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May 11, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
56:23
Delusional Democrats’ Failing Foreign Policy | Ep. 537
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Democrats are confused why President Trump's foreign policy seems to be working.
The media experts demonstrate they know nothing about gender or babies.
And we checked the mailbag.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
So we have a ton coming up on today's show, plus I'm going to tell you a little bit later in the show who our special guest is for our Sunday special.
It's somebody that you know, somebody that I think that you will like.
Our lineup is really good.
We've been starting to reach out to a lot of folks for the Sunday special, and the guests that we're having are really first-rate.
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Okay, so, President Trump's had a very good week on foreign policy.
A very good week on foreign policy.
First of all, there was the removal of the United States from the Iran deal, which was, as I've said many times, a very strong move, a useful move.
Also, President Trump was able to bring home three American citizens who had been held captive in North Korea.
They thanked him for it.
All of this, very good for President Trump.
And Democrats are sort of baffled by all of this.
They don't understand, why is it that Donald Trump, this Rube, the supposed idiot.
Why is it that his foreign policy seems to be achieving greater results than Barack Obama's awful foreign policy, which was based very much on the idea of a world working together where we reach out our hands, an open hand, and we never threaten.
No, we never threaten.
If we do threaten, we don't really mean it, like in Syria.
But instead, what we really should do is we should all just hug it out.
Why is it that Donald Trump's view is working better?
And why does it resonate more with Americans?
Why is it?
You can see the puzzlement on the faces of the folks in the media.
They just cannot understand why it is that Donald Trump seems to be succeeding in this way.
The latest indicator comes courtesy of NBC's Haley Jackson.
So Haley Jackson was covering President Trump's photo op with the Koreans, with the American citizens in North Korea who had been released.
And Trump went to meet them on the tarmac at like 2 a.m., 3 a.m., and then he spoke about it.
And watch NBC's coverage here, because it truly is amazing when you juxtapose this coverage with the coverage of the media at Bo Bergdahl's release back to the United States by ISIS.
You recall that Bo Bergdahl had been taken prisoner, rather, by al-Qaeda.
And you recall that the president of the United States traded five top terrorists for Bo Bergdahl, who was in fact a traitor.
It turns out that he was being tried for desertion.
And Bo Bergdahl, this was treated as a wonderful thing.
Barack Obama had a photo op in the Rose Garden with Bo Bergdahl's parents talking about how wonderful it was to bring Bo Bergdahl home.
This American hero bringing him home.
Obama didn't call him a hero.
Other members of his administration did.
And the media covered this straight.
Look at what Barack Obama did.
That's just so magnificent.
It's so wonderful.
Well, there's no question that these particular American citizens were not, in fact, deserters from the American military, and we didn't have to trade terrorists to get them back.
But watch NBC's coverage of Haley Jackson.
But what was striking was that this was, listen, Donald Trump's a former reality show producer.
This was a staged production meant for television, meant for the cameras, meant to be shown and seen here in this country and around the world.
You had floodlights lighting up this 30 by 50 foot American flag hanging in between two ladder trucks as the plane carrying these men rolled in.
This moment when the president and first lady holding hands went up the stairs, spending six minutes in private conversation.
And then unexpectedly, because we didn't think that was going to happen, unexpectedly coming over with these men and taking a number of questions from reporters who had gathered around in front yelling questions.
Look at that photo-op.
That staged photo-op.
How terrible that photo-op.
You mean like the exact photo-op that Barack Obama did in the Rose Garden with Bo Bergdahl's parents to announce the return of a deserter in exchange for terrorists?
You mean like that photo-op?
That the media didn't call a photo-op?
And if you'd said it was a photo-op, no, you were not allowed to say it was a photo-op.
It was bad to say that it was a photo-op.
Because obviously, listen, the President of the United States at that point, he was well deserving of a victory lap.
Listen, are these all photo-ops?
Of course they're photo ops.
Of course it's a photo op.
When President Trump goes on the tarmac to meet with people at 2 a.m., that's a photo op.
If I were to meet somebody at 2 a.m., the only reason I would do that is for a photo op.
I'm not even sure I would meet members of my family at 2 a.m.
on a tarmac.
It's really early in the morning.
I need my sleep.
But for the media to critique this by saying, oh, look at Trump.
He's a reality show producer.
This is what's so funny.
The media can't understand how a reality TV guy became president of the United States because he was the second reality TV guy to become president of the United States.
The first was Barack Obama.
All of these photo ops, all the scripted nonsense, it existed for Barack Obama, too.
The media just refused to call it out.
And then there's John Brennan.
John Brennan is former CIA director under Barack Obama.
And he says that Kim Jong-un has obviously duped President Trump.
How does he know that Kim Jong-un has duped President Trump?
Well, he doesn't.
But he was there when Barack Obama was being duped by the Iranians.
He was there when North Korea was duping Barack Obama.
But apparently he knows better.
He knows now that Donald Trump was duped by the North Koreans.
How does he know?
Because Donald Trump got to have a photo op.
And if he got a photo op, that means that Trump must have given up something awful in exchange.
I think he is very smartly and very masterfully, Kim Jong-un, escalated and saber-rattled so that he could then switch and appear much more accommodating and present a more peaceful face.
And so now we've gone from Mr. Trump calling him Rocket Man and Sick Puppy to Honorable and Nice.
Okay, well, did it ever occur to John Brennan that Donald Trump does that as a fig leaf for his actual policy?
Donald Trump says a lot of things.
Again, you could put this on Donald Trump's FATAP.
The dude said a lot of stuff.
Donald Trump says a lot of things.
But the question is what he actually does.
And this is what the American people are starting to recognize about President Trump.
That despite, maybe because of all the pyrotechnics, because of all the craziness, It is sometimes possible to ignore all of the good things that are happening.
And you can see that the folks over on MSNBC don't understand this.
I do appreciate the silliness of the host there, who refers to Kim Jong-un as Un.
That's not the way that Korean names work.
His name is Kim, right?
His last name is Kim.
But in any case, John Brennan making the case that Donald Trump is being duped by the North Koreans, with no evidence that he's actually being duped by the North Koreans to this point, other than Donald Trump said something on a tarmac about these people being treated very nicely by Kim Jong-un, which obviously was untrue.
Trump says a lot of stuff, right?
File that one in, Trump says a lot of stuff.
But for a guy who's a dupe, he seems to be doing pretty decently at this, and at least he's surrounding himself with people who are certainly not being duped.
Now, speaking of Democrats who say that Trump is being duped, Nancy Pelosi, she of the moving dentures, she suggested that President Trump had failed in his oath to protect and defend the United States by pulling out of the Iran deal.
Very, very sad.
We take an oath to protect and defend.
That is our first responsibility.
I do not think the president is honoring that oath by what he did.
Okay, so he's not honoring his oath.
What exactly is the oath that he's not honoring?
You mean the oath to uphold the Constitution, which was which was openly breached by pushing the Iran deal.
The Iran deal was not a treaty.
The Iran deal was an executive agreement between Barack Obama and the Iranian government.
It was not approved by the Senate.
In order for a treaty to be approved by the Senate, you need at least 60 votes to approve that treaty in the Senate.
It did not get 60 votes in the Senate and had a 21% approval rating among the American public at the time that it was passed.
When John Pondhortz made a great point over a commentary, he said, one of the reasons that the Democrats were so attached to the Iran deal is because they felt it was a great triumph of them over the public.
It was their ability to steamroll everybody and push through a deal that everyone thought was garbage that made them celebrate it.
They thought it was a real demonstration of their power, of their will, of their ability to cram down things the American people didn't want on a stupid, unwilling American public.
But Donald Trump breached some sort of constitutional duty by pulling out of a deal with a terrorist nation?
Donald Trump did that?
Or is it Barack Obama breaching his constitutional duty to defend the United States by signing a deal with a regime that has killed American soldiers?
Okay, let's be clear about this.
During the Iraq War, there were Iran-backed militias that were murdering American soldiers and wounding American soldiers.
There's a lot of IEDs set by Iranian troops produced in Iran that were used to maim American troops.
Barack Obama signed a deal with those people and got nothing in return.
Zero things in return.
But Donald Trump is the one who's a dupe?
Donald Trump is the one who's a fool?
There's a reason why the American people are trusting Republicans more on foreign policy these days than they trust Democrats.
And part of that is because the American people, when it comes to foreign policy, they're not as sanguine about the possibilities of a beautiful world as Democrats are.
Democrats seem to always believe that if we are just nice to everyone else, everyone else will be nice to us.
That is not true.
You're nice to everybody else until they are mean to you.
At that point, you clock them.
That's an American foreign policy that I think that the American people agree with.
Another demonstration of this, obviously, is the Democrats' newfound opposition to Gina Haspel.
Gina Haspel, of course, is the CIA nominee to be first female director in the history of the CIA, and Democrats are just fighting mad about this.
How could Gina Haspel even be considered, considering that she worked at the CIA at a time when the CIA was engaged in waterboarding of terrorists?
How could they possibly do all of this?
Now, they were totally fine when John Brennan was at CIA.
Didn't matter that John Brennan worked at the CIA at the time when waterboarding had been approved.
It didn't matter that half the people at the CIA worked at the CIA at the time when waterboarding was used.
But now, even the remote idea that waterboarding was a necessary evil, that it was something that we had to do, but it did not constitute formal torture, that has been thrown out.
No, if you say this, it makes you a cruel, inhumane, bad person.
Now, John McCain has said some of these same things about waterboarding, but I have a little more sympathy for John McCain saying them, considering the man was actually tortured in custody for seven years.
I have a little more sympathy hearing that from John McCain, who was tortured for no reason.
Legitimately no reason other than to try and break him.
I have more sympathy for that position from McCain than I do from Dianne Feinstein, who knows better than to assume the best about people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
One of the things that was hilarious this week is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was one of the masterminds of 9-11.
There were suggestions that he was going to be allowed to testify against Gina Haspel, that they were going to bring an actual terrorist responsible for 9-11 out of jail so that he could talk about the horrors he experienced at the hands of Gina Haspel.
If you want to make Gina Haspel president of the United States, that is the best way to do that.
Seriously, bring a terrorist out there to talk about how Gina Haspel was mean to him.
I would vote for her for president after hearing that, because Khalid Sheikh Mohammed deserved every little bit of everything that he got.
But beyond that, he also gave us a lot of actionable intelligence because we waterboarded him.
In just a second, I'm going to show you a clip of Dick Cheney.
I'm going to play for you a clip of Dick Cheney talking specifically about how Democrats really don't get it, right?
He explains why it is that waterboarding was a necessary thing at the time, and again, demonstrates why it is That so many Americans are not going to trust Democrats on foreign policy for quite a while after Barack Obama.
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Okay, so.
Speaking of democratic inability to understand the heart of the American public, the truth is that in elections in the United States from basically World War II on, Republicans were trusted with security far more than Democrats.
So after the end of World War II, and really with the rise of President Eisenhower in the 1952 election, since then Republicans have won every foreign policy election and they lost a lot of domestic elections.
So they lost.
They won.
Eisenhower won on a foreign policy Cold War.
I'm going to end the war in Korea based election.
And then Richard Nixon won on a restoration of security based election.
We're going to end the war in Vietnam with victory and peace through victory.
Right.
That was going to be that was going to be the idea from Richard Nixon.
And then End of the Cold War.
Ronald Reagan ran on the idea that the Soviet Union was an evil empire.
And from 1980 to 1988, the Republicans were present.
From 1988 to 1992, in the aftermath of that, George H.W.
Bush was there to sort of do the cleanup in the aftermath of the Cold War.
Then, you got onto domestic issues, right?
It was the economy, stupid, that got Bill Clinton into office in 1992.
But, as terrorism was rising, Then George W. Bush was trusted more in foreign policy in the 2000 election, and obviously he didn't even win the popular vote there.
But by 2004, clearly security was at the top of the agenda, and he won a re-election, a hard-fought re-election battle against John Kerry.
By 2008, the American people were ready to move on from national security.
They didn't want to hear about the Iraq War anymore.
They were tired of the Iraq War.
They'd been convinced by the media that the Iraq War was the wrong thing to do because there weren't massive stockpiles of new WMD found in Iraq in the first place.
And so we had a domestic policy election and Barack Obama won on the basis of that.
But the reality is that when it comes to crises in foreign policy, Republicans are trusted more than Democrats because Republicans are more realistic than Democrats on all this stuff.
They are.
They see the world as a dark place filled with people who are trying to kill us and we have to strengthen our hand.
And this is why Dick Cheney, for all the talk about him being this evil Darth Vader-esque figure, there are a lot of folks in the United States who believe, well, maybe you need Darth Vader if you're staring down somebody even worse.
Well, here's Dick Cheney talking about why the use of waterboarding during the War on Terror was a useful thing.
The techniques we used were not torture.
A lot of people try to call it that, but it wasn't deemed torture at the time.
The techniques we used are techniques we use on our own people in training.
We didn't go out and make them up someplace.
The President signed off, I signed off, the National Security Council signed off.
They did a good job.
They got the intelligence they needed.
And most Americans, I believe, still feel the same way, despite our sort of softness with regard to waterboarding.
on our watch.
So now people wanna go back and try to rewrite history.
But if it were my call, I'd do it again. - And most Americans, I believe, still feel the same way despite our sort of softness with regard to waterboarding.
If there were another terrorist attack in the United States of 9/11 scale, the United States would quickly shift into, "Okay, you do what you need to do "to get the information short of actual full terror, "of full torture." You know, waterboarding is not full torture.
We do use it to train Navy SEALs.
I watched, as I say, Stephen Crowder get waterboarded, and dude is fine, okay?
He's just as crazy as he ever was, but Stephen Crowder is totally fine.
He's not somebody who's suffering from the long-term aftereffects of torture.
Okay, well, meanwhile, The Mueller probe continues to unfold, and obviously members of the Trump administration are interested in wrapping this thing up.
Is this all a prelude to President Trump firing Robert Mueller?
I doubt it, but I think that they are trying to push publicly for Mueller to end this probe, and I think that's appropriate, because I think that the Mueller probe does not appear to have come up with anything so far in terms of actionable intelligence about the Trump administration.
A lot of the late-breaking news is about Michael Cohen, not about President Trump, and short of anything about President Trump and Russian election collusion, I don't see the evidence at this point.
So here's Mike Pence, the vice president, yesterday saying, listen, it's time to wrap this stuff, this stuff up.
I mean, we got enough.
Enough is enough.
About a year since this investigation began, our administration's provided over a million documents.
We fully cooperated in it.
And in the interest of the country, I think it's time to wrap it up.
And I would very respectfully encourage the special counsel and his team to bring their work to completion.
He was asked whether it was a witch hunt.
He declined to say that it was a witch hunt because he doesn't want to look like he's stepping on Mueller completely.
But he's not wrong when he says it's time to wrap this thing up.
I mean, the Mueller investigation has now been going on.
Mueller was appointed, what, May of last year?
So now it's been going on for a full year, the Mueller investigation?
And all of the talk about Trump-Russia collusion has been going on since the middle of the 2016 election and nothing.
Right, nothing.
The FBI has been looking into this for two years, and the best they've been able to come up with is George Papadopoulos, a low-level staffer, met with some Russian agents in London to talk about leaks of Hillary emails, and it went nowhere, and then lied to the FBI about it, Papadopoulos, which is why he is probably going to end up, you know, cutting some sort of bargain.
All we've ended up with is a FISA warrant on Carter Page that resulted in no prosecution whatsoever.
All we've ended up with is a prosecution of Mike Flynn based on him fibbing to the FBI about having a conversation with the Russians after the election, having nothing to do with Trump-Russia collusion.
What any of this stuff has to do with actual Trump-Russia election collusion is beyond me.
And I think Trump is rightly angry about this.
John Kelly, the chief of staff for President Trump, he says that mostly the president is just embarrassed and annoyed by the investigation at this point.
Is there a cloud because of it hanging over this White House?
Well, yeah, you know, there may not be a cloud, but certainly the president is somewhat embarrassed, frankly, when world leaders come in.
You know, Bibi Netanyahu is here and he was under investigation himself.
And it's like you walk in and, you know, the first couple of minutes of every conversation might revolve around that kind of thing.
I mean, you've got to sympathize with Trump to the extent that Trump knows he didn't collude with Russia, and yet he's been hearing for two years that he won an illegitimate election because he colluded with Russia.
That would annoy me, too.
It would annoy you, too.
I think it would annoy everyone.
You know, this is all based on the assumption he didn't actually collude with Russia, and I've seen no evidence that he did at this point.
None has been presented publicly.
So if Mueller's got something, at a certain point you've got to say, dude, wrap it up, present your evidence, let's see what you've got to show.
If you've got nothing, then you've got nothing.
Now, with all of that said, all of the hubbub now surrounding Michael Cohen is obviously not good for President Trump.
The president has not surrounded himself with the best people.
That is very clear.
Surrounding himself with Michael Cohen was a foolish move from the very beginning.
Michael Cohen is a dunderhead.
That is obvious.
And the fact that Michael Cohen continues to haunt the president is largely a problem of President Trump's own making.
AT&T announced today that they apologized for ever having given money to Michael Cohen.
They were apparently giving money to Michael Cohen in the hopes that he would essentially lobby the President of the United States on the AT&T Time Warner merger.
They gave him about $200,000.
The head of AT&T's Legislative Affairs Office actually resigned today over all of this, even though no illegal activity took place.
They can give Michael Cohen any amount of money they want.
It's really up to Michael Cohen to register as a lobbyist.
But it does make it difficult for the President of the United States to claim that he's trying to drain the swamp when all the people around him I reckon in the cash like Michael Cohen.
Under my administration, we're fighting against the lobbyists, the special interests and the corrupt Washington politics.
After years of rebuilding foreign countries, Of which a lot of people partake in the cost of rebuilding those foreign countries.
We are finally rebuilding our country.
Okay, so when he says drain the swamp in these rallies, it's difficult to say that while Michael Cohen is pulling down $2 million to be friends with Donald Trump.
It makes things very awkward.
It's why Donald Trump needs to excise these people from his life.
It's why the president needs to not engage us.
Now, is he wrong that he's draining the swamp as far as regulation?
No.
As far as shrinking size of government and regulation, I think that the president is doing his best, although he has signed into law a couple of terrible omnibus packages he never should have signed into law.
The real kind of draining the swamp has little to do with firing Michael Cohen as his attorney.
It has a lot more to do with cutting the size and scope of government.
I think that Trump In some ways has his heart in the right place there, although he's not cutting the size and scope of government, I think, nearly enough to suit me.
But it does not help his case when Michael Cohen is running around being Michael Cohen.
OK, now, meanwhile, the expertise of the left is on full display.
And when it comes to matters of genetics and reality, It's so bizarre.
There are a lot of folks on the left.
I spend my life going to college campuses and being told that I do not fully understand science, that I do not fully understand science.
I'm going to explain in a second why it is the left that apparently does not fully understand science, at least lately.
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All right.
So, speaking of science, the left obviously is having some trouble with the science.
So, this comes up in a couple of different contexts today.
Context number one, apparently Donald Trump told John McEnroe, the former number one seeded tennis player, He's got to be pushing 60, John McEnroe.
But John McEnroe was apparently at some event and Donald Trump passed a note up to him offering to pay John McEnroe a million dollars if he would play a match with Serena Williams.
Here is John McEnroe talking about it.
I was calling a match and suddenly I get this envelope and it's from Donald Trump, you know, who's promoter galore.
Little did I know what was going to end up happening, nor I believe anyone else.
So he wrote me a letter, said, you know, dear John, you know, I want to offer you $1 million again to play either Serena or Venus.
And so over the course of time, literally, you know, my kids, you know, my daughters have... Dad.
I don't know if you can beat Serena.
I'm like, God, I ain't even got my kids on my side.
OK, the answer is he could probably beat Serena.
OK, but CNN's Christine Brennan says no.
Either Venus or Serena would have pummeled John McEnroe, the former number one player in the world.
First of all, are you talking about in their primes?
Because no.
Are you talking about when John McEnroe is 60?
Still probably knows the truth.
But here, here they're talking about it on CNN.
And obviously, female power means that women have the same musculature and capacity in sports as men.
If you're stupid.
So here is here is Christine Brennan trying to explain.
Can we talk about him saying that he was sure that he would have beaten Serena or Venus Williams?
I mean, I don't think he can be so sure.
Well, he's in his late 50s, Brianna, and I don't think anyone would want to see that, but I think Serena Orvinas would have pummeled him a la Billie Jean King over Bobby Riggs back in 1973.
Okay, Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs because Bobby Riggs threw the match.
Okay, he legitimately threw the match and he was a drunk old dude.
The idea that that match is one of the great annoyances for anyone who knows anything about sports.
It is such an annoyance when people say that Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs straight up.
Okay, Bobby Riggs threw the match before the match.
There's very little doubt about this at this point.
And here is my proof that John McEnroe would in fact beat Serena Williams.
And certainly in his prime would have beat Serena Williams, no question.
First of all, Serena Williams has said before she doesn't plan the men's tour because she wouldn't win on the men's tour.
This is obviously true.
Many years ago, very early in Venus and Serena's career, 1998, Serena Williams decided she thought she could beat some men.
So she was in an ATP tour office at the Australian Open.
And a guy named Karsten Brash, who you've never heard of because he was an OK player, but he wasn't anything special.
He was once a top 40 player at his best.
But at this point, when he met Serena Williams in 1998, he was ranked 203rd in the world.
203rd in the world.
So Serena was talking about how she might be able to beat some of the men.
And he said, OK, want to play a match?
And so both Serena and Venus showed up to play matches with him, just for fun.
So Brash, this is according to USA Today, the date was set and the day arrived.
Brash played a warm-up round of golf in the morning, then came to Melbourne Park.
The threesome went to the backcourt where each sister would have a one-set shot at Brash.
Word had spread around the grounds the event was taking place, which caused tournament officials to restrict admittance to the area to only those with badges.
Brash smoked and sipped beers during the changeovers, and to be honest, no longer looked the part of a fit professional athlete.
Brash led 5-0 over Serena before winning the set 6-1, and then posted a 6-2 set victory over Venus.
Okay, he was old, he was ranked 203rd in the world, he was smoking and drinking beer between the rounds, and he kicked the crap out of Serena and Venus Williams.
That is not a rip on Serena and Venus Williams as athletes.
They're incredible athletes.
They're also women.
And to pretend that women and men are exactly the same when it comes to physical capacity is just idiotic.
It's just stupid.
Okay, she is the greatest female tennis player of all time, but her fastest recorded serve was 129 miles per hour.
Okay?
The fastest recorded men's serve is 163 miles per hour.
In the 2015 Grand Slam, Serena's average serve traveled 109 miles per hour.
Novak Djokovic averaged 117.
Andy Murray averaged 114.
So the experts have come up with something called the Universal Tennis Rating.
It rates all players on a single scale.
Jokovic, this is a couple years ago, ranked at 16.39.
That was the highest in the world.
Serena ranked at 13.36, which doesn't sound terrible until you realize that that is the same ranking as a mid-ranked male college tennis player.
Okay, so men and women, they don't have the same capacity.
Okay, this is true when it comes to throwing baseballs as well.
Women, on average, cannot throw as fast as men.
There are some women who can throw pretty fast.
There are no women who can throw 95 miles per hour.
Okay, the average woman throws a baseball slower than... This is a real statistic.
This is not me making it up.
The average woman throws a baseball slower than, out of 1,000 men, 998 of those men.
OK, the average woman throws faster than two out of one thousand men that you pick up the street.
So let's get over this whole women and men are exactly the same.
They're not exactly the same.
Again, does this make women worse?
No.
Does it make women worse at sports?
Yes.
By any objective measure.
But why is this even?
But feminists, don't you understand you undermine your case when you suggest that men and women are exactly the same or they should be treated exactly the same?
Don't you understand that it's really stupid?
Because then you know what happens?
Fallon Fox, who is a dude who is transgender, fights women in MMA and beats the living crap out of them because he still has male musculature.
And it's unfair because it's a man beating the hell out of women?
This whole thing is so stupid.
Speaking of expertise on the left, I have to play this clip because it's just incredible.
So there's an expert in Britain.
I love what now passes for being an expert.
It's pretty spectacular.
This is an expert in Britain trying to explain that parents should ask babies for permission to change their diapers.
There's a sexuality expert and author named Deanne Carson.
And she was speaking to ABC News in Australia and she was asked what age clients she works with.
She said, we work with children from three years old.
We work with parents from birth.
And then Carson explains exactly what she means by that.
We work from children from three years old.
We work with parents from birth.
From birth?
Yeah, yeah.
Just about how to set up a culture of consent in their home.
So, I'm going to change your nappy now.
Is that okay?
Of course, the baby's not going to respond.
Yes, mum, that's awesome.
I'd love to have my nappy changed.
But if you leave a space and wait for body language and wait to make eye contact, then you're letting that child know that their response matters.
Um, no.
Okay, as a parent of two, okay, as a parent of a four-year-old and a two-year-old, one of whom is out of diapers and the other one who will soon be out of diapers, I hope, okay, here's the truth.
If you leave your kids to decide when they want their diapers changed, they will have diaper rash forever.
Forever.
Okay, if I let my two-year-old son explain to me when he wants his diapers changed, first of all, he's really smart, so he actually does.
Like, he, as soon as he goes to the bathroom, he immediately tells us.
Like, right then, he says, okay, pee-pee, poo-poo, whatever, and then we go and change him.
My daughter was not so much like that, right?
When she was very young, she was also a clean freak.
And so when she was a little baby, she would not eat until she'd been changed.
But as she got older, because kids do this, she started getting angry when you would change her diaper.
And my son is starting to get to that age now, too, where he gets mad when you change his diaper.
He doesn't want his diaper changed.
He thrashes around on the changing table.
You know what you have to do?
Force your kids to change their diaper if you're not an idiot.
But apparently, being an idiot is an actual qualification for being an expert on parenting on national TV.
Now, listen, I don't want to stereotype this woman, Deanne Carson.
I don't know if she has kids.
I don't know who does her hair.
But this is dumb.
OK?
This is incredibly dumb.
And it's amazing what constitutes expertise.
Now, the parenting experts know so little about what actually happens with regard to parenting.
So many of them are basing it off of bad social science or based on these tiny, uncontrolled studies that A lot of what they have to say is just absolutely counterintuitive.
And then they claim that they are experts in science first.
And these religious parents who do things like change their kids' diapers without their kids' permission.
You're violating consent.
You're part of rape culture if you change your kids' diapers or some such nonsense.
Okay.
So I'm going to get to the mailbag in just a second.
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Alrighty, so, we are now going to get to the mailbag, but first, you're going to have to go over to DailyWire.com.
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You think that you're sending me these emails and I'm going to answer all of them?
I get hundreds of emails a day.
I mean, not to be self-centered, but I'm a popular fellow.
I get lots and lots of emails.
How do you know that your question is actually going to be answered?
You know it's going to be answered when you actually send it to me via Daily Wire.
And the way you do this is you go to our Daily Wire chat room right now, as I'm about to do the mailbag, after you subscribe, and then you can ask me questions live and I will answer them for you on air.
Plus, you can ask questions of our other hosts, including the excorable Michael Mowles.
It's almost time for our next episode of The Conversation.
Tuesday, May 15th, 5.30pm Eastern, 2.30pm Pacific.
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Plus, you should subscribe also because it helps us bring you the show.
Okay, let's be honest about this.
It is your subscriptions that allow us to bring you the show and allow us to bring you the Sunday specials.
Our new Sunday special is coming up on Sunday because it's Sunday special, if you didn't get that from the name.
And we are featuring Dave Rubin.
So Dave Rubin stops by for the full hour, as Larry King might say.
And it is excellent.
It's really a lot of fun to listen to.
You've seen a lot of hubbub about the intellectual dark web this week.
Well, Dave is a charter member and a connector within the intellectual dark web, and we'll have full discussions about Dave's philosophy and the stuff that Dave has to say.
Well, and here's a little bit of what it sounded like when I sat down with Dave Rubin.
One of the great things about Dave Rubin is that the first time I was introduced to you, I think it was probably on your show.
I don't know if we knew each other before I was on your show.
And you are, I think, one of the best interviewers in the business.
So people normally see stuff like this and expect us to see the chairs reversed.
Yeah.
But what's what's really fun about this, I actually want to ask you about some of your own journey, because you don't actually get to talk about that too much.
Very quickly, though, I just for the record, clearly, by you being an interviewer, you stole this from me.
I was the one that came up with the idea of the interview.
No question.
sitting there talking it out. - It's full on cultural appropriation. - And you have culturally appropriated it from me.
I just wanna put that.
- Oh yeah, and then just like America, we're gonna culturally appropriate from others and then we're gonna make the best of it and make more money.
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All righty, it is time to mailbag it up.
So let's do this thing.
So Jim says, hello, Ben.
As a father of three beautiful girls, I feel it behooves me to make the world a better place for them.
I personally think our national debt needs to be reconciled above all else.
And that entails entitlement reform.
No politician wants to discuss.
What do you think is the number one threat the next generation faces and how can we fix it today?
I think in terms of government, that's exactly right.
I mean, in terms of government, the blowing out of the national debt and the creation of a fiscally irresponsible deficit that's going to be paid off by our kids and our kids' kids is really awful.
It's one of the things that Paul Ryan was trying to push.
It's one of the shortcomings of President Trump, who really doesn't care too much about entitlement reform.
He thinks it's politically toxic.
He may be right that it's politically toxic, but You gotta do it anyway, because if you actually want to save the country, you can't be waiting until 20 years from now when social security goes fully bankrupt.
Not even 20 years, probably 10-15 years from now when it goes fully bankrupt, and you're looking at drastically raising taxes or continuing to blow out our national debt, which essentially outsources our foreign policy to people who own our debt, puts us in severe fiscal need.
So that's stuff Republicans ought to be pursuing right now, and they ought to be making strong moral arguments for why Social Security needs to be restructured.
I think young people in particular are willing to hear that argument, and if they care about Social Security, they're willing to hear it.
You don't want your taxes raised and you want more money back from the government?
You can have both of these things.
All we have to do is make Social Security a private thing as opposed to making it a public thing.
He has a bunch of accomplishments that I think are really great.
I think the tax cuts are excellent.
I think that his stacking of the courts is probably the single best thing.
His stacking of the courts with conservatives who are going to be on those courts for Decades is an excellent, excellent, necessary thing, because otherwise the judiciary just becomes a tool of the left.
Beyond that, obviously the movement of the embassy to Jerusalem, pulling out of the Iran deal, all of that is terrific.
Cutting down on regulation.
The man's got a lot of accomplishments.
I mean, I can't be unhappy with his policy so far.
I think his policy so far has been terrific.
As I've said, two top members of the administration.
A-minus on executive policy, C-plus on legislative policy, D to F on rhetoric.
I think his rhetoric has improved of late.
He hasn't had any big Charlottesville boo-boos as he used to.
Hopefully that lasts, but it's a day ending in Y, so there'll be a tweet storm coming soon.
Susan says, Question.
Hey Ben, you clearly have amazing recall.
I imagine much of that is IQ, but any tips for the lay person of the world to help us keep our memories sharp?
Well, when it comes to actively attempting to memorize, I'm lucky because I have a pretty good memory for things I want to think about.
But what I do find helps is writing stuff down.
So not even looking back at what you've written down, but the very act of writing things down is very helpful.
It's a good study method for kids who are in school.
If you're in high school, you're in junior high, you're trying to study for a test, write things and write them by hand, not type.
Typing, it doesn't get in your head quite as much.
Grab a pen, write down the stuff you want to remember.
The very act of writing almost engraves it on your memory.
So I would highly recommend that as a memory tool.
Also, you then have notes that you can later use.
I make a mistake, I think, when I read books.
I've had this discussion with a couple of people in recent interviews.
Jordan Peterson, most specifically, I think, talked about highlighting books, I believe is Jordan.
I am not somebody who highlights my books because I have a lot of reverence for the written word and for books, and I don't like defacing my books.
But I was hearing from, it wasn't Jordan, it was somebody else, and it's going to annoy me now.
So my memory ain't that great.
But if you but what he was saying is that, it was Glenn Beck, it was Glenn.
So Glenn was saying that he enjoyed highlighting books specifically because he would take notes in the margins of books, and then his kids are always fascinated by his thought process as he was reading, which I think is actually kind of a cool Writing in books, writing stuff down is probably the best way to approach that.
This is the big question.
Obamacare work now that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act repealed its funding mechanism in the individual mandate?
Since it is a mandatory expenditure, wouldn't other tax dollars now have to be allocated to it or will it just cease to exist?
Thanks.
Love the show.
This is the big question.
After you get rid of the individual mandate, which was the funding mechanism to pay for all of the increased cost through regulation of Obamacare, the only way that you're going to be able to bring costs down in the individual marketplace is by getting rid of regulation or by subsidizing.
The federal government has chosen to subsidize, which is why I'm not in love with just getting rid of the That's good.
But you're going to have to do more than that.
Otherwise, you're going to be blamed for an increase in the price of individual health care plans.
So this is why getting rid of regulation is what was deeply necessary and unfortunately did not happen.
That's a major shortcoming of Republican Congress, and it behooves us to remember that.
Chris says, Ben, can you explain the central banking system and the purpose of the Federal Reserve, the positive and negative sides alike, please?
So, the Federal Reserve was originally established in the beginning of the Depression, basically.
And it was established in order to say to banks that if you lose all of your money, we can provide you a certain percentage of your money back to you.
So this is why the FDIC, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, ensures that the first, I believe, $200,000 of money that you have in the bank, you will get back regardless of whether the bank goes bust.
This is the federal government saying, it's trying to prevent runs on bank.
The way it used to work is that if there was a bank, it had a certain amount of money in the bank, the bank never has as much money in the bank as it owes to people.
Because when you give money to the bank, the bank doesn't just keep it in the back room.
The bank lends that out to people at interest.
That's how the bank makes its money.
Well, what happens if everybody who has their money stored in the bank goes and asks for their money at the same time?
The bank doesn't have that money.
It goes bankrupt.
And it starts trying to call in loans.
This is what happened at the beginning of the Great Depression.
Everybody started going to the bank and withdrawing their money from the bank.
So the solution by the federal government was the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which is run by the Fed.
And the idea there was that they were going to be able to insure your losses by banks.
Now, the problem with this is it does create a significant amount of moral hazard.
Moral hazard being that banks can now be loosey-goosey about the amount of money that they lend out, knowing the federal government is going to back their play at the end or bail them out in the end.
This has been the problem with the Fed from the beginning, is the possibility of moral hazard where people act irresponsibly and then the federal government bails them out, as we saw actually in 2008-2009.
The Fed has some other stuff that it does in conjunction with the Department of the Treasury.
The Department of the Treasury sells bonds, stocks and bonds, and the Federal Reserve works with the government The Department of the Treasury, in order to provide the dollars that are used in the sales of stocks and bonds.
So when the government buys back bonds, for example, they're trying to take more bonds out of the market.
They're trying to inflate the currency or the amount of currency that's in circulation.
Milton Friedman was a big fan of the Fed, actually.
He thought that the Fed should set a standard growth rate in the amount of money in circulation on a particular year-by-year basis, like 2%.
Then there are people who are Chicago School.
So, Chicago School economists think the Fed ought to exist and the Fed ought to have control over the amount of money in circulation.
And then there's the Vienna School of Economics, which suggests that really we should be on a gold standard and the government shouldn't be able to manipulate the amount of currency that's in circulation.
That happens through a sort of complex process between the Fed and the Department of the Treasury.
I tend to be on the Vienna School of Economics side.
I'm not a big fan of the Federal Reserve.
I think the Federal Reserve It creates a sense of security that I think is unwarranted, and that leads, again, companies to rely on the federal government to bail them out, and now bailouts are enshrined in the Dodd-Frank Act, and that really needs to be gutted as well.
I mean, that's something else that the Republicans ought to be pursuing right now as well.
Okay, let's see.
Harrison says, Hey Ben, I was wondering what your opinion is of a negative income tax such as the one proposed by Milton Friedman as an alternative to the welfare state.
So as an alternative to the welfare state, I'm for it.
As an adjunct to the welfare state, I'm against it.
So the negative income tax is that idea that based on your income, we basically guarantee you a minimum income.
It's basically a universal basic income.
He says that you should have a negative income tax based on the amount of money that you make, and we will sign a check to you back from the federal government for a particular amount of money.
But it's not going to be dependent on the amount of money that you make completely, and it's also not going to require that you be single, for example, that you're a single mother, and it's not going to be welfare state-based.
It's going to be a certain sliding scale that we give you of a consistent amount of money that goes into your bank account, and that is what it is.
And it would be a lot cheaper than the welfare state.
No question.
You wouldn't need the infrastructure of the welfare state.
So I agree that as an alternative to the welfare state, it would be great.
I tend to oppose both of them because I don't think that that's a useful thing and rely instead on private charity.
Thomas says, hi, Ben, in regards to the more progressive in regards to progressivism plaguing the nation, do you see America ever returning to its more conservative Judeo-Christian roots?
And what would it take to get us there?
I think that what it would take to get us there is to recognize that our moral roots are Judeo-Christian, whether you like it or not.
This is an argument that I've been having repeatedly with a lot of folks who are Enlightenment thinkers, Neo-Enlightenment thinkers.
I've had this argument now with Sam Harris and with, not really with Jonah Goldberg openly, but I would certainly like to discuss it with Jonah.
I think he'd probably agree with me, actually.
And I've had this argument with Michael Shermer.
There are a lot of people who are, I've had this argument about Steven Pinker.
Enlightenment thinking is rooted in Judeo-Christian values.
You want to get people back to Judeo-Christian values, what you say is, listen, all the stuff that's around you, that was built by a Judeo-Christian civilization, so maybe it would behoove you to study the foundational documents of the Judeo-Christian vision, and then to see how those documents have been interpreted over the last several thousand years to bring us here.
Because there's this myth that's going around that what happened is that in the 18th century, late 18th century, early 19th century, there was a vast shift in public thinking.
And the thinking went, we reject the Bible.
And from that came everything grand.
That is a lie.
It is not historically true.
It is not philosophically true.
It is not morally true.
And I think that we need to debunk that if we are actually going to fight for Judeo-Christian values.
OK.
Derek says, salutations, Ben.
I want to ask, why does the left hate Western culture?
Almost everything great about the modern world is due to the progress of Western civilization, yet the Left loathes the very foundations that made such an incredible world.
It's mind-boggling.
Sincerely, Derek." Well, I think that what the Left sees when they see Western civilization is inequality.
So the reason the Left hates Western civilization is because the Left says, as Marx said, that individual human beings are created by the system in which we live.
We don't have free will in the sense that we can really move beyond the system, what we have to do is tear down the system.
We have to tear it out at its roots, and then we can build a better, more utopian world.
And from that utopian world will come a transcendental man, will come a new type of human being who's kinder and more generous and better to other human beings.
But that can only change if you get rid of the system itself.
And so what the left tends to focus on is all of the shortcomings of the system.
So what are the shortcomings of the system in the freest, most prosperous time in human history?
Well, the shortcomings of the system are lack of soul.
So throughout the 20th century, the left kept saying that even during the 1950s, when everybody was booming and it seemed like a America was finally starting to move beyond its racial problem.
I mean, the civil rights movement really starts in the 50s, not the 60s.
And there's real change coming in America.
All of it good, or at least a large part of it good.
Feminism is early, first stage feminism is beginning, and all of that is good.
The left says, no.
The reason there is sexism, the reason there is racism, the reason there is brutality is because of this capitalist system.
And all of these people who you see, who are engaged in the capitalist system, are truly empty souls.
These are people who have nothing to live for.
They're just shells of their former self.
They're missing meaning.
And that missing meaning is a generation of Western civilization.
It was generated by Western civilization.
So all we have to do is get rid of all of these Western civilized notions about freedom, individual rights.
We have to get rid of this whole shtick about capitalism.
And when we do that, we'll have a better human being in a better world.
So that's that's the reason they're trying to propose a utopian vision to replace the Western civilized vision, failing to recognize, of course, that all the good stuff around them is inextricably intertwined with the principles that generated it in the first place.
Fernando says, I got asked this question during dinner with a couple of friends.
What is a soul?
I did not know how to answer.
What do you believe in is the definition of a soul.
So this is a hard question because obviously the soul is unprovable.
It's not verifiable.
There's no real way to tell what a soul is.
So, there are various definitions of the soul.
So, Thomas Aquinas has an interesting definition of the soul.
He says that, basically, people are made up of form and matter.
So, you are made up of matter and you are made up of form.
So, the form precedes the matter in the Platonic narrative.
that there's the form of a dog that God has in mind, and then there's a dog, right?
There is the form of dog, and the reason that you know all dogs are similar is because there's a platonic idea of dog, right?
And so all those dogs fall under that one platonic ideal of the dog.
The same thing holds true with regard to form and matter, sort of according to Aquinas.
So the idea there is that there is a form of you, right?
There's a form of man, and that encompasses what you are, and that survives death, but it is more than your constituent parts, And that's what the soul is.
So the form is the soul.
So whether that survives death or not, the idea is that the form is you, and it's not just your constituent parts.
I think there's something to that.
I also think that there's a good case to be made that the soul is what animates you, that when you die, the soul obviously leaves your body.
And what we mean by that is that the animating force that allows you to live and think and make decisions freely has now left you.
And so that's what I think the soul is.
What the soul does after death is beyond me.
I don't know the answer.
No one knows the answer because unless you're a Christian you believe Jesus came back to tell everybody.
There are very few people who have come back to tell anybody about what happens after death.
I have my own theories as to what happens after death.
But those theories, actually we'll be discussing that I think in a coming Sunday special sometime pretty soon.
Okay, one more of these?
Okay, one more.
Natalie says, Hi Ben, I'm currently an intern at a big corporate law firm.
I'm starting law school next year.
While the work of an attorney interests and excites me, I'm growing concerned about balancing the demands of corporate law and family life.
I look around at this law firm and see a lot of very successful females, but most of them, especially partners and high-level associates, are not married and do not have kids.
Since more than anything else, I want to get married and have children in the future.
Michelle Obama thinks you're a terrible person.
Thanks.
So I think the answer is it is certainly possible to be a good corporate attorney and a good wife and mother.
mother at the same time.
Thanks.
So I think the answer is it is certainly possible to be a good corporate attorney and a good wife and mother.
I do think that there are trade-offs and to pretend that there are no trade-offs is to ignore reality.
Hours that you spend at work are hours that you're not spending at home.
And hours that you spend at home are not hours that you are spending at work.
And I do not think that a good corporate law job substitutes for having a happy home life.
I think almost nothing substitutes for having a happy home life.
And I'm speaking to someone whose wife works extraordinarily long hours.
My wife works really long hours.
Like today, she took off from the house at 7.45.
She'll be back tonight at 6.30.
That is a normal day for her.
That is a good rotation for her.
Her prior rotation, she was going in at 5 a.m.
and she was coming back at 10 p.m.
some days.
That is hard.
And it's hard on the family.
And it's hard on the kids.
We've made provision for that, right?
I'm home a lot more than she is.
My parents are over a lot.
We have a nanny.
All of these things are great.
But is it a trade-off?
Of course it's a trade-off.
And it's a trade-off that she struggles with and she feels every day.
I think one of the great lies that feminism has told to women is you can have it all.
You can have a lot of good things.
But to pretend that there are no trade-offs among those things is to be foolish.
I just don't think that that's true in any real sense.
Okay.
Time for a thing I like and then some things that I hate.
So the thing I like, there's a movie that's now available on Amazon Prime.
It's called Last Flag Flying.
It's really good for the acting.
It's very anti-war, obviously, because every movie that Hollywood has ever produced since the Vietnam War has been an anti-war movie, basically.
There are a couple of exceptions, like 12 Strong is an exception.
But this movie, the acting is really first rate.
It's Bryan Cranston and Lawrence Fishburne and Steve Carell.
Cranston is, of course, the highlight of the show.
He really is terrific in this film.
But Lawrence Fishburne turns in a really good performance as well.
Basically, the story is these three guys were in the army together in Vietnam, back during the Vietnam War, and now Steve Carell's son was in the Marines, his son was killed, and he tries to go get these two guys to come with him to pick up his son's body and bring it to Arlington, but it turns out that the army has lied to him about how his son died, and now he doesn't want to bury his son in Arlington.
Instead, he wants to bury his son back home.
Here's a little bit of the preview.
You know what amazes me about you?
Well, it could be anything.
I'm a pretty amazing guy.
You turn the keys to your bar over to the guy who's asleep on your pool table, and then you jump in your car and you drive me to hell and gone, and you don't even know where we're going.
Ask the question, am I willing to surrender to God?
What the hell happened to Mueller the mauler?
First class drinker?
Gambler?
We have some visitors amongst us here today.
We were in the service together with your pastor.
I haven't seen these men in decades.
They represent a dark period in my life.
That went down awfully quick.
Drinkin' for tuna, you got old and boring.
I'm not a huge Richard Linklater fan as a general rule, but the movie's actually quite good.
And the acting, more than anything else, it really is a showcase for the three performers involved.
So if you like good acting and the script is entertaining, even if it's anti-war, it's really anti-Iraq war.
And there are a couple of lines.
The assumption in Hollywood always is that the Iraq war was a terrible, terrible, awful, horrible, terrible, terrible mistake.
And so everything they ever say about the Iraq war is based on that argument, which I think is a deeply flawed argument.
But it is still worth the watch if you're just looking for some solid performances.
Okay, time for some things that I hate.
All right, so I have to show you this clip from April Ryan.
April Ryan is, of course, a White House correspondent.
I can never remember which outlet she is for, but she's a White House reporter.
She was on CNN last night, and she was discussing Melania Trump, and she's for American Urban Radio Networks.
And here's what April Ryan had to say about Melania Trump.
It's just an amazing thing, right?
She's allowed to get away with this.
So John Kelly, who's the White House Chief of Staff, is being accused of racism today because he suggested that a lot of illegal immigrants who come to the United States are undereducated, which is technically true.
Okay, that is just a fact.
A lot of illegal immigrants who come to the United States are undereducated.
But April Ryan is not considered in any way xenophobic for saying this about Melania Trump.
She wants to show young people how it's done and do it right, and they will pick up those habits.
I wonder if the president will change.
But there are realities.
There are a lot of realities that she's dealing with.
This is a first lady who is not culturally American, but she is learning the ways.
I don't even know what that means, that Melania Trump is not culturally American.
What exactly does that mean?
She has a foreign accent?
And what about Melania Trump is not culturally American?
She seems pretty culturally American to me.
Again, it's amazing.
If somebody were to say that on the right about anybody on the left with an accent, it would be, oh my god, racism, xenophobia, terrible, how could you?
What about that person is bad?
My in-laws are culturally American.
They have very strong Israeli accents.
They're culturally American.
They've been living in America since my wife was 12 years old, which means that they've been here.
I'm not gonna give away my wife's age, but they've been here for a little while.
Okay?
My wife wouldn't care, honestly.
She's been there for 18 years.
My wife's 30.
She doesn't care.
But the truth is that April Ryan's allowed to get away with this because April Ryan, obviously, is a member of Minority Group, and if you're a member of Minority Group, then you can say anything about any other member of Minority Group, my proof being that the members of the Women's March, who are members of Minority Groups, can hang out with freaking Louis Farrakhan, and everybody just goes, oh, well, whatever.
Who cares?
Keith Ellison can be an actual anti-Semite, and he's being quoted in the media today saying, I'm very upset that people are calling me an anti-Semite.
I think that it's awful that they're calling me an anti-Semite.
I'm more upset that you are an anti-Semite, dude, but you're allowed to get away with it, because if you have the right skin color, apparently you're allowed to be a racist.
Which is really awful, awful, awful stuff.
Okay, other things that I hate.
So George Stephanopoulos just doing yeoman's work on behalf of NBC.
George Stephanopoulos does have a long history of defending people who are accused of sexual misconduct, going all the way back to the Clinton days.
Tom Brokaw has been accused of sexual harassment by Linda Vester, who is a former reporter at ABC News.
And this is pretty funny because George Stephanopoulos rushes to Tom Brokaw's defense.
Tom Brokaw is pretty angry.
He says he was ambushed, says he was perp walked.
What's your response?
Well, I expected a denial.
That is what harassers generally do.
What I didn't expect was such a personal attack.
And what I'm concerned about is the message that that sends to women inside NBC News.
About whether or not they are safe to report somebody who is powerful.
If they get that kind of backlash.
In that letter he describes you as a colleague who has trouble with the truth.
Are you absolutely convinced that everything you remember about that incident, those incidents with Tom Brokaw, would happen?
George, my memory of those incidents is crystal clear.
The notes that I took immediately afterward are crystal clear.
Okay, so Linda Vester from NBC News, obviously George Stephanopoulos from ABC News.
Imagine him.
Would he ask those questions of Stormy Daniels?
Right, really.
Stormy Daniels, who's an actual porn star, right, who, shall we say, has some problems in her life.
I think it's fair to say Stormy Daniels is a person with some problems in her life.
Would George Stephanopoulos sit there and ask, you know, Donald Trump has said that you're lying.
Do you truly recall what happened?
Are you sure you recall every minute of what happened?
We say, you know, he's very upset, Donald Trump.
He's very, very upset with you.
You know, he's pretty angry.
Are you absolutely convinced that what you're saying is true?
Come on, come on.
I know that NBC News investigated itself and cleared itself, but you don't get to investigate and clear yourself well and then bring out a bunch of women who are not Linda Vester in order to talk about how Tom Brokaw was wonderful to women.
Amazing how the media will circle the wagons from the Me Too movement, actually, as soon as it's a member of their own who's really under the gun.
Somebody who is considered an iconic figure in the media.
Alrighty.
So, we will be back here next week.
Have yourself a wonderful weekend.
Don't try to spoil things too much.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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