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Dec. 9, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
51:10
David Limbaugh | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 30
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Some people say we need to fight as dirty as the left or we're gonna lose.
I don't agree with that.
We don't have to fight as dirty, but we have to fight as aggressively and as relentlessly.
So here we are on the Sunday special with David Limbaugh, author of Jesus is Risen, which, if true, is bad news for me.
We'll get to all that in just one second.
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Well, David Limbaugh, thank you for coming.
I really appreciate it.
Thanks for having me.
So for folks who don't know, and this means nobody knows because I haven't told the story before.
The way that I got started in political commentary was at least partially due to David Limbaugh, who I met for the first time in person today.
So we have been talking and corresponding for legitimately 17 years.
And this is the first time we've ever met in person, actually.
So the way that this started is I was writing a column for the UCLA paper.
I applied to Creator Syndicate, which was your syndicator for your column.
And I applied cold, and they picked me up.
And then I had to get blurbs for the column so we could send it off to various newspapers.
And I emailed you out of the blue.
I was just some random kid.
And I was like, can you give me a blurb for my column?
You kindly said, sure.
And then you said, and also, if you decide to write a book on college campuses, then I would be happy to be the agent for it.
And I thought, OK, well, then I should probably go ahead and do that.
And then I wrote Brainwashed.
So, we have been friends for 17 years now, and it's pretty amazing.
It took us this long to actually meet in person.
I don't mean to put you on the spot, but tell us the story of how we met.
That's more specific than I remember, but that's exactly right.
And I don't remember actually engaging in solicitation for your legal business, but But I did want to encourage you to write.
Amazing prodigy.
And what has always amazed me, too, about you is that you didn't take off in an explosive way until maybe, what, the last year or two?
Five years, maybe the last four or five years, yeah.
And maybe the Piers Morgan thing was the catalyst.
Exactly, like 2013.
Yeah, that's how fast time goes.
But, haven't I always told you that it's going to happen?
Many times, many times.
And so it's gratifying.
And I don't take any credit for it at all, but I just love having been present as this thing develops.
Well, you should take some credit for it, because David was one of the people who, when I felt like crying because I wasn't actually progressing at the speed at which I was hoping to, David, you were always one of the people who was telling me that stick with it, everything's going to be okay, people will eventually come around.
Yeah, and our mutual friend Ann Coulter wanted to get you on the Supreme Court.
I had a different path for you.
Okay, so let's talk about ways that the church and synagogues have screwed up.
Because if you look at religious observation in the country, it's been markedly declining since the 1950s.
The number of people who are affiliated with an official religion is much lower now than it used to be.
People say that they are spiritual but not religious, which is the most empty phrase that I could possibly think of.
It's like you get to say that you believe in God without actually having to do anything about it.
But it seems to me that there are three problems, three various approaches that have been taken, all of which have their problems.
Approach number one is the approach that you mentioned, which is the let's have pizza and a guitar and come to church for the pizza and the guitar.
And we won't talk politics at all.
We will never threaten anything that you think about life.
This seems to me the direction in which a lot of churches have gone, thinking this is going to draw in young people.
Young people don't want that.
Young people want eternal values.
They want to know why they're here and not in a movie right now.
They want to know what it is that makes church special.
What it is about our 3,000 year history in Judaism and 2,000 year history in Christianity that makes it worthwhile to give up your Sunday morning when you could be out playing video games.
Do you think that the churches are doing a good enough job of leaving behind that sort of soft approach?
Because I think that too many of them are falling into this in an attempt to fill the pews in short order without actually getting to the root of the matter.
Yeah, I agree.
And it worries me that, for example, a pastor, a preacher, has got to be willing to talk about sin from the pulpit.
If he's afraid to turn people off, then he's doing a disservice.
Now, I don't think I don't want pastors to inject politics overtly.
I want them to advocate values that are consistent with the Bible and that may be consistent with conservative political values, but not do it in a political or partisan way.
I don't mean to do it furtively.
I just mean preach the Bible and preach Christian values.
But some of them are afraid and they stay away from these issues.
I visited one church where the pastor said, right after Trump won, we're going to pray for the people here who weren't in favor of Trump's...
And I was so turned off by that because what about...
Did they ever say that about Obama?
And here's the thing.
I don't want pastors to be political conservatives or political liberals.
I want them to leave all of that out and just preach the gospel, preach the Bible.
But some of them are afraid to do that.
And even if they do get people in the door, I think ultimately they're not going to keep them in the way that they want to keep them because they're not going to fill them with what they need.
So I think that...
So we agree on Problem number two is something you mentioned a little bit earlier, which is a feeling that you get from a lot of people who don't have a lot of familiarity with church or maybe they do with the wrong churches when they're young.
This feeling of incipient theocracy, you know, the folks who think Mike Pence is going to reinstitute the Handmaid's Tale because he's a religious person, and they think back to their youths when they had a priest or a pastor or a rabbi who used to feel very oppressive.
I think it's important for, you know, religious communities to point out, look, we're here to help guide you and provide you the social fabric so that you can do the right thing, but we're not interested in grabbing the reins of government and then cramming down our version of life on you other than protecting life, liberty, and property.
That's exactly right.
And while you can look at world history and say, well, they did.
We did dabble a lot in theocracy and intermixing church state in that sense.
But I think our framers were very clear.
They wanted to prohibit the establishment of a national church.
And the reason they wanted to do that is because they knew that if you have one church that's mandated, then you don't have religious liberty.
They wanted religious liberty for everyone.
And you can argue about whether it's ultimately about Christians and all denominations being whatever, but I don't care.
The spirit of it is the same.
I don't, as a Christian, I don't want to muzzle anyone.
I want the freedom of religion and speech and association to be robust.
And that's one thing, one telltale sign of the difference between libs and conservatives.
Liberals are censors.
Liberals suppress liberty.
Liberals are intolerant.
Conservatives and Christians are tolerant.
We have nothing to fear from the marketplace of ideas.
We just don't want people to keep us from saying what we want to say, such as we're seeing now in the social media.
But I'm on record on this.
I'm against theocracy.
Affirmative.
It's the worst thing you could ever do.
We're not supposed to do that.
Now, I think the Jews were supposed to do that in the Old Testament.
God wanted to be their king directly.
They demanded a king, and he ultimately gave it to them.
But I think you would probably agree with that history.
Maybe you wouldn't.
In fact, I'd be interested if you didn't.
But Christians for sure, and Jews today, we don't want theocracy, do we?
I mean, even in the Old Testament, God is really dicey about kingship and monarchy.
I mean, Samuel is really not happy with the concept of the Jews wanting a king.
That's my point.
It's supposed to be a much more direct relationship between people and God without this sort of intermediary cramming things down from the top.
It's supposed to be a relationship between God and his children as opposed to somebody who's actually the enforcement mechanism for God from the top.
That's a point.
So even that theocracy was not what we think of theocracy today.
Right.
And that theocracy existed in a different setting and at a different time, obviously.
There are many rabbinic responses to specifically this issue because Jews have never been in control of land for a couple of thousand years up until 1947-1948 again.
So then there's the third issue with church and synagogue And that is, I think, the most troublesome one for a lot of conservatives and Republicans.
And it gets into some pretty dicey political territory, which is, of course, what makes this fun.
I see it a lot among young people, which is the feeling that, OK, so you don't want theocracy, and you have values that you're preaching.
What are you willing to say about politicians who are doing good stuff for you, but may not share your values?
And this, obviously, I'm referring to President Trump.
There's a lot of controversy over how the evangelical community has treated President Trump, with some people saying that the evangelical community has acted unfaithfully, in a certain sense, by green-lighting his bad behavior.
Other people saying, well, you have to back him.
I mean, the opposition is legitimately anti-life.
I mean, not Pro-choice, but affirmatively celebrating abortion.
So how do you separate out the various strands of how Trump should be treated by Christians, if they want to reach out particularly in an intellectually honest way to young people?
I think that obviously it was a dilemma going in for me when I didn't support him during the primaries and there are a lot of things about him I didn't like, as you well know.
I see Trump as kind of the general in a culture war and in a war for our salvation of the country.
Secular salvation, I don't mean literally.
I see the left as so crazy and so Antithetical to our views and our vision of America.
That I applaud Trump fighting.
Now, I don't like all the things he does, obviously.
And I don't want to lose my credibility or intellectual honesty by defending things that he does that I don't think are right.
But since he's been in office, as opposed to before, I don't see him misbehaving that much, no sexual dalliances, none of that kind of thing.
He hasn't been accused of any of those kinds of things.
Everything that's come up is about what has occurred prior to being in office.
I think Trump, one of the reasons I was for Cruz and not for Trump originally, I didn't believe he was a conservative.
And I think I was rational in believing that when you look at his past.
I don't believe I'm selling out by now saying I'm supporting the fact, the welcome fact that he has changed, at least he's changed in terms of his policies.
What we anticipated and what he's doing.
He's governing for the most part as a conservative.
And that's gratifying to me.
His tweets.
Yeah, I don't like the tone of some of them, obviously, and you've mentioned some of them, I won't even say it, but I do like the fact that he's fighting.
See, I think one of the reasons we have this problem, Trump is a symptom of, to me, we have a perception that the Republican Party wasn't fighting, that they were squishes, that they wouldn't ever fight Obama on budget battles, that they're always catering.
Every time there's a compromise between Republicans and Democrats, The, the ball of socialism is marched a little bit incrementally down the field.
You never see it go the other way when there's a compromise.
It's only when we win and we force it down their throats.
I mean, not force it, but we do it democratically.
They force it down our throats, i.e.
with Obamacare.
So, I, I don't, I, I see Trump as governing conservatively, uh, and I, I, the, some of the things he says, oh, let me say this.
I know that you and I, I hear, I watch and listen to your podcast a lot.
I agree with you 99% of the time.
I think we have a different perception though about Trump.
And this is what bothers me about Never Trumpers.
They think we're sellouts.
I haven't sold out.
I have five kids.
I have nothing to sell.
I love America as much as I ever have.
I am not offended by Trump's nationalism.
I don't see code in Trump's nationalism to white supremacy or alt-right or any of that.
Trump and code don't mix.
Trump is, whatever he says is what he says.
And so I don't see any of these sinister motives that Trump has.
He may say things that aren't true, but I don't take him that seriously.
So as before, when I, some of the things he did, I was just appalled.
Now I kind of laugh when I see these videos of him in the wrestling thing.
Now I look back at him accusing Ted Cruz's dad of assassinating.
I just laugh at that because I don't, it's so absurd.
And I don't even take him seriously.
It was dirty pool at the time.
Don't get me wrong.
But I don't, I just don't take, see Trump as some sinister guy.
I think he's really working for the good of America.
And I mean, I really, of all the things he believes, I really believe he loves America.
And, and I don't see a lot of evil in him.
And I think as a Christian, I have a duty to support him because he's the guy that's standing in the way of, he's standing athwart the advance of leftism.
Okay, so I want to ask you in a second about the response to that.
And this is coming from somebody who said I'm much more likely now to support him than I was in 2016.
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All right.
So the response to that, particularly when you talk to young people, is that some of the language that you're using to describe President Trump is pretty flattering.
So you say that he's the general in the culture war, for example, or that you think that he's doing what's best for the country.
And the other way of saying it, sort of the other side of the coin is...
Dude's kind of a schmuck, right?
Which is like, personally, he doesn't have a history of treating women well, obviously.
He's been very skeezy in his business dealings.
He lies a lot.
He says a lot of things that aren't true.
But he's a perfectly serviceable and better than serviceable vessel for a lot of my political priorities.
And for that reason alone, since all the damage that he was going to do has now been done, right?
I mean, I was afraid that he was going to coarsen the public culture, even though it's already coarsed.
He's done that.
It's over.
Can't put that cat back in the bag.
All right, he's going to say things that I don't like.
He's done that.
Not sure that can be undone.
He's going to soul suck the Republican Party.
I think he hasn't really done that to too much of an extent.
But when you say to young people, particularly, that he is a The feeling that he's a great leader, or that he's a good man, or that he's even a decent fellow.
I don't think that he's a particularly decent fellow.
I wouldn't want him as a business partner.
I don't think that he's a good man.
I wouldn't want him around my wife, unsupervised.
But as a vehicle for my political viewpoint, which is a reflection of my values, I would certainly prefer him in the White House, too.
To Hillary Clinton or any other Democrat that they are willing to run at this point or probably in the near future.
So with that being the case, you know, we're both coming at it from the perspective of people who are going to vote for Trump in 2020.
But I do wonder if it undercuts the message of people who are value centric to lead with the, like, to what extent do you feel the need to defend Trump as a human as opposed to defending your vote for Trump as a politician?
Well, it depends on the charge against him.
I think the facts ought to speak for themselves on a case-by-case basis.
I do believe that he has become more conservative, substantively.
I agree with that.
But let me tell you my theory why.
I don't think he was ever ideological.
He did have strong beliefs on tariffs and trade wars and that kind of thing.
And immigration.
But he hung around New York liberals, and he thought they were nice guys.
They were nice to him, and he's very much a product of who, I mean, he responds to people personally, if they like him and all that.
And you can say that's a negative, and I understand.
But now he sees the left for what they are.
And now he sees who the good guys are, including the Christians.
And I actually think there's been a transformation.
I don't know about a conversion.
I have no idea where he is spiritually.
But I think he's moved in the right direction substantively and idealized, even beyond how he's governing.
I think he's come to see who the good guys are in this existential struggle for America.
I don't want to say that to young people or anybody else that if he's doing something wrong that it's right.
I don't want to say that it is.
But I might give him some slack on things that I don't take him that seriously about.
So, if he says, I want to wrestle somebody to the floor, or he talks about it, I don't want him to curse in public, obviously.
But, if he's combative, that doesn't bother me.
I want him to be combative, because that's what we've missed, and that's why the base is so, that's why there's a rallying around him, because they see, I really believe this, that the conservatives thought, the Tea Party thought, that we weren't, that there were no leaders standing up for our values, and our ideas.
Something that does bother me.
I'm probably as idealistic as you are.
I consider myself a constitutional conservative.
I was for Ted Cruz because I saw him as the vintage, pure constitutional conservative.
I know Trump isn't that, and he isn't the kind of guy that can give me goosebumps about someone who will read constitutional law and all that.
And I didn't agree with these people who I argued with during the primaries that we need somebody who's going to come in and break everything to fix it.
Because I believe what we needed to do was return to our principles, our constitutional principles.
But since he's been in office, I've had a rethinking even of that.
I've come to believe, and it may be rationalization, I don't know.
I've come to believe that we did need somebody to really shake things up because I see, if Ted Cruz had come in, and I still love Ted and I'm friends with him, I don't know that the country would have allowed him to do what Trump has done.
Trump is so unorthodox, whether you give him credit for it, just say that his nature as being so unorthodox has resulted in some things really happening.
I don't agree with the people who have now analyzed it.
I think they got it right for the wrong reasons.
But I think in retrospect, they were right, that we needed to have things just broken, not our system.
And you're going to say, well, not you, but I say to myself, then how do we restore the purity of our system and the constitutionality and all that stuff?
Well, I think we can look to him as honoring the Constitution.
I don't agree with the people who say he's so authoritarian.
Yeah, he likes Putin because Putin liked him.
He might admire tough guys, but he's not doing anything that's a threat.
In fact, the only thing he really did, the only executive order that he ever did that I thought was blatantly unconstitutional was when he reversed himself at the pressure of liberals on the border thing.
Now, there are probably other examples.
I don't fear him.
I don't see that he wants to do any of that.
And when he makes these statements, I wish I could be king.
Obama said that stuff in a minute.
I don't think Trump means it. - So let's go back to this topic about President Trump shaking things up.
So my view of President Trump shaking things up is I can name maybe one place where I think that no other Republican would have done it.
And that is moving the embassy to Jerusalem.
I think no other Republican does that.
I think that he is so out of the box and so unorthodox a thinker that he thought, OK, there's no reason for this.
Let's just do it.
It's obvious that we should do it.
Let's do it.
I think even Ted Cruz would have had difficulty doing it.
But in terms of shaking things up, I think Ted Cruz probably gets the tax cut.
I think that Ted Cruz probably gets whatever reversal of Obamacare happened because it's just whatever Republican votes are there.
I think he probably appoints the same justices, maybe better justices in the case of Kavanaugh.
We'll have to see how Kavanaugh goes.
So where do you think that the shaking things up has really benefited the country and the conservative movement?
When I say, I don't want to make the statement that he could have done it better than Cruz in the sense of Uh, I don't mean he would have advocated better.
I just think because of his personality and his charisma, he's able to get things done that Ted might not.
Ted, they had so demonized Cruz, uh, that they, I think they would have neutered him politically.
I don't think he would have backed down one bit.
I just don't think he would have, and I don't want to say he might, he's the one exception.
I don't want to say anything negative about him.
Uh, cause I don't regret my support for him.
Right.
But I just think in the end, Trump, Because of his unorthodoxy might have, even on Kavanaugh, he defends Kavanaugh.
He says, somebody more circumspect may say, we got to wait for the evidence to come in.
And Trump waited, but then he finally said, this woman is not telling the truth.
Those kinds of things, Trump has more courage for whatever reason.
You may attribute it to the wrong things, but he's just a street fighter.
He's a brawler.
And I don't have any problem with that.
In fact, some people say, we need to fight as dirty as the left or we're going to lose.
I don't agree with that.
We don't have to fight as dirty, but we have to fight as aggressively and as relentlessly as they do.
So how do you think this plays out in 2020?
So I will admit that I was a skeptic leading up to 2016, obviously, because the data suggested skepticism.
Trump wins the shock victory.
My theory is that no one showed up to vote for Hillary Clinton.
My evidence for that is that he won fewer votes in Wisconsin than Mitt Romney did, Trump did, and won the state.
Hillary Clinton lost the state because no one likes Hillary Clinton.
And the dirty little secret of 2016 is that it was not, in fact, a referendum on President Trump.
It was a referendum on the worst candidate in the history of the Republic who everyone despised, including Democrats who voted for Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sanders in the primaries.
So 2018 comes around and we get shellacked.
I mean, it looks now like we're going to lose 40 seats when all is said and done in the House, which is a shellacking.
We are only able to gain two seats.
I'm not optimistic, but I'm not pessimistic.
I thought we were going to make it closer in the House, but I don't think we got shellacked from a historical perspective.
going into 2020.
Are you optimistic that Trump is able to win re-election?
If so, why?
I'm not optimistic, but I'm not pessimistic.
I thought we were gonna make it closer in the House, but I don't think we got shellacked in historical, from a historical perspective, but we lost way worse than we wanted to, and that looked like we were going to before.
I do think that Trump has something that other people didn't have that contributed that contributed to his victory.
He can really rally his base, like nobody I've ever seen.
He came to Cape Girardeau for the Hawley rally, and you can't believe the way he energizes people.
He gives a good stump speech and gets people motivated.
We've talked about whether Not we've talked about, but I've been reading.
Trump can do this with his base, but he has to go beyond his base.
I think Newt just says, and nobody can deny Newt Gingrich's brilliance, and especially as a strategist, if he really gets the base multi-hyper expanded, we will win anyway.
I don't believe that.
But I believe, again, that what the left will probably do in the next two years will reveal them more and more for How unreasonable they are and how extreme they are.
They might get smart and not be extreme.
But we, Trump, we have to have a good economy.
Remember, Trump wasn't running.
He was and he wasn't running in this election.
But these elections weren't nationalized.
And the presidential election will be, obviously, by definition.
And they're all voting for one candidate versus the other, as opposed to 450, 435 different districts.
I think that he has a very good chance of winning, but it depends on... I saw Steve Dace write a column the other day saying, I'll tell you right now whether Trump's going to win.
It's whether the Democrats put up somebody likable.
If they put up somebody that's not likable, he'll win.
If the person's likable, he won't.
Now that kind of goes with your 2016 theory that Hillary wasn't and all that.
But I don't think it's that simple.
Steve Dace is a very smart guy.
But I think that the economy is going to make a big difference, and who the Democrats put up, obviously.
But I don't think likability is all there is to it.
These people who purported to know what was going to happen a year out, to me that's just folly.
Things can change overnight, and we've seen it literally change overnight.
I think we've got to do much better messaging going forward.
And Trump has, I wish there was a way that Trump, you could have the good Trump without the bad Trump.
When I say the bad Trump, I'm talking about the shooting himself in the foot on certain of his tweets.
And, but, but I like a lot of his tweets.
He can, like I say, he could be combative without being personal.
I mean, he can even be personal as long as he isn't.
Um, rude and insulting in ways that he shouldn't be.
Right.
I mean, I've, I've suggested that we actually create a fake Twitter app and we put it on his phone and then we can actually screen his tweets.
He actually tweets it out.
It gives him fake feedback.
He thinks that it's real feedback and then he goes around the rest of the day all happy and it never sees the light of day outside of the White House.
Something like that.
Because obviously I agree there, there are a lot of great benefits to a guy with as much charisma, as much magnetism.
I mean, the guy can bring a spotlight like nobody, Well, I don't have as jaded a view as you do of him.
I probably did during the primaries.
I don't see him as a person that is just all negative.
You've got to remember something else.
be caught between his brain mouth filter would definitely be a good thing.
Well, I don't have as jaded a view as you do of him.
I probably did during the primaries.
I don't see him as a person that is just all negative.
I see if he, you got to remember something else.
They have attacked him so much.
And yes, he's in one sense thin skinned or whatever you want to call it.
But he's legitimately responding to a relentless assault, personal assault.
And so he's defending himself and he's got a forum to do it.
Sometimes I think he goes overboard with the Adam Schiff thing, that kind of thing.
Even though Schiff deserves ridicule.
But he doesn't need to gratuitously put that in.
Like a lot of people on Twitter, you know the urge to be rude and funny.
And then you wake up the next day, I wish I hadn't done it.
And what I try to do on Twitter is to live a good example and try to be nice to people, even people that are mean to me, but I'm biting my tongue the whole time. - You're much nicer on Twitter than I am.
I know, but I don't want to be.
My instinct is to go for blood.
And I can see Trump, he's a brawler and he just, he doesn't, but I don't see him as some sinister guy.
I see him as really wanting to help the country.
Yeah, he gets too personal and stuff.
But I just, with young people, I think young people have got to be, we've got to educate young people to what we face, how they're going to lose their liberties and everything that was built for them if the left continues to win.
Well, so this seems like a question as to what the future of the Democratic Party you would hope to see looks like.
Because in the one sense, it sounds like you would like to see the Democratic Party reveal their full-scale radicalism for everybody, so that way we have a better chance of victory in 2020.
At the same time, if that full-scale radicalism wins out, then you have a full-scale radical Democratic Party in charge of the government.
So which direction would you like to see the Democratic Party take?
Well, they're impotent now, though.
All they can do is obstruct.
All they have is the House.
And so, no, I don't subscribe to this view.
Let them in charge so they can show just how bad they are and destroy the country.
I don't think we have many years left.
I don't think we have many chances left.
That's not what I mean.
But if you had your druthers, would they run in 2020 a more moderate candidate who appeals to the Rust Belt because you want two viable parties?
Or would you prefer they run somebody completely radical so that the country can see, and then we risk whether that person wins or not?
Well, that would be a calculation.
If I thought the person could win, I wouldn't want him to run.
But I don't believe there's many, almost any such thing as a moderate Democrat anymore.
They build people like that, Sherrod and all that.
I don't believe it.
All these Democrats vote and enable the radicalism that we see in the country.
So I think that's one of the reasons, I think the things that separate Never Trumpers, by the way, I don't consider you Never Trumpers.
I'm not a Never Trumper.
I was during the election, but to me, just so folks understand the sort of breakdown of what Never Trump is.
Never Trump was a movement that existed.
It wasn't really even a movement.
It was more like a self-definition.
In 2016, will you vote for Trump in a general?
Will you not vote for Trump in a general?
I did not vote for Trump in the general, so I was a Never Trumper.
But after the election happened, There's nothing to vote for anymore now.
He's the president.
So the question becomes, is he good or is he bad?
And so I've declared myself a sometimes-Trumper when he's good.
But also, if you had had a crystal ball... And you would have governed like this... Yeah, then you would have voted for him.
Yes.
I mean, yeah.
The difference our calculation is I think I think that Hillary was so bad and I think we're closer to the precipice to losing this country.
I don't know about you, but I think I see Tom Nichols.
I've been friendly with him on Twitter, but he advocated voting for all Democrats.
Max boot.
These people are unhinged.
I can't understand how you could be a conservative and advocate because they think that if you do that, you'll ultimately bring the Republican Party back to its census.
I don't think we have the time and I think we're already back to our census.
I don't think we've sold our soul.
I think we are in a desperate war with the left to preserve America and Trump's the guy leading the charge right now and he's just the one doing it and we're supporting him for that reason.
But I don't think they see the gravity of the threat, the existential nature of the threat, and the immediacy, the urgency of it, to the extent that I do.
I may be wrong, but I don't see that we have a lot of time left.
Okay, so I want to ask you in a second about your book, Jesus is Risen, which, as I say, contrasts sharply with the Jewish version of this book, Nope.
But I do want to talk about your religious writing.
We'll get to that in just a second.
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Okay, first let's start with your political writing, because you're well known for your political writing.
You've written a bunch of New York Times bestsellers on politics before you ever started writing about religion.
What got you into writing politically in the first place?
Regnery Publishing asked me to write my first book on the Clinton-Reno Justice Department.
They saw that I had a column, and I'm a lawyer, and so I agreed to do it, having no idea what I was doing.
I started doing it.
I mean, I started writing the book and studying to write the book, researching.
And the more I researched, the more I floundered, realizing, the more I read about it, the less I think I know.
I don't know how to organize this.
And not to bring up Coulter again.
She told me, she was an author for Regnery at the time, and she said, just start writing and all of a sudden your organization will be a byproduct of that.
And I really think that was simple but profound advice.
Once you start writing, you necessarily become organized, because you have to focus on what you're writing about.
So what was your family like growing up?
Because obviously there's you, you're obviously very political, your brother is Rush Limbaugh, your father was a judge, correct?
My dad was a lawyer.
My grandfather was a lawyer.
My uncle was a judge.
So we grew up as Republicans.
My dad was a Goldwater conservative.
Very smart politically.
He would hold court in our house.
A lot of times our friends would go out and look for girls and all that, but other people's friends.
Our friends would come to our house and listen to my dad pontificate.
He was kind of Russia's predecessor, but he just did it in the living room.
And so, what was it like to grow up in that house?
People always say, it must have been fascinating around the dinner table.
And the truth is, no, we just listened to my dad.
We never talked.
But we did absorb it.
In fact, when Rush first got into radio, I mean, he always wanted to be a radio guy.
And that didn't surprise me, but when he started talking about politics, I couldn't believe how insightful he was and how knowledgeable he was, because he didn't talk about it that much.
He moved away when he was 18 or 19, and we got closer the older we got.
But he left, and once I first saw him make a speech at the Lions Club when I came to visit him in Sacramento, and he had a radio show out here, which was his forerunner to his national show.
Man, he's like my dad.
He knows all this stuff.
I can't believe how good he is, how knowledgeable.
But at our house, it was mainly we listened and we absorbed.
So how did you move from political writing into religious writing?
Because you've written several books on the Gospels and the New Testament and the historicity of Jesus.
How did you move into the religious space after writing all these New York Times bestsellers on politics?
Well, the first book I tried was about the Old Testament.
I think we've talked about this before, but one of the things that convinced me of Christ's deity is the Messianic prophecies.
Obviously, Judaism doesn't accept those.
We've laughingly discussed that before.
But that kind of tipped me over the edge when I looked at the messianic prophecies.
I've always been a doubter.
I believed in God, but I didn't believe in the God of the Bible.
But it wasn't that I'd ever investigated the God of the Bible.
I just negligently and recklessly rejected Him without ever studying it.
Once I began studying it, I came to the conclusion that the Bible is the Word of God.
It kind of hit me like an epiphany, and I wanted to inhale everything I could about it.
So I started writing a book about the Old Testament, the first three books, and I submitted that to a Christian agent.
He said it's a little highfalutin for a person with no credentials.
And it's not informal enough for the other, so basically, buzz off.
And so this was when I was in my 30s, and I was a little bit discouraged, so I thought, okay.
But I still continue to study for the next 20 years.
I've continued to study pretty intensely Christianity and theology.
And it was only after, and by the way, at that point I had no platform.
I had no columns, written no books, and done nothing along these lines other than practice law.
And so, after five political books and a syndicated column for 15, however many years it was, I decided to revisit this.
I still didn't know if I had the credentials.
I mean, I knew I didn't, because I'm not a pastor and all that.
But I felt like there are so many people that are not They don't hear the message of theologians and pastors.
They don't have access to some of the great writings that I do, and they don't read apologetics.
I thought, well, I can bridge this gap for the lay people, and I can introduce them to all this research and all the things that finally convince me.
So I wrote the first book, Jesus on Trial.
As a chronological history of my faith journey, and also as a book on apologetics.
And then I continued after that into the Emmaus Code, and then the last book before this one was The True Jesus, which is about the Gospels, where I just consolidated all four Gospels into one running narrative and had commentary along with it.
This book, Jesus is Risen, It's a history of the church insofar as it tracks the Bible.
Acts was the history of the early church, and six of the Apostle Paul's 13 epistles.
So it's really not a history of the church.
It's a history of the church insofar as it tracks the Bible.
What this book does is track those books, every verse in the Bible, either stated or paraphrased, and then a commentary with some of the great Christian thinkers, and then my own insights.
So where do you think the real gap, since obviously you're very familiar with the Old Testament and the New Testament, where do you see the real differences philosophically coming in between Old Testament, the religions of Judaism, and the New Testament?
Because there seem to be a couple of different views about this.
One is that Jesus radically shifts kind of the narrative of the Old Testament in a different direction.
One is that he comes to complete the law, and so it's more of a newer and more complete gloss on the Old Testament.
But where do you see the differences between Old and New Testament?
Okay, I believe that the Christian theology believes, and I believe, that the New Covenant supersedes the Old Covenant, but the New Testament doesn't supersede the Old Testament.
It is the second part of a two-part story of God's salvation history.
And, you know, I'm amused by all these secular critics who say, Jesus is all salt and light and love, and he never got mad, never reprimanded anyone.
And what they don't realize is, if Christian theology is true, the God we worship is Triune.
And so Jesus was with the Father and the Holy Spirit at the creation.
So of course he embraced everything in the Old Testament.
And it was intended to be.
And the Jews were the chosen people, are the chosen people.
Of course, the Christian view is that they're the chosen people to bring the gospel, ultimately, to the rest of the world.
They anticipated a Messiah who would be a political deliverer, a military deliverer, and they, according to Christian theology, not through their own fault, but misapprehended what the Old Testament Scripture was saying.
What it was really saying is Christ would be a suffering servant, and he would die for his sins.
So when he died, Not only did he not deliver a political victory, he was humiliated and didn't even lift a finger to defend himself, and he died.
And even some of his disciples at that point, Peter denied him after he died, even after having lived with him and seeing all his miracles.
It wasn't until they witnessed his bodily resurrection that they were transformed from cowards and skeptics to bold proclaimers of the gospel.
But I believe that the Old Testament is absolutely true, absolutely the word of God, every bit inspired.
And that there is total consistency.
Now, as to whether the Mosaic Law is still valid, I mean, obviously, the Apostle Paul talks about Christians not having to be circumcised and all that because it's about faith in Jesus Christ.
It's not about works.
But the Christian view is that it was never about works and that salvation has nothing to do with works because we can't.
Save ourselves.
We're all sinners.
And so you have to put aside your pride and put all your trust or faith in Jesus to bridge that gap between sinfulness and God's perfect.
Sinlessness.
So this is one of the descriptions I'd heard between Judaism and Christianity, is that Judaism is much more acts-based, whereas Christianity is much more faith-based.
So one might say, OK, if you're a Christian, some people say, why is in Christ there's liberty?
People say, you know, get rid of your chains, you're a Christian.
And then other people say, no, because you Christians are skulls.
You have to live to a higher standard.
Well, in fact, here's the difference.
Christians believe that we do not have to follow the law as a matter of following them in terms of some strict requirement, but that when you're under the law of Christ, the law of Christ isn't really a law, it's a matter of love and obedience, and you even hold yourself to a higher standard, supposedly.
But we believe that you can't fulfill the Ten Commandments on your own strength.
It's impossible for any sinful human being, and we're all sinners, to live up to that standard.
God can't allow sin in his presence, so there's got to be a way to cancel out that sin, and that's Jesus.
We don't believe that, I don't believe, that all these laws have been eradicated.
The Mosaic Law, in fact, all of them are still in force.
They're still God's perfect laws.
We still live by those precepts.
There's a debate about whether we follow the Sabbath and all that, and that hasn't been reaffirmed.
Some people believe, some people don't.
But basically, those were God's laws.
They were perfect laws, but the Christian view is they couldn't deliver salvation, they were to demonstrate to people their inadequacies.
So the law was given to show people how they couldn't live sinless lives and that would draw them to Christ.
It's more complex than that.
So in this view of Christianity, is it better to be a sinner with faith or a saint without?
So you're a person who fulfills as many, you're a good person, you fulfill all 10 commandments better than most people, but you don't believe in Jesus.
What is What does that mean in the Christian faith?
The Christian faith is that salvation is only through Jesus.
Now when you say better, I think there's a lot better acting people that aren't Christians.
A lot of non-Christians are better acting than I am.
I don't like this judgmental stuff that some Christians have.
One of the things that turned me off originally was the scold aspect.
The theory is that when you accept Christ and you're converted, you're justified.
Upon that moment, you're freed from the penalty of sin.
For salvation purposes, when God looks at you, He doesn't see you.
He sees Christ's sinlessness.
He can't see you.
Spurgeon, one of the great British pastors, wrote about this.
God can't help, but when he looks upon you and you've accepted Christ, all he can see is his son.
That's for salvation purposes, but also something happens when you accept Christ.
And that is, you're also freed from the power of sin, meaning the Holy Spirit begins to indwell you and empowers you to combat sin on a daily basis.
Doesn't mean that you will ever overcome sin as a practical matter, but you will become holier, you will become more Christ-like, more sanctified the more you avail yourself of the Holy Spirit.
And so you will become a better person in that sense, in an active sense, but you'll never be sin-free this side of eternity.
I want to ask about a misapprehension that seems to be had by a lot of folks, particularly in the Jewish community, about the evangelical Christian view of Israel.
The misperception seems to be the only reason that evangelical Christians care about the state of Israel and the Jews generally is because the goal is to get all the Jews back to Israel, at which point Jesus makes his reappearance, the rapture happens, and everything is great from then on in.
But if it weren't for all that, then Israel, screw them.
That obviously is inaccurate.
I am particularly offended by that.
In the first place, Christ was a Jew.
Jesus was a Jew.
That's indisputable.
I believe we have a duty to love Jews.
We believe that Christians derive their salvation Through Judaism and through Jews.
And it's open to everyone, by the way.
It's not just open to Gentiles.
It's open to everyone.
I also don't, I reject this notion and I also don't understand it.
And I know a lot of Christians who feel this way.
This is a little bit different, but it's analogous point.
They want Jesus to come back.
They want him to return.
And they, I can't wait for Jesus to come back.
I don't get that because if you believe you're saved and if you believe you're going to spend eternity with God, Anyway, what difference does it make if he comes back and exacts revenge on your enemies or whatever?
I don't even understand that.
Israel is the Jews' everlasting possession.
I believe in the Abrahamic covenant.
I believe that it has not been eradicated.
I don't agree with the covenantal theologians, as opposed to the dispensationalists or whatever, who believe that the church has been substituted for Israel.
I believe Israel is Israel.
That land is theirs forever.
And when I think about The Jews returning to Israel in 1947, 1948, that gives me goosebumps about the validity of the Bible and God's superintendence and sovereignty.
That's just too unbelievable that that happened, for God not to be behind it.
And I believe that those who bless Israel will be blessed, those who curse Israel will be cursed.
My allegiance to Israel and to Jews isn't because I'm afraid I'll be smacked down.
I believe it's just part of it.
I have an affinity.
I'm not trying to patronize you, but I've felt that way.
I think believing Jews feel that way.
They can sense it.
The idea that we want to usher in I know there's some looney tunes out there that have that, and some people I guess, but I don't know anybody, nobody that I respect wants to do it for that reason.
They want to do it because they're so sick of how crazy the world has become, and that I can understand, but not for the sake of ushering it in for any other reason, and not for utilitarian purposes about the Jews.
That's pretty cynical.
But I know I'm not saying you're Sennacline, that's true.
No, no, there are a lot of misapprehensions about all of this and I think that it's really important to elucidate that because when I say it, people don't believe it the same way they would from somebody who actually studies this stuff.
So we've spent a lot of time talking about sort of the divisions between Christianity and Judaism, but it seems to me that right now in the United States and more broadly, The grave division is between believers in the Judeo-Christian value system and everybody else.
Right now, there are a group of people who believe that essentially the values of the Bible are the correct values as filtered down through thousands of years of thought, history, and evidence, and that that is what has created Western civilization.
And there's a whole other group of people who believe that Judeo-Christian civilization basically stands in the way I totally agree.
and that all of the hallmarks of Judeo-Christian civilization have to be obliterated in the name of that progress.
And this seems to me to mirror a lot the division between right and left.
What do you make of that generalized thesis?
Totally agree.
I think that the Judeo-Christian tradition is what has given rise to this unique system that we have, this unique country, the freest, most prosperous, most benevolent nation in the history of the world.
And if I had to, I mean, We could go in and we could talk about how the majority of the Founding Fathers were strong practicing Christians.
There's debate about that.
I mean, some people point to the high-profile Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, who are arguably not strong Christians.
They might have been deists or whatever.
But the overwhelming majority of them were Christian, and they believed in the Judeo-Christian ethic.
And by the way, just so people don't think I'm patronizing, Judeo-Christian is not some euphemism.
I consider it Old Testament, New Testament, as a piece.
And so that's what we're talking about.
And so I think you can look at our founding and trace it.
And I also think that the development of all these ideas, you can trace back to Christianity.
And Judaism and Christianity.
Okay, so I do have one final question to ask you.
Specifically, I want to ask you to give your elevator pitch for why people should go back to church in accordance with your book.
But if you want to hear David's answer, you have to be a Daily Wire subscriber.
To subscribe, go to dailywire.com, click subscribe, you can hear the end of our conversation there.
Well, David, thank you so much for stopping by, and it is so cool that we finally get to meet after nearly 20 years.
Thank you so much.
Thanks so much for coming in.
The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is produced by Jonathan Hay.
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