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March 7, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show

54:26

As The Globalists Turn | Ep. 490

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	Gary Cohn is out.
	Tariffs are in.
	And Republicans look for a second special counsel, this time to investigate the FBI.
	We'll get to the bottom of all of it.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	As the hourglass empties, so are the days of our lives.
	As the staffing turnover at the White House continues, apparently the only person who's going to come back, Jared Kushner apparently just went to Mexico.
	By the time he gets back, it's going to be like Donald Glover in that scene from Community.
	He's just going to walk in, everything's on fire, people are hitting each other with baseball bats.
	That's basically what's happening over at the White House.
	We'll discuss all of those things.
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	Okay, so the big news of the day, of course, is that Gary Cohn, that globalist cuck, is out.
	Breitbart, of course, is celebrating with pictures of globes popping all over the place.
	All of it is very, very exciting.
	Here's the story about Gary Cohn.
	Gary Cohn was Trump's top economic advisor about three weeks ago.
	Three weeks ago, people were suggesting that Gary Cohn was about to take over for John Kelly as Chief of Staff, that Kelly was on the out, and Gary Cohn was about to enter.
	Now, Gary Cohn has been shoved aside in favor of Peter Navarro.
	Gary Cohn is a Democrat, but he's a free-trade Democrat.
	Peter Navarro is also a Democrat, but he is a non-free-trade Democrat.
	So, Peter Navarro has a bunch of kooky theories about why 17th century mercantilism is actually genius economic policy.
	He's wrong.
	But Trump believes all that stuff because Trump has this 1950s-era vision of the United States in which smelters are working full bore, and Pittsburgh is the center of steel production.
	Now, never mind that when Pittsburgh was the center of steel production, the environment was really not nice, and that pretty much every film about blue-collar America in the 1960s and 70s featured people being miserable in steel production in Pittsburgh.
	All of that is irrelevant to President Trump.
	He thinks, as the steel industry goes, so goes the United States economy.
	Now, that isn't true.
	The steel industry has been the same percentage of the American economy approximately since about 1983.
	We've produced about the same amount of steel since then.
	We've just done it with 25% as many employees because technology has gotten a lot better.
	But Trump says he wants tariffs, and tariffs there shall be.
	So, Gary Cohn yesterday submitted his resignation.
	He said, I am out.
	So, the New York Times reports, White House officials insisted there was no single factor behind the departure of Mr. Cohn, who heads the National Economic Council.
	But his decision to leave came as he seemed poised to lose an internal struggle over Mr. Trump's plan to impose large tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.
	Now, remember, Trump really doesn't know what he's talking about on these tariffs.
	Trump is arbitrarily setting the numbers.
	Even Peter Navarro had suggested a 25% import tariff on steel.
	And Trump said, why don't we—a 24% import tariff on steel.
	Trump has said, why don't we make it 25?
	Let's make it 25 because it's a nice round number, which is just a great way to do economic policy.
	Cohen had warned last week he might resign if Trump followed through with the tariffs.
	Cohn had lobbied against them internally.
	The biggest problem here was not that Cohn lost a policy battle.
	Because when you're in the administration, of course sometimes you're going to lose policy battles.
	That's just the way that it goes.
	The President of the United States makes the final call.
	Everybody else works for him.
	But the problem here is that Trump was having meetings off the books with Wilbur Ross, the Commerce Secretary, as well as with Peter Navarro.
	He wasn't actually letting his National Economic Advisor know.
	And then he went directly around him and announced a tariff without any supporting structure in place.
	So he's talking about tariffs.
	There's not a single executive order, not a single piece of legislation, not a single policy paper that's been put out explaining what exactly Trump wants here.
	He just went out there and said, I want tariffs, and tariffs there shall be.
	And suddenly, Gary Cohn was out in the dark.
	So, Gary Cohn has his authority entirely undercut, which is the real reason that he's leaving.
	Trump gave a statement to The New York Times, said, Gary has been my chief economic advisor and did a superb job in driving our agenda, helping to deliver historic tax cuts and reforms, and unleashing the American economy once again.
	He's a rare talent, and I thank him for his dedicated service to the American people.
	He's expected to leave in coming weeks.
	That means that in the past few weeks, Rob Porter is gone.
	Hope Hicks is gone.
	Josh Urfell in comms is gone.
	Gary Cohn is gone.
	McMaster is apparently on his way out as well.
	So the turnover in the Trump administration is extraordinarily high, and this is having a pretty marked impact on the market.
	So the markets right now are responding with a lot of trepidation to how this is going.
	And it is amazing.
	If you look at the pictures of the Trump administration in its early iteration, and you see all the people who are standing next to Trump, virtually everyone is gone.
	Mike Flynn is gone.
	Katie Walsh is gone.
	Sean Spicer is gone.
	Hope Hicks is gone.
	Reince Priebus is gone.
	Steve Bannon is gone.
	And now Gary Cohn is gone.
	Everybody is basically gone at this point.
	And not only that, because Trump likes governing through chaos, because he likes that, apparently, according to a number of sources, President Trump was freeing up Anthony Scaramucci to go on cable news and take shot after shot at John Kelly, the White House chief of staff.
	According to CNN, the president has emboldened Scaramucci, the former communications director, another guy who was in the administration and was there for five seconds, he was fired after 10 days, to continue attacking John Kelly during his cable news appearances, a source familiar with the situation told CNN.
	So Trump has basically operated the White House like Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator.
	He's just sitting there watching people fight each other.
	Let them fight.
	It's the new Godzilla movie.
	Let them fight.
	He's just enjoying watching the carnage as his top advisors savage one another and people outside the White House beat the crap out of one another because Trump likes the reality TV feel.
	He likes the feeling of chaos.
	Bad news.
	It's hard to get good staffers into a chaotic White House.
	Why would you give up a good-paying job somewhere else to enter into an administration where the chances that you're going to be ripped by your boss publicly are 1 in 2, the chances that somebody else in the administration is going to rip you publicly are 2 in 3, and the chances that you will leave in ignominious disgrace are probably 85%.
	Does that sound like a really good bet for you?
	Now, listen, there are a lot of people in the White House who are thinking about leaving and have been thinking about leaving for a long time.
	This is common knowledge in Washington, D.C.
	circles.
	Because they don't like Trump's chaotic moves here, again, the swiveling is so fast and so problematic that it's hard to imagine how Trump is either hemmed in by anyone with How his advisors hem him in from making bad decisions.
	It's also hard to imagine how he's going to get top staffers anymore.
	Remember, Sam Nunberg was fired and Sam Nunberg went on TV the other day and made a fool of himself.
	This administration, the turnover rate is really rapid and not everybody is being replaced by better people.
	So here is Donald Trump praising Gary Cohn two months ago.
	Okay, this is not five years ago.
	This is two months ago praising Gary Cohn.
	They said, will Gary Cohn continue or remain in the administration?
	I said, I hope so.
	Now, if he leaves, I'm going to say I'm very happy that he left, OK?
	Come here, Gary.
	Everybody's laughing.
	Yes, a very big deal.
	I think he's pretty happy.
	Yes, I'm happy.
	He's so happy he's leaving five seconds later.
	And so, well done, President Trump.
	And then President Trump came out yesterday at a press conference, and he said that everyone wants to work in his administration.
	He came out and he said, no, no, no, you don't understand.
	It's not that we have staff turnover here.
	It's that everyone wants to be here.
	This is the place to be.
	The White House has tremendous energy.
	It has tremendous spirit.
	It is a great place to be working.
	Many, many people want every single job.
	You know, I read where, oh, gee, maybe people don't want to work for Trump.
	And believe me, everybody wants to work in the White House.
	They all want a piece of that Oval Office.
	They want a piece of the West Wing.
	No.
	No, this is not a true statement.
	OK?
	Sorry to break it to you, Mr. President, but nobody wants to work for you.
	Okay?
	No one wants to work for you.
	The turnover rate at this White House is extraordinary.
	And it's extraordinary not because you disagree with your top advisors or because your top advisors feel they've gotten the job done.
	The turnover is extraordinary because people, again, feel like they're being backstabbed every second of the day.
	You've got to feel like your boss has your back.
	Okay, you do.
	We have pretty good staff retention here at The Daily Wire, and that's because the people who work here know that in the end, I'll take the hit rather than having my employees take the hit.
	I rip on my employees on the air sometimes, but they know that I'm joking, right?
	Mathis knows that I think he does a really good job and that I have a lot of appreciation for his skill.
	That's the nicest thing I'm ever going to say publicly about you, Mathis.
	Everybody else here knows that's the case as well.
	That's why we're able to retain staff and we have good staff loyalty.
	Because we all feel like we're pushing in the same direction.
	We all have the same general principles about American politics.
	And because people know that we're not going to stand for employees stabbing each other in the back.
	But Trump likes that style of management.
	He thinks somehow that this strengthens him.
	He thinks somehow that this makes his administration better and stronger.
	It doesn't.
	And what's worse, it makes the policy worse, because then he brings in people who are able to bend his ear.
	So if you kiss Trump's ass, there's a very good shot that his policy is going to become your policy.
	I said right after Anthony Scaramucci left that if I wanted to be White House comms director, I probably could do it just by appearing on Fox and Friends every other morning and praising Trump to the skies.
	And I guarantee you that within three weeks, I get a call from Trump or somebody close to the administration asking if I wanted a job in comms.
	That's not how you ought to run an administration, particularly if you're supposed to have things that you want to do.
	And this is part of the problem.
	The Trump administration ran through large elements of its agenda in the first year.
	And those agenda elements were quite good.
	A lot of those agenda items were things that I agreed with, things that I liked.
	And now Trump is born, and idle hands are the devil's playground.
	The fact is that the president doesn't have a lot to do right now, and so he's sticking his thumb into pies that he has long wanted to stick his thumb into.
	He's always had this bizarre notion that America's trade is thwarting American growth, which is just not true.
	He's always had this very weird idea that trade is a zero-sum game, that when you and I make a voluntary transaction that we've both lost, or that one of us has gained more than the other, or that one of us has gained at the expense of the other, None of that is true.
	And so you're seeing it in the markets today.
	You're seeing that the markets are responding to these indicators from the president with a lot of trepidation.
	The Dow Jones Industrial Average today is down 338 points already.
	A lot of the commodities markets are down significantly because people understand that Trump is now, on principle, going to raise tariffs.
	Now, there are a lot of people who are saying today that when it comes to tariffs, everything will be fine, this is not going to have a major impact on the economy.
	Wilbur Ross was out saying that yesterday.
	He held up a Campbell's Soup can on Sunday and claimed that if your price of Campbell's Soup goes up only three cents, it's not a big deal.
	Wilbur Ross, what would he know about drinking from a Campbell's soup can?
	He's literally a billionaire.
	And he was on national TV holding up Campbell's soup cans.
	He was talking about tariffs a little bit more yesterday and trying to defend Trump's tariff regime, even though there really is no economic basis for it.
	Again, the industries that are supposed to be protected here are already dominant in American life.
	They produce 70% of American steel.
	Their stock has been up for the past several years.
	Their production was up 5% on average last year.
	Doesn't matter.
	Trump has this vision.
	He has this bizarre utopian notion that we're going to shut down Google and ramp up Nucor.
	That all the people who are currently working in tech are going to suddenly be working in the smelting industry.
	It's just not true.
	It's just silly.
	I'm going to explain why this is silly in just a second.
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	Alrighty, so Wilbur Ross, the Commerce Secretary, who is one of the driving forces behind the new tariff regime.
	He was on CNBC yesterday trying to defend how this is all going to work.
	And his defense is, shall we, how shall we say, lackluster at best.
	He's already indicated a degree of flexibility.
	I think a very sensible, very balanced degree of flexibility.
	And I think that you're going to see, as you understand the details of what actually is going to happen, that we're not trying to blow up the world.
	There's no intention of that.
	We want to balance our needs to fix the trade deficit with the needs of the economy and the needs of the global economy itself.
	Oh, well, that thrilling tale right there from Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, the most charismatic man outside of Mitch McConnell in Washington, D.C.
	He must be just fun at parties, Wilbur Ross.
	And I love that he starts his case by, we're not trying to destroy the world.
	Oh, that's comforting.
	Thanks.
	That's always how I lead off my policy suggestions.
	I always say, you know, the thing is, you think we're going to destroy the world.
	I'm not really trying to destroy the world.
	And then when he talks about trade deficits, again, this is just economic ignorance.
	Trade deficits mean nothing.
	Venezuela has a trade surplus.
	It is a very, very poor country.
	In fact, if you look up the countries that have trade surpluses right now, it is a pretty good mix of countries that are doing well and countries that are doing poorly.
	Okay, so I'm going to look up the list right now.
	The countries with the highest trade surplus in 2016, according to Statista.com, are China, Germany, Russia.
	Russia's economy has been stagnating in a major way.
	South Korea, Netherlands, Italy.
	Italy is a disaster area.
	Ireland, Taiwan, Singapore.
	Some of this makes sense because some of these are places where you generate really, really cheap product.
	China is number one.
	They have the highest trade surplus.
	And China's economy has suffered two major stock market collapses in the last four years.
	United Arab Emirates, Japan, Saudi Arabia.
	Are any of these economies comparable to the United States?
	Are any of these economies really beating the United States?
	Is Malaysia beating the United States?
	Is the Czech Republic beating the United States?
	Of course not.
	Venezuela, by the way, as I say, also has this.
	Italy's basically bankrupt as a country.
	Brazil is having significant economic troubles.
	They have a trade surplus.
	Trade surplus means nothing.
	Trade surplus does not mean anything.
	The reason being, if you trade and then somebody, you spend more dollars than they do on your product, those dollars come back in the form of capital surplus investment.
	Can they invest in American businesses?
	They buy real estate.
	Somebody's saying, what if they come in and buy up the entire country?
	This was the fear that Japan was going to buy up tons of real estate in America in the early 1990s, late 1980s.
	And it turns out that Japan's economic program was completely busted because they were focused on the trade deficit.
	In the 1990s, they suffered a significant depression.
	So, again, it's really, really foolish to make economic policy based on these issues.
	The United States has had trade deficits.
	It's had trade surplus in our history.
	There is no correlation between trade deficit with a particular country and that country doing better than we are.
	That's just not the way any of this works.
	But the Trump administration is not doing this for economic reasons.
	They're doing it for cultural reasons.
	So, here, let me explain why they're doing this for cultural reasons.
	Again, there's a picture.
	Politics is about pictures.
	Politics is about stories.
	Politics is about narratives.
	When I say trade deficit doesn't matter, it's true, but Trump is telling a different story.
	And the story that President Trump is telling is a story that goes something like this.
	Once upon a time, there were booming industries in the United States.
	Large-scale factories.
	These big buildings located in Detroit, where people worked on employment lines, where they worked on manufacturing lines, and they worked there for 50 years, and they got the gold watch, and then they went home.
	And they had enough money, based on that one salary, to support their families.
	Why can't we go back to something like that?
	And the answer is, because America's economy is much more developed.
	You have better stuff now.
	You have cheaper stuff now.
	The businesses that we work in are better to work in than those businesses.
	If you had a choice between working in a Pittsburgh smelter and working in the Pittsburgh healthcare industry, you would choose to work in the Pittsburgh healthcare industry.
	Pittsburgh, by the way, is doing quite well.
	The Pittsburgh unemployment statistic right now, the Pittsburgh unemployment rate currently is 4.6% as of September 2017.
	That is lower than Pennsylvania as a whole.
	It's lower than Philadelphia at 6.0%.
	That's because Pittsburgh has totally shifted how it works.
	Pittsburgh has become one of the more beautiful cities in the Union.
	Pittsburgh is clean now.
	It is a service industry.
	It is a healthcare industry driven city.
	But Trump doesn't like that.
	He wants to go back to the pictures from the deer hunter where you've got Where you've got Christopher Walken working in giant gloves.
	He wants to go back to the pictures from Breaking Away, where you've got the father working in a quarry.
	That's what Trump thinks industry looks like.
	It's just ridiculous.
	It's just ridiculous.
	Iran, by the way, has a trade surplus.
	Iran is number 15 in the world in trade surplus.
	Is their economy something that you'd like?
	Is that something that you think makes any sense?
	Here are the countries with the largest trade deficits, by contrast.
	The three largest trade deficits in the world, United States, UK, Canada.
	Do those economies sound pretty good to you?
	Because they are pretty good.
	India is a growing economy.
	They have a trade deficit.
	France has a pretty significant trade deficit.
	Australia has a significant trade deficit.
	Again, no correlation between having a trade deficit and having a poor economy.
	But again, it's not about that.
	It's about Trump thinking he's going to win politically because he promised a bunch of people in manufacturing industries he's going to bring their jobs back.
	I said at the time, that's a lie.
	Those jobs aren't coming back.
	Those jobs left because of technology, they did not leave because of global competition, and they certainly are not going to be protected by killing jobs in other industries.
	Because all a surplus is, I mean, all a tariff is, is a tax that is being placed on everyone else for the benefit of some.
	So if you think that, for example, the ethanol industry needs to be subsidized by the federal government, I don't think so.
	I think that it's nasty to tax me to pay off a bunch of farmers in Iowa.
	I don't see why that's useful.
	And Ted Cruz said the same thing, and he actually won the Iowa caucuses, so I think a lot of farmers in Iowa believe the same thing.
	They think they can compete on the global scale without subsidies from the federal government.
	If you believe that the steel industry needs payoffs from me, this is just a form of corporate welfare.
	That's all this is.
	But Trump has assured us, don't worry, tariffs will be done in a loving way.
	They'll be done lovingly, you know, like with love.
	So not only do we lose on trade, we lose on military.
	So, and hence we have these massive deficit numbers in our country.
	We're going to straighten it out.
	And we'll do it in a very loving way.
	It'll be a loving, loving way.
	They'll like us better.
	And they will respect us much more.
	Bring back that loving feeling.
	Four are still tariffs.
	The Righteous Brothers making their entry in a loving way.
	He says the same thing about immigration.
	He's always been doing it with love.
	I remember when we laughed at Jeb Bush for saying the same sort of thing.
	But now Donald Trump says it and we're supposed to pretend that this makes any sense.
	Of course it doesn't.
	Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, both of them came out and said this is silly.
	Cruz was the first to say it.
	He said these tariffs concern me as well they should because they are stupid.
	The tariffs that were announced, did they surprise you?
	They did not surprise me, but they concern me.
	When it comes to trade, I support the president and the administration.
	Okay, well, I'm glad that that's what Ted Cruz says, but the reality is that if Trump—look, if Trump were designing these measures in order to attempt to drive some sort of lowered trade barrier on the other side, that'd be one thing.
	But Trump is doing this on principle.
	Trump thinks that we can shaft other country into trade war.
	That's what he wants.
	Rand Paul says the same thing, by the way.
	He says the United States will lose a trade war because no one wins in a trade war.
	If you look at steel use in our country, there are 60 people purchasing steel for every person making steel in the country.
	So there's a lot of people who purchase steel that are going to be hurt by this.
	My state alone exports $20 billion worth of products, including a lot of farm agricultural products.
	And if there's a trade war, we stand to lose in a big way.
	And really, the United States will lose in a trade war.
	OK, so let's, in a second, I'm going to explain why it is that I don't trust Congress on this stuff, why they're a bunch of gutless panderers, in one second.
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	Okay, so here is why I don't trust Congress.
	So Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, they come forward and they say, this is bad policy.
	And indeed it is!
	Indeed it is garbage policy.
	If I have not made that clear, I think this tariff policy is stupid.
	I think it is counterproductive.
	I think it's going to hurt the economy.
	I think we just passed some really good tax plans.
	And I think that the economic impact of those tax plans are going to be walked back down.
	The one good thing that may come from this is that so much of the country is anti-Trump that maybe it'll turn into a free trade country again.
	But Republicans are following Trump down the primrose path.
	There was a poll yesterday showing that 65% of Republicans say that it will be easy for America to win a trade war.
	No, that's just stupid.
	You know, when I've talked about the possible soul suck of the Republican Party and the concerns that I have that Trump would lead Republicans to embrace bad policy just because he said them, this is one example of that.
	That said, I think that a powerful leader on the Republican side who comes forward and says no, if they can outshine Trump, will convince Americans of the opposite.
	But what you're hearing from Congress is that they're very resistant to this.
	So Paul Ryan says he's extremely worried about the consequences of a trade war, and he urged Trump to take a surgical approach rather than imposing penalties on all imported steel and aluminum.
	But this is weird, because it seems to me the Constitution of the United States gives Congress the power under Article 1 to lay and collect taxes and duties.
	And a tariff is a duty.
	So why is it that Trump can do this unilaterally?
	Well, the answer is because there's a law on the books that was passed in 1962, the Trade Expansion Act.
	And Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act gives the President of the United States the ability to go around Congress.
	And he says that it's for security reasons.
	So according to CNN.com, the law says the president can impose tariffs on all other countries if imports pose a risk to U.S.
	national security.
	In this case, Trump is arguing that steel and aluminum imported from Canada, Mexico, and all other countries meets that standard.
	That justification makes no sense.
	Maybe you could challenge it in court by saying there is no real national security need, but the courts are probably going to toss that.
	They're going to say it's a political question.
	There's something called political question doctrine, and the courts have generally held that when there's conflict between the branches, between the legislature and the executive, that this should be hashed out through legislation.
	Not through appealing to the judiciary.
	If the tariffs are imposed, they'll probably be challenged at the WTO, the World Trade Organization.
	But that could take two years to walk back.
	Remember, the last time there were steel tariffs, that was Bush implementing them from 2001 to 2003.
	Something like 200,000 American jobs were lost during that period.
	And the President of the United States then was forced to back down off those steel tariffs.
	What Trump is talking about is a lot harsher.
	So, the question becomes, where are those stones, Congress?
	The responsibility lies with you.
	And this brings up a broader problem with American government.
	It was a problem when Bush was president, when Obama was president, when Trump was president.
	The problem is that our legislature is full of corrupt actors.
	And when I say they're corrupt, I don't mean they're taking pay.
	They're taking pay to do things.
	What I'm saying is that they think their job is to sit there.
	They're like Sidney Pollack and Tootsie.
	Their job is just to field calls.
	And they think that their job is to sit there and delegate authority to the executive branch.
	The executive branch has grown in size and scope over the course of time.
	The number of federal employees in the executive branch at the beginning of the 20th century was extraordinarily low.
	And the number of federal employees over time has grown in the executive branch massively.
	So right now, in the executive branch, there are literally 2 million people, apparently, working in some capacity for the executive branch.
	At the beginning of the republic, you could fit the executive branch in a water closet.
	The executive branch was like 15 people, because that's how the government was supposed to operate.
	It was supposed to be small.
	Now the executive branch has grown just in outsized ways.
	It's pretty astonishing.
	I'm looking up the statistics right now.
	Right now, as of 2015, there are 1.8 million people working for the federal executive branch.
	That's an astonishing statistic.
	That's even up from 2006 when it was 1.6 million.
	Trump is cutting some of those people.
	But, I mean, look at these numbers.
	Look at these numbers.
	When you talk about the executive branch, these numbers are insane.
	There are 200, let's see, there are 325,000 people working for the VA.
	There are 233,000 people working for the Department of the Army.
	There are 25,000 people working for the VA.
	There are 233,000 people working for the Department of the Army.
	There are 196,000 people working for the Department of the Navy.
	There are 54,000 people who work for DOT, the Department of Transportation.
	There are 74,000 people working for the Department of Agriculture.
	There are almost 4,000 people working for the Department of Education.
	There are 15,000 people working for the Department of Energy.
	Nobody even knows what the Department of Energy does.
	Okay?
	When Rick Perry took over that job, he legitimately had no idea what it did.
	He thought that it was about oil.
	It turns out it was about protecting our nuclear weapons.
	If you look at the executive branch civilian employment since 1940, it has grown enormously.
	Enormously.
	I'm looking at the Office of Personnel Management right now, and the chart looks like this.
	1940 now.
	The statistics are just...
	Incredible.
	And that's disturbing.
	And the reason for that is because the founders were wrong about something.
	By the way, you want to know something crazy?
	Okay, so this is in thousands.
	In 1940, a grand total of 700,000 people were working for the executive branch in 1940.
	Today, there are 1.8 million people working for the executive branch.
	Maybe more.
	Maybe over 2 million people.
	So we have tripled the size of the executive branch in the last 80 years.
	And before 1940, it was way less than that.
	But in the early 20th century, it was really, really, really low.
	So, what happened again?
	The founders were wrong.
	So the founders thought, if you read the Federalist Papers, which we go through every Monday here, when you read the Federalist Papers, what you see is that the founders were deeply concerned with the idea that there would be ambitious people in every branch.
	There would be ambitious people in the legislature trying to grab power, and there are ambitious people in the executive trying to grab power.
	There are ambitious people in the judiciary trying to grab power.
	And so what we needed were a bunch of checks and balances that would prevent anyone from centralizing too much power.
	And so if the president wanted to usurp power, the legislature would step in and defund him, or not give him the power to do so.
	If the president overrode his constitutional authority, the judiciary would step in.
	If the judiciary overrode its constitutional authority, the legislature would defund the judiciary.
	If the legislature overrode its authority, the president would veto.
	In other words, all of this was predicated on an assumption about human nature, and the nature particularly of people in politics, which is people in politics want power.
	It turns out that what people in politics really want is adoration without responsibility.
	What people in politics truly want is to be loved without actually having to do anything, and without being held responsible for anything.
	They want all of the plaudits with none of the accountability.
	That's what they want.
	And so the legislative branch has kicked everything over to the president.
	Now, the president typically is somebody who wants power.
	Because if you run for the president of the United States, you're typically not doing so to avoid responsibility, you're typically doing so because you want to be the guy.
	The president is basically like an elected king in the American system at this point because of the federal bureaucracy.
	Bureaucracy didn't exist in the 19th century.
	The federal bureaucracy was minimal.
	It was only at the beginning of the 20th century with Woodrow Wilson and the progressives and Teddy Roosevelt that there was this weird idea that happened that experts in the executive branch were better qualified to write the regulations under which we live than the people we elect.
	So unelected bureaucrats will take over all the real regulatory and lawmaking authority and the legislature will just kick everything over there.
	So now we have a system of perverse incentives.
	We have a set of people in the legislature who will bitch and moan about stuff that's happening in the executive branch, but they don't actually want to do anything.
	Because if they do anything, they're going to be held responsible for doing something.
	Let's say that Congress came along and they said to President Trump, we hate your trade program, we're removing the authority for you to do what you're doing.
	And then the economy went south.
	Well, those legislatures get punished at the office.
	They get punished at the ballot box.
	What if they just bitch and moan about it, and then the economy goes south?
	Well, then they get to say, I told you so, without actually having to take responsibility.
	The legislature could tomorrow revoke the authority of the President of the United States to unilaterally impose tariffs this way.
	They could.
	They're not.
	The reason they're not is, again, because no one in the legislature has the stones to stand by the decisions they want to make, which is why the executive branch continues to grow.
	They write these vague, omnibus packages that nobody knows how to implement, except the bureaucrats in the executive branch who wrote them.
	You know who writes bills?
	The people who write bills are bureaucrats in the executive branch working with bureaucrats in the legislative branch, as well as lobbyists.
	That's who actually writes the bills.
	Do you actually think that Senator Chuck Schumer is sitting there writing bills?
	Do you think Nancy Pelosi has ever written a bill?
	She has never written a bill.
	Nancy Pelosi has never written a single bill.
	Okay, Nancy Pelosi's staffers may have written a bill in coordination with lobbyists and people in the executive branch, but she has never written probably a sentence of a bill.
	At least beyond the preamble, which is where you talk about how wonderful you are.
	The legislature has failed.
	The legislature has failed and failed in dramatic fashion.
	And the reason that the legislature continues to kick authority over is because they're attempting to avoid responsibility.
	The judiciary is happy to centralize authority in the executive branch because the judiciary is, again, a federal institution.
	And the way the judiciary gains power is by enjoying the privileges of being part of a federal government over which it gets to preside.
	And the executive always wants to grab power.
	So the constitutional structure has been completely inverted here in a serious way.
	Article I of the Constitution was the legislature.
	Article 2 of the Constitution was the presidency.
	Article 3 was the judiciary.
	Now it's almost backwards in terms of importance.
	Now it's almost judiciary, presidency, legislative branch.
	The legislative branch has become a defunct institution.
	The legislative branch has unfortunately become a vestigial organ of American governance.
	And that's a real problem.
	It's a real problem because President Trump is not ambitious enough to overthrow the constitutional order by just running roughshod over the legislature.
	Plus he has a Republican Congress, so it's not really an issue.
	But there are presidents who have and presidents who would like to.
	President Obama's executive amnesty being the most obvious example.
	So you think this policy is bad?
	Blame Trump, but blame the Congress more, because Congress could do what it should do right now about stopping this, but they don't have the stones to do it, which is really sad.
	OK, so I want to talk a little bit more about some of the scandals that are plaguing the Trump administration, unfortunately, and a scandal that continues to plague the Obama administration.
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	So a couple of more pieces of news on the Trump front, and then we'll get to some other elements, including social media crackdowns on conservatives.
	So, the Trump administration had—I did a lot of bad Trump there.
	Now it's time for a little bit of good Trump.
	So, Trump was commenting on foreign affairs.
	He had the Swedish prime minister at the White House yesterday, and he said to the Swedish prime minister, by the way, I was right, you have an immigration problem.
	This is true.
	Certainly you have a problem with the immigration.
	It's caused problems in Sweden.
	I was one of the first ones to say it.
	I took a little heat, but that was okay because I proved to be right.
	But you do have a problem and I know the problem will slowly disappear, hopefully rapidly disappear.
	Pretty spectacular.
	You know, the truth is that this is right.
	You know, I remember back during the campaign, Trump said that Sweden was having severe problems with particularly unvetted Muslim immigration, and that it was raising the crime rates in places like Malmo.
	And the media went nuts.
	How dare he say such a thing?
	How dare he suggest such a thing?
	And they said this on a broad level, right?
	I pointed out at the time that Trump's specific claim was not true, but his broader claim that there was a crime problem in Sweden because of immigration, that was true.
	And the media jumped to, there's no problem in Sweden, everything is great.
	Trump was right on that.
	He is still right on that.
	And what's hilarious is that the New York Times has now been forced to write pieces about why they're having a severe crime problem in Sweden.
	It turns out that part of that is because when you import an entire population of people coming from countries with higher crime rates and significant cultural differences, you may, in fact, increase the crime rate in your country.
	It's one of the reasons, by the way, why whenever you compare crime rates in particular countries, particular states, when you check the gun homicide rates in particular countries, you actually have to look at the people and not look at the location.
	So, there's this common thing that's done by advocates of gun control, where they say, look at the murder rate in Norway versus the murder rate in the United States.
	Look how the murder rate in Norway is way lower than the murder rate in the United States.
	That's probably because there are more guns in the United States.
	Well, as Milton Friedman once said about the economic status of Norwegians, people were saying, if you look at the economy in Norway, it's stronger in some ways than the economy in the United States.
	He said, not among Norwegians, meaning that Norwegians in the United States earn significantly more than Norwegians in Norway.
	Swedes in the United States are living in lower crime areas and commit fewer crimes probably than Swedes in Sweden.
	And so you actually have to look at the people who you're talking about if you want to compare apples to apples and not apples to oranges because it's people who are picking up guns and committing crimes.
	This is why population matters.
	This is why you actually have to treat everybody as an individual.
	But if you are assessing whether a group of people generally Is more or less likely to commit crimes, then you have to look at the statistical variability there and you have to look at cultural differentiation.
	It's not an ethnic thing, it's not a racial thing.
	This is about cultures, it's about religions, it's about the assimilability of particular people who are from different cultures.
	Okay, so Trump said that to the Swedish Prime Minister.
	Other things that he said, so yesterday he said, We are looking at sanctions on Russia.
	He said, we're not going to allow Russia to influence 2018.
	This made the press very upset because, of course, their theory has been that Trump is working hand-in-glove with Russia and that in 2018, Vladimir Putin will come and personally stuff the ballot box for Devin Nunes in his district, which is, of course, very silly.
	Here's Trump saying this.
	But are you worried about Russia trying to meddle in the midterm election?
	No, because we'll counteract whatever they do.
	We'll counteract it very strongly.
	And we are having strong backup systems.
	And we've been working, actually, we haven't been given credit for this, but we've actually been working very hard on the 18 election and the 20 election coming up.
	Thank you very much.
	Okay, so good for Trump for saying this, and again, they are talking about leveraging harsher sanctions on Russia as well.
	So that's the good news for Trump.
	The bad news for Trump is that Stormy Daniels, a porn star, is suing him, so that's awesome.
	So I will say that Black Lives Matter had the stupidest tweet I've seen in a long time yesterday.
	They said that the president of the United States paying off a porn star to keep silent.
	This is the lowest point in American history.
	And I thought to myself, the name of your group is Black Lives Matter.
	You might have thought maybe slavery was the low point in American history.
	Like, if you're going to go with low points in American history, president paying off Pornstar, not good.
	Slavery, kind of worse.
	Internment of the Japanese?
	Pretty bad.
	Jim Crow?
	Kind of crappy.
	Lots of really bad things have happened in this country.
	The Trail of Tears.
	Few bad things have happened that are worse than the President paying off a porn star.
	That said, is it a useful thing?
	Is it a good thing that the President of the United States has been profligate with his member?
	Is it a good thing that the President of the United States has shtooped half the porn stars in Hollywood?
	Probably not.
	And the fact that Stormy Daniels is now suing him means another round of stupid headlines that are going to be annoying and irritating.
	And it is not good that the president, when it comes to his sexual character, has none.
	So that is obviously a problem.
	Okay, so meanwhile, speaking of scandal...
	Top Republicans are now calling for a second special counsel, this time not to investigate Trump-Russia collusion, but to investigate FISA abuses.
	So, yesterday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte and Representative Trey Gowdy demanded the appointment of a special counsel to investigate conflicts of interest and decisions made and not made by current and former Justice Department officials in 2016 and 2017.
	Noting that the public interest requires the action.
	Gowdy, who is, I think, an honest guy, and Goodlatte, who I also think is honest, penned a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
	They say matters have arisen both recently and otherwise, which necessitate the appointment of a special counsel.
	We do not make this observation and attendant request lightly.
	So what they say is that they now know that there are two dozen witnesses that Michael Horowitz, the DOJ inspector general, did not have access to.
	And these witnesses apparently have information about FISA abuses that...
	That list of witnesses includes FBI Director—former FBI Director James Comey.
	So, Sessions announced that Horowitz would investigate allegations of government surveillance abuse in light of memos that the dossier—that suggested that the dossier compiled by Christopher Steele was used to obtain a FISA warrant to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
	Gowdy says this whole FISA warrant was on Carter Page, and all of them agree that this is suspect.
	This is controversial as to how suspect that FISA warrant was, but there is a pattern of FISA warrants being given out without proper evidence.
	That's not a particular shock.
	And Gowdy says, Congress does not have the tools to investigate, plus we leak like the gossip girls.
	So they're asking for a special counsel to be appointed on this.
	There should be a special counsel appointed on this, because if Jeff Sessions were to either let the FISA system off the hook or to condemn the FISA system, he'd be accused of political bias.
	A special counsel on this is probably something useful.
	Again, the Obama malfeasance with regard to the corruption inside the executive branch was continuous throughout his tenure.
	Obama has said that he led A very clean administration.
	That, of course, was not true.
	He did not lead a clean administration.
	In fact, his administration was replete with corruption.
	Eric Holder was a corrupt actor.
	Eric Holder, who is now trying to run for president, apparently, in 2020, which is just unbelievable, considering that he was held in contempt by Congress for his own corruption.
	He corrupted the ATF, the ITF.
	The IRS was corrupted by the Obama administration, the IRS scandal.
	The DHS was corrupted under Kathleen Sebelius.
	The VA was corrupted under President Obama.
	Virtually every Every agency with initials was corrupted under the Obama administration, and all of that deserves thorough investigation.
	The American people were lied to about that.
	The media did not do their jobs when Obama was in office.
	They are doing their jobs when Trump is in office, but they will not again when a Democrat is in office.
	So special counsel would probably be fair game here.
	Chelsea Clinton came out yesterday, though, and she says that President Trump should lay off her mom.
	I thought this was amusing.
	Back to back, she said that Ivanka Trump was fair game, and then she said that Trump should lay off Hillary.
	What troubles you the most about the state of the country right now, and what would you say to the president about it?
	Please do your job.
	Focus on your job.
	Please don't worry about the Oscar ratings or how my mom's doing, although thank you, she's doing great.
	So, don't worry about her or Mom's doing.
	The reason people are worried about how Hillary's doing is because, again, there was unprosecuted corruption that went on during the Obama administration, and now the Republicans are in charge.
	They're investigating.
	It's sad that they had to do it now.
	They should have done it more when Obama was president.
	It's sad that it takes another attorney general to actually appoint the special counsels necessary to look into these issues.
	But that's because Obama corrupted these agencies first.
	If the Attorney General had done his job when Obama was president, it wouldn't be left to Republicans to do that job.
	I like Chelsea saying to Trump, lay off Hillary, but then she says, well, it's fine to launch into Ivanka.
	Do you have any sympathy for her?
	Because she's an adult who has taken on an official role in the White House.
	Do you think she's fair game for criticism, or is she just another presidential child?
	I think anyone who works for the President certainly should expect to be scrutinized for whatever decisions not only she or he is making, but whatever decisions the White House is making on any given day.
	OK, how about people who work for the Clinton Foundation, which was alleged to be involved in corruption while your name was on it?
	It's the Bill Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
	How about people who work for their mom's campaign and speak at the DNC?
	Again, the hypocrisy here is pretty astonishing.
	Chelsea has barely been asked any questions about the corruption of her parents because she's been seen as off-limits, but Ivanka apparently is within limits.
	I think both of them should not be off-limits.
	I think questions should be asked of both of them, and all of that is fine.
	But the hypocrisy of the media there is pretty astonishing.
	Okay, so, I want to—let's get to some things I like and some things I hate.
	So, things that I like.
	So, I've been doing heaven-related art this week.
	So, one of those pieces of art is the movie that launched a whole spate of movies in Hollywood in the 1930s and 40s about life after death.
	So, there's a movie called Heaven Can Wait that came out much later in 1978 with Warren Beatty.
	It's a remake of this film.
	The film is called Here Comes Mr. Jordan, and it's about a prizefighter who is supposed to not die in a plane accident, but the angel of death thinks that he's supposed to die and takes him too early.
	So they take the soul out of his body, but his body is destroyed.
	And so the soul is supposed to be put back down on Earth, and so it's about his soul inhabiting other bodies, and him trying to make a life for himself doing that.
	The movie is Here Comes Mr. Jordan.
	It stars Claude Rains and Robert Montgomery.
	Here's a little bit of the trailer for it.
	A murder!
	Is it going on right now?
	Yes.
	Right here in this house?
	Who's doing it?
	His wife, and the man she's in love with.
	They're drowning him in the bathtub.
	Holy cow!
	No, Joe Pendleton, Robert Montgomery to you, wants no part of that setup.
	That is, he thinks he doesn't, until he sees a girl named Betty.
	I didn't come here so much to thank you as to... because I had to see you again.
	But that's wonderful.
	That's wonderful.
	And here comes Max Korko, Joe's lifetime friend and ex-manager, who thinks Joe cracked up in his plane.
	Joe is having a hard time convincing him he's wrong.
	Okay, so the movie's kind of a comedy, it's kind of a drama.
	It's much better than the 1978 version, and this led to a bunch of other movies, like The Bishop's Wife, about people who come back from the dead and are trying to make a life on Earth, or trying to communicate with people on Earth.
	It's well worth the watch.
	And again, this was a time when Americans were, I think, when you watch old movies, there's a certain nostalgia, not just because they're in black and white, but because there's a certain set of values there, right?
	There's a certain baseline religiosity to movies like this, that there is an afterlife, and that what you do in this world matters, and that the incorporeal soul is a thing.
	Yeah, that was sort of the commonplace assumption.
	Now all those assumptions, of course, have been ripped away, and in a materialist world, you can't make this movie.
	In a materialist world, you can sort of make Bruce Almighty, and that's the best that you can do.
	But Bruce Almighty is a really watered-down version of Here Comes Mr. Jordan.
	This idea that God is imminent in the universe is played for laughs, but there's a certain reverence for it in the old movies that doesn't take place in some of the new movies.
	Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.
	So, number one, there is apparently an ISIS-inspired teen who tried to bomb a school yesterday in Utah.
	Here's a piece of the news story on it.
	David Morse is relieved after three weeks of waiting for the person who desecrated an American flag and vandalized Hurricane High School to be found.
	I was totally surprised that I haven't heard anybody say anything about who's done it.
	No suspect had been reported until today, when a 17-year-old Pineview High School student found a suspicious bag in the hallway.
	A backpack that was smoking.
	The entire school was evacuated because of it.
	Follow the instructions of the officers.
	Now, a student who, according to police, was authorized to be on Pineview's campus for coursework is the alleged suspect in both of these cases.
	You got a mentally ill young person that needs some help.
	Okay, so the reason that I point this out is because there's a guy who set off a bomb that didn't go off on a school campus.
	Have you heard this story?
	Has this been at the top of the news anywhere?
	Okay, now maybe it's because the bomb was unsuccessful.
	Maybe it's because it was with a bomb.
	If a student had walked into school with a gun and fired a bunch of shots and nobody had been killed, but then it turned out that the person was a member of the NRA, you think it might lead the news?
	You think maybe there's an agenda to the news?
	Yeah, this sort of demonstrates that there's a pretty significant agenda to the news.
	Okay, other things that I hate.
	So speaking of the news and bias in the news, one of the things that's been very irritating for people in conservative media has been the biases and the algorithms in major companies like Google and Facebook and YouTube and Twitter.
	And those biases are pretty obvious.
	You can see that, for example, Google banned you from searching for guns when you shop.
	So if you type in the word gun when you Google shop, it doesn't show up.
	No results show up, which is just ridiculous because people will find ways to buy guns anyway.
	I mean, there are plenty of stores online where you can buy a gun and it ships to a federally licensed firearm dealer.
	Facebook has been slammed for ignoring conservative stories and outlets in its trending news.
	They shifted their algorithm, but now they've shifted their algorithm again, supposedly to downgrade partisan news, saying that instead they want to push news that is going to you know, focus in on, as Mark Zuckerberg says, less sensationalism, misinformation, and polarization.
	He says that they should favor content that is broadly trusted.
	And the way that they determine whether a source is broadly trusted is by asking users if they're familiar with a news source and then whether they trust that news source.
	That's the way that they figured this out.
	So, that means that sites that are openly partisan, like Daily Wire, are going to be downgraded.
	But sites that are fake, non-partisan, like the New York Times and CNN, are going to be upgraded.
	Which stands in favor of legacy media.
	So it cuts out the traffic base for a lot of people.
	It means that even though you're a follower of the Daily Wire, even though you're a follower of my show, my stuff may not show up in your feed if you don't actually set it specifically to show up in your feed.
	Because Facebook is trying to downgrade my content for you, even though you enjoy my content and you voluntarily clicked into following me.
	This stuff is really bad, and all the algorithms are being set by a bunch of leftists in Silicon Valley, which is why Peter Thiel just left Silicon Valley.
	The irony here, of course, is that conservatives like me have been making the case against regulation of these industries.
	I don't think these industries ought to be regulated.
	I think they're free market industries.
	But the people who are being slapped are the deregulators.
	The people who want to regulate the industry are being flattered by all of this.
	All of this really is an attempt to reinstate the dominance of the mainstream media, to restate the power structure.
	Because if you get rid of the ad-supported media model, news media model, you're going to go back to a subscription-supported media model.
	And that, of course, is going to benefit all of the major players who have had subscriptions for years, like the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal.
	So all of these social media gatekeepers are working very hard on reinstating all of their favorite media members as the only authorities to listen to.
	And they're downgrading everybody else.
	I don't know if that's conscious, but it's certainly a bias that is present on Twitter, on Facebook, on YouTube, on Google.
	There's a reason, PragerU, you just filed a lawsuit against YouTube.
	Okay.
	Final thing that I hate, Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeting out stupid things again.
	So he tweeted on art, quote, bears repeating, creativity that satisfies and affirms your worldview is entertainment.
	Creativity that challenges and disrupts your worldview is art.
	No, that's an idiotic definition.
	Creativity that satisfies and affirms your worldview is everything Hollywood made this year.
	Everything Hollywood makes satisfies and affirms its own worldview.
	The idea that you have to be challenged by art in order for it to be art is ridiculous.
	I'm not challenged by St.
	Matthew Passion by Bach because I don't find that it challenges me religiously with regard to Jesus, for example.
	I just enjoy it.
	I think it reaffirms the religious nature of the world.
	I don't feel challenged, particularly, by a lot of artistic works.
	I think that a lot of artistic works are just wonderful art in and of themselves.
	Basically, what Tyson is saying is that if it's propaganda, it's art, and if it's not propaganda, it's entertainment.
	That's just insane and ridiculous.
	But, again, that's sort of Neil Tyson's stock and trade on Twitter at this point.
	Okay, final note.
	We haven't done Bible in a while, so this is a very quick biblical note here.
	So last week was Purim.
	I didn't explain what that was.
	That's the story of Esther in the palace of Ahasuerus, who's probably Xerxes in real history.
	The story there is that Xerxes' top advisor, Haman, was planning a genocide of the Jews, and meanwhile, Ahasuerus, Xerxes, was looking for a new wife.
	He'd killed his first wife, Vashti, and he settled on, in a beauty contest, he settled on Melania Trump.
	No, he settled instead on Esther, and Esther was a Jewish woman, and Esther lobbied the king not to allow genocide against the Jews, and instead the king flipped and allowed the Jews to defend themselves.
	So that entire story, the story of Purim, the reason that you saw a lot of people dressing up if you live in a Jewish neighborhood and passing out candies, is in celebration of that holiday.
	What's amazing about that particular holiday is we read what's called the Megillah.
	When people say the whole Megillah, this is what they're talking about.
	The Megillah, which is a long scroll that tells the story, is It never once mentions the name of God.
	It's a Jewish religious holiday, but it doesn't mention the name of God once.
	Why?
	Because it's the most modern Jewish holiday.
	God is imminent in the universe if you're there looking for Him.
	If you see Him behind the curtain.
	If you see, in Judaism it's called Hester Ponim, God hiding His face.
	Hester comes from the same root.
	The idea is that God hides His face in history.
	God hides His face in your life.
	But if you look closely enough, you can identify godly patterns in your own life If you don't look close enough, however, it's God hiding behind nature in order to provide you a semblance of free will.
	So, in many ways, it's the most religious holiday while being overtly one of the least religious holidays in the Jewish canon.
	Okay, we will be back here tomorrow with all the latest.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Mathis Blover.
	Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
	Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
	Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
	Edited by Alex Zingaro.
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	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

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