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Sept. 1, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show
59:28
Liz Wheeler | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 66
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Everything that the left is trying to do is a threat to who we are as the nation.
Everything that we are built on, all the principles that we're built on, is on the line when it comes to the policies that the radical left is putting forward.
And if we don't stop those, the next generation, our children and our grandchildren, aren't going to know the same America that we know.
Hey, hey, welcome back.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show Sunday special.
I'm really excited to welcome to the program Liz Wheeler from OANN, One America News Network, and her show is called Tipping Point.
She has a brand new book out also called Tipping Point, plural, to distinguish it from her show.
Liz, thanks so much for stopping by.
Ben, thanks for having me.
So, what prompted you to write your book, Tipping Point?
Right, so this is the most common question I'm asked about this book, and it's actually a great story.
You probably experienced this, too, actually.
After my show, every night, we have a show Monday through Friday, I get dozens, if not hundreds, of emails from people telling me, I agree with what you say, I see for myself what the left is doing to our nation, but how do I do anything about it?
These are people who don't work in Washington, D.C., people who aren't in the government, they're not in the swamp, they want to know what they can do besides every year going out and casting their ballot.
And, you know, I would answer as many of those as possible, but after a while, I thought, well, this needs a longer form.
So my book is my long-form answer to those people.
This is a handbook for what everybody in America can do to fight back against the radical leftist ideology.
So in a second, I'm going to ask you to go through some of the arguments that you make in the book.
And I also want to ask you, what exactly is the mentality that the other person that you're talking with has to have in order for any of these arguments to be effective?
I'll ask you that in just one second.
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So let's talk about what it takes to even get into the conversation.
So I get the same letters that you do.
The biggest question I always get is, how do I destroy somebody to feed somebody in one of these debates?
And the first thing that I always ask is, is it even worthwhile having the conversation?
So what do you think are the preconditions to having an honest conversation?
One of them might be that you're not supposed to be destroying each other in the conversation.
Right, well one of the things that I always remind people is a lot of times when you're having a debate, and this I'm sure you've experienced, is you may not change the mind of the person that you're actually talking to.
A lot of times it's almost entertainment, it's a show to have those ideas compete with each other, and the person that you're talking to is going to be pretty...
Um, firm in their beliefs.
That's part of human nature.
We don't like to change our minds, we don't like to lose face, but if you really think about the people that are listening, what they might hear, what part of the leftist argument they might need debunked in order to process the information from your side, from the right side, that you're presenting in that argument, that's what I always tell people to think about.
Not necessarily the person that you're talking to, but everybody listening to the argument or the debate.
So how much command do you have to have of the facts in order to have these debates?
Because you spend your life doing this, I spend my life doing this, most of the people who are writing us spend five minutes or ten minutes or maybe an hour listening to our shows every night.
What level of expertise do you think people have to have in order to do well in these sorts of conversations?
Well, I always say when you're talking to a liberal, it's not difficult to be the smartest person in the room, the most educated person in the room.
So I would say you do have to know what you're talking about.
Of course, if you don't know what you're talking about, then you're just going to be slinging around talking points.
Kind of makes us know better in a political debate than the other side.
But that's what I hope to do in my book, is I give people some facts and some figures and some arguments that you can make without spending six or eight hours researching every day before you engage in that debate.
And once you know the basics, Once you know how to use the basics, almost weaponize that data or that information against a leftist, then you don't have to, I mean you don't have to have a PhD in politics to do it.
Have you ever found yourself convinced by any of the arguments that other people are making on the other side when you have a conversation with them on some of these issues?
Probably not at this point in my show because I'm pretty firm.
I'm pretty, I'm pretty firm in my principles.
I know what I believe and more, more than that, I know why I believe what I believe.
I always say in politics, you should tie yourself to the principles, not to a politician, you know, not to any show, not to any personality.
You should tie yourself So, you're a young conservative woman, which means that you've internalized the patriarchy.
I'm not thinking about a particular political party.
I'm thinking about the principles that I'm fighting for.
And so if you can convince me why my principles are wrong, if you can convince me why my religion is wrong, I'm open to hearing your argument, but I've thought through my positions pretty closely.
So I don't know that in a debate, I've thought, oh, yep, you're right, I'm wrong. - So you're a young conservative woman, which means that you've internalized the patriarchy.
So what exactly made you conservative to begin with? - Well, I grew up in a conservative family.
My dad's a small business owner.
And growing up, you know, we would work with him at his store and we would see how businesses run.
He was very open with us about his finances, taxes, government regulations, how that impacted his business.
So I think it's a little bit difficult to experience that in real life and not come out on the other side, somewhat conservative, believing that the individual knows better than the government does.
Because, you know, you can see for yourself what happens when government tries to tell somebody what to do, but then you get to a certain point, this is the same with religious beliefs, you get to a certain point Where you're not just drafting on what your parents believe anymore.
You have to have that, you know, come-to-Jesus moment where you realize your views for yourself.
And mine was kind of, I don't want to be told by somebody else what to do.
I want to make my own decisions, even if that leads to mistakes.
I want to be able to achieve my potential in the way that I see fit, handle my money the way that I see fit, handle my religion the way that I see fit, exercise my constitutional rights the way I see fit.
Not the way some bureaucrat in Washington, D.C.
wants me to live my life.
And so when you come to that point, you realize of the two parties, the major political parties, only one of the parties is offering that opportunity.
The other one wants to tell you exactly what you should be doing and what you're not allowed to do.
So what are the shortcomings with the Republican Party?
Because, I mean, you talk about the differences between the Republican and Democratic Party.
I think, in theory, that's true.
In practice, it seems to be a lot less true, considering the size and scope of government that even the Republican Party is pushing these days.
Right.
Well, the number one problem with the Republican Party right now is spending.
I mean, conservatives are supposed to be fiscally conservative.
We're not supposed to spend like the Democrats spend.
And we can see, I mean, it's not just this administration.
It's Congress, Republicans in Congress.
It's the prior Republican administration.
President Bush spent like crazy.
Nobody has the appetite anymore To make the pitch to voters why we need fiscal conservatism, I tell people watching my show all the time, this is why it's so dangerous when Democrats offer free stuff to voters as a way to sort of buy their votes.
Because once you've made that offer, once you have bought them off, it's very difficult for somebody else to come in and say, actually I'd like your vote and my platform is I'm going to take away your free stuff.
Nobody really is going to buy into that.
And when we have politicians whose interest is keeping their seat for as long as possible versus serving the interests of our Constitution and their constituents, they're not going to make an argument that they know right off the bat is a losing argument.
So do you think that we're basically screwed when it comes to spending?
Because that obviously holds true for Republicans as well as Democrats.
Oh yeah, for sure.
That's Republicans and Democrats.
I mean, President Trump in 2016 openly campaigned on not changing the entitlement programs that are destroying our budget and represent 66% of all spending, all of it mandatory in the United States.
We have to change it, or else we're going to be on the road to Greece.
There's no two ways about it.
If we don't stop spending, we're going to run out of money to spend, and then we are going to default.
And I think this is more incumbent even on Republicans in Congress than President Trump.
He can certainly advocate for that, but it's congressional Republicans who have to do the hard work.
They have to be the ones who Put those tough spending proposals and actually make plans to implement fiscal conservatism.
And yes, that includes reforming these entitlements that so many people want to believe are untouchable.
They're going to be untouchable in less than 10 years if we don't do something.
They're going to be untouchable because we're not going to have any money to spend in them.
So to go back for a second to your personal story, so you talked about why you're conservative, but what got you into politics in the first place?
Because a lot of people have conservative parents and don't end up doing what you do for a living.
Barack Obama did in 2007.
That was kind of the first time I paid attention to politics on my own versus just, you know, seeing it in my sphere or seeing my parents pay attention to it.
I started following the Democratic primary, watching him compete with Hillary Clinton, and the day that he won the election, I thought to myself, You know, this man really does want to fundamentally transform America away from what has made America so great.
And I, you know, I would see these politicians on the debate stage, Republican politicians, saying the wrong things.
You know, they're not, they're not speaking to what voters have the capacity to hear.
They're not packaging limited government and conservative principles in a way that's palatable Okay, so what do you think is the specific angle that you take that a lot of politicians don't?
D.C.
And I thought to myself, I can say these things better than these politicians.
I can tell people why conservative principles are the best for them and for their family and for our nation.
And so I thought to myself, then you should do it.
OK, so what do you think is the specific angle that you take that a lot of politicians don't?
So I've critiqued for a long time the sort of accounting methodology that formed former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan was famous for.
He kind of sits down with the briefcase and then explains to people why entitlement spending was bad.
I've been very critical of that approach.
I think that it is counterproductive.
But what do you think is the best approach when you're trying to convince people, not just debate with people, but convince people who may be undecided about these issues?
We need to think about how they hear things.
I mean, this is true in interpersonal relationships, too, which is why in one of my chapters of my book, when I give a reading list, I actually give a recommendation for people to read a couple of books that are about how men and women relate to each other, because you have to understand human nature in order to communicate with people that you don't know.
They're outside of your social circle.
And I think politicians don't think about the perspective of the people that they want to vote for them.
They're thinking only about their arguments on the House floor.
They're thinking only about their policy positions, what's smart and what's not smart to them.
And they're not thinking about what touches the heart of one of their constituents.
And I'm not advocating to go just to a motion like the Democrats do, but you also have to be A relatable individual.
You have to listen to what the other person cares about, and then you have to explain why conservative policies best address what they care about.
Because hands down, I mean, I cannot think of an issue that an individual American cares about that is not best addressed by limited government versus big government.
Okay, so let's talk for a second about the female aspect of what you do, meaning that there's all of these opinions out there about what women are allowed to speak about versus what men are allowed to speak about.
This particularly becomes true in the area of abortion, where men are routinely told that they have to sit down and shut up because if you are not pro-abortion, then this is obviously because you're not a woman.
You're a woman.
You're obviously very pro-life.
So why do you think that this meme has spread so far and so wide that women are uniquely pro-abortion, have a unique stake in abortion, and that men should sit down and shut up?
Well, men are told to sit down and shut up because feminists are scared of there being a coalition of people, regardless of your gender, who are actually pro-life.
They are trying to silence as many people as possible because they're going to lose the argument on abortion.
If they actually had the courage to have the debate, they would lose that 100 out of 100 times.
And so they tell me, As a conservative woman, that I'm not a real woman because I'm not pro-abortion.
They tell you as a man that you're not allowed to talk about this because you don't have a uterus, so no uterus, no opinion.
They are trying to silence as many people as possible so that the only people left who are quote-unquote allowed to talk are pro-abortion feminists.
So in a second we're going to get to the intellectual incoherence of suggesting that I am not a woman so I can't speak about abortion because I don't have a uterus, but also you don't need a uterus to be a woman, you can actually just be a biological male.
But I want to ask you what you think are the most convincing arguments in favor of the pro-life position.
Because there's the moral argument that's made, there's the scientific argument that's made.
What do you think has been the most effective move by pro-life advocates?
So there's actually really interesting new information about this from the University of Chicago.
There's a PhD student, he actually just graduated, who did a study on what convinces people to be pro-life versus pro-abortion, and the number one deciding factor, people said, is when does life begin?
You talk about this all the time, I talk about this all the time, but he said it's the science of the thing that convinces people, and people want to know when life begins, and so he studied, well, Who, when they tell you when life begins, do you give the most credibility to?
Because sometimes when I say it, people will say, you're just saying that because you're a conservative.
You're just saying that because you're pro-life.
And he found that biologists, people think biologists have the most credibility when it comes to this argument.
And then he did a third step.
He did a study of biologists all around the world, asking them when life begins.
And they responded almost unanimously with life begins at conception, scientifically.
And I say almost unanimously because I believe it was above 95% and the remaining few percent just sent him hate emails about trying to spew his pro-life agenda.
So, I mean, I think that's the best way to go about it.
Of course you can speak to somebody's religion if they come to you with a religious issue.
Of course you can speak to the ethics of the thing.
But truthfully, the heart of the matter when it comes to abortion is always, when does life begin?
And if life begins at conception, which science tells us it does, then what right do we have to end that human life?
Okay, so let's talk for a second about some of the counter-arguments that I've heard, and I'm sure you've heard, on the abortion issue.
So, one of the counter-arguments that I hear very often is the bodily autonomy argument, which is, sure, it's a human life, but it exists inside you, you still have bodily autonomy, and so why exactly should you be forced to bear this child's term if you're in control of your own body, particularly anything inside of it?
Right, well that comes back.
I mean, what I tell people in my book, when you're talking about abortion, you always want to bring it back to the heart of the matter.
Because all of these extraneous arguments are rendered moot, essentially, when you get to the heart of the matter.
So you want to talk about bodily autonomy, then you say, okay, well are we dealing with one body or are we dealing with two bodies?
And if they say one body, the woman's, then you say, well, then what is that?
What is that that she's pregnant with?
What is in her uterus right now?
What is in her womb?
The answer to that, of course, is a unique person with unique set of DNA.
And it brings it back to that question, when does life begin?
And if it begins at conception, what right do we have?
Every single abortion argument can be brought back to that question.
And that's what I encourage people, I advocate for people to bring it back to that, because it's kind of a lose-lose for the pro-abortion crowd.
If they don't acknowledge that science says that life begins at conception, then they're being anti-science, which is what they accuse you and I of being all the time.
If they do say life begins at conception, then they're, you know, undermining their own argument.
They're saying, well, even though this is another human life, I want the government to say which life has more value and which life we're allowed to just discard and kill.
Just to clarify your pro-life position, in case of rape and incest, you're also pro-life or you believe there should be choice available?
I am pro-life.
Okay, so that is logically consistent.
I'm on the same page, obviously.
The counter-argument that you usually hear is the so-called famous violinist case.
I'm sure you've heard this one before.
I've heard your takedown of it as well.
From the 1970s, very famous philosophy paper, and it basically suggests, okay, so you wake up in a room, and next to you is a famous violinist who has been hooked into your veins, and do you have an obligation not to unhook this famous violinist if this famous violinist is going to die absent the IV?
Well, the argument there, of course, is that like a rape or incest case, in that particular case, you didn't will this person to be connected with you.
In the case of consensual sex, obviously one of the risks of consensual sex is that you will indeed get pregnant, but if you had no choice in the matter, then it looks a little bit more like this particular case.
How do you take down that particular argument?
I mean, I think that conservatives do this very well and extend a tremendous amount of compassion to victims of rape and incest.
In fact, I don't know that there's any demographic of people in our country who are more compassionate.
And I'm not just talking about on the airwaves.
I'm talking about with their money.
I'm talking about with their charity to victims of rape and incest as we should be.
Um, and we need to remind people when they're trying to tie the entire issue of abortion to rape and incest, that rape and incest, um, account for less than 1% of abortions in our nation.
So if we're making abortion legislation based on rape and incest, then it should only apply to those two, or to that less than 1% of abortions.
It should not apply to the other 99%.
So when, when the left gives me straw mans, I...
Bring it back to the heart of the matter every single time because they don't want to have that conversation.
I mean, Planned Parenthood, we've invited Planned Parenthood and other abortion advocacy groups onto my show to debate me.
I'm very respectful when I debate.
Numerous times, probably innumerable times, nobody wants to have that debate.
They do not want to talk about the heart of the matter.
They just want to go off into the periphery because they know they're going to lose.
I don't let them go off into the periphery.
So let's talk about another hot button issue that you've talked about a lot and gotten a lot of flack for, and that is the issue of transgenderism, gender identity disorder, gender dysphoria.
So the right has gotten a lot of flack again, and the numbers here tend to break down along gender lines, meaning men are less sympathetic to the arguments with regard to changing of gender than women seem to be, in the same way that when it comes to the pro-life Pro-choice argument, men tend to be a little bit, not tremendously, so a little bit more pro-life than women do.
On transgender issues, it seems like there actually is a larger gender gap on some of these issues.
So, where do you stand on the malleability of gender versus sex?
There's something that the left has forgotten about.
It's called objective truth.
There are two genders, male and female.
It's coded within our DNA.
It's not bigoted to say that.
It's not intolerant to say that.
It's a simple matter of biology.
I will never let the left shut me up from saying that because it is the truth no matter what they say.
Again, conservatives should Offer a tremendous amount of compassion to people suffering from gender dysphoria because they deserve our compassion.
That must be an incredible burden to feel that you are trapped in the wrong body, to feel that you are a different gender.
That's a legitimate psychiatric disorder and we should treat these people with dignity and respect and love.
But treating them with dignity and respect and love is not allowing them to be used as political pawns for the left's political agenda, and that's what the left is doing.
They are trying to exploit these people under the guise of saying they're tolerant, under the guise of saying that we're trying to include transgender people in polite society.
The left is actually exploiting them, and we shouldn't let them do that.
Because it's part of their larger scheme, if you will.
Their larger scheme to undermine the family.
Because when you advocate for transgenderism, meaning when you do that politically, what you're doing is you're saying that there's no real gender roles, right?
And if there's no traditional gender roles, then there can't be any traditional relationships.
If there's no traditional relationships, then there can't be a traditional marriage.
If there's not a traditional marriage, then there can't be a traditional family unit.
If there's not a traditional family unit, then everybody in our nation is rendered dependent on the government, which conservatives identify as the ultimate goal of many Democratic politicians.
They want money, and they want power, and to do that, they control the people.
Do you think that it has more to do, the left's agenda on this, has more to do with the interference of government?
Or does it have more to do with the general attempts to redefine terms along subjective lines?
Because it seems to me that's even a deeper issue.
The left obviously wants a bigger government.
But it seems to me that what the left really wants, more than anything else along these lines and virtually all others, is to radically redefine reality in terms of subjectivity.
The idea being that we are supposed to simply respect what you think of yourself and take that as a given reality, and that any attempt to say something that is objectively true is offensive to you.
And the goal there is that once we can't even have a common conversation anymore, well then How are we supposed to live together?
I think that the attempt to break down gender is part of an attempt to break down religion, part of an attempt to break down social institutions, not in favor of government, but just in favor of leveling.
But I think you have to ask why.
Like, why would they do that just independently?
Why would they care if there's no such thing as objective truth, if it wasn't in pursuit of a larger goal?
Because I don't think that as many leftists, and I'm not lumping together liberal voters with leftists, I don't think leftists Do I don't think they impose their agenda haphazardly.
I think they do it on purpose and with a purpose.
It's one of the things that I talk about in my book, actually, that you have to define it.
You have to define what it is that they want, because when you define what it is that the left wants, you can understand that each of their attacks, you know, whether it is on Christianity and religion or the family or our education system or whatever it is, when they are attacking these things, they're doing it with a purpose.
And their purpose is to tear down, in my opinion, their purpose is to Tear down these cultural cornerstones so that people are dependent on government.
They're not doing it just for the sake of doing it.
Maybe some individual is, but collectively, I think they're doing it in order to consolidate control in the government because that's what benefits them the most.
So how much do you think is malice and how much do you think is stupidity?
I guess is the question.
Because really it seems like, you're probably right when it comes to a few thinkers, members of the Frankfurt School, people who are actual Marxists who wish to see institutions collapse so they can rebuild the new utopian tomorrow.
But the vast majority of people who support, for example, the transgender rights movement, I don't think that they have any such Thoughts about this.
It seems to me that it really is as deep as, I feel unsympathetic if I don't just say that people are what they say they are.
And thus, I don't want to look cruel, I don't want to feel cruel, and what does it hurt me?
Well isn't that why you and I do what we do for a living?
Because there are many people who hear these things and they feel compassionate, as they should.
It's a good part of human nature to see somebody who's oppressed, somebody who's been marginalized, and say, hey, I want to be on that person's side.
I want to stand up for them.
I want them to be treated with dignity and respect.
And so they see, they hear this rhetoric from, you know, the upper echelons of the transgender movement, and They say, listen, I want to be on that side because I want to stand with the marginalized people.
And they're not, you're right, they're not thinking through why the transgender movement is doing what they do.
But I think absolutely, I think it's directed by special interests, by an ideology that wants to consolidate power into government.
Because I honestly don't think that all, I don't think that it would be as concerted of an effort to morph this politically correct culture into the laws of our nation if they didn't have a larger plan.
All right, so I want to ask you about a couple more issues, and then I want to ask you some sort of broader philosophical questions.
So let's talk for a second about an issue that seems to be very divisive, again, along gender lines, and this is the issue of immigration and national security on the border.
So men tend to be a lot harder on border policy than women do.
There's been a lot of talk in the media about lack of sympathy from the Trump administration for people crossing the border.
You are a border hawk.
What do you make of those arguments?
I think this is a matter of Democrat politicians tell lies to the American people.
Truthfully, I mean, I want to talk about the immigration rules that the Trump administration just unveiled.
The ones about catch and release, the one about detaining children with their families.
Do you know what this issue is actually about?
Human trafficking.
The trafficking of little children.
If you're a border patrol agent or an ICE agent, you are giving pregnancy tests to little girls as young as 11 years old.
If that does not break your heart and break your soul to hear that, then I don't even know how to talk to you.
And yet, the left is not interested in practical solutions about how to prevent those children from being trafficked.
The number of those children that are being trafficked increased by 300 percent.
I believe it was last year to the first half of this year because the catch and release program, because that policy incentivizes illegal immigrants or illegal aliens who are claiming asylum, incentivizes them to bring children with them because they know under the Flores settlement agreement, children can't be detained for more than 20 days. incentivizes them to bring children with them because they know So parents and children are released with a court date after that 20 days.
They fade into the shadows.
They never show up for their court date.
And voila, they're in the United States for free.
But what happens to those children?
The left, you say that to the left and their head is going to explode.
They're not going to listen to you about human trafficking.
They're not going to listen to you about the sexual abuse of women or children at our border.
And that should show you all you need to know about whether the left is arguing about the border in good faith or not.
Because if they cared about women and children the way that they claim that they do, they would be applauding.
They would be standing up and giving a standing ovation to what the Trump administration just did.
So one more issue that I want to get your opinion on, and then we can get into some more broad philosophy, and that is the crime issue.
So it seems like this should be an area particularly where women really are conservative.
I mean, and this was the premise of the 2004 election.
George W. Bush ran on the so-called security moms, women who are deeply concerned about national security and crime.
And yet right now what we are watching is movement by both parties away from sort of tough on crime tactics, including the Trump administration, which signed into law criminal justice reform.
And we've tried that here in California.
It has not worked particularly well.
What's your take on how the government should be dealing with crime?
I think we should enforce the laws that we have on our books.
I mean, that's job number one.
I mean, you can apply this to any area of crime.
I mean, we can talk about how it applies to gun crime, but we have the left telling us that we need all of this gun control, all these new laws.
I think they have, like, 13 proposals in, you know, the Parkland Kids Green New Deal for Guns, whatever they're calling it, a peace plan.
All of these different things, if we had just applied the laws in our books, we don't need gun control to keep us safe.
So that's a microcosm of our entire criminal justice system.
If we actually enforce the laws in our books, we wouldn't have the same issues that we have today.
It wouldn't be such a politically... I don't even want to call it a politically divisive topic so much as a politically dishonest topic.
People pretend like they're on one side of criminal justice or the other just to get votes, but they don't have actually any intention of enforcing laws that we do have.
So, now I want to ask about the more general question.
Sure.
So, as I mentioned before, there's this massive gender gap between men and women, particularly with regard to President Trump, but just true politically.
Generally, it's a growing gender gap.
It's getting worse.
You're making a very articulate case, as a woman, for pro-life positions, for pro-hawkish positions on immigration, for anti-crime positions.
All of these are convincing arguments, with which I agree.
So why is it that this gender gap is widening, not narrowing?
Um, I think because of what I said before, I think the Democratic politicians tell lies all the time.
The mainstream media disseminates those lies to all the four corners of our country.
Not everybody spends as much time as you and I do researching every day, so I'm not going to sit here and castigate people who, you know, fall for the propaganda, but essentially, essentially that's what's happening.
If you're not someone who's highly plugged into the conservative movement or conservative media, then some of these arguments that are coming from the left, at surface value at least, Sound very compelling.
I mean, think about those pictures.
You know, we're talking about immigration.
Think about those pictures of those little kids, those little girls wrapped in those foil blankets in cages next to porta-potties, you know, surrounded by barbed wire.
That should, you know, that should break our hearts.
That is really sad.
And if you don't do your research, or if you're not plugged in, you might think that President Trump was the one who just put them there and not realize that those photographs were from 2014 and 2015 when President Obama was in office.
That seems obvious to you and me, but not everybody is as plugged in to see those things.
So, again, that's why I do what I do, because I want people to have an avenue to hear the truth.
I want people to hear the liberal talking points and say, oh, that does sound kind of convincing.
Well, I mean, I think that answers why so many people are deceived generally, but to get back to the sort of gender gap, why is it that more women than men seem to be buying into left-wing arguments?
And again, I think the gender gap is a really obvious Yeah.
thing that's been happening.
I mean, you can see it.
The Democrats fought the war against the war on women in 2012 with Mitt Romney.
And then they did the same thing in 2016.
The great danger to President Trump, electorally speaking, is women in the suburbs.
It is not men per se.
It is.
Well, don't you think it's fear?
Don't you think it's fearful?
Because the Democrats, that's what I would identify it as, because the Democrats target women, especially suburban women, and say, listen, if you don't support radical leftist policies, then you're going to be relegated back to, you know, what many women consider to be their worst nightmare, you know, not able to vote, not able to drive, not able to have a job, not able necessarily to choose who they want to marry or where they're able to live, you know, sort of the proverbial, and I don't mean any disrespect to my grandparents' generation, but the proverbial You know, 30s, 40s, 50s housewife that is just cleaning house and cooking.
And I don't mean any disrespect to people who do that, but there's a difference between doing that when you choose to do that and doing that when you're forced to do that.
And so the Democrats have made a concerted effort ever since the sexual revolution to put fear in the hearts of women, to scare women into supporting their policies because otherwise, you women, you're going to be oppressed by the patriarchy, you're going to be put back Well, this does bring us to the question of President Trump and what you saw in 2016.
We'll start there.
Why do you think President Trump ends up winning the election of 2016?
Because obviously he was expected to lose by everyone, including President Trump.
I think he won because he's not afraid to push back on the radical leftist ideology, on the narrative that's being perpetuated by the mainstream media.
I mean, conservatives who followed along not just this election, not just the Obama administration, but even going back to George W. Bush, conservatives all over the country were so frustrated when, you know, Bush and his administration didn't push back.
Against the media.
That really, I think, was red meat to the mainstream media.
You know, they saw what they could get away with.
And a lot of people across the country were really fed up with that because propaganda does work.
So when the media is engaging in this propaganda, it does make a difference in how many people vote if they're not as engaged as you and I are.
And President Trump isn't afraid to just point at someone and say, that is BS.
That is ridiculous.
Don't try any of this nonsense on me.
Don't try to castigate pro-life views or immigration views or free market views as being racist or bigoted or homophobic.
That's not true.
He's not afraid to fight no matter how hard they fight back.
And I think that appealed to a lot of people, me included, in our country.
With that said, where do you think 2020 is going to go, given the prevailing trends?
So I had a very interesting conversation with a professor from American University named Alan Lichtman on my show this week.
He has predicted the past nine presidential elections correctly based on an algorithm that he devised.
It's not based on the polls.
He has 13 elements in his algorithm and he says a sitting president must lose six Well, I mean, I think that it's smart not to buy into polls 18 months or, as it turns out, 18 hours before a presidential election.
I lost a lot of money in the last presidential election betting as the data went, and that was a horrible, horrible mistake.
But with that said, do you have fears that President Trump is vulnerable?
I mean, if you had, let's say you were the odds maker and you had Everybody is always vulnerable.
Nobody should ever take their position for granted.
Voters should always go out and vote.
You should never feel comfortable in your position.
That's the easiest way to not be taken advantage of, but that's the easiest way to lose your seat and be surprised about it.
President Trump should campaign on what he's done.
He should campaign on what he's still going to do.
Voters should go out and vote.
They should look at his record, especially voters who, during the 2016 campaign, didn't believe that he was going to be conservative on anything.
They should look at what he's accomplished, and they should see that No, spending is still out of control, but the vast majority of things, it's absolutely incredible resume of conservative achievements, and so they should decide, well, which direction do I want our country to go in?
And if you want our country to go in the direction of conservatism, well then there's one obvious choice, and you should go out and you should vote that choice.
So as I've been saying for years, President Trump appears to be a hammer, and he's a hammer in search of a nail.
Sometimes he hits a nail squarely and it's really satisfying, and sometimes he hits a baby and it's not nearly as satisfying.
So with that said, let's say that you're advising Trump.
What do you advise him to do in terms of how he approaches things publicly?
Do you think that he just continues to do what he's doing, you just let Trump be Trump?
Or do you think that Trump should tone it down on Twitter, do you think that he should Maybe speak a little bit less wildly, a little bit more advised fashion.
What would you recommend?
You want my honest opinion?
Sure.
I actually think Trump's tweets are awesome.
Not 100% of them, but more often than not, they make me laugh, they're true, they might be harsh, and they get the media to talk about what he wants them to talk about.
The media doesn't even realize 99% of the time that he is trolling them.
That he is actually, not the producers in their studios, he is actually dictating what they're going to talk about all day long.
They don't realize that.
And I sit back and I watch these tweets come in on my phone all the time, as we all do.
And honestly, I think they're awesome.
I think that's one of the reasons why he won.
Not every tweet, there's some, you know, as we all do, that I say, well, should have phrased that different, or once in a while there'll be a cringe, but most of the time I think they're awesome.
So, you're a big believer in President Trump's tweets, I get it.
Sure, yeah.
Listen, as a member, as members of his base are constantly telling me his tweets are unbelievable.
I enjoy my fair share of President Trump's tweets.
Sometimes I find them absolutely hilarious because... He's very underappreciated as being hilarious.
He's very, very funny.
I mean, it is one of the chief things about him that is appealing is that he's basically a stand-up comedian being the president, right?
I mean, all of his rallies, this is what the media don't understand about him, is that when he does a rally, He's not scripting like Obama.
He's not even scripting like W. He's out there riffing like Dennis Miller would at a live stand-up.
And that's exactly what it is.
And that's why when people are like, well, why don't people take seriously what he's... Because he's not taking himself seriously at these rallies.
Well, let me push back on this.
Remember what I said before about the mistake that politicians make?
The mistake that politicians make is they don't think about how their audience is hearing something, right?
So what President Trump does is he always thinks about how his audience is hearing him.
What they want to hear, yes, but he's always thinking about how they're going to respond to it.
That's how he has that connection with them, and that's what sets him apart from most other politicians.
That's not a bad thing in a politician.
I mean, it's a good thing in front of a live audience.
I will object to the phrase, always thinks in connection with President Trump, just as a general matter.
But when President Trump is in front of a live audience, I mean, he is performing in front of a live audience.
You're a performer.
I'm a performer.
In front of a live audience, you have a symbiotic relationship with the audience, and Trump does that as well as anybody.
The problem is there's a whole camera crew there, and they're there projecting this to hundreds of millions of people.
And let me present the counterargument to the Trump's tweets are the greatest thing and are going to get him reelected.
Okay, here we go.
That might be a little bit of a hyperbolic.
It is.
I don't mean to, I don't mean to, I don't mean to throw him out of here, but we'll say that you like his tweets and you think that they are a positive for him.
That's fair, yeah.
Okay, so let, so here is the case against.
There's a mythology that's been built up around 2016.
The mythology goes something like this.
Hillary Clinton was a wonderful or at least mediocre candidate.
President Trump ran in A fantastically different campaign that mobilized an entire group of people who hadn't gone to the polls before, and he won a sweeping victory because of that.
I don't think that's true.
I think what happened is that people looked at Hillary Clinton, and they didn't go out to vote for her because they thought, number one, she was definitely going to win, so they just didn't show up to the polls, and number two, they just weren't all that enthused about her, so they didn't show up, figuring she was going to win.
Okay, so if you were, like, lukewarm on her and you didn't like Trump all that much, All right, fine.
Maybe I'll show up for her.
Maybe I won't.
It's raining outside.
Forget it.
Not going to happen.
And then people just didn't show up for her in the key battleground state.
She wins the popular vote by 2.5 million, and she loses in the narrowest gauntlet in American history.
She loses Ohio pretty solidly, but then she loses Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, all very narrowly.
Now, the proof of my position, that this was about Hillary losing and not about Trump winning and mobilizing a vast new movement, is that Trump actually won fewer absolute votes in Wisconsin than Mitt Romney did.
And Mitt Romney lost the state overwhelmingly to Barack Obama.
And Donald Trump won the state of Wisconsin.
That's not about Trump mobilizing voters Romney didn't.
That's about Hillary Clinton failing to mobilize the voters that Barack Obama did, because Barack Obama was the actual statistical outlier.
And this holds true in nearly every state.
Donald Trump performed like generic Republican.
The dirty little secret is he didn't perform like non-generic Republican.
He actually performed within margin of error in nearly every state with Mitt Romney and George W. Bush in every single state.
Well, the problem there is that it was a referendum on Hillary Clinton.
Now we move forward to 2020.
It's no longer a referendum.
No, but it's not.
Clinton.
Now it's a referendum on Donald Trump because he's the president of the United States.
So as I've been saying, if the referendum is on Elizabeth Warren and her garbage ideas, No, but it's not.
Trump wins.
If it's a referendum on Trump and him as a personality, It's not that either.
then he's got a real problem.
If it's just a referendum on the economy, well, then we'll have to see where the economy is in about 18 months because I think everyone agrees that if the economy takes any sort of dump at all, he's done.
Right.
But you're missing a big point here.
The point is that this is a referendum and Trump has made it this through his tweets on the leftist ideology.
It's the mainstream media that he is battling here because the mainstream media has been the PR firm of the Democratic Party.
So yes, he's not running against Hillary Clinton anymore.
He's now running on his own record.
Sure, most people are doing better than they were before.
Trump was president, so he's good there.
But I don't... His tweets have also changed, by the way, from during the election in 2016 to now.
He's ramped them up.
They're more bombastic, even.
They're certainly more frequent.
He targets people much more specifically.
But here's why.
And I'm going to reference, actually, an article that you wrote.
I believe it was last week.
You said, what would this week look like in conservative achievements?
If Trump hadn't tweeted.
Yes, this is right.
If Trump hadn't tweeted, and I think it's a good point, but I would push back and say, to the left, nothing is ever good enough unless you fully adhere to the radical leftist ideology.
This is the cancel culture that we talk about in society all the time.
So it doesn't matter that Trump is Trump.
They call him a racist and a white supremacist and evil.
Because he's a Republican, not because he is racist or white supremacist or evil.
And you can look at proof of that when you look at how the media handled, you know, a sort of lukewarm Republican like Mitt Romney.
They said he was evil, too.
He wasn't tweeting.
They're going to treat a Republican exactly the same, no matter how they are, no matter whether that Republican is tweeting or not, because that person is a Republican.
Trump shouldn't, in my opinion, cede any ground to them and say, oh, you want me to act a certain way?
I'll act a certain way because you want it.
Because they're just going to push further.
It's never good enough for them.
I don't think it's about ceding ground to the media.
I mean, that is my favorite part of what Trump does.
I mean, when he's lashing out at CNN, I have virtually no problem.
I think the media are garbage.
I think they've been garbage at their job forever.
I don't think he's the first person to do it, by the way.
I think that Newt Gingrich did it in 2012 in the primaries, and it's why Newt had that brief moment of glory.
When he started ripping on John Harwood in the middle of a debate, right?
So, I mean, this is not something new.
Trump has just made it into an art form.
But the problem is that the art of politics is making it very difficult for people to vote for your opponent, and making it a lot easier for people to vote for you.
Trump makes it very difficult for people to vote for his opponent, and also makes it very difficult for people to vote for him, specifically because of this.
And the proof concept here is not 2016, it's 2018.
Meaning if you watch 2018, for a brief moment in time, it was a referendum on Democrats.
During the Kavanaugh hearings, before the Kavanaugh hearings, the Democrats were up in the generic ballot somewhere between 8 and 10 points.
The Kavanaugh hearings happen, and suddenly Kamala Harris is in our faces.
And suddenly, you see all the Democrats making complete fools of themselves, pushing against due process, suggesting that people can be railroaded with 30-year-old allegations that have no evidence to back them, and the American people get annoyed, and suddenly, the polls close up, and it's basically a dead heat going into the election.
Then the Kavanaugh hearings end, and President Trump says, you know what, I gotta ramp up my base, I'm gonna talk illegal immigration for the next three weeks, and I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna rally, and I'm gonna tweet about illegal immigration for the next three weeks.
And suddenly people's minds shift from, I really don't want Kamala Harris in charge of the country, and her folks in charge of the country, Democrats in charge of the country, And it shifts to, oh God, he's tweeting again.
Oh God, he's just saying things.
And they're thinking about that when they go into the polling places, particularly in purple areas with suburban women.
And they not only vote against him, they vote against Republicans overwhelmingly.
That was a wave election.
We like to call it not a wave election.
It was a wave election by the statistics.
It did not have to be a wave election if President Trump had been quiet after the Kavanaugh hearings or just said the word Kavanaugh one million times between the end of the Kavanaugh hearings and the election.
And I understand what you're saying in one sense, but that's a certain time in history.
I mean, this is another time in history already, just another year.
And I think we have to ask ourselves, well, what is the approval rating among Republicans of President Trump?
And how does that compare to past incumbent Republicans who are facing re-election?
I think the number is 94% of Republicans approve of President Trump.
That's astronomical comparatively to other presidents in our history.
So most of those people are most likely going to turn out and vote.
His base will show up, no question.
His base is going to show up.
The question is, there is a poll number that I saw, and I know we're not supposed to respect poll numbers this far out, but if people don't like either candidate.
So in 2016, there was a poll showed that, there were a bunch of polls that showed if you don't like either Trump or Hillary, you're actually more likely to vote for Trump.
There are polls now that show that if you don't like, for example, Trump or Biden, you're more likely to vote for Biden by, I think, a factor of In other words, Trump may be alienating exactly the people that he needs to not alienate.
Right, the Rust Belt.
Yeah, the Rust Belt, the suburban women.
I mean, Texas, there's a reason that four Republican congresspeople have bowed out.
There's a reason that Texas is trending purple.
For all the talk about Trump being a glorious, victorious winner, the fact is Mitt Romney won the state by 12.
Well, Texas isn't about Trump, though.
Texas is about immigration and the demographics changing in that state and people from California moving to Texas and all those different things.
Actually, domestically born Texans are voting blue in larger numbers than California and expatriates.
We can blame our state for a lot, but we can't actually blame it for that.
But it's also the demographic change, not just of Californians moving there, but of Latinos who are, you know, crossing the border and settling in Texas and raising their kids there and changing the demographics of the local government.
But Trump wildly underperforms the Latinos in Texas in a way that, for example, Greg Abbott does not or Ted Cruz does not.
I mean, the fact is, you're right, demographics are changing in Texas, but let's put it this way.
Trump loses Texas elections over.
I think we all agree this.
I don't think that he is going to lose Texas.
I think he'll win Texas, but I think that it'll be narrow.
Right now, it is very narrow in Arizona.
It's very narrow in New Hampshire.
There are a lot of states.
He's doing well in the states that are heavily rural, right?
He's going to do well in Iowa, probably.
He'll do well in Ohio, presumably.
But in a lot of the states where the movement has been toward urban areas and away from rural areas, if Republicans don't find a way to win those elections, then they're not going to be in office for a very long time. - I agree, I guess my question would be, I agree, but this trend has been a trend.
It didn't start under President Trump.
So I guess my question would be, if you're laying the blame at the feet of President Trump, what's the basis-- - Not totally. - What's the basis of that?
Because this is a trend that started, I mean, the Turn Texas Blue movement, whatever they call themselves, that's long before Trump ever came down that elevator. - That's true, and then Wendy Davis got her ass kicked.
I mean, but the fact is that, does Trump exacerbate the wrong kinds of trends, or does he alleviate the wrong kinds of trends?
And this is really a question for, can Trump do better, right?
I mean, this is not me trying to say that President Trump is definitely going to lose or that I want him to lose, God forbid.
I don't want Elizabeth Warren to be president of the United States.
It would be a horror show.
But if Trump could contain himself, wouldn't that be a better strategy than simply his base rah-rah-ing him all the way to... I think there's a third option there.
I think so.
Because he does respond to his base a lot more than here.
We talked about this actually briefly before we went on air, but I think there's a third option, a way that President Trump can win Democrat voters without stopping what he's doing, without changing who he is, without curbing his tweets, without stopping implementing conservative policies.
And it's probably the least sexy sounding political issue out there, but school choice.
If he talks about school choice, if he pushes school choice, champions for charter schools and school vouchers, then there are going to be Democrat voters whose children go to those schools, minority moms whose children go to those schools.
They're registered Democrats, but they want the best for their kids.
And I think that that's a secret weapon that President Trump can use to expand his base in some of these states.
We saw this.
This isn't a hypothetical opinion.
We saw this happen in Florida in 2018 when DeSantis, now Governor DeSantis, a Republican, defeated Andrew Gillum.
He did so by a margin of just 32,000 votes, right?
But 100,000 African-American women, registered Democrats whose kids went to charter schools, voted for DeSantis.
At the same time, they voted for the Democrat Senator Bill Nelson, and they did that because DeSantis was promising to champion charter schools and Andrew Gillum was promising, you know, to abolish them.
He called them a siphon on the public school system.
So even though this doesn't sound like an issue that's exciting, it doesn't sound like a bombastic tweet, it doesn't sound like a media narrative, when you're talking to actual voters about what matters to them, going back to what I said earlier,
I think this is a way that President Trump can compliment what he's doing now, compliment what appeals to his base, and also reach across the aisle to a demographic that's not served by their Democrat representatives, who are actually told by their Democrat representatives that what is best for them and their family and their children and their children's education is not what the government wants them to be doing.
If he does that, I actually think that would be a secret weapon that would help him win a lot of Democrat votes.
I mean, I would love to see him do that.
I'd love to see him make the tax cuts permanent as well.
It's been kind of fascinating.
Since the Democrats took over the House, he hasn't really issued a lot of calls for legislation.
Aside from school choice, what would you like to see him push the Democrats on?
Spending.
I'd like to see that, especially in a second term, when you're not up against re-election.
I think we need to do that.
If I were the president, I would veto any budget that came on my desk that didn't defund Planned Parenthood.
I think you want to get your base excited.
You want to get your religious base, you want to get your pro-life female base excited.
You defund Planned Parenthood.
Um, tax cuts are always good.
His regulation push.
I mean, one of the things that I think is the most underappreciated thing that he has done, it's becoming a little more appreciated now, is his appointment of federal judges.
He is remaking the federal judiciary and that is a legacy that will last.
Much longer than any term a president can ever hold.
These judges that Trump is appointing are constitutionally minded folks.
They are going to not be judicial activists.
They're not going to bend with the winds of politics.
They're going to uphold constitutional values, which puts a, you know, a block, a door block in the way of what the radical left is trying to do, which is codify politically correct culture into law, not legislatively, but through our courts.
So, strategic question, not just for President Trump, but for all Republicans.
Right now, there's a real incentive on the part of people on the right to nutpick, to look at the left and find the nuttiest ideas and point those out, because they are plentiful.
They are very plentiful.
It's hard not to.
It is, especially because, again, the nuts may have actually taken over the party at this point, but there is a danger in Doing what so many of us have done and that is elevating the most extreme elements of the Democratic Party.
I understand that the party has moved in very extreme directions, but elevating the most extreme members of the Democratic Party at the expense of some of the not quite as extreme but still extreme members of the Democratic Party.
On the one hand, it makes it obvious to the American public how extreme and radical the Democrats are.
On the other hand, we may be emboldening the people who end up governing us.
And that frightens me a little bit.
I mean, are you worried about that?
Because the Democrats basically did do this with Donald Trump in 2016.
They kept saying, well, you know who we'd love to run against?
Would be that Trump guy, because he's nuts.
And then Trump becomes president, of course, and he governs in extraordinarily conservative fashion.
Should we be more careful about the opponents that we select?
Should we be trying to put our thumbs on the scale in favor of Democrats who are slightly more reasonable than, for example, the squad?
Or should we be rooting for the squad to take over leadership of the Democratic Party?
I would respond to that by asking, who's more reasonable in the Democratic Party?
Who's the reasonable one?
There are a couple of blue dog Democrats left in Virginia.
I mean, we could root for them.
I was rooting for Nancy.
Names?
The one who just won Dave Bradsheed is slightly more... Exactly, though.
Nobody even knows who they are.
I mean, the entire party.
The one guy from somewhere in the Midwest.
But even Nancy Pelosi looks moderate next to these clowns, right?
But she's not.
I mean, three years ago, we thought she was the most radically left that any politician, the craziest any politician could get.
And then it turns out behind door number three.
Exactly.
So I don't know.
I don't know if we're particularly elevating it or if the Democratic Party has been elevating it.
I mean, I think this was the result of Bernie Sanders running against Hillary Clinton in 2016.
He certainly lost, but the impact, his legacy, is that he moved the Democratic Party from just being liberal and left, maybe even what I would consider far left under Barack Obama, to being radically socialist Uh, leftist ideology.
They're just as far left as you can possibly go.
They're advocating outright.
They're saying socialism is a good thing.
They want cultural Marxism.
They want, essentially, communism.
I mean, we didn't make them take these policy positions.
We are just saying, that policy position that you're taking, it's dangerous and stupid, and here's why we're going to debunk it so that nobody falls for it.
So let's talk about the 2020 Democratic side of the aisle.
So right now, as we currently sit here, Joe Biden is collapsing in on himself like a dying star, apparently, according to the polls.
Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders both running in tandem near where Joe Biden is.
There are a couple of polls in the last week that basically have Biden receding back to the rest of the field.
Not a great shock, considering that he was a weak candidate going in.
How do you see this race going the rest of the way?
And who do you think the nominee is?
Oh, I hesitate to make predictions a year and a half out.
I think it depends on what people say, how bad of gaffes Joe Biden makes, whether people care about looking at Elizabeth Warren's actual policies.
I know she's kind of getting this cultural meme status for always having a plan for everything.
And in a sense, kudos, you know, having a plan.
Don't just run on a talking point.
So does Stalin, but sure.
Yeah, exactly.
But if you look at her actual plans, they're terrifying.
And so I talk about this on my show all the time.
I don't just want to talk about Elizabeth Warren's cultural appropriation, pretend Cherokee heritage.
I mean, it's bad by leftist standards.
But if you look at some of the other things that she stands for, I mean, the Accountable Capitalism Act.
If Elizabeth Warren gets the nomination and I'm Trump, that's what I talk about.
The Accountable Capitalism Act empowers the government, the federal government, to expropriate any private business in our nation that earns more than $1 billion in revenue.
That's something like 3,500 private businesses that Elizabeth Warren wants to be under the purview of the government and not the people.
They have to obtain a federal charter, meaning permission from the government to run their business, and a set of standards about how they want to run their business or else the government comes in and fully takes it over.
That is literally socialism.
So, I mean, you talk about some of these things, or President Trump and all Republicans running should talk about the details of these people's policies, because those middle voters, that 30% who voted for Obama first and then voted for Trump in 2016, they don't like that sort of thing.
That's too radical for them, and that would either keep them from voting for an Elizabeth Warren or drive them to vote for President Trump.
So on a personal level, change topics really quickly.
Yeah.
How have you been dealing with the added notoriety of what you do?
So obviously, you know, five, six years ago, some people knew you, now a lot more people know you.
Have you dealt with the blowback that you've received for doing what it is that you do?
You've obviously become one of the more hated figures on the right because the left despises you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Welcome to the club.
Enjoy.
It's a party out here.
But how have you been dealing with that on a personal level?
Um, I'm really fortunate to have a support system, a really strong family support system, a really strong group of friends.
You know, my husband is an incredible support.
We were together long before I had a show on One American.
It's really, I found it very beneficial to be around people who were my friends, were my family, were my support before I was ever on television, because those people, you know, they just, they just look at me for me, not for me on television.
And so when you're surrounded by that, when you're fortunate enough or blessed enough to have that support system, I think it's a lot easier to let that stuff roll off your back.
I'm not a terribly thin-skinned person to begin with.
I mostly look at insults that are hurled at me in a positive way, meaning I don't enjoy, I'm human, I don't enjoy being insulted, but if the left doesn't have an argument back, a counterpoint to what I say, then they resort to ad hominem, so that means that I won that point, right?
So if you kind of Look at insults that way, and then don't look at insults if it starts to get to you.
Don't look at your timeline if, you know, you're getting piled on by a bunch of people who aren't wanting to argue policy, they're just wanting to insult you personally.
Don't look at it.
Go hang out with your family, go hang out with your friends, go read a book, go live your life outside of politics, and, you know, let people waste their time insulting you if that's what they want to do.
Have you gotten really good at that?
I've been working on that for years, the not looking at the notifications.
Any tips on that?
Like, seriously.
Just don't do it.
Yeah, I basically have started to do that.
I've basically gone cold turkey on some of Twitter.
Sometimes it's hard to put your phone down.
We both know this.
I think we're both Twitter addicts.
But I don't know.
My rule is just if something starts to get to me, if I see an insult and it actually hurts my feelings, then I'm like, okay, it's time to step away because, you know, that shouldn't hurt your feelings.
That shouldn't be something that makes you think anything differently about yourself or something that makes you feel insecure.
So if there's anything that does, I step away.
Much of the time it doesn't because, you know, it just, I know who I am.
I know that I'm a child of God.
I know that I'm loved.
I know that I'm beautiful.
I know that, you know, that I have so much to bring to the world.
I'm not insecure when someone calls me a profane name because I know that that's not true.
I know that that comes from a place of ignorance, of stupidity, of probably hurt within themselves.
It just doesn't change my view of myself.
So, you know, we talked a little bit earlier about the idea of, you know, being in conversation and shifting, you know, on fundamental principle.
I agree with you that if you're really studied in your own fundamental principles, the changes there are going to be minor and rare.
Yeah.
Have you ever been changed on a question of policy?
Yeah.
A specific question of policy?
Yeah, the death penalty.
I used to be very pro-death penalty.
You know, if you get these terrible criminals, why not?
You know, they deserve to die, right?
That's just justice, and I have shifted on that.
Probably not 100% anti-death penalty, but you look at the statistics of how many errors there are, how many people are executed, and their DNA afterward exonerates them, and that's inexcusable in our justice system.
We cannot tolerate that.
Um, especially in an era where these, the most terrible criminals don't have the possibility of escaping.
You know, it might have been different back in the Wild West where people, um, could escape prison, you know, to actually, to actually keep them from harming other people you had to put them to death, for example.
But that's not the case anymore.
We can keep people from harming other people without putting them to death.
And the purpose of our justice system, I think, philosophically, is not to engage in revenge.
It's not vengeance.
We're not supposed to play God.
The purpose of our justice system is to restore order to our society.
And we have to, unfortunately, tragically, we have to remove some people from society.
We have to incarcerate some people when they Um, have violated other people's rights and can't be trusted not to violate people's rights again.
But that's the extent to which our justice system should, um, go.
We shouldn't be saying what these people deserve or, um, what, you know, what we think they ought to get because of what they do.
We just have to protect people.
And as, as human nature, I think it's hard to do that when you see some of the most egregious crimes committed by the most evil of people.
But, uh, yeah, that's one that I've, I've changed my thinking on.
So on a broader level, how does religion play into your life?
Are you a religious person?
Yes, I am.
I'm a practicing Catholic.
It is everything of who I am.
So maybe you can talk a little bit about that.
How does that play into your politics?
It plays into my politics, well, I mean, kind of what I just said before about it's my identity.
I'm a child of Christ.
I know who I am.
I know that I am loved.
I know I am created, fearfully and wonderfully made.
I know that I am put on this earth for a purpose.
I know that my role on this earth is to further the kingdom of God, to love other people as Christ loves me.
I try to do that through my politics.
Um, as well, I think, you know, God gave us free will.
He didn't make us the same as animals.
He wants us to have a choice between good and evil so that we can choose Him, so that our choice is, um, of free will to choose Him.
And I think conservative policies allow people not only to achieve the potential that our Creator put within them to achieve, but also to make those choices, um, in their own lives between good and evil.
It's also the most compassionate.
We're called I think any religious tradition calls us to be generous and loving and charitable to other people, and conservative principles allow us to do that better than any other form of government that the world has ever known.
So, well, we've talked a lot about arguing politics.
How do you go about arguing or discussing religion with people, or do you sort of try to stay away from it because people tend to have their own private beliefs?
Um, I, we don't talk, I don't have a lot of political or religious arguments on air.
I always say that my political arguments are based on both, you know, secular practicality combined with the morality that my faith informs.
So I never advocate for a political policy based just on, um, my religion.
I'm never going to say, oh, the government should force everybody to go to confession once a week because otherwise You know, you're going to be in, you know, you're going to have committed a mortal sin, obviously.
That should be your choice, whether to do that.
But, I mean, it's kind of ridiculous, I think, to, it's kind of ridiculous when the left says that we should take our religious beliefs out of politics.
Because at the end of the day, everything that is moral, on the philosophical sense, is because of God.
It is begot of God.
There is no morality If there is no God.
And so if we're talking about the laws in our nation, what governs right and wrong and justice, those are all begot of the Judeo-Christian tradition of morals.
There's no way we can remove that from our politics, I mean, unless we wanted to fundamentally change our system.
And we've been the most successful, the most just, the most prosperous system on Earth.
Why would we change that?
Okay, so in just one second, I want to ask you a final question.
That is, what do you think is the biggest problem facing the United States?
If you want to hear Liz Wheeler's answer, however, you have to be a Daily Wire subscriber.
To subscribe, head on over to dailywire.com, click subscribe, and you can hear the end of our conversation over there.
Well, Liz, I really appreciate you stopping by.
The book is Tipping Points.
Everybody should go check it out.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Associate producer, Colton Haas.
Our guests are booked by Caitlin Maynard.
Post-production is supervised by Alex Zingaro.
Editing by Donovan Fowler.
Audio is mixed by Mike Coromino.
Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
Title graphics by Cynthia Angulo.
The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire production.
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