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June 12, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
52:41
The Big Meeting | Ep. 558
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President Trump meets with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.
We have comprehensive coverage.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
Oh, man, is our coverage going to be comprehensive today?
We are going to do this thing soup to nuts.
We are going to go through everything there is to go through about the North Korean meeting, about President Trump hanging out with Kim Jong Un, everything from their personal relationship to the actual statement that they signed together.
First, I have to make a couple announcements.
So today, 7 p.m.
Eastern, we are doing a Father's Day special in honor A Father's Day, which makes sense, since it's a Father's Day special.
Daily Wire God King Jeremy Boring is hosting a roundtable discussion with me, Andrew Klavan, Michael Knowles, plus special guests Alfonso, Rachel, and Nick Cerci to discuss the role of fatherhood in our society.
I believe everyone there has actually had children, except for Knowles, who will sit there uselessly, as per our usual arrangement.
We'll be live-streaming on Facebook and YouTube.
If you're a Daily Wire subscriber, go to dailywire.com, submit live questions to us, which will be monitored by Elisha Krauss.
We will see you this afternoon.
Okay, well.
As I say, I want to get to everything having to do with this Kim Trump meetup.
I know that some people are upset with me because I'm skeptical of the Kim Trump meetup.
I will explain why in full color, in full comprehensive detail in just a second.
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OK, so biggest news ever.
So the big news of the day, of course, is that President Trump goes over to Singapore and he meets with Kim Jong-un.
Now, I want to begin with this.
Kim Jong-un is the world's worst dictator.
He's a piece of human debris.
He is garbage.
He has killed his uncle, his ex-girlfriend, his brother-in-law, I believe.
He's killed all those people within the last couple of years.
He killed his uncle at an airport using VX nerve gas.
He has 25 million people living in his slave state.
He has 200,000 people living in his gulags.
He is just sheer garbage.
And he is generation number three of sheer garbage in the Kim family.
A North Korean defector talked a little bit on television yesterday about the people in North Korea and the fact they don't even know that they're slaves because they've never seen the outside world.
In order to understand how horrible North Korea is, you have to understand that at night, when you take a photograph from space of North Korea versus South Korea, South Korea is all lit up like a Christmas tree.
In North Korea, there's one light and it is at Kim Jong-un's palace.
Legitimately.
Here's what a defector from North Korea said about North Korea.
How bad was it in North Korea when you were there?
It's hard to say because, I mean, I thought, like, I never knew my country was isolated.
People in North Korea, they don't know that they are slaves.
That's why, you know, if you don't know you are slaves, how do you demand to be free?
Okay, so the bottom line is that this is a slave state.
It is run by one of the world's most evil families and the world's most evil human being at this point in time.
Now, the reason I point this out is because people are treating this summit with a bit of frivolity.
They're treating it as a giant celebration, a coming-out party for Kim Jong-un.
That is completely inappropriate.
The only reason that we're meeting with Kim Jong-un is because he's been testing his nuclear weapons and because his family has been pursuing nuclear weapons and lying about it to the West over and over and over again.
And lest we forget, these lies have been continuous and repeated.
Okay, the Kim family has lied no less than eight times since 1992 to the American government about denuclearization.
Eight times.
So before everybody gets on their high horse about, oh, Trump finally got them to promise denuclearization, they've promised denuclearization more often than...
As many nights as there are Hanukkah, he has promised denuclearization.
I mean, he has promised denuclearization essentially every other year, the family has, every other year since 1992.
And we're supposed to pretend that his current promise means something.
Well, Trump tweeted in the run-up to the meeting that critics were selling him short.
short.
He said, the fact that I'm having a meeting is a major loss for the USA, the haters and losers.
We have our hostages testing research and all missile launches have stopped.
And these pundits who have called me wrong from the beginning have nothing else they can say.
We will be fine.
Okay, just to point out here, yes, we got some hostages back.
So did Barack Obama in 2014.
That is just historical fact.
As far as testing and research and missile launches have stopped, we have no way to verify whether research has stopped.
Testing has stopped at the nuclear mountain because they imploded their own nuclear mountain.
And their missile launches have stopped because they don't want to set off President Trump in the run-up to the meeting, right?
That's the idea here.
And President Trump then continues, and he says, meetings between staffs and representatives are going well and quickly, but in the end, that doesn't matter.
We will all know soon whether or not a real deal, unlike those of the past, can happen.
The truth is, usually a president of the United States does not get together with a foreign adversary to sign an agreement until there's an agreement to be signed.
Until there's something real and decent and long-lasting and verifiable to be signed.
The goal of these negotiations is CVID.
Complete Verifiable Irreversible Denuclearization or Dismantlement.
CVID.
They're not really even talking about that right now.
They're not really even talking about that.
This was the big question.
Was President Trump going to be handing Kim Jong-un a public relations victory by going over and hanging out with him?
Or was he going to get some serious concessions?
Now, we don't know the answer to that yet.
And this is my note of caution.
We don't know yet.
So what you're hearing from a lot of folks on the right is triumph!
Nobel Prize!
Everything great has already happened.
Nothing great has happened.
In fact, right now, the ledger is stacked in favor of Kim Jong-un because we just handed them a massive PR victory.
We'll go through the PR victory and all the mistakes that were made over the last 36 hours and handing them a PR victory now.
All those mistakes turn to gold if Kim Jong-un actually wants to denuclearize.
So if the White House knows something that we don't, if the White House actually has some sort of verifiable regime of dismantlement coming, then this is the greatest move of all time.
If they don't, then it's a debacle.
Okay?
There really is no in-between.
There's no in-between position where Trump goes over there and makes nice and plays kissy face with Kim Jong-un and doesn't get anything out of him, where it's not a debacle.
And on the other hand, if he gets what he wants out of Kim Jong-un, then obviously everything is justified.
But right now, everybody is jumping to their various positions.
You got folks on the right, and they are jumping to the position that Donald Trump has done something masterful.
It's a masterstroke.
It's genius.
It's MAGA MAGA 3D underwater chest upside down.
And how do we know that?
Well, because Trump's doing it.
If Obama had done the same thing, we would have gone nuts.
If Obama had gone over to Singapore and hung out with Kim Jong-un and stacked the American flag alongside the flag of North Korea, we would have gone crazy because the flag of North Korea is the modern-day equivalent of the swastika.
Imagine that Kim Jong-un is Hitler, and you understand a little bit better why it might not be a great idea to have all these photo ops with a guy without receiving any sort of serious concessions in the first place.
So on the right they're jumping to, everything is great, everything's gonna be fine, no downside, all terrific.
And on the left they're jumping to, this is the worst thing that has ever happened in the history of the world.
The same people who are cheering Obama for signing the world's worst nuclear deal with Iran, But we don't know yet.
I say a lot on this show.
I spend a lot of time on my show saying, let's wait for the evidence to come in.
And there's another case where I'm gonna say, let's wait for the evidence to come in.
to virtually anything.
He committed to a few things.
None of them are good, but we don't know yet.
I say a lot on this show.
I spend a lot of time on my show saying, let's wait for the evidence to come in.
And there's another case where I'm gonna say, let's wait for the evidence to come in.
But we can say that President Trump gave up something very serious in this photo op.
He gave up the idea that America, as the freest country on the face of the planet and most powerful country on the face of the planet, has the capacity to talk down to Kim Jong-un.
We should be talking down to him.
He's a tin-pot dictator piece of crap.
He's a horrible human being.
And legitimizing him, and pretending that he's a normal person, and that this is a normal regime, and that we've got to have normal relations with this normal regime without any serious concessions being made?
I don't know why the president does that.
I honestly don't.
I don't know why this wasn't done through lower level negotiators.
I don't know why this wasn't done through Mike Pompeo.
I don't know why this wasn't done through the CIA.
There are plenty of ways to negotiate these deals.
Having the president show up for a nice back rub with Kim Jong-un doesn't seem to me like a worthwhile cause.
Now, you have to understand the level of reality TV that was involved in this from the very start.
You have Dennis Rodman on TV crying.
So Dennis Rodman showed up in Singapore wearing a Make America Great Again hat.
This is not the case.
He's been going over to North Korea for years.
Back in 2014, a guy named Donald Trump tweeted that he never would have said that Dennis Rodman should go over to North Korea and hang out with Kim Jong-un.
It's why he's glad he fired him from Celebrity Apprentice.
Now Dennis Rodman is actually at this event and he starts crying on TV while talking about how he is sponsored by some sort of pot Bitcoin company.
I got so many tough threats while I was sitting there protecting everything.
And I believed the dark career.
And when I went home, I couldn't even go home.
I couldn't even go home.
I had to hide out for 30 days.
I couldn't even go home.
But I kept my head up high, brother.
I knew things were gonna change.
I knew it.
I was the only one.
I never had no one to hear me.
I didn't know no one had to see me.
But I took those bullets!
I took all that!
I took everything!
Everyone came at me!
And I'm still standing!
And today is a great day for everybody!
Singapore!
Tokyo!
China!
Everything!
It's a great day!
And he's standing there talking about PotCoin.com and Chris Cuomo humoring him.
OK, when Dennis Rodman says it's a great day, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a great day.
It could just mean that he took LSD.
Like, we just don't know.
It's Dennis Rodman.
OK, so all of this happens.
Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump walk out.
And here is the historic moment.
Everybody says it's historic.
They always say historic as though historic is good.
Historic just means historic, meaning that it makes history.
But lots of things were historic.
Neville Chamberlain was historic.
And so was so was opening China.
Lots of things are historic.
Here's what it looked like when President Trump met with Kim Jong-un for the first time.
As we see President Trump getting prepared to walk to center stage.
And there it is.
The first handshake between the United States president and North Korea.
Okay, now pause it right there.
You can see the danger in this image, okay?
And the image is, of course, a bunch of American flags stacked up against a bunch of North Korean flags.
If those were swastikas, everybody would understand this.
Okay, symbolism matters.
And I guess we play Kim Jong-un as though he is some sort of joke.
As though he's just a fat boy who's a joke.
OK, there's an element of that.
But the guy also happens to be a mass murderer, like an actual mass murderer.
So in any case, President Trump says that he is happy to get the guy to the table.
And then he says that he felt foolish with doing the fire and fury rhetoric, but he had to do it.
He told this to Sean Hannity.
He says that, you know, that's the way that you get Kim Jong-un to the table in the first place.
Well, I think without the rhetoric, we wouldn't have been here.
I really believe that.
You know, we did sanctions and all of the things that you would do, but I think without the rhetoric, you know, other administrations, I don't want to get specific on that, but they had a policy of silence.
If they said something very bad and very threatening and horrible, just don't answer.
That's not the answer.
That's not what you have to do.
Okay, so I agree with President Trump's harsh rhetoric.
I agree with President Trump's harsh rhetoric with regard to Kim Jong-un.
I don't think that it was his harsh rhetoric that brought Kim Jong-un to the table.
I think that it was the South Korean administration, which has been extraordinarily open toward Kim Jong-un and basically brokered this deal.
So, I like the harsh rhetoric.
I have no problem with the fire and fury rhetoric with regard to Kim Jong-un.
It doesn't bother me one iota.
In fact, I'd like more of that.
More of the harsh Trump rhetoric, less of the kissy kissy face for me because I just I'm not a big fan of how this went.
So in just a second, I'm going to explain to you what exactly went down in this deal because I have the document in front of me, what exactly was signed and why it basically is a giant nothing burger for the moment.
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All right.
So what actually was in this this deal between new best friends, President Trump and Kim Jong Un?
So here is what the deal says.
It says President Donald J. Trump of the United States of America and Chairman Kim Jong Un of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea held first historic summit in Singapore on June 12th, 2018.
President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong-un conducted a comprehensive, in-depth, and sincere exchange of opinions on the issues related to the establishment of new U.S.-DPRK relations and the building of a lasting and robust peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.
President Trump committed to provide security guarantees to DPRK, and Chairman Kim Jong-un reaffirmed his firm non-wavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Let's stop there for just a second.
Okay, what that means is that President Trump made commitments that he would not actually involve the United States in joint military drills with the South Koreans, and Kim Jong-un said, I'm going to do the same thing my dad and my granddad promised, and I'm going to lie about it.
That's not a promising start.
Listen, I know, maybe there's more to come.
Maybe there's more to come, but I need to see the evidence there's more to come before I start getting excited about a deal that basically is weaker than prior deals.
And the fact is that the joint comprehensive framework that was come up with in 2005-2006 is stronger than this deal.
Convinced that the establishment of new U.S.D.P.R.K.
relations will contribute to the peace and prosperity of the Korean Peninsula and of the world, and recognizing that mutual confidence building can promote the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, President Trump and Kim Jong-un state the following, and here we get to the Actual four basic principles of the deal.
Principle one.
The U.S.
and the D.P.R.K.
commit to establish new U.S.-D.P.R.K.
relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.
Okay, so that one doesn't mean anything.
Two.
The United States and the D.P.R.K.
will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.
Okay, again, that doesn't mean anything.
Three.
Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the D.P.R.K.
commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
There's nothing new here.
work toward complete denuclearization is actually a weaker promise than has been made in prior agreements.
And then four, the United States and ZPRK commit to recovering POW MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.
And then there's a bunch of language about how much fun they had together.
There's nothing new here.
The one that Trump has been pumping the hardest is the POW MIA language, the suggestion that we're going to bring home the remains of all these POWs and MIAs.
That's great, except that this has been a Korean promise for legitimately 30 years.
Korean officials have been promising to do this since the 1980s.
Between 1996 and 2005, U.S.-North Korean search teams conducted 33 joint recovery operations and recovered 229 sets of American remains, that program was actually discontinued for a time because North Korea insisted we pay them bribes in order so that we could gather the bones of the American dead.
Some Americans were referring to this as bones for bucks.
We recontinued it in 2011 and then we stopped again in 2016.
So the deal itself is no great shakes.
So what that means is that the only way for this to be a success is if it is a first step.
Now, in order for it to be a success as a first step, two things have to happen.
The Trump can't give up too much up front.
And second, there must be an actual thing that we get on the back end.
Now, I want to talk about what Trump gave up here in just a second.
So let's begin.
President Trump does this press conference last night.
He's obviously very pleased with himself.
He's obviously very excited because this is the historic moment.
It's the moment the world came together.
It's his Nobel Prize winning moment because he went just as Nixon went to China, Trump went to Singapore.
OK, so Trump starts off and this is one of the problems.
So the big wins that President Trump handed the North Koreans were a couple full.
There are a few of them.
So first off, there was the.
So first off, there was the.
Trump prays for Kim Jong-un, okay?
And there's plenty of it.
So it begins with President Trump talking about how talented Kim Jong-un is.
Now, I understand this is Trump shtick.
I get it.
I understand.
President Trump is trying to build relations.
What, are you going to go over there and yell at him that he's a dictator, mass murderer?
No.
But you also don't have to say that he's the world's most wonderful guy.
I understand.
Again, this is Trump's shtick.
He says this about everyone he first meets them.
But it's not good in just the same way it was stupid when President Bush said that he looked into Putin's eyes and he saw his soul.
I think this is idiotic.
Here's President Trump saying that Kim Jong Un is very talented.
He said this sort of nonsense before.
Well, he is very talented.
Anybody that takes over a situation like he did at 26 years of age and is able to run it and run it tough, I don't say He was nice, or I don't say anything about it.
He rented very few people at that age.
You can take one out of 10,000 probably couldn't do it.
Okay, he's a dictator who legitimately murders political dissidents.
That's not the language the President of the United—that's shameful language.
The President of the United States should not be using that language about one of the most evil people on planet Earth.
I don't care whether it's Obama.
Or Bush, or Clinton, or Trump.
That's not the language you use with Kim Jong-un.
And then, President Trump goes further.
He actually starts talking about all of the concessions he would like to make to Kim Jong-un.
Some will materialize, some will not.
But none of this signals strength to Kim Jong-un.
It actually signals weakness to Kim Jong-un.
At some point, I have to be honest, and I used to say this during my campaign, as you know probably better than most, I want to get our soldiers out.
I want to bring our soldiers back home.
We have right now 32,000 soldiers in South Korea.
And I'd like to be able to bring them back home, but that's not part of the equation right now.
At some point, I hope it will be, but not right now.
We will be stopping the war games, which will save us a tremendous amount of money, unless and until we see that the future negotiation is not Going along like it should.
Okay, so Trump's made some sort of concessions here.
One of the concessions is that we're going to hold off on joint military exercises with South Koreans.
This apparently surprised the South Koreans.
He said that these exercises were quote-unquote very provocative.
That's the language that Kim Jong-un probably said to Trump.
These are provocative exercises.
They're not provocative exercises.
They're joint military exercises.
They're not meant to provoke a response from North Korea.
They're meant as a warning.
I think he wants to do things.
I think he wants to.
You'd be very surprised.
in those terms about joint military exercises.
And then he starts talking again about how wonderful Kim Jong-un is.
He talks about how Kim Jong-un really wants to get something done.
I think he wants to do things.
I think he wants to.
You'd be very surprised.
Very smart, very good negotiator.
Wants to do the right thing.
I believe it's a rough situation over there.
There's no question about it.
And we did discuss it today pretty strongly.
I mean, knowing what the main purpose of what we were doing is, denuking, but discussed it at pretty good length.
We'll be doing something on it.
It's It's rough.
It's rough in a lot of places, by the way.
Not just there, but it's rough.
And we will continue that, and I think ultimately— Okay, again, brushing off human rights abuses in North Korea, as it's rough in a lot of places, this is not a good look from the President of the United States.
Now, the reason I'm being critical is because what President Trump is trying to do here, obviously, is butter up Kim Jong-un.
Like, really butter him up.
The idea here is we'll make Kim Jong-un feel so good about himself that he'll give up his nuclear weapons.
I'm deeply skeptical Kim Jong-un falls for this, but clearly that's what Trump is trying to do, to put the best possible spin on it for Trump.
That he doesn't like Kim Jong-un, but he's trying to manipulate Kim Jong-un.
He's trying to butter him up.
I think the most buttery thing that he said actually was not during this press conference.
We'll get back to the clips from the press conference in just a second.
It's clip 19, where he was with Greta Van Susteren and apparently decided that we were going to do an episode of The Dating Game.
Here he is describing his potential date, Kim Jong-un.
Really, he's got a great personality.
He's a, you know, funny guy.
He's a very smart guy.
He's a great negotiator.
He loves his people, not that I'm surprised by that, but he loves his people, and I think that we have a, you know, the start of an amazing deal.
We're gonna de-nuke North Korea.
It's gonna start immediately, and a lot of other things are happening.
He loves his people.
Don't you understand?
He loves his people.
Just like To Serve Man, right?
From Twilight Zone?
They also, the aliens, love their people.
To eat them.
Okay, Kim Jong-un has kept his people in a state of abject slavery for legitimately decades.
And he loves his people.
How is that helpful?
How is that helpful?
Okay, so, if he butters him up, again, All of this is contingent on something really big has to happen at the other end.
If not, this is the President of the United States lying down and playing dead for the worst dictator on planet Earth.
We'll get to more of President Trump's statements on all of this, plus the blowback in just a second.
The media blowback is hypocritical, and I'll talk about that.
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Okay, so back to President Trump's Press conference.
So President Trump continues by talking about how he and here President Trump is talking about the media hypocrisy.
So a lot of people are saying, well, why is this any different than when Obama was trying to make concessions to the Cubans or the Iranians?
And Trump rightly is saying, listen, the deal that I'm cutting right now isn't making more concessions than anything Obama did.
And this is one of the great ironies of this particular political moment is that all the people who thought that Obama was just terrible for the Iran deal are cheering wildly President Trump meeting with Kim Jong-un and massaging his back.
And all the people who are really, really angry at President Trump for doing this on the left were wildly ecstatic about President Trump back massaging the mullahs in Iran.
And then there are those of us who say, listen, it's bad when Obama back massages the mullahs, and it's bad when Trump back massages Kim Jong-un.
It's bad when Obama kisses the butt of some of the worst people on earth, and it's bad when Trump does that as well.
There better be some sort of payoff on the other end.
Here's Trump going after the media, however.
Jennifer, when you look at all of those things that we got, and when we got our hostages back, I didn't pay $1.8 billion in cash.
Like the hostages that came back from Iran, which was a disgraceful situation, what took place.
So we've gotten a lot.
So when I hear somebody in the media say that President Trump has agreed to meet, like, it's not a big deal to meet.
I think we should meet on a lot of different topics, not just this one.
And I really believe a lot of great things can happen.
Okay, it is a big deal to meet.
It is a big deal to meet.
Okay, it's a big deal to meet for the North Koreans.
It may not be a big deal for Trump to meet, but it's the United States.
He has the prestige and power of the United States sitting behind him.
Granting meetings to some of the worst people on earth is a bad idea.
There's a reason that President Trump, for example, hasn't been willing to meet with members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
There's a reason that he's not willing to meet with the leadership of Iran.
Everybody understands this on an innate level.
President Trump understands it, too.
He's brushing off the meeting as a big nothing because nothing has happened yet.
But that's exactly the point.
Nothing has happened yet, so why are you meeting?
What is the point of this meeting?
And when I say that there's been triumphalism surrounding this meeting, I mean, I mean, coming from the Trump administration.
So President Trump tweets out this video.
When he was 18, he tweets out this video of a compilation of himself meeting with Kim Jong-un.
I'll describe it to you.
And you can hear the music underneath because all this triumphal music as though something great has been done.
Again, nothing great has been done yet.
Maybe something will be done.
But so far, all I've seen is the president of the United States walking arm in arm with one of the worst people on planet Earth and then flattering him as a wonderful, smart guy.
Yeah, that's not great to me.
I'm waiting for the great part to come.
I understand that maybe this is the setup.
Well, I need the punchline before I start laughing.
Otherwise, I'm just going to be angry at the setup because I don't like the setup very much.
Trump, though, is touting the setup as though this is some sort of big win.
The problem with this video is that if you cut it shot for shot with the same music, you could play it on Pyongyang TV in favor of Kim Jong Un.
Here's what the video sounds like.
So you can see Trump walking into the venue, and then you see him shaking hands with Kim Jong Un, and both of them smiling, and Trump being very warm, and the triumphal music.
Everything's just spectacular.
And then them walking along some sort of portico together, and them sitting together.
Okay, none of this is useful.
And then Mike Pompeo coming in and shaking hands with Kim Jong-un, both of them very smiley, and then sitting across the table.
And the hopeful music rises.
Oh, and then they're both waving to the crowd, Kim Jong-un smiling.
They're walking together in the gardens.
Okay, none of this is useful.
The point of this meeting is supposed to get Kim Jong-un to understand that you actually need to make concessions.
Because if you don't make concessions, we're going to kick the living bleep out of you, right?
Right?
That's what this meeting was supposed to be.
Not President Trump going in there and making nice so that we can then claim that we've won some sort of victory.
Diplomacy is not a victory.
Diplomacy is a tactic.
Just because you are being diplomatic does not mean that you did anything wonderful.
It depends what's on the other end of the diplomacy.
Obama did this routine too.
This is my original complaint about Trump meeting with Kim Jong-un.
I said it at the time.
Go back and listen to the tape.
I've been saying it for weeks.
Saying that you're going to meet with somebody makes the diplomacy the chief goal.
Diplomacy is never the chief goal.
Now, there are a bunch of people today who are making the same argument that Obama made about Iran.
Well, what would you have him do?
Go to war with North Korea?
No, I wouldn't have him go to war with North Korea.
I would have his lower-level negotiators making clear to the North Koreans what the deal should be, and then when it's time for Trump to actually triumph, then he gets to walk in and sign a big piece of paper.
But preliminarily, handing this sort of legitimacy and kindness to Kim Jong-un is not useful.
I mean, speaking of legitimacy and kindness, you know, President Trump has been saying for a long time that one of the keys here is that he's used very harsh language with regard to North Korea, that if North Korea violates, then we may have to use fire and fury.
Well, yesterday, he basically took fire and fury off the table.
Here is President Trump talking about how if we went to war, 30 million people would die, which is essentially taking military force off the table, effectively.
This is the press conference, the quote beginning, Seoul.
So there's 28 million people.
Think of that.
And it's right next to the border.
It's right next to the DMZ.
It's right there.
I mean, if this would have happened, I think, you know, I've heard, oh, 100,000 people.
I think you could have lost 20 million people, 30 million people.
This is really an honor for me to be doing this because I think, you know, potentially you could have lost, you know, 30, 40, 50 million people.
The city of Seoul, one of the biggest cities in the world, is right next to the border.
Okay, so the fact that he's saying this is effectively taking the option off the table, which is not a good idea, right?
I mean, there should be no options off the table, obviously, and President Trump's whole shtick here, when it comes to foreign policy, is you never give away your hand.
And maybe we'll hit you with a club, and maybe we'll give you a carrot, but you never give away your hand.
Here's President Trump tipping his hand, and that's not particularly smart.
It's just, it's not particularly bright, and I'm upset with him for having done it, obviously, unless, unless, I keep saying unless, because we don't know what the unless is, so we have to hold off judgment.
Unless there is some sort of big concession by the North Koreans.
And then, this I thought was the funniest part of the press conference.
So Trump showed Kim a tape.
Apparently.
And I've seen the tape now.
It's this highly produced little tape with a big narrator voice, with a big narrator going, Trump, Kim, can they make peace?
And then a bunch of pictures of people playing basketball and people dancing and singing, and then a bunch of pictures of missiles and all this kind of stuff.
It's pretty amazing.
But Trump talks about, you know, the tape and what he showed Kim.
He says that was a version of what could happen.
That was a version of what could happen, what could take place.
As an example, they have great beaches.
You see that whenever they're exploding their cannons into the ocean, right?
I said, boy, look at that.
Wouldn't that make a great condo behind?
And I explained, I said, you know, instead of doing that, you could have the best hotels in the world right there.
Think of it from a real estate perspective.
You have South Korea, you have China, and they own the land in the middle.
How bad is that, right?
It's great.
But I told them, I said, you may not want to do Here's the point.
The United States does not have to engage in a charm offensive with North Korea.
We're the most powerful country in the history of the world by a factor of 10.
He looked at that iPad and I'm telling you, they really enjoyed it, I believe.
Here's the point.
The United States does not have to engage in a charm offensive with North Korea.
We're the most powerful country in the history of the world by a factor of 10.
There's legitimately no reason we have to engage in a charm offensive when we're telling a tin pot dictatorship to give up their nukes.
The charm offensive stuff, if it works, then I'm happy to say that President Trump did something unprecedented and massive and wonderful.
But if it doesn't, then all that happened is the President of the United States made a tin pot dictator look like somebody who's actually worth the time.
And I'm not seeing that.
Again, you know, President Trump's language here has been I don't think useful.
I think it's been counterproductive.
But again, I'm willing to withhold judgment.
I'm willing to withhold judgment.
He says that he is ready to trust Kim Jong-un.
This is the third clip from the ABC interview with Stephanopoulos.
He says that he's done a lot of deals and I think that I might be able to trust Kim Jong-un.
Again, not sure why.
Over my lifetime, I've done a lot of deals with a lot of people.
And sometimes the people that you most distrust turn out to be the most honorable ones.
And the people that you do trust, they are not the honorable ones.
So, we are starting from a very high plane.
We're starting from a very good relationship.
This has been a very big day in terms of the world.
I think it's been, maybe, a lot of people are saying it's historic.
We're all calling it historic.
Right, and everybody's talking about how historic it is.
Historically good?
Historically bad?
We don't know yet.
We don't know yet.
But I will say this.
The media, who are treating this with grave skepticism, I wish they treated the Iran deal with the same grave skepticism.
And conservatives, who are treating this as an unmitigated triumph, I wish that they had treated this the same way they treated the Iran deal.
The deal is not a deal until there's a deal.
This is true of every deal in business and in politics.
There's no serious deal that's been made.
All that's happened so far is that Trump has offered really an unwarranted open hand to the worst dictatorship on planet Earth, put their flag alongside the flag of the United States.
You know how many Americans died to keep that North Korean flag from flying over South Korea?
50,000 Americans died to keep that flag from flying over South Korea.
That means that if you're going to fly it alongside the American flag, there damn well better be a good reason.
And it can't just be because Trump wants a photo op.
There has to be an actual good reason, and that means actual denuclearization.
I hope that's what the Trump administration has in its back pocket.
I suspect that it is not, from speaking to many people with knowledge of the situation.
I suspect that it is not, but if it is, then more power to him, and all this ends up being a coup.
It ends up being the greatest thing ever, and I pray that it is.
If not, it ends up being a debacle.
An Obama-esque debacle, worse in some ways than anything except for the Iran deal on the Obama ledger.
Okay, so I want to talk about Bill Clinton and how Bill Clinton continues to get away with everything in just a second.
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So meanwhile, President Clinton continues to get away with everything.
He made some comments the other day that went largely unremarked upon by mainstream media.
He said in an interview that sexual misconduct norms have changed.
How have they changed?
President Clinton, explain.
In general, I think it's a good thing, yes.
I think it's a good thing that we should all have higher standards.
I think the norms have really changed in terms of What you can do to somebody against their will, how much you can crowd their space, make them miserable at work.
You don't have to physically assault somebody to make them, you know, uncomfortable at work or at home or in their utter just walking around.
Okay, so the standards have changed about how much you can do with somebody against their consent.
I love that the follow-up question here is not, well, what was the standard with Juanita Broderick?
What was the standard with Paula Jones?
What was the standard with Kathleen Willey?
My favorite part of all these interviews with Bill Clinton is that James Patterson, the best-selling author maybe of all time, is sitting next to him just looking egregiously uncomfortable, just looking like he wants to crawl into a hole and die.
It's pretty spectacular.
But Bill Clinton, again, still a respected voice on the left.
And then we wonder why people don't take the media seriously.
We wonder why when the media asks critical questions about North Korea, everybody blows them off.
Maybe it's because they're a bunch of hypocrites.
Maybe it's because they're ridiculous.
Now, speaking of ridiculous, this story is amazing.
So Jack Dorsey is the head of Twitter.
He tweeted out that he had ordered a bag of sandwiches from Chick-fil-A.
So he tweeted out, boost Chick-fil-A.
And then it showed a image of how much money he has spent at Chick-fil-A.
He spent like 30 bucks at Chick-fil-A.
And then he was called on it by Soledad O'Brien, who immediately said, this is an interesting company to boost during Pride Month, Jack, because it's Gay Pride Month this month, which if you didn't know, congratulations, it's Gay Pride Month.
And then Jack responded, you're right, completely forgot about their background.
He never should have shopped at Chick-fil-A during Gay Pride Month.
It's basically like Gay Ramadan.
Now it's during this month.
You mustn't.
We're gonna fast from all the Christian-owned companies during Gay Ramadan, Gay Pride Month.
No one, no one must ever shop from Chick-fil-A, a company that has never discriminated against homosexuals in any way, but whose owners are against same-sex marriage.
Anybody who shops at Chick-fil-A is violating the precepts of Gay Pride Month.
Because the gay pride jihadis are going to come after you and insist that you do repentance.
Very, very important stuff from Soledad O'Brien.
The best part of this is that Soledad O'Brien did an event in 2012 sponsored by Chick-fil-A.
So she was happy to take the cash from Chick-fil-A, but now she's very upset that Gay Pride Month, its sanctity, its sanctity has been violated by the evil that is tweeting out that you shopped at Chick-fil-A to get a sandwich.
And then people wonder why people voted for President Trump.
You know, as critical as I am of President Trump from time to time, the fact is that the left does nothing but push people into President Trump's camp with social culture war issues like this.
You know, I like a lot of President Trump's policy.
I don't like a lot of President Trump's rhetoric.
Some of the things President Trump does, like this North Korean summit, I think are foolhardy and problematic.
But when you have an entire group of people who insist that I cannot shop at the chicken sandwich shop of my choosing because that might offend homosexual people for no reason at all, It sort of makes me think maybe I'll just vote for the guy who's not doing that.
Maybe I'll vote for the guy who doesn't take that stuff particularly seriously.
Pretty amazing stuff there from Jack Dorsey.
I love that Jack Dorsey has to acknowledge that.
So it took Jack Dorsey like months and months and months to punish Louis Farrakhan by taking away his verification on Twitter.
He shouldn't have taken away his verification.
He shouldn't ban him either.
I think it's good Louis Farrakhan is out there.
He reminds us how scummy human beings can be.
He's just a piece of garbage.
But that said, Jack Dorsey has banned a number of people from Twitter, but not Louis Farrakhan, so he still hasn't banned Louis Farrakhan, but he's never gonna shop at Chick-fil-A during Gay Pride Ramadan, so that's very exciting stuff.
Okay, meanwhile, speaking of ridiculous stuff, the Tony Awards happened last night, on Sunday night, and they were particularly replete with anti-Trump rhetoric, foolishness, so we talked about this a little bit yesterday, but Robert De Niro dropped an F-bomb on the air.
He decided that to show what a hero he was, he was going to say F-Trump in front of a crowd, I'm gonna say one thing.
Trump.
because that's really heroism.
I mean, the approval rating for Trump in this room is negative 37%.
Like it's not even, there is no approval rating.
I mean, it's 100% disapproval.
And so he did something really brave.
He went out there and ripped Trump in front of all these people at the Tony Awards.
I'm going to say one thing.
Trump.
Standing ovation.
Woo, standing ovation.
He said F Trump.
You know what?
And then I love how they stand and they cheer.
And then he goes like this.
He gives like the big two fists up and he like pumps his fists as though he's actually succeeded in making Trump not president anymore.
That by shouting F Trump, Trump is no longer the president.
It's in the constitution.
If Robert De Niro goes on stage and shouts F Trump, And then of course Andrew Garfield got up, the guy from Spiderman, not the new one that's good, the old one that's bad.
He got up and he started talking about how everybody should abandon, everybody should basically bake cakes for the gays if they're asked to do so for a gay wedding and such.
We are all sacred, and we all belong, so let's just bake a cake for everyone who wants a cake to be baked!
Except for Christians.
Christians are not sacred, and they do not belong.
Christians do not belong.
And as I proposed yesterday, I believe that Andrew Garfield should actually act.
I will write a play about the Christian bakers who were discriminated against by the Colorado Commission on Civil Rights, and Andrew Garfield can play the lead.
He can play the Christian baker.
And I will raise the money to do that.
And he should have to do that.
Because he should act for whoever wants him to act.
I mean, it's a free market.
It's an open society.
I demand his services, and his services I shall have.
Andrew Garfield.
And then it got even better, of course.
This actress from a new musical about Harry Potter, I guess?
She says that President Trump should not come to see the show.
He should be banned from the show.
Andrew Garfield says that a Christian baker should have to serve at a same-sex wedding, but this actress says her name is Noma Dumezweni.
She says that Trump should not be able to come to her play.
So, yeah, there's no double standard here at all.
Should the president come see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child?
No.
Thank you.
Anybody else?
Yes.
Anybody else?
Yes.
But not him.
Not him.
So here's a question.
The question is, why is it that the Tony Awards, like the Oscars, like the Emmys, have catered so specifically to one segment of the population?
Now, the easy answer is they're all a bunch of leftists and they hate the right.
That's true.
But that doesn't explain why they've been allowed to get away with it.
So the Tony Awards do not get big ratings.
The Tony Awards got something like 6.3 million total viewers.
By way of contrast, Game 4 of the NBA Finals, which was down this year, Drew twice that, drew 12.9 million viewers.
And few Americans have actually seen the shows featured at the Tonys.
Basically, Broadway attendance for musicals has been effectively stagnant since 2006, 2007.
Nobody's seen any of these plays.
So why is it that the Tonys are so far out of the political mainstream?
Well, the reason is because of an element called renormalization.
So renormalization is this weird thing where a small group of people can impact a large group of people.
So here's how it works.
You have a family of four.
One of the members of your family is a vegetarian.
So instead of you having to cook two separate meals, you just cook a vegetarian meal for everyone.
So now all four people have to have a vegetarian meal.
Now that family goes to a party.
There are four families there.
And only one of the families is vegetarian.
Well, the person who's throwing the party may think, well, you know, I really don't want to cook two meals, so I'm just going to make the entire thing vegetarian.
So one person who's vegetarian can convert an entire group of people into eating vegetarian at a particular meal.
Well, the same thing happens when it comes to Broadway.
There are motivated niche groups who only go to the theater if their particular group is catered to, and these happen to be hardcore leftist groups, particularly.
And so those shows are what tends to be produced because they figure that Everybody else who's coming to Broadway will see whatever it is that is provided.
In the same way that the meat-eater will eat the vegetarian meal, a bunch of people who don't care about these niche shows will go to see the niche shows, because they're there for Broadway anyway.
And that's how Broadway Remains Liberal continues to make money.
It's only exposed, of course, on the Tonys, when millions of people watch it.
When millions of people see this liberalism and this leftism put on full display in front of the entire country, and they find it completely off-putting.
But that's how the market actually allows for Broadway and Hollywood to remain so left, even while they alienate huge swaths of the country.
Okay, so time for a couple of things that I like and then some things that I hate.
So...
Things that I like.
My kid has been... I'm going to talk a little bit of Star Wars here because there's a big news story about Kathleen Kennedy.
So there's a lot of talk about that Kathleen Kennedy, who's the head of Lucasfilm, is going to step down from the Star Wars franchise.
That she's going to step down as the head of Lucasfilm.
And I am going to talk about that in just a second.
First, I want to talk about how much I like Star Wars.
I like Star Wars so much that my kids are familiar with all the music.
Their favorite has been this rendition for a little while.
My two-year-old son particularly loves this.
He calls it Chetawah.
He loves Cello Wars.
Okay, Cello Wars is, there's this group of guys, they're called the Piano Guys, and they did this version of the Star Wars music, and it's just for two cellos, and basically there's a little bit of background music, I believe, from a synthesizer or a piano, and it's pretty cool.
Music by Ben Thede
So it's pretty fun to see You can get all their music on iTunes.
They have a lot of good stuff.
So go check out The Piano Guys.
I really enjoy a lot of their music.
This thing has several million hits on YouTube.
For good reason, it's pretty well produced.
OK, so I'm going to talk about Star Wars and Kathleen Kennedy and the stuff I hate.
But first, one more thing that I like.
So this was pretty awesome.
So I was walking on Saturday on Shabbat.
I was walking around with my family.
And we walked past a Little League baseball field.
And I had to stop and watch Little League baseball because Little League baseball is the best.
Okay, and as we were walking by the Little League baseball field, the teams were going out there and they were lining up, and I didn't realize this is what they do in Little League, because I played in Jewish Little League, so Jewish Little League, we don't do any of this particular stuff, although I think that we definitely should.
What they were saying, oh, they lined up both teams, right, the opposing teams on the third baseline and the first baseline, and then they had all the kids repeat this mantra, I trust in God, I love my country, and will respect its laws, I will play fair and strive to win, but win or lose, I will always do my best.
That's all American stuff.
It's just great.
Unfortunately, all those principles are under attack from both some folks on the left and some folks on the right, particularly when it comes to playing fair and striving to win and doing your best.
I think that those principles are particularly under attack in today's modern era, unfortunately.
But these sort of values do have an outcome, and that outcome is stuff like this.
So yesterday, this is just a beautiful video.
There is a high school pitcher who was pitching against, I guess it's one of his best friends since he was a kid, and his best friend played for another team from another high school.
And this last pitch wins him the winning team now gets to go to the state championship in high school baseball.
And what you're going to see in this video is the pitcher strike out the batter, and then his teammates rush to celebrate on the mound.
And before they can, he goes and gives his best friend a hug and comforts him about striking out.
And then he finally goes and he celebrates with his teammates.
That's just great.
That's just great.
I mean, that's sportsmanship and that's decency, and we're lacking a lot of that in today's modern politics.
Okay, time for a couple of quick things that I hate.
Okay, so thing that I hate, Michelle Wolf is awful.
Okay, she's awful.
She was awful when she did the White House Correspondents' Dinner, and she is awful now.
So she has a show on Netflix, which nobody will ever watch.
We'll never know the ratings, because that's not how Netflix actually makes its money.
They make their money off subscriptions, of course.
So Michelle Wolf did this routine, this video, where she plays a person who is submitted to the op-ed page of the New York Times, and the op-ed editor of the New York Times, it turns out, is an actual clown.
But she's not going to rip the op-ed editor of the New York Times for being too left.
No, she's going to rip the op-ed editor of the New York Times for being too right.
And she's specifically going to go after Barry Weiss.
Barry Weiss is the only semi-conservative columnist at the New York Times.
I think it's Ross Douthat and David Brooks, who's not really very conservative at all.
And Barry Weiss.
And Michelle Wolf goes after Barry Weiss because, after all, there are certain opinions that are bad.
Capital B-A-D.
Bad.
And they must not be allowed to be given room on the pages of the New York Times.
Here's Michelle Wolf being a complete cretin.
It's supposed to be Barry Weiss.
Stop it!
Enough, Barry Weiss!
Your opinions suck!
They're bad opinions!
Bad!
Do you even realize what you're doing?
People look at your paper as a trusted source for informed opinions, but instead you're validating these bad shit points of view!
Maybe it's time you leave.
Do not validate the bad points of view, people.
Michelle Wolf is right.
Barry Weiss had an opinion.
So has Barry Weiss ever defended Pizzagate?
Of course not!
That's asinine.
Barry Weiss has written about a wide variety of issues, some of which are not particularly pro-right-wing, by the way.
And there is Michelle Wolf saying, these are bad opinions.
Bad!
I'm gonna stand here and shout, bad opinion!
Bad opinion!
And you don't deserve space in the New York Times.
Now, listen, do I think there are legit bad opinions?
Yes.
I think that legitimate racist opinions are bad, for example.
I think there are plenty of legitimately bad opinions.
I think the opinion that rape is a wonderful thing.
That's a horrible opinion, right?
There are plenty of horrible opinions.
Barry Weiss does not fall outside the Overton window, but according to Michelle Wolfe, she does.
Because according to Michelle Wolfe, the only people who should be on the pages of the op-ed of the New York Times are people that Michelle Wolfe personally agrees with.
Now, the great irony of this is that Barry Weiss wrote a full column defending Michelle Wolfe after the White House Correspondents Dinner.
So apparently her bad opinions include defending Michelle Wolfe.
Pretty amazing stuff.
Okay, now meanwhile, other things that I hate.
So I have to talk about this briefly.
There's a whole upspate of people who are now defending Kathleen Kennedy.
Kathleen Kennedy is the head of Lucasfilm, and the reason that they are defending Kathleen Kennedy is they say that Kathleen Kennedy is doing a wonderful job as the She's the head of the Star Wars universe.
She's not doing a bad job.
Pay no attention to the failures of Solo.
Pay no attention to The Last Jedi.
Pay no attention to any of that stuff.
She is doing awesome.
And you know how we know she's doing awesome?
Because Kathleen Kennedy is super woke.
And the real reason that Star Wars is failing right now, that Star Wars is having some trouble, the real reason that Star Wars is feeling the pain is because of these toxic fans.
Now, does this sound familiar?
Does it sound sort of like what people said about Hillary Clinton?
Hillary isn't failing because Hillary sucks.
Hillary's failing because everybody's deplorable.
That's exactly what all these columnists are saying.
So there's a guy named Mark Bernardin who writes for the Hollywood Reporter.
He says that all of these toxic fans, quote, hate everything the new Star Wars stood for, hated what they saw as a social justice warrior remix of the Star Wars they grew up with, and they hated Trans Rose.
This would be the this cat, this actress.
What's her first name?
Katie Tran, maybe?
Who plays Rose in the last Star Wars movie, which is a garbage part.
Most of all because they decided she was the avatar that was all that was wrong with the franchise.
Those fans, minority but a loud one, found there them in the very thing they used to love.
Those who chose this particular vein of the dark side, emboldened by the faceless intoxication of the internet, went hard on Tran.
Racist invective, misogyny, rape, and death threats all hurled at her constantly, unrelentingly, transforming what had been a Cinderella story, The Last Jedi was Tran's first major film into a modern day nightmare.
Okay, so if you think that this group of Reddit trolls who are like all up on Tran, that that is what is causing Star Wars to fail, You're an idiot.
Okay, the real reason that Star Wars is failing is not because of any of that stuff.
Because if it was because of that stuff, you would have expected Solo to do fine, because Solo wasn't filled with as much SJW nonsense.
The real reason that Star Wars is failing is because Kathleen Kennedy is terrible at her job.
Okay, the Lucasfilm Story Group?
The reason she's being defended again is because she is super woke.
The New York Times had a piece a few weeks ago talking about Kathleen Kennedy's Lucasfilm Story Group and they said, quote, Now, I don't care about any of that stuff.
fulfill the expectations of loyal fans and create meaningful female characters.
The Lucas Group Story Group is entirely female.
The Times gushes today.
The Lucasfilm Story Group is a diverse outlier in Hollywood.
Five of its members are people of color.
The team includes four women and seven men.
A new unpublished analysis of Star Wars films shows striking progress in the representation of gender and race.
Now, I don't care about any of that stuff.
I care whether the movies are good.
But the press cares about that stuff, and that's why they have to defend Kathleen Kennedy from her bad creative decision-making.
The reason that Star Wars has failed is because they basically had two choices on relaunching the Star Wars universe.
One would be, fast-forward 50 years when all the original characters are gone, and then you lose the nostalgia, but at least you relaunch the universe.
Or two, you recast the original characters and you pick up where Return of the Jedi left off.
But instead, she chose door number three, which is bring back all the original characters, kill them off in the stupidest possible ways, and then try to make backwards-looking nostalgia films about characters you've already destroyed, like Solo.
I can't imagine why that was a giant fail.
Kathleen Kennedy should go, but the media's gonna try and save her because she's a woman and she's a woke woman at that, so that's all that matters.
Okay, quick explanation of a Federalist paper since we didn't do so yesterday.
So Federalist number 32 we are up to.
We can do this very quickly.
Alexander Hamilton wrote Federalist 32.
This is a continuation of his discussion about the taxing power of the federal government.
And what he says is that the state and federal government will be able to have concurrent taxing power.
So there's a lot of worry at the state level that if the federal government can tax, That that will prevent the state from taxing, and Hamilton assures people that's not the truth.
He says, this exclusive delegation, or rather this alienation of state sovereignty, would only exist in three cases.
Where the Constitution in expressed terms grants an exclusive authority to the Union, where it granted in one instance an authority to the Union, and in another prohibited the states from exercising the like authority, and where it granted an authority to the Union, to which a similar authority in the states would be absolutely and totally contradictory and repugnant.
In other words, unless the Constitution explicitly rules out that a state can do something, the state can still do something.
So this is his argument.
And then he says states can tax their citizens.
He says there is plainly no expression in the granting clause which makes that power exclusive in the Union.
There's no independent clause or sentence which prohibits the states from exercising it.
In other words, stop worrying so much that the federal government is going to tax everybody and states won't be able to.
Hamilton was right about this.
Both the feds and the states now tax people out of existence.
That's very exciting stuff.
That's because the growth of the federal government far beyond what Hamilton ever could have foreseen or approved.
Okay, we'll be back here tomorrow with all the latest updates.
Hopefully, we'll have some good news from the Trump administration in terms of actual concrete steps that the North Koreans will take to denuclearize.
Otherwise, it was not a great day.
But maybe it will be a good day tomorrow.
We'll find out.
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.
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