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July 26, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
48:52
Good Trump, Bad Trump | Ep. 589
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President Trump declares his trade war on hold, the White House cracks down on CNN, and Republicans go after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
We'll talk about it.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
Many a new piece of news will meet my eye, Many a new day shall find me.
Well, we'll talk about all of the things that are breaking in the news.
First, I need to let you know that if you have not actually bought a ticket yet for our live events in Dallas and Phoenix, what are you doing?
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Well, that debt is greater than the entire economic output of the United States.
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Okay, so yesterday was an epic day of Good Trump, Bad Trump, which is a great excuse for us to bring back our Good Trump, Bad Trump jingle.
We haven't done this in a long time, guys.
I'm excited.
Let's bring it back.
Good Trump, Bad Trump, guys.
Guys, go.
Good Trump, bad Trump, which one we'll begin today?
Every day is a mystery on Good Trump, Bad Trump.
You never know what you're going to find behind door number one or door number two.
Well, I've been talking for several weeks about the silliness of trade wars, about why you don't rally tariffs, why you don't increase tariffs in order to increase prices on your own citizens and increase prices on inputs and sink your own economy simply to punish other countries.
The president, however, likes tariffs a lot.
But yesterday, He went weapons down with the EU.
So he tweeted out yesterday that he had made a deal with the EU.
He said, great meeting on trade today with Juncker EU.
Juncker, of course, is the head of the EU.
He says, we have come to a very strong understanding in all believers and are all believers in no tariffs, no barriers and no subsidies.
That would be Jean-Claude Juncker, by the way.
He says, work on documents has already started and the process is moving.
Along quickly.
European Union nations will be open to the United States and at the same time benefiting by everything we are doing for them.
There is great warmth and feeling in the room.
A breakthrough has been quickly made that nobody thought possible.
Actually, I mean, to be a little fair, pretty much everybody thought that was possible, so long as we just said, we're not going to raise our tariffs and you're not going to raise your tariffs and then we get to be friends again.
He says, great to be back on track with the European Union.
This was a big day for free and fair trade.
Now, it was a good day for free and fair trade.
One of the big questions here is whether it was Trump's tough talk with the EU that caused them to lower some of their tariffs on American products.
That is, I would say, unclear at best, just to be completely honest.
Now, I'm fine with the president Leveraging and threatening if he gets them to lower their tariffs.
That is fine with me.
And then we lower our tariffs and everything's all better.
So I don't care.
That's fine.
I'm very pleased that the president has moved in this direction.
It was unclear this is the direction the president was going to move because on the one hand, he likes tariffs a lot.
He thinks tariffs are inherently good.
And on the other hand, he was saying, well, what we should all aim for is no tariffs.
So which was it?
Was this just a negotiating ploy or was this the president speaking his true feelings on tariffs and then his administration sort of fixing it in the back room?
Either way, the outcome is the same and the outcome is good.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board was very excited about this this morning.
They said the meeting on Trade Wednesday between President Trump and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker had all the makings of a potential crackup, but in the event it provided the best economic news in weeks, financial markets were clearly pleased as stocks rose across the board before the closing bell on the statements by the two presidents after their White House session.
Call it a relief rally.
The two sides essentially declared a tariff truce, pending negotiations on a larger trade deal between the 28-nation European Union and the U.S.
Mr. Trump agreed to step back from his threat of 25% tariffs on European car imports, while the two sides pledged to resolve the current U.S.
steel and aluminum tariffs and Europe's retaliatory levies on U.S.
goods.
Europe also agreed to buy more soybeans immediately and much more liquefied natural gas from the United States in the future as its import capacity expands.
Particularly is a good thing that the EU is now going to import a bunch of American liquefied natural gas.
It cuts off the market for the Russians who are increasing their power and their influence in the European Union by shipping all sorts of natural gas to that area.
LNG export capacity is expected to nearly triple by 2020 to 9.6 billion cubic feet a day as more export terminals come online and the fracking boom continues.
Well, I wish that he would extend it to auto industrial goods.
deal that Mr. Trump said would have as a goal, zero tariff, zero non-tariff barriers, and zero subsidies on non-auto industrial goods.
Well, I wish that he would extend it to auto industrial goods.
I don't think that we should maintain all of these trade barriers with regard to autos and motorcycles, but it is good that everybody is back at the table.
The Wall Street Journal points out that Europe has a 10% tariff on U.S.
made cars.
The U.S.
charges only 2.5% on cars made in Europe, but we charge a 25% tariff on imported trucks and Europe will want the United States to take that to zero, which won't please Ford and U.S.
companies.
Let's all hope that this is all honest and everybody wants to get to zero tariffs and zero subsidies and that we all want to get to a perfectly free trade scenario.
Now, Was it President Trump that caused all this?
A lot of his champions today are saying that this was Trump at his very best.
This was Trump making a deal by raising tariffs, threatening the EU, and then the EU backing down.
Trump seems to believe the same thing.
Here's what he had to say yesterday in a hastily called press conference at the Rose Garden.
We've never done like we're doing, I can say from the standpoint of the United States.
We've never done this well, but we're going to do a lot better after we do this deal and other deals that we're currently working on.
I had the intention to make a deal today.
And we made a deal today.
So Trump is very, very happy, of course, because anytime somebody says that a deal was made, he's a happy camper.
President Trump, of course, is a dealmaker.
This is how he pictures himself.
And if a deal got made, the president gets credit for it, no matter what tactics he used in order to engage in it.
Now, did we actually have to threaten the EU with all these really high tariffs in order to get them to lower some of their barriers on soybeans?
Probably not.
The reality is that the EU just signed a massive trade deal with Japan, the United States could have been a part of.
There's a piece over at National Review by Matthew Rooney from just a couple of days ago talking about the deal between the EU and Japan.
He says this, How do we know that?
It was America's own strategy with the general post-war agreement on tariffs and trade.
This is a bad move on America's part because latecomers will ultimately find themselves with no option but to accept the terms of the deal.
How do we know that?
It was America's own strategy with the general post-war agreement on tariffs and trade.
That's GATT, NAFTA, and the Central American Union.
missing from the table?
First, because we abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that'd be TPP.
The European Union, with an economy similar in size to America's at 25% of global GDP, has teamed up with Japan, which produces another 5% of global GDP to take the lead.
So why was the U.S. missing from the table?
First, because we abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that'd be TPP.
There are problems with TPP as negotiated by Barack Obama, but I think it was a mistake, I said so at the time, to scrap TPP.
I think that instead, President Trump should have gone in and opened up some of those provisions to congressional approval, obviously.
Also, President Trump continues to muck about with NAFTA, and he's unclear on whether we are going to allow NAFTA to move forward or not.
Everybody else is creating these great trade blocs, and the United States is sort of picking and choosing trade deals, some of which are beneficial and some of which seem relatively minimal.
Nonetheless, this is good Trump, OK?
Bottom line is tariffs come down, trade barriers go away.
That is good Trump.
And President Trump gets credit for the EU lowering its trade barriers, even if I think that this sort of threatening language with regard to tariffs is unnecessary.
We'll also have to see the final product.
We will have to see the final product of the agreement.
We'll have to see the text.
Of the agreement.
We'll have to see whether the tariffs actually do come down.
So that, indeed, is good Trump.
More good Trump was the Trump administration, officials from the Trump administration, coming forward and making clear that American policy on Russia is not going to weaken anytime soon.
So we've been hearing ever since the Helsinki conference last week between President Trump and Vladimir Putin, we've been hearing that the president of the United States is weak on Russia.
He's in the pay of the Russians.
We hear this from Adam Schiff.
We hear this from various members of the Democratic caucus, that Trump Well, that actually is not true, as evidenced by the policy of the administration.
Now, I suggested in the last couple of weeks that there is this massive gap between President Trump's rhetoric and the actions of his administration.
And it's one of the reasons, I think, that the left can't understand why so many conservatives support President Trump.
They say, well, President Trump says crazy things you'd never accept from Barack Obama.
And the answer is, right.
But then none of that stuff happens.
So when President Trump says a lot of nice things to Vladimir Putin, None of it actually materializes.
Also, I do have to acknowledge that this is hilarious.
You know, when Vladimir Putin, the dictator of Russia, actually, you remember, he handed Donald Trump a soccer ball.
Do you remember this?
He handed him a soccer ball as a sort of memento that he was going to keep from this conference.
It turns out the soccer ball did indeed have embedded inside it a chip that allowed it to broadcast to cell phones in the area.
So it actually was a spy device, apparently.
There's a report that it was actually a spy device that was handed from Vladimir Putin.
To Donald Trump, but Donald Trump did not fall for it because Donald Trump knows soccer.
That's a man who knows his football right there.
So, does any of this, does any of Trump's rhetoric actually make a difference?
It's a serious question that we have to, that we have to answer with regard to all of these policies.
He talks tough on the EU, but then he signs a trade deal with them, which is good.
He talks weak on Russia, but then his administration is pretty harsh on Russia.
Mike Pompeo, who's the new Secretary of State, the new, the new and improved Secretary of State, he was testifying before Congress.
He says, listen, We haven't changed our policy on the Russians invading Crimea and the Ukraine.
They need to get out.
Well, what about all the talk that this administration was the Manchurian candidate, that it was in the pay of Vladimir Putin?
Well, not so much.
Here's Mike Pompeo.
Today, the Trump administration is releasing what we're calling the Crimea Declaration.
One part reads as follows, quote, the United States calls on Russia to respect the principles to which it has long claimed to adhere and to end its occupation of Crimea.
OK, so all of that is good.
And then Pompeo continues to say, listen, we're not weak on Russia.
And he keeps saying we're weak on Russia.
We're not the Obama administration, guys.
Like, the president may say some stuff, but him saying stuff doesn't necessarily mean that's the stuff that's actually implemented.
It's important, Senator.
Comparison matters here, because there is a narrative that has developed that somehow President Trump is weak on Russia, when in fact the converse is true.
OK, and then Bob Menendez, the terrible senator from New Jersey, He starts trying to go after Pompeo, suggesting, of course, that President Trump is indeed soft on Russia, and Pompeo just destroys him.
Senator, I'm telling you what he had a conversation with Vladimir Putin about, and I'm telling you what U.S.
policy is today.
I understand, Senator, I understand the game that you're playing.
No, no, you know, Mr. Secretary, with all due respect, I don't appreciate you characterizing my questions.
Okay, but I don't appreciate the questions characterizing the Trump administration as some sort of lackey institution for the Russians.
It's just a bunch of nonsense.
And in just a second, I'm going to explain why Trump's slight disconnect from his administration actually sometimes is a good thing.
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Okay, so.
President Trump's policies continue to be quite good, even if his rhetoric continues to be not so good.
Now, all we need is for his rhetoric to actually mirror his policies.
If President Trump's rhetoric mirrored his policies, he'd be in a lot better shape right now.
And I say this as somebody who wants the president of the United States to succeed, because I like a lot of the policies his administration is putting in place.
One of the problems, however, that I'm seeing is, and this is where the bad Trump comes in, The president's rhetoric does matter when it comes to some of the polling data.
There was a poll yesterday that shows Democrats are now plus 12 in the congressional generic ballot.
That is not a good number.
There were two separate polls having Democrats up 12.
That means the Democrats not only take the House, there's a good shot they take the Senate as well.
There are Republicans who are now running behind in Arizona, which is insane.
They should not be running behind in Arizona where there's a very, very good candidate running, Martha McSally.
They should not be running behind in some of these other states.
They shouldn't be running behind Joe Manchin in West Virginia, the reddest state in America by Trump vote.
There's just no way this should be happening.
Trump's approval ratings are still where they were, but when you dig down, what you see is some trouble for President Trump.
There's a poll from NBC News today.
In Michigan, only 28% of voters say Donald Trump deserves re-election.
62% of voters say he does not deserve re-election, that someone else deserves a chance.
28% of voters say Donald Trump deserves reelection.
62% of voters say he does not deserve reelection, that someone else deserves a chance.
Those numbers are 30% pro, 60% con in Minnesota, 31% pro, 63% con in Wisconsin.
All of that, these are dangerous numbers for the president.
Now, the president can still win the next presidential election without winning Wisconsin, Minnesota, or Minnesota.
If he wins Pennsylvania and Ohio and Florida, he's okay.
But suffice it to say that if the president's policies were actually mirrored in his rhetoric, he'd be a lot more popular.
So I know a lot of his base thinks that his policies can only happen because of his rhetoric.
I hear.
I hear.
Listen, I hear the argument.
I just don't think that the argument happens to be particularly compelling.
I think that this president could get his policy done simply by saying what his policy is.
If he went to the EU and he said, listen, you guys are our friends.
Let's lower the tariffs.
And then they said no.
And then he said, OK, well, then we're going to have to ratchet up the pressure.
I think that would be a lot better.
Instead, he sort of preemptively ratchets up pressure because he likes tariffs, for example.
And then when the tariffs come down, it's unclear whether it was because of Trump's action or because we could have gotten this deal in the first place when it comes to Russia.
The president could say, listen, Russia meddled with the 2016 election.
It did not have an impact on the final outcome.
But we are going to stop all that because we are tougher on Russia than the prior administration was, no matter what the media have to say.
He could say all of those things.
The fact that he doesn't create suspicion in the mind of voters, that is unnecessary.
That is unnecessary and counterproductive and a waste of time.
So the president is doing himself no service with his rhetoric.
That's the bad Trump.
The good Trump is good things are getting done.
The bad Trump is he's saying bad things.
I know Trump supporters say, well, why do you care what he says?
Here's what he does instead.
If you care about him being re-elected, if you care about Republicans maintaining Congress, what he says matters too.
Okay, speaking of which...
Let's talk about some actual bad Trump yesterday.
So there's a big news story yesterday where a woman named Caitlin Collins, who works for CNN, she formerly worked for the Daily Caller, she was essentially barred from the White House.
She was denied access to an open press event in the Rose Garden.
Why?
Because she was the pool reporter earlier in the day and she asked President Trump some questions that apparently he didn't like.
According to CNN, they said, we demand better.
The network said Collins was told by Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications Bill Shine and Press Secretary Sarah Sanders that her questions were inappropriate.
Now, she was representing the White House press pool at the time.
The way this works, for folks who don't understand, is that it's not like a bevy of reporters just get to follow President Trump around.
There's usually one reporter who's assigned for part of the day to ask the president questions in sort of smaller areas, and that person's questions are then distributed with the answers to the entire press pool.
That's very, very common.
It happens at rallies all the time because all the networks basically agree that they're going to cooperate in asking these questions and then distributing the answers.
CNN says this decision to borrow a member of the press is retaliatory in nature and not indicative of an open and free press.
Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that Collins, quote, sorted questions and refused to leave despite being asked repeatedly to do so.
Subsequently, our staff informed her she was not welcome to participate in the next event, but made clear that any other journalist from her network could attend.
She said it didn't matter to her because she hadn't planned to be there anyway.
To be clear, we support a free press and ask that everyone be respectful of the presidency and guests at the White House.
Here is Caitlin Collins talking about this yesterday on CNN.
This, of course, turned into a big blow up.
So I was blocked from attending an open press event here at the White House because the White House did not like the questions I posed to President Trump earlier in the day during an event in the Oval Office with the President of the European Commission.
Did Michael Cohen betray you?
Okay, so it was an open press event, and she was calling out some questions on behalf of the press pool, and then Trump basically booted her from a future White House press conference at the Rose Garden.
And this became a huge story, because the idea was, she asked tough questions, Trump didn't like it, and now they're going to prevent her from entering.
Now, Trump says it was because she was rude.
Well, if that were the case, then Jim Acosta should be barred for life from the White House.
I mean, the guy's rude every single day.
But that's not the way any of this should work.
Now, in the name of consistency, I think the press should be aggressive with the executive branch.
I like it when the press is aggressive with the executive branch.
I think that's their job.
And I think they should have been much more aggressive with Obama.
My critique is the double standard, that they weren't aggressive with Obama, and they were aggressive with President Bush, and they are aggressive with President Trump.
As a member of the White House press pool, Fox stands firmly with CNN on this issue of access.
But the proper response to that is that the press should actually be aggressive with President Obama as well.
Brett Baer, I thought, said it correctly.
Brett Baer over on Fox News yesterday.
He said, listen, all of us in the press were on the same side here.
That means that it's our job to ask tough questions.
He got all sorts of flack for this.
I think Brett Baer is basically correct here.
As a member of the White House press pool, Fox stands firmly with CNN on this issue of access.
So far, no response from the White House.
OK, Brett Baer got all sorts of crap for this.
But again, you should want a press asking questions.
Your real critique of the press should be that they didn't ask questions to Democrats, not that Republicans should be able to boot people.
Now, I'll show you an example of the double standard here with regard to the press coverage.
So, this was an event at the White House, and this person was called a heckler.
He's a transgender quote-unquote heckler who is present at some Press conference that Obama was doing with Joe Biden, and this transgender reporter started asking questions about the deportation of LGBT immigrants, and Obama tossed the person to the cheers of members of the press.
Hold on a second.
OK, you know what?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Hey.
Listen, you're in my house.
Go, go, go!
Can we escort this person out?
Okay, and he had the person tossed.
Now, this was characterized as a heckler.
The same thing happened to Neil Munro.
You remember Neil Munro was a reporter for the Daily Caller, and at a White House press conference in the Rose Garden, Neil Munro called out a question to President Obama.
The entire press sided against Neil Munro, and Neil Munro was asked to apologize to the President of the United States.
My feeling is that the press should be as abrasive with the president as they feel like being.
I like the back and forth of politics.
I think that this sort of abrasiveness from the press is good, not bad.
I held that standard when Obama was president.
I hold that standard when President Trump is president.
This is a bad look for the White House, and it's something that they probably should not have done.
So that is some bad Trump right there.
I think it's easily fixable, but it creates a perception that Trump is not pro-free press, which I think is at least somewhat inaccurate.
Okay, in just a second, I want to talk about some bad GOP because I think that some of my friends in the house, people I like, people who I know, are making a bad move in the House of Representatives.
I'll explain that in just a second.
And then I want to get to the craziest editorial of the day from the New York Times.
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Okay, meanwhile...
The GOP has decided to file articles of impeachment against Rod Rosenstein.
So Rod Rosenstein, who is the Deputy Attorney General, he's in hot water because a lot of the members of the House, the Republicans, are very upset that the Deputy Attorney General is not fast enough to turn over records from the DOJ with regard to, for example, the FISA application for Carter Page, as well as records of the Trump-Russia collusion investigation.
And they're very unhappy with the DOJ for all of this.
So yesterday, House Freedom Caucus leaders Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan, both of whom I'm friendly with, both of whom I like, escalated their fight with the Justice Department, introducing a resolution to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
The resolution is not a sign the House is about to vote to impeach Rosenstein, as House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte and House Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy, who have been pushing for documents from the DOJ, did not sign on.
The House is leaving for a month-long recess after Thursday.
This is the part where you start to say, This looks like a publicity ploy.
And I say that with all due respect to representatives who I like and I'm friendly with.
It looks like a publicity ploy if you can't get an actual vote on the impeachment, if it just looks like, we're going to file for impeachment and then we won't hold a vote.
You know, if you're actually going to try and impeach somebody, you got to try and impeach them.
By the way, very few people have ever been impeached in the United States.
Like 19 people in the entire course of the history of the country have been actually impeached by the House.
And I think only eight have been convicted by the Senate and removed from office.
The resolution is the strongest step that conservative allies of President Trump have taken in their feud with Rosenstein and the Justice Department.
In a statement, Meadows said Rosenstein should be impeached because of the Justice Department's stonewalling of congressional subpoenas and hiding information from Congress and for signing one of the FISA Act Well, that last excuse, right, that Rosenstein signed on to the FISA warrant renewal application, I find that uncompelling given that we don't actually know what's in that warrant application right now, right?
We've only seen the hundreds of pages of redactions, so we don't actually know what was in there.
So before you impeach a guy over signing a warrant renewal that may in fact not be bad, you may want to see what's behind the redactions.
There's also a bigger problem for the Republicans here.
And that bigger problem is pretty simple.
It turns out that Rod Rosenstein can be trumped.
Literally trumped.
President Trump can simply release all these documents tomorrow.
Rod Rosenstein is a member of the executive branch.
The DOJ is a department of the executive branch.
All Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan have to do is walk across the street to the White House, go into the Oval Office, and say, Mr. President, tell Rod Rosenstein that it's his job to release these documents or declassify them yourself.
Just go do that.
Trump hasn't done that, which suggests to me that there is something weird going on.
I've asked members of the House about this, like, why is it that President Trump doesn't just release this information?
And then members of the House, people like Devin Nunes will tell me, they will say, well, because President Trump doesn't want to interfere in the investigation.
So let me get this straight.
Congress is going to interfere in the investigation by going after members of the Trump cabinet, right, going after members of the Trump team, but Trump can't interfere in the investigation by releasing documents into public view?
That doesn't wash for me.
And I think that it's, I think it's, even Andrew McCarthy over at National Review, who's been a legal booster of the president in the Mueller investigation, he says basically the same thing.
He says, you know, going after Rosenstein is obviously of secondary consideration.
Plus, how's this going to go?
You impeach Rosenstein.
Let's say you get what you want.
Not going to happen.
Let's say you get what you want.
Rosenstein goes away.
And then President Trump nominates somebody new to fill that slot.
And then the Republicans approve that somebody new.
And that person walks through the front door and fires Bob Mueller.
You think the blowback's not going to be on Trump?
What do you think is going to cause more blowback?
Republicans impeaching Rosenstein, replacing him and having that person fire Mueller, or the President of the United States just declassifying documents so that the entire public can see them?
The answer, of course, is that the first is going to be significantly more burdensome to the future of a Trump presidency than the President just releasing all of these documents himself.
Also, it's worth noting, you know how many impeachment articles were filed against members of the Obama administration when Republicans were in charge of Congress?
Giant zero.
Giant zero.
Eric Holder was held in contempt by Congress, and theoretically, Congress could hold Rod Rosenstein in contempt.
Theoretically, they could hold him in jail beneath the House.
There actually is a jail beneath the House for holding people in contempt.
Really.
But if you're only going to file for contempt against Eric Holder, who is a lot worse than Rod Rosenstein, I'm not sure why Rosenstein gets impeached under a Republican president you can talk to, but Eric Holder, who considered himself Barack Obama's wingman, and on behalf of whom Barack Obama declared executive privilege, does not get impeached.
So Eric Holder, no impeachment.
Rod Rosenstein, impeachment.
I don't buy it.
I just don't.
Maybe there's a good excuse.
I have yet to hear it.
I haven't seen enough on this that makes me feel comfortable with what the Republicans are doing here.
Now, speaking of stupid moves, there's an article in the New York Times today from the excorable Jessica Valenti.
I know it's a word I use too much, excorable, but so many people are just full of it.
Jessica Valenti is the author of six books on feminism, which makes her just a drag at parties, gotta tell you.
But she is the author most recently of the memoir, Sex Object, Which is weird.
And she has a piece in the New York Times today called, What Feminists Can Do for Boys.
Now, this could actually be a three-word editorial.
What feminists could do for boys.
Leave them alone.
Right?
And then we could actually just all move on with our lives, but that's not what Jessica Valenti wants us to do.
Jessica Valenti thinks that we should not leave the boys alone.
Feminists must teach boys to be feminists.
Teach boys not to rape.
Teach boys to be little girls, basically.
I mean, that's really what this editorial says.
So, she writes this.
One of the many political ironies of our time is that feminism's most powerful cultural moment has coincided with the rise of extreme misogyny.
While women protest, run for office, and embrace the movement for gender equality in record numbers, a generation of young, mostly white men are being radicalized into believing that their problems stem from women's progress.
Well, no.
I don't think that men believe that women in the workplace is a real problem or women being able to choose what they want to do with their sex lives.
I don't think there are a lot of young men who object to that, frankly.
I don't think there are a lot of men who are sitting around thinking, man, these women, I wish they'd go back to the kitchen.
This is a feminist canard that all of us are sitting here going, yeah, you know what?
I wish my wife were barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.
It turns out that my wife can be barefoot, pregnant in the kitchen and work a full-time job as a doctor.
Wow, lots of things happening right there.
It turns out she doesn't like wearing slippers.
That's not my fault.
She wants to wear slippers in the kitchen while cooking.
And then I'll help her cook.
And then she goes and she is a doctor saving people's lives.
That's fine.
That's fine.
But there's this idea from the feminist left that young men who feel emasculated by the feminist movement, they feel emasculated because they fear women's empowerment.
I don't fear women's empowerment.
I fear emasculation.
Like a lot of people fear emasculation.
I fear the idea that feminists actually want men not to protect women.
They want men not to be masculine.
They want men not to be men and have responsibilities for taking care of women and children.
They want to read masculinity out of the world.
And then they are surprised when men object to this.
And I'm going to talk a little bit more about this in just one second.
We'll continue with Jessica Valenti's horrible op-ed in the New York Times in just a second.
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OK, before I go further with this Jessica Valenti nonsense and we talk about the feminist movement and how It's basically destroying, I think, the future of sexual relations in the country, relations between the sexes.
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Okay, this Tumblr is just magnificent in every possible way.
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Right.
It doesn't say Liberal Tears Hot or Cold, because liberals are people I can have a conversation with.
It says Leftist Tears Hot or Cold.
Those are the people who scream at the sky after President Trump is elected and then write op-eds for the New York Times.
And their tears should be drunk.
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All righty.
So continuing on with our good friend Jessica Valenti.
She says, Whether it's misogynist terrorism, the rash of young men feeling sexually entitled to women, or the persistent stereotype of real men as powerful and violent, it's never been clearer that American boys are in desperate need of intervention.
They are in desperate need of intervention because you have robbed them of purpose.
As I've said many times, when feminists say things like, teach boys not to rape, You know, I'm, I think, a pretty good guy.
When I say a pretty good guy, I don't mean I'm nice to people because, come on, I'm not nice to people.
But I'm... The reality is that I was a virgin until I was married.
I have very high sexual standards for myself, and I did all the way up until the time that I was married.
I am a... I've been married for 10 years already.
I have two children under the age of five.
I spend an awful lot of time with them.
Every single day, I take care of them.
I provide for them.
I protect them.
I make sure I know how to protect them.
Right?
This is the stuff a man should do.
When my father was bringing me up, my father never sat me down and said, Ben, don't rape.
Because no one has ever said that in the history of humanity.
It's like saying to someone, son, don't murder.
No one says that.
What your father teaches you, what your parents teach you, is to be a good person.
And what that means is taking responsibility for others.
It's answering the question that is asked by Cain in the book of Genesis.
Am I my brother's keeper?
And the answer is, you are your brother's keeper, and you are your sister's keeper, and you are taught that you are to protect yourself, and your family, and your civilization, right?
These are the things that make good men.
Men who are robbed of purpose become destructive.
Men who are robbed of purpose turn that aggression outward.
Men who are robbed of purpose tend to hurt others in ways that they are not even thinking about.
They tend to treat other people as objects.
You want to know why men are treating young women as objects?
Because they've not been taught that they are supposed to have responsibility for those women.
I don't mean they're supposed to own them.
I don't mean they're supposed to control them.
I mean, they're taught that they're supposed to protect women.
If you're not taught to protect women, if you have a bunch of young men who are never taught that their job is to protect women, and they are taught that instead, women are just these things out there, and you treat them as you would treat other things, then you shouldn't be surprised when men treat women as objects, which is a great, great evil.
But feminists get this all wrong.
So Valenti says, though feminists have always recognized the anguish that boys face in a patriarchal system.
Anguish?
We haven't built the same structures of support for boys that we have for girls.
If we want to stop young men from being taken in by sexism, that has to change.
Well, first you have to define sexism.
The feminist left has an unfortunate tendency to define sexism as treating women nicely, like opening a door for a woman, picking up the tab, saying that a woman looks pretty today.
These are terrible, terrible sins.
One of feminism's biggest successes, according to Valenti, was creating an alternative culture for girls and women seeking respite from mainstream constraints.
Girls worried about unrealistic beauty standards, for example, can turn to the body positivity movement.
Those of us who find traditional media's treatment of women unappealing can read feminist blogs and magazines.
Female college students who have critical questions about how gender shapes their lives can take women's studies classes.
All of these things make women less happy.
I mean, I'm just...
All of these things.
The idea that women get happier by taking women's studies classes.
I've never seen unhappier groups of people than women who takes women's studies classes.
Seriously, that is not a happy group of people.
It's a general rule.
Just saying.
Okay?
Also...
Let's be clear about the unrealistic body image standards.
You know who buys women's magazines?
Women.
Not men.
Men are not making those magazines.
Men are not buying those magazines.
You know who runs the makeup industry?
Billions and billions of dollars?
It ain't men.
Men don't care.
Ask your boyfriend or your husband.
Ladies, ask your boyfriend or your husband next time you spend a hundred bucks on getting your nails done.
They will not even notice.
Men don't even care.
Men don't notice.
Okay, this is women judging other women.
Dirty little secret.
Women judge other women a lot more than men judge women.
Really?
From social media campaigns to after-school equality clubs, feminism has birthed dozens of online and real-life spaces where girls can find alternatives to the sexist status quo.
But boys and young men who are struggling have no equivalent culture.
As Sarah Rich recently wrote in The Atlantic, while society is chipping away at giving girls broader access to life possibilities, it isn't presenting boys with a full continuum of how they can be in the world.
This gap has made boys susceptible To misogynist hucksters peddling get-manly-quick platitudes in dangerous online extremist communities.
Who does she use as her example?
Jordan Peterson, of course.
My friend Jordan Peterson.
He's the example of toxic masculinity.
A guy who is married, who has kids, who doesn't regularly get into fights or rape people.
He is the great... A guy whose main takeaway, his literal main takeaway to boys is clean up your room.
That's literally his takeaway.
He's toxic masculinity.
Why?
Well, because he does not call students by their preferred pronouns.
And he says that men are in charge because they're better suited for it.
OK, he has never said that.
What he has said is that there are hierarchies of competence in virtually every area of life and that in a free system, those hierarchies are not going to be evenly distributed in any area.
In some areas, women will do better.
In some areas, men will do better.
This is absolutely true on every level.
It's always been true in a free country.
There will be hierarchies of competence because there are in every area of life.
There are hierarchies of competence in basketball.
I fail at that hierarchy of competence.
That is not because of racism or sexism.
Some of Mr. Peterson's other claims, Valenti says, include the idea that sexual harassment wouldn't be such a problem if women didn't wear makeup to work.
He has never said that.
And that enforced monogamy would stop young men from committing mass murder.
He has never said that either.
Again, we covered this on the show a few weeks ago.
Absolutely idiotic.
What he actually said is that a system that encourages monogamy is going to end up with a more evenly distributed sexual distribution of partners than a system where a few men get a lot of women, for example.
But he doesn't say the government should force women to get married to a man and men should... Like, he doesn't say any of that stuff.
It's just made up.
Online misogynist communities offer similarly dangerous advice to young men distressed over sexual rejection.
Instead of teaching them, says Jessica Valenti, that their value has nothing to do with their sexual experience or that they are simply not entitled to sexual attention no matter how badly they want it, incel forums tell boys that the real problem is women's freedom.
If women didn't have a choice, they say, any man could have sex with whomever he liked.
Okay, well, I myself have critiqued the incel community exactly this way, saying that if you actually want to get a woman, perhaps you ought to act better.
Perhaps you ought to aim for marriage and commitment and responsibility, rather than just aiming for random sex.
But the feminist movement doesn't agree with that, because they think that marriage and responsibility are impediments to freedom.
I think that they are the greatest indicator that you have a societal basis for freedom.
And Jessica Valenti continues.
She says, feminist ideas can help men, be it the rejection of expectations that men be strong or stoic or ending the silence around male victims of sexual violence.
But boys also need the same kind of culture we created for girls.
Instead, what we need is a new sort of system, a new support system.
It says white male leaders in government corporations and institutions vastly outnumber women.
Men have more cultural and economic power than women.
But until we grapple with how to stop misogynists themselves, starting with ensuring boys don't grow up to be one, women will never be free.
And then she offers no actual solutions except for we should have women's studies classes that teach men not to be men.
So solid solution there.
I can't imagine why men are running screaming away from away from the feminist movement.
Just I can't imagine it.
Now, speaking of men running screaming away from the feminist movement, I gotta tell you about this insane paper.
It's really funny.
This insane paper from an author named Helen Wilson.
It's a peer-reviewed journal.
Okay, it's a peer-reviewed journal in an actual feminist academic journal.
And the article is titled, I kid you not, Human Reactions to Rape Culture and Queer Performativity at Urban Dog Parks in Portland, Oregon.
Let me read that again.
I can't even get it out, it's so stupid.
I can't even get it out.
It's so stupid.
And it's based on approximately 1,000 hours of observing dogs and their owners.
The author, Helen Wilson, claims there was one dog rape humping incidents every 60 minutes.
So the dogs are sexist.
According to Wilson, this is not a joke.
According to Cassie Dillan over at Daily Wire, dog parks are just the place to observe toxic masculinity and heterosexuality.
Quote, dog parks are microcosms, where hegemonic masculinist norms governing queering behavior and compulsory heterosexuality can be observed in a cross-species environment.
According to Wilson, dog parks are oppressive spaces that lock both human and animals into hegemonic patterns of gender conformity, adding oppressive patriarchal norms, reach their zenith in dog parks.
And then it gets even where nobody can actually say whether this woman has a Ph.D.
She says she has a Ph.D.
in feminist studies and is the lead researcher for the Portland Ungendering Research Initiative.
So, the academic journal is called the Journal of Feminist Geography.
I can't believe this is real.
I mean, if this is real, it's just unbelievable.
Maybe one of the reasons that heterosexuality is the norm in dog parks is because dogs, in order to reproduce, have to have sex with other dogs of different sex.
I'm not sure how these dogs actually self-identify, but I don't think it matters at the dog park because everything is terrible and weird.
So, just well done, everyone.
Why don't we take women's studies more seriously, folks?
Why don't we take feminism more seriously?
Nobody knows.
Speaking of idiotic ideas from the left, Israel is under a lot of flack lately.
The state of Israel is under a lot of flack because they pushed through a new law calling Israel the nation-state of the Jewish people.
Now, I was unaware that Israel was not the nation-state of the Jewish people.
In the Declaration of Independence of the state of Israel, it says it's the nation-state for the Jewish people.
It is called the Jewish state.
There's a reason that it was called that.
The reason that the parliament actually passed this law is because the courts in Israel are even more leftist than they are in the United States, and there were a bunch of attempts by the Supreme Court of the State of Israel to essentially rewrite all of the basic laws in Israel to not make Israel a Jewish state.
Now, there have been a lot of people who say Israel is ethnocentrist because it's a Jewish state.
Israel is not ethnocentrist unless you consider Latvia ethnocentrist, unless you consider France ethnocentrist.
There are lots of countries that are made for the people who are in them.
America is a land for Americans.
Now what's great about America is you can become an American.
What's great about Israel is that you can become a citizen and become a Jew.
Judaism is not something that you are only born with.
You can actually convert into becoming a Jew.
I also noticed that all the people who are very upset with the idea of a Jewish state have no problem whatsoever with a Palestinian state that will be run under Islamic law and will have zero Jews living in it, whereas 20% of all people living in the state of Israel are actually Arab.
And 20% of people living in Israel are Arab, and the vast majority of those people are Muslim.
And in fact, when asked, Israeli Arabs do not want to leave Israel and move into the non-existent state of Palestine.
They don't want to leave and move into a Muslim country because they have it better in Israel.
But an article in the New York Times says Israel is terrible because democracy and Judaism cannot coexist.
Weird how you're allowed to say that in the pages of the New York Times, but you can't say that Islam and democracy can't coexist.
So just to get this straight, according to the left, Christianity and democracy can't coexist, even though they have coexisted and democracy was basically born inside Christian countries.
Judaism and democracy can't coexist, even though Israel is in fact a Jewish and democratic state.
But Islam and democracy can coexist, even though there are precisely zero actual major Islamic democracies.
Like serious Islamic democracies.
The closest thing that you might have is something like Indonesia, even though there are significant restrictions on democracy.
But according to the New York Times, it's very, very bad that Israel says that it is now a nation state of the Jewish people.
Israel also made Hebrew its official language, which originally it was, I guess, Hebrew and Arabic and English, but that was a holdover from British Palestine mandate.
So they have said that Hebrew is the official language, but these other two languages are given quasi-official status.
So now Israel is apparently evil, evil, evil, evil.
It's really amazing.
This editorial in the New York Times suggests that the nation-state law is terrible.
They say that Judaism cannot coexist because the minute that Judaism and democracy are attempting to coexist, then you are writing non-Jews out of the Declaration of Israel's Independence and the State of Israel.
That is simply not true.
Arab parties sit in Israeli's parliament.
The only thing that this really does, in reality, is prevent the Supreme Court of the State of Israel from cramming down a bunch of leftism that would undermine the identity of the State of Israel in order to promote a leftist view of what the State of Israel ought to be.
OK, so we're going to get to now some things I like and then we'll do some things I hate and then we'll get out of here.
So things I like.
We've been doing jazz all week.
One of the great jazz pianists of all time is a guy named Errol Garner.
You probably don't know Errol Garner's stuff because much older pianist, but terrific, terrific jazz pianist.
This is from a cut.
They can't take that away from me.
And it really is fantastic.
The album is Concert by the Sea, and Errol Garner is the pianist.
See, it really swings. it really swings.
He's-- He was also famous for the fact that he was very short in stature.
He was five foot two.
He used to perform sitting on multiple telephone directories.
I have sympathy.
So Errol Garner, go listen to that.
That album's great.
Concert by the Sea, Errol Garner, it really is terrific.
Other things that I like, you know, good news never gets enough attention, and this I thought was a great story.
So a police officer was confronted with a homeless man who wanted to go in for a job interview.
The man was named Phil.
He reportedly went to a McDonald's in Tallahassee to apply for a job, but he was told he couldn't be hired unless he shaved his beard.
Phil started shaving his thick beard in a gas station parking lot without a mirror, and then Officer Tony Carlson came up.
He saw the man struggling, so he came by.
He tightened the screw on Phil's razor and then proceeded to shave Phil's face for him, and somebody captured this video and it went viral.
Here's what it looked like.
Yeah, you can't really hear it, but what you can see is this police officer who's actually shaving this homeless man so he can go in and apply for a job.
And the officer said, if he's wanting to help himself, I need to be more careful, more than careful, and try to help him out the best that I can.
Just a great story of human beings helping other human beings.
You only see the stories about the police when the police are shooting somebody.
You never see the stories about how often the police actually help people.
A lot of great police officers out there doing a lot of wonderful things.
Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
So, Representative Joe Crowley, not long for Congress because he was defeated in a primary by everybody's favorite socialist, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
I am getting better at saying her name.
Joe Crowley came out yesterday and he said that he has an idea.
You know, where Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez merely says that ICE should be abolished, Joe Crowley says we should pay the families of illegal immigrants.
Yes, really, this is a thing that happened in real life.
I suggest they need to be compensated for what this administration did to them.
The first form of compensation needs to be the full reunification of these families.
Okay, so reunify the families, fine, but then we should pay them?
They crossed the border illegally and then cost us a lot of money.
How?
What?
Why?
Where?
When?
How?
Who?
I mean, none of this makes any sense, but it is obvious right now that members of both parties, but particularly Democrats, are really catering to a hardcore radical base.
And the more radical you are, the more popular you are, which is why Maxine Waters, who is a full-fledged nutjob, is now anti-Maxine inside the Democratic Party.
This is why, you know, when I said earlier in the show that I think President Obama, President Trump rather, needs to do better with the rhetoric, because Democrats cannot be allowed to win Congress.
If Democrats win Congress, if they win the Senate, there won't be any judges, there won't be anything good that gets done, it'll be a bunch of radical proposals and investigations for the next two years.
And if Trump loses re-election on the back of that, and you have a Democratic president with Democrats in the House and Senate, look for things to get wild and terrible as fast as humanly possible.
The pendulum swings in this country, and it swung to the right for a bit.
And we've got to be very careful it doesn't swing back to the left, because when it does, it's going to swing back to people like Joe Crowley and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her democratic socialism.
So we've got to be very, very careful here.
OK, we'll be back here tomorrow with all the latest news updates.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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