All Episodes
Previous Next
May 31, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
48:14
The Saddest Story Ever Told | Ep. 550
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Dinesh D'Souza gets a pardon, Samantha Bee uses the c-word, and Team Obama.
We now have a retrospective into what election night was like for them.
It's kinda great.
- I'm Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
So we have a lot to get to today here on The Ben Shapiro Show.
A lot of breaking news.
The president of the United States has been tweeting up a storm, which means that there is a lot of stuff happening.
But first, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at OMAX 3 Ultra Pure.
So you've heard a lot about the grand effect.
Of omega-3s.
Well, that is not wrong.
Omega-3s are really good for your health.
They alleviate joint pain and muscle soreness.
They make you feel your best, particularly post-workout.
They improve your focus and your memory.
They boost cardiovascular health and more.
Well, Omex 3 Ultra Pure is the best form of omega-3 that you can find on the market.
It's almost 94% pure omega-3 fatty acids.
It is the purest concentration on the market.
They have a patented EPA to DHA ratio of 4 to 1.
It is specifically engineered for inflammation and joint pain.
They have this thing, you don't believe me how pure this stuff is?
It is so pure that if you put it in the freezer, it comes out clear.
Most omega-3s, you put them in the freezer, it comes out cloudy.
This stuff is so pure, it comes out just as clear as when you put it in.
It is the purest option.
Okay, you're not going to get any of the fish burps that you think that you're going to get from omega-3s when you try omax.com slash Shapiro.
It's tryomax.com slash Shapiro today, and you get a box of Omax 3 Ultra Pure for free.
That's tryomax.com slash Shapiro.
Get your free box of Omax 3.
T-R-Y-O-M-A-X dot com slash Shapiro.
Again, tryomax.com slash Shapiro.
Try it today.
It comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee.
So even if you don't like it, you got a money-back guarantee.
You have plenty of time to try it.
And you'll feel the Omax difference.
Again, try omax.com slash Shapiro today and get a free box of Omax 3.
Make Omega 3s part of your diet.
A lot to get to here in the news today.
We begin, I suppose, with the pardon of Dinesh D'Souza.
So the President of the United States announces today that he is going to pardon Dinesh D'Souza.
Dinesh, of course, has been a guest on the program.
I'm friendly with Dinesh, so full disclosure on that.
Dinesh was Basically, railroaded back during the Obama administration.
He was in the middle of making an anti-Obama documentary, and it was revealed that Dinesh D'Souza had engaged in the process of straw donations.
So basically, there's a woman named Wendy Long who was running for Senate, and Dinesh wanted to give $20,000 to her.
He couldn't.
He could only give $5,000 to her.
So a bunch of people gave $5,000 to Wendy Long, and then Dinesh D'Souza reimbursed them.
He acknowledged this in court.
He pled guilty in court.
And he was sentenced to a certain amount of prison time.
Now, the reason that this isn't just a case of somebody doing something wrong and going to jail is because the vast majority of cases like this end with a fine.
The vast majority of cases like this do not end with actual prosecution to the point where somebody goes to jail.
And it seems a little coincidental that Dinesh D'Souza was making anti-Obama documentaries just about the time that the Obama DOJ decided it was necessary that Dinesh D'Souza go to jail.
Well, President Trump responded today by saying that he is going to pardon Dinesh D'Souza.
Dinesh already served his time, obviously.
Here's my generalized opinion on this.
I do not believe the president should have pardon powers.
Just not Trump, any president.
I think it's very silly that the Constitution has pardon power for the president, that governors have pardon power.
I think it's really dumb, specifically because either you believe the criminal justice system works, or you believe it doesn't.
And having one guy who is sort of like a cottie sitting under a tree, ruling as to whether people ought to be spared the penalties of their crimes, that seems to me rather dictatorial and monarchic.
It doesn't have a lot to do with the balance of powers, checks and balances of a functioning republic.
I don't like the power generally, but if you're going to use the power, you have to use it very sparingly and you ought to use the power.
In this particular case, I would have thought that it would be more of a commutation situation.
So there's a difference in pardon power between pardoning someone and commuting their sentence.
If you pardon somebody, then their crime goes away.
It's off the books.
It's as though they never committed the crime in the first place.
If you commute somebody's sentence, Then, if they were about to serve time, they no longer have to serve time.
So right now, there's a serious call to give commutation to this guy who spent 21 years in prison, and then was allowed out of prison, and then it turns out that the system got it wrong, and he's already rebuilt his life, and they're going to send him back to prison.
There's a strong call by some people, like friends of mine, like Dana Perino, that this guy should have his sentence commuted.
I agree with that.
He shouldn't be pardoned because he did commit the crime.
Well, in this particular case, Dinesh committed the crime.
Is a pardon appropriate?
I'm not sure that a pardon is appropriate.
I think a commutation would have been appropriate, but he already served his time.
Here's where a pardon is appropriate, however.
Dinesh is no longer allowed to vote.
Dinesh obviously cannot get loans very easily.
It's hard for him to get credit cards.
There are certain penalties that attach to being a felon, and Dinesh is a convicted felon, which means that he couldn't have done any of those things.
Well, Trump is wiping all of that off the books.
Again, do I think the pardon would have been the best Solution here, I think commutation would have if the timing had been right.
But do I find this to be a wild miscarriage of justice?
I do not.
Now, is it political?
Of course it's political, right?
Dinesh is on President Trump's side.
He's been a very strong advocate for President Trump.
If Dinesh D'Souza were on the left, I don't think they'd be talking pardon today.
But this is unfortunately how pardon power works.
Okay, this has been true for Clinton.
It was true of Obama.
There are a lot of people who receive pardons and clemency specifically because of their politics.
Chelsea Manning would still be in prison if it were not for the fact that Chelsea Manning is a wild leftist who is transgender.
Barack Obama let Chelsea Manning out of prison specifically because of those factors.
So to pretend that the pardon power has not already been used for innately political purposes would be to ignore the truth of the situation.
So while you hear the left complaining a lot about the Dinesh pardon today, I just, I don't buy the outrage.
I don't know that it's, You know, the greatest move in the world, but I also don't think that it's unjustified.
And I think that the idea that Dinesh ever went to jail for this is insane.
OK, so meanwhile, there's some other news from the Trump administration.
We are now in the middle, apparently, of a trade war.
So that's excellent.
There's a lot of talk about Trump was not going to enter into a trade war.
And he decided that, I guess, it was worthwhile doing so.
So he has decided to extend tariffs to the EU on a number of products.
And those products include steel and aluminum.
According to The Guardian, a full-scale trade war between Washington and Brussels is looming after the U.S.
announced it was imposing tariffs on imported steel and aluminum from the European Union.
The president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, promised swift retaliation after the U.S.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said EU companies would face a 25 percent duty on steel and a 10 percent duty on aluminum from midnight on Thursday.
So, right now we are talking about a serious trade war that could impact the economy.
It's a bad move by President Trump.
The reality is that tariffs are not good for the economy.
of America's traditional allies.
And so we could not reduce America's trade deficit and the waiver was being lifted.
So right now we are talking about a serious trade war that could impact the economy.
It's a bad move by President Trump.
The reality is that tariffs are not good for the economy.
All they are is a tax on American citizens.
Remember, when you artificially boost the price of products that Americans have to buy, that is a de facto tax on American citizens.
They can no longer spend their money where they choose to spend their money.
Plus, a lot of these companies that are going to end up being tariffed actually hire a lot of people in the United States.
Like, half of a Mercedes-Benz is produced in the United States.
At plants based in the United States, some of those cars, luxury items, will be hit with some of these tariffs.
Also, the President of the United States has started a trade war with Mexico, so now Mexico is threatening its own tariffs against some of America's products, so a lot of American exporters are very unhappy.
So, today, I guess Mexico has announced that it will put its own tariffs on products including pork bellies, grapes, apples, and flat steel, which sounds like some sort of weird dish, but in any case, Mexico is going to be announcing its own trade barriers.
None of this is good policy.
The President has benefited from a booming economy, and a lot of that is his own doing.
A lot of that is Trump's willingness to get rid of regulations.
A lot of that is Trump's willingness to lower taxes.
A lot of that is Trump's willingness to allow the market to operate freely.
Engaging in trade wars with some of America's biggest trade partners is not a way to increase the effectiveness of American business.
It's just, it's a counterproductive move.
I know that the president has this bizarre understanding of tariffs.
He believes that trade is a zero-sum game and there's always a winner and a loser.
That is not correct and business is going to suffer because of all of that.
It's bad policy.
However, on the other side of the ledger, I mean, if we're going to do some good Trump, bad Trump, there's some bad Trump, here's some good Trump.
So the president signed what he called right to try legislation.
So right to try legislation has been considered by conservatives for many, many years.
Basically, the FDA, it takes enormous quantities of time and money to get FDA approval for a drug.
One of the reasons drugs are so expensive in the United States is you have to run through years of FDA approval processes before you can bring a drug to market.
Literally millions and millions of dollars it takes to actually get to market.
Well, what happens if you're a terminally ill person and you want to try an experimental drug?
Well, so far, the Democrats have, up till now, opposed the idea that you should be allowed to try those drugs.
They say the FDA has to license every product that is used in the United States.
But what about people who are going to die anyway?
Why exactly can't they try what they want?
I mean, if they want to try some snake oil and it happens to work for them, why shouldn't they be given the option of doing that?
That's what the right-to-try legislation was.
So President Trump signed that right-to-try legislation yesterday.
This is a very good move.
Giving terminally ill patients the right to try experimental, life-saving treatments.
And some of these treatments are so promising.
But for many years, patients, advocates, and lawmakers have fought for this fundamental freedom.
And as I said, incredibly, they couldn't get it.
And there were reasons.
A lot of it was business.
A lot of it was pharmaceuticals.
A lot of it was insurance.
A lot of it was liability.
I said, so you take care of that stuff.
And that's what we did.
Today, I'm proud to keep another promise to the American people as I sign the right to try legislation into law.
So this got no press yesterday, but it is a very, very good move by the Trump administration Again, there's good and there's bad to the Trump administration, but it's foolish to ignore the good or to ignore the bad, right?
We have to point out whenever any of this stuff is happening.
Also, it is worthwhile noting that while the press continue to suggest that President Trump and his administration are replete with people who do not care about human beings, this particular piece of legislation is obviously an attempt to alleviate the suffering of an enormous number of people who are Stuck, right?
Who have no choice when it comes to what sort of treatment they wish to see.
It's also a good argument for libertarianism, even in areas that the FDA covers, that if somebody wants to try a drug, why shouldn't they be able to try that drug?
Speaking of people with heart inside the Trump administration, Trump actually had a pretty good day yesterday insofar as demonstrating a certain amount of heart and compassion inside the Trump administration.
This was pretty great.
As he was signing this right to try legislation, there's a little kid Who apparently, I believe, has cystic fibrosis?
Is that the case with this kid?
I can't remember what his condition is.
But this really cute little kid, and he comes to the signing ceremony, and he wants to get a hug from Trump, and it's really cute.
And you can see the kid going in for a hug, and Trump is busy, he doesn't really notice the kid.
And he keeps going in, trying to get a hug.
And finally you'll see Trump notices it.
And then Trump leans over and gives her a hug.
It's very cute.
Very, very cute.
Okay.
And then that wasn't the only sign of compassion from the Trump administration yesterday.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked at a White House press conference about school shootings.
And you can see, this is not the response of somebody who doesn't care about dead kids, as so many people who are anti-Trump have suggested.
One thing that affects mine and other students' mental health is the worry about the fact that we or our friends could get shot at school.
Specifically, can you tell me what the administration has done and will do to prevent these senseless tragedies?
I think that as a kid and certainly as a parent there is nothing that could be more terrifying For a kid to go to school and not feel safe.
So I'm sorry that you feel that way.
This administration takes it seriously and the School Safety Commission that the President convened is meeting this week again, an official meeting, to discuss the best ways forward and how we can do every single thing within our power to protect kids in our schools and to make them feel safe and make their parents feel good about dropping them off.
So clearly it's an administration filled with heartless cretins, you know, evil, evil people.
So this is not to say that the Trump administration doesn't do things that I find terrible at times, right?
Or says things that I find gross at times.
I mean, obviously I've been outspoken about all of that.
And we'll talk in a little bit about the president's response to the Roseanne situation.
But this this image that is put out by so many folks on the left that the Trump administration is just filled with awful, terrible people who don't care about kids is just stupid.
In a second, I'm going to show you the media's response to all of this yesterday, because it truly is astonishing.
First, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at Zeal.
So.
There's some things in life that make you feel wealthy without having to spend lots of money.
Zeal is one of those things.
You're just sitting at home and you're thinking, I could go make an appointment at the spa for a massage, but it's going to cost a lot of money and I have to wait.
Well, instead of doing that, why don't you just check out Zeal?
Zeal makes sure that you can get a massage on demand.
Go to zeal.com or Zeal's iPhone or Android app that zeal spelled Z-E-E-L.com.
Select from top local licensed pre-screen massage therapist.
You can choose your favorite technique, gender preference, time and location for your massage and Zeal will send one of their 10,000 licensed massage therapists with a massage table, music and supplies to give you a five-star massage.
Scheduling, booking, payment, fast and easy.
Even the tip is included.
Seven days a week, 365 days a year.
A Zeal massage therapist can be at your door in as little as an hour.
They've got privacy, convenience, quality, comfort...
I've used Zeal for my wife, for my mother, for my father, for my sister, for my other sister.
We use it in the family all the time because Zeal is just that convenient and the massages are really top-notch.
So to help you get started, our listeners can get 25 bucks off their first massage Right now, with promo code Ben.
That's Z-E-E-L.
It's spelled Z-E-E-L dot com.
Z-E-L dot com.
Promo code Ben.
And right now, go to Z-E-L dot com.
And again, you get 25 bucks off your first in-home massage when you use that promo code Ben.
It also lets them know that we sent you.
So check it out.
Really great service.
Z-E-L dot com.
Okay, so how does the left respond to everything happening inside the Trump administration?
The only way to express this would be to say, in the most vile and despicable possible way.
So instead of dealing with the Issues with the Trump administration.
Instead of talking about trade policy, for example.
Or instead of talking about the right-to-try legislation.
Or instead of even talking about the stuff that President Trump says.
Instead, the left has decided they have to out-Trump Trump.
They have to go lower than low.
So remember, Hillary Clinton said, when they go low, we go high.
And it didn't work for her.
So it seems like the left community has decided that when Republicans go medium, they will go as low as humanly possible.
Case in point, The case in point over the last 24 hours is Samantha Bee.
So Samantha Bee, as I've said, has been in a running gun battle with Trevor Noah and Amy Schumer and a bunch of other leftist comedians for most unfunny human in the world.
But I think that she clearly takes the cake here.
I've always been leaning towards Samantha Bee, I'll be honest with you.
In these sweepstakes, I've always thought that Samantha Bee was the front runner.
I always thought that she led by at least a head.
And it seems that she has drawn full, like, she's drawing lengths away.
This is now like Secretariat in the unfunny horse race.
Here she is yesterday going after Ivanka Trump.
Ivanka Trump, you'll recall, had the temerity, the audacity to tweet out a picture of herself and one of her children over the weekend because it was Memorial Day weekend.
And the left said, how dare she take a picture with her kid?
Because there are people being separated from their kids on the border right now.
Now, as we discussed earlier this week, this critique makes no sense whatsoever, like no sense.
But that didn't stop Samantha Bee.
So Samantha Bee says that not only is Ivanka wrong to take that picture, she is a bleep.
Ivanka Trump, who works at the White House, chose to post the second most oblivious tweet we've seen this week.
You know, Ivanka, that's a beautiful photo of you and your child, but let me just say, one mother to another, do something about your dad's immigration practices, you feckless c**t!
He listens to you!
Put on something tight and low-cut and tell your father to f**king stop it!
So much bravery, so much class, so much decency.
This is how you got Trump.
This is how you got Trump.
So in a second, I'm gonna discuss more on how the left got Trump.
Okay, so Samantha Bee obviously is, I mean, I won't use the language that she uses here, but she's a very bad person.
Let's just say that.
She's a very bad person.
What Ivanka Trump taking a picture with her baby has to do with being called a feckless C-word is beyond me.
And how Samantha Bee keeps her job after that is beyond me as well.
It seems to me that there's certain language that is so outside the bounds of normal discourse that you can get fired for it.
Like Roseanne calling Valerie Jarrett an ape.
It seems to me like that was a fireable offense.
And it seems to me like Samantha Bee calling Ivanka Trump a feckless c-word for no reason other than she is in Trump's orbit and has a child is insane.
It is insane.
And then she goes on from there obviously to suggest that Trump wants to have sex with his own daughter and therefore if Ivanka wears something tight fit that she can change immigration policy.
The rage of the left, the utter insane response of the left to everything that Trump does, is driving more people into President Trump's arms.
Like, Trump may not have to actually do anything to win re-election if the left continues to pursue this sort of nonsense, this sort of vile nonsense.
As another example, Michaela Angela Davis is a race commentator on MSNBC, and she says that, in response to the whole Roseanne thing, she says, all Trump voters are racist.
Like, all of them.
It's actually on CNN.
Tens of millions of people voted for him after he showed his cards for years.
Are you suggesting that they're racist?
Yes.
The people who vote, all the people who voted for Donald Trump are racist?
Yes.
They may not be violently racist.
They may not be... He's targeted.
He's very clear and strategic.
Look, anti-blackness is a strategy that has been the foundation of part of the American project.
So it's not just that Trump is racist.
It's that every single person who supports him is racist.
So here's what we've learned from the left media in the last 24 hours.
Ivanka Trump is a feckless c-word.
And we have learned that if you voted for President Trump, even if you decried some of the things that he was saying, this makes you a racist.
And then they wonder why so many people are rushing to the arms of President Trump.
They're wondering why that's happening.
They're wondering why people don't respect the media.
And here's another example of media malfeasance yesterday.
And they're wondering why people don't take the media seriously.
Here's one of the CNN reporters Going off on President Trump for hosting a White House Sports and Fitness Day.
Okay, this is a thing that virtually every president has held.
This White House Sports and Fitness Day.
Like, I remember Obama holding them.
But now you're going to hear a commentator suggest that Trump shouldn't hold it because he's fat.
The President is having this event here at the White House today, highlighting health and fitness, while questions are being raised about the President's own health and fitness.
As you'll recall, back in January, the President's doctor came out to the briefing room, and while he told reporters he believed the President was in good health, he did say that he was 6'3 and 239 pounds, and had set a weight loss goal of 10 to 15 pounds over the coming year.
So questions are of how he was going to do that through diet and exercise.
A great deal of irony here today, John, as the president is holding this event, these questions about his own weight loss battle that are still going on in the White House.
So much journalisming.
Wow.
I mean, that is some serious journalisming right here.
But she was surpassed by Jim Acosta, the White House reporter over at CNN, who legitimately is an awful, awful reporter.
I mean, Jim Acosta is a guy who believes he is Sam Donaldson and is more like Sam the Eagle from the Muppets.
He's just not good at this.
Here's Jim Acosta at the White House complaining about Sarah Huckabee Sanders, because Sarah Huckabee Sanders made a point over the last couple of days.
Her point about Roseanne was, you guys were very, very upset about Roseanne, and you were happy for her to be fired, and maybe she should have been fired, but you don't seem quite as happy to talk about Joy Reid, for example.
Which is obviously true.
CNN's Jim Acosta, he got very angry at this, because he has to stand up for the reputation of the media.
When the media starts standing for the media, and they're no longer standing for the truth, it turns out that most Americans tune them out.
Jim Acosta is the reason most Americans are starting to tune out the media.
Here's Acosta going after Huckabee Sanders for saying something that is obviously true.
It's a bit much, I think, for the White House press secretary from the podium to come out here and try to shame the media and say it's somehow our fault that Roseanne Barr put out this tweet.
Oh, that's not exactly what Huckabee Sanders said.
That's bad news coverage by Jim Acosta.
Shouldn't say it's the media's fault that Roseanne Barr put out the tweet.
She said it's the media's fault that there's this double standard where Joy Reid gets to keep her job, but Roseanne Barr loses her job.
And Joy Reid gets to keep her job because she is on the left.
And Roseanne loses her job because she was pro-Trump.
Which is perfectly obvious.
Media malfeasance.
Media nastiness.
This is how you got Trump, and this is how you're gonna get more Trump.
So by all means, continue to do this.
By all means, continue to think you can out-nasty President Trump.
There's no one on Earth who can out-nasty the President of the United States.
It ain't gonna work.
It just is not going to work.
And it's also one of the reasons why there's such scheudenfreude when it comes to The Obama administration being ousted because they were quietly nasty.
They were quietly sliding in the knife into so many Americans.
And Trump is just a hammer.
So he's just obviously out there with Thor's hammer hitting people.
In a second, I want to talk a little bit about the scheudenfreude that obviously comes from President Obama having lost, because there's an amazing story in the New York Times and a piece of audio I just have to play for you that's incredible.
But first, I want to say thanks to our sponsors.
Over at ExpressVPN.
So, there's been a lot of noise about social media companies that have been letting third parties get your user data, but the truth is that internet providers with Verizon and Time Warner, they can record a list of every website you visit, and they can legally give it to anyone.
The internet is basically the Wild West, and if you think people aren't mining your data, you are wrong, which is why it's time to stop trusting big corporations with your data, and instead start protecting with ExpressVPN.
With ExpressVPN, you can privately and securely surf the internet without being tracked by anyone.
You can set it up on all your devices in just a few minutes.
I've set it up on my own computer.
You set it up, and it really runs seamlessly in the background of your desktop, laptop, smartphone, tablet.
It protects me while I'm browsing, streaming, downloading files, or emailing, so I don't have to worry about third-party eyes on all of the stuff that I'm doing on the internet, which is good for political people like me, because the fact is that I don't want people knowing what I'm thinking about politics until I say it right here on the show.
I don't want people digging through my emails.
I don't think you want that either.
That's why ExpressVPN is necessary.
Using ExpressVPN, you can safely surf public Wi-Fi hotspots in Starbucks, or you're just using somebody else's Wi-Fi connection.
You don't have to worry about Starbucks grabbing your material, or if you're at a hotel, or you're in an airport.
For less than $7 a month, you can get the same ExpressVPN protection that I have, and every ExpressVPN plan is covered by a risk-free 30-day money-back guarantee.
After you've experienced the freedom and privacy and safety ExpressVPN can provide, you're not going to want to use the internet again without it.
Go to expressvpn.com slash ben and you get your first three months for free.
That is expressvpn, e-x-p-r-e-s-s, vpn.com slash ben for three months for free.
Don't put it off, do it right now and then you don't have to worry about it ever again.
For seven bucks a month you're protecting your data.
Expressvpn.com slash ben and get your first three months for free when you use that slash ben.
Okay, so.
One of the things that's been, I think, really delicious to watch is the left had this perception of itself as beyond, sort of beyond decent.
The right was indecent, and the left was so decent, and the left was so good, and the left was so kind, and they just cannot understand how President Trump won.
And it's their lack of understanding as to why President Trump won that basically guarantees that he'll have a serious shot at re-election in 2020, despite his extraordinarily low approval ratings.
The left doesn't understand how he won.
And they don't understand how he won because they don't understand themselves.
One of the ways that you change your own life, just speaking personally, one of the ways that you change your own life is looking at your own flaws and then determining how to fix those flaws.
So, you know, for me, I've had to try to get beyond my own confirmation bias.
It's a difficult thing to do, to try and look at the stuff that you want to believe and determine whether you are right in believing those things.
For people like me, you know, sometimes I get condescending.
I gotta work on that, right?
There are certain things about me as a human being that I have to try to work on.
Well, the same thing is true of parties.
Parties have to look internally and say, what is it that we have to work on?
The Democrats never felt they had to work on anything because they had made, basically Trump's case against the Democrats, they'd made against Republicans for years.
The case that Trump makes against the Democrats, that they're all bad and they like MS-13 and they're mean and they're cruel and they're nasty and they're stupid and all this kind of stuff.
That's just turnabout as fair play.
The Democrats have been claiming this for years.
In 2013, I wrote a book called Bullies, a New York Times bestseller, talking specifically about this character tactic that has been used by Democrats for years.
Well, when Trump won, suddenly it dawned on the Democrats, or it should have dawned on the Democrats, that maybe they shouldn't have been so quick about dismissing half the American public.
Maybe they shouldn't have been so quick about assuming that they were the bringers of light and truth and that everyone who disagreed with them was ill-motivated.
And so there's something delicious about watching members of the Obama administration trying to cope with the fact that Hillary Clinton lost an election to Donald Trump, which is, again, that was a nearly impossible, miraculous occurrence.
This video, this audio of Ben Rhodes, I just came outside to try to process all this.
It's a lot to process.
President Obama is just delicious.
This is a video of Ben Rhodes as he is realizing this from a documentary.
He's just realizing that President Trump has won the presidency and it is astonishingly glorious.
I just came outside to try to process all this.
It's a lot to process.
I mean, I can't even... I can't...
I can't put it into words.
I I don't know what the words are.
Oh, it would take a heart of stone not to laugh at that.
It's so amazing.
So Ben Rhodes is just a garbage heap.
Ben Rhodes is the architect of the Iran deal.
He openly bragged about lying to the American people.
And there he is.
I can't understand why the American public rejected the Obama legacy.
Why, God, why?
And then just the incapacity to speak by a former novelist from his Brooklyn apartment elevated to a position of unprecedented power for a guy who knows nothing about anything.
It's just wonderful.
That's not the only wonderful thing.
The fact that the Democrats don't understand this is why they have a serious shot at continuing to lose.
It's one of the reasons why the generic ballot gap between Republicans and Democrats has now shrunk to near nothingness.
There's a piece in the New York Times that is from a report by Peter Baker about the emotional stages of adjusting to President Trump's victory.
And it is just wonderful.
Here's what it says.
Riding in a motorcycle in Lima, Peru, shortly after the 2016 election, President Barack Obama was struggling to understand Donald J. Trump's victory.
What if we were wrong?
He asked aides riding with him in the armored presidential limousine.
He had read a column asserting that liberals had forgotten how important identity was to people and had promoted an empty cosmopolitan globalism that made many people feel left behind.
Maybe we pushed too far, Mr. Obama said.
Maybe people just want to fall back into their tribe.
His aides reassured him that he still would have wanted he'd been able to run for another term and that the next generation had more in common with him than with Mr. Trump.
Mr. Obama, the first black man elected president, did not seem convinced.
Sometimes I wonder whether I was 10 or 20 years too early, he said.
This is why you fail.
This is why you fail.
I love that the level of introspection is not about him, not about his administration.
It's about the evils of the American public.
So the same American public that elected him overwhelmingly twice suddenly was evil, but had nothing with him.
It was them.
They were the bad people.
He was just too early.
Don't you understand?
We were given a gift by President Obama.
President Obama, he was the gift, right?
It was just like bleep in a box, right?
He just unwrapped himself and there he was.
It was fantastic.
President Obama came along and we should have all just been grateful for his very presence in front of us.
He was his own gift.
He was God's gift, which means President Obama's own gift to the people.
He was his own son presenting himself to us to die on the cross for our sins.
This was Barack Obama.
This was the man.
And then what I love about this so much is that that line where he says, maybe we push too far.
Maybe people just want to fall back into their tribe.
Obama was a tribalist president.
President Obama had the opportunity after his election in 2008 to bring Americans together, particularly on issues of race.
He failed to do it.
Not only did he fail to do it, he deliberately decided not to do it and instead to focus on tribalizing people by polar patterns, right, by trying to move people back into their tribes so he could then Agglomerate them all together, wrap them into a ball, and in this Democratic ball that was going to roll downhill and crush Republicans.
That was his entire electoral strategy, and he still doesn't get it.
But it's really delicious to watch him not getting it.
He was out of touch, President Obama, and so were the Democrats, which is why they lost.
In the weeks after Mr. Trump's election, the New York Times continues, Mr. Obama went through multiple emotional stages, according to a new book by his longtime advisor, Benjamin Rhodes, right?
That was the same guy you watched there trying to struggle with the idea that Trump had won, and it was wonderful, just delicious.
At times, the departing president took the long view.
At other points, he flashed anger.
He called Mr. Trump a cartoon figure who cared more about his crowd sizes than any particular policy.
Okay, that is true.
It is also true that Barack Obama cared a lot more about his crowd sizes than any particular policy, which is why he went around Europe immediately after his election, speaking to throngs of people and saying nearly nothing of substance.
He expressed rare self-doubt, wondering whether he had misjudged his own influence on American history.
Set to be published next week by Random House, Mr. Rhodes' memoir, The World As It Is, by the way, the fact that Ben Rhodes called his memoir, The World As It Is, is just unbelievable.
Ben Rhodes is a guy who legitimately believed that Iran was going to moderate if we gave them hundreds of billions of dollars.
And then he's writing a book called The World As It Is.
But don't worry, they're not out of touch.
Not out of touch at all.
But apparently his book offers a peek into Mr. Obama's tightly sealed inner sanctum from the perspective of one of the few people who saw him up close through all eight years of his presidency.
Few moments shook Mr. Obama more than the decision by voters to replace him with a candidate who has questioned his very birth.
I love, even the wording is just so good.
It's just so good.
Mr. Rhodes served as Mr. Obama's deputy national security advisor through some of the most consequential points of his presidency, including decisions to authorize the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
I love, by the way, the Democrats are still hanging their hat on that one.
Every president would have said, go do it.
Jimmy Carter would have said, go do it.
Send more troops to Afghanistan, pull most troops out of Iraq, restore diplomatic relations with Cuba, seal a nuclear agreement with Iran, intervene militarily in Libya, and refuse to intervene militarily in Syria.
But his book offers a new window.
Yes, in his own mind.
Obama is such a tragic figure in his own mind.
In his own mind, he was just, he was the man.
in the 2016 election to help Mr. Trump get elected and the aftermath.
In handing over power to someone determined to tear down all he had accomplished, Mr. Obama alluded to the Godfather mafia movie.
I feel like Michael Corleone.
I almost got out.
Yes, in his own mind, Obama's such a tragic figure in his own mind.
In his own mind, he was just, he was the man.
He was the Christ-like figure coming to save America and then we crucified him on the cross of Trump.
Ooh, it feels good, I gotta say.
I didn't vote for Trump, but just for that schreudenfreud, sorta wish I had.
And I understand the temptation.
We sell a leftist hero's mug, right?
I get it.
I get the temptation.
It doesn't mean that President Trump does everything right, but the fact that Barack Obama was so deeply out of touch, and that he didn't understand the American people, and that he really believed that by polarizing the American people, he could bring us all together again, And then he felt the impact of President Trump following him is just great, and well-deserved, and certainly well-deserved for Ben Rhodes as well.
There's more to this story, and I just have to savor every moment of it.
But first, go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.
For $9.99 a month, you get the rest of this show live.
You get the rest of Michael Knowles' show live.
You get the rest of Andrew Klavan's show live.
You also, if you get the annual subscription, get to be part of the mailbag, which we'll be doing tomorrow.
And you get this, the leftist year's hot or cold Tumblr.
For $99 a year, you get all of those things.
It is cheaper than the monthly subscription.
Plus, just want to tell you, you need to go over to YouTube and iTunes to subscribe to the show.
One of the reasons you need to do that is because we have fantastic interview shows every Sunday.
We have our Sunday special and upcoming on our Sunday special, the incredible and hilarious Joe Rogan.
Hey, I'm Joe Rogan, and tune in this Sunday to the Ben Shapiro—is it the Sunday Special?
The Ben Shapiro Sunday Special.
I don't even know what it's called, but I do enjoy talking to Ben.
I love this guy.
I love communicating with him.
I think he's a brilliant person.
And we talked about a lot of cool sh—, so enjoy!
Or not.
So Joe will be stopping by on Sunday.
I saw him yesterday.
It was a real blast.
And he will talk about Roseanne.
We'll get into all the topics of the day.
So go subscribe over at YouTube, over at iTunes.
You're really going to enjoy it, I think.
It's a real kick.
Joe's a kick in the pants.
He's hilarious.
So check that out.
We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast in the nation.
Okay, so this is a New York Times piece.
It is so long and so glorious.
On election night, Mr. Obama spoke by telephone with Cody Keenan, his chief speechwriter.
And Mr. Rhodes to figure out what he should say.
Mr. Rhodes asked if he should offer reassurance to allies.
Nope.
I don't think I'm the one to tell them that, the president said.
Because, of course, Obama wouldn't actually say that our allies would be okay.
Obama, by the way, wasn't even friendly with our allies.
When it comes to Israel and Britain, he was certainly not friendly.
The next day, Mr. Obama focused on cheering up his despondent staff.
At one point, he sent a message to Mr. Rhodes saying, Really, that's something that he said to Ben Rhodes, Barack Obama.
There are more stars in the sky than grains of sand on the earth.
You have got to be kidding me.
You've got to be kidding me.
He did an interview with Glozell.
He did another interview with Pimp with a Limp.
There are pictures of him with a selfie stick in the Oval Office.
There are more stars in the sky than grains of sand on the earth.
What a pretentious douchebag.
Days later, Obama seemed less sanguine.
He said, I don't know.
Maybe this is what people want.
I've got the economy set up well for them.
No facts, no consequences.
They can just have a cartoon.
Obama was his own sort of cartoon.
The fact that people couldn't find humor in Obama is just beyond me.
You know, yesterday we talked about Trevor Noah saying that Obama was not inherently humorous.
Are you kidding me?
This is a dude who sends text messages to people that say things like, there are more stars in the sky than grains of sand on the earth.
Thanks, Confucius!
Like, what in the?
There is no humor in him?
He added, we're about to find out just how resilient our institutions are at home and around the world.
The day Mr. Obama hosted Mr. Trump at the White House after the election seemed surreal.
Mr. Trump kept steering the conversation back to the sides of his rallies.
Noting that he and Mr. Obama could draw big crowds, but Mrs. Clinton could not, Mr. Rhodes writes.
Yes!
Yes!
It's so great!
I said right after the election, there's one picture that really got me right after the election.
It was a picture of Donald Trump visiting the White House, sitting next to Barack Obama.
And you recall that Barack Obama had said on national television that Trump would never be president in a series of mean tweets with Jimmy Kimmel.
And there's Obama, looking like he wants to die.
And Trump's sitting next to him, giving the Trump finger to the camera, and behind them is a bust of Abraham Lincoln, looking down.
It is just amazing.
I love that Trump, because here's the thing, as I've said many times, Trump is Obama unmasked.
Deep down, Obama's ego is Trump's ego.
All the talk about crowd size, Barack Obama did his original DNC acceptance speech in 2008 on a stage with Greek columns and mist coming off the floor in a stadium filled with 40,000 people.
You think Obama didn't care about his crowd size?
Dude could not stay off TV.
He wouldn't miss an All-Star game.
He wouldn't miss an NCAA bracket challenge.
The guy was on TV all the time.
Trump is just the vulgar version of Obama in terms of personality.
I'm not even talking in terms of policy here.
The fact that Obama couldn't see that in himself is, again, one of the reasons he was so out of touch.
He was so out of touch.
This guy who's quoting fake psalms that he makes up himself.
Afterward, Mr. Obama called a few aides to the Oval Office to ruminate on the encounter.
I'm trying to place him in American history, he said.
He pedals bull, Mr. Rhodes answered.
That character has always been part of the American story.
You can see right back to some of the characters in Huckleberry Finn.
Maybe, Mr. Obama answered, that's the best we can hope for.
Oh, so sad, so sad.
By the way, talking of people who pedal bull, Barack Obama was in the Senate for five minutes before he ran for president, and he gave the most BS speech at the DNC in 2004 I had heard at that time, right?
The whole, we're not red states and blue states, we're the United States, right?
I just, I love that Trump is the bizarro, he's like Bizarro Superman.
Like, Obama sees himself as Superman, and Trump is just Bizarro Superman, where everything he says is kind of backwards, and he's just the weird version of Obama.
Like, when Obama looks in a funhouse mirror, he's gotta see Trump, and it must haunt his nightmares, and he deserves every second of that.
It is so grand, and it is so great.
Now, speaking of so grand and so great, I have to tell you this story, because it is so good.
Jill Stein, you remember Jill Stein?
She was the left's great hope.
She was the great hope.
She was going to provide that counter to Hillary Clinton.
Shortly after the 2016 election, according to the Daily Beast, Jill Stein raised more than $7 million from shell-shocked liberals eager to pursue a swing state recount.
Nearly two years later, the U.S.
Green Party's last candidate for president is still spending that money.
Ongoing litigation, travel costs, and staff salaries are also likely to eat up whatever is left.
So did they ever actually do any of the recounting?
likely to receive a once promised chance to vote on how the post recount money would be spent, nor have donors been given much of a window into how Stein is actually spending their donations.
The last FEC filing from the Stein campaign was for the month of September 2017.
And the last update from the campaign itself came in a post on April 20th, in which it said it was down to about a million dollars in recount funds.
So did they ever actually do any of the recounting?
Nope, they spent it all on staff salaries and vacations.
Yep, you guys didn't get scammed at all.
The only scamster in that race was clearly Donald Trump, not Jill Stein, not Hillary Clinton.
Man, sometimes politics is great.
Now, speaking of when politics is not great, we have to talk about Spygate.
So, the President of the United States decided to tweet today, because today is a day ending in Y. So, he decided that he was going to tweet about Spygate.
Spygate, as you recall, is this allegation that the FBI was, at the behest of the Obama administration, looking into The Trump campaign, they were targeting the Trump campaign because they wanted to essentially falsify information about collusion between President Trump and the Russians and then use that as a club against him in the election cycle.
Now, I've always had a few questions about this.
Question number one, why exactly wouldn't they release the information if they had it?
Question number two, the only people that they targeted inside the campaign were people who basically have been charged at this point.
They never targeted Trump Jr.
They never targeted President Trump himself.
They never targeted Steve Bannon.
They never targeted a bunch of people who are top members of the Trump campaign.
It was only Manafort and Gates and Papadopoulos and Carter Page, right?
All people with serious, suspicious histories.
And then the third question is always the biggest, which is, if all this really happened, why doesn't Trump just declassify it?
And if the FBI really was going after Trump at the behest of the Obama administration, Trump's the president.
He can declassify this stuff at any time.
Part of the reason that I don't buy this story is because the president tweets things that are sometimes just not true.
So here's the thing that he tweeted that was just not true today.
He said, The corrupt mainstream media is working overtime, not to mention the infiltration of people, spies, into my campaign.
Surveillance much?
Okay, that's somewhat fair.
Here's the part that's not fair.
Not that it matters, but I never fired James Comey because of Russia.
The corrupt mainstream media loves to keep pushing that narrative, but they know it is not true.
He literally went on Lester Holt's show on national television on NBC and said he fired James Comey because of Russia.
He then went into a room with the ambassador to Russia, from Russia, Sergey Kislyak, and told him that he fired James Comey because of Russia.
Now, I don't think that he fired James Comey because Comey was about to uncover Russian collusion.
I think he fired James Comey because he was frustrated that Comey was not announcing publicly that he didn't have the goods on Trump about Russia.
When Trump says he didn't fire James Comey because of Russia, he literally said on national television.
He literally said that on national television that he'd fire James Comey because of Russia.
So, um, no.
I just, I don't buy that.
By the way, speaking of people who don't buy it, Trey Gowdy, who, it's really funny to me, you know, tribalism is a hell of a drug, and Trey Gowdy, you will recall, was considered One of the staunchest, most aggressive Republicans in Congress.
He's retiring now.
He was on the, I believe, the House Oversight Committee.
And you remember during the Benghazi hearings, he was shellacking the Obama administration over and over and over.
He was the best prosecutor they had on the Oversight Committee.
He's a very strong Republican.
And he said on Fox News that the FBI was not out to get the quote-unquote Trump campaign in the middle of the election cycle.
Here's what he had to say, and the backlash was fierce.
It was President Trump himself who said, number one, I didn't collude with Russia, but if anyone connected with my campaign did, I want the FBI to find that out.
It looks to me like the FBI was doing what President Trump said I want you to do, find it out.
He's not the target.
So when Schiff and others don't make that clear, they're doing a disservice to our fellow citizens.
I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got, and that it has nothing to do with Donald Trump.
Okay, so what he says here is two things.
One of them is that the FBI was not investigating Donald Trump, and the other is that the FBI was not investigating the Trump campaign.
Now, there's a case to be made, Andrew McCarthy makes it today, that the Trump campaign was basically under investigation.
I don't agree with Andrew McCarthy's case, I tend to agree with Trey Gowdy.
But what's happened, because Trey Gowdy said something you are not allowed to say now, which is that President Trump is overblowing this case, A lot of folks have been all over Trey Gowdy.
Sean Hannity, for example, attacked Trey Gowdy on Fox News and suggested that Trey Gowdy had now been co-opted for some reason.
There's the suggestion being made that Trey Gowdy has been co-opted by the deep state or that Trey Gowdy is now running interference for Democrats and for the FBI.
Again, Trey Gowdy, I believe, he might be wrong, but to question his motivations here I think is really beyond the pale.
Again, When the evidence shows that the FBI was directed by President Obama or even hinted at by President Obama to target the Trump campaign, not just people within the Trump campaign, the Trump campaign itself, when we understand why Trump hasn't declassified the material, when we understand why the FBI didn't release the material, then I'm happy to go with the Spygate stuff.
Until then, I'm gonna have to withhold judgment.
Just as a lawyer, I'm gonna have to withhold judgment.
And I don't know what's wrong with that.
I think withholding judgment might be the best thing you can do when the evidence is not yet out.
Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
So, Things I like.
I do enjoy reading about human psychology and the natural limitations that human beings have.
As I said earlier in the show, I think it's a very important thing that The human beings that they want to change actually spend some time looking into their own limitations.
There's a great book by Paul Bloom, a psychologist, I believe, at Yale University.
It's called Just Babies, The Origins of Good and Evil.
And it basically explains that human beings are not blank slates, right?
We are born with a bunch of inherent limitations that we have to work to overcome.
These limitations do include discrimination and violence.
They do include cognitive biases.
And it's important for everybody to know about these things so that you and your own life can overcome them and so you can educate your children better to overcome them.
Again, the book is called Just Babies, The Origin of Good and Evil.
It's a short book and a very easy read.
It's really fun to read as well.
It'll give you some information that puts to death the lie that the left has told for literally generations, that human beings are infinitely malleable if only we change our social constructs.
The idea that boys can become girls and girls can become boys is an outgrowth of the idea that the human brain is intensely plastic, so plastic that it has no actual features.
That's not true.
It never was true.
In human history, it has not been true.
And Paul Bloom sort of puts that to bed in Just Babies, The Origins of Good and Evil.
Okay, time for some things that I hate.
So yesterday, as I mentioned, President Trump met Kim Kardashian in the Oval Office.
And I question whether this was a worthwhile thing to do, because I think that linking yourself with celebrities is generally a waste of time and counterproductive.
I don't think celebrities generally have important things to say on topics outside of their purview.
That's not to say they can't raise money for charity.
It's not to say that they can't have their causes.
But I don't know why politicians should take the word of celebrities as more important than anybody else.
So if Trump wants to talk prison reform and sentencing, it seems to me that he thinks that Kim Kardashian is somebody he should talk to.
It seems to me that he should talk to Kim Kardashian, have Kim Kardashian recommend an actual expert on prison reform and sentencing, have that person come into the White House, and then they can talk about it.
But this whole photo op nonsense, which is not, it didn't start with Trump, obviously.
Obama used to do it all the time.
It is nonsense.
Now, of course, what's ironic about all of this is that speaking of philosophical consistency, A bunch of people on the right will say, no, no, it's good.
Kim Kardashian coming in, it's great because she's trying to do the right thing.
Again, I'm not questioning Kim Kardashian's motives.
I'm questioning the usefulness and whether it is good for the country to have politicians doing these photo ops with celebrities as though the celebrities know what the hell they are talking about in many of these cases.
And I remember that there was a guy named Donald Trump who used to be sort of upset about this kind of stuff.
Trump used to rip Hillary Clinton The only way she filled up the arena was to get Jay-Z.
And his language was so filthy that it made me like the most clean-cut human being on Earth.
Okay, that's a fair criticism, but then you can't go around talking about why Kanye should come to the White House.
The hypocrisy is a little bit much for me.
I have a consistent stand on this.
I do not think celebrities know things as a general rule.
If they do know things, one thing, if Trump wants to be friends with people, that's fine.
But the photo ops, the attempt to use celebrity as a method of power maintenance in American politics, I hated it when Obama did it.
I hated it when Hillary Clinton did it.
I don't like it when President Trump does it.
I'm as consistent as can be on this.
And I can't say the same about a lot of other people on the right who have just said, well, you know, as long as it's Trump doing it, it's totally fine.
But getting kind of used to that after all these years.
OK, time for a quick, quick Bible verse.
So we've been going chapter by chapter through the books following the five books of Moses.
And this is from the chapter three of the book of Joshua.
So Joshua is about to invade the land.
And it says, early in the morning, Joshua and all the Israelites set out from Shittim and went to the Jordan, where they camped before crossing over.
After three days, the officers went throughout the camp giving orders to the people.
When you see the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God and the Levitical priests carrying it, you are to move out from your positions and follow it.
Then you will know which way to go since you have never been this way before.
But keep a distance of about 2,000 cubits between you and the Ark.
Do not go near it.
Joshua told the people, consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do amazing things among you.
It's that verse that I want to talk about a little bit.
The idea that you have to consecrate yourselves because tomorrow the Lord will do amazing things among you.
If you were told today that God was going to do something amazing for you, would you go out and consecrate yourself?
Or would you think, well, listen, it's already guaranteed, right?
The reward's already guaranteed.
So would I go out and consecrate myself?
Would I go out, clean myself, make sure that I'm as clean as can be?
Or would I just rely on the mercy of the Lord?
It's my feeling that this verse has some serious importance because the idea is not that you're trying to buy off God to do things for you.
Religion is not about buying off God to do things for you.
God is not a gumball machine.
What God is, is a being that is infinitely kind and merciful.
And in gratitude for that, we have to constantly be in the process of consecrating ourselves.
God's going to do what he's going to do.
And I don't believe that you earn points with God in this life simply by doing good things.
I don't think it's you do good things and then God is nice to you.
Again, God is not your candy machine.
It is your job to be grateful for the things that God does give you, including a predictable universe in which, if you apply the rules, then good things happen to you.
It is our job to consecrate ourselves and not to worry about what God is going to do for us, because what God is going to do for us has almost no... Like, if people had not consecrated themselves, according to Joshua, God still would have done the great thing.
It is our job to be grateful for those great things, and therefore to spend our time making ourselves more virtuous human beings.
Okay, we'll be back here tomorrow with The Mailbag.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Alex Zingaro.
Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.
Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.
The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.
▲
Export Selection