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Dec. 20, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show

53:05

The Agenda Collapses | Ep. 684

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Time	Text
	President Trump announces a precipitous Syria pullout.
	The Trump wall remains mythical.
	And we explore whether feminists will allow girls to be girls.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	Oh, man, we do have a lot to get to today.
	The president has been busy and not in a particularly good way.
	Unfortunately, we'll get to all of that in just one second.
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	All right.
	So the president's agenda is collapsing in the last month of the year.
	There's really no nice way to put this.
	The president's agenda in the last week has been just awful.
	It has.
	It's just been awful.
	I mean, everything he has done has been something that you would have expected from the Obama administration, not something that you would have expected from the Trump administration.
	So, as you know, I was Luke Cold on criminal justice reform from the very beginning.
	I remain Luke Cold on criminal justice reform.
	Maybe it'll work out.
	Maybe it won't.
	It should not have been a top Republican priority to rewrite the law to give people greater discretion to let violent criminals and nonviolent criminals out of prison.
	If you want to rewrite the laws in congressional fashion to actually lower the penalties for particular crimes, go ahead and do that.
	But simply getting rid of mandatory minimums or ensuring that wardens can let people out of jail if they deem them to be nonviolent, I have some real problems with that ideologically.
	Even though I like a lot of the people who sponsor the bill and are appreciators of the bill.
	But that is the least of President Trump's concerns this week.
	I mean, in other minor concerns, the president, and it's not minor, the president issued an executive order banning bump stocks.
	Now, as you know, I've said on the program, I'm in favor of banning bump stocks.
	That does not mean the president has the power under the Constitution of the United States to simply issue an executive order getting rid of bump stocks.
	You need a piece of legislation to do that.
	So if you want to pass a piece of bipartisan legislation to make that happen, he certainly could.
	He certainly could have made that happen.
	He did not.
	Instead, he did it from the presidency itself, from the executive branch.
	And just wait until Democrats start trying to do the same thing, issuing executive orders to curb the Second Amendment in minor or major ways from the seat of government in the White House.
	I do not think that that is good policy.
	But again, even that is the least of our concerns today.
	We begin with the border wall.
	President Trump today basically went back and forth and back and forth and back and forth about whether he was going to sign a bill that would allow funding for the border wall.
	This is bad policy.
	The reason it's bad policy is because the president has been wildly inconsistent on what exactly he would sign.
	He has spent two years not holding the line on the funding for the border wall.
	He kept saying, oh, we'll kick it down the road.
	Oh, we'll kick it down the road.
	And then suddenly, when the right started yelling at him because he was about to sign yet another continuing resolution that did not include funding for the border wall, suddenly President Trump woke up and started tweeting about it this morning.
	Government by tweet is not how government gets done.
	Government by tweet is not how legislation gets done.
	If President Trump is really a dealmaker, he should have gotten everybody in a room, and he should have said, listen, what do I need to give up to get what I want?
	Instead, President Trump basically sits there and he tweets at his members of Congress, and then he says that he's okay with a continuing resolution, a clean continuing resolution, so the Senate passes one.
	And then it goes to the House, and the House is ready to pass one.
	And then, after there's blowback for President Trump not vetoing such a bill, then he starts tweeting about it, and then members of the House start having second thoughts, and then they feel like they have to vote on a bill that would include $5 billion in border funding, and then that will probably fail, and then the President will sign the continuing resolution anyway.
	Whereas if he just held the line from the very beginning, there's a better shot that at least people are incentivized to do what he wants.
	President Trump went on a bit of a Twitter bender this morning, and last night, in which he's very upset that people are angry at him, a lot of his allies are angry at him, people like Ann Coulter are very angry at him.
	Ann Coulter came out yesterday and she said she will not vote for President Trump without the wall.
	He promptly unfollowed her on Twitter.
	So here is Ann Coulter, one of the earliest Trump boosters, the author of In Trump We Trust, which is an amazing title for a book.
	Because again, that's supposed to be God, not Trump.
	No matter what you think of Trump, God should not be replaced with Trump in any sentence at all.
	But here's Ann Coulter talking about how she would not vote for Trump without the wall.
	Ann, let me ask you this then, Ann Coulter.
	The second Tuesday after the first Monday in November 2020 comes along and there's exactly as much wall built that day as there is today.
	Does Ann Coulter vote for Donald Trump for re-election?
	No, nor will I think most of his supporters.
	Why would you?
	So he's not, she's not the only one who has been saying this.
	Laura Ingraham has been incredibly critical.
	I was critical yesterday on the show.
	Mark Levin was very critical yesterday on his show.
	Rush Limbaugh was very critical.
	He said that Trump basically got ruled by the Democrats on the wall.
	Trump gets nothing and the Democrats get everything, including control of the House in a few short weeks.
	In fact, I just alluded to this.
	Trump is going to get less than nothing because this compromise strips out the $1.6 billion for the wall that the Senate Appropriations Committee had already approved weeks ago.
	go, that's gone too.
	Okay.
	And this has caused Republicans in the house to actually say, okay, well, let's get together and let's fight for the wall.
	Mark Meadows, who was once considered a possibility for the president's chief of staff got up yesterday and he said, listen, we made a promise that we were going to build this damn thing.
	So let's build the damn thing.
	Is it actually going to get built under president Trump?
	The answer is in all likelihood, no, but here was Mark Meadows yesterday making the case.
	As I close out this particular special order, I think it's appropriate for us to remind the American people that there is a bad case of Potomac fever up here in Washington, D.C.
	They forget what they promised the American people, and yet what they must do is not forget this time.
	Mr. President, we're going to back you up.
	If you veto this bill, we'll be there.
	But more importantly, the American people will be there.
	Okay, so here's the part that I find intellectually dishonest about a lot of the debate that's going on right now.
	President Trump is supposed to be a strong negotiator.
	President Trump is the one who's supposed to be standing behind his own promises.
	It was President Trump who promised a wall that Mexico was going to pay for approximately 1,273,393 times during the campaign and in the aftermath.
	It was President Trump who was pushing that as a policy.
	Everyone who said, listen, we don't actually need a wall, we just need more border security.
	All those people were considered cucks.
	All those people were considered sellouts.
	It was President Trump who was saying we need a wall.
	And people like me agreed with him on that point, that we need some sort of physical barrier along the border, just like Israel has a physical barrier against terrorism in the Gaza Strip or in parts of Judea and Samaria.
	We all agreed with that.
	And then President Trump basically backed off of it.
	We have this weird case where everybody is so afraid of alienating President Trump that they feel like they have to kiss his ass routinely.
	They have to do this routine where if President Trump comes up short, it's everybody else's fault for coming up short.
	It's the great leader is never wrong.
	It's all the people around the great leader who are somehow wrong.
	But let's face this, okay?
	Democrats are celebrating today and they were celebrating yesterday because they think they ruled President Trump.
	Nancy Pelosi was literally dancing her cares away at a Christmas party last night because she knows that she is beating President Trump at his own game in all of this.
	If you can't see this, it's actually Nancy Pelosi, doddering old Nancy Pelosi, shuffling around to Bye Bye Miss American Pie, which was written, you know, a solid 73 years after she was born, so good for her that she's still capable of moving.
	She was dancing at a Christmas party last night.
	Seth Meyers, because all of our late night comedy must be dominated by politics, he was mocking President Trump yesterday for not getting the wall.
	You can see Democrats are very excited about this.
	They feel like Trump got played.
	Trump wanted $5 billion for a pointless border wall to enforce his racist immigration policies, but he was too incompetent to figure out how to get it.
	The only way Trump's ever going to get that wall is if he builds it with the portraits he bought with his charity money.
	The wall is just like Trump's charity, a scam that is now falling apart.
	One Trump associate after another is pleading guilty to federal crimes.
	If all these lawsuits work out, Trump might have to go live in the YMCA.
	Okay, so all of this is stupid from the left, but this is why President Trump should never have caved on any of this.
	And this kind of last-minute hemming and hawing, this whole, okay, well now I've watched Fox News, and now I'm changing my opinion back on the wall.
	Dude, this is not the sign of a good negotiator.
	Read the art of the deal.
	Really, this sort of unpredictability, this sort of random changing of your own position all the time, it doesn't give your congressional supporters anywhere to go.
	They feel like you might undercut them one day.
	You might actually be angry at them for backing your own agenda.
	I've fielded calls from members of Congress over the last two years who have been utterly bewildered as to where Trump even wants them to be on particular issues, especially about the border.
	They say, well, am I supposed to vote for this or am I not supposed to vote for this?
	Because Trump will come out and endorse the CR and then everybody will be like, okay, well, I guess I'll vote for it.
	And then Trump will immediately undermine the same CR.
	There was a tweet today from a journalist saying that a member of Congress, Republican member of Congress, said they weren't going to vote for the CR until they got a tweet from the president.
	So we're now waiting for the president to tweet about things before we know how to vote on things, promises that he himself has been making for years on end.
	I mean, listen to the inconsistency in President Trump's own Twitter feed.
	He says, Okay, all of that is fine if that had been a consistent position.
	a wall, are necessary for border security, are putting politics over country.
	What they are just beginning to realize is that I will not sign any of their legislation, including infrastructure, unless it has a perfect border security.
	USA wins.
	Okay, all of that is fine if that had been a consistent position.
	But within the next tweet, okay, a tweet separated by minutes, President Trump writes this.
	With so much talk about the wall, people are losing sight of the great job being done on our southern border by border patrol ice and our great military.
	Remember the caravans?
	Well, they didn't get through, and none are forming or on their way.
	Border is tight.
	Fake news silent.
	So which is it?
	Do we need a wall?
	Do we not need a wall?
	Who the hell knows?
	According to President Trump, the one who was pitching the wall from the outset It depends on his bowel movements that day, apparently.
	President Trump then tweeted out, when I begrudgingly... Now he's trying to blame Paul Ryan, of course.
	After sending all of these mixed signals and coming to some sort of agreement with Republican leadership, now he's backing out of it, which means that, again, the House will probably pass some sort of bill or try to pass a bill with border funding.
	It'll fail, and then they'll pass a clean CR, and then Trump will sign the clean CR, and that's how this is probably gonna go.
	President Trump says, when I begrudgingly signed the omnibus bill, I was promised the wall and border security by leadership.
	Would be done by the end of the year.
	Now, it didn't happen.
	We foolishly fight for border security for other countries, but not for our beloved USA.
	Not good.
	Again, I agree with his position on border security.
	But does he agree with his position on border security?
	And why in the world?
	This is the guy who says that Washington is corrupt.
	Washington is a swamp.
	Washington is full of liars.
	So why did you buy the promises earlier this year?
	Doesn't that make you a fool?
	Doesn't it make you foolish to buy the promises that were made by legislators that were never going to be kept?
	Or is it possible you knew all along that these promises were not going to be kept?
	You went along with it at the time, and now you're fussing and blaming everybody else when it turns out that you're not capable of keeping a promise that you made to the American people and to your own supporters?
	No, I don't want to be this critical of the President of the United States, but it is his job to get this stuff done.
	This is his number one promise.
	I'm going to get to promises that he's made in just a second, because I keep hearing about all these promises that he's kept as president of the United States.
	He has kept many promises as president of the United States.
	There are a few key ones he is not keeping, and those are coming back to bite him this week.
	We'll get to that in just a second.
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	Okay, so the President of the United States made a promise about the wall.
	He also made a promise that he was going to defund Planned Parenthood.
	Have the Republicans made a move to defund Planned Parenthood?
	Like any move?
	I thought that was a key promise of the Trump administration.
	We've had Congress.
	Republicans have now controlled the House of Representatives.
	They controlled it continuously from 2010 to 2018, and they were unable to pass a single budget that did not include funding for the mass abortion clinic Planned Parenthood.
	They've controlled Congress from 2010 to 2018.
	Every single appropriations bill has funded Obamacare.
	Every single appropriations bill has failed to fund a border wall.
	Every single appropriations bill has funded all of the Democratic priorities.
	This is a failure of government.
	And when the president is the president, at least the House could say, OK, Obama's not going to sign anything that we pass.
	So we have to pass something or the entire government shuts down.
	When you run the Congress and the president is the president, don't you have an obligation to at least try?
	Don't you have an obligation?
	Doesn't President Trump have an obligation to get in a room with Republicans and maybe some Democrats and try and cut a deal?
	Isn't this something the president ought to be trying to do as opposed to sitting there and tweeting?
	He's the great dealmaker, so make a great deal.
	Now listen, I'm not sanguine about the fact that Democrats are radically intransigent on the wall.
	They are, of course.
	But the President also has the bully pulpit.
	The President has the capacity to go out and rip on the Democrats' willingness to expose America to insecurities simply because of their own arrogance and multicultural nonsense.
	President Trump could do that every single day.
	Has he done that?
	No.
	He's gone to campaign rallies and he's said the same stuff over and over, but has he made a national address to the nation about the necessity for a border wall?
	Has he used the power of the presidency to push for stuff?
	He has not.
	And then we're surprised when the promise doesn't get kept?
	It's just not good stuff.
	It's not good stuff from the President of the United States.
	I'm disappointed.
	A lot of his supporters are disappointed about the wall.
	And again, I'm not going to blame that on the Senate when he told the Senate to go ahead and make all of this happen without border funding.
	So what's happening right this second is that a bunch of people are going to the White House to meet with the President.
	Apparently it's Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy and Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan.
	They're also going to the White House to try and negotiate with the president over all of this.
	And what they are basically saying now is that maybe they're going to kind of deal with the Democrats where the Democrats agree to wall money and the White House and GOP fund the Gateway Tunnel, which is obviously a big project for New York Democrats.
	We'll see if this is something that if that happens.
	Then good.
	I mean, but that's not going to happen.
	Democrats are not going to to make that sort of a deal.
	OK, well, we'll get to more failures in just one second.
	Apparently, Sarah Sanders is now saying the president is having a meeting with Republican House members at noon today.
	At this moment, the president does not want to go further without border security, which includes steel slats or a wall.
	The president is continuing to weigh his options.
	So we'll see how this plays out.
	The president should stand strong, even if it's belated.
	And meanwhile, the president was involved in a giant, giant fail today with regard to with regard to Syria.
	His Syria policy is just a disaster area.
	The president said yesterday that he was going to pull out of the pull out pull American troops out of Syria.
	And then he went on his Twitter and he issued a statement about it.
	The statement that he issued is I mean, frankly, this is just it's egregious.
	So he says, getting out of Syria was no surprise.
	I've been campaigning on it for years.
	And six months ago, when I very publicly wanted to do it, I agreed to stay longer.
	Russia, Iran, Syria, and others are the local enemy of ISIS.
	We were there.
	We were doing their work.
	Spelling there incorrectly.
	Time to come home and rebuild.
	Hashtag MAGA.
	Okay, well, actually, Russia, Iran, and Syria are not the local enemy of ISIS.
	They've used ISIS as a rationale for upping their troop presence in Syria.
	They have no interest in actually getting rid of ISIS.
	It provides them the international excuse for being there and pursuing their own priorities.
	Everyone who knows anything about Syria understands this.
	The Turks have been telling the United States to get out of Syria so they can go in and murder the Kurds.
	Honestly, if I'm Kurdish, I'm wondering how many times can I just get screwed by the United States?
	George H.W.
	Bush promised that we were not going to abandon the Kurds to the whims of Saddam Hussein, and we promptly abandoned the Kurds to the whims of Saddam Hussein.
	The Clinton administration promised the same.
	Nothing happened to protect the Kurds.
	The Bush administration promised that we were going to protect the Kurds in Iraq, and then there was a precipitous pullout by Barack Obama that left the Kurds in the middle of nowhere, basically.
	And now, the Trump administration had promised solidarity with the Kurds, and they're pulling out so that the Turks can go in and slaughter the Kurds.
	Like, if you're the Kurds at this point, you just gotta think, Who the hell am I supposed to trust out here?
	So we're pulling out.
	And to pretend, by the way, that this pullout is militarily beneficial to the United States is asinine.
	As I mentioned yesterday, having a couple thousand troops in Syria to at least maintain status quo makes a lot of sense.
	And for folks, well, you know, why don't we just pull out and hand it over?
	That vacuum is filled by somebody.
	So it'll be filled by Iran.
	Okay, so Iran will fill the gap.
	And now you'll have more missiles flowing into Syria, leading to the possibility of a serious conflagration with its neighbors Jordan and Israel.
	Or, you'll see more mass slaughter by the Assad regime, leading to mass immigration into Europe, which will change the face of politics over there and lead, presumably, to the possibility of further terrorism in Europe itself, because sometimes terrorists hide among the refugees.
	Or you'll see Turkey increase its sway in the region.
	Turkey is a is a nasty imperialist power at this point under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who's an Islamist thug.
	All of this is just bad policy and the president is making political policy by tweet.
	There's an article in the Washington Post today.
	It says, in April, President Trump repeated his campaign promise to end U.S.
	military involvement in Syria.
	I want to get out, he said.
	I want to bring our troops back home.
	In September, senior administration aides said at the time, the president was persuaded to change course.
	Some 2,000 U.S.
	troops would stay in Syria indefinitely, not only until the Islamic State was defeated, but also until a political solution to the overall Syria conflict was in place.
	And in a key part of Trump's newly announced Iran policy, all Iranian forces and their proxies aiding Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had left the country.
	On Wednesday, Trump sent heads spinning within his own government and around the world by apparently reversing himself again.
	And by the way, I can tell you that folks in the White House are confused about this.
	His decision was made on Tuesday, according to people familiar with the issue, following a small meeting attended only by senior White House aides and secretaries of defense and state, most of whom, if not all, sharply disagreed.
	We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump presidency Trump announced in a Twitter post early the next morning.
	According to officials in Reuters, U.S.
	President Donald Trump's order to withdraw U.S.
	troops from Syria also signifies an end to the U.S.
	air campaign against ISIS there, U.S.
	to protect the Kurds.
	According to officials in Reuters, U.S. President Donald Trump's order to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria also signifies an end to the U.S. air campaign against ISIS there, U.S. officials told Reuters on Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity.
	An end to the U.S. air campaign air war will likely heighten fears that ISIS, which has lost almost all the territory it once controlled, could be given space to regroup.
	And this notion, by the way, that ISIS is completely defeated is sheer crap.
	It's just not true.
	And the fact is that when Barack Obama idiotically declared ISIS the JV squad, there were like 700 members of ISIS who promptly took over half of Iraq.
	Right now, there are 20,000 to 30,000 active members of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, according to Trump's own Pentagon.
	Coalition officials say the numbers are inflated, but two other reports by the UN and CSIS independently came up with roughly the same estimation, according to Rukmini Kalamachi, who's a correspondent for the New York Times, who covers ISIS.
	President Trump, in his own Twitter feed, basically acknowledged that ISIS has not been defeated, saying that Russia and Iran and Turkey were going to take on ISIS now.
	So they've been defeated, but they're still going to be fighting ISIS.
	You have to explain that one.
	In just a second, I'm going to get to President Trump's statement on Syria.
	He made an open statement about Syria that is really pretty egregious.
	Honestly, I'm sorry to be such a downer right before the Christmas break, but the news is what the news is.
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	So President Trump issues a video yesterday on his Twitter feed all about his policy in Syria.
	And here is what he had to say.
	We've been fighting for a long time in Syria.
	I've been president for almost two years, and we've really stepped it up.
	And we have won against ISIS.
	We've beaten them, and we've beaten them badly.
	We've taken back the land, and now it's time for our troops to come back home.
	So our boys, our young women, our men, they're all coming back, and they're coming back now.
	We won, and that's the way we want it, and that's the way they want it.
	Okay, then when he says that that's the way they want it, and he points to heaven, as though the soldiers who served in Syria would definitely back his policy, this is something that politicians are not allowed to do.
	You're not allowed to do this.
	It was bad when Obama did it, it's bad when Trump does it.
	You don't get to say what the soldiers really want is to come home.
	I'm getting letters from soldiers today.
	I'm getting letters from people who served in Syria, and they're saying we're abandoning our Kurdish allies.
	These are people who have fought with us, alongside us.
	Saving American lives, fighting next to us in these places.
	They're saying we're abandoning this country.
	We're abandoning our mission.
	Not only are we abandoning our mission, we're actually exposing the West to greater threat because as ISIS gains power, they don't just stay there.
	How many ISIS attacks have we seen in the West over the past seven years since Barack Obama finished his pullout?
	From Iraq?
	It's just, it's unseemly, at the very least, to be suggesting to use the authority of people who are dead to back your own political program, almost no matter what the political program is, is unseemly at the very best, and gross at the very worst.
	It's just, again, none of this holds.
	None of this holds.
	The Syrian policy doesn't make any sense.
	There is no great demand to pull 2,000 troops out of Syria, except by Rand Paul, who's an isolationist.
	And once the situation has been solidified, why you would abandon that for Turkey is beyond me.
	And that's the other thing, is that there are reports today that President Trump really did this in order to appease the Turks.
	That basically he had a phone call with the Turks and the Turks said, you know what, why don't you withdraw?
	And President Trump was like, you know what, why don't I withdraw?
	That is unacceptable.
	The Turkish government is one of the worst actors in the Middle East.
	I know there are a lot of bad actors in the Middle East.
	The Turkish government is definitely one of them.
	The only potential upset in recent days, according to the Washington Post, was a threat by the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who spoke with Trump at the Group of 20 summit three weeks ago, and again on the telephone Friday, to send troops across the border to attack the U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in northeast Syria.
	Officials familiar with the Friday call said that Erdogan, among other things, had stressed to Trump that the Syrian Kurds were terrorists, allied with Kurdish separatists in his own country, and asked why the United States was supporting them rather than its NATO ally.
	The answer is, of course, that Turkey never should have been part of NATO.
	It was a joke to make Turkey part of NATO.
	It was never a westernized country.
	And the idea that we were going to bring Turkey into NATO and now make their defense our mutually Defensible position that if they are attacked by the Kurds or something that the United States has to get involved.
	It's amazing.
	We're supposed to now worry about Turkey as a NATO ally while we don't worry about Latvia, Estonia or Lithuania as a NATO ally under Russian threat.
	It's unbelievable.
	The Erdogan noted that the Islamic State had been vanquished and questioned the need for an ongoing U.S.
	troop presence, saying the Turkish troops already massed on the Syrian border could handle any problem there.
	Apparently, the call and the withdrawal were definitely related, according to officials inside the White House.
	This is the only, by the way, ally of the United States in the region that cares at all, that is happy at all about this decision, is Turkey.
	And they are not really an ally, as I've already noted.
	They're an Islamist country that has now arrested 100,000 dissidents over the last couple of years in a seizure of power by Erdogan, who is one of the worst actors in the region.
	Lindsey Graham, who's been a reliable Trump ally on foreign policy and nearly everything else, came out and ripped President Trump yesterday.
	The decision today by the president, and I think it was his alone, I think it's disastrous to our own national security.
	I am shocked by this.
	I think this is a decision that is against sound military advice.
	To say they're defeated is an overstatement and is fake news.
	So what you have done, in my view, is set us back.
	So who's happy today?
	Russia's happy today.
	Iran is happy today.
	Turkey is happy today.
	You know who's not happy today?
	The Kurds, the Israelis, the Jordanians, the Saudis, the Egyptians, and basically all the allies that we actually have.
	Those people are very unhappy today.
	All of the people who hate the United States are pretty happy today.
	Terrible move by President Trump.
	I understand he's trying to do an Obama circa 2010-2011.
	He thinks he's going to win over people on the left.
	If he withdraws from Syria, it's not going to happen.
	That was a war that we were actually winning.
	If you're going to talk about withdrawing troops, at least make the argument about Afghanistan or something.
	Like, I think that there's a better argument for Afghanistan than there is for Syria, although I don't think there's a great argument for either.
	The minute we leave Afghanistan, the Taliban takes over and Al Qaeda's back, but...
	This notion that you can simply pull troops out willy-nilly from places without any further consequences is just ridiculous.
	This has been the constant lesson of the last 30 years.
	That doesn't mean you can nation-build every place.
	It doesn't mean that we can afford to put hundreds of thousands of boots on the ground in all of these places.
	But if, with a stable force of 2,000 people, you can lock down these areas and prevent ISIS from becoming a regional threat and an international threat again, that seems like a pretty fair bargain to me.
	There's always this perspective about people who serve in our military that they're sort of pawns in the game of life.
	And it's just stupid.
	These people say, well, you know, our poor troops, bring home the troops.
	Have these people ever met troops?
	Like, really, I spend a lot of time talking with people who are in the American military.
	And not only because I give a fair bit of money to American military charities, but also because we have a lot of folks in the military who listen to the show.
	These people are not joining up because they are desperate to serve on a base in Georgia.
	These people are joining up because they want to protect and defend the United States.
	So the question should not be, What is the safest place for our troops?
	It should be, where are our troops best utilized to keep the American people safe?
	And our troops know that.
	That's why they join up in the first place.
	To say less is to denigrate their patriotism in joining up.
	They didn't join up just for the college benefit.
	Our troops joined up because they did something more patriotic than I would do, or most people in my audience would do.
	They joined up because they want to protect and defend the United States.
	Understanding that we have civilian control of the military here in the United States, and understanding that threats to the United States are ever-present.
	Members of the military I've talked to over the last 48 hours think that this is cowardice.
	They do.
	And I think that the president's retreat on the international stage is not restricted to Syria.
	I mean, listen to this story today.
	It's just a very bad week for news for the Trump administration.
	According to the Associated Press, North Korea said Thursday it will never unilaterally give up its nuclear weapons unless the United States first removes what Pyongyang called a nuclear threat, which means what they really want is for the United States to remove all troops from the Korean Peninsula, which is never going to happen.
	The surprisingly blunt statement jars with Seoul's rosier presentation of the North Korean position.
	That's because Seoul, South Korea has what we call a sunshine government, which is dedicated to some sort of rapprochement with the North Korean government.
	But that doesn't mean the North Koreans are actually attempting to make a deal.
	I said this when President Trump held his summit with Kim Jong-un.
	I said either this is the most brilliant diplomatic maneuver of all time or it's utterly stupid.
	And the North Koreans are the North Koreans.
	The Kim regime over there has been utterly consistent in what they do.
	They lie to the West for concessions, and they go right back to developing their nuclear weapons.
	The latest from North Korea comes as the United States and North Korea struggle over the sequencing of the denuclearization that Washington wants and the removal of international sanctions desired by Pyongyang.
	The statement carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency also raises credibility problems for the liberal South Korean government.
	In other words, just like Barack Obama made a huge mistake entrusting the terrorist regime in Iran.
	So they'll keep their promises.
	They're moderating.
	They're nice.
	It turns out terrorist regimes, rogue regimes, don't really have a habit of doing that.
	And if they want to moderate, you know what they can always do?
	They can do what Muammar Gaddafi did before we killed him.
	They can hand over their nuclear weapons, scot-free.
	Nothing's stopping them from doing it right now.
	Iran, if it wanted to join the family of nations, you know what it would have to do?
	Just join the family of nations.
	If North Korea wanted to join the family of nations, all they'd have to do is join the family of nations.
	Nothing is stopping them.
	This idea we have to negotiate for them to do the right thing is insane.
	Are we or are we not the most powerful country in the history of the world?
	Do we or do we not have the most powerful military in the history of the world?
	Are we or are we not the most powerful economy in the history of the world?
	We're acting in the Obama administration and we weren't acting like this under Trump, but now in the last week we are.
	Do we have leverage or do we not?
	This is a question with Saudi Arabia also.
	When MBS, when Mohammed bin Salman Had a Saudi citizen killed and it became public.
	And then we acted as though we need the Saudis more than the Saudis need us.
	If President Trump is a guy with swagger, right?
	I mean, that is his thing.
	So why not swagger on the world stage?
	I didn't mind that one.
	I liked that about President Trump.
	I liked it about George W. Bush, by the way.
	The United States ought to have a little bit of swagger on the world stage.
	Why?
	Because our values are superior to the values of North Korea, or Iran, or Turkey, or the Syrian government, or Saudi Arabia, or any other country, frankly.
	Doesn't mean we don't need allies.
	And it also means that we ought to be using our leverage where appropriate.
	But instead, it seems like we're afraid to use our leverage.
	Why do I say that?
	Because North Korea is openly stating now they're not going to denuclearize without the United States leaving the Korean Peninsula.
	The statement says, the United States must now recognize the accurate meaning of the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and especially must study geography.
	When we talk about the Korean Peninsula, it includes the territory of our Republic and also the entire region of South Korea, where the United States has placed its invasive force, including nuclear weapons, When we talk about the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, it means the removal of all sources of nuclear threat, not only from the South and North, but also from areas neighboring the Korean Peninsula, meaning they want us to remove our presence in Japan.
	And so that's what they want also.
	So what is the Trump administration's response to all of this?
	Breaking this morning.
	U.S.
	hopes Kim-Trump summit could take place in early 2019.
	I don't know what to, honestly, I don't know what to say is the motivating factor here.
	It makes no sense to me.
	I think that it cuts against everything that President Trump has purported to be on foreign policy.
	So we've got the wall situation falling apart for him.
	We've got the Syrian situation falling apart for him.
	We've got the North Korean situation falling apart for him.
	What do all of these have in common?
	President Trump builds himself as a man who would not cave.
	And what we have seen in the past week is caving and caving and caving and caving.
	Mr. President, stand strong.
	These are things you promised.
	You promised to keep the American people safe.
	That promise means more than a dumb promise to remove troops at whim from a place in the world where the troops were actually doing some good and abandoning our allies in the process.
	You made a promise to build a wall, so build the wall.
	All of this is, it's gotta be maddening for Trump supporters.
	It should be maddening for Trump supporters.
	And if not, if you're a Trump supporter, you should ask yourself why you're not maddened.
	Are you not maddened because we're so invested in President Trump just as a person that we don't care what he does politically?
	Or because we've convinced ourselves that every choice is a binary?
	That we can't push President Trump for better?
	That every time something President Trump does is wrong or bad, that we have to say, ah, but the Democrats would be worse?
	The Democrats aren't in office right now.
	You know who is?
	A guy named President Trump.
	That means it's his job to do what he said he was going to do.
	I have a couple more notes about this, and then I do want to get to The latest on the Trump legal barrage, the Mueller investigation coming after President Trump.
	Again, very bad week for the president.
	We'll get to all of that in just one second.
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	So another bad news for President Trump.
	The Mueller investigation is continuing forthwith.
	Roger Stone apparently still under serious scrutiny by the Mueller office.
	Now why does that matter?
	Because the Mueller investigation has basically come up with its theory, I think.
	And its theory is that President Trump was being funneled information via a radio talk show host to Jerome Corsi, to Roger Stone, to President Trump.
	And so now what they're trying to figure out is whether Roger Stone lied in his House Intelligence Committee statements when he suggested that President Trump was never informed that WikiLeaks was going to dump information about Hillary Clinton and that WikiLeaks was a Russian front group.
	According to the Washington Post, Special Counsel Robert Mueller asked the House Intelligence Committee on Friday for an official transcript of Trump adviser Roger Stone's testimony, according to people familiar with the request, a sign that prosecutors could be moving to charge him with a crime.
	It's the first time Mueller has formally asked the committee to turn over the material the panel has gathered in its investigation of Russian interference.
	Legal analysts say that Mueller may be ready to indict him.
	Roger Stone says, I don't think any reasonable attorney who looks at it would conclude that I committed perjury, which requires intent and materiality.
	Okay, well, in the past, perjury charges have not always included.
	Stone is not completely wrong on this, but it is quite possible that what Mueller is actually trying to do is indict Roger Stone for perjury, and then turn on President Trump, and then turn on Stone and say, you know, Roger, you're going to do 27 years in jail.
	Or you're going to admit that President Trump told you to lie to the House Intelligence Committee and tell you to suborn perjury.
	That's basically what the Starr investigation did with Monica Lewinsky to come up with the suborning perjury charge against President Bill Clinton back in 1998 and 1999.
	So we will see how the Mueller investigation goes about its business in this area.
	Now, meanwhile, You know, it is amazing.
	With the Republican Party experiencing all of these difficulties, it's easy to forget the Democratic Party has been engaged in similar corruption, worse corruption in some cases, and manipulation.
	This is an amazing story that basically the Democrats were manipulating a race in Georgia.
	So here is the story from the New York Times.
	As Russia's online election machinations came to light last year, a group of Democratic tech experts decided to try out similarly deceptive tactics in the fiercely contested Alabama Senate race, according to people familiar with the effort and a report on its results.
	So while the Democrats are whining that the Russians were putting up fake Facebook pages with fake news, the Democrats were doing exactly the same thing on Facebook and Twitter in the Alabama Senate race that Roy Moore ended up losing.
	The secret project, according to the New York Times, Well, a couple of things.
	Facebook and Twitter was likely too small to have had a significant effect on the race in which the Democratic candidate it was designed to help Doug Jones edged out the Republican Roy Moore.
	But it was a sign that the American political operatives of both parties have paid close attention to the Russian methods, which some fear may come to taint elections in the United States.
	Well, a couple of things.
	One, this is an overread of Russia.
	Trolling has been happening online as long as I've been online.
	This is nothing new, too.
	Look at how the New York Times covers that, right?
	So when the Democrats engage in deceptive activity on Facebook and Twitter in an attempt to suppress Republican votes in a senatorial election, then the New York Times notes that the secret project was likely too small to have had a significant effect on the race.
	When the Russians issue, like, a few Facebook posts that reach a minute number of people, I read you the statistics the other day, Then it swung the entire election.
	Don't worry, folks.
	There is no media bias at all, at all.
	Speaking of corruption, we've been hearing nonstop about corruption when it comes to all of the Republican moves in North Carolina's 9th congressional district, the hiring of a particular person who is known for sort of stuffing ballot boxes.
	Now it turns out, in that investigation, that person has worked for both Democrats and Republicans, was working for Democrats in 2016, and nobody seemed to care.
	I love that this story is flying completely under the radar, but in California, where a bunch of late-breaking House races went for the Democrats, and everybody said, no, can't be voter fraud, that would be impossible.
	That would be impossible, even though California does have rules that allow people to go and ballot gather, meaning go to people's houses and pick up their absentee ballots for them.
	The possibilities of fraud are rife.
	How rife are they?
	According to the Sacramento Bee, California's Department of Motor Vehicles confirmed on Monday that its director, Gene Shiomoto, will retire after three decades with the department and a tumultuous final year.
	Why exactly is she resigning?
	Well, she's resigning because the department struggled to implement new laws this year, including the state's Motor Voter Program, which launched earlier this year to automatically register people to vote when they visit the DMV.
	The department announced in September it had improperly registered thousands of Californians through the program.
	Thousands of Californians were registered improperly by the DMV under state law in the state of California.
	No possibility of fraud, though.
	We've been told voter fraud is the only thing that happens when Republicans suborn it.
	But when Democrats are involved in the possibility of voter fraud, when the laws make it easier to commit voter fraud, then we're crazy.
	We're trying to suppress the vote if we mention all of these things.
	The DMV has also faced increased challenges with issuing federally mandated Real ID cards, which are required by October 1st, 2020 for people who want to board airplanes and enter other federal facilities without a passport.
	Secretary of State Alex Padilla said last week, Shio Mito had lost my confidence and trust and called on Jerry Brown, the governor of California, and governor-elect Gavin Newsom to promptly appoint new leadership at the DMV.
	So the DMV is just a crapshoot on the state of California.
	But more importantly, corruption does not only exist on one side of the aisle, despite what the media would have you believe.
	Corruption certainly exists on the left side of the aisle.
	When you mention this, then Democrats say that you're trying to suppress votes.
	If you mention that voter fraud is a real thing, and that people can gather ballots, like literally just go door-to-door gathering ballots, and we don't know what happens between the time those ballots are gathered and the time those ballots reach their final destination, if you mention that, it's because you're trying to suppress votes.
	But, if Republicans do the same thing in North Carolina, then obviously what you're talking about is voter fraud, serious voter fraud.
	If the Russians are attempting to manipulate things via Facebook pages, it affects the entire 2016 election.
	But if Democrats do the same thing in Alabama, in the middle of an election, in a senatorial election, then the effect is probably too small to have swung the election.
	How do we know that?
	Well, because the New York Times says so.
	You wonder why people don't trust our institutions?
	This is why people don't trust our institutions of media.
	They're losing trust in voter integrity.
	They're losing trust in the function of government because everybody makes promises and no one keeps any of the promises.
	All of this should be deeply disturbing to Americans who care about the functioning of the federal and state governments.
	Okay, time for a couple of things that I like and then we'll get to some things that I hate.
	So as I've mentioned earlier this week, it's time for some calming music after that.
	Things I like this week.
	Beethoven was born this week, so it's Beethoven's birthday.
	That means that we're doing all Beethoven all week.
	This is one of my favorite piano sonatas.
	It's still famous, but one of his lesser-known famous piano sonatas, if that makes sense.
	This is his Piano Sonata No.
	21, the Waldstein Sonata.
	Emile Gillel is again on piano, one of my favorite pianists.
	I love this piece so much.
	It is fantastic.
	This is the last movement of the Beethoven Piano Sonata No.
	the Waldstein Sonata.
	The Waldstein Sonata.
	Yeah, I'll stop it. - Okay, so I mean, it's just, it's beautiful music.
	I love it.
	Um, so go check that out if you need to be calmed a little bit today, because it really is good stuff.
	Okay, other things that I like.
	So, whatever you think of Speaker Paul Ryan, and I've not been supremely happy with his performance as Speaker because I don't know, you know, that there's ever been a Speaker of the House that I'm fully happy with.
	It's a difficult job, for sure.
	But Paul Ryan's farewell address was very good yesterday.
	So he gave his farewell address on the floor of the Congress.
	He is obviously leaving his job.
	Whatever you think of Paul Ryan, his comments about where we need to fix the country are exactly right.
	It is not inside government.
	This is what I've said repeatedly.
	It's the case that I make in The Right Side of History, my new book that's coming out in March, which you should go check out at any bookseller, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, any of them.
	Go check it out there.
	It was the number one trending book on Amazon yesterday, so thank you for that.
	But everybody should go pick it up.
	It's great.
	If I do say so myself and I wrote it, but Paul Ryan made the case basically that our focus on Washington D.C., our focus on politics ignores the fact that the country is really built outside of government.
	What we really need to focus on right now is rebuilding the social fabric in our neighborhood and our communities.
	That's the way that things are going to get done.
	Not by relying on some great god king in Washington D.C.
	of either party to magically fix your life.
	Here's Paul Ryan talking about it.
	And this is part of the problem with being Speaker of the House.
	As Speaker of the House, people are constantly berating you.
	Get things done.
	Get things done.
	When in reality, The congressional system was built not to get things done.
	And the massive growth in government we've seen over the last 80 years has been a serious problem in trying to walk back.
	It's almost impossible to walk back, or at least very difficult, which is why Paul Ryan, who came into office promising entitlement reform, has spent his entire career fighting for it and failing.
	Here's Ryan, though, talking about what really needs to happen in society if we are to rebuild the level of trust necessary for a functioning civilization.
	What a country.
	Where someone of an unassuming Midwest upbringing gets the chance to be a part of all of this.
	Yes.
	What a country!
	You can pursue whatever your passion is, wherever it takes you.
	I mean, that's the American idea, isn't it?
	The condition of your birth isn't your destiny.
	Your struggle isn't your destiny.
	It's part of your journey.
	Okay, so, you know, that sort of hope is good.
	His speech is very good.
	Again, whatever you think of Paul Ryan, the message that we all need to, you know, figure out our community, and that's where real growth begins, that of course is exactly correct.
	That's a conservative position.
	Because what the left would have you believe is that there are only two modes of living.
	One is as an atomized individual, and two is through the great collective of government.
	What the right has always said is that the actual way of living goes like this.
	You as an individual, your family unit, your community, your state, and then finally the federal government.
	When it comes to Where you should be putting your trust, the last place you should be putting your trust, is in the federal government.
	Okay, time for some things that I hate.
	Okay, so the thing that I hate, number one, so Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cake Shop is just getting destroyed by the state of Colorado.
	It's disgusting.
	So there's some vindictive piece of garbage human who's decided they're going to go into this Christian baker shop and they're going to ask him to bake every offensive cake they can think of.
	So they've already asked him to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding and he said, no, I can't do that because I'm a Christian.
	And then they sued him, and he lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then it went all the way up to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court sort of said, well, he gets to bake whatever cake that he wants, it's artistic expression, but the ruling was very narrow.
	So now they want to drag him back into court, because what they want to say is that he's still discriminating.
	What the Supreme Court said in the first case is that he's not allowed to discriminate, but the state of Colorado also can't be discriminatory in how it applies the rules, and obviously they had animus for this particular guy.
	So what the people who are going after Jack Phillips now want to do is allow the state of Colorado to show no animus, but punish Jack Phillips.
	So now they're doing the same thing.
	The same jerks are coming back to Jack Phillips' bakery, and now they're asking him to bake a gender identity transition cake.
	He's a religious Christian.
	And he says, no, I won't do that.
	So now the state of Colorado is cracking down on him again.
	This is honestly, this is a fascist mindset.
	You got to make people do what they don't want to do or they're bad people.
	And this is the local news reporting on it.
	A Colorado baker who won a victory in the Supreme Court when he refused to bake a cake for a gay couple on religious grounds has a new legal battle on his hands.
	The Colorado Civil Rights Commission recently ruled that Jack Phillips had discriminated against a transgender woman.
	They say Phillips refused to bake a cake for the woman who wanted one with blue frosting and a pink interior.
	The commission has made it clear that it is intent on punishing Jack Phillips.
	Other cake artists are allowed to decline messages that they don't want to communicate, but when Mr. Phillips does it, they come after him.
	Okay, so the problem here is not a double standard.
	So I know that the lawyers are making the case that it's a double standard because that's how the Supreme Court ruled.
	The real problem here is no baker should be forced to bake any cake they don't want to bake for any purpose.
	Hey, that's what freedom is called.
	I don't believe the federal government or the state government should be forcing people to engage in business with people they don't want to engage in business with.
	I know it's a controversial position because people say, OK, what about racists who don't want to serve black people?
	Or what about anti-Semites who don't want to serve Jews?
	And my answer is, go to a different bakery then.
	Those people's businesses will fail because people will rightly say, I don't want to shop at a cake shop that won't serve black people or won't serve gay people or won't serve Jewish people.
	This is where the free market comes in.
	Freedom of choice involves allowing people to choose to do things you don't like.
	And if you don't believe that, then you might want to re-examine your assumptions about how wonderful you are as a human.
	Because if somebody could come along and try to force you to do something that you don't like, the sword cuts both ways.
	Okay, other things that I hate today.
	So there was a tweet that came out yesterday, and it was a picture of Rachel McAdams.
	So, I don't want to rip on the person who sent the tweet.
	I want to rip on... I think it was Vogue magazine that did this.
	I want to rip on the photo shoot itself.
	So, it's a tweet of Rachel McAdams in heavy makeup, wearing basically a sexy bra, and then nursing.
	She's got breast pumps on both her boobs.
	And a lot of people are saying, look at the feminism.
	Look at the feminism.
	So, a couple of things.
	First of all, Well, I think that breast milk is wonderful and has certain medicinal advantages.
	Plenty of babies grow up on formula, plenty of women don't have time to pump, and that is not a rip on the parent.
	So, this kind of virtue signaling with breast pumping is really silly.
	Second of all, breast pumping in Versace?
	Like, who does that?
	Like, the statement you need is a rich actress, a super rich actress, who apparently sits around in, like, random hotel lobbies breast pumping while wearing Versace.
	If I'm going to talk about, you know, heroism in breast pumping, my wife, I mean, who is a doctor, it turns out, would pump for our second child, because she was in medical school and residency when she had our kids, respectively.
	For my son, my wife would pump in the closet at the hospital between hospital shifts.
	And so that's a little more impressive and a little more feminist than, ooh, Rachel McAdams, who's exorbitantly wealthy, works, reading other people's lines, sitting there wearing makeup, and, like, the virtue signaling of breast pumping is just, I'm sorry, it's tiring, it's tiring.
	Like, I think that women who do it are doing something cool, I think that's great.
	There are women at the office who breast pump, and we provide a space for them to do it.
	I think that that's wonderful.
	But the whole virtue signaling, I'm better than you because, look at me, I'm a feminist because I breast pump.
	Alright, whatever man.
	Just, no.
	And I'm less than impressed by the vogue virtue signaling of, she's fierce because she breast pumps while wearing a Versace.
	You know, I have a lot more respect for women who breast pump and just don't make a big fuss out of it.
	Like, I have a lot of respect for that.
	That seems to me... There's a lot of virtue signaling around early motherhood and pregnancy.
	I see the same thing sometimes with... There's this class of women who do this whole... If you do natural birth, right?
	You don't use an epidural.
	You do natural birth.
	Then this makes you a better person.
	Why?
	Why?
	Experiencing more pain makes you... All this is just silly talk.
	Okay, so, there's that as well.
	Okay, final thing that I hate today.
	So, there's a tweet that somebody sent out yesterday that is utterly insane.
	Okay, there's a picture of these migrant kids.
	These migrant kids have arrived at the border.
	In order to keep track of them, and so the people are not switching their IDs, the border patrol has been writing numbers on their arms.
	Well, obviously, this has sort of echoes of the Nazis putting numbers on people's arms.
	That's the idea here.
	So, some moron tweeted out about this and suggested that, they tweeted out this picture, they said, the only reason people cared about the Holocaust is because it had white victims.
	A couple of things about this.
	One, the Jews were specifically murdered during the Holocaust because they were not considered white by the prevailing dominant culture at the time.
	Two, These kids are not going to be sent to gas chambers with their entire families murdered and cremated.
	Many of them will become asylum refugees in the United States.
	Many of them will not.
	But...
	Read another book.
	You know, I say this about Harry Potter a lot.
	People are always, oh, isn't this just like Harry Potter?
	No, it's not just like Harry Potter.
	You're an idiot.
	Okay, well, same thing.
	Read another book.
	Read another book.
	Okay, not everything is the Holocaust.
	It's not the Holocaust when people come to the U.S.
	border, are made to wait in line, have in magic markers something written on there.
	Not a permanent tattoo.
	Magic marker.
	I've written memoirs with Holocaust survivors.
	You know how dismissive and derisive it is to suggest this?
	But this idiot's tweet, this guy named FauxKhalif, he tweeted out, I will say it again, y'all only care about the Holocaust because the victims were white.
	35,000 likes on Twitter.
	5,000 likes on Twitter.
	17,000 retweets.
	Just idiotic.
	Idiotic.
	So, garbage opinion, dude.
	But, you know, I guess that's the way we go now.
	Everything is the Holocaust.
	Everything is Hitler.
	Except for actual Holocaust and Hitler.
	That's not actual... That's not actually bad, I guess.
	That's not as bad, anyway.
	Alright, well, we will be back here tomorrow.
	I hope that the news turns.
	I hope that we have much more great things to report to you before we leave for our Christmas vacation.
	If not, we'll be here anyway.
	So we'll see you then.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.
	Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
	Edited by Alex Zingaro.
	Audio is mixed by Mike Caramina.
	Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.

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