the group was planning for.
Okay, there's only one problem.
appropriate security, and they said that assertions the university is moving an event space for ideological reasons or that organizers were not involved in discussions are patently false.
Okay, there's only one problem.
When you use security issues to move me off campus or bar the public from attending my speeches, you're bowing to the heckler's veto.
There's a backdoor discrimination against conservatism that is happening here.
Conservatives don't shut down leftist speeches.
They don't go and they don't protest leftist speeches.
They don't threaten violence to leftist speeches.
And therefore, if Ta-Nehisi Coates comes to University of Minnesota, they give him the 1,500-seat auditorium.
If I come to University of Minnesota, they won't give it to me because leftists threaten violence or their worries about Antifa.
And therefore, I get relegated off campus.
So it's basically them saying, for your own good, we're going to put you in solitary confinement.
We're going to put you under mandatory confinement for your own good.
Well, guess what?
That's not your job.
Your job is to ensure safety at a venue where the public can come here.
And this is not the only university to do this.
It's not just University of Minnesota.
This has now happened in Northwestern University, University of Connecticut, University of California at Berkeley and UCLA.
At all of those, they barred the public more generally from coming to the speech out of security concerns.
Then do a better job, gang.
University of Berkeley, Cal, they have a football team.
They have 50,000 people who show up to that stadium every week.
They do the same thing at UCLA, and at University of Minnesota, and at Northwestern.
They somehow can't figure out how to do security for a 1,500-person event?
I somehow have my serious reservations and doubts about this.
But, again, if you use security as an excuse to shut down only one side of the aisle, at a certain point you have to ask whether, in fact, this is viewpoint discrimination, or at least backdoor viewpoint discrimination.
Other things that I hate.
So President Trump had announced that he wanted to do a military parade.
I thought this is a waste of money.
If we're going to do a military parade, let's do it to honor the soldiers after we win a war in 1991, for example, or for Memorial Day or for Veterans Day.
That'd be a perfect time to do it.
But leftists couldn't have a reasoned conversation about this, so they decided to lose their minds.
So Arne Menconi, he's a lefty, tweeted, quote, We already have 13 people who signed up to lay down in front of the tanks if Trump brings out a military parade.
This is not a military authoritarian state.
Would you join us?
Hashtag Trump parade.
Okay, and then he tweeted a picture of Tiananmen Square.
Okay, Tiananmen Square was not a military parade.
There was a protest going on, and they sent in the military to shut down the protest.
If leftists want to stand in front of American tanks, let's see how well that goes for them.
Let's see if that's a winning PR move by them.
Okay, final thing that I hate today.
So, as I mentioned, Shawnee—I think his name is Shawnee Green.
So, Shawnee Green is one of the Olympians who is up for the position of carrying the flag.
Shawnee Davis, I'm sorry.
Shawnee Davis.
So, Shawnee Davis is a speed skater.
And according to CNN, it's Aaron Hamlin, who's a world-renowned luger, a two-time world champion, four-time Olympian, and Shawnee Davis.
These are the two people who are up for it.
He's a decorated speed skater, five-time Olympics qualifier.
The flag bearer is typically chosen in a vote of eight U.S.
winter sport federations.
This year, Hamlin and Davis tied at 4-4.
So they had a coin toss, and Hamlin was chosen.
So what did Davis tweet?
Davis tweeted, quote, I am an American, and when I won the 1000 meter in 2010, I became the first American to two-peat in that event.
Team USA dishonorably tossed a coin to decide its 2008 flag bearer.
No problem.
I can wait until 2022.
So coin tosses are now racist, which is just spectacular.
Apparently they should have chosen him because he was black.
He hashtagged Black History Month 2018.
I don't understand why you being black, why does that mean that you get to carry the flag as opposed to the lady who won the coin toss?
Are women not victimized in American society?
Intersectionality fight!
Yeah!
So that's always amusing when Democrats decide to fight one another, leftists decide to fight one another over coin tosses that are racist.
Legitimately, the definition of a random event is now considered racist.
So very, very exciting stuff.
All right.
We will be back here tomorrow with all of the latest updates on all of the latest news.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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