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April 18, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
48:43
Thank You, Barbara Bush | Ep. 520
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Former First Lady Barbara Bush passes away, Justice Gorsuch actually rules against President Trump, and James Comey continues to make his pathetic rounds.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
So we have a lot to get to today, including Stormy Daniels on The View yesterday.
Just a lot of news breaking.
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Okay, so the big news yesterday, obviously, was the death of Barbara Bush.
So Barbara Bush, the wife to one president and the mother of another.
A couple of things are worth noting right off the bat.
And the universal admiration for Barbara Bush was really something nice, I think, in an era where everybody seems to be at each other's throats over politics.
A couple of things are worth noting right off the bat.
First of all, if you look at all the obituaries, it says that Barbara Bush was most famous, obviously, for, as I say, being the wife of one president and the mother of another.
There's this weird idea that goes around in feminist circles that being a wife and being a mother is somehow degrading to women.
That somehow it is what you do, not in your relationship with others, but what you do in your career that matters most.
Well, for the vast majority of human beings, it is what you do in your family life and the kind of children that you raise that is going to be your final legacy on the world.
Barbara Bush said this herself in 1990.
She was speaking at Wellesley.
She was protesting in 1990, so this just shows how long these college protests have been going on.
But Barbara Bush, who was then First Lady of the United States, she talked about why family was valuable in life in 1990 at graduation.
So I want to offer a new legend.
The winner of the hoop race will be the first to realize her dream, not society's dreams, her own personal dream.
And who knows?
Somewhere out in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow in my footsteps and preside over the White House as the President's spouse, and I wish him well.
So, she's a person who definitely understood the value of family.
One of the charming clips that was going around yesterday, as well as a clip from 2011, George H.W.
Bush and Barbara were on the Today Show together, and they read, with their granddaughter actually, and George W. Bush's daughter, and they read, George H.W.
read some love letters that he'd written to Barbara, and you can sort of see their relationship encapsulated in this short clip.
December 12th.
1943.
My Darling Bar.
This should be a very easy letter to write.
My grandparents have been writing each other love letters for more than 60 years.
I love you precious with all my heart and to know that you love me means my life.
6, 1994, for Barbara Pierce from GHWB.
Will you marry me?
Oops, I forgot, you did that 49 years ago today.
I was very happy on that day in 1945, but I'm even happier today.
You give me joy that few men know.
I've climbed perhaps the highest mountain in the world, but even that cannot hold a candle to being Barbara's husband.
Mom used to tell me, now, George, don't walk ahead.
You never listen to your mother.
Little did I know I was only trying to keep up with Barb Pierce from Onondaga Street in Rye, New York.
I love you.
I love you, too.
No, Gimpy, why are we such criers?
You know what?
You could be Speaker of the House.
Okay, so, Barbara Bush, she was definitely a pistol.
There's a good piece in the New York Times by Christopher Buckley, who is a novelist and speechwriter for VPHW from 81 to 83, and he talks about exactly who Barbara Bush was.
He said that he learned a couple of lessons from her.
her.
He said, Thanks, Mom.
If she was in Mrs. No-Nonsense, she also had a playful, even girlish side to her.
On one occasion, I was alone in a freight elevator with Mr. and Mrs. Bush and their Secret Service detail when it got stuck between floors.
Stuck elevators are viewed grimly by the Secret Service.
The atmosphere quickly elevated to condition red, with hands reaching for the holstered Glock 9s, orders barked into wrist mics, and all the rest.
The Bushes were blithe.
I was standing behind them.
Mr. Bush's fingers reached for Mrs. Bush's derriere and gave it a pinch.
She turned to him and grinned like an 18-year-old.
Hiya, fella, she said, so I can claim to have witnessed a primal scene between Mom and Dad Bush.
So, just, you know, she was apparently a really good woman by virtually all accounts, and there were tributes that came in from the Clintons, there were tributes that came in from the Obamas, and class all across the aisle, except, of course, for the far left.
The far left found an excuse to be upset about Barbara Bush.
So, Randa Jarrar, who is a professor at Fresno State and obviously a delightful human being, She tweeted out, So, you can always count on Twitter to provide you some of the best in American life.
But this does demonstrate that there is a primal hatred that exists on both sides of the aisle, unfortunately, with regard to some of these figures, because The reality is that if people can't get beyond their own politics to see the personal side of people like Barbara Bush, who is not a political figure, right?
I mean, Barbara Bush is the kind of woman who when she was the first lady in 1989, it was right after the election, there was a lot of talk about how babies with AIDS, people were afraid that if they held the baby with AIDS or if the baby with AIDS spit up on them that they would actually get AIDS.
Barbara Bush went to a children's center where there were babies with AIDS, and she actually went and she picked them up, she carried them around in front of the cameras just to demonstrate that this was not a serious danger.
And yet the fact that people hate each other so much in today's modern politics, they're ripping on Barbara Bush, 92 years old, on the day of her death, is really classy.
It's not quite the same thing as ripping on Ted Kennedy the day of his death.
I mean, that guy actually left a woman to drown in a car.
Barbara Bush did nothing of the kind.
But, you know, that may be the extent to which our politics have gone awry.
Now, speaking of our politics going awry, the story of the day yesterday continued to be the Stormy Daniels fallout, the Michael Cohen fallout, and all of it continues to be very weird and very bizarre.
We're obviously living in a reality show simulation.
The former Leading presidential candidate for the Democrats for a certain period of time, Bernie Sanders, actually tweeted out today that he wants Cardi B to decide Social Security policy.
See, I was joking when I said I thought that Cardi B's tax policy was great, because I don't think Cardi B knows all that much about tax policy.
Bernie Sanders apparently was not joking.
That just shows you how crazy things have gotten.
Well, now Stormy Daniels was appearing on The View.
And if you don't believe that so much of our controversy, so much of the hatred that we see in America's public life is now driven by the TV theatrics of our political actors, All you have to do is watch TV for five minutes and be disabused of this.
So Stormy Daniels, who is a self-aggrandizing porn star who had sex with a married man in 2006, earned $130,000 out of it right before the election, and then decided to forego the $130,000.
She's giving it to Planned Parenthood, which is obviously a very classy move.
And she instead wants to make a fortune by speaking openly about her affair with Donald Trump, which lasted apparently a grand total of one night.
Well, now she's on The View, and on The View, she's explaining that she is not in it for the money, that she is not in it for the glory.
She is obviously in it for both the money and the glory.
And listen, she's a free person in the United States.
She can do whatever she pleases, but that doesn't mean that we have to put aside our critical thinking skills.
She showed up with her lawyer, Michael Avenetti, at the Michael Cohn hearing the other day in New York.
There's no reason for her to be there.
She showed up there because she wants to stay in the news.
And she's very good at staying in the news.
And the news are very good about keeping her in the news.
So here was Michael Avenatti explaining that this was not a publicity stunt and Stormy Daniels saying this was not a publicity stunt to show up in court to an event that had nothing to do with her.
I want to address the first part and I'm going to let her address the second part.
As it relates to us having nothing to do with the case, I mean, that's just not accurate.
On Friday, Judge Wood, who I know, granted me access to that case, stated that she would hear from me as to any issue that I wanted to speak about, recognizing that we did have standing in connection with that case because some of these documents that were seized relate to her.
And in fact, the warrants stemmed in significant part from what happened to my client.
So we had every right to be there.
And Judge Wood, the sitting federal judge, would not have granted me access to address the court if we had no business being there.
But I'm going to let Stormy speak to this issue of making money from the tour, etc.
Go ahead.
Can I just say, first of all, I did not name the tour.
You won't hear me say it.
I haven't promoted that name.
I think it's awful.
You think the name's awful?
Yeah, I don't like to use it.
I think it's cheesy and a play on someone else's idea and I try not to do that.
A strip club owner in the Carolinas came up with it and everyone else has latched onto it.
As far as the tour, yes, I've gotten more bookings than usual, but I'm doing the job that I've been doing for the last almost 20 years.
Yes, there's a lot of publicity, but I didn't do it for that because this isn't what I want to be known for.
As a matter of fact, I hid for quite a while, and it's overwhelming and intimidating.
Okay, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
Like, I'm sorry.
The media portraying Stormy Daniels as some sort of great heroine who's coming out here because she just wants the truth told.
This isn't what she wants to be known for.
Yes, I'm sure she wants to be known for The Witches of Brestwick.
That's what she wants to be known for, right?
What she really wants to be known for is stripping, but not on the Make America Horny Again tour, which is what the name of her tour is.
That's the name that she doesn't want to mention there.
And she feels really bad about that because, I mean, that's humiliating.
It's not humiliating to strip.
Naked, in front of a bunch of men, after talking about having an affair with the President of the United States.
That's not humiliating.
It's really the name of the tour.
That's really where you gotta draw the line.
I mean, if you're gonna talk about class, that's really where you gotta draw the line.
It's not, you know, the being a pornographic actress thing that's humiliating in any way.
It really is the fact that you're now speaking on The View, fully dressed, about all this stuff.
That's not what you wanna be remembered for.
You definitely wanna be remembered for those lesbian porn scenes.
That's definitely the thing that's gonna go on the epitaph right there.
Like, what in the world?
And we're supposed to believe that our politics are not broken in any significant way?
I'm going to show you more of our politics being broken in just a second, because this interview on The View really was quite astonishing.
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Okay, so speaking of the craziness of Stormy Daniels on The View, everybody's favorite portion of television, of course, yesterday, was the reality TV show reveal of the likeness of the person who allegedly threatened Stormy Daniels.
So I do love that Stormy Daniels says in this interview she tried to stay silent about this for a long time.
Well, no, actually, she tried to sell the story to In Touch magazine, and then she tried to sell the story to National Enquirer, and then she sold the story to Trump, and now she's selling the story to the media.
So that's not good at being quiet about things, just last I checked.
But she says in 2011, after In Touch Weekly was going to print a story about her having a one-night affair with Trump, and she was going to get like 15 grand for all of that, then some weird guy came up to her in the parking lot of some grocery store with her daughter and said to her something about how this, how nice baby you got there would be a shame if something happened to her mother, which is just something from a bad dime novel.
Maybe it happened, maybe it didn't, but this reveal on The View is just so ridiculous.
I'm sorry.
If this were something that really mattered to Stormy Daniels, I assume she would make a police report of some sort.
I assume that she would actually turn in this photograph to the police.
I assume that she would take it a little more seriously than to go on The View to reveal it.
Now, listen, I'm not ripping on The View.
I desperately want to appear on The View.
But that said, this does not exactly pass the smell test in terms of non-publicity-seeking behavior from Stormy Daniels.
So, Normie, you recently sat down with a forensic artist, a very well-known one, who created a sketch of the alleged suspect based on your memory from that day, and now you're ready to reveal that sketch for the first time.
Can we take a look at that with you?
Sure.
Oh.
Here you go.
And to your recollection, is that the person that threatened you?
Absolutely.
Looks exactly like that person?
Wow.
To your recollection, is it the most generic-looking photograph you have ever seen of any human being ever?
It looks like every male star of the last 30 years in Hollywood?
Wow.
Thanks, Stormy, for that.
You've really cleared it up.
I'm sure that all the information will certainly be forthcoming, although I have my own suspicions that it was Tom Brady fresh off the flight gate.
He had to do something to get his name out of the headlines, and so he decided to go and threaten Stormy Daniels in 2011, wearing the boy band haircut.
Just really strong stuff from Stormy Daniels there.
And the media taking all this stuff seriously is truly incredible, but of course, That's not the only stuff they're taking very, very seriously.
They are also taking very seriously, and continuing to do so, all of the information about Michael Cohen.
So Michael Cohen, of course, is President Trump's lawyer.
And Michael Cohen was dragged into court by—well, actually, he dragged the FBI into court because he is suing for access to all the materials that they seized from his offices.
There's a lot of speculation about what exactly is in those materials, what exactly Michael Cohen has to worry about, but the two big headlines to come out of this are that Michael Cohen is in serious legal jeopardy, which could be trouble for Trump, and two, that one of Michael Cohen's clients was, of course, the talk show host on Fox News, Sean Hannity, right, with whom I'm friendly.
Michael Avenetti, who is the lawyer for Stormy Daniels, again on The View, he says that he has no fear that Michael Cohen will eventually flip on Trump and Trump will be taken down by the great and brave Stormy Daniels.
Here he is actually on MSNBC, Avenetti, talking.
I mean, the guy just must have, he must live at these TV studios as often as he's appearing on TV.
You think Michael Cohen's wife is going to advise him to take a 20-year bullet for the president?
I doubt it.
What about his children?
What about his children?
I mean, listen, Donny Deutch knows Michael Cohen, and we know other people that know Michael Cohen.
He loves his kids.
He loves his family.
And he loves his kids more than he loves Donald Trump's.
I understand the loyalty and all that other stuff.
But that only goes so far.
That only goes so far when your own Children are saying, Dad, what's going on?
It's either Trump or not watch your kids grow up.
The level of speculation that is occurring right now on cable television is just astonishing.
I was watching CNN again at the gym yesterday, and I'm trying to remember whose show it was, but one of the shows was just, the entire hour was dedicated to speculation about the connection between Michael Cohen and Sean Hannity, which is cable news' other favorite topic.
They're fascinated with the idea that Sean Hannity had the same lawyer as the president.
Well, is that really a giant shock?
That Sean Hannity is friendly with the lawyer for the president.
Sean Hannity is probably calling Trump every night.
In fact, I have pretty good information that he does talk to President Trump on a very frequent basis.
The Washington Post reported the same thing today.
That's not any sort of surprise, and he's known Michael Cohen for years.
The only weird legal issue here is that Sean has alternatively claimed that Cohen was his lawyer and that Cohen was not his lawyer.
For purposes of confidentiality and privilege, that does make some difference, but The newsers that are going crazy over this, the CNNs and MSNBCs that are going totally nuts over this, I'm just wondering what's so crazy about Hannity having the same lawyer as Trump?
Like, I assume that Hillary Clinton's lawyers represent a lot of members of the media because she probably is represented by mainstream law firms.
Is that the end of the world?
Half the people in the media worked in the Clinton administration.
Is that supposed to be some sort of great shock to anyone?
For example, you're seeing Chuck Todd over at NBC and MSNBC saying that he is stunned by Fox News' coverage of the fact that Sean Hannity was using Michael Cohen as his lawyer and covering Michael Cohen's fallout at the same time.
I'm just, I am stunned that Fox had no punitive response.
Not a, Sean Hannity must disclose every night.
Not a, he can't cover this story.
Not a, he's been suspended for a week.
Nothing.
Not a single thing.
They are saying, this is okay.
For anybody that works at Fox News.
Okay, literally, George Stephanopoulos, the chief of staff for Hillary Clinton, who wrote in his memoirs about crime with Hillary Clinton after President Clinton won in 1992, interviewed Hillary Clinton multiple times during the last campaign, and ABC News made no disclosure about that at the top of any of the shows, and he covered it as an objective journalist.
How has he magically changed into an objective journalist?
The answer is he wasn't.
It's just that the media don't care when it's a lefty who has close associations with members of the Democratic Party.
They care very deeply when a member of the media has close relationships with top members of the Republican Party.
Brian Stelter said some of the same stuff on CNN.
He said, if Rachel Maddow had been getting legal advice from Hillary's attorney, Sean Hannity would go crazy.
Let's imagine in a parallel universe where Hillary Clinton's president, Rachel Maddow, was discovered to have been getting secret legal advice from a Clinton lawyer.
Never mind the idea that that Clinton lawyer would have been raided and would have been under investigation.
If Maddow was under the microscope like that, Hannity would be, he would be ripping, he would be going wild with it.
He would be talking about it non-stop.
And I think what is so frustrating to most Americans, when these partisan wars, is the lack of consistency.
That Hannity would erupt if it were the other side.
Okay, so I agree on the lack of consistency point.
My only question is why is it that Brian Stelter is willing to ignore the lack of consistency on his own side of the aisle?
I like Brian, but I'm just wondering why is it that all these people on the left side of the aisle are willing to completely overlook the fact that half of the media are staffed by people who I'm sure share lawyers with Hillary Clinton and were probably interviewing her at the same time.
They don't seem to care about any of that, right?
I mean, the head of CBS News was the brother of Ben Rhodes, who was the national security advisor under President Obama.
You know, whether or not that makes a difference in news coverage is questionable, but it is something that ought to be displayed on a regular basis.
These close relationships that are happening in the media all the time.
I'm just amazed that the media suddenly latch onto all of this, except they're not really amazed.
They don't like Sean Hannity very much, and obviously they don't like President Trump very much.
Now, speaking of not liking President Trump, James Comey continues to do his tour of his publicity tour about his book, demonstrating a higher loyalty to a higher royalty.
That dude is very interested in making a lot of money off of his book.
And he is nonstop on television lately.
It is really amusing to watch him.
So yesterday he said that President Trump has a weird obsession with James Comey.
This is what Comey said.
He said, Donald Trump is treating me like a scorned high school date.
Dude, you're the one who literally went and wrote a book about how much you don't like Trump.
Trump wasn't saying a lot of stuff about you until you decided to come back with the book.
Now, I'm not really pleased with how Trump has handled the whole James Comey debacle.
I didn't think that it was greatly handled in the first place.
For James Comey to be walking around saying that Donald Trump is the scorned lover in this particular relationship seems to be ignorant of things like mirrors and self-awareness.
It's pretty incredible.
And speaking of lack of self-awareness, watch as Eric Holder tries to defend James Comey from the predations of Donald Trump.
He says that Donald Trump does not believe in the rule of law.
Remember, this is the attorney general who is held in contempt of Congress.
For failing to turn over records.
This is the guy who was responsible for the Fast and Furious scandal.
This is the guy who described himself as the President of the United States' wingman, as opposed to, you know, a law enforcement officer, the chief law enforcement officer of the country, and he's complaining about Donald Trump not believing in the rule of law, and the media are just sitting there taking this, and then people wonder why people are not taking the media seriously.
This is why, right here.
How do you make sense of those two different ways the president talks about law and order?
Well, he believes in situational law and order.
And there is no way that I think you can resolve the tension that you have just described.
He is not a believer at base in the rule of law.
He wants to make sure that those people who he likes, the people who support him, are treated in one way, and those other people, whoever those other people are, are treated in a different way.
Okay, so I love that Eric Holder is sitting here saying this with a straight face.
That Donald Trump, you know, he wants to make sure that only his allies are treated fairly, but everybody else is treated unfairly.
You were the Attorney General under President Obama who utilized the IRS, or at least his IRS, went after conservative nonprofits.
You were the Attorney General during Fast and Furious.
You were the Attorney General during the HHS scandal.
There were a dozen scandals that happened under Eric Holder, and Eric Holder was simultaneously describing himself as Barack Obama's wingman, and now he says that Donald Trump is inconsistent about the use of law enforcement?
It's really incredible.
Speaking of inconsistent about the use of law enforcement, James Comey, you know, again, the guy with the higher loyalty, he comes out and he says that he has no opinion on disciplining Andrew McCabe.
Andrew McCabe, of course, was deputy director of the FBI when James Comey was there.
And now it turns out that Andrew McCabe repeatedly lied to the FBI.
He repeatedly lied over and over.
And that's why he was fired.
And now James Comey says, well, I have no opinion on prosecuting Andrew McCabe.
I really have nothing to say about that.
So he didn't deserve the discipline he got, Andrew McCabe?
No, I think the process... I don't have a view on what the ultimate discipline should have been.
But this is the system working.
This is the Justice Department holding accountable its employees to the truth.
So he has no opinion on what should happen to Andrew McCabe.
Amazing.
He had an opinion on what should happen to Hillary Clinton.
He has opinions on what should happen to President Trump.
But he has no opinion on what should happen to Andrew McCabe, the guy who worked underneath him and who was simultaneously leaking materials to the media and pretending that somebody else inside the FBI was performing those leaks.
The inspector general has a full report on Andrew McCabe, okay, and what they found is that McCabe lacked candor on multiple occasions and violated FBI policy when he authorized the disclosure of sensitive investigative information to a reporter.
And James Comey has no opinion on any of this.
But don't worry, the only people who are engaging in selective use of law enforcement are members of the Trump administration.
And look how the media propped Comey up, right?
Stephen Colbert has on James Comey last night.
Comey actually raised Colbert's ratings, which is not a shock, because Colbert's ratings have been very up and down.
And they drank together, I mean, Comey and Colbert, because there was that story in Comey's book about how Comey, after being fired, drank red wine from a paper cup on a plane on the way home.
If it felt like you were working for a mob boss, were you surprised that you got whacked?
and Comey drank together.
The last time Colbert drank with somebody, it was Hillary Clinton, not a shock there either.
But here is Colbert really just massaging Comey's shoulders. - If it felt like you were working for a mob boss, were you surprised that you got whacked?
'Cause that's what they do. - I actually was quite surprised because I thought I'm leading the Russia investigation Even though our relationship was becoming strained, there's no way I'm going to get fired or whacked.
Why?
Why wouldn't you get fired?
Because that would be a crazy thing to do.
Why would you fire the FBI director who's leading the Russia investigation?
Because you're leading the Russia investigation.
I don't know if you've dealt with mob bosses before, but they don't like to be investigated.
Okay, so Stephen Colbert, of course, is making a point that he doesn't know that he's making, which is, if James Comey really thought all these terrible things about Trump, why didn't he quit the first day?
Why didn't he just quit and say, the president asked me for a loyalty oath, I wasn't willing to give him a loyalty oath, and I'm not going to serve under that president.
But, of course, James Comey is there in his...
I don't even know what he's wearing.
I mean, he's wearing a black shirt and a gray jacket that makes him look like something straight out of a 50s lounge.
And Stephen Colbert is talking with him, of course, in the most glowing terms about President Trump.
All of this stuff is so off-putting.
James Comey has nothing new to tell.
We know his story, OK?
And his story is what his story is.
He's so self-aggrandizing that I think he's actually undercutting his own cause.
James Comey, again, former FBI director, yesterday he said that he imitated LeBron James on leadership.
No, this isn't a real... This is just astonishing.
This isn't him pandering in any way.
This is what he says.
I'm sure that he just goes around talking about LeBron James on leadership.
This is what James Comey does.
I admire LeBron James and he's probably about to find out I used to talk about him all over the FBI and say he illustrates what the endless pursuit of excellence looks like.
But every offseason I've read he tries to find a part of his game to make better, which is crazy because he's already better than everybody else.
It's because he measures himself not against the others but against himself.
So I used to say inside the FBI, look, this is a great organization, but it's not good enough.
It can't ever be good enough.
We have to find parts of our game to make better.
Look at LeBron James.
He is insufferable.
I'm sorry, he's just insufferable.
There's no way to watch James Comey and not think that he's actually doing damage to the anti-Trump cause by being this insufferably douche-ish.
I mean, it's just awful.
That's not even a word, but I've coined it for James Comey.
My goodness gracious.
President Trump doesn't help himself, by the way, when he fires back on this.
He should just let James Comey hang out there in the breeze.
I mean, he really should just let James Comey, all six foot nine of him, say silly things and be looked at as silly.
But President Trump can't help himself, so he tweets out, Slippery James Comey, the worst FBI director in history, was not fired because of the phony Russia investigation where, by the way, there was no collusion except by the Dems.
You know, Mr. President, you literally said on national television to Lester Holt that you fired him because of the Russia investigation.
Like, you literally said that.
That's the only reason there's a special counsel right now.
The revisionist history from President Trump is not helpful here.
So James Comey may have been a terrible FBI director.
I think that he was.
James Comey may be a self-aggrandizing douche.
I think that he is.
President Trump made a big mistake when he fired James Comey and then went on national television to brag about it, saying that the real reason he fired James Comey is because Comey wouldn't come out and say that he was innocent in the Russia investigation.
That forced Rod Rosenstein, the guy who wrote the letter that provided the impetus for firing James Comey, that forced Rosenstein to recuse himself and appoint Robert Mueller.
There would be no Robert Mueller today if it were not for President Trump firing James Comey and then talking about it on national television.
So him denying it now is just silly.
Again, the president should be above these things.
He should just let it all play out.
Everyone can see this stuff, OK?
I have enough faith in the American people that they can look at the Stormy Daniels stuff and they can look at her revealing ridiculous mock-ups of generic-looking white men who threatened her in a parking lot and say, all of this seems like reality TV show nonsense.
The president apparently doesn't have that faith, or he can't control himself, so he tweeted out about Stormy Daniels.
He said that this was a con job as well.
He said, quote, Again, you know, for fake news media for fools, all of that is capitalized, which is weird.
But, you know, why is the president doing this?
I don't think it serves his purpose.
I think that not only does it not serve his purpose, it's counterproductive in a very serious way, because What he really should be saying—he shouldn't be saying anything.
But if his people are saying anything, it should be, well, if that actually happened, then the president had no knowledge of any of that.
When he just says that this is a non-existent man, when he comes out and says this never happened, now he's in a food fight with a former porn star he had sex with.
And none of this is good for the president.
None of this is good for the president's agenda.
Now, speaking of not great for the president's agenda, yesterday, There were a couple of dings in the White House.
One of those dings came courtesy of Justice Gorsuch.
So, there's been a lot of talk, of course, about Justice Gorsuch and Justice Gorsuch being President Trump's main victory as President of the United States.
There's a lot of truth to that.
I think Justice Gorsuch has been terrific thus far.
Well, he ruled on a case yesterday and a lot of folks were very angry at him.
They were angry at him because he sided with the court's liberals on a case with regard to the mandatory Deportation of a legal immigrant.
So the case was called Sessions v. DiMaia and involved a legal immigrant who came to the United States years ago.
As an adult, this guy was twice convicted of burglary.
Federal law permits deportation of legal immigrants if they are convicted of an aggravated felony, one type of which is a crime of violence.
The Obama and Trump administrations both claim this, according to Ala Pundit over at Hot Air, that burglary can be categorized as a crime of violence because of the way the statute is worded.
Any crime, which by its nature involves a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may be used in the course of committing the offense, is a crime of violence whether or not physical force was actually used.
In deciding whether a crime by its nature is a crime of violence, courts are supposed to look at what the ordinary case involving that crime might look like.
So the courts for liberals thought that this was unconstitutionally vague.
This did not make clear when you could deport somebody and when you could not deport somebody.
And Gorsuch concurred.
He said that the Congress has to do a better job of writing its legislation.
Right, here's what he wrote.
He wrote, "Vague laws invite arbitrary power.
Before the revolution, the crime of treason in English law was so capaciously construed that the mere expression of disfavored opinions could invite transportation or death.
The founders cited the Crown's abuse of pretended crimes like this as one of their reasons for revolution.
Today's vague laws may not be as invidious, but they can invite the exercise of arbitrary power all the same by leaving the people in the dark about what the law demands and allowing prosecutors and courts to make it up." So this does not sound like a wildly liberal decision In fact, it sounds very much like what Justice Scalia might have said in the same case.
There's an argument over whether this statute was vague or whether the statute was not vague, and nowhere does it say that Congress can't simply redraw the statute to make it less vague and then apply it going forward.
Again, there was a case called United States versus Johnson a couple of years ago about the Armed Career Criminal Act.
And it said if you were convicted of three prior violent felonies under the law, then you could be given extra prison time.
And there was some wiggle room in what it meant to be a violent felon.
And Antonin Scalia actually wrote with the four liberals as well as John Roberts.
They wrote the majority opinion.
So it's not, you know, out of the realm of possibility for Justice Gorsuch to... And people are saying, well, this means he's Anthony Kennedy.
That's not true.
I just don't think that's right at all.
I think Justice Gorsuch continues to be a real asset to the court.
And I think the ruling yesterday, it's controversial, but I don't think that Gorsuch gets this one wildly wrong.
Now, speaking of controversies that may mean more inside the administration, apparently Nikki Haley is now in a fight with other members of the administration.
So Nikki Haley, who is, of course, at the United Nations, as I have said, my spirit animal, Nikki Haley at the United Nations is my favorite thing in American government in a very long time.
She's the U.S.
ambassador to the U.N.
Well, on Sunday, she said that there would be new sanctions against Russia that were forthcoming.
And then the administration walked that back, and Larry Kudlow suggested that she had been confused.
And so Nikki Haley let Dana Perino know in a statement over Fox News, quote, with all due respect, I don't get confused.
That was after Kudlow had told reporters that there might have been some momentary confusion.
He said she was certainly not confused.
Kudlow backed down.
I was wrong to say that.
Totally wrong.
So apparently what happened is that she made these comments, and then the circumstances sort of changed, and she was not informed of that.
And so there was a miscommunication in the White House.
That is not a particular shock.
But Haley getting very aggressive about the fact that she was not confused about anything, I think that's because, you know, look, Nikki Haley has some pretty strong principles, and I think that she's right to hold those principles.
Now, one thing you've got to be aware of is there are members of the White House who don't like Nikki Haley, and there are members of the White House who are not fond of Mike Pence, the vice president.
So there's a story from The New York Times today all about how Nikki Haley and Mike Pence...
are secretly planning a coup inside the White House.
That Mike Pence wants to run for president and Nikki Haley will run for VP in 2020 if something should happen to President Trump, that they're sort of stationing themselves that way.
This, of course, would lead to President Trump being suspicious and angry.
Just this week, President Trump knocked down a person who was supposed to be appointed a national security advisor for Pence who was coming from Nikki Haley's team.
The reason for that is that this particular person apparently was not a Trump supporter and Trump has a nose for such things.
He doesn't want anybody who didn't support him in the last election cycle being in any position remotely approaching power.
And with all of that said, the idea that Mike Pence and Nikki Haley are planning some sort of coup inside the party, I don't see the evidence for that.
I think there's a lot of bad blood inside the White House, unfortunately.
And that bad blood inside the White House has not died down over the period of time that the president has been president.
In fact, in some ways it's gotten worse.
But the media also have an interest in fostering this sort of chaos.
They're very much interested in continuing to push the notion that the White House is a place of backstabbing and backbiting in which the vice president is going to go up against the president and all that sort of nonsense.
I just don't buy it.
I know all these people who are now talking about and I don't think that this is a real thing.
OK, in just a second, I want to talk about what's happening in California where freedom of speech is really on the line.
It makes a big difference to folks like me who engage in freedom of speech for a living here in California on a regular basis.
But first you're gonna have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.
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All righty.
So meanwhile, over in California, the California legislature is pushing a new law that really should scare people.
It essentially bans the sale of particular books.
I am not kidding.
This is something that is happening in the state of California.
According to David French over at National Review, Assembly Bill 2943 would make it an unlawful business practice to engage in a transaction intended to result or that results in the sale or lease of goods or services to any consumer that advertise, offer to engage in or do engage in sexual orientation change efforts with an individual.
The bill then defines sexual orientations change efforts as any practice that seeks to change an individual's sexual orientation.
This includes efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.
Hey, this is insane.
I'm sorry, this is insane.
This bill is totally crazy.
It doesn't matter whether you believe that conversion therapy works.
I think the evidence on that is at best mixed and leaning very strongly toward no.
But that does not mean that you shouldn't be able to read a book about how to fight particular urges or that urge you to behave in certain ways.
The entire religious worldview is that you have lots of urges, right?
We all have lots of urges, and a lot of those urges are bad for you, and you should resist those urges as much as possible.
But under California law, such books could be banned in the state of California.
Like, really.
And even worse, it says it includes efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions.
So in other words, if I have a three-year-old kid, and that three-year-old kid is expressing that they want to be the opposite sex, I can't take that kid to a therapist who is going to say that, who's going to try to make sure that my kids Feelings of gender disorientation are alleviated?
I don't have the ability to do that in the state of California.
How in the world is that constitutional?
The answer is it's not constitutional.
The answer is also that folks on the left in California don't care.
So we talk about tyranny coming in the guise of a happy face, well this is what we're talking about.
The folks on the left in California suggesting, of course, that gender expression is innately baked into the cake, that sexual orientation is innately baked into the cake, and that any attempt by anyone to say any difference should be illegal in the state of California is fully crazy and fully violative of First Amendment basic freedoms.
It's also not true.
Okay?
It's also not true.
Human behavior changes on a regular basis.
Now, I'm not talking about your desires.
Your desires may not be changeable.
But it is a fact that when it comes to, for example, gender expression, 80% of all kids who identify as cross-gender when they are young grow out of it by the time they are teenagers.
And you're now telling me that I have to reinforce that at the state level?
And that if I don't, the state is going to sue me?
The state is going to punish me?
And remember, this isn't just seeking the services of a psychiatrist.
This is even by a book about this.
If Barnes & Noble carries a book about how to deal with a child who's suffering from gender dysphoria, and that book suggests that you don't have hormone treatment or humor it, that this may actually be a violation of California state law?
I mean, this is insane.
It's totally crazy.
As David French writes, "To take one example, "large numbers of children who exhibit gender dysphoria "eventually desist.
"Their dysphoria resolves itself as they grow older.
"Indeed, there's serious research indicating "this is the most likely outcome "for a child with gender dysphoria.
"But under AB 2943, the very act of communicating "this truthful and indeed hopeful message "could very well lead to legal jeopardy." Not just that.
You can see a world in which California goes even further than this and starts taking children out of homes.
If you're a parent who says, listen, my little girl is not a little boy, no matter what she says, then you could see the state saying you are now engaging in child endangerment.
I cannot imagine the Supreme Court of the United States would uphold this law.
I just can't imagine it.
Now, maybe, you know, maybe a couple of the justices will try to uphold the law, some of the more radical justices.
But I just can't imagine that the Supreme Court would say this doesn't violate the First Amendment.
It very, very obviously And of course, this is the future of—California is the future of the left.
So, if you wonder why folks on the right are so unwilling to make bargains with folks on the left about social issues, this is the reason.
Because social leftists are interested in not only changing minds, but in forcing that change on people from above using the power of government.
I mean, this is truly evil stuff.
Suggesting to people they shouldn't be able to buy books they want to buy, suggesting to people that they shouldn't be able to bring kids to the therapist they want to bring kids to, is just insane and evil.
It really is.
And the fact that California is pursuing it demonstrates how crazy the left has gone on social issues particularly.
Okay, time for some things that I like and then some things that I hate.
So, Things that I like today.
So I'm in the middle of reading a book by Todd Esperdom called Something Wonderful, and it really is a great book.
It's all about Rodgers and Hammerstein.
Of course, I'm a huge Rodgers and Hammerstein fan.
Carousel, Oklahoma, South Pacific, The Sound of Music, The King and I.
They wrote a bevy of fantastic, fantastic musicals.
The one I've lately been listening to a lot is Carousel.
And, you know, I have to say, my kids have totally ruined me.
I used to be able to listen to Carousel without crying or without being emotional in any way.
And that was the way I preferred my life.
And now I listen to Carousel and I'm a mess.
So, well done, children.
You've destroyed me as a human being.
But the relationship between Rodgers and Hammerstein, not only does it say something about You know, how great art is created, but the art that they created is quintessentially American.
If you look at the work that they did, so much of it is about this sort of liberal consensus post-World War II and even during World War II about what it was that America stood for, what America was fighting for.
They have several shows about cross-cultural exchanges.
They have a couple of shows specifically about fighting racism.
South Pacific, particularly, is a very anti-racist show.
They take on some really difficult issues.
In Carousel, for example, Billy Bigelow, who's the hero of the show, he's really not the hero of the show.
He's the anti-hero of the show.
He's a really bad guy.
One of the descriptions about Billy Bigelow's character that I think resonates is that Billy Bigelow in Carousel is supposed to be a really bad person who you significantly dislike until he starts to sing.
Because when he sings, suddenly he's expressing what he feels as opposed to how he behaves.
And you sort of understand all the challenges that he faces as a character.
But there's spousal abuse in Carousel.
And it's taken very seriously in the show.
It's just, there has been no better lyricist than Oscar Hammerstein.
Despite all the talk about how naive his lyrics are, you cannot listen to the soliloquy from Carousel without understanding how good his understanding of human character was.
And also, the understanding of what male and female are like.
I think that if you look back to his lyrics particularly, about how women sing about men, how men sing about women, It's very true to what men and women are on a general level.
Of course, general level doesn't apply to each individual, but it does apply in general.
And in the soliloquy particularly, there's one beautiful move that Oscar Hammerstein makes in the soliloquy from Carousel.
You should go listen to it if you haven't.
Billy Bigelow is realizing that his wife has told him she's pregnant, and he is a complete He's a loser.
He's a bum.
But he thinks of himself very highly.
He thinks that he's the strongest guy in the world.
And so he starts off thinking, wow, I could have a boy.
And so he starts off talking about his boy Bill and what his boy Bill's going to be like.
He's going to be as tall and as strong as a tree.
He's probably going to go around telling all the other kids that I can lick their fathers while I can.
I'm a tough, rough guy, and my kid's going to be tough and rough just like me.
And then he realizes, halfway through the soliloquy, that this could be a girl.
And then his expression totally changes, right?
Everything changes.
Suddenly he realizes he has to be a responsible human being.
Suddenly he realizes that he has to go out and make some money.
He says that you can have fun with a son, but you have to be a father to a girl.
And by the end of the show, by the end of the song, he starts off talking about how strong he is and how tough he is and how he wants to see that in his son.
And by the end of the song, he says, you know, I can't, I need to go out and I need to earn.
I need to go make some money because I don't want my daughter growing up in an area with a bunch of bums just like me.
Suddenly there's actually some introspection that takes place when you have kids that you're responsible for.
It's an amazing, amazing song, but that's true of all of their lyrics.
The simplicity of Hammerstein's lyrics are deceptive because people think that Great lyrics are really complex.
They think that Lin-Manuel Miranda's lyrics are of the same level as Hammerstein's, or even Sondheim's are of the same level as Hammerstein's.
I really don't think that's the case.
I think that Hammerstein had a unique understanding of human individuality, and that's why you can listen to lyrics from two different characters in Hammerstein's show, and they sound very different, whereas if you listen to Sondheim lyrics, for most of his characters, they sound like Sondheim.
Almost in the way that Aaron Sorkin is a very good writer, but all of his characters sound like versions of Aaron Sorkin.
The same is not true for Hammerstein.
OK, so check out the book Something Wonderful by Todd Purdum.
Other things that I like.
So, this is pretty amazing.
A heroic female pilot did save this Southwest flight.
This is a frightening story.
So obviously, if you saw yesterday, it was all over the news.
There was a Southwest flight from New York to Dallas.
And the Southwest flight, an engine came off the plane.
It, like, exploded.
Part of the left engine ripped off.
And part of it flew through the window.
It killed a woman.
There was a woman who sucked halfway out of the plane.
She ended up dying.
She apparently was a tremendous person as well, from all accounts.
But the woman who saved the flight, the pilot, was Tammy Jo Schultz.
56.
She was one of the first Air Force pilots in the United States to be a woman.
And she's a religious Christian.
And apparently a passenger on the flight said, we were leaving LaGuardia heading to Dallas.
We were west of Philadelphia, probably about 30,000 feet.
All of a sudden we heard this loud bang rattling and then it felt like one of the engines went out.
The oxygen masks dropped and flight attendants did a good job.
The pilot came on and said, we're diverting to Philadelphia.
And, you know, there was a serious medical injury.
I don't know much about that, but I was sitting in front with a couple of passengers.
We got the mask on, and as soon as we landed, we were thankful.
The pilots did a great job.
The crew did a great job.
They got us down to Philly, and that's when I took a photo of the engine, and it appeared that it shredded the left side engine completely.
So we were coming down.
We dropped 30,000 feet to 25,000 feet.
The pilot regained control.
It was pretty scary.
The pilots did a great job.
So who exactly is this woman?
As they say, she was one of the first female fighter pilots and the first woman to fly an F-18.
She wasn't permitted to fly in combat, but she became an aggressor pilot and an instructor.
And of course, she is also a religious Christian.
She talks about the fact that every time she flies, she sees it as proof of Christ in her life.
So, sounds like a pretty amazing person and well worth celebrating.
Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
All righty, so I wanna give you the update on the Starbucks, the Starbucks boycott, the stupid Starbucks boycott.
So, as I say, yesterday, I said yesterday on the show that I am skeptical of the stories that some vast swath of racism is happening across the country by Starbucks employees.
And I showed you a tape from one Starbucks in Torrance, which is an area that is about 40%, 35% Asian, and I think it's about 2% black, and largely Hispanic as well, so it's a heavily minority area.
And this Starbucks employee, who's Asian, supposedly told a black guy he couldn't use the restroom and all we saw of the tape is what the black guy had to say about it, but we never heard the manager's account of exactly what happened.
Well, the same thing happened at the Starbucks in Philadelphia that led this whole thing off.
It turns out that the manager of the Starbucks has spoken out, her name is Holly, and she has spoken relatively anonymously.
What she says happens is that these two black guys come in, and they sit down, and then they not only refuse to leave, but when asked politely to leave because they're not buying anything, they begin to get a little bit aggressive with her.
They begin to—and she calls the police.
Like, they just won't leave.
She says—they come in, they say, can we use the restroom?
She says no, and then they just sit down, and they stay there.
Now, do I believe her or do I believe the two black guys who are talking about this?
Well, you know, all I can say is that the supporting evidence tends toward the story of the manager.
And the reason I say that is because the police chief, who's a black guy, said that when the police came and they asked these two guys to leave, the two guys said no.
The two guys refused and they said, go ahead and arrest us.
You know, they were apparently relatively aggressive with the officers as well.
Not only that, but it turns out that this woman, Holly, who was the store manager, I got a letter from one of the listeners to The Ben Shapiro Show, who routinely goes to this particular Starbucks and knows the manager.
And here is what she wrote me.
What she wrote me is, "I don't know what happened last week with the two guys.
I wasn't there.
But I highly doubt that she saw the two men and decided to call the police based solely on the fact that they are black." Well, according to this person who listens to the show, "From my observations and interactions with her, I was actually under the impression that Holly is an SJW feminist of the highest Once I even heard her scorn a male barista for not using the proper neutral pronouns of somebody.
That's why this whole situation is so shocking to me.
Even though I did not agree with her and all the SJW pins that adorn her beanie, I think calling her a racist all over the news and doxing her name, address, phone, family, etc.
is disgusting.
The patron said Holly's not racist and doesn't deserve what is happening to her here in Philly.
The patrons of the Starbucks are, quote, both black and white, and I've personally seen Holly give the oh-so-coveted restroom code to both black and white people, patrons and non-patrons.
I've seen her train both black and white staff members.
She has been nothing but nice to everyone.
I've never witnessed any racist behavior.
I may not agree with the way she carries herself with the colorful hair and the hippie pins, but I can recognize when someone is doing their job well.
Again, it would be very weird if Holly were a giant racist working in Philadelphia at a Starbucks.
The city is 42% black.
That would just be a very weird hiring decision.
And she lasted a year at the job without anybody else having any complaints.
So I find this whole story somewhat suspicious.
But Starbucks is a soft target.
Starbucks is never going to say that the incident didn't happen or defend their employee.
They're always going to cave into the SJW crowd because this is what they do.
This is the danger of being on the side of the SJWs.
Eventually, they always eat their own.
OK, so we'll 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 Bluver.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Alex Zingaro.
Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.
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The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.
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