A battleground Republican congressperson retires, Democrats fret over Joe Biden, and President Trump lays out his pitch again.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
Well, it's a morning.
And that means that President Trump took to Twitter.
And stuff happened.
We'll get to that in just one second.
First, we need to talk about the fact that those earbuds in your ear, they're old.
And they're ugly.
And we all know it.
And they've got the wires coming down from them.
They don't sound all that good anymore.
What you need is a new pair of earbuds.
Wireless earbuds.
But earbuds that are not going to cost you a fortune.
And this is where Raycon earbuds come in.
Raycon earbuds start at about half the price of any other premium wireless earbuds on the market when they sound just as great.
Raycon's E50 wireless earbuds, they've changed the game for me.
I wear them all the time.
They are very comfortable.
They're easy to take anywhere.
Unlike some of your other wireless options, Raycon earbuds are both stylish and discreet.
They don't have those wires.
They don't have the stems.
And of course, they don't just look great, they sound terrific as well.
Raycon offers their wireless earbuds for everybody in a range of fun colors at a terrific price.
Go buy Raycon.com.
Buy Raycon.com.
Slash Ben right now.
to get 15% off your order.
That's B-U-Y-R-A-Y-C-O-N.com slash Ben for 15% off Raycon wireless earbuds.
If you've been eyeing a pair, now would be the time to get a great deal.
One more time, that's buyraycon.com slash Ben.
B-U-Y-R-A-Y-C-O-N.com slash Ben.
Use that slash Ben so they know that we sent you.
Also, get 15% off your order today.
Buyraycon.com slash Ben.
And listen, I'm the best earbuds on the market for not as expensive as those other earbuds.
Buyraycon.com slash Ben.
Okay, so there's a piece of news yesterday that I think is indicative of where exactly the race stands going into 2020.
And it's not a good piece of news for Republicans.
So today is going to be all about bad news for both parties.
It turns out that the Democrats are less than sanguine about Joe Biden as their possible nominee because he seems old.
He seems slow, as I've been saying for a while.
Slow old Joe Biden.
But meanwhile, on the Republican side, the great problem with President Trump has been that he cannot contain himself.
He just does not have the capacity to contain himself.
If the man had one iota of self-control, he would be nearly unstoppable as a politician.
But it turns out that With the good comes the bad, and with the good part of the sandwich comes the poop.
And the fact is, the president of the United States cannot contain himself.
And this is going to be a continuing problem for him.
And while there are Republicans around the country who are celebrating the quote-unquote purifying of the party, they're celebrating the fact that those rhino cucks are going away.
You need those people to vote for you in 2020 if you wish the president to retain the presidency.
You need some of these Congress people in swing districts to remain.
And in fact, some of the best politicians in the Republican Party are from some of these swing districts, exactly the sort of districts that Republicans need.
So here's the piece of news.
Representative Will Hurd, who is the lone black Republican in the House and the rare GOP lawmaker to at times criticize President Trump, will not seek re-election according to the Washington Post.
Now the left is taking this as Hurd is resigning because he can't get along with Trump.
That is not the case.
The reason that Hurd is resigning is because he is looking at the tea leaves for 2020 and he does not like what he sees.
He has already raised, it was pretty clear that he was going to run.
He raised something like $700,000.
Already, for the 2020 race.
And that was going to be used in a knock-down, drag-out battle.
Wilhurd has been representing the Texas 23rd District since January of 2015, since the 2014 election, which was a wave election for Republicans.
This has been a very, very back-and-forth district.
So, from 1992 to 2006, when there was a Democratic wave, it was represented by Henry Bonilla, who was a Republican.
And then from 2006 to 2010, it was represented by a Democrat, then there was a Republican wave, and for two years it was represented by a Republican.
Then in 2012, during Obama's re-election campaign, it was represented by a Democrat again, and then Will Hurd came back in, and he won two consecutive terms.
The last term that he won, he won in an insanely narrow election.
He won that election by something like a thousand votes total.
It was extraordinarily close.
It's like 103,000 votes to 102,000 votes.
And Will Hurd was probably looking at the tea leaves in his district.
It was a district that Hillary Clinton won, and he ended up winning the district.
That's exactly the kind of place that Republicans need to win.
The places that Hillary Clinton won, but you need a Republican congressperson.
Those are the districts.
And Wilhurd is stepping down.
Now, what is fascinating about this district is that this district is nearly 70% Hispanic.
So this is also a district where Republicans are showing their mettle when it comes to the ability to get people of racial minority status and ethnic minority status to vote Republican.
One of the great differences between California and Texas is the way that Hispanics vote in Texas versus California.
In California, Hispanics vote something like 70-30 Democrat.
In Texas, Hispanics vote something like 55-45 Democrat.
Well, that gap explains the dominance of Republicans in Texas for the last 20 years, even with the rising tide of Hispanic immigration into Texas and the growing Hispanic population in Texas.
But what Will Hurd's resignation shows He's not resigning.
What his unwillingness to run for re-election shows is that there's a feeling that Texas is beginning to turn blue.
So this is very bad news for Trump come 2020, if it's seen as sort of a bellwether.
Immediately, Cook Political Reports took this district from toss-up to leans Democrat because Heard is a unique candidate.
Herd's retirement is the third by a Texas Republican in the past week alone.
Now, the other two Texas Republicans retiring are retiring in heavy red districts.
But the fact is that a lot of folks don't want to be in Congress right now.
A lot of folks see a bad wave coming in 2020.
Why?
Not because of the economy, which continues to be good.
Another economic report today that puts the U.S.
unemployment rate at 3.7%.
A record number of people in America are now employed.
Some 157 million people in the United States currently have jobs.
That is a great economic record for the president of the United States.
All this despite the fact that there are significant headwinds in terms of trade barriers and tariffs that the president is putting in place with regard to China.
Some justified, some unjustified.
We'll get to that in just a little while.
So why exactly isn't Trump riding at 52, 53 percent?
And the answer, as always, comes back to the fact that the president cannot exercise self-control.
And you can tell by the way the right is reacting to Wilhurd's retirement.
So many people on the right are reacting to Wilhurd's retirement with good riddance.
That guy wasn't standing up for Trump when Trump said stuff.
He's in a swing district that is filled with Hispanic people on the border.
Of course he should be calling out the president, not just morally.
Listen, you know my views on this.
I believe that when the president does something, when Trump does something wrong, he ought to be called out the same as any other human being who does something wrong, even if you like what he's doing politically, and even if you like the fact that he slaps the left on a frequent basis.
When people do stuff that is morally bad, you should point out that it is morally bad.
This is, in fact, your job as a moral human being, is to point out when things that are morally bad are morally bad.
Doesn't mean you shouldn't vote for him.
Doesn't mean you shouldn't support him.
It does mean that when you exercise your judgment as to whether something is morally bad or not, it is your moral judgment that is being called into question, not Trump's moral judgment that is being called into question.
People judge you based on the way that you deal with things that you see that are immoral in your life.
And so I've always recommended to everybody left, right and center.
It's my great irritation with the left is that the left stands on their they sit on their high horse and they pretend that they are the arbiters of morality, the police of morality.
And then they won't call out immorality when it's on their own side.
And then they look at Republicans doing the same thing and they say, how dare you?
I mean, the same people who rip on Trump constantly on the left and rip on Republicans who won't rip on Trump constantly.
Those are the same people who cheer when the New York Times today reports Chappaquiddick as a Kennedy family tragedy.
I kid you not, that's in the New York Times today.
It's okay, guys.
You can stop defending the Kennedys.
Teddy's been dead for 10 years.
It's okay.
You can stop it.
You don't have to do it.
That led to the rise of Trump.
The odd gracelessness of the left, the fact that the left Constantly suggested that the right was morally bereft while touting its own immoral actors as somehow morally superior.
That led the right to embrace a lot of this stuff, but Will Hurd calling out Trump when he thought Trump was wrong, it wasn't just, I think, the right thing to do in many cases.
I think that it was the politically smart thing to do in his district, obviously.
Herd barely held his seat last year.
Trump lost the congressional district.
It covers more than 58,000 square miles between San Antonio and El Paso along the Mexican border by four percentage points in 2016.
In an interview last Thursday with the Post, Herdhead criticized Trump's, and this is just Washington Post coverage, Trump's racist tweets last month.
Again, it is amazing how the Washington Post will take tweets that I think were xenophobic but not racist and then call them racist as though that is a fact judgment as opposed to an opinion judgment.
The Washington Post says Heard criticized Trump's racist tweets last month, in which the president said four Democratic minority congresswomen should go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.
Three of the women are from the United States, etc.
Heard said, when you imply that because someone doesn't look like you and telling them to go back to Africa or wherever, you're implying that they're not an American and you're implying they have less worth than you, is what Heard had to say about this.
Heard also repeated his earlier pledge to vote for Trump if he's the Republican nominee in 2020.
He said Hispanics, African Americans, and other groups would be receptive to conservative themes if they weren't drowned in racially charged rhetoric.
Heard said, number one, you need to show up to communities that haven't seen Republicans show up and listen.
Then the message that you take is how we have solved problems in our communities.
When you look at African American unemployment, Latino unemployment, it's at an all time low.
A herd is the kind of Republican that you do need.
He is 41 years old.
He said he plans to run again for elected office.
You would imagine that he's probably going to run for Senate at some point or maybe governor of the state of Texas.
He's a former CIA officer.
He said, I think I can help the country in a different way.
I'm interested in pursuing my lifelong passions at that intersection of technology and national security.
I think I have an opportunity to help make sure the Republican Party looks like America.
He opposed Trump's national emergency declaration, but does favor a border barrier, for example.
So Herd has been a lot more moderate in his approach to Trump than a lot of the other Republicans, and that has led a lot of Republicans to distance themselves from Herd in the same way they did from, for example, Jeff Flake.
But Herd never virtue-signaled in the same way that Jeff Flake did.
And more than that, Heard is the kind of person that you need in that district.
Jeff Flake could lose his seat.
It ended up being filled by a Democrat, but Republicans had a shot at the seat.
Without Will Heard in that district, it's a problem for Republicans.
So why is this so important?
It's important because, again, every swing district is now a bellwether for Trump.
And if he's losing swing districts in Texas, he's going to be in trouble come 2020.
And again, it goes more to Trump as a character than it does go to Trump's policy.
So how is Trump going to win over the districts that he needs to win over?
Now, there's this prevailing theory.
It's a very sanguine, optimistic theory on the Republican side that Trump has a mystical connection with voters and that he will pull a rabbit out of the hat a second time.
That 2016 was not about Hillary Clinton being unable to pull votes.
It was about Donald Trump having a magical ability to bring out voters who had never voted before and also to suppress the Democratic vote.
In 2018, Trump drove out the Republican vote and the Democratic vote.
And the Republicans got blown out.
And here's the thing.
If Trump stuck to his actual political pitch, he would win.
This is the thing.
What got you here is not necessarily what keeps you here.
What gets you to the major leagues may be your 98 mile per hour fastball, but at some point you have to develop a secondary pitch.
98 miles per hour can get you through AA.
Once you get to AAA, you start to struggle.
Once you get to the majors, everybody hits 98.
The President of the United States is expected to be the President of the United States.
And that means that he is expected to provide solutions, which he has done on the economy, for example.
It means that he is expected to provide solutions for groups of Americans who didn't even vote for him.
And the President suggested some of those solutions last night in his rally.
And then he went on Twitter this morning and he undermined it.
I'll explain in just one second.
First, some topics in life are pretty uncomfortable to talk about.
Sex is one of those things.
But sex is also one of the most important things in life, especially within the context of marriage.
Studies show that 70% of dudes who experience erectile dysfunction don't actually get treated for it for just that reason.
It can be awkward to discuss.
But sometimes things just don't work the way they're supposed to.
That's not something to be ashamed about.
Health problems are health problems.
The important thing is to get them solved.
That's where our friends at Roman come in.
Thankfully, Roman has created an easy way to get checked out by a doctor and get treated for ED online with Roman.
You can get medical care for ED, if appropriate, from the comfort and privacy of your own home.
You can handle everything online in a convenient and discreet manner.
Getting started is simple.
You just go to GetRoman.com and complete an online visit.
If your doctor decides that treatment would be appropriate, they can prescribe genuine medication that can be delivered in discreet packaging directly to your door with free two-day shipping.
Dudes, go talk to the doctor.
ED can be tough to handle, but it is very important to get it checked out.
Go to GetRoman.com slash Ben to get a free online visit, free two-day shipping.
That's GetRoman.com slash Ben for that free visit to get started again.
GetRoman.com slash Ben.
G-E-T-R-O-M-A-N dot com slash Ben.
Go check them out right now.
Okay, so.
The reason that I point this out is because Trump does a rally last night.
And the rally is fine.
In fact, the rally is good.
There's a lot that Trump does in this rally that is correct.
CNN was so disappointed in the effectiveness of the rally that they started using a chyron, crowd doesn't chant send her back at rally.
That's not news.
You printing a chyron saying something didn't happen is not news.
Aliens didn't land in Area 51 is not news.
Aliens did land in Area 51 is news.
So CNN was desperately hoping that the crowd was going to chant send her back again so they could call Trump and his supporters racist.
And so they were desperately, desperately wanting.
But that didn't happen.
So instead, they just reverted to a headline that said it didn't happen.
In any case, President Trump's rally last night was quite good in a lot of ways.
He pointed out the radicalism of the Democrats.
He did a long extended riff on the fact that Democrats are wrecking major cities around the country.
He did an extended riff on Los Angeles.
That's exactly correct.
He talked about the fact that living conditions in Los Angeles have been steadily declining.
That Los Angeles, California has half the nation's homeless population and they are heavily located in L.A.
and San Francisco.
He talked about tent cities in L.A.
I live in L.A.
I've experienced the quality of life here.
Mayor Eric Garcetti has done a garbage job.
And so has the governor of California.
Jerry Brown did a garbage job.
Gavin Newsom is doing a garbage job.
When Trump points out that the livability of America's major cities is being dramatically undermined by the ACLU light governance of Democrats in places like Seattle and L.A.
and New York.
And that's a strong pitch.
It's particularly a strong pitch for suburban women.
So back in 2004, George W. Bush won re-election on the basis of the so-called security moms.
This was the great meme of 2004 with security moms.
Bush was talking to suburban women who wanted to protect their kids, and he was the man who had stood up to terrorism.
And that's what his pitch was.
And it worked!
Trump can make the exact same law and order pitch today, particularly about America's major cities.
He can say, look at the homeless, look at the fact there are open needles on the streets in LA.
Yeah.
Herbert Hoover promised a chicken in every pot.
Democrats have delivered in major cities a homeless person on every bench.
It's it's it's unbelievable.
And anybody who lives in L.A.
can attest to this.
You cannot walk down the street without running into folks who are living on the streets, oftentimes in filth, many times with open needles nearby, with open with Open alcohol, open feces.
I mean, it really is egregious.
This is a good political point for Trump, and it's something that he hammered last night, so that was good.
And Trump let off his rally by suggesting that he wants to just do a normal rally.
He said, we don't want any controversies, which is a somewhat smart thing to say, saying the quiet part out loud, but sure.
He said, we don't want any controversy.
For decades, these communities have been run exclusively by Democrat politicians.
And it's been total one-party control of the inner cities.
For a hundred years, it's been one-party control.
And look at them.
We can name one after another, but I won't do that.
Because I don't want to be controversial.
We want no controversy. - OK, that is fine.
That is fine.
Everybody knows that he's implying Baltimore there, that if you say that Baltimore is a poorly run city, then you are going to get into trouble.
That is Trump, you know, obviously getting under the skin of Democrats.
All that is fine.
And then President Trump goes on the warpath against the socialism in the Democratic Party.
He says, listen, Americans are not interested in doing this socialism.
He's right about this.
This was evident on the debate stage the other night when the moderates like John Delaney really took it to Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
This was evident when Joe Biden was defending himself from socialists to his left on that stage.
People like Bill de Blasio and Kyrsten Gillibrand.
Here's Trump saying, we don't want to do the socialist thing.
No matter what label they use, a vote for any Democrat in 2020 is a vote for the rise of radical socialism and the destruction of our great, our beautiful, our wonderful American dream.
We're not going to let our country ever go down the route of socialism.
Yeah, and then he went back to the cities issue.
He said that Democrats, quote, deliver poverty for their constituents and privilege for themselves.
Great line.
True.
He said, for decades, these communities have been run exclusively by Democratic politicians.
It's been total one party control of the inner cities.
He said that federal funding sent to these areas was, quote, unquote, stolen money and it's wasted money and it's a shame.
There's no question that there is serious corruption in a lot of these cities.
And he avoided mentioning lawmakers by name.
So he didn't mention Elijah Cummings.
Which is the smart thing to do.
Again, you can make this point without jumping onto the landmine of blowing it.
And then President Trump went on to the rest of the radical Democratic agenda.
He suggested Democrats support late-term abortion, which of course they do.
They're incredibly radical on this issue.
Every top Democrat also now supports late-term abortion.
And then you'll have like a governor of Virginia It's not only late-term abortion, it's killing the baby after the baby is born.
How about that?
Think of that.
Think of that.
That's why I've asked Congress to prohibit extreme late-term abortion, because Republicans believe that every child is a sacred gift from God.
And all of this is good stuff.
And Democrats are nervous about this approach by Trump.
They are nervous that their own party is running off the rails to the left.
So Paul Begala, for example, he was talking, Democratic advisor, Clinton advisor, he was talking about how the Democrats are running too far to the left.
I mean, they're abandoning even the legacy of Barack Obama, who is a very far left president, and they're running even further to the left.
Here's Begala talking about how Democrats are setting themselves up for failure.
So Trump's Trump's picture is correct.
When Bill de Blasio said this about deportations, Joe, the vice president, should have said, some people need to be deported.
By the way, Kamala Harris should have said, some people need to be incarcerated.
She should have turned to Tulsa Gabbard and said, yes, I raised bail on people who create gun violence, because gun violence is an epidemic.
No, but this is my problem.
The whole two-day debate is I believe many of these candidates seeking to win the nomination are setting themselves up to lose the presidency to Donald Trump.
Of course, he's exactly right.
Begala is exactly right.
So is Jim Messina, former advisor to Barack Obama.
He says, why are they attacking Obama?
Are they nuts?
What the hell is this?
Approval rating with Democrats is 96 percent.
Donald Trump's approval rating with Democrats, 4 percent.
So the fact that we spent more time talking about a wildly popular president and not talking about Donald Trump is just ceases to amaze me.
But just politically, we are better off staying on the offense on President Trump, on health care, and on economic issues that make sense to voters.
And I just don't fundamentally get the strategy of going after the most popular Democratic president in modern memory.
OK, and he is not wrong about this.
Even the editorial board over at The Washington Post is ripping on Democrats for doing this.
They understand what's happening over at The Washington Post.
The editorial board wrote, quote, this wrote, quote, I don't understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can't do and shouldn't fight for, said Senator Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday night.
Senator Bernie Sanders, the other major candidate on the field's left wing, piled on.
This got us thinking about some big ideas in U.S. history, like, say, amending the Constitution to outlaw liquor or sending half a million troops into Vietnam or passing a $1.5 trillion tax cut for the wealthy in a time of massive deficits.
Ambition is essential, in other words, says the Washington Post, but not sufficient.
The country faces big challenges such as economic inequality and climate change.
The call for creative solutions.
They also call for wisdom, honesty, and even a bit of modesty about the government's limitations.
Having embraced Barack Obama's no drama approach to governing, often defined by the philosophy, don't do stupid bleep, it would be odd if Democrats suddenly embraced ideological grandiosity as a prerequisite for service in the Oval Office.
That means, first, that proposals should meet a baseline degree of factual plausibility, a bar that, for example, the Medicare for All plan that Mr. Sanders and Ms.
Warren favor does not clear.
The Senators cannot deliver a system that provides far more benefits than other single-payer systems they claim as their model, while preserving the level of care and access that insured Americans currently enjoy.
They should make the case for government monopoly on healthcare if they want, but they should be honest about the trade-offs.
Candidates who promise big ideas should be pressed on how they will realize them.
The next president should have a vision of progress for the nation that is expansive and inspiring.
It should also be grounded in mathematical and political reality.
That's the Washington Post editorial board recognizing that what Trump is saying is true.
That the Democrats have skewed way too far left.
So Trump has got a pitch.
Trump has got a pitch.
And it is obvious that Trump's pitch is scaring a lot of the Democrats, as well it should.
Meanwhile, the left flank of the Democratic Party continues to get more and more radical.
Bernie Sanders came out yesterday.
He said, I'm not going to attack Elizabeth Warren in the future.
We're basically a unified front on behalf of socialism.
In the debate the other night, you appeared to have a kind of a non-aggression pact with Elizabeth Warren.
Do you two have a deal not to attack each other, at least at this stage?
Elizabeth and I have been friends for over 20 years.
She's running her campaign and I'm running my campaign.
They're different campaigns.
What are you doing?
I think the most effective way to campaign, to be honest with you, is to talk to the American people about why the middle class is disappearing, why we have massive income and wealth inequality.
You talk about those issues, you do well.
You try to beat up on somebody else.
Frankly, I don't think it's good politics.
So again, the left flank of the Democratic Party is unifying, and this should be scaring a lot of folks who are in the Democratic Party.
Nancy Pelosi was pandering to Ilhan Omar again yesterday.
This is not a smart tactic.
And Ilhan Omar tweeted out a put out on Instagram a picture of herself holding hands with Nancy Pelosi.
I guess they took a trip to Africa for some reason.
And Nancy Pelosi looking supremely awkward while holding hands with Ilhan Omar.
And then Ilhan Omar put out there that they said to send us back.
So we all went back together.
This is the Democratic strategy.
It's not going to work out well for them.
And meanwhile, the best advocate for the Democratic moderate campaign is Joe Biden.
And he's got a lot of holes in his record, too.
More importantly, he's looking old.
He's looking slow.
The sleepy Joe Biden thing that Trump was pushing is really true.
It really is.
And here's a montage of Joe Biden screwing things up in the debate royally over and over and over.
I mean, the man survived, but not by much.
I mean, he's going to be 78 by the time of the next presidential inauguration.
Go to Joe.
3-0-3-3-0, and help me in this fight.
If you notice, there's no talk about the fact that the plan in 10 years will cost $3 trillion.
My plan costs $750 billion.
That's what it costs, not $30 trillion.
Thank you, Mr. Vice President.
Eight more years of Donald Trump will change America in a fundamental way.
The fact is that the bills that the president, that, excuse me, the future president here, That the senator's talking about.
Well, first of all, I'm grateful that he endorsed my presidency already.
We should put some of these insurance executives who totally oppose my plan in jail for the 9 billion opioids they sell out there.
One of the things, we're responsible for 15% of all the pollution in the country.
The important number in Vice President Biden's remarks just now is that the United States is only 15% of global emissions.
Would you or would you not rejoin the TPP, yes or no?
I would not rejoin the TTP as it was initially put forward.
Screw up after screw up there for Joe Biden.
People are getting nervous about Joe Biden.
So as the moderate in the field, and even Biden, has to make overtures toward the left flank.
So Biden was asked whether he's moderate.
He said, no, no, no, I'm not moderate.
I'm progressive.
I'm not moderate.
Dude, why are you running against the one thing that makes you appealing?
You say that your plan is more moderate, and how do you get people to sign into government health care?
No, it's not more moderate.
Look, here we go.
For my entire career in the Senate, I was listed never below one of one to 25 most liberal people in the United States Senate, okay?
I wish you guys had called me a moderate when I was running for re-election back in Delaware, you know?
I would have won by 80%.
But here's the deal.
There's nothing moderate about what Barack did in Obamacare.
Nothing.
No president had come close.
And they tried and they tried and they tried.
Seven presidents.
This guy did an incredible thing.
Okay, and that is true.
Barack Obama was not a moderate.
He was a progressive.
But the people who are in his party now see him as insufficiently far to the left.
It's pretty amazing.
Trump, of course, has the naturally best bullying take on Biden.
He says, sleepy Joe limped through this one.
He limped through those debates.
It is a hole in Joe Biden's persona that the guy is just he looks tired.
He does.
I think Biden did okay.
He came through.
He came limping through, as they say about Sleepy Joe.
He limped right through it.
But he got through it.
He really did.
I think he was okay.
I think Kamala had a bad night last night, I would say.
But it's really boiling down to four or five of them.
Okay, so again, I think that analysis is correct.
So, what does all of this stack up to?
What all of this stacks up to, Will Hurd retiring, Joe Biden having weaknesses, Trump running on the failures of Democrats that are obvious to anyone who has eyeballs in a lot of the major cities in the United States.
Here's what this boils down to.
If Trump could simply run on his policy, if he could simply run on his record, he can still be colorful, he can still make jokes.
Donald Trump at eight, turning down that dial from 11 to eight, He's still going to be the most entertaining guy in the field.
He can still do the stuff he wants to do.
He can still make crowds laugh.
He did it last night at his rally.
He didn't make any real headlines because he didn't go over the top.
He goes out of his way to say, we're not going to do controversy.
And he rips on democratic governance of cities without going after Elijah Cummings by name and suggesting that Elijah Cummings is the worst person ever and all of this.
Again, that is a perfectly fair hit and a perfectly valid hit and a perfectly useful hit.
And then President Trump goes on Twitter this morning.
Trump at rallies is a lot better than Trump on Twitter.
Trump goes on Twitter this morning.
As we talked about yesterday, Elijah Cummings' house was robbed over the weekend.
And there is great irony to the fact that the media, proclaiming that Baltimore is indeed a wonderful, safe, high-median income American city, a wonderful place, beautifully governed, That the same weekend when they were talking about all this, Elijah Cummings' house was robbed.
Now his house was robbed before Trump even talked about Cummings or Baltimore.
It was broken into on Friday night, early Saturday morning.
Trump started tweeting after that on Saturday morning.
So the initial pickup from the media was that Trump had somehow incited this against Cummings, which is not true.
It's just plainly untrue.
And again, there is something ironic and something Bizarre about the fact that Elijah Cummings is jabbering about how Baltimore is wonderful while his house is being broken into.
However, is it a good thing that Elijah Cummings' house was broken into?
No, it's not a good thing that his house was broken into.
Crime is bad.
Okay?
And just because you don't like Elijah Cummings and you're mad at him because he runs the Oversight Committee doesn't mean that you should probably be happy when his house is broken into.
That's silly!
And not more than silly, it's immoral!
So here's what the president tweets out this morning.
Again, after spending the entire night last night saying, we don't want controversy, no controversy.
So Trump just, he was like, you know what?
Controversy.
So he tweets out this this morning, quote.
Really bad news.
The Baltimore house of Elijah Cummings was robbed.
Too bad.
Exclamation point.
Now, here come the defenders to say, well, he's really saying it's too bad he's actually sincere.
Yeah, sure.
I'm sure.
Or, alternatively, he's laughing at the fact that Elijah Cummings' house was robbed.
Like, come on!
Dude!
Like, really!
You're making the case for safety and security.
You're making the case that you need to make suburban women feel comfortable with your candidacy.
You need to throw the focus onto democratic radicalism.
And you do a rally where you do all these things.
And you do them effectively.
And your next move is, too bad your house got robbed.
Whoops.
The whole point here is that the defense to the house getting robbed is that he had nothing to do with it.
You don't have to own everything.
You don't have to stamp a giant Trump T right on Elijah Cummings' house getting robbed.
What the?
What?
What?
Just what?
Why?
Why, God, why?
It's not just immoral.
It is politically idiotic, obviously.
And is any of this going to have any lasting impact on Trump?
The reason these things blow over is because everything is baked into the cake for Trump.
People know this is who Trump is.
They've made their judgments on Trump.
Why do I lament it?
Because just like you have that annoying uncle who you don't really want to invite to family parties, and he's really annoying, He may be a little racist.
He's really crude.
He says nasty things to your wife.
You don't really want him coming to the family party, but it'll really hurt your mom's feeling if you don't invite your uncle.
And so, you don't think about him all the time.
Like, you don't wake up in the morning thinking about your drunk Uncle Ned.
You don't wake up in the morning thinking about that.
But then, when he's coming over, you're like, oh god, now I'm thinking about him.
Now I'm thinking about him.
And it just makes your day worse.
The more days where you're thinking about Uncle Ned, the worse it is for Uncle Ned.
Yeah, the fact is, the more days you're thinking about the economy being good, the more days that you are thinking about the Democrats being radical, the more days you are thinking about Joe Biden being too old and too sleepy to be president of the United States, the better it is for Donald Trump.
The more you're thinking about, oh God, did he tweet again?
The worse it is for Donald Trump.
As I say, I have a very simple 2020 election theory.
It applied to 2016 too.
And it's why everybody got, including me, got 2016 wrong.
Whoever is the subject of the referendum in 2020 will lose.
Americans are sick and tired of their politicians.
They think all of them are garbage.
All of them.
Which is why Trump is president.
In 2016, the media, me included, everybody who was watching the data, thought that 2016 was going to be a referendum on Trump.
Which is why every time some piece of bad news came out for Trump, anything from the p-word tape to Trump saying ridiculous things about Mexican judges, whenever that happened, we all went, okay, it's going to be a referendum on Trump, and that's going to be bad for Trump.
And it turned out that 2016 was not a referendum on Trump.
It turned out it was a referendum on Hillary Clinton.
It turns out that after 20 years, people did not want to show up to vote for Hillary Clinton.
Republicans despised Hillary Clinton.
They thought that she was corrupt, which she is.
They thought that she had engaged in criminal activity, which she did.
They thought all of those things.
And so the referendum on Hillary went poorly for Hillary Clinton.
In 2020, if it's a referendum on Trump and his personality, he will lose.
If it is a referendum on Democrats, he will win.
So how can you get it to be a referendum on Democrats?
You can point at, you can do exactly what Trump did at his rally last night.
You want to make it a referendum on Trump?
Keep tweeting the way the President Trump tweeted right there.
It is not going to work out to his benefit.
It is just it is not smart in any way, besides which it is it is immoral.
And it gives it again another news cycle.
That's a year and a half out.
It's not too late for President Trump to stop doing this.
But does anyone really have a lot of faith that the president is going to stop being who he is, that Trump is going to stop being Trumpy?
I don't think so, which is why the Democrats are basically looking forward to nominating the block of wood, the petrified wood that is Joe Biden.
Because Joe Biden is just default candidate.
All right, in just a second, we're going to get to the news on the Senate, the Senate passing another, this big, awful budget bill.
We're also going to get to your mailbag questions.
But first, it is that glorious time of the week when I give a shout out to a Daily Wire subscriber.
Today, it's Sherry Taylor on Instagram, who's dealing with what every person with the world's greatest beverage vessel deals with, the covening eyes of others.
In this particular picture, Sherry's Tumblr is sitting on a kitchen counter brimming with delicious leftist tears as her bulldog, Petunia, stares with deep determination.
Winston Churchill over there.
The caption on the dog's face reads, Mom, give me a sip of that.
Hashtag Leftist Tears Tumblr.
Good luck, Petunia.
Thanks for your support.
Sherry, that is an awesome dog, by the way.
That is an awesomely hideous and yet cute dog.
Pretty fantastic.
Okay, so go check out the Leftist Tears Tumblr.
You can get a subscription over at dailywire.com.
Also, remember that we do have a big backstage live event coming up August 21st.
Still a few VIP tickets available.
Thank you to The Daily Caller for giving us additional publicity on it.
We appreciate it.
You can go purchase a ticket right now at dailywire.com slash backstage.
The VIP tickets will set you back a couple hundred bucks, but the normal general admission tickets only set you back about $35.
It should be a blast.
Look forward to seeing you there.
August 24th, Terrace Theater in Long Beach.
Go check it out right now.
Also, make sure you subscribe to dailywire.com.
You know the pitch.
Just go do it already.
Come on.
Just do it.
Come on.
Okay?
We're the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast in the nation.
All right.
So in big news that nobody cares about, the Senate passed a broad two-year budget bill on Thursday that boosts spending and eliminates the threat of a debt default until after the 2020 election.
Justin Amash from Michigan, the former Republican congressperson, points out correctly today that one of the things people should note is that when it says that we are racking up these giant budget bills, these giant $1.3 trillion budget deficits, that those are measured on a yearly basis.
When you talk about the $1.5 trillion Tax bill that is measured over the course of a decade in terms of its economic impact.
When you drop a trillion dollars a year above what you are taking in, that is measured yearly.
He says spending bills are valued over a one-year period.
Tax bills are valued over a 10-year period.
In other words, a $1.3 trillion spending bill is 10 times larger than a $1.3 trillion tax bill.
The spending bill has 10 times the deficit impact.
Fact check, true.
Republicans just signed off on it because no one is actually fiscally responsible.
Much easier to pass spending into law than to curb that spending.
Which is one of the reasons why, and it's just a fact, split government tends to actually generate, in many cases, lower budgets because the fighting leads to lowering of the budget.
People don't want to sign off on as many things together.
Single-party control leads to blowout budgets for Democrats and Republicans.
Split government sometimes, particularly during the Clinton era, actually led to more budget balance.
Trump wrote on Twitter, quote, Budget deal is phenomenal for our great military, our vets, and jobs, jobs, jobs.
Two-year deal gets us past the election.
Go for it, Republicans.
There's always plenty of time to cut.
Again, saying the quiet part out loud right there, which is it's a bad budget deal, but it does get us past the election.
There is the president cheering on a massive budget deal that betrays fundamental fiscal principles of conservatism, but honestly, that's not a Trump-only problem.
That is a Republican problem generally.
That is bad news for the Republic, but probably good political news for the President.
Meanwhile, as I said earlier, there are a record 157 million people employed in the United States in July.
The unemployment rate did hold steady in July at 3.7%.
According to the employment report, the civilian non-institutional population in the United States is 259 million.
Of that civilian non-institutional population, 163 million were in the labor force, meaning they either had a job or were actively seeking one during the last month.
And of those people, 157 million have jobs.
Those are some pretty fantastic jobs numbers for the president.
There is some worry about the economy slowing.
This has been exacerbated by the president announcing yesterday that he will impose new tariffs of $300 billion on imports from China starting next month.
There was sort of a ceasefire in the trade war, and now the ceasefire has gone the way of the dodo bird.
This is leading people to speculate that the Fed is going to raise some of the rates again, is going to rather lower some of the rates again, try to jog the economy.
There's a worry that there will be a deflationary cycle where people are buying less and less, that consumers are going to buy less and less, and that the only thing basically holding up the economy right now is consumption, not investment.
That is one of the concerns anyway.
Trump said until such time as there's a deal we will be taxing them that will raise the prices on products like cell phones, television, toilet seats, and pillows.
It could raise the price as much as 10 to 25 percent.
So you would imagine that the market has basically suggested they think that this trade war will come to an end prior to the election because Trump doesn't want a trade war going all the way through the election.
With that said, is it good for the president that the economy is going to take a hit because of the trade war?
Probably not.
There's some good security reasons why tariffs might be useful.
The Chinese do cheat on a lot of these trade deals and they steal America's intellectual technology.
Case to be made that we should go to the WTO, the World Trade Organization, and prosecute those cases.
But regardless of what you think, if the president is thinking about election 2020 to the point that he's willing to blow out the budget, then raising tariffs on Chinese goods in the lead up to the election is probably not a smart strategy.
The one thing everybody acknowledges at this point is that if the economy takes a dump at any time in here, the president does not get reelected.
Okay, let's jump into the mailbag.
Mitchell says, My first child is ready to be delivered any day now.
What is your advice for a first-time father?
I'm excited and terrified all at the same time, ready to meet him, but I have to keep him alive and that's scary.
Thanks, Mitch.
Well, the good news is people have been keeping their children alive for literally hundreds of thousands of years, so I think it'll be fine.
My advice for a first-time dad is, especially in the early going, understand that kids don't really get cute until about five months.
At the very beginning, you may not feel the sort of connection that you thought that you would feel.
Everyone always talks about you pick up the kid and you feel that immediate connection.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no, but it gets better.
The kids get so interesting and so much fun and so fantastic.
As I always say, when it comes to sort of the life cycle of happiness and sadness, When you are single, your happiness range goes up to about a 7, and your sadness range goes down to about a 1.
And then you get married, and your happiness range goes up to about a 10, and it goes down to about a negative 10.
When things are really, really bad, it's worse than anything that happened when you were single.
And when it's really, really good, it's much better than anything that ever happened when you were single.
And then you have kids, and your happiness range goes to infinity on the positive side, and negative infinity on the negative side.
Because the worst things that will ever happen to you have to do with your kids, the best things that ever happen to you will have to do with your kids.
It is spectacular.
It's right to be excited and terrified.
In fact, I think the fact that you're terrified, Mitch, is good news.
Because the things that we are worried about, the things we are terrified about, means we take great care with them.
I'll tell you, the hardest part of being a parent in today's society is saying no.
The left says you're never supposed to say no to children.
Literally, you're never supposed to say no to them.
But the mark of a good parent is saying no in appropriate amounts.
Setting rules and sticking to them.
Kids like rules.
Kids need boundaries.
I know that we live in a society that says that any boundaries on children are oppressive.
That's because our society is dumb.
Boundaries are necessary for children.
Children seek them.
And they thrive when given the proper boundaries.
Doesn't mean that you have to be authoritarian.
There's a difference between what they call authoritative parenting and authoritarian parenting.
Authoritative parenting is you have rules and you hold by those rules because those rules are rationally and correctly based.
Authoritarian parenting is because I said so.
You should be able to explain the rules that you use for your kids.
But you should have rules and you should enforce those rules.
Yeah, of course.
Teresa says, hi, Ben.
I'm a cradle Catholic.
Sometimes when I discuss religion with my peers, they accuse me of being brainwashed from birth to believe what I believe.
I have a very difficult time convincing them otherwise.
And once they have that idea in their head, they simply refuse to listen to me.
I'm wondering if you have had similar experiences as an Orthodox Jew and how you overcome this factor when talking with people.
Yeah, of course, I think that everybody who is born into a religious household has that experience of, oh, the only reason you believe this is because you were brought up this way.
And the way to deal with this argument is to say, there may be truth to this, right?
We are all subject to the biases of how we were raised, obviously.
Like, for example, you secular humanists, you were raised in a society that values secular humane ideals.
Do you value those because they're rationally based?
Or do you value those because you were brought up in a society that values those things?
Because rationality can take you in any direction.
And if you think that religious people don't doubt their beliefs and examine those beliefs over the course of years, over the course of decades, then you've got us all wrong.
Now, I'll grant you the respect of thinking that you've thought through the positions that you hold, but you need to grant me the respect of thinking I've also thought through the positions that I hold.
Because the problem with that attack is it's really, in essence, a character attack, and it's a character attack that applies to everybody.
Everybody's belief systems are, of course, rooted in the environment in which they grew up.
The question is, have you thought through your own beliefs?
Do you have good answers to the questions that are being asked of you?
Or do you really just believe things because people told them to you when you were three?
Becoming more sophisticated over time means asking those questions and answering those questions.
And you can reverse the question and say the same thing to anybody who is an atheist or a secular humanist.
And if they say, well, I used to be religious and now I'm an atheist because I thought things through.
You can say, okay, well, I'm glad you thought things through.
I've also thought things through and I came to a different conclusion.
And it is dismissive and derisive and derogatory in a way that is inappropriate for a normal conversation to suggest that I've not considered my ideas while you, magical human being, have.
have sean says greetings mr shapiro i want to say thank you i had a question and if i should stay at my job and suck it up you helped me take the plunge into something new i'm making more money and more than that it feels so much better to not be under bad management and oppressive sjw policies i'm now in my second annual subscription eager to help you and others fight back thank you for your voice well number one you're welcome you know the the fact that you move jobs and took a risk as i've said calculated risk taking is a very good thing i've I've switched jobs many times in my career.
I graduated from law school in 2007.
Since 2007, I have held, before I started Daily Wire, I had held something like seven jobs, and I'd quit every one of the jobs for my own reasons.
I quit a job at a law firm because I couldn't stand it.
I quit a job working at a radio network because it was not moving in the direction that I wanted it to move.
I quit a job at Breitbart because I had significant editorial disagreements with the leadership over there.
I've quit a bunch of jobs in order to make more opportunity for myself or because I had moral disagreements.
You have to make calculated risks, and you have to be smart about those risks.
Do the risks open windows?
Do they open doors?
Or do they close doors?
Very often, people will quit a job and unintentionally close a door.
What you want to do throughout your life and your career is to open doors, not close them.
And even if you leave, you should try to leave on good terms as much as possible.
Angela says, Media like to show that illegal immigration is a lot worse under Trump compared to Obama.
How is immigration under Bush compared to Obama?
Thanks.
Well, illegal immigration has been increasing significantly over the years.
Barack Obama, I don't know where they're coming up with the metric that illegal immigration is a lot worse under Trump compared to Obama.
That's not actually true.
There's been a pretty tremendous escalation in family illegal immigration across the border, and that's why you're getting all these child separations at the border.
But Barack Obama deported something like 3 million people.
Over the course of his presidency.
I mean, it was much higher than Bush.
I think Bush was at, like, two million.
So, Obama was dealing with a border crisis in 2013, 2014, so I'm not sure what statistics are being cited there.
Daniel says, hi, Ben.
Ever since Nancy Pelosi has been very publicly warming up to the members of the squad, there's a visible absence of controversy stirred up by AOC and her crew.
What do you think is at play here?
My wife and I both love the show.
Best Dan.
Well, I mean, I think that right now, everything was put on back burner to attack Trump.
It's one of the reasons why I was pretty upset at President Trump when the squad and Pelosi were going directly at each other and I thought, man, this is fantastic.
This is great.
This is WWE fisticuffs between two characters who I do not like.
Let them fight.
I was totally into it.
And then Trump jumps in and he's like, I want to fight with everyone.
Let's do it, man.
Fight time.
And then they were like, OK, let's team up.
We're going to have a team up now.
And of course, that that's what's papering over all of us now.
Will it break out into the open again?
You bet it will.
All Trump has to do is shut up for five minutes and the Democrats will break back into what they have been doing, which is tearing each other apart.
This is why I keep saying to the president, Mr. President, it's Shark Week.
Go watch Shark Week.
Stop it.
Go watch Shark Week now.
There's sharks on TV.
You like sharks on TV.
We know.
Go do that.
Ashley says, Ben, given all we know on the link between social media and teenage depression and suicide, do you think the government ought to have enforceable laws on minimum ages of social media use?
Thanks, I'd love to hear your thoughts, especially given the weaponization of media by sexual predators to ground minors, or to target minors.
It's an interesting question.
I really do think that this is more of a parental question than it is a governmental question, but there are addictive aspects to social media, and the notion that A kid who is 12 or 13 should be on social media if the parents are not doing what they are supposed to be doing.
It's really interesting.
I honestly haven't considered enough.
I want to consider that more.
It's something that I am open to.
Because, again, protection of children is one of the roles of government because kids can't take care of themselves.
And if parents are simply plopping their kids in front of the TV 12 hours a day and not sending them to school, we do have truancy laws, and if parents Are allowing kids to take advantage of social media in such a way that it is endangering to them, then I could see an argument.
I mean, as you know, I'm loathe to embrace government regulation in nearly any area of American life, but I could see the argument.
I could see the argument here.
Billy says, howdy Ben, from your future home in the great state of Texas.
By the way, on a personal level, quick note on that one, on a personal level, my kids are not going to be allowed on social media until they're probably 16 or 17 minimum.
And even then, I would prefer that if they have a social media profile, they're not actually posting on it.
I'm not sure they should have social media until they're 18.
Like, they need to be old enough to understand that everything they put on social media is then permanent.
Billy says, howdy Ben, from your future home in the great state of Texas.
Yeah, I appreciate it.
Two questions.
One, how would the US get back to the gold standard?
How, in your opinion, would that affect the economy?
Two, as someone getting married to my fiance next year, could you give me some advice that has helped you be a good father and husband?
I'm an avowed Catholic.
I'm hoping to add my understanding of what makes a good husband and father.
Any and all advice is helpful.
Please do not hold the fact that Michael Moles and I share the same religion.
I don't.
I love many Catholics.
Michael Moles is not among them.
So, when it comes to how the US would get back to the gold standard, It's difficult to reverse the fact that so many people in the United States and in the federal government believe that manipulation of the currency is a positive good.
I mean, there are even many folks who are conservative who believe that the best policy of the Fed would be to basically set a low interest rate.
This is sort of Milton Friedman's policy, like a 2% interest rate.
And then it would just be that year on year.
I don't like the idea of a central government being able to manipulate currency.
It's a way of robbing savings from people.
It is a way of the government manipulating policy in order to cover for its own shortcomings.
The way that you would do this is you would peg the dollar to the current value of gold.
Whatever is the current value of gold, you would peg the dollar to a current value of gold ounce, for example, and then that would be the price of the dollar forever.
It would never change.
And that would provide an insane amount of stability.
I mean, you want to keep the United States as the world's global currency?
This would be the way to do it, because then there would be inherent value in the currency.
In fact, you know, I used to be more skeptical of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is basically trying to do this.
Bitcoin is setting an actual value to a currency that is based on scarcity, and is not controllable from above by some sort of manipulative entity.
It's all fun and games for the government to play with the currency until you create a bubble, and then that bubble ends up bursting, for example.
As far as the second question, how to be a good father and a good husband, I would say as a father, the rule that my dad used, and I think it was a good rule, was always take your kids seriously.
Always take their concerns seriously.
Treat them as though their concerns are serious.
Don't talk down to them.
Be authoritative, but not authoritarian.
Set rules, understand your own rules, and always treat them as though they are rational and have good reasons for what they're doing, even if they don't always.
And that is a good mark of a good parent.
As far as being a good husband, I would say that the same thing holds true.
Try to put yourself in your spouse's place when you are thinking about what you're... The killer of marriages is faulty expectations.
The best marriages are reliant on two spouses who believe that it is my job.
Not it's my wife's job and I'm mad at her for not doing her job.
It is my job.
And I don't have the expectation that she's going to do that.
It's one of the things that's made my marriage with my wife so fantastic is that there are a lot of situations in which my wife has not been present because she was doing medical residency, for example.
My... I wasn't angry at her for that.
I wasn't angry saying, well, you know, I wish that she would do X, Y, and Z. It was, no, listen.
This is a marriage.
This is a partnership.
I'm picking up the slack because that's my job.
My job is to do X because she can't do X today.
And now that she's finished with residency, she's doing the reverse.
I'm very busy.
She's not quite as busy.
That means she's picking up the slack in an awful lot of ways.
If you think first, this is my job, not this is my spouse's job, you're going to be better at everything.
You're going to be a better business partner.
You're going to be a better spouse.
Now again, this arrangement only works with people you trust.
This is true for politics too.
With people you trust, saying it's my job, not your job, is the best politics.
But that only works when people aren't free riders and taking advantage.
If you married somebody who is a free rider and is taking advantage, that's just a bad marital decision.
But that doesn't change the underlying fact that being a good husband is you saying, yes, it's on me, and not doing it out of a sense of virtue, not doing it out of a sense of virtue signaling where it's like, oh, look at me, the suffering, sacrificial man taking on all these burdens.
But as a part of making your life better, being more responsible, the best people you know are the people who take on more responsibility.
Taking on more responsibility makes you a better human being, I think.
Let's see.
Jordan says, Hey, Ben, if the Democrats nominate Joe Biden and they lose, what happens to their party?
Will that kill any hopes of moderation within the party?
Yeah, they'll skew to the left.
If Joe Biden is the nominee and they lose, they will skew dramatically to the left.
They will suggest that he lost for the same.
It'll be basically the reverse of Republicans 2012 to 2016.
Now, I think it may have more to do with persona than it has to do with policy.
But Democrats really conflate persona and policy in a pretty incredible way.
Yeah, it's good times up there.
Where everybody's being told to wax each other's genitals.
Yeah, it's good times up there, where everybody's being told to wax each other's genitals.
Party times.
I'm wondering how Elizabeth Warren is being taken seriously as a candidate, despite being proven to have abused the left's religion of identity politics for her personal gain by claiming Native American ancestry.
How is that not grounds for immediate dismissal from the Democratic Party?
Best, Luke.
Well, number one, she acknowledged for white privilege, right?
So this is the get-out-of-jail-free card for identity politics.
Acknowledge white privilege.
Acknowledge it!
You must atone!
So she atoned.
And also, she's a socialist, so she can get away with anything.
The media love Elizabeth Warren.
Elizabeth Warren is not a great candidate.
They love her.
The two candidates that have gotten, they're the really three candidates getting this sort of love from the media right now.
Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg.
None of them are particularly appealing, but they make the left feel smart.
And thus, Elizabeth Warren continues to ride high.
Jeffrey says, long time listener and fan.
After re-watching the Daniel Day Lewis film Lincoln, I thought to ask, what is your favorite historical film?
Also, if you had the opportunity, are there any amendments you would like to put forth for vote?
So, My favorite historical film is, was, shall always remain 1776.
I'm a musical theater fan, and 1776, which is a fantastic take on the origins of the Declaration of Independence, is dramatic, it's brilliantly written, wildly underrated because people wildly overrate Hamilton.
And it's terrific.
It's really great.
But there are a bunch of historical films that are really terrific.
Patton is a fantastic film that is also historical, obviously, with George C. Scott.
That is a terrific movie.
They're really too many.
Most of my favorite films are probably historically oriented in some way.
But 1776 is the one closest to my heart.
As far as amendments, I'd put forth for a vote.
I've always said that I would love a constitutional amendment that suggests that every bill has to be no longer than three pages and on a single topic.
The death of democracy is omnibus bills.
Because all that is, is here's a bunch of crap.
Either vote for the entire bucket of crap or you vote for nothing.
How about this?
How about we get everybody on record how they feel about this specific proposal?
And then we can all vote based on how they feel about this specific proposal.
Otherwise you end up with this idiotic demagoguery where you have a bill and it's called the Make America Awesome Act.
And you didn't vote for the Make America Awesome Act.
You're like, you're right, because it blew out the spending.
I'm like, no, no, no.
But it also had funding for first responders.
So you hate the first responders.
You're like, no, I just don't want to blow out the spending.
No, but you didn't vote for it.
It's stupid.
How about this?
How about we have funding for first responders?
And that is a separate bill.
And then we have all the other stuff.
And those are all separate bills.
That was the way that legislation was supposed to work.
OK, final question.
Michael says, Ben.
I recently read Bill Clinton's autobiography and was surprised to learn that he was rather right-leaning, at least compared to today.
I was wondering how you would grade his presidency, not counting the scandals.
Thanks, Michael.
Well, on foreign policy, I would give Bill Clinton a D. I think his foreign policy was quite bad.
I think it led to the rise of Al Qaeda.
I think he was weak on foreign policy.
He retreated from the world.
On domestic policy, I think that his policy was quite good.
I mean, in his first term, he started off moving to the radical left, then he got blown out in the 94 elections, and being a smart politician, he then moved to the moderate center and started cutting deals with Newt Gingrich to lower the budget deficit, to reform welfare, to lower the capital gains tax.
So, the fact that Bill Clinton governed as a moderate Republican on economics And on domestic policy, he signed the 1994 Crime Bill.
These were all good pieces of legislation.
So on domestic legislation, Bill Clinton was like a B, B-plus president.
He did a lot of good things on domestic legislation.
On foreign policy, he sucked.
And then, of course, there was the scandalous nature of his presidency.
Bill Clinton could not win a single primary in the Democratic Party today.
Not a single one.
At least not running as 1996 Bill Clinton.
Alrighty, well, we will be back here today with two more hours of additional content.
We'll skip things I like and things I hate because we're running a bit long, but we will see you here next week.
If not, if we don't see you here a little bit later today, if you don't subscribe, then have yourself a wonderful weekend.
We'll see you here back here on Monday.
Same bat time, same bat channel.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Robert Sterling.
Directed by Mike Joyner.
Executive Producer, Jeremy Boring.
Senior Producer, Jonathan Hay.
Our Supervising Producer is Mathis Glover.
And our Technical Producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Adam Sievitz.
Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.
Hair and Makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
Production Assistant, Nick Sheehan.
The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
Hey guys, over on the Matt Wall Show today, we're going to hit on some of the stories we missed this past week, starting with Mario Lopez.
He said, as you may have heard, that three-year-olds can't choose their own gender, but he since almost immediately cowardly apologized for that.
So we'll discuss the need in our culture for not just sanity, but also courage, which is so sorely lacking.
Also, is it racist?
For robots to be white.
CNN has posed that very important question.
And finally, scientists are trying to create human-monkey hybrids.