The left goes berserk after Jonathan Chait says something heretical, Facebook stock takes a massive dive, and the Mueller investigation might be expanding into President Trump's Twitter feed.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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All right, so.
Good news today.
The economy boomed in the last quarter.
It jumped 4.1%.
President Trump held himself a little press conference to celebrate all of this.
According to CNBC, gross domestic product grew at a solid 4.1% pace in the second quarter.
That's the best pace since 2014.
There was a quarter in 2014 under President Obama in which the GDP jumped 5.2%, I believe.
But this has boosted hopes that the economy is ready to break out of its decade-long slumber.
If the next quarter is as good as this quarter, then we are looking at the possibility of 3% GDP annualized growth.
So when they say that it grew 4.1% in quarter two, what they really mean is that if you took that growth and you extended it over the course of the entire year, then the economy grew 4%.
It doesn't mean that the entire economy grew 4% in that particular quarter.
But with that said, if the economy continues to boom, it'll obviously be a boon to all of these Republican candidates in their congressional districts.
It'll be a boon to the president of the United States in his reelection efforts.
This is the fastest rate of growth since the 4.9% in the third quarter of 2014, which was revised downward, I believe, from 5.2.
It was the third best growth rate since the Great Recession.
In addition to the strong second quarter, the Commerce Department revised its first quarter reading up from 2% to 2.2%.
President Trump says that we are on track to hit the highest annual growth rate in over 13 years.
He says, I will say this right now, and I will say it strongly, as the deals come in one by one, we're going to go a lot higher than these numbers, and these are great numbers.
Now, These are really good numbers, and I'm really, really pleased.
Because listen, when the economy booms, we all do better.
That is a wonderful thing.
It is bad salesmanship to come out and say that we're going to do a lot better than these numbers, because why would you oversell the economy?
Going out there and overselling it and then coming in short is a recipe for bad headlines.
Whereas if you just said, we just had a fantastic quarter and we look forward to continued strong growth in the economy, then you're not providing the sort of downside that your political opponents will jump on if we come in at 3.7% next quarter or 3% Now, there are some people today who are suggesting that perhaps these GDP statistics are somewhat inflated by President Trump's tariffs.
Why?
Not because the economy jumped on the back of the tariffs, but simply because a bunch of foreign companies bought a lot of American product in expectation that tariffs were about to increase in their own country.
So, for example, if you're China, now is a good time to buy American soybeans before your own tariffs go into place on all of the So, the export numbers were slightly inflated, according to some folks like Ben Smith over at CNBC.
We'll have to see if that is indeed the case as time goes on.
Residential real estate starts were a little bit slow, but all other areas of the economy continue to boom.
All of this is very good for the President of the United States.
One company that is not booming, however, is Facebook.
Facebook has taken a massive hit.
During a conference call on Wednesday, Facebook Chief Financial Officer David Wehner predicted bad news for the second half of the year.
The company's shares immediately began a drastic retreat in the extended session.
Facebook would see a $100 billion blow to its market cap after shares plunged 20% because the bloodbath was continuing into Thursday's trading session.
The decline was stunning not only because of the scale, according to MarketWatch, but because Facebook had managed to avoid this type of punishment through a multitude of sins, too numerous to fully list.
While the Cambridge Analytica controversy weighed on the stock and it easily rebounded from those declines, even during Zuckerberg's, Mark Zuckerberg's head of Facebook, congressional hearings earlier this year, the company's shares rebounded during his testimony.
Facebook seems to have become the Teflon company, but when it comes to finance, you actually have to show profit.
And one of the things that Facebook has done is they've cut off a lot of avenues to profit by cutting off a lot of their advertisers, particularly on the news side.
And then if they can't monetize the data they've been gathering from people because of things like the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it makes it questionable as to how they're actually going to earn for their investors.
So Facebook shares took a serious, serious hit.
And Mark Zuckerberg, his stock was worth $20 billion less than it was on Tuesday, basically, by the end of Thursday.
So that is some pretty stunning stuff.
Colin Sebastian, who's an analyst with Robert W. Baird, wrote, clearly Facebook is more focused this year on strengthening content quality and platform security, which likely accounts for part of the deceleration in revenues and user growth.
We note that our surveys earlier this year had suggested some Facebook fatigue, which may now be showing up in results.
So some of these social media companies, and Facebook has basically a monopoly on social media, some of these social media companies are losing the trust of their customers, and they are seeing that reflected in their stock prices.
The same thing, by the way, is true over at Twitter, which has been taking stock hits this week.
If you look at their stock price Right now, as in today, it has been down significantly today.
It was down almost 20% at one point during the day.
And over the course of the last five days, it has taken a massive hit.
Starting at the end of the trading day on Thursday, Twitter just plummeted.
It went from $43 a share all the way down to about $35 a share.
So it's a massive, massive hit over the end of the week.
And a lot of that has to do, again, with all sorts of trust issues that have been Harming Twitter and then that ranges from the shadow banning scandal that is that has harmed Twitter To the fact they've had to purge all of these fake accounts on Twitter One of the serious questions about Twitter has already has always been what its profit model is going to be because you don't pay for Twitter It's free.
And so advertising was supposed to be the the profit model for Twitter But advertisers aren't seeing the kind of revenue that they want to see in return from Twitter.
And so the stock has dropped tremendously The company did post another profit, which for the third consecutive quarter, it was able to do so in the company's history.
And the $134 million in net income it reported amounts to $0.13 a share.
Twitter's top line did climb, and it beat the fact set consensus estimate according to MarketWatch.
But investors were reacting to Twitter's slowing user growth because its monthly user count went south.
It fell by 1 million to 355 million from the year's first quarter.
So people are simply not joining Twitter at the same rate.
They may be experiencing the limit of the number of people who actually want to be on Twitter, which makes some sense because right now, What you're seeing on Twitter is social media mobbing becoming the most popular form of entertainment on Twitter.
Somebody says something and you destroy them.
Somebody says something you don't like and you decide to end their career.
That means that a lot of prominent people are no longer going to take part in Twitter.
They're not going to take part on Facebook.
A lot of these social media companies have reaped the whirlwind and they would have been a lot better off if they just said, listen, we're a platform.
What happens on that platform?
Not our job to police it other than criminal activity.
But instead, the folks over at Twitter have said, we want to make a better user experience with healthier conversation.
And then people on the right say, well, yeah, but your definition of healthier conversation is not allowing us to talk.
Your definition of a healthy conversation on Twitter is shadow banning us.
Preventing our tweets from being seen.
And the same thing on Facebook, where people say, well, you've discriminated against particular points of view on Facebook, why would we want to give you our business?
These social media companies decided they didn't want the backlash from the left, and instead they drew the backlash from the right.
I don't think that that fully explains the decline in stock price, but it has something to do with the overall lack of trust people now feel in social media.
And the politicization of business is having some major impact across the board, and not just on people on the right, on people on the left as well.
The latest example comes courtesy of the Huffington Post.
So on Thursday, the Huffington Post revealed an absolute bombshell.
Liberal columnist Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine was in an all-hands staff meeting, and he said at this meeting that part of him was glad that President Trump had won the Oval Office.
This required the Huffington Post to run a front-page story about how terrible Jonathan Chait is.
Jonathan Chait is a hardcore liberal.
Big government.
Hates President Trump.
Doesn't like conservative policy.
But according to the Huffington Post's Ashley Feinberg, Chait, among others on the magazine's editorial staff, was asked whether any part of him was happy that President Trump had won thanks to the possibility of more exciting content.
And Chait answered honestly.
So according to the Post, listen to the way the Huffington Post reports this.
There's a woman named Traister, Rebecca Traister, who's a writer at large there.
Traister went first and gave the right answer, which is no, said one employee, and realized that there was a right answer to how do you feel about things.
She said there isn't a single molecule of her that is happy Trump won and that will all face repercussions for generations.
Chait, however, answered the question with an affirmative 100%.
According to the staffer, Chait said with a laugh, maybe that makes me a sociopath.
Some of the employees in attendance said the group was stunned by Chait's response.
Others were less surprised to hear the sentiment come from a self-described disenfranchised white man.
This is how the left responds to its own when they say something mildly positive about President Trump.
Not even that they love President Trump, want President Trump to remain president, but just he's entertaining.
The level of horror in the Huffington Post article is telling.
And of course, Jonathan Chait then got dragged on social media Requiring him to respond to the Huffington Post in which he said that his comments were quote intended for an audience which I assume was familiar with my work and the obvious seriousness with which I take politics in general and Trump in particular.
I was commenting in an ironic and self-deprecating fashion about the way in which I can professionally disassociate myself from the events I am commenting on.
But that didn't stop folks on the left from losing it.
Jeet here over at The Atlantic said the disappointing thing here is that Chait, as I thought when I saw the headline, isn't an accelerationist, meaning there are some people on the left who are happy that Trump was elected because they think that it's going to precipitate a vast move to the left, but that's not what Chait was saying.
Andy Zeisler...
Who's another lefty, blue checkmark, said, LOL, I'm such a sociopath.
Actual sociopath.
And then, of course, you have folks like Oliver Willis at Media Matters, who is a complete dolt, saying, how white male of him.
So the left is now eating its own.
And then you wonder why so many people don't want to take part in social media.
You wonder why it is that so many people are running screaming from companies like Facebook and Twitter, and why Facebook and Twitter, in an attempt to stem that tide, have decided to crack down on conversations.
It turns out that OpenFORA, I mean, honestly, I sort of feel for the heads of Facebook and Twitter to the extent that OpenFORA are going to lead to a large amount of meanness.
But if you crack down on the meanness, there's no way to do that without cracking down on the content as well.
So it's no wonder that the stock is dropping for a lot of those companies, even as the economy booms.
OK, in just a second, I want to talk about some of the bigger developments of the day with regard to President Trump.
First, let's talk about something nice.
We just talked about some terrible, terrible things.
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So now let's talk about the news, which is not, in fact, warm and cuddly.
Speaking of not warm and cuddly, Michael Cohen, he's back at it.
So Michael Cohen, let's just make clear here.
Michael Cohen has an agenda.
Now, everyone in politics has an agenda.
Rudy Giuliani, the president's lawyer, has an agenda.
Michael Cohen, the president's former lawyer, has an agenda.
President Trump has an agenda.
Everybody's got an agenda.
Agenda, agenda, everybody's got an agenda.
Well, Michael Cohen is now coming out and saying that he's got the goods on President Trump.
Why would he say this?
After spending years and years and years being President Trump's loyal lackey?
Being a self-described consigliere to President Trump?
Paying off President Trump's former lovers?
Why exactly would Michael Cohen turn on him now?
Well, because the FBI raided his offices, right?
Because he's afraid of going to jail.
So now he's turning, and he's publicly saying, I have the goods on President Trump.
He's basically begging.
Michael Cohen is basically begging, at this point, Robert Mueller to cut him some sort of deal so he can avoid prison time, and in return, he will flip on President Trump.
That's what he is doing very publicly.
This really isn't conjecture at this point.
And the latest evidence of this is that Michael Cohen has now come out and he has said that President Trump knew in advance of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump Jr.
and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who was involved with the government.
And who, it had been promised, would have the goods on Hillary Clinton.
According to CNN, Michael Cohen, President Trump's former personal attorney, claims that then-candidate Trump knew in advance about the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower, in which Russians were expected to offer his campaign dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Sources with knowledge tell CNN.
Those sources with knowledge, their names might rhyme with Schmeichel-Mohan.
Cohen is willing to make that assertion to special counsel Robert Mueller, the sources said.
The sources, their names might rhyme with Schmeichel Glowen.
Cohen's claim would contradict repeated denials by Trump, Donald Trump Jr., their lawyers, and other administration officials who have said the president knew nothing about the Trump Tower meeting until he was approached about it by the New York Times in July 2017.
Now here is the timeline if you've forgotten all about the timeline.
The timeline was that in June 2016 there was a meeting between Donald Trump Jr.
and some members of the Trump campaign and Natalia Veselnitskaya all about supposedly bringing dirt to the attention of the Trump campaign from the Russian government that wanted to help Trump get elected, right?
This was the biggest smoking gun that the left had and there's no evidence that Donald Trump knew about it at all.
Donald Trump later Well now, Michael Cohen has blown all of this sky high, supposedly.
Donald Trump Jr. write a statement talking about what exactly happened in that meeting.
Then Donald Trump Jr. went on Twitter and released all of his emails, which were pretty damning.
And that's basically where things stood.
And Trump's claim, his defense here, was, I didn't know anything about this meeting.
Well, now Michael Cohen has blown all of this sky high, supposedly.
So here's what Cohen alleges.
Cohen alleges that he was present along with several others when President Trump was informed of the Russians' offer by Trump Jr., by the Trump Jr.
By Cohen's account, Trump approved going ahead with the meeting with the Russians, according to sources who may or may not be Michael Cohen.
To be clear, these sources, who may or may not be Michael Cohen, said Cohen does not have evidence, such as audio recordings, to corroborate his claim, but he is willing to attest to his account.
Okay, now, if Michael Cohen is willing to testify in court about this, this means that someone is committing perjury.
Either Michael Cohen is committing perjury or Donald Trump Jr., who testified under oath in front of Congress, I believe, is committing perjury.
Cohen privately testified last year to two congressional committees, but he said nothing about this at the time.
A source familiar with Cohen's House testimony said he did not testify that Trump had advanced knowledge.
That source may or may not be Schmeichel Moen.
Cohen's claims were not mentioned in separate reports issued by Republicans or Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee.
One of Cohen's attorneys, Lanny Davis, declined to comment on the report.
Now, all of this prompted President Trump to fire back at his now open warfare between the president and his former consigliere, Michael Cohen.
This is basically turning into the scene from Godfather 2 with Pantheon.
Is that what his name is?
I can't ask either of you.
Neither of you have seen The Godfather.
The two people in the room.
This has been a serious issue at the office.
Two people in the room.
Two producers in the room and the makeup gal, Jess.
Two people have not seen The Godfather in our offices.
It's just terrible.
It speaks poorly of the millennial generation in any case.
There's a character in Godfather 2.
I'm going to explain to you.
There's a character in Godfather 2, guys.
And that character in Godfather 2 is going to flip and testify against the Corleone family after spending years working with the Corleone family.
Okay?
That's Michael Cohen now.
Now he's flipping against... Do you get the analogy now?
Does it make sense?
Okay.
Now we can move on.
So...
The question is whether Cohen actually has the goods or not.
President Trump is very, very upset about all of this.
So the president of the United States says this on Twitter.
I arrived back in Washington last night from a very emotional reopening of a major U.S. steel plant in Granite City, Illinois, only to be greeted with the ridiculous news that the highly convicted Robert Mueller and his gang of 13 angry Democrats obviously cannot find collusion.
The only collusion with Russia was with the Democrats.
So now they are looking at my tweets, along with 53 million other people.
The rigged witch hunt continues.
How stupid and unfair to our country.
And so the fake news doesn't waste my time with dumb questions.
No, I did not know of my meeting with the son, Don Jr.
Sounds to me like someone is trying to make up stories in order to get himself out of an unrelated jam.
Taxi cabs, maybe?
He even retained Bill and Crooked Hillary's lawyer.
Gee, I wonder if they helped make him the choice.
Helped him make the choice.
Okay, so Donald Trump is now accusing Michael Cohen of basically being run by Bill and Crooked Hillary's lawyer.
Which is weird.
So listen, do I think that Michael Cohen is telling the truth?
No, I think Michael Cohen is a serial liar.
I think Michael Cohen is also an idiot.
I think a lot of things about Michael Cohen.
I think he's a liar.
I think he's an idiot.
I think Donald Trump hired him, which doesn't speak highly of his hiring abilities, and then worked with him for years.
But is there any reason for me to believe that after two years of saying that nothing happened, Michael Cohen, as soon as he is threatened with legal repercussions, suddenly flips and says, oh yeah, Trump knew all about that Trump Tower meeting.
Is there any reason for me to believe Michael Cohen?
No.
Now, is there a lot of reason for me to believe Donald Trump on this particular score?
Not really.
But I'm actually going to have to see some evidence before I believe the allegation that Donald Trump knew about the meeting.
Maybe he knew about the meeting.
Maybe he didn't.
But I'm not exactly going to sit around listening to Michael Cohen.
The media are, though.
The media are just ecstatic about this.
They think, finally, we've got Trump.
It is so It's wild watching the media think they have Trump at every turn.
We finally have Trump, and then it's like watching a fat kid with a greased pig.
I mean, they're chasing him, and then there's the greased pig, and they finally have him, and they fall forward, and boom, right in the mud.
And then they get up, and they chase the greased pig around a little bit more, and then boom, right in the mud.
And by the end, the only person covered with mud is the fat kid, in this case the media, and the greased pig just keeps escaping.
If you think that Michael Cohen is going to be the club with which you beat Donald Trump, this is the funny thing, right?
All of the clubs the media have used to beat Donald Trump are, at the very least, as bad people as Donald Trump.
Stormy Daniels is not exactly a paragon of moral virtue.
And that was the club that they decided they were going to use to beat Donald Trump with.
It was the porn star who had a one-night stand with a guy who was married.
And has sex on film for a living and then took $130,000 from that guy and now is supposed to be the great Democratic hero.
And now they're going to go to Michael Cohen, who until five minutes ago was the worst person in the world, according to Democrats.
But now he's a truth telling hero.
He's the whistleblower.
He's the insider.
He's going to get Trump.
Yeah, good luck with that.
Good luck with that.
Maybe it turns out that Trump knew about the meeting at Trump Tower.
Maybe not.
But I am not really going to believe Michael Cohen's word.
I just don't buy it.
Okay, so in just a second, I'm going to show you that the Trump team does not buy it either.
And so we basically have what we call the liar's paradox, which I will explain in just a second.
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So, obviously, the Trump team is unhappy with Michael Cohen.
Rudy Giuliani, who is President Trump's new lawyer, and who has not demonstrated tremendous credibility on a lot of issues himself, he says that Michael Cohen is a pathological liar.
So here's what he has to say about it.
I expected something like this.
From Cohen, he's been lying all week.
I mean, or for two, he's been lying for years.
I mean, there's nobody that I know that knows him that hasn't warned me that if he's, back is up against the wall, he'll lie like crazy because he's lied all his life.
Okay, so there's a famous logical conundrum in which you go up to, in which you go up to a knight.
Okay, this is called the knights and knaves problem in logic.
And the knights and knaves problem goes something like this.
You walk up to a guy on the road and you say to him, are you a knight or are you a knave?
And he says, I am a knave.
Now, is he a knight or is he a knave?
You don't know.
Because if he's a knave, then he would say that he were a knight.
And if he's a knight, he can't say that he's a knave.
Right.
A knave being a liar.
So if he's a truth teller, he can't say that he's a liar.
And if he's a liar, he can't say that he's a liar.
So none of them will say that they're a liar.
So if he says he's a liar, which is it?
Right.
This is this is one of these logical kind of problems.
There are all sorts of variations on this theme.
OK, if you have President Trump, who has not been supremely honest about some of the things with regard to, for example, rewriting Donald Trump Jr.'s 's statement on the Trump Tower meeting, or with regard to Stormy Daniels, or with regard to a myriad of other topics on this particular subject.
You can't necessarily believe what President Trump has to say just because he said it.
And then you've got Michael Cohen, who lies an awful lot and also doesn't know what polls are.
So you've got a lot of things to worry about with Michael Cohen.
Then you've got Rudy Giuliani, who in the last several weeks has backtracked several times on a variety of different topics.
So which one is lying?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I mean, you don't know either.
So the only thing I will say is that if Michael Cohen, in fact, were aware that Donald Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting, the serious question to be asked is why there are no tapes of it.
Because obviously the guy was taping everything.
The guy had an obsession with tape.
He has tapes of himself and Donald Trump chatting about everything under the sun.
That's how we now have glorious, glorious audio of the president ordering a Coke from one of his associates.
So, there's, I just, I find all this non-credible.
It seems like there are a lot of stretches going on in this entire attempt.
So, another stretch that's going on.
According to Michael Schmidt and Maggie Haberman over at the New York Times, quote, for years, President Donald Trump has used Twitter as his go-to public relations weapon, mounting a barrage of attacks on celebrities and then political rivals, even after advisors warned he could be creating legal problems for himself.
If you have to go through President Trump's Twitter feed for evidence of obstruction of justice, I'm going to say you don't have much, okay?
from the president about Attorney General Jeff Sessions and former FBI Director James Comey, according to three people briefed on the matter.
If you have to go through President Trump's Twitter feed for evidence of obstruction of justice, I'm going to say you don't have much, okay?
We all saw all of those tweets, and the explanations are just what they always were.
Either President Trump is obstructing justice and trying to stymie the Mueller investigation because he's trying to hide something, or the president is just mouthing off about things.
The President is just frustrated with Mueller, and he's frustrated with Comey.
End of story.
Which one of those do you think is more likely?
That the President is really obstructing justice, that he has something deep and dark to hide, or that the President of the United States says a lot of stuff on Twitter.
Now, as I've said, my belief on this is very clear.
The president says a lot of stuff on Twitter, and if your best evidence is going to be stuff that he says to 50 million people on Twitter, then he's really bad at collusion, right?
He's really bad at collusion and obstruction.
Like, I just, I don't buy any of this, and I find it difficult to believe that this is what's going to take down President Trump is going to be Twitter.
Now, they are also saying that federal investigators in Manhattan have asked to interview Allen Weisselberg, who's the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, as part of their investigation into Michael Cohen.
Now, what's really fascinating about the kind of Michael Cohen and Robert Mueller of all of this is that while everybody is focused on the Mueller investigation, it really is going to be the Cohen stuff that is going to be more damaging to President Trump, if there is anything that damages President Trump.
It's so funny.
Everybody is so polarized now that when you say things like, why don't we just wait for the evidence to come out?
People immediately jump to, well, you must be a shill for President Trump or you must be a shill for Robert Mueller.
It's weird.
When Mueller comes out with indictments and I say, OK, well, there's some good stuff and I'm waiting to see more evidence on President Trump.
Then people say, why don't you just go along with Mueller?
Why don't you just believe, just believe that collusion happened and that obstruction happened?
And I'm like, well, I'm waiting for the evidence.
But when Trump says that there is no, that this is all a witch hunt, that there's nothing there, I say, well, listen, I'll just wait for the evidence.
And then people on the right say, how dare you wait for the evidence?
How dare you?
You know why?
Because I'm a lawyer and also a rational human, and you should be too.
If you don't have evidence of an allegation, you should wait for the evidence of the allegation to amount to something before you jump to the conclusion.
And the fact that everybody is willing to jump to conclusions without waiting for the evidence is more than slightly troubling to me.
Okay, meanwhile, the Republicans are signaling to their own base a lot.
Now, Jim Jordan, a guy who I really like, Representative Jim Jordan from Ohio, a strong Freedom Caucus member, a very, very conservative member of Congress, He is running for Speaker of the House.
And I think that he would make a very good Speaker of the House or a House Minority Leader if, God forbid, the Democrats win back Congress in 2018, because he is quite strong.
He is quite militant.
He is willing to go up against the Democrats with everything at his disposal.
He is more of a blunt instrument than Paul Ryan in terms of taking on the left.
And I like that about Jim Jordan.
He's not somebody who's going to pull his punches.
So I'm very much in support of the idea that Jim Jordan is going to run for Speaker of the House.
He said that he's sending a letter to his colleagues as we speak.
That said, I think that the sort of signaling that is going on from the right wing of the Republican caucus with regard to, for example, Rod Rosenstein, as I said yesterday, I think is a mistake.
The attempt to impeach Rod Rosenstein is counterproductive, and it signals to the country that you're trying to cover up something from President Trump.
That's what it actually signals.
There's what you think it signals to your base, which is, Rosenstein and the deep state are out to get Trump, let's fire Rosenstein.
And then there's what it signals to the rest of the country, which is Congress is a lackey of the president, and they're doing his dirty work for him.
Because guess what?
If Trump wanted to fire Rod Rosenstein, he has every capacity to do so right now.
He doesn't have to wait to do it.
He can also declassify all the materials that the Republicans in Congress want Rod Rosenstein to release.
I think that, you know, Paul Ryan has this right.
He says he doesn't support Rosenstein's impeachment.
Frankly, I don't either.
I don't think that it's a good idea.
I think it's politically stupid to move for the impeachment of Rod Rosenstein.
I understand why some of the leaders in the House are doing it.
I think they're doing it because they want to show that they are very much in support of President Trump and that they're standing up to the deep state and that there are going to be a lot of rah-rah cheerleaders on the conservative side of the aisle who are happy because fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, MAGA, MAGA.
I don't think it's smart politically.
I have to agree with Speaker of the House Ryan on this.
Here's what he had to say.
It is appropriate that we conduct oversight of the executive branch and that we get full compliance with the executive branch on what are very legitimate document requests.
Do I support impeachment of Rod Rosenstein?
No, I do not.
Okay, and here's something for Republicans to remember.
If you set the precedent that somebody ought to be impeached over not being completely transparent with oversight committees in Congress, wait till the Democrats have control of Congress.
Wait till they're subpoenaing documents from members of the Trump administration.
Wait until they call Trump before them for testimony.
Wait until all that happens and then launch impeachment on the back of this kind of stuff.
It's just, it's not particularly smart.
Okay.
In a second, we're going to get to the mailbag, which everybody loves.
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All right, let's mailbag it up.
Let's talk about, let's talk about your questions.
Okay, Nicholas says, Even though the ability to invest has contributed greatly to the growth of economies and in turn a higher standard of living across the world, the Bible seems to strongly speak against loaning money on interest.
I might be misinterpreting the text, but how should we balance this aspect of our religion with one of the central pillars of the free market that has allowed for so much prosperity?
Thanks.
He said at some point he hopes that I'll come and speak at the University of Kentucky because they have Grey Bourbon, which is a strong, strong pitch.
Okay, so here's the answer with regard to interest.
So in Judaism, first of all, there's a huge portion of Talmudic law that is basically designed to work out Variations on interest.
Because interest is quite good for the economy.
Because one of the big problems is that if I am not allowed to loan money at interest to Senya, I might loan money at no interest to Senya because I'm friendly with Senya.
But if I have to loan money at interest to Austin, I'm not going to do it.
Without interest?
Because what if he never pays me back?
I mean, he's a Cubs fan.
I can't trust Cubs fans.
So why exactly would I loan him money at no interest?
One of the great incentives to loan people money is that you are able to charge them interest and that creates a sort of security for you to lend them the money in the first place.
Well, it is important to understand the context in which the rules on interest are written in the Bible.
Religious communities are supposed to be seen as charitable social safety nets.
That's what they're supposed to be seen as.
And so, in Judaism, if you have a business that is loaning money to another business, it's not clear that that is actually banned.
So this has actually become an issue with, for example, Bank Leumi, which is the Israeli national bank, is that if you loan at interest in your institution, it may not be quite the same thing biblically as me loaning money to Senya.
Or me loaning money to, take a more specific religious example, me loaning money to a fellow member of my synagogue.
The idea in Christianity and Judaism is that members of a community should act as support structures for one another and loan each other money at no interest so that everybody can prosper.
This is also true, by the way, under Qur'anic law.
The Qur'an is very much against interest.
Now, there are people who suggest that that's because these are all human-written Documents supposedly then people just didn't understand how interest works.
I find that a little bit I find that a little bit cynical I think instead the basic idea here is the same as it is in the New Testament when it says that that Jesus's disciples lived in common and then people use that as a as a as evidence and That Jesus was a communist?
And the answer is no.
They lived as a family.
You also live in common with the members of your family.
I wouldn't lend money to my wife at interest.
I wouldn't lend money to members of my community at interest.
I mean, I've lent money to people in my community at no interest rate, right?
Because I think that that's the moral thing to do.
But that is, in fact, an act of charity.
If you actually want to have a functional economy, obviously you have to lend money at interest.
Jordan says, Okay, so this is a basic marital rule.
You ready for this?
Basic marital rule.
Since then, my mother-in-law has consistently tried to give her input and opinion on how my wife and I should care for our daughter.
With other topics, I normally don't let this bother me, but when it relates to my family and how to raise my child, I've become increasingly annoyed and begun to resent it.
I don't want to put my wife in a difficult spot with her mom, but I don't want to resent my in-law's presence either.
Thoughts and suggestions.
Thanks, Jordan.
Okay, so this is a basic marital rule.
You ready for this?
Basic marital rule.
It's your wife's job to tell her parents to stop.
Okay, it is not your job to tell her parents to stop.
It's just going to be a terrible disaster if you do that.
If you tell her parents, listen, mom, I need you to back off, then she's just going to go complain to your wife.
Your wife's going to say, why were you so mean to my mom?
And then you got trouble because she's not sleeping anyway and she's nursing the six month old.
So what you actually want, and this is a rule that we have in my family, is that if there's a problem with my parents, if my wife has a problem with my parents, it is my job to convey that to my parents, particularly because you have to be open minded about your own parents that maybe, listen, Your parents, this is one of the toughest lessons in life, seriously, is when you grow up, part of growing up is realizing that your parents are human beings, too, and they make mistakes, and sometimes they're annoying, and sometimes they do silly things.
My parents are wonderful.
They are wonderful.
I mean, they basically provide secondary childcare to my kids all the time.
But there are times when I will have to say to my parents, listen, Dad, that's not the way that I really want to do that, or listen, Mom, that's really not the way that we want to do that.
And my parents are really, because they're good people, they're willing to hear that out.
They understand my kids are my kids, and I'm raising my kids as I want to raise my kids.
The same thing is true of my wife's parents.
If there is a problem with my wife's parents, it is her job to speak to her parents.
You should talk to your wife.
You should have a conversation about what it is that bothers you.
And if your wife is open-minded and she does the right thing, have her listen to the segment.
It is open-minded of her to listen to your critique and then go talk to her parents and tell them to back off.
Because parents take it a lot better coming from their own kids than they do from the in-law who stole their child from them.
Now Clayton says, Hi Ben.
So Taylor Swift is my absolute favorite artist.
No!
No.
I believe her musical abilities rival that of great composers such as Bach, Brahms, and Mozart.
Senya.
Senya must have planted this.
Every day after the show, if I don't do my ad reads, the extra ad reads that I have to do properly after the show, Senya will play Taylor Swift in my ear as a sort of Chinese water torture in order to get me to do what she wants me to do.
She loves Taylor Swift.
Yeah, now we're playing.
Why would you do this?
Stop that!
Stop it right now!
I have to finish this show, and if I die, I won't finish the show.
God, and you played the worst of all of her songs, Bad Blood with Lena Dunham, how dare you?
Says, could you please tell me how much you love Taylor Swift?
Thank you, Shapiro2020.
How much do I love Taylor Swift?
Let me count the ways.
Okay, zero!
Zero are the ways in which I love Taylor Swift.
Okay, Kevin says, The answer is no.
Okay?
Tariffs are not a good thing unless you're using them as a ratchet to get another country to lower its tariffs and you have to use it as a sort of leverage point.
Also, you can punish cheating in terms of like, if somebody's stealing IP and then shipping the product back into the country, if they're actually violating fraud laws, then tariffs are appropriate as a punishment.
But, If the idea is that somebody else is just making cheap products that people want to buy, I don't see why it's any of your business if I want to buy a Japanese Walkman.
That really is none of your business at all.
Elise says, hi, Ben.
If you were forced to eat dinner with Bernie Sanders, what would you say and what kind of pudding cups would you bring?
Well, honestly, I'm not sure I'd have a lot to say to Bernie Sanders because I'm not sure that Bernie Sanders is the kind of guy who listens to things.
I'm not sure that we would actually have a good conversation.
I'd probably try to avoid politics if I wanted to have a pleasant evening with Bernie Sanders, because what could I say to him that would actually convince him?
This is actually a serious question.
You do have to assess whether conversations are worth it.
I'm not sure a conversation with Bernie Sanders is worth it.
A debate with Bernie Sanders is definitely worth it.
And with that in mind, I issue this open challenge.
Anytime, anywhere, You can shoot me up with Valium, you can club me in both kneecaps, and I'm happy to debate Bernie Sanders under any physical condition.
Like, any physical condition, anywhere in the United States, basically, so long as I'm half-sentient.
I'm happy to do that.
As far as what kind of pudding cups would I bring, well, I mean, I know the man loves pudding cups.
But I think I would deprive him of pudding cups.
I think what I would do is I would only bring one type of pudding cup.
And then I would suggest that a free market system provides too many different options for pudding cups.
And clearly what we need is a government centralization of all pudding cups and redistribution of pudding cups.
And if he has to pay with less pudding cups, then that's just the way it goes.
Justin says, on tariffs, other than having strong leverage, how does a nation get other countries to lower their tariffs without threatening them with our tariffs?
There are actually a lot of ways to get other countries to lower their tariffs, without actually increasing our tariffs.
First of all, if they want to increase their own tariffs on our products, that doesn't actually hurt our economy in any significant way, since we are just getting cheaper products and inputs, and then we can generate our own products, and then we can sell that to other markets.
Thank God there are not only two players in the global system.
But let's simplify economics for just a second.
There are only two people in the world, you and the guy who owns the grocery store.
And the guy who owns the grocery store does not want to, and you're a carpenter, he doesn't want to use you to make the shelves, right?
He says, I'm not going to use you to make the shelves.
I'm tariffing you.
The groceries are still cheap at the grocery store.
Would you rather go in your backyard and farm all of your stuff yourself and then you have to do your carpentry and you also have to grow your own wheat in the backyard?
Or would you be better off just going and buying the groceries and then spending the extra time trying to find another client?
You know, the idea that you actually make yourself better off by taxing yourself at a higher rate, I think, is completely silly.
The highest leverage for free trade is the fact that people would actually, in their own countries, want access to your products and services, which is why the Again, if you're temporarily increasing tariffs in order to lower other people's tariffs, I don't really have a problem with that.
But if you're using tariffs as a way of strengthening your own economy, I think that's idiotic.
Well, first of all, I think the president really needs to stop saying things that make him unpopular, because as I've said with my balloon theory of politics a little bit earlier this week, I think the president has squeezed all the air out of the presidential side of the balloon.
Anything he does from here on in doesn't affect the presidential polling, but it does affect the congressional polling.
Other than that, I'm not sure what the Republicans can do, frankly.
I mean, I think the Republicans should just go out and campaign on the economy, they should go out and campaign on the tax cuts, they should go out and campaign on getting rid of the individual mandate.
There are a lot of good things for them to campaign on.
They're going to need to stop making big boo-boos because congressional elections turn on big boo-boos.
Let's see.
Alexander says, Hi Ben, could you please make the case for why I should have you as a role model as opposed to Michael Knowles?
Thanks so much.
Yes, I've been married for 10 years.
I have two children.
I was a virgin until I was married.
I live a clean lifestyle and I am significantly richer than Michael Knowles.
Well, I'd sort of have to know what the job interview was.
this upcoming Tuesday.
Any advice you could give me on how to ace it and also on how to negotiate a salary?
Much appreciated.
Keep up the stellar work.
Love the podcast.
Well, with a greeting like that, how could I not give you great advice?
Well, I sort of have to know what the job interview was.
All I would say is that being honest with your employer when they ask you trick questions like what is your greatest flaw is probably a better way to tackle things than trying to outsmart Usually what people do is they say, well, what is your greatest flaw?
And you say, I'm too diligent.
I work too hard.
You know, I'm a workaholic.
I work too many hours.
It's like, no, that's not what they're looking for.
What they're looking for is for you to say something like, you know, I need to be more self-critical of my own work, right?
Stuff like that.
As far as negotiating a salary, Pick a number higher than the one you want.
I used to make this mistake in negotiations.
And the negotiation used to go, me saying what I actually wanted, and then somebody coming back with a lower number.
I would negotiate based on what I need, not what I can get.
If you're actually negotiating on salary, you should try to assess what the other side thinks you're worth, and then try to go a little higher than that number and let them negotiate you down.
I know, it's stupid.
It would be better if everybody could just be honest about what they actually want, but unfortunately nobody is in these negotiations.
Alexander says, Dear Justice Shapiro, I've noticed the left has shifted the past few years to a very binary view of race, white and non-white people of color.
I'm Iranian in the murky ground between those categories.
They're still darker than Sean King.
I've noticed that when people on the left find it useful to have me on their side, they view me as an exotic person of color with a rich culture and like.
Then when I disagree with certain positions they have on privilege and race, I suddenly become a white man.
Was this binary race system consciously developed by some on the left to use as a power play and put more people against the white devils?
Or is it an unconscious outcropping of a deeper ideology?
Thanks, Alex.
Well, it is an unconscious thing.
I think that there are folks on the left who basically suggest that if you disagree with them, you are not a legitimate person of minority status.
And listen, the same thing has happened to me as a Jew, right?
When I was critical of the alt-right, then it was Jewish commentator Ben Shapiro.
And when I am critical of Barack Obama, then it is white nationalist critic Ben Shapiro.
I'm the same person.
I didn't change.
We're in the same yarmulke.
Nothing has changed.
But this is how the left acts because the left has now identified all core goods with minority, ethnic, racial, cultural status and all core bads with majoritarian white status.
So it's really that simple and it's really gross.
I'm a stay-at-home mom of a six and two-year-old.
My husband and I have pretty much decided we are not going to have any more children, but lately I've been having some second thoughts.
Not because I want more kids, it is a challenge handling the ones I have now, and I feel like we'll be able to offer more attention and opportunities to our kids since there's just two, but I almost feel like we have some sort of responsibility to have more since we're a stable Christian home, we have a great relationship, and my husband has put in the hard work so that I can be home full-time.
Just curious about your thoughts on this.
Thanks.
You know, I do believe that people should have more than two children.
I believe people should have lots of kids.
You know, I'm not saying, listen, you gotta make the judgment for yourself.
I've suggested that I think that healthy, able-bodied people who are responsible with their lives should definitely have kids.
I think that it is selfish not to have kids if you can provide a kid with a good home because the next generation is significantly more important than your pleasure over the next 20-odd years.
Or over the rest of your life, for that matter.
But, that said, Listen, I have two kids who are under five.
Is it rough sometimes?
Absolutely.
Are they little terrors?
A hundred percent.
Are we going to have more kids?
You bet.
Because will it be a little more stressful?
Yeah, but I've also heard that peak stress is three, and then four it starts to decline again.
Because then you have number one taking care of number four, and you have some helpers around the house.
And also you can turn them into your child slaves, basically.
And they make cheap shoes for you, and it's really great.
So you can go check that out.
Free labor and all that.
Yes, I think that if you can sustain more kids and it's not going to hurt your relationship, then why not?
Children are wonderful and terrible and wonderful at the same time.
time.
Andrew says, hey, Ben, what do you think about nuclear fusion as a solution to all our energy problems?
Should we even be investing more into it?
Well, I mean, if you're talking about nuclear power plans, then absolutely.
Yeah, of course, we should be having more nuclear power plants.
The fact that we have, like, two in the state of California, and we have rolling brownouts every single year during the summer, and the government says every year, turn off your air conditioner when it's summer.
It's like, did you not get the memo that over the past several billion years, it gets hot in the summer?
Did you not get the memo?
That's when I need my air conditioning, is during the summer.
And you idiots have cut off all the abilities to build nuclear power plants, and instead you're like, oh, well, what if we just have windmills?
Yeah, the windmills are gonna do it in the middle of the summer when there's no wind and it's 190 degrees outside, you idiots.
Yes, of course nuclear would be a good solution.
Listen, most of, I believe most of France's energy is based on nuclear power, which is significantly cleaner than any other form of power that can provide mass amounts of electricity.
Cadence says, hey Ben, How can conservatives respond when liberals quote that this land is stolen from Native Americans as a response to illegals coming into the United States?
They use this to justify open borders.
Well, there are a couple of responses to this.
First of all, the history of the world is movement of populations.
The truth is that Native American tribes Move routinely and took over each other's lens and made war with one another.
It is also true that there was no sovereign state in the United States when settlers arrived.
It wasn't like there was a sovereign nation that had claimed actual territorial ownership over particular areas as far as I'm aware.
And so was the treatment of Native Americans decent?
Absolutely not.
But can you say that the United States quote unquote stole the land?
In rare cases, I think you probably can.
But in most cases, I think the answer is no.
There's a lot of unoccupied land out there.
And I also do hold by the Lockean theory of property that property ownership is largely based on your ability to cultivate the land, which is why I believe in a legal thing called adverse possession, which is basically if you own 200 acres and you're not doing anything with it ever, you don't ever visit it, you don't do anything with it.
And I go out there and I set up a farm on your land.
And 20 years later, you come by and you say, why do you have a farm on my land?
I say, well, right, it's my farm.
The law basically says, under English common law, that's my land now.
I cultivated it.
So I think there is benefit to cultivation of land.
Any advice?
says, hey Ben, this morning I found out my girlfriend of two years might be pregnant.
Yes.
I'm absolutely terrified and feel I'm not ready to be a father.
Any advice?
Yes, sack up.
Yes, marry her and sack up.
That's my advice.
You've been living with your girlfriend.
It turns out, when you have sex with people, of the opposite sex particularly, and specifically, then there is a serious possibility that pregnancy may be the result, because this has been true throughout all of human and animal history.
So, I'm glad that you're having fun, but now I think that it's quite important that you provide a home to that child.
Be a man.
This is your job on planet Earth.
Your job on planet Earth is now to marry your girlfriend and take care of your child.
And if you feel that you couldn't be responsible for that, that's a decision you should have made before.
But now, responsibility has been thrust upon you.
And you can either be a man, or it can be a child.
If you decide to be a child and either abandon the kid, or you decide to do something much, much morally worse, and...
Do something or convince your girlfriend or discuss with your girlfriend doing something to the baby itself, which is an act of not only ultimate irresponsibility, but deep evil.
If you do that, you've betrayed your purpose on the planet.
You've betrayed my purpose on this planet.
Everything else gone, right?
I lose the show.
I lose my career.
My sole purpose on this planet is to protect my wife and children.
That is my sole purpose.
So now, you have a situation you didn't want.
Guess what?
That situation is going to be the best thing that ever happened to you, too.
It's going to be the best thing that ever happened to you.
You're now going to become a more responsible human being.
You're going to become a better human being.
That kid is going to make you better because you're not going to be thinking about you anymore.
You're going to be thinking about, how do I protect my daughter or my son?
You're gonna be thinking about what standards and values do I need to make solid in this world to make a better world for my kids.
You're gonna now need to sit there and think about what kind of, what kind of child you want to raise.
You're gonna have to start thinking about something beyond the next 24 hours.
You're gonna have to start planning.
You're going to have to start making career goals, right?
You're going to become a man now.
Okay, kid?
This is the way that it works.
You're a man now.
Be a man.
This is your job.
Okay, one more question.
Michael says, Are you a coffee drinker?
If not, what is your go-to beverage?
So, I was not a coffee drinker until the last two weeks.
You may have noticed that I'm a little more hyper-unusual on the show.
That is because I've started drinking coffee.
There are two reasons for that.
One is, when I get up at 4.30 in the morning for Fox & Friends, man, I need a shot of coffee.
I mean, like, I didn't think I did.
And then I did.
And also, I wasn't getting enough sleep.
And one day, I had a cup of coffee before the show, and I pumped out that show, man.
I mean, it was great.
Everybody's like, that was a great show.
And I was like, good!
If coffee's good, like Black Rifle coffee, if that stuff's good, Try some Coke.
But I thought, OK, well, I'm not going to do cocaine.
Not Coca-Cola.
I'm not going to do cocaine.
And I'm not going to do Coca-Cola, which is unhealthy.
Instead, I will do coffee, which is only slightly unhealthy.
And then I went out and I made the mistake of buying an Amazon Prime Day.
I gave myself the gift of an Escafe machine.
And I've been having coffee ever since.
It's probably not the best thing for me, but I've lost some weight.
There's that.
You know, one more question because I can't end on that one.
Gregory says, Hey Ben, I listen to your podcast every day along the likes of Bill Burr and Joe Rogan.
I'm a huge comedy fan.
I've learned to laugh at jokes thrown from both sides of the ideological spectrum.
That being said, I do feel like comedy has become a way for certain people to become motivational or inspirational icons without the repercussions that political commentators face.
What is the future for comedy in this country?
Do you have any particular favorite comedians?
Well, the future of comedy is dark and dismal because everybody is now made a virtue out of being offended.
Comedy is all about violating taboos.
If you're going to be offended when taboos get violated, you're not going to be able to laugh at things and it means that we're going to destroy anybody who tells a joke, even a bad joke.
Comedians are not going to hit 100% of the time.
They're going to violate all your taboos and sometimes it'll be funny and sometimes it won't.
But that's okay.
That's how comedy gets done.
Some of my favorite comedians, so I think that Mulaney is terrific.
His work, if you go watch his Netflix special, it's really, really good.
He's really a talented guy.
Until Louis C.K.' 's unfortunate fall, Louis C.K.
was definitely one of my favorites.
His bit on, whenever he talked, here's the thing about Louis C.K.
It's not even because I'm offended.
It's just because I like good comedy.
Blue comedy is the worst kind of comedy.
When people tell sex jokes, it's the easiest thing in the world.
When they curse, and that's the laugh line because it's shocking, that's really easy stuff.
Louis C.K.' 's bits on kids are just, they're spectacularly good.
He has a couple of bits on kids that are really, really funny.
One of them is my favorite bit on kids ever about his daughter asking him particular questions and the tendency of children to ask why until you basically die.
I mean, honestly, I think that he was rather honest about the fact that he was sleaze, right?
I mean, it wasn't like he was trying to hide the ball on that one in any sense.
But the fact is that, yeah, I think that Mulaney, Louis C.K., those are two good ones.
It's until until Bill Cosby turned out to be a horrible multiple serial rapist.
Allegedly, I think that a lot of his old comedy was was actually quite good.
I grew up listening to some of Bill Cosby's old CDs.
All right.
Time for a thing I like and then a thing that I hate.
And we'll get out of here.
So things that I like.
We'll finish up Jazz Week.
I know I know some of you meet that with great relief, but we're finishing up Jazz Week this week.
This is from an album called Crystal Silence with Chick Corea and Gary Burton.
Chick Corea is on piano.
Gary Burton is on vibes.
and this is a cut called Senior Mouse.
All right, well, if you want more good jazz, I should have actually pulled a cut of my dad playing jazz, because my dad's really good.
We'll do it next week.
Somebody remind me.
And next week, I'll pull a cut of my dad playing jazz, because my dad's really, really good.
And we'll play that next week.
OK, time for a quick thing that I hate.
There's two quick things that I hate.
I hate cultural literacy.
And apparently it is rife at this office.
So I'm just going to mention the fact.
I'm just going to rant for just a second.
So this morning, Jess, who we all love and adore.
She's the makeup gal over here, the makeup and wardrobe gal over here.
She explained to me that she has never seen Star Wars episodes 4, 5, and 6.
Which is absolute cultural illiteracy.
I mean, that is just, that's like you can't read English.
I said to her, are you American?
Are you a real American?
How can you never have seen Star Wars?
That is just, that is, and she says, well, you know, I've never even seen the, I've never even seen the Godfather.
And I was like, what?
What now?
Like, you're making it worse.
Why are you still talking, Jess?
Why are you doing this?
You're making it worse.
And then she says, you know, I was one to the other movie that I've never really made all the way through is The Ring.
And I was like, well, who cares?
That's not a big deal.
She said, oh, no, I mean Lord of the Rings.
What?
Why?
What?
And then I was walking through the halls of the office.
There's certain moments in life where you feel like you've gotten old.
I was walking through the halls of the office, and I was trying to explain to people my outrage that Jess had never seen the Godfather.
And then Senya informed me she had never seen the Godfather.
And then Alicia Krauss informed me she had never seen the Godfather.
And then half the office informed me, Colton, have you seen the Godfather?
Colton says he has never seen the Godfather.
This is the collapse of Western civilization.
What is wrong with you people?
Like, really?
You've all seen the latest Infinity War.
Ooh.
Y'all went and saw Avatar.
Okay, jerks.
Yeah, I see you thumbs-upping over Avatar.
You've all seen the latest Taylor Swift music video.
Go watch some actual quality material.
I haven't seen the Godfather.
I said, what are y'all, 15?
And everybody got very offended.
Ooh, how dare you call us 15?
You're right.
I overestimated.
You're all children.
You're all small children.
I've already shown my four and a half year old Godfather one, two, and three.
Not true.
But when she's five.
OK, so finally, other thing that I hate today, on a more serious note, Iran has now threatened to send terrorists to the United States.
So this is just great.
Major General Qasem Soleimani, who's a really nice guy, has claimed that if the U.S.
starts a war, Iran will finish it.
Well, they will finish it by being a pile of glass if they start a war with us.
I mean, come on.
He said, as a soldier, it is my duty to respond to Trump's threats.
If he wants to use the language of threat, he should talk to me, not to President Hassan Rouhani.
agencies as having made the comments during a speech in the city of Hamadan.
He said, as a soldier, it is my duty to respond to Trump's threats.
If he wants to use the language of threat, he should talk to me, not to President Hassan Rouhani, which is weird since I thought that Rouhani was supposedly the leader of your garbage government.
What could you have done against Iran in the past 20 years you haven't done already?
Well, we could have launched missiles to decapitate your entire regime.
We've been nice enough not to do that.
Turns out the U.S.
is really good.
We're really good at breaking stuff.
I mean, when we want to break stuff here in the United States, we break stuff in the United States.
For all the talk about the Afghanistan war and how it's dragged on forever and the Iraq war and how that was dragging on, Saddam Hussein had the third-largest army on Earth.
In three weeks, we reduced him to hiding in a spider hole.
In Afghanistan, we had troops that had overrun the country within legitimately three weeks of having invaded the country.
The United States military is the most powerful force on Earth by a factor of about 10.
When people say that China could go to war with us, ah-ha-ha-ha-ha.
Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha.
Untrue.
So when you see the Iranians saying things like, we will defeat you in war, We're not talking the card game, folks.
Legitimately, you think you can defeat the United States military in war?
Yeah, try that one.
Try that one.
If we wanted, we could blow up the moon.
Like, come on.
This is just nonsense.
And then he says, Trump should know we are a nation of martyrdom and that we await him.
If you guys launch a war against us, I mean, legitimately, you launch a war against the United States, then you will be a nation of martyrdom.
That can be a lie.
And he says, He says that they will hit back with terrorism.
Now, here's the part that I love about this.
This was the regime that was supposedly moderate, remember?
This was the moderate Hassan Rouhani regime that we were supposed to hand billions of dollars in cash to, according to Barack Obama.
But they're not seeming so moderate.
Now, there are people who are like, well, that's because you ended the sanctions.
Let me ask you a question.
If you were a criminal who was seeking to invade my home, and I said to you, you know what?
I'm not going to let you invade my home.
And in fact, I'm going to call the cops on you.
And you said, that's terrible.
How dare you?
How dare you, sir?
I promise I will not invade your home if you don't call the cops.
And I say, you know what?
All right.
I feel like you're trying to moderate.
I'm not going to call the cops.
And then you say, you know what?
I'm going to invade your home.
Why would I possibly have thought that you were legitimate and sincere when you said you weren't going to invade my home?
If the Iranians want to be part of the family of nations, you know what they have to do?
Stop being a terrorist regime.
They can do it any time they please.
It isn't hard.
There are lots of regimes that do it.
But, you know, they've decided this is what they want to be.
And it just shows how much of a liar Barack Obama was when it came to policies like the Iranian policy.
OK, we'll be back here next week with all of the latest news.
And I hope I live till then.
I don't have a heart attack thanks to the ignorance of my own staff about basic cultural features of the United States.
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.