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Nov. 9, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
50:18
The Slow Wave | Ep. 657
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Democrats gain late, seriously late, ground on Republicans.
Everybody revs up for 2020, and we check the mailbag.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
As always, a lot of breaking news, and we'll get to all of it in just one second.
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OK, so on Tuesday night, it seemed as though the blue wave did not materialize.
It was more like a slight blue tide.
But as the votes have been tallied, it looks more and more like a slow-moving blue wave.
Just to be completely honest about the status of the election, the reality is that early on Tuesday night, there were a couple of races that surprised everybody.
The Ohio governor's race, the Ron DeSantis race in Florida, the Rick Scott race in Florida.
And because of those surprises, it sort of colored everybody's perception of what had happened in the election.
It looked like Democrats would pick up 30, 31, maybe 34 seats at the outside.
Now it's looking like by the end of this election, because the votes are still being tallied in some places like California, Democrats could have picked up as many as 40 seats, which is a wave, and that seats that looked like Republicans had won, including in Florida and Arizona, could still be up in the air.
Right now, if you had to guess, you would suggest that Kyrsten Sinema, who is a radical leftist, Insane person is going to be the new senator from Arizona over Martha McSally, the first female Air Force pilot to fly in combat.
So the Arizonans apparently picked Kristen Sinema, who in 2003 suggested that she should be okay with Americans joining the Taliban.
Over Martha McSally, which means that that Republican margin, plus three in the Senate, goes down to plus two.
Now it also seems that Rick Scott, Rick Scott in Florida, his race is now being upended by late vote counting.
When I say late vote counting, I mean seriously late vote counting, because it turns out that Broward County is just a crap show.
Broward County, of course, the site of the Parkland shooting, and it turns out that Broward law enforcement Well, it turns out that the Broward County electioneering officials, those guys are also terrible.
The election officials also don't know what they are doing.
Rick Scott has now filed a lawsuit against those election officials, according to Fox News.
Accusing Democrats of conducting a coordinated effort to steal elections in a campaign of possible rampant fraud, Republican Senate candidate Rick Scott filed explosive lawsuits late Thursday against the top election officials in two heavily Democratic counties as they continue to report new votes and three major races in the state appear headed The official in question is named Brenda Snipes.
The gubernatorial race also with Ron DeSantis and Andrew Gillum could be headed for a recount.
What exactly is the problem?
Well, in Broward County, it turns out the officials in Broward County are refusing to even update folks on how many outstanding votes there are or how exactly they are being counted.
The official in question is named Brenda Snipes.
She is the person who is the supervisor.
She and another woman named Susan Butcher.
And Rick Scott says it has been over 48 hours since the polls closed and Broward and Palm Beach counties are still finding and counting ballots.
And the supervisors, Brenda Snipes and Susan Butcher, cannot seem to say how many ballots still exist or where these ballots come from or where they have been.
And so this looks like a blatant attempt to change the results of an election.
For example, Brenda Snipes.
Again, she's a supervisor in Broward County, whose job it is to oversee these elections.
She's finding votes after the statutory period for vote announcements has already been made.
She's still finding votes.
It's just like Florida 2000.
Democrats are saying, we don't have to obey any of the rules with regard to counting of votes.
Instead, what we're going to do is we're going to say, count every vote and then we'll just find new votes in the back room, Ms.
Snipes, can you talk to us at all?
You can't speak to us this evening?
somewhere.
Here's Brenda Snipes dodging questions about how many votes there actually are outstanding.
Miss Snipes, can you talk to us at all?
Can you talk, you can't speak to us this evening?
Dr. Snipes, why did early voting take so long to count?
Okay, now Snipes, if you say that I'm being a little bit too suspicious, it would be worth noting here that Brenda Snipes has been under serious scrutiny as well as she should have been for years because she has been, I think she was actually fired for incompetence under I think she was actually fired for incompetence under Jeb Bush.
A long time ago.
She is just, she's a terrible official.
She's been a terrible official for a long time.
In May 2018, she was under fire for gaffes.
She vowed that the election would be safe from hackers, but she has a long history of stinking at her job.
On May 11th, a circuit court judge ruled, this is of this year, Brenda Snipes broke federal and state law by too quickly destroying ballots from the August 2016 primaries, even though there was a pending lawsuit seeking access to those ballots.
You understand?
The courts told her, don't destroy those ballots because we need to look at the results of primaries there.
She went ahead and destroyed the ballots anyway.
That's not the only problem with Brenda Snipes.
In November 2016 general election, a small number of mailed out ballots were missing the state's medical marijuana referendum.
The office attempted to contact voters who returned ballots did not include the referendum question so they could revote.
Okay, well, you can't do that.
In August 2016, early results were posted online a half an hour before the polls closed.
You can't start posting poll results before the polls close.
That violates state law.
In 2016, the American Civil Rights Union sued Snipes for not doing enough to remove ineligible voters from the county rolls, increasing the potential for voter fraud.
Snipes is just, she's a terrible official, she's been a terrible official for a long time.
Rick Scott went after her on Sean Hannity's show, talked about it yesterday.
Florida law says that all absentee early voting numbers must be reported within 30 minutes of the polls closing, correct?
Absolutely.
And those numbers have gone 71,000 votes.
Sean, they've found 78,000 new votes since election day two days ago in Broward County and 15,000 more votes in Palm Beach.
We don't know how many more votes they're going to come up with.
And amazingly, as soon as people started making a fuss about this, including Senator Marco Rubio, suddenly Broward County stopped finding votes.
It's just incredible.
Marco Rubio tweeted this out yesterday.
He tweeted, Florida law requires counties report early voting and vote by mail.
That obviously is wildly inappropriate.
polls closed.
43 hours after polls closed, two Democrat strongholds, Broward County and Palm Beach County, are still counting and refusing to disclose how many ballots they have left to count.
That obviously is wildly inappropriate.
A mandatory recount now appears imminent not only in Rick Scott race, but also in the Agricultural Commissioner contest and Florida's high-profile gubernatorial brawl between Democrat Andrew Gillum and Republican Ron DeSantis based on new vote totals, even though Gillum has already conceded.
He says that he wants the recounts, although he is not unconceded.
Scott says, we have no idea how many votes they're going to come up with, but they're going to try and keep counting until they win the election, basically.
We're just going to keep finding votes.
In random places.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee specifically alleges that Snipes is in violation of the Florida Constitution and the Florida Public Records Act.
It demands an emergency hearing as well as a court order requiring Snipes to turn over information about ballots in Broward County.
Scott's complaints against Palm Beach County Supervisor of Election Susan Butcher, meanwhile, alleges first that officials there illegally refuse to allow Republicans or any witnesses to monitor the county's handling of damaged absentee ballots.
According to Scott, the officials there failed to allow the Palm Beach County Canvassing Board to determine which damaged or improperly filled out absentee ballots were valid and how the voters of those ballots had intended to vote.
Instead, Butcher and her staff simply did what we remember from 2000, where they were basically looking into their heart to determine how people voted.
Well, if a Democrat looks into a Democrat's heart to determine how a possible Democrat voted, I think we can all determine what exactly that vote will look like.
The lawsuit that Scott has filed against Butcher requires an injunction, demands an injunction requiring Butcher to make and compare duplicate copies of all damaged absentee ballots in the presence of Scott's representatives, which seems totally fair, and to allow the Palm Beach County Canvassing Board to determine voters' intent when counting those ballots.
I mean, this is amazing, amazing stuff.
Rubio has pointed to the slow drip of tens of thousands of additional ballots that were reported throughout the day Thursday, most of which were favorable to several Democratic candidates.
Isn't it weird how every recount, every recount always seems to favor the Democrats?
Isn't that very weird?
How every single recount, it's like across the country, it always seems to favor Democrats in counties where Democratic officials are in charge of the elections.
Weird.
Just weird.
So obviously, all of this should be deeply troubling to Republicans.
With all of that said, it is pretty obvious that the 2018 message is that Republicans have a problem.
If Rick Scott loses that seat in Florida, that means the Republicans end up with a net gain of just one in the Senate, leaving them with 52 senators.
Which would be a serious, serious, serious problem.
If they end up with 52 senators, that is not enough to provide a bulwark against the 2020 senatorial elections, in which case the Democrats could theoretically sweep all three chambers of Congress.
All three chambers.
The House, the Senate, the Presidency.
They could sweep all of them in 2020 if Republicans don't have enough of a buffer zone.
And this does lead us to have to recapitulate some of our analysis about the 2018 election, about the midterms.
Because the sort of comfortable analysis was that it had not been a wave, that Democrats had not scored wins across the board, people like Beto O'Rourke.
In Texas had gone down.
The Republicans don't really have as much of a problem as people are suggesting because they retained the governor's house in Ohio as well as in Florida.
But if it turns out that by the end of all of this Democrats won more seats than they did in 2006, and they were able to only hold the Republican wins to plus one, and they were able to take a couple of formerly Republican seats in the Senate, In Nevada and in Arizona?
That it should be a wake-up call to Republicans.
Will it be a wake-up call to Republicans?
Maybe not.
We'll talk about that in just one second.
First, let's talk about the fact that we are in a season of change, which is not necessarily wonderful for you.
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Okay, with all of the talk...
about the shift in the senatorial election in Arizona, where, again, it is astonishing that Kyrsten Sinema could be sitting in the Senate.
She is as far left as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in every possible way.
She's a true, deep blue progressive.
She takes that seat from Martha McSally in all likelihood.
That means that we have to reevaluate again where we stand in this election.
If this was a blue wave, that should be a wake-up call to Republicans.
Is it going to be a wake-up call to Republicans?
Probably not.
Probably not, because everyone has sort of Locked into their narrative about what American politics is right now.
The right has locked into the narrative that President Trump is a magical, magical man who can simply conjure victory out of the jaws of defeat, thanks to 2016.
And so it doesn't matter what the data says.
It doesn't even matter what the elections say.
All that matters is that we rely on President Trump to save us.
I don't think that President Trump would want you to rely on President Trump to save us.
I think the fact is that if Republicans want to win, they're going to have to shift strategy.
That doesn't mean shift policy, but it does mean That Martha McSally would have won that seat in Arizona, in all likelihood, if it had not been for President Trump demagoguing immigration in the last three weeks of the campaign.
The Republican losses in the House would have been mitigated if President Trump hadn't made himself unpalatable in suburban Republican districts like the Georgia 6th.
These are actual problems for Republicans, and if they fail to recognize these as actual problems because they're too ensconced in the magical thinking that President Trump can suddenly conjure victory out of defeat out of thin air, they're likely to feel the effects of that.
And where you're really seeing this is with regard to young people.
I've been warning about this on this program for literally years.
We have the largest young audience of conservatives and probably non-conservatives who listen to conservative shows in America.
We have literally hundreds of thousands of young people who listen to this show every single day.
70% of our audience is under the age of 35.
With all of that said, I talk to young people probably more than anybody else in the conservative movement.
Young people do not like President Trump.
Young people are off-put by his antics.
Young people are forming a larger and larger percentage of the electorate.
And that is a serious problem for Republicans.
I'm going to show you a bizarre poll.
One that you would not expect.
This one comes from Texas.
And here's a question.
It's from CNN's exit polls.
How long have you lived in Texas?
People who were born in Texas, people who have moved to Texas.
Among people who were born in Texas, which is 58% of the people polled, 51% voted for Beto O'Rourke, 48% voted for Ted Cruz.
percent voted for Beto O'Rourke.
Forty eight percent voted for Ted Cruz.
Among those who moved to Texas, only 42 percent voted for Beto O'Rourke.
Fifty seven percent voted for Ted Cruz.
This is sort of counterintuitive, isn't it?
You would have thought that it is all of the outsiders coming from LA and San Francisco and blue areas around the country moving to Texas that are turning the state purple.
That's not what's happening.
What's happening is that people who are older and are sick of doing business in California are moving to Texas.
People who are in New York and don't want to pay those taxes, those people are moving to Texas.
Those people are voting for Ted Cruz.
They're expatriates from leftism.
The people who are born in Texas, namely the younger contingent, those people, those people are voting for Beto O'Rourke.
There is a generational problem for Republicans here, and that is a generational problem that is only going to grow if they don't look reality in the face.
So in a second, we'll talk about how Democrats could still blow this because there is that possibility.
So here's the thing.
Republicans can blow this by ignoring the problem that's looking them right in the face, namely a generational shift in which a lot of Americans do not like President Trump and they think that Republicans are character free.
It's a serious problem for Republicans.
If they fail to recognize this, they're going to keep getting shellacked.
By the same token, Folks on the left who are suggesting that they can win simply by calling Republicans racist, that is not true either.
Whichever party realizes first that the battle is in suburbia is going to win the 2020 election and will have a shot at consolidating gains in the other chambers of Congress.
If Republicans realize they need to make some outreach efforts toward the suburbs, they'll be okay.
If they don't, they'll get swamped.
If Democrats continue to run radical leftists, they will lose.
If they start running folks who are more moderate in purple areas, they will win.
And Republicans will lose.
Now, here's where there could be a theoretical silver lining to what is happening in Arizona, where again, I'm devastated that Martha McSally is probably going to lose to Kristen Sinema.
The silver lining there is that maybe it'll be a wake-up call to Republicans that they can't just bank on the magic.
And maybe it'll be deceptive Democrats who believe they can run candidates like Kyrsten Sinema all across the country and somehow pull out victory.
Now, if Democrats were smart, looking forward to 2020, Democrats would be looking to candidates who are more moderate in orientation.
They would be looking, for example, to theoretically Joe Biden, right, because he has sort of a blue-collar appeal and is considered more moderate, even though he's not politically moderate.
They would be looking at folks like Amy Klobuchar over in Minnesota, the only Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee who acquitted herself at all well during the Kavanaugh hearings and who just won a blowout election in Minnesota, which is a hotly contested state.
Klobuchar would be a pretty good 2020 candidate for Democrats.
In all likelihood, they are going to be deceived by the fool's goal that is progressive victory.
They think that if they run a serious progressive, then they are going to win again, simply by shouting about how mean President Trump is.
That's why there is still a lot of focus on Beto O'Rourke.
It turns out that Democrats are trying to push Beto O'Rourke for the national spotlight, even though he lost in the state of Texas.
And remember, Trump wasn't on the ballot in Texas, okay?
If Trump had been on the ballot versus Beto O'Rourke, that is not a 51-48 election.
That is a 55-45 election.
In any case, CNN reports that Beto O'Rourke's closer-than-expected loss Tuesday has fueled optimism among his friends and allies, as well as Democratic admirers around the country, that he will run for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
O'Rourke smashed online fundraising records, and he huddled with senior campaign aides Wednesday in El Paso, offered them no indication of future political plans.
But there have been very initial discussions with O'Rourke in recent weeks about the prospect of a 2020 bid.
This is the one area where Democrats did come up short.
They don't have a national candidate in 2020.
They were hoping O'Rourke would win in Texas, and then he'd be the de facto frontrunner in 2020.
He didn't.
They're hoping Andrew Gillum would win in Florida.
He'd be the de facto frontrunner in 2020.
He didn't.
So, they've been left a little bit leaderless at the top, but that is not necessarily a problem for them if they select somebody who actually is moderate.
Chances are, however, that they will not.
That they are going to double down on simple hatred of Trump as the only talking point for getting rid of Trump.
Now, the thing about that is that it's effective where it's effective.
Dislike for President Trump was very effective in the suburbs because Trump makes himself disliked.
And you can see Democrats are already trotting out their talking points for 2020 on this score.
Michelle Obama, for example, has a new book out in which she savages President Trump.
She says in her new book that Donald Trump sends the message, I can hurt you and get away with it.
There's been some kind of soft patter about Michelle Obama running for president herself in 2020.
Truth be told, she'd be a very dangerous candidate.
The AP reports that Michelle Obama denounced Trump for bragging in 2005 on the infamous Hollywood tape about sexually assaulting women, and she accuses him of using body language to stalk Hillary Clinton during an election debate.
That was idiotic.
That was not a thing that happened.
And she writes of Trump following Clinton around the stage, trying to diminish her presence.
Trump's message, according to Obama, in words which appear in the book in darkened print, I can hurt you and get away with it.
So this is going to be the pitch for Democrats come 2020.
Now, the way to cut back against all of that, obviously, is for President Trump to not feel particularly threatening, for him to be aggressive where he needs to be aggressive, but to be less than aggressive where he does not need to be aggressive.
Unfortunately, the president's aggressive streak is not confined to areas in which it helps him.
And that's a problem for him.
In a second, I'm going to show you how that aggressive streak is blowing back against him a little bit, even though it shouldn't necessarily in certain areas.
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Okay, so President Trump is making himself more polarizing, not less polarizing.
He did this in the lead up to the election and he is now doing it in the aftermath of the election.
He's obviously irritated with the press.
There's been some fallout from his willingness to go after Jim Acosta.
Now, as I said yesterday on the show, Jim Acosta is a schmuck.
No, find you somebody who loves you, like Jim Acosta loves Jim Acosta.
Like Jim Acosta, while maintaining that his First Amendment rights have been deeply violated, he's flown to Paris to cover the White House.
So he's like taking selfies outside the Eiffel Tower.
That's, I mean...
This is obviously Nazi Germany.
He obviously has a very rough life, does Jim Acosta.
Well, President Trump has decided that he is angry at the entire press corps right now, which, again, is not unfitting.
The press corps has been terrible to President Trump.
President Trump has responded in kind, but President Trump Do you expect Matt Whitaker to be involved in the Russia probe?
He did a press scrum as he was on his way to the helicopter today.
And he was walking out to the helicopter.
The press starts asking him questions.
And here is how it went.
You expect Matt Whitaker to be involved in the Russia probe.
Do you want him to...
It's up to him.
Do you want him to rein in Robert Mueller?
What a stupid question that is.
What a stupid question.
But I watch you a lot.
You ask a lot of stupid questions.
Yes, and Trump obviously has about had it with the questions he's getting from the press.
That is not the same thing, by the way, as him being a person cracking down on the First Amendment or we're in the throes of fascism or something.
It's not that stupid a question, honestly.
Like, people are wondering whether Attorney General, Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker is going to crack down on Mueller.
I don't think he is.
There's no evidence that he is.
With that said, that's the natural consequence of firing Jeff Sessions, who had recused himself from the Russia probe, where Whitaker will not.
And then it gets even better.
President Trump goes after April Ryan, so he's talking about Jim Acosta from CNN.
I mean, I do this on a regular basis, right?
I speak publicly.
I'm on the radio.
I'm on Twitter.
April Ryan deserves to be blasted by President Trump.
The problem is whenever you speak, I mean, I do this on a regular basis, right?
I speak publicly.
I'm on the radio.
I'm on Twitter.
I write for a variety of websites and outlets.
You have to consider your audience, right?
When President Trump does this stuff, is his audience the press?
Is his audience the base?
Or is his audience those people in suburbia?
If the president directed his mind toward the people in suburbia, what do I need to do to win those people over?
I think that he'd be a lot more effective than directing his mind toward the people he is talking to right in front of him.
Talking to his base, talking to any other group of people.
The only people in America who matter politically right now, because everybody else is locked into their position.
The only people who matter politically right now are those folks in suburbia.
The question is, does this stuff help or hurt for President Trump?
So here's President Trump going after April Ryan.
The same thing with April Ryan.
I watch her get up.
I mean, you talk about somebody that's a loser.
She doesn't know what the hell she's doing.
She gets publicity, and then she gets a pay raise, or she gets a contract with, I think, CNN.
But she's very nasty, and she shouldn't be.
She shouldn't be.
Okay, fact check true on all of that, right?
I mean, he also said about Jim Acosta that Jim Acosta isn't very bright, but he is very loud.
Also, fact check true.
All of this is true.
The only question is whether it is effective.
True and effective are not necessarily the same thing.
That doesn't mean lie, but it does mean that sometimes you don't say everything that comes through your head, because it provides fodder for the other side.
Now, to be fair, the Democrats are obviously being dishonest about everything that is going on with the Mueller probe.
The Mueller probe is moving forth with speed.
They're going to issue a report probably in the near future.
That's not stopping the Democrats from claiming that Trump is trying to quash the Mueller probe.
That's because, originally, their claim was that the Mueller probe was going to uncover terrible wrongdoing between the Trump campaign and the Russians.
As hopes of that have faded, it has moved into, well, maybe the Mueller probe will uncover obstruction.
Maybe what they'll uncover is President Trump trying to stop a full investigation.
As those hopes faded, it turned into, well, maybe Trump will try to obstruct the Mueller investigation, and then we can get him for obstruction of the investigation of his obstruction into a collusion that did not occur.
Right?
This is where Democrats are going.
Now, Nancy Pelosi tried to make that case.
She says that President Trump fired Jeff Sessions to interfere with Robert Mueller.
Well, I think the latter is the primary purpose, is to interfere with the Mueller purpose.
The timing of the Mueller investigation, the timing of it was, of course, to distract from the big defeat that the President suffered in terms of our taking the House.
Okay, so she says that she thinks that the president is apparently going to interfere with Mueller.
Again, this is a pipe dream for Democrats, but... And it is a lie.
There has been not a... Seriously, there is no evidence whatsoever, none, that President Trump has somehow hamstrung the Mueller investigation.
James Comey said as much.
Mueller has said as much.
There is no evidence of that.
Comey said this in open testimony.
He was asked, OK, do you think that President Trump shut down the investigation in any effective way?
He said no.
He said no.
That's not stopping the Democrats from jumping on this bandwagon, though.
Richard Blumenthal, who's just terrible, the senator from Connecticut, he says that democracy is under attack because Jeff Sessions was fired.
Now, I do love that the same Democrats who say that Jeff Sessions is evil That Jeff Sessions is a neo-confederate?
These same Democrats are very, very upset that Jeff Sessions would be fired by President Trump.
Here's Richard Blumenthal, who like five minutes ago was ripping on Sessions, now ripping on Trump for firing Sessions.
It is a break-the-glass moment, an attack on our democracy, and it should precipitate exactly the kind of firestorm that we saw in the wake of the Saturday Night Massacre under Richard Nixon.
It is, in effect, a slow-motion Saturday Night Massacre.
No, it isn't.
The Saturday Night Massacre was a deliberate and open attempt to fire the special prosecutor in the case.
A Saturday Night Massacre here would be Trump firing Mueller.
That would be a Saturday Night Massacre.
Him firing Jeff Sessions is not a Saturday Night Massacre.
And unless you can come up with any evidence to the contrary, you're just fibbing.
The funniest part of this is, I do love this, thousands of protesters showed up on the streets in New York City, and it's like they have nothing better to do in New York.
And I don't know what they do at night.
It seems like there's a good nightlife in New York, right?
There are things to do.
They go to Broadway.
Madison Square Garden still has Knicks games.
There are things happening in New York, but apparently, Not so much, because if you drop a hat in New York, people will gather and protest.
Last night, I kid you not, they were actually protesting against the firing of Jeff Sessions, a man they despise.
All President Trump really has to do to gain their love is President Trump has to fire President Trump.
Democrats will turn him into a hero, and then President Trump will be able to run against President Trump in 2020 on the Democratic ticket, and he will win.
That should be the actual strategy.
I love this.
They're wandering around shouting, let's go Mueller.
And there are pictures of Trump being arrested with signs that say, just do it.
And people carrying the baby Trump balloon.
Thousands of people marching in New York City for no apparent reason.
So well done, everybody.
As I say, President Trump should fire President Trump and then run on the Democratic ticket as somebody who was fired by President Trump.
He can run against himself and then he'll win, presumably.
So that I think is best strategy.
OK, in a second, I want to get to the mailbag.
But first, but first, let's talk about you keeping your hair.
OK, the reality is that you look up top, look at that top of the head and you think, oh, man, starting to look like my pops up there, starting to look like my dad.
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Okay, I want to get into the mailbag.
I want to take your questions in just a minute.
But first, you're going to have to go over to Daily Wire and subscribe.
Go over there right now.
I mean, we have thousands of people subscribing, really, on a fast basis, because people love the content as well they should, because, come on, it's great.
Not only do you get the rest of this show live and Michael Moles' show live, and Andrew Klavan's show live, also, you get special access to Andrew Klavan's next chapter of Another Kingdom, performed by the execrable Michael Moles.
Today we'll be live streaming the first 15 minutes of episode 6, titled He Bought Me, which is also the title of the Broward County Elections Office.
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I'll get that full experience available to subscribers only.
Also, make sure that you subscribe over YouTube and iTunes.
We have a Sunday special coming up that's going to be really great.
And the annual subscription.
You get this.
The very greatest in beverage vessels.
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Now, you may have noticed that I'm a little bit under the weather today.
You know why?
Because I have not been drinking often enough from my leftist tears hot or cold tumbler.
I'm not saying there are medicinal effects to drinking from the leftist tears hot or cold tumbler.
That would probably violate You know, falsity in advertising.
All I'm saying is that if correlation equals causation, which as we all know it doesn't, but if it did, then drinking from this tumbler would certainly have prevented me from getting sick.
So with all those caveats, get the tumbler.
Okay, you get it for $99 a year.
Also, reminder, I'm speaking at Ohio State University on Tuesday, November 13th at 7 p.m.
Eastern.
Gonna be talking about all of the Democratic plans for 2020.
And why their intersectional strategy that was sort of started on college campuses around the nation has now infected the Democratic Party at an extraordinarily deep level and is tearing the country apart from sea to shining sea.
How the social fabric is fraying because of the intersectional strategy pursued by the left.
How that's drawing a reactionary response from the right.
We're going to talk about all those things over at Ohio State University.
On Tuesday, I'm sure there will be protesters, because there always are.
I'm sure it'll also be a lot of fun.
I'm looking forward to seeing it.
It's a massive university, obviously, with a tremendous population, and we're going to be in a battleground state, so it should be a blast.
Go check it out.
If you are around Ohio State, then see if you can get a ticket.
Ohio State University, Tuesday, November 13th, at 7 p.m.
Eastern.
Go check that out.
Okay.
Well, we are the largest, fastest-growing conservative podcast in the nation.
Now, just before we get to the mailbag, I do want to make one note.
There is a hot topic out there right now about whether, in fact, there is a reason that the current acting AG, Matt Whitaker, should not be allowed to be the acting AG.
There's a... there's...
A lawyer named John Yoo, who served under the Bush administration.
There's another lawyer named George Conway, who of course is the husband of Kellyanne Conway.
They have read, they've written a piece for the Washington Post, in which they talk about Matt Whitaker not having been subjected to confirmation by the Senate, and so him taking a position for which he has not been confirmed is probably illegal.
Clarence Thomas has felt the same.
John Yoo says, quote, the Constitution says that principal officers must go through appointment with the advice and consent of the Senate.
In Morrison v Olson, the Supreme Court made clear that the Attorney General is a principal officer.
Therefore, Whitaker cannot serve as acting AG despite the Vacancies Act, which does provide for him to be acting AG.
The statute is unconstitutional when applied in this way.
The reason that it was okay for, for example, the, the after, uh, after Well, originally, there have been a couple of cases where acting AGs have taken over, obviously.
But those cases in which acting AGs took over, they had already been confirmed by the Senate in a different capacity.
That has not actually happened with Matt Whitaker.
So this is an actual serious, it's an actual serious issue.
Does it really mean anything for the long haul, though?
Because the president does have a majority in the Senate, which means that he is going to get his AG pick.
There's been a lot of talk about Chris Christie, which will just be a blast.
So, good times.
Okay, let's do a little bit of mailbagging it up.
It's been a long week.
Let's do some mailbagging.
My husband got me hooked on your podcast.
I don't miss a day.
My kids ask me if I'm listening to Ben Shapiro when you're on.
I have three kids, five, four, 15 months.
My two oldest girls love classical music.
They've watched The Little Einsteins, a show that teaches about different composers, as well as listen to the classical kids' CDs.
They know many composers just by hearing a piece.
My question is, what else can I do to expose them to the classics?
Well, number one, if you have a five-year-old, then you should get your kid into actually taking lessons.
My four-and-a-half-year-old Is taking violin lessons right now.
The hard part is getting her to practice because she does not like practicing, but she does love her lessons.
And so if I tell her that she has to practice or there will be no lessons, then she practices.
My two and a half year old son can't wait to take music lessons.
I think that the best way to engage with classical music is not only to engage directly by listening, but also by playing classical music.
What else can you do to expose them?
Well, I mean, my four and a half year old has been with me to actual concerts.
Like I took her to the Hollywood Bowl.
For Star Wars Night, as well as for a Grieg concert.
She was really great.
She sat through the entire thing.
So, you can do that as well.
I should come up with a list of sort of classical-friendly pieces.
Honestly, another great way, if they watch TV, is the old cartoons have a lot of classical music.
We played one, or a couple of them last week, in which, like, there's a Tom and Jerry cartoon that has Liszt.
There's a Bugs Bunny cartoon that has Rossini.
There are a bunch of different old cartoons that have classical music, because they're a little too young to watch Amadeus.
Melanie says, Yeah, I do think that it is driving people toward a more polarized view of their neighbors, and that makes them more susceptible to racism on both left and right.
So I think that what you're seeing is, on the left, openly racist talk about, for example, the shortcomings of white women.
Which has become an actual talking point on the left.
And on the right, what you're seeing is a bunch of folks who are responding to the intersectionality of left by saying, well, why can't we have an identity politics of our own?
And there are black folks who say we need to vote like black folks.
And there are brown folks who say we need to vote like brown folks.
Well, why can't we say we need to vote like white folks?
Because that's racist.
So I do think that reactionary politics has made things a lot more racially polarized, if not outright racist.
Well, Clarence Thomas, how old is Clarence Thomas right now?
Trump will get the chance to replace his president.
Many are watching for Ginsburg.
I've heard Clarence Thomas may take an early retirement.
What are your thoughts?
Well, Clarence Thomas, how old is Clarence Thomas right now?
So he is 70 years old.
I think he's a little young to retire.
I don't think that he's going to retire in the next couple of years.
I think more likely that he tries to hold out.
The justices who are most likely to retire right now are Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.
They are the oldest.
So Ruth Bader Ginsburg, of course, is now 85 years old, and Stephen Breyer is the second oldest justice on the Supreme Court.
He is 80 years old.
So those would be the two who are most likely to have health problems, just based on age.
I think that President Trump, if he's lucky, will get one more, and that may be Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but she's going to hold on by the skin of her teeth because she doesn't want to be replaced by a Republican, obviously.
Scott says, hey, man, love the show.
I'm a proud Tumblr owner.
Do you think the left will ever be successful in getting rid of the Electoral College?
What do you think is the best argument in favor of the Electoral College?
Well, the best argument in favor of the Electoral College is that it doesn't allow urban areas to completely dominate rural areas in the same way that the Senate of the United States doesn't allow urban areas to completely dominate rural areas of the country.
And the Constitution was, in fact, a pact between the states as well as of the people more broadly, as we've explained in our Federalist paper series, uh, So the states are never going to approve of this, okay?
Because in order for there to be an amendment to the Constitution getting rid of the Electoral College, you need two-thirds of states to approve.
If you think that states like Montana are going to approve of California simply being able to outvote the rest of the country based on population, not a thing that is going to happen.
I'm not sure there's ever a way to prevent mass shootings.
Even in heavily gun-controlled countries where basically there's been gun confiscation, mass shootings are still present.
Look to places like Norway.
Look to places like Denmark.
There have been some mass shootings, I believe.
In France, obviously, there have been a bunch of mass shootings.
The best solution, honestly, is that highly trafficked areas must have armed security.
They must have armed security guards.
In fact, I've been urging some friends over at the NRA to start a fund to help not only protect schools, but also protect churches, synagogues, mosques from the possibility of mass shooting.
Well, my favorite place to vacation is Hawaii, just because everybody speaks English, so I don't actually have to work to try and communicate with the locals.
It has American standards of living, so you don't actually have to worry about the water, for example.
And Hawaii is paradise, man.
Hawaii is just spectacular.
And I've been on most of the islands over there.
It's pretty amazing.
If I could visit anywhere in the world, where would it be?
Yeah, I've been thinking about this a lot lately.
There are a lot of places I'd like to visit.
I'd actually like to visit Austria because I'd like to see Salzburg and Vienna.
I would like to visit the Far East.
I'd like to visit Japan.
I think that'd be really interesting.
When I actually have time, right, when my wife and I retire in, what is it now, 35 years, then...
Then I guess that we'll probably be doing a fair bit of traveling because we really do like traveling together, obviously.
But there are so many great places to visit, and I feel like I'm not well-traveled enough.
Joe says, Well, the first thing you have to do is you have to come up with an actual chapter-by-chapter outline and figure out what you're going to say within each chapter, including subsections within each chapter.
Now, I've written fiction.
I've written nonfiction.
Nonfiction is a lot easier for me than fiction.
For some people, it's the opposite.
I know that I've talked to Andrew Klavan, my friend and colleague here over at The Daily Wire about this.
He writes fiction for a living and he spends an awful lot of time outlining, creating character profiles, really trying to map everything out in advance that by the time you sit down, it's really about execution and not about necessarily just going wherever the story takes you.
I think that's true in nonfiction too.
You should be trying to map out what you think before you actually start putting pen to paper.
And then when you get good enough, when you've done it enough times, then your brain sort of starts structuring things automatically like that before you even sit down.
Dan says, I'm currently a college student at St.
Louis Community College.
This is my first time managing a political campaign.
I'm moving to the capital of Missouri to work as my representative's legislative assistant.
Any advice for a young woman in my position to help me continue climbing the ladder without straying from my own values?
My boss is Republican.
Any advice on some issues we should focus on?
This next year, obviously, the life issue in Missouri, I think, would be supremely useful.
I think that in Missouri, protecting religious freedom would be really useful.
That's beyond sort of getting out of the crony capitalism that all state governments are involved in.
Anything you can do to cut the budget would be useful as well, though those are broad priorities.
But as far as keeping your principles, this is what I said to a bunch of staffers on the Hill in Washington, D.C.
a few months ago.
We interviewed Speaker of the House Ryan back a few months ago, and it was a snow day, so I was supposed to speak at Georgetown.
The speech got canceled, so we had a little extra time.
So we called sort of an impromptu, an impromptu basically get-together with all the congressional staffers who wanted to come.
Several hundred showed up.
It was really fun.
And what I said to all the congressional staffers is that they have a harder job than I do.
My job is to come here and tell you what I think on a pure intellectual and philosophical level, and tell you where particular policies stray from that purity.
The job of a lot of folks in Congress is to try and get the best deal they can in line with that philosophy.
Well, making a deal always means straying from that philosophy a little bit.
The best thing that you can do to keep your soul is to recognize where you are straying from your core ideology and core philosophy, be honest about it, say, yeah, I'm getting the best deal that I can, but I understand this isn't the best deal that is necessarily possible in the greatest of all possible worlds where I control everything.
Now, understanding where you stray and not making excuses for that straying, but simply saying, listen, things have to get done.
It's a much more practical and a much more honest way of doing politics than simply saying this is the best deal that ever was.
Christy says, Hi Ben.
Thank you for being a reliable source of sane insight on an insane world.
An insane world.
I'm wondering what your opinion is on flu shots specifically for my children.
Do your kids get flu shots?
Every source I find recommends it, yet my husband doesn't want our kids to get it.
He claims the benefits don't outweigh the risks.
We've both done a fair amount of research.
We have come to a stalemate.
We could use some words of wisdom from a guy with a doctor for a wife.
Thanks.
Indeed.
So we do get the flu shot.
The flu shot is one of the less effective shots.
In the United States, simply because it only controls for one strain of the virus, and they sort of bet on what they think is going to be the most prominent virus, and then other flus go around.
Now, there is serious danger in people not getting flu shots, because it turns out that sometimes, in many cases, the government is right in the flu shot that they determine is going to be the most necessary.
And the number of people who have been dying of the flu on a year-over-year basis has been increasing.
Specifically because people are not getting flu shots.
So I'm very much in favor of vaccines generally.
I'm very much in favor of the flu vaccine.
But recognize the flu vaccine is not a cure-all because it is not actually a flu shot.
It is a particular strain of the flu shot.
William says, Well, I think that's probably true that Ohio is moving in the direction of a non-swing state.
That is because Ohio has a heavy rural population and because a lot of the people who'd be heading to urban populations are actually heading out of state in Ohio.
Ohio's an interesting state because the population in some ways is getting more rural.
It is still heavily blue-collar.
Fewer people, on average, are going to college in Ohio than are going to college in other surrounding states.
And education tends to correlate highly with voting Democrat because you go to college, you tend toward the left, and then you move to a big city.
Well, Ohio seems to be moving in many areas in the opposite direction.
Well, Ohio is indeed trending red in a pretty significant way, just as Indiana is trending red, just as Missouri is trending red.
There are a bunch of states that are trending red.
Nobody's talking about that because everybody is focusing on the states that are trending blue because they're more populous.
Antonio says, Does this mean Trump is posturing for the firing of Robert Mueller?
If so, do you stand by your statement on the Bill Maher show that if he quashes the Mueller investigation, impeachment should be on the table?
I know Nancy Pelosi has made a strong indication the course of action isn't in the best interest of her party.
You still see impeachment as a real threat for Trump.
Thanks, Ben.
Well, yeah, I stand by that.
I mean, I've always said that if he quashes the Mueller investigation, then he is obviously attempting to shield himself.
What he should be doing is allowing the Mueller investigation to go forward and then he can fight back against it.
Now, those of us who are intellectually honest are willing to defend the president when we think that he is being unfairly maligned and targeted.
Now, I've done that.
I think that the Mueller investigation will come up with far less than the Democrats think.
I've been as honest as I can be on the Mueller investigation.
When I think that there is evidence that the Trump campaign did things wrong, like the Trump Tower meeting with Don Jr., I've said so.
And when I think the Democrats are overplaying their hand by suggesting collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians that took place and affected the election, I've said that too.
So, I don't think President Trump is going to quash the Mueller investigation.
I've heard nothing like that from anyone in the White House, and I know a fair number of folks in the White House.
So, you know, I think the media are getting their skirts in a bunch over all of this, but I don't think that that's actually the reality of what's going on here.
Okay, time for a quick thing I like, and then a quick thing I hate, and then we'll get out of here for the weekend.
At long last, my goodness, this week has been 87 years.
So, things I like.
So there's this great video of Saints quarterback Drew Brees throwing footballs to his four kids.
And all I can say is this basically looks like what I do in my house.
So here's Drew Brees with his four kids throwing footballs to them.
Now, they are running around in circles and he is throwing football after football to them.
He's basically running a football drill.
They throw the footballs back to him, he throws them to the kids.
Okay, now, the reason that this reminds me so much... Okay, so, things that young parents should know...
Kids love running in circles.
OK, it's just a thing.
Try to find an area of your house where there is a circle so kids can run around in circles.
It is their favorite thing to do.
Now, I don't have the skill set that Drew Brees does.
So my version of kids running around in circles has taken two forms in recent weeks.
Form number one is that I lie down on the floor with my head on a pillow and then my kids run around our large den in a giant circle and take turns jumping on my stomach.
Uh, and this is both dangerous and apparently highly rewarding for them.
They love it.
Um, my, uh, my daughter is, she's like macho man Randy Savage from the top rung.
I mean, she actually comes in and she jumps in the air and she goes knees first into the stomach.
So it's, it's challenging.
I got to kind of grab her in the air before she kills me.
My son is, is much more funny.
He kind of runs up to me and then just sort of falls over on me.
So, that's version number one.
Version number two is, for some reason that I can't explain, we have some extra mattresses in the den right now.
I guess there's some folks staying over, in-laws, a few weeks ago.
We have some extra mattresses in the den.
They're sort of piled up there.
And my daughter, for some reason, she likes to make what she calls doggy beds.
So, she gets pillows and blankets and she just makes beds around the house for no reason.
And this particular, you know, kind of Princess and the Pea mattress stack.
She has fallen in love with, she calls it the Toto.
I don't know why.
And she, and so what we do is I put my son on my shoulders and then I chase her around the room and then I take him and I throw him onto the mattress stack and then I take her and I put her on my shoulders and run around the room.
And this tires me out and them out, me more than them.
But the good news is that this is pretty, you can see these kids are in their PJs with Drew Brees.
That's precisely the time to do this.
You tire your kids out by running them around in a circle as fast as humanly possible until they collapse in exhaustion, and then you throw them in bed as fast as possible.
Okay, so, you know, a little unwarranted parenting advice and unsolicited parenting advice for you there.
Okay, time for a thing that I hate.
So great moral voice, Snoop Dogg, went to the White House.
Now, I will remind you that Snoop Dogg actually was inside the White House with President Trump, then went on national TV and bragged about smoking pot inside the White House because, as we all know, President Obama was a man of deep personal dignity and conviction when it came to the honor of the White House.
So now, Snoop Dogg has been relegated to the lawn outside the White House.
And so here is Snoop Dogg standing around outside the White House, smoking a blunt, and saying, F the President.
So I'm glad that, this is why it's so astonishing.
People are like, oh, Trump, he has these celebrities to the White House.
You know, he has people like Sarah Palin to the White House, people who said terrible things about President Obama.
Snoop Dogg went to the White House while Barack Obama was there and smoked pot in the White House and bragged about it nationally.
And now he's out front of the White House doing the same thing.
Like, it's just... Come on.
Dignity left American politics a long time ago.
Here's Snoop Dogg contributing to that.
So beautiful stuff there from Snoop Dogg.
So glad that he is an icon of our national culture as well.
Very, very exciting stuff.
All right.
So we will be back here next week.
Obviously, we are expecting the Mueller report to come out sometime in the next couple of weeks.
I will be on the road.
I will still be there.
So you're going to want to actually Follow us.
I think we're at Ohio State University, University of Pittsburgh, and University of Wisconsin, so we are making the rounds next week.
If you're in any of those areas, check out the tickets.
Should be a lot of fun.
And if not, then I believe we are streaming some of those, so check that out as well.
We'll have all the latest news then, all the fallout from the midterms, all the rest.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Alex Zingaro.
Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.
Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.
The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.
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