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Oct. 17, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
50:46
The Saudi Conundrum | Ep. 640
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President Trump struggles to deal with the fallout from the alleged Saudi murder of a dissident.
President Trump battles it out with Stormy Daniels in the great battle of our time.
And we're going to talk about some fundamental conservative principles today.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
Stop the hammering!
I only say that because if you can't actually hear that through my microphone, there's legitimately hammering going on on the floor beneath us as we build out our new lair, our fantastic new studios, which will be unveiled sometime in the future, just like the Shapiro store.
It may take longer to materialize than I say it will, but eventually it will arrive.
There is news to get to today and philosophy to get to today.
Many, many things to talk about, but first, Let us talk about the upcoming election.
If you look at the rhetoric from the leftist news outlets on the heels of Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation, they are trying to solidify the left for the midterms.
It is going to be a battle for the House.
Right now, chances are the Democrats win the House.
Here's what's at stake if the Democrats do take the House.
The positive policies Republicans have enacted over the past two years, everything to help the economy, regulatory reform, tax cuts, judicial appointments, withdrawal from the Iran deal, all of it could be stymied if the Dems take control of either House.
And when they start to obstruct, That might have an effect on the dollar, on stocks, on other unknowns that could impact your savings.
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All right, so we begin today with the President of the United States suggesting that if the Democrats win the House, it's not his fault.
That's not a big shock.
I mean, you wouldn't expect President Trump.
He's not really a the buck stops here guy.
That's not his motto.
He tends to operate more in the the buck stops wherever I'm not.
And therefore, if the Republicans were to lose the House, it has nothing to do with President Trump.
Now, let's be real about this.
With a soaring economy, the Republicans should be doing better in polling than they are.
Democrats are highly motivated to get out and vote, partially because of President Trump.
Do I think it's extra because of Trump?
Not really, believe it or not.
I think that Democrats are motivated to vote because the Republican is in the White House, and it would be the same thing if it had been Jeb Bush.
I think they would have been motivated to vote.
Midterm elections are really bad for sitting presidents, and this election cycle is no different.
If it turns into a raucous blowout, if it turns into Democrats winning 40, 50 seats, then you might start talking about the impact President Trump has had.
Obviously, President Trump has a unique gift.
for both getting the worst out of his opponents and the worst out of himself from time to time.
And when I say from time to time, I mean on a not infrequent basis, which is why we're now talking about Stormy Daniels, Mushrooms, Mario Kart and horse faces.
We'll get to all of that in just a second.
But President Trump said yesterday that if the Republicans do indeed lose the House, it's not on him.
If they don't go out and vote, then they have themselves to blame because they'll lose wealth.
Tremendous amount.
I built up $11.7 trillion in wealth.
You report on it.
Okay, so, you know, when he suggests that it's not his fault because we have, you know, a great economy, he's right, that we do have a terrific economy right now.
There's a study out today, and it shows that the United States is now number one in competitiveness for the first time in 2008, after it made the second highest overall gain from the previous year's ranking from the World Economic Forum, according to Ryan Saavedra over at Daily Wire.
The top five countries were the US, Singapore, Germany, Switzerland, and Japan, all of which saw their scores increase in 2017, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Economic recovery is well underway, with the global economy projected to grow almost 4% in 2018 and 2019.
The report stated, adding that the recovery remains vulnerable to a range of risks and potential shocks.
That's just a way for economists to hedge their bets.
The journal noted that the warning cited, quote, a brewing trade war between the U.S.
and China as a possible hindrance to growth that could potentially derail the recovery and deter investment.
The report scores countries on how closely they match up to the competitive ideal.
The U.S.
scored an 86% out of a possible 100.
America's vibrant entrepreneurial culture and its dominance in producing a competitive labor market and nimble financial system are among the several factors that contribute to making the United States' innovation ecosystem one of the best in the world.
This prompted President Trump to tweet out all of the good economic news.
He tweeted out an incredible number just out.
Over 7 million job openings.
Astonishing.
It's all working.
Stock market up big on tremendous potential of USA.
Also strong profits.
We are number one in the world by far, which is true.
He says that we now have eight times more new manufacturing jobs than we did under President Obama.
Also true.
The fact is that the economy has been going gangbusters under President Trump.
And a large part of that is not only the regulatory reform and the tax cuts, but a feeling of Consistency and certainty in economics.
See, it's very important to have a level of consistency and certainty if you're running a business.
If you're living in the state of California, where we are, and you run a business, one of the problems is you are not sure what insane regulation is going to come down the pike at any given moment.
And on a federal level, If you don't know what crazy regulation is going to come down the pike at any given moment, you're more likely to hold out your money.
You're more likely to say, you know what?
I'm going to leave that money in the bank.
I'm not going to invest in a new employee I may have to fire.
I'm not going to invest in new infrastructure that may have to go unused.
Instead, I'm just going to hold this money out and I'm going to wait for a better economic time.
President Trump and Republican Congress mean that there is a level of solidity in Americans' perceptions of which way the economy is going to move, namely in the direction of businesses having more freedom to pursue the causes that they wish to pursue.
Now, President Trump is signaling that the great danger to this is the Federal Reserve.
The Federal Reserve has been tightening interest rates.
The reason they're tightening interest rates is because they don't want a bubble.
They don't want a lot of folks taking out cheap credit from the Federal Reserve banks, lending out at cheap rates, and then All of those assets being overvalued and then the economy collapsing again like it did in 2007-2008.
So the Federal Reserve actually isn't doing the worst thing.
The fact that the economy continues to grow at extraordinary rates with the Federal Reserve tightening credit is actually quite a good thing.
But here is President Trump suggesting that the economy might be a little bit more fragile than we think it is by going after the Federal Reserve.
The biggest threat is the Fed, because the Fed is raising rates too fast, and it's independent, so I don't speak to him, but I'm not happy with what he's doing, because it's going too fast, because you looked at the last inflation numbers, they're very low.
You know, debatable as to whether the Fed should even exist, but if the Fed is going to exist, then raising interest rates in a time of economic boom is not the world's worst idea.
However, there is a problem.
We do have this booming economy, right?
7 million unfilled jobs.
It's an amazing statistic.
For all the talk about the hollowing out of the American middle class and the people who are living in despair in small town communities, 7 million unfilled jobs is a lot of unfilled jobs.
That is a lot of unfilled jobs.
And we are a country originally of pioneers and entrepreneurs.
People who are willing to venture out of the spaces from which they were born in order to find new economic opportunities and new jobs.
The problem is that an economy that's booming like this, but that also may require you to add new skills and move out of your hometown, it's deeply at odds with some of President Trump's campaign promises.
It's deeply at odds with a certain perception of the economy that's pushed by the so-called populist right.
Now, when I talk about the populist right, I'm talking about folks who I think say a lot of true things on a lot of subjects, but not on this particular subject.
And in this particular camp, I count a bunch of folks who have made big names for themselves, Based on the idea that America's economy is bound to fail, that there's too much income inequality.
This is from the right.
These are people supposedly from the right.
Claiming there's too much income inequality, that manufacturing jobs are dying, that small towns are dying, and therefore the government has to step in and regulate.
We need tariffs.
We need regulations.
We need redistributions.
We need heavier unionization.
And this comes from a value system that doesn't actually see the morality in the free markets per se.
Now, listen, there's nothing that is necessarily moral in how people use free markets, but the basis of a free market system, private property ownership and control of your own labor, that is a deep moral good.
There is something moral about free markets that is not moral about restricted markets.
That can only hold true when there's no exploitation.
That can only hold true when the government prevents forced use of labor, for example.
But when the government steps in and starts tromping on free market principles, on individual property rights and individual use of labor, then you get into trouble.
And the problem is that there is a widespread perception among a lot of people on the populist right that America's economy, even when it's going great guns, is still unfair.
This is where the Trumpian right meets the Bernie Sanders left.
Tucker Carlson has a new book out called Ship of Fools.
We're going to have Tucker on the Sunday special sometime in the near future.
And Tucker is sort of an economic populist.
Very talented guy, obviously.
And Tucker's economic populism borders on sort of a Bernie Sanders perspective on how the economy ought to work.
He talks a lot in his book about this sort of suffering middle class that was left behind.
And one of the things he says in the book is that, I was reading it last night, and it's really well written.
It's, again, Tucker's a deeply talented guy.
One of the things that it says is it says that while the rich have gotten richer in the United States, the poor have gotten poorer.
Now, he acknowledges that the poor getting poorer in the United States is not actually a thing that's happening, that the poor in the United States are still extraordinarily rich by any sort of global standard.
They are richer than they were in 1979 by any standard.
They have better stuff.
But that's not enough because he says that there's still envy between the rich and the poor.
And as long as that exists, the government has to step in to help prevent that envy from overtaking the political system.
That's a perspective that probably Bernie Sanders supporters hold.
And you saw some of this during the election cycle when President Trump was trying to appeal to Bernie Sanders supporters with the same sort of language.
The free markets were flawed.
That globalization was a bad thing.
This is the stand-in, by the way, for free markets.
The dirty word that people use instead of free markets these days is globalization.
Now, there are significant Problems with globalization on the local level in certain areas.
So, for example, you're getting outcompeted by a business in China and your business goes out of business, that hurts for you.
But globalization is just another word for free markets, because if you were getting outcompeted by a firm in California and you're in Ohio, that wouldn't be globalization, that would just be the free market at work.
There are moral questions as to whether we should be doing free market stuff with dictatorships like China.
But there's no economic question that it is beneficial economically to consumers in the United States and to producers who use inputs in the United States to have free trade.
And yet, by suggesting that capitalism and free markets are not enough, suggesting that globalization is a bad thing, what we need is economic nationalism, more government intervention.
President Trump is actually undercutting the cause of his own economy, which is not based on anti-globalization.
It's actually based deeply on a global free market and on less regulation.
President Trump's economic system is based on less government intervention in the economy, but President Trump has been preaching more economic intervention in the economy by suggesting that the economy is leaving people behind.
Well, that is a talking point that can be used against him.
It's a talking point that can be used against him in elections.
And it's also a talking point that is not particularly conservative, which I'm going to explain in just one second.
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We've seen earthquakes.
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Okay, so.
It's not just Tucker.
I don't want to pick on Tucker.
There are a bunch of folks, again, who I really admire intellectually.
I think Tucker is one of them.
Another person who I admire intellectually is a guy named Oren Kass, who has a book out that I've recommended on the show called The Once and Future Worker.
And in that book, Oren talks about this kind of new populist economics.
What he says is basically capitalism is designed to provide you the cheapest products and the best products at the most available opportunity.
And there's no question that this is what capitalism has achieved.
This is what globalization has achieved.
We live in times that would astound any human being from even 50 years ago.
We live in a time, economically, where, legitimately, you can have any product on planet Earth delivered to you within days.
Made in 10 different countries.
Assembled in a factory overseas.
Shipped directly to your house.
You don't even have to leave your house.
All you do is push a button and these things arrive.
There's a very famous economic essay called iPencil.
All about how no one on planet Earth actually knows how to make a pencil beginning to end.
Why?
Because there's a graphite factory, and then there's a wood factory, and then there's a paint factory, there's a metal factory, there's a rubber factory.
All of those places have to generate small pieces of the pencil, and then it is all assembled, and then it is brought to you for pennies.
That's the magic of capitalism.
That's the magic of globalization and free markets.
Now, when people say globalization, again, because people think that globalization means that we are giving up control to people who are outside America, They don't understand that globalization really just means free markets.
If we just had free markets, folks would be on board.
But globalization is an easy way to... It's kind of a left-liberal term for free markets that's been used, just like trickle-down economics is a left-liberal term that has been used instead of supply-side economics.
Well, Oren Kass, in his book, he talks about how capitalism is great at generating all sorts of consumer goods.
That capitalism is consumer-focused, which obviously is true.
It's consumed capitalism with making sure that you can not only dispense with your own labor at the price that you see fit, but also that you provide products and services to somebody else that they want.
What he says is that we may be living in a time very soon where people can't find fulfillment in consumerism.
Instead, they find fulfillment in jobs.
They find fulfillment in work.
Now, there's no question that a guy making $20,000 a year and working is probably happier than a guy making $20,000 a year from welfare and not working.
But the real question is, how much economic wherewithal do you have to sacrifice?
How much free market do you have to sacrifice to give that guy a job at $20,000 as opposed to just redistributing?
And this is really a fascinating economic debate that is breaking out.
I think it's premature, but it's fascinating.
I'll explain in just one second.
So, here is the new debate on the right in economics.
And it sort of crosses political boundaries.
It's really quite interesting.
On the one hand, you have folks who say globalization and redistribution.
What do we do with the people who are left behind, who are working jobs that get eliminated, who can't change jobs, who don't want to leave their hometown?
Now, the normal answer in the past was get up, get a new skill, leave town.
That was the actual American answer.
That's why America spans from coast to coast and isn't just relegated to the eastern seaboard.
Because people legitimately gave up plots of land in New York and decided, I'm going to go out to the middle of nowhere, I'm going to cross territory where people want to kill me, and I'm going to go out to the middle of nowhere, set up a claim, and then I'm going to work on that claim by myself, at risk of death, in order so that I can make something more of myself.
That is the American ideal.
The pioneer, the cowboy, is still the American ideal.
But that sort of has gone by the wayside because we now believe that everybody is entitled to things.
We're an entitlement culture.
And so what's broken down is two separate views of where the economy should go from here.
View number one is globalization and redistribution.
Free markets everywhere.
And if people are left behind, then we have a basic income, a universal basic income, or we have a social welfare net, a safety net.
And that's how we pick up for the folks who get left behind.
Those people, we just give them money, basically.
So globalization raises everybody's living standard, and then everybody who is left behind a little bit, we give them a little bit of extra money to make them feel better and so that they can live better.
That is model number one.
And a lot of folks in sort of the Trump camp say that's not right.
And the Bernie camp say that's not right.
They say instead, what we really need is a new model of how to think.
And the model of how to think is about jobs.
How do we provide jobs for people?
Because jobs provide meaning.
And if you don't have a job, you have less meaning.
So, what if we just restricted the free market itself?
What if we put barriers on the free market?
Now, to Orrin's credit, Orrin Kass, he doesn't really recommend tons of restrictions on the free market.
He talks about different ways that we could shape public policy in order to make the markets freer, actually, relieve regulations to make it easier to generate jobs.
But, President Trump has suggested restrictions on the free market.
He has suggested Restrictions on global trade, for example.
And there's a real push by some on the Trumpian populist right to restore union power, even though it is Americans voluntarily moving out of private unions, not companies breaking unions that has led to the dearth of unions in the United States.
So that's model number two, is you restrict the free market economy in order so that everybody has a job.
And that, again, is more of a left-leaning version.
So it's kind of fascinating because you have liberals who are for globalization and redistribution, and you have conservatives who are for globalization and redistribution, and you have liberals who are for workers And not free markets.
And you have conservatives who are for workers and not free markets.
Now, the actual answer to this problem is look at what free markets do.
Look at what free markets do.
And if President Trump were really a free market minded guy, that's what he would be saying right now.
All he would do is just point at his economy.
He would say, you know, you're all worried about technological developments.
You're all worried about automated cars and trucks and all the rest of this.
Well, guess what?
There's no question that capitalism has a process of creative destruction attached to it.
Joseph Schumpeter, the famous economist, coined this term, creative destruction.
That every time a new industry is created, old industries are destroyed.
The car industry destroyed the horse and buggy industry.
Wheelwrights went out of business.
There were literally people whose job it was to make wooden wheels, and they went out of business when cars came around.
But guess what?
That created new jobs in the car industry and new jobs in making parts for those cars.
In other words, certain jobs get destroyed so that we can all live a better lifestyle and people have to learn to adapt and adjust.
And that's the history of humanity.
Forget capitalism.
The history of humankind is adapting and adjusting to the environment around you.
This idea that we can't adapt and adjust to new technologies seems to me completely wrong-headed.
All of the talk about how all of these jobs are simply going to disappear thanks to technology and how we have to restore manufacturing jobs by restricting the free market.
It's a big mistake.
The reason that we live the most prosperous lives any human beings have ever lived in the history of time is because of these free markets.
All of the talk, we talked about this last week, all of the talk About how wages are the same between 1979 and 2018 neglects the fact that you can get stuff for one-third the price you could in 1979.
If I'm making the same amount of money in 1979 as I am now, but now my money goes three times further, I'm making three times what I was making in 1979.
Effectively speaking.
Because the value of money is what you can get for the money.
So, I think that this debate is not only premature, I think it's wrong-headed.
And I think it's going to lead to bad public policy.
I think this debate is going to lead to restrictions, regulations, crackdowns on free markets, all in the name of an unknowable evil that has yet to manifest itself.
There's under 4% unemployment in the United States right now.
It's about 4% unemployment.
That's basically full employment.
There's 7 million unfilled jobs.
Before we destroy a system that creates this sort of prosperity, we might want to think twice.
We might want to think twice.
Okay, meanwhile, the Trump administration is undergoing some severe difficulty with regard to foreign policy, specifically thanks to Mohammed bin Sultan, the Saudi crown prince, allegedly deploying a security team to Istanbul in Turkey, and they murdered a Saudi dissident.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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Okay, so, as we say, the President of the United States is in hot water specifically because The Saudi government has basically put him in a very rough position.
Here's the rough position they put him in.
Mohammed bin Sultan was considered the new reformer in Saudi Arabia.
And indeed, Mohammed bin Sultan looked as though he was a guy who was going to help lead this anti-Iranian coalition.
That continues to be his value.
All of the talk about the Saudi regime modernizing and moving toward liberalism, like classical liberalism, All of that was overstated.
It is an Islamic dictatorship in which people still have their hands chopped off for theft.
It is not exactly a modern country.
But we are all very shocked and appalled, as we should be, when Saudi operatives decide they're going to murder a dissident at a Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
So here's the Wall Street Journal with the latest reporting.
Saudi operatives beat, drugged, killed, and dismembered.
A dissident Saudi journalist in the presence of the kingdom's top diplomat in Istanbul, Turkish officials said Tuesday, as Washington urged Riyadh to provide answers, President Trump cautioned that Saudi Arabia should be considered innocent until proven guilty.
His Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on a visit to the kingdom said Saudi leaders had strongly denied involvement and were conducting a serious, credible investigation, but Turkey is now suggesting that they have tape of the entire thing happening, at least audio tape of the entire thing happening, which can't be very pleasant.
I mean, that sort of audio would be almost as hard to listen to as a Lady Gaga recording.
In an interview with the Associated Press Tuesday, Mr. Trump compared the allegations that Saudi agents had killed Mr. Khashoggi to the accusations of sexual misconduct against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
This is where President Trump gets himself in trouble.
This is not particularly smart.
Now, there are several possible responses to the Saudi situation.
Response number one.
This is really bad.
We should put some sanctions on Saudi Arabia, at least temporarily, until they provide some sort of answers on all of this, and until they punish the people responsible, and until they reform their conduct.
That's possibility number one.
Possibility number two is you say, yes, this is really bad.
Also, every country in that region is basically a garbage heap, or is run like a garbage heap.
The countries themselves, the people are, I'm sure, wonderful in many of these countries, but the administrations of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, certainly Syria, certainly Lebanon, Jordan, none of these administrations are great Western democracies.
These are all garbage administrations.
So, what we could say is, yes, this is really bad.
Also, for geopolitical, realist reasons, like Henry Kissinger, we still need to work with the Saudis to contain the Iranians.
Right?
That's possibility number two.
And then there's possibility number three, which is Trump telling the Associated Press, quote, here we go again with, you know, you're guilty until proven innocent.
We just went through that with Justice Kavanaugh and he was innocent all the way as far as I'm concerned.
Somewhere, Justice Kavanaugh screams in silent agony as he is compared to Saudi dictators who murder people in consulates and then liquefy their bodies.
That is just, it's like when Trump said during the Kavanaugh hearings that he'd been accused of things too, and Kavanaugh just must have been smacking himself on the forehead, Jean-Luc Picard style, double face palm.
It just, it makes, because the president sees things in black and white terms on every score, He says this sort of stuff, but equating Brett Kavanaugh, where there was no evidence other than the allegation alone against him, with the Saudis murdering a human who has disappeared, and where there is apparently audio evidence, an audio recording shared with both the U.S.
and Saudi Arabia.
Comparing that to Brett Kavanaugh, Brett Kavanaugh can't be a happy camper right now, come the hell on.
I mean, really.
Apparently on the recording, a voice can be heard inviting the consul to leave the room.
The voice of a man Turkish authorities identified as Saudi forensic specialist Salah al-Tabiki can be heard recommending other people present listen to some music while he dismembers Mr. Khashoggi's body.
According to the tape, Khashoggi was not interrogated.
Instead, he was beaten up, drugged, and killed by Saudi operatives who had flown in from Riyadh.
Apparently, he was dismembered while he was still alive.
So, things went real well over there.
All of this, again, is deeply, deeply ugly, of course.
That doesn't actually answer the question as to what President Trump should do, however.
And this is where President Trump's best claim is that he's basically just a realist trying to make deals as far as possible.
And while he appreciates the human rights violations are bad, he is not going to stay up nights worrying about the Saudi government.
committing human rights violations that we all know they've been committing for years on end.
I mean, this is the same Saudi administration that has been quite friendly with radical Muslims for decades on end.
The vast majority of the 9-11 hijackers were Saudi.
So, suffice it to say, the Saudi regime is not exactly a wonderful, wonderful regime, but that doesn't mean the United States doesn't have interest with regard to Saudi Arabia.
As an example of President Trump saying this sort of thing repeatedly, he was asked about Helsinki.
You remember he had that meeting in Helsinki with Vladimir Putin, where he was very complimentary of Putin.
It was not his finest hour.
Trish Regan, who has a brand new show on Fox Business, which is well worth watching, she pressed President Trump on Helsinki.
Here's what Trump had to say.
With Putin, they want me to go up and have a boxing match with him on stage?
That was nice to him.
I was nice to him.
But what happened is when I walked off the stage, everyone said, oh, that was great.
We're on the plane.
All of a sudden, the fake news starts saying, oh, Trump wasn't tough enough.
And let me tell you, if I was too tough, they'd say Trump was too tough.
I could have a very good relationship with Russia.
Having a good relationship with Russia would be a good thing, not a bad thing.
Okay, so there was that, right?
So when he says that about Russia, he said the same sort of thing about Kim Jong-un, right?
This is how Trump acts with regard to bad dictators.
He basically determines whether he needs them or not.
And then he tends to treat them nicely if he needs them.
Because this is how Trump is personally with all the people he deals with.
If he needs you, he's very nice to you.
If he doesn't need you, then he calls you a horse face.
And that's what President Trump does.
And so when people are confused that President Trump isn't calling Mohammed bin Sultan a horse face, that's because that's not how President Trump operates.
That does not mean, however, that what the left says about Trump's relationship with Saudi Arabia is true.
So Ben Rhodes, who is just the worst.
Ben Rhodes is a former national security advisor to President Trump.
He's just awful.
He's just awful.
He was the guy who lied to the American people about the Iran deal.
He was the leader of the Iranian regime outreach effort on the part of the Obama administration, an actual outreach effort to an evil dictatorship, the lead sponsor of terror on planet Earth, attacking President Trump, suggesting Trump is somehow responsible for Saudi Arabia acting like Saudi Arabia.
Journalists everywhere are less safe.
And let's face it, we have a President of the United States who says journalists are the enemy of the state.
So values like freedom of speech and dissent suddenly are very endangered around the world.
And that's a trend line that I think is getting much worse.
And so this vacuum of any advocacy for democratic values I think is putting people at risk.
And there's nobody else who's going to fill that vacuum if the President of the United States and the United States of America is not doing that.
OK, this is why Trump supporters are not going to resonate to anything the media are saying these days.
The media covered for an administration that did outreach to actual terrorists for years upon years upon years.
So when Trump says, listen, I'm not going to go crazy over the Saudi thing, most Americans are basically going to say, OK, well, all right.
Now, is that the proper action?
No, the proper action is probably the sanctions at the very least and insistence on some sort of change in Saudi Arabia.
But we do have leverage over the Saudis to pretend we don't is foolish.
President Trump is much more of a foreign policy realist than some of his predecessors.
And as a foreign policy realist, I think that it is not Okay, in just a second, I want to talk about the great battle of our time, which is not Saudi Arabia versus Iran, or even Republicans versus Democrats.
It is President Trump versus Stormy Daniels.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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Okay, so in just a second, we'll get to Trump versus Stormy, the great battle of our time.
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Mathis, you knew you weren't going to get off that easy, dude.
He's been in here for several days and he didn't get smacked yet, so that was just a requirement of the job.
In any case, the other big story on everybody's radar today is a story about Tiny and Hard Space, the great romance of our time.
So, President Trump let it off yesterday, you'll recall, when he decided that he was very, very happy that Stormy Daniels had had been forced to pay attorney's fees in the state of Texas on a ridiculous defamation lawsuit that she filed against him.
And he tweeted out yesterday, Now I can go after Horseface and her third-rate lawyer in the great state of Texas.
She'll confirm the letter she signed.
She knows nothing about me.
A total con.
And everybody went nuts because he called her Horseface.
Now, there was a theory online that he's, we know President Trump is just bad at spelling, so there was a theory online that he didn't mean to write Horseface, he meant to write Whoresface.
Uh, and You know, unkind, but fact check, harsh but true.
In any case, it is not good policy for the President of the United States to be doing any of those things, let alone to be saying that a woman he once shagged is a horse face.
It's a weird kind of self-own.
That woman that I had sex with was so terrible and ugly.
Okay.
That's a way to do it.
In any case, Stormy Daniels then replies in the typical classic fashion for which she is known.
She's a classy lady.
You know, the kind of woman who's featured in New York Magazine.
Not kidding.
There's a full photo spread of Stormy Daniels as the new feminist leader because she gets paid to have sex on camera and then had sex with a married man and then refused to shut up about it after being paid $130,000 to shut up about it.
She is a feminist heroine.
She is Susan B. Anthony.
My goodness.
So here's what she tweeted.
She tweeted, Ladies and gentlemen, may I present your president.
In addition to his, um, shortcomings, he has demonstrated his incompetence, hatred of women, and lack of self-control on Twitter.
Again!
And perhaps a penchant for bestiality.
Game on, Tiny!
So this is weird, because now she's suggesting that she is an actual horse.
Right?
Because he has a penchant for bestiality.
Well, the only thing he said about horses was that she's a horse face.
Which, I gotta say, I don't think is really true.
I don't think that Stormy Daniels is a horse face, just by any objective measure.
But, in any case, she says that he has a penchant for bestiality, which is weird.
And then she says, Game on, Tiny.
So, the romance of Tiny and Horse Face, I mean, is this how it went back when they first met?
Where Trump walked up and said, you have a horse face.
And she went, well, you're tiny.
And then they just passionately made out.
Is that basically how that went?
Well, that wasn't the end of the story.
The end of the story was that Michael Avenatti felt the need to jump in.
So Michael Avenatti, who I, I adore Michael Avenatti.
I will be honest with you.
I have been saying for months now that I want Michael Avenatti not only to run for president, but to win the nomination for the Democrats because I root for entertainment value around here.
If we are going to live this news cycle, let's live it.
I mean, come on, let's paint the town red.
If we are going to sin such that God has decided his vengeance upon us shall be this news cycle, then let us revel in our sin.
So Michael Avenatti desperately wants to run for president and in the last three weeks has destroyed his own party's credibility on Brett Kavanaugh.
Lost a lawsuit against President Trump.
Now he jumps into the Stormy Daniels Donald Trump fight with a video so good that I want to make it my permanent ringtone.
Here is Michael Avenatti sounding off.
For those who can't see, Michael Avenatti, you know, this is really high style.
He has taken his phone, turned it into selfie mode, and now he is filming himself speaking very seriously into camera about horse face.
Here we go.
It's a sad day in America when the president of the United States calls a woman a horse face.
Donald Trump should be ashamed of himself.
I don't care if you're on the right, the left, or the center.
No man should call a woman a horse face, especially the president of the United States.
I have two daughters.
I think it's a disgrace.
I don't care what your political persuasion is.
You should condemn it as well.
It's wrong.
It's so wrong.
It's the wrongest thing.
He paid his client off.
Trump paid his client off $130,000 to shut up about nailing her 10 years before while he was running for president.
But the real problem is he called her a horse face.
No one in this country should be called a horse face under Amendment 87 of the Constitution.
It should be illegal.
For anyone to be called a horse face in America.
I'm sorry, we need to play the beginning of that again.
Because the way he says horse face, you can see his internal monologue going, Michael Avenatti.
His internal monologue is, don't laugh, Michael.
Don't laugh when you say horse face.
Don't laugh.
Damn it.
This is like his fifth take.
This is his fifth take.
His first four takes, he had to be breaking up.
I enjoy this too much.
When the president of the United States calls a woman a horse face.
I've laughed more in the last week and a half thanks to this news cycle than I think the previous time.
Oh!
And Democrats love this idiot!
Oh, it's the best.
It's the best.
Who thought that was a great idea?
He was like, you know what?
I'm going to jump into this campaign because I'm going to flip this camera around.
The president should never call anyone a horse face.
That's like the ninth worst thing Trump did yesterday.
Like Trump said that Brett Kavanaugh was equivalent to the Saudi government who just killed a man, dismembered him, and liquefied him.
And Michael Avenatti is deeply, deeply concerned about the horse face comments.
Woman, a horse face.
I promise you, by the way, that Bill Clinton called women far worse than a horse face.
Way worse than a horse face.
LBJ was not famous for his gentility around women.
Really.
Okay, but we'll get to the media's response to all of this because it was just as hysterical and just as over the top.
President Trump has a unique gift.
He can make his enemies do pretty much anything, and they do and they will.
So here is how the media responded to all of this.
So the media said it is very, very bad, very, very bad for President Trump to have called Stormy Daniels a horse face.
This is after weeks of them reveling in her calling his penis a Mario Kart character.
I mean, really.
They reveled in this.
CNN covered it endlessly.
She went on Jimmy Kimmel, and she actually picked out mushrooms that she says his genitalia looked like.
Here's Don Lemon trying to suggest how bad it is that Donald Trump would insult someone's physical appearance by insulting President Trump's physical appearance.
So well done here, Don Lemon.
Does he own a mirror?
He keeps talking about people gaining weight and how people look.
Does he own a mirror that doesn't have Vaseline over it or a cloth?
I mean, all he has to do is look in the mirror.
Donald Trump is no prize.
And if I were him, not that I'm one either, I would keep my thoughts about other people's looks to myself.
You just didn't.
Literally, you just didn't.
Because if I were him, I would keep people's— He's ugly, and he's fat.
And if I were him, I'd keep my thoughts about other people's looks to myself.
I love that this is a serious news segment on CNN.
First of all, Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon in the same room, or at least on the same split screen.
The amount of brain wattage on that screen right now, if translated into electricity, might be able to lightly toast a piece of bread.
My goodness.
But that is, yeah, so yeah, the American people are definitely going to take seriously your admonitions about name-calling when you say that the president is a fat orange toad.
Good job, guys.
Really, really well done.
Then you have April Ryan, who showed up on CNN to do the same routine.
So April Ryan is Urban Radio Network reporter.
You'll recall April Ryan from such hits as Kanye West's wife's former sex tape lover doesn't approve of Kanye West.
That happened last week.
But April Ryan is now the great adjudicator of class and decency in the media.
Very exciting stuff from April Ryan.
What is he doing here?
He's the President of the United States.
This is street.
It's gutter.
It's going into the gutter.
No, it's not going.
It's there.
So it was one thing when she was quoting Ray J to critique Kanye West.
It is another thing when the President of the United States goes after a woman who was insulting his genitals on national television to the shortling and laughed at.
Now listen, none of this is justification for Trump's behavior.
But I think we already know who President Trump is with regard to women.
Are we supposed to pretend?
Is this our thing?
Are we supposed to pretend that the President of the United States is some sort of gentility?
That he's the king of chivalry?
Yeah, calling a man a horse face.
I understand, Michael Avenatti.
Calm yourself.
All of this is just absurd.
It's just absurd.
The absurdity didn't stop there.
President Trump continues to attack Elizabeth Warren, but not in the most effective way.
How many times do I have to tell you?
He needs to sign a check to Elizabeth Warren for $976.56, 1 1,024th of a million dollars.
That's what he needs to do now.
Instead, he's tweeting about her.
So he tweeted, Elizabeth Warren is being hammered, even by the left.
Her false claim of Indian heritage is only selling to very low IQ individuals.
Now, President Trump on the attack.
Again, he's a hammer in search of a nail.
Sometimes he hits a nail, sometimes he hits a baby.
In this case, he hit a nail.
So, at least there's that.
At least there's that.
The left continues to defend, continues to defend Elizabeth Warren, by the way.
I just, this news cycle this week is too much.
I'm not sure I can handle it.
My brain is exploding.
Joan Walsh, the resident feminist in chief over at The Nation, which is to say, a crazy person, she has a piece today called, Donald, Elizabeth Warren will not let Donald Trump define her.
Because that's what she's doing.
When she says she's Native American, in fact, she won't even let biology define her.
It's pretty amazing.
She won't let objective reality define her.
It's really, really an impressive feat.
According to Joan Walsh, Elizabeth Warren releasing her DNA test was a way of preventing Donald Trump from defining her.
So instead, she defined herself as a fool.
So that was great.
That was really exciting stuff.
Do you remember Rachel Dolezal?
Remember there was that white lady who said she was black so that she could be like the head of the Spokane NAACP?
And then people found out that she had just been basically tanning her skin and doing her hair out in frizzy hairdo.
And everyone was like, well, that's a white lady and that's a racial hoax.
I would bet money that if you took a racial DNA test of Rachel Dolezal, she has more African background than Elizabeth Warren has Native American background.
And now I'm desperate to make that happen.
So Rachel, if you're listening right now, I will pay for your 23andMe test, because I want to know whether you are more black than Elizabeth Warren is Native American, so that we can laugh endlessly as the media, which ripped you to shreds, has to say that you are more black than Elizabeth Warren is Native American.
I just think that would be absolutely delicious.
Okay.
Time for a couple of things that I like and then a couple of things that I hate.
So, things I like today.
Lindsey Graham 2.0 is the best version of Lindsey Graham.
He emerged during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings.
He's sort of like Demi vs. Pute Lovato.
Lindsey Graham 2.0.
I'm going to take a DNA test, all of you have.
I've been told that my grandmother was part Cherokee and Indian.
It may all be just talk, but you're going to find out in a couple of weeks because I'm going to take this test.
You are going to take it?
I'm taking it and the results are going to be revealed here.
This is my Trump moment.
This is reality TV.
Okay, well, good stuff from Lindsey Graham 2.0.
Other things that I like.
So, Hillary Clinton was in a van.
Not the van that she collapsed into on 9-11, 2016.
A different van.
And she was at an event, I guess raising money for Senator Bob Menendez in New Jersey, because he's suddenly found himself in a bit of a firefight for his Senate seat.
And the van crashed.
Here is what that looked like.
And there's Hillary like, I hope she wasn't driving.
like.
But that is, I mean, let's be honest, that is not the first time that Hillary Clinton has been stopped by the polls.
So that was, oh, I know you loved it.
Come on, guys.
Come on.
You love the punning.
It's there.
Hillary Clinton.
I have such a good joke that I could say right now, but I've pledged not to make any more van driver jokes.
I won't.
That's solid stuff from Hillary Clinton.
I don't know who this week decided that they would go to the punchline asylum and let out all the patients, but all the punchlines are running free.
And there's no way for me to catch them all.
I'm only one man with one butterfly net.
I can't keep up with the chaos.
There is no way for me to catch every punchline that has now escaped the asylum.
So stop it, people.
Put the punchlines back where they belong.
Solace.
Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.
So, thing number one I hate.
Two GOP candidates have now been assaulted in Minnesota.
According to Bill McMorris over at the Washington Free Beacon, the Minnesota Democratic Party has suspended a spokesman for calling for violence against Republicans, even as two GOP candidates have been assaulted and suspected politically motivated attacks.
The Democratic Farmer-Labor Party has suspended communications staffer William Davis for a week because he said Democrats should bring Republicans to the guillotine.
And also, two different Republicans have now been assaulted.
Minnesota State Representative Sarah Anderson was punched in the arm after spotting a man destroying Republican yard signs.
She said the attack left her scared, and her attacker only desisted when she fled to her car and threw it in reverse.
And then there was another GOP candidate who was also attacked.
His name is Shane Meckland.
He suffered a concussion after getting sucker-punched while speaking with constituents at a restaurant in Benton County.
He says that he has suffered memory loss.
And doctors told him he'll have a four to six week recovery time ahead of him.
He said he was cold cocked while sitting at a high top table at a local eatery and he hit his head on the floor.
So, well done mob politics.
Everything is going great.
Hey, other things that I hate today.
There's a story from the Agence France-Presse, the AFP, saying that there's a new reality TV in France, and here is how it goes.
It's a new dating show, helping time-pressed millennials save on the unnecessary preliminaries by cutting straight to the chase.
The show is called Making Love, and it has jaws dropping at Mipcom, the world's biggest TV market in Cannes, by having contestants have sex first before deciding if they like each other.
Its French producers, WeMake, says it has brought together scientifically matched singles to ask the essential question, could making love make you fall in love?
The answer is no.
You idiots.
We've been trying this in western societies for the last 40 years since the rise of the radical feminist movement and the sexual revolution.
It is a giant fail.
Having sex with people first does not make them fall in love.
It makes a man satisfied that he has had sex first.
Okay, this is so stupid, I cannot even tell you, but I guess the idea here is that if we rut like animals, suddenly love will be the outcome.
If you have that little love in your life, that you think that sex with a random stranger is suddenly going to usher in an era of nuptial bliss, you're out of your damn mind.
You're out of your mind.
And ladies, if you think that this is how you're going to hook a man, is by having sex with him, you're crazy.
That's not what hooks a man.
That really isn't.
Any man will have sex with any mildly attractive woman at any time.
That's how men operate.
If you think that you offering sex to a guy is somehow going to get him to stick, that is just not true.
That is just not true.
To get men to commit requires you to actually not do that.
It requires you to actually Suggests to a man that perhaps a relationship is necessary in order for physical lovemaking to be part of the process here.
That is why marriage was built in the first place.
It was a great institution for women.
Too bad radical feminists decided to throw it all away.
Okay.
Well, we will be back here tomorrow with all of the latest and craziest news.
I don't, I can't even predict what's going to happen by tomorrow.
I just, I've run out of predictions.
So we'll tell you then.
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.
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