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Dec. 21, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:04:43

Who Let The Mad Dog Out? | Ep. 685

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	General Jim Mattis quits as Secretary of Defense, President Trump initiates DEFCON 1 on a government shutdown, and the stock market tumbles again.
	It's the year-end episode of The Ben Shapiro Show.
	This is the final live episode this year.
	I know, brush away those tears.
	It's okay.
	It'll be alright.
	We'll get through this together and then we'll be back energized and refreshed in the new year.
	I know I will.
	I'm going to take a vacation next week.
	I hope that you're also having a vacation next week.
	But first, we want to make sure that you are all up to date with the latest news, which is crazy.
	I have to say, the season finale of Trump It's really ending on a cliffhanger.
	Like, as we go into the new year, I mean, there are a lot of cliffhangers that have yet to be resolved.
	Really a strong tease for the next season of Trump the Show.
	We'll get to all that in just one second.
	First, let's talk about how you send packages this holiday season, this Christmas season, because it is indeed Christmas.
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	We use Stamps.com here at the Daily Wire offices.
	I use Stamps.com in my own personal life, for Hanukkah presents, and also for nice things for people around the Christmas time.
	I use Stamps because it is so good.
	For all of the aforementioned reasons.
	And right now, you too can enjoy the Stamps.com service with the special offer that includes a four-week trial, plus postage, and a digital scale, without long-term commitments.
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	Alright, so.
	Last episode of the year.
	There's a lot going on.
	A lot going on.
	So.
	Yesterday, the Secretary of Defense, General Jim Mattis, who is one of the most beloved members of the Trump administration by the general public and by the Republican base at large, he decided that he was out.
	He issued his resignation letter.
	He will be leaving as early as February.
	His resignation letter is quite brutal, but to understand what he's talking about, you first have to understand what it was that triggered the resignation.
	So, a little bit of background info.
	Jim Mattis is very close to General John Kelly, who was the Chief of Staff inside the White House when John Kelly left.
	That probably set the clock ticking on when Mattis was going to leave, but as recently as a few days ago, it has been reported, Mattis was telling friends and family that he was going to stay on and see this thing through because he wanted to make sure that the Pentagon was still being well-led, no matter who was President of the United States.
	Well, all of that changed after the President of the United States, Donald Trump, decided to precipitously announce a pullout from Syria.
	And not just that, he's apparently preparing now a substantial withdrawal of U.S.
	troops from Afghanistan, according to the Wall Street Journal.
	Apparently, he wants to pull down about 7,000 of the remaining 14,000 U.S.
	troops.
	He wants to bring half of them home in the coming weeks, the start of a total pullout that could take at least as many months.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, a day after a contested decision to pull American military forces from Syria, officials said on Thursday that President Trump has ordered the start of a reduction of American forces in Afghanistan.
	More than 7,000 American troops will begin to return home from Afghanistan in the coming weeks, a U.S.
	official said.
	The move will come as the first stage of a phased drawdown and the start of a conclusion to the 17-year war that officials say could take at least many months.
	There are now more than 14,000 U.S.
	troops in Afghanistan.
	Trump announced on Twitter on Wednesday that he would pull all of the more than 2,000 American troops.
	In Syria, as the Wall Street Journal notes, taken together, the Syria withdrawal and the likely Afghan drawdown represent a dramatic shift in the U.S.
	approach to military engagement in hot spots around the world, reflecting Mr. Trump's aversion to long-running military engagements with their high costs and American casualties.
	A senior U.S.
	official said, Now, all of this was not driven by the best foreign policy advisors around him.
	I do not think this is the position of Nikki Haley.
	I do not think this is the position of John Bolton.
	I do not think this is the position of Mike Pompeo.
	I don't think this is the position of Jim Mattis.
	I think this is President Trump talking to outside folks, including the Dictator of Turkey, Erdogan, who wanted him out of Syria.
	I think he's talking to folks like Rand Paul and Tucker Carlson, who are telling him to double down on his views with regard to Afghanistan.
	A lot of that is speculation, but knowing the president talks to outside sources, none of that would be particularly surprising.
	The problem is that decisions like this actually have consequences.
	So let's take Syria first.
	The president tweeted out regarding Syria yesterday, so hard to believe.
	He's very angry at Senator Lindsey Graham, who's come out against him on this.
	It's so hard to believe that Lindsey Graham would be against saving soldier lives and billions of dollars.
	Why are we fighting for our enemy, Syria, by staying and killing ISIS for them, Russia, Iran, and other locals?
	Time to focus on our country and bring our youth back home where they belong.
	So a couple of things about this.
	Number one, he's contended that ISIS is dead.
	But in this tweet, he's saying that ISIS is alive and fighting Syria, Russia, Iran.
	So, which is it?
	Also, I have spoken out against the perception of our troop as a bunch of young innocents abroad, desperate to come home, as opposed to guys who signed up knowing exactly what they were doing, meaning they were there to serve America's interests abroad.
	I've gotten more letters over the last 24 hours from folks who are in the military, many of whom served in Syria, and who are saying, why would we possibly abandon our allies on the ground there?
	The stories that are coming out of Syria are horrific enough.
	The safe areas of Syria are basically being protected by U.S.
	troops.
	We pull out.
	The Russians are not pulling out.
	The Russians are staying because they don't care.
	They're going to stick around.
	They're going to continue to build up their forward operating protocols and bases in the area.
	The Iranians are going to continue to strengthen their position in the area.
	The Turks are going to come in and slaughter the Kurds.
	None of this is good.
	I mean, if you're Kurdish, you have got to be livid with the Trump administration at this point.
	The Kurds have been screwed by everyone.
	They were screwed by George H.W.
	They were screwed by Clinton.
	They were not really screwed by George W., but they were screwed by Obama, and now they're being screwed by Trump.
	Kurds right now, I mean, there was a rumor yesterday by Richard Engel over at NBC News.
	He was saying that the Kurds are looking at releasing ISIS fighters specifically because they want the world to know that ISIS isn't dead at this point.
	Apparently, a lot of Syrian Kurds were walking up to U.S.
	troops and begging for their lives yesterday, which is just delightful.
	A good indicator that you are doing the wrong thing is that Vladimir Putin says that you are doing the right thing.
	Yesterday, the President of Russia, meaning the dictator of Russia, says that he agrees with President Trump's policies on Syria.
	Now, I'm old enough to remember when this was a bad thing for Republicans.
	I'm old enough to remember when Barack Obama handed over control of Syria to the Russians with his fake red line in Syria, then handing over the leadership in Syria to Russia.
	And a lot of us shrieked bloody murder over it, saying, why would you possibly strengthen the hand of one of America's worst geopolitical enemies?
	Well, Vladimir Putin is very happy today, and there's a reason he's very happy today.
	That he will be withdrawing U.S.
	troops from Syria.
	As far as ISIS is concerned, I agree more or less with the President of the U.S.
	We, and I have spoken about this before, have really achieved substantial changes with regard to the militants in Syria and have beaten the forces in Syria.
	Okay, and I will say that Putin then tweeted out, the Russians then tweeted out this morning, quote, Syria, I agree with President Trump that ISIS was defeated in Syria, but terrorists can spill over into neighboring countries and regions.
	The translation there means, yeah, I agree with Trump.
	He should pull out of Syria, but also we're not.
	We're going to stick around.
	You know, for the security of the world, we're going to stick around.
	Yeah, right.
	Well, this has all prompted members of the Trump administration to go on television and then proclaim that ISIS has been defeated, which, of course, it has not.
	Stephen Miller was on CNN.
	Stephen Miller is, I think, quite good when it comes to speaking about illegal immigration.
	He's not nearly as good when it comes to speaking about Syria.
	Here he was yesterday explaining that ISIS has been defeated.
	This is simply untrue.
	Here he is saying it anyway.
	The president says on one day that ISIS is defeated, the next day he says ISIS is there and let Russia take care of it.
	ISIS has been defeated, but if ISIS wants to retrench and regrow and reorganize, it's going to be up to those countries to defeat their enemy.
	Okay, so their enemy?
	ISIS isn't our enemy anymore?
	ISIS is now Russia's enemy?
	Weird take, Stephen Miller, and weird take everyone else.
	All this prompted yesterday Jim Mattis to step down.
	Apparently he did so specifically in the wake of the Syria decision.
	According to the New York Times, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis' experience and stability were widely seen as a balance to an unpredictable president.
	Again, I think wrongly.
	People were seeing Mattis as sort of the linchpin of American foreign policy inside the administration.
	I don't think that's true.
	Having spoken with many, many members of the White House on a regular basis, Mattis was a crucial part of the White House, but he was certainly not the leader on foreign policy when it came to deciding what came next.
	For example, Mattis was a big opponent.
	Of pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal.
	Obviously the Trump administration did so.
	Mattis was not a fan of the Jerusalem embassy moves.
	Obviously the Trump administration did so.
	I think both of those decisions were right.
	So it's not like Mattis was infallible or was right on everything, but having somebody with actual experience in the military directing the Pentagon with a perspective on whether we should pull troops out of volatile areas, I think that was valuable.
	Well, he resigned on Thursday, according to the Times, in protest of President Trump's decision to withdraw American forces from Syria and his rejection of international alliances.
	Mr. Mattis had repeatedly told friends and aides over recent months that he viewed his responsibility to protect the United States' 1.3 million active-duty troops as worth the concessions necessary as Defense Secretary to a mercurial president.
	But on Thursday, in an extraordinary rebuke of the president, he decided that Mr. Trump's decision to withdraw roughly 2,000 American troops from Syria was a step too far.
	Officials said Mr. Mattis went to the White House with his resignation letter already written, but nonetheless made a last attempt at persuading the president to reverse his decision about Syria, which Trump announced on Wednesday over the objection of his senior advisors.
	Apparently, he asked his aides to print out 50 copies of his resignation letter And so this brings us to his actual resignation letter and the disconnect between what Trump said about Mattis resigning and what Mattis said about him resigning.
	So what Trump said is this.
	He tweeted out, General Jim Mattis will be retiring with distinction at the end of February after having served my administration as Secretary of Defense for the past two years.
	During Jim's tenure, tremendous progress has been made, especially with respect to the purchase of new fighting equipment.
	General Mattis was a great help to me in getting allies in other countries to pay their share of military obligations.
	A new Secretary of Defense will be named shortly.
	I greatly thank Jim for his service.
	A very warm goodbye from President Trump.
	Also important to note here, look at President Trump's language.
	He talks about that progress has been made with the purchase of new fighting equipment.
	President Trump is very intent on seeing America as sort of a business.
	And so when we sell defense equipment to, for example, Turkey, he sees this as a win.
	One of the reasons that he is pursuing a Syrian policy in conjunction with the Turks is because the Turks just pledged to buy about $3.5 billion worth of U.S.
	armaments Presumably they would have gotten that from Russia if they hadn't gotten it from the United States.
	But again, the idea that we should be held hostage over $3 billion of U.S.
	armament is just ridiculous.
	In any case, President Trump gives this warm goodbye to Mattis.
	Mattis' goodbye, not nearly as warm.
	So here's what he says in his goodbye letter, in his resignation letter.
	He says, I've been privileged to serve as our country's 26th Secretary of Defense, which has allowed me to serve alongside our men and women of the Department in defense of our citizens and our ideals.
	I'm proud of our progress that has been made over the past two years on some of the key goals articulated in our National Defense Strategy, putting the Department on a more sound budgetary footing, improving readiness and lethality in our forces, reforming the Department's business practices for greater performance.
	Our troops continue to provide the capabilities needed to prevail in conflict and sustain strong U.S.
	global influence.
	And then he gets to the actual heart of the letter.
	And this is the part that's pretty devastating to President Trump on a personal level and for the administration as a whole.
	I mean, it's pretty bad.
	I'll get to that in just one second.
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	Okay, so Mattis' letter continues, and he gets into some really tough stuff for the administration.
	He says, "One core belief I've always held "was that our strength as a nation "is inextricably linked to the strength "of our unique and comprehensive system "of alliances and partnerships, While the U.S.
	remains the indispensable nation in the free world, we cannot protect our interests or serve that role effectively without maintaining strong alliances and showing respect to those allies.
	Like you, I have said from the beginning that the armed forces of the United States should not be the policemen of the world.
	Instead, we must use all tools of American power to provide for the common defense, including providing effective leadership to our alliances.
	NATO's 29 democracies demonstrated that strength in their commitment to fighting alongside us following the 9-11 attack On America, the defeat ISIS coalition of 74 nations is further proof.
	So right there, that is a pretty subtle slap at Trump's anti-NATO talk and his rhetoric, and it's a slap at his pulling out of Syria.
	He says, we have a coalition fighting ISIS, what are you doing?
	We have a coalition in NATO, what are you doing?
	And then he continues, similarly, I believe we must be resolute and unambiguous in our approach to those countries whose strategic interests are increasingly in tension with ours.
	It is clear that China and Russia, for example, want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model, gaining veto authority over other nations' economic, diplomatic, and security decisions to promote their own interests at the expense of their neighbors, America and our allies.
	That is why we must use all tools of American power to provide for the common defense.
	Again, this is him pushing against Trump handing over Syria to the Russians.
	My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues.
	We must do everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity, and values, and we are strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our allies.
	And then he drops the bomb on Trump.
	He says, because you have a right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position.
	That's brutal.
	That is brutal.
	It's subtle, but it's brutal.
	I mean, that is a cut that goes deep, because basically he's saying, I respect our allies.
	I believe in a strong national defense.
	I believe we need to confront China and Russia rather than backing away from them.
	I believe that we need to not abandon NATO and not abandon Syria.
	And I have this moral view of foreign policy.
	You don't, so I think you deserve a Secretary of Defense who agrees with you.
	I mean, that is rough stuff.
	That is rough stuff.
	He says, I very much appreciate this opportunity to serve the nation and our men and women in uniform.
	Signed, General James Mattis.
	Okay, very brutal stuff.
	Not a single word of praise for President Trump, which is unusual in a resignation letter.
	It's particularly unusual in this administration where every resignation letter contains fulsome praise for the President of the United States.
	This is having some pretty brutal impacts inside the Republican Party.
	I'll explain that in just a second.
	So, a lot of Republicans, I mean, I've been getting texts from people who are real Trump fans, people who are deep Trump believers, very disquieted about Mattis's resignation, about his policy in Syria, President Trump's policy in Syria.
	About the criminal justice reform that went through earlier this week.
	About the machinations on the wall, which we'll get to in just a second.
	A Fox News reporter, I'm trying to remember her name, Jennifer Griffin, she spoke yesterday on Fox News about what is happening over at the Pentagon.
	She said the morale has never been lower over at the Pentagon because Mattis was well liked.
	I was told by a very well-placed source here in the Pentagon that morale has never been lower at meetings here at the Pentagon of the top brass in the last few days to discuss the pullout of troops from Syria.
	You can see that the worm is starting to turn a little bit for some members of Trump's base.
	Fox and Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade.
	He's a really nice guy, a friend of mine.
	Brian Kilmeade, who's been a very, very strong Trump supporter throughout his administration and before, he said that President Trump today had re-founded ISIS and was giving Russia a big win.
	He was talking with Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
	He said he's also doing exactly what he criticized President Obama for doing.
	Here's what Kilmeade had to say.
	Secretary of Defense Mattis has decided to retire in a lengthy letter.
	I looked everywhere, Sarah.
	Now, any praise for the President?
	The President praised him.
	He's leaving, basically, it seems, because of the way the President treats our allies, in his view, and the pullout in Syria and Afghanistan seems to have been too much.
	How bad is the relationship right now?
	Look, they continue to have a good relationship, but they disagree on a number of fronts that he outlined.
	But at the end of the day, the American people elected one person to be the commander-in-chief and to make decisions.
	Well, Kilmeade then just slammed her.
	He said, President Trump accused Obama of founding ISIS.
	And then he said, President Trump just re-founded ISIS because they have 30,000 men there.
	They're already striking back with our would-be evacuation.
	The president is really on the griddle with this.
	And then Sanders said that she respectfully disagreed with Kilmeade.
	And then she said, the idea the president has anything to do with helping ISIS re-emerge is absolutely outrageous.
	And Kilmeade said correctly, leaving is helping.
	This was the case that was made against Barack Obama.
	And then Sanders says, if ISIS wants to pick a fight with somebody, they sure as heck don't want to pick one with Donald Trump because he will destroy them and defeat them.
	Except that we're leaving.
	Except that we're leaving.
	Again, what drove this decision in the first place is President Trump's warmth toward a dictator, Erdogan, in Turkey.
	Now listen, there are a lot of folks today who are saying, this is the right move.
	We need to pull out, there is no long-term strategy.
	This is the crew that always says, endless war, endless war, we can't have endless war.
	I didn't like this argument when it was made by Barack Obama with regard to the Iran deal.
	What people in foreign policy like to do is create false binary arguments.
	These false binary arguments go something like this.
	If you don't sign on to the Iran deal, you are for endless war with Iran.
	You want nuclear war with Iran.
	It's a lie.
	There are lots of things I want with Iran.
	War is not one of them.
	What I would prefer is sanctions on Iran.
	What I would prefer is maybe thinking about closing the Straits of Hormuz.
	What I would prefer with Iran He's trying to find dissenters inside Iran who can lead a revolution against the presiding power over there.
	What I want with Iran is containment of their power to the country that they already control.
	But, Barack Obama's people were saying things like, no, if you don't back the Iran nuclear deal, you want war.
	We got the same thing with North Korea from President Trump.
	If you don't back President Trump's talks with the lying North Korean government, the lying, murderous, genocidal North Korean government, then this is because you want war with North Korea.
	Or maybe I don't think they should be legitimized on the world stage.
	Now we're getting the same routine on Syria.
	If you don't want to pull 2,000 troops out of Syria and leave the Kurds defenseless as they get slaughtered by the Turks, if you don't want to leave a bunch of people defenseless to ISIS, if you don't want to leave a bunch of people at the mercies of Bashar Assad... By the way, all these things have externalities.
	They all have externalities.
	ISIS hasn't exactly been quiet over the past few years in the West.
	ISIS hasn't exactly been inoffensive in its expulsion of millions of refugees from this area, many of whom are swamping Europe.
	But the idea is that if you don't want to pull these troops, then you want endless war.
	Endless war.
	You just want to fight in Syria endlessly and leave our troops there endlessly.
	Same thing in Afghanistan.
	We can't have an endless war.
	Well, what about the alternative?
	What about the alternative which is foreign policy is really a game of catch-as-catch-can?
	And we gotta be honest about what foreign policy is.
	We've never been honest about what foreign policy is, because we have this kind of, we have this blinkered vision that foreign policy should always end the way World War I or World War II ended, with some sort of surrender and signing of a document.
	No war since then has ended that way.
	Maybe the Korean War, to a certain extent, but even that was maintained by American military presence in South Korea that continues to this day.
	The reality is that war is no longer about simply going in, defeating an enemy, and then occupying the country until it is a Western-style democracy.
	At least Germany had a history of Western-style democracy before the Nazis came to power.
	The same thing simply was not true in Afghanistan.
	The question is, what's in our interest?
	And is it in our interest to pull out and allow Al-Qaeda to reconstitute and allow Pakistan to possibly fall to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban?
	Because that's a serious possibility, by the way.
	Remember, that as Afghanistan strengthens, there's going to be spillover into Pakistan, and Pakistan is a nuclear-armed state.
	I mean, there are all sorts of ramifications to foreign policy that are uncomfortable to think about, but that are quite real.
	And the simplistic, let's just bring our troops home stuff, It doesn't work, which is why I promise you that within two years, President Trump will be reinserting troops in Syria when something goes wrong.
	We'll get to all of that.
	I want to get to the government shutdown and the Mexico stuff in just one second, because that's the other big news item that's coming out today.
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	OK, so meanwhile, as all of this chaos is happening with Mattis and Syria and Afghanistan, chaos is happening on the home front to the stock market.
	tumbled some 500 points yesterday, which means that we have now raised all gains since the start of the Trump presidency on the S&P 500 as well.
	The U.S. stocks swooned for a second day Thursday after the Federal Reserve rates benchmark interest rates and said it would continue to let its massive balance sheet shrink at the current pace.
	You do have to say at this point that the Fed is obviously taking a pretty harsh position with regard to the Trump administration.
	Now, there are two ways to read what the Fed is doing by raising interest rates.
	One, they're saying the market is wrong, the market is incorrect, the fundamentals underlying the economy are still strong, and so we're raising the interest rates knowing that the fundamentals of the economy are still strong.
	Possibility number two, the Fed is basically saying, look, we need to raise interest rates anyway because they're just too low.
	We can't have another bubble that bursts.
	So we are tightening up the interest rates right now.
	And if that costs the economy, it costs the economy.
	That would explain why Trump is so ticked at the Federal Reserve.
	It also explains why, listen, I'm not a fan of the Federal Reserve.
	On this one, I am with Ron Paul.
	I think the Federal Reserve does more harm than good.
	I think a predictable rate of inflation, according to Milton Friedman's economics, would be preferable.
	Frankly, I'm in favor of going back to a generalized price of the dollar pegged to the price of gold, so that we at least have an objective measure of what the dollar is worth.
	In any case, the Dow and NASDAQ posted their lowest closes since October of 2017.
	This is the worst year for the stock market as currently constituted since 2008, which is the beginning of the recession.
	Is this actually going to lead to a new recession?
	Unclear at this point, but obviously indicators are not great.
	Today, the Dow is up slightly.
	It's probably going to even out today, but there was a big drop yesterday.
	And if you look at what the Dow has done over the last month, As of December 3rd, the Dow was at nearly 26,000.
	Today, it is below 23,000.
	That is a massive drop in just one month.
	If you look at it over the last six months, what you are seeing right now is that the high point in the last six months was Wednesday, October 3rd, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at nearly 27,000.
	And now, it is down below 23,000.
	So that is a massive, massive sell-off.
	And you are seeing that basically continue.
	It's a pattern, and it's emerging, and it's a serious issue.
	Okay, with all this chaos happening, what we could really use right now is a government shutdown.
	Now, as I said yesterday, I'm not against a government shutdown.
	I don't think government shutdowns matter very much.
	I don't think people care about them as much as the political class chatters about them.
	When the government shuts down, not all that much actually shuts down.
	You still get your mail during Christmas.
	You still get your Medicare during Christmas.
	You still get your Social Security during Christmas.
	It's all the non-mandatory spending and the non-essential government services that shut down.
	So what exactly happens?
	Nine departments close, about 420,000 people work without pay.
	That would be the people in the Departments of Agriculture, the Treasury, Homeland Security, Interior, State, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Commerce, and Justice.
	All right.
	So.
	Fine.
	Hundreds of thousands of federal employees deemed essential are still forced to work over the holidays without pay, according to the data compiled by the Senate Democrats, but they're going to get paid again.
	OK, the idea that we're not going to give them back pay when the government stops the shutdown is just nonsense.
	So 90.
	So honestly.
	You could find places that are going to, like, float you a little bit of money for the holidays while the government shuts down, knowing that in three weeks it's not going to be shut down, you pay them back.
	With 90% of their personnel considered essential, the Department of Homeland Security is hit the hardest.
	Again, they're still serving, so for you, the taxpayer, the answer is that these people are still out there doing their jobs.
	It hurts government employees, but it doesn't actually hurt the American people insofar as everybody who's still essential is doing what they're supposed to do.
	The national parks are likely to close, so they say that All 58 of the country's national parks would shutter over the holidays.
	But you have to ask yourself why you would shut, like, open-air monuments.
	Remember, Barack Obama did this during the 2013 government shutdown.
	He actually shut down open-air monuments, like the World War II monument.
	He put, like, ropes to prevent people from going into the World War II monument, which is just silly towns.
	The Smithsonian Museum may have the funds to remain open, staff said in a tweet, but some of the agencies, like many of the agencies set to be impacted, they'll update that as the deadline approaches.
	Another 400,000 workers will be furloughed.
	Many of them will be furloughed in places like the Department of Commerce.
	Eh.
	Good news, 52,000 staffers at the IRS are furloughed.
	So if we can make that happen, like, on a permanent basis, then I'm all for that.
	Apparently, if you are, because the funding for the State Department is set to expire on Friday, that could throw a wrench in the plans of international travelers.
	So, okay, so you should have gotten your passport stamped like before.
	Okay, like, I've been in that situation, but tough.
	I mean, what's more important, actually, getting a permanent border wall on our southern border, or you didn't stamp your passport three weeks ago, like you should have?
	So right now, here's where things stand.
	President Trump says he's not going to sign any bill that doesn't include $5 billion in funding for the border.
	While Paul Ryan announced this yesterday after visiting the White House alongside Kevin McCarthy, here was the outgoing Speaker of the House announcing that Trump was not going to cave on the issue.
	The President informed us that he will not sign the bill that came over from the Senate last evening because of his legitimate concerns for border security.
	So what we're going to do is go back to the House and work with our members.
	We want to keep the government open, but we also want to see an agreement that protects the border.
	We have very serious concerns about securing our border.
	So the President said he will not sign this bill.
	So we're going to go back and work on adding border security to this, also keeping the government open, because we do want to see an agreement.
	Okay, so, you know, that is...
	Trump's not wrong about this.
	As I said yesterday, I'm glad that President Trump is standing for this belatedly.
	Now, here's the parentheses critique.
	The critique here is that President Trump should have done this years ago.
	You know, when it was before midterm, and when House Democrats weren't set to take over in the next 30 seconds, and when he had more leverage.
	Because right now, House Democrats figure a couple of things.
	One, they look at the last election cycle, and they see that up until the last couple of weeks of the election cycle, In 2018, the election was actually quite close.
	Then Trump started jabbering about immigration nonstop, and he started basically a lot of talk about border wars and all the rest, and we moved away from talking about Justice Kavanaugh, and then the Republicans just plummeted in the polls.
	And they lost by an average of 8.6 points across the country.
	That was the final vote count in all of the House races.
	So Democrats are thinking, okay, if Trump wants to talk incessantly about the wall, let him do it.
	What do we have to lose?
	We have another two years until the election.
	They're also thinking, we're going to take over the House in five seconds, so what's he going to do then?
	So Trump picked the, I'm glad he's doing it.
	I am.
	I think that it's, I think he should do this.
	I think forcing the Democrats' feet to the fire is a good thing.
	I think he should do it with a House full of Democrats.
	I think all of that is fine.
	Should he have done this two years ago?
	Of course he should have done this two years ago, which is why Stephen Miller, who's quite good on immigration, as I said, he had no good answers, or he's at least good on illegal immigration.
	We disagree on legal immigration.
	He had no good answers when asked by Wolf Blitzer, why didn't the president do this like two years ago when he could have?
	Why didn't he get the border wall done during his first two years in office with a Republican majority in the House and a Republican majority in the Senate?
	Well, we actually have completed or have underway a hundred miles.
	But the president's made clear that he's not interested in continuing to build the wall one mile, one stretch at a time.
	He wants to build the wall by getting the money now, just like the president was very clear about for the last year leading up to this funding fight.
	But he hasn't received the five billion.
	Okay, and then Miller got more and more animated over all of this.
	Now, here's where the Trump administration does have an advantage.
	The Democrats really don't care about border security.
	They don't like border security.
	And Miller pointed that out to Blitzer.
	He said, well, they voted against deporting MS-13 folks.
	They voted against a border wall.
	They voted in favor of sanctuary cities.
	He's right about all that stuff.
	It's also true that Trump should have done this earlier, obviously.
	But when Trump says that walls work, he is correct.
	And this is a winning political point if he is willing to press it.
	The focus on the caravan that was coming to the border was extreme and overwrought, but his talk about a border wall being necessary, I think that the vast majority of Americans actually do agree with that, even if they tell pollsters otherwise.
	Essential to border security is a powerful physical barrier.
	Walls work.
	Whether we like it or not, they work better than anything.
	Okay, of course he's exactly right about all of this, and he should hold the Democrats' feet to the fire.
	I'll explain how that can be done.
	One strategy suggested by the president is not how it can be done, but I'll explain how it can be done in just a second.
	First, I want to talk to you about how you defend your rights.
	So, our founders were deeply interested in protecting your individual rights, your God-given rights, and then they gave you the Second Amendment, which was designed to protect those rights, to allow you to defend those rights against enemies, foreign and domestic, and the folks at Bravo Company Manufacturing are interested in helping you do that.
	BCM was started in a garage by a Marine veteran more than two decades ago to build a professional-grade product that meets combat standards.
	BCM believes the same level of protection should be provided to every American, regardless of whether they're a private citizen or a professional.
	Now, as you know, when I talk about the Second Amendment, I don't talk about hunting, because I'm not a hunter.
	I don't talk about going to the range, because while I enjoy going to the range, I don't have a lot of time to do it.
	What I talk about is protecting yourself and your family.
	BCM is not a sporting arms company.
	They design, engineer, manufacture life-saving equipment.
	They assume that each rifle leaving their shop will be used in a life or death situation by a responsible citizen, law enforcement officer, or a soldier overseas.
	Every component of a BCM rifle is hand-assembled and tested by Americans to a life-saving standard.
	BCM feels a moral responsibility as Americans to provide tools that will not fail the user when it's not just a paper target, when, God forbid, you actually have to use a gun to protect yourself.
	To learn more about Bravo Company Manufacturing, head on over to BravoCompanyMFG.com, where you can discover more about their products, special offers, and upcoming news.
	That's BravoCompanyMFG.com.
	And if you want to find out more about BCM and the awesome people who founded it and run it, go check out their products at YouTube.com slash Bravo Company USA.
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	I'm proud to be associated with them.
	BravoCompanyMFG.com.
	Go check them out right now.
	Okay.
	I have a lot more.
	Plus we have the mailbag coming up, a lot more goodies, things I like, things I hate.
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	So what exactly should President Trump do?
	Well, President Trump should not call for an end to the filibuster when it comes to funding the government.
	The reason being, last time somebody tried to end a filibuster was Harry Reid.
	He ended the judicial filibuster and that allowed President Trump to ram through every judge he could ever possibly want in a million years.
	That's been great for Republicans.
	Why would you want to end the filibuster five minutes before Nancy Pelosi takes over the House?
	That does not make any sense.
	Why would you want to end the filibuster a couple of years before an election that is likely to not go well for Republicans in the Senate?
	Does that make any sense?
	None of that makes any sense.
	And Mitch McConnell isn't going to do it.
	Mitch McConnell isn't going to do any of that stuff.
	So, there's that.
	What exactly should Republicans do at this point?
	What Republicans probably should do is something that my friend Daniel Horowitz over at CRTV has recommended.
	He says that basically he should force the Democrats to actually filibuster.
	So the dirty little secret about filibustering is that it takes 60 votes to break a filibuster, but a filibuster is an actual procedure.
	It's not just, we decide, we filibuster.
	We vote, and now we filibuster.
	No, you actually have to go out there and talk and talk and talk and talk.
	You have to physically go out there and hold up the business of the Senate.
	And so Trump, for optics reason, should do this.
	So here's what Daniel Horowitz says, and this is basically correct.
	He says, The lack of unanimous consent or 60 votes doesn't table a bill.
	It's just that opposing senators in the minority can request to be recognized and then continuously hold the floor.
	In recent years, majority parties have never made the minority do that.
	Sometimes it makes sense to preemptively achieve an agreement because the majority just can't afford to chew up endless days on debate of a single issue, but sometimes there are issues worth fighting for.
	Either way, this is the end of the line for the 115th Congress.
	How do you get Democrats to stop talking?
	This is where Senate Rule 19, the two-speech rule, comes into play.
	The rule explicitly prohibits individual senators from speaking more than twice upon any one question in debate on the same legislative day.
	Given that Republicans preside over the chair and control of the floor, they can refuse to officially adjourn, opting only to recess temporarily and keep the Senate in the same legislative day indefinitely.
	This will ensure that even the Democrats who are willing and able to speak for a long time will eventually be forced to relent.
	This never happens, it's never enforced, because Republicans never force Democrats to hold the floor in the first place, and Mitch McConnell won't bring up legislation without a unanimous consent agreement or 60 votes.
	But, if he forced the minority to hold the floor and enforced Rule 19, Democrats would exhaust themselves very quickly.
	It's a strategy laid out by James Wallner, who's an expert on Senate procedure.
	Walner points out that Democrats do have the ability to challenge rulings of the chair and bring up points of order or call for quorum calls as means of prolonging their floor time, but Republicans can dispense with those motions with 51 votes.
	Eventually, Democrats would run out of steam and exhaust their two speeches per member.
	This could take days or weeks, but it depends on the determination of each side.
	He says the optics are also really good here because, again, Democrats are going to have to get up there and explain why they're holding up the business of government just to not give Trump the money to fund a border wall.
	And Democrats, by the way, don't have a strong case here.
	The dumbest tweet that I saw today came courtesy of Chris Murphy, who is just a dolt.
	Chris Murphy tweeted out today, I kid you not, that President Trump is a racist because he doesn't want to actually build a border wall on our border with Canada.
	Okay, this is literally what he said.
	He tweeted out that, he said, here's where the analogy breaks down between the TSA and the border wall.
	He says, we have TSA at every airport.
	Trump is advocating putting up a wall on only one border.
	No wall for the country filled mostly with white people.
	Yes, I'm sure that is Trump's main concern.
	The seven people from Canada attempting to illegally immigrate.
	As opposed to the hundreds of thousands of people from our southern border attempting to illegally immigrate.
	If Democrats have to make those sorts of arguments publicly, it could be quite humiliating for them.
	So, if you're gonna do this, if you're gonna do this, why not force Democrats to, even if you lose, why not force Democrats to go out there and explain for hours on end why they won't fund the government just to prevent a wall from being built in the first place.
	Okay, meanwhile, I do have to note, the worst editorial of the day comes courtesy of Julia Jaffe, who is just a terrible columnist.
	She's the woman who attacked Melania Trump during the campaign, and then she was attacked by anti-Semites, and then President Trump said nothing about it, so she became very famous on the basis of this.
	She's a correspondent for GQ magazine.
	She has a piece today titled, just in time for Christmas, Please Don't Wish Me Merry Christmas.
	Why?
	Because she's Jewish.
	Now, as a Jew, If you wish me a Merry Christmas, you know what I'll say?
	I'll say, thanks, and you have a Merry Christmas, too.
	You know why?
	Because what do I care?
	You're not trying to convert me.
	And it seems to me that you are just wishing me a nice time of the year, because you know I don't celebrate Christmas, because I wear a yarmulke.
	And if I weren't wearing a yarmulke, I don't think it would be unfair to assume that I might celebrate Christmas in a country where, legitimately, 90% of people celebrate Christmas.
	Okay, here's what she writes though.
	She says, I like good cheer, but please do not wish me Merry Christmas.
	Why does she say this?
	Because she says, it was five nights before Christmas, and my Lyft driver was the umpteenth person to wish me a Merry Christmas that day.
	He probably just meant it the way most people do.
	It was a kind of December shorthand for have a good day, but he had a cross hanging from his rear veneer.
	I said, thank you.
	Wished him the same, got out on my street, decorated with lights and wreaths and nativity scenes, went into my house, and sighed.
	I'll explain why this doltess sighed in just one second.
	She said, I like good cheer, but please do not wish me Merry Christmas.
	It's wonderful if you celebrate it, but I don't, and I don't feel like explaining that to you.
	And yet you are in the pages of the Washington Post today.
	It's lonely to be reminded a thousand times every winter that the dominant American cultural event occurs without me.
	Oh my, get over yourself, lady.
	Get over yourself!
	Christmas is a lovely holiday, but it definitely is not a secular one.
	True.
	It is a celebration of Christ, as its very name implies.
	As a Jewish person, I have zero problems with your celebrating the birth of a person you believe is God's only son who grew up to die for your sins.
	I don't share your faith, and I don't begrudge you the joy of your celebration.
	In fact, I often participate.
	As I will this year when I bring Christmas presents wrapped in Christmas paper to a Christmas dinner with my friends and their sweet children.
	There's no problem here.
	We know, respect, and celebrate each other's differences.
	My family even celebrated a version of this holiday for decades.
	In the Soviet Union, run as it was by the self-declared militant godless, Christmas was a secular holiday.
	It was called New Year's.
	And then she says, It began to feel deeply alien, precisely because we were secular, but it was not.
	Despite the movies and the shopping, despite the Germanic decor, Christmas is still, at its core and by design, about the birth of Christ, a point that seems bizarre to argue.
	Just look at all those nativity scenes.
	And despite its celebration of a Christian God, it is everywhere for over a month, in a way no other holiday is, not even Easter.
	Okay, first of all, when she says despite its celebration of a Christian God, I'm just going to put this out there.
	Kind of weird to distinguish the Christian God from the Jewish God when we actually believe in the same God.
	We don't believe Jews in the Jesus part of the Christian God, but we still believe in the same Judeo-Christian God, right?
	Presumably the being standing behind all creation, right?
	This is something that Jews and Christians hold in common, even if we don't believe the Jesus story as Jews.
	But she's very offended.
	She says, it is in every ad, in every window and doorway, on everyone's lips.
	If you're not a part of the festivities, even its sparkling aesthetic can wear you down.
	Honestly, if you look at Christmas lights and you get sad, you got a problem in your life, lady.
	As a very orthodox Jew, again, for the 1,000th time, I don't celebrate Christmas.
	You know what's fun?
	Christmas lights.
	They're twinkly and pretty, and they make me happy, because they're twinkly and pretty.
	And they don't make me think of pogroms, because we don't do that sort of thing here in the United States.
	And in fact, it makes me grateful that so many people in the United States celebrate Christmas, because those people are generally stand— The people who celebrate Christmas in the United States are largely the people who are standing between Western civilization and the abyss.
	And by the way, as a Jew, these are also the greatest defenders of Israel.
	She says, Oppressive ubiquity?
	I gotta say, it's really funny.
	and you're used to the fact that cab drivers don't wish you an easy fast on Yom Kippur, but it's harder to get used to the oppressive ubiquity of a holiday like Christmas.
	Oppressive ubiquity?
	I gotta say, it's really funny.
	She says, this is always the time of year I feel most excluded from society, one Jewish friend told me.
	I promise you that the Jews, who are most Orthodox in the United States, don't give one wit about being wished Merry Christmas.
	I can speak for my community when I say the vast majority of Jews in the United States, when they are going around during Christmas season, if somebody wishes them Merry Christmas, they go, thank you, and you have a Merry Christmas too.
	You know why?
	Because we are quite secure in our own religion.
	It's only secular Jews who are not in favor of religion of any sort.
	They're not in favor of their own Jewishness unless it makes them othered from Christianity.
	And they're not in favor of Christianity because Christianity is a religion.
	These people are the ones who get deeply offended.
	In fact, there's a famous story.
	I think I've told it on the program before.
	Where a couple of rabbis, very famous rabbis, they went to public school in the United States.
	And they were in the back of a cab together around Christmas time.
	And one said to the other, so where did you go to middle school?
	And the other said, well, I went to public school.
	And the other one said, well, I went to public school too.
	He said, I don't believe you.
	And the other one said, OK, well, I did.
	And the other one said, well, you know what?
	Prove it.
	Sing Silent Night.
	And so these two rabbis in the back of the car are singing Silent Night.
	Because, guess what?
	We live in a country that is founded on Judeo-Christian values.
	It was founded mostly by Christians.
	It is still inhabited mostly by Christians.
	That's not a bad thing.
	That's a very good thing.
	That's why the country is so great.
	It's why the country is so tolerant.
	It's why Julia Jaffe can write stupid columns in the Washington Post moaning about how people say Merry Christmas to her.
	It's just ridiculous.
	She says, My wish this holiday season is for people not to make assumptions about others, to put themselves in others' shoes, to respect others as they wish to be respected, to respond with kindness even when they disagree, to live and let live.
	Well, if they say Merry Christmas to you and you're not living and letting live, I would suggest that you're the one who's intolerant and being kind of a jerk.
	I mean, the Grinch apparently is real.
	The Grinch is a real thing, and the Grinch has taken on the body of Julia Jaffe.
	So good stuff there, Julia.
	Well done.
	Okay, time for some mailbag.
	So let's mailbag it up a little bit.
	Because it's the last mailbag of the year.
	I know.
	We're all sad about this.
	But don't worry, time continues to move, and we will be back in the new year with so many goodies that will make your head swim.
	Okay.
	Daniel says, Can you go ahead and get into more detail why Turkey filling in the power vacuum in Iraq and getting more power in the region is bad for the U.S.
	or Israel?
	Aside from being a dictatorship, Turkey isn't likely to attack Israel or start a proxy war and doesn't pose a threat to U.S.
	citizens.
	Well, Turkey, in fact, has backed Hamas, right?
	Remember the Hamas flotilla that was backed by Turkey?
	It came from Turkey.
	Erdogan is a radical Islamist who has helped cut off material military ties between Israel and Turkey.
	It would not be foreign for Erdogan to start backing terrorist groups.
	That does not seem implausible.
	Not only that, but expanding of Turkey's reach into places like Syria and the slaughter of the Kurds, who have been our historic U.S.
	allies, that is indeed a problem.
	Erdogan is a bad actor in the world.
	Jacobs says, I have recently found out that my wife and I are expecting our first child in August.
	We are planning on surprising our parents with this good news on Christmas Day.
	Any advice on what to expect?
	How did you tell your parents about your first child?
	Thanks and God bless.
	Well, first of all, grandparents are going to be happy.
	Being a grandparent is like the happiest thing in the world, if I can take any cues from my parents and my wife's parents.
	I would get ready for excitement and fun, unless your parents are terrible people, in which case, you know, not much I can do for you, bud.
	But it should be a blast.
	I mean, congratulations, that is awesome news.
	The way we told my parents is we had them come over for dinner, and then I said, I just have some good news for you guys, and, you know, my wife is pregnant.
	And they freaked out, and then my wife's parents freaked out.
	It's really, it's a blast.
	It's one of the coolest things in life, is telling your parents that you are now carrying on the progeneration of the species.
	It's a pretty cool thing.
	John says, I'm sure someone has already asked this, but if AOC runs like Vox suggested, will you throw your hat in the ring for a chance to finally get that debate?
	It could save you that 10K as well.
	Thanks, love the show, and Clavens as well.
	Well, I can't credit you for your taste, but would I throw my hat in the ring just to debate AOC?
	Again, I think that That would involve primarying Trump, presumably.
	I think primarying Trump inside the Republican Party right now is bad for a variety of reasons.
	The biggest reason not to primary Trump right now is because it would force people into a choice between conservatism and Trumpism.
	I don't want to force people into that choice.
	Personal loyalty tends to win that choice.
	I prefer that the party Not split and have another civil war over Trump right now, especially because events are going to do what events are going to do at this point.
	Agatha says, Dear Ben, Love the show, keep up the good work.
	My question regards the theological understanding of marriage in Judaism.
	Why is it polygamy is practiced in the Old Testament or Torah but not practiced today in Judaism?
	Also in Christianity, husband and wife are understood as the king and queen of creation.
	Is there similar symbolism in Judaism?
	Thanks for taking my question.
	Well, obviously, husband and wife are the foundations of all civilization.
	This goes back to Genesis and Adam and Eve.
	As far as why polygamy is no longer practiced.
	So in Judaism it was outlawed in around the year 1000 by Rabbeinu Tam who's a very famous rabbi.
	It's not been common practice in Judaism for hundreds and hundreds of years.
	The reason being that it was seen as anti-woman.
	The reason being that it was suspected that men could not actually cope with supporting that many wives.
	And also it undermines the institution of marriage itself, which is why you see in the Bible that there is polygamy in the Bible, but the first couple is one man and one woman.
	It is not one man and many women.
	And Nicole says, "What is your favorite kind of cookie?" So I'm going to give an unexpected answer right here.
	I like Madelines, which are kind of a cake, I guess.
	But they are delicious.
	They are just the best thing in the world.
	Veronica says, Let's talk dating strategy.
	Who says I love you first?
	I think it should be the guy.
	Who said it first?
	You or your wife?
	Also, did you hold hands before marriage?
	So, I did hold hands with my wife before marriage.
	That is not an orthodox thing to do.
	So, I will acknowledge that straight up front.
	As far as who should say I love you first, I think the guy is almost always... I think the guy should say I love you first.
	I think the guy should be aggressive.
	I think the guy should ask the girl to marry him.
	I think guys who don't do these things are not guys you want to marry.
	I think if a guy is stringing you along for years on end without asking you to marry him, then that's a real bad sign.
	And we have such a weird, bizarre view about love in today's society.
	You see on TV, people hop in the sack, and then one will say, I love you, and then it gets awkward.
	It's like, that's when it gets awkward?
	Not when you decided to unveil your genitals?
	When you said, I love you, that's when it got awkward?
	Maybe your priorities are screwed up.
	So, here's how it worked with me and my wife.
	So, there are sort of a couple of stories about this.
	The first one was, we had been dating for maybe a couple of weeks, and I took my wife to Disneyland, which is the acid test in my family.
	If you take somebody to Disneyland, and they're cynical about Disneyland, you cannot date them or marry them.
	Because Disneyland is a happy place, and if you refuse to engage in happiness, you suck as a human.
	So, I took my wife to Disneyland on the way back.
	We're in the car, and I said, you know, I really like you.
	Meaning, I want to date exclusively.
	And she already assumed that we were dating exclusively, because she just wasn't a person who dated multiple people at a time.
	But I said, you know, I really like you.
	And she looked at me and she said, I like things about you.
	I was like, oof.
	Ooh, I still mock her to this day, and then I say, and you know what?
	Now we have two kids.
	So there.
	Guess who won that argument?
	That's right.
	So, basically, we went to visit her parents.
	She stayed for a little bit longer.
	What was funny is when we went to visit my wife's parents, she said, don't take this the wrong way, but I think you should come up and visit my parents.
	And I was like, I'm going to take this exactly the way it is.
	Which is that we're getting married.
	That's the way this is going, right?
	Because come on, I'm not meeting your parents just for the fun of it.
	And she was like, no, don't, you know, don't take it the wrong way.
	I knew.
	So we get back.
	I get back.
	She gets back a couple days later.
	I go pick her up at the airport.
	We're in the car.
	And I said, you know, I love you.
	And she said, thanks.
	And I was like, oh, so that went poorly.
	And so for about a month, so I remember the exact dates on this.
	So the exact dates were on November 15th, 2008, 2007.
	November 15th, 2007, I said I love you to my wife.
	For one full month, every conversation we had on the phone, I said I love you and she would say bye.
	And then on December 15th, she said, I love you too.
	And then I said, let's get married.
	Because this is the thing.
	She knew that as soon as she said, I love you, the reason she wasn't saying it is because she knew that as soon as she said, I love you, that was the next step.
	We were not dating for non-marriage.
	We were not dating for fun.
	We were dating for marriage.
	So once she said, I love you, there was only one step left.
	And that was let's get married.
	Then I said, she says, She said, I love you.
	She said, I love you, too.
	And I said, let's get married.
	And she said, why can't we just enjoy our time together?
	And I said, because I'm not enjoying our time together without the prospect of marriage before me, because this is rather agonizing.
	Like if I'm in love with you and you're in love with me, but we're leaving a door open, I hate this.
	This is garbage.
	So why don't we just get married?
	And she was mostly it was about she was 20.
	She was afraid of telling her parents.
	She was freaked out about getting married that young.
	And so we had some conversations about it.
	And then finally, she said the most romantic words that my wife has ever said to me.
	She was worried about what people would think if she was 20, because we were talking this through.
	And she looked at me and she said, people are full of bleep.
	Most romantic words my wife ever said to me.
	I love my wife.
	She's the best.
	And then she said, so let's get married.
	And then we were engaged.
	That was my engagement story, right?
	There was no fancy helicopter dropping down onto a field.
	There was not me swimming across an ocean with a ring on my back being carried by a laser eyed shark or anything.
	It was me just saying, let's get married and her finally acquiescing.
	And then it took her a week to tell her parents.
	So that's that one.
	We were engaged on December 22nd.
	I believe she told her maybe three days to tell her parents.
	So that's our story.
	But yes, the man should say I love you first because men should be aggressive.
	Men should be the men in a relationship.
	And that's what women want, by the way.
	Okay, let's see.
	What else?
	Eric says, Ben, if President Trump were a Democrat and with a progressive left agenda and ideals, do you think the media and celebrities would cover and react to him differently than they do today?
	Of course they would.
	He would be, look at this man.
	He's amazing.
	He came out of nowhere.
	He's a celebrity and he won the presidency.
	It's un-freaking-real.
	Look at this guy.
	What political skills he has.
	And look at the bravery in withdrawing from Syria.
	And look at how he's bucking in the establishment.
	And look at how unpredictable he is.
	And look how unique he is and his connection with the people.
	Yes, of course.
	You'd get nothing but plaudits from the media.
	They would love him, love him, love him to death.
	And if he fibs every so often, that's just because he talks the way regular people talk.
	Basically, the way that Bill Mitchell covers Donald Trump is the way the mainstream media would cover Donald Trump if Donald Trump were a Democrat.
	Cheryl says, Hi Ben.
	I read a story this week about a group called Freedom from Religion Foundation.
	They were angry that a large lit up cross was put on display by the city of Ozark, Missouri on public land.
	The group of triggered people threatened to sue the city on the basis of the establishment clause.
	What's the legality of local government setting up crosses or nativity scenes?
	My understanding is that the legality under current Supreme Court law is that you also have to provide ...space for other religions if they wish to make a holiday display, which is why you'll see sort of these holiday displays where there's a menorah, there's also a Christmas tree and nativity scene, and various other kind of religious accoutrements.
	I think all that's stupid.
	It's not an establishment of religion to put up a Christmas tree.
	Nobody's being forced to abide by that.
	And if you're worried about taxpayer dollars being spent for that, then maybe you should just have private groups cover the fee, which is very often what happens in these cases.
	William says, if someone is non-negotiably against a certain issue, like abortion, how should they approach their spending habits when presented with buying items from businesses who support what they are against, like Starbucks contributing money to Planned Parenthood?
	What are your thoughts on personally boycotting the business?
	So, my general thought on boycotting business is if the business itself is engaged in the thing that you don't like, then it is fair to boycott the business.
	If a person who's associated with the company is engaged in that, not fair.
	So, boycotting Chick-fil-A because Dan Cathy is anti-same-sex marriage is stupid.
	Boycotting Starbucks if Starbucks, I don't know if this is true, if Starbucks is in a corporate way supporting Planned Parenthood, I think that's perfectly appropriate.
	Craig says, Hi Ben, do you think incivility in the House and Senate started with Newt Gingrich aided by Rush Limbaugh?
	Will it ever cease?
	No.
	Incivility in the House and Senate has been around forever.
	Somebody was nearly beat to death in 1856 on the floor of the Senate.
	Charles Sumner was nearly caned to death on the floor of the Senate.
	So no, incivility did not start in 1998.
	So I do not think that that is correct.
	Um, I know, I know that you want this to be the last question or wanted that one to be, but tough.
	I'm going to do one more.
	So it says, let's see, do, do, do, do, do, do.
	Um, cause it's the last question of the year.
	So.
	Oh, okay.
	I, this last question there.
	Okay, fine.
	So, uh, Renee says, Hey Ben, ever considered writing a book on parenting?
	Well, I really write books about.
	What should be taught to everyone and it's equally applicable to children, I'd feel a little awkward writing a book about parenting considering that I have kids who are four and a half and two and a half, so I don't know how they're gonna turn out yet.
	And if they turn out to be serial killers, that book is not gonna be worthwhile.
	I don't think they will be, by the way.
	They're pretty nice kids.
	Aaron says, Ben, you've been very upfront about your objections to public sector unions.
	What are your thoughts on private sector unions that compete in the free market?
	So as I said yesterday or a couple of days ago on the conversation with Alicia Krauss, I'm fine with private sector unions so long as they're not kneecapping people.
	Ben says, given the increasing amount of social media deplatforming that has gone on as well as the recent issues with Patreon, it appears those on the left and right are increasingly finding themselves relegated to completely different forums for communicating their ideas.
	Which I fear will further polarize the American people.
	Is this trend of social media censorship sustainable or will it at some point collapse under its own weight?
	I think it will.
	I mean, I think the Patreon is an obvious example of people pulling out and there will be new, more open fora that are created that have less of a heavy hand placed on them from above.
	Okay, final question of the year.
	Joel says, hey, Ben, big fan.
	I was hoping to get your opinion on a statement I heard recently.
	To understand racism, you need to understand power dynamics.
	To understand sexism, you need to understand power dynamics.
	To understand poverty, you need to understand power dynamics.
	To understand power dynamics, you need to listen and believe the stories of the powerless.
	Wow.
	I've rarely seen such a bunch of horse crap cobbled together in a nearly ununderstandable paragraph before.
	So, this is one of the lies that folks say.
	They say that if you want to understand racism, you have to understand that racism can only be perpetuated by the strong and the weak.
	This is a lie.
	Racism is a frame of mind.
	You can be racist against a powerful person just as you can be racist against a non-powerful person.
	The same thing is true of sexism.
	You can hate women and be powerful.
	You can also hate women and be not powerful.
	There are plenty of Poor people who don't have a lot of power in American society, who are plenty sexist.
	To understand poverty, you need to understand power dynamics.
	The assumption is that poverty is created by people on the top of the hierarchy who are forcibly attempting to cram down rules on people on the bottom of the hierarchy.
	In a free society, this is a bunch of nonsense.
	In a non-free society, this is true.
	In a non-free society, like say a communist society, the people who are rich are the people with the power.
	But, in a free society, you can have people with power who are not rich, you can have people with riches who are not powerful, and the question is whether you can become one of these people.
	Can you, just a free citizen, become a rich and powerful person?
	If the answer is yes, then this is not about power dynamics, this is about personal choice.
	And they say, to understand power dynamics, you need to listen and believe the stories of the powerless.
	Well, no, because I don't believe that human beings are innately trustworthy.
	So I don't understand why I would believe the stories of the powerless any more than I believe the stories of the powerful.
	I'm only going to believe stories that have an evidentiary basis to them.
	So provide me evidence, I'll believe it.
	Don't provide me evidence, I won't believe it.
	That's the end of it.
	It doesn't matter who you are.
	And if we are adjudicating whether you are believable or not based on your level of victimhood, then this is you placing evidence outside the realm of reality and you instead It's basically religion at that point.
	Basically, at that point, you're just taking on faith somebody's story because you want to believe their story.
	Okay, time for some things I like and one thing that I hate.
	So, things that I like.
	It's been Beethoven all week, which is a great way to close out the year.
	This is a little bit of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.
	1, second movement.
	Murray Pariah on piano, wonderful pianist George Schulte conducting.
	And if you've been in a bad mood and you want to get in a good mood, listen to some of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.
	want a magnificent piece of music.
	PIANO PLAYS
	PIANO PLAYS And I could play this for you all day because it is that incredible.
	Beethoven, God's gift to humanity.
	Just spectacular, spectacular stuff.
	And be grateful for, you know, the great art that makes life that much richer.
	Just incredible, incredible stuff.
	Okay, I have to leave you, in terms of things I like this year, with a thing that I definitely like.
	A British Army sniper once killed six terrorists with a single bullet.
	Nothing could make me happier than this.
	It's just fantastic.
	A British Army sniper, according to the UK Sun, once killed six terrorists with a single bullet from one of the Army's most powerful guns.
	The unidentified marksman, a Lance Corporal in the Coldstream Guards, hit the target from about 930 yards away.
	Well, in Kakaran, in southern Afghanistan.
	So that is a long distance.
	For those who don't do math, that's like almost 3,000 feet.
	3,000 feet.
	All six terrorists were killed with a single bullet.
	Why?
	Because it hit the trigger of a suicide bomber's vest, which exploded, killing everyone around him, which is awesome sauce.
	The marksman was 20 at the time.
	He was using an L115A3 gun, which is one of the most powerful sniper weapons.
	Lieutenant Col.
	Richard Slack, who is commanding officer of the 912 Royal Lancers, explained how the shot happened.
	In December 2013, when hundreds of British and Afghan soldiers were in a gun battle with 15 to 20 insurgents, the guy was wearing a vest.
	He was identified by a sniper moving down a tree line and coming up over a ditch.
	He had a shawl on.
	It rose up.
	The sniper saw he had a machine gun.
	They were in contact.
	He was moving to a firing position.
	The sniper engaged him, and the guy exploded.
	There was a pause on the radio and the sniper said, I think I've just shot a suicide bomber.
	The rest of them were killed in the blast.
	The vest had apparently 20 kilos of explosives, 44 pounds of explosives in it.
	It was first reported that with that sniper's first shot on that tour of duty, he killed a Taliban machine gunner from 1,500 yards.
	Yeah, man.
	That's some solid stuff.
	So, well done, unnamed army sniper who killed six terrorists with a single bullet.
	Awesome, awesome stuff.
	Hopefully that sort of math will continue to take place over the course of our near future.
	Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
	This is a dumb thing, but it's indicative of our dumb time.
	So this is a story from Huffington Post, a repository of dumb things.
	It comes from their entertainment section.
	Movie audiences in many parts of the world associate the Swahili phrase Hakuna Matata with Disney's 1994 animated classic The Lion King, but one activist is rallying to change that.
	Shelton Mapala, who is of Zimbabwean heritage and based in Toronto, launched an online petition earlier this month calling on Disney to give up its trademark for Hakuna Matata, calling it an assault on the Swahili people and Africa as a whole.
	Okay, if you think that it's an assault on Africa, To trademark a phrase, meaning no worries, sung by a cartoon meerkat and boar.
	I gotta say, you might want to shift your pri- Some bad stuff's happening in Africa right now, not involving cartoon meerkats and wild boars that fart on screen.
	You might want to actually, you know, like, re-prioritize your life just a little bit.
	So this guy wrote, Hakuna Matata has been used by most Kiswahili speaking countries such as Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Mozambique, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
	Disney can't be allowed to trademark something that it didn't invent.
	You know what people didn't invent?
	You know, most people who get trademarks, what they didn't invent is English, right?
	So we are trademarking my slogan.
	Okay, but when we trademark myself, I didn't invent any of the words in my slogan.
	And in fact, my people, the Jews, they didn't speak English originally.
	So I am culturally appropriating the language of English with words I did not invent in an order that I may have created, but I'm sure has been used at some time by somebody else, sometime in the past, maybe.
	Whoa, cultural appropriations galore!
	Public records show that Disney first applied for the still-active trademark in 1994, the same year that The Lion King debuted in theaters.
	That means the company can potentially sue if the words hakuna matata appear on unauthorized clothing and products, which they should, because the reason that most people are using that is not because they come from any of these countries, but because they have seen the movie The Lion King.
	And a Kenyan intellectual property and entertainment lawyer sided with Disney in a social media dispute.
	She said, Right, but law doesn't matter, and intellectual property law doesn't matter, and wisdom doesn't matter, and reason doesn't matter.
	on the internet has been blowing up because of a misconception and misunderstanding around intellectual property law.
	Right, but law doesn't matter and intellectual property law doesn't matter and wisdom doesn't matter and reason doesn't matter.
	All that matters is that someone somewhere is offended.
	Well, how about this, this Christmas season?
	Instead of being offended by anything or everything, instead of being offended when someone says Merry Christmas or Hakuna Matata, how about stop being a stick in the mud, you dopes?
	How about we all have a really nice Christmas vacation?
	How about we all come back refreshed in the new year, ready to do battle over the things that matter and have conversations and discussions about those things?
	How about we all come back in a better mood?
	Because I promise you, by the end of the first week of January, that mood will be gone and you'll be drinking heavily and you'll be looking at ways to escape the burdens of your everyday life, which is why we'll see you here then.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.
	Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
	Edited by Alex Zingaro.
	Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.
	Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.

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